Jon Bang Ploug

Excited to share our work on #AncientRNA from alcohol-preserved lungs, recovering the oldest human RNA virus genome (an 18th-century rhinovirus). Our study shows that viral RNA remnants persist in centuries-old tissue, opening new ways to study virus evolution and historical disease #Paleovirology🫁🦠

"Don't go meddling with Babylonian horoscopes." We get a fascinating glimpe here into an old pastime

Yes, I guess so. They tap into our pro-nature bias, so many people, even MDs, really wish that their theories are true even when 30 years of evidence gathering shows the opposite.

Yes, they can delay it. Better to prevent it, but that requires a complete understanding of the mechanism.

Between 1904 and 1907, approximately two million people are estimated to have died of plague in northern India. Despite this extraordinary scale, the episode has never been narrated as a historical catastrophe, surviving instead almost exclusively in statistical series and technical reports.

Claude AI has been reasonably good in providing advice on Type 1 diabetes management. After I uploaded several months of data from a Tandem insulin pump and a Dexcom sensor, it gave some great advice that led to small adjustments, which improved time in range and gave fewer hypos

They are so obviously a cult that I am perplexed why nobody sees it.

It reminds me of the days when certain Germans couldn't accept advanced physics, such as the theory of special relativity, solely because of the people who developed it. It didn't help them in the end.

Most bizarrely, this logic undercuts decades of historical epidemiology. Carmichael and Silverstein become “naïve” simply for doing what historians have always done: reconstruct change across time.

Yet in aDNA studies, heavy sample selection, modeling, and interpolation are treated as rigorous inference. Texts = bias. Molecules = truth.

The implication was clear: only genomic data counts as “real” evidence for biological change. Textual sources are methodologically suspect by default.

At a recent presentation, I argued (with a bioinformatician) that smallpox virulence likely declined around 1600, an argument already well described by the historians Carmichael and Silverstein.

A historian at the presentation dismissed my use of sources from different periods as “cherry-picking.”

Thailand Begins Airport Screening as Nipah Virus Outbreak Spreads in India Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health has begun screening air passengers arriving from India for signs of Nipah virus infection, following reports of a cluster of cases in India’s eastern state...

🦠 Nipah outbreak

Nipah virus outbreaks have high fatality rates, in the 40-70% range. The latest outbreak is in eastern India. Five cases are reported, and 100 people are under quarantine.

Several Asian countries are reported to be stepping up alertness.

1/2

Actually, it's absurd how little we can read of what humans have produced. We just never see this, as we avoid all the stuff we aren't familiar with. Even philologists are only able to read a small percentage.

Caring for the plights of the working class?

Great! I hope that Denmark will follow suit soon.

He has sworn fealty to Putin, so he will do his utmost to help him now. What a disgrace for him to lower himself to such servitude.

The church also made it illegal. So you could get into serious trouble eating horsemeat, which probably removed most of the flavour..

A truly paradigme changing piece. I’ll be using this to push back against the old guard and their droplet theory.

Habits and policies come and go (masking vs. non-masking eg.) but fundamentally rewriting our understanding of a scientific subject is a rare and historic event.

I also believe that we historians have a heightened responsibility to combat antisemitism. It is an age-old 'mind virus', one that is still endemic around the world, occasionally flaring into epidemics as seen in recent times.

Perhaps, but Monbiot is part of the problem. He reminds me of the European elites before World War II, who were completely ignorant of and disrespectful toward the plights of the working class, fueling grievances that ultimately proved catastrophic.

Gullfoss, but I haven't seen Seljalandsfoss and Hraunfossar

Yes, it was a great talk indeed. You really got us convinced that this is something we need to look more into! I am sitting here and reading about plague in Denmark and Eastern Europe right now :)

My farewell to In Our Time I set up In Our Time 27 years ago. I had been shunted from Start the Week to what was cheerfully known as the ‘death slot’, 9 a.m. on Thursdays, because BBC management decided I could no longer present...

The intellectual diversity of IoT has been astounding. One of my favourite moments was when a scientist began his reply: ‘A billion, billion light years ago…’

✍️ Melvyn Bragg

Folklore experts: I need help visualizing a portent from an Icelandic Annal:
A man sees a "strange sheep" that is spotted and shaped like a "gaflkæna" (a small boat with a flat stern?).
Text says: "...with a long snout in front and short/blunt behind; it came up after him in the wake of his boat."

Title slide for Monica H. Green, "How to Collaborate (or Not) Across Historicist Disciplines: Thoughts from 15 Years on the Edge of the Paleosciences of Plague," presented at Roskilde University, PandemiX Center, 9 Dec 2025. The image in the center shows the author pointing to the pre-Big Bang lineage 0.ANT3 on a phylogenetic tree showing the evolution of Yersinia pestis. She is in discussion with sinologist, Bob Hymes.

My thanks to the PandemiX center at @roskildeuni.bsky.social for hosting me today. What a great opportunity to talk about the current state of plague research & the challenges of thinking across so many disciplinary methods. #PandemicThinking #histmed h/t @jonploug.bsky.social

Italian plague doctor, Rome 1656
The outbreak most closely linked to the iconic beaked suit.

– Made with Nano Banana Pro

I often use documentaries by BBC and others to help bring the past to life for my students. The catch is that you can't make them yourself to fit the exact subject you're teaching. That’s where AI tools could be helpful. They offer infinite customization.

Here I had some fun with Nano Banana Pro.

Da Lone pludselig stod med en guldbelagt lanse i hånden, fik chokket hende til at stikke den i jorden igen Arkæologer fra Museum Vestsjælland har gjort fundet af lanserne, som er det ældste jern fundet i Danmark.

Yes, the archaeologist was so surprised that her first reaction after having unearthed it was to put it back down again, thinking

"Shit! - How can there suddenly be iron here, right in the middle of Bronze Age finds and in a Bronze Age setting?"

www.dr.dk/nyheder/indl...