Remember Bryan Johnson? Here’s a reminder of his silly obsession.

Johnson famously claims to spend millions on his health each year, which goes towards keeping a personal army of doctors on hand who constantly monitor his biomarkers, and help carry out more unorthodox health interventions like swapping his blood out with his younger son’s and monitoring his nighttime boners (though he’s seemed to pare things back as of late).

Unfortunately, poor little Bryan is sick.

Bryan Johnson, in his quest for eternal youth, has been dealt a mortal blow.

Last week, the longevity-obsessed tech investor revealed that he had been diagnosed with an incurable autoimmune disease in which his “stomach is eating itself.”

He’s got autoimmune gastritis. It’s not a mortal illness, but it is a serious and uncomfortable chronic disease, nothing to be made light of. Pity him, but don’t plan the funeral just yet.

Besides, he’s going to turn this into a profit-making drama.

But, true to his mission, Johnson believes he can biohack his way out of this gut-punch, too.

“I’m going to try and solve it,” he wrote on X. “Will share all.”

The man is rich, he already spends millions of dollars on his health every year, and gastritis is a manageable illness. I’m pretty sure he’s going to live through this, it’s just become a significantly more uncomfortable process.

But someday, he will die.

Mitch McConnell has been MIA for a few weeks. Credible sources say he’s been in the hospital since 14 June, “recovering”.

Laura Loomer says he is “brain dead” and never coming back.

Who are you going to believe? I think we’ve caught Loomer in a lie. McConnell is a Republican, if you’re going to say he’s brain dead, I’m going to ask, “how can you tell?”

Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the Democratic national committee, directed a pointed message at candidates running under the party’s banner while openly criticizing its direction.

“I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” Harrison wrote on social media. “Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Focus on building the party you actually support.”

It is curious how Harrison frames the progressives as ‘hating’ the Democratic Party purely because they want to take it in a different direction. He seems to think that the neoliberals who have dominated the leadership for so long are the rightful owners of the party and should not be challenged. He is not alone.

Over the last few days, prominent party figures have moved away from unifying under a “blue no matter who” banner to push for a more formal break with their left flank, and said the moment may have arrived for Democrats to confront their more socialist wing.

“I actually do think it’s time for Democrats to talk the S-word: schism,” James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said on his podcast. He added that some DSA-aligned candidates “have no place in the Democratic party” and, of the broader coalition: “I’m not in that fucking political party.”

Norman Solomon has a very good analysis about the current state of the struggles within the Democratic Party and says that the party establishment is panicking and also reveals whom people like Harrison and Carville actually represent.

Between 2008 and 2016, when Harrison worked as a lobbyist for the powerhouse firm the Podesta Group, he represented scores of huge corporations. They included Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Boeing, BP, General Motors, Google, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Oracle, United Technologies, Walmart and Wells Fargo. He also lobbied for trade associations like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and the National Mining Association.

Harrison is an archetype of the political operatives telling democratic socialists to leave the Democratic party. If they followed such advice, the new mayors of New York and Seattle would no longer be Democrats. Nor would the next mayor of Washington DC, or the member of the Los Angeles city council now in a runoff for LA mayor.

Many prominent mainline Democrats are suddenly insisting that their party’s big tent should get smaller. One of them, James Carville, declared last week that the socialist Darializa Avila Chevalier, who won the Democratic primary in New York’s 13th congressional district, “is not a Democrat” and House Democrats “should not seat her in the caucus”.
…

After gaining fame as the campaign manager for Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential victory, Carville served as a consultant overseas for corporate and conservative candidates from Greece to Latin America. He and Harrison are just two of the eminent Democrats now publicly melting down about the left’s advances in this year’s primaries. The surge of voter support for strong progressives is a shock to seasoned lobbyists and political consultants for corporate America along with Democratic politicians who serve it.

A major factor is the drastic shift away from public support for Israel during the last two years, now showing up on ballots. Mainstream Democrats have been knocked out of their denial comfort zone. Even though it has lately become expedient to distance oneself from Aipac, the main pro-Israel lobby group, most Democrats in Congress (along with Republicans) remain closely aligned with Israel – despite the genocide in Gaza.

The Democratic leaders in Congress, Representative Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer, have always been stalwart advocates for Israel. Each has received more than $1.7m in campaign contributions from pro-Israel groups. Steadfast allegiance to Israel is one of the key reasons for their mutual antagonism with the left.

People like the odious Carville and Harrison represent neoliberal Democrats, not the party’s base.

The data, however, offers a more complicated picture of where the Democratic base actually stands. A Fox News poll in March showed that 49% of all registered voters, including 72% of Democrats and 60% of independents, described capitalism as working “not very” or “not at all” well.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten pointed to a poll from Marquette Law School that found the DSA now holds higher favorability than sitting congressional Democrats, from Democratic voters and leaners themselves.

In his segment, Enten summarized it by saying: “Simply put, they’re more popular than the Democrats currently in charge.”
…

National polling also consistently shows that cost of living and affordability – which often comprise the center of democratic socialists’ platforms – remain the dominant concerns for US voters. And younger and more liberal Democrats are significantly more likely to express support for generational change within the party’s leadership.

It’s an opening that the DSA isn’t shying away from, with its sights set beyond the November midterms. DSA’s national co-chair, Megan Romer, told Politico last week that the group was dispatching surveys to all 250 of its chapters this summer, asking members to weigh in on who should carry the democratic socialist banner into 2028, with responses due back to national leadership by 15 September.

“What DSA represents is a real contrast to Democrats who have run the last couple of elections on fear,” Romer said. “You can’t run on that. You have to offer an alternative.

People like Carville want power so that they and their friends can benefit from it rather than use the power for the general