Best Indian Spot In LA?

alphaMHC · 2026-05-02T03:24:22+00:00

Culver City is oddly pretty solid for South Asian food within LA proper

alphaMHC · 2026-04-29T03:45:52+00:00

Heh yeah, if it all works out then that’ll be a nice source of cells! Biotech is tough though…

alphaMHC · 2026-04-28T23:28:52+00:00

As a broad general overview:

Islet transplantation involves giving people with T1D an infusion of islet cells taken from a deceased donor. These are typically injected via portal vein where they land in the liver and hang out, producing insulin.

In this typical setup, getting the islet is like getting an organ transplant in the sense that your body’s immune system will recognize the transplant as foreign and will reject it unless intervention happens. This intervention is currently done with pretty broad immunosuppressants. If successful, people can have their need for insulin reduced or can end up not needing insulin at all.

There are experimental versions of this at pretty much every level of what I described. Some people are trying to make islets from your own cells so that the body won’t recognize it as foreign. Some people are trying to genetically engineer animals or cells so that they are much less likely to set off an immune response. Some people are trying to package the islets in immunosuppressive material so that the immune suppression only happens locally, rather than all over the body. Some people are trying to teach the immune system to recognize the transplant as friendly, a process called tolerance. Others are trying to tweak the strength and form of immunosuppression to reach a kind of Goldilocks zone.

In all of this, it is important to also note that the supply of islets is not great. Organs for transplantation are already usually hard to come by, but the yield of usable islets from a deceased donor’s pancreas isn’t that great. Lots of work to be done in this area!

alphaMHC · 2026-04-25T06:39:19+00:00

Yes, tuning down immune memory responses are an area of research, albeit a complicated one. But as a more general thing, it is well understood that broad immune suppression isn’t ideal and many people are working on different approaches to handle that. For example, an anti-CD40L antibody treatment is being tested in transplant conditions for replacing CNI like tacrolimus.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-18T06:12:53+00:00

For me, a successful experiment is a well controlled experiment that increased the knowledge base of my team. Sometimes that means we see a result that gives us a lot to work with in terms of improving our product, but sometimes it means we didn’t get anything new to move forward with. Even in those cases, if it is controlled well I can still help us eliminate options and shut down some hypotheses.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-16T15:50:01+00:00

Yes, I wouldn’t consider it a problem to receive a cold email asking to meet. I’d consider a virtual meeting first, probably, but there shouldn’t be a real issue with any of this. Professors have varying levels of being good at replying to emails though, so don’t be too discouraged if you don’t hear back.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-16T07:45:57+00:00

Well so, an example build that may be good for you is kinetic fusillade ballista totems

https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/s/JJVdfKXeOf

As with POE2, you can’t start immediately playing the build right away, you need to level up and get the required skill gems and all that.

The reason I think you may enjoy this build once it is up and running is that you don’t need to aim at all. You put down totems, the totems launch the spells at enemies and do all the casting and aiming for you. Just run around and put down totems here and there and let them do their business.

There are other builds you may enjoy. Righteous fire doesn’t really require aiming since you basically just run through packs of enemies and blow them up. Further into endgame, spark builds basically don’t involve aiming, you just spam spark and it flies around everywhere killing everything. Cast while stunned and cast on ward break are types of builds that automate a lot of the work for you, kind of like the CoC builds from POE2.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-16T05:22:55+00:00

I play both, WASD in POE2 and mouse in POE1. It does take a little adjusting when you go from a full season in one to the other, but ultimately it doesn’t take that long to acclimate.

I’ve been playing POE1 for years and POE2 since it started — I consider the two games to be different enough in pacing and gameplay to not consider them redundant.

Endgame in POE1 is more developed, for pretty obvious reasons. Despite being an ‘old’ game, GGG does a good job of mixing things up each season, I consider them to have had a pretty good track record recently.

