Daniel Bolnick
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danielbolnick.bsky.social
Daniel Bolnick
@danielbolnick.bsky.social
6.3K followers 690 following 2.4K posts
Professor of ecology and evolution @ UConn. Studies adaptation, evolutionary immunology, speciation, genomics, foraging, parasite ecology and more.
Hikes, rock climbs, tango, history buff, photographer & parent
Posts Replies Media Videos
danielbolnick.bsky.social
A postdoc in my lab, Ben Flanagan, just had a really nice paper come out in MB&E @official-smbe.bsky.social comparing transcriptomic response to a standardized immune challenge in 14 phylogenetically diverse species of ray-finned fishes
academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...
Macroevolutionary changes in gene expression response to an immune stimulus across the diversity of fishes
Abstract. Our understanding of the vertebrate immune system is dominated by a few model organisms such as mice. This use of a few model systems is reasonab
academic.oup.com
December 27, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
michaelr12.bsky.social
The top is after Trump’s DOJ redactions below is without, I can almost figure out who they are protecting
December 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
wolvendamien.bsky.social
I'm a gnat's asshair away from just letting all y'all learn shit the hard way, and literally all that's stopping me is the continued understanding that I gotta fuckin live here too.
janelleshane.com Janelle Shane @janelleshane.com · Apr 12
1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.
daviddlevine.com David D. Levine @daviddlevine.com · Apr 12
LLMs hallucinating nonexistent software packages with plausible names leads to a new malware vulnerability: "slopsquatting."
April 13, 2025 at 4:39 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
johnholbein1.bsky.social
DOGE was A LOT less likely to cancel contracts from companies that donated money to Republicans than companies that donated to Democrats.
December 25, 2025 at 10:47 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
thelastmileusaid.bsky.social
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
Line chart titled “Halloween Candy Spending Surpasses President Trump’s Humanitarian Aid Funding in 2025.” The chart compares U.S. humanitarian aid spending and U.S. Halloween candy spending from 2019 to 2025 in billions of dollars. Humanitarian aid, shown in orange, rises from about $8 billion in 2019 to a peak near $16 billion around 2022, then declines sharply to about $3.4 billion in 2025. Halloween candy spending, shown in green, increases steadily from about $2.2 billion in 2019 to about $3.9 billion in 2025, surpassing humanitarian aid in the final year. Note indicates humanitarian aid data reported by UN OCHA as of December 19, 2025. Source is the Council on Foreign Relations.
December 25, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
jschuurmd.bsky.social
Flu is widespread in Northeast… ERs full of it. Get your vaccine and high-risk patients should consider wearing a mask in crowded places if you want to avoid illness.
Ps vax is not perfect but better than nothing.
December 24, 2025 at 2:54 PM
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Seasons Greetings.
December 24, 2025 at 3:24 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
carlbergstrom.com
Imagine that a decade ago someone had told you that in 2025 Americans would be torrenting a handheld video of a Canadian television screen to see a 60 minutes broadcast about Trump‘s torture prisons.
December 23, 2025 at 3:20 PM
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Snow on a partially frozen pond makes for some wild visuals
December 23, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
p-hunermund.com
Canada doing Radio Free Europe for Americans
muellershewrote.com Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.com · 4d
BREAKING: WATCH the full 60 Minutes CECOT segment here. This was sent to me anonymously. It appears to be the segment CBS' Bari Weiss killed. www.muellershewrote.com/p/watch-the-...
WATCH: The 60 Minutes CECOT Segment
I was sent the CECOT segment anonymously in a group chat.
www.muellershewrote.com
December 23, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
jeremymberg.bsky.social
Thanks @hypoautonomic.bsky.social for putting this together.

Warning: May cause you to throw things or bang your head against the wall.
hypoautonomic.bsky.social Hypoautonomic, BS @hypoautonomic.bsky.social · 4d
Ok here it is.

A supercut of 68 speaking engagements from Podcast Jay, aka, the NIH Director. Sorry.
youtu.be/ytHRSkt0MYY
Podcast Jay Supercut
YouTube video by Hypoautonomic
youtu.be
December 23, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
brianapobiner.bsky.social
Curator of Education job (tenure-track Assistant Professor) at the Museum of Natural History, University of Colorado Boulder! Salary $90-$100K, 9 month full time position. Apply by Jan 21. jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...
Assistant Professor - Curator of Education (Tenure-Track)
jobs.colorado.edu
December 22, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
colincarlson.bsky.social
Let's pull the number up to the top: $75 billion per year

That's the economic cost of taking Nobel prize-winning, life saving technology and chucking it in the trash as a vice signal
yalesph.bsky.social Yale School of Public Health @yalesph.bsky.social · 4d
A new report from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have devastating health and economic consequences for the nation.
New report sounds alarm on health fallout from mRNA vaccine funding cuts
A new report from the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have
ysph.yale.edu
December 22, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
clarajeffery.bsky.social
Here is the 60 Minutes segment Bari is trying to keep you from seeing. They keep getting taken down so watch asap
December 23, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
phillewis.bsky.social
WATCH: Here's the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" last night
December 22, 2025 at 10:28 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
yalesph.bsky.social
Beyond the financial toll, the researchers found that withdrawing support for rapidly advancing mRNA vaccine technology could result in over 49,000 preventable deaths annually among patients diagnosed with four major cancers.

3/3
December 22, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
yalesph.bsky.social
A new report from researchers at the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have devastating health and economic consequences for the nation.
New report sounds alarm on health fallout from mRNA vaccine funding cuts
A new report from the Yale School of Public Health warns that the U.S. government’s abrupt cancellation of funding for mRNA vaccine research could have
ysph.yale.edu
December 22, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
yalesph.bsky.social
The report estimates that mRNA vaccines could avert over $75 billion in economic costs annually.

2/3
December 22, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
economist.com
Western carmakers are coming up against fast-growing Chinese electric-vehicle brands all over the world. Those that slow down production risk giving their competitors an unassailable lead
Retreating from EVs could be hazardous for Western carmakers
Governments are tempting a shift back to petrol
econ.st
December 22, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
chenchenzhang.net
"Rather than democratizing scientific publishing, Open Access has helped commercial publishers generate more profits".
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
December 4, 2025 at 12:52 PM
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Entrancing….
December 22, 2025 at 2:54 AM
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Happy Holidays. May you have time to relax and rejuvenate. And not obsess about news for a bit.

I made a chocolate krantz cake (aka. Babka) and it was so so so good.
December 22, 2025 at 2:33 AM
danielbolnick.bsky.social
Before the pond ice melted this week, we had an inch of water over thick ice, whipped by wind and rain.
December 21, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
alexwild.bsky.social
Why are rich people paying trillions for “artificial intelligence?”

I know people who have genuine intelligence. The real deal. None of this fake shit. Give them your money. It’s a better product.
December 21, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Daniel Bolnick
ecoinvasions.bsky.social
No paper from me or my lab will ever be submitted to an MDPI journal - including any of their superfluous "special issues". I will very rarely (if ever) cite MDPI papers. And I will never review for them. deevybee.blogspot.com/2024/08/gues...

The same goes for FrontiersIn journals, among others.
December 16, 2025 at 4:21 AM