Worth listening to @techwontsave.us on how news is increasingly consumed through social media and now "AI" platforms www.techwontsave.us/episode/288_... and then reading this BBC piece...
24.10.2025 02:38 β π 65 π 28 π¬ 0 π 0@pvanheus.bsky.social
#bioinformatics at @SANBI_SA, building bioinformatics workflows for (Pan-)African PH. health & justice! married. @pvanheus@mstdn.science
Worth listening to @techwontsave.us on how news is increasingly consumed through social media and now "AI" platforms www.techwontsave.us/episode/288_... and then reading this BBC piece...
24.10.2025 02:38 β π 65 π 28 π¬ 0 π 0Around 10% of your Nanopore reads (SQK-RBK114) are incorrectly trimmed. Here is why, and how our new tool Barbell solves it:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Want to get started? github.com/rickbeeloo/b...
Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time β regardless of language or territory. www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
23.10.2025 17:17 β π 565 π 323 π¬ 20 π 58Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.
There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
At some point it has to become clear that this tech exists is to create a more toxic society and enrich its owners. These uses are not aberrations but rather the entire purpose.
23.10.2025 19:07 β π 1590 π 608 π¬ 60 π 67The benefit of Ozempic (semaglutide) for protection from major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) is independent of weight loss magnitude and baseline adiposity, likely related to the GLP-1 anti-inflammatory effect
thelancet.com/journals/lan...
My friend told me that her 14 year old son started doing laundry on Sundays for some of his elderly neighbors. He doesn't charge for the labor. And now he is the most popular person in the building and has non stop pies, cookies, and cake. The 14 year old should be our model of modern masculinity.
23.10.2025 02:27 β π 4673 π 811 π¬ 30 π 0New research finds that anti-vaccine networks on Facebook were smaller but more tightly coordinated, spreading emotionally charged misinformation faster, while pro-vaccine networks were larger and more institutional, sharing accurate info but with less engagement.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Israel violating a ceasefire deal as a mob of Israeli settlers attack an American journalist and Palestinian grandma & an Israeli soccer match has to be cancelled because of violent fans is all the worse when you remember the deal calls to "de-radicalize" Palestinians and not Israelis
20.10.2025 00:31 β π 1310 π 411 π¬ 7 π 4The countdown to the end of DRC's most recent #Ebola outbreak has begun with the release from hospital of the last known patient. Of 64 cases (53 confirmed, 11 probables), there have been 45 deaths & 19 survivors. +35,000 people were vaccinated in this response. www.afro.who.int/news/last-eb...
19.10.2025 15:44 β π 344 π 84 π¬ 5 π 4A must-read @politico.com piece about the man behind the Great Barrington Declaration & the Brownstone Institute, two groups that were foundational and central to RFK Jrβs rise and to his MAHA agenda (I was interviewed for the piece; thereβs a quote from me)
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...
German study shows how far right sets agenda thanks to mainstream parties reshaping their communications to respond to what are initially fringe issues, boosting the spread of these ideas and signalling to voters that these ideas and stances were legitimate
shorturl.at/OFfig
They're open with their intentions. They want to provide the only analysis resources themselves.
16.10.2025 20:11 β π 3 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0"With at least 34 trenches measuring 2 kilometers long, the grave in the Dhumair desert is among the most extensive created during the Syrian civil war, Reuters has found. Witness accounts and the dimensions of the new site suggest that tens of thousands of people could be buried there."
15.10.2025 18:03 β π 38 π 23 π¬ 0 π 5Aftonbladet
Greta Thunberg: βIsraeli soldiers hit, kicked, starved, and tortured meβ
β’ They placed a flag next to me, and anytime the flag touched me, they kicked me
β’ Whenever I raised my head to look at Ben-Gvir, I was kicked
β’ She was filmed while stripped naked
Aftonbladet: tinyurl.com/a33vxatc
The CDC's union estimates that a quarter of the agency been gutted under the Trump administration. Here's our story at @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/cdc-te...
14.10.2025 22:37 β π 110 π 69 π¬ 6 π 8And despite the sterling work @olivia.science @timnitgebru.bsky.social and many others have done on critical AI materials, responding to this thing is *yet more* unpaid academic labour drawn from a vanishingly small time budget!
14.10.2025 22:48 β π 4 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Is this EDS-HAT thing of yours facility specific? Reasons I've heard for not doing similar have included shortages of bioinformaticians, difficulty interpreting results, difficulty building data to action pathways. Can be overcome but how did you do it?
14.10.2025 22:44 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Illustration of Burrows-Wheeler Transform and many auxiliary structures from the input string how$now$brown$cow$#
New tool "bwt-svg" for making illustrations of the BWT and the many auxiliary arrays and other structures related to it. Pyodide-based no-installation-necessary interface here: benlangmead.github.io/bwt-svg/. (H/t to @robert.bio for pointing me to pyodide!) Full repo: github.com/benlangmead/....
14.10.2025 20:48 β π 39 π 21 π¬ 4 π 1Maldives becomes the first country to achieve βtriple eliminationβ of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B
hq_who_departmentofcommunications.cmail19.com/t/d-e-gwgjl-...
100%! And for those making out this is some kind of moral failing of Sudanese or other Africans... just nope. No. Not going there.
13.10.2025 14:37 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0my biggest beef with bluesky is that I get way more updates on what Curtis Yarvin or Peter Thiel than anything on the African continent
13.10.2025 12:41 β π 1136 π 144 π¬ 5 π 9Well done Shafaq Aftab. When a reviewer stole her work and published it under his own name, she fought for a YEAR to get the journal to retract the paper. Just wondering why it took Wiley a YEAR to do this. π§ͺ #academicsky
retractionwatch.com/2025/10/03/w...
For some context the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report in addition to being just a good read, to quote wikipedia, "is the main vehicle for publishing public health information and recommendations that have been received by the CDC from state health departments. "
11.10.2025 02:43 β π 499 π 198 π¬ 8 π 17My quote of the day
Nobody ever thanks you for saving them from the disease they didn't know they were going to get.
William Foege
Last month Trump said he wanted proof that COVID vaccines are effective. Yesterday, during his "semiannual" physical, Trump received a COVID vaccine as well as a flu shot.
That's because vaccines β which Trump's administration have made harder to get β work.
Standing in solidarity with colleagues at the CDC who were fired as part of yet another RIF wave.
We are all less safe without their expertise and dedication.
CDC has been a global leader in public health & played a key role in smallpox eradication. Health depts in red states & blue states rely on CDC expertise & support. The CDC EIS program trains the next generation of public health leaders & disease detectives.
They are burning it to the ground.
Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials
βDisease detectives,β high-ranking scientists, the entire Washington office and the staff of a weekly public health journal were among those who learned late Friday that they would lose their jobs.
#GiftLink
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...
π§΅RFK "HIV-doesn't-cause-AIDS" Jr. is now linking circumcision with autism.
This nonsense was posted by his anti-vax group Children's Health Defense years ago, and I looked into it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS9D...