iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Wait wut www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/s...

70. Blue whales are the biggest animals ever to exist on Earth. Where are their babies born?
Helen Scales, marine biologist

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Apropos of nothing: www.cdc.gov/wastewater/e...

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Fresh language in today's CDC measles update. The asterisk for deaths this year stands, and establishes new goalposts: "*The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) does not currently have any death records from 2026 that indicate measles is the underlying cause." www.cdc.gov/measles/data...

CDC's table of deaths from measles, listing an asterisk for 2026 and 3 for 2025.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

🤷‍♂️ www.cdc.gov/measles/data...

CDC notice about delay in weekly measles case data update.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

YBC 5471: peabody.collections.yale.edu/view/object/... And translation from Marten Stol: archive.org/details/lett...

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

These bot accounts annoy the hell out of me when they have images that have nothing to do with the text, and everything is utterly unsourced. The actual source is still super neat! But I guess not what the engagement bait factory wanted?

Cuneiform tablets from the Yale Babylonian collections

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Thrilled to learn that our work on H5N1 won a National Edward R. Murrow Award! www.rtdna.org/2026-nationa...

in bold: Excellence in Innovation

underlined: What the U.S. Government is Dismissing That Could Seed a Bird Flu Pandemic
ProPublica, new york, ny

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

This is really important work -- the genetic diversity seen so far suggested a start of the Ebola outbreak around mid-March. But the epi turned up hundreds of Ebola-like cases going back as far as January. www.science.org/content/arti...

screenshot of text: "Until now, estimates about when the epidemic started had relied mostly on genetic evidence. Comparing the sequences of Ebola virus found in patients allows scientists to build a family tree and estimate the age of the earliest common ancestor. One such analysis, posted online in early July, suggested the earliest cases occurred in mid-March. But most of the genomes analyzed so far came from Bunia, where the disease erupted later. “I think January is plausible … because we don’t have many sequences from Mongbwalu,” says an author of the analysis, evolutionary biologist Andrew Rambaut of the University of Edinburgh."

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

seriously though if i ran a newspaper there'd be a lot of this

J Jonah Jameson (animated) meme of "i want pictures of spiderman" but it actually says "i need more WGS of MeV"

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

NWS *and* H5? What a week for Texas cattle 👎

National Milk Testing Status, with "affected" status for California, Idaho, Utah and Texas

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Oof, after just a month of no detections, HPAI is back in the Amish duck-farming region in Northern Indiana. 5 cases reported since May 4, mostly on duck farms. Remind me how this was addressed in another densely duck-farmed region hit by constant waves of H5 2.3.4.4b? www.in.gov/boah/species...

5 cases in LaGrange presumptively positive since May 4

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Preliminary analysis shows the sequences from the MV Hondius hantavirus patients are virtually identical. Supports theory of one spillover from rodent to first patient and subsequent human-to-human spread on the cruise ship. virological.org/t/preliminar...

SNPs of sequences from cases. 2,3,6 are identical, cases 7 and 5 have one mutation each on L protein

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Been listening to this album for years and just realized that she’s talking about playing Geoguessr

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

And just now, a detection in a Jay County turkey flock (Jay 12), putting most one of the densest poultry-farmed areas in the country under in a control zone.

Buffers around Jay 12, which places much of Jay and Mercer County in a control or surveillance zone for HPAI

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

A new D-strain reassortant, D1.12, has cut a swath through Lancaster County, PA. Nearly 8 million birds have been culled in the county since late January.

Map of recent cases in Lancaster County, PA

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

There's also been a resurgence in cases in northwest Indiana, after a brief lull in cases following rampant spread in Amish duck farming communities in November and December. www.in.gov/boah/species...

Case list from Indiana Board of Animal Health

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

This og:image drives me absolutely insane every time I see it

Geomatch of Reuters photo of strait of hormuz

map showing Qeshm, an island on the Iranian side of Hormuz

map of historical shipping traffic in strait of hormuz

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

I missed this the other day: USDA NVSL finally updated GenoFlu 🎉 Confirms that D1.1 continues to reign supreme, though there are new EA3 reassortants out there that emerged this fall github.com/USDA-VS/Geno...

a streamgraph of HPAI detections in the U.S. among wild birds, cattle and poultry. D1.1 (yellow) has dominated cases lately

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Situation in Lancaster is ugly. 7.25M birds at 17 premises hit by HPAI in just 30 days

table of 17 recent lancaster, pa hpai cases

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Dara, I’d like to buy your administrative elephant

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

An egg layer flock in Lancaster County, PA hit with HPAI this week. One to keep an eye on: In 2022, when an egg-laying flock in Lancaster around that size had an outbreak, the infection spread to other flocks in Lancaster and Berks, taking out over 4 million birds, mostly layers.

