CharonY

While not wrong, it is IMO also a bit complex. There are significant overlap in many functions with the immune system, and there is often a somewhat myopic view regarding how they work (or fail to work) together to prevent certain conditions. Typically (and in part this is how funding and research works), research groups focus on a specific aspects from a specific viewpoint. And this is clearly needed to address any issues with some depth. A big challenge in biology is the how the many parts intersect with each other and you could look at any mechanisms from many different viewpoints (the immune lens being one of them, and that in itself is split into many sub-topics). At the same time, we need overarching concepts and narratives to understand and teach what is going on. However, cancer and cell biology tends to be maddening siloed (with highly specialized viewpoints). The reason is quite clear, the subject is too complex to be handled with a single narrative or viewpoint, but if you look at things at sufficient depth, the same mechanism can be discussed in wildly different contexts, frequently without acknowledging each other. Sorry for the rant, I got caught up in one my pet peeves again.

The main connection between DNA and life is probably evolutionary sciences. For the dynamic aspects of life (the living part) DNA is really boring and does not actively do that much. It is more a foundational blueprint which cells use to build the stuff they need (though I am likely very biased as I switched from genetics to cellular physiology and never really looked back). For evolution the Futuyma (Evolution) is still the seminal book, if a bit technical. But it does showcase the overall life aspect in the broadest sense.

Most you see in popular press is overhyped. There are few examples of truly awesome results. Almost all of them are preliminary with moderate to low effect sizes. And this is even without the very important issue that others have pointed out: animal models are always very limited. And companies also always have to figure out how much they want to invest into a given trial. In many cases they rather fund multiple phase II rather than recruiting over a 1,000 folks in one go, just to see whether it is worthwhile. For some diseases, it is not feasible to get a large group of participants. And in some rare cases the drug or therapy is so expensive that having hundreds of treatments at the same time are not going to happen. Very little of it is down to regulation, as certain folks like to claim. More important are aspects of cost and feasibility. The COVID-19 vaccines were developed fairly quickly as a) a lot of money was invested so that folks did Phase 2/3 essentially simultaneously, b) the vaccines were easy to produce and c) so many people got infected (which is necessary to assess vaccine efficacy) that they were able to get a sufficiently large infected cohort very quickly. Cancer, on the other hand is very difficult to treat for a many of reasons, typical drugs have to be toxic, so a lot is aimed at targeted delivery, others like immune therapies have to customized for each patient and so on. And in cases the challenge is to damage just the right cells, which is incredibly difficult. Even just cutting them out can leave cells behind that then start proliferating,so folks need to undergo toxic treatments to kill cancer more efficiently than themselves. Under these conditions, it is easy to see why no one has really fund a magic bullet yet.

Biology is way more complicated than any of the It stuff. A single cell outpaces the complexity of even the most complex machines currently. So, this is very much expected. Even in biological sciences, technical developments have been massive. For example, when I did my PhD sequencing a simple bacterium was a multi-million, multi-year effort involving multiple groups and companies. Now, I can sequence on over the weekend by myself. And yet, our understanding of even understanding bacterial cells is developing slowly. There is a big difference in generating data and generating understanding. In that regard, it is also true for computers. Yes, we can do more fancy things way faster than we used to. Everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket. But can you honestly claim that this has somehow led to an equivalent increase in how everyone understands the world? Better tools are the easiest bit in everything. Better understanding is the rate limiting step. This is true for cancer as for many other things.

Relatively slow to what? For some cancers, prevention had the largest impact. Some of the biggest changes in cancer-related deaths are associated with air quality laws and reduction of smoking. Also, people are getting older on average. Which means, the likelihood to acquire and die of cancer at high age increases. But again, prevention is likely going to be the part that is way important than treatment. Recent work for, example have shown that certain cancer types have now increased in younger folks, especially in Western cohorts. Some risk factors are known (e.g., alcohol consumption and obesity), but others less well-known one might be contributing (sleep deprivation.. yikes...). It is usually better to maintain a car than trying to start repairs once it is falling apart.

Also, it is very different depending on the type of cancer type and country. As noted prostrate cancer has a 5yr survival rate cab that is above 90% in many countries. Improving that is going to be very hard from there. The stage at which cancer is detected is also crucial to this statistic. For lung cancer, stage I detection has above 60% 5-yr survival rate, which drops to about 2.5% at stage IV. Some cancer types are difficult to detect which limits treatment options. For these reasons, a general statement regarding cancer survival is mostly useless and can easily be misleading. It should also be noted that we obviously cannot expect indefinite increases and the older one gets, the more likely it is that some form of cancer will present. Depending on how aggressive the type of cancer is folks might die do to other reasons and cancer might only contribute or even only be incidental to the cause of death.

I don't think it was ever about business. Twitter never made a huge lot of business sense. It was mostly a vanity project (also evidenced by the rebranding).

If so, probably just one of the 450 things on their social media feed before breakfast. I think many/most young folks struggle with the input they get. Information-wise, they are almost catatonic. Simplified (but wrong) messages might indeed have a calming effect. We are doing a very poor job in training them to filter and process information. It would be interesting to see how the lawsuit goes. Ultimately, advertisers would look at cost-benefit of the situation. If the reach via Twitter brings more revenue than lawsuits or other potential costs, they'll be happily advertising there again. Also: So even if the lawsuit is not successful in court, it is successful already in effect and highlight the issue of using money and legal proceedings to shut down thing you don't like.

There are a couple more here https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm23y7l01v8o Currently, 3 under 20 and 4 over 50.

