Let this unsolicited 2014 cartoon of me sipping coffee in Havana sit here for posterity as I replace it with an actual photo for my micro.blog avatar. [Note: Slash account photo slash profile pic. I can’t keep up with the nomenclature. ] Other than the hunched back, the often unkempt sideburns, and the cup of coffee that is always close by, it never truly was a good likeness, even for 2014.

The new photo is a cutout of this particular moment in time, as I browsed through used books in front of an Athens, OH bookstore during one of our first post-pandemic trips. Yes, that feral child doing God knows what on the sidewalk is ours, and obscured by the sign just enough to be included without a privacy blur.

Athens itself ⊕ [Note: And yes, having a photo from an institution unironically named the Athens Lunatic Asylum serve as my Twitter profile backdrop was a joke that up until now only I uderstood, but we are both in on it now, aren’t we, dear reader? ] was a delightful surprise, from the walkable downtown to its partially-abandoded Lunatic Asylum. The latter was the source of my Twitter cover photo, also saved here for posterity pending the site’s likely demise.

Eeast coast beach vacations in December are underrated (Virginia Beach, VA)

Finished reading: Checkpoint Charlie by Iain MacGregor 📚

Stories of the Berlin Wall, told through interviews with (mostly Westen) contemporaries, ranging from suspensful to the mundane, meant not to offend anyone, not even the Soviets. It’s an achievement of sorts, I guess.

Fascinating how people least deserving of sitting at the table are so often the ones making the most noise.

Finished reading: Genius by James Gleick 📚

The temptation for scientists’ biographers is delving too deep into their work, and not their life or process. Feynman himself gave a good account of the work, and Gleick does a great job with the life. The process remains a mystery.

Some beautiful charts in this Pew Research overview of their 2022 findings. What they show is not as beautiful, but you can’t win them all.

To all trainees who are smart and lazy: no, you are not getting away with it. Sure, you can creatively avoid responsibilities on your way to graduation, but it will burn many more bridges than you realize. Your teachers aren’t stupid.

Samuel G Rodriques ⊕ [Note: If you were looking for his blog’s RSS feed, you won’t find one listed. Thankfully, NetNewsWire was able to dig up the url. ] is an inventor, entrepreneur, and author of my favorite blog post so far this year:

Serious drug developers have long since learned not to trust animal models when it comes to predicting the efficacy of a treatment for most diseases.

And also:

There is a phenomenon that all biologists will be aware of, where after working on a new idea for 2 years, you one day come across a paper from 2008 and say, “oh my god, if only I had known this two years ago.” If we want biology to move fast, we need to figure out how to eliminate this phenomenon.

And:

In biology, until recently, it seemed like everyone wanted to be a professor or start a company, i.e., that the only high status thing you could do after your PhD was to become a manager.

Not sure I agree with his prescriptions, but the diagnosis is right!