iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

In my experience, 50% of all merlin sightings are "whoah was that a merlin? I'm not sure." 49% are "whoah, there goes a merlin!". 0.9% are "is that small dark teardrop on that distant snag a merlin?". This is in the 0.1% of merlin sightings.

pretty lucky to have a merlin sit still long enough to take a picture!

I was filled with rage but this really jolted me out of it and made my afternoon.

There's pretty good evidence that in western cultures when you turn 45 your country decides to spit on your most sacred values, careen into government by incompetent war-mongering fascists and put the world on track for WWIII just in time for your tween boys to reach draft age.

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Noah Reid @noahreid.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Love to hit "reply" on an email thread in outlook and reply to myself. Definitely the correct default behavior since I was the last person to add to the email thread so that is obviously what I wanted to do.

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This story presents a couple dealing with familial adenomatous polyposis as a compelling case for legalizing embryonic gene editing. I'm not an expert, but shouldn't mendelian diseases be more easily dealt with by preimplantation genetic testing? Isn't gene editing increased risk for no gain?

npr.org

This startup wants to prove gene-editing embryos is safe for making healthy babies

Origin Genomics aims to prove that the potential benefits of its technology for editing disease-causing genes in human embryos outweigh the risks.

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Reposted by Noah Reid

Cellular Tracking Technologies @celltracktech.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

A Northern Waterthrush tagged in Cape May, NJ left after sunset on Sep 11. Two weeks later it was over Colombia! Jamaica -> Colombia included ~800 km of open Caribbean. 3,082 km so far! @birdscanada.bsky.social @originalstu.bsky.social #MotusWTS #BirdMigration #ornithology @nature.org

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Reposted by Noah Reid

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026

Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc

nyti.ms

Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)

An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.

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Noah Reid @noahreid.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

This groundbreaking software from a newcomer to the field has a 20 page git readme full of emojis documenting an extensive CLI? Hard pass.

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Reposted by Noah Reid

Wei Shen 沈伟 @shenwei356.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

SeqKit is now faster and uses 40% less memory when reading large FASTA records, such as human genomes, though it still uses more RAM than tools written in C/C++/Rust. Worth upgrading! github.com/shenwei356/s...

github.com

GitHub - shenwei356/seqkit: A cross-platform and ultrafast toolkit for FASTA/Q file manipulation

A cross-platform and ultrafast toolkit for FASTA/Q file manipulation - shenwei356/seqkit

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Noah Reid @noahreid.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If me and Rudy were astronauts and discovered some seemingly benign but actually hostile alien biosphere, Rudy would not be the loyal companion with a sixth sense for danger. He would be the first to get got.

Obviously I am strictly charcoal-based. Having some stupid dial that controls the temperature would ruin everything.

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I like being a completely unsophisticated grillmaster. It means that sometimes food is mediocre, but it also leaves room for food to be surprisingly glorious. Like why is this red pepper so incredibly delicious? I don't know. It's a gift from heaven.

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Imagine telling 2004-you that you were going to want to bring all this back.

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Noah Reid @noahreid.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

This morning the first Tolland County sedge wren in over 30 years was found. Given how sneaky it was it makes you wonder how many have passed through unnoticed.

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Issue resolved. I am considering this whole episode a legit part of the practical training in HPC.

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Noah Reid @noahreid.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A student who already has credentials needs to set up 2FA for our HPC. IT demands that I vouch for him. But they also need proof that I am who I say I am in the form of photographs of my university ID. This is all taking place over university e-mail.

static.klipy.com

Tucker Carlson

ALT: Tucker Carlson

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Reposted by Noah Reid

Ian Sudbery @iansudbery.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Holy moly, @ensembl.org killed biomart! Hope many R scripts are there out there that depend on biomaRt? How many people have informatics practicals, or undergraduate project instructions that depend on a web interface for bulk selection of data?

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One note about cruising rice country looking for shorebirds/waders if that sounds like something that interests you... don't trespass! Just watch stuff from the roadside. I have only had friendly interest from locals out there, but I was warned that trespassing can trigger hostility.

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It concentrates birds because it's one of the very rare small patches of woods in the vast coastal prairie. ebird.org/hotspot/L210... If conditions were right you could see quite a few songbirds in a very small area there. There used to be a small water fountain that drew in thirsty birds.

Oh and for migrating songbirds, Peveto Woods is really an epic spot. People think of it more as a location to catch trans-gulf migrant fallouts in spring, but it probably also concentrates southbound migrants in fall.

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So for a drive from lake charles to Cameron, the fields around Fruge Rd are a good ebird hotspot ebird.org/hotspot/L330... But again, while that can be pretty awesome if you find fields with the right conditions, that all depends on what farmers are doing so it requires cruising around.

And in the rice country I imagine there could be decent numbers of shorebirds and wading birds in muddy or half drained fields. That would require just driving the roads with your eyes peeled. We did that a lot when I lived there.

For the actual coast, I think you can drive on the beach at Rutherford Beach, south of Cameron Prairie. There could be lots of gulls, terns and shorebirds out there.

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A few weeks from now is still a little early for the huge masses of waterfowl that winter in the rice country and coastal prairie out there, but doing the wildlife drives at Cameron Prairie and Lacassine NWRs would probably still be pretty good.