Jonathan Dushoff

@jdushoff.bsky.social

1122 Followers 187 Following

Theoretical biologist, recreational mathematician, anti-fascist*. * I had planned not to be political here, but when circumstances change, decisions sometimes have to change.

Image of a phone screen showing the NYT Wordle App. User has played 1000 games and solved the puzzle 39 times in two tries; 355 times in three; 410 times in four tries; 146 times in five tries and 40 times in six tries.
A schematic diagram showing how average phylogenetic branch lengths increase as sampling proportions decrease.
Image of me: a tall, skinny white guy with a brown-flecked white beard, sitting in an office failing to resemble Phil Jackson.
A red international prohibition symbol super-imposed on a golden noose.
A red international prohibition symbol super-imposed on a golden noose.
It is alleged that the celebrated nuclear scientist Niels Bohr was recently visited by a curious American. — “The professor has a horseshoe above the door,” he said. “Does the professor believe in superstition?” — “Of course not. But I have heard it said that a horseshoe can bring good luck even to people who are not superstitious” . . . https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/09/horseshoe-luck/
A table reading 20:00 5 Chance of showers. Risk of thunderstorms 30 * NE 20 gusts 40 21:00 8 Chance of showers. Risk of thunderstorms 30 * NE 15 22:00 12 Chance of showers. Risk of thunderstorms 30 * NE 15 23:00 15 Chance of showers. Risk of thunderstorms 30 * NE 15 with pictures of raining storm clouds
Picture of a river otter in the water with a fish in its mouth from Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Northern_River_Otter_Eating_White_Sucker_on_Seedskadee_NWR_(22984535449).jpg
A hopefully better-quality version of the same typeset poem.
Image of a typeset poem, reading: Worldlines There is only one electron It entered our universe-bubble just once and filled it up by travelling forward and backward in time, its Innumerable U-turns looking to us time-locked observers like creations and annihilations There is only one electron A high-school girl running easily up the icy courthouse steps Suddenly realizes that she is also the old woman on her left so scared of falling that she can barely move and also the toddler flopping happily in the snow that morning There is only one electron – that fidgety tenant is me and so is the bored landlord and also the sad deputy There is only one electron It will exit our universe-bubble a trillion trillion years from now once – Jonathan Dushoff
A picture of Trump dancing, presumably as he receives an award. The headline reads: Infantino's 'Peace Prize' to Trum raises questions about FIFA's neutrality.
Clip from an article reading: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth acknowledged U.S. forces conducted a follow-up strike on the alleged drug boat during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday, but distanced himself from the killing of individuals clinging to the wreckage. “I didn’t personally see survivors,” Hegseth told reporters, noting that he watched live footage of the attack. “The thing was on fire. It was exploded in fire and smoke. You can’t see it.” He added, “This is called the fog of war.”
Article clip reading: Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, welcomed the supreme court ruling in favor of the state’s Republican party. In a statement carried by the Associated Press, Paxton said the order “defended Texas’s fundamental right to draw a map that ensures we are represented by Republicans”.
Text from the War Manual (pdf linked above) including the below, and some footnotes: 18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations. The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal. 27 Similarly, orders to <end of page text>
Screen grab from the substack post, focused on the bolded phrase: “I began to wonder whether the title was a hidden signal that this book was actually part of the war, with essayists carefully chosen to wage a battle against science, scientists, and institutions in need of a comeuppance so that higher education and science can get back to the classics (aka the good old days).”
A blackboard with a drawing in several colors of chalk showing 16 squares, some subdivided, with one-letter abbreviations for amino acids and other annotations. Above is a small white square divided in four, showing ATCG (clockwise from upper left). More description provided in the thread.
Peanuts cartoon strip Panel 1: Patty and Violet are smiling at Charlie Brown, who says "Go ahead! Make fun of me! You just wait. Panel 2: Charlie Brown shakes his fist in foreground, girls play in background. He says "Someday I'll get to be President, and then you'll all be sorry!" Panel 3: Girls say in unison: "I'll say we will!" Panel 4: Charlie Brown walks down the sidewalk saying "Somehow that didn't come out right."
A screenshot of a flyer with a picture of Muizenberg beach with changing sheds in the foreground and the Cape of Good Hope in the background; some text information similar to the information in the link; and logos from SACEMA and ICI3D.
Figure in the upper left-hand corner of the attached pdf. Text available there. It shows two very-similar frequency plots of case reproductive number, labeled respectively R0=2 and R0=8
