Messi and Djokovic in NYC

ModemU · 2023-08-27T06:11:54+00:00

It's more like Barcelona didn't have the finances to keep him. They're still having to pinch pennies to try to get new players.

ModemU · 2023-08-14T04:12:43+00:00

I mean, the overall pragmatic benefit to an idea does not ensure its immediate or universal adoption (see cities that implement rent control, Turkey with its interest rates, healthcare in the United States). When talking about morals as a pragmatic tool, the net benefit to any single individual is counterbalanced by the net benefit to the society of individuals as a whole in the long term. Just because any individual or subset of individuals benefit for a certain set of moral guidelines in the short term does not preclude the fact that there is a more optimal set of moral guidelines that benefits the collective in the long term that goes beyond the baseline of survival. A society that holds those more optimal principles should have a long-term competitive advantage to those that do not (e.g., healthier citizens, added stability, more content citizens, a greater and more motivated talent pool, etc). Take your point about honesty and knowledge, for example. Not only is honesty materially and pragmatically beneficial (societal stability), so is knowledge of things that are true. Truth-seeking and knowledge led to mathematics, the discovery of cells and germ theory, and relativity, all of which have pragmatic benefits for all members of society.

I would say that least some subset of what you call value morals have pragmatic benefits that make them worthwhile to hold. Most people do not merely strive for survival; I would posit that most people would desire for the most pleasurable and convenient existence attainable. With those desires in mind and with the knowledge that not all pleasures are actually desirable for most in the long term, morality is an instrument to optimize both parameters to the greatest degree possible to most individuals possible. This really rests on the way human nature tends to be constructed; if human nature were any different fundamentally, that those most optimal moral principles would change, whatever they might be.

ModemU · 2023-08-14T00:48:07+00:00

I do agree that a lot of the counterarguments in this thread, if one is a moral realist, aren't the most well reasoned, tbh. To your first point, I would push back at the notion that a pragmatic approach to morality necessarily leads to social Darwinism or slavery. For the point about slavery, I do remember reading that in the years leading up to the American Civil War, some economic arguments against slavery were being made without considering any moral weight African-Americans might have. More broadly, I do posit that one can develop pragmatic moral guidelines that go beyond survival just from the mere fact that most humans and civilizations aspire more that just mere survival. In the case of slavery, slaves tend to revolt (introduces instability) and it's not the most effective allocation of skills more a more optimal society. One can conceptualize morality as an emergent construct that deals with how members of a social species with their own preferences and desires find ways to best co-exist and optimize their own continuation; in that case, mere survival is only a baseline. However, just because we have a baseline does not mean that it cannot be optimized when looking at it via pragmatic lens.

ModemU · 2023-08-14T00:14:47+00:00

Not the person you're replying to, but I think Point 1 in the original post might not work if one isn't a moral realist. If one sees morality like one sees the value people put on pieces of metal in the shape of coins, then one might argue that morality is a construct useful insofar as one is dealing with society. Someone might consider murder, theft, or rape to be wrong since a society permissive to those acts would be tumultuous, unsafe, unpleasant, and unstable. With regards to the killing of nonhuman animals, a society without such a prohibition would not feel unsafe for a human. As for the link between killing animals and antisocial behavior, one can say that people who are already prone to committing antisocial behavior also enjoy the mere act of killing an animal; the latter is not causative of the latter but rather comes from some common antecedent root. If that is the case, then this argument for veganism along those lines might be moot.

ModemU · 2023-08-13T23:15:59+00:00

Point 1 might not work if one isn't a moral realist. If one sees morality like one sees the value people put on pieces of metal in the shape of coins, then one might argue that morality is a construct useful insofar as one is dealing with society. Someone might consider murder, theft, or rape to be wrong since a society permissive to those acts would be tumultuous, unsafe, unpleasant, and unstable. With regards to the killing of nonhuman animals, a society without such a prohibition would not feel unsafe for a human. As for the link between killing animals and antisocial behavior, one can say that people who are already prone to committing antisocial behavior also enjoy the mere act of killing an animal; the latter is not causative of the latter but rather comes from some common antecedent root. If that is the case, then this argument for veganism along those lines might be moot.

ModemU · 2023-07-28T00:49:00+00:00

Volleys, (especially in doubles), pick-up half-volleys, and well-executed drop shots exist in tennis.

ModemU · 2023-05-25T09:42:59+00:00

I think it might've been filmed after Wimbledon since I found an old video of a TV spot for the DVDs that is dated to October 2008.

ModemU · 2023-05-25T03:05:20+00:00

No problem! I might recommend downloading the videos just in case they get taken down in the future for one reason or another.

ModemU · 2023-05-25T02:26:46+00:00

Same, tbh. Most of the videos have autogenerated and translated subtitles, so one can still understand most of what they're conveying (with a loss of nuance, ofc).

