1. I'm supposed to be finishing my taxes but I've got another four hours. So let's talk about an absolute disaster in the US science ecosystem.

The NIH's BRAIN (Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) suffered catastrophic budget cuts—under Biden, no less—and now is unlikely to fund any new grants and will likely cut funding to existing grantees.

https://braininitiative.nih.gov/news-events/blog/brain-director-funding-neuroscience-uncertain-budget-climate

After many months of work, we are releasing Nextclade version 3 with major new features and changes:

- Splicing, slippage, and circular genomes
- Local tree-building
- Auto-suggestion of suitable datasets
- Align more divergent sequences
- Community datasets

clades.nextstrain.org

[1/n]

Ceci n'est pas un spreadsheet.

"A restaurant would not serve you a photo of the meal you ordered. If you have a spreadsheet, why would you save it as an image file? Not being able to copy and paste data or to clearly read it decreases the possibility of curation. Again, this can be solved simply by paying attention to proper formatting."

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002477

Each and every oppressed people, ethnic group, clan, sect, nation you name it...deserves a South Africa.

It might not end the death today, but to have Israeli government representatives, long deemed untouchables, have their crimes read to them in a court of law...a process triggered by a post apartheid African state....watershed moment to say the least.

I hope they feel seen in Gaza. I hope they feel heard.
#Palestinians
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/12/icj-genocide-case-south-africas-five-point-argument-against-israel