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Biology
On the safety of microplastics – Trying to explain what we know and don’t know about the safety of microplastics. That being said, don’t eat them if you can avoid them.
Is longevity a choice? How about obesity? Coming back to cavefish to argue that any of us could become cavefish if we believed in ourselves.
The way scientists think about obesity now is wrong – Arguing towards a new understanding of obesity
GLP-1 and GIP agonism and antagonism is weird – Adding onto the previous. They are really, really weird and hard to understand, despite being very useful.
The twin mysteries of GLP-1 receptor agonists – GLP-1 receptor agonists are full of mysteries.
5 Whys of Diabetes – A neat new approach to studying chronic diseases: by asking why a bunch of times.
How to get causation from correlation in genetics – Mendelian randomization is neat. I explain it here.
Ground squirrel microbiomes are neat, unlike human microbiomes – Celebrating ground squirrels and dissing humans.
Anthropocentrism, obesity, and long-lived cavefish – Introducing the fat, eyeless, long-lived cavefish.
Why don’t hummingbirds get diabetes? A fun paper exploring the genetic adaptations of hummingbirds to a high glucose diet.
Is this all the medicine we were promised? Complaining about lecanemab and other so-so medications.
Does herpes cause dementia? I doubt it, but I try to give it a fair shake.
A miracle drug sold over the counter – Exploring one of my favorite drugs.
Should you work for Neuralink? Probably not. – I find out that judging Elon Musk’s companies is hard.
Bacterial vaginosis – On the causes, consequences, and treatment of BV.
Diagnosing and treating chronic cough – Self-explanatory. Same vein as my IBS post.
The place of AI/ChatGPT in drug discovery – For actual drug discovery, it might never be helpful. But, for the stuff around drug discovery (like keeping track of project timelines), I’m hopeful.
Prilosec, Nexium, and the narrowing of American pharmaceutical ambition – Discussing how Prilosec (omeprazole) was a really cool, impressive drug, then its sequel, Nexium (esomeprazole), was a shameless cash grab. The manufacturer got its comeuppance though, when Nexium, uh, made $50 billion over its lifetime.
Steelmanning chiropractic – Trying to prove that chiropractors have some useful ideas. This proved to be an insanely controversial post on Reddit. People hate chiropractors.
How I’ve tried to fix my lower back pain – Exploring a variety of methods to fix lower back pain and then just ending up back at stretching and strengthening.
Biology has analogies, not paradigms – Talking about how, unlike Kuhn or Popper’s models of science, there are no real paradigms or falsification of models in molecular biology. There are just analogies, which are imperfect but useful.
Why does the flu/COVID make us tired? – Inspired by a recent bout with COVID, trying to figure out why COVID makes us so exhausted. Discusses the relationship between adenosine and sleep vs. glucose and fatigue (i.e. the tired you get at night vs. the tired you get after a marathon).
Are being big and old risk factors for cancer or not? – Returning back to the question of the relationship of age and size with cancer. Why is a fat 3-year-old mouse so much more likely to get cancer than a 100-year-old whale?
Obesity’s relationship with type 2 diabetes is really weird – Once again, I go down the rabbit hole of obesity’s weird health effects. This time, it’s exploring type 2 diabetes, and why it’s so easy to reverse and then un-reverse. It’s weird!
A medical thought experiment – Traveling back in time to see if one could rediscover germ theory in the year 1650. Then, a twist!
You should justify your exclusion criteria – Discussing the use of exclusion criteria in medical intervention studies. Too often, they’re used to redefine conditions into different ones than are discussed in the abstract.
Can gene therapy fix any genetic defect? – Talking about the sorts of things gene therapy is good for and the sorts of things it really isn’t.
The manifold effects of tetracycline – Elaborating on the weirdly long list of effects of tetracycline and celebrating “dirty” drugs. Did you know tetracycline can cause teeth graying?
Epstein-Barr virus causes multiple sclerosis. So what? – I question the implications of the most exciting epidemiological study of the year.
Should you take metformin for longevity? No. – Sorry for the spoiler, but in this essay, I take a look at the promise of metformin now for longevity, and the promise of metformin as a longevity therapeutic in the future. Neither impresses me.
