So it turns out the "contract" teenagers signed for their student loans wasn't actually a contract at all, the government always had the right to retrospectively change the terms, and at no point was this explained to those taking out the loans... www.newstatesman.com/politics/edu...

Most people experienced the fall of the Roman Empire as “one day the bridge fell down and no-one came to fix it”. anyway www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

just needs a re-score with www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHP9... and this is basically an ad for a future of cute little bots - I like the fun logo

1/ 🌍 Our June update is here! Two new pathogens added in response to active outbreaks, over 5,700 new sequences, and a growing community of labs from around the world. Here's what's new in #Pathoplexus 👇 Read the full update: pathoplexus.org/news/2026-06... 📰

Like Artemis/ACT but wish it was easier to install and more modern? Try Seqhiker. 🧬 Native desktop app (no Java) for Windows/mac/linux 🖱️ Drag-n-drop FASTA/GenBank/GFF3/BAM/VCF files 🔍 Genome browsing and ACT-style comparison ✨ Themes (customisable) and a Vim mode Docs: seqhiker.readthedocs.io

Was surprised how sweet this supermarket iced coffee with zero added sugar or sweeteners was. Turns out they just add lactase to break the lactose into sweeter sugars 🤔

National thermal indicator anomaly for Metropolitan France, 2000–2026

🚀

Honoured to be awarded the Mary Lyon medal by the Genetics Society today, here in Edinburgh. V grateful to mentors and all my previous group members and colleagues. Medal is an X chromosome!!

I suspect reactions will fall into 3 categories: 1) excitement ‘because AI’; 2) revulsion; 3) questions whether this may be the beginning of more multi-dimensional approaches to ranking papers without reading them (which many want) 1/2

Very interesting talk by @mendelrandom.bsky.social on the apparent effect of shingles vaccines on dementia. Clear discontinuity from shingles vaccines on shingles, but not on dementia, in this much larger follow up in England, using similar analytic choices as the Wales study that showed a benefit.

(as we all know already) Ryan's knowledge and insights into SARS-CoV-2 evolution are second to none, hope this can be resolved

TWT has got me to sleep ~every night for the past 28 or so years :'(

Wow, spotted at a local grocery store in Hong Kong! I've never seen a 10 in 1 rapid test before.

ARTIC network has published Bundibugyo (BDBV) sequencing resources as the 2026 outbreak continues in DRC & Uganda. We have compiled guidance for labs wishing to sequence, assemble and analyse BDBV genomes: artic.network/viruses/bdbv/bdbv-sequencing-guide.html

Great episode!

My institution is considering (further) reducing the times at which one can access the building. Would be interested to hear from other academics as to whether you have 24/7 access to your labs/office or what the hours look like (thanks!)

My institution is considering (further) reducing the times at which one can access the building. Would be interested to hear from other academics as to whether you have 24/7 access to your labs/office or what the hours look like (thanks!)

The contrast between the number of media requests I got when rich people on a cruise were facing a deadly, but contained outbreak versus now that some of the poorest people in the world are facing a deadly and devastating epidemic is just so so stark and it just really annoys the hell out of me.

Teams in the Democratic Republic of the Congo & Uganda have now shared the first sequences from the current Ebola (Bundibugyo virus) outbreak using Pathoplexus, just days after cases were confirmed. Read more about the response to Bundibugyo virus here: pathoplexus.org/news/2026-05...

First genomes from the current Ebola outbreak. A very rapid response from teams in the DRC and Uganda. virological.org/t/initial-ge...

Here we go: Official declaration from the DRC that "laboratory analyses conducted by the National Institute of Biomedical Research on May 14, 2026, on 13 blood samples, have confirmed 8 positive cases of Ebola virus disease, Bundibugyo strain" 5 samples had too little volume to be analyzed

1/ 🚀 Pathoplexus now supports Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), a species of Ebolavirus. BDBV has been associated with past outbreaks of Ebola in the DR Congo and Uganda, & a case has been reported today during response to the current Ebola outbreak. pathoplexus.org/ebola-bdbv #ebola #bdbv #ebolaoutbreak

Since launching support for the Andes virus species of hantavirus two days ago, we have already received submissions from four countries' sequencing teams. This is a testament to the rapid response of researchers, sharing real-time data. Read more in our news post: pathoplexus.org/news/2026-05...

and in case anyone was wondering, yes there are currently exactly 500 sequences.. just a coincidentally round number that happens to result from grouping INSDC segments, and applying our QC

1/ 🚀 Pathoplexus now supports the Andes variant of Hantavirus (ANDV). ANDV is the variant identified in the recent MV Hondius cases, & the Hantavirus variant previously identified as having occasional human-to-human transmission. pathoplexus.org/andv #hantavirus #hondius

First genome sequence from Andes hantavirus strain from ongoing ship outbreak posted on Virological: virological.org/t/complete-s... courtesy Swiss National Reference Centre for Emerging Viral Infections, Geneva University Hospitals, University of Zurich

You have really interesting things to say, but the way you post is very annoying. Could you change your personality so I could more easily engage with your content?

UK Biobank has my data, but I’m not worried. I know the benefits are too great to consider pulling out www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Amazing thread on how social media is no longer what you choose, from humans you selected, but algae content, from strangers and LLMs, selected on the basis of your twitches.

TIL that robot vacuum cliff sensors have a non-zero false negative rate :/

is there an explanation of why frontier LLMs, across multiple companies, love the name Elias so much (and Maya, I think)?

ChatGPT Images 2.0 graph of dataset overlaid on the real data. Pretty close.. I fear we might see these starting to pop up

even "sequence a monoclonal antibody" gets a consistent refusal from opus 4.7 on the web 😢

Claude Code became very reluctant to do anything remotely connected to viral sequence data some time in the last few weeks. (I'm quite sympathetic, but also I will now have to use Codex)

Introduction, Methods, Results papers are much less readable than Introduction, Methods-And-Interleaved-Results papers

More than I thought howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com

there is a very excellent exhibit at the san francisco Exploratorium museum that illustrates this. there is a black background, and you push a button, and a swatch of white paint flips up in front of it.

Really excited to be able to share our latest preprint, describing how during its evolution in cattle, H5N1 has got better at using a type of alternative receptor that's abundant in cows, but not found in humans and birds. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Artemis Real-time Orbit Website: www.nasa.gov/missions/art...

artemis toilet drama rabbit hole ttu-ir.tdl.org/server/api/c...

You are *not* going to guess the explanation for this one.

Further details on the meningococcal genome and genomic epidemiology including data release info from the recent explosive Kent outbreak: www.gov.uk/government/p...

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Some provisional analysis on one of the genomes from the menB outbreak detailed below: johnlees.me/posts/menb-o...

I did my PhD on bacterial meningitis, finding whether there are genetic factors which make meningitis more likely. Wrote down some initial thoughts on the current outbreak in Kent: johnlees.me/posts/menb-o... I tried to think of factors and their likelihood to explain why this is happening now

You can now view a tree of 2,399,238 bacterial genomes we made from AllTheBacteria (on the great Taxonium): taxonium.org/atb That's a big tree! (unless you're used to SC2 trees)

is anyone still listening to notebook lm podcasts?

Last year, a mathematician discovered that you can derive pi by flipping a coin. They discovered this by asking ChatGPT random questions between reps at the gym mathenchant.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/i...

New OpenFold3 preview out! (OF3p2) It closes the gap to AlphaFold3 for most modalities. Most critically, we're releasing everything, including training sets & configs, making OF3p2 the only current AF3-based model that is functionally trainable & reproducible from scratch🧵1/9