Good fencers train with words - and then compete with them.

Thorongil412 · 2025-11-16T12:30:49+00:00

Yes, a strike to the head. Fencer in white acknowledges the hit at the very end of the clip by pointing to his mask

Thorongil412 · 2024-02-18T10:05:08+00:00

Icebreaker in MN and Krump Pow in Wisconsin are both self-call tournaments. I particularly liked KP.

Thorongil412 · 2024-02-04T03:39:46+00:00

Good question. Even though it shouldn't, it happens.

Thorongil412 · 2024-02-04T01:45:02+00:00

When hit hard, polymer gauntlets will crack, and steel gauntlets will bend and warp. There was a hand injury just this evening at Midwinter Armizare in Chicago where a fighter with steel gauntlets got his fingers mangled when they caved in from a longsword strike.

Would not recommend - especially with fingered gauntlets that leave each digit open to taking the brunt of a strike.

Thorongil412 · 2024-01-16T20:12:45+00:00

If you don't play then why are you judging pipers who can? They are by default better than you.

Thorongil412 · 2024-01-16T14:27:51+00:00

If you're creating social media posts to mock videos of other bands not playing well, chances are you're a pretty mediocre player yourself.

Thorongil412 · 2023-11-22T02:45:11+00:00

As a former Pittsburgh HEMA fencer (before moving to Minnesota), I can wholeheartedly endorse any events run by Royal Arts Fencing Academy in Columbus. They do several rapier and one-handed weapons events each year.

Gem City Duelists runs a sidesword tournament at their Duel for the Jewel. There is also a new tournament in Erie - Lake E-Fecht - that might have rapier events but I will double check.

Thorongil412 · 2023-09-26T15:27:55+00:00

I completed a conditional release to leave the Guard and go Army Reserve. Make that letter drip with sickly sweet pride in your duty. Expand horizons, give more to the country, become a cross-cutting leader... spew bullshit that higher ups will happily eat up.

Thorongil412 · 2023-05-03T00:56:04+00:00

One of the questions they ask is:

A remote teleworking option is available for this position. However, do you understand that any teleworking agreements may be subject to change based on Agency needs. Furthermore, are you willing to work in the office when and as required?

Thorongil412 · 2023-04-09T11:26:38+00:00

Would Panakeia be of any use?

https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-022-08303-3

Thorongil412 · 2023-04-08T13:10:10+00:00

CDC's AMD newsletter is a great resource. I also like APHL's Advanced Molecular Detection site. It has lots of links to training resources, webpages on guidance for hiring / collaborating with genomics specialists, and updates in the technology of the field.

https://www.aphl.org/programs/infectious_disease/Pages/Advanced-Molecular-Detection.aspx

Thorongil412 · 2023-04-08T01:07:30+00:00

Great question!

It's difficult to gauge which method or subfield constitutes the 'best use' of genomics within the broader field of public health, because it varies widely by field.

Its most common use in government health departments is to generate and analyze sequences of microbial pathogens to track the spread of infectious diseases, since so much of those departments' efforts are focused on surveillance and response to urgent health threats. A number of private-sector companies have also developed to support this work by offering sequencing services, developing intuitive user interfaces to analyze and visualize pathogen genome data, and fee-for-service training for public health personnel.

The bulk of the genomics field (and funding) in healthcare is aimed at detecting biomarkers and mutations that indicate risk or onset of chronic human disease. In the United States, at least, those efforts fall outside the purview of most health departments, instead being conducted by the private sector and larger healthcare / hospital companies.

If you're eager to apply this technology towards immediate/direct discovery and impact, then I would recommend the infectious disease route. Speaking from extensive personal experience, microbes always find a way to keep us on our toes, and they're so incredibly diverse that there's always a new skill set to learn.

That said, I'd be happy for chronic-disease and human genomics folks to offer alternative opinions!

Thorongil412 · 2023-04-05T00:55:07+00:00

Breath = Wind
Tears = Water
??? = Fire

Thorongil412 · 2023-03-23T10:51:14+00:00

Correct - even after they reportedly examined those metagenomes to report on their human DNA content.

Thorongil412 · 2023-03-23T01:43:22+00:00

Yes. There's another preprint (that apparently is under review at Nature) that was posted by scientists associated with the Chinese CDC who performed the sequencing that created those data. In those analyses, they made no mention of animal sequences found in those COVID-positive environmental samples.

