Larry Hunter

@proflhunter.bsky.social

5430 Followers 4339 Following

Knowledge based biomedical data science, artificial intelligence for discovery in molecular biomedicine, computational bioethics, theory of mattering. University of Chicago / Big Island HI

Red tomato-covered tofu in a white bowl and noodles topped with green cilantro in a yellow bowl.
20+ ISCB members in front of the Capitol building before giving a briefing on how informatics advances health and life sciences.
Your comment was submitted successfully! Comment Tracking Number: mri-13tc-42rp Your comment has been sent for review. This process is dependent on agency public submission policies/procedures and processing times. Once the agency has posted your comment, you may view it on Regulations.gov using your Comment Tracking Number. Agency: OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET (OMB) Document Type: Proposed Rule Title: Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance Document ID: OMB-2026-0034-0001 Comment: I am submitting this comment in strong opposition to the proposed revisions to 2 CFR Part 200 (Docket OMB-2026-0034). The below is a brief summary, my full comment is attached as a PDF document. The core of the proposed change is a rebellion against the long-standing government policy of deferring to experts in grant-making decisions. Instead, the proposed rule substitutes total executive authority in making all federal grants. It is so bizarre and nonsensical that it is impossible to believe the proposed rule came from a body of experts. The entire purpose of the proposed rules is to subvert expertise, and replace it with political judgment. It’s perhaps too much to call it judgment – it replaces judgment with turning the entire federal government into a way to reward political friends and punish political enemies without any regard for expertise. There is no rational basis for the proposed massive change to the way the government disperses grant funding, and that change represents a clear error in judgment. Furthermore, This proposed change does nothing but silence and intimidate independent expertise and facilitate executive corruption. I have substantial expertise in science and its government funding, that comes from decades of experience as a federal scientist, a federally funded academic researcher, and as a participant in various aspects of the federal grant-making process. I focus my comments in the attached document on scientific grant-making, but they also apply to th…
Bar chart showing electric consumption over the last two years. Tripled in July ’25 (and declined a bit since then).
Excitement How exciting is this paper for you? Excitement is subjective, and does not necessarily follow what is popular in the field. We may perceive papers as transformational/innovative/surprising, e.g. because they present conceptual breakthroughs or evidence challenging common assumptions/methods/datasets/metrics. We may be excited about the possible impact of the paper on some community (not necessarily large or our own), e.g. lowering barriers, reducing costs, enabling new applications. We may be excited for papers that are relevant, inspiring, or useful for our own research. These factors may combine in different ways for different reviewers. 5 = Highly Exciting: I would recommend this paper to others and/or attend its presentation in a conference. 4.5 4 = Exciting: I would mention this paper to others and/or make an effort to attend its presentation in a conference. 3.5 3 = Interesting: I might mention some points of this paper to others and/or attend its presentation in a conference if there’s time. 2.5 2 = Potentially Interesting: this paper does not resonate with me, but it might with others in the *ACL community. 1.5 1 = Not Exciting: this paper does not resonate with me, and I don’t think it would with others in the *ACL community (e.g. it is in no way related to computational processing of language).
The University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division - TO: BSD Faculty FROM: Bess Wildman, Vice Dean of Academic Administration and Finance SUBJECT: Action Requested: Disclosure of Foreign Gifts and Contracts to Federal Agencies ACTION REQUESTED: We are requesting disclosure of any gifts received from (and any contracts entered into with) foreign sources by BSD faculty during the period January 1st through June 30, 2026.
