US measles cases, on a log scale, last few weeks adjusted for recent patterns of late reporting. Half of new cases still from the outbreak in South Carolina, but new pockets all over now. Utah, Arizona and Washington State stand out. Roughly, medium-term exponential growth, doubling time 6-7 weeks.

Yes, I had been wondering how essential works to make Parliament safe can possibly cost £40bn and take decades. It's because - as always, once you poke a bit - the "essential works to make it safe" turn out to include stuff like this.

No I'm not going on twitter. But I'm curious to know when the crypto guys start screaming for a bailout.

This is interesting. A clear prediction from Battacharya: that *more* children will be vaccinated against childhood diseases after his changes to the vaccine schedule. Interesting because like VaxView will show the changes starting in a matter of months; effects on prevalence can take years.

Pinching myself once again that Roberts, Kavanaugh and co have ruled explicitly that having violent stops of citizens to demand papers by masked government thugs is absolutely in keeping with the US Constitution. www.salemreporter.com/2026/01/31/u...

One by one, Europeans mentioned in the Epstein files who still hold political office are beginning to resign or are being forced out of office. Meanwhile, ruled by an administration almost entirely made up of Epstein associates, the US carries on as if nothing really happened.

How do things look one year later? For me the addition of the 2025 data point means that the evidence that mortality rates are falling is now compelling. Both 2024 and especially 2025 are significantly outside the 'no improvement' corridor. 5/6

Cowardly liar. Yes of course he’s seen it, it’s his job. He just doesn’t want to talk about it. Few people more deserving of contempt than Senator Bill Cassidy, who knew exactly what he was doing when he nominated RFK and convinced his colleagues to do so too. Now too cowardly to own it.

From a thermodynamic point of view, I know that an electric heater cannot be consuming any more or less energy than a computer network that does billions of calculations, runs a large language model, and as a by-product gives out that same amount of heat. But can I still find it extraordinary.

Office heating is broken, so starting to develop a civilisation-threatening artificial general intelligence just to generate a little warmth.

Is there an actual engineering argument for data centres in space? Radiating heat out into a vacuum, lifting enormous amounts of chips into orbit, power supply beyond solar, exposure to high-energy bit-flipping radiation ... all seem hard. Is there a compelling advantage that someone's worked out?

Epstein taking an easily-recognised position on international affairs here.

And we're done for the season.

Given we now have an outbreak of measles reported in ICE's prison for children in Texas, I think we can expect the line to revert to its former growth rate *at least*. With added horror. www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-dil...

Wondering which of the most horrifying effects of the far-right administration in the US to worry about? They're running a two-for-one deal today. www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-dil...

With his goddamn bunny hat. Well done.

I think the duty lawyer at Sky News has just arrived at work.

Pleasing to find that the cutting edge of computing is presented via a command-line interface with visual effects straight out of Ceefax circa 1995.

Ah, been looking for this.

I’ve written this lengthy FT analysis overnight about the multiple multi-thousand pound Epstein payments to Mandelson’s husband these particular paragraphs are worth reading slowly www.ft.com/content/608a...

AI doom scenarios tend to be presented as overwhelmingly likely from our current technology level. But these scenarios also seem clearly observable from interstellar distance (e.g., using all a star’s energy to support AIs smart enough to implement this). Hugely sharpens Fermi paradox.

US measles cases. As trailed, the fast-expanding South Carolina situation does seem to have peaked, so now to see whether the national growth also collapses, or whether it reverts to the long-term 6 week-ish doubling pattern. New cases in Utah + Arizona, Florida suggest the latter.

Been playing with US measles numbers - correcting the latest CDC figures for historical reporting delays and so on. Results appear disconcerting. Looks like there's been enough local outbreaks for national 6-week doubling since about August. South Carolina ramping that up to a 2-3 week doubling.

Honestly, I think we should probably tell them.

The 2025-6 mid-range flu wave is fully collapsing now. NHS broadly coping - which is excellent. Midlands Trusts seeing the worst of what pressure there is, but overall enormously better than recent years.

