I am recruiting Ph.D. students this cycle. Students interested in deep-sea fishes and phylogenetic comparative methods are an especially good fit.

An unexpected visitor turned an ordinary shift into a memorable wildlife story in New Brighton, Christchurch. After a curious seal wandered into Union Minimart, the owner calmly guided it outside before nearby residents helped escort it safely back to the beach. It’s a reminder of the unique…

This image of our native kererū (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae) will be Wikipedia's Picture of the Day tomorrow 📸 Photo taken in the Waitākere Ranges by Charles J. Sharp (CC BY-SA 4.0). See it on the Wikipedia home page from 00:00 UTC on 18 July 2026.

#BabyGlobe is all checked in to Singapore for the next step in the #journeytowikimania looking comfy!

Want to join our team? Check out this opportunity. Closes 30 June NZT.

Neil Gemmell@profgemmell.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🔬 Postdoctoral Opportunity – Mitochondrial Genome Editing We are recruiting a PDF to study how mitochondrial DNA mutations influence phenotype, metabolism, fertility, and ageing using mitochondrial base editing and Drosophila. Apply: otago.taleo.net/careersectio... 📩 neil.gemmell@otago.ac.nz

The ‘Environmental Omics’ satellite of QRW2026, is happening at Te Pae, Ōtautahi, 3-4 Sep. Further information at: www.queenstownresearchweek.org/latest-advan.... Abstract submission (due June 24th): www.queenstownresearchweek.org/abstract-sub...

💯 this. Support public transport.

Jessica de Heij@jdeheij.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Great vid by Critic; what if you walked to Dunedin Airport (25km away)? No bus, even though the city welcomes students from every corner of AoNZ. When roads get the investment from government and PT doesn't, everyone pays the price. That's not a gap in the network, it's a policy choice. #nzpol

🔬 Postdoctoral Opportunity – Mitochondrial Genome Editing We are recruiting a PDF to study how mitochondrial DNA mutations influence phenotype, metabolism, fertility, and ageing using mitochondrial base editing and Drosophila. Apply: otago.taleo.net/careersectio... 📩 neil.gemmell@otago.ac.nz

This is great news for Wellington commuters, ask your employer about Extraordinary #nzpol

Metlink jumps aboard tax-free public transport fares

Fintech company Extraordinary is offering a payroll-based scheme to pay public transport fares with pre-tax income, which it says could cut commuting costs by at least 30%.

thepost.co.nz

🔬 Postdoctoral Opportunity – Mitochondrial Genome Editing We are recruiting a PDF to study how mitochondrial DNA mutations influence phenotype, metabolism, fertility, and ageing using mitochondrial base editing and Drosophila. Apply: otago.taleo.net/careersectio... 📩 neil.gemmell@otago.ac.nz

In the latest play from Project 2025, the Trump Administration has announced plans to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a $368 million network of more than 900 instruments that continuously monitor the ocean. This is a deliberate destruction of critical scientific infrastructure.

TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...

How much of Thermo Fisher’s antibody data has been manipulated?

We’ve documented more than 100 instances of apparent data manipulation in Thermo’s catalog

reeserichardson.blog

There is no other explanation.

Did you know that New Zealand's only dental school has 80 mannequins with removable jaws in one teaching space? A fact from the recently improved article on the Faculty of Dentistry, on the front page of #Wikipedia right now! @universityofotago.bsky.social en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers...

University of Otago Faculty of Dentistry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

500 years ago, people starting building pā all over northern NZ—fortifying their settlements with rows of palisades, cut from nearby bush. Why? What were pā defending—or trying to say? The trees themselves, combined with mātauranga Māori, tell a story. www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-... 🇳🇿🧪 #archaeology

The pā builders

Five hundred years ago, people starting building pā all over northern New Zealand—fortifying their settlements with rows of pointed palisades, cut from the surrounding forests. Why? What were pā defen...

nzgeo.com

And 9 seconds later … www.tomshardware.com/tech-industr...

Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

PocketOS founder blames ‘Cursor running Anthropic's flagship Claude Opus 4.6’ plus Railway’s infrastructure for data disaster.

tomshardware.com

Xkcd does it again! m.xkcd.com/3221/

Quite the blast from the past. TIG tips was very handy - one of my extraction protocols published there is still being used in the lab and elsewhere. But, gulp that was 30 years ago!

John Mackay@dnature.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Time to throw out old papers and files. Used to love the methds-reagnts newsgroup back in the day. And the tech tips online. Even a protocol here from @profgemmell.bsky.social I’ve just noticed !

Time to throw out old papers and files. Used to love the methds-reagnts newsgroup back in the day. And the tech tips online. Even a protocol here from @profgemmell.bsky.social I’ve just noticed !

While I was down South, this paper was published: MetaZooGene Intercalibration Experiment (MZG-ICE): Metabarcoding Marine Zooplankton Diversity of the Global Ocean. A nice collaboration via SCOR MetaZooGene Working Group - we evaluate #eDNA data comparability among labs. doi.org/10.1111/1755... 🧬🧪

MetaZooGene Intercalibration Experiment (MZG‐ICE): Metabarcoding Marine Zooplankton Diversity of the Global Ocean

DNA metabarcoding of zooplankton biodiversity is used increasingly for monitoring global ocean ecosystems, requiring comparable data from different research laboratories and ocean regions. The MetaZo...

doi.org

New Zealand has more sunshine than Germany. But only 1 in 35 homes here has rooftop solar. Australia? 1 in 3. Why? I tried to find out - despite some strange secrecy www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Government ‘kicked the tyres’ on solar subsidies but went with ‘minor’ tweaks instead

It is one of the cheapest ways to cut power bills - yet documents reveal the government shelved a subsidy.

rnz.co.nz

I find myself slightly suprised to be recommending a video from the Norwegian Consumer Council, but it's bloody good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator

YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council

youtube.com

And people wonder why NZ’s R&D spend is way lower than the rest of the OECD & our productivity is in the toilet. www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360...

Government’s new science institute to lose 6% of staff less than a year after forming

The Bioeconomy Science Institute is shedding 6% of its staff.

stuff.co.nz

Every Wikipedia editor starts somewhere. Luckily, the Help:Directory makes the first step easy: it’s a collection of how-to pages and tutorials to guide volunteers through everything from creating categories to adding references.

🚨 New pre-print! 🚨 In the largest study of its kind to-date, we investigate the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms driving within-patient evolution of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Read here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... , and follow along with this thread, discussing our findings (1/21)

I haven’t been this excited for a bubble to burst since I was a toddler.

The algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects.

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

nature.com

I really enjoyed this interview with Mihingarangi Forbes. In 20 minutes we managed to touch on numerous issues relating to how AI is changing society, issues I've been grappling daily in conversations with colleagues here in New Zealand.

Te Pūnaha Matatini@tepunahamatatini.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"Nothing like this has existed before, and we don't quite know what it does to people." @carlbergstrom.com spoke to Mihingarangi Forbes about living with AI on Saturday Morning this morning → www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro... #cccss26 🧪

Landing in Dunedin Aotearoa in about 90 minutes for the start of a trip that represents the culmination of a dream I’ve had since I was ten years old.

Visiting academic to address spread of misinformation

For Carl Bergstrom, misinformation is like a living organism — it can travel across networks and spread through populations like pathogens. The...

odt.co.nz

This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a business model. ICE keeps growing, not because it makes America safer, but because corporations are raking in billions off cages, bodies, and suffering. ICE’s existence is a massive revenue stream.