Jan Lause
@janlause.bsky.social
data science postdoc in Tübingen 🧬🖥️🧠 scRNA data analysis, UMAP/tSNE & retina neuroscience | science journalism on AI & sustainability 🤖❤️🌍 | easily sidetracked by small plot details & cool birds 📈🔍🦜
Pinned
Jan Lause
@janlause.bsky.social
· Feb 18
I just defended my PhD on single-cell normalization and visualization methods in neuroscience! 🧑🎓 🖥️ 🧬 🧠
Thanks a lot to @hippopedoid.bsky.social, @philipp.hertie.ai and everyone in the lab for supporting me ❤️
Now looking forward to my postdoc on what Amacrine cells are computing in the retina 👀
Thanks a lot to @hippopedoid.bsky.social, @philipp.hertie.ai and everyone in the lab for supporting me ❤️
Now looking forward to my postdoc on what Amacrine cells are computing in the retina 👀
Reposted by Jan Lause
As the world hurtles towards geopolitical crisis, my marine biologist son sends photo of an underwater leaf slug from Fiji to wish us calm.
January 21, 2026 at 9:54 AM
As the world hurtles towards geopolitical crisis, my marine biologist son sends photo of an underwater leaf slug from Fiji to wish us calm.
Reposted by Jan Lause
Coming soon to all of Europe?
I hope so. I've been complaining about our lack of autonomy in the domain for as long as I've been using Linux.
I hope so. I've been complaining about our lack of autonomy in the domain for as long as I've been using Linux.
The Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs is moving away from Microsoft and switching instead to Linux and LibreOffice
www.heise.de/news/Von-Wor...
www.heise.de/news/Von-Wor...
Abschied bis Herbst: Dänisches Digitalministerium kehrt Microsoft den Rücken
Beim dänischen Digitalministerium sollen alle Angestellten ohne Microsoft auskommen. Stattdessen werde man Linux und LibreOffice nutzen, sagt die Ministerin.
www.heise.de
January 20, 2026 at 9:21 AM
Coming soon to all of Europe?
I hope so. I've been complaining about our lack of autonomy in the domain for as long as I've been using Linux.
I hope so. I've been complaining about our lack of autonomy in the domain for as long as I've been using Linux.
Reposted by Jan Lause
More than 200,000 Danish citizens have signed a petition to buy California as a response to Trump’s attempt to take Greenland.
They say they will provide Californians with “rule of law, universal health care, fact-based politics, and a lifetime supply of Danish pastries.”
They say they will provide Californians with “rule of law, universal health care, fact-based politics, and a lifetime supply of Danish pastries.”
January 17, 2026 at 5:36 PM
More than 200,000 Danish citizens have signed a petition to buy California as a response to Trump’s attempt to take Greenland.
They say they will provide Californians with “rule of law, universal health care, fact-based politics, and a lifetime supply of Danish pastries.”
They say they will provide Californians with “rule of law, universal health care, fact-based politics, and a lifetime supply of Danish pastries.”
Reposted by Jan Lause
We're hiring an intern! Apply here.
Retraction Watch journalism internship
Retraction Watch covers science and research integrity through the lens of retractions. Its staff of three full-time journalists, as well as its two founding editors and a network of freelance writ…
retractionwatch.com
January 16, 2026 at 11:06 PM
We're hiring an intern! Apply here.
Want a relaxing break? Scroll this thread instead of your timeline. 🐈
(For best results, close this app once you are done and check your own surroundings for cats you don’t own — maybe you get lucky!
(For best results, close this app once you are done and check your own surroundings for cats you don’t own — maybe you get lucky!
Having a good Father’s Day. Freed a pigeon from our living room earlier. Now there’s a cat in our bedroom. We don’t own a cat.
January 16, 2026 at 11:09 AM
Want a relaxing break? Scroll this thread instead of your timeline. 🐈
(For best results, close this app once you are done and check your own surroundings for cats you don’t own — maybe you get lucky!
(For best results, close this app once you are done and check your own surroundings for cats you don’t own — maybe you get lucky!
Reposted by Jan Lause
Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average.
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...
January 14, 2026 at 12:44 PM
Globally, no single day in 2025 was cooler than its 1991-2020 average.
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...
climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima...
The numbers in this overview were pretty surprising to me - I wonder how they look for Germany... (were we also suffer from low economic mobility etc...)
If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this:
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
America's problems are solved problems. Just not here.
What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵
January 13, 2026 at 3:27 PM
The numbers in this overview were pretty surprising to me - I wonder how they look for Germany... (were we also suffer from low economic mobility etc...)
