Well this is a bit too close for comfort. #caledon

Plexiglass barriers. Born of absolute ignorance of fluid dynamics and a conviction ballistic droplets was the only threat. Under some flow conditions a flat barrier concentrates contaminants on one side - but no one bothered to ask anyone the flow question. Basic fluid dynamics from undergrad.

Amazing that this review paper from 2021 just became my most cited paper of my 30+ yr career. I am honored to have been the lead first co-corresponding author with @ChiaWang8. COVID is indeed airborne--as are most other respiratory viruses. @ucsandiego.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/full/10....

You could just mute that man. Really. Mute or block and get on with your day

We are seeing huge amounts of illness that is off the chart. Flu, COVID and RSV. WEAR A FUCKING MASK IN PUBLIC.

The Classic ‘Popcorn’ Synth Pop Instrumental Played on Theremin and an Adorable Otamatone laughingsquid.com/popcorn-ther...

#ArtAdventCalendar Dec. 20 Horned grebes are a common bird in many of our marshes, usually alongside many ducks. Except in this marsh. THIS marsh belongs to THIS Horned Grebe and he is always looking for trespassers … he has just seen a duck, and is heading over to have a chat … quickly! #Birds 🪶

Yeah, I'd be pretty furious if I got spam email from some "AI agent" thanking me for my contributions too I dug into what happened here, turns out it's an experiment called "AI Village" which unleashes all sorts of other junk emails on the world: simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/26/...

make a Bond movie academic Live and Let Die: Conservative Evangelical Reactions to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U.S. West

I'll just leave this 2018 paper here: academic.oup.com/jid/article/...

Ottawa WAVE (Wastewater Analytics for Viral Epidemiology) as of Dec 21. LEFT IMAGE: 7d trendline of SARS-CoV-2 signal since spring 2020 (A); Past year (B), and 2 months (C), inferred case incidence (D), and Reff (E) determined with ern (PMID: 38905266). RIGHT IMAGE: other viral traces

Merry Christmas all! It struck me today that this is the first Xmas since the 2021 Omicron wave that I have had zero COVID inpatients. The lull isn’t expected to last. x.com/jpweiland/st...

The cybertruck lays on its back, its undercarriage baking in the hot sun, spinning its wheels, trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?

A sharpie arrived a couple of days ago. Chased a Blue Jay through the trees. Blue jays have not returned. Sharpie intensified its hunting today & scored a kill. 😢 I named it MurderBird. We took all the feeders down hoping the sharpie will head off to hunt elsewhere. 😪 Tough birdwatching day

Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays and seeing lots of birds. 📷: Northern Cardinal

I have a friend who recently gave me a speech similar to the below. He ended it with the analogy that if your career didn’t turn into a rocket ship between 2010 - 2022 then at this point you missed it and your job is to land the plane. Careers in tech are only going to get harder not easier.

Fuck you people. Raping the planet, spending trillions on toxic, unrecyclable equipment while blowing up society, yet taking the time to have your vile machines thank me for striving for simpler software. Just fuck you. Fuck you all. I can't remember the last time I was this angry.

Framework | Memory pricing updates #devopsish

The only true way is the Canadian way (As much as I wish it was a joke, it is in fact not one and this is exactly how it works here)

Good morning! 🪶

Here's a beautiful cardinal that I photographed in my backyard earlier this year; I thought it was a good one for today. Merry Christmas to all! #birds #birding #Bobsbackyard #Ancaster #HamOnt #MerryChristmas #Christmas

Pretty good hummingbird-eye scene #birds

SARS-CoV-2 is so dangerous precisely because of its insidious nature. Its propensity to continually re-infect. The superficial similarity of the symptoms it causes to those of other common viruses. The unseen risk of sequelae. That wretched molecular shark tricks almost everyone.

I never thought I would see so many risk professionals in infosec look at the attack, the impact, the risk, the thousands of papers, then shrug, annouce "LGTM", and dive into the deep end of the pool.

A key component of analysis is the distillation of complex situations to the fundamental concepts that underpin them. I never, ever thought in 2020 that the simple concept of, 'I don't want to get infected with a novel virus' would be warped from common sense to a rebellious act.

Salesforce in the summer: "AI is doing 50% of the work at Salesforce" Salesforce now: "AI? I don't know her"

Earthrise Apollo 8 December 24, 1968 63/n

This is my phone wallpaper & lock screen photo. It reminds me we can do world changing things when we set our collective minds to it.

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

#Ontario #wastewater graph updated with December 7 data - Kingston, London, Peel, Toronto updated: wwater.ca/Ontario - Also updated: AB, BC, MB, NB, NL, NS, PEI, QC, SK, YT wwater.ca Source: health-infobase.canada.ca/wastewater/

A tiny Northern Saw-whet Owl, annoyed by my presence. These little murder floofs are so adorable. #birds #wildlife #owl #PhotographersUnited

Canadian COVID Forecast: Dec 20, 2025 - Jan 2, 2026 SEVERE: none VERY HIGH: AB, MB, NB, North, QC, SK HIGH: CAN, BC, NL, NS, ON, PEI MODERATE: none About 1 in 55 people in Canada are CURRENTLY infected.

suspect a big reason why many academics and others who work in areas where getting facts RIGHT is key are disinterested in using LLMs for research: they’ve tried it, they keep noticing major errors in output, and they conclude that having to verify all that doesn’t actually save them time.

Masks and eye protection required employees, professional staff, volunteers & students. Masks recommended for visitors. "A surge in cases of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has prompted Sarnia’s Bluewater Health to implement mandatory masking in all clinical areas starting Monday."

Whew.

Sigh.

Robotaxis can’t handle out of sample conditions and behave inexplicably causing traffic chaos and making people hate them?!? Who could have predicted?!?!

Dawn Patrol 🦄

To be blunt: if you are doing anything at all right now to reduce your risk of infection from SARS-CoV-2, you're being smart. As a result of the current high prevalence of flu, masking is back in the media. Ignore anything negative said about it. Political nonsense is irrelevant.

Utterly ignored & memory holed by senior infection control policy makers to this day.

July 6, 2020: Morawska & Milton, Clinical Infectious Diseases (invited commentary) a landmark consensus statement from 239 scientists across ~32 countries was submitted urging WHO and the medical community to recognize airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2.

June 11, 2020: Zhang et al., PNAS (epidemiological analysis): Analyzed outbreak trends in Wuhan, Italy, and NYC and argued that airborne transmission was the dominant driver of COVID-19 spread and wearing masks as the most effective way of preventing spread

May 27, 2020: Prather et al., Science (perspective) pointed out that a large share of COVID spread can happen through shared air and masking/testing are necessary to reduce cases to combat asymptomatic spread

May 27, 2020: Morawska et al., EIl (correspondence): A group of 36 international aerosol, indoor-air, HVAC, and infectious-disease experts warned that airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 indoors was being downplayed, and called for ventilation, filtration, reduced air recirculation

A legendary paper.

May 14, 2020: Sia et al., Nature (animal model / hamster study) showed SARS-CoV-2 spreads efficiently between hamsters through the air, becoming key evidence that inhaling a relatively small airborne dose over a short time can be enough to establish infection

May 2, 2020: Varga et al., Lancet (case series) showed that SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect endothelial cells lining blood vessels, causing widespread vascular inflammation (endotheliitis) and helping explain clotting, ischemia, and multi-organ complications in COVID-19