Want to reverse aging? Try reversing graying, first. – Looking at the difficulties of graying research and comparing them with the much greater difficulties of general aging research. Also, looking at spontaneous re-pigmentation as possibly the only example of “reversing” aging in humans, and what can be learned from that.
Why did they give antidepressants to COVID patients? – Looking at the TOGETHER trial, which gave fluvoxamine to COVID patients in Brazil, as an example of repurposing gone right. I talk about the scientific background of the trial, why its success is hard to replicate (especially the funding parts), and the hacky ways for-profit companies try to do their own repurposing trials.
Why organ transplant patients may not get dementia – Exploring the implications of a paper that claims that patients on calcineurin inhibitors, a specific type of immunosuppressant commonly given to organ transplant patients, don’t get dementia. One of these implications is that, if the paper’s right, investors should give me money.
Why can’t we just give steroids to people with muscular dystrophy? – Short answer: muscular dystrophy destroys the muscles, while steroids just recruit more muscle fibers that would be destroyed. It took 12 years and over a billion dollars to get to that answer, though.
A lesser known mechanism for alcohol tolerance – exploring the mystery of alcoholics who walk around with a blood-alcohol level that would literally kill a non-drinker. I argue that the answer is modification to BK channels.
Why bigger species live longer and what we can learn from it – simple observation: bigger species live longer than smaller species (elephants vs. mice), but bigger breeds live shorter than smaller breeds (St. Bernards vs. Chihuahuas). This essay argues that immunology is the key.
A complete guide to self-diagnosing and self-treating IBS – Self-explanatory. This is the sort of guide I wished I had when I was suffering through IBS.
Are mRNA therapies the future? – Examining the hype around mRNA. Hype is partially busted: mRNA is cool, but it’s not a cure-all, and at this point it’s difficult to imagine it being effective in non-vaccine therapeutics.
Why oncology is so popular for pharmaceuticals – Discussing the economic reasons why oncology is such an attractive category for pharma companies, as well as the statistical reasons. Hint: it’s because oncology drugs use bullshit measurements.
What exactly is the role of inflammation in the immune system? – Exploring the enduring mystery of why anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and adalimumab don’t make people much more susceptible to infections.
Don’t use R0 to measure the rate of COVID transmission – Arguing that R0 is a bad measure because:
- It depends on circumstance and is not an inherent property of the virus
- It’s an average, which ignores superspreaders
- Its problematic calculation assumes asymptomatic transmission, a constant relationship between when a person is infected and when they show symptoms, and a single number for “infectiousness”, none of which are justified
- The estimates for R0 of all viruses vary drastically
Asymptomatic shedding of the virus is the norm – arguing from examples of every kind of virus (DNA, RNA, enveloped, and unenveloped) that asymptomatic shedding and transmission is common and uncontroversial
How to make bird flu (H5N1) cross over to humans – exploring how viruses cross over from animals to humans, using an experiment where they made the bird flu transmissible between ferrets (and probably between humans)
Why do humans keep getting diseases from bats? – long story short, because bats are social and are virus “reservoirs”. This is because their unique immune system allows them to live with viruses that would kill other mammals.
Genetically engineering virus immune bees – exploring a paper that shows how scientists infected bees with a bacterium that gave the bees immunity to the viruses and mites that cause colony collapse. The key technology was RNA interference, which I explored for a bit in my “failed projects”.
Biotech
Viking Therapeutics has an $8 billion market cap with 27 employees. This is their story. – Showing that you don’t really need discovery capabilities as a biotech startup.
Karuna Therapeutics sold for about $14 billion. This is their story. – The greatest drug repurposing success of all time? Probably. Can I match it? Probably not.
Pharmacokinetics: drug development’s broken stairs – Explaining why the biotech world’s understanding of PK sucks and what to do about it.
When rational drug design meets an irrational disease – The story of tofersen (a.k.a. Qalsody), Biogen’s sketchy ALS drug.
Letter to a young biotech founder – Advice to those who want to start a biotech, especially just out of their PhD.
How to manufacture a drug – My brief introduction into how drugs are actually made, based on personal experience.