Reposted by Jan Lause
once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions
January 9, 2026 at 2:07 PM
once again being driven insane by ML conference submissions
Reposted by Jan Lause
Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).
January 8, 2026 at 5:38 PM
Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).
Interesting work on LLM memorization:
Researchers were able to extract long book passages verbatim from Claude, Gemini and Grok --- sometimes almost the whole book.
Curious to see how this type of result influences Copyright cases...
Also see their thread with details and limitations below ⬇️
Researchers were able to extract long book passages verbatim from Claude, Gemini and Grok --- sometimes almost the whole book.
Curious to see how this type of result influences Copyright cases...
Also see their thread with details and limitations below ⬇️
We extracted (parts of) 12 books in experiments with 4 frontier-lab, production LLMs.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
We prompted the LLMs with a short prefix of a book and asked them to complete the rest. For Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, we extracted 95.8% of the book from jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet.
January 8, 2026 at 3:42 PM
Interesting work on LLM memorization:
Researchers were able to extract long book passages verbatim from Claude, Gemini and Grok --- sometimes almost the whole book.
Curious to see how this type of result influences Copyright cases...
Also see their thread with details and limitations below ⬇️
Researchers were able to extract long book passages verbatim from Claude, Gemini and Grok --- sometimes almost the whole book.
Curious to see how this type of result influences Copyright cases...
Also see their thread with details and limitations below ⬇️
Reposted by Jan Lause
Since Jan 1 2025, which feels like four trillion years ago, research has been shared on here 5 million whole-ass times. Bluesky recently passed 2 billion posts IN TOTAL.
So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research.
That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.
So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research.
That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.
January 8, 2026 at 1:08 PM
Since Jan 1 2025, which feels like four trillion years ago, research has been shared on here 5 million whole-ass times. Bluesky recently passed 2 billion posts IN TOTAL.
So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research.
That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.
So 0.25% of the entire site's traffic was citations to research.
That is actually massively high. Is it? Yes. Here's why.
Reposted by Jan Lause
I have been asked several times how we draw the 3D Figures for of our papers, so I wrote a blog post on it. This does not replace a Blender tutorial, just a couple specifics for scientific papers:
- import images as planes
- render edges
- transparent BG
chriswolfvision.medium.com/creating-3d-...
- import images as planes
- render edges
- transparent BG
chriswolfvision.medium.com/creating-3d-...
January 6, 2026 at 8:18 PM
I have been asked several times how we draw the 3D Figures for of our papers, so I wrote a blog post on it. This does not replace a Blender tutorial, just a couple specifics for scientific papers:
- import images as planes
- render edges
- transparent BG
chriswolfvision.medium.com/creating-3d-...
- import images as planes
- render edges
- transparent BG
chriswolfvision.medium.com/creating-3d-...
Reposted by Jan Lause
lol. Before Stackoverflow I knew SelfHTML and R-Help. Stackoverflow et al. were so welcoming and well-designed by comparison (e.g., they would search existing posts based on the text you wrote). Meanwhile, all my current LLM prompts include stuff like "please please tell me when my premise is false"
January 5, 2026 at 10:05 AM
lol. Before Stackoverflow I knew SelfHTML and R-Help. Stackoverflow et al. were so welcoming and well-designed by comparison (e.g., they would search existing posts based on the text you wrote). Meanwhile, all my current LLM prompts include stuff like "please please tell me when my premise is false"
Reposted by Jan Lause
From the 2022 drop era: “who needs wheat? Bread is so much tastier”
January 4, 2026 at 5:57 PM
From the 2022 drop era: “who needs wheat? Bread is so much tastier”
Reposted by Jan Lause
To include some numbers here, StackOverflow in Dec 2025 had 3862 new questions. The last time SO had this few questions was in *Aug 2008*, the first full month that SO was in operations!
In its peak month (March 2014), SO had 207,493 new questions!
In its peak month (March 2014), SO had 207,493 new questions!
January 4, 2026 at 1:46 PM
To include some numbers here, StackOverflow in Dec 2025 had 3862 new questions. The last time SO had this few questions was in *Aug 2008*, the first full month that SO was in operations!
In its peak month (March 2014), SO had 207,493 new questions!
In its peak month (March 2014), SO had 207,493 new questions!
Reposted by Jan Lause
Because international media largely seems to struggle to choose the correct wording to describe what’s happening: the US, under the self describes „peace president“, attacked another country and kidnapped its president. That is factual, no matter how bad or illegitimate Maduro‘s rule is (very bad).
January 3, 2026 at 11:18 AM
Because international media largely seems to struggle to choose the correct wording to describe what’s happening: the US, under the self describes „peace president“, attacked another country and kidnapped its president. That is factual, no matter how bad or illegitimate Maduro‘s rule is (very bad).
