No, it's a guy who edited the genes of some embryos in the hopes that a particular gene mutation would give resistance to HIV.
Only: the gene editing didn't actually give the specific version of the gene studied to have an effect on HIV susceptibility, the gene is also associated with memory and other brain function, and the gene was incompletely edited so that there are multiple versions of the genes in both kids, when the studied mutation needed to be present in both chromosomes of the chromosome pair in order to show some kind of effect on HIV.
Even if you believe that the evidence is strong enough to support the idea that a mutation in this gene can give HIV resistance, this guy didn't actually do it in a way that was scientifically sound, and now two real human beings have to live their lives with the effects, including any off target effects, whatever they might be.
Only works if your sexual partner is non exclusive.
Clean jar, water+salt (look up how much), you're good.
There are known food safety principles in fermentation, and it's not an "anything goes" kind of practice.
It's not just about the cleanliness of the jar, especially when you're putting in vegetables that will carry their own microbes and spores on their surface or in the accompanying soil/dirt.
Most lacto fermented pickle recipes will follow guidelines for keeping things safe and for keeping things tasty (some bad ferments aren't actually dangerous but just don't taste as good), and there are a lot of helpful guidelines out there that depend a bit on the vegetable itself (which might have different water content, pH, commonly associated microbes or pathogens).
You don't need to be able to submit a certified HACCP plan for your process, but for anyone who isn't already familiar with the risks and best practices should stick with established recipes from reputable sources.
Some people talk about botulism risk, but the reality is that almost no botulism cases come from home pickling, and very few come from home canning. C. botulinum cells and spores don't like acid and don't like salt, so most pickling recipes will easily prevent that problem in almost any home environment.
All that is to say: it's not exactly a high risk activity, but stick with established recipes from reputable sources unless and until you know what you're doing with pathogenic risks.
Yogurt is interesting because it's already acidic, and dairy contains proteins, salts, and acids that buffer pH. So the microbes that thrive in that environment are already able to handle more acidic environments generally, and then might not experience as acidic of an environment in the human stomach compared to some other foods.
A lot of probiotic foods don't actually have more microbes in them, but have certain microbes that tend to be found in human guts. I wonder if there's some kind of filter effect where only certain types of microbes are more likely to survive the stomach, and therefore our guts tend to consist of microbes that are hardy against those conditions.
Great story. Sorry about the end, though.
so as to put so much vodka into his system, no germs would survive
I know this is just an aside, and not the main point of your story, but for everyone watching from home, drinking alcohol actively sabotages your body's ability to fight off infections.
We use alcohol to disinfect things, but only between 60-80%. Higher than that, and there's not enough water to effectively deliver the alcohol molecules to the cell membranes where they'll do their work. Lower than 50%, and the alcohol molecules aren't concentrated enough to effectively destroy most bacterial membranes. That means pouring regular old 80 proof/40% vodka isn't going to effectively disinfect things on contact.
And even if you're drinking high proof spirits, beyond the 40% minimum of most vodkas, once it's in the body it gets diluted down at least 2 orders of magnitude, to where the blood alcohol concentration of anything under the coma-inducing/deadly 0.4% is basically negligible in terms of damaging the cells of unwanted microbes. But while your body works to rid your body of that poison, your immune system is weakened, and will do a worse job of preventing those unwanted microbes from taking hold in your system.
But tying effort, time or practice to art is absolute bullshit.
Agreed.
Effort, time, and practice can be important to the art itself. Filmmakers love long one-shot scenes because it's an impressive technical achievement and the end result is often made more interesting because of just how it was made. There are authors and sculptors and filmmakers and composers who created masterpieces that were only made possible by the decades of experience they've accumulated. For example, Tolkien's pre-LOTR career is a fascinating look at how he eventually acquired all the tools to be able to create a compelling narrative in a world he created.
But it's by no means required, or always better, to have the high effort or high skill option over a lower effort or lower skill artwork. Sometimes additional effort is a waste, or counterproductive. Sometimes there's beauty in the low skill or constrained or rushed option.
Art is a creative process, and any of the little factors can matter, but very few of the factors always matter. It's a "you know it when you see it" thing.
