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Becca

@sciencelizard.bsky.social
776 followers 873 following 5.3K posts

Science, snark, lizards

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Reposted by Becca
Jen Herman 🌪️ @jukebarosh.bsky.social · 7h
Just put it in an ice bucket in the sink so you don't crack the sink & pipes & give the building manager night terrors. Happy haunting
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Anne Helen Petersen @annehelen.bsky.social · 9h
"As things stand, students who commit infractions like plagiarism — which typically has no real victims — are often punished more harshly than the male students directly responsible for making the campus dangerous for female ones."
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 8h
The new Americabot is good for finding who is funded on what niche research project you were curious about www.aphis.usda.gov/sites/defaul...
america.gov
America.gov
Find answers from official government sources and clear next steps for the services you need with America.gov.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 9h
I’m not saying he’s going to single-handedly move the needle on inter-religious tolerance and understanding, but I am saying to be able to offer hope instead of fear on the topic of antisemitism is rare and welcome
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 9h
I’d wager 95% of reproducible science is also science that risks getting scooped. You can’t build reproducible science in an economy that incentivizes moats.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 12h
Having a real "Our Blessed Claude literature review" vs. "Their Barbarous ChatGPT literature fail" moment, ngl
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 15h
Rarely is the question asked: can our Senators literally teach anyone how to BUDget? I'm not one to get fixated on the deficit, but c'mon.
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Needhi Bhalla 💅🏽 @needhibhalla.bsky.social · 17h
The wrong fucking people have imposter syndrome
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 18h
Thoughtful and well-informed perspective about the goings-on inside NIH. www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...
psychologicalscience.org
NIH Employees Lived in A Culture of Fear, So They Started Keeping Receipts
Sylvia Chou, former NIH program director, says “nobody’s OK” after massive disruptions to funding policies and infrastructure.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 18h
This is why FedEx trucks need to be replaced with horses
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 19h
A power shift from Congress with the consent of Congress isn’t exactly a coup, but we do need to seriously recognize how much easier it is to break institutions than build them, and how much work there is to be done.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 20h
Hot take but the most crucial thing America could do to reduce pesticide injuries is not encourage lawsuits of food companies, but to ban golf. And maybe soccer, but there’s data on golf jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
jamanetwork.com
Proximity to Golf Courses and Risk of Parkinson Disease
This case-control of older US adults examines risk of Parkinson Disease by proximity of residence to a golf course.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
If you sit on a manuscript for 10 months and THEN give people BULLpockey chatGPT instead of actually reading the dang thing, you should go to jail for one million years!!!!
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I love the hovering sombreros! Also there’s prolly a dude in Naperville Mad AF about this and that brings me a kind of joy
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Sheep brains sheep brains rolly polly sheep brains sheep brains sheep brains eat them up YUM
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Pure Science @purescience.news · 28/09/2026
Fat Bear Week semi-finals: Bucky Dent vs. Backpack and 132 vs. 910 #Science www.popsci.com/environment/fat-bear…
popsci.com
Fat Bear Week semi-finals: Bucky Dent vs. Backpack and 132 vs. 910
It's a day for survival stories and big, chunky bears.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I live in Indiana, and the lesson from the lights going out in Gary for > 2 weeks due to Storm Lucy is NOT "lol wowzers IN is hella Racist, what an outrage!". I mean we are, I'm not going to lie. But the lesson is that the grid is super vulnerable, and it can happen to you too, not just Gary.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
So we know that watching your football team win boosts testosterone for a time (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9811365/). Cubs winning the world series helped Trump in Ohio in 2016. Do men who vote early in the day (when circadian rhythm boosts T) vote differently?
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Checking your browser - reCAPTCHA
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I actually did ask Gemini where to get a particular antibody and when it recommended Santa Cruz I slept well at night knowing AI dependent would be bioterrorists are doomed
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THE NERVE @thenerve.news · 28/09/2026
Excellent column from @doctorow.pluralistic.net - includes a run down of the tech sector’s history of cartel-adjacent behaviour including THIS three decade agreement btw 40 companies not to poach engineers. chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/law_and_econ...
chicagounbound.uchicago.edu
The Silicon Valley No-Poach Conspiracy
The Silicon Valley no-poach conspiracy is the most important cartel no one has heard of. It is rarely discussed in the cartel literature and is lost to public memory. More than forty tech firms, inclu...
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Leah Houri-Zeevi @leahhouri.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
🩸🩸🩸TODAY WE SHARE TWO MAJOR DISCOVERIES🩸🩸🩸 1. We peered into genomes and brains of the rare mosquitoes that QUIT feeding on blood and found what biting is built from 2. Humans got rid of isoleucine in their blood, malaria suffers from it, and mosquito proteomes budget for it THREADS>
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The harms of the largest IP theft in history to train the models are both diffuse and hinge on the *future* revenue streams of existing content. In research, career rewards accumulate to those who announce a result *first*, so the harms of theft are personal and jolting.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Mine too! It’s the Mossa bicep and shoulder tracks, plus possibly competitive swimming
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ouinne @ouinne.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
ANNUAL HALLOWEEN REMINDER THAT ANYTHING WITH ACTIVATED CHARCOAL *WILL* FUCK WITH YOUR MEDICATIONS
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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
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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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Kingfisher & Wombat @tkingfisher.com · 27/09/2026
Parents of the world, I’m new to this because Stepkid only recently hit the age, but is there a name for “I have given the kid the thing from my closet because it looks better on them than it ever did on me, goddammit?”
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Kinda wonder how many people lamenting the lack of history instruction for STEM types read Zinn
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I think in the US we need to ask if the universal experiences (K-12 having US history as explained by either Texas or California textbooks, but minimal world history and geography, for example), are not a bigger cultural influence than how liberal the arts at at the elite places
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Me, Mom of a teen boy: "aww, look at how cute my guy and his buds look going to Hoco. I wonder if he'll have a better time with his guy friends vs. pairing off for prom" Me, seeing a FB friend's Hoco photo of 13(!) teen girls: "Good lord, they travel in large packs! No wonder boys don't pair off!"
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I think big tech does fund small high risk stuff, but then it dies an ignominious death when it doesn't turn a pretty penny killedbygoogle.com
killedbygoogle.com
Killed by Google
Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"huddled in the darkness afraid of demons and ghosts" I think one problem with the public's idea of science right now, is that we have a dearth of people who develop and understand technologies (particularly LLM transformers) who explain them other than demons and ghosts youtube.com/shorts/igndc...
youtube.com
Protect science! 🧪
YouTube video by Elle Cordova
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Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.
ironholds.org
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🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️‍🌈 @nuclearanthro.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
I do, once again, recommend reading Hugh Gusterson’s “Nuclear Weapons and the “Other” in the Western Imagination.” In any case I did the meme along those lines:
Cartoon by Tom Gauld of two banks of a river one labeled “our blessed homeland” and the other “their barbarous wastes.” Both locations are identical in their three castle like buildings, number of trees, etc. I have added text over the original labels. On the left these labels go left to right and downward along the cartoon with each line pointing to a different building or a group of people or finally a ship. The labels on the left read:

