Marko Prous

[Keith Robison @OmicsOmicsBlog]

Interesting preprint which has escaped me, but a comment on my recent piece by a long time reader highlighted it

Recipe for making Rapid Adapter compatible click primers for ONT sequencing

https://t.co/BQajfN2skj

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@kirk3gaard @astrocytosis1 @nanopore i still would like to have an option of higher accuracy model even if much more compute (ok 20x maybe bit too much :)). For metabarcoding or metagenomics, high read accuracy is still critical to recover low abundance taxa

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@JamesAl0410008 Although there definitely are lot of fungi, there is a amplification bias toward fungi because of shorter ITS sequences. Fungal ITS region is often around 700 bp, while e.g. in arthropods it's often much more than 1500 bp

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@logarithmic_h no reason to assume that more closely related to humans than to gorillas or chimps, all of which split from each other about that time. It could be a member of ancestral population leading to gorillas, chimps, and humans. How can tell to whom it is closest?

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@johnhawks I hadn't checked the original paper yet, I thought they had a bit more evidence to indentify them as H. erectus. Denisovans seems more likely indeed

[David Bell @bell00david]

Essentially, 2-3 people may have unfortunately died from a virus that has been around probably at least as long as humans.

The news story is that it was made into an international news story.

Yesterday, about 4000 people died of TB, and 2000 children died of malaria. The same news services missed it.

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

Only 9 species of sawflies in Greenland, would expect >100 based on the plant species present. This is general pattern for insects of Greenland, extremely species poor https://t.co/aCkOTCNO5G

[Jens Christiansen @jenshigh]

NO, DENMARK DID NOT RUN ON 100% WIND AND SOLAR FOR AN ENTIRE MONTH!

A headline story is all over the internet right now, claiming that Denmark ran on 100% wind and solar for all of March 2026. This is obviously fake news.

Denmark relies heavily on imported electricity when the wind stops. This also happened for entire weeks in March.

Additionally, biomass was generating a large share of the power continuously for the entire month.

I don't know where this fake news comes from, but it sure is spreading fast. Please share this post so we can debunk this false claim!

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@OmicsOmicsBlog no really complete human genome sequence has been sequenced yet, rDNA copies and perhaps some other repeats have not been entirely correctly assembled yet. At least a few more papers reporting "first truly complete human genome" can be published in the future I suspect

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@JMRothberg read length?

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

Paul Ehrlich has passed away, and I wanted to see whether he was as bad as his quotes and short clips suggest. Surely, there might be some nuance or careful thought in his worldview. Nobody is that purely evil.

So I picked up The Population Bomb and started reading.

It turns out, he's even worse than you think!

I’m putting together a thread below.

Quotes taken out of context don't get at the degree to which he is consistently evil and misanthropic. He had an entire system that he pursued in which human life was constantly denigrated and devalued, with an eye toward elimination. You’re left wondering what you’re even reducing human population for, since every form of life seems to be not worth living.

Some people are racist and just hate poor and brown people. Some hate the rich. Paul Ehrlich doesn't discriminate. He wants you not to exist if he can get away with it. But if he can't stop you from living, he wants you to have a much worse quality of life.

Ehrlich has a plan for both advanced and poor countries. He has blueprints for entire regions of the globe.

Humans do not have agency in Ehrlich’s world. They’re simple consumers of resources, with no ability to create, better their circumstances, or exert individual agency to make the world a better place, except to the extent that they ensure fellow humans no longer exist.

You might find all of this depressing. But I’ve found reading Ehrlich invigorating. It is a reminder of how much evil there is in the world. Recall that Ehrlich was not some guy in his room putting out diatribes. He was a professor at Stanford, a highly decorated scientist, and one of the most prominent public intellectuals of his generation. While reading Ehrlich today, know that he has intellectual descendants in the form of degrowthers and other environmental extremists, along with anti-capitalists who don’t understand the basis of prosperity and prioritize redistributing wealth over all else.

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@kirk3gaard @nanopore This was made possible by devider that can classify mapped reads into endless variants differing by only one SNP
https://t.co/7mAZMhxMed

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@kirk3gaard @nanopore Yes, high quality ASVs (10-20 reads per variant is enough) can be produced from complex mixtures with ONT and regardless of amplicon length. Have been doing that for a year or so already. Minovar:
https://t.co/JbtUW9EnOW

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@JamesAl0410008 Homo habilis and H. erectus were probably interbreeding, if they can be separated taxonomically at all

[Maurice Cousins @MDC12345678]

I was working on shale gas in the mid 2010s. I started in late 2013.