USDA dashboard of new Lancaster County HPAI case in an egg layer facility.

Table of HPAI cases phylogenetically linked to Lancaster 01 in 2022

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Not the first to note the questionable carto in two different Board of Peace logos, one on stage at Davos (blue background) and one tweeted by White House (white background).

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

One Health expert Dr. John Korslund (@hogvet51.bsky.social) shares his thoughts on our recent investigation on his blog. Worth a read if you're interested in #h5n1 #birdflu (and #h5n5) hogvet51.substack.com/p/a-grim-wee...

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

7/ By mid-March, the outbreak had hit 83 farms across six counties and two states, leaving over 20 million chickens dead, most no further than 15 miles from the first infected farm.

Zoomed out map, revealing that birds at 83 farms across six counties in Ohio and Indiana had contracted the virus.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

6/ The simulation showed that where the wind blew, the virus followed. In the first few weeks of the virus’ spread, I found that farms downwind were 20x as likely to see outbreaks.

The map highlights 16 farms that were located in the plume and tested positive for the virus. ProPublica found that farms located downwind from Howe’s Hens during this period were about 20 times as likely to contract the virus than those that weren’t.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

5/ The virus raged at Howe’s Hens, the center of the outbreak, from at least Dec. 22 to Dec. 31, when all the birds on the farm had been killed. Using weather data from that period, I simulated where dust from the site could have blown.

The map reveals a visual representation of a plume moving northwest, using weather data between Dec. 22 and Dec. 31, that shows where dust could have blown from Howe’s Hens. The map also highlights the dozens of farms within the plume.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

4/ Some thought it might have moved on the wind, not just because of biosecurity failures. To try and understand this better, I built out a list of 200+ chicken and turkey farms in the 12-mile radius that USDA establishes around an outbreak to look for where else the virus may have spread.

A map showing over 200 chicken and turkey farms that lie within a 12-mile radius around Howe’s Hens. Most farms are in Ohio, with some in eastern Indiana.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

USDA-VS has not publicly updated its genotyping tool yet, so it's not clear if D1.5/6 is are promoted minor strains or newly detected. USDA-VS defines D-types as reassortants of the "A3" Eurasian lineage with North American viruses github.com/USDA-VS/Geno...

spreadsheet of the named lineages of HA EA3 used to genotype HPAI viruses

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

New #H5N1 genotypes reported! Minnesota's recent turkey cases were reported as a mix of D-type reassortants, including the D1.1 strain that was prevalent in wild birds last year, along with two newly named strains, D1.5 and D1.6. #H5N1

Spreadsheet showing highly pathogenic avian influenza cases in Minnesota over September.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

more images on their VRBO listing but ... 🤷‍♂️ www.vrbo.com/343422

VRBO listing photo of the front entry of "Hacienda Aguajito"

Image from vrbo listing of buddha statue at Hacienda Aguajito

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

❤️❤️❤️ www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/m...

Even Billy Strings, no college man, absorbs music theory like secondhand smoke from Berklee-trained bandmates. “I’m always asking Alex Hargreaves” — who plays fiddle in his band — “some theory question,” he told me. “I was asking him yesterday, ‘What the hell is this sound?’ He says, ‘It’s Lydian dominant.’ I’m like, ‘Oh.’”

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

The hed of "Families May Be Evicted for Minor Offenses" doesn't do the story justice. The reporter found families that were pursued for eviction over offenses where they were cleared of wrongdoing, were noncriminal or strain the entire idea of "offense", or had absolutely nothing to do with them.

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

I am absolutely not rooting for fentanyl-laced pills but folks have really got to take a second to think before quoting these figures.

smattering of headlines containing the phrase "enough fentanyl to kill ... "

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Nat Lash @natlash.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

"Since September 2024, nearly five tons of fentanyl has crossed over our southern border — enough to kill over 5 billion people." "seized enough fentanyl to kill every Virginian ten-times over" www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/new...