For sure, I just get antsy when peer review doesn’t come from from external sources

1 patient, T2 since mid-30s and now 59, had kidney transplant 2017 after end-stage diabetic nephropathy and fucked glucose control since 2019. The successful cells were endoderm stem cells from him cultivated by mice they injected with his PBMCs that they then made diabetic. So not from cadavers (except mouse cadaver i guess), which is the actual new part here. Intrahepatic implant, and cells from unrelated donor failed that were embedded at the same time. His personalised mouse-donor cells worked well enough to take him off insulin 3 months later.

Wu, J., Li, T., Guo, M. et al. Treating a type 2 diabetic patient with impaired pancreatic islet function by personalized endoderm stem cell-derived islet tissue. Cell Discov 10, 45 (2024).

It’s good news, but you’re entirely correct that the article missed the point entirely. Thanks for the crash course in islet cell therapy!

Hm, 5 year old journal, with the editor board, funding and half of the authors all from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but significant hospital contribution. I remain skeptical of the headline but hopeful of the science.

I once looked at a job listing for something with very specialist technical knowledge in specific programming areas, for a Japanese company based in Tokyo (pre-covid so remote wasn’t really a thing yet). Pretty niche stuff and needed at least basic Japanese language skills too, so I assumed it would pay ok - even if it wasn’t good or great in comparison with jobs where i was.

After conversion it worked out to be around USD$40k a year, which is probably just over 1/3 of what it would pay at minimum elsewhere. More like 1/4 or less for Silicon Valley type locations, but the rent for a tiny Tokyo shoebox is about the same price even if food is a cheaper. There was no way I was applying for that.

It isn’t just about a weak yen, it’s much more about hugely underpaying people.

It starts before birth. Low socio-economic status affects the health of pregnant people, which in turn has consequences for foetal development. Stress is a big trigger for various latent congenital issues, and that’s one reason climate change is going to result in increased rates of disease.

Not just a defense witness, a former federal prosecutor. A judge had to tell a former federal prosecutor “And then if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes.” like he was a pouty teenager.

As has medicine and most other technologies. And yet… the question is never asked about the long term threats posed by people who aren’t personally hunting and tracking and foraging.

And miss out on the reminder that my existence is precarious and dependent on the good-will of the able-bodied? Nah, that’s head-in-sand stuff. I prefer to remind everyone of what this line of questioning has led to in the past and the human consequences of discussing the rights of a group of people in the abstract.

Exactly, and yet the question is never “is agriculture a long-term threat to humanity?”. It’s always the people with medical issues who are acceptable first choices as society’s sacrificial MacGuffin, long before we question any technology that benefits the person who is “just asking questions”.

It’s like we didn’t already do Social Darwinism the first time. Super frustrating.

Even if we ignored the entire history of the word cripple, it still would be remarkable to not consider hunchback or dwarf as physical descriptions. Given that your next question references video games and then we fall down Godwin’s slippery slope, I’m not convinced you’re honestly engaging with the concept of connotation.

the words only have deragatory meaning to those who have decided they are such.

Yes, and when the people who have to live with the consequences of discrimination tell you that you’re speaking in the same way as those who have discriminated against them, it’s worth considering. Even momentarily.

Have a great day, I’m going to go be a cripple elsewhere now. Nah, just kidding, it will still be my couch. Just not this thread.

If you wanted to emphasise the challenges he dealt with, adjectives for his physical appearance were not a good choice. The challenges he would have dealt with may have included chronic pain, limited mobility and discrimination. You could even have said he suffered from kyphosis. But words which have been frequently intended to be derogatory don’t do much to create a sense of empathy.

could be applied to anyone.

And it’s nice to see disability being normalised, even if that wasn’t your intent.

steinmetz was a hunchback cripple dwarf

I never want to hear anyone say again that “nobody calls someone a ‘cripple’ anymore”. Perhaps consider this somewhat less grotesque alternate phrasing: “Steinmetz was a person who experienced significant and debilitating disability”.

natural selection does not choose whats best overall, just those that can reproduce.

That’s not only an incorrect understanding of natural selection, i’d add that Steinmetz chose not to reproduce. If he hadn’t been the topic of your next sentence, I wouldn’t have felt the need to emphasise his personal agency. Or his existence as a person

Oh cool, it’s time to find out how much of a burden on humanity I am and whether I should have been left to die. Just hypothetically of course, I wouldn’t want anyone to misunderstand. I always enjoy this question with my morning coffee.

Now there’s something I haven’t heard in a million years. Thanks for helping me rediscover it!

A song evaded me for maybe 5 or 6 years once. I ended up having this same conversation about evasive songs with someone and did my best at an impression, because it’s instrumental.

“Doo-d’ Doo Doo, Doodoo Doo, Doo-d’ Doo Doo, Doodoo Doo…”

The person I was talking to instantly said it was Eple - Röyksopp, and was entirely correct.

There’s a person who has been living a mostly normal life with 90% of his brain missing. Perhaps we could just re-examine society’s ableism and how we design our systems of government to allow single points of failure instead? RFK Jr. has terrible opinions, but also had them before having a literal brain worm.

Dennett taught me how to find common ground with very different people in discussions which might otherwise be heated arguments. I was lucky enough to see one of his talks some years ago, and his work and methods are something I frequently think about even today. His writing style was playful and accessible, but it paled in comparison to his presentation which really demonstrated his abundant charisma. His passing is truly a huge loss in a world that increasingly needs his teachings. My condolences to his family and the communities he fostered.

Vale, Daniel C. Dennett. I hope I can continue to do even a shred of justice to your contributions.

Edit with link: Dennett (somewhat accidentally) created a community for interdenominational Christian clergy who are also secret atheists. It started with a research paper with interviews and some analysis of their similar/different experiences. Ignore the abstract if academic language isn’t your thing, the rest of the paper is a much easier and interesting read:

Dennett, D. C., & LaScola, L. (2010). Preachers Who are Not Believers. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(1), 122-150

very good mental healthcare

No, it’s just better than other places. It’s overstressed, underprioritised, acute-focussed and failing the population at large. Better than the US, even exponentially, doesn’t mean good.

Switching to what alliance? It’s not like they’re going to join BRICS.

Maybe enough to make a huge difference. To be clear, I have zero problem with the concept of wealth redistribution to better achieve some kind of equitable outcome (that ideally isn’t at the cost of the environment, which is the big reason that the top global richest will need to give up a lot of travel ).

I just think a lot of the people who are keen for “eat the rich”, especially in its more violent forms, may not realise they’re on the menu themselves when the issue is looked at from a global all-of-humanity perspective. And, I encourage people to really think about who and what is included or excluded in the definitions of “rich”, what level of variation is acceptable to them, and what a sustainable living situation even looks like for the world’s population if we had total equality. They’re all very hard questions that I don’t have an answer to either.