Kaitlin
@justktln2.bsky.social
computational biophysicist
mixer of potions
vmap enthusiast
ex-Texan
🏳️⚧️
mixer of potions
vmap enthusiast
ex-Texan
🏳️⚧️
Pinned
Reposted by Kaitlin
I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.
If you ever wondered why visible light is those particular wavelengths, it's because life evolved to see in the narrow range where water is transparent
October 3, 2026 at 9:28 AM
I have absolutely wondered about this. Amazing.
Reposted by Kaitlin
New: As gay bars across the country say that Meta is flagging and deactivating their accounts without warning, I spoke to an Austin queer bar that says Meta nearly destroyed their ability to advertise events: www.chron.com/culture/arti...
How Meta's new content moderation upended a Texas gay bar
At least one LGBTQ establishment in Texas says the social media giant has incorrectly disabled its social media account, potentially hurting business.
www.chron.com
October 4, 2026 at 9:01 PM
New: As gay bars across the country say that Meta is flagging and deactivating their accounts without warning, I spoke to an Austin queer bar that says Meta nearly destroyed their ability to advertise events: www.chron.com/culture/arti...
Reposted by Kaitlin
AI is conscious like sherlock holmes is conscious: if he wasnt, he wouldnt be able to solve the mysteries, but when you put down the book there isn't a real guy there
I think people are wasting a lot of cycles on whether AI is conscious or intelligent when really we’re trying to figure out if it’s human, and it isn’t
October 3, 2026 at 3:04 AM
AI is conscious like sherlock holmes is conscious: if he wasnt, he wouldnt be able to solve the mysteries, but when you put down the book there isn't a real guy there
I went to the white cloud and not only did everybody know you, they said they saw you swinging the world by the tail
October 1, 2026 at 11:42 PM
I went to the white cloud and not only did everybody know you, they said they saw you swinging the world by the tail
Reposted by Kaitlin
Symmetry Breaking under Vectorial Perturbations in Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.753211v1
September 30, 2026 at 3:45 AM
Symmetry Breaking under Vectorial Perturbations in Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.28.753211v1
Reposted by Kaitlin
It’s been long enough and I’m petty enough to share this publicly: I’ve applied for two tenure track jobs ever, and at the one that isn’t this one, I was told not to wear nail polish to the interview by a search committee member
During my postdoc, several grad students told me about the time one of the faculty shot down a job candidate for wearing the wrong pantyhose
what's the most insane hiring shibboleth you've ever heard, non-coffee edition
September 26, 2026 at 2:27 AM
It’s been long enough and I’m petty enough to share this publicly: I’ve applied for two tenure track jobs ever, and at the one that isn’t this one, I was told not to wear nail polish to the interview by a search committee member
When I transitioned I was a grad student at a public academic medical center in Texas. The Texas attorney general ran doctors at my endocrinologist’s office out of the state and subpoenaed trans peoples’ medical records. For years I was in fear of being kicked out of my PhD on these grounds
when i transitioned the faculty in my department at brown, as far as i know, never mistreated me on that basis. but the other phd candidates treated me like garbage. one brought her date to the office and watched in bemusement as she ridiculed me as "looking like you're wearing a halloween costume"
When I transitioned, I immediately started getting written up for every little thing. Finally, in a meeting with the regional manager and the branch manager, I pointed out that I had never been written up before transitioning.
They said my old boss cut me a break because i "was a sad guy".
They said my old boss cut me a break because i "was a sad guy".
September 26, 2026 at 1:59 AM
When I transitioned I was a grad student at a public academic medical center in Texas. The Texas attorney general ran doctors at my endocrinologist’s office out of the state and subpoenaed trans peoples’ medical records. For years I was in fear of being kicked out of my PhD on these grounds
Reposted by Kaitlin
One after another, women reported being sexually harassed by male supervisors, getting paid less than their male peers, getting passed over for promotions, getting talked over in meetings.
🔗 www.wired.com/story/women-...
🔗 www.wired.com/story/women-...
September 21, 2026 at 5:08 PM
One after another, women reported being sexually harassed by male supervisors, getting paid less than their male peers, getting passed over for promotions, getting talked over in meetings.
🔗 www.wired.com/story/women-...
🔗 www.wired.com/story/women-...
Reposted by Kaitlin
Ancient viral warfare could be at the root of modern class 1 CRISPR bacterial defense systems.
Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/46rOANl
Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/46rOANl
A viral origin for RNA-guided immunity
Ancient viral warfare could be at the root of modern class 1 CRISPR bacterial defense systems
scim.ag
September 25, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Ancient viral warfare could be at the root of modern class 1 CRISPR bacterial defense systems.
Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/46rOANl
Learn more in a new #SciencePerspective: https://scim.ag/46rOANl
No more MD or ensemble papers benchmarking on Chignolin. Enough
September 25, 2026 at 2:35 AM
No more MD or ensemble papers benchmarking on Chignolin. Enough
Reposted by Kaitlin
The fact that every major news outlet includes vocal tics and hesitations when it’s a woman saying “like” and not when it’s a man saying “um” is itself wicked telling.
