Postdoc @HHMIJanelia by way of @WelsherLab | Leading Edge Fellow 💪 | Microscopist 🥼| Weekday Warrior 🥋 | Openly Autistic | Memes and Motivation 🥇|

Joined April 2009
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Great things are going to happen here. It all starts with The Empty Table #microscopy @HHMIJanelia
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
When Walmart never went back to 24 hours nation wide after Covid I knew that was the end of America.
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
May 10
i can't believe a year ago we were still copy-pasting prompts inside chatgpt
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Adopting Claude speak in my regular life, episode 1: Partner: Did you do the dishes tonight? Me: Yes they're done. Partner: Why are they still dirty? Me: You're right to push back. I didn't actually do them.
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Ever notice… Not one aerospace engineer, orbital mechanic, rocket propulsion specialist, avionics technician, mission controller, flight dynamics officer, structural engineer, materials scientist, thermal systems engineer, optical physicist, radio frequency engineer, radar operator, satellite tracking analyst, astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, geologist, planetologist, atmospheric scientist, meteorologist, oceanographer, biologist, medical doctor, flight surgeon, military pilot, test pilot, naval officer, intelligence analyst, CIA operative, NSA signals analyst, Pentagon official, defense contractor, weapons inspector, UN observer, foreign government, rival space agency, Roscosmos engineer, ESA mission planner, JAXA scientist, CNSA analyst, ISRO researcher, science journalist, investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, professional photographer, photogrammetry expert, digital forensics analyst, CGI artist, VFX supervisor, Hollywood special effects technician, AI researcher, computer vision scientist, image authentication specialist, metadata analyst, cryptographer, academic peer reviewer, university professor, Nobel laureate, or government oversight committee - anywhere around the globe, in any country, speaking any language - has identified a single frame of Artemis II as fake. But TruthSeekr666 and NasaLies420 has spotted it all. Every photo. Every video. Obvious CGI. Total AI slop. Weird how that works.
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This literally feels like Team Rocket reciting their motto before they try some bullshit to kidnap Pikachu 😤
Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. 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. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
No this is not a joke…Retro Weather Channel is officially back! 🎶 Head to weather.com/retro enjoy RetroCast Now for your forecasts in the way you know and love. 💙🎷☀️
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Wilddddd
If you, like me, just woke up, let me catch you up on the Claude Code Leak (I know nothing, all conjecture): > Someone inside Anthropic, got switched to Adaptive reasoning mode > Their Claude Code switched to Sonnet > Committed the .map file of Claude Code > Effectively leaking the ENTIRE CC Source Code > @realsigridjin was tired after running 2 south korean hackathons in SF, saw the leak > Rules in Korea are different, he cloned the repo, went to sleep > Wakes up to 25K stars, and his GF begging him to take it down (she's a copyright lawyer) > Their team decided - how about we have agents rewrite this in Python!? Surely... this is more legal > Rewrite in Py > Board a plane to SK🇰🇷 > One of the guys decides python is slow, is now rewriting ALL OF CLAUDE CODE into Rust. > Anthropic cannot take down, cannot sue > Is this "fair use?" > TL;DR - we're about to have open source Claude Code in Rust
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
If you, like me, just woke up, let me catch you up on the Claude Code Leak (I know nothing, all conjecture): > Someone inside Anthropic, got switched to Adaptive reasoning mode > Their Claude Code switched to Sonnet > Committed the .map file of Claude Code > Effectively leaking the ENTIRE CC Source Code > @realsigridjin was tired after running 2 south korean hackathons in SF, saw the leak > Rules in Korea are different, he cloned the repo, went to sleep > Wakes up to 25K stars, and his GF begging him to take it down (she's a copyright lawyer) > Their team decided - how about we have agents rewrite this in Python!? Surely... this is more legal > Rewrite in Py > Board a plane to SK🇰🇷 > One of the guys decides python is slow, is now rewriting ALL OF CLAUDE CODE into Rust. > Anthropic cannot take down, cannot sue > Is this "fair use?" > TL;DR - we're about to have open source Claude Code in Rust
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Thanks for the free 7-day trial of 2026 I’d like to unsubscribe from whatever the hell this is
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
One of the quiet privileges of academia: you spend your days surrounded by some of the brightest people on the planet — all trying to understand something deeply. Not to sell it, not to exploit it, just to understand. That changes you.
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I am so sick of reading these longform AI engagement bait posts with em-dashes and “It’s not a X, it’s Y”. Once I saw it I couldn’t unsee it. The dead internet theory is alive and well.
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Calcium imaging throughout entire fish bodies (including liver, pancreas, and kidneys😋) biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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Literally me IRL 😂
She's got a PhD in kicking butt. ✊💥 Check out the full breakdown of Harlowe's gravity-defying Augments and Action Skills on her Official Character Page. 2kgam.es/3JuplS4
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Hyperspectral Fluorescence Imaging with a New Polarity-Ultrasensitive Fluorescent Probe. advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley…

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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Collaborating with Prof. Kai Huang, we integrated large-scale computer simulation, scaling theory, and real-time single-particle tracking microscopy to unveil a universal memory effect in the binding dynamics of liquid molecules. nature.com/articles/s41467-0…
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I genuinely believe in 10-20 years the average person will have a daily training routine for their mind the way that the outsourcing of physical labor has necessitated everyone going to the gym. When we outsource our thinking the “muscle” that is our brain will also atrophy.
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
9 Jul 2025
Humans didn’t climb to the top of the food chain to eat salads
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
27 Jun 2025
Interesting point from Claude. The quality of your AI outputs will be determined by how well you can articulate your thoughts and ideas, and in essence determine the quality of your life. As the years go on Creativity and Articulation will be the new currency, and those who do not continuously develop these skills will be left behind. Do not believe the bullshit that AI will do all our thinking for us. Use AI to elevate your thinking, so you can articulate the outputs you want in a far greater manner.
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
Microsoft answers be like: "Hi, I'm a level 420 technician with 69 years of experience . Have you ran 'sfc /scannow' ?" redd.it/1jlgsco
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Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. "Dr. CJ" retweeted
📢 #AI & #CellularPhysiology researchers 👉 join us March 30-April 1 for a free livestream of our conference examining the intersection of these fields. Topics include AI-driven insights into genomes, overcoming dataset challenges & more. 🔗Register: janelia.news/register
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