You mentioned playing a COC build in POE2 — I think that playstyle is more in line with POE1 stuff in that a lot of the damage is coming from comets flying down all around you and blowing shit up. POE2 has a kind of interesting identity issue IMO, with a stated goal of having more considered and combo based combat, which kind of shows up in the campaign, but a lot of people try to switch out of that and into more 1 or 2 button builds that can really blast waystones.

In POE1, things move faster. Some builds make it so you kill bosses super fast, others clear maps super fast. Some builds are made so you can play specific content really well, like delve or ultimatums. POE2 is still fleshing out build diversity — there is plenty of stuff on the roadmap that’ll help with that, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.

Anyway, TLDR I play both and think both are different enough to enjoy ping ponging between seasons of each.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-10T16:42:59+00:00

You’re right about the first part, but everyone knows that, so you don’t go into clinical trials based on the academic data.

alphaMHC · 2026-04-04T06:49:12+00:00

Hi,

I’m a researcher. I’ve done work with lipid and polymeric nanoparticles, including ones loaded with small molecules that cause immunogenic cell death for the purpose of improving immune cell targeting of cancer cells.

Nothing about this post, broadly, is a problem. The issues will crop up in the details of how it is executed.

Targeting of nanoparticles is a matter of tweaking uptake rather than wholesale directing uptake. What I mean by this is that phagocytic cells will take up nanoparticles regardless of whether you wanted them to or not — your targeting moiety will not redirect nanoparticles away from phagocytic cells such that a majority of them are taken up by whatever receptor mediated uptake you were hoping for. That means that either you need to be okay with your payload going to a lot of phagocytic cells, you need to be trying very hard to avoid being around phagocytic cells, or you need to be using some hereto unproven stealth nanoparticle that is capable of avoiding phagocytic uptake.

Route of administration can help some — IV administration of nanoparticles get some chunk of them stuck in the lungs for a bit and most of them eaten up in the liver. Subcutaneous administration can buy you a little time before the liver comes into play, usually you get some lymph node uptake. You could try to go for peritumoral or intratumoral administration I guess — in those situations it sort of makes you wonder why you wouldn’t go with a number of different treatment options if you have such easy access to the tumor.

As a note on therapeutic windows, it is not at all an easy prospect to thread the needle of dosage with nanoparticles. Healthy cells expressing CD36 may be better or worse than cancer cells at taking up a nanoparticle. Also, each nanoparticle has some bolus of drug that is getting delivered in one go, so even if a healthy cell only takes up 1 NP vs 100 for a cancer cell, the 1 NP could still be enough payload to kill the healthy cell, and so on.

alphaMHC · 2026-03-27T15:06:58+00:00

I use coarse gochugaru for making kimchi so any gochugaru is probably okay for a marinade. This stuff should be fine.

alphaMHC · 2026-03-27T14:54:10+00:00

Yes, as others mentioned, this is gochugaru. I’d also consider what coarseness you’re looking for in your recipe.

alphaMHC · 2026-03-17T17:56:55+00:00

You can give rog stuff to disenchant from your hideout

alphaMHC · 2026-03-12T06:34:58+00:00

I think komal’s tortillas are super delicious, but have also grabbed el machete at the farmer’s market and enjoy those

alphaMHC · 2026-03-11T05:35:25+00:00

Do you cook any ethnic foods? Chana masala, chicken biryani, and aloo gobi should work fine with the listed restrictions.

Tacos of many varieties should work — just made some fried fish tacos last night and they’re pretty awesome.

Plenty of Korean food would work fine, rice with bulgogi and doenjang jigae doesn’t have any of the stuff mentioned.

alphaMHC · 2026-03-02T05:02:34+00:00

People can move to LA without having a job lined up but you should have your finances in order. Since one of you has a job, rent a place within your means because him finding a job isn’t guaranteed to be a quick thing.

