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The Casual Hiker

@sfhiker.bsky.social
112 followers 146 following 195 posts

SF-based computational biologist, hiker, nerd. All things history/prehistory, science, tech, nature, and sustainability. Also SF and California politics.

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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I don't understand why Dario and Sam keep asking for government intervention. OpenAI and Anthropic are the two major frontier labs and they are both located in SF. Just meet at a local Starbucks and sign an agreement to slow things down. Invite Sundar too. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/t...
nytimes.com
What Anthropic’s C.E.O. Argued in His Call for Slower A.I. Development
Dario Amodei’s 3,800-word letter laid out a three-step plan to rein in artificial intelligence.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
A tornado formed during Kilauea lava fountain eruption yesterday. Lasted about a minute.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
A river otter chomping on a fish at Phoenix Lake today.
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 09/10/2025
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
nyti.ms
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
Juvenile bobcat encounter on Tennessee Valley Trail.
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Işıl Arıcan @isilarican.com · 18/07/2025
In Turkey, when authoritarianism took hold, satire was one of the first casualties. Political comedy shows disappeared—now, airing one could land you in jail. Dictatorships always follow the same playbook.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Renewable energy is humming along despite the setbacks: “…people are now putting up a gigawatt’s worth of solar panels, the rough equivalent of the power generated by one coal-fired plant, every fifteen hours.” www.newyorker.com/news/annals-...
newyorker.com
4.6 Billion Years On, the Sun Is Having a Moment
In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system.
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Alex Kalinin @alxndrkalinin.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
🔬API-first feature extraction for image-based profiling workflows If you need to obtain interpretable features from your segmented microscopy images, but want to do it in a fully automated way, we know the struggle. 1/6
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Işıl Arıcan @isilarican.com · 07/07/2025
For many years while I was running a scientific skepticism site/podcast I repeated the mantra "vaccines were so successful, we forgot their impact due to vanishing diseases." Bringing a major pseudoscience conspiracist in charge of HHS is a sure way to remember their impact- in the most painful way.
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
Summary Table of the massive defunding of biomedical research in the United States www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
More on this @latimes.com by @niamhordner.bsky.social www.latimes.com/science/stor...
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Axel Visel @axelvisel.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Textbooks: “Enhancers are just a bunch of TFBSs” But how do they REALLY work? New paper with many contributors here @berkeleylab.lbl.gov, @anshulkundaje.bsky.social, @anusri.bsky.social A 🧵 (1/n) Free access link: rdcu.be/erD22
A meme-style comic panel with three parts. Left: A stylized enhancer with a mutation, surrounded by colored blocks representing functional motifs, a neural network diagram, chromatin accessibility signal traces, and a sequence motif. Two cartoon mouse embryos below show different LacZ reporter activity patterns. Top right: A hand hovers anxiously between two red buttons labeled “Experiments” and “AI,” with the caption “HOW DO ENHANCERS REALLY WORK?” Bottom right: A sweating superhero wipes his forehead, looking stressed about the difficult choice.
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Mike Ege @mikeege.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
'Even in a city renowned for its bleeding heart, there is a breaking point, a collective exasperation with those who weaponize our compassion to fuel a crisis that claims lives young and old, drawn to our streets by cheap drugs and lax enforcement' thevoicesf.org/san-francisc...
thevoicesf.org
San Francisco voters urge unity to tackle fentanyl - The Voice of San Francisco
Our justice system is facing unprecedented times of polarity. San Francisco watched as ICE protests in Los Angeles erupted into violence and Waymo burnings. Subsequently, our city faced its own violen...
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Sedat Kapanoğlu @ssg.dev · 05/06/2025
"After court order, OpenAI is now preserving all ChatGPT user logs, including deleted chats, sensitive chats, etc."
mastodon.laurenweinstein.org
Lauren Weinstein (@lauren@mastodon.laurenweinstein.org)
After court order, OpenAI is now preserving all ChatGPT user logs, including deleted chats, sensitive chats, etc.
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 27/05/2025
Terminal Genome Viewer (tgv), written in Rust github.com/zeqianli/tgv
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Having missed last week's $10K treasure hunt, I decided to hunt for another treasure myself this weekend: the Tiburon Mariposa Lily, which grows only in Tiburon and nowhere else in the world. ONLY in the Ring Mountain Preserve in Tiburon. So I headed there yesterday to try my luck. 1/n
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Ming Tommy Tang @tommytang.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
16 resources for re-analyzing public expression data 🧵 👇 1. rnama.com/docs/search... RNA meta Analysis has ~26,700 studies (5,717 RNA-Seq and 20,955 Microarray)
rnama.com
Combine and Search the World's Gene Expression Data
Improve gene expression accuracy through meta-analysis then search over 26,000 studies for correlated signatures.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
The Methuselah tree. A majestic redwood, estimated nearly 1900 years old. Its diameter at base is about 4.25m. [Near El Corte de Madera Creek Preserve]
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
What to do when you encounter a mountain lion?
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Resolution Trail, El Corte de Madera Preserve: the trail was named after an Australian Douglas DC9 that crashed here in 1953. Some debris still can be seen along the trail. 1/n
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
Was this event really the beginning of the Internet Age? A commemorative plate from Alpine Inn, a beer garden near Palo Alto.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/05/2025
