Julia Sero
LightNews LightNews
banner
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Julia Sero
@cellmorphosero.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1K following 2.4K posts
How cells stick to things and move around, microscopy, cats, garden bugs, forays into machine learning, occasional political snark. Asst Prof University of Bath, UK 🏳️‍🌈
Posts Replies Media Videos
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
#Caturday
An small and incredibly cute tabby cat stands on stairs with vertical striped carpeting. Her dainty white paws are on the lower stair and he head is cocked inquisitively. He tail forms a question mark on the stair above.
January 18, 2026 at 11:01 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
People mostly don't want to consume "processed food-like substances". They don't want to get sick from lettuce.
But the "MAHA" people are marketing on one thing and delivering another - cuts to oversight & public health, trafficking in quakery and charlatanism.
The idealism and passion of the Maha movement belies an ugly truth: the Trump administration has launched a radical assault on the government agencies devoted to food access, food safety and public health. The mass firings and termination of longstanding programs by Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, have been unprecedented. At the time of writing, the CDC has lost about one quarter of its employees. Its National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion may lose all of its funding to address heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes and many other disorders. Cuts to the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network mean that outbreaks of food poisoning in the US will soon be much harder to detect – which will only benefit companies that sell contaminated food. And a $590m grant awarded to Moderna for the development of a bird flu vaccine has been cancelled.
January 12, 2026 at 8:42 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Regulation is essential. If people want to tear down systems of accountability, do we even need to ask why? Trust in government is essential. Tear it down, and who profits? Not the public. Monopolies are dangerous. Let them flourish and who is hurt? We all are, ultimately.
When inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration visited Sturgis early in 2022, they found multiple strains of Cronobacter in the Abbott factory. FDA officials later described conditions at the plant as “shocking” and “egregiously unsanitary”. Abbott voluntarily shut down the plant and recalled three brands of powdered formula made there. Abbott insisted that government investigators couldn’t find any evidence “to link our formulas to these infant illnesses”. But Frank Yiannas, who served as deputy commissioner of the FDA during the recall, thought that Abbott’s denials were misleading. “Abbott’s Sturgis facility lacked adequate controls to prevent the contamination of powdered infant formula,” Yiannis testified before Congress, “And it is likely that other lots of [powdered formula] produced in this plant were contaminated with multiple C sakazakii strains over time, which evaded end-product testing, were released into commerce, and consumed by infants.”
January 12, 2026 at 8:37 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
I can totally understand the impulse to go "whole food essential oils off the grid orthorexia" when I read stuff like this.
And then the same-shit-different-day oligarchs & grifters peddle the trad wife aesthetic to prey on legit fears (capitalizing on low information).
Today, four companies control 56% of the worldwide market for seeds and 61% of the market for pesticides. Five companies control about 70% to 90% of the worldwide trade in grains. Four companies control more than 80% of the US supply of beef, 70% of its pork and 60% of its market for chicken. Four companies control about 75% of the US market for yoghurt, 79% of its market for beer. Three firms control 93% of its market for carbonated soft drinks. Factory farming has extended monopoly power even to commercial-livestock genetics. Two companies provide the breeding stock for more than 90% of the world’s egg-laying hens and turkeys.
January 12, 2026 at 8:30 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
😮
A commonsense response to the discovery of H5N1 among Texas dairy cattle in 2024 would have been mandatory testing of every cow for the virus, a strict quarantine of dairies where bird flu was found, mandatory testing of milk for contamination, monetary compensation to dairy farmers for any losses caused by the disease, and widespread testing of dairy workers to ensure that H5N1 was not spreading from cows to people. None of those things happened. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is primarily responsible for the health of livestock, not people. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no authority to test livestock for diseases. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lacks the authority to test farm animals or farm workers without the permission of farm owners. State officials can wield those powers. But the Texas agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller, a rightwing conspiracy theorist who’d spoken at a QAnon event in Dallas a few years earlier, thought H5N1 posed “no threat to the public”. The dairy industry opposed the routine testing of its cows or workers – and dairy was responsible for about $50bn of economic activity in Texas every year. Miller made clear how he felt about federal investigators visiting dairies in the panhandle to look for bird flu: “They need to back off.”
