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Txzen

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Everything posted by Txzen

  1. There's just no reason to sort through that drivel to refute it. Here, try this instead : No sign COVID vaccine spike protein is toxic 4.5 billion doses administered. Four point five. Billion.
  2. Txzen

    Kauai

    Staying in Hanalei is great, because a lot of the day traffic dies down a bit from people visiting from the south - it gets a little quieter for sure. That said, while we always stayed up north, we would take at least one trip to the sunnier Poipu area too. Have not been since they instituted all the restrictions driving to Ke'e. Can understand why, as it was getting to be a zoo, but as I understand you have to be on top of your reservations and hit your reservation window (often earlier in the morning that I would like on a vacation). Lots of decent to good food in Hanalei - I'm partial to Hanalei Gourmet (get whatever the fish special is), kalua pork nachos at Kalypso while sitting and looking at the rain on the mountain above, Tiki-Man pizza, and the Dolphin. Smith Family Garden Luau for the win - go as early as they let you and wander the gardens as long as you can before dinner, with a bag of birdseed for the peacocks.
  3. These are all dumb ideas - the people that are dragging their feet will not be convinced if you say we're shipping it to India. You want to be a part of society, show your vaccine card. Or sit home and eat horse paste. It's a free country. (edit - sorry, meant to reply to the original post from Twitter)
  4. Yes - and you can even see this with the antibody titer response to the vaccine. The older you are, the harder it is to generate a neutralizing titer, and the less effective the vaccine is. Young people have a more robust immune response.
  5. And you're still alive? That's good to hear. In all seriousness, while more neutralizing antibodies are generally a good thing, it's not clear yet what the increase is in protective benefit.
  6. Look man, we’re not planning on crashing parking lots with and RV and a fuck tent. Although that now does seem to have a certain appeal...
  7. I'm out of town, and get this text. Now mind you, I've been talking about visiting some National Parks lately, but have been doing the planning as she's never been to any of them (I've been to most) and I want to combine a few for a longer summer trip. Her: I'm booking Yellowstone for next summer. You good with mid-late June? Me: Uhh...that's abrupt. Want to think this trough as for a longer stay it might make sense to stay in two different places - it's a big park. Where are you looking and for how many days? Her: 2022 Me: That didn't answer my Q Her: I've been looking at the (so-and-so) and (so-and-so) website. It's a year off. We can cancel anytime until next May. Me: My God. How many days are you booking and where are you booking? Her: Inside the park. Whereupon I break out the bourbon and put the phone down.
  8. Yeah. She's in Rockridge, or the Hills. Maybe Montclair.
  9. How did they ask for money? The LAX line works, or worked pre-covid, in such a way that until you were in the car and gave them your trip code, they didn't know where you were going. And yes, the cab 'industry', more like a mafia, killed themselves. It's no coincidence that Uber started in San Francisco, one of the worst taxi cities I've ever been in. As a resident, it was a joke to try and get a cab for a 'small' ride in town. You'd call, they never show up. You call again, rinse, lather repeat. They deserve everything they got from rideshare. Rest in pieces. Totally get the conversation around how the rideshare service can be exploitive of their drivers. The taxi medallion system seems even worse to me.
  10. I don't watch him, not fond of his shtick. But by all accounts, a very solid dude. As mentioned above: Guy Fieri Is Back Feeding Firefighters in California
  11. Been in it many times. It's spectacular. They have a few with a center glass bottom. It's also the world's longest unsupported span of a cable car (~3k between supports).
  12. The videos of him, hobbled, are painful for me to watch. But happy he's back on the saddle. He's one of the most talented living musicians, full stop. I'm not a fan of his later career - the top 40 stuff - but you can't knock how successful it was. He's an immensely talented songwriter. He's also one of the best drummers who ever was. Early Genesis stuff is amazing, and even early post-Peter as well. Not Phil, just some kid who gets his spirit (on a pretty technically challenging track):
  13. Undefeated.
  14. Txzen

