I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.

This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.

It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

Main character energy is OUT, this summer we’re bringing NPC energy. We’re posted up at the bar dropping lore and suggesting side quests. We’re leaning casually near a locked door and saying “I don’t think you have the key for that” when someone tries the handle. We’re staring at a tree.

I’m the Canadian who was detained by Ice for two weeks. It felt like I had been kidnapped

I’ve been seething and grieving since yesterday’s Friday Night Massacre of NIH overheads, a seeming bit of bureaucratic trivial that will in fact destroy the US university system if unchecked. But I want to get away from budgets and rate breakdowns and F&A percentages for a moment.

Humor me?

Buckle up because we're banging into the new year with my annual retrospective of the last year in databases! Highlights include license change blowback, Databricks vs. Snowflake gangwar, @duckdb.org's shotgun weddings, and buying a quarterback to impress your lover: www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/...

Check out this bombshell publication by Michael Fischbach @mfgrp.bsky.social and coworkers @stanford-chemh.bsky.social @stanfordmedicine.bsky.social, imagine a cancer immune therapy/vaccine where treatment begins and ends with a painless topical skin treatment! 🤯

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If an #H5N1 pandemic starts tomorrow or in three months, there will be little mystery as to how it happened. The conditions are all there. They have been for a while.
So in some ways the more interesting question to me at the moment is: Why aren’t we in a pandemic yet?
Story here, 🧵 to come:
🧪#IDSky

Great example of YIMBY zoning reforms happening in Minneapolis! www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-...

Seems like a safe bet that object storage as a foundation of data systems architecture is here to stay blog.colinbreck.com/predicting-t...

Utrecht in the Netherlands is the most bikable city in the world. They have launched the ‘10-minute Utrecht’ strategic programme.
"Utrecht will be always beautiful. A city that grows with history. A city that has everything you need nearby."
Read it 🔽
healthyurbanliving.utrecht.nl/our-vision-f...

Looking for books to get for #climate curious friends & family this Christmas🎄?

Here are 6 of my favourites reads this year.

First up @doctorvive.bsky.social's indispensable guide to talking climate action & fighting fossil fuel propaganda 🧵

From the archives: Have you (like me!) wondered what the ATT means and how it's different from average treatment effects? I use #rstats to explore why we care about (and how to calculate) the ATE, ATT, and ATU #polisky #episky #econsky www.andrewheiss.com/blog/2024/03...

Here's a little drawing of some of the 1400 compounds released in
@evebio.bsky.social's first data dump.

Mosaic v0.12 is out: database-powered scalable, interactive visualization! 📈 One new addition is support for dynamic changes in the backing data. Move between smaller and larger samples to balance speed and comprehensive coverage.

This week's #ChemSci Pick of the Week is "Performance of Quantum Chemistry Methods for Benchmark Set of Spin–State Energetics Derived from Experimental Data of 17 Transition Metal Complexes (SSE17)" by Mariusz Radon et al.

Read it here for free: doi.org/10.1039/D4SC...

#ChemSky #CompChemSky

On average, this halide #perovskite is cubic, but locally it dances. Beautiful visualisation (with time averaging) by Will Baldwin using www.ovito.org based on Atomic Cluster Expansion force fields reported in onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #CompChem #CompChemSky