MethylatedXanthines

@gwern Weird Al take but ok

I have begun writing irrationallife.substack.com/p/you-could-de…

@ATinyGreenCell I know you've said you plan on releasing your petunia cultivar eventually, but in the meantime, any recs for readily available commercial varieties suited for doing this sort of work?

More agroinfiltration tests. Black sharpie stripe indicates injecred bloom. Right lobe is positive control. Should turn red in the next 72hrs.

@NikoMcCarty @AsimovPress Excellent article! Funny, I was/am literally writing a(n inferior) version of almost exactly this article. Oh well, got to pivot I suppose.

Our latest article at @AsimovPress is a step-by-step guide to designing antibodies with BoltzGen, AlphaFold3, and other tools.

A few years ago, designing an antibody on the computer was extremely difficult. Today, there are several open-source tools which allow anyone to design antibodies from home. Out today: A step-by-step guide to antibody design. By @btnaughton.

@whybyfire @kipperrii This is why metaprecommitments are key

@NthLair @kipperrii Too many people think this and then get permanently disabled free soloing or alike and realize they hadn't really accepted it

i think alex honnold an amazing human being and a man of great character. hope nothing bad happens to him, like lying in bed awake at night realising that his work encourages other people to do things that lead to their death and that if he died in a climb it likely save lives

@gork is this true

@owl_posting This just means you need to double down and shitpost harder

grateful to the mostly nice comments who are happy to read something dumb and let it slide over them like syrup

this article got curated to the top of lesswrong despite it very clearly being one long shitpost. this is very kind of the mod who deigned to highlight it, but an unfortunate side effect is that a gaggle of foot soldiers have assembled in the comments section to bravely plant their flag in the ground and wag their finger at me for writing something that both pretends to be real, and has no real takeaway point. i have never quite understood why certain members of that world are viewed with as much cultural disdain as they are, but it finally clicked into place. they actually believe that this, all of this, is real, and that it has meaning to offer. i got news for you buddy

@ATinyGreenCell That makes sense, my thoughts are based mainly on a brief stint in academia

@NthLair Industrial biotech often works on DoE and Taguchi methods which are intrinsically empirically derived :)

With all the hype in lab automation these days, I really hope we also invent automation-optimal methods too. Do we need to run a whole protein gel? Can we do infrared-heated PCR of droplets suspended by ultrasonic? Running a big-ass gel to resolve some bands seems odd with bots.

Superbowl prediction:

@ATinyGreenCell Besides being really cool (which ngl, is important), how does the gene gun stack up vs. other methods of transformation?

Gearing up for more gene gun optimizations. It seems like I'm one of maybe 5 people on earth that has this gene gun model so I need to reinvent a lot of protocols. Diameters, pressures, shockwave geometry, all very different. At least the consumables are universal. 😬

@IronLordByron @keysmashbandit Like shooting your gun in the air outside your house to keep property values down, rats must also advocate shrimp welfare.

@keysmashbandit If rats read the room before talking about stuff they'd be normies

Great fondness for the rats and love what they do etc etc but I don't really gaf about invertebrate lives on a mass scale and I think they should stop talking about it asap because it gives the impression of being unrealistically divorced from material reality

@owl_posting How did the New England Orthodontic Laboratory get so powerful?

by mid 2026, the majority of the US economy will be neolabs

@ATinyGreenCell Not necessarily that it's unwarranted, but it's interesting how often DIY biology (or biology not conducted in an "official" lab) just seems to cause this visceral fear reaction in a lot of people.

See its crap like this that gives amateur biology a bad name. I bet the people operating it have formal training too, but people sure love blaming the diybio folks as high risk. At least diybio had a cool fbi outreach program for a while... abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-investi…

@whybyfire @kipperrii Choosing to free solo is a very deliberate act. If you do it, you've probably already accepted the possible consequences failure.

@kipperrii i've been conflicted about how to feel about him after reading about a climber who was paralyzed in an accident indirectly due to risk tolerance from free soloing. like leaving your comfort zone is necessary to grow, but the risk that involves is not the reason growth happens.

We need more labyrinthine urban scapes

I daresay it is the year of the lobster

@IronLordByron @AriZerner @tautologer I do: naomikritzer.com/2026/01/21/how…

@AriZerner @tautologer I have no specific knowledge in that area

is there some legal aid org or something like that on the ground in Minneapolis that I can donate to?

@_inc0_ @ATinyGreenCell Although, it should be noted that enzymatic benchtop synthesizers may also be widely available very soon. Look at Zhonghe Gene or MeiYou Tech out of China. No idea of the costs though.

@ATinyGreenCell It uses phosphoramidite chemistry

Imagine saying this but for bioengineering, lol. It's so much easier to do valuable work when typing is free and costs nothing but electricity to maintain.