💔🙏Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are celebrating Christmas today in the trenches while holding the line against Russian aggression They're doing it for their nation's survival & for Europe's security Merry Christmas to all of them & their families. May they reunite soon

One of the most pleasant surprises of the past 20 years was the transformation of Wikipedia into arguably the most reliable general information source freely accessible to the public. It’s not perfect — I’ve certainly seen errors — but it’s kind of shockingly good. One might consider a donation.

Greta Thunberg arrested at a protest supporting Palestine Action hunger strikers

In English we know it as “Carol of the Bells,” but the melody arises from a Ukrainian folk tradition of songs welcoming the new year and summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity. Do listen. I wrote about the history here: snyder.substack.com/p/o-generous...

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

Oliver Sacks was a hero of mine. I couldn't let @rachelaviv.bsky.social’s brilliant piece pass without comment. My latest, on why Sacks's fictions are so much worse than those of your garden-variety journalist fabulist. . open.substack.com/pub/mariakon...

#OtD 17 Dec 1970 soldiers were ordered to fire upon Polish dockworkers in Gdynia by the state to attempt to crush protests against price rises. Dozens were killed then buried, but strikes grew until the government had to back down stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8870...

i know this is hardly a new take but isn’t it WILD that wikimedia has to ask for donations to keep itself afloat when every LLM in the world has been trained on wikipedia data?

If you have a bank account in your country or use U.S. technology, as most of us do, this will 100% affect you and your loved ones now and well into the foreseeable future. And this is why #Digitalsovereignty should be a goal for every democratic government if they are serious about freedom.

This is what is going to happen. There will be a thin top layer of non-digital universities — and all the tech billionaires will send their kids to those places.

Why does anyone use the Wilcoxon test for anything? It's not even transitive. It's sensitive to things one most likely is not looking for (changes in distribution shape) and relatively insensitive to what one usually is looking for (change in location). www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Wondering how much it helps that Finnish is not widely spoken and not easy to learn (but Hungary contradicts this factor)

Just discovered Radu Isac, hilarious & resonates so much youtu.be/ndtMz2aNqi8?...

Huge respect to the papers for finding both an 88 year old worried about the tax bill on her 6 bedroom Kensington house and a 20 year old fretting about only being able to save £12k a year tax free. Top work all around. These are not easy case studies to find.

It sure looks like Russian intelligence attempted to use military drones to assassinate the President of Ukraine inside an EU country. Looking forward to more thoughts from Belgium on why freezing Russian assets is an escalatory move that might compromise the peace process.

Oh look. They’ve actually drawn a diagram for all the people stupid enough to need a bloody diagram.

Day 4 and the final day of the BSI saw a fantastic talk from @labliston.bsky.social about Tregs in the brain and an excellent session devoted to “Barriers, bugs, and breakdowns” - right up our street! Thank you to all organisers and presenters @britsocimm.bsky.social for a great week in Liverpool🫶

We can't imagine what realities in Ukraine are. Some paperwork related to my car was delayed. Yesterday I got a text: "today I got the news that unit for whom Roma was driving current batch of cars or buggies got destroyed on a mission with few guys killed and other badly wounded... 1/3

People in comments write "this is not America". So what is it, Belgium? This is the US. This is the "mass deportation" policy in action. It's enacted by president elected on that mandate by Americans. He is still supported by one of the two major parties. It's what they voted for. They knew him.

"There's not enough women in STEM!" is a Anglo-Germanic problem, sure, all have problems with systemic inequality, but not to the same scale as Germany. Ya'll just pretending other countries don't exist.

Polygenic risk scores probe selected DNA variants to estimate risks for traits like height or diabetes. Yet those very variants—or adjacent/linked ones—can shape cancer or infection resistance, musicality, wit, appearance. Using PRS to choose embryos is just a terrible idea

Don't fall for the manipulative "censorship" framing of EU's fines against X for DSA violations. The EU is trying to enforce their laws. X is breaking them. And the U.S. government is defending big tech, billionaries, & bullshitters rather than protecting users. www.linkedin.com/posts/daphne...

a life changing opportunity made possible by the Nobel Prize funds awarded to John Sulston -- the @sangerinstitute.bsky.social runs the Sanger Prize scheme, open to an undergrad from any LMIC to spend 3 months here learning all about genomics. more details here www.sanger.ac.uk/about/study/...