The Rangehouse: the old US Naval Magnetic Silencing Range in the Marina. The facility was used to calibrate naval vessels' magnetic signatures to avoid detection by mines etc.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 26/04/2025
Ditto.
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The San Francisco Standard @sfstandard.com · 25/04/2025
And in a very serendipitous, very SF moment, Daniel Lurie spotted a whale out in the Bay during the panel. “Look, greatest city in the world.” 🐋
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Bay Area News @bayarea.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Last historic theater in downtown Berkeley to be torn down: 'Could never ever be duplicated'
kron4.com
Last historic theater in downtown Berkeley to be torn down: 'Could never ever be duplicated'
(KRON) -- Despite a final attempt by neighbors, a historic theater in downtown Berkeley will come down. Berkeley City councilmembers voted Tuesday night to uphold their approval of a project to tear down the United Artists Theater and turn it into housing. People packed into a special city council meeting in a last effort to [...]
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 13/04/2025
After 15 years of hiking in the Bay, I still find new and amazing trails. The weather was perfect for Old St Hillary's Wildflower Preserve yesterday. Made me feel truly blessed to live in the Bay. 🧵
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The San Francisco Standard @sfstandard.com · 11/04/2025
She’s heeeere. 👀 R-Evolution, the 45-foot-tall, 32,000-pound steel sculpture that first debuted at Burning Man in 2015, is now calling San Francisco home for the next six months. 🎥: Eric Thurber
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Hahah
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
The tech capitol of the world finally allows its police department to use tech, and crime rate drops. youtu.be/bk5fGu_-NcQ?...
youtu.be
San Francisco Police credit their new surveillance hub with drop in crime
YouTube video by KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
Anyone surprised?
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Sad. www.kron4.com/news/bay-are...
kron4.com
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Poppies are blooming in God's Country.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
Bipping is down, thanks to Prop E which let SFPD use drones and cameras to catch criminals. Apparently, they can do their job when they're not hamstrung by the SF Board of Supervisors and the Police Commission. www.ktvu.com/news/san-fra...
ktvu.com
San Francisco car break-ins lowest in 20 years
San Francisco hit a 22-year record low in the number of car break-ins, according to city leaders.
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Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 27/03/2025
A paper in Nature presents a method for breaking down perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), environmental contaminants known as ‘forever chemicals,’ while recycling the fluoride contained within them. go.nature.com/3Rk1dCf #chemsky 🧪
This is figure 1, which shows the synthesis of fluorochemicals from PFASs.
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Health Nerd @gidmk.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
New study on non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NGCS) shows that it probably doesn't exist. In a blinded, randomized setting, people with NGCS had the same response to placebo (gluten-free) yoghurt and muffins as to the ones with gluten. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist at Harvard Medical School, was detained at Logan Airport after returning from France and sent to an ICE detention in Louisiana, The Insider reports. A big critic of Putin and the war in Ukraine, she may now be deported to Russia.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
Spring finally arrived in the Bay Area after weeks of gloomy weather. Puffy grass and wildflowers covering Mt Diablo make you wish you were a cow. 1/n
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
one and a half rainbows.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
#fungi
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
How much time do we collectively waste preparing tax returns every year so that Intuit Turbo Tax can make money?
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Facepalm. urlvanish.com/ccc571f9
urlvanish.com
Exclusive: US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say
It is unclear whether U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who has long promoted anti-vaccine views, is involved in the planned CDC study or how it would be carried out.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
transgenic ≠ transgender
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The San Francisco Standard @sfstandard.com · 04/03/2025
DA rages at courts as suspected $16K Walgreens thief released
sfstandard.com
DA rages at courts as suspected $16K Walgreens thief released
During the incident, one suspect reportedly hit a store employee with an umbrella while the worker was calling 911.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
Big Basin Redwoods is recovering from the devastating CZU Fire in 2020 --at least the part that open to visitors. Some trees are completely charred and seemingly dead but the most have lost only their branches, and growing new ones now. Amazing. 🧵
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
A scientist testing Google’s new AI asks it to generate hypotheses on mechanisms underlying antibiotic resistance. After two days of processing, the AI suggests a hypothesis the scientist’s team recently developed—but hasn’t published yet. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
AI cracks superbug problem in two days that took scientists years
The lead researcher has told the BBC he was so astounded he assumed his computer had been hacked.
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Remarkable story of a museum guard deciphering the long-dead Urartu language from cuneiform tablets. youtu.be/XqScUII2z_4?...
youtu.be
He Learned an Ancient Language Experts Couldn’t Solve
YouTube video by Olly Richards
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
#fungi
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
Highway 1 and Devil's Slide, near Gray Whale Cove, south of Pacifica. 🧵
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The Casual Hiker @sfhiker.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
A thin veil of fog over Montara State Beach at sunset.
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