My struggle with step 1 of the FDA’s 15 step flowchart – Actually submitting things to the FDA, especially the CVM (Center for Veterinary Medicine), is insanely difficult for no good reason.
Philosophy
We have changed the language game we play with computers – Exploring LLMs through Wittgenstein’s lens.
Should ethical philosophers be ethical themselves? Yes. It’s weird that I have to argue this.
You live in a world that philosophy built – Even if you ignore philosophy, philosophy has not ignored you.
Socrates and Categorizations – Socrates, the first philosopher, developed a method to refine definitions and eliminate internal contradictions in thought. But his method has limitations.
Aristotle and logical systems – Aristotle was a brilliant man who insisted that the world make sense to him. So he developed a way of making it so.
Francis Bacon and observations – Deduction is useful in many ways, but it can’t produce new knowledge. Only induction can do that, but it’s a tricky process. Francis Bacon tried to refine the method, and ended up being the first philosopher of science.
Descartes and radical skepticism – If skepticism is a hammer, Descartes saw all of philosophy as a wall of glass. And he was eager to start smashing.
Hume and the problem of induction – Induction is super useful. It’s a pity, therefore, that Hume showed it can never be justified. In short, nothing can ever be said to cause anything.
Immanuel Kant and intuition – According to Kant, thinking about thinking is like using a microscope to examine itself. It can’t be done. Why? Intuition, or “pre-processing”.
Wittgenstein and the limits of language – Right now, I’m attempting to use language to convey meaning. Is it working? Wittgenstein will tell us.
Karl Popper and falsificationism – Science is what allows men to fly, control electricity, and cheat death. It’d probably be a good idea to figure out what exactly it is, then. Karl Popper is on the case.
Charles Sanders Peirce and arguments – For arguments to work, both sides need to be working off the same definitions. Two users of a word have the same definition of that word only if they intend the same effect when using that word.
Learning
Is it possible to explicitly teach intuition in the sciences? – Going back to my geoscience roots to try to discuss how scientific intuition is formed and how it can be improved.
How D1 wrestlers learn and what we can learn from them – basically, the best learning environment is to have
- Close interaction with other people who are learning the same thing
- Emotional bonding with said people
- Drilling of what you want to learn
- Single-minded focus on exactly what you want to learn
Using spaced repetition flashcards to learn pretty much anything – showing how spaced repetition can be used to learn any subject, including mathematics.
Why introductory chemistry is boring: a historical perspective – showing the evolution of the teaching of chemistry over time, from exciting medieval times to the overly boring present
Why most intro philosophy courses feel useless – long story short, because they ask somewhat interesting questions and don’t even try to answer them
How to fix calculus: make calculus exciting again – showing how shocking calculus is (and historically controversial), and arguing that, if students were shocked by calculus, they might be interested in learning it
Uncategorized
Birthday dreams – Turning my newsletter into a platform for sharing my dreams.
When your family becomes inverse strangers – Being sad while looking at old postcards.
Let’s be more sincere in the New Year – A plead for sincerity, because that’s how our society runs.
I have no gift for gift-giving – A Christmas-themed post.
My life through Halo – Nostalgia through a videogames lens.
On the preciousness of life – Politics through a nostalgic lens.
A geosciences paper is fraudulent? I’m not surprised. – Unpacking my trauma of my undergraduate experience in geosciences, which I maintain is a stupid field.
The Tao of Fetch – My ode to my best boy, Jasper.
Back then, I never thought it’d be a long time ago – A nostalgia trip provoked by a physical trip (to Iceland).
Why do we try to redeem criminals by looking at their upbringing? Answering the title question through psychology and philosophy.
Looking for your keys under the light – Sort of a philosophical essay based on a joke. Hard to explain.
How to apply for MassHealth: an 18 step guide – My journey through the MA healthcare bureaucracy.
Bloody Mary was not especially bloody – Politics through a historical lens or something.
Something interesting is happening in Tulsa – My Birthright trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Can an AI ever be as intelligent as a bat? – Questioning intelligence with assistance from Thomas Nagel.
