Laura Hug's Avatar

Laura Hug

@lhug

Environmental microbiologist and CRC at UWaterloo. Tangent-prone story teller and compulsive frisbee chaser. Views are my own.

1,228
Followers
283
Following
104
Posts
14.06.2023
Joined
Posts Following

Latest posts by Laura Hug @lhug

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

03.03.2026 12:10 👍 9497 🔁 4129 💬 77 📌 165

Never noticed before that the enchantress eternally cursed an entire castle of people because a 14 year old boy was rude to her. #BeautyAndTheBeast #WhatWasSheExpecting

16.02.2026 22:05 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

I tried to take a photo of a grasshopper on my windshield, but now it looks like a gigantic bug destroying the town.

10.02.2026 06:10 👍 25007 🔁 5121 💬 4 📌 2

I'm excited to read it! And would love to know more about the process of deciding to, and then actually writing, a book. (preordered!)

10.02.2026 15:14 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Preview
The Dark Frontier by Jeffrey Marlow: 9780593230183 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books An awe-inspiring investigation into the hidden world of the deep sea—the most mysterious, unforgiving environment on Earth—whose secrets can radically revise our understanding of life itself...

Hey guess what - I wrote a book, and it's coming out soon!

The Dark Frontier is about the wonders of the deep sea...and the threats they face. Check it out, and if you're so moved, you can preorder from your favorite purveyor of fine literature 📚❤️

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/652987...

10.02.2026 14:17 👍 15 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0

I'm about a 3, set it all gently aflame. I think it would be difficult to actually fix/harmonize most of the taxonomic errors (polyphylies, etc.) without renaming from bottom to top, and when making exceptions, whose fave gets to win?

02.02.2026 17:47 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Post image Post image

Covers of the 2 leading science journals this week
@science.org and @nature.com
www.science.org/content/arti... www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

22.01.2026 19:26 👍 288 🔁 137 💬 6 📌 7

If you manage people, and you don't read @rawsignal.ca's newsletter... well, that's probably fine but you definitely should start.
On managing teams when you don't have the relevant expertise: "The tools are getting faster but the core issue was never that you were bullshitting slowly."

21.01.2026 14:41 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0

This is exactly my first thought when is comes to literally *anything* about Greenland. The native Inuit who were colonized by Europe, and who have fought long and hard to regain some level of home rule, deserve better than to have their homeland considered "for sale" by this bullshitter president.

19.01.2026 04:29 👍 125 🔁 44 💬 1 📌 0

I've played enough Risk to know that if the US takes Greenland, they're going to want Canada and Mexico next to get the completed continent bonus.

19.01.2026 14:13 👍 14 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

Magical overnight visitors have a hard cap of one per month, thank you

27.12.2025 19:25 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

The classic academic urge to write a book… #IDontHaveTimeForThis

27.12.2025 19:23 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Not youtube, but the podcast Normal Gossip has 90% female guests and is also delightful, and is my current “steady chatter to fall asleep” option

27.12.2025 19:22 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I’m running a social experiment on my family. This fall, I’ve taken up a new hobby. I’ve mentioned it to everyone at least twice, with appropriately nerdy enthusiasm. Will holiday gifts be overwhelmingly this-hobby-related, or has it not percolated into their view of me yet?

01.12.2025 22:05 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
World still on track for catastrophic 2.6C temperature rise, report finds Fossil fuel emissions have hit a record high while many nations have done too little to avert deadly global heating

With current pledges, the world's on track for 2.6°C of warming in 2100 compared to preindustrial levels.

10 years ago, before the Paris agreement, it was 3.6°C

20+ years ago, we thought it would be 4-5°C

So 2.6°C is better, but the problem is that climate impacts are way worse than we predicted.

13.11.2025 12:55 👍 1012 🔁 390 💬 16 📌 26
Worksheet on soil layers with components labeled. Above, in pencil and with messy handwriting is written “I don’t need to hear this because my mom is a microbiologist”

Worksheet on soil layers with components labeled. Above, in pencil and with messy handwriting is written “I don’t need to hear this because my mom is a microbiologist”

Not *quite* the attitude I’m looking for..

11.11.2025 22:23 👍 22 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0
Discarded diversity: novel megaphages, auxiliary metabolic genes, and virally encoded CRISPR-Cas systems in landfills

New paper from our group - megaphages, compact CRISPR-Cas effectors, and more from landfill phage, led by the talented Dr. Nikhil George (not on bsky). rdcu.be/ePo8o

11.11.2025 18:38 👍 24 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 1

Two emails this week told me the photos of landfills on my webpage really sparkle. No, no they really don’t. Sparkle seems the word du jour

04.11.2025 20:45 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Josh Neufeld did with the 3rd year Env Micro and Diversity course I now teach - it had been flipped back before it came my way. Maybe ping him?

04.11.2025 20:42 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

I love kids. I have two of them. They’re amazing. However, kids are the absolute least self aware, clumsiest little puffins on the planet.

Please don’t drive tonight unless you have to, and if you do drive, drive super slow and pay 100% attention at all times.

Happy Halloween! 🎃 👻 💀

#PublicHealth

31.10.2025 11:35 👍 1888 🔁 474 💬 23 📌 24

not to brag but i can generate slop with natural intelligence

28.10.2025 16:15 👍 304 🔁 52 💬 8 📌 2

@planetmoney.bsky.social AI hosts in the Trojan Horse episode? Or sound mixing gone overboard?
Really hard to listen to Kenny when interspersed with the interviews, then back to “human” for the wrappers, just obviously robotic in some way

28.10.2025 13:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Two pumpkins side by side on a deck in sunlight. The left pumpkin is a round orange gourd carved with a confused face. The right pumpkin is a smaller white pumpkin carved with a spooky ghost.

Two pumpkins side by side on a deck in sunlight. The left pumpkin is a round orange gourd carved with a confused face. The right pumpkin is a smaller white pumpkin carved with a spooky ghost.

First two (of five) carved. Now to see if the squirrels eat them before Friday…

27.10.2025 01:17 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Nobel committee unable to reach prize winner who is ‘living his best life’ hiking off grid Fred Ramsdell was among those honoured with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine but might not know because he is somewhere in Idaho and uncontactable

“I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee

Probably a call that you’d return…

www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

07.10.2025 13:30 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

If you aren't knowledgable, you are impressionable.

02.10.2025 16:23 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

“Many young extremists now believe in a much simpler binary: Order and chaos. And if you are spending any time at all trying to derive meaning from violent acts like this then you are, by definition, their enemy.”

13.09.2025 15:08 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Charlie Kirk was killed by a meme Making sense of our dark new era of extremely online political violence

And this one via @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social at @garbageday.email sent me down some rabbit holes (but in a good way).

www.garbageday.email/p/charlie-ki...

13.09.2025 09:48 👍 57 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 3

Manufacturers use the same cartridge for tons of tests (pregnancy, flu, etc) and just swap out the paper strip for the right one. But I agree that positive/negative would be better!

08.09.2025 16:05 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

They’d been exposed for a few days the week prior. They are pro testing, just befuddled

08.09.2025 13:25 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Walked someone through reading a COVID test correctly after they texted me a pic of a perfectly negative test saying “sorry I can’t come”…. No the C does not stand for COVID.
#ItsBeenFiveYears #TwoLinesNotOne

08.09.2025 13:20 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0