Screenshot of a slide titled “Dynamic approaches”. It shows: a schematic diagram of an SEIR compartmental model with a dashed blue line from the I compartment to the line from S to E; a time-series plot titled SIR disease, N=100,000" with a blue deterministic and a red stochastic curve tracing an oscillating epidemic outbreak; and text bullets reading “Use dynamical mechanisms to tie things together” and “New infections are caused by infected people”.
A flyer advertising a symposium in Nangang, Taipei on 27 Jul 2025, with invited speakers Prof. Jonathan Dushoff Prof. Takahiro Ochiya, and Prof. Edit Buzás.
A water dispenser with a sign saying "CAUTION! 60°C" in big letters, with smaller text in English and Japanese.
Screenshot of proposal instructions, reading: __Your research proposal should stand-alone__ (i.e., it should contain a complete description of your project and all the information required to support your research plan, without any hyperlinks) The page limits for a research proposal are:
A screenshot of the linked conversation, focusing on the part where Jonathan Dushoff asks twice for the name of an expert who is against MMR, and Norm Matloff (你有冇諗清楚呀?)‬'s reponses.
A chart showing six qualitatively confidence intervals, compared to a zero point and positive and negative "cutoffs". The respective inferences about a hypothetical effect could be described as "Large and positive", "Positive", "Small and positive", "Small", "Not (large and positive", "Nothing ruled out", but the chart describes the top three as "Different" and the next three as "Not different".
A social meda post from @realDonaldTrump: In my opinion today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad --- Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were "taken away" on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWAR, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs --- A TOTAL SCAM. Jerome "Too Late" Powell is no better! But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!
Figure 5 from the linked paper. It has four panels, and kind of looks nice, and is best described by the paper text and figure caption.
A graph of HIV prevalence vs. Year, showing prevalence increasing rapidly from 1990-1998, then slowly until 2010. A curve follows closely the increasing portion, then shoots off the top of the graph. Text at the top reads R0=5.66
A screenshot of the linked document, showing the workshop title (English and Chinese), an NCTS logo, and some artistic, unconnected gears.
Image from Microsoft Teams with the message: Hey Jonathan! You're early. The organizer will let you in when the meeting starts.
A list of English Premier League title winners (clubs). The list is sorted numerically, from Blackburn with 1 win to Man U with 13, and forms a perfect Fibonacci sequence.
A photo of a False Bay beach with multi-colored changing sheds in the foreground and mountains in the background. The text reads: MMED 2025 Clinic on the Meaningful Modelling of Epidemiological Data 16-27 June Muizenberg, South Africa MMED is a 2‐week clinic on data‐driven, dynamical models of disease spread and the application of these models to answer public health questions Unfortunately, this year we are unable to accept any applications as the clinic is already at capacity, but we hope to welcome applications in future editions Learn more, stay up to date and view material at https://www.ici3d.org/MMED/
Screenshot of a tweet from @WhiteHouse, reading: SATURDAY WORDS OF WISDOM ✨ If he tattoos like MS-13, beats women like MS-13, and tramples the law like MS-13—THEN HE’S PROBABLY MS-13.
Screenshot of the top of the New York Times web site for the morning of Sun 6 Apr. There is a large photo of Trump in front of the White House holding up a fist, and headlines that all focus on tariffs. The top headline reads "U.S. Tariffs Will Wound Free Trade, but the Blow May Not Be Fatal".
Apparently a picture of a flyer. At top is a medieval-looking picture with a king-looking person in the center and a spirit in the clouds above him. There are also some other people, trees, a bird, and some less-clear objects. The picture credit reads "Image licensed by Wellcome Images". The title below reads "Wake up, Christians!" The main text reads: Trump is the literal antiChrist. The. Literal. AntiChrist. When he was asked, “is that your Bible”, he answered, “it’s a Bible”. It was burning his hand, through his glove!, and preventing him from lying about it. Ask yourself: why does a man who literally flaunts all seven of the deadly sins have so many Christian followers? Because he’s targeting Christians! Because subverting Christians is his main goal. He is using your pride, your hatred, your Original Sin against you. Christendom needs to stand against the antiChrist. Christians will be the salvation of the world. Or not. Ask yourself: does Trump remind you of Jesus? Jesus is love, patience, forgiveness. The more influential Jesus became, the more humble he became! Remind you of anyone? In reverse?? The antiChrist! Wake the “hell” up. Before we literally cede victory to the forces of Hell!
The upper left-hand corner of the PubMed web site. The notice has a small US-flag icon and text beginning "An official website of the United States government"
Screen capture of a google search for "vim". The response from google starts with "Did you mean: emacs".
Panels A, B and D from Figure 1 of the cited paper, showing time series and phase planes of stochastic disease models, along with their deterministic limits.