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M.A.R.
M.A.R.
12:37 AM
@CowperKettle Yeah, I STILL can't read Russian
@CowperKettle There's this "You wouldn't possibly understand art" toxic culture in the 'poetry community', and Shamloo was really good at being a shithead. So I'd actually probably enjoy some of his poetry if it didn't have an author tag beneath it
@Cerberus I think at the moment everyone's priority should be to get the world vaccinated ASAP because the longer we wait, the more likely it will be for a new resistant variant to come even before vaccination is over, so I think that kinda trumps every other consideration right now
2
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@M.A.R. Yes, of course.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Now I can't see that Tweet but if a political score or two are to be gained or lost, I think they should settle that score later
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
I posted a screenshot.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Imgur is also blocked, but i.stack.imgur isn't
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Of course what Biden or the EU says is not important.
Oh, I see.
No VPN?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
12:44 AM
Mar 26 at 20:18, by Mitch
a numb man mime land mammal meme on the lam
@Cerberus Not on this PC
No problem, I'll check it later if I was curious
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
@CowperKettle The problem is that Africa has neither the organisational capacity (governments, companies, etc.) nor the scientists to set something up.
> Maroš Šefčovič
🇪🇺
@MarosSefcovic
The EU has exported ~200M doses of #vaccines, as many as we have delivered to our citizens.

While we're open to discussing new solidarity proposals, our priority is to ramp up the
🇪🇺
vaccine production + to see others unblocking exports of vaccines and their components. #GAC
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Thank you
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
> Frank I Am
💉
@_frankiam
·
May 11
Replying to
@MarosSefcovic

@EU_Commission
and 9 others
@POTUS
are you listening?

You don't get to take the moral high ground with the vaccine nationalism you are running!
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
> Former Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age
Very Qajarian title
Qajar kings loved titles, well, mostly near the end.
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
Hah.
It's also incomprehensible.
 
Xanne
Xanne
12:49 AM
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
I dunno what that is, some sort of slogan?
Why not just call it the tech committee or something.
Too informal for our rather superbly intellectual taste smirks in French
 
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-latin answer (49): Why use "on-pass" / "onpass" instead of "pass on"? by Lohithakshan. N. K on english.SE
 
Xanne
Xanne
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. It's like any military guy anywhere with the ... what do you call the big hats they wear?...
not a helmet
the fancy officer dress hats?
is it hat?
it can't be hat
but the chest full of medals
That's just so....
vain
you went into battle and killed some of the other guys... that guy should get a medal.
But the captains and general have a square foot of colored metal on their chest for being administrators
@Xanne Oh yeah sure it is what you might use outside of the family, but never to the affected people.
But it's still just as much a term that is actually used as the other terms at that question.
 
Xanne
Xanne
@Mitch It’s called fruit salad. When you find out what the medals are for, it’s often quite impressive.
 
Mitch
Mitch
1:00 AM
@Xanne right. it's the difference between how you describe something to someone else and what you use to call them in front of you. In fact, I bet that 'rainbow child' was an invention to euphemize what they thought was too blunt about 'replacement child'.
 
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-latin answer, potentially bad keyword in username, blacklisted user (121): Why use "on-pass" / "onpass" instead of "pass on"? by Lohithakshan. N. K on english.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted username, mostly non-latin answer, blacklisted user (210): Why use "on-pass" / "onpass" instead of "pass on"? by Lohithakshan. N. K on english.SE
 
Mitch
Mitch
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
1:19 AM
@M.A.R. Poets are notorious for spewing venom left and right. Byron derided Keats bl.uk/collection-items/…
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. a mean anemone mnemonic
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@CowperKettle Sure, but this guy just went ahead and dismissed the entirety of traditional Iranian singing, and that was one of his saner moments. He was really the Bukowski-type who were just really really eloquent at saying they have no idea WTF they're doing with their life.
If it was just good ol' rivalry between poets and playwrights, Shakespeare did that too.
He's a bit of an intellectual darling, but I just find his popularity as sort of a knee-jerk reaction to the regime's censorship, not anything relating to the intrinsic value of his works.
The same sort of attitude where people prefer to read the worst work of a feminist writer than arguably better works from writers that haven't been so vocal about their sociopolitical affiliation
 
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
1:52 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with a link in answer (80): "Stockmarkets" vs. "stock markets" by Ghanshyam manikpuri on english.SE
 
livresque
livresque
2:09 AM
@baied'euzellecité More and more recently I hear people say they're calling to check in. "Just calling..." to check in or just checking in is about the same as touching base with someone you've been a little out of touch with. Conceptually a great question on keeping in touch.
 
livresque
livresque
2:35 AM
@M.A.R. Hi MAR, may I just say I appreciate that point of view?
 
