Txzen

Obligatory:

Agreed. I don’t think he’s getting much tactical advice from his team car, or he’s ignoring it. This will cool his jets a bit and make him a little more tactical. Maybe. At least he’ll never underestimate Vingegaard again. For those of you who like graphs and data : https://lanternerouge.com.au/2022/07/21/vingegaard-does-the-fastest-hautacam-since-armstrong/

Did a Spandelles and Aubisque double years ago, from the opposite direction today. Spandelles was supposed to be the easy warm up with a 5.5% avg gradient. What that ended up with was a km of 3% then 9, then 18, then 5, then 7, then 2, then a ramp of 25… brutal. This was before they paved it so naturally all the steep stuff was broken road and quasi gravel. A glorified farmer’s back road to nowhere - my kind of ride but I had nothing for the Aubisque. Other than that, the main hazard were flocks of sheep on the road. I can’t say how hard the second half of Hautacam is. The first half is hard enough and then you pass through a little village with schoolchildren cheering you from flower-draped windows of centuries-old farmhouses. Then reality hits hard. As you climb you get these little signposts that tell you what the next kilometer’s gradient is - utterly demoralizing, but a beautiful climb. Love the Pyrenees. Will wait for the end of the Tour to threadshit my B&B recommendations in this valley.

In Yellowstone with no cell and spotty WiFi. - did the crash occur on the Spandelles descent?

I’ve ridden this area multiple times. After a hot day you come back with tar splattered over your legs. The scariest sight is rounding a bend and seeing the caution sign ‘gravillion!’

The shocker is the guys in 97 are nearly as fast as the group today, while riding aluminum frame bikes, and aluminum box section rims with 32 spokes.

Shut the fuck up, Donny, and let all the tourists go to Muir. Rodeo beach is a desolate wasteland. Don’t go there.

Or anywhere on the Peninsula - La Honda, Purissima, Heritage Grove, Portola…

It’s true that Muir Woods is overrated as the only place for that experience, but it’s still awfully pretty. It can just be a beating to be there in peak season.

Warwick is great, if maybe a little on the commercialized side. We stayed on the grounds overnight in an area where they have cabins by the river. Food was forgettable but the experience was great - they had some extra activities for the guests there and you get early admission.

The High West Saloon is worth a visit.

That Peak Design bag is the shit though - I use it all the time. Great for active trips where I'm lugging a camera and electronics but also want to maybe pack my helmet, cycling shoes, etc. Just enough pockets, love that it has a full zip access from the part that has the back straps - that way when you lay it down you can access your stuff and not get the part that touches you dirty from the dreck of a 3rd-world airport or the great outdoors. Deep secure side pockets, fits over the handle of a rolling bag, hidden waist band, laptop sleeve, side and top quick carry straps... It's super technical but doesn't shout that I'm backpacker. Darn near everything Peak Design makes is great (tech pouches, capture clip, etc.). It's the largest you can carry on for international regulations, and even though it's basically one big space it can fill up quickly. Ode to my PD 45L. I've taken it all around the world at this point. Great bag. https://www.peakdesign.com/products/travel-backpack/?variant=11530908172332

Related.

Exploratorium, Cal Academy of sciences (aquarium, rainforest), cable car museum, Fort Point and if you have a car Rodeo Beach (Battery Townsend, Nike Missile site).

Was at the ceremony where him and Dave inducted Rush to the R&R Hall of fame. The love was palpable. Insanely talented drummer. What a gutting loss.

They are a remarkably resilient and obscenely stubborn people. No better example than the Royal Castle in Warsaw. Mostly destroyed by shelling in WWII, Hitler gave the order to reduce it to a pile of rubble. The Nazis bored holes to place explosives and did just that. But the clergy and locals saved remnants from the rubble, and the castle was eventually rebuilt starting in the 70s, using photographs, paintings...and remnants to rebuild them. If you go into a room and follow the gilded crown moulding, you'll often find one small section which is heavily tarnished. It's an original part which was used to recreate the rest. Some stubborn Pole dug through the rubble and held on to it in their basement through generations and decades knowing that someday they'd rebuild. Frankly, most of the old town in Warsaw was rebuilt that way, using period oil paintings as reference. The Royal Castle in Warsaw A major draw in Wroclaw, the Panorma Raclawice is a massive, 360 degree piece of art commemorating the heroic, though failed, battle for independence in 1794 against the Russians. Yeah, that part of the world has long, long memories for history for sure.

I actually came here to post that study (which had just published) just because it challenged even my assumption of minimal risk to those with no comorbidities, and spoke to your question as to the efficacy of vaccination for not-at-risk populations. I'm not an aloof cunt, I'm a sarcastic one. Well, maybe aloof in that I don't know who the fuck you are, as outside of a few people who post decent scientific info here I don't pay attention to the names of those who routinely post the usual crap (unfounded vaccine safety concerns, statements of steamrolled development, 'I know people who were never vaxxed and we had the same outcome', etc.). If I always post in response to you, well, FAFO I guess.

Curious what 'medical scientist' means, as this is...an interesting opinion not at all grounded on the facts. New study looking at 150k people in the VA - even a mild case has impacts on heart health, regardless of comorbitities. So that's fun. Nature : Heart-disease risk soars after COVID — even with a mild case The paper : Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19

That's a fun read. I spent about a decade doing small molecules in oncology for a large pharma. I'm on the biology side, so my chemistry knowledge is a bit on the 'I slept at a Holiday Inn last night' level, but after a while you do learn some of the salient points. Always enjoyed sitting in with the chemistry team, all wearing 3D glasses while they rotate around the pocket on the kinase we were targeting, overlaying how all the chemical variants they made grew or reached into hydrophobic areas or made contact with key amino acid residues. Space age. I think a lot of small molecules that make it to market probably have similar issues as paxlovid. One thing he didn't mention that I saw was multiple chiral centers. Each time you make that reaction, you have multiple outputs and sometimes only one spacial orientation has the properties you need. The odds are almost never 50:50, and invariably the stuff I worked on always needed the one product that was 20% of the reaction. That's a nuisance in the preclinical stage and a colossal issue at the commercial stage. There's a lot of work as these programs move to IND to ensure that the chemical synthesis doesn't utilize some process which isn't scalable. I know industry gets a bad rap, but I hope that's due to the business/marketing side. The science is incredible, and I'm constantly fascinated by how much work goes in to make these drugs at scale - whether it's small molecule, biologics, or even cell therapy.

Not a B cell guy, but the natural progression of antibody class switching upon antigen exposure is for a first transient production of IgM and then a second prolonged IgG production. My guess would be that your vaccination already ‘switched’ B cell production from IgM to IgG, and any secondary exposure would likely only trigger a profound IgG production.

Thanks for this reference. Unaware of the book or the author, which is odd as his focus area is straight in my interests.

And now I want pelmemi. And barszcz.

He's really, really good. Knows the history of the area, speaks the language fluently and is somehow able to befriend everyone he comes across (minus a few babushkas here and there).

tl;dr - the WHO sets global recommendations, the FDA chairs an advisory committee to pass that recommendation on to manufacturers, then standard lot release assays verify the effectiveness. And yes, I could totally see this happen for COVID strains. The question is will manufacturing be able to keep up with strain emergence. That said I'm still amazed we do this every year in f-ing eggs (which was a prime issue during the H1N1 variant year as it also took out the egg production). An overview of the regulation of influenza vaccines in the United States