Reposted by Will MacnairPwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 21hSo a few folks asking why OAI is releasing this at all. And I think that's probably worth a thread in its own right 419150
Reposted by Will MacnairPolars @pola.rs · 06/10/2026We just released Polars 2.0. It removed many of our legacy decisions makes the streaming engine our default and promotes SQL to a first class citizen within Polars. pola.rs/posts/releas...pola.rsRelease of Polars 2.0DataFrames for the new era 05914
Reposted by Will MacnairSolomon Kurz @solomonkurz.bsky.social · 12hFun blog, and it made me long for more connections between philosophy and applied statistics 0173
Reposted by Will MacnairMax Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · 06/10/2026The share of children who died before they were 5 years old in 1950 and 75 years later. Africa: 33% ↘ 6% Asia: 25% ↘ 2.5% Oceania: 9.3% ↘ 2% Latin America: 21% ↘ 1.5% Northern America: 3.8% ↘ 0.6% Europe: 10.5% ↘ 0.4% Globally: 23% ↘ 3.5% 8410140
Reposted by Will MacnairSjoerd van Alten @sjoerdalten.bsky.social · 06/10/20261/12 Personality predicts earnings and wealth. But does it cause them? That is hard to answer: personality is correlated with family background and much else. In our new working paper, we use the randomness of genetic inheritance to get closer to a causal answer. 1176
Reposted by Will MacnairLev Parikian @levparikian.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Happy birthday Steve Reich appy birthday Steve Reich H ppy birthday Steve Reich Ha py birthday Steve Reich Hap y birthday Steve Reich Happ birthday Steve Reich Happy birthday Steve Reich Happy irthday Steve Reich Happy b rthday Steve Reich Happy bi thday Steve Reich Happy bir 14463124
Reposted by Will Macnairworm @rfksbrainworm.bsky.social · 02/10/2026If you ever wondered why visible light is those particular wavelengths, it's because life evolved to see in the narrow range where water is transparent 10260851706
Reposted by Will MacnairRedwan Farooq @redwanfarooq.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Fantastic preprint showing how circulating EBV-specific CD8+ T cells in MS adopt a GZMK+ effector–memory state that is primed to migrate to the CNS & may drive neuroinflammation through non-cytolytic interactions with B cells & myeloid cells. 🧵👇 1/ 253
Reposted by Will MacnairKilian Schober @kischober.bsky.social · 02/10/2026New preprint from our lab, now on bioRxiv! We are VERY excited about this one! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... How does Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) immunity become linked to multiple sclerosis (MS)? (1/8)biorxiv.orgA pro-inflammatory effector-memory T cell program links peripheral EBV priming to CNS autoimmunityT and B cell-mediated immunosurveillance of the central nervous system (CNS) can become maladaptive in multiple sclerosis (MS). Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a likely driver of MS, yet how exactly EBV-s... 11810
Reposted by Will Macnairghost malone ergo propter bones @proptermalone.bsky.social · 30/09/2026what i think is currently up in the AI space since we're having cost arguments again: selling inference is very profitable, but models are improving so fast that there's no time for capex on model training to amortize, so net at this rate they're losing money which is why they want a cartel 1534036
Reposted by Will MacnairMasahiro Kanai @masakanai.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Our single-nucleus immune multiome atlas is now out in @nature.com! 🧬 10M PBMCs from 1,108 @finngen.bsky.social donors recruited by Finnish Blood Service, profiled at @broadinstitute.org with chromatin accessibility and gene expression in the same nuclei, to trace how disease variants act 🧵👇 13617
Will Macnair @willmacnair.bsky.social · 30/09/2026As a connoisseur of philosophies, what makes it more satisfying compared to others? Are there particular comparisons with other schools where you think “this is much nicer from the stoics”? I’m curious about what taste looks like to philosophers 👨🍳 001
Reposted by Will MacnairAndy Matuschak @andymatuschak.org · 25/09/2026Made a Printer Friend which quickly transcribes speech onto little slips of paper. Very nice for card sorts, quickly capturing open loops, discursive notes in books, etc. The speed of thermal printers and their auto-cutters is so satisfying! And dedicated mechanical key! Mm! 5565
Reposted by Will MacnairFaine Greenwood @faineg.com · 25/09/2026Imagine if instead of regulating drone risks the normal way (which we did), we instead paid weird bloggers lots of money to worry about superintelligent dogs sprouting thumbs and using drones to kill us. This is pretty much how the US is approaching AI risks and regulations. My latest:little-flying-robots.ghost.ioWhy We Can't Let Enormous Weirdos Regulate AIImagine if instead of regulating drones via the standard lengthy, boring, and bureaucratic process - which we did - we instead decided, in the name of fostering all-important American drone innovation... 251013293
Reposted by Will MacnairRob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 24/09/2026If you are a US citizen or permanent resident looking for a postdoc, the President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is a great opportunity faculty.umd.edu/presidentspo...! If you are eligible, working in computational genomics, and interested in my lab, let me know!faculty.umd.eduPresident's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program | Office of Faculty Affairs 099