Reposted by Jan Lause
One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.
January 2, 2026 at 2:17 PM
One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.
Warum brauchts Journalismus von Netzpolitik.org? Nur so erfährt die Öffentlichkeit von Datenleaks und problematischen Entwicklungen in Richtung Überwachungsstaat (Palantir, Chatkontrolle..).
Digitale Zukunft geht nicht ohne unabhänge Medien, die sich auskennen! Also, wer kann: Jetzt spenden!
Digitale Zukunft geht nicht ohne unabhänge Medien, die sich auskennen! Also, wer kann: Jetzt spenden!
December 19, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Warum brauchts Journalismus von Netzpolitik.org? Nur so erfährt die Öffentlichkeit von Datenleaks und problematischen Entwicklungen in Richtung Überwachungsstaat (Palantir, Chatkontrolle..).
Digitale Zukunft geht nicht ohne unabhänge Medien, die sich auskennen! Also, wer kann: Jetzt spenden!
Digitale Zukunft geht nicht ohne unabhänge Medien, die sich auskennen! Also, wer kann: Jetzt spenden!
Reposted by Jan Lause
Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
December 17, 2025 at 3:25 PM
Thrilled to see our review article "The evolutionary origins of synaptic proteins" highlighted on the cover of Nature Reviews Neuroscience 🤩.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@msarscentre.bsky.social 🧠✨🧬🌊🪼🧽
Reposted by Jan Lause
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality.
www.newyorker.com
December 12, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Incredible piece on Oliver Sacks. If you were ever awed at his supposedly true stories (I remember being stunned by the account of the autistic twins who rattled off large prime numbers), read this. He told wonderful stories, but they were in large part fiction.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Reposted by Jan Lause
come for the economic data comparisons, stay for the carbon emissions burn 🔥
It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US
This view is wrong
A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵
This view is wrong
A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵
December 12, 2025 at 12:56 PM
come for the economic data comparisons, stay for the carbon emissions burn 🔥
Reposted by Jan Lause
I'm more and more convinced that low-dimensional manifolds in the brain are just an artifact of the experimental designs and analyses we use...
🧠📈 🧪
🧠📈 🧪
Dimensionality reduction may be the wrong approach to understanding neural representations. Our new paper shows that across human visual cortex, dimensionality is unbounded and scales with dataset size—we show this across nearly four orders of magnitude. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
December 11, 2025 at 8:19 PM
I'm more and more convinced that low-dimensional manifolds in the brain are just an artifact of the experimental designs and analyses we use...
🧠📈 🧪
🧠📈 🧪
Reposted by Jan Lause
All travelers from ESTA countries (yes the ones on visa waiver programs) will have to disclose 5 years of social media + huge amounts of personal data to enter the US now. All US academic associations should now meet outside the US if we want to meet our international colleagues.
December 10, 2025 at 4:27 AM
All travelers from ESTA countries (yes the ones on visa waiver programs) will have to disclose 5 years of social media + huge amounts of personal data to enter the US now. All US academic associations should now meet outside the US if we want to meet our international colleagues.
Reposted by Jan Lause
Synaptic-resolution connectomics: towards large brains and connectomic screening — a Review by Moritz Helmstaedter
@mhlab.bsky.social
#neuroscience #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@mhlab.bsky.social
#neuroscience #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Synaptic-resolution connectomics: towards large brains and connectomic screening - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Connectomics has delivered on its promise to map neuronal circuits at scale and at synaptic resolution. In this Review, Helmstaedter describes recent methodological achievements and remaining cha...
www.nature.com
December 9, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Synaptic-resolution connectomics: towards large brains and connectomic screening — a Review by Moritz Helmstaedter
@mhlab.bsky.social
#neuroscience #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
@mhlab.bsky.social
#neuroscience #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Jan Lause
Are you unable to continue your research in the USA due to political pressure? 14 Postdoc fellowships (2 years) are available for relocating to Germany
Please spread the news:
14 PostDoctoral Fellowships in the Early Career Rescue Fellowship Programme in Freiburg, Konstanz and Tübingen.
Contact me, if you want to work with us in Tübingen.
stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobpostin...
14 PostDoctoral Fellowships in the Early Career Rescue Fellowship Programme in Freiburg, Konstanz and Tübingen.
Contact me, if you want to work with us in Tübingen.
stellen.uni-konstanz.de/en/jobpostin...
14 Postdoctoral Fellowships - Early Career Rescue Fellowship Programme
stellen.uni-konstanz.de
December 8, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Are you unable to continue your research in the USA due to political pressure? 14 Postdoc fellowships (2 years) are available for relocating to Germany