not many people know this, but Barilla has a line of 3D printed pasta it sells mostly to the fine dining industry. I don't want the pasta. I want the pasta printer

Lion King pogs, obv

Pocket vetos require congress not to be in session. Since they’re back in office this week these should automatically pass without a signature.

I know I’m in Georgia because a TSA agent just held up an empty Pepsi bottle that came loose in the scanner and asked the line whose Coke it was.

On the plus side, it’s given me an easy binary screen for all primary physicians across my many cross country moves since then: the ones who claim I must be mistaken about that and the ones who lean in and ask for more details.

As someone who had the joy of multiple shingles outbreaks as an undergraduate I endorse this message

OTOH if we did just imagine throwing a tennis ball for a dog in lunar gravity.

They haven’t presented it to the president because he says he won’t sign anything until SAVE act passes, and with Congress on recess it would now be up for pocket veto if they do it now. So we’re all in holding mode for longer. (*insert deep university spin-out founder sigh here*)

A sign on the fence of a graveyard. It reads "No use of geiger counters on church property."

This sign raises many questions, which probably should be answered by the sign but aren't

Haha brains are so weird. I get exactly this — down to the having signed up for another course just for fun! — but my subconscious has only recently added the part where I explain how it probably doesn’t matter if I no longer officially graduated high school with the PhD and all.

If you get your hands on a decent UV flashlight or other UV light source, try pointing it at a bruised banana.

You'll have the opportunity to observe a phenomenon called "blue halos of death" caused by cellular senescence & the breakdown of chlorophyll in the fruit peel.

Let's talk about it.

This is just crazy. March 20th. Colorado.

Billiken - Wikipedia

This poor dog is currently getting crushed by a Billiken, which is apparently some kind of weird turn of the 20th century Americana good luck charm en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiken

Uga VI, the University of Georgia's white English bulldog mascot in his red G jersey, is fully airborne with all four paws off the ground, biting onto a large red Georgia flag being held by a cheerleader on the field at Sanford Stadium in 2004. The cheerleader's mouth is open in shock witnessing the world's least aerodynamic dog defying gravity. Photo from the Savannah Morning News: https://www.savannahnow.com/story/lifestyle/celebrations/anniversary/2010/03/25/uga-savannah-s-own-celebrity/13698279007/

I filled out my family's college basketball pool bracket based on mascots' abilities to win in head to head competition, so now it's time to reshare the greatest picture ever taken of Uga, the University of Georgia's namesake bulldog.

Wow, so bendy!

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You know what would be really fun? Synthetic epigenetics. There are so much chemical space to decorate DNA, but most of them are not naturally occurring (e.g., DNA acylation). If we put together a set of writers, readers, and erasers, we can get a whole orthogonal synthetic epigenetic system going.

I love this joke. You love this joke. We all do. It is hilarious.

Buuuuuut...you know we're about to discuss Roman calendars, right? And that this joke isn't quite right?

SO! Let's talk about Roman calendars and why the 'number months' (Sept-Dec) do not match their numbers (7-10)! 1/

Following @joshuasweitz.bsky.social post and discussions with him and the Vox story, I have estimated R01 success rates for each NIH institute and center with enough awards for this to be meaningful.

A long 🧵...

1/25

The US slashed medical research grants in nearly every field, Pratik Pawar/Vox - https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/482363/nih-medical-research-grants-cut-2025?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImJsVWFZMk1PSzEiLCJwIjoiL2Z1dHVyZS1wZXJmZWN0LzQ4MjM2My9uaWgtbWVkaWNhbC1yZXNlYXJjaC1ncmFudHMtY3V0LTIwMjUiLCJleHAiOjE3NzQ2MTkyOTIsImlhdCI6MTc3MzQwOTY5Mn0.DntsxOVbCb9ha3Xw0ZBEvzobSo4z6K2EWfc1qfJk728&utm_medium=gift-link

New reporting on what has happened to science under the Trump administration and HHS leadership, building on publicly available NIH grants data.

Take-away: across-the-board cuts are reducing our capacity to discover & serve.

Out today, via @pratik-p.bsky.social

🎁
www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Ye
GADS

Twin fountains! Spectacular.

Campolina: a deep neural framework for accurate segmentation of nanopore signals - Genome Biology Nanopore sequencing enables real-time, long-read analysis by processing raw signals as they are produced. A key step, segmentation of signals into events, is typically handled algorithmically, struggl...

Transformer-based AI has boosted
@nanoporetech.com
sequencing accuracy, but at a cost to portability due to GPU demands.
Our new work, spearheaded by
Sara Bakic, introduces Campolina link.springer.com/article/10.1... to improve nanopore signal segmentation for event-based mappers.

A line graph showing the success rates for fiscal years 2015-2025 as a function of percentile score. The curve for fiscal year 2025 is substantially lower than for previous fiscal years.

With these results in hand, we can now reproduce the graph that @joshuasweitz.bsky.social posted.

It is still shocking, but we can now understand why it looks the way it does: The number of R01 and R56 awards were down while the number of applications were up.

16/20

The plot is only part of the story.

The data do not include lost science via terminations, freezes, stalled payments, and award delays. The collapse in awards rates will lead to job loss, gaps in research programs, and drive scientists to spend more time writing grants rather than doing science.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

oh yeah?

There are a lot of options, but I’ll never *not* cue up Livin’ on a Prayer at the 50% mark, because I need all the cheesy confidence I can summon up for the second half.

Yes! High stakes synchronized ski teams?! In searching around apparently any time a sighted person tries it (with a blindfold), no matter how skilled a skier they are the universal response is that it’s psychologically terrifying.

Was just saying this last night watching downhill. Where’s mu commentary on who the athletes are, their training regimen, how they got to where they are today and how the rules of the event work? Why am I stuck searching Wikipedia for literally the basics?

Sled hockey is better in this respect.

you’re hired