You definitely need to read Robin Robertson's "Mortification: Writers’ Stories of their Public Shame" with such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Irvine Welsh, and Julian Barnes. My favourite is poet Simon Armitage's:

The enshittification of literature of all types. You’re going to need to hype up that obit/war report/interview/long read with some pizazz. Sorry Ms. Atwood, the topic’s a bit of a downer. Could you trim chapters 3-10 and increase the titillation index ten-fold?

Not sure this is heading in the right direction (and no jokes about 5 bladed razors).

This bag has been on the apron for 20 mins. Odds of it getting on the correct flight?

Legends on Netflix is well worth it. Sort of Slow Horses but with Liverpudlians. Music is great too (but no Jagger theme song).

Eeny, Meanie and Miney are still left.

The Computational Biology and Medicine Program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto is hiring a Program and Data Management Coordinator. Come join us! Applications close 26 May. jobs.smartrecruiters.com/UniversityHe...

A lovely, thorough and fitting obituary for Professor Juliiet Daniel by @vickyyyf.bsky.social [gift link]. www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/46242ee... Photo by Nick Iwanyshyn/the Globe and Mail, ALT text by me.

Clearly part of the Vought plan. The loss of talent and institutional memory will take years to recover from.

Meet the Team! Alejandro Tapia, our Program Manager.... "Hi, I’m Alejandro Tapia, Program Manager for the DHDP. I support teams across Canada in developing & delivering collaborative projects through the DHIF, helping advance health research using data & technology." run.terryfox.ca/129944/page/...

Any science funder that isn't working to address these issues is going to accelerate their trajectory into a blackhole of single digit success rates, exhausted peer review systems and loss of trust and confidence by the research community and supporters, alike. It is a global existential problem.

🩺 Could immunotherapy work for more pancreatic cancer patients than previously believed? 🩺 A new study by Network researchers at Dalhousie University suggests that immunotherapy could be beneficial for at least a subset of people with pancreatic cancer. Learn more: tinyurl.com/43aes97p

West End Squirrels.

@peiferlabunc.bsky.social Join our super elite club before the subscription rate goes up!

Of course everyone in a town called Marblehead should have a bidet. And a set of MMA onesies.

🍁 What it really takes to build a national cancer research resource 🍁 5 years ago, we set out to build Canada’s largest and most comprehensive cancer resource. While we achieved our goal (and even exceeded it!), getting there wasn't straightforward! Here's what we learned: tinyurl.com/5n6dmykr

'Biomedical AI has surged on a simple bet: combine large, diverse datasets and AI models get better — with more accurate predictions and fewer blind spots. Alongside computing power and algorithm innovation, Fu emphasizes, AI is only as good as the data it learns from' www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Me, fall off, nope, wasn’t me. This same squirrel coated itself earlier with bird feed dust and was temporarily transformed into a grey squirrel.

Digital Health & Discovery Platform: accelerating precision medicine for patients across Canada. Stay up-to-date with our news; subscribe to our newsletter here: forms.office.com/r/GEKWZ10ZXe and read the Bulletins here: www.dhdp.ca/updates/news... #PrecisionMedicine #datasharing #AI #ML #CanSci

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Including major support from a @terryfoxresearch.bsky.social Program Project grant! 👏👏

Starting to see emails from unknown people ([email protected]) who cite some public info and are trying to start a conversation (say about Toronto), but after being ignored, persistently follow up. AI bots?

Given LLMs are now regurgitating their own bathwater, it would seem relatively trivial to significantly pollute the libraries with intentionally distorted content to further skew political and other biases. Would just take a morally corrupt tech billionaire. Good job there are none of those.

This eats quantitative easing of monetary policy’s lunch. The coming mass devaluation of paper publication unless we switch to quality over quantity metrics (which should have been obvious years ago).

