Daniel Rigden

This sums it up.

Sadiq Khan calls for progressives to “fight back and champion the benefits of legal migration” in Fabian conference speech.

He warns of the “construction sector grinding to a halt, care homes left understaffed, our universities badly hit, and even greater challenges for the national finances”.

Board of Peace - Season 1

It's a fascinating read, and both your and @ellabaron.bsky.social's results are brilliant

Mirdita Lab - Laboratory for Computational Biology & Molecular Machine Learning Mirdita Lab builds scalable bioinformatics methods.

My time in @martinsteinegger.bsky.social's group is ending, but I’m staying in Korea to build a lab at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine. If you or someone you know is interested in molecular machine learning and open-source bioinformatics, please reach out. I am hiring!
mirdita.org

Just spotted that 25k of you here are now receiving these. So thanks for keeping your letterboxes open and your doormats clear.

You keep reading them, I’ll keep sending them. Cheers, T.

🌟 2026 Nucleic Acids Research Database issue 🧬
182 papers, 84 new databases, plus Breakthrough Articles on JoGo (global long‑read haplotypes) and So3D (3D spatial genomics). Browse the issue and Editorial: academic.oup.com/nar/issue/54...
academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
@danielrigden.bsky.social

The venerable Collection of databases (www.oxfordjournals.org/nar/database/c) is also updated under the care of @xosegb.bsky.social

As always, a pleasure and a privilege to be in charge of the Issue and thanks to the excellent staff at @oxfordunipress.bsky.social for making it possible.

The issue has two Breakthrough papers: JoGo, a human haplotype nomenclature and database, and So3D, a fully 3-dimensional spatial transcriptomics resource.

As usual, lots of amazing resources among the 84 new arrivals. Another 98 papers are Updates from across the globe, including helpful overviews from the major players at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), the @ebi.embl.org and the Chinese National Genomics Data Center (NGDC).

The 2026 Nucleic Acids Research database issue and the online molecular biology database collection Abstract. The 2026 Nucleic Acids Research database issue has 182 papers from across biology and neighbouring fields. Eighty-four of these papers describe n

The new 2026 NAR Nucleic Acids Research Database Issue is now out! 🎉

Take a look at the Editorial here academic.oup.com/nar/article/...
and browse the whole Issue here
academic.oup.com/nar/issue/54...

1/ Something which I don't think gets articulated clearly often enough is that a system where countries generally respect international sovereignty and territorial integrity is not pure charity or morality by the United States, but in its direct interests.

Despite it being the strongest bear.

In remembrance of Peer Bork  | EMBL EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

Very sad to hear about the passing of Peer Bork, one of true giants of computational biology

www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

🔵 This week's Tom the Dancing Bug
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A BUSY, BUSY ICE ENFORCEMENT OPERATION
with apologies to Richard Scarry
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Brought to you by the rough and ready Inner Hive, including long-time member Brady Marsh and new member SquirrelSaver7. ( bit.ly/theInnerHive )
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READ IT RIGHT HERE👇

A Year of Living Dangerously in Trump's America I no longer feel safe to speak or act freely in a country where people are being arbitrarily detained and killed and where the truth is becoming whatever Donald Trump says it is, reports Alexandra Hal...

This from former British diplomat @alexhh.bsky.social, who now is now based in the US, really hits home about the nightmare currently playing out in Trump's America

bylinetimes.com/2026/01/15/a...

Or there’s X, the website formerly known as Twitter. Its owner is committed to removing the government, and seems keen to encourage violence on Britain’s streets. Now its 2026 update lets users create what are politely called “sexualised images” of anyone, including children. A Secretary of State for Culture, if Britain had one, could take a view on whether this was a welcome development. They could, if they had been appointed and went into work every day, offer Starmer advice on whether X should be one of the government’s main channels of communication, effectively supporting a site that produces on-demand pornography of real people including, let’s say it again, children.

If the UK government had a Culture Secretary, that person would be in a position to take a view about whether child porn on demand was a good thing, or a bad thing. thecritic.co.uk/brin...

Abuse thrives where the government tweets – why it's time to quit X now The use of AI tool Grok to generate en masse intimate images of real women and girls is sickening.

It's now unconscionable for the government to be posting on X.

X is not a neutral utility, it is far, far darker: an environment that shapes behaviour, rewards cruelty, and normalises abuse.

@theleaduk.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/theleadu...

Translated from the original German

podcasts

There is, to my mind, no justification for the continued use by the UK Government of X as a platform for official comms. There hasn't been for some time, in fact, but if the latest developments around AI-generated image abuse and CSAM don't change the policy I really don't know what will.

Elon Musk's Grok apologizes after generating sexual images of young girls The incident has renewed concerns about sexualized images being made of women with their consent.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐭 𝐗/𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰.

Musk’s platform is proving itself a vile cesspit: its AI generating sexually explicit images of children is horrifying.

Every day we tolerate this, we weaken our democracies and endanger our future.

www.newsweek.com/grok-apology...

A List of Predictions Made in 1926 About 2026

🧵

This year has been brutal for the #climate movement.

Rollbacks, repression, & outright denial, especially in the US, have made progress feel fragile & uneven.

Which is exactly why it matters to pause & look back at what did move forward in 2025.

Here are 12 real wins 🏆, one for each month 🧵⬇️

Just a gif of the EU flag projected onto the London Eye as part of Mayor Sadiq Khan's London's New Year's Day fireworks 😀

The UK is £90 billion a year poorer because of Brexit i.e. tax rises and spending cuts, it's absurd

One day soon the madness will end and the UK will #RejoinEU ☺️

Cameron refuses to apologise to Ukip David Cameron today refused to apologise for describing the UK Independence party as 'fruitcakes', 'loonies' and 'closet racists'.

David Cameron right shock. www.theguardian.com/politics/200...

Had no idea about Presto Music so thanks. Do they cover even the more esoteric in your experience?

Redacting Andrew papers ‘like removing Trump from Epstein files’ A biographer of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor said officials were panicking and worrying about what releasing the papers to the National Archives would reveal

Files on Andrew’s activities as trade envoy withheld by the government. Once again even disgraced royals are protected by the state. What’s there to hide? It’s more important than ever that transparency reigns with the Royal Family. And it never does.

www.thetimes.com/article/c695...

Number of people who say Britons must be born in UK is rising, study shows Exclusive: Research finds ‘worrying’ surge in support for hard-right narratives on national identity

So Boris Johnson, Prince Phillip, Andrew Bonar Law, Freddie Mercury, George I, George II, Richard E Grant, Douglas Carswell, Rudyard Kipling, Cliff Richard, Joanna Lumley and Spike Milligan weren't British?

Interesting

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I thought I’d share a few of my favourite photos by other people that I’ve seen on this platform in 2025. A slowly evolving thread. 🧵