ImaCake

36 ms·

1. 451.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   I am a molecular biologist but not a virologist. This article is stupid. The furin cleavage site, with almost identical sequences is present in several ancestral coronaviruses to Sars cov II. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc
2. 452.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   There is, of course, a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1227/ Just goes to show that this sort of thing is not unique or new! Reading is something done mostly on the toilet or waiting for the bus. There’s no reason to t
3. 453.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   I’ve used amazon in NSW and it’s the only time I’ve had an issue with online shopping. The package was empty! I had no easy recourse because the item was only about $25. Australians are used to using alternatives to Amazon, and I hope they
4. 454.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   So I agree with you in broad strokes but I want to nit-pick some meanings here. >It still seems extremely unlikely, however we lack a good sense of not only the frequency of such events (presumably quite low), but also the total number w
5. 455.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   I think it's incorrect to say they "revert to their wild genes". It's more a change in their outer appearance and traits while their genetics remains largely untouched (at least over only a few generations). Revert also
6. 456.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   I broadly agree that this is disastrous in the same sense that any invasive species is. But I take exception to this silly paragraph: > He worries, for example, that the fluorescence-endowing genes from the escapees could end up being in
7. 457.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   Wow it is hard to imagine Ever paying for R. Its mass adoption in biostats is because it is free.
8. 458.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   I use cow milk in my coffee and almond milk in my bland cereal of choice. I’m not lactose intolerant, but too much milk definitely feels “heavy”. The almond milk plus some sultanas substitutes nicely and is very cheap. Mostly its not for th
9. 459.▲
   by ImaCake 5y ago

   Reddit effectively has this information buried in its database. But they don’t really use it, preferencing issues of the day and recycled tik toks apparently.
10. 460.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I guess python was around then but certainly not like it is now. I wonder if python 1 even had a regex library? My lab, that does a mix of bioinformatics and population genetics, has people who know bash, python, and R. Honestly, I think ba
11. 461.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I am just not engaged enough in day-to-day politics to know about the Issue of Day. So when people make angry quips about it, and can't fit a multi-paragraph explainer into it, I can't make any sense of their tweets. I find politi
12. 462.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Yeah politics on twitter is awful. For outsiders like me it is often hard to even understand what a popular political tweet is even about. Twitter is good for pictures of nature though. And somehow a great deal of decent scientific discours
13. 463.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Does intermediate distribution here correspond to a Sampling distribution? If so I think you got it right.
14. 464.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I was just hedging my statements really. The rest of what yoy say addresses other important considerations well so I don’t have anything else to add.
15. 465.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I honestly don’t know. The molecular evidence suggests that COVID evolved in the wild. It’s either a natural spillover or a lab leak. But its definitely not a lab made virus. China is secret by default, maybe they don’t know if it’s a lab l
16. 466.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    As a molecular biologist. I would say it‘s probably contamination of the samples. The confidence comes from the other contaminating sequences found in the same samples; the hamster DNA (and monkey was the other one I think). Both are routin
17. 467.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Does your single-issue account mean to suggest that sequencing a close-ish relative of COVID in 2018 means they were growing it in a lab? I can‘t think of a good explanation that would link sequencing to lab experiments. RATG13 is 96% simil
18. 468.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    User rcpt shared the, much more legible, twitter thread this kinda trash telegraph article is citing, reposting as a top level comment since the parent comment there is being modded: https://twitter.com/jbloom_lab/statu
19. 469.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Thanks, that twitter thread actually makes sense, unlike the telegraph article. The conclusion seems to be that we need a timestamp on when these samples were sequenced. If in Jan 2020 it is fine, if its in 2019 it catches the Chinese Gov i
20. 470.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Australia has "Rare Voices Australia" which is for rare genetic diseases that face this same issue. I have met the co-founder who is an impressive and emphatic person. Similar probably exists where you are. https://rare
21. 471.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    >1984 is not boring Maybe not for you. But it was for me. I am not sure how claiming that it is not boring for all people could be true (implied by your comment). Much easier to defend the counterfactual that all topics are boring to at
22. 472.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    How is it bullshit? There is plenty of science to backup the claim that intelligence is heritable [0]. From there the rest of what I said is basic population genetics statistics. 0. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29335645&#
23. 473.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Absolutely. A lot of funding gets poured into dead end alzheimers research or similar that will never work. A fraction of that redirected to rare diseases that get zero funding will do wonders. It is a shame that academia and research are s
24. 474.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Thanks for this. I have a friend who reads this special brand of niche junk math for entertainment and I am sure he will love this.
25. 475.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I stopped before this point. Thankyou heaps for reading further and sharing this quote. I think it really nails it.
26. 476.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    > Isn't it possible however, that James and Sarah would have had a child who would have become another Mozart, or Einstein? At least genetically this is unlikely. Several hundred genetic variants explain a good fraction of intellige
27. 477.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I know people love 1984 but I found it exceedingly boring when I tried to read it. But it does have some very interesting ideas. My issue with 1984 may have been prior exposure to it's best ideas elsewhere. Orwell is a great writer, hi
28. 478.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    Agreed with this one. But whole chunks of it are incredibly boring. So not one to be read cover to cover. I wonder if someone could point to an annotated bible or even a text book on the historical and culturally important points that are c
29. 479.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    My anecdata, as an outsider who is a researcher, is that silicon valley is either the south SF bay area or the mindset. I certainly mean the latter when describing HN to others.
30. 480.▲
    by ImaCake 5y ago

    I’m reading this at 7am from Perth. On a Saturday, so I imagine Australian engagement might be low for the next few hours still.