Part of why ChatGPT’s writing ability surprises – Trying to generalize from ChatGPT’s writing ability to my own.
Definitions have consequences – It’s another AI post, this time yelling about the idea of “AGI”.
My advice about going to grad school to change your career – Basically, be careful before you spend $100k. Weird that I have to say this, but grad school marketing is strong.
What to do when the tide is going out – A sort of self-help for people who started building in buzzy spaces that are no longer buzzy.
Peculiar facets of my ordinary, middle-class American childhood – In which I tell Europeans that we do, actually, drink from red solo cups.
Drug trials have a surprising amount of detail – We gave a bunch of cats drugs. It was pretty complicated to do so. This explains why.
Artificial General Intelligence timelines ignore the social factor at their peril – Using the lens of the Three Mile Island incident to discuss how technological progress can be slowed down immensely by social backlash, which AGI people are ignoring. Written for an FTX Future Fund contest.
The FTX Future Fund needs to slow its charitable spending way down – The FTX Future Fund is dumping mounds of money into Effective Altruist related causes. It is having unfortunate side effects, which I discuss here.
Vets today are like doctors yesterday (and doctors today are miserable) – Discussing the current state of the veterinary profession vs. the medical profession. Doctors are overworked and harassed, while vets are slightly less so.
How to win an election in 10 easy steps: an effective altruist’s guide – Written after the $14 million failure of the Carrick Flynn Congressional campaign. It’s an attempt to gain some learning from it. Am I qualified to write this? Nope, but I’ll do it anyways.
My terrible plan for reducing opioid deaths – I discuss a drug that preserves respiratory function while still allowing for the pain-killing effects of opiates, and propose that everyone gets high with no consequences
So, you want to patent a drug. Here’s what you need to know. – Self-explanatory.
What the FDA is like from a small biotech’s perspective (hint: they’re terrifying) – discussing the FDA through the lens of Axsome Therapeutics, a small biotech who rightfully thought they had a soon-to-be-approved treatment for depression. Then they got caught in a drive-by by the FDA.
How to spot a good fake ID – Self-explanatory. A lot of credit is due to a bouncer friend of mine, who is very good at spotting fake IDs and has a huge collection of them.
Recommendations for improving teaching in Brazilian jiu jitsu – Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a sport that I’ve gotten to know pretty well over the last year and a half, and I think it’s fantastic. But I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in the teaching of BJJ, and I’ve outlined those recommendations here. This essay also serves as a brief summary of my philosophy and practices as an educator, as applied to BJJ.
The limits of argumentation – Philosophers (and everyone else) have traditionally used argumentation to determine truth. But this doesn’t always work. Using the 2016 presidential debates, I’ll explore when exactly argumentation breaks down.
Probability, Bayesian theory, and causation– Many philosophers have discussed the difficulties of saying that some event caused another event. The answer that most scientists have adopted is to say some event probably caused another event. Does this work? Not entirely.
Hard science, soft science, and pseudoscience – Some people say that Aristotle was the last man to know all the knowledge available in his time. The rest of us are forced to rely and even trust our lives on theories that we cannot understand or evaluate. This is a difficult problem, but it can be approached philosophically.
Thinking about big numbers – We read in the news every day about thousands, millions, and billions, but these numbers are never put in context. This essay discusses a method of grappling with big numbers and making them understandable.
How to valuate a company – One of humanity’s favorite uses for our money is to use it to make more money, and one of our favorite ways of doing that is to invest our money in companies. This essay compares and contrasts two methods of doing that from a philosophical standpoint: Warren Buffett’s and Andreesen Horowitz’s.
The flow of money – It must be nice to be a bank. People just give you money and you can do whatever you want with it until they ask for it back. Fortunately, banks aren’t the only ones who get to play with other people’s money, and I’m not even talking about kids with rich parents.
Lessons in business from the golden age of advertising – A summary of the lessons from a book I read about Albert Lasker, who was responsible for the success Sunkist, Warren Harding’s presidential run, Palmolive, and Kotex, and others
Self-organized criticality: the potential and problems of a theory of everything – explaining the idea of self-organized criticality, its insane popularity, then its inevitable downfall