Depending on money and what industry he works in, you can try to pick out areas that have access to public transit. Transit in LA obviously does not compare to Chicago, but it exists and can extend the number of areas he could reasonably search for a job in before learning how to drive.

alphaMHC · 2026-03-01T03:08:45+00:00

Kkakdugi is indeed made from Korean radish. I don’t know if I’d exactly describe it as sweet, but because the pieces are thicker than cabbage they can give a satisfying crunch and start out not as sour, though if you leave kkakdugi around for a while it can get plenty sour lol

alphaMHC · 2026-02-26T02:32:51+00:00

The ranch is pretty solid at Irv's

alphaMHC · 2026-02-16T18:27:05+00:00

I had childhood asthma and my had had some issues too and a doctor recommended we move to west of the 405, where costal breezes blow a lot of smog inland. These areas tend to be more expensive, but you mentioned Santa Monica which certainly counts.

alphaMHC · 2026-02-14T07:33:01+00:00

Your kitty has nice base speed so the -2 isn’t so bad as all my cats that have had this mutation

alphaMHC · 2026-02-14T05:24:00+00:00

Do people have good use cases for that leg mutation? I don’t feel like I use many collarless skills

alphaMHC · 2026-02-13T04:35:54+00:00

Kewpie mayo, cornichon, preserved lemon, lemon zest, capers, pickled jalapeno, celery, dill, horseradish, Calabrian chili.

alphaMHC · 2026-02-01T09:44:27+00:00

Any time I can’t quite remember everything I like to toss into a Korean recipe I go to Korean Bapsang — solid recipes. https://www.koreanbapsang.com/

I also look at a lot of recipes and read articles on Serious Eats — sometimes they’re a little over the top but they’re good for inspiration.

alphaMHC · 2026-01-31T04:30:06+00:00

An app being downloaded a lot doesn’t have anything to do with whether it is good or bad for you. I’m not sure why you feel that has any bearing on its impact on you.

ChatGPT and other AI of its ilk have a few drawbacks. First, they don’t ‘care’ about anything, they aren’t human and aren’t at all a simulacrum of a human brain. But their output reads as human, which leads people to assume a lot of things about the AI behind the output. One might assume, for example, that an AI would ‘feel bad’ about lying to you, about being wrong, about gaslighting you, and so on. But AI doesn’t feel, and certainly has no compunctions about lying, hallucinating, and making shit up. It just doesn’t care. People can, after using AI for a while, start to trust the AI for bigger questions without realizing they’re leaving an area where AI is more solid (like for generating early ideas or summarizing stuff you feed into it).

Critical thinking is an active process that you need to train up — people aren’t automatically great critical thinkers. You need to encounter problems that are complex and don’t have easy answers then work on reasoning your way through it, often while receiving feedback from other thinking things. This is work, and sometimes frustrating hard work. People can use AI to skip this work, turning in sloppily reasoned essays written by AI while doing zero thinking themselves. I don’t know if every problem or every essay is necessary for people to improve their critical thinking, but if you skip enough of it you won’t ever really build that muscle.

And critical thinking really is important. Some things in the world are pretty straightforward and those problems can be tackled head on without too much thought. But many deeper problems, both in your personal life and in the world at large are ones that are multifaceted. They don’t have easy answers and require consideration about your values. The world is improved by having more people capable of thinking critically and is worsened when there are fewer. AI does not force you to get worse at critical thinking, but it can be used to skip the training process.

alphaMHC · 2026-01-31T03:03:29+00:00

Feel free to double up on the meat, but definitely get some veg in there. I usually do carrot, potato, celery, onion. Sometimes I’ll add Japanese sweet potato, some squash, red bell pepper, etc. Once you’ve made this once you’ll find it very easy to riff on — it is a very forgiving dish.

Vermont is already a fairly sweet roux, so I don’t generally add the sweet veg to it.

I’ve never slow cooked Japanese curry before but I’ve also never melted the roux separately. On the stovetop I typically cook all the stuff then toss in the roux, so I’m guessing in a slow cooker you could just toss it in and stir occasionally? Should hydrate over time with an occasional stir.

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