Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/15/6/evad100/7189782

Living+evolving inside insect cells for millions of years can drive bacterial genomes to mind-boggling extremes. New paper in @GenomeBiolEvol asks what bacterial transcription looks like at the extremes of genome reduction (<200kb), genome fragmentation (40+ chromosomes/genomes!), and gene dosage imbalance (1:100+).

This is my first first-author paper and the first of my PhD w/ @mcsymbiont. I'm thrilled to have it finally out, + in one of my fav journals! Check it out!

On #NationalHIVTestingDay, raise awareness that early diagnosis & treatment are crucial in controlling HIV. We're committed to making HIV a disease of the past through groundbreaking research. Together, we can end HIV. https://ragoninstitute.org/research/hiv/ 🎗️🔬 #RagonInstitute #Research

There are many benefits to posting a preprint:
✅ Instant feedback
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& more!
Visit our website to learn about more #PreprintStories

Next up at #GRCdevbio23, is @Dev_journal Associate Editor @Ken_Poss_Lab (@DukeU).

Last time Ken was here in 2009, he presented work which was later published in Dev and also made the cover!
https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.098798

Read more about Ken in this interview: https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.193078

@loshmi Excellent thread! I like to add this article: "How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)" from Lionel Dricot.
One keyphrase: "But there’s another way: make it irrelevant. That’s exactly what Google did with XMPP."
...because the protocoll of the fediverse is a competitor to their businessmodel.
No worries, Microsoft and his behaviour is mentioned, too.

https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html

So the purpose of the #fediblock virtual picket is to stake a claim and build a common consciousness. It could grow - we could build a cross-#fediverse infrastructure to negotiate and make collective decisions. We could develop a standard for all those who want to join - a viral thing. @dk
wrote of this in the Telekommunist Manifesto a long while ago.

The point of the #fediblock is not to stop Meta, it ultimately cannot do that. The point of it is to realize what we can do together.

🧵 6/6

A #strike / #fediblock doesn't let them do this. It prevents #Meta from entering the existing conversation with interesting content and dynamic developments. It makes it harder and more expensive for them to develop their own ActivityPub software, makes #EEE slightly more expensive.

Whoever thinks that we have somehow "won" by having them adopt #ActivityPub is deeply ignoring reality and history. We have opposing interests. They are capitalists, we are a commons. They want to eat us.

🧵 5/n

Ultimately, Meta would kill what Mastodon has become, as everyone will mostly be using their app. They will have saved their business empire from the threat of #communization.

This is why they are doing this. It's a business move, and if you think that you somehow outsmart 500 billion $ company you're deeply misguided. In capitalist societies, smarter people are not more successful at doing what they want to do, richer people are.

🧵4/n

People will be divided between interoperability with #Meta and alternative clients. They will like the no ads stuff on #Masto, but at first the ads on #P92 will be promoted posts and will actually be useful. It will be reliable. Small servers on #Mastodon will collapse because of rapid growth, difficulty in moderation, attacks by right-wing trolls. People will want reliability and move to the meta thing, because it's just easier.

🧵3/n

Meta will data collect not just public content, but also statistics like how long your eyes stay on certain text. What you hover over, what you toot and erase, what you search for. None of this is available to them now.

Regular people won't care because they have busy lives and just want something that works. Geeks won't care because we can use alternative clients (for now). After a few years, #meta's #p92 will introduce features unavailable on alternative clients.

🧵2/n

@cyrilpedia thanks for posting, it’s always fun and inspiring to read about this generation of scientists (while of course recognizing that the structure of modern science does not allow pretty much anyone to work on a 20-year problem!)

Do y’all think about how the desert city of Dubai, which is hosting the next United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), has a huge indoor ski facility that has a lodge that uses gas heaters to keep guests warm?

Now out in @CurrentBiology -- our paper on cortical pattern amplification with learning, w/ @KanakaRajanPhD 🧠📄

Below in thread: Huge perceptual improvement. No vis resp changes. Simple recurrent model. Relationship to recent S. Peron lab paper. +more.

What does it mean? Biological recurrent networks in vivo can change to accommodate totally new patterns of input. We provide those artificially w/ optogenetics.

1/ #neuroscience #ai #

All you need to know about how rentier #capitalism works in one but of data:

The UK's water firms were privatised without any outstanding debts over thirty years ago.... now, the privatised #infrastructure (regional) #monopolies have around £62bn in debt, but are still failing to deliver an adequate service.

If that debt has not been used to invest sufficiently in the #infrastructure, which the firms now (grudgingly) admit,, you might wonder where has it gone?

I leave that for you to guess!

Ever wondered what a baby #scorpion looks like? Wonder no more! This is the first instar pronymph of scorpion species Centruroides vittatus (the striped bark scorpion).

Image from Farley, R.D., 2005. Developmental changes in the embryo, pronymph, and first molt of the scorpion Centruroides vittatus (Scorpiones: Buthidae). Journal of Morphology, 265(1), pp.1-27.

#science #arachnids