- "germans", "french", "danes" weren't a thing. up until recently. they are genetically diverse groups.
I was under the impression that the DNA kits described actual ethnic groups and showed a map of the distribution of those groups overlaid on modern political borders or region names. Here's the page on 23 and Me's reports, which have a lot more granular detail, mapped onto modern political borders for reference, but where any listed nation or territory may have up to dozens of different sub-groups listed.
Sharp knees, 2/10 would not bang
I wanted to avoid overexplaining the joke, but it's also worth pointing out that the slight shifts in federal law this year is only a part of a broader push around state laws and American gun culture more broadly (and I'd expect them to keep lobbying for more federal deregulation after this year too), to where it's now more economically viable to manufacture, distribute, and sell suppressors. According to this source's analysis of ATF stats, we went from less than a million lawfully registered suppressors in 2016 to 1.5 million in 2018 to 2.6 million on 2021 to 4.9 million in 2024.
There's a broader shift underway, and I was just making a joke about it.
I've always understood it to be a remnant of a culture that de-emphasized genealogy and family pedigree, and had a lot more cultural and ethnic mixing in marriages at an earlier era. In Europe, it seems like there are a lot more family crests and aristocratic titles, from centuries of families maneuvering for political power through strategic marriages and what not, and stronger cultural taboos against marrying and having children outside of one's ethnic group (and religion), at least up until maybe World War II.
So if there's just less to learn from DNA testing (a person who happens to already have records of all 16 of their great-great-grandparents, who all lived in the same geographical area), I'd expect there not to be much demand for that kind of analysis.
Or maybe I'm wrong to focus on the gentry and aristocratic families, and have a misplaced view of how long that kind of stuff culturally persisted in Europe.
If we're talking table manners and conventions, at this point I'm on board with combining three principles, two from the West and one from the East, for making dining more convenient and more pleasant:
That would also take care of the American versus English etiquette (and whatever countries fall on either side of that convention) on how to use knives at the table.
It's only quietly annoying because we legalized gun silencers this year!
(Technically suppressors, and they've technically been legal for a while, but they were previously heavily regulated and hard to get the right to manufacture, distribute, or sell, and now it's much easier, and no longer taxed at the federal level).
I feel like brand obsession, where the brand itself is a status symbol, is more of a European thing, especially the brands owned by LVMH (which they've successfully exported everywhere, including the Americas and Asia).
There's still a time and a place for brand/manufacturer as an indicator of quality or even corporate policy (cars, bicycles, certain electronics, certain functional apparel/shoes/equipment/tools), but those are the types of things where I'd still consider the brand even if it's nowhere to be seen on the finished product.
At a certain point my pattern recognition skills reached their limit to where learning each new concept was still the same, but I had a lot more trouble organically seeing and identifying when a particular technique was useful for a particular type of problem. Which is something that happens to a lot of different people at different stages of their math education, just happens to different people at different points.
And maybe I could've stuck with it, or used it enough to where I eventually got it easily the way I had done with all math topics before that, but I ended up steering the rest of my engineering education into topics that weren't as heavy on that type of math. More programming and logic and microcontrollers, less electromagnetics and radio signals.
For me, the leap to multivariate calculus gave me a lot of trouble.
Differential equations was doable but no longer fun for me, either.
It was a combination of multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations where I just wasn't having fun with math anymore. Those subjects represented the end of pure math education for me, and later engineering classes requiring knowledge in those were also not a ton of fun. Went from a self-described math and science guy to just...not describing myself in that way anymore.
One of the things I did when I was in my 20's and 30's that I'm really glad I did, was to always be willing to relocate. I did it about 5 times for new jobs, once for a new school, and twice for a romantic relationship (including with the woman I ended up marrying). I made new friends in each city, and kept those "new friendship" social skills over time. Now I've settled into a specific place with my family, but I have friends all over the U.S., know a little bit about a lot of cities and their neighborhoods and the local culture, and perhaps most importantly, know what I'm looking for in friendships and relationships.
I made new friends in my 30's because I absolutely had to, living in a city where I only knew one other person. And now I'm still making new friends occasionally in my 40's because I like to: colleagues and neighbors and fellow parents from my kids' schools, etc.