Bryan Gitschlag

Oh dear. That’s like, “oh you’re a barista? Make me a coffee, hehe.”

I do appreciate the question for the opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about how evolution of biological complexity works, but the question is almost never in good faith. Usually more of a ‘gotcha.’

Evolutionary biologist. “How do you explain [complex thing]?”

Let me know if you start seeing shiny things like buttons and coins lying around your property. :)

What about moderately communist?

Evolution 😅

Dr. Knurick seems to be most active in the video-based social media platforms like іnstа.

Their bsky info…
@drjessicaknurick.bsky.social
@amylnon.bsky.social

I would also look at Amy Non's work. She's an anthropologist who studies social inequalities in health outcomes (and the biological/molecular basis of such inequalities). Not sure how much public science communication she does, though, but definitely a researcher in this area.

I know that Jessica Knurick has spoken on such issues before. She's a dietician and nutritionist with a large social media footprint, who does a lot of pseudoscience-debunking online (e.g. responding to bad health info by discussing systemic issues that impede people's access to healthy lifestyles)

List of mass shootings in the United States in 2025...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Quote by RaeShanda Lias: Becoming? Desensitized? Are we not in the same America? Did you all forget that they used to take their children to lynchings? …they used to take their children, put them on their shoulders, and watch somebody else die, from a tree. They made a whole day out of it. So I’m not even sure what this question is about. This country has been desensitized to violence.

"Are Americans becoming desensitized to violence?"

Just want to share this response from @raeshandalias.bsky.social

(By the way there have been more than 300 mass shootings in the USA so far in 2025, defined as "4 or more people killed or injured")

Quote source:
www.instagram.com/raeshanda_li...

We jointly analyzed datasets of adaptive change (e.g. drug-resistance mutations) and independent measurements of mutation rates, across a number of species, and show that species-specific tendencies in adaptive evolution respond (statistically) to species-specific mutational tendencies.

(3/3)

Mutation bias and the predictability of evolution | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Predicting evolutionary outcomes is an important research goal in a diversity of contexts. The focus of evolutionary forecasting is usually on adaptive processes, and efforts to improve prediction typ...

It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the outcomes of adaptive evolution are statistically enriched for not only beneficial mutations but also high-probability mutations; see our review of the literature: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

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Graph showing a positive correlation between "bias in adaptive outcome" on the vertical axis and "mutation bias" on the horizontal axis, with 14 data points representing 14 respective species, with a line of best fit equal to a slope of 0.82 on the log-scale axes. Each data point contains horizontal and vertical error bars to illustrate the uncertainty in both the mutational and adaptive data. The 95% confidence interval of the slope is shown in parentheses (0.44 to 1.24), based on 10,000 simulated data sets, where the simulated data sets are based on statistical resampling of the empirical data (i.e. "bootstrap" data sets). Regression lines based on these bootstrap data sets are shown as light gray lines. The type of bias reported here refers to the ratio of transitions versus transversions, where transitions are a DNA mutation that preserves the basic structure of the DNA base (i.e. a purine-to-purine or pyrimidine-to-pyrimidine mutation), and transversions are mutations that alter the structure of the DNA base at a particular site (i.e. replacing a purine with a pyrimidine or vice versa). In other words, this graph shows that transitions contribute more toward adaptive evolution in species where transitions arise at a higher rate.

NEW PAPER! Some kinds of genetic mutations are more likely to arise than others. Such "biases" in mutation vary between species.

Analyzing data from 14 species, we show that this variation explains species differences in the genetics of adaptation!

(1/3)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Not only blasphemous but also seems to be contradicted by facts. Religious influence on public life has declined for centuries, not just in recent decades, accompanied by both periods of conflict & relative peace, with an overall upward trend in many metrics for social progress & quality of life.

In addition to the unconscionable act of taking people’s medicine away, this illustrates how fundamentally unserious they are about solving serious societal problems like gun violence.

It’s such a great film!

Also I recall seeing a tumblr thread referring to that as the most flirtatious sword fight ever, and basically arguing that everyone in that movie is bi.

Just gonna leave this here…

bsky.app/profile/brya...

Oh that looks like a Western Blue Jay! 🤩

it* 😑

Yeah if bewilders me that people—reasonable people, like in news media—analyze him as though he has complicated thoughts and strategies, knowing full well that the madness of 2016-2020 happened.

My recollection is that the first 18 verses of John 1 was also a later addition, or at least this is a popular view among some scholars (my new testament professor was a scholar of John who held this view).

That's kind of along the lines of the concept of the Middle Path in Buddhism.

Oh my God it's available in Python 👀

I gotta wonder if that percent goes up when you only sample atheists. Can’t help but notice it’s 7% if you add “God guided evolution” & “humans existed since beginning of time.”

One possibility is, a lower tendency to be religious might correlate with reduced reverence for the sanctity of polling.

I suppose another possible explanation is that some people aren’t black-&-white in thinking about God. Maybe they’re an atheist with respect to a literally-supernatural figure described in church, but they still use theistic language when pondering the mysteries & nature of the universe 🤷‍♂️

I could imagine that. Almost seems like the evangelical fundamentalist’s impression of an atheist (“you know there’s a God, you’re just mad at him”).

Huh, learned a new term.