Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

Hello, all. I've been around for a few days but haven't yet made an #introduction post. So here we go.

I'm a #bioinformatics consultant with [The Bioinformatics CRO](https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/) working on a variety of small and large projects ranging from fundamental genomics to clinical decision support. Before that, for several years I was a postdoc and ORISE fellow specializing in high-altitude medicine and physiology at the University of Colorado Altitude Research Center. My academic background is a nearly even mix of #biostatistics, machine learning, and biology.

The ARC* has been sadly moribund for a few years, but thanks to collaborations with other groups, we're [starting to get more active again](https://harcsummit.org/). Hopefully I will have more to say about that in the future. Meanwhile, feel free to ask me anything about #altitude medicine---I think I still remember most of it.

Years before _that_, I was an Air Force #medic (after a brief stint as an Army infantryman) followed by a couple of years as a civilian EMT. My time in patient care informs my approach to science: the numbers I crunch represent human lives.

Otherwise, I'm an armchair #paleontologist hoping to be able to call myself an _amateur_ paleontologist again one of these days---by which I mean actually spending some time in the field and/or the prep lab---a too-occasional science fiction writer, and chronically sleep deprived. Also, my life is the internet: it's cats all the way down.

*Fellow #Primeval fans may recognize the jacket in the picture. My wonderful fiancée found it for me when I was hired at the ARC, for exactly the reason you think.

I do so love it when someone tells me to "read a basic #textbook" in a field where I've not only read basic textbooks, but some advanced ones as well—and as it happens, that I'm getting paid to work on *right now*. #Immunology, in this case, but it's a widespread phenomenon.

Well no, I don't love it, but it does at least provide some brief amusement. Link, for the curious: https://thinktankredux.quora.com/Im-still-going-to-try-to-keep-from-posting-about-politics-in-general-but-Ill-make-an-exception-for-matters-of-medicin?comment_id=156316551&comment_type=3

"Okay, we're clearly at the beginning of a #movie. Now, is this a wacky #comedy with incompetent #gangsters who take ever-more-ridiculous pratfalls in a futile attempt to recover their loot, or a gritty #thriller where the viewpoint characters are in way over their heads? Help me figure it out ... fast."

"I am humorously pretending not to understand context so I can deliberately misinterpret your statement! Look at me! I am very clever!"

Whoever first said puns are the lowest form of humor might have had a different opinion if they'd lived to see the internet.

I'm still going to try to keep from posting about politics in general, but I'll make an exception for matters of #medicine and #public #health. Not only is it of course a subject near and dear to my heart, in the big picture it may well be the most vital issue of our time, and of any time.

#Infectious #disease taken as a whole has killed more people throughout history than any other cause of death, and it's not even a particularly close race. Most people living today have never experienced a world without #vaccines and #antibiotics. We have forgotten the terror carried by even the whisper of plague. #AIDS and #covid, terrible as they were and remain, are the merest echoes of the horseman's hoofbeats. This is a *good thing*.

We're about to learn again. Monarez and many other dedicated people at the #CDC did their best to keep that memory buried in the past, and it wasn't enough. Dedicated traitors to humanity have dug it up and brought it back to life, to shamble through our streets rotting and stinking and hungry for living flesh.

But maybe she'll at least get to go on record telling the alleged people who enabled this horror exactly what they've done. Every disaster movie begins with ... you know the rest. Future historians will remember that not everyone was complicit, if there's any such thing as history at all.

Okay, I lied: now would be a great time to listen to some Small Faces.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Because I talk a lot about #writing on Facebook, I get a bunch of book ads on my feed. At least I assume that's why I'm getting them. I know when I've been talking about other topics, I tend to get ads for things related to those topics. Not with dinosaurs, oddly, even though I know there's a bunch of paleomerch out there. Everything else, yeah.

Most just come across as mediocre, and a few as quite good. I've bought at least one book due to a Facebook ad, and been pleased with the results.

About a third sound absolutely awful. Mind-bogglingly bad. The characters and situations are irredeemable cliches. The plots are absurd. The writing style, the way words are put together, is cringe-inducing. The dialog sounds like nothing no actual person would ever say.

