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guyleonard.bsky.social
Bioinformatician w/ Tom Richards & Team at @oxfordbiology.bsky.social Homebrewer, all things brewing. WSET Beer Level 1. Rejoiner 🇪🇺🤝🇬🇧 Constant politics-doom ruined the other place. Legacy: @[email protected] or @guyleonard
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I suspect that fact that the vast majority of LLM users don’t seem to have received this (really very simple!) message is because the AI companies have a vested interest in us not understanding it. “ChatGPT is smart, it just makes mistakes sometimes” is much more marketable than the truth.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

🎉 Now out “Phylogenomic analyses indicate the archaeal superphylum DPANN originated from free‑living euryarchaeal‑like ancestors” www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Save the date! 🙆🏻‍♀️ The Workshop on Genomics 2026 will take place between the 11th and 24th of January, 2026! In Český Krumlov, Czechia. Regular applications will be oppening mid-July, keep an eye on updates! 🤗 evomics.org/2026-worksho... #evomics2026

Equal opportunities funding for the Workshop on Genomics 2026 is now open to apply! Deadline: 2nd of July. Check elegibility in our website, and apply: evomics.org/equalopportu... #evomics2026

Save the date! Come and learn some genomics!

🚨In PNAS🚨 The right often accuses fact-checkers of political bias But we analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and found posts flagged as "misleading" are 2.3x more likely to be written by Reps than Dems! The issue is Reps sharing misinformation, not fact-checker bias... www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Wine yeast could soon be used to brew new beer styles www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/06/wine... @teamdb.bsky.social

He knew where his towel was.

It's Beer Day Britain and we'd like to honour the occasion by drawing your attention to @jonnygarrett.bsky.social's piece on his @craftbeerchannel.bsky.social mission to give cask beer a recognised UNESCO cultural heritage status. Cheers! www.pelliclemag.com/home/2025/4/...

No gods or kings.

"As of February 2025, Genomes on a Tree (GoaT) lists 1,843,386 eukaryotic species, of which 72599 belong to protists. There are 46,184 eukaryotic assemblies corresponding to 20,004 species. Yet only 2,743 of these assemblies correspond to 1,121 protist species." 👀👀👀👀

Happy to have contributed to this great article: #Protist genomics: key to understanding eukaryotic evolution. Congrats Alexandra Schoenle et al. #ProtistsOnSky authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Hi! This is a labeler account meant to identify Substack links. If you didn't know, Substack actively courts and platforms Nazis. If you quit X/Twitter because of the Nazi problem, well, what are you still doing on Substack? There are plenty of alternatives which may be more cost-effective for you.

Always a tough day today. Things get better, time moves on, but will never forget. Too many shitty things going on in the world. Going to go for a walk/cycle. Peace.

Oh no. Anyway.

Always a tough day today. Things get better, time moves on, but will never forget. Too many shitty things going on in the world. Going to go for a walk/cycle. Peace.

www.ft.com/content/8778... Kudos to Andrea Sella for taking a stand against @royalsociety.org’s inaction over Elon Musk FRS

You know the old boring joke of "How do you know if someone is vegan? Don't worry they'll tel you". Well it's literally this, but for using AI.

Many amoebae incorporate diatoms in their shells, but Cylindrifflugia bacillariarum is the master. Third and fourth pics are close views of the glue that holds it all together. #ProtistsonSky #Amoebae #Peatlands

📣 We will be transitioning to a new website architecture on May 20, 2025. We will not be running a parallel system, so you may have to make a few changes, especially if you are using the API.

Attention Protistology Hive MInd: Looking for suggestions for the best/most complete/not divergent Rhizarian genome to search. B. natans is missing something and we'd like to double check if this is a real loss or just false negative.

URGENT: FlyBase has lost practically all its funding overnight; even user fees are tied up in denied grant funding. 🤬🤯 Any lab using @flybase.bsky.social please donate using the link in post below. This incredible community, on whose backs our #Drosophila labs depend, can't be left out to dry.

🎓Part of the current #ScientificCrisis is the cult of the #LoneGenius myth. Great scientists are not isolated geniuses but a cultural phenomena, product of education systems, funding structures, social capital, historical paradigms - and lots of privilege and invisible labor. 1/🧵 #AcademicSky

We are in the middle of the kmer workshop. So far had a great time with our bright participants and excellent teaching team. Stuff is not recorded, but we will compile all the reusable materials afterwards so if you are missing out, stay tuned….

"In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes." Hyperion, Dan Simmons, 1989

I’m going to say it again, generative AI and the push for it to be used in every Avenue of learning and education is because generative AI literally is a weapon for knowledge destruction not a knowledge creation tool and silicon valleys goal is to monetize and gate off all of human knowledge

Archaea xkcd.com/3095/

New metagenome assembler for ONT R10 and PacBio HiFi reads, from Jim Shaw. See Jim's thread for details

NIH funding supporting the HMMER and Infernal software projects has been terminated. NIH states that our work, as well as all other federally funded research at Harvard, is of no benefit to the US.

The war on science in the US is already having an effect on private sector research like AlphaFold. Bears repeating but the private sector builds on top of things created by academic research for the public good. This hurts everyone.

ONE TRAPPIST HAS TO GO! What are you choosing? Everyone is going to hate my answer but Orval, get outta here.

Ok.

Very excited to announce my new position at Wellcome Sanger Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow on Genomics of Symbiosis, for the Tree of Life Department!! 🧬👩🏻‍💻 Looking forward to exciting research and collaborations! 🤩

eugh. when did tbl2asn get replaced with table2asn.

I went to grad school.

"Whatever side of the fence you’re on, the evidence shows LTNs cut traffic, clean the air and enable more walking and cycling." "As obvious as it sounds, the root cause of congestion is that there are simply too many cars on the road."

The new UK-EU deal is better than what we had under the several Tory party deals. But being back in the EU fully, would be even better!

Coverage of idiots claiming ‘betrayal’ or ‘surrender’ isn’t just bad journalism, it’s a dereliction of our duty to explain things. I’d actually forgotten just how bad it got but here we are, straight back to treating liars & spivs like authorities of equal weight to experts & honest brokers.

Species recovery is the future 🌍 Dr Molly Grace is changing the way we think about what’s possible for nature. Today is Endangered Species Day, and Molly's work shows that nature really can bounce back. Read our new spotlight on Molly! 👇 bit.ly/4kpvw7l @ox.ac.uk @iccs.bsky.social

"The email newsletter service Substack is facing a user revolt after its chief executive defended hosting and handling payments for “Nazis” on its platform, citing anti-censorship reasons." - www.theguardian.com/media/2024/j... Nazis aren't dead. They're on Substack.

I wrote an op-ed for @lbc.co.uk about Labour's immigration white paper today & how chasing Nigel Farage will take them nowhere www.lbc.co.uk/opinion/view...

Kirk to Enterprise. Beam up the beasties!

As a middle aged man (🤢), I can't but help think the backlash to GenAI and it's use within college/uni is arse-backwards. Instead of banning it to fit the current model, we should be innovating the system to teach responsible and critical use of a new tool.

🧬 Want to learn more about #genome sequencing, assembly, curation and analysis? Why not head to Florence this autumn? ⏳ There's still time to apply and attend #EMBOgenomeSeq — deadline is the end of May! meetings.embo.org/event/25-gen... @embo.org @ebpgenome.bsky.social