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 Have you ever withdrawn a paper from a journal because they took too long to respond?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

Infectious Disease Modelling starter pack update! Many more modellers have joined Bluesky recently so this update is overdue. Pls keep on sending suggestions! (bio should contain experience relevant for this pack) IDModelling pack 1: go.bsky.app/86Ao1a5 IDModelling pack 2 : go.bsky.app/2oBB7KX

Mass murderer. (gift link)

I needed to see this today. Something beautiful is going to happen. #nokings

This Elusive Antarctic Squid Was Seen for the First Time

Scientific mentoring question - some folks I work near tend to be avoidant around sharing work that is not perfect or asking about a topic that they're new to. What are some good ways to create an environment where people feel comfortable or encouraged to ask for assistance when they need it?

Experimenting with nature photography - Satoshi Kamiya tree frog, from 35cm homemade double tissue #origami

New article, led by Loveleen Bansi-Matharu and other colleagues from the HIV modeling consortium - estimating where along the HIV care continuum new HIV acquisitions occur, with implications for how to reduce future acquisitions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It seems that network science could help us understand who was going to be elected the next Pope. Provost showed a highly prominent position in the social network of cardinals. Kudos to the researchers of Bocconi University! www.unibocconi.it/en/news/netw...

This is how I found out

It’s time to reconsolidate a counterculture and politics against this shit. Science, art, medicine, poetry, philosophy as the beautiful life, the fullness of human civilization, that they want to destroy. Humanism, not cynicism, not slop, not tech “””nerd””” culture

🚨 Science nerds: TIME FOR ACTION!! 🧪 The past two weeks have been horrendous for NSF. Will only continue to get worse, with likely more hits and fuckery today & tomorrow. See this new @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social article for where we are today (gift link). 🧵 But then most importantly...

If you need joy today, take time to celebrate *Princess Awesome et al vs. CPB et al* joining this list of comical case names. www.loweringthebar.net/comical-case...

Proud to be able to contribute to this work with other colleagues in the HIV Modelling Consortium, estimating the impact of USAID and PEPFAR's cuts to HIV programs. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This paper is wild. Using Facebook data, migration flows for 3B people are estimated. Results match other high-quality approaches where estimates are available but the FB data approach can be applied much more broadly and quickly. Data will be made public through the Humanitarian Data Exchange.

I am no longer working on evaluating the health impacts of providing dapirivine to adolescent girls and young women. As of today, I am now evaluating the health impacts of giving dapirivine to people with vaginas ages 15-25.

The former head of PEPFAR pleads for the preservation of the lifesaving program. @cohenjon.bsky.social speaks with John Nkengasong. www.science.org/content/arti...

I didn’t make it to CROI this year, and I’m so glad I caught up with Rebecca Denison’s presentation. A deeply moving and sobering reminder that each of us has a contribution to make at this political moment. youtu.be/CutIwfkv8oU?...

TAKE ACTION! If you weren’t able to attend #CROI2025 this week, you can still make your voice heard by telling Congress to enact pending legislation that provides full funding for and averts cuts to vital, lifesaving domestic and global ID and HIV programs. here: bit.ly/41WxvJE

I don’t know if it’s semantic satiation or what but preparing for a talk is a really good way to completely lose track of which parts of your research matter

Everything we can save is worth saving

The coolest thing I’ve seen today is that a bunch of volunteer public health professionals and developers have restored the CDC website from before January 20th 2025. This differs from an archive in that they want to rebuild the links between pages and replicate the full website.

Spending my weekend producing estimates of how many people’s lives are at risk as a direct consequence of PEPFAR’s cancellation www.vox.com/future-perfe...

2 cases of measles confirmed in NYC www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news...

You know Kate Winslet in Contagion? Where she runs into a hot zone, risking her life, so Americans could be safer? She was an EIS officer. That’s who was just fired at CDC today. EIS officers. And many, many more public servants fighting every day for your health.

My mom asked me if I could "take AI off her computer". I said, "sure, let me just get my tweezers".

Academic workers across the country are organizing to call on our congressional representatives on Thursday, 1/30, at 3pm ET / 12pm PT to demand these restrictions be lifted immediately. There will be a training over zoom at the beginning of the event. Join us! form.jotform.com/250226137228...

I know there’s a lot right now. But folks need to understand what this means. A suspension this long would mean people living with HIV lose their medicine for months. People around the world lose their PrEP for months, putting millions at risk of getting HIV. Drug-resistant strains could emerge.

Not good news: @who.int just announced a new Marburg outbreak in Tanzania. “As of 11 January 2025, nine suspected cases were reported including eight deaths across two districts – Biharamulo and Muleba. … Results are pending official confirmation.” 🧪 #IDsky www.who.int/emergencies/...

I saw someone wearing a shirt with DATA MINER printed above a picture of an oil derrick. I think it was meant to be clever but read to me as grim. Anyone know of an article exploring the analogy of data science as comparable to extractive (exploitative, environmentally harmful) industry?

Paper submitted today! "Assessing bidirectionality in causal relationships between HIV and depressive disorders in western Kenya: A mathematical modeling study" - estimating how much HIV burden is attributable to the interactions with common mental disorders like major depression

Trying to use ChatGPT to do arithmetic be like