YOU ARE... The Org Chart Survivor patron saint: Ethan Mollick Your company made you 'AI Lead' on top of your actual job. You use it, it helps sometimes, and you've stopped trying to explain to leadership what it can and can't do. You run little experiments and post the results. Just try things, you keep saying. Just try things. Impact: +1.8 • Valence: -0.3
BLVR: What about ideas about replication and transmission? Could they tend towards the reductionism that I’ve seen you argue against in your work, sort of like Dawkins’s selfish gene? That we can explain everything with just a look towards what happens in DNA, without the context in which it happens, or the environment in which it is situated? MG: That depends on your general attitude. It doesn’t depend on the double helix, though. Well, of course, Crick was a very extreme reductionist, yes. He gave a talk in Washington, I don’t remember when, and he was nothing but reductionist about genes. It was awful. But you can discover the structure of anything, and it doesn’t take it out of its context. BLVR: It seems to fit with the “knowledge is orientation” slogan in the sense that you are always situating yourself, trying to find your way from some place. Maybe I should ask about those popular ideas, like Richard Dawkins’s and The Selfish Gene. MG: Oh [laughing], that’s just a gimmick. I don’t take it seriously, though. BLVR: Seems to be widely known, though. What is the gimmick? MG: Well, it’s not important with anybody who’s serious. The gimmick is just that everything is genes, and genes are trying to perpetuate themselves and we’re just sort of by-products of that. It’s total reductionism, like we’ve been saying.
A yellow bowl of bright green beans and white chucks of potato in a creamy-looking sauce.
Golden crust flecked with white Parmesan, filling of broccoli, roasted red peppers and black olives. Dish of red sauce on the side
Green cabbage leaves topped with tomatoes, cucumbers, peanuts, fried yellow split peas, garlic chips, fried shallots, and sesame seeds, all topped with a mound of dark green fermented tea leaves
Fork on a white napkin. A yellow bowl with two dishes, topped with colorful tarka. A plate with two rounds naan
Water aggressively absorbs reds, slowly absorbs greens, and barely absorbs blues at all. This pattern pushes nearly any spectrum with blue and green in it out of the sRGB gamut almost immediately. When you look at sand in the shallow water near the coast, it traces a curve through colorspace as the depth of the water changes. The light from the sun is filtered once as it passes through the water on the way down, bounces off the sand, and filtered again as it comes back up to your eye. White or yellow sand will first shift to unrepresentable cyans, then to unrepresentable blues, and then finally converges close to the sRGB blue primary again once the water is very deep and dark.
Adorno once wrote about the seeming futility of writing poetry after Auschwitz. Not to come off as twee, but we might call today’s version of the same idea the futility of the MFA novel after Gaza. Not because the making of the art (or the criticism) is pointless, but that there is, fundamentally, prior to art, an obligation to sit with the horrors of the world—maybe not to directly translate them into art, but to understand that this violence is the framework of the society in which we live and work. As for what to do about it, the most optimistic maxim may come from Jean-Luc Godard, who once said that he did not wish to make political films, but to make films politically. Art made in a new and broader context, made through changes in the relationship of labor and capital via the union or the strike, through forging new and more equitable institutions, through resisting platformization and enshittification in pursuit of something better, through involvement in our communities and the broader milieu, through the principled rejection of anti-human technologies even if that comes at great social and economic costs—these are just a few examples of the way we, as artists and critics, can combat not only fascist aesthetics, but maybe even fascism itself.
In some ways this all suggests a more mature response from the cybercrime ecosystem than we see in industry (possibly because of the lack of a CEO and venture capital class). Many of the broader economiceffectsreflectpatternsalsoobservedinlegitimatecontent and tech economies – for saturation of overproduced low-quality content in particular. Therefore, we conclude that generative AI toolsarehavingdisruptiveeffectsoncybercrime, butmostlytothe economics and political economy of major platform infrastructure and the licit and illicit businesses that cluster around it, rather than to cybercrime directly. Finally, we note that in recent months anxiety over labour market disruption from these tools is increasing precipitously. This may end up being the most important way in which generative AI tools disrupt the cybercrime ecosystem – mass layoffs, economic downturn and a cool job market pushing legitimate, more skilled developers into the underground communities of get rich quick schemes, fraud, and cybercrime.
Black lava rock in the foreground, a bit of Kiawe, a turquoise lagoon, with the blue Pacific in the background, under a bright sky with a few small clouds.