Yeah, I know: "never judge a book by its cover" is a maxim for a reason. But when the ads are most likely written by the authors themselves, and they include excerpts that read like fingernails down a chalkboard ... well, there are only so many hours in a day, you know? I have shelves full of books I've read many times and will happily read again. Also a fair number I've either never read, or read so long ago I've forgotten all the details, but remember enjoying. It takes a lot to make me add to the book mountain, these days.

Even by those standards ... Larry Correia? Really?

I don't think I'm a great writer. I do think I'm pretty good, and getting better as I knock the rust off my skills. Enough people seem to agree that I plan to keep doing it this time. (Like I did all the other times, but let's not talk about that.) Compared to these clowns, I'm Nebula and Hugo and Pulitzer and Nobel material all in one.

Guess I need to start posting about the Civil War again so I can get more ads for the Stonewall Jackson Commemorative Zippo. Which it would take an act of God to get me to buy, but I'm still more likely to pay for that than "American Paladin." Please.

This is why I still can't be that worried about Skynet.

And let's face it, "velociraptor" is just a really cool, evocative name.

This subject comes up fairly often, so I'm putting my mini-essay here as an easy reference. Feel free to share, or copy and paste with attribution, as you see fit. Comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcome. 🦖 🧪 🚀 ✍️

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Michael Crichton's main reference when writing #JurassicPark was Gregory Paul's Predatory #Dinosaurs of the World. That's how we ended up with human size "velociraptors," later retconned to the considerably larger #Utahraptor. Although the poor creatures still have broken wrists and a severe case of mange.

Paul is a notorious #lumper, who likes shoving distantly related organisms into the same #taxonomic category. (The opposite of lumpers are #splitters, who try to put every specimen into as distinct a category as possible.) But even he never claimed they were the same species. Rather, he put them into the same genus, making #Deinonychus into another species of #Velociraptor, i.e. V. antirrhopus instead of D. antirrhopus.

This isn't entirely a crazy idea. Lots of modern genera have species with similar body plans but enormous size differences. Consider #Panthera, the big cats, which contains species from P. uncia, the #snowleopard, to P. tigris, the #tiger—even though tigers are generally about five times the mass of snow leopards, similar to the ratio between D. antirrhopus and V. mongoliensis.

However, there are enough other differences between Deinonychus and Velociraptor that even Paul has long since admitted this was a mistake. No #paleontologist now doubts they each belong in their own genus. Unfortunately, since Jurassic Park has so thoroughly cemented the idea of the big V, I doubt it will ever go away.

This is how "intellectual" #creationists and #antivaxers sound to #biologists, BTW.

Not posted for agreement, if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, terms and conditions apply, see your local grumpy scientist for details ...

This type of "#humor" is shit.

"#Cardcatalogs were our #Google! #Polaroids were our #Instagram! #Payphones were our #iPhones!"

NO THE FUCK THEY WEREN'T. They were very useful in their time, but the modern versions are *better*. Which is why it's difficult to find a card catalog or a Polaroid camera these days, and a payphone is practically impossible.

Grow the hell up.

Or as we say in #Colorado, "Tuesday."

After making a #vampire joke elsenet, I suddenly thought of a portmanteau I can't get out of my head: "#hempire." This is, of course, the word used to describe a giant chain of #dispensaries owned by a bloodsucking creature of the night.

You can still get useful health information from some US government websites, if you know what you're looking for. Here's an example, which I'll explain.

https://www.cdc.gov/covid/hcp/clinical-care/underlying-conditions.html

As you may have heard, #HHS Secretary #Brainworm and his jolly crew of mass murderers have placed restrictions on the updated round of #covid #vaccines. Specifically, they've restricted recommended #vaccination to those over 65 or at high risk.

"High risk" isn't actually defined, because fortunately, most of these bedbugs in human form are as stupid as they are evil—and they're pretty fucking evil. The linked #CDC page, however, lists a variety of #medical conditions which may be enough to convince health care providers that you qualify.

If you have *any* of the listed conditions, any decent #physician, physician assistant, #nurse practitioner, or other #provider with prescribing authority should be willing to write you a #prescription. This will make your life dramatically easier, not to mention longer.

Oh, and if not, that means your doctor wants to kill you. Run.

