Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 4h

I’d like to think – hope – their knees weren’t taken to the scrap heap!

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Marc Daalder @marcdaalder.bsky.social · 5h

My analysis: The Government’s methane announcement is the policy equivalent of a steaming cowpat on cross-partisan climate consensus and international efforts to tackle the crisis.

The headline effect of a new, weaker climate target is a warmer, more dangerous world.
newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/13/f...

Farmers off the hook on climate means rest of us pick up the slack

Comment: The Government's methane announcement is the policy equivalent of a steaming cowpat on cross-partisan climate consensus.

newsroom.co.nz

1 16 42

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 4h

It reads like the latest twist on 'shaming' approach Simeon Brown has been taking 😔

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 4h

I appreciate that you may have meant historical fiction – sure, fair enough in that frame – but you didn’t say historical fiction in your original post. I just tried join in, on something that read as contemporary use from what you wrote. Cheers.

1 2

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 4h

I was referring (deferring if you prefer that) to the Wikipedia entry I cited, “The term high tea is now used in the southern hemisphere to describe formal afternoon teas. Formal afternoon teas are often held outside the private home in commercial tea rooms, function venues, hotels, or similar.”

1

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 5h

To confuse things, in the Southern hemisphere high tea today usually means formal afternoon tea, typically eaten at restaurant 😀

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(me...

Tea (meal) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2 1 3

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Rob Waterhouse @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social · 13h

Emerging trends, key challenges, and future opportunities in evolutionary and comparative #genomics academic.oup.com/bioinformati...

Validate User

academic.oup.com

2 3

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 8h

#NZ More on that NZ citizen, a citizenship 'gifted' by Key’s administration. I sincerely hope the current coalition government aren’t tangled with him in any way whatsoever, or with his companies.

Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 13h

Our future is being shaped to a terrifying degree by people who have just … completely lost their marbles…

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist

The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’

www.theguardian.com

2 3 11

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 9h

#Christchurch #NZ I had no idea this was temporary 😢

It was fun watching little ones barely are taller than your knee zooming around up and down all over it 😊

Apparently it’s now closed to make way for a residential development with replacements out in the suburbs.

The Press @thepress.co.nz · 12h

It’s been the scene of many a scrapped knee and whoop at a big jump. But as the temporary set-up on Manchester St officially closes, the city council has plans for two new pump tracks in the suburbs and is renewing two others.

‘It was a good spot’: Last rides at central Christchurch bike track

It’s been the scene of many a scrapped knee and whoop at a big jump. But as the temporary set-up on Manchester St officially closes, the city council has plans for two new pump tracks in the suburbs and is renewing two others.

dlvr.it

1 1

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 9h

#Christchurch #NZ Subscription needed, but there is at least this -

“his plan to rip up the city’s most divisive cycleway is unlikely to go ahead”

(A cynic might say saying that he’d rip it up in the run up to the election was just trying win votes?)

The Press @thepress.co.nz · 12h

Christchurch’s returning mayor has a lot he wants to do, but admits one election promise is already headed for the chopping block.

Phil Mauger’s second term: ‘Attack debt’, tinker with rubbish collection, likely give up on ripping up cycleway

Christchurch’s returning mayor has a lot he wants to do, but admits one election promise is already headed for the chopping block.

dlvr.it

1

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 9h

Just in case you missed it, he has an account here - @joachim123.bsky.social

1

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 9h

Yep.

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 10h

Ha 😀

You want to be in 'the real world' to see and think those things that make up the stuff of novels, but then, as you write, lock yourself away from it as so not to be tempted to procrastinate with more 'research'. *Sigh*

The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 17d

These very true words from Steve Hely have given me tremendous comfort over the years.

Writing a novel— actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs— is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.

2

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 11h

Interesting case 😄 – slightly *more* cones being put out… 😆

bsky.app/profile/thep...

The Press @thepress.co.nz · 13h

In Whanganui, information from the Government’s own Road Cone Tipline had actually led to more cones being put out than taken away. In Wellington, 110 complaints resulted in just two cones being removed.

