Jealous y’all actually get any paid parental leave. over here in freedom land we force new parents to show up to work sleep deprived and neglect their babies. And Americans wonder why the birth rate is falling.

Edit: adding that if it’s available, childcare for infants is as expensive or more than rent or mortgage payments. So you have to work to afford that

Got a different way to abbreviate Eastern Equine Encephalitis?

Yes, US republicans also claim to be more responsible with government finances and have had far right factions taking over the past 20 years or so

QuantumScape is currently building the mass production line for a solid state battery and has been sending prototypes out to their auto manufacturer clients for testing.

This Undecided with Matt Ferrell video has a good breakdown.

Disclosure: I own 100 shares of QS

Adding all of that coal and limestone trapped a lot of carbon underground. If that carbon was CO2 instead, the Earth would be much hotter. Perhaps hotter than the boiling point of water and thus there would be no ocean between the continents, like Venus.

Metal ions can perform interesting chemical reactions that organic molecules cannot. A positively charge metal ion can also naturally bind to negatively charged proteins. So the organisms that more successfully took advantage of these chemical reactions reproduced more effectively than the organisms that didn’t.

The patient featured in the article has survived lung cancer for 15 years. Seems a little long to feel badly when it’s possible for newer types of therapies to use lower doses that are just as effective.

David Sinclair is an interesting person. I’ve seen him present his research in a professional setting and he does some really interesting science. He is also very enthusiastic at selling his story.

There’s likely no amount of supplement and drug cocktails that will undo the damage of a sedentary lifestyle and poor diet. Best case scenario is this research could be on to something that significantly augments a healthy lifestyle, or worse case it could be wasting a lot of money on something that potentially ends up being harmful a few decades from now.

I’ve looked at the list of supplements and drugs Dr. Sinclair takes and there is mechanistic rationale from cell culture and animal experiments behind the ones I’m most familiar with. But it is a big leap to go from cell culture and animal models to human health on a much longer time span. The clinical trials needed to really demonstrate a lot of these claims are incredibly expensive and would take decades. Drug companies in the anti-aging field tend to focus on older patients to start with and earlier endpoints like lower cancer, Alzheimer’s, or heart disease incidence. They also tend to be funded by silicon valley tech executives.

~50% of the time I attend virtually, because yeah it’s nice to sleep in on Sunday and make breakfast with the service on Zoom and camera off

It probably depends heavily on the specific congregation. I haven’t seen those vibes personally though. In my experience nobody really bothers the people who just show up occasionally, except to be friendly at coffee hour. UU are very much about democracy and so the local make up of the congregation can take it in many directions. Try it out on zoom if they offer a hybrid attendance to see if it’s a good fit

Hear me out, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church for the music and sense of community. There is no shared theology among UUs, only a set of shared values. UU services vary a lot by the specific congregation. Ours has had services on celebrating gender identities, promoting social justice, mourning global conflicts, and fighting climate change. Sometimes relevant theology from a variety of world religions is incorporated into services, but there is no expectation to be a believer and there are many atheist members in my church. The rest of the time we have potlucks, play board games, do community service projects, etc.