Very cool pair of papers demonstrating little link between amount of additive genetic variation and amount of nucleotide variation within species: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Levels of additive genetic variation vary substantially between species

Adaptive potential determines how populations respond to environmental change. This study compiles evolvability estimates from over 170 multicellular species, revealing substantial variation across th...

journals.plos.org

What a terrible thing to read. This poor newborn that happens to be your genetic clone IS NOT YOUR PROPERTY and is not a part of your body. You can't just harvest its organs and run experiments on this other human being.

Dan Davies@dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 2w ago

Again, the most important legal and ethical issue raised by this is something like "no you didn't, that's a lie, that didn't happen"

This is very good to see Also, I wonder if a reason for the Spanish men's team's success - obviously aside from their great skill and tactics - is in part that they are humble and understand the need to rely on each other and recognise others' worth This encourages teamwork, and its a team sport

elia ayoub@ayoub.bsky.social · 2w ago

In case you didn’t have enough reasons to love Spanish football, here’s some more wholesome content of the male players paying their respects to the women’s team, which also won the world cup www.instagram.com/reel/DbEsgxe...

It’s an evolutionary travesty that we had to fight lions and bears, not to mention the weather and each other, only to create language which represents the world well and enough that meanings can be derived from it by statistical parasites.

perfect dead drop 10/10 no notes (the shrouds really make this)

This reminds me of the impact dating apps had on how we connect. I'm glad I was old enough to experience dating before apps came along, but I'm too young to escape the LLM. I'm already a Claude Code junkie.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

10. In theoretical disciplines where LLMs can hypothetically aid researchers in screening for the most promising projects, researchers will become more selective about what they publish.

I wish I did not have to bring up this old tweet from ‘that other place’ every now and again but here we are (again) and here it is…

Why is reading so fundamental to the human mind? In this fascinating paper, @standehaene.bsky.social & Co show how literacy reshapes and connects the brain’s visual and language systems. A timely reminder of what education could lose if LLMs replace reading & writing. www.unicog.org/publications...

I wasn’t ready for this. ☠️ 😭 Low T Pete will never live this down.

They will have their Nuremberg trials, no doubt.

Ed Markey@edmarkey.bsky.social · 3w ago

This is footage of ICE handcuffing a 26 year old father after murdering him in broad daylight. We cannot look away. Abolish ICE. Abolish qualified immunity. Hold these murderous thugs accountable.

It has been criminally underreported but Kelsey Pfendler has just rowed solo across the Pacific Ocean from the US coast to Hawaii in record time. A 2,400-mile unsupported journey in 43 days, 17 hours, and 55 minutes. Notably beating the Men’s record by 9 whole days.

I've just started to use Claude Code and it should be renamed to Claude God. I mean, wow.

1. A bit of evolutionary biology. I'm really intrigued by a new perspective piece from Steve Frank that explores connections between how natural selection creates systems that generalize and recent work in machine learning about the surprising capabilities of massively overparameterized systems.

Generalization as the great leap in evolvability: insights from machine learning

Abstract. Natural selection encodes learned information in the genome. Learned solutions may be tuned specifically to past challenges, failing in altered e

academic.oup.com

First taste at #SMBE2026: joining the intriguing GHIST2026 challenge as a participant. We have 6 months to see who will be the best at detecting selective sweeps, demographic changes and infer relatedness patterns. Let the Hunger Games begin.

Farewell to Copenhagen and SMBE26! It felt like a reunion with old friends, and I even made some new ones. On top of that, I'm going home with my notebook full of fantastic, inspiring science. Thank @official-smbe.bsky.social for organising this and for being such an inclusive & diverse community.

Is the first artificial cell finally here? In this groundbreaking work lead by @kateadamala.bsky.social the team has been able to create a synthetic cell from scratch, capable of genetically encoded growth and division. An impressive achievement biotic.org/research/spu...

Recently published in MBE, the paper by @moicoll.bsky.social on HMM models for studying human admixture is featured in his talk. Don't miss it! 📋 Symposium 25 🗓️ June 30, 3:50 pm Read the paper here 👉 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag134 #SMBE2026 #societyjournal

Enhancement of hidden Markov model analyses for improved inference of archaic introgression in modern humans

Abstract. Insights into the admixture history between modern and archaic humans require accurately inferred introgressed fragments within modern genomes. H

doi.org

Interactive schedule for SMBE2026. Enjoy the conference! #SMBE2026 github.com/MoiColl/SMBE...

GitHub - MoiColl/SMBE2026_schedule: Interactive SMBE2026 schedule

Interactive SMBE2026 schedule. Contribute to MoiColl/SMBE2026_schedule development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

S M B E, S M B E! Looking forward to seeing old friends a bit older. @official-smbe.bsky.social

Authors on Bluesky @moicoll.bsky.social @lauritsskov.bsky.social @zeniabaek.bsky.social @asgerhobolth.bsky.social

Macìa et al. introduce two novel enhancements to hmmix that improve the detection of archaic fragments and the estimation of summary stats for the study of admixture events between modern and archaic humans. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag134 🖌️ Lídia Gonfaus Coll #evobio #molbio #compbio

I am not at #Evol2026, but @conjustover.bsky.social is! Go check out his talk on collaborative work we have been doing with John Wakeley on simulating autotetraploids tomorrow at 4:15pm.

On my way to party hard with The Prodigy!

The Prodigy: Man Dancing on Rooftop

ALT: The Prodigy: Man Dancing on Rooftop

static.klipy.com

For years I've tracked billionaire excess. Each year I show students a chart that blows their minds. This year I had to redraw it for a trillionaire: Elon Musk, $1.32T. Depressing that we're here. Silver lining: couldn't have happened to a less deserving person, proof that wealth ≠ merit.

Elon Musk's $1.32 Trillion, to Scale

The first trillionaire's fortune, one pixel per $1,000 — scroll past every dollar, and see what a fraction of it could do instead.

stanford.edu

Postdoc search update! I am continuing to solicit applications for a postdoc opening in the lab, and probably around the beginning of July I will start selecting applicants to interview. See evoldir ad here: evoldir.net/brian/evoldi... Please RT or whatever!

The Berlin Zoo named their baby Hippo Brötchen. :) (Bread roll 🥖)

1/ New paper with Elizabeth Borden, Karen Hastings, and Ryan Gutenkunst on immunoediting in human tumors. Ryan and I built the modeling side, so that's what I'll focus on here.

Artificial intelligence and humans. In this interview, Dalí explains the difference between a Velázquez painting and a photograph. youtu.be/jSOOXHhO-pU?...

Dalí sobre la fotografía y Velazquez - 1971

YouTube video by El Mundo de Yhi

youtu.be

Our new paper doi.org/10.1098/rspb... on long-term genetic threats to small populations finds that "mutational meltdown" (bad mutations fixing) is less of a problem than "mutational drought" (too few good new mutations) @wmawass.bsky.social @uliseshmc.bsky.social @jeremyjberg.bsky.social 1/5

Extinction vortices are driven more by a shortage of beneficial mutations than by deleterious mutation accumulation

Abstract. Habitat loss contributes to extinction risk in multiple ways. Genetically, small populations can face an ‘extinction vortex’—a positive feedback

doi.org

Causal inference clarifies the roles of background selection and mutation rate variation in shaping human genetic diversity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.02.727906v1