I mean it keeps the organs in though? And mostly keeps the rain out. Points for that!

"And now - here's some golden oldies that some of our listeners will remember straight away!
'... I repeat, the archduke of Austria-Hungary has been assassinated...'
What a classic!"

Books are basically fancy text files, and Amazon is a multi-gazillion dollar company - I just can't believe this is not a solvable problem. And probably not even that hard of a one. It's just greed.

#OnThisDay 1930: the BBC's news announcer said, "there is no news" and piano music was played for the remainder of the 15 minute segment.

More days like this please

I'm not a religious person, but I've been more interested in the old biblical stories since I really realised just how radical it is to tell people "do not kill."

And I would definitely expect a PC loaded to _keep working_ with the files/features it used to support, even if I can't get new features or whatever. Windows doesn't cut off my internet access when it stops shipping updates.

There is quite a difference between an Ereader with extremely limited functionality needing to receive and load about 3 standardized file formats- and an entire operating system.

Does it work with Libby? That's where I get most of my books (library app) - but they link to Amazon to get to ereader as far as I can tell.

I make heavy use of Libby for ebooks. But I live in a small apt (limited book space), travel often, & live in a non-English-speaking country (very limited secondhand options, both to buy & sell).

May not be unusual but is still unacceptable.

Email from amazon announcing they will no longer support Kindle devices from 2012 or earlier - even if they are working fine.

Why not let a perfectly functional device just keep functioning? 😠

Second day of #gfv2026 starting off with fantastic plenary talks by Nihal Altan-Bonnet, Paul Lehner and Emma Hodcroft @firefoxx66.bsky.social 🤩

If you want to join a team making pathogen sequencing and analysis for public health, surveillance, and research more accessible, more equitable and more ✨awesome✨ - look no further - come join us on this mission at ARTIC!

#openscience #opendata #opensource

Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) - School of Biosciences - 107071 - Grade 7 This post-doctoral position will contribute to both complementary programmes, developing ‘broadband’ metagenomic sequencing capabilities for rapid detection and characterisation of emerging and unknow...

ARTIC are hiring! Postdoctoral opportunity in metagenomics at the University of Birmingham

edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

A screenshot of the new Pathoplexus homepage showing all viruses now supported, including Dengue and Yellow Fever, which are circled in red

1/ 🦟 Big news: #Pathoplexus now supports Dengue virus & Yellow Fever virus - two arboviruses responsible for over 400 million infections and up to 94,000 deaths per year.
Here's what’s new in our latest update 👇🏻

Read the full update: pathoplexus.org/news/2026-03... 📰

SimPlot-CL: Automated Similarity Plotting from the Command Line A lightweight, Python-based command-line tool for generating similarity plots directly from sequences.

5/5

If you want to try it out, check out the documentation and open-source code here:
🌐 Website: eve-lab.org/blog/SimPlot...
📂 GitHub: github.com/hodcroftlab/simplot-cl
Feedback and feature suggestions are very welcome! 🙂

And again - huge thanks/credit to Keno for this great work!

4/5

The tool is inspired by great existing software like the original SimPlot (Lole et al., 1999), but provides a command-line implementation that enables smooth integration into bioinformatics pipelines (e.g. Snakemake or Nextflow workflows).

A screenshot of the arguments table for SimPlotCL, just giving a brief view of some of the arguments and what they do, such as --metadata, --colors, --windowsize, --stepsize, etc.

3/5

SimPlot-CL makes it easy to generate similarity plots in bulk! It supports inputs where query and reference sequences are in the same or separate FASTA files, can optionally align sequences first, and offers customizable plotting parameters (window/step sizes, colors, etc).

2/5

We built a lightweight Python command-line tool for automated similarity plot (SimPlot) analyses. It performs sliding-window comparisons of one or multiple query sequences against a panel of reference sequences, designed with viral recombination analysis in mind.

A figure showing a 'Simplot' which plots the similarity of a genome to other genomes across a graph, with similarity on the Y-axis and the genome position on the x-axis. Many coloured lines show the sequences being compared - those closest to the top (similarity of 1) are the closest matches in different parts of the genome.

1/5

Introducing SimPlot-CL! 🧬
Recombination plays an important role in viral evolution. Similarity plots are a great way to visualize recombination patterns, but generating them across many genomes can be cumbersome

(Work with my student, Keno Strotjohann!)
📂 github.com/hodcroftlab/simplot-cl

In 2025, GISAID cut off access to many critical SARS-CoV-2 resources, incl. our outbreak.info.

A month ago, GISAID leveled accusations against us, Cov-Spectrum, Nextstrain, and members of COG-UK, which are false and misrepresent known facts.

Our joint response:

blog.outbreak.info/joint-respon...

A "lantern" from Basel Fasnacht (carnival) celebrations, showing an upside down white abstract dove holding a neon green leaf in its beak

From Basel #Fastnacht 2026

Looking forward to the #SocialMediaCafe for researchers tomorrow tue, 25.2.2026, 12.15-13h with guest @firefoxx66.bsky.social. We will talk about the use of social media for researchers and focus on Bluesky. The cafe is open to all ZHAW-researchers. Check the intranet: intra.zhaw.ch/departemente...

I would have given you exactly that advice (stock up on essential medicines) at the end of Feb!

It's hard to recreate that mindset now, because know we *know* - we've *seen* a world brought to a halt. But this was incomprehensible then. How do you just - stop everything?

What situation would we not believe today? Or are we more likely to believe overall?

Will I ever have that feeing again?

I continued to help plan events that I knew would not happen. Because it turns out you can't just announce the world is on the brink of a huge change: it's beyond belief. Even when asked directly, my answers were too incomprehensible.
Some things can't be told, only seen.

By this point in February & after, the world felt totally surreal: life was mostly proceeding as normal, but those of us working on the virus knew it was all about to come crashing down - though we didn't know exactly how. It felt like leading two lives - like being a little bit crazy.

A screenshot of a FB memories post from 6 years ago today, 23 Feb 2020. Emma Hodcroft posts: "So yea. This is it. This is the post. SARS-CoV-2 is extremely likely to become (if not already) pandemic. What's most important right now is getting a handle on how quickly it is spreading and where. This means increasing testing and trying to slow the spread to buy time."

Every year I get to 're-live' the pandemic thanks to FB memories. Re-examining my posts with increasing time is always interesting.

This one though - this one never fails to send a shiver down my spine. When do make a post like this? When are you sure enough? What if you regret it?

Winterreden 2026 Karl*a gehört Zürich! Karl der Grosse dient als Plattform für den Meinungsaustausch und ist ein soziokultureller Treffpunkt.

Yes - it was! You can listen to myself, and all the other speakers, here: www.karldergrosse.ch/programm/kat...
😁

Emma Hodcroft presenting Pathoplexus at the LS2 Annual Meeting

Invited speaker Emma Hodcroft @firefoxx66.bsky.social presenting Pathoplexus and the readyness to respond in the @lifesciswitzerland.bsky.social #LS2AM symposium of the @sib.swiss Bioinformatics Section.

Highlighting the speaker who stood in front of the Surprise mayor and told him to consider what the Mayor of Ohrdruf must’ve thought before he died by suicide: “He might have thought ‘how is this my fault I had no jurisdiction over this’ maybe he said ‘this site was not subject to local zoning.’”