Lol. I’ve seen hot dogs sell here for US$13 (after conversion). The US doesn’t understand how cheap their food is, even with inflation. The minimum wage for adults is USD$15.40 though (again converted) and we don’t have “but it’s OK they get tips so we don’t have to pay them more than $2” shenanigans.

Fuck that paywall, but again the problem is largely how underpaid and exploited people are, not how much hot dogs have increased in price.

I appreciate you

For sure, I just get antsy when peer review doesn’t come from from external sources

1 patient, T2 since mid-30s and now 59, had kidney transplant 2017 after end-stage diabetic nephropathy and fucked glucose control since 2019. The successful cells were endoderm stem cells from him cultivated by mice they injected with his PBMCs that they then made diabetic. So not from cadavers (except mouse cadaver i guess), which is the actual new part here. Intrahepatic implant, and cells from unrelated donor failed that were embedded at the same time. His personalised mouse-donor cells worked well enough to take him off insulin 3 months later.

Wu, J., Li, T., Guo, M. et al. Treating a type 2 diabetic patient with impaired pancreatic islet function by personalized endoderm stem cell-derived islet tissue. Cell Discov 10, 45 (2024).

It’s good news, but you’re entirely correct that the article missed the point entirely. Thanks for the crash course in islet cell therapy!

Hm, 5 year old journal, with the editor board, funding and half of the authors all from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but significant hospital contribution. I remain skeptical of the headline but hopeful of the science.

Looming? Sudan is past the looming stage. When do known verified atrocities reach “current reality” status?

I once looked at a job listing for something with very specialist technical knowledge in specific programming areas, for a Japanese company based in Tokyo (pre-covid so remote wasn’t really a thing yet). Pretty niche stuff and needed at least basic Japanese language skills too, so I assumed it would pay ok - even if it wasn’t good or great in comparison with jobs where i was.

After conversion it worked out to be around USD$40k a year, which is probably just over 1/3 of what it would pay at minimum elsewhere. More like 1/4 or less for Silicon Valley type locations, but the rent for a tiny Tokyo shoebox is about the same price even if food is a cheaper. There was no way I was applying for that.

It isn’t just about a weak yen, it’s much more about hugely underpaying people.

It annoyed me that I couldn’t see the whole statue. It’s just a statue of the local general but another part of the inscription was also interesting:

THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER WON AND IS ENTITLED TO THE ADMIRATION OF ALL WHO LOVE HONOR, AND LIBERTY.

Uh huh. From a monument built 50 years after the war ended. Physical copium.

It starts before birth. Low socio-economic status affects the health of pregnant people, which in turn has consequences for foetal development. Stress is a big trigger for various latent congenital issues, and that’s one reason climate change is going to result in increased rates of disease.

Not just a defense witness, a former federal prosecutor. A judge had to tell a former federal prosecutor “And then if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes.” like he was a pouty teenager.

Which kind? We’ve got bunches. The sulphur crested are the most famous, and they are great but can be vandals

Oh no, i got to see them. This was a decade ago, and I was told even then that there used to be many more. I was happy to see any at all though, I had only ever seen them in movies and they almost seemed mythical. They are pretty magical, it’s very sad to hear they’re almost gone.

Seeing a chipmunk was the same for me. And goddamn are they cute, I had no idea they were so small and precious. Alvin and the chipmunks are monstrosities by comparison.

The bin chickens are my kin, I’m in the small minority here who appreciate them.

And yeah, the flying foxes are a surprise for most foreigners. They’re also pretty big and often fly low at dusk, so they can be slightly startling too, even though they’re just adorable fuzzy harmless nectar drinkers. It’s a pity they screech too, it might be easier to reassure non-locals that they’re not dangerous.

People are also often surprised to see all the other Sydney city wildlife and how much of it there is, especially rainbow lorrikeets. Everyone loves the lorrikeets, but people from the northern hemisphere are especially awestruck when they see them. It’s understandably almost a little surreal to have such brightly colored parrots hanging out in the middle of a city, if you’re someone who comes from a city that is just pigeons and sparrows.

If you want to see a croc, just go walking near the shallow water of the top half of the country’s coast. You won’t see the croc for long, and it will be the last thing you ever see, but it will be up close and very personal.

Seriously though, you don’t go to see salt water crocodiles in the wild or even go near any body of water on the northern coast. If you can see one with the naked eye in the wild, you’re already too close. They’re extremely fast, extremely aggressive, and the males get up to 6m / 20ft long and 1000kg / 2200lb. They are very much a zoo only thing.

I was excited to see squirrels, lightning bugs and a racoon in the US.

When people come to Australia they obviously want to see kangaroos, koalas and platypus and quokka. Koalas are very rare to see in the wild, and a visit to a zoo will score you a sleeping ball on a branch. Kangaroos are frequently roadkill if you go outside the city. Quokka require a long trip to a really remote location. You’ll also almost never see a platypus, even the ones at the zoo you might catch a water ripple at best.

But if you’re headed to Sydney city, guaranteed you’ll spot the almighty and much maligned “bin chicken”, our Australian white ibis. Often not quite white from the bins. At night they serenade you with their collective honking from their tree, which can be easily spotted by the masses of white poop underneath. And you’ll see fruit bats in the evening. Hopefully not the daytime corpses hanging from electrical cables while they slowly rot, but that’s not altogether unlikely either, unfortunately.

There’s a person who has been living a mostly normal life with 90% of his brain missing. Perhaps we could just re-examine society’s ableism and how we design our systems of government to allow single points of failure instead? RFK Jr. has terrible opinions, but also had them before having a literal brain worm.

If you want your funeral to properly represent you, write your own eulogy.

Dennett taught me how to find common ground with very different people in discussions which might otherwise be heated arguments. I was lucky enough to see one of his talks some years ago, and his work and methods are something I frequently think about even today. His writing style was playful and accessible, but it paled in comparison to his presentation which really demonstrated his abundant charisma. His passing is truly a huge loss in a world that increasingly needs his teachings. My condolences to his family and the communities he fostered.

Vale, Daniel C. Dennett. I hope I can continue to do even a shred of justice to your contributions.

Edit with link: Dennett (somewhat accidentally) created a community for interdenominational Christian clergy who are also secret atheists. It started with a research paper with interviews and some analysis of their similar/different experiences. Ignore the abstract if academic language isn’t your thing, the rest of the paper is a much easier and interesting read:

Dennett, D. C., & LaScola, L. (2010). Preachers Who are Not Believers. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(1), 122-150

very good mental healthcare

No, it’s just better than other places. It’s overstressed, underprioritised, acute-focussed and failing the population at large. Better than the US, even exponentially, doesn’t mean good.