Zamin Iqbal

Sovereignty for sale Tech monopolies and the future of the nation state

New post just out:

"Sovereignty for sale"

The UK is uniquely exposed to the power of US tech monopolies - from Palantir to AI and cloud services.

Why is it so dangerous? What are other countries doing? And what should we do?

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/s...

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

New AI in genomics fellowship with the sanger institute and Google DeepMind A new research fellowship will explore the application of AI in genomics, funded by Google DeepMind.

Postdoc on AI/biology funded by asanger and DeepMind!

www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/ne...

Spanish PM Sánchez responds to Trump:

"Spain is against this disaster... Govts are here to improve people's lives... It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are unable to fulfill that mission use the smoke of war to hide their failure, and in the process, fill the pockets of a few."

right, deleted, sorry both!

er...yes, sorry :-(
i'm not really adding to the discourse am I, maybe i should delete

Bhattacharya urges measles vaccination as US activity increases

"According to the New York Times, the United States asked PAHO for the deadline to be pushed back, with some experts again noting the administration does not want to lose elimination status before the midterm elections."

www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/bhat...

"..used the tech to identify peptide inhibitors of transcription factor CREB1, which is overactive in a broad range of cancers ..
They have shown these peptides can enter human cancer cells grown in the lab, shut down CREB1-controlled pathways, and selectively kill cancer cells."

New paper showing that bacteria with more genes for cooperation can live in a broader range of habitats and that genes for cooperation are more more likely to be in the accessory genome www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @lauriebelch.bsky.social

I felt the need to write to my MP yet again

First mRNA COVID-flu combo vaccine set for European approval Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) backs Moderna’s mCombriax vaccine for adults aged 50 and over.

Coming to Europe...

#Medsky #IDsky #influenza #COVID #vaccines #Moderna #MRNA

Starmer's ability to find the exact sweetspot which pisses off everyone is extraordinary. He's a savant.

Help me out #MicroSky - what are your favourite microbial/viral genetics practical classes for undergraduates that can be run across just two sessions?

If Reform had won Starmer would be on his knees to those voters begging for forgiveness. Greens win and it's like "Fuck off cranks"

Not even hiding the belief that there are Real Voters (white, male, perhaps working class when politically convenient) and Fake Voters (graduates, Muslims, people in cities, anyone on the left regardless of class or ethnicity). A belief shared by many on the Labour right

This is terrible from Starmer. Just absolute trash. And any normal voter looking at the new MP and then reading this description will think him mad.

The man who brought you “Island of Strangers” has views on divisive politics

Nobody here needs to be told that Reform's claims of cheating are utterly absurd but it's worth noting that the anti-Reform vote was so large that even if the Greens and Labour had split it 50/50 Reform would still have lost — in fact they would have come third. They only value democracy if they win

There are millions of people who have that stomach. We just need to get them into public office.

Article - Nuffield Politics Research Centre

@martamiori.bsky.social and I have been writing, since 2024, about why Labour's 'Reform' challenge and emphasis was based on a misunderstanding of Labour's vote. Here for anyone interested: politicscentre.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

Unrooted phylogeny indicating the major clades of Mycobacterium bovis found in Ireland.

The genomic diversity and spatial patterns of Mycobacterium bovis in Ireland revealed by whole genome sequencing rdcu.be/e50zT

This could be true, I don't know how we'd know really. What do you mean by load/requirements for ENA - they are under load, and submission has tricky requirements?

YouTube video by Comptoir IA ⚡️💪Energym⚡️💪

This spoof is fantastic, not least for the aging choices they’ve made for the tech broligarchs. youtu.be/zdkBUuWCZg4?...

One interesting thing we did is look at rate of submission bacterial sequence data to INSDC. Logistic fit is surprisingly good - inflexion during the pandemic. So, the data no longer looks like exponential growth. Projected to 2035 just for the hell of it, let's see.

Cheers Ewan! Was very glad to see our protein structure predictions get into EBI AFDB! Open databases FTW!

I should have said, this takes us to about 2.8 million genomes in total. We don't have annotations, etc for the latest data yet, this will be an ongoing process

Courtesy of @martibartfast.bsky.social , we have a new release of AllTheBacteria which adds another 322,920 assemblies, covering all ENA (illumina, isolate) prokaryotes to May 2025.
allthebacteria.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ov...

The fact that there’s a secret network of doulas going around Minneapolis to help with home births for parents afraid of ICE should be front-page news.

These children, born in secrecy, are American citizens.

The purpose of a car or carriage is to get from A to B. The purpose of education is to learn intellectual skills. Advait Paliwal's comparision of the mechanisation of transport to using AI for school/college/university work misses the point entirely. And most likely deliberately.

Students are as varied in personality and motivation as humans are , so I feel there will always be some who don't want to learn, but many arrive feeling they don't have the 'right kind of brain', and i think a lot if that is managing expectations (its normal to be confused when you learn).