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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. As seen on twitter: @StevenJRobbins
279 posts 3,090 followers 353 following
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Doing gods work right here.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

I spent some time cleaning up my repo demonstrating how to use the NCBI Datasets REST API to do automated and/or bulk retrieval of genomes, by accession or by taxonomy. It's not super well documented but it does all seem to work :). Enjoy!

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

So. It has officially happened. I have been officially let go from my position at CDC. I wasn’t a probationary employee. I had stellar performance reviews every year. I’ll be ok. But please understand that many worked HARD to get into these positions and were doing great public health work.

submitted 2 days ago • 1871 comments

Rarely do I ever print out papers but this one legit deserves analog attention. Enthralled to say the least. So much bioengineering wisdom gleaned from this. My toolbox doth expandeth. Phenomenal work by @fernpizza.bsky.social and another @baym.lol lab banger. SO. GOOD. #MEvoSky

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Give this women a god damn medal!! Executive orders are NOT federal law. They’re executive fiat from a wannabe king.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Is it this one? Congrats everyone #protistsonsky www.cell.com/current-biol...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

100% democrats reliably have both highest average GDP growth www.aeaweb.org/view-high-ch... and generally the highest stock market growth. Obama and Clinton were rock stars, Biden was ok. Trump and Reagan were just ok, Bush and Nixon were god awful. www.macrotrends.net/2481/stock-m...

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Again, the two most impactful lies of the past half-century have been “Trump is a good businessman” and “Republicans are the good-at-economy party”

submitted 3 days ago • 30 comments

I am the features editor at Endpoints News. We're closely reporting on the Trump administration slashing the federal workforce and the impact on biomedical research. I want to hear your stories and tips. Signal at: @jaredwhitlock.73. I can honor requests for anonymity.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

“the United States is not a startup. The federal government exists to do all of the things that are definitionally not profitable, that serve the public good rather than protect investor profits. (The vast majority of startups also fail, something the United States cannot afford to do.)”

submitted 3 days ago • 231 comments

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

submitted 4 days ago • 250 comments

Pretty cool! Ability to do long-read metagenomes is often limited by DNA input. PacBio's new SPRQ chemistry increases data output, reduces input req to 500ng. More importantly, the more you multiplex the less input you need. Multiplex 2 samples, req is 250ng and so on. www.pacb.com/blog/lightin...

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

Scientists are now organizing events, called Stand Up for Science, on 7 March in Washington, D.C., and state capitals. So far, they have attracted more than 100 volunteers from some 30 states who are hoping to rally support for research as a public good. scim.ag/4328LAD

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

First nuclear weapons management, now this. No one - Democrat or Republican - voted for this kind of incompetence.

submitted 5 days ago • 790 comments

Maybe I wasn’t clear about this. I wanted more egg and no plane crash, not many plane crash and no egg.

submitted 6 days ago • 609 comments

Firings are happening right now at the National Science Foundation. Essential staff are being cut. This isn’t about the budget. If it was, they’d be going after the military (17%) or state appropriations (38%). NSF is 0.7% of the federal budget. All federal employees make up only 4% of the budget.

submitted 5 days ago • 99 comments

The Democrats on the House Science Committee have set up a website to collect stories from fired federal employees, anonymously if desired democrats-science.house.gov/sciencefirings

submitted 5 days ago • 8 comments

There's been a lot of developments in our understanding of defence/anti-defence systems in genomes and mobile genetic elements in the last few years - just came across this review that can get you up to speed on anti-defence systems in phages and plasmids - www.cell.com/current...

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

AntiDefenseFinder: a tool for the automated annotation of 156 anti-defense systems in DNA sequences - academic.oup.com/nar...

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

PyOrthoANI, PyFastANI, and Pyskani: a suite of Python libraries for computation of average nucleotide identity https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.13.638148v1

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Pope Francis' remarkable rebuke of JD Vance and Trumpism lays bare an essential truth: Trump is overseeing a massive and systematic abandonment of obligation to the global poor, and Vance's theological obfuscation can't make that disappear. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1914...

submitted 11 days ago • 119 comments

I was pretty critical about @asm.org's anticipatory obedience to the EOs so I want to amplify this statement & point out some positive actions - They admitted they'd made mistakes & apologized to affected individuals and in a town hall - They committed to holding ABRCMS 2025. This is a big 1/

submitted 9 days ago • 2 comments

We have to stand up for science! Anyone who can join these rallies and believes that US science must be protected should come! @standupforscience.bsky.social

submitted 8 days ago • 7 comments