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👻Sewall Fright🎃

@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social

8K followers 1.2K following 3.9K posts

Postdoc in evolutionary genomics of polyploids at RBG Kew | science & society | opinions mine Mizzou, Fulbright Belgium, and Michigan State alum. Here because of medicaid, public universities, and pell grants https://kevinabird.github.io/

kevinabird.github.io

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Mar 28

Really excited to share this new paper with Amanda Agosto-Ramos & @spicybotrytis.bsky.social! We use glucosinolates in the Brassicales as an illustrative model to demonstrate what the improvements in genome quality & phylogenetic coverage are teaching us about the evolution of metabolic innovation.

Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation

Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…

www.sciencedirect.com

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 18h

Why can’t I just find a place to live that’s cool and normal

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 1d

Attlee taught Labour to walk, now he watches on as they fly

Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 18h

Desperate to tap into the zeitgeist of the British people, Starmer finally works out what we need to ban: the cheeky nandos experience.

David Sligar @davidsligar.bsky.social · 1d

Attlee taught Labour to walk, now he watches on as they fly

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 18h

Is it good or bad when your self-proclaimed philosopher god king can’t understand the themes and content of children’s media?

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 21h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

Larry Hunter @proflhunter.bsky.social · 1d

What drives test score differences in twins raised apart?

School! Invest in schools!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

IQ differences of identical twins reared apart are significantly influenced by educational differences

Over the last century, several large studies have been published exploring IQ differences amongst monozygotic (MZ) twins reared apart (TRA). By and la…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 2d

Effects of deleterious mutations on the fixation of chromosomal inversions on autosomes and sex chromosomes https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.10.681595v1

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 2d

I don't know, "we are looking for our hypothesized effect" seems similar enough to "we are looking for species X". The real problem is that the hypothesized effect is completely ridiculous.

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Max P III @blackballer.bsky.social · 2d

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 3d

He really shouldn’t be talking about Catholicism like that

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 3d

You won’t believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned

Communication must be freed from clickbait and misguided thinking, head of Catholic church tells journalists The pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires. Australian media representatives were among those to hear directly from Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Thursday with about 150 members of newswire alliance Minds International. Continue reading...

www.theguardian.com

Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 3d

The Rutgers TPUSA chapter — whose characterization of a historian there as a “outspoken, well-known antifa member” led to death threats and moving his family to Europe — think *other* people are being “blatantly defamatory.”

Not them, though. They’re doing politics the right way.

Rutgers TPUSA officers slam petition to shut down chapter, ‘Blatantly defamatory’

Alexander Di Filippo accuses Turning Point USA of inciting violence against Antifa handbook author Mark Bray.

www.foxnews.com

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Boas Pucker @bpucker.bsky.social · 4d

Excited to share our new preprint!

🧬 Large-scale Phylogenomics Reveals Systematic Loss of Anthocyanin Biosynthesis Genes at the Family Level in Cucurbitaceae

👉 doi.org/10.1101/2025...

A deep dive into the genomic evolution of color in cucurbits 🎃🍉 — feedback welcome!
@puckerlab.bsky.social

Synteny plots supporting loss of DFR, ANS, and arGST in Cucurbitaceae. Reference: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.10.06.680802

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 4d

It’s going to be so embarrassing if this site implodes before Twitter

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Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 5d

This lurid headline is about British tourists no longer getting away with overstaying in Schengen. Or being 'illegals', as it's often called in the UK.

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 5d

Can we pause and imagine the well of sympathy in the Telegraph for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of overstaying foreigners in the UK who don't speak English. Polluting the culture.

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 5d

Tip rate estimates can predict future diversification, but are unreliable and context dependent https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680809v1

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

I answered the parallel to the actual conversation: “Is the current Republican Party a discontinuity from its past”. It isn’t, there are and have been far more white supremacists than Duke, it’s informed the party rhetoric and strategy for decades, and now it’s their dominant ideology.

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Some are campaigning on that kind of ID and winning. If the Democratic Party was DemSoc in 30 years I would not consider that a discontinuity or an aberration

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Seems like the same heritage foundation in substance to me

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

I agree, but that brazenness is long overdue because the republican party has been a problem for 60 years. If this is viewed as a discontinuity it means there is a sensible republican party to return to and collaborate with

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Whether an escalation of a trend is a discontinuity is a distinction without a difference to me. What’s happening now is largely by the hands of the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, hard to argue that’s not mainstream

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

No, but that’s also pretty much what people warned the Bush-era escalation would result in.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

There are enough names to go back and forth clever. The party actively deciding to make this coalition and incorporating the messaging and policy of that faction is not really exonerating. If there are segregationists in your party it’s a segregationist party

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

His post-realignment political history, included the seat he actually won, was Republican, and Republicans were the party that absorbed his rhetoric and strategy to gain/keep power.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Like come on, the only difference between the past and now is they’ve actually succeeded in undermining liberal democratic society where previous iterations came up short

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

All three are fundamentally the same progression of undermining civil rights, killing government capacity to provide for and benefits society, and increasing militarization. Surely you can see the through line from the Brooks Brothers Riot, John Yoo, ICE/DHS, etc and the present.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Quick question Will, which party did David Duke run under?