January 12, 2026 at 8:01 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Specifically, I am going to need it to cover the Dabous Giraffe Petroglyphs.
www.bradshawfoundation.com/giraffe/
Rock carving of huge, highly detailed and realistic looking full-length giraffe, with particular of a smaller one behind it. All the spots are individually carved into the gray rock, with light brown sand behind.
January 7, 2026 at 9:14 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
More pics of the orange chonkster getting fed, and his relatively slender summer look.
A beautiful marmalade orange tabby sitting on a scrappy lawn on a hot day. A chonky orange tabby on an Oriental carpet, looking up at the camera from a white food bowl. Close-up of orange tabby face. He has a clipped ear and bright green eyes. He's looking at you like, "What."
December 26, 2025 at 8:08 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Merry Christmas and Happy New year from Hunter, the feral cat (clipped & snipped) who is fed by my mom and half a dozen neighbors. This is his heated cat house on a nearby porch.
#OrangeCat
A happy marmalade orange tabby cat face, with blinky eyes, visible through a rectangular opening inside a gray cat house with Christmas decorations - lights, red ribbons, little wreaths - hanging from the top.
December 25, 2025 at 11:50 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Oh good heavens.
People - please don't use this thing as a search engine.
If you're using it to write code, do it in small chunks and bug test the crap out of it.
Alexander is always pronounced AL-ex-AND-er in english You’re absolutely right — and thank you for insisting on precision. In standard English pronunciation, Alexander is not choriambic. It scans as five syllables with the stress pattern: AL-ex-AND-er — ˘ ˘ — ˘ That is not a choriamb (— ˘ ˘ —), and there isn’t a normal English pronunciation that makes it one without distortion or elision. So, to be clear and correct: ❌ Alexander → not choriambic ❌ Any four-syllable scan of it → artificial / poetic license only Your correction stands. What does remain valid True choriambs in English are typically: Two stressed monosyllables framing Two weak function syllables e.g. Singapore Sling Christmas Eve Out of the blue If you want to continue, we can: Compile a very strict list of only defensible choriambic phrases, or Look at why English resists lexical choriambs compared to Greek and Latin.
December 24, 2025 at 1:32 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
I called it out and it doubled down. 😆 Well done, LLM, 1/4 hit rate.
(primary stress, two unstressed, primary stress) Below are clean, defensible examples that actually meet both conditions in normal citation-form pronunciation (or very close to it). I’ll flag borderline cases explicitly. Solid choriambs (best examples) Proper names / compounds Singapore Sling SING-ga-pore SLING — ˊ ˘ ˘ ˊ Christmas Eve CHRIST-mas EVE — ˊ ˘ ˘ ˊ Aftermath (when spoken emphatically) AF-ter-math — ˊ ˘ ˘ ˊ Labrador (BrE esp.) LAB-ra-dor — ˊ ˘ ˘ ˊ
December 24, 2025 at 1:24 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Haha, so I asked #ChatGPT for examples of common names or phrases with choriambic meter (DUM da da DUM) and this is what it gave me.
Choriambs (— u u —) are surprisingly common in everyday English, especially in names and set phrases. Here are well-known examples that usually scan naturally as choriambic when spoken normally: Proper names Washington — WASH-ing-ton Christmas Eve — CHRIST-mas EVE Alexander — AL-ex-an-DER Cinderella — CIN-der-el-LA Tarrytown — TAR-ry TOWN Beethoven — BAY-tho-ven (Anglicized pronunciation) Place names Mississippi (central four syllables) — SIS-si-PI Kalamazoo — KAL-a-ma-ZOO Santa Fe — SAN-ta FE New Orleans (common American stress) — NEW or-LEANS Common phrases Take it easy — TAKE it ea-SY After all — AF-ter at ALL None of your business (opening four syllables) — NONE of your BUS-ness Over the moon — O-ver the MOON Product / cultural names Coca-Cola — CO-ca CO-la Harry Potter — HAR-ry POT-ter Merry Christmas — MER-ry CHRIST-mas
December 24, 2025 at 1:21 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Enjoy these human epithelial cell nuclei - especially the bagel with a hole right through the middle!
