A powerful El Niño Event is expected to develop during 2026. How powerful? Well the seasonal forecasting models are currently all over the place. So, somewhere between a Top 10 event in modern history and super-bonkers extreme crazy land. 🤔 🧪🌊

A program called Rx Kids that gave women in Flint, Mich., money during pregnancy and after childbirth significantly improved their health and that of their newborns, according to a new study. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/w...

Golden Lily wallpaper originally designed by J.H. Dearle in 1899 for Morris & Co.

Reviewers in two groups were given identical resumes for Emily Clarke and James Clarke and told they had used AI. Emily's was 2x as likely to raise doubts about competence. "She can't even write a CV herself." But James "just needed a bit of help." fortune.com/2026/05/10/i...

Cinderella Complex: When women outsource autonomy and make themselves wholly dependent on a man's goodwill, success, and faithfulness. It a risk and a trap, in which women may lose their identity, agency and freedom and who may be replaced. www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/is-t...

"Three Hundred Things a Bright Girl Can Do" by Lilla Elizabeth Kelley, published in 1903 by Dana Estes and Company. The distinctive cover art was designed by American artist Amy Sacker. I am such a sucker for beautiful antique book covers. They just don't make them like this anymore.

How to post some pictures of myself every once in awhile! Here’s me from last couple of weeks. Not shown is me in front of my computer eight hours a dsy which is where I invest most time

Per-contact transmission risk was previously estimated as 3.4% in household (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17471425/), so below could imply [big assumption] a single case on average infects roughly 20x0.034 = 0.7 others per day infectious on cruise. Can see why cluster can occur.

Dutch newspaper, AD, (highly credible) reports South Africa has reported to them a new confirmed hantavirus test in the 69 year old Dutch woman who left the boat after her husband passed away. Follow up "Request for Information" on hantavirus cluster on MV Hondius.

The Chronicle was honored for revealing how companies drastically underpay wildfire survivors. Gabrielle Lurie and an investigation of for-profit psychiatric hospitals were named finalists.

Global study (N=23K) finds 1/3 of Gen Z men and boys think a wife should "obey" her husband. 13% of Boomer men, 18% of Gen Z women & 6% of Boomer women agreed. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Driverless cars have to prove that they meet strict safety standards, including protection from hacking or cyber threats before being allowed on roads. AI tools that enable harassment, humiliation, abuse and hounding of women require no such guardrails. www.ft.com/content/60e2...

#BreakingNews: Several backcountry skiers are missing after an avalanche in #CastlePeak around 11:30.

Don’t blow away @norcalstormchasing.bsky.social! Winds are picking up over Donner Pass as the leeward low forms in the Great Basin. Gusts of 25+ mph making for brief whiteout conditions. Much stronger winder expected Tuesday with gusts of 40 to 60 mph a high possibility.

Next pandemic is gonna be lit 🔥 We’ll all be chugging protein drinks and swallowing deworming tablets and talking about “that which cannot be named” while our social media feeds tell us that anyone who died did not do enough push-ups…

The pattern doesn't get much better than this for Sierra Nevada snow. A series of storms moving out of the Gulf of Alaska *should* track just long enough over the Pacific to pick up plenty moisture. First storm Tue-Wed before pattern gets cranking Valentines Day. 5-10 feet on table thru ~Feb. 22.

Our paper modelling transmission risk in schools is published in Nature Communications. **The relative contribution of close-proximity contacts, shared classroom exposure and indoor air quality to respiratory virus transmission in schools** doi.org/10.1038/s414...

Study (N=160K mtgs) finds that when AI notetaking is used, women spoke 9% more than men. Perhaps because people are more aware of what they say when it is being captured. But men still used non-inclusive terms (swear words or "you guys") 2x more than women. www.thepersistent.com/when-ai-is-l...

One of the things I was most worried about is starting to come to fruition. RFK Jr. will succeed in eliminating all of our vaccines if allowed to remain in office. His disinformation campaign and the falling demand for vaccines will cause American companies to stop making them.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

MUST READ thread before Monday night's forecasted G4 / SEVERE geomagnetic storm. Auroras could be seen as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border at times. Widespread mid-latitude displays are possible. Here's what you need to know to have a successful aurora chase tonight! 🧵 #heliophysics #aurora

Yesterday Elon Musk retweeted "white solidarity is the only way to survive". In our numb overwhelmed media environment it barely made headlines that the world's richest man endorsed blood-curdling white nationalism. My brief writeup for @religiondispatches.org religiondispatches.org/elon-musk-ju...

Children will die with RFK Jr.'s new vaccine recommendations. We're NOT doing the "experts disagree" game. The US vaccine schedule was painstakingly constructed through a deep & thorough process by experts with unquestionable expertise. This is policy by fiat. It is pre-meditated murder. 1/

So might Xi Jinping now think it’s OK for PLA special forces to hit #Taiwan and kidnap Lai Qing-te for his “crimes”? #China

Traffic control concrete baubles in #Beijing getting the winter crochet cover treatment. They’re lovely eh! #China

Older women's authority in the workplace is not presumed & must be re-earned. They must be not be “angry” or “difficult.” While older men age into bluntness & are accepted for their lack of tact, women of the same age are often punished for speaking their minds. philanthropywomen.org/feminist-fun...