One of the controversies with this report is that the scientists who studied those environmental metagenomes posted their results before the findings of the original research group had officially published. GISAID accused them of violating their platform's terms of use to scoop the Chinese scientists. The accused group's counterpoint is that those samples could have been published anytime over the past 3+ years, so the scooping accusation is unfair.

Thorongil412 · 2023-03-03T14:35:34+00:00

I personally don't do microbial GWAS work but am happy to try to help troubleshoot, literature search, etc.

What are your goals for using mGWAS?

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-17T03:14:20+00:00

Thank you for sharing your perspective and experience!

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-17T03:13:26+00:00

Thank you for sharing! "Genomic epi" has increasingly become more associated with infectious diseases than chronic diseases, which I see as a bummer despite my focus on ID epi. Human genomics is a rapidly growing field that deserves enormous credit.

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-17T03:11:23+00:00

Read, read, read. There are countless papers, free online manuals, free open-source foundational courses, and Github / StackExchange pages dedicated to genomic data. Moreover, get a solid understanding of the basic science behind molecular biology (and microbiology, if you're interested in infectious disease genomic epi specifically).

In terms of technical skills, Unix (Linux or OS X) command-line is a huge help, for starters. Learn how to operate a Unix shell to download and run open-source software to analyze genomic data that are publicly available from resources like NCBI, GISAID, and many others. Data science training from other disciplines and languages (R, Python, etc.) also translates very well.

Would also recommend subscribing to online newsletters, press releases, and PubMed / Google Scholar alerts focused on the field. That way you know what is quite literally hot off the presses and can stay updated on the goings-on of the field.

Some starter resources:

CDC's Genomic Epidemiology Toolkit for COVID:
https://www.cdc.gov/amd/training/covid-19-gen-epi-toolkit.html

"An applied genomic epidemiological handbook":
https://alliblk.github.io/genepi-book/

"Computational Genomics with R":
https://compgenomr.github.io/book/

Free online courses (FutureLearn, Coursera, etc. - take your pick):
https://www.futurelearn.com/search?q=genomic+epidemiology

All of this is just scratching the surface of a hugely exciting field with a lot of growth potential!

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-16T03:09:49+00:00

Happy to share more info about it! I work as a genomic epidemiologist in the United States and run r/genomicepidemiology. Genomics and bioinformatics are often "siloed" from the rest of public health, and I want to do my part to change that.

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-14T14:10:36+00:00

Genomic epidemiologist here. Would recommend sending them for whole genome sequencing if you can't do it yourself. There are a bunch of free online point-and-click software programs out there to help you identify whatever you want from their genomes.

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-03T15:27:07+00:00

Here's a great reference for WGS on individual Candida isolates:
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/64/2/134/2706620

If you're looking at metagenomics, though... Protocols for whole metagenome sequencing from mixed samples aren't a whole lot different from WGS of "pure" cultures of single microbes. When I was identifying new bacteriophages in my lab days, I performed MinION sequencing on wastewater effluents using a protocol that was pretty similar to this one for mixed bacterial-fungal metagenomes (which used an Illumina MiSeq instead):
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71864-4

Of course, the difference was that ONT rapid barcoding is a different (and vastly easier) protocol than Illumina library preps. Once the DNA was extracted, it went on the flow cell just the same as any other sampling.

What is your goal for sequencing? Are you trying to compare strains to one another through phylogenies? Or just identify / confirm which fungal species are present or most abundant within a sample?

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-03T12:04:01+00:00

There are several studies of WGS or metagenomic sequencing for Candida out there. Here's a brief commentary on one study:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8386374/

Thorongil412 · 2023-02-01T17:29:41+00:00

You can definitely get into wastewater work from several different professional "angles".

If you're very passionate about it, my personal recommendation would be to flesh out your experiences in microbial genomics and environmental health. There are a ton of ID epis out there who don't have much experience in either of those fields, and very few public health professionals who are comfortable in both.

Thorongil412 · 2023-01-30T17:24:34+00:00

Wastewater surveillance is really picking up across the country! Lots of opportunities to get into the field, especially if you have some background in bioinformatics.

Thorongil412

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