📚 #BookSky Ardern’s memoir, A Different Kind of Power, wins the 2026 Ockham’s People’s Choice book award “by a landslide.” Also: a little 3m x 4m library in Kaipara wins the 16-book haul. Nice 😊

🚢🦠 ICYMI - This ⬇️ from The Guardian corrects the record on reporting a women was told her initial symptoms were anxiety, later proved to have a hantavirus infection. The reporting confused the Spanish health secretary talking about a different person.

📚 #BookSky A bit of a perennial, but fun (which is why they’re perennial, I guess…) Writers might like that the first sentence of each novel is given. Perhaps controversial: I think Hemingway’s use of three 'in's in (hehe) opening A Farewell to Arms is terrible 😄 1/3

The stuff of war politics thrillers, “While the incident remains a mystery, CNN suggested the sinking of the Ursa Major “may mark a rare and high-stakes intervention by a western military to prevent Russia from sending an upgrade in nuclear technology to a key ally, North Korea”.” 1/2

🚢🦠 If you want the latest update, it’s the pinned post in Ian’s feed @mackayim.bsky.social And, yes, that fancy name is "the hantavirus", except there’s a lot them, as this is the specific one that was on the cruise ship 😀

#NZ 🇳🇿 Vaccine-preventable HPV cancers cost country more than $130m in four years – and that’s likely a substantial under-estimate

#Christchurch #NZ The full article is paywalled, but there are at least some photos at the top.

“With this announcement, the Government is prioritising commercial certainty over environmental security, even as climate change makes the conditions for commercial enterprise or even continued existence increasingly uncertain. Whether that is a worthwhile trade is open to debate.”

📚 Upcoming book

📚 quote

Compelling read blog.k10s.dev/im-going-bac...

Aurora from Dunedin, NZ, on this day two years ago. Photo from my balcony 😊 (I’ve moved since).

“Are you sure?” Alton said. “Of course not,” Clyde said. “I’m a former philosophy professor. We’re professionally not sure of anything.” He ate some more of his omelet.

Highlighting that cities can have economic growth (rising GDP) while cutting emissions. For those wanting to explore, you can view the cities on this globe: no2-vs-gdp-figure-87520c.pages.nilu.no 🧵⬇️

#NZ Did it again. There’s definitely something broken. Maybe it’s not tallying the time elapsed if you skip forward over portions of the show? Whatever it is, I’d hate to see this clipping off the closing stages of a match.

“With this announcement, the Government is prioritising commercial certainty over environmental security, even as climate change makes the conditions for commercial enterprise or even continued existence increasingly uncertain. Whether that is a worthwhile trade is open to debate.”

#Christchurch #NZ City council offers funds to help restore iconic buildings damaged in the earthquakes, with conditions including matched contributions from the government. CCC article, with the funding options: www.newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/c...

🌊 Research: A 481-meter-high landslide-tsunami in a cruise ship–frequented Alaska fjord The scientific paper (6 May 2026) reviewing this 2025 tsunami mentions one even higher, “most famously the 1958 Lituya Bay tsunami in southeast Alaska, which overtopped a ridge lying 530 m above sea level”. 1/n

If you are unsure if you have received the recommended two doses of the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine, you can verify your status by calling 0800 282 926. www.healthnz.govt.nz/news-and-upd...

Decades of deep sea mining research shows threat to seafloor creatures – Expert Reaction

There’s still time to have your say. Consultation closes on 18 May 2026.

#Christchurch #NZ The full article is paywalled, but there are at least some photos at the top.

Version 3. I've extended the orange-shaded area to cover the full 45 days (WHO number) and indicated each week since the date post-onset of Case 1's symptoms (dpo). May 10th was a day when 2 people became symptomatic and also tested positive. I've used green

some updates and small corrections on the hantavirus phylogeny below: virological.org/t/complete-s... the cruise ship virus is from ANDV Clade 3 (see Fig2A journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...) Clade 3 has confirmed human cases, Clade 2 has confirmed H2H, safe to assume both can H2H #ANDV

🚢🦠 #NZ The Australians and New Zealander will instead “first spend up to two days in the Netherlands, instead of returning direct from Tenerife.”

