I’ve had this website for almost 5 years. In that time, it’s been pretty bare-bones, primarily serving as a landing page for me to share my general scientific interests with the world. I built a blog feature, but I’ve never used it other than to create a “Hello, World!” post.

Once upon a time, I relied on Twitter (quite a lot) to communicate with the outside world, particularly to talk about science and academia with friends and colleagues, but also to share my worldview. I used to really enjoy this mode of communication, especially once Covid hit, because it made it easy to keep in touch with folks near and far. As an added bonus, I could connect with people who have similar interests or worldviews that I wouldn’t meet otherwise.

I used to like how Twitter provided a low barrier to join an ongoing conversation with other likeminded people I know (or “know”). Eventually, I realized it was too overwhelming and I needed to take a step back. People were talking about things I care about, but it felt like everyone was talking at the same time and it was hard to keep up. On top of that, if I did join the conversation, I didn’t know how–or when–people would respond. It’s as if you walked into an episode of The Bear–everyone, yourself included, is talking over everyone else and eventually it becomes chaos.

I like to talk about science–especially gene regulation, genomics, developmental biology, machine learning, and data visualization–and my philosophy on what doing academic science looks like. I like to be thoughtful and intentional in what I say, but social media incentivizes engagement, which makes it hard to walk away and wait a while to gather your thoughts. Furthermore, short character limits make it hard to convey nuance and careful thought. What started as a step back from Twitter turned into quitting it entirely.

As I spent time away from science Twitter, I realized that these thoughts weren’t limited to social media. I think that short-form digital communication, including texting and Slack, suffer from some of the same issues, albeit to a lesser extent–they are good forums to send quick messages and get answers to easy questions, but they aren’t good methods to have a thoughtful conversation with somebody. For that to happen, I need to be face-to-face with someone, or at least have a call with them, in order to develop my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I find plenty of value in journaling and independent thought, but I’m of the belief that it takes two to think.

I think of science as a creative process for exploring and making sense of the unknown. That means bouncing ideas off people. Since I stopped doing that over the Internet, I have found in-person conversations and brainstorming sessions to be even more valuable and rewarding.

However, I miss having an easy venue to summarize and disseminate my thinking with friends and colleagues. It’s nice to write up your thoughts from time to time and put it out there for others to see. Of course, we have publications for that, but it’s also nice to write more informally to share your thoughts with friends, coworkers, and future colleagues.

For that reason, I’ve decided to try blogging on here! I don’t really know how often I’ll blog or exactly what I’ll cover, but expect me to write about science, coding hacks, and a career in academia. I might also write about my music interests, books that I read, or other random interests of mine.

You might be asking: What about Bluesky or Substack? The short answer is that I’m just doing this for me to collect and summarize my thoughts. If my friends and colleagues read it, that’s great, but if not, I still got value of writing things up for an outward-facing audience! I’ve been meaning to give Bluesky a second chance and curate my feeds more closely, but the kind of writing I’m interested in isn’t the most amenable to Bluesky, and I don’t want to send a subscription-based newsletter. I’ll use Bluesky to inform my network when I have a new post, but beyond that, I’m not sure if or how I will use it. For now, you can find the thoughts I want to share with the rest of the world right here on my blog!