Matthew Fainor

@handle.invalid

Tissue engineer by day | writer, knitter, scifi reader, and tea enthusiast by night

Philly was recently named the “Best City for Street Art.” And if you’re interested in learning more about this dynamic world, I’d love to invite you to check out my podcast with WHYY called, Art Outside!

I wish all Americans would watch this, in particular Trump/Musk supporters who might consider this without their pre-existing biases that blind them. This is framed so well. This is how I would be convincing people that they are going to end up funding this huge scam where they are the losers.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (NM-01)@repstansbury.bsky.social · last yr.

Folks, this is a scam. The GOP is helping Elon Musk and his friends loot the federal government and give themselves billions in federal contracts—and then wants to give them permanent tax breaks on the back end by cutting critical programs. Let's call it what it is: a scam on the American people.

Every new announcement about some update to an AI image generator makes me seethe. People with the audacity to say OpenAI is “making art accessible” so gravely misunderstand what art and the purpose of art is in our society. Not to mention the energy, the water, or the theft.

The state of my fridge has reached a new lowest point at the end of this grocery cycle. It’s just a jar of olives, eggs, and about 6 things of pickles/pickle juice. And some really old kimchi 😂

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I usually stay around my own neighborhood, so when I venture down to south Philly I get the treat of seeing a different set of street art. This one is by Sean Lugo, whose signature is animal heads on people’s bodies. His stuff is SO good. Love this cat.

Calico cat head wearing headphones on a woman’s body who is talking with her hands on the radio. She’s got green pants and a yellow sweater over a blue shirt, very cool, and the sign above the cat says she’s on air. She’s talking into a metal wxpn microphone.

BUGS ARE SO COOL!! “The ant scurries along on six nimble legs. It catches up to its peers, a line of antennaed bugs roaming the winding surface of a tree, perpetually hunting for food. While doing so, each unknowingly leaves antibiotic microorganisms secreted from its feet” grist.org/food-and-agr...

A secret weapon in agriculture's climate fight: Ants

Ants — yes, ants — could protect apples, nuts, cocoa, and other beloved crops from disease and climate change.

grist.org

This is one of my favorite kinds of stories in that it surprised me! These activists are challenging the notion that “mine sites are considered ideal locations for prisons or a dumping ground for waste, rather than places of ecological value.” grist.org/justice/biso...

Bison, not prison: Activists buy a prison site to rewild the land

A coal mine was the first to wreck the land. Now activists want to keep another extractive industry from taking root there: prisons.

grist.org

I am on the bus, minding my business when the man in front of me begins frantically using 3 phones at once. THREE! What unspeakable force drove him to such madness??? And what could he possibly need to be doing like that???

Science news, get your science news here! I know a lot is happening right now, but people are still doing excellent research in the field of #RegenerativeMedicine, work that supports people of all kinds. Some of our field’s recent highlights ⬇️ 🧠 🦴🫀 fleshyfutures.substack.com/p/the-tissue...

The Tissue #7: Recommendations from one scientist to another

FDA approves first MSC therapy, woven PCL hip implant moves toward phase I clinical trial, iPSC treatment for Parkinson's disease

fleshyfutures.substack.com

UPDATE: The National Park Service have now removed “queer” and the “Q+” from the web page for stonewall, along with any mentions of transgender people.

Stonewall page on the National Park Service website:

"By the time of Stonewall... we had 50 to 60 gay groups in the country. A year later... 1500."
Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.

Really excited to share the scientific research we do in the Gullbrand Lab at #ORS2025. At a time when the scientific priorities, structure, and funding in the US are being reassessed, it’s very grounding to be surrounded by talented scientists working to solve real problems for real people.

From left to right: Sarah Gullbrand with short curly hair in black blazer and pink sparkly boots with her arm around Matthew Fainor in light pink sweater. Janai Augustin in black sweater and grey plaid pants with his arms around Matthew and Brianna Orozco in grey plaid pants and black blazer, her arm around Emily Sharp dressed in a white turtle and flowinf blue pants. Standing in front of their two academic posters.

Oh please please i am begging, don't use generative AI for any reason if you can avoid it. It's being marketed as a quick time-saver, but it's messy, inaccurate, it is putting entire industries of people out of work, and the environmental impacts (energy and water usage) are huge and debilitating.

To all the books I read in 2024, thanks for the great times. Would definitely recommend almost all these books, but if I could only pick three, I’d tell everyone they must read A Psalm for the Wild Built, A Certain Hunger, and Crying in H Mart.

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