-
Posts
703 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Posts posted by Txzen
-
-
Not a lot of TT this year which is where Tadej could take time on VG. Could be an interesting race.
-
Very good documentary from WSJ on the origins and workings of Wagner - apologies if already posted.
-
2
-
-
- Popular Post
- Popular Post
On 5/9/2023 at 10:07 AM, Rimbo said:This is really quite a development. My mother was from Latvia, as her family fled during WWII as the Russians were closing in. We visited (her first after having left) about 25 years ago and she was disgusted with the fact that anytime she asked a question of someone in Latvian - directions, or casual conversation - the reply was almost always in Russian. It was part of a wholesale eradication of the national history and culture of the country (and has absolutely been a central component of Russian strategy for much of this century).
If this report is as real as it sounds, this is a huge cultural shift for Latvia. Truly remarkable.
(apologies for bringing this up so many days after it was posted - can't keep up with this thread, and thank you to those who keep it fed with such great information!)
-
11
-
3
-
I have a bag fetish - there I said it. Tried so many different style and designs and never really hit on the right one.
I think there's a bit of an overall style choices to make - do you want one that is very techy or 'back pack-y' looking, do you want a ton of organization/compartments, or would you prefer versatility in packing it?
I could not be happier with the Peak Design Travel Backpack (45L) The straps are quite comfortable when it is loaded to the max (and there's even a hide-away waist belt, though I've never used it). It's fairly minimalist looking on the outside, and basically only two main compartments, one with a few smaller zippered areas. The rest is one big cavity which for me adds to the versatility. There is a dedicated laptop sleeve.
I've filled this thing with cameras, lenses and electronics (using their own equally excellent tech and toiletries bags), I've filled it with my cycling helmet, shoes and gear, or with my ski helmet and gear, I've used it for work trips and love that it doesn't look like my hiking bags.
Love that there are so many ways to get in the bag with zips on the side and a back clamshell - the latter is great because you lay it down on the outside and open from the portion that is against your back, great for getting your camera gear out and preventing you from getting mud on the part that will touch your body (or digging through it at an airport in nowhere India where whatever on the floor is also questionable).
They definitely make a lot of stuff geared for photographers, but this is just a great bag in general. Also love all the grab straps at the top, bottom and back of it as it makes it easy to grab and go without even putting it on your back. Bonus bag trolley sleeve as well.
Pricey but seriously well thought out with a high quality of build.
Ode to my Peak Design bag...
-
1
-
-
Alas, it seems like an underwhelming paper, mostly because of the lack of scientific collaboration (which likely stems from lack of trust going both ways on this issue).
As noted here, some of the species supposedly identified by samples in the market could not possibly have been there ('killing a Panda carries the death sentence, so there is no way they could be in a market'). This either means the samples were contaminated and/or suffer from inaccurate species assignment. Remember that ad hoc analysis by the data by a French team (and others) came to the conclusion that raccoon dogs were a potential culprit.
Unfortunately, the quality of the data is not going to help resolve this question.
-
1
-
-
On 3/1/2023 at 9:29 PM, NWBuck said:
We can see them here in Seattle on occasion:
On occasion you can also see Mt. Rainier.
-
3
-
-
- Popular Post
- Popular Post
ChatGPT is a very impressive tool.
-
3
-
3
-
8
-
Alas, finding out will just get harder. A predictable, but unfortunate, development.
WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
Text:
SpoilerThe World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned.
Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn’t going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”
In January 2021, an international team of experts convened by the WHO travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. Together with Chinese researchers, the team reviewed evidence on when and how the virus might have emerged, as part of phase one. The team released a report in March that year outlining four possible scenarios, the most likely being that SARS-CoV-2 spread from bats to people, possibly through an intermediate species. Phase one was designed to lay the groundwork for a second phase of in-depth studies to pin down exactly what happened in China and elsewhere.
But two years since that high-profile trip, the WHO has abandoned its phase-two plans. “There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but “that plan has changed”. “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins,” she said.
