Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)

@allostericsite

Dad, Mol. Biologist, reader, music listener, etc...Skeeting about STEM, SciComm, science nonprofits, & also parenting, food, fitness, travel, being a grumpy GenXer. Aspiring to be an ally to anyone who needs allies, here and IRL.

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Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· 8d

The most important skill I will teach Claude today.

Screen shot of a Claude "saved skill" that says: "Got it--Oxford comma from here on. I saved it as a standing skill, so it'll automatically apply whenever I create or edit any document, deck, spreadsheet, or other written content for you going forward, not just for the rest of this conversation.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· 14d

Enjoying seeing some familiar faces while representing @addgene.bsky.social at the 2026 United States Culture Collection Network! #USCCN

Me standing next to a banner that reads: UNITED STATES
CULTURE
COLLECTION
NETWORK
A Central
RESOURCE
For Microbial Culture Collections and their
Users
ion Network O
addgene

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· 26d

Whether Argentina wins or not, at least Messi got a LEGO kit out of it.

A LEGO kit for assembling a large Lionel Messi

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· 27d

The most entertaining urinal I’ve ever used. GOOOOAAAAL!!!!

A urinal with a green mat, a small white soccer goal, and a little plastic soccer ball you can pee in to score a goal.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jul 13

This year’s sand sculpture in Sankt Peter-Ording. Real crab on top for scale.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jun 28

Yesterday, a group of fellow middle-aged friends (aka The Dad Bod Squad) and I finished a Spartan Super 10K. I ended up running well over 10K due to a few penalty loops for obstacles I couldn't quite finish. This is how my mid-life crisis is manifesting, and I'm okay with that😅

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jun 24

You may have to zoom in a bit to see it, but on my morning walk to work I discovered a scenario that perfectly embodies a pessimist’s view on life.

Photo of a street with two signs on each sidewalk. The sign on the left sidewalk reads “Sidewalk closed, use other side” with an arrow pointing across the street. The sign on the sidewalk across the street simply reads “Sidewalk closed”.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jun 22

NPR headline: Trump claims vandals damaged DC Reflecting Pool, and says it will be drained again/we’re all trying to find the guy who did this meme

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· May 7

Who can guess what science concept I was trying to convey to my daughter with this hastily drawn sketch?

A hand drawing of a circle with some lines in the perimeter with a column of rectangles curving towards it, with some circles at the top of the column.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· May 6

All of my work notebooks for the last several years have been science-themed (from Cognitive Surplus), but only this one has caused a kerfuffle with a few arachnophobic colleagues 😬.

Cover a notebook that says “The Biology of Spiders”, featuring several photorealistic images of different spider species.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Apr 28

Read the intro to @chanda.blacksky.app’s new book while waiting for her to speak at Harvard last night, and these two paragraphs alone should convince you that this is a book you need to read.

Cover of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s book The Edge of Space-Time

Excerpt from intro:

When it's at its best, physics is a kind of poetry, a story about the cosmos that is made from metaphors-and a producer of metaphors in its own right. I believe that seeing the universe through the perspective offered by physics strengthens our ability to understand what work metaphors are doing on us and how we might wield them. It is in this sense that physics works on us like poetry: a way of understanding the world that provides insights not available to us elsewhere.
This helps us see why we should bother with it. We should bother with physics because it is, in part, how we as a species learn to use our minds. We should learn and teach poetry, physics, algebra, and other abstract ideas because they train us to think in symbolic and figurative terms. The same goes for calculus and quantum mechan-ics. And if we cannot learn to think in and through the abstract and the symbolic, then we are pliable. We are sitting ducks for the fascists and authoritarians who will use us for their ends, and their ends are ultimately catastrophe for the rest of us. That's always been true, and it always will be.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Apr 25

My 13yo is currently at a Model UN summit at the actual UN in NYC with other 6th-8th graders and these are the subtopics for discussion in one session 😲. If she understands what all (or any?) of these things mean, she is way more politically savvy than I am.

Piece of paper taped to a board with the following hand written on it:

SUBTOPICS:
Technological Unemployment and Labor Disruption.
3 Bridging the Digital Divide for SME Inclusivity.
3 Blockchain and FinTech for Trade Financing.
4 Cybersecurity, Data Sovercignty, and Geopolitical Tensions.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Mar 17

This piece by David William Silva sums up a lot of my thoughts about AI much better than I ever could have. substack.com/home/post/p-... This section in particular articulates my biggest fear when people tell me they used AI for "creative thinking". It's not brainstorming. It's pattern recognition.

The Brainstorming Test
I have used AI many times as a brainstorming mechanism, a sounding board for early-stage ideas.

And here is what I’ve found: every time I had an idea that was genuinely outside the box, AI discouraged me from pursuing it. When I persisted, it didn’t just push back, it practically begged me to stop. To not continue. To not insist.

Think about what that means. The tool that everyone tells you is “creative” and “revolutionary” is architecturally incapable of doing anything other than averaging what already exists. It is a statistical summary of the past masquerading as a window into the future.

