Willem van Schaik

Speaking just for the UK media, because they see it throufh a filter of prejudices and preconceptions about what NL is or should be.

And they do not understand that being the largest party is relatively meaningless, compared to the UK.

It is better in Dutch than in translation for reasons I find difficult to pin down.

(don't worry about me, I am feeling fine)

November Het regent en het is november Weer keert het najaar en belaagt Het hart, dat droef, maar steeds gewender, Zijn heimelijke pijnen draagt. En in de kamer, waar gelaten Het daaglijks leven wordt verricht, schijnt uit de troosteloze straten Een ongekleurd namiddaglicht. De jaren gaan zoals zij gingen, Er is alengs geen onderscheid Meer tussen dove erinneringen En wat geleefd wordt en verbeid. Verloren zijn de prille wegen Om te ontkomen aan de tijd; Altijd november, altijd regen, Altijd dit lege hart, altijd.

The Dutch original is one of the very few reasons to learn the language

NOVEMBER It’s raining and it is November: Autumn lays siege now to the heart That sadly, though more wont than ever, Endures its secret pains apart. And in the room, where resignation Sees daily life pass as it may, From streets that speak of desolation A bleak light falls at close of day. The years pass by but never alter, The difference will soon be gone Between dim memories that falter And what is lived and is to come. Lost are the ways I knew of gaining Release from time in earlier days; Always November, always raining, Always this empty heart, always.

Happy November everybody!

JC Bloem - November (1931) (translation: John Irons)

A simplified version of Figure 4 from our paper https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002741 describing the evolution of vancomycin resistance in C. difficile. The shows phase contract and fluorescence microscopy images of a wild type and a vancomycin resistant C. difficile. In the fluorescence channel can be seen vancomycin -bodipy binding to the mid-cells of wild type cells but this labelling is absent in the resistant bacteria

1. Characterising the role of the dual-function VanT in C. difficile vancomycin resistance.
A collaboration between our group in @molmicrosheffield.bsky.social and the groups of @gavinhthomas.bsky.social and Marjan van der Woude at the University of York

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

While I don't agree with all of this piece (e.g. the far right vote in NL has just gone to other far-right parties instead of Wilders' PVV and has actually grown slightly), there are some interesting parallels with the UK.

Fantastic result in Bromsgrove, congratulations to Sam Ammar and the local team!

Across the country, it’s the Liberal Democrats who are taking the fight to Reform and winning 💪

Woo-hoo!!!!

Your morning coffee could secretly be weakening antibiotics Researchers have discovered that everyday substances like caffeine can influence how bacteria such as E. coli respond to antibiotics. By examining 94 common drugs and food ingredients, scientists foun...

Careful with that re AMR

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

(this is more a case of a terrible press release because the paper is solid and pretty interesting)

I saw it and thought it was proof that publishing is travelling towards click bait over substance.

Top meme work there, Adam

Carnivorous ‘death ball’ sponge among new species found in depths of Southern Ocean Researchers previously took first confirmed footage of a juvenile colossal squid in scarcely explored habitat

I, for one, welcome our new carnivorous death ball sponge overlords.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I don't think I have many followers in Bromsgrove South, but just a reminder that today is the by-election for Worcs County Council.

If you want to beat Reform, the Lib Dems got close last time (finishing 2nd, only 90 votes or so behind Reform) so hopefully they will bring this over the line now.

Discarded cigarette butts as overlooked reservoirs and amplifiers of antibiotic resistance genes and pathogens in urban green spaces | PNAS Cigarette butts are widely discarded in urban green spaces, yet their microbial health risks remain poorly understood. In a nationwide survey acros...

www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

I know. Couldn't bother to reply to Science Media Centre.

I can't wait for the day that I see a paper entitled "One health papers on AMR are a major source of AMR"

Wilders' PVV the big losers if this is right. Encouraging.

Dutch elections summary

This Currys catalogue page advertises various VHS video recorders and video tapes. The page features deals and promotional offers, highlighting prices and specifications of each product, along with a budget card payment option. (+BASF E240 Twin Pack E180 VHS Video Tapes Ferguson VHS Video Grundig VHS Video Recorder Hitachi VHS Dual-Speed Video MatsUI TV & Video Package Matsui VHS Video NEC VHS Video Panasonic Dual Speed Video Panasonic VHS Video Philips VHS Video Scotch E180/L750 Twin Pack and Sharp VHS Video)

#Christmas 1985: Video Recorders and Video Tapes from Currys

(+Panasonic Dual Speed Video; Hitachi VHS Dual-Speed Video; Grundig VHS Video Recorder; MatsUI TV & Video Package; Panasonic VHS Video; Matsui VHS Video; Ferguson VHS Video; Sharp VHS Video; Philips VHS Video; NEC VHS Video, and more)

I thought the Marais is in the 3rd?

11th is pretty good, bit off the heavily beaten track, which is not a bad thing in Paris

Antimicrobial resistance among Gram-positive agents of bacteraemia in the UK and Ireland: trends from 2001 to 2019 - PubMed Gram-positive pathogens were the dominant historical pathogens of bacteraemia. The trends seen here-with many near-universally active antibiotics-indicate little hazard of this situation returning. Nevertheless, few treatments exist in some settings, notably multi-resistant E. faecium endocarditis.

Interesting paper

'Antimicrobial resistance among Gram-positive agents of bacteraemia in the UK and Ireland: trends from 2001 to 2019'

TL;DR:
- dramatic falls in MRSA
- pneumococcal resistance rates low
- E. faecium more prevalent (and more vanR) than E. faecalis

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41140273/

Baseball is a game normally played in secret by Americans while the British sleep but for some reason it has escaped into the uk daytime and now the secret is out.

Plasmid dependent phage eliminate pathogenic bacteria and antibiotic resistance plasmids from the chicken gut microbiome https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.26.684609v1

We left the US and moved to France Hello readers, I got big updates! Some of you already know this, but it’s getting more real and more official every month: my family and I have left the US and moved to France! A few months ago I q…

I started a new job in Montpellier, France!
Happy about new opportunities, sad about the state of things in the US.

abetterscientist.wordpress.com/2025/10/26/w...

I like that in the 2024 version they use the same shadow effect. Very powerful.

That merely being “under review” by a Nature family journal is offered as a quality proxy for a paper is a tragic illustration of the extent to which academia is addicted to brands and outsources evaluation

Which is brilliant!

I can highly recommend Nosferatu (2024) in the run-up to Halloween

Paratyphoid fever and relapsing fever in 1812 Napoleon's devastated army By implementing a phylogeny-driven approach for authenticating ultra-low-coverage pathogen aDNA, Barbieri et al. detect Salmonella enterica Paratyphi C and Borrelia recurrentis, agents of paratyphoid ...

Yep. Spoiler alert: they found evidence of relapsing fever (lice-borne Borrelia spp) -and paratyphoid fever.

www.cell.com/current-biol...