Sometimes, I run on what feels like German logic: - If I'm late, it's rude and my meeting will be cancelled. - If I'm early and wait outside until the meeting is officially supposed to start, either I get noticed and the meeting starts early, or I don't get noticed and I'm perfectly on time.

they should make a movie series about how it’s irresponsible to use technology to mess with the natural order of things for profit

The Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) is seeking a scientist in wildlife biology, ecology, or a closely related discipline, with a focus on movement ecology, spatial data analysis, and/or scavenger and carnivore systems. Read and apply here: tinyurl.com/mr3x7uwk

I might or might not have tried to load all of openrivers into ArcGIS onto a 24Gb Ram computer without cropping to my area of interest and it might or might not have crashed the whole system.

Brilliant talk by Dr Johannes De Groeve today, perfectly timed to the time I was working on my spatial analysis. I'll definitely be keeping TABS on the package.

Spatial data preparation is simultaneously some of the most fun and some of the most boring work I've ever done.

New PhD Opportunity. We are advertising for a modeller to model the impacts of mosquito-borne disease in the Americas. The project is funded by The Leverhulme Trust via University of Glasgow, and supervised by Christina Cobbold, Dom Brass and myself. Deadline 6th March 2026. t.ly/Z-tqt

Today, I found a place that had fries with friends sauce and then I got a coffee from Leonidas. I think it's safe to say that I sometimes do miss Belgium.

An absolute highlight of collecting occurrence data from the literature has been to add location tags to all of the coordinates and postcodes while finding out a bunch of town names in the UK.

As someone who has a whole Genshin Impact gaming channel, having to cite Escofier and Escoufier in a methods section without misspelling them as Escoffier is going to be interesting.

Found out today: I read and processed 161 papers during my lit review.

The lawyer in the rom com I'm watching with my mum just cited a law in courst that I cited in my lit review.

Questions I have asked myself today, rabies research edition: - How do I bibtex cite the UK government? - Why is this list of rabies cases missing that 1985 lethal spillover from C. nilsonii to a bat worker that was followed by researchers not finding a single seropositive bat?

I have to say, I really love it when I find a reference that solves a lot of method questions I had. Species shout-out to Dr. Solveig Lubeley and her PhD thesis at this point.

🚨 Pre-announcement! 🚨 We’re hiring for 2 x two-year, full-time roles to join me and the wider @palaeoverse.bsky.social team @es-ucl.bsky.social. - Research Software Engineer (REF: B04-06999): lnkd.in/eNRBiPnP - Community Engagement Coordinator (REF: B04-06998): lnkd.in/ejUACCzn

"Mind the gap" is all fun and games until you're 5"4 leaving a Southern train at Clapham.

Trying to squeeze things in before the holidays is always a risk. Got a RAM upgrade and figured I'll run my trial data analysis . . . The server I get my mapping data from is on maintance for the rest of the week.

I don't want to make the decision here, but I should really stick to one for the next four years, so #MathSky Maple or Mathematica? If you need more context: I have previously used Mathematica, but my supervisor mainly uses Maple

I love silly coding things. 1. The course I'm taking added a .txt file with the Project Gutenberg version of Little Women 2. I'm backing up the course via GitHub 3. I have GitHub mobile on my phone => I can read Little Women on my phone on the train journey back.

One day, I would like to understand Brighton, because I got immediately cold the moment I left the city.

In a peak uni experince, my housemate was still in the kitchen pulling and all nighter when I went in for an early breakfast ahead of travel to a short programming course.

Very excited to see Kirsty Bolton, @edmhill.bsky.social, and Ellen Zapata-Webborn speak at the JUNIPER seminar today #episky

I'm having a little maths day which means I get to curl up with some papers, my notebooks, a ludicrous amount of tea, and scribble down equations I'll be needing later. #EpiSky

Every time I make myself a cup, I forget that Douwe Egberts is much stronger than the instant coffee we had in the lab before.

I've set up some google scholar alerts for different bat researchers which means I now get four emails about the same paper.

There's a little sneak peak of my project on the website of my DTP now: www.surrey.ac.uk/wessex-one-h...

The hidden danger of Biorender (& the death of scientific illustration) A short thread 🧵

A great overview on benefits, pitfalls, and limitations.

Today, I had to grab a stepping stool at the library, because apparently Paul Dirac is a top shelf author.

After trying to get a grasp a more global perspective on disease ecology in the species I'm working on, I'm never again complaining about overly localised studies.

"The hyperreal bat: more vivid, more coherent, and more narratively satisfying than any bat in nature." Why does the idea of bats as special viral reservoirs endure? New Substack post: robertjgifford.substack.com/p/bats-and-v...

My supervisors are the best. They managed to get me out of a whole bunch of rabbit holes that would have delayed my lit review indefinitely.

I've been processing my lit review notes and the amount of times I've written "ref verify with", because I caught the textbooks slacking with their references one too many times is giving me trust issues.

A reminder to all #palaeoartists; the deadline for the Marsh Palaeoart Award is fast approaching! If you want to submit I'd recommend doing it ASAP as, while it says 25th Nov here, the webpage specifies the 21st (I'm glad I checked😅). Anyway, good luck to y'all! #paleoart @palaeontosoc.bsky.social

when will the lesson finally get learned? #cloudflare

Timezones are fun: I just got an email for a seminar on "Let’s talk about work-life balance"... at 5am my time.

Loved seeing people post their graduation pictures today, so throwback to my Genetics master "Just look at the degree on that chick"

Today's count of algorithms being made worse after the companies that made them started to use genAI like a crutch is up to 2...

Shoutout to Sussex Library! After stressing out over not finding a key reference, they found it in 4 four days and sent me the pdf.

Why do new versions need to ruin things?! I used to find every paper I had in my bibliography on research rabbit. One algorithm change later and it can't even find references Zotero was able to export from Google Scholar.

We're advertising an MRC-LID PhD studentship on modelling measles outbreak risk in teenagers and adults, with me, @amsuffel.bsky.social and @rozeggo.bsky.social You'll design mathematical models using vaccine data and Electronic Health Records to analyse recent transmission patterns, get in touch!

Got to read an exciting new study on a new method of outbreak cluster detection including an application to probably animal rabies cases in Tanzania today: Hayes et al. in @royalsociety.org Open Science #episky royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

The pile of old textbooks on my desk is growing a delightful amount.

Someone said to me they're don't believe in the COVID vaccine and I lowkey went into epidemiologist sleeper agent mode. They were really receptive to the information though. #episky

Working on a species named in 1775 is all fun and games until you're trying to find out when we went from calling the virus they carry just rabies to European Bat Lyssavirus 1. Like, what do you mean thre's a textbook describing rabies spillover from bats and then a 30 year gap!?

It's @palaeoverse.bsky.social day! Very excited to be listening to Dr Oskar Hagen about biodiversity modelling beyond statistical approaches.

Brilliant talk by @drjmiddleton.bsky.social at Uni of Sussex today, providing some insights into the intersection between conservation and local population health.

I was browsing some references today and would you look at that: The Russian I took in high school to get some easy marks is coming in handy once again.