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thundara

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recent comments, posts, and shares:
thundara  ·  2238 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 31, 2018

You ever have one of those weeks where you're just like: yeah. there might be a right-wing conspiracy?

I don't think Infinite Jest is itself depressing, but you'll want to avoid some of the books that came after. After reading Oblivion I didn't feel surprised that he killed himself.

From the wiki:

    In general, Marshall Boswell claimed that this was Wallace's "bleakest" work of fiction. In Oblivion, he "uncharacteristically" provides "no way out" of solipsism and loneliness. Boswell further suggested that the collection "repeatedly undermines many of the techniques for alleviation" from loneliness, like communicating through language, that Wallace presented in Infinite Jest. "Oblivion," he writes, "remains unique in Wallace's oeuvre in its unrelenting pessimism."[26]
thundara  ·  2292 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The G.O.P. Is Rotting

Fuck if even Brooks is seeing the light, maybe there is hope?

thundara  ·  2336 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Anyone in Boston October 12-15?

Chances are I'll still be in town doing the same old thing next April too. Keep us posted!

thundara  ·  2336 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 25, 2017

Implemented an algorithm from a paper, got invited out to drinks tonight by the author. Makes this a real pubski, rather than a labski, day for me!

Also, met with my adviser to discuss human patient data, kept calling our samples "animals". Old habits die hard?

thundara  ·  2363 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 27, 2017

Do they freeze alright? Their parent cells are so finicky that somehow I doubt mine would be happy with a drop of DMSO in solution.

And making microglia:

thundara  ·  2364 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 27, 2017

I made an embryoid body!

~2 months until I have the final cell type I'm looking at.

thundara  ·  2385 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 6, 2017

A month and a half of treating, sorting, maintaining, and cleaning my cells every day to finally get the CRISPR knockouts I'd been working towards:

Now to do this 6 more times.

One of the genes I'd been trying to knock out was in a tricky region to sequence. I asked my adviser if I should spend a month debugging the PCR (after a post-doc had tried and failed for a month), just show the protein had disappeared by an antibody assay, or sequence the whole genome and look at that one gene afterwards.

They said sequence the whole genome.

The golden days we live in. Time to start making designer babies.

thundara  ·  2392 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 30, 2017

Nom nom nom

thundara  ·  2392 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 30, 2017

I'm getting chunks of human brain today!

thundara  ·  2398 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Anyone in Boston October 12-15?

Thu / Sun both work for me, keep us posted

thundara  ·  2400 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Anyone in Boston October 12-15?

I'll be around, I'm down for a pubski in meatspace.

thundara  ·  2404 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trump Tells Aides He Has Decided to Remove Stephen Bannon

http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/bannons-time-is-up/

Daily caller, but it's Stone who's... a sight to behold:

    Not understanding that “personnel is policy”, Bannon refused to fight for any of his allies or those who helped get Trump elected. It’s as if Steve felt the grubby business of patronage was below him.

    Bannon delivered the Trump State Department into the hands of the Globalists.

    Bannon failed to push the President to use his most potent rhetorical and political weapon-Term Limits -in his current fight with the Congress. ... which sent the clear signal to Republicans in Congress that you can thwart the President and there are no consequences.

    Tough talking Anthony Scaramucci, whom I like and whom I think was treated rather shabbily, was, as I said, a political suicide bomber. He took out two RINOS: Preibus and Spicer
thundara  ·  2414 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: About this Googler's manifesto

Thoughts:

- It's pretty annoying to see the guy described as having a PhD in systems biology from Harvard. Word from a friend is he dropped out after 2 years. And even if he had the degree, it doesn't really doesn't make him any more an authority on psychology or gender dynamics than the layman. Especially when half his links are blog posts.

- The guy's an idiot if he expected to keep his job after calling his female colleagues more neurotic and less stress tolerant. Especially coming from a biology background where environment is just as stressful but the gender ratio tips the other way.

- Saying "I'm just commenting on general trends, don't take it personally" doesn't make what comes after any less offensive or wrong. The same goes for "PC culture isn't going to like this but..."

- The arguments from inherent genetic differences tend to always ignore the social differences, past and present, that favor one group over another. Most positive initiatives (select training and outreach to women, under-represented minorites) are evolutions on previous affirmative action policies as a way of addressing the whole "it's not fair to those of us in the present who aren't responsible for the actions of others in the past" argument.

- It's hard to read this:

    I’ve heard several calls for increased empathy on diversity issues. While I strongly support trying to understand how and why people think the way they do, relying on affective empathy—feeling another’s pain—causes us to focus on anecdotes, favor individuals similar to us, and harbor other irrational and dangerous biases. Being emotionally unengaged helps us better reason about the facts.

And not think that this guy doesn't play well with others.

thundara  ·  2423 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: July 26, 2017

"Nucleofector – Amaxa" and "Human Stem Cell Nucleofector Kit 1 – Lonza", I may need to play around with it though, as the protocol appears to have not worked very well (it was ~6M across 4 cuvettes, which may not be the optimal cell:cuvette ratio?...)

thundara  ·  2423 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Putin expels 755 US diplomats from Russia

Wasn't this what Russians ridiculed Obama for as ineffective when he did it to them?