Ben Berman

Excited to present our latest @nanopore liquid biopsy paper! Here, we generate the first long-read survey of circulating DNA in patients with a diverse set of cancer types. Short 🧵 follows ... [1/5] biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

@weinberg1968 @RawaneOsmane source? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_cens…

Bullshit most of that 90% were living in Jordan you lying Nazi and most of the rest had only just arrived due to the open borders which the British colonists recruited Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Iraq Saudi and many other surrounding countries, at the same time that they were refusing to let Jews enter from Europe where they where escaping a real genocide, not a bullshit made up one like the Fuckastoinians and media fabricated. In 1920 there where very few Arabs in Israel , and Jerusalem was Always majority Jewish despite the multiple massacres of the Jewish community year after year. Learn your history and stop your lies Adolf

“Free Palestine.” I grew up on those words. In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them. In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to. Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all. Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge. What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that. Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine. In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence? Palestine is still first. So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with. So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews. And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state? You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media. Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position. 📍#Israel

A little secret. About 5% of our production traffic is on the Pi harness, about another 5% is on OpenCode. Reminder you can use your ChatGPT account in a flourishing set of other tools. We’ll continue to make Codex awesome, but you have options.

There are many from the west bank who were studying at Israeli universities before oct 7, and it became more difficult or impossible afterwards due to restrictions. Also many workers, who have been replaced by workers from other countries. Oct 7 was a complete disaster for these people (admittedly not as bad as it was for the people of Gaza)

There is a young woman I follow - she is 18, living in the West Bank. She was supposed to be starting university but since the war has not been allowed to. What would it take for her to be able to start studies if she lives in the Palestinian Areas? She is such a sweet and good person, wants to study math and physics.

Today, as I entered the campus of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to speak at a conference, I noticed again a simple but powerful reality: most of the students walking through the gates at that moment were young women — many of them Palestinian students from East Jerusalem, my own city. For me, this was a living example of something many people have forgotten: Israelis and Palestinians are still capable of coexistence, partnership, and building a shared future together. Those who believe that October 7 and the terrible war that followed permanently destroyed every possibility of trust and human connection are wrong. Something was broken. Deeply broken. But not beyond repair. Every day, in hospitals, universities, businesses, and ordinary human encounters, Israelis and Palestinians continue to prove that another reality is still possible. The picture below is living evidence.

We’re hiring in my group at Calico. We build Borzoi and its successors—deep learning models that predict how every nucleotide shapes cell-type-specific gene regulation—and apply them to interpret human genetic variation.

@EricLDaugh It's just a thought, those kids don't look that busy...

🚨 WOW! Several HUNDRED Chinese youth and a military band just gave President Trump a GRAND WELCOME as he arrived in Beijing 47 is LOVING IT, stopping to watch 🤣 China's VP, ambassador and foreign minister are there as well This is what TRUMP RESPECT looks like! 🇺🇸🇨🇳

🚨 Out today in Cell! @CellCellPress Path2Space: #AI that predicts spatial transcriptomics (ST) from H&E pathology, enabling spatial biomarker discovery in #BreastCancer at scale. 📄 doi.org/10.1016/j.cell… 🧵1/8

A recent preprint introduces TumorLens, a long-read framework for unified cancer profiling, detecting genetic and epigenetic alterations in a single assay, from SNVs to methylation. Uncover the science behind it: medrxiv.org/content/10.648…

I'm saddened by the passing of Craig Venter, a brilliant scientist and visionary entrepreneur whose partnership with the NIH led to the mapping of the human genome—unlocking new insights about ourselves and our common humanity. I'll always be grateful for the chance to know him and learn from him. His legacy will endure with every new discovery built on his lifetime of research and innovation.

@Avivit1985 @Eyalo365 every president has violated this law, i think

@Eyalo365 כתבו שאין אישור מהקונגרס האמריקני להמשיך במלחמה אחרי 60 יום. זאת הטעיה ?

זהו, נכון לעכשיו (יתכנו שינויים) המטוס האחרון ברכבת: מטוס RCH2092, לוקהיד C-5M סופר גלקסי של חיל האוויר האמריקאי (רישום 86-0014), המריא משדה PSM בפורטסמות', ניו המפשייר, כשעה לפני צילום המסך (כ-05:00 UTC, 1 במאי 2026). הוא נמצא בתחילת טיסה ארוכה מעל האוקיינוס האטלנטי, בגובה 33,000 רגל ומהירות 470 קשר. בהתבסס על חישוב מסלול מעגל גדול (great circle), היעד הסביר ביותר במזרח התיכון הוא בסיס אל-עודיד (OTBD) בקטאר או בסיס אל-דפרא (OMAM) באיחוד האמירויות. המרחק האווירי המשוער: 5,600–5,800 מייל ימי. זמן טיסה כולל כ-12 שעות (ללא עצירות או תדלוק). הגעה צפויה: בין 17:00 ל-19:00 UTC היום (20:00–22:00 שעון ישראל). מדובר בטיסת לוגיסטיקה צבאית, ולכן היעד חסוי. ייתכנו תדלוק או עצירה באירופה.

