Had an inflection point in my side business this week, as we started phase 2 of our drug discovery program (and actually started getting some hits!). I'm itching to get away from my day job, but that wholly depends on some additional funding coming through. Have some irons in that fire, but nothing solid yet. The biotech funding situation is shaky right now anyway, so there's no harm in biding my time while I can. Either way it's exciting, and I'm getting closer and closer of realizing what seemed like a pipe dream until very recently.

My wedding took place under a massive banyan tree in Lahaina, Maui. It was sort of a symbol of permanence and might, given that it was 140 years old and like an entire city block wide. Guess it's a joke to think of anything as permanent. I visit Maui most years, so I guess this year instead of going I'll be looking for a good relief group to give my would-be tourist bucks to.

I live in an increasingly Office Space reality. TPS reports run my life, and I put in less effort all the time while getting undeserved and un-asked for pay increases fairly regularly. It not exactly as cool as it sounds, but I'm hyper aware that it could be a lot worse.

Spending a wonderful Wednesday morning sitting on an airplane while a team of mechanics struggles to figure out how to close the boarding door. If I’m lucky this will take so long I’ll miss the meeting I’m supposed to be traveling to and I can just get on the next plane home 😂

Lots of exciting things happening in my world. I think I have enough money soft committed to my new company to think about quitting my day job this spring. All family and friends among the investors. It’s really humbling to have this many people basically say “I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I believe in you, so here’s some cash.” Very strongly motivating to succeed too when your success or failure is a success or failure for people close to you. More details in the months ahead.

I once spent four days in the Kingdom. Notable observations from that regrettable gambit:

1. Literally nobody works (except the slaves).

2. They don't let Westerners (maybe all foreigners...don't know) wander the streets of Riyadh alone. Not sure if this is to protect them or us. Probably both.

3. A boring-ass country with no culture or entertainment to speak of is not made less boring by the lack of alcohol, nor by the fact that Saudi Airlines blurs out women's legs in the in-flight movies.

4. 113º Heat SUCKS and I wouldn't want to take a 5 minute walk from anywhere to anywhere, no matter how conveniently located my local halal butchery is.

5. After I gave my talk to the conference I was attending, a young medical student approached me to say how happy he was to meet a real American scientist. We chatted for a minute or two, and I gave him my card. Not 30 minutes later he sent me a long email about how hard it is there, and that he had expressed a disbelief in God, for which he was punished with beatings from the religious police. It felt weirdly like a trap, so I just responded with something anodyne. But true or not true, the email is problematic either way.

6. When I tried to get my visa, I naturally visited the embassy's website, and it's one of those sites where Chrome throws up a big red screen saying GO BACK TO SAFETY YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKER!!!

I could go on, but my point is that I think that the Kingdom and His Highness have some more pressing problems than urban planning if they want to attract foreign investment that doesn't involve resource extraction.

That's a tough one, and there are two distinct answers. The facile answer is that it's been too controversial to ever ram through Congress in some form. Almost no other issue sparks this amount of animosity on both sides. The other answer is that we have a very strange system of government whereby Congress can only enact certain types of laws, mostly to do with finance and the military. Many of the classic criminal laws here (think murder) are state laws. When the feds want something done they pass a law that says something like, "States must do X or else we won't give them any money." Congress passing a law that says "abortions are legal" probably isn't possible. But on the other hand it should really need to be possible, because historically rights have only ever been expanded in this country. They haven't really ever been taken away (except in some really rare and transient cases--during WWII for example), especially in cases where the public so overwhelmingly is on the side of the right that's being debated. So for the average American abortion has been settled for 50 years. The republicans used it as a wedge issue to get votes in the 80s, and since then it's taken on a life of its own (no pun intended) and some of them believe their own bullshit at this point. Public opinion is so firmly against the Court on this one, that I fear it's going to get out of hand one way or another.

I'll preface this by saying I've not tried intermittent fasting, and I have no a priori opinion of it.

That said, I read this in the Times yesterday, and I skimmed the source material, and I don't think the media interpretation of the study is really hitting the mark. People doing intermittent fasting, as I understand it, are trying not to calorie count. Therefore, comparing its effects to calorie counting really misses the point. The proper control is "eat whatever and whenever you want" to "eat whatever you want between hours A to B." Because in the end, they found that intermittent fasting works; it just doesn't work any better than controlling for calories. Controlling for calories is a lot harder than just setting up simple dietary rules to follow.

I think the study was well-designed, and it looks like good work. I just think the media is using an opportunity to say I-told-you-so to a bunch of people who are trying to their best to do something good for themselves.

My whole family has covid right now. It's...interesting. And maybe even a little liberating? I'm going to a fucking hockey game and getting loaded next week for sure. The kids are getting through it ok. I almost thought my wife and I were going to escape without getting sick, but alas, you can only withstand about 200 coughs directly to the face before your immune defenses collapse or just fucking give up or whatever. Anyway, we're making dinner plans with friends and thinking about planning a vacation. Might as well enjoy the freedom. I do, however, have a new found appreciation for people with chronic fatigue syndrome. Every step I take is labored, like trudging through mud.

Ummmm, remind me: Did the baby-killing Zika virus arise 300 meters from the only lab in the world who holds similar Zika viruses and whose stated research goals are to modify the Zika virus in exactly the hyper-pathological way that it behaves in the wild, while that behavior has never before been observed among the tens of thousands of other known Zika viruses? Can't remember.

That's a very good question, lil. To me, there are two defining characteristics of presidentiality that should transcend gender. One is the ability to take in a lot of information (some contradictory) and a lot of opinions, and maintain an ability to separate the signal from the noise to make a decision about a course of action. Two is the ability to get others on board with one's decision making, which is primarily dependent on one's ability to communicate and connect with people. These two together, for me, are what define leadership generally, and presidentiality in particular. I think whether a woman or a man is at the helm of a government or a company or a group of any sort, formal or informal, that both of those traits define leadership.

Edit: I think that "decency", "morality", "integrity", etc, are all proxies for trust, which just makes it more likely to be able to connect with followers and adversaries alike, but they're not great leadership qualities per se. Trump is very good at connecting with followers, almost magically so. He is not good at connecting with adversaries, because no one trusts him.

I actively avoided the debate last night, but unfortunately I've been reading about it this morning. It is not making my morning better. Poking around the news websites it looks like even the right wingers are having a hard time spinning this in Trump's direction.

Best of luck, my friend. Good to hear from you nonetheless.