Today a colleague forwarded this article to me, from Joseph Redmon and Ali Farhadi YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement arxiv.org/abs/1804.02767 The relevant passage:

I just did this for the second time, it took me about 20 minutes, and it feels great to be working together with so many other fellow citizens who understand how damaging this is going to be for all Americans.

Did you write your comment yet on the OMB rules on federally funded science yet? No? Don’t worry, you can do it this weekend. Here are some resources that can help you get started.

Putting this out there in case we need it later

I did this and so can you!

I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Captain America run earlier this year, a book which wrestles with what America means, and what it still could mean in the future we want to build, even after falling into the clutches of authoritarianism. The run references these panels from 30 years earlier throughout.

Went looking for horseshoe crabs in Jamaica Bay. I missed the season when they’re around but did do some #origami nature photography.

I love any writing that really digs into the affective experience of playing games, and so I loved this article from @duckvalentine.bsky.social about the experience of playing Blue Prince. kotaku.com/i-am-looking...

I've found that when I use LLM tools in my professional work - writing or coding - usually I have to put a great deal of thought into what I want the model to produce. If I don't do that, if I rely on the tool to do my thinking for me, the end result is not very useful.

Going to sneakily edit wikipedia to say that it was named for Lord Wiggins, the Earl of Disappointment

Three incredible Blaschka glass #octopus models from Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, second photo shows both male and female argonaut specimens and an argonaut shell.

More Moropus content, today at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology

I took this picture of a shark hanging out in front of a jet for many minutes at the New England aquarium. @whysharksmatter.bsky.social is the shark doing this for a reason? Is it doing anything that could be described as having fun?

Russell Vought has a plan for science, but so do we. Join the fight by taking action against the latest OMB grant funding proposal here 👉 zurl.co/Q8eBE #StandUpForScience #OMB #Vought #SaveScience #Science

Satoshi Kamiya #origami phoenix, on display at @qplnyc.bsky.social last month

Great googly woogly onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

“Everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the US really had cut off aid. It was easier for them to believe that the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the United States would do this.”

Appalling how destructive it was to end USAID

It is my duty to inform you that there are baby capybaras at the Sacramento Zoo

iranwarcost.watson.brown.edu For a second I thought the cost burden in California was high here because of the rising costs of fertilizer, but it appears this is *only* counting the costs of gasoline and diesel.

A 3,200 year-old painted scene of a lion and a gazelle playing a board game, probably senet. From an ancient Egyptian illustrated papyrus showing animals taking on human roles in comic situations where they act against their natural instincts. 📷 British Museum #Archaeology

It’s happening!

Reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder this week and thinking about how to practice this: “Avoid doing violence to the minds of unseen others on the internet, others will learn to do the same.

X's algorithm is in fact doing what you think it's doing. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Meet the Metal Snail from the Bottom of the Ocean ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/i...

If you can live through February, you’ll live another year.

Time to retire

Highly recommend William Foege’s memoir “The Fears of the Rich, the Needs of the Poor” on public service through public health. Thank you for your career of service to Americans and to the world. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

Capybara and bird friend. #capybara model by Hiroaki Kobayashi, folded from papyrus. Homage to www.tumblr.com/animalssitti... #origami

New paper out: "Identifying #malaria elimination strategies in the presence of human movement in Bangladesh" - led by Hsiao-Han Chang and and @ayesha-mahmud.bsky.social. rdcu.be/eOXse

Happy Halloween from this plague doctor

Satoshi Kamiya #octopus, folded from 4 inch papyrus #origami

Photograph taken of an exhibit at the Zambia National Museum of a Ground-to-Air Rocket used in witchcraft. The caption evokes a world of invisible combat by witchcraft, where practitioners trade barrages of magic missiles.

One of my favorite things that I learned on my French Revolution history tour of Paris is that when they dismantled the Bastille, they repurposed the stones. Some of them were carved into maquette sculptures of the Bastille, or other knicknacks, and sold as souvenirs. First Bastille day had merch.

Some fun highlights from my French Revolutionary History tour today. Here is the remaining foundation stone from The Bastille, on display in a Metro station. Also here is the building on the site of the former Bastille, complete with artificial cannonball dents.

Arrived in Paris for @netmob2025.bsky.social later this week! Excited to be back in one of my favorite places on earth. Welcoming any recommendations for places to go or things to look for.

Hey remember when the CDC dropped 6 of the 8 foodborne illnesses from the nationwide monitoring system in July and one of them was listeria? Mentioning for no particular reason www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

To my academic comrades - what is the longest you have ever waited for a journal to get back to you about whether or not they would agree to review a manuscript? Have you ever withdrawn a paper from a journal because they took too long to respond?

If you don’t already know about Robert Smalls, today is your lucky day. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...

Out this week: two publications on the long-term impact of canceling HIV services provided by PEPFAR in Africa. Long story short, suddenly discontinuing HIV services could be catastrophic if allowed to continue indefinitely. 1/6 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Communing with redwoods in Muir Woods. I took them for granted when I was growing up. Now I always make a point to visit them when I’m back in CA. A sacred place. Steinbeck wrote that it’s impossible to photograph one but I tried anyway.

Fascinating to read about - an real life epidemiological mystery unfolding, and the answers could have important implications for disease ecology in the US. gothamist.com/news/nj-heal...

Experimenting more with nature photography Robert Lang’s Shizuoka cicada, folded from 10 inch Cabbage paper

Highlights from #Origami USA 2025! I met Robert Lang in person, presented him with a fold of his Shizuoka cicada

Microsoft Outlook's state of the art AI text completion tool:

Sad to not be present at #IAS2025 in person this week. My heart is with all the activists, clinicians, and scientists who are there now.

Fellow infectious disease modelers - for those of you who have been part of ensemble modeling efforts, do you have a preferred set of criteria for comparing across different models in order to help with interpreting variance and uncertainty? #episky #IDmodeling #IDSky