Chris Balakrishnan

Now out in @asm.org #mSystems! journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
Congratulations to Robert and thanks to all collaborators. See thread below for a summary of the work, exploring the use of cross-species coexpression analyses to predict primary and secondary metabolic interactions in microbiomes.

Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds - Consumer Reports Exclusive: Instacart’s AI pricing may be inflating your grocery bill.

In collaboration w/ @groundwork.bsky.social & @moreperfectunion.bsky.social, we convened hundreds of volunteers from across the country to investigate Instacart’s AI-assisted pricing experiments at popular grocery stores like Target & Kroger. Read our full investigation below:

The past and future of known biodiversity: Rates, patterns, and projections of new species over time The number of known species on Earth is increasing rapidly, suggesting unexpectedly large numbers of many groups.

Fascinated to learn that we are still discovering new species at the highest rate ever. Mapping Earth's biodiversity is far from over, and while we learn more and more about it, let's protect what we do know as well as we can!
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Why is the adobe “Ask AI assistant” right in the middle of the text I am trying to read?

Zillow Removes Climate Risk Scores From Home Listings

Lol, Zillow tried to rate the climate risks facing individual properties. The real estate industry *hated* it, precisely because it worked -- it made selling risky properties more difficult. So they rebelled & Zillow caved.

Don't look up!

Also, I am so grateful for funding - notably from the NSF PurSUiT program - that has valued and recognized the importance of biodiversity & discovery science and that is enabling our lab to continue this geothermal research.

Incl @maureenmkearney.bsky.social @evolutionpirate.bsky.social & others

Introducing ** Incendiamoeba **, a eukaryote that can live at temperatures well beyond what we thought possible. 63C!!

Read @hbrappap.bsky.social thread to see what we’ve already started to learn from this amazing organism!

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

#MicroSky #protistsonsky 🧪 #evobio

4) US being left behind: The US absence was quickly normalized. Whether out of frustration or honest conviction, delegates spoke of the US declining in relevance. As an African govt rep said: “Americans should realize the world is moving on from them... other nations are this as an opportunity.”

Not that you asked, but here's a thread of intriguing (real!) food facts to amuse/bore your friends and family.

Great for gatherings when you need to change the subject!

I keep saying, Google intentionally making its search worse is a world-historical fumble, and it's a huge opportunity for so many others across the internet, if they'll just seize it..

Unfortunately, I can confirm that this is true.

I have known Carl for 2 decades and he is smart, dedicated, and quite apolitical, focused on science and getting stuff done on important problems.

Huge unnecessary loss of leadership and expertise.

Trump’s thugs have come to my state to kidnap people/put them in concentration camps

Anthony Lewis, Superintendent of Durham Public Schools, sent around a really wonderful letter to all parents explaining how DPS would handle any of these thugs coming to any public school

What a time we live in 😢

How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi in display at Barnes & Noble

All time achievement. Our #nerdnite book “How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi” is touching @edyong209.bsky.social ‘s book.

two contradictory ideas that i hold in my head at the same time: 1) i think the threat to both SNAP recipients and federal workers is significant enough now that even bad deals are worth making to prevent further harm, and, 2) everyone who caves now should retire in shame

I so appreciate this attention to what we’ve been doing with ed tech at CUNY and the notion that the higher ed ecosystem can benefit from it. Too many folks to name have been involved in those projects over the years, and it builds upon work and commitments at CUNY that goes back generations.

A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

If you are a Democratic senator watching these results and the lesson you take is "I should cave and help Republicans reopen the government for nothing more than a promise written on toilet paper" then you shouldn't be in the Senate anymore

The CDC Data Project In the proposed FY26 budget, programs that help Americans live safer, healthier, longer lives are on the chopping block.

New-to-me but very helpful visualizations how all the actions of the past ten months are affecting the CDC www.cdcdataproject.org

HAPPENING NOW: A MASSIVE crowd of protesters flood the streets of San Diego for a “No Kings Day” rally showing their love for America and standing up against the corrupt fascist Trump administration. look how huge it is

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

The official website of the Nobel Prize - NobelPrize.org The Nobel Prize rewards science, humanism and peace efforts. This is one of the central concepts in the will of Alfred Nobel, and it also permeates the outreach activities that have been developed for...

Six of the nine Nobel Prize winners this year work in the U.S.
Three of the six were born outside the U.S., which is the pattern most years. No country has benefited more from welcoming immigrants from around the world.
www.nobelprize.org

This is remarkable. The world added more solar and wind capacity in 2024 than we added demand. 100% of demand growth PLUS 9% to retire dirtier sources. Cheap energy keeps winning. ember-energy.org/latest-insig...

A job ad with multiple images, including the exterior of the museum, a view of collections (jars on shelves), and pictures of some cool, tropical fish but I don't know enough about fish to describe them other than to say they're pretty colors of yellow and blue/green

🚨We're hiring! The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is seeking a tenure-track split position as Assistant Curator of Ichthyology and Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. Please retweet & share with colleagues! 🐟🐠🧪

Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/174674

Man, I'm sorry, but reading all these AI generated essays from students, it just sucks all the joy out of everything. It's exhausting, makes you into a weird paranoid cop, grinds you down, wastes your time, makes you feel like shit about everything.

Fuck this shit technology and all its enablers.

Nice piece on power consumption by LLMs & GenAI spectrum.ieee.org/ai-energy-use #energy #artificialintelligence #llms #genAI

Transformative change to address biodiversity loss is urgent and possible Transformative change for a just and sustainable world often appears overwhelming. This Perspective highlights the key messages from the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment and how everyone can be ...

Transformative change for a just and sustainable world often seems overwhelming. @annelarigauderie.bsky.social and the @ipbes.net Transformative Change Assessment co-chairs highlight the roles we can each have in achieving #transformativechange.

🧪 #biodiversity #sustainability

plos.io/3VGKknN

Yes! A fantastic way for folks who don’t have access to a major university library to be able to read articles.

The World's Newest Whale Species Is Critically Endangered With Only 50 Individuals Left The species has been historically hunted, but now faces even more threats.

The World's Newest Whale Species Makes Moans Like No Other And There Are Only 50 Individuals Left To Hear Them | IFLScience 🦑🌎🧪

We don't structure our programs to reflect this, but in reality faculty is the alternative career path, not the default.

That’s wild … so you’ve not had a collaborator hesitant to post a preprint? Happens to me quite often!