Jacoby Robinson

Can bioimaging build capacity in fungi research? | News | Wellcome Dr Elizabeth Ballou from the University of Exeter writes about her research on antifungal resistance and how bioimaging could help build capacity in fungal research.

wellcome.org/news/can-bio...

Fungal Futures: Ancient Egyptians, Cats, and Wonder Bread — Jacobyceps My recent distraction from dissertation writing, concerns how we can use fungi as biocontrols to improve agricultural sustainability. Increased study in recent years shows that even the most well-char...

Doing a blog where I talk about the ways we have and continue to use fungi. First one is up is inspired by my Kansas roots and love of beer: www.jacobyceps.com/blog-fungal-...

Looking at my woven leather sandals and freshly ironed apron knowing I gotta write this damn dissertation

The Ruin And Redemption Of The American Prairie Tallgrass prairies in the United States were cleared for industrial farms. Can the lost biodiversity be restored?

www.sciencefriday.com/segments/sea... re: lawns are an ecological disaster — not all grass is bad

a man in a trench coat and hat stands in front of a sunset sky ALT: a man in a trench coat and hat stands in front of a sunset sky

“What do you want to do for Juneteenth?”

Me: Get out there on that grill

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

A few:

You can safely *touch* pretty much any mushroom you see.

Fungi effectively digest nutrients on their “skin” or outside the cell.

Grass lawns are functional disasters and are ecologically equivalent to patches of desert.

Coffee has been hot since it was invented as a drink approximately 525 years.

So, no, I will not be filing a personal exemption by way of copious apologies and justifications to the brilliant baristas who insist that I must want iced coffee.

I will stand in this breach. So be it. Coffee is hot.

The Fungal Kingdom as a Rosetta Stone for biological discovery Long-time Current Biology advisory board member, Joseph Heitman, introduces this special issue on ‘The Fungi’.

The Fungal Kingdom as a Rosetta Stone for biological discovery: Current Biology www.cell.com/current-biol...

This is terrible but it is also misleading. The US government is not the accreditor - they've basically written a letter to Columbia's *actual* accreditor and demanded that they take action.

Columbia failed to meet accreditation standards, US government says The U.S. Department of Education said on Wednesday it has notified a university accreditation body that Columbia University had violated federal anti-discrimination laws by its alleged failure to protect Jewish students on its campus.

ED has reported to Columbia's accreditor that it "violated" anti-discrimination laws and thus has not met accreditation standards. This is the feds telling an accreditor that they should punish a uni because ED wants them to.

The iron triangle is in such danger...

www.reuters.com/world/us/us-...

Sinners Is The Highest-Grossing Original Movie In America This Decade (& It's Not Even Close) It beat the next original film by over $100M.

screenrant.com/sinners-movi...

Live Sinners - Spoiler Movie Review YouTube video by BlackGayComicGeek

I was initially inspired by her guest appearance on a show discussing Sinners here: www.youtube.com/live/LJBsABh.... BGCG and Virgo Blade are great but Dr. Brooks stole the show

We’ll probably start over the next week and I post some of our thoughts as we go.

Me and my gf are starting a book club (of 2 so far) focused on Black horror starting with Sycorax’s Daughters by Dr. Kinitra Brooks. It’s an anthology of horror short stories written by Black women and we would love to have others join virtually or otherwise

Book is ~$20 on Amazon

Fallen tree trunk sits in a stream bank covered in reddish brown shelf mushrooms

Hell yeah

A bright yellow, slime-mold fungus covers and hangs off a small branch with a similar appearance to branches of a willow tree

An absolutely mesmerizing slime mold found in Soberanía National Park, Panamá. It’s the kinda thing that makes you re-experience child-like wonder at the beauty of life followed by a devastating reminder that we are obliterating billions of years of biological innovation to cool chatbot servers

On the bright side, i did get the unofficial green light to defend this summer

The average PhD student experience of trying to schedule a committee meeting at the end of the semester

First time find, a little bit of witch’s butter on an old conifer stump

Wanmi Mosaku and Buddy Guy getting screen time — I left full

The SINNERS discourse is great because to normal people "Ryan Coogler movie with Michael B. Jordan" sounds like a money printer but to weird rich racists in Hollywood it's a niche Black film for Black audiences only, and they're mad they didn't foresee it is, duh, a money printer.

SINNERS is 🤌🏽CINEMA🤌🏽

Finally updated my Blackademics starter pack, now including Katherine McKittrick, Imani Perry and others.

Grad students and other scholars: follow the #Blackademics feed to participate in the conversation. Thanks as always to @rudyfraser.com for hosting us on Blacksky!!!

go.bsky.app/SSc7tNL

This should be the top story in Axios’s morning read. But it isn’t. It’s the FIFTH top story.

@axios.com
www.axios.com/2025/04/23/t...

“A couple days later, on March 6, I was working from home at around 11:30 when I got a notice that my VPN had gone down,” he says. “I didn’t think much about it. It can cut out from time to time. About 10 minutes later, I got a knock at the door.” Two men were outside Jackson’s door, dressed in slacks and polos. They were not wearing badges. “I first thought they were going to try to sell me something. But as soon as I opened the door they said, ‘Are you Clayton Jackson?’ I think I shook my head or said ‘yeah,’ and then I heard, ‘We have information that you are obstructing an ongoing immigration investigation.’” Jackson says alarms went off in his head. “My first instinct was to want to know what this was about. That it must be a misunderstanding. So I started to tell them about how I’ve been involved in some pro bono work. Then this voice in my head kicked in and just said, you need to shut the fuck up — don’t say anything.” The officers never identified themselves. They did ask if they could come inside. “I said absolutely not,” Jackson says. “I asked for their names and badge numbers. They said they didn’t have to provide that information at this time. So I told them I’d be calling my lawyer and I shut the door behind me.” Jackson says his mind started racing. “I needed to know who they were, what agency they were with. Then I remembered that I have the Ring camera. Maybe I could watch the video of the incident and figure out who they were from that.” There was no video. “That’s when I learned why my VPN had gone down. It wasn’t the VPN. Someone had shut off my Wifi.” About 15 minutes after the interaction at his front door, Jackson’s Wifi was up and running again.

It's a high bar, but this from @radleybalko.bsky.social might be one of the most fucked up things I've read in the new Trump era. For context, this TX lawyer had just had an informal conversation with a family caught up in ICE raids.

Seriously. Read this. radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-courag...

The End of Disease

Thoughts on Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind saying that AI could cure disease in general in ten years.

Bonus index to my longer posts on AI/computational drug discovery over nearly 20 years!

“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies," Marks said. "This man doesn’t care about the truth. He cares about what is making him followers.”

Graduate Reductions Across Biomedical Sciences (2025)

I created a brief spreadsheet of reductions I've heard of so far. Any additions you know of (especially if you have the links/receipts) would be great: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Can you spare a minute to help this campaign? Protect CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) and Laboratory Leadership Service (LLS)

On behalf of a friend in the Lab Leadership Service at the CDC, please help support the critical mission of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service by signing this petition chng.it/6CFWfNcFPV