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👻Sewall Fright🎃

@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social

8K followers 1.2K following 3.9K posts

Postdoc in evolutionary genomics of polyploids at RBG Kew | science & society | opinions mine Mizzou, Fulbright Belgium, and Michigan State alum. Here because of medicaid, public universities, and pell grants https://kevinabird.github.io/

kevinabird.github.io

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Mar 28

Really excited to share this new paper with Amanda Agosto-Ramos & @spicybotrytis.bsky.social! We use glucosinolates in the Brassicales as an illustrative model to demonstrate what the improvements in genome quality & phylogenetic coverage are teaching us about the evolution of metabolic innovation.

Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation

Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 22h

This lurid headline is about British tourists no longer getting away with overstaying in Schengen. Or being 'illegals', as it's often called in the UK.

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Frédéric Moreau @goodclimate.bsky.social · 21h

Can we pause and imagine the well of sympathy in the Telegraph for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of overstaying foreigners in the UK who don't speak English. Polluting the culture.

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 17h

Tip rate estimates can predict future diversification, but are unreliable and context dependent https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680809v1

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 17h

I answered the parallel to the actual conversation: “Is the current Republican Party a discontinuity from its past”. It isn’t, there are and have been far more white supremacists than Duke, it’s informed the party rhetoric and strategy for decades, and now it’s their dominant ideology.

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 22h

Some are campaigning on that kind of ID and winning. If the Democratic Party was DemSoc in 30 years I would not consider that a discontinuity or an aberration

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 22h

Seems like the same heritage foundation in substance to me

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 22h

I agree, but that brazenness is long overdue because the republican party has been a problem for 60 years. If this is viewed as a discontinuity it means there is a sensible republican party to return to and collaborate with

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Whether an escalation of a trend is a discontinuity is a distinction without a difference to me. What’s happening now is largely by the hands of the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society, hard to argue that’s not mainstream

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

No, but that’s also pretty much what people warned the Bush-era escalation would result in.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

There are enough names to go back and forth clever. The party actively deciding to make this coalition and incorporating the messaging and policy of that faction is not really exonerating. If there are segregationists in your party it’s a segregationist party

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

His post-realignment political history, included the seat he actually won, was Republican, and Republicans were the party that absorbed his rhetoric and strategy to gain/keep power.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Like come on, the only difference between the past and now is they’ve actually succeeded in undermining liberal democratic society where previous iterations came up short

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

All three are fundamentally the same progression of undermining civil rights, killing government capacity to provide for and benefits society, and increasing militarization. Surely you can see the through line from the Brooks Brothers Riot, John Yoo, ICE/DHS, etc and the present.

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

Quick question Will, which party did David Duke run under?

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

The most generous take is that there is a section of the party that happily used the promise of leopards eating faces to rile up their base so they could cause general economic structural violence in their quest to create an oligarchic nightmare country & they are now upset their face is being eaten

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 1d

If you know anything about the history of the right you know it is a continuation of a trend. The people upset are mostly either sour lost control of the coalitional bed they made or agree with the fascists but quibble about strategy

Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 1d

One reason former Republicans have been better at opposing Trump than many progressives is because they correctly understand that the GOP’s descent into fascism represents a dramatic shift, and is therefore scarier, where the latter groups feel the need to argue it’s just a continuation of trend

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Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 1d

Estimating the rate of quantitative trait evolution in the presence of gene tree discordance by calculating likelihoods across trees https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680724v1

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Paula Villa Braslavsky @paulita.bsky.social · 1d

"Key take-away: Political communication by mainstream parties plays a central role in the electoral success of the far right. When mainstream parties adopt far-right issues, they help to disseminate far-right ideas and legitimise them."

Teresa Völker @tevoelker.bsky.social · 1d

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 2d

The most important paper in evolutionary biology I'd never heard of:

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www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Brian Soucek @brsoucek.bsky.social · 4d

Strong statement today from UC's Academic Senate:

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 4d

Meltdown Jay

Jay 🦋 @jay.bsky.team · 5d

You could try a poster’s strike. I hear that works

Reposted by 👻Sewall Fright🎃

Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 4d

Do you know anyone with an interest in pursuing a PhD studying the genetics, development, and evolution of skeletal morphology and life history? If so please encourage them to apply to work with me through any of the University of Illinois' EEB or PEEC programs. 1/4 🧪🦷🦴🐭🐒

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👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 4d

It’s very critical that all the care and support comes from women, not a collective sense of mutual obligation toward each other… for reasons

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

This is what happens when academic freedom cases are ran by PR consultants instead of academics

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 5d

Absolutely ridiculous. There was nothing academic about what Cofnas said. It’’s not academic freedom, it’s plain as day discrimination

The Times & Sunday Times @thetimes.com · 5d

Investigation clears Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked after saying that ‘in a meritocracy’ black people would not hold prestigious positions

Cambridge says academic’s ‘offensive’ race views were free speech

Investigation clears Nathan Cofnas, who was sacked after saying that ‘in a meritocracy’ black people would not hold prestigious positions

www.thetimes.com

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