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The discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences: use of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine, and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.

Within 48 hours, the four human study participants showed remarkable results: their immune systems went into turbo cancer-destroying mode. And without surgery, radiation, or dangerous chemotherapy.

Folks, we may have a cure for cancer within your lifetime.

#if these work it would be incredible #glios are horrific #and there aren't great treatments currently #It's just resection after resection but any functional gains don't stick around long because the tumor just grows and grows and grows

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So I was once actually collecting data in a frozen river, and another guy fell in, filled up his waders and everything. He was wearing cotton (we were floored), and I had the car keys so I was like “alright, I’ll walk you back to the car to make sure you’re okay. Then you can strip down in there and get the heat going. There’s a blanket to wrap up in.” And he looked at me like I was insane. He said, “what? I’m fine.” I informed him that actually, if he stayed outside in subzero temperatures, soaking wet, in cotton, he was Licherly going to Freeze To Death, and he was like, “it’s not the 1800s lmao.”

And then while the guy in charge Forced him to go back to the car and strip, I had to stand there in a frozen river absolutely bewildered by the implication that a Wildife Biologist thought hypothermia is like, an old timey disease that people stopped getting at some point.

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'oh it must be so fun and cool knowing how to knit-'

it is. but I also experience the Madness

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can I get a job as an editor but the only thing I do is correct when someone uses the word "prone" when they mean "supine"

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Real and implied birds.

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adult hood is just

*buys a half gallon of milk* *uses it all within a few days* *decided to buy a gallon of milk to not run out before next shopping trip* *uses a teaspoon of milk that week and it goes bad somehow* *buys a quart of milk instead so it won’t go bad* *uses it in one day* *buys a quart and a half gallon of milk because the gallon was too much but the half gallon was not enough* *only uses the half gallon* *gives up on milk for a few days in general* *buys a gallon of milk again just to tempt fate* *somehow uses all of it without realizing and then has to eat sad cereal with like the 5 drops of remaining milk*

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one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

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Rereading the Lord of the Rings series recently, and it's so fascinating to me how much the series is a denial of the typical juvenile power-fantasy that is associated with the fantasy genre.

Like, the power-fantasy is the temptation the Ring uses against people It tempts Boromir with becoming the "one true king" that could save his people with fantastic power. It tempts Sam with being the savior of Middle Earth and turning the ruin that is Mordor into a great garden. It tempts Gandalf and Galadriel with being the messianic figure of legend who brings salvation to Middle Earth and great glory to herself.

The things the Ring tempts people with are becoming the typical protagonists of fantasy stories that we expect to see. and over and over we see that accepting that role, that fantasy of being the benevolent all-powerful hero, is a bad thing. LotR is about how power, even power wielded with benevolent intent, is corrupting.

And its so fascinating how so much of modern fantasy buys into the very fantasy LotR denies. Most modern fantasy is about being that Heroic power-fantasy. About good amassing power to rival evil. But LotR dares not to. It dares to be honest that there is no world where anyone amasses that power and remains good.

I guess that's one of the reasons its so compelling.

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Because folks liked my latest pigeon comic so much, here's another pigeon piece!

I made this a couple years ago for a sadly now defunct publication called Pipe Wrench. I hope this piece helps spread more pigeon love.

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me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home

me when I get home:

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redesign for lesbian visibility week 🩷🧸🫶

click for quality (my shop) (instagram) (tip me) (shirts)

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I love how succinct this is.

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A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

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the body horror kind of got to me at work today

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ngl I keep forgetting that Hobby Lobby is a real store that people go to. That people actually think of it as a craft store and not as a crazy Christian mass artifact smuggler. I google "Hobby Lobby" and get a page full of results that make me go "wtf is this craft supplies and operating hours shit, I thought we all knew this place for smuggling looted cuneiform tablets out of Iraq"