    Big Pharma

    Dude. I'm a nerd, so...no. Maybe at the clinical ones, but not the science ones. Keystone conferences are a different lot - think drunken hot tubbing with illicit substances. Too poor for bottle service, man.
  15. Txzen

    Big Pharma

    And big Pharma could give a fuck about medical marijuana. Doesn't factor into anything I've ever heard in my time. No one is really interested in blocking it, if anything they want a piece of it.
  16. Txzen

    Big Pharma

    I have spent most of my career fighting and dealing with budget reductions in R&D - many of them totally arbitrary and just belt-tightening (i.e. not because of a major trial failure, shift in priority, etc.). I've more or less come to terms with it. The fact of the matter is R&D spends money, and can only offer the promise of profit. R&D tries to build a pipeline, but it is more attractive, often, to cut internal spend and look for BD/M&A externally for a mature 'asset' rather than develop it yourself. That's with big Pharma. Having spent time in biotech/startups, we're always trying to sell ourselves to big Pharma because they have no new ideas and are plodding behemoths. I'm on the research side, but will occasionally go to the big clinical conferences (like the American Society for Clinical Oncology). That's the big one in my field, at least for the corporate side as well as late breaking clinical trial data. But to rent a booth is exorbitant (many tens of thousands and up), and if you want to serve something as simple as coffee, add in another few tens of thousands. Now look at the big pharma booths that occupy hundreds of plush square feet, modeled after a trendy cabaret in Ibiza, where you can go drive some VR car through a maize of cancer cells just to get a little plushy and post it on Twitter. A patient's right advocate would have a stroke (no pun intended). It's a funny, and sometimes perverse, business - like many, I suppose when you start talking about big money. And yes, I know I sound like this guy now: The reality is those big drugs, and even the legacy drugs, keep the lights on. How much is fair pricing in the US market, relative to the rest of the world, is a totally relevant conversation for which there isn't a particularly easy answer.
  17. Txzen

    Big Pharma

    No. This is not new. Big Pharma spends way more on marketing than R&D (says the guy in pharma R&D). The change in law in 1997 that opened up these advertisements was a mistake, IMHO.
  18. Got my 14 year old vaccinated for this exact reason. He has a history of mild exercise-induced asthma as well, so I wasn't planning on taking any chances.
  19. Kirkwood is terrible. There are no restaurants, no nightlife, no real hotels, practically no on-mountain dining, and many of the lifts are slow non-detachable ass smackers. There's not even really a grocery store, so you need to practically bring all your food for your stay (including breakfast and lunch). You should never, ever go there and make sure to tell all your friends not to go there either.
  20. That sucks (as we’re all in this together) but perhaps not surprising that 1930s technology of an inactivated virus vaccine wasn’t going to work with this coronavirus.
  21. Reading the whole thing (and it is essentially a letter to the editor) it’s more of a request to dispassionately and scientifically determine the origin, rather than a declaration one way or the other. Which isn’t a bad idea, but the tweet puts a little English on the ball.
  22. Came here to post this. I have memories of the Smithsonian air and space museum as a child, but discovered the Udvar-Hazy with my young son - blew both our minds. It’s simply exceptional.
  23. That's a great neo-classic Merckx!
  24. Yep, which I why I said it was a bit of a semantic argument, and frankly it's a bit regrettable that ASGCT (who hold a yearly conference that I attend) sort of muddle the waters with that term. The therapy does nothing to alter genes, and does not contain a gene. That quote is perfect, though - it's an instruction. mRNA is a bitch to work with because it's extremely labile, and you have to have all sorts of safeguards in the lab to prevent it from getting chewed by by RNases. It's why I've never been concerned about safety for this approach, but was skeptical it would work.
  25. This is wrong, and frankly it's a semantic (though important) argument. mRNA isn't a gene - it's a message from a gene. Gene therapy is most commonly referred to as the act of changing the DNA of a cell. From the pharma company that developed the vaccine: link
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