Viewing profile — great_tankard

This is an absurdly irresponsible way to report this work. Doesn't think to mention that they're working with phage (viruses that infect bacteria, NOT humans) until halfway down th…

Are you saying that the priorities of the Department of Education have been misplaced, or that it was a mistake to have a Department of Education at all? "Academic accomplishment h…

Yes, but the HN crowd isn't Zitron's main audience. He appeals to smart people who don't understand anything about computing or business. I do not mean this in a disparaging way; i…

This is exactly how I feel about him too. I also find his "number big" approach to writing ("check out my 18,000 word blog about something I'm learning about in real time") off-put…

This is a really strange, deterministic view on something we collectively have influence over. That thing about "unintended consequences that [may be] materially worse?" We've actu…

>We need to identify the highest quality research projects and fund those. Congratulations, you have described the system that's been in place for decades.

Very cool. Are you a dancer yourself?

"YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE: I have now joined the club everyone assumed I was already a member of."

This is not an original observation, but it took me too long to realize so I think it bears repeating: your personal website is also the one place where you have control over how m…

You might want to look into why "journalism is dying" and whether Google (and Facebook) had anything to do with it.

About time. Any organization or person actively posting on that platform is just lending it undue credibility.

I must have missed this drama. Who was offended by it? When was Gary "cancelled?"

This is an awesome writeup that really helped me understand what's going on under the hood. I didn't know, for example, that for the limited number of PTMs AF3 can handle it has to…

It's true that Science is very invested in this bad (for everyone else) publishing model, and I suppose if somehow, by omission, they managed to convince the population that open a…

This topic has broken the brains of so many otherwise reasonable people. Is a lab leak possible? Of course it is. But the purported evidence for it is so weak, repeated by the same…

Agreed on all counts, though it's important to note that this protein has bacterial homologs that almost definitely have the same function (5'-3' RNA ligase activity).

>Ridiculous not in a political sense (I have no strong feelings one way or another about the economic fates of career writers) but in the sense of being incoherent. It is not incoh…

Make sense. Plastics are notorious for absorbing in the UV range- for most useful spectroscopy experiments below ~400 nm we have to go straight to quartz cuvettes.

You're right! I didn't like what she had to say because the thing she said was transphobic. The "trans issue" itself is not a weird topic. But there are certain ideas that seem to …

Yes, you've gotten exactly to the heart of what I was trying to say. Of course there are people who get unfairly maligned for saying the "wrong" thing (or when the things they say …

I don't typically question a person's motivation for asking questions! But the "great trans bathroom debate" has blown up far out of proportion, and its such a weird topic to wade …

Ok I guess I have to spell this out explicitly: the self-censorship thing obviously applies doubly to the trolls and doxxers and "virtual vigilantes." Nobody deserves that kind of …

Yes. I've often wondered about how previous generations got certain things so wrong, but this is the first time I've been fully aware of a revolution taking place right under my no…

Lol