colleague from CDC: "Taking it day by day. I'm very angry and sad. We lost some really good people."

Yes, thanks! Quiroz, et al (incl. @grey-monroe.bsky.social) is relevant to understanding the proximate causes of non-random patterns of repair and mutation

But this leaves open whether the driver is mutation or damage. That's the issue we are trying to tackle— how to tell these 2 hypotheses apart

...has most of the same implications as gene-targeted hypo-mutation, but is more parsimonious

Later this spring, evol-mut-circle will host an open discussion of competing hypotheses, to include some of the scientists active in this area of research

I'll post more details as the date gets closer

Sorry, I try not to be a jerk but that was rude.

That would have been amazing but it is extremely difficult to get decision-makers to spend large amounts of money or do extremely unpopular things without a guarantee of results. And scientists in early 2020 could not guarantee that air filtration would be a game-changer

dude lost his temper and used force exactly 1 time in his entire recorded life, and this was the context

The technofascist coup plan a la Yarvin says the regime must be able to control every institution it does not dismantle. IMHO they picked Columbia bc the admins are so willing to sell out. If they capitulate like NIH, Columbia will voluntarily purge its own people and programs to comply with MAGA

Right, it's important to keep stating loudly that this is an illegal seizure of power, an administrative coup. It's a bit like when a cop with no right to search your car or house acts like he has that right. If you let him in, you are the sucker

We all need to be that guy who just keeps arguing

Same here. Many agencies are doing long-term work for strategic gain. If everyone doing research (into fish, weather, security, COVID, etc) goes on strike— and gets fired— there is no immediate downside. It just makes us stupider, less competitive, and more vulnerable 5 years into the future.

OK, thanks. I don't work on speciation. I have done a lot of reading about "evo theory" writ large, and in that genre, he is a reactionary who can be counted on to bring the same hostile and dismissive tone to intra-scientific disputes as he does to extra-scientific ones

What do you mean by "firings"? By "targeted agencies" do you mean the ones whose employees got the deferred resignation (fork) offer? I am not aware of actual firings at NIST (ideology = 0.01, workforce = 3400)