Fun with strings! Ukulele, knitting, physics!

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 3rd, 2023

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  • I got into a very strange argument with a relative (who doesn’t know any trans people -at least none they are aware of). They were absolutely convinced that ANY man is better than ALL women at all things. Athletic, intellectual, creative; men are inherently better at all of it.

    Therefore, in their mind, anyone who was a man/boy at any point in their lives will be better at everything than a cis woman ever could be. So trans women will always dominate no matter what.

    The profound misogyny at the base of their argument was flabbergasting.










  • This is the cool part:

    But histotripsy foils cancer’s cloaking efforts by destroying its cell walls, leaving the tumor antigens in plain sight for the body’s immune system.

    This effect was detailed in a pair of papers published by the U-M research team between March 2022 and January 2023. They demonstrate that the sound waves used to break down cancerous tumors in rats also helped trigger the rats’ immune response. After histotripsy destroyed 50% to 75% of liver tumor volume, the rats’ immune systems cleared away the rest, with no evidence of recurrence or metastases in more than 80% of animals.

    That immune response occurred throughout the body, not just in areas targeted by the histotripsy treatment, resulting in the reduction of tumors far from the treated area.

    The immune response is key. Without it, histotripsy is just yet another way to destroy a tumor without curing the cancer.






  • I’m finding the opposite. Books that I loved when younger are even better as I re-read them now. Ursula le Guin, Terry Pratchett (their YA and their adult books) have so much more nuance and subtlety than I was aware of when I just read them for the adventure and story. There are some profound bits of wisdom and wry observation tucked in those books.