Alex May

Bob Gatenby finishes his phenomenal #MathOnco25 talk with this stunning figure and conclusion: "Cycles within cycles may allow metastatic prostate cancer to be converted to a chronic disease". The results are from a new paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

"why are games so expensive"
"why are mass layoffs happening"
"why are games getting cancelled"
"why did that popular studio close"

it's capitalism. capitalism is why all of this is happening. the rampant prioritizing of profit over the all else, from price and quality to dev health and well being.

Always assumed Michaelis & Menten were two guys; turns out Menten was a badass woman and is my new academic crush! Wikipedia: “She played the clarinet, created paintings worthy of art exhibitions, climbed mountains, went on an Arctic expedition, enjoyed astronomy, […] had mastered several languages”

Just finished an ecology course where they told us the soil taste test is frowned on these days, what with Blastomycosis and ground contamination and such

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

Straight out of the Cambrian explosion

Matthew McConaughey says he wants a private LLM, fed only with his books, notes, journals, and aspirations, so he can ask it questions and get answers based solely on that information, without any outside influence.

this exists it is called thinking

This is reassuring! I used to consider myself a solid writer and it was really demoralizing to see what LLMs could do. Maybe I don't need to despair too much after all!

Will humans and AI coevolve in the future? As interdependencies grow, the two could come to function not merely as interacting agents, but as an integrated evolutionary individual. Check this paper in @pnas.org by @mkhochb.bsky.social & P Rainey @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We're clear-eyed: Every AI company and investor has massive incentive to hype the most glorious AI case. So the technology might never live up to its promise. But this would require every CEO of America's seven biggest companies to be collectively delusional about where they're spending trillions in combined capital.

wow is it possible for seven people to all be wrong about something?

www.axios.com/2025/09/02/a...

Now that the ink is dry, I'm writing a book y'all! Get ready for a global exploration of cryptids, featuring gorgeous illustrations. EEK

Adding to my list!!

@giamora.substack.com seems like these could be up your alley!

I am going to lodge a prediction: the AI bubble is going to start to deflate in the next 18 months.

Chatbots have edge case utility, but are not themselves transformative. Agents are as controllable as an alcoholic rabbit; not fit for serious work. Foundation models are no longer improving rapidly

CRISPR as a microbial immune system In 2003, Mojica wrote the first paper suggesting that CRISPR was an innate microbial immune system. The paper was rejected by a series of high-profile journals, including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Molecular Microbiology and Nucleic Acids Research, before finally being accepted by Journal of Molecular Evolution in February, 2005.[3][4]

TIL the original paper describing CRISPR, by Francisco Mojica, was rejected by 4 journals and took 2 years to be published

Want to name a real virus? I have recently discovered 9 new phages which now need names! To enter, you simply need to donate to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust on my JustGiving page (£2 = 1 entry) and share your email with me on donation (see link info). Please share 💚 www.justgiving.com/page/meaghan-c-1

YouTube video by Quanta Magazine How Did Multicellular Life Evolve? | Podcast: The Joy of Why

Just heard @wcratcliff.bsky.social‬ on the origin of #multicellularity www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsvD...
Great to hear that cells harnessing physics was a significant step & to have a proper discussion of the question not led by the ‘power’ of genes. Well worth a listen.
#NotInTheGenes #CellsRus

YouTube video by Benn Jordan I Saved a PNG Image To A Bird

Holy shit. This guy saved a PNG to a bird.

(he drew a bird into a spectrogram, played that sound to a starling, and the starling reproduced it back to him with enough accuracy he got his bird drawing back in their call's spectrogram) www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQC...

How Our Gut Microbiome Can Drive Sugar Cravings More Evidence for Our Gut Taking Center Stage for What We Eat

How our gut microbiome drives sugar cravings
erictopol.substack.com/p/how-our-gu...

I have very mixed feelings about Timmy's, but yeah the honey crullers are the way to go (also I have a soft spot for Boston creams)!

What It’s Like to Be a Student Who Hates ChatGPT “Everyone is using it”—almost everyone.

you've heard about the college kids who can't do anything without ChatGPT's help—but what about the students who oppose generative A.I. for myriad reasons and refuse to rely on it as a shortcut? well, I found and spoke with a few of them here: slate.com/life/2025/07...

If you’re a US researcher, now is the time to establish a plan B The scale of funding cuts in the United States means that countless scientists will lose their jobs. It would be naive not to start thinking about alternative career paths.

If you’re a US researcher, now is the time to establish a plan B www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Iris Van Herpen has an ongoing collab with @cern.bsky.social and the pictures are spectacular #sciart kottke.org/25/06/large-... 🧪

I genuinely believe this is where we’re going with games, but in the meantime we’re going to lose incredible talent and works of art

The @asm.org just released an outstanding report on what we know (and don't know!) about key steps in the origin of complex life. We brought together leading experts on the origin of life, eukaryogenesis, and multicellularity, then jointly wrote this report. Give it a read!

asm.org/reports/earl...

ChatGPT's Impact On Our Brains According to an MIT Study The study, from MIT Lab scholars, measured the brain activity of subjects writing SAT essays with and without ChatGPT.

epic shit I love it

time.com/7295195/ai-c...

I suspect that fact that the vast majority of LLM users don’t seem to have received this (really very simple!) message is because the AI companies have a vested interest in us not understanding it. “ChatGPT is smart, it just makes mistakes sometimes” is much more marketable than the truth.

Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. While we will consider all projects in ecolo...

I would love to host a PhD student on my lab with strong quantitative training interested in projects integrating ecology and evolution, or cell physiology and ecological dynamics
www.simonsfoundation.org/grant/simons...