 
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SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
7:12 AM
 
 
3 hours later…
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
10:24 AM
@Donald.McLean yes, that makes sense. context is key
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
11:11 AM
@livresque thanks!
@MattE.Эллен opens door with context
These fantasy RPGs are taking it a little too far
I mean, the plague comes, and people don't believe in it? Really?
 
Matt E. Эллен
Matt E. Эллен
11:26 AM
@M.A.R. all my contexts seem the same, so it can take me ages to get into my house
 
 
5 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
4:46 PM
 
 
3 hours later…
Mitch
Mitch
7:51 PM
My crusade for truth in the face of making some people upset is being hampered by ease of system use.
THat's a purple way of saying that the 'replacement child' answer, which the author deleted, was successfully undeleted only to be immediately redeleted by the author.
Which I suppose is what the system should allow, but I was sort of expecting the system rule to be more like closing of a question where you need an equal number of close votes to reopen votes.
But I want truth to prevail! My truth! which should be other's truth!
But all words are made up!
sobs uncontrollably
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
8:21 PM
@Mitch there there. They're all just societal constructs. Answers, words, even delete buttons
 
Cerberus
Cerberus
You're a social construct.
2
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Word of the day: replisome
The Okazaki Fragment was discovered by a Japanese guy who later succumbed to leukemia caused by the nuclear bombings.
Reiji Okazaki
Reiji Okazaki (岡崎 令治, Okazaki Reiji, October 8, 1930 – August 1, 1975) was a pioneer Japanese molecular biologist, known for his research on DNA replication and especially for describing the role of Okazaki fragments along with his wife Tsuneko. Okazaki was born in Hiroshima, Japan. He graduated in 1953 from Nagoya University, and worked as a professor there after 1963. He died of leukemia in 1975 at the age of 44; he had been heavily irradiated in Hiroshima when the first atomic bomb was dropped. == Okazaki Fragments == In 1968, Okazaki discovered the way in which the lagging strand of DNA is...
 
Davo
Davo
8:39 PM
I'm just amazed at how nice the site used to look. From english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/400/…
 
tchrist
tchrist
sighs
 
Mitch
Mitch
8:55 PM
@Cerberus How dare you
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
 
Mitch
Mitch
@CowperKettle All you hear about all day is how cows and whales are related and that birds are basically dinosaurs, but I'm constantly overwhelmingly amazed at how chemicals evolved just to get to the point of things like the ADP/ATP or photosynthesis or the Krebs cycle.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@Mitch I am also amazed by that. I'm trying to write an article aboud DNA polymerase gamma in the Russian Wikipedia, and it's hard. It does so many things and it's all so complex.
So I'm just reading about it.
 
Mitch
Mitch
And then everybody is freaking out about how individual cells work... but there's a big gap in knowledge between that and how does hair know not to grow on my ear?
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Yes, there is a host of proteins that control the expression of genes, so that unnecessary genes are not expressed where they should not.
 
Mitch
Mitch
9:04 PM
@CowperKettle and the timing of it all... single cell physiology I think has been dated to ... 3billion years ago, and multicellular to 1 billion? So all the chemical stuff took 1 1/2 billion years from Earth formation to get actual cells.
@CowperKettle I guess there's a lot of knowledge out there that is just too detailed to fit in a meme.
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
For instance, Capicua transcriptional repressor suppresses a lot of genes. But once in a while a chromosome breaks and fuses incorrectly, creating chimeric proteins composed of Capicua and some other proteins. That can launch a cancer that will kill a person in mere months, very agressively - because Capicua turns from suppressor to activator: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6825133
 
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, no whitespace in answer, repeating characters in answer (264): Are there previous formulations of this quote from George R.R. Martin ✏️ by Helpful Hannah on english.SE
 
Mitch
Mitch
Have you ever seen the Roche posters on Biological pathways?
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
The article I cited describes how a 9 year old girl died very qiuckly because of a chimeric CIC-DUX mutation. This mutation allowed the cancer to activate all kinds of genes, so nothing could help the girl.
 
