The associated slogan of "where infinite ambition meets global impact" being mostly evocative of futility ("where an unstoppable force meets an immovable object") also contributes to this feeling.

Probably should have seen this coming when they expensively redesigned the logo to detach the head from the rest of the body.

Six days. Six days with no news for students or locked out faculty, counsellors, and librarians. Six days with no news for other staff, community partners, or research collaborators at other univs. Six days of the senior admin doing nothing. 15 days since the admin was at the bargaining table.

I gave a symposium talk at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology 2025 (#eseb2025) meeting last week and this was my title slide showcasing how I was speaking as an independent scientist because @dalhousieu.bsky.social @dalhousie.bsky.social has locked us out.

Here’s where we stand: My union moved on salary and was willing to talk: Dal mgmnt was not interested My union offered to find ways to save money: Mgmnt said no. My union wanted to work together to build new child care: Mgmnt didn’t care. Let’s #KeepDalStrong, we said. No, they replied.

🚨Second study from the lab. @CellReports SARS-CoV- and SARS-CoV-2-like viruses are found in insectivorous bats, but the antiviral responses in these bats remain less studied. Here we show how bat cells respond to SARS-CoV-2 and shed light on virus entry. www.cell.com/cell-reports... #LZCI

WildEpi was well represented at the One Health - AMR and Zoonosis meeting in Calgary. Dr. Samira Mubareka and Dr. Finlay Maguire. @smubareka.bsky.social @finlaym.bsky.social

🦘✂️ Thanks to @cziscience.bsky.social , @wytamma.bsky.social and I are writing the next version of the Snippy bacterial variant calling pipeline. We want your input on what features s it will have. Please fill out this (longish) survey to help make Snippy great again! forms.gle/YJP6WQjsk8KK...

📢 We're excited to introduce Pathoplexus, a specialized sequence database for human viral pathogens! 🌍 🧬 Launching with 4 viruses, Pathoplexus.org combines modern open-source software with transparent governance to improve global pathogen sequence sharing. 1/14

Day 2 of #pha4gecon: Sarah Hersey (Head of WHO IPSN) chairing resource limited infra for pathobioinf. First Joel Sevinsky, building on www.nature.com/articles/s41... Terra+theaigen wfs FISMA/FedRAMP compliant example. Cloud costs 1-2% of consumables. New Theaigen Global Health Initiative non-profit

Alan Christoffels kicks off the first PHA4GE conference in beautiful Stellenbosch, with a wonderful opening keynote from Anita Ghansah #PHA4GEcon

A great sets of talks on QA to kick off #pha4gecon sessions: Josephina Campos (IPSN), Karen Osman (UKHSA), Constantina Laou (UKHSA@AfricaCDC), and Sarah Mwangi (AfricaCDC) about the challenges of external quality assurance programs for pathogen genomics at a national, regional, and global level.

"Past, Present, and Future of Software for Bayesian Inference" - An interesting overview of what, exactly, building software to do Bayesian inference means If you use Stan, JAGS, PyMC, NumPyro, etc, you might be interested. www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/rese...

Monitoring fruit bat colonies could provide early warning for Nipah outbreaks. www.nature.com/articles/d44...

For @mblscience.bsky.social & other science recent arrivals, here is a much more comprehensive intro to Bsky doc by @markrubin.bsky.social that might be helpful: docs.google.com/document/d/1... And a running list of Science-Related Feeds on Bsky as they get created docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Final #GMI13 day, Academic-Government Teams starts with Ben Howden (MDU) on the Australian Pathogen Genomics Program: need AusTrakka (used differently for research & PH surveillance), accreditation, multidisciplinarity, formal implementation/eval. Wins not always papers & change not always popular!

Day 2 #GMI13 starts with Indigenous Data Governance Principles and Data Sharing Experiences. Taylor Morriseau (FNHS MB) explains centrality of OCAP principles (fnigc.ca/ocap-training/), specific FN benefits+principles (not pan-indigenous), free+prior informed consent. Emphasises Inclusion != Equity

Conference organiser Emma Griffiths kicking us off with a great introduction to the purpose of #GMI13 and the (still) open and growing challenges in global microbial genomics data sharing and harmonisation.

Woke up from a dream this morning: I was taking a statistics exam on a moving bus and it was proctored by a colleague dancing while wearing VR goggles. First day of the academic year is going well.