Iran Tells U.N.: We support and foster “a safe and inclusive digital environment.” Forgot To Mention: For the last 60 days, the Islamic regime has blocked access to the internet and imposed a digital darkness on its people.

@Realneo101 free Iran!

I'm experiencing suppression on this account. If you see this, please do me a favor and say 'Free Iran'. Thanks.

@SSinijlawi what are the defining issues of this "new current"? pragmatic, independent, and credibility are not issues.

The early results of the Palestinian local elections are beginning to tell a deeper story. A young generation of change has now firmly placed itself on the Palestinian political map. Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas and the current leadership are increasingly failing to win the trust of Fatah’s own base—let alone the broader independent public—even in elections where Hamas largely stayed out. Despite the full weight of administrative, financial, and institutional support behind official Fatah lists, the results show that challengers have made significant and meaningful gains. In small and mid-sized municipalities—where tribal dynamics are less dominant—such as al-Obeidiya, al-Karmel, Khillet al-Mai, and Jericho, independent lists representing a clear demand for change have won decisively. These lists are often led by credible, moderate figures—many emerging from within Fatah itself—who chose to challenge the official structures and succeeded. In Hebron, the picture is more complex. Tribal dynamics played the major role. While Fatah list officially “won,” the reality is that the election became an internal contest between the Jaabari and Qawasmi families over control on on the Mayor position. Despite Hamas’s boycott, many of its supporters within these families participated, influencing the outcome in favor of their tribal candidates like Yousef al-Jaabari and Khaled al-Qawasmi. Jenin delivered another surprise. A list representing the camp-based reality and local grassroots leadership won by a large margin against the official Fatah list—signaling a deep disconnect between the traditional leadership and the street. The conclusion is becoming clearer: This was not just a municipal election. It was a political signal. A new current is rising—pragmatic, independent, and rooted in credibility. The question now is no longer whether change is coming. It is whether the current leadership is ready to face it.

Can water intake prevent Alzheimer’s disease? No. This is fully AI-generated… but the data below could easily pass as real. The new ChatGPT image model is truly impressive, but I think it poses a real risk for scientific integrity in future. For example, I could just generate a dataset with a single prompt that appears to show something like water preventing Alzheimer’s disease. Ironically, we used to laugh at obvious “AI slop” (like those weird generated mice), but that’s changing pretty fast. If I were reviewing this fake figure today, I’m not sure I could reliably tell whether this figure is real or AI-generated? The bigger issue is that the usual signals we rely on e.g., how realistic or plausible something looks are no longer enough. I think we really need more comprehensive AI detection and, more importantly, stronger verification standards for scientific submissions going forward. We’ll probably also need better ways to digitize lab notebooks and ensure access to raw data, something closer to how code and version history are tracked...

Science is about to get absolutely nuked. Unless we get extremely strict about providing and opening up code and data and documenting lab experiments rigorously, a torrent of credible-looking but fraudulent papers is upon us.

@yarbatman I thought their more desperate problem was lack of refined fuel.

We know the blockade won't collapse Iran's economy because it has been tried before... by Trump! Iranian crude oil exports fell to zero during the second half of 2019, storage filled up, and Iran rolled back production of both crude oil and refined fuels by about half. Meanwhile, Iran was experiencing significant supply chain disruptions, job losses, and demand contraction because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a multi-faceted crisis, not unlike the one facing the country today. Even so, the economy limped along for about a year until oil exports began a slow recovery. Today oil production is back at the pre-sanction levels. The blockade was never going to cause enough pain in a short enough time to tilt negotiations in Trump's favor. Things are pretty evenly poised and that is exactly why a deal is possible.

@MarioNawfal if you get the first one, the other two problems dissolve away

Imagine Iran without the IRGC Imagine Iran without U.S sanctions Imagine Iran without Netanyahu

@ariel_oseran Good thing for them to be focusing on while their country runs out of money and gas.

The IRGC created an AI slop video mocking Trump over their decision not to attend talks in Pakistan.

@thesmoosh @websterkaroon please do. I don't think I ever said it could be peaceful.

The past 10 months have been such an utter nightmare. War. Protests. Massacres. More war. Electricity issues. Water issues. How much more can a society take? When can Iranians just be able to live normal lives like everyone else?