I totally don’t have grants to submit or course lectures to prep for. Much better to distract myself with different bento lunches.

Addressing the health impacts of plastics is becoming more urgent with every breath we take, and every sip of water we drink. Plastics are essentially immortal, filling landfills, waterways and the air, by @picardonhealth.bsky.social www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti... via @theglobeandmail.com

Excited to share our new study out in Nature Communications. We mapped the composition of the human breast #milk #microbiome and showed that microbes present in breast milk directly contribute to the assembly of the #infant gut microbiome in the first months of life. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New Microbe Matters! @relenski.bsky.social traces the legacy of Escherichia coli and how science is evolving to use this model organism in new ways #microsky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉🎉 Congrats to @mklevings.bsky.social, Peter Zandstra & colleagues!! @bcchresearch.bsky.social @sbmeubc.bsky.social

Amanda Gorman wrote this poem for Renee Good and that’s it for me tonight.

My quote of the day Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. Carl Sandburg

Vaccines, the most impressive public health intervention in medical history, and where we could be headed if there was not efforts to negate truth, facts, and evidence A great, open-access, review and perspective by @scientificdiscovery.dev

So it looks like i hadn't mentioned this, here, so just in case let me say this plain: Instructure, the parent company & producer of the Canvas learning management software platform, has partnered with OpenAI, as of last year. There are a number of claims being made about privacy but… well. Heads up

Also AI does, they just don't want to research and read www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Troubleshooting common errors in assemblies of long-read metagenomes www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

2025 sucked. In 2026, we are taking back our science! We are excited to launch our Substack: The Science Fight Club. Read our first post, written by @cdelawalla.bsky.social, a review of 2025, a preview of 2026, and a big call to action. open.substack.com/pub/sciencef...

This is an excellent thread that really does show how we are in the long game - and in Canada for some grants there is only 1 application deadline per year. Can be brutal to get funding.

And if you’re thinking, “I’m just one person, what difference can I make?” my pinned post has you covered:

When I decided to become a climate scientist, I thought I’d only need do it for a decade or so – because it was so obviously urgent, surely we would fix it by then? And then I would go back to studying galaxies. Now, thirty years in, I have a different plan for what’s next ⬇️😄

Sourdough cinnamon rolls!

Last hike of 2025 is filled with joy and a sense of wonder. Hoping for more of this in 2026.

💾 snp-dists 1.2.0 Major upgrade to this distance matrix tool - huge performance gains from multithreading (-j), max distance short circuiting (-x) and lower triangle output (-L). #bioinformatiocs #microbiology #genomics github.com/tseemann/snp...

Every time I submit a scientific manuscript, I am confronted with the counter-intuitive fact of PAYING to publish work that I created.

NEW: America’s stillbirth crisis. A threat in your medicine cabinet. The drying planet. Here are some ProPublica investigations you may have missed this year.

Expectant mothers were left so hungry after the U.S. cut foreign food aid that one woman ate clay and charcoal. Her baby struggled to gain weight after being born prematurely. By @annamaria.bsky.social, photos by @storitellah.com & illustrations by Phoebe Ouma

This is an outstanding essay describing some of the important roles and influences of NIH program officers (from an insider perspective). Read! elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/the-quiet-...

One of the most incredible shots I've ever gotten, in Yellowstone. This coyote walked over a ridge in the blowing snow and posed for me, with a small grin on its face, the snowfalkes like stars in the background. The desolation and beauty of life and nature is grounding, and so good for the soul.

Clostridioides difficile is a gram-positive spore-forming anaerobic bacterium that can produce toxins. Learn more about the epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of recurrent C difficile infections in this JAMA Insights: ja.ma/48VUBnn

Black women in America are more than twice as likely as white women to have a stillbirth. Getting physicians to take their concerns seriously is one reason for this disparity, they say: “If you’re a Black woman, you get dismissed.” (Published Dec. 2022)

Anyone else listening to K-Pop Demon Hunters on repeat?

The New York Times is joining nearly 40 scientists on an expedition to Antarctica’s fastest-melting glaciers. Our reporter shared a look inside his survival training before the trip. Learn more and send our Climate team your questions: nytimes.com/antarctica?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes

Dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium americanum) spreads its seeds by "explosive discharge". The seeds, expelled by hydrostatic pressure in the berry, can travel 20 m (65 ft) at top speeds of 100 km/h (60 mph). The goal is to land a seed on another branch to colonize other trees. (📷: LB323YAP Lou S. YT)

There's more evidence that the Covid-19 vaccine lowers risk of preterm birth, hospital stays and death.. 🧪🦠 www.sciencenews.org/article/bene...

Gotta get on these thieves’ tails and claw back the money they lost.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring… apart from journal editorial teams who have made this my final paper of the year! Happy to announce that this work has been published in Nature Comms. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Yup

👇👇👇👇

Imagine my shock when I found out this guy is one of the Danish investigators doing the unethical trial funded by RFK Jr through a non-competitive grant, in which they'll deliberately withhold the hep B vaccine birth dose from babies in Guinea-Bissau even though it's a proven effective intervention

Really excited to see this come together across collaborators and led by an amazing postdoc - Dr. Hannah Wallace - and summer student Gabi Rzeszutek. Zoonotic and avian pathogen detections (including H5) in Manitoba from environmental sampling: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

"The changing roles of Escherichia coli" -- a short essay by yours truly. rdcu.be/eVtXT

Maria Shriver, niece of JFK: He was a man interested in the arts, culture, education, language, history... It is beyond comprehension that the president has sought to rename this great memorial. C’mon my fellow Americans! Wake up! This is not dignified. This is not funny... It’s downright weird.

Thank you, @elongreen.bsky.social. It’s one I am especially proud of.

I've spent all day struggling to write a single page of a popular science article. I bang away at a word processor; give up; start diagramming on paper. Take some notes; draft a few sentences in pen; return to the computer...and very slowly I figure out what I was trying to say in the first place.

I encourage people to learn about what happened following the École Polytechnique massacre in Québec to see how much of this history repeating itself is very much preventable.

Brutal but effective public health messaging from New York Public Health. The CDC is compromised. They’re no longer a reliable source of information. They push anti-vaxx & anti-science grift. Get your vaccines. Wear a respirator. Clean the air Get public health advice from experts, not RFK Jr

The RFK, jr effect.

Really lovely to spend the afternoon listening to Immunity by Joshua Roman, based on his experiences with long covid, and participating on a panel. We need more voices speaking up for long covid, and it was so powerful to join together www.joshuaroman.com

Here is a bit of my resignation speech from last night

Deeply disappointed to hear that the BBC has pushed out one of the most brilliant presenters in all of science communication for speaking with integrity and honor in support of human rights and dignity.

Exactly one year ago, my daughter was in the hospital battling RSV. The thought that more families might go through that when an incredibly effective and safe medication exists is mind-blowing. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Make no mistake. The anti-scientists in charge will launch many "safety scrutiny of approved vaccines against X", not because of any safety concern, not because the many past studies were not good. It is anti-sience ideology, all of it. It will cost lives, missery, and preventable diseases return.

People looking for information on the 2025 edition of the Fraser Valley floods can find it here. BC’s “urgent” update is set to begin soon. www.emergencyinfobc.gov.bc.ca/event/flood-...

BREAKING: Officials in Sumas, Wash., immediately south of Abbotsford will be sounding their flood siren that warns residents to evacuate. This is a sign of likely flooding in Sumas Prairie in Abbotsford. www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...