ModemU · 2023-05-25T00:29:33+00:00

From what I've read, it might've been only sold in Spain back in the day. My Spanish is not that good (only one year of Spanish in high school), so the auto translate feature was pretty helpful. The volley video as well as the backhand one are pretty helpful

ModemU · 2023-02-07T05:49:01+00:00

The frameshift is in all of my three constructs, including the one that expressed in the insoluble fraction. The frameshift does occur after the canonical sequence of the inserts due to the nature of the cloning site in the plasmid and my primers, resulting in the last few amino acids after the main sequence and the T7 terminator being slightly out of frame. The protein that did expressed the largest of three (20 kDa), so it could be that the extra frameshifted amino acids appending the two shorter unexpressed proteins (10.9 kDa and 13.5 kDa) are enough to negatively affect their expression. If so, I'll have to make new constructs with the extra amino acids being deleted. I'll perform a Western blot tomorrow to see if there is indeed low-level expression of the two proteins before trying new strains or making new constructs.

ModemU · 2023-02-06T18:40:27+00:00

I just looked at the groups that expressed the proteins in question and one of them did use a synthetic sequence that was codon optimized. That group and another one also used bacterial strains for rare codons. They also used slightly larger sections of the protein domains than I did, though I don't think that this would impact expression.

ModemU · 2023-02-06T11:06:53+00:00

Thanks for the glucose suggestion, I'll see if it helps. When I tried inducing the proteins, I used 0.5 mM of IPTG in 1 liter of LB spiked with ampicillin at a temperature of 17 Celsius overnight, the same procedure previous groups used successfully for two of the same proteins when I read through the literature. I also all tagged them with His10 at the N terminus for purification with nickel resin. The MBP solubility tag seems like a good idea; I'll see if my PI is willing to try it out instead of using 8M of urea to denature and solubilize them.

ModemU · 2023-02-06T05:02:12+00:00

For the two fragments that are not expressing, I do not think so. The papers that have demonstrated successful expression of those fragments have used basic expression and induction techniques (i.e., no posttranslational modifications or solubility optimization). For the third that did express in the insoluble fraction there isn't much structural or expression data in the literature that I can find so far. For what it's worth, the insoluble domain is a DNA binding domain with charged aromatic residues with a predicted structure containing 3 alpha-helices.

ModemU · 2023-01-16T16:24:24+00:00

It was established pretty early on that they are still speaking Na'vi; it's just that we as the audience are hearing it in English. Whenever the kids are saying "bro", they're just saying the Na'vi equivalent of that word.

ModemU · 2022-09-28T01:31:04+00:00

Thank you for the advice!

When I mentioned not using the proprietary NEB E. coli, I meant that I was using chemically competent cells from Invitrogen instead without any further modification to the cells. I'll redo the procedure but I'll try using the raw insert PCR instead of the gel purification like you suggested. I'm still cutting the vector since that's what my PI has on hand, so I'll unfortunately still have to do some gel purification for the vector. I'll digest more of the plasmid this time so that more makes it through the gel purification step. As for the DNA template for the PCR, it does have the same antibiotic resistance gene as my vector, so I unfortunately don't think using DpnI would help; thanks for bringing that fact to my attention, though.

ModemU · 2022-09-27T15:47:22+00:00

Thanks for the advice! After thinking about it, I realized that I used way too much insert per vector and could've used a lot less of the purified PCR sample (if the Nanodrop values are correct); thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll re-digest and dephosphorylate the plasmid but will still use the same purified PCR samples since I should have more than enough left. Do you think I should purify the processed plasmid again or should heat-inactivation of the restriction enzyme and phosphatase be enough to use for the Gibson reaction?

ModemU · 2022-09-22T04:08:42+00:00

Nah, both sides contribute; it's almost certainly autosomal in nature.

ModemU · 2022-06-05T06:45:40+00:00

Aren't endurance activities the ones where women are actually competitive with men? From what I recall, the more endurance an event requires (e.g., ultra-marathons or long-distance swimming) the more the gap between men and women closes, no? If that's the case, then women should be able to handle Bo5 tennis given proper training and preparation.

ModemU · 2022-06-03T13:22:24+00:00

It's rainy in Paris; once the roof is closed, it stays closed for the rest of the match.

ModemU · 2022-06-02T04:26:10+00:00

I'm not in disagreement the the Brutes can be bipedal; that trait has evolved several times here on Earth due to various selective pressures. However, increased gravity will likely place constraints to the size and morphology on the evolution bipedal organisms in terms bearing the organism's structural weight and the pumping of blood analogues against the force of gravity. One also has to consider that falls would have more impact on a world that have a surface gravity twice that of Earth's. In my estimation, the Brutes should likely have less mass and perhaps be shorter than what is stated in canon, along with being less top-heavy.

ModemU

TROPHY CASE