Mitch
Mitch
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
9:07 PM
Hey I linked that a while ago!
That's MY discovery!
Shoo
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. Link?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
@tchrist just that?
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
Cancer mutagenesis is interesting.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Oh, I linked another one
You win this round, BATMAN!
@CowperKettle I just did a short essay on the anticarcinogenic antibiotics and it's really mind-bogglingly awesome
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. When I was growing up, we lived near a river which I used to go play near. Rocks and mud and all sorts of stuff. a path and a breakwater and a sort of meadow. I never saw anybody there so I considered it mine. As in mental ownership.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
9:09 PM
The really awesome thing they pat evolution on the back for is K+ voltage gated channels
 
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
@M.A.R. Oh, that's great!
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. oh yeah, that's a good one. pretty much the same 'area' of things.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
K+ and Na+ are really really close in size, in chemical properties, everything
 
Mitch
Mitch
@M.A.R. Who's a good boy? You are evolution you are such a good boy.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
But the whole function of the neurons depends on differentiating between the two
So I wonder how many million years of evolution it took for the K+ channels to place their carbonyl oxygens close enough that a K+ will be selected and passed inwards, but Na+ would be too small to be attracted much
It's a tunnel of negative charge called the 'selectivity filter' IIRC
Sodium and potassium ions are solvated by six water molecules normally, and they have to detach from them to enter the channel and the cell
 
Mitch
Mitch
9:14 PM
@M.A.R. the amount of trial and error needed seems like kinda a lot
@M.A.R. and do it kinda fast.
for like muscles and brain stuff to work like they do
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
> Na+ has a Pauling ionic radius of 95 pm, while K+ has a Pauling ionic radius of 133 pm.
 
Mitch
Mitch
Oh. When you put it that way it doesn't seem so hard
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Carbonyls are very polar functional groups in abundance in proteins. The channel is a huge protein that bends inwards to form its natural shape, and somehow that is wide enough to attract and let through K+ ions, but Na+ are too small to feel enough attraction
@Mitch Except the protein is literally a snake that has to (1) fold in such a specific way as to make a tunnel, and (2) make its carbonyl groups stick out and make a tunnel, and (3) that tunnel has to be big enough for K+, but too big for Na+
 
Mitch
Mitch
It's funny how these large protein structures came about to construct molecular architecture to control single (and relatively much rarer) atoms.
@M.A.R. I feel like there's a lot harder stuff to get done by proteins than controlling for a size difference of 95 vs 133.
like
like... I don't know
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
(4) positive ions wanna get in naturally because the cell is more negative than the outside
 
Mitch
Mitch
9:19 PM
some protein stuff
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
Well a simple ribosome is itself really complicated
How many trials and errors did it take to come up with ribosomes?
Protein and RNA structures that can make proteins which might go and make more RNAs
Was the ribosome first, or the egg?
See also: if making more yogurt requires yogurt, how do you make grandpa yogurt?
That question used to bug me when I was a kid
 
Mitch
Mitch
Like if you're exploring the solar systems in the 10 lt year cube around us... let's say a hundred systems... contrary to most sci-fi... if you found -one- planet that had an abundance of amino acids just laying around and nothing else more complicated... that'd still be a universally mind-blowing experience. It'd be totally wild if there were even the most rudimentary bacteria-like things.
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
I'm obsessed with yogurt
 
Mitch
Mitch
everybody expects monsters and aliens. That shit ain't gonna happen.
@M.A.R. exactly. it's insane
@M.A.R. I mean... you could be obsessed with a lot worse is all I'm sayin
 
 
2 hours later…
Cerberus
Cerberus
11:08 PM
@Mitch I thought whales were related to deer?
 
M.A.R.
M.A.R.
11:53 PM
@Mitch isn't it sort of deterministic? Like, leave the chemicals to themselves and they'll take 3.5 billion years, give or take, to become sentient intelligent beings?
Bong Joon Ho is making an animated movie about some lamprey that thinks has a herniated disk?
 

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