“This country has never elected a female president. Why are we pretending that this is not a factor?” Ocasio-Cortez said with a laugh. “That doesn’t make it impossible, but to act as though it’s not a factor in anything ever is really a form of, like, denialism” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/u...
Will Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Run for President in 2028? Here’s What She Said.
In a wide-ranging interview, the New York congresswoman offered her most detailed insight yet into how she is thinking about a possible presidential run.
www.nytimes.com
September 22, 2026 at 8:42 PM
The fact that every major news outlet includes vocal tics and hesitations when it’s a woman saying “like” and not when it’s a man saying “um” is itself wicked telling.
Reposted by Kaitlin
I think the median voter believes in Natural Prices, and these are about how much things costed at the most recent point in their mind where they felt relatively financially stable. They expect politicians and businesses to honour this and take steps to ensure things cost their Natural Price.
December 4, 2025 at 8:21 AM
I think the median voter believes in Natural Prices, and these are about how much things costed at the most recent point in their mind where they felt relatively financially stable. They expect politicians and businesses to honour this and take steps to ensure things cost their Natural Price.
Reposted by Kaitlin
Very interesting paper.
An old-fashioned concept - sadly now rare in biology - measure stuff accurately, and you can understand how it works...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
An old-fashioned concept - sadly now rare in biology - measure stuff accurately, and you can understand how it works...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Uncoupling microtubule lifetime, stability and post-translational modifications.
Microtubules (MTs) undergo continuous cycles of growth and disassembly. Because the transitions between these states are stochastic, MT age varies widely within a population. As MTs age, they are thou...
www.biorxiv.org
September 16, 2026 at 7:37 AM
Very interesting paper.
An old-fashioned concept - sadly now rare in biology - measure stuff accurately, and you can understand how it works...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
An old-fashioned concept - sadly now rare in biology - measure stuff accurately, and you can understand how it works...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Me every time someone draws a free energy landscape cartoon
Turns out, the author just ... made them up 🤷♂️. I can't get over this. It really doesn't seem ok to me for someone to draw some squiggles, claim that they're illustrative of something in the real world, then act as though it's akin to evidence. The vibes you feel aren't data!
September 16, 2026 at 1:00 PM
Me every time someone draws a free energy landscape cartoon
Reposted by Kaitlin
I don't think people really understand the psychic impact of knowing that multiple times a day every day your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and everyone who could ever have any power over you is being flooded with agitprop designed to make them hate you
September 15, 2026 at 10:48 PM
I don't think people really understand the psychic impact of knowing that multiple times a day every day your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and everyone who could ever have any power over you is being flooded with agitprop designed to make them hate you
Reposted by Kaitlin
I don't know if Matt Levine's theory about what's behind recent calls for AI regulation is correct. But it does sound plausible! www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...
September 14, 2026 at 6:47 PM
I don't know if Matt Levine's theory about what's behind recent calls for AI regulation is correct. But it does sound plausible! www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...
Reposted by Kaitlin
Approximating the Lorenz attractor with a chaotic leaky water wheel.
The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
September 13, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Approximating the Lorenz attractor with a chaotic leaky water wheel.
The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
The orange dot is the centre of mass of the water. It traces (a projection of) the familiar attractor as the wheel spins seemingly randomly left and right.
Reposted by Kaitlin
The widely debunked GOP-Grindr thing is a homophobic lie that @jessicatarlov.bsky.social should be embarrassed for indulging in. The fact that liberals do this relies on their barely hidden homophobia. Gay people see this and we learn you’re not really allies after all. @acyn.bsky.social
Jessica Tarlov on Republican Midterm Convention: It was hornier than I expected it was going to be. I know it wasn’t an app-wide outage on Grindr, but there’s a traffic increase when a big cabal of Republicans get together to talk about their family values.
September 13, 2026 at 6:30 PM
The widely debunked GOP-Grindr thing is a homophobic lie that @jessicatarlov.bsky.social should be embarrassed for indulging in. The fact that liberals do this relies on their barely hidden homophobia. Gay people see this and we learn you’re not really allies after all. @acyn.bsky.social
this was @iid.bsky.social btw
Did I tell you all about the dynamical systems theorist that got caught gambling on the local tennis league I was a part of? She was fixing points.
September 12, 2026 at 4:11 AM
this was @iid.bsky.social btw
Reposted by Kaitlin
While the Fields Medal celebrates the under-40s, the mathematician Joan Birman has, at the age of 99, solved a major open problem in representations of the Braid groups, a topic she has worked on for more than 60 years.
July 27, 2026 at 5:53 AM
While the Fields Medal celebrates the under-40s, the mathematician Joan Birman has, at the age of 99, solved a major open problem in representations of the Braid groups, a topic she has worked on for more than 60 years.
looks like a beautiful paper
Thermal fractuations assist high-speed rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor at low load https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.09.750262v1
September 10, 2026 at 7:53 PM
looks like a beautiful paper
One of my main hobbies is moseying about
September 6, 2026 at 7:39 PM
One of my main hobbies is moseying about