BA.3.2 emerged in Nov 2024 after ~3 years of intrahost evolution with >50 new spike AA muts, but since then, it's changed very little. Could the mutagenic drug molnupiravir (MOV) galvanize BA.3.2 into pursuing new evolutionary paths? A new 89-mut BA.3.2 sequence hints that it could. 1/11

Before the 1990s, plane crashes caused by microbursts used to kill planeloads of people fairly regularly. Dr. Ted Fujita and NCAR scientists figured out how to detect microbursts and warn pilots about them. Since then? Zero airliner crashes from microbursts.

Stunning video of the enormous eye at the center of hurricane Melissa. Taken by the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron “Hurricane Hunters” just before they had to abandon their mission. Melissa is extremely dangerous, the strongest Atlantic hurricane to occur this late in the season.

Cannot believe I just searched “teenage sperm count” on PubMed to confirm my suspicion that nowhere near enough adolescent semen research has occurred in any era to support this claim. Why is he always so weird about kids?

You might be wondering why we haven't updated outbreak.info for months. Well, the reason is that GISAID cut our access in January - as they did others. Without telling us. After a ♾️ back and forth, that is now permanent. More on that soon - and why GISAID should not be trusted with critical data.

Respect to those who got here first.

There's a new BA.3.2.2 from South Africa today. For the most part, there's been little substantial change in BA.3.2 over the past few months—mostly synonymous mutations & very little happening in spike. But this new one has 3 spike mutations & looks quite interesting. 1/6

The newsletter from agricultural producer news site WATT Poultry is now a primary source of my anxiety. H5N1 is exploding in North American poultry. Every day, a headline like this. But no human cases. Either there aren't any or there's no testing. Given CDC's dismantling, I can guess.

Models are trending up 📈 for #snow in the #Sierra and #Tahoe from Monday-Wednesday. This morning’s data has 15-20” of snow at @cssl.bsky.social near Donner Summit. Some of this will melt initially due to warm ground temps, but this would be a memorable October snow. #CAwx

wowwww this is incredibly beautiful. tagging some friends who will love this: @ladyofsardines.bsky.social @heymrsbond.com @marcusluther.bsky.social therumpus.net/2025/10/02/h...

Good write up by the study’s authors. Suggest reading if you’re in a workplace with other employees.

A few have asked me about this. XFG is the main lineage in the US at the moment. If there is a choice between a JN.1 or an LP.8 vaccine, I would take LP.8.

If you missed our coverage on the BBC yesterday of the World Humanoid Robot Games in #Beijing, here’s a taste in two parts… #China

Let's take a look at some of the rhetoric RFK Jr. has used over the last couple of years in describing the CDC. First up, search his statements on X: x.com/search?q=fro... I'll show a few examples in the following. "cesspool" "crooked", etc.

Jay Bhattacharya says that Program Officers made up banned words lists at NIH. This is a real email I got at NIH. (Granted, before Jay started.) But nothing has changed since he joined. I refused to censor the summary, so it remains unposted. And I have tried since Jay arrived.

Instead of telling women: - Avoid weak language: Call it strategic language - Be authoritative: Use participative leadership - Master self-promotion: Share credit generously - Don't be emotional: Balance authenticity & discretion See my latest @fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.com/91363032/sto...

Amazing how far up the hill the wave comes. Dog almost doesn’t make it!

Return-to-office policies are not proven to make companies more productive. Many CEOs who reported women quitting said they were struggling to fill jobs because of that loss of female employees and that their overall workforce productivity is down. time.com/7306896/wome...

Tsunami waves of up to 13 feet recorded in Yelizovsky in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, state-linked media says, following preliminary magnitude 8.7 earthquake t.me/tass_agency/...

Study finds for women without children, an unequal division of cognitive labor (anticipating, filling and monitoring household needs) was a predictor of emotional exhaustion. For mothers, it was unequal child-care responsibilities. theconversation.com/all-women-no...

🔴⚠️🔥♨️🇬🇷🇹🇷The E.#Mediterranean is engulfed by smoke of #wildfires from the #Balkans to #Turkey.Last 6hrs by meteosat-12 #MTGI1 with main fires in #Greece and Turkey.#Evia #Messinia #Kythira #Crete.Devastation in the forests of #Karabük and the city of #Bursa #climateemergency

FDA’s cancer review team overseeing breast and gynecological products has lost about 1/3 of its medical review staff and the malignant heme group will lose about 2/3 of its medical review staff—all to voluntary resignations clustered among seasoned reviewers insights.citeline.com/pink-sheet/a...

Straight talk from Dr. Francis Collins on the devastating - and politically motivated - cuts to science and public health in the United States. Anybody who cares about their health or the future or science, technology, and innovation in this country should watch this. www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/T...

If we want men to be less lonely, we should start by socializing them in boyhood to be part of a shared project of care. Give them dolls, toy kitchens, and tea sets. Ask them to help care for younger children. Expect them to clean up after themselves. Let them feel the work and value of care. 1/