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Useless (Les)bian

@plxntbxbe.bsky.social

65 followers 85 following 280 posts

call me RNA cause I break down easily | scientist by trade, idiot at heart | PhD student in Dev Bio @ WashU (it's in STL) | they/she 🏳️‍🌈 | views my own

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · Nov 3

This is not my professional account, even tho I am a professional please expect idiot behavior here

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 2d

Demonias in the workplace

Person wearing black dress with a sparkly spiderweb print cape, they wear black lipstick and dark makeup with black spiky platform heels and some black over-ear headphones

Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

John Gallagher @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social · 3d

Genuinely delighted to download a PhD thesis from a university repository where the author has neglected to remove the words "BITCH THIS IS YOUR THESIS" from the filename.

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 3d

Good morning from my soup-obsessed cohort

Text exchange
Person one: Does CSF make the brain a soup or is it a marinade
Person two: ohh is that why Zombies eat brains?
Me: I think that's a marinade. One solid within the big bowl does not a soup make

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 5d

My friend studies the effects of alcohol on memory formation and so he has to bring alcohol over to the mice every day for his work. Today we asked him what its like to introduce alcoholism to a species that does not understand fermentation and he was like "I'm like the mouse Prometheus"

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 9d

"tons of pigs and corn in Iowa. Iowa is corn dog"

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 9d

"hotdog soaked in ethanol. Corn dog"
"Glycerol + hotdog. Corn dog"
"Pig wrapped in envelope glue. Corn dog"
"Pork soaked in gasoline. Corn dog"

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 9d

My friend and I (autistics) have a new bit where we mention some sort of corn byproduct + a hot dog and then claim it's a corn dog

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 14d

I come to 7brew for the caffeine yes, but I mostly come here for the trap anthems blasting out the coffee hut. Rolled up to get my coffee and these suburban white kids in the hills blasting Rich Amiri

Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

Dr. Jey McCreight 🏳️‍⚧️🧬 @jeymccreight.bsky.social · 18d

Thread on this morning's panel here! What a batch of great talks 🏳️‍⚧️🧬

#ASHG25

Beyond X&Y @beyondxandy.bsky.social · 18d

"Genes, Traits, and Identities: Navigating Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Research"

Frequently the trans and intersex communities are excluded from population-based genomics studies because they cannot be put in a neat box. But sex is a complex trait, like many other traits we study #ASHG25

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Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 18d

Not kidding when I say it appears they were trying to brainstorm what the opposite of "no taxation without representation" would be and this clunky dogshit is the best they could come up with

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 18d

Bessent: "No kings equals no paychecks"

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 18d

5 years of geotagged and rated out of 5 stars shits

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 18d

Apparently I've been putting my shit data into Poop Map for 5 years now

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Like reading from a gross horrible man's perspective for a ~200 page Okja of people, I know the horror is supposed to both be the main character and the context in which they exist within but really do we need to waste our time reading misogyny horror

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Stop recommending Tender is the Flesh it's so boringggg read better books

Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 23d

Lost Science is a new NYT series of accounts from scientists who have lost their jobs or funding. You can send your story to the Times here www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

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Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

Matthew Terrill @matthewterrill.bsky.social · 22d

I was already a hard AI-skeptic but this cements my long suspicion that there is no feasible path to anything close to return on invested capital for these data centers. Tech would need 15 to 25 times current AI revenues within the next 2-3 years just to break even. Not financially viable.

"I clearly hit a nerve in the industry, when judging by the number of individuals who reached out to chat," he wrote in an followup blog post. "In total, l've spoken with over two-dozen rather senior people in the datacenter universe, and there was an interesting and overriding theme to our conversations: no one understands how the financial math is supposed to work. They are as baffled as I am, and they do this for a living."
Kupperman's original skepticism was built on a guess that the components in an average Al data center would take ten years to depreciate, requiring costly replacements. That was bad enough: "I don't see how there can ever be any return on investment given the current math," he wrote at the time.
But ten years, he now understands, is way too generous.
" had previously assumed a 10-year depreciation curve, which I now recognize as quite unrealistic based upon the speed with which Al datacenter technology is advancing," Kupperman wrote. "Based on my conversations over the past month, the physical data centers last for three to ten years, at most."
In his previous analysis, Kupperman assumed it would take the tech industry $160 billion of revenue to break even on data center spending in 2025 alone. And that's assuming an incredibly generous 25 percent gross margin - not to mention the fact that the industry's actual Al revenue is closer to $20 billion annually, as the investment manager noted in his previous blog.

"In reality, the industry probably needs a revenue range that is closer to the $320 billion to $480 billion range, just to break even on the capex to be spent this year," Kupperman posited in his updated essay. "No wonder my new contacts in the industry shoulder a heavy burden - heavier than I could ever imagine. They know the truth."
Kupperman called that gulf between tech industry spending and actual revenue in 2025 "astonishing."
However, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface. For example, how does it all shake out when we account for 2026, when hundreds of new data centers are expected to pop up?
"Adding the two years together, and using the math from my prior post, you'd need approximately $1 trillion in revenue to hit break even, and many trillions more to earn an acceptable return on this spend," he writes.
"If the economics don't work, doing it at massive scale doesn't make the economics work any better
- it just takes an industry crisis and makes it into a national economic crisis," he concludes.
Overall, the pessimists broadly agree: it's no longer a matter of if Al is massively overhyped, but when the whole thing comes crashing down.
More on Al hype: Data Shows That Al Use Is Now Declining at Large Companies

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Matcha tonic :)

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Me after I contextualize that I'd never get to look at shit under a microscope in any other job

Sad man / happy man bus meme. The text over both says "I looked at fish today" signifying that it is annoying and disheartening to go in and collect data day in and day out, while simultaneously it is a gift to be able to do this kind of work whereas I would never get the opportunity to do this elsewhere

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

I saw Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter at the Arkadin yesterday and honestly best use of a Friday

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

I love sleazy tiny cinemas, I love going to watch shitty b films with a ton of strangers who also love trash + exploitation film.

Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 22d

Dozens of employees at the CDC — including “disease detectives,” high-ranking scientists and the entire Washington office — were notified late Friday that they were losing their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s latest round of federal layoffs.

Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials

“Disease detectives,” high-ranking scientists, the entire Washington office and the staff of a weekly public health journal were among those who learned late Friday that they would lose their jobs.

nyti.ms

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Not to get all sappy but man I'm so glad to be a biologist. In what other fucking job do I get to go look at a baby squid under a microscope just because my coworker/boss decided he wanted to look at squid all day

Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · 22d

Being a biologist is so cool, today I got to look at squid under microscopes bc the head of the department uses them for hearing research and I just popped in and went "can I see the squid?"

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Useless (Les)bian @plxntbxbe.bsky.social · Sep 23

Every day I work with my students I look at myself and ask if undergrad me would think I was a cool TA. Today is a success in that

Reposted by Useless (Les)bian

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Sep 23

I'm sorry to post this so sooner after the timeline cleanse.

But wtf.

Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/h...

The officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary, also endorsed a B-vitamin-based drug, leucovorin, to treat autism. It has only been studied in dozens of research participants.

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