“OUR GLORIOUS peaceful intent

OUR GREAT nuclear deterrent

OUR stabilizing missile shield

OUR HEROIC regionally deployed security forces.”

The labels on the right read:

“THEIR WICKED warlike nature

THEIR PRIMITIVE nuclear arsenal

THEIR destabilizing anti-missile system

THEIR BRUTISH regionally deployed imperial troops.”
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Why do intro survey courses exist?
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In Otter News @in-otter-news.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
After a long day at the aquarium, the otters help tidy their toys away. Payment is made promptly and entirely in ice cubes.
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Museum of Twitter @museum-of-twitter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Once I interviewed a guy who brought one piece of chocolate cake, one ice cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. I hired him but he immediately used his 2 weeks of PTO.
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I hope everyone has that new middlearch book on their radar and realizes the dentists millionaires will fight this tooth and nail because luxury mouth bones as a status symbol allows them to extract maximal rent
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Deb Chachra @debcha.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Second-screening the Katmai Falls bearcam today reminds me: Q: How do you weigh bears for Fat Bear Week? A:. By using LIDAR — laser-scanning bears to quantify the chonk volumetrically, and then using estimates of ursine density to convert it to approximate mass. www.geoweeknews.com/articles/sup...
geoweeknews.com
Supporting Fat Bear Week With Laser Scanning | Geo Week News
“Fat Bear Week celebrates fatness. That’s what you want to do before you go into your den.” Each year as summer begins to fade and wildlife
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Radical Islamist Alien Furries is the name of my Whirling Dervish Folk Music Opera
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the abbot of unreason (a returned archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I am a single issue voter and that issue is: "tax the data centers and use the money to build a new resilient and clean grid"
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This is a good piece, generally. I do want to quibble with "recruiting without detection is hard too". Anthropic's life science verification program itself could be recruitment aid abio.substack.com/p/why-ai-ass...
abio.substack.com
Why AI-assisted bioweapons won't kill us all
I interviewed dozens of biosecurity experts. The fear that AI will enable lone wolves to build pandemics is a case study in how domain expertise gets sidelined.
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Lacey Chappel @moth-laceychappel.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In honor of Fat Bear Week, 20% of proceeds from bear stickers, booklets, and prints will be donated to the Katmai Conservancy Otis Fund until October 3rd www.etsy.com/shop/mothbud... 🐻 #fatbearweek #fatbearweek2026 #nationalparkservice #SciArt🐡#katmaiconservancy #wildlifeart #sciart #art #bears
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I feel you, Daniel L
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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
One of the fun parts of parenting is you can tell your kids about something all you want but once they learn it somewhere else it’s, “Mom, sit down you will not believe this,” and you just smile and nod.
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Meade Krosby @meadekrosby.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
My teen came home from AP Computer Science yesterday and sat me down to lecture at length on the environmental injustice of data centers (I did not interrupt). If this is what they’re teaching the kids alongside Java maybe we’ll be alright.
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Gina Baucom @gbaucom.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Early career faculty in Evolution? I would love to chat with you!
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Becca @sciencelizard.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Honestly if the middle age white ladies finally unite as a political force and do a flash mob "that don't impress me much" voter registration flash mob dance, count me all the way in
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Alyson Smith @pedsaly.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
In less than 3 minutes, @apoorvanyt.bsky.social shows - and tells - us what’s happened inside the CDC. Everyone needs to watch ❤️‍🩹
nytimes.com
Video: A Shrinking Work Force Is Changing the C.D.C.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost close to 30 percent of its staff in the past year, with big turnover in top leadership and entire teams effectively shut down. Our health report...
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