- seems that new public toilets in China make you watch ads in order to get toilet paper
- The Economist would like you to be more worried about North Korea
- How the rich and powerful plan to live forever (I am life extension curious, as anyone whose entire family dies before 65 would be)
Tag: med
TODAY:
- Budget set for 26 November
- new cancer treatments emerging
- China’s military is now leading
- Xi and Putin overheard talking about organ transplants and immortality
OPERATIONS: Hitting my ancient iPad 2 with sticks to make its Downcast app work properly. I think the machine may have finally crapped out. Production and release schedules tentatively set. Today is scripting and hopefully getting back into a prose piece I’ve been fiddling with.
STATUS: 8hrs 8m sleep, but my body thinks autumn is here and is telling me to hibernate. Inbox 95. Browsing for new winter clothes. Reminder to self that I need to clean all my winter boots. Wearing the Timex Expedition Scout today, my signal to myself that I’m staying at least partly disconnected until 5pm.
READING: OUR DEBTS TO THE PAST by Ed James (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Life is Exhausting by The Void Wanderer
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.
Comments closed“The most likely scenario is that the severed upper limbs were trophies taken from the bodies of enemies fallen in battle or raids immediately after death and brought to the village. Heads and hands seem to be the most common human trophies documented in the archaeological record, although written and ethnographic sources often refer to other body parts, including soft tissues which would not generally preserve, such as scalps, ears, or genitals,” the authors write.
Disney is suddenly freaking out about losing its “boy” audience. No, really—they’ve finally noticed that the demographic they’ve spent the last decade ignoring might actually matter.
Variety is reporting that the studio has been quietly putting the word out to producers and writers: bring us films that can lure young men (ages 13–28) back into the fold. That Gen Z demo has been drifting for years, preferring video games and viral meme cinema (“Minecraft”) to whatever Marvel or Star Wars are serving up.
Comments closedThe United States may be losing its edge in mRNA technology.
The technology, which powered life-saving COVID-19 vaccines and is now rocketing new cancer therapeutics forward, will soon undergo a scientific slowdown. On August 5, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would wind down mRNA vaccine development under the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA.
From the Economist newsletter:
Comments closed
Cardiologists reported that an experimental drug, lepodisiran, manufactured by Eli Lilly, an American pharmaceutical company, could lower by 94% the blood’s level of a genetically inherited particle that greatly increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes. The promising midstage trial results will now be tested in large clinical trials. An estimated 1.4bn people worldwide have elevated levels of the particle, Lp(a).
The sun is out. Not sure I’ll have the time to make the most of it, myself, but he’s rolling around on the grass like a happy idiot.
🌐
- Sutton Hoo helmet may not be from Sweden after all, new discovery suggests
- Chinese Scientist Ostracized Over Gene-Edited Babies Seeks Comeback
- The cover-up is worse than the group chat
OPERATIONS: Quick rewrite on deck, some breakdowns to knock out, wrapping up Sunday’s newsletter, a hundred emails to process – which I’m about to do, and maybe send some more, as I continue to fail to try to be better about being in contact with people.
STATUS: a geophysical artist I know has sent me an email entitled “cave cameras,” so god knows what he’s done this time. A few moments of frustration last night with my phone last night, my usual complaint that nothing on it works the way I want it to – why on earth would Fitbit not be accessible by Apple Health? Why do so few app makers produce widgets for their apps? Why isn’t this goddamn thing a glanceable terminal?
READING: THE NOTEBOOK, Roland Allen (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:
THINKING ABOUT:
When the copper returned to the station at the end of the beat, the duty officer could quickly inspect the notebook to verify that he had indeed performed his duty. That indoor role solidified into the rank of ‘inspector’; the officer whom we think of as an investigator was, originally, merely there to check the paperwork.
THE NOTEBOOK
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Now: DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT audio drama podcast, THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM. Forthcoming 2025: FELL: FERAL CITY new printing, THE AUTHORITY Compact Edition, The LIGHTS OUT Anthology.
Comments closed
Pictured: today’s garden work.
🌐
- Gene-editing drugs are moving from lab to clinic at lightning speed
- Mystery surrounds US woman found starving and chained to tree in India
OPERATIONS: there is NO SIGNAL in the garden. It’s basically the 1970s out there, currently – continuing local network issues. Briefly organising delivery schedules for artists, publishers and myself and adding pending production deals to the boards
STATUS: Inbox 99, 7hrs 46mins sleep, sleeping heart rate of 64 (this is a note to self), readiness score of 86 which means I should be able to dig up some trees as well as cutting and lopping some back, and I will likely deprecate these details from STATUS next week
READING: EVERYTHING IS CINEMA: THE WORKING LIFE OF JEAN-LUC GODARD, Richard Brody.
THINKING ABOUT: from the Godard book:
I remember Godard asking me, for a scene of a car arriving at a railway crossing: “I only want the sound of the match.” Ordinarily, one would have put the sound of the car in motion and then braking, the character reaching for his cigarette then lighting it. This practice lent the voices and the discrete sound effects a peculiar intimacy, as if, like Bruno, the viewer were experiencing not a moment in full but a particular, keen, and pointed detail as Bruno remembers it.
MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter. Forthcoming 2024: THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT, DESOLATION JONES: THE BIOHZARD EDITION, FELL: FERAL CITY new printing. 2025: THE STORMWATCH COMPENDIUM.
Comments closedAgeing: ‘Supermodel granny’ drug extends life in animal tests
The drug is already being tested in people, but whether it would have the same effect is unknown.
July 17, 2024 at 05:26PM
Comments closedI could write a long list of all the things I don’t care about any more, but I don’t care about them enough to write the list.
TODAY:
- Cancer vaccine
- Was Seahenge created for a ritual to extend the summer during climate change battle?
- Starling swarm satellites
Comments closedEven Nature can become depraved if people relentlessly incite it to do so . . . And Nature must have had an interest, taking an unscrupulous glance at our history where it discovered the perfect setting it needed to try out some new experimental form of life.
THE TWENTY DAYS OF TURIN (UK) (US+)
In 1946, University of Chicago researchers Anton Carlson and Frederick Hoelzel subjected rats to periodic food restriction and found, when they did, that those that went hungry every third day lived 15 to 20 percent longer than their cousins on a regular diet.
It’s not clear whether the pair applied what they’d learned to their own lives, but both lived relatively long lives for their time. Carlson died at the age of 81. Hoelzel made it to 74, despite having subjected himself over the years to experiments that included swallowing gravel, glass beads, and ball bearings to study how long it would take for such objects to pass through his system. And people say I’m crazy.
LIFESPAN, David Sinclair (UK) (US+)
Comments closed