Researchers are undertaking some work to pin down a timeline of the virus’s initial spread. This includes efforts to trap bats in regions bordering China in search of viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2; experimental studies to help narrow down which animals are susceptible to the virus and could be hosts; and testing of archived wastewater and blood samples collected around the world in late 2019 and early 2020. But researchers say that too much time has passed to gather some of the data needed to pinpoint where the virus originated.
Tense times
Many researchers aren’t surprised the WHO’s plans have been thwarted. In early 2020, members of then US president Donald Trump’s administration made unsubstantiated claims that the virus had originated in a Chinese laboratory, and US intelligence officials later said they had begun investigations. The city of Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a high-security lab that works on coronaviruses. Chinese officials questioned whether the virus originated inside the country’s borders.In the midst of simmering hostility between the two superpowers, WHO member states requested in May 2020 that the agency put together a science-led effort to identify how the pandemic started. Although China agreed to the mission, tensions were high by the time the WHO group left for Wuhan, and engagement with China quickly unravelled after the group returned.
In its March 2021 report, the team concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus accidentally escaped from a laboratory. But the inclusion of the lab-incident scenario in the final report was a key point of contention for Chinese researchers and officials, says Dominic Dwyer, a virologist at New South Wales Health Pathology in Sydney, who was a member of the WHO team.
That July, the WHO sent a circular to member states outlining how it planned to advance origins studies. Proposed steps included assessing wild-animal markets in and around Wuhan and the farms that supplied those markets, as well as audits of labs in the area where the first cases were identified.
But Chinese officials rejected the WHO’s plans, taking particular issue with the proposal to investigate lab breaches. Zhao Lijian, the spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, said the WHO proposal was not agreed by all member states, and that the second phase should not focus on pathways the mission report had already deemed extremely unlikely.
In August 2021, members of the original mission team published a Comment piece in Nature urging quick action on the proposed studies to trace the virus’s origins. “We wrote that piece because we were worried phase two might not happen,” says Marion Koopmans, a virologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a member of the mission to Wuhan. “I’m sorry to say that that’s indeed what panned out.”
Stalled work
Gerald Keusch, associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory Institute at Boston University in Massachusetts, says the origins investigation was “poorly handled by the global community. It was poorly handled by China. It was poorly handled by the WHO.” The WHO should have been relentless in creating a positive working relationship with the Chinese authorities, says Keusch; if it was being stonewalled, it should have been honest about that.Van Kerkhove says that the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has continued to directly engage with Chinese government officials to encourage China to be more open and to share data. And WHO staff have reached out to the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing to try to establish collaborations. “We really, really want to be able to work with our colleagues there,” says Van Kerkhove. “It’s really a deep frustration.”
The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to Nature’s e-mailed requests for comment on why the phase-two studies have stalled.
In November 2021, the WHO formed the Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO) — a permanent team of experts who have since written a proposal for how to conduct origins studies for future outbreaks. SAGO has also evaluated evidence on the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
Blood-donors study
Outside the formal WHO-led process, some studies proposed for phase two have gone ahead. In May last year, researchers in Beijing and Wuhan published the results1 of an analysis of donor blood supplied to the Wuhan Blood Center before December 2019. The researchers were looking for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies that could signify some of the earliest infections in the pandemic. The team screened more than 88,000 plasma samples collected between 1 September and 31 December 2019, but did not find any SARS-CoV-2-blocking antibodies in the samples.Michael Worobey, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, says the work is an important contribution from Chinese scientists, supporting earlier genomic analyses2 showing that the virus probably had not emerged as early as September and was not widespread in Wuhan in late 2019.
Another study3 by researchers from China, which has not been peer reviewed, reported finding traces of SARS-CoV-2 in January and February 2020 at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, which was visited by many of the earliest known people with COVID-194. Samples were taken from sewage, drains, the surfaces of doors and market stalls, and from the ground, among other places. The researchers concluded that the virus was probably shed by humans, but Rasmussen and others are keen to take a closer look at the raw data, which included swabs from a defeathering machine, to see whether they can identify animal species.