No doubt the #Einsatzgruppe will eventually get around to banning #mRNA vaccines entirely, followed by all covid vaccines, followed by all vaccines. Secretary Brainworm *definitely* wants to kill you. For now, though ...

Good night, and good luck.

I guess they should have used better priors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_(yacht)

Sometimes I realize a lot of people I think of as being generally on my side, and vice versa, inhabit an entirely different moral universe than I do.

Really I've known this for a long time. Getting smacked in the face with it is still weird. #nocontextforyou

A big part of the problem, which I don't see acknowledged very often, is that #writers who create #antiheroes generally know exactly what they're doing.

They know a substantial part of their audience will identify with these characters. They know many fans will see the bad behavior as desirable, and while most won't have the guts to act that way in real life, some will. They know the awful things the characters do will make them appealing, not as cautionary tales or examinations of the ugly parts of the human psyche, but because they're "dark" and "gritty" and "edgy." They know over-the-top caricatures are one of the quickest ways to get lauded as "realistic" by audiences and critics.

And whether they know it or not, they're very often living out their own fantasies. Consider for example David #Mamet, who after decades of building a reputation as an unflinching observer of the worst excesses of #masculinity, has now shown that he desperately wants to be the protagonist of his own stories. He won't do it, of course, but he takes great satisfaction in imagining he could. There are many others, most lacking Mamet's fame but with the same Walter-Mitty-as-played-by-Christian-Bale nest of snakes in their heads.

Writers who are confronted with this accusation usually don't take it well. I get that, because I've been one of them. But if we're going to make a big deal about looking into the abyss, our own motivations are a good place to start.

https://charlotteclymer.substack.com/p/im-tired-of-anti-heroes

A story in two parts:

"Probably doesnt help that pharmaceutical companies are about as trustworthy as the national press in most countries. Nobody believes a word they say anymore due to hidden agendas and historic manipulation of information for corporate greed."

"well its either [Trump] or cackling Kamila and her merry band of men dressed as women in government so its just which is the lesser of two evils 🤔"

Both comments are from the same poster, in the same thread. You can probably guess the context. I've left grammar and spelling intact, because you know, I like to cite my sources accurately.

This is why I look side-eyed at people who claim to distruct #vaccines, or any #medications really, on the basis of #corporate malfeasance. Yes, #pharmaceutical companies tend toward greed and corruption. So do all companies. The bigger they get, the worse their behavior gets, and some pharmas are among the biggest corporations on the planet. Most aren't, BTW—small #biotechs betting everything they have on one or two possible treatments outnumber the Pfizers and Lillys about ten thousand to one. That being said, I do understand where the idea of drug development as a monolith comes from.

It's not why people go #antivax. I'd like to believe it was, because that would mean it might be possible to get through to them. I've learned better. Scratch anyone who uses the kind of vaguely leftish rhetoric in the first comment, on this particular topic, and there's a really good chance you'll find a right-wing loon. #NotAll as needed, but close enough. Most of the rest are lefties who seem determined to prove horseshoe theory.

And it *works*. Lots of mostly reasonable people will nod along with comments like the first, and never even see the second. If it gets posted at all—good propagandists are a lot smarter than this guy.

The effectiveness of this rhetoric is a big part of the reason why we currently have mass murderers in charge of our medical research system. They may kill you, and they will almost certainly kill at least a few people who matter to you. Do not forget.

TIL that back in July, I got a $12.85 #royalty check. That's for about a year's worth of sales.

Guess I'm not going to be retiring to live the fabulous life movies assure us #writers have after their Big Break. Scrimp and suffer and starve until ... ta da! You make that all-important sale and then you're rolling around cackling and naked on piles of cash.

Well, I grew up in a #writing household, so I've known for a long time that's not how it works. Once upon a time I had what I thought was a realistic hope of supporting myself on my writing income, but I gave up expecting it a long time ago—

—and this is the first writing money of *any* amount I've received in over twenty years. Feels like a win to me.

If you think having a #degree makes you a better person than people who don’t have a degree, fuck you.

If you think not having a degree makes you a better person than people who do have a degree, fuck you.

Both of these #attitudes are shit. One of them is currently a much bigger problem than the other.