Reposted by Will Macnair#SingleCell preprints @prepub-singlecell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Targeted single-nucleus sequencing of 39,800 neurons reveals extensive low-frequency somatic variants #SingleCell 🧪🧬🖥️ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20… 021
Reposted by Will MacnairHarmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Some random thoughts: Good science doesn't always need disruptors. Often, it needs load-bearing walls. You can't pivot away from a failed multi-year experiment or "iterate" your way out of a mentee's PhD. Science needs stable foundations, not churn. Don't break the people building on top of it. 613022
Reposted by Will MacnairAlex Kale @kalealex.bsky.social · 24/09/2026What AI scales about science are the parts that are most broken and gameable. With the exception of combinatorial problems like protein folding, we need more thinking and less rote computation. 0236
Reposted by Will MacnairThe Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026A new publicly available single-cell atlas of the human prefrontal cortex was made from 6.3 million nuclei across 1,494 donors, ranging from before birth to more than 100 years. By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/transcriptom...thetransmitter.orgPrefrontal cortex has three transcriptomic actsVarious genes show distinct exits and entrances with age in the open- source dataset, the largest of its kind to date. 0124
Reposted by Will MacnairThe Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Microglia don't just prune synapses; they also reach into axons and scoop out organelles containing cellular debris, a new preprint reports, calling it "skoupocytosis." #neuroskyence By @siddhantpusdekar.bsky.social www.thetransmitter.org/microglia/mi...thetransmitter.orgMicroglia scoop out garbage from inside neuronsThrough a newly identified process called skoupocytosis, neurons recruit the immune cells to remove cellular waste they find hard to deal with themselves. 01910
Reposted by Will Macnairpapers-neurodegen.bsky.social @papers-neurodegen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Landmark map of human brain’s gene activity holds clues to Alzheimer’s disease and more #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠 www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-… 021
Reposted by Will Macnairpapers-neurodegen.bsky.social @papers-neurodegen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Single-cell atlas of transcriptomic vulnerability across brain disorders #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-… 021
Reposted by Will Macnairpapers-neurodegen.bsky.social @papers-neurodegen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Single-nucleus atlas of cell-type specific genetic regulation in the human brain #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41588-026-… 021
Reposted by Will MacnairAmanda Heidt @scattercushion.bsky.social · 23/09/2026🧪Today, the PsychAD Consortium published EIGHT papers across Nature journals detailing their efforts to create the largest map of the human prefrontal cortex. It's hard to overstate the amount of work here, nor the absolute treasure trove this team has created for researchers.nature.comLandmark map of human brain’s gene activity holds clues to Alzheimer’s disease and moreThe atlas of gene expression in the prefrontal cortex was created using samples from almost 1,500 donors of all ages — from infants to centenarians. 0119
Reposted by Will MacnairWaggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Review @cellcellpress.bsky.social Oligodendrocytes in central nervous system health and disease www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... 084
Reposted by Will MacnairRob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026It's here! new preprint: Gravlax, an annotation-independent molecular evidence archive for scRNA-seq. A count matrix freezes one annotation. Molecules never change. Instead, gravlax keeps the evidence. Requantify, query, and discover under any annotation. 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 33413
Reposted by Will MacnairJohn Gallagher @johnrgallagher.bsky.social · 21/09/2026It’s very hard to fathom but we have intelligence without consciousness which our science fiction hasn’t prepared us for. Intentionless intelligence is weird. 6509
Reposted by Will MacnairAda Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 20/09/2026The world’s largest battery-electric aircraft flew for the first time on the 12th of August, a 27-minute test flight over upstate New York that cost about five dollars in electricity. Heart Aerospace’s 30-seat prototype is a big step toward a commercial version. buff.ly/i3f0PhR #ShareGoodNewsTootechspot.comThe largest all-electric plane ever flew for 27 minutes, on $5 of electricityHeart's X1 demonstrator flew for 27 minutes from a regional airport in upstate New York, running on battery power the entire time. The aircraft reached 1,100 feet... 191042293
Reposted by Will MacnairEd @ed3d.net · 20/09/2026I mean that tbh. I block 10x the accounts I follow and a lot of times it's just "this person has an awful vibe" or "this person is a shitter in somebody else's mentions". The make-a-list types get INCREDIBLY mad with their "never interacted with me and blocked me" lists, but it's Good Actually 1863
Reposted by Will MacnairSimon Willison @simonwillison.net · 18/09/2026Being a computer scientist who refuses to find anything about LLMs interesting right now is a bit like being a geneticist who refuses to find anything interesting about the recently opened Jurassic Park 4382282
