iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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I think a key issue here is that these guys have no idea what 'good' means

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And once again, real harms imposed on real people must be set aside until after real damage is done in order to privilege the unproven right of Trump to impose those harms

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 21h

I feel like if AI wants to be in the business of offering medical opinions, then AI companies need to be in the "getting sued for medical malpractice" business too

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André Picard @picardonhealth @picardonhealth.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Plasma collection in Canada is a bloody mess that needs fixing. It’s time for Grifols, the private plasma collector, to get its act together or get out of Canada, by @picardonhealth.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti... via @theglobeandmail.com

theglobeandmail.com

Opinion: Plasma collection in Canada is a bloody mess that needs fixing

The importance of plasma-derived medications can’t be overstated, but integrity of the system is even more crucial

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Alex Merz 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇺🇦 @merz.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Find a picture of him from ten years ago. It’s as though someone put a hex on him. The actual cause is probably dodgy purported anti-aging treatments.

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sianushka.bsky.social @sianushka.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

“The rate of ectopic pregnancy deaths in states with abortion bans is nearly double that in states where abortion is legal.” That stat should shame every anti abortionist in the world.

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Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is not a Canada-only problem and that actually makes it worse as countries feel less exposed when they are trending with the mean. Perhaps someone will instead recognize the opportunity? If everyone else is pulling back on R&D investment, your new dollars will go much further if contrarian.

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Jim Woodgett @jwoodgett.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Paul Wells did some deep diving on the HERD illusion around 18 years ago. I doubt HERD is the excuse not to invest more though, as it doesn’t take long to physically disabuse the situation by a simple tour. But the situation will deteriorate much faster as international tuition revenues collapse.

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Christophe 🔬 Leterrier @christlet.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Here's a balanced account of where the microscopy community stands on AI use by this year's Small World in Motion winner. My main issue is that no one seems to have seen the original data despite requests (no mention of it being reviewed by the organizers) www.the-scientist.com/allegations-...

the-scientist.com

Allegations of AI Use in Nikon Competition Spark Controversy | The Scientist

Microscopists raise concerns about inappropriate AI usage in Nikon's microscopy contest-winning video. Nikon stands their ground, citing no policy breach.

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Sylvain Baillet @sylvainbaillet.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

👉 Tenure-track opening in neuroscience @crchum.bsky.social @umontreal.ca crchum.carrieresante.gouv.qc.ca/poste/profes...

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William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It’s all stupid and silly until it isn’t.

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BCCHR ResDev (DM) @resdevbcch.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

‼️ attention Canadian health researchers ‼️ #CIHR has posted the Project Grants Discussion Paper and a related *survey* cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/54821.html Please please participate 🙏

photo of the “help shape the future of the project grant program” announcement by CIHR. TEXT is accessible in the hyperlink in this post.

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Around 4:30, I heard Jon Lorsch had approval to turn the system back on. Not clear who gave that approval. Given the impending end of the fiscal year and the many delays this year, the few hour pause could matter. Reminded me of this stunt from July 2025: www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/t...

statnews.com

Trump administration reverses course, lifts pause on NIH grant awards

The order applies to the entirety of new and, possibly, ongoing research grant dollars that go to universities and academic medical centers.

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What. A. Day. NIH grant-making was paused for several hours today. Not sure who gave the order. But in light of the Friday night Bhattacharya-Vought feud & threatened EO to implement #ScienceDeathPanels, my money is on Russell Vought. I learned of the pause from a colleague around 11:30. 🧵

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Christophe 🔬 Leterrier @christlet.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

From the new info my bet is fluo labeling inference pushed to 11. Hallucinating nonsensical DAPI nuclei, mitochondria stain, membrane labeling from a kind of phase contrast image: wrong localization, wrong scale, wrong movement. Keeping this movie as SWiM winner is a disgrace to the competition

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Mark Peifer (He, him) @peiferlabunc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Exactly! And as I noted in a note to Nikon on Linked-In, they provided no information about the false coloring. Are nuclei in blue? Are mitochondria magenta? What are the red filaments. Without some knowledge of this, determining whether this is even plausible is impossible

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Christophe 🔬 Leterrier @christlet.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is the updated part. Looks like the movie is an AI-generated fluorescence image from a non-labeled acquisition technique. No indication that the Small World jury and organizers have requested and verified the raw data (as mentioned as a possibility in the competition rules)

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Paul Fairie @paulisci.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

When I first moved to Calgary in 2006, I would regularly tell people outside Alberta that things were weird but not as weird as they seemed from the outside. Now I tell people that they're weirder.