Planets at sunset
Yellow plate with green beans with almonds and Serrano on one side, spinach and chick peas on the other
University of Chicago Biological Sciences Division Did you know...? The federal government is currently accepting comments on proposed changes to the Office of Management and Budget’s Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance — guidance that controls the universal legal framework governing all grants across the federal government, not just for research, but also for civil infrastructure such as medicaid, education, and disaster recovery. Each comment becomes a matter of record that must be considered; the most impactful responses are personalized, with unique language describing how a specific section(s) of the rules would impact your research program personally. If you need some help to get started, you can read more about talking points for scientists and any concerned person, review the instructions about connecting your comments to specific sections of the regulations, or explore others’ comments. To submit your response, anonymously or attributed, click the “comment” tab for Docket OMB-2026-0034 in regulations.gov. Comments are due by 11:59PM EDT on July 13, 2026.
Ingredients: Chickpea Flour, Rice Flour, Sunflower Oil, Yellow Pea Flour, Maltodextrin, Salt, Onion Powder, Cane Sugar, Citric Acid, Garlic Powder, Yeast Extract, Fruit and Vegetable Juice, Natural Flavors, Paprika Extract, Rosemary Extract Nutrition: 1 serving per bag | Serving size 21g Calories 100, Total Fat 4.5g, Saturated Fat 0g, Trans Fat 0g, Cholesterol Omg, Sodium 200mg, Total Carbohydrate 13g, Dietary Fiber 2g, Total Sugars <1g Incl. <1g Added Sugars, Protein 3g, Vitamin D Omcg, Calcium 10mg, Iron 0mg, Potassium 100mg
Bowl of ramen noodles topped with green beans, garnished with cilantro, sesame seeds, and Wu River preserved mustard shreds.
A large multicolored bowl of vegetables topped with yogurt flecked with green cilantro. Lentils topped with tarka of green onions, garlic, turmeric, cumin and mustard seed. Flatbreads with a sheen of golden butter
Graphs showing decline of coral cover and changes in dominant coral types
Somewhat fuzzy picture of my son at age 3.
A large bird walking in grass. It has brown stripes, and a black face and bill.
Dickies Live in Kona! poster
Ram giving side-eye
ChatGPT Shop Smarter with ChatGPT Instead of scrolling through pages of results, simply describe what you want. Start Shopping <button text>
Motivation is a ubiquitous, yet still mysterious phenomenon. Its dictionary definition, “the (conscious or unconscious) stimulus for action towards a desired goal” is often operationalized in psychology and neuroscience as the willingness to expend energy for an anticipated future return. All living things demonstrate motivated behavior. There are disagreements about whether artificial intelligence systems, thermostats, or other inanimate objects might also be said to be motivated, so the boundary between what is and isn’t a motivated system remains fuzzy. Even more troubling for scientific accounts is the uncertainty about how motivated action could be compatible with physics.
Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
Sunset with a few clouds behind palm trees. A crescent moon and Venus shine above
Rectangular slice of thick pizza on a cutting board. Thin sliced potatoes on top with bits of parsley. A little pick soppressata peaking out
A view from the Pu'u Wa'awa'a trail. Sheep graze on the green grass in the foreground, with the Kohala mountains and dramatic clouds in the background.
Borgata Marshmallow Liquer
Yellow bowl with golden-crusted scalloped potatoes, slightly charred broccoli, and rounds of parsnip. Nicely browned focaccia with artichoke hearts and black olives on a wooden cutting board in the background.
Pignolati in the style of Libby’s 1 egg white 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/4 tsp almond extract 1/2 c sugar 1 c almond flour 8 oz pine nuts Preheat oven to 350, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Froth the egg white with a whisk. Add the extracts and froth again. Add the sugar and stirrer until there are not lumps. Add the almond flour and combine until all the flour is moist and it coheres in a ball. Divide into 8 portions. With wet hands, shape each portion into a ball and place on parchment. With a tablespoon divide each ball in half, making crescent shapes. Roll each cookie in pine nuts to coat and return to baking sheet, reshaping as necessary. Bake for 15 minutes, let cool for 10 minutes before removing from parchment.
Bowl of salad with greens flecked with gold and red, bowl of bright yellow noodles with a slice of lime. Bottle of fish sauce and dried red chiles in the background
Salad in a yellow bowl, with green cilantro leaves, celery, rhubarb, radishes and feta cheese.