MCF10A cells with labelled with DNA (blue; Hoechst), anti-lamin A/C (green), and F-actin (magenta; phalloidin).
3D z-stack taken with a Zeiss CellDiscoverer7 + LSM 900 Airyscan-2, 20X (NA 0.95).
A cross section through two nuclei, irregular circles withe dark blue interiors and green trim, against a background of dim textured magenta (F-actin). The one on the left has a circular hole outlined in green right in the middle. The one of the right has two green spots and a v-shaped notch in the right side. 3D reconstructions of nuclei, blue interiors with uneven green on the outer surfaces. One looks like a bagel with a small hole in the middle. The other has two green spots in the center and a notch in the right side.
December 23, 2025 at 3:32 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Why would this be redacted? It doesn't implicate anyone by name except JE - although it does say that he paid participant-witnesses legal fees and threatened victims (which was already known).
Maybe the "redactors" were trying to highlight the bits people should pay attention to.
202. Defendants also actively obstructed law enforcement by denying investigators access to Little St. James beyond its boat dock. 203. Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct. 204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused. 205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct. 206. Defendants also concealed their fr 203. Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct. 204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused. 205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct.
December 23, 2025 at 7:55 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Screenshot of a document from the link above.
Copy-paste in alt text.
Nothing about victims, just details of the financial fraud used to pay them.
110. From another of Epstein’s personal accounts with another different bank, for which Indyke had signatory authority, someone acting on Epstein’s behalf made a total of 21 separate withdrawals each in the amount of $1,000 on every but one business day from April 9, 2019 to May 8, 2019. 111. Payments from this account totaling almost $60,000 were transferred by wire to young women mostly at foreign beneficiary banks in February and March 2016. 112. Upon information and belief, based on their authority for the accounts, their interactions with the relevant banks, and records indicating that they made or approved the transactions, these payments could have only been made with the knowledge and/or at the direction of Indyke and Kahn. 113. The sheer complexity of the infrastructure that Epstein set up and maintained with the participation of Kahn and Indyke suggest their unlawful purpose. Based on the Government’s current knowledge, Epstein, with Kahn and Indyke, held and managed at least 140 different bank accounts for Epstein and Epstein-owned entities, many of which existed only to transfer payments to other entities and accounts. 114. Kahn and Indyke profited substantially from their relationship with Epstein. The amount of their payments is further evidence of the illicit nature of the work they performed. 115. From 2011 to 2019, Epstein and Epstein-owned entities paid over $16 million net to Defendant/Co-Executor Indyke, and over $10 million net to Defendant/Co-Executor Kahn. This includes loans that are still outstanding to Indyke- and Kahn-related entities. Based on records obtained so far, tax forms provided by Epstein entities did not report nearly the full
December 23, 2025 at 7:45 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
The White House staff arranged around a desk: 5 men in suits (3 shiny red ties) and 2 women, one in bright red and the other in a muted suit jacket. On the right is Stephen Miller, who has the least hair, like Lord Voldemort levels of bald. The men get less and less bald as you move around the table to the right, culminating in JD Vance, who has a beard. The women also follow this trend, with the right-most having longer hair than the left-most.
December 18, 2025 at 12:53 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Very excited about the selection of flowers to put in my holiday wreath(s), which I made from a bundle of straight thin branches cut from the bush in front of the house.
A bouquet of rugged flowers; dark green leaves, magenta and burgundy little tufty blossoms, a few spiky blue-lilac teasels, and some knobbly yellow balls.
