send them into a ammo utopia in the idaho mountains, and put a citadel around them. they might be thinking it is there to prevent others from coming in but really it is to keep them away from society. their proposed rules should be nicely self-selecting only the craziest of the crazy.
Month: January 2013
Dog plastic surgeon
Zizmor for dogs
Mount vernon hotel
200 years back in time
Jews for Jesus
This is a thing? (Seen in Murray hill)
Nixtamalization
Nixtamalization is 3.5 ka old and produces the most delicious tortillas. if you want to experience this rare process, head to tortilleria nixtamal in queens. they are the only place on the east coast still using this technique, and the results speak for themselves.
1 More Episode
this is a pretty great cameo.
Apollo Robbins
the greatest pickpocket of all time.
A glut of Ninjas
i had no idea unemployment was so bad. social media maven is what someone calls himself when they are between jobs.
As a public service, I like to periodically check in on the number of self-proclaimed social media “gurus,” “ninjas,” “masters” and “mavens” on Twitter. Why? Well, it seems like an important metric, an indicator of something.
Whatever it means, this is one indicator that is most definitely on the rise. In January 2013, the number of Twitter users with “social media” as part of their bio has grown to epic proportions. The list now tops 181K – up from a mere 16K when we first started tracking them in 2009
FDNY / NYPD plus donuts
just now, outside my building: 4 firetrucks, a jeep, and a donut cart (whenever you have FDNY or NYPD, you have donuts). turns out the boiler blew and it smells like exhaust everywhere. nothing to worry about, but in typical nyc fashion, i finally met the neighbors and we introduced ourselves.
2014-02-12: 10s of NYPD doing what they do best, standing around
Mosquito Gene Drive
Engineered sterile male mosquitoes
Brought down mosquito population in a test run in small town by 85% in 4 months.
Obviously there are some risks here, but risks have to be weighed against benefits – if we don’t do it, mosquito-borne diseases keep killing 1M people each year.
Today, worldwide, 3000 people will die of mosquito borne illnesses. 3500 will die in auto accidents. I don’t have good numbers to scale the problem of hospital errors globally — but I’m guessing between 5000 and 20000 deaths a day. These problems are easy or at least easy-ish to fix. The medical profession can break the culture of “let’s wing it” and “who has time to wash their hands?” in hospitals. It is possible to get rid of the mosquitoes that carry malaria, dengue, zika and the rest. The technology to deliver self-driving cars is close.
There are loads more real problems that kill people in huge numbers that have easy-ish ways to fix that I can name. By contrast, the terrorist attack yesterday was a single, small incident. Terrorism kills very few people.
2016-10-06: Wow, awfully clever name.
Bad mosquitoes spread disease. Good mosquitoes can stop them. Debug is a group of scientists and engineers developing technology to raise and release sterile mosquitoes to eliminate the ones that carry disease.
2016-10-08: The anti-vaxxers found a new hobby.
If the Keys scuttle the project, it may go against broader public opinion. A national survey found that 78% supported using GMO mosquitoes to fight Zika. Last month a bipartisan group of 61 Florida state legislators issued a statement asking the FDA to use emergency powers to give them Oxitec right now. “What’s happened now is you have various mosquito districts saying, ‘Why can’t we use this technology?’ ” If the vote goes against Oxitec, “we would move the trial somewhere else. But obviously it would be more preferable and more convenient to do it where we planned to do it.”
2022-07-04: Changing host smell
Some diseases can change how their hosts smell. Certain viruses and microorganisms have evolved to use this to their advantage. For instance, plants that are infected with the Cucumber mosaic virus release a molecule that attracts aphids, which the virus uses as a vector to infect new plants. Parasites that cause malaria advertise their hosts to passing mosquitoes through changes in body odor. Mice infected with Zika or dengue produced 10x as much acetophenone as did healthy mice. Daubing healthy mice — and a few human volunteers — with acetophenone revealed that mosquitoes were drawn to the smell. Giving infected mice vitamin A, which is commonly used to treat skin conditions, helped to lower the amount of acetophenone the animals exuded, potentially providing a new way to control the spread of both diseases.
2022-11-26: Data from a new field trial
treated mosquito populations were suppressed by 88-96%. Male mosquitoes have short lifespans as it is—just seven to 10 days—and the self-limiting trait becomes less prevalent in each subsequent generation of males. Eventually, it fades within the gene pool. That means more releases are needed.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 