“I still hope that progress will be made,” says Thea Fischer, a public-health virologist at the University of Copenhagen, who was a member of the mission to Wuhan and is part of SAGO.
-
-
1 minute ago, Alphie Solomons. said:
we fin to stunt on these hoze. Shit right there will piss off the correct people to affect change. Right now, live time .
I’ll have what he’s having.
-
1 hour ago, BRLA said:
Wow - I was there for that game. If memory serves me correctly it was cold, wet & windy....and I stayed until the end. It was like watching a train wreck occur in real time and over a 3 hour period.
It was indeed miserably cold and wet. Somewhat ashamed to say I didn’t stay for the end (and the only time I remember ever leaving early) but there was no real reason to stay.
-
Yeah yeah yeah. Let’s see if they can do this in the second half. I’m told it’s important to keep scoring in the second half.
-
What secondary doing?
-
Ewers seems to be picking up where he left off. Screen was a nice call though.
-
2 hours ago, MAUFRAIS said:
I’ve always assumed it’s like the scene in napoleon dynamite where he drinks the milk and correctly deduces that the cow got into an onion patch and all the old rednecks nod approvingly and write in their notebooks.
The defect in this one is aggy.
-
1
-
-
On 10/29/2022 at 12:37 PM, MillerEP said:
^This is 100% real, and it's also 100% funny.
I can’t say why I was there, but I’ve visited Draper before - they are an interesting think tank of top scientists across disciplines. One of their first projects was to devise the guidance systems for the Apollo program. They work closely with the government.
They talk pretty gleefully about how they bio-hacked dragonflies. Not an April Fool’s:
https://www.draper.com/news-releases/equipping-insects-special-service
-
1
-
-
Ice is relative though. It's often so much warmer in Tahoe than elsewhere we usually go so it never seems that bad. Yes, that can melt and freeze overnight, but it's not, oh, Lake Louise in February. Usually it's not bad.
It's been too long since I've been to Heavenly. Personally I thought it was a bit chopped up and an oddly laid out mountain by the views as well as dinner at Himmel Haus by far make up for it.
For Park City, we've often stayed in the middle between PC and Canyons, and used the free and convenient bus service to move around, as well as head into downtown for dinner. It's true that you really do not need a car there. On the Canyons side, the bus stop drops you off at the Cabriolet gondola, which takes you up to the base village - another 20 steps and you're at the main gondola. No steps with ski gear - wish more places did that. We preferred the Canyon side of things, but at the time we were limited to average to challenging blues, so that area fit the bill. Would like to go back as it's such a nice relaxed trip there both from the airport and when you get there.
We're headed back to Whistler this year after a two year hiatus due to all the COVID mess, and I can't wait.
-
The leads are weak.
-
2
-
3
-
1
-
-
Thank goodness we don’t have the pressure of the college football playoff anymore. That would have broken us.
-
1
-
1
-
-
2 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:
Tackling is a problem in America
Some say an epidemic.
-
That’s our D in a nutshell right there.
-
This game is an abortion.
-
Just now, immamac said:
I don't know why we abandoned the run.
When you can’t complete a pass, a loaded box will do that.
-
Shitbird doing shitbird things.
2022 Tour de Francis
in Other Sports
Posted · Edited by Txzen
Cav’s a guy I love to hate. As much as a butthead that he is (literally) I might have wanted to see him at least challenge for 35. Hell of a career though.
My annual plug for https://pyreneescyclinglodge.com. Stayed here a few times - lovely view across the valley of Hautacam. Ride to Hautacam, Aubisque/Solour out the door, with Luz Ardiden and the Tournalet near. It’s many of the less known climbs that really shine though - Cirque de Gavarnie and Troumouse come to mind. Wake to the sound of church bells and the bells around the sheep grazing on the hills. My favorite area by far.