Top of the Pops Connections Sherlock Holmes (Cumberbatch) Mission Impossible Father Ted Blue Peter 60 Minutes (to 2025) Have I Got News For You Fawlty Towers Black Adder Thunderbirds Boys from the Blackstuff GBH Monty Python Slow Horses

🍁 Ce dimanche ! 3 mai - Forum pan-canadien des patients (FR): L’oncologie de précision : de l’espoir à l’impact 🔗 Inscrivez-vous!: tinyurl.com/yt958ekh

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There’s one question that almost every patient that walks into Dr. Amy Trottier's blood cancer clinic in Halifax asks: why me? As she explains in our latest Network Voices piece, the answer is increasingly found in an unexpected place: their family tree. Read now ▶️: tinyurl.com/5fu6p6f3

Imagine you have a top 10%ile grant and it has only a 40% chance of being funded. NIH may be a few years ahead in this rush o the bottom, but these trends are international.

We’ve lost a dear friend, colleague, and brilliant scholar, Dr Juliet Daniel (to my left in this photo). She was a McMaster University Distinguished Professor, a proud Barbadian-Canadian, a fierce EDI advocate & a leader of the Canada Caribbean Initiative (CCI). May her soul rest in eternal peace.

Happy to see that ERC has rexconsidered it’s eligibility criteria for re-submission of unsuccessful grant applications to the Starting, Consolidator & Expert grants. As a former CoG panel chair, we often saw significant improvements in resubmitted applications and the new rules would have caused…

WOW! 1:59:30 WOW! www.cbc.ca/sports/olymp...

The Director of the FBI has dibs on the first plane.

Instead of “fire him into the sun” we have a better option, “fire him into the north pole of Saturn”.

Excellent post. Scientific inflation is likely 2X that of retail price index. Add to this the creep in the amount of data now required to support a grant application or paper and the fact that grant values still do not cover all expenses and we are between a harbour wall and an approaching tsunami.

It’s not really funny, but I continuously get the most inapproriate pitches from a bunch of AI companies with a request for reply Yes/No/Unsub. They are plain text and hence get through my usual spam filters. But talk about advertising how appalling their use of AI is…

'Time is Finite' jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Lagging? 2026 has flattened at 33% of normal! This is devastating.

Self-referential circuits is a far better term than Large Language Libraries. An enclosed system will solidify its boundaries rather than expand them. Status Woe.

The iconic van that accompanied Terry Fox on his Marathon of Hope is on view at the Steele Wheels Motor Museum. The 1980 Ford Econoline, now known as the ‘Van of Hope,’ #NovaScotia /1 thread www.ctvnews.ca/atlantic/nov...

An unfair comparison since Henry had twice as many wives though not as many golf courses/cemeteries.

##OnThisDay - April 12, 1980 - St. John's, NL "Today is the day it all begins..." Join us for the #TerryFoxRun on September 20. Register and kickstart your fundraising today: terryfox.org #TerryFox #FinishIt

From @joho.bsky.social a timely reminder about how desperately wrong three widely influential minimalists of Covid-19 were. sciencebasedmedicine.org/nopandemicre...

Canada and others are pursuing mRNA research which will lead to new vaccines against infections and diseases like cancer. At some point, unless this pig ignorance of science is reversed, there will be massive unmet demand in the US.

This article only hints at the real driver for increased sales of better seats: increasing enshittification of the experience of flying economy class, with reduced seat space and a plethora of add on charges for basic amenities. Way more people have a worse experience than have a better ($$) one.

Gigantic Money Pit (just not for Pittsburgh steel workers). Even the new Gord Howie bridge, paid fully by Canada, uses US steel on the US side.

Firing tomahawk missiles at your own precious heritage. Is everything a profit centre? Can you breathe dollar bills?

Thanks but no thanks. Indeed, looking forward to our science council discussion today in how best to protect applicants and reviewers from abuse of AI in applications and reviews. Scientific integrity is essential for peer review.

There’s too much bad news these days To uplift you, check out this @ourworldindata.org story on how cervical cancer rates have declined greatly among younger generations with vaccination! ourworldindata.org/hpv-vaccinat...

These emails have the same level of precision targeting of so-called smart bombs. At lest they don’t cause awful collateral damage.