Wait, what now?
12.03.2026 18:14
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Wait, what now?
Map of Iran overlaid across Europe. It's effing huge. Germany, Austria, Poland, the balkkans, loads of Eastern Europe.
The problem with how we draw maps is that countries near the equator appear 'small'. Iran overlaid on Europe.
Imagine trying to dominate an area this size with just air power or contemplating putting troops in when it's spent forty years preparing to fight exactly the kind of war that results.
How can we tap into the enormous functional diversity of microbes on this planet?
Join us at EMBL Heidelberg (8–10 Dec 2026) to learn about ongoing efforts to decode gene function and organisation in human gut microbes, and present your science.
We do that as well - the requirement to review our own outputs is what seems unusual.
The 2026 National Science Foundation budget is $8.75 Billion.
We get asked to rate and review our own outputs for REF. This is in addition to being asked to explain in each category why we're proposing the output in the first place - so it's redundant as well as a cheap way to ensure at least one "4*" in the system…
ARTIC are hiring! Postdoctoral opportunity in metagenomics at the University of Birmingham
edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Pretty sure what's described in this article is against the REF2029 code of practice (e.g. section 13).
Interested to see if there are any teeth to the CoP.
2029.ref.ac.uk/guidance/sec...
Sheffield Hallam’s new plan to save cash:
🔸 All teaching-focused staff to be employed by a subsidiary firm
🔸 All non-REF staff to be moved to a pension scheme with a lower employer contributions
#UKHE
When this is all done we should have a tax on everyone who said they had had enough of experts...
lmao let’s goooo
Just stumbling around trying to figure out how the world works.
It is quite amusing to me how so many people don’t understand scale .
You would have to have a fleet of around 100k trucks running 24/7 down a road twice the size of the M25
Volumes of oil transitioning this strait are around 20 million barrels a day.
Roughly 70% world trade volume
I loved this comparison of the two Menaces.
They should put a monkey on the £50 note and a pony on the £10 note to confuse the hell out cockneys.
Image from their link showing evidence of fabricated references
Holy smoke. What ultimately happened???
Principles of Boogie Management Don't blame it on the sunshine Don't blame it on the moonlight Don't blame it on the good times Establish a collaborative working environment coupled with individual accountability to prevent a blame culture from developing in the first place Brian Bilston
Principles of Boogie Management.
How often an appropriate choice of benchmark is absent from a paper announcing a new technique or approach, and it takes papers like this to make the comparisons ;)
Ars Technica: NIH director launches “Scientific Freedom” lectures with non-scientist
by John Timmer @arstechnica.com @jtimmer.bsky.social
Matt Ridley Jay Bhattacharya
bit.ly/4lnUtBH
A single course of antibiotics can have lasting effects on your gut microbiome, with changes that last well beyond 4 years. Three types of antibiotics stood out for their long term disruptive impact (3 at left, Figure)
nature.com/articles/s41...
New paper showing that much of the apparent success of protein language models in predicting mutational effects is a mirage: These models mostly memorize sites. 1/
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Obligatory meme.
We’re recruiting new Research Group Leaders!
Why join?
🌍Work across EMBL’s 6 sites
🎓Participate in @embl.org courses and seminars
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#ResearchCareers @epetsalaki.bsky.social
Just in case anyone else hadn't heard of this group until today:
"we:
> Push for legislative change that creates real equality at home and at work
> Provide free advice and support women to challenge discrimination"
pregnantthenscrewed.com
The shoe thing is low on the "important global matters" scale, but HIGH on the "I'll take things a deranged Roman emperor would do for $500, Alex" chart.
jokingly, this is the entire discipline of bioinformatics (again, I kid).
"LLMs cope, but scholars would be better served if papers preserved structure and intent for machine consumption."
Oh god, just teach your fucking program how to parse a file like every other person dealing with every other file format.
How stupid and ignorant do you have to be to let Ezra Klein do an Issac Chotiner to you?
Watch the video to find out!