Thomas Lumley

Submitters’ primary concerns about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines can be categorised as follows. ° mRNA vaccines (which use messenger RNA to instruct the body’s cells to produce a viral protein that evokes an immune response in the person receiving them) alter DNA or modify genes, causing cancer and other harmful conditions. ° The manufacturing process for Comirnaty was changed which affected its safety. ° The Comirnaty vaccine was still ‘experimental’ at the time of approval and had not been properly tested. ° The Comirnaty vaccine produced harmful side effects which authorities have not acted on appropriately. ° The long-term effects of the Comirnaty vaccine remain uncertain. 1383 We have carefully considered these issues, drawing on advice and evidence from a range of experts and sources, including studies provided to us by submitters, research published in leading scientific journals and conclusions from international regulatory authorities and the COVID-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board. This review makes clear that the concerns raised are not grounded in reliable evidence or aligned with scientific consensus. While we acknowledge the sincerity of those who brought these concerns to us, ultimately our conclusions reflect the most robust and widely accepted scientific evidence available.

Prepare for meltdowns from any VFF or similar people in your life. I think they genuinely convinced themselves the phase 2 report was going to prove them right.
Reader, it did not.

English translation of Sophie Kowalevski's "On the problem of the rotation of a rigid body about a fixed point" This is an English translation and digitisation of Sophie Kowalevski's (also know as Sofya Kovalevskaya) paper on what is now known as the Kovalevskaya Top. The original paper was written in French an...

arxiv.org/abs/2603.07154
/English translation of Sophie Kowalevski's "On the problem of the rotation of a rigid body about a fixed point"/
Sophie Kowalevski (translation by Graham Hesketh)

Job opportunity Assistant Professor, tenure track, qualification agreement at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien Jobportal others in Wien

Opening for a tenure track position in statistical computing:

wirtschaftsuniversitaet-wien-portal.rexx-systems.com/Assistant-Pr...

As dept chair, R Core member Kurt Hornik invites applications from people who could make substantial contributions to #RStats, including base R.

Deadline Mar 18!

#Rstats #RSpatial #Duckdb ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Using Quarto to Write a Book I’ve spent the last couple of months revising my Data Visualization book for a second edition that, ideally, will appear some time in the next twelve months. As with the first edition, I’ve posted a c...

Using Quarto to write (and typeset) a book.

Mazda accused of greenwashing with tree-planting promotion Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle's CO2 emissions.

Mazda says it plants five trees for every car sold, but a climate expert says 41,000 trees would be needed to offset the vehicle’s CO2 emissions.

Mazda has now been taken to the Advertising Standards Authority over the allegedly misleading promotion.
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/09/m...

Yes, I saw that. I will be interested to see how it plays out.

Grammarly turned me into an AI editor against my will and I hate it The company tells Platformer it will let experts opt out of the controversial feature — but how different is it than what every other AI company is doing?

Wait, what?! Grammarly made an AI persona of me and all these other journalists?!!!!!

Thank you @caseynewton.bsky.social for shaming them into at least offering a paltry optout— although obviously that is not enough.

www.platformer.news/grammarly-ex...

If one's given name is Peter and one wants to be called Petra, is that "derived from" the given name? 🤔

Reading through the 4 enumerated items in particular, it is super clear that robust public research capability is needed to address them all. At the same time, this government is further destroying that very capability and the pathways for training up the next generations.
#NZPOL

Lockdown, vaccine decisions 'considered and appropriate' – Royal Commission The Covid-19 Royal Commission has broadly backed the decisions taken during the pandemic, while identifying areas for improvement.

The Covid-19 Royal Commission's second report has been published, I've read (almost) all of it and here are the key takeaways:
newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/10/l...

Saw a van advertising "passive fire installations". Very slow arsonists?

Adjusting to the Changing Internet When ads flooded some parts of the internet, I adjusted by avoiding those places when I recognized the signs—or hitting the back button quickly when I hadn't. When "AI" scrapers led to an explosion of sites making me wait while checking if I'm a robot, I got used to it, though it's a drag. And so on it goes. Now it seems cyber surveillance could advance in ways that might require bigger behavioral adaptation.

Adjusting to the Changing Internet

When ads flooded some parts of the internet, I adjusted by avoiding those places when I recognized the signs—or hitting the back button quickly when I hadn't. When "AI" scrapers led to an explosion of sites making me wait while checking if I'm a robot, I got used…

R-Ladies branded graphic with purple-to-blue gradient background. The heading reads "Our Programs" in white. Six program cards are arranged in a 2-by-3 grid: Mentoring (connecting new chapter organizers with experienced leaders), RoCur (rotating curation on Bluesky spotlighting community voices), Abstract Review (80+ reviewers helping members submit to conferences), Community Slack (a safe space for connecting, learning, and sharing), Blog (tutorials, stories, and career journeys from our community), and YouTube (event recordings and learning materials).

R-Ladies is more than meetups. Our programs:

🤝 Mentoring — pairing new organizers with experienced ones
📣 RoCur — rotating curation on Bluesky
📝 Abstract Review — 80+ reviewers for conference submissions
💬 Community Slack
📖 Blog & YouTube

rladies.org

#RLadiesIWD2026

Really nothing in Papua New Guinea?

No, it sends the hour to the southern hemisphere for a nice holiday. Then the wolf eats it again in October. We should find a way to do this over the internet and save on wolves.

An Assistant US Attorney has got himself on the wrong side of a "not checking AI and not admitting it" claim. His "firm", the US Attorney's Office, has also been told to show up at the hearing.

websitedc.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/go...

@alistaircoleman.bsky.social
Reminded by FB.
NZ headlines 6 years ago

The middle-aged dude riding a fixie and wearing a courier bag should be in lycra.

For people who do international online meetings: time-zone chaos season starts tonight and runs for a month

Paper bag of feijoas from an Eastern Suburbs aunty via Roskill distribution hub

Socialist fruit season has begun

Yes, it's November 19th

Vancouver has the advantage of not needing to fly over any places likely to be in a shooting war

I've seen Jaynes used as an example of a scientist who was completely wildly wrong but not a crank

(I don't know if this has anything to do with the important pre-human predators in NZ all being birds, with full colour vision.)

Flame robin - Wikipedia

The Australasian robins do include a bunch of brightly-colored species, of the same general form as the English robin, which explains the name. The NZ members of the group aren't colourful.

Here's an Australian flame robin

The first time I went to Tiritiri near Auckland I saw two of these and didn't realize how rare they were. When I mentioned it, an American bird photographer ran back up the trail to try to find the kōkako where I'd seen it. Wonderful birds -- they'd be popular even if they were common

Despair is not a plan

Ok, who wished Marsden had the same funding rate as NIH?

I think "mystery" is going too far. The basic idea is old, and the problem with the proof is that there's too much of it to check rather than that it does anything especially hard to understand. It's just philosophically interesting for what it shows about mathematicians' concepts of proof.