Of Barack Obama: "the optimism he stirred through his winning 2008 campaign...". I remember sitting at a bar in Toronto with my colleague @carloscaldas1960.bsky.social and watching the inauguration feeling inspired and full of hope. The right wing resurgence just 8 years later was unthinkable.

State sanctioned murder.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign... As near to a must read as anything that I ever post: A succinct summary of the history of the first quarter of a century (at least from a western viewpoint).

www.theguardian.com/environment/... This story is poignant as well as being a scary reminder of how far teaching the effects of global warming will be.

I’m receiving an increasing number of messages from some of you who are concerned about me. Please don’t be. I’m not going to stop speaking out. Some thoughts... https://robertreich.substack.com/p/please-dont-worry-about-me

1970—no fault divorce finally legalized, female suicide rates drop 20% 1974—Equal Credit Opp Act passes, women finally have basic access to finances 1993—Marital rape finally criminalized Call me old school but countering record high suicide, financial imprisonment, & suffocating DV IS Liberation

These two day test matches are disastrous for some. That's a long way to go to watch grass growing.

We need more of these type of papers!

There are so many things being done by Trump that European politicians should condemn and take retaliatory action. Their failure to do so shows a lack of integrity and cowardice.

If I type the same sentence on my phone several times the predictive text will happily predict each word, but it never gets the punctuation. #smalllanguagemodels

The only possible explanation for this is that they had already discovered almost all the great music that predates this.

Very cool.

Some people were born before video games were released.

Long profile of Director Bhattacharya in Science. Lots of perspectives. www.science.org/content/arti... 1/13

We’re no longer doomed to forget history but to augment it until we can’t tell what’s real and all the conspiracy theorists can pretend the entire atrocity was imaginary too

A quick collaboration with the wonderful Rachel Bender Ignacio, Jade Pagkas-Bather and Sara Gianella. "Why Americans are Dying Younger? NIH Is Not the Problem. Our Broken Healthcare Delivery Is." academic.oup.com/jid/article/...

#birdsoftheworld #nature African darter

{ggview} can print plots to Viewer (Rstudio or Positron) with true scaling. Adjust plot settings and see the final proportions immediately. Save the plot once 👌 e.g.: ggplot(...) + ggview::canvas(width = 220, height = 220*2/3, units = "mm", dpi = 300) per @nrennie.bsky.social #datavis #rstats

Welcome to California and the civilised world.

This paragraph is almost perfect prose. I suspect AI was not involved.

I need to use the word crepuscular more often. It's a shame it's not an insulting adjective.

The scale of this duplicity is appalling.

So fundamental they paywalled the article.

Agree 💯 per cent.

Hegseth repeatedly misled the public about this strike. The boat was headed for Suriname, not the U.S. It wasn't carrying fentanyl. The survivors didn't "radio for backup." This strike was illegal, and Hegseth is trying to cover up what happened by refusing to release video.

New paper: "Alcohol consumption and risk of cancer: a Mendelian randomization analysis of four biobanks and consortium data" out at BMC Medicine: link.springer.com/article/10.1.... Lots of interesting findings! Brief thread:

www.bmj.com/content/391/... "Health and care data must not be owned or sold but have protected legal status as inseparable from the person. Monopolistic control over health information and data brokerage should be unlawful." A thought provoking piece I thought.

The opportunity to hike in snow and ice when it is 22 deg C in the city is one of the many attractions of living in Los Angeles. #Gracie loves hiking, not so keen on posing.

Elon's little serfs are quite literally begging journalists to come back because every publicly available source of data shows people have fled the platform and young people won't use it. They are literally begging regular people to come back. Don't do it! It is a website by and for actual Nazis!

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

They shouldn't.

It is stated as a fact that testosterone levels have declined in men (cohort effect rather than age specific decline). However, there is no good evidence that this is true. Comparing levels measured in studies from the past with more recent studies is fraught with all sorts of biases.

Republicans finally announce healthcare plan via RFK JR, “We’re introducing new sticks to bite down as we amputate your leg.” via @timheidecker.bsky.social and @osullyville.bsky.social

A political party cannot lead on this because the appalling system of political donations that are required to get elected necessitate thinking that the answer to this question is no.

I heard today that Dr Alice Whittemore died last week. When I first started my research career in genetic epidemiology I learned much from her. Our early collaboration on ovarian cancer led directly to forming the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium in 2005.

@gavinyamey.bsky.social I've got to enjoy your music recommendations; what's your Xmas/midwinter festival albums of choice (if you have such a thing).

December is always fun playing my favourite Xmas albums. Peace by Rotary Connection is one of them. Their version of Silent Night is a cracker. youtu.be/7FpGic6wmRY?...

A football world cup in Trump's unmistakable style: designed to pander to the haves while giving the middle finger to the have nots. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

1/2 I was asked to review an AI summary of a paper I'd published. It was part of a research project into the application of AI to research. The summary was not particularly good summary of the introduction and abstract. I was then asked to review 5 hypotheses generated by AI. #AIscience

FIFA peace prize winner about to sign off military budget that exceeds that of the nine next highest spenders.

An act of kindness is a political statement in the current political climate. Much of right wing policy is fundamentally about being mean to people.

I don't get the rise of the medical paternalism. Remember one of the cardinal rules in the House of God , "The patient is the one with the disease"? If the patient does not want to take the advice offered, so be it: #UDoU, #FAFO, caveat emptor are parts of adult life & death.

Some useful tips here.

Daily fight to the death with #Gracie.

Machine learning has developed remarkable new ideas about how to develop prediction algorithms. But always baffled me why the field had to reinvent how to evaluate models. Here we show F score should not be used to evaluate medical prediction models link.springer.com/epdf/10.1186...

So Labour can moan about Greens being unrealistic as much as they want, but who is the bigger fantasist: the people who know the house is on fire and something radical is needed? Or the people saying "this is fine" as the roof falls in?

It's that time of the year to have a listen to one of my favourite Xmas albums. Beautiful harmonies from The Roche's. youtube.com/playlist?lis...

This stuff is quite scary. The glorification of state sponsored violence. "Masculine leadership". What a complete a.hole he is.

I gave a lecture to some biostatistics grad students in Kyoto yesterday. One of them asked me a question that I responded to. A few minutes later he stuck his hand up again and said that he had just asked chatgpt the same q and got a different answer.

Reminder about Jan 6: it really happened It was a horror 140+ police were injured A range of violent weapons were used by attackers Chants to hang Mike Pence were heard There was a gallows and guns Pipe bombs diverted police as mob approached