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stevenjrobbins.bsky.social
Do my science @ace_uq studying coral reef microbiomes. Data wrangler, meta-omics and long-read wonk, clean energy enthusiast, Saganist zealot, collector of weird zoology facts, other nonsense.
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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.

submitted 5 hours ago • 124 comments

We get so little time. How people choose to spend it in how they treat others is all I ever need to know.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

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.

submitted 6 hours ago • 369 comments

BREAKING: The FDA has approved a twice-yearly injection that provided a near-perfect shield against H.I.V. infection in clinical trials. But the Trump administration has gutted the programs that might have paid for it in low-income countries (Gift article) www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/h...

submitted 22 hours ago • 22 comments

Powerful story from Carolyn Johnson at the Washington Post... wapo.st/44ntbo4 [Should be a gift link; let me know if there are problems]

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

San Diego #NoKings

submitted 4 days ago • 115 comments

HAPPENING NOW: Thousands of protesters march through the streets of Houston, Texas for a “No Kings Day” rally against Donald Trump (Video: Joseph Trimmer)

submitted 5 days ago • 12 comments

Chicago

submitted 5 days ago • 162 comments

Thousands in Evanston.

submitted 5 days ago • 64 comments

Getting ready to march in NYC to say #NoKings!

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Here in Louisville, there was a large turnout!! #nokings

submitted 4 days ago • 1 comment

More #NoKings Phoenix. #SoundUp

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Philly showin' up today

submitted 5 days ago • 626 comments

3.2 million and counting, we see you, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Indiana! Incredible turnout, amazing job showing up! Side note: 10 MAGA agitators have been arrested. Thank you to everyone helping us track them down.

submitted 5 days ago • 142 comments

This paper was much needed to highlight again the fact that protists make (almost) all main branches of the eukaryote tree of life, yet they continue to be dramatically understudied. Genomics is one example of this. Cite it!!! #protistsonsky

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

1. Trump's tax cuts overwhelmingly help the rich 2. His spending cuts are targeted at the poor 3. Tariffs cost the poor a larger share of their income Roll these three regressive policies together and you get the largest redistribution from poor to rich in American history. The anti-Robin Hood.

submitted 6 days ago • 48 comments

Soldiers behind Trump at Bragg, who boo’ed California mayor and cheered Trump, were all screened for appearance and political alliance. Almost all of them were male, with a “certain look,”and the memo included things like “no fat soldiers” This is a disgrace.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

This is the effect of Trump's tariffs havoc on #biotech stocks. More Trump "biowreck" than biotech... Big tech has recovered because of the TACO concessions, but nobody cares about biotech.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Bang on

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Durbin to Bhattacharya: "I can't understand it. I disagree w/ this admin on so many things. But this is the one that really gets to me personally. To think this nation would walk away from medical research. For God's sake...cancer, your budget requests a 38% cut to the National Cancer Institute"

submitted 9 days ago • 525 comments

I'm happy to announce the latest release of the GlobDB, available at globdb.org. The GlobDB is a database of "species dereplicated" microbial genomes, and as of release 226 contains twice the number of species-representative genomes (306,260) than the latest GTDB release.

submitted 9 days ago • 3 comments

I’ve written threads about the GBR-MGDs pMAGs, but it also contains viruses (vMAGs), including a monophyletic clade of marine Crassvirales, chromosome-level eukaryote eMAGs, and putative plasmids. We wanted a holistic DB. One problem: some key software appear to break with long reads. A 🦠 🧵.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

Our paper shows that most ectomycorrhizal fungal species (83% of OTUs) are "dark taxa": species we detect in DNA, but can't match to known species names. We map global "darkspots" - the parts of the world most in need of more research. @spun.earth @ethz.ch www.cell.com/current-biol...

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

Hot take. The government isn’t subsidizing university budgets. Universities are lending subsidized expertise to research and development that contributes to the public good. It’s called partnership.

submitted 11 days ago • 11 comments