#NZ 🦠 Measles: fourth case in Wellington – Measles is likely circulating in Wellington Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ update: www.healthnz.govt.nz/health-alert... Locations of interest (no new LOIs yet added at the time of writing, but keep an eye on it): www.healthnz.govt.nz/health-topic... RNZ story ⬇️

#NZpol Good longer-form piece explaining why ⬇️

🖥️ Heads-up to Linux users, if you haven’t heard already – Incl. #bioinformatics people!

🚢🦠 All passengers now disembarked from MV Hondius. I haven’t seen much about what’s happening to the crew in Western media. The Manilla Times say, “the 38 Filipino crew members aboard the MV Hondius will undergo a mandatory six-week, or 40-day, quarantine and monitoring period in the Netherlands.”

Slightly increase a band Crowded Houses

With Eugene Koonin, we wrote a rather comprehensive review on the origin, evolution and organization of the #virosphere. We describe all 10 viral realms and the logic behind them, and so much more. Check it out! comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/ar...

#NZpol Government changes climate law to prevent lawsuits – “designed to give businesses certainty”

Final reminder that applications for the LMB’s Rising Talent Fellowship close on 17 May. If you’re a Black heritage scientist looking for a postdoc position in molecular biology or associated biomedical sciences, click here to learn more about the Fellowship: mrclmb.ac.uk/careers-and-...

Join our software webinar on May 12th to hear from Jarrett Johnson, Senior Developer from Schrödinger, on Upcoming improvements to visualization and CryoEM support in PyMOL. Tuesday, May 12, 2026 - 12:00pm ET Register here: buff.ly/shCJxog #SBGrid #Webinars #StructuralBiology

FUNDING ALERT: Up to $10,000 in seed funding is available in this round of the Peggy Girshman Idea Grants for projects that help science writers in their professional lives and benefit the field of science writing. Applications due May 15. SPREAD THE WORD:

🖥️🧬 Preliminary analysis of Orthohantavirus andesense virus sequences from a cruise-ship related cluster, May 2026.

🚢🦠 There’s a FAQ linked in this post ⬇️ Ironically, the Q&A in the post isn’t elaborated there, AFAICT. Maybe that’ll be updated soon?

🍎🖥️📱 26.5 update out – not very exciting, but hopefully a few more bugs squashed! – new Pride-themed wallpapers – beta for encrypted RCS messaging arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026...

🚢🦠 re the headline & post, my understanding of it is the *initial* quarantine period will be for 21 days, with them open to extending that to 42 days. Symptoms can take up to ~6 weeks to develop. (I’m not saying I agree with this approach, but clarifying what is being said.)

A little summary of some events. Version 1.

#NZ ⚽️ TVNZ did it again. Playing the 1News "from the start", delayed, it cut me off the last few minutes of the weather forecast. I hope they sort this out. I wouldn’t want the equivalent to happen in a FIFA World Cup match! 😠

Wikipedia can be a powerful teaching tool, but with such a massive resource at your fingertips, it can be hard to know where to start! We're pleased to share 'Wikipedia in Science Education', a resource designed for tertiary educators in Aotearoa New Zealand. 🔗 www.wikimedia.nz/wikipedia-in...

NZSL is pretty easy to learn the basics of. Getting fluent is always harder, in any language, but unlike some languages, you can get into basics quickly. There will be courses in most cities.

#NZ 🦠 Measles: fourth case in Wellington – Measles is likely circulating in Wellington Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ update: www.healthnz.govt.nz/health-alert... Locations of interest (no new LOIs yet added at the time of writing, but keep an eye on it): www.healthnz.govt.nz/health-topic... RNZ story ⬇️

Worth factoring in -

This is the coolest news! Goooooo Rachael!!! Will illustrious author Rachael King be faithful or a traitor?!

May also be of interest to those in the 🖥️🧬 space -

#NZpol Te Pāti Māori splits as MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi announces new Te Tai Tokerau Party

When I had to get the meningococcal vaccine to live in a dorm, my mom unprompted said when she was a nurse in the Army, she saw a case of it, young people who should have been very healthy, suddenly laid low and they couldn’t do anything about it as they seized, limbs turned black, and they died.