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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 21/09/2026

I'm not saying others didn't know this. I'm not saying at different points I didn't think aspects of these things. I'm saying the overwhelming evidence is THAT stark. This isn't nuanced, it's nefarious. Evil grievance politics. 3/3

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Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 21/09/2026

What's happening in Alberta is even more batshit than I ever thought. Danielle Smith is a dangerous psychopath, and the AB separatist movement largely exists because COVID broke far-right brains, and is led by Christo-fascist religious white nationalists, relying on dark money. 2/n

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If Democrats continue to focus on elite issues like the price of diesel fuel instead of on kitchen table issues like chem trails and racial purity, they're going to get walloped in November.

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

So sick of useless techbro scam artists sucking all the air out of every room and taking up all of the space we could be using for discussing things that matter.

AI is rapidly getting smarter.

This has nothing to do with our product, but it's a good hook for the kind of person we’re marketing to.

Anyone who actually cared about general increases in human capacities would put all of their effort into childhood nutrition and public education. But fuck that.

Today we're announcing Vitruvian, a new set of polygenic scores. We're calling them "genetic optimization models" because "polygenic scores" tested poorly.

Our whitepaper says the expected gap between the highest- and lowest-scoring of five embryos (many IVF patients have 1-3) is ~10.8 IQ points. The gain over transferring a random one is ~half that. So like 5, but let’s call it 14, a number that tested well.
Best case for P(we pick an embryo with higher IQ than random pick) = 0.63 for a difference that has no demonstrated effect on any outcome a parent would care about. Meanwhile 1/3 of our customers will get a worse-than-chance pick on this metric. The good news is it is impossible to know, and we are selling a value system.

The models were trained on 1,000,000+ people, mostly of European ancestry, so if you aren't, the numbers above get substantially worse. We validated on 40,000+ siblings, many of whom took a short, noisy cognitive test in UK Biobank, which risks inflation based on relatedness, stratification, overlap between training/test.

Is our model overfitted? Does it suffer from common issues with UK Biobank data? No one has checked but us.

NICK BOSTROM. (VCs in the Valley like it when you say that.)

Genetic optimization has followed a scaling law all the way up to the hard, low ceiling set by how much your embryos differ from each other. Forget I said that.

In fact, nothing is being optimized in the sense you understand that word, which is the sense in which I want you to misunderstand it.

Parents across the world now have the choice to pay us for possibly altering a complex and contested metric that is strongly shaped by nutrition, education…

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WeberLab@McGill @weber-lab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

🚨We're hiring!!🚨 @biomcgill.bsky.social is looking for a Quantitative Cell Biologist to join our diverse and interdisciplinary community. Please share this ad broadly, and reach out if you have any questions. mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/McGill...

mcgill.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com

Assistant Professor in Quantitative Cell Biology - Department of Biology

Please refer to the How to Apply for a Job (for External Candidates) job aid for instructions on how to apply. If you are an active McGill employee (ie: currently in an active contract or position at ...

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

FAQ City: Montreal...really the best, no question Mascot: Non-existent, legless bird symbolizing endless toil What's for lunch: Onigiri place just opened on the ground floor...really turning a corner here People: Lots of super nice biologists, spanning outside kind to inside kind Vibes: see "City"

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

There are several industries in Canada--groceries, telecom, and of course airlines--where a handful of massive corporations run rampant over consumer rights. Yes they get sued and caught by regulators, which results in them losing dozens of dollars. Canada needs to embrace punitive damages.

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Piali Sengupta @senguptalab.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This is fucking exhausting.

