Jason Williams

SHOULD THE U.S BLOT OUT THE SUN AND USHER IN AN AGE OF ETERNAL DARKNESS? - Gallup 2/20/26-3/5/26

NO - 41%
YES - 38%
UNSURE - 21%

The result is a brief pocket of suspended time: the texture barely moves while the harmony quietly tightens beneath it.

One of my favorite moments.

Curiously, the violin’s closing chord does not entirely disappear. Its pitches linger and are gradually reinterpreted as the bass shifts beneath them, so that what first sounded like a firm arrival quietly dissolves into passing harmony…

320–321: One of the most Brahmsian aspects of this passage is that almost nothing moves on the surface, yet the harmony changes constantly. Beneath this apparent stillness, the cello introduces a chromatic descent that quietly reshapes the harmony under the sustained upper voices…

Life is so complicated right now. I really need to loose some distractions so I can think more clearly about how I design my oubliette.

I bet learning Polish as a second language does not have many pleasant surprises.

Next week, capstone students in the ENVS class I'm teaching will present "Environmental Impacts of Large Data Centers"

Most data centers don't get an EIA, so we have to DIY it - come hear their research on 3 proposed centers!

@carlbergstrom.com @wolvendamien.bsky.social @meadekrosby.bsky.social

Monica Munoz Torres holds the BOSC 2025 poster

BOSC Chair Nomi Harris by the BOSC 2024 poster

#BOSC2026 is looking for sponsors!

Your sponsorship helps BOSC advance open-source bioinformatics and open science and broaden representation (www.open-bio.org/obf-dei/).

Info: open-bio.org/events/bosc/.... Please contact us for details about sponsorship levels and perks!

“Deranged activist” sounds like a great addition to a CV/Biography.

Does the type of publisher response to integrity concerns influence subsequent citations? A cohort study. Background: Journals may respond to integrity concerns by publishing an editorial response (editorial notice, expression of concern (EoC) or retraction). We investigated whether the type of editorial ...

"little evidence retraction or editorial notice had any effect on the rate of citation"

Perpetuating signals that a paper is flawed is critical. We need to do this better systemically. In other news, people don't read papers they cite...

ht @deevybee.bsky.social

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

NIH Director Bhattacharya signals an end to the affirmative action program for ESI Well, this is fascinating. Director Jayanta Bhattacharya went on the Why Should I Trust You podcast in an episode dated Feb 26, 2026 [h/t]. Around 59:00 he is answering the podcast host after she p…

Good observations from @drugmonkey.bsky.social about early stage investigators (or at least Director Bhattacharya's comments on a podcast about them).

drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/n...

Thanks, @maxkozlov.bsky.social .

I will go further. This deranged activist was also known for criticizing NIH Director Francis Collins during the Obama administration when he felt that Collins was making decisions not aligned with the best interests of the NIH.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Forecasting the Next Pandemic Led by scientists from Yale and the University of Oklahoma, the Viral Emergence Research Initiative (Verena) is one of the largest pandemic prevention research

Very special to wake up today to a profile of @viralemergence.org from Yale. We’re in month eight of turmoil right now, and it’s hard to focus on the science, but the truth is: we have a lot more work to do.

ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

for those of you who werent adults during iraq, its hard to overstate how much the media loves war porn. they salivate over pentagon spin briefings. they love stories about all the bombs and how supposedly infallible they are. they love the notion of the commander in chief, in the situation room etc

A post from Jason Locasale quoting Paul Thacker complaining about a Nature story from Max Kozlov using data from NIH Reporter that I posted on my Bluesky account.

Apparently Jason Locasale and Paul Thacker have a problem with using publicly available data from NIH Reporter about the number of new and competitive renewal grants from fiscal year 2026 compared to previous fiscal years because I first posted it.

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I'm Gen Z, I'm almost 30, I run an award-winning team of almost a dozen people, and my biggest problem in the workplace is that the government has disappeared $5m they owe me so I can run interference on pandemic prevention while they rip copper wire out of the walls of NIH. But go off I guess

Not sure why you chose not to prepare for this.

A titan of vaccine development sees his field’s achievements slip away Stanley Plotkin, the 93-year-old "godfather of vaccines," is watching his field’s achievements slip away.

Stanley Plotkin had a major hand in the development of a number of vaccines in use today; he designed the rubella vaccine. He remembers the world before widespread use of vaccines & knows what's coming as vaccine policy is rewritten & vaccine confidence is eroded. www.statnews.com/2026/03/02/s...

Exfiltrate your memories from one provider to another. Copy the prompt here: claude.com/import-memory

What does it say about my HSK level that I now get random spam SMS in Chinese now?

Seductive …

RBPscan: A quantitative in vivo tool for profiling RNA-binding protein interactions Kretov et al. introduce RBPscan, an RNA-editing-based platform that measures how RNA-binding proteins engage their targets in living cells. This approach quantifies the binding strength of protein-RNA...

I thought the figures and writing were excellent in this clever methods paper about studying RBP-RNA interactions in vivo www.cell.com/molecular-ce...

I wish RNA was still interesting.

Congratulations 🍾🎊🎈

Congrats to our 2026 GSA Award recipients! They have made significant contributions to science, including scientific discoveries, mentoring, creation of community resources, and education. Learn more about them: buff.ly/6zAwQQ1

Join us in celebrating their accomplishments.👏

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Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software after its code was found tied to US surveillance efforts | Fortune Discord cut ties with its age-verification partner after exposed code fueled federal-reporting concerns, months after a breach hit 70,000 users.

AM I SUPPOSED TO BE SUPRISED? IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WITH HALF A FUNCTIONING BRAINCELL AND A PULSE THAT'S SUPRISED??
fortune.com/2026/02/24/d...

When I go for a medical procedure, the message to my care team is we all get through this.

WTAF 😱

There's an image of people, of ourselves as a species, behind this statement that I find disgusting to my core.
He thinks humans are purely automatons to extract value from, and I'm sure that's the majority view of his social class.

Grievance Is All You Need Understanding attacks on NIH, CDC and FDA through the lens of COVID revisionists

Thank you. Full essay here, all posts always open to all:

joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/grievance-...