Just 204 road cones confirmed gone thanks to heralded ‘tipline’

In Whanganui, information from the Government’s own Road Cone Tipline had actually led to more cones being put out than taken away. In Wellington, 110 complaints resulted in just two cones being removed.

dlvr.it

1 2

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 2d

#NZpol Beyond stupid

BVV to close cone hotline after she’s worked out how things work, and having learnt,

“but they [contractors] are actually following what they were told to do”

Like she could have simply asked how things work first.

newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/09/v...

Van Velden can see end of the road for cone hotline

Reports halved each month with just one in five resulting in action, as the minister says councils proved to be the culprit

newsroom.co.nz

5 11 46

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 11h

Good catch; he’s got to believe that variants cause differences, etc…

1

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 11h

He may believe in "terrain theory" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_th... – I guess it sounds science-y for those who’ve drifted.

Germ theory denialism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 11h

Classic example, taught to students everywhere!

He should know that one…

1

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 17h

This seems like a mistake.

Matthias Monroy @matthimon.bsky.social · Aug 29

The EU-Commission wants to negotiate a very sensitive agreement that would allow US authorities direct (!) access to police-stored fingerprints & facial images in Europe.
Potentially, all travelers could be affected by this #EBSP – and people in need for protection.
digit.site36.net/2025/08/29/e...

"Border Security" with USA: Brussels ready to give deep access to biometric data in EU states | Matthias Monroy

The European Commission wants to negotiate an agreement that would allow US authorities direct access to police-stored fingerprints and facial images in Europe. Potentially, all travelers could be…

digit.site36.net

9 38 77

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 17h

I’m imagining a Rowan Atkinson character census collector striding up to a worker, pointedly looking at a parchment held in one hand, not the worker, wavering a quill above it with his other hand, saying, extremely haughtily, “NOW. How shall I describe YOU…?”

It’d be a lot of fun to play with 😀

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Ms Hooper @mshooper.bsky.social · 21h

“Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an "astonishing rate," scientists have found, raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been underestimated.”

Scientists discovered something alarming seeping out from beneath the ocean around Antarctica

New seeps of methane are being discovered at an "astonishing rate," scientists have found.

www.rnz.co.nz

5 44 59

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 20h

From yesterday.

Sharing as much for the Punch cartoon of man "evolving" from worms 😄

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 2d

OTD in 1881, Charles Darwin published his last book, on earthworms.

It reflected a long interest in animal minds: “One alternative alone is left, namely, that worms, although standing low in the scale of organization, possess some degree of intelligence.”

🧪 🌱🐋🦋🦫 #HistSTM #philsci #pschsky #cogsci

Caricature by Edward Linley Sambourne from Punch in 1882 titled “Man is but a Worm,” depicting human evolution, commencing with Chaos, through worm, monkey, culminating in Darwin himself.

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 1d

🧪 I’d have never guessed it either ⬇️

Anne Carpenter @drannecarpenter.bsky.social · 2d

15 years in the making, we confirmed that mitochondria - the powerhouse of the cell - have an unusual localization in patients who experience psychosis (including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders). You’ll never guess what kind of patient cells we used to make this discovery… 🧵

mitochondria from bipolar patients are closer to the nucleus in these images; control patients' are spread out further

1 5 13

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 22h

Insects take up new locations when climates change. They take the diseases they carry with them, in this case dengue ⬇️

Gavi @gavi.org · 6d

Dengue-carrying mosquitoes have been detected in the UK. Here’s what you need to know, and why scientists are keeping a close eye. 👇🧵

15 39

Reposted by Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚

Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 1d

🦠 OK… I’ve seen a lot of stupid stuff tracking pseudoscience… this is right up there.

He says, “there is very little science to support that genes are the cause of any disease”

Germ theory denialism is daft, genetic disorder/disease denial like this is equally bad 🙄😳😣

🧵⬇️

Psychiatrist Andrew Kaufman writes,

“Autism is not genetic, and in fact there is very little science to support that genes are the cause of any disease. What you inherit from your family are traits like height and eye color, which is indisputable. But conditions like autism and even cancer are the result of environmental factors and toxins, both of which can be addressed with the right information. Do not allow the medical industry to reduce our health to genetics — the problem is much different (and easier to solve). In many cases, genetics is used as a cover-up for poisoning.”

6 4 14