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

yeah, the enrollment declines, if you like that metric, are similar across the basic sciences and the humanities in many places; noninstrumnetal / non-pre-professional inquiry is just attacked rhetorically so much before anyone even gets to the college classroom

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𝕊𝕦𝕟𝕕𝕒𝕖 𝔾𝕦𝕣𝕝 @sundaedivine.lol · 12/09/2026

“Boss, love the work, big fan, but I need this Strait of Hormuz thing wrapped by Friday."

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

"At a total process efficiency of around 8%, we would need more than doubled all electricity generation in a year,to pull 1yrs worth of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Direct air capture is not efficient enough, nor will it ever be efficient enough that we can just keep emitting CO2 like we have been"

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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The US once had 17 military bases on Greenland, but has closed all but two. The decisions to close were 100% US decisions. Neither Greenland nor Denmark requested the closures. Luckily for Trump, he base is immune to reality. Hopefully for the rest of us, most American's aren't.

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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Denmark & Greenland have figured out that all they have to do is allow Trump to brag and he'll give them anything. Trump is now touting his "amazing" new agreement, that is no different than the 1951 Greenland Defense Agreement, under which the US could have unlimited bases. 1/2

avalon.law.yale.edu

Avalon Project - Defense of Greenland: Agreement Between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark, April 27, 1951

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Is there some non pathetic definition of the word "rebuke" I am unaware of?

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ⓘ 𝕆ligarch f*ckery detected @adelpreore.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

For as long as I live I will never forgive or forget every single individual that have enabled and profited off this lying and utterly corrupted administration. www.msn.com/en-us/politi...

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Andrew Iwaniuk @evoneuro.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Worth noting that this has been flagged as an issue for decades. Gen X (👋) raised this 20-25 years ago and no one cared (of course). The bigger issue with respect to hiring new faculty is lack of funding to post-secondary institutions, and a corresponding lack of space.

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Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

you think metascience units sound good on paper but are skeptical that they will be misused by this government. i think they sound horrifying on paper and am skeptical that they could do any good in anyone's hands. we are not the same.

aip.org

Researchers Skeptical of NSF Metascience Plan

The agency issued a memo last week laying out several grantmaking changes, including a new office for metascience.

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Art directors, brand people, agency review, Converse people...all of whom are supposed to be experts in visual communication. You don't have to Roland fucking Barthes.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

For obvious reasons, culture warriors in the pay of private interests that seek to take universities over have every reason to obscure this. On an individual level, too, structural explanations are cold comfort when the one job in your field is on a topic you don’t work on and goes to someone else.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

But the actual problem is not who gets the golden ticket this year, but rather why a socially vital sector (do we not think knowledge, about society and about nature, is valuable?) has been eviscerated to the point where a steady job teaching and doing research is a golden ticket in the first place.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

What you won’t find much of are ordinary scholars who have neither an axe to grind about their failed hopes nor a buzz to create for their next NYT bestseller about why plagues are good or The Left has stifled debate by eating sandwiches. Both the picture and the personnel draw from the extremes.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

In publications advancing an “antiwoke” line you will find a corresponding mix of would-be or once-was academics who couldn’t make it work for one reason or another, and classical liberal stars who are very much making it work — with a sprinkling of wingnut welfare types on race science postdocs.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

It’s worth considering the confused role academia plays in radical centrism as a movement. It is, first, a muddled target: a bastion of wokeness, brainwashing, ideological compulsion but also irrelevance, elitism, weakness. But it’s also a magic well of authority for heroes like Pinker and Peterson.

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Years ago I complained to a senior admin about Pinker giving a big public talk because he's unserious and dishonest in his public facing work. This person happened to be in his field, and was like "he's always been unserious, even in his supposed area of expertise."

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Peripheral to the main business here but one thing I learn every time someone belatedly discovers that Pinker has issues with rigour is that nobody reads footnotes. I suspect this extends to other cases

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

My guess is that it’s unlikely that someone is rigorous in their scholarship and responsive to criticism right up until the moment you chance to notice otherwise. In media, though, it happens all the time

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

There’s naturally been a lot of focus on the photo of him with Epstein as a trigger but the fact is he’s been blocking-and-then-attacking people who point these other things out the whole time, too

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