Yeah, I randomly had the thought because of the the change of the naming of his companies. But since I don't know the name of his other children, it was likely totally unrelated and I draw a comparison where there should haven't been one. So apparently without being a CEO one might have the delusion that random thoughts could be post-worthy. Shame on me and I'll go sit in the corner for a while.

What is up with this guy and his obsession with the letter X?

It doesn't help that food is a rather sloppy term (as opposed to either "carbon source" or "energy source"). But on the other hand, the rest of OP is not much better, so in a way it fits.

I think the tricky bit is to figure out the temperature for a volume. I think what I remember was to start with 2l per 454g package, add salt, set to high or medium high and then wait until it boils, turn down temperature to simmer and check how long it takes. Depending on how long it takes to boil I am guessing that the whole process might take up to 20 minutes, with probably less than 5 minutes of boiling. I have never tried that myself, to be honest. I have got Italian friends and I want to keep them.

A potential advantage is that depending on what kind of stove you have and the size of the pot, the time to boil soaks pasta and cuts down on total cooking time. I know chefs who do that to cut down time for freshly cooking (dry) pasta, but they have optimized their workflow for that. It probably won't work if you do that with fresh pasta, though.

A) wants to get on the right wing grift, B) aligns with his own values, C) thinks that every stupid thought he has is gold. I wished there were, but ultimately I doubt that that they will.

Exchemist has mentioned the most important point, dropping pasta into defined temperature creates the most reproducibility. Now there is quite some chemistry related to pasta cooking and generally speaking, the first process is controlled by water penetration, starch gelatinization and protein coagulation. These steps are all temperature dependent but not all aspects are impacted equally (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2007.03.018). For example water penetration occurs at low temperatures, but protein coagulation generally requires higher temperature for homogenous coagulation. Yet, that is also dependent on the way the gluten network is developed during the production of pasta (https://doi.org/10.1080/10408390802437154). Another aspect is the rate of starch gelatinzation to protein coagulation. If coagulation dominates and is done faster than than gelatinzation, starch particles will be trapped in the gluten network resulting in more firm pasta (which is usually desirable). Conversely high starch swelling with an incomplete network allows starch to escape to the surface (and cooking water) which results in soft and sticky pasta (https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/foodmicrostructure/vol2/iss1/2). As gelatinization starts at lower temperatures, cooking from cold will release more starch. That all being said, for dried pasta it generally does not matter unless it has a large surface (e.g. fettucine) where the released starch can make things rather sticky and where cooking in boiling water accelerates protein coagulation. Otherwise, one can do the opposite for example soak pasta at low temps (before starch gelatinization, so <45 ish or so C). This takes care of the water penetration part while gelatinization and coagulation does not occur yet. You can then then just heat it up (e.g cook in sauce) to rapidly induce coagulation without the release of excessive amount of starch.

I think the influence of libertarian ideology on modern politics quite fascinating. On its face, libertarians seem are seeming fiercely individualistic, which often puts their influence at odds with certain programs that could be considered common goods (e.g. health care, infrastructure etc.). And I originally thought that most arguments in politics would be centered on economic disputes. Yet, strangely libertarianism has over the decades increasingly merged with authoritarianism, which always seemed contradictory to me. Other streaks are very visible in the US, where on the one hand we have the call for small governments and individual freedoms, yet want to micromanage which books kids are allowed to read or what sexual orientations are deemed acceptable. Looking back at papers in the 80sor so, researchers argued what seemed logical, libertarian and authoritarian attitudes would be on opposite sides of a social scale. And while this might have held true for a long while, especially in recent times (Trumpism being such an example), assertions of individual rights were fused with authoritarian demands. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination has turned from individuals not wanting to get vaccinated, to demands to abolish vaccines and masks, for example. A colleague pointed to an interesting chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Psychosocial Studies" which asserts that in modern individuals there is an inherent ambivalence. Personally, I am always sceptical regarding this grand theories, but it at least tries to resolve how folks can keep these different tendencies aligned (emotionally, at least).

! Moderator Note Is there anything to discuss here? If not this thread will be locked.

I mean, we all do. Some parts of us more effectively than others.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg- the whole document is a manifesto of fundamentalists ideals and identity-based restructuring of society.

More likely than not this is also a default stance. Folks arrived at a given ideology somehow, unlearning that is going to be difficult no matter what.

Yes and fornicate with the person they presumably do not like...? I should probably add to my previous comment that there are obviously bad actors promoting such labels. Bannon's openly said that his strategy was to push identity politics and we can see something happening on that front from Russia, too (or perhaps it is the same strategy).

It is tricky and in open discussions we can also see that some labels are getting outsized attention. But ultimately I think everyone uses labels knowingly or not, because that is how humans think. This does lead to a certain bias, as some groups will use different codes and labels and these are then considered identity politics, whereas the categories oneself uses are most invisible as they are part of the way we see the world. The issue is that one needs to make a conscious effort to not remain on the superficial level in public discourse, but the increasing reliance on short bits of information makes it increasingly difficult. And while there are folks who weaponize it to spin, I am increasingly worried that folks are also just less well trained to go beyond these superficial aspects. I.e. it is not necessarily a well orchestrated manipulation, but more a general lack of competence in processing, understanding and presenting information (and I say that as someone who is working on a regular basis with the next generation of thinkers).

Perhaps, "Trump is a real man, he does all the harassment and rape himself".

There is a bit of grumbling regarding a settlement for sexual harassment in Shapiro's office. As the perpetrator was an aide and no himself it might not be that critical, though there is a (highly hypocritical) vector of attack.