jmb, phd

Recent weather events across the South have offered a reminder, from a Minnesotan’s perspective: nobody deals with ice like those from the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

Kingdom animalia.

Speaking on behalf of science, we’re okay with this outcome.

But you can do that right now, though, right? As far as I’m aware, neither arXiv nor bioRxiv have format or length requirements. If you’re going to blow up article formatting, why not blow up commercial publishing at the same time?

Don’t worry, you can just feed the plots and bullet points into an LLM and ask it to create a paper for your to read. /s

🌻 Sharing this preprint where we assembled 3 new chromosome-level genomes, including the first for Asteraceae's South American sister Calyceraceae! Asteraceae uses all the tricks when it comes to being the most ecologically successful family of flowering plants. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Faculty job ad for a position in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Georgia.

We're hiring! Please spread the word. We have an opening for an Assistant Professor in Plant Synthetic Biology for Strategic Resources Research. See ad for details – and apply to join us here in Athens, GA! 🪴 #PlantBiology #SyntheticBiology #PlantScience #AcademicJobs #UGA

Just spent waaay too long canceling Spectrum internet by phone. Big thanks to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals (1 Bush, 2 Trump appointees) that blocked the Biden-era “click‑to‑cancel” rule before it took effect this month. Truly working for the people – clicking a button is *so* hard. /s

Happy to see this out and for the opportunity to contribute!! The puzzle of Asteraceae inflorescence development jumps one step forward (a big step 😅) 🌻

Have you ever wondered how sunflowers got their head? The answer lies in stem cells, a modified signal peptide, and a whole lotta evolutionary history. Happy to have played a role in this work. 🌻

Nice. Fwiw, I can translate science into gibberish *or* gibberish into science. That’s my super power.

Okay, found them. Artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy, and translational science. None of which I can eat.

Wait. What are the President’s five priority areas?

Knock out science, observe the phenotype. It’s like reverse genetics, but with civilization.

So. I’m sitting here watching The Terminator and realizing that we’re just four years from SkyNet sending a killer robot back in time to ensure an apocalyptic future. I hope we make it that long.

Same old same old. Unfortunately.

Academics, do you need a simple way to explain IDC (F&A) rates? Imagine dining at a restaurant. You enjoy your meal but decide to pay only for the chef & ingredients, ignoring the waitstaff, rent, and utilities. Clearly, these “extras” make the experience possible. But imagine if everyone did this.

How many bikes can one man ride?

True or false… When a major international conference gives you an actual paper notebook as part of the swag, they should also give you a writing utensil. You can get those with sponsor logos, too, right? Or is a $1k-ish registration fee for academics and non-profits too low for such luxuries?

Also, funny thing… If your child is under 18, you don’t have to certify then as a tobacco non-user… So yeah, they can smoke all they want with no impact on your insurance. 🤷‍♂️

Dude, your insurance doesn’t carry on, same as it ever was, if you don’t re-opt-in for your dependents? That’s criminal. The only thing we *have to* do every fall is re-confirm that we’re not tobacco users to avoid an upcharge. The price of coverage increases (of course!) but it stays in place.

Then again, maybe you’re a sleeper agent for Big Corn™️…

I think the word you’re looking for is “cornologist.” Side note: that auto-corrected to corporatist, which I’m pretty sure you are not.

I see five. Corn, corn oil, corn maltodextrin, corn protein, and corn syrup. I wonder what percentage of corn that is by mass?

That’s really cool, small world!

The corner of Pine Lane and what? My wife grew up on Colby Drive. P.S. Beautiful tree! I hope it’s a male gingko… Otherwise, RIP your nasal passages. 😂

TFW you go old school and bust out a bunch of PCR primers that you published 18 years ago to validate some crosses… and you discover that the parents differ for a big ole indel in one of the genes. Few things are as satisfying as seeing genetics in action on an agarose gel. 🌻 🧬

Fyi, I told a bunch of people and nobody cared. 🤷‍♂️

Twinkies arranged to spell “NOPE!”