Reposted by Will MacnairPer Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026A paper is finished when the embarrassment of submitting it becomes smaller than the embarrassment of still working on it 630254
Reposted by Will MacnairOmid V. Ebrahimi @omidvebrahimi.bsky.social · 17/09/2026📜 Out now: ‘Towards a genetics of mental disorders as complex dynamical systems’ After 2 years of work with @michelnivard.bsky.social & @ludvigdb.bsky.social We outline a roadmap to align behavioural genetics with novel dynamic theories of mental disorders A thread 🧵 doi.org/10.31234/osf... 14719
Will Macnair @willmacnair.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Super interesting new kind of model: - output is responses to structured queries you specify (e.g. Q = "which direction?", A = ["left", "right", "forward", "backward"]) - *extremely* fast Watch the doom demo here: typesafe.ai/blog/introdu... It feels like seeing the Terminator's internal state... 😅😬typesafe.aiIntroducing System One Models & Jev - TypeSafe AI BlogTypeSafe AI is an AI lab building machine-native intelligence infrastructure for automation, designed to make decisions within software. Try our first System One Model, Jev, in early access. 020
Reposted by Will MacnairRichard McElreath 🐈⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Back in 2018 I needed a custom poisson-binomial log-prob for Stan, so I wrote a clunky one, and then Bob I think wrote a more efficient one. Today poisson-binomial is built into the math library. For all your unusual mixture needs. (My use was for weird survey data) 1423
Reposted by Will MacnairMC Stan @mc-stan.org · 17/09/2026Release of CmdStan 2.40, including new Stan Math, core Stan, and Stanc, is now available! Blog post with new features blog.mc-stan.org/2026/09/16/r... Highlights - integrate_1d_double_exponential, a variadic version of old integrate_1d - integrate_1d_gauss_kronrod, a different quadrature rule ...blog.mc-stan.orgRelease of CmdStan 2.40We are very happy to announce that the 2.40.0 release of CmdStan is now available on Github! As usual, the release of CmdStan is accompanied by new releases of Stan Math, core Stan, and Stanc3. Thi… 13116
Reposted by Will MacnairAnil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 16/09/20261/6 An extraordinary @nature.com paper has just landed from the lab of @sergiuppasca.bsky.social. They found a way to create "xenocortical mice" which have ~92% of their cortex occupied by a cortical organoid derived from human stem cells. 69140
Reposted by Will MacnairRob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Our bramble preprint is out. Here's a thread about this work and why I think it's exciting! bsky.app/profile/robp... 092
Reposted by Will MacnairWill Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 16/09/2026No. This Cory Doctorow post is awful and borders on actual misinformation. The fact that a widely respected voice like him is spreading this kind of false narrative is, again, a giant blaring alarm about the effect the Bluesky info environment is having on people’s brains. 2329323
Reposted by Will Macnairpapers-neurodegen.bsky.social @papers-neurodegen.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Inflection points and transitions in Alzheimer’s disease #NeuroDegeneration 🧪🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-… 011
Reposted by Will MacnairTom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 16/09/2026the hardest thing for the politician-bureaucrats to understand -- but which NSF staff *absolutely do* understand and always have -- is that you actually make scientific progress by giving young people money and promising not to bother them 430084
Reposted by Will MacnairPer Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Every dataset contains the answer to your question, provided you are willing to change the question 2659
Reposted by Will MacnairMattan S. Ben-Shachar @mattansb.msbstats.info · 14/09/2026Upgrading my "hedghog-cake as an estimand" slide with some more hedgehog cakes from hell. #statsmeme 4588
Reposted by Will MacnairScott Barolo @sbarolo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026🧵 Short thread: I give a seminar to 1st-year biomed PhD students in my program about how to critically read a paper, how to extract VAST amounts of information from the title, and why reading AI summaries instead of struggling with papers is *particularly* bad for trainees. 🧪 28031
Reposted by Will MacnairSleegers Lab @sleegerslab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026🧠🧬 New from our lab! Postdoc Celeste Laureyssen ( @celestelaureyssen.bsky.social ) reviews how neuropathology-centered GWAS can sharpen our understanding of the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and its frequent co-pathologies—moving beyond clinical diagnosis alone. link.springer.com/article/10.1...link.springer.comA new era of genome-wide association studies in the field of Alzheimer’s disease and overlapping co-pathologies: lessons learned from a neuropathology-centered approach - Acta NeuropathologicaAlzheimer’s disease (AD) and overlapping pathologies represent a growing worldwide health concern. With the first disease-modifying treatments on the rise, it becomes increasingly important to move re... 055
Reposted by Will MacnairZach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 15/09/2026Can we please stop doing this? I made a comic about it and everything! 142240411
Reposted by Will MacnairSergey Ovchinnikov @sokrypton.org · 14/09/2026Finally a more intuitaive way to learn pLDDT/pAE? 😎 sokrypton.github.io/protein_figh... (Character idea from @hannes-stark.bsky.social & Alex Waldherr) 727698