5 December 1898 | A Polish Jew, Jakub Stieglitz, was born in Niebylec. An art historian. In #Auschwitz from 5 May 1942. No. 34793 He perished in the camp on 4 June 1942. --- Our podcast talks about the situation of Polish & Jewish prisoners in the camp: https://youtu.be/_ZaWqIsmY4U

And that's a wrap! Thank you all for making #BSI25 so special. What a fantastic week of celebrating immunology, catching up on the latest research and connecting with friends old and new. We can't wait to see you in Glasgow next year to do it all again. Love, The BSI staff team

4 December 1926 | Polish Jewish girl, Golda Bretmel, was born in Żelechów. She emigrated to France. She was deported to #Auschwitz from Angers on 20 July 1942. She did not survive. --- Children at Auschwitz Lesson: https://lekcja.auschwitz.org/dzieci_EN/ Podcast: https://youtu.be/aYKx_zpLSqA

plinkQC: An Integrated Tool for Ancestry Inference, Sample Selection, and Quality Control in Population Genetics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 R package meyer-lab-cshl.github.io/plinkQC/ #Rstats

Huh. Mfs trying to destabilise Poland with illegal trilobite imports!

Sadly, this is true, and already happening. Maybe I'd say "environment of increased uncertainty" but in substance, right.

Obviously trying to revolutionise biology...

It seemed so incredible that I visited the link. It's REAL. What was this story about almost 28% margin profit necessary to maintain high editorial standards?

Thought provoking article about whether face transplants are indeed beneficial for patients. Extreme example of why the bar for benefits is much higher for life-enhancing (as opposed to life-saving) treatments. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

26 November 1921 | A Dutch Jewish woman, Bertha van den Berg, was born in Padang in Indonesia (then Dutch East Indies). In September 1942 she was deported to #Auschwitz. She did not survive. --- Women at Auschwitz Podcast: https://youtu.be/ijTxtbNlJO8

Witkoff is not buying the Russian narrative. He is selling it.

Not me coming across a write up on Halszka Osmólska, a palaeontologist born in the independent Poland, working for the Polish Academy of Sciences, activist in the Solidarity movement, awarded Order of Restored Poland, dying in Poland. Being labelled as Soviet/Russian in an English academic journal.

If they learn English you cannot complain they don't speak English 🤷‍♀️

War of aggression, mass killing of civilians, and settler colonialism

Really pleased to share the first paper to come out of the lab. We found that hospital patients were frequently colonised with P. aeruginosa and that the same clone was shared between the gut and the lung. The phylogenies indicate that the clones moved from lung->gut www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I implore someone, anyone, in the media… Do your job And the next time you have Farage on, please ask him directly: …what were the motivations behind this?

It is unprecedented that 47 medical and public health organizations should come together to condemn the actions of the CDC. www.apha.org/news-and-med... 1. American Academy of Pediatrics 2. Academic Pediatric Association 3. American Academy of Family Physicians ....

The famous hole in the roof in the shape of Brexit

@ryanairofficial.bsky.social this is from you the lowest of low, refusing to refund a doctor who helped in an emergency. Especially considering the sum involved.

23 November 1943 | A transport of 1,181 Jews arrived at #Auschwitz from Drancy in occupied France. The train departed with 1,200 Jews, but 19 escaped on the way. After the arrival selection, 895 people were murdered in a gas chamber. 9-year-old Francis Levin was among them.

Roman lettuce 'explants' - we cut and planted the bottoms before eating the rest. 10 days (both)

The Polish prime minister reacts

This is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

It’s mad how much this one tree is talked about and yet the same focus isn’t given to actually important habitats being torn up. Why hasn’t Labour banned peat compost for instance? I’m told it’s symbollic of how much people care about nature… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We have a US administration trying to bully Ukrainians into accepting Russia’s proposal that their sovereignty be undone. Aside from the naked injustice of this, there are five basic practical reasons why it would make the world far more dangerous. (video) snyder.substack.com/p/the-putin-...