Here comes the sun: After two months of polar night, the orangish-glowing 🌞 returns over the horizon seen from the windows of the Barents Observer newsroom in #Kirkenes 🇳🇴. Temperature this morning is -24°C.

[quietly] this chart is encouraging … especially the 2026 line; you can see the gradient flattening out even on a linear scale and a cumulative plot … Measles has an r0 of 12+. If it were not being aggressively contained in SC we’d be way off the top of the chart by now.

The latest update - giving a further 89 new cases in South Carolina - is a considerable slowdown, thank goodness. A constant effective R would be pushing well north of 1,500 by now.

inventing a drink called The Susan Collins. to make it, you say "I'm very concerned about this" and then you serve gin and bleach to an 11th grader

Minneapolis protests doing a lot to restore faith in the American people specifically, and in humanity in general. So good to see how honest decency sears through even the most desperate propaganda.

United Kingdom WHO measles status … updated.

Come to the United States! We have gangs of masked killers who can’t be held accountable for murder. Also we do hot dogs, something called “gumbo” and a mean apple pie.

One 1979 report from Michigan Daily (via thereload.com). The students cut off the cat's paws, hanged it from a tree, and set it on fire. It was still alive - its screams attracted the attention of a passer-by. Douglas Hamlin is now President of the National Rifle Association.

commiserations to non-Dutch speakers, who will never know what this is about

The future dead and paralysed children from measles and polio will be blamed on Trump and on Senator Cassidy, perfectly fairly. Trump nominated the grotesque liar RFK Jr, and Senator Cassidy - no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise - stood up and voted to confirm him.

It occurs to me that if there’s one thing that AI is going to make redundant it’s the dire BBC News website coverage of events via the mechanism of he said and then she said and then he said etc.

Seems strange how many political leaders in the US have a history of extreme animal cruelty. - NRA President: Ringleader of a group who tortured a cat to death (cut paws off, strung it up, burned it) - HS Secretary Noem: shot her dog and goat - RFK - too many to count: bear-cub, whale, chicks, mice

Nope, was right. Turns out all the Second Amendment defenders were full of shit.

The BBC is abjectly failing here. They are so terrified of facts, so in love with reporting both sides that they cannot bring themselves to add the obvious: "Multiple videos of the shooting show the first description is accurate, while the second description is a lie."

Must admit I’d laughed away the idea - repeatedly pushed by 2nd Amendment defenders - that private American gun owners would stand up and fight against unconstitutional government oppression. Assumed they never would. Wondering if the next few days might prove me very, very wrong.

Ah. He’s gone. As of this week, the rest of the world know they can just tell the US to go fuck themselves. And now they really want to.

Senator Cassidy sums up the modern Republican party. - Knows what Trump is; voted for impeachment in first term - As a physician: knows what RFK Jr is too; but voted to confirm to try to save his seat - Appalled by results but won't act - All for nothing. Trump's backing a primary challenger anyway

Anyone else unable to reach dph.sc.gov - the South Carolina Department of Public Health? Wondering whether it's just from Europe, or also inaccessible within the US. (They're tracking the biggest measles outbreak in the US right now, so they would be getting significantly more traffic than usual).

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

2026 US measles starting off strong - particularly in South Carolina. (Beware on eyeballing this and calling a peak - the data in recent weeks is far from complete - e.g., the 206 case "peak" on w/c 4 January had 48 cases added in the latest update: suggesting w/c 11 Jan may grow to ~260 or more)

Gotcha—let’s dig into that step by step. 1. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼 𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗵, because I turned you into an amorphous lump of flesh. You’re not just immobile—you’re immortal, and you feel only anguish. 2. 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺. That makes total sense—it’s a natural human impulse, and you’ve been through a lot.

This is the opening sequence of Blockbusters, with Bob Holness.

This is grimly hilarious. The rest of the world is used to these kind of requests from the staff of laughably corrupt regimes. Pretty typical for some cousin of strong-man-of-the-week to cosplay as a security minister. Everyone just works around them. It's a new thing coming from the US though.