When it tells you your unconventional idea is bad, it’s not evaluating your idea. It’s telling you that your idea doesn’t resemble the data it was trained on.

That’s not intelligence. That’s pattern-matching with a confidence problem.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Mar 6

I left my lunch bag in the lunch room and a co-worker brought it to me, saying “I figured you were the only person here who wouldn’t be too embarrassed to bring this to work.” Hell yeah—I’m hungry like the wolf.

A pink and blue hued lunch bag featuring two howling wolves on a star field

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Feb 16

My sister dropped a bunch of stickers in my Xmas stocking and I confess I had not looked at all of them very closely until now. Anyway, my sister is the best😂

A sparkly sticker with roses that says “Thou may ingest a satchel of richards”

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Feb 14

I can’t stop thinking about this paragraph from Kaveh Akbar’s “Martyr!”, and saddened by the fact that the government can’t even get the “don’t be shitty” part right.

WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE DIFFICULTIES OF SCULPTURE, MICHELAN-gelo said, "It is easy. You just chip away all the stone that isn't David." It's simple to cut things out of a life. You break up with a shitty partner, quit eating bread, delete the Twitter app. You cut it out, and the shape of what's actually killing you clarifies a little. The whole Abrahamic world invests itself in this promise: Don't lie, don't cheat, don't fuck or steal or kill, and you'll be a good person.
Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not.
But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That's the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing. That belief corrupts everything, has everyone with any power sitting on their hands. A rich man goes a whole day without killing a single homeless person and so goes to sleep content in his goodness. In another world, he's buying crates of socks and Clif bars and tents, distributing them in city centers. But for him, abstinence reigns.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Feb 11

My sister works in HVAC and just sent me this text. I’d be a big proponent of any and all public buildings having a Wiggle Room. Or, for the oldsters like me, a Nap Room.

Screen shot of a text that reads “A library we're working on has a little room off the children's section called "Wiggle Room". I presume for the nuggets who can't sit still through story time.” Followed by a blue print of a library with the designated Wiggle Room.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jan 30

Behold the half ass sidewalk clearing I experienced today in Watertown, MA. It was a very tight squeeze, and I’m not a big dude. Do better New Englanders.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jan 21

My daughter is only 16, but she already possesses a lifetime supply of lip balm (this pic just shows the top of layer of three).

A plastic drawer filled with 40-50 lip balm tubes f various colors and flavors.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jan 9

Could I give a talk about CRISPR benefits and risks? Sure. Could I give such a talk in *German* like my 16yo tomorrow? Absolutely not.

Poster with the title “Genmanipulation mit CRISPR: Weltrevolution oder unabsehbares Risiko“

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Jan 8

Though I have very mixed feelings about AI images, my co-worker's very rapid rendering of my Slack rant this morning is frighteningly accurate.

An AI comic book-style rendering of my Slack message this morning of my looking at at an Apple laptop and saying "OMG, that OS update erased all my Chrome windows and hundreds of tabs AND the history, so I can't restore them! I had a system...I HAD A SYSTEM!"

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Dec 17

Well at least I’ve got this going for me.

NYY puzzle wrap saying I am in the top 1% of Connections players

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Nov 28

My Thanksgiving to-do list vs. my friend’s. Outcome was the same—we both fed a bunch of people. But whoo-doggy did we use different tactics (and, okay, his probably tasted better)😆

A messy hand written list of Thanksgiving staples

A detailed spreadsheet breaking down Thanksgiving meal prep into 5-10 minute increments.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Nov 24

My wife, in Germany for a landmark birthday, has never used emojis in her text messages before. I guess she just needed the right occasion 😏

A text exchange with the words “Thanks! I hope you’re enjoying your last day of being in your forties!”

Followed by nothing but a crying face emoji.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Nov 23

Five pounds of butter is probably enough for Thanksgiving, right?🧈🧈🧈🧈🧈

Several packages of butter in a freezer door

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Nov 12

Just a few days in to our building’s food drive. I’m sorry for the necessity, but grateful for the generosity of my colleagues.

A food drive poster next to shelves full of non-perishable foods.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Oct 28

I wasn’t sure what to draw for today’s #inktober2025 prompt, “Skeletal”. Then I saw how long last night’s World Series game lasted and the answer was obvious.

A crude pen rendering of a Dodgers fan and Blue Jays fan as skeletons.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Oct 25

I picked up racing bibs for another family who will have to miss the 5K tomorrow, and one of the daughters is missing out on being the most popular runner there. IFYKYK

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Oct 23

Just letting the AI know I don't need it for a dopamine release, thanks.

Screenshot of AI exchange:
In the future, you do. not need to preface responses with statements like "You're absolutely right". I don't need that kind of validation from AI.

Response: Understood. I'll skip those kinds of prefatory statements.

Eric J. Perkins, PhD (he/him)@allostericsite· Oct 16

So glad my son is eating responsibly in college🤨