A 1982 Apollo DN100 workstation. A large vertically oriented monitor and a keyboard on top of a mini-fridge sized white box, with a black control panel.
Green over red lentils, chickpeas with red cherry tomatoes and chilled, eggplant. In a yellow bowl, with a glass of grapefruit juice and fizzy water, and a plate of brown spotted naan
Golden crust over green broccoli, roasted red peppers, black olives and white cheese. Next to it on a cutting board is a white bowl filled with bright red marinara
Us3’s “Hand on the Torch” album cover.
A white bowl. To one side, green and white bok chopy, flecked with chili oil and sesame seeds. Brown finely diced mushrooms and crumbled tofu, topped with green cilantro leaves and scallions. Noodles peak out here and there. A small pile of yellow sauerkraut at the bottom
Dr. Palmer said he and Mr. Kennedy met in September 2024, when Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, hosted a round-table discussion on nutrition. He was invited at the suggestion of Dr. Casey Means, Mr. Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, and her brother, Calley Means, a top adviser to Mr. Kennedy, who also attended.
PaperBanana This is the repository for PaperBanana. Our code and dataset will be released in ~2 weeks.
Green cactus growing up a wall, with pink fruit.
Red and green long tubes of filled baked dough topped with white feta cheese and bits of mint leaf
180 degree rainbow
If you say, "what does a Chinese flying car look like," that sounds corny and goofy. If you ask "what does a Xiaomi-Huawei pilotless taxi-drone look like when it's a new-energy-vehicle," then the Saudi investors would fret about that. "Room temperature superconductors" are also an old idea, but if ten thousand Chinese lab engineers ground-it-out force-of-numbers style, and some Chinese heavy-industry managed to mass-build those, the world would be set on its ear. Of course the world would still be stricken with the ongoing climate crisis, but everybody would kowtow to them because it would transform the grid worldwide. The Xi Jinping "Chinese Dream" is about the kowtows. It's about historically overcoming the "century of humiliation" and having the world bow the knee in awed respect of a rejuvenated hegemonic techno-superpower. I get it why that would be a Chinese ethnonationalist aspiration, but if everybody else is auto-humiliating themselves by comparison, that makes them look even more impressive. I'm not all that "impressed" by them, but I'm sure I'll be paying more attention to them. If they're setting the pace, it behooves you to look.
A milky circle of cheese, surrounded by curly pasta in a dark sauce, topped with green leaves and flakes of cheese, in a yellow bowl on a brown table.
From the human genome project to the realization of genomic medicine: highlights from a 35 year journey
Dear Dr. Lawrence E Hunter, I am Rosy White, an Editorial assistant from a U.K based publishing company contacting you with the reference from our editorial department. Based on your outstanding contribution to the scientific community, we would like to write a book for you. Researchers like you are adding so much value to the scientific community, yet you are not getting enough exposure. No matter how many papers you publish in famous journals, you will still be unknown to common people. To solve this problem, we came up with this unique solution. With our book writing service, we will write your research contributions in common man’s language. We will also include all your published papers into this book in a way that a common man can understand it. And then, we will publish your book with our publishing group. Before publication, we will send the draft to you for scientific accuracy, once you approve our draft, we then proceed for publication. You will get all the rights of your book, and all the sales generated from your book will be credited to you. Your book will then be listed on famous websites like Amazon, eBay, Good Reads, and many other popular book websites. As a result, you will get good credit and people will recognize your hard work and your scientific contributions. Last but not least, after the publication of your book, it will be published in Google News, Yahoo, and other major news channels. What more can you ask for? All we need is your book writing contract, and you will get all the rights for your book. I will be waiting to hear from you. Best Regards Rosy White.
Golden fried tortillas enveloping brown refried beans, yellow cheese, thin sliced cabbage, avocado, pico de gallo
Golden brown flowers of phyllo with bits of green spinach pointing through, in a steel skillet
Purple sweet potatoes, orange pumpkin, topped with white yogurt sauce, in a yellow bowl