rotexo

12 ms·

91.
by rotexo 5y ago
On a tangent: if humanity ever found themselves in a children of men-style situation, I think an excellent use of the final generation’s resources and effort would be building a system of fully automated luxury communism for the corvids and
92.
by rotexo 6y ago
Aside from launch costs, isn’t heat management one of the hardest parts about schemes like that? I’m obviously not an aerospace engineer, but I thought the vacuum breaks most heat dissipation schemes
93.
by rotexo 6y ago
Indeed! KSR has clearly had a change of thinking about terraforming since the Mars trilogy. I asked him about it at a reading he did from Red Moon, and he responded with the Antarctica analogy I described above.
94.
by rotexo 6y ago
I like Kim Stanley Robinson’s take: that humanity’s off-planet presence will be like our presence in Antarctica. We will put a bunch of scientists there and continue to actively support them there, because self-sufficiency is unlikely in su
95.
by rotexo 6y ago
Careful there—those conclusions may be overstated because of bias in the people getting tested in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated groups ( https://mobile.twitter.com/ZoeMcLaren/status/136358205077574... )
96.
by rotexo 6y ago
As far as I’ve read, no data on clinical effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines against the SA strain. There have been several reports where groups measure neutralizing antibodies in serum of people who have received vaccines against the variou
97.
by rotexo 6y ago
I feel like the beach ball sub-plot in that movie is a practice-run for Alien. Not to mention the parallels between the conversations with bomb and Ash.
98.
by rotexo 6y ago
One of the things I really miss about home: summer bug noises. Generally just don't get them in Berkeley.
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by rotexo 6y ago
I really tried with Dying Earth (I particularly was interested in seeing the roots of D&D's magic system), but man the misogyny got to me real quick. I suppose it was just a product of its time, and different people's toleranc
100.
by rotexo 6y ago
Nah man it isn’t life unless it’s summer in Austin. Back in my youth I would still bike everywhere, I would just plan my bike route to hit every public pool possible, like the main character in John Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer.’ And then I would
101.
by rotexo 6y ago
I would be curious to hear if the parent to your comment was talking about politics. They might instead be talking about the response to Covid-19, and the much larger death toll per million people in the US compared to Canada: https:/
102.
by rotexo 6y ago
Oh hey I use your vamp plugins and sonic visualizer a lot! thanks for your work.
103.
by rotexo 6y ago
David Byrne’s book “How Music Works” has an interesting bit about how the common contemporary way of recording recording (recording different tracks separately) can feel very unnatural for bands that are used to playing live, in an actual a
104.
by rotexo 6y ago
Right, I didn't phrase that well. It would be nice to be able to treat covid early in the infection. However, research time and resources are limited. To work with your analogy, at the moment we are trying to put out the active fire of
105.
by rotexo 6y ago
From the methods summaries: "We conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of intravenous remdesivir in adults who were hospitalized with Covid-19 and had evidence of lower respiratory tract infection." [1] &qu
106.
by rotexo 6y ago
On a somewhat related note, here is an excellent short documentary on the making of the score for John Carpenter’s Escape From New York: https://youtu.be/NBw4OXM6ad4 It is particularly interesting to see how MIDI completely
107.
by rotexo 6y ago
or maybe she is feeding an exceptionally intelligent crow
108.
by rotexo 6y ago
I think that term refers to edible protein sources from unicellular organisms, not a misunderstanding of biology (though I understand that’s how it can seem).
109.
by rotexo 6y ago
The benefits of multi-classing go beyond the combat mechanics of the game, as well. If you develop a character-driven reason for multi-classing, that's character growth in action. Great for role-playing as well as for driving the plot
110.
by rotexo 6y ago
Maybe I am misunderstanding the terms we are using. Allow me to articulate what I think the valuable line of inquiry is here, and then maybe you can identify what I am missing philosophically, because I'm still not sure exactly what th
111.
by rotexo 6y ago
If I might make a gentle counterpoint: if we didn't follow a rigorous reductionist process, the article you are commenting on wouldn't exist and we wouldn't know a thing about bacteria forming large-scale structures in order
112.
by rotexo 6y ago
At least regarding this particular piece, it seems to me (microbiology PhD) that we have a perfectly adequate definition of organism (I like a definition of life put forwards by NASA: a self-sustaining chemical system capable of undergoing
113.
by rotexo 6y ago
Out of curiosity, which of the engineering problems posed by the Starship/Superheavy system are the biggest potential showstoppers? My instinct is the belly flop/heat shield required to make Starship reusable, but I know nothing a
114.
by rotexo 6y ago
That last paragraph hits home. I was always ‘good at school’ (even though I spent a lot of effort studying to maintain that status), up until I got to my PhD program and I couldn’t just ‘regurgitate simple models’ and succeed anymore. I got
115.
by rotexo 6y ago
Wait I’m a little confused. It seems like injecting people with an mRNA, which their cells then translate into an antigen that provokes an immune response, is a very different technology from monoclonal antibodies. They are both related to
116.
by rotexo 6y ago
I'm glad this is getting attention, but I don't like how this line is written: "Most bizarrely of all, when researchers tested blood samples taken years before the pandemic started, they found T cells which were specifically
117.
by rotexo 6y ago
There is more to the immune system than antibody production. A lot of the focus is on antibody production, because it is easy to measure. T Cell responses, for instance, can be very durable for coronaviruses--for instance, people who recove
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by rotexo 6y ago
I'm lucky in that I work at an essential business, so I have been coming into work this whole time, which gives me social interaction. I have a 1/2 hour bike commute, so the commute part isn't an issue. Downside: my girlfrien
119.
by rotexo 6y ago
Wow that is also my estimate of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin! In all seriousness, I would think that a) finding life on another planet in our solar system and b) determining whether it shared a common ancestor with life on
120.
by rotexo 6y ago
I wonder if putting up a space sunshade (the cloud of lenses version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade ) would be feasible with starship/superheavy. If so, that strikes me as a way more important projec

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