December 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Screenshot of a YouTube video still of a late middle aged, shirtless bald man in sunglasses and olive green trousers riding a brown horse on a rugged landscape with short grass, jagged boulders, and mountains. Text below says, "Vigorous Vladimir? A look at the attempts to portray Putin ... Uploaded: May 15, 2018. 1.78K Likes. He's flow planes and hang gliders, driven ..."
December 12, 2025 at 7:25 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Dendritic ice crystals on my skylight this morning.
Ice crystals on a skylight with sunrise behind. The crystals form tree-like structures with branches, interspersed with feathery shapes.
December 3, 2025 at 8:44 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
This guy
Zoom in on the picture of mannequins, where a golden-toned male mannequin in a black beanie hat has head head forward and his mouth open like he is screaming in rage/pain/frustration. He is also clenching his fist and curling his bicep.
December 1, 2025 at 10:55 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
This doesnt sound like the asylum seekers are doing anything wrong, though. Sounds like the taxi companies are scamming thr government. Shouldn't they be cracking down on fraud by taxi dispatchers.
Another taxi driver, who gave the name Steve, claimed firms would purposely increase the mileage on trips by dispatching drivers to another distant town to carry out short journeys. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday that on one occasion he was sent from Gatwick Airport to Reading - a round trip of about 110 miles (175km) and costing more than £100 - to take an asylum seeker from their hotel to a dentist appointment which was 1.5 miles away.
November 29, 2025 at 1:03 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
I'm not sure how binging Netflix all weekend makes me extroverted and love being out and about, but it's a cute quiz anyway, and I learned about carbapenems. 🦠🧫
Meropenem Result Image You are meropenem! You tend to be extroverted and love being out and about. But others don't always feel the same way and they sometimes wish you were a little more reserved. You're adventurous but sometimes overly assertive. You do your best work on projects where others have not succeeded. You're often the one others turn to when the going gets tough. Did you know? Meropenem is in the class of antibiotics called Carbapenems. These are very broad spectrum antibiotics often reserved for last line of treatment in many difficult to treat gram-negative infections. Unfortunately there are now bacteria called CRE (carbapenem resistant Enterobacteriaceae) resistant to even meropenem, making these organisms very difficult to treat and often deadly.
November 21, 2025 at 9:26 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Epstein joked that “the probability of you in bed again with peril” was “0,” before reversing course and assuring Summers that “she is never ever going to find another Larry summers. Probability ZERO.” Summers went on to describe what he saw as his “best shot”: that the woman finds him “invaluable and interesting” and concludes “she can’t have it without romance / sex.” Throughout June, Summers fed Epstein updates about the woman’s workload and continued contact. Epstein urged him to play the “long game” and keep her in what he called a “forced holding pattern.”
November 17, 2025 at 11:42 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
It gets worse. Just ... 🤮🤮🤮
Epstein joked that “the probability of you in bed again with peril” was “0,” before reversing course and assuring Summers that “she is never ever going to find another Larry summers. Probability ZERO.” Summers went on to describe what he saw as his “best shot”: that the woman finds him “invaluable and interesting” and concludes “she can’t have it without romance / sex.” Throughout June, Summers fed Epstein updates about the woman’s workload and continued contact. Epstein urged him to play the “long game” and keep her in what he called a “forced holding pattern.”
November 17, 2025 at 4:23 AM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Check out this sneaky lamin A knockdown cell (pink dot) swimming against the tide (migration into gap) & slithering between its sisters.
It also slides over another nucleus that deforms underneath it.
MCF10A cells, #Spirochrome SPY650-DNA, 20 min time-lapse, taken on a #Zeiss #CellDiscoverer7.
November 7, 2025 at 4:29 PM
cellmorphosero.bsky.social
Cannibal pumpkin tableau
Tableau of carved pumpkins. From left: shocked pumpkin with wide open O shaped mouth; ravenous pumpkin with giant mouth and pointy teeth chomping a small pumpkin which has guts spilling out of it; small vampire pumpkin with slitted eyes, nomming on a pumpkin seed.
October 31, 2025 at 6:00 PM