Andrew Kennard @askennard@qoto.org

a Portrait of Tenochtitlan, my 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire is released!

I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I am really curious what all of you think.

Take a look:
http://tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl

#tenochtitlan

I see a lot of people sharing blanket condemnations of all of those who still remain on #Twitter / #Xitter , and I need you to slow down a bit.

Sure, in some cases this is justified - journalists should really know better. But there are a lot of communities on that platform that are vital to many people's well-being that _haven't_ been replicated on the #Fediverse or elsewhere. Take #BlackTwitter - while #BlackMastodon is growing, it's still minuscule in comparison. The number of Twitter users in #Pakistan is staggering, while they are only a handful on #Mastodon . And so on, and so forth. Twitter was a lifeline to many marginalized people, and it still is - even though it gets worse every day - and we need to recognize this.

As a white European guy, it was easy for me to walk away from Twitter (I still have an account there, but I only post "you should go to Mastodon" stuff these days) - since it is easy to find people of a similar background to interact with. But this is NOT true for everyone!

So I'd like everyone to show a bit less contempt to the remaining Twitter users in general, and put some more effort in how to make the Fediverse friendlier to marginalized voices. Because there is MUCH work to be done here!

This is one of the most incredible pieces of research into a random piece of infrastructure I’ve ever seen. A wild ride.

https://tylervigen.com/the-mystery-of-the-bloomfield-bridge

h/t @danyork

🔬First method-focused work from our lab is just out in Cell Reports Methods 🎉
Interested in multicolor SMLM? Check the open-access final version of Karoline Friedl's PhD work, with Sandrine Lévêque-Fort's lab and the Abbelight gang
https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-methods/fulltext/S2667-2375(23)00215-1

Nothing destroys a graduate career faster than help avoidance.

For all the folks starting their #PhD (or their master thesis) today - a reminder why your PhD advisor can solve a problem so "easily" ...

#astrodon #academia #AcademiChatter #research

New @biorxivpreprint manuscript from my lab that sheds light on part of the dark genome, unannotated or poorly annotated genes in the genome. In it, we show that the highly conserved HEATR5 protein is a component of two biochemically distinct protein complexes.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.08.24.554671v2

If you are a white leftist and you talk “both parties are the same they are both capitalist” you will loose most of your black audience. I think it ought to be obvious that this isn’t because blackfolks love Democrats (in most cases, there is always someone being simple in any group) —no. it’s because the difference between the parties is material and obvious and these are unstable times.

When I hear such talk I wonder if the speaker is working on voter suppression.

Fellow professors, if you're teaching an introductory course in graduate school, set aside some class time early in the semester for students to discuss their transition to your program. You'll find that they're struggling far more than you probably realized. You won't be able to solve all their problems, but opening space for them to voice their issues is more powerful than you can imagine.

#AcademicChatter #AcademicMastodon

@askennard @rspfau @lzvolk

Best advice. Read the pipettor manual they are actually amazing resources.

Eg:
'To attain maximum accuracy, set volume must be approached from a higher value. If the desired value is lower than the previous volume, adjust the value to 1/3 turn above the required setting..."

Also these two pages:

@rspfau @lzvolk @askennard

Absolutely! One thing I do now with everyone who joins my lab (even postdocs) is to do a how-to pipette session.

I think many of my early grad school failures were due to problems with pipetting.

I've started adding in, make sure to wear your glasses if you need them. Until I started needing reading glasses, I did not realize how much being able to see well is part of good pipetting. Now I realize that some ppl's struggles come from vision issues.

I strongly recommend this scholarly analysis of arguments over the status of the Neutral Theory

The sourcing is excellent, the logic is clear, and the analysis has a practical focus on facilitating science by achieving clarity (rather than adopting a partisan slant)

A minor disagreement: "The phrase ‘non-Darwinian evolution’ is a misnomer" (conclusion #6) is not justified in the text and is IMHO plainly wrong

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/brv.13010?af=R