By March 2014 Putin had annexed Crimea with his “little green men”. That should have been the strategic jolt.

Around the same time NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that Russia was actively backing efforts to undermine European shale development in order to preserve its leverage over gas markets. He was ignored.

Instead of recognising what Crimea signalled about power, vulnerability and the weaponisation of energy, our complacent governing class dragged its heels and doubled down on Milibandism.

Every bogus argument advanced by green activists and outright malevolents about shale was indulged. The sector’s liberating potential was waved away. We were told it would take too long to matter. We were told we imported very little gas directly from Russia.

Its reputation was systematically trashed. Claims were made that it would cause cancer and wipe out local house prices.

For many of its opponents, their delusional and idealistic ends entirely justified whatever underhand means were required.

Then came 2022. A full scale invasion of Ukraine. An energy price shock. Britain left exposed to European gas markets and reliant on LNG.

In 2025 the OBR was clear. Covid, the global financial crisis and the Ukraine shock have left the country with minimal fiscal headroom for the next crisis.

When @trussliz argued in 2022 that we needed to lift the shale ban and address the root causes of our vulnerability, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and a tranche of cowardly backbench Conservatives lined up to block it. As with opponents of new nuclear in the 2000s, some said it was not worth doing because it would take two to four years to scale. As if long term resilience were a reason for paralysis. Her critics owe her an apology.

Four years on we are staring at another perilous moment. The structural exposure has not diminished. It has deepened.

On an industrial level we are weaker than before Ukraine. We no longer produce ammonia - which is needed for fertiliser and explosives. Steelmaking is on the brink. The petrochemical sector is on the cliff edge. These industries sit at the base of the economic and defence pyramid. Once they go, they are extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.

Yet ideological MPs still insist that increasing domestic gas supply, onshore and offshore, would not enhance national security. It is perverse reasoning. Ideology is being placed above the national interest.

The irony is stark. The same drilling and subsurface technologies are quietly deployed in Cornwall for geothermal projects with little objection!

But these same MPs will be the first to feign surprise when our domestic politics grows more extreme and more caustic as living standards are hit again. Social division will widen. Public morale will erode at precisely the moment when cohesion is most needed.

We urgently need to reindustrialise and rearm. That demands abundant, reliable domestic energy. To run down the fossil fuel sector in a hardening world - when we have not decarbonised warfare - is the modern equivalent of advocating disarmament after Manchuria in 1931, Abyssinia in 1935, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 and the Sudeten crisis in 1938.

Our heavy industries cannot withstand another supply side shock. By narrowing our own energy base, we create the conditions in which adversaries can exploit our weakness.

My message to all patriotic and decent Labour MPs, trade unionists and activists, and there are many of them, is simple.

Moments like this test seriousness. They test whether party loyalty comes before country.

If you believe in the national interest, then say so. Stand up for energy realism. Stand up for domestic industrial strength. Stand up for credible deterrence.

History is unforgiving of those who see the danger but shrink from its implications.

[Willis Eschenbach @WEschenbach]

@elonmusk On the left is what Elon wants you to think is happening.

On the right is what is happening.

Yellow line is the same data in both graphs.

Elon needs a "Conflict of Interest" statement attached when he posts about this subject.

w.

[Marko Prous @mprous1]

@symPiotr @NatureComms fair enough, although I would not include age in the definition

[Matt Ridley @mattwridley]

Nonsense. The scientific evidence of current benefit from global greening is stronger than the scientific evidence of future harm from global warming.

Calling carbon dioxide a danger to public health is mad – it is an odourless, invisible, non-toxic plant food produced by human lungs at far higher concentrations than found in normal air.

If it’s a danger, then so is dihydrogen monoxide, which regularly kills people.

The only scientific justification for the endangerment finding was that a child in Chad, say, might die of heat stroke in 50 years’ time as a result of carbon dioxide-induced global warming.

But it's more likely that the same child might NOT die of starvation TODAY as a result of carbon dioxide-induced global greening – an effect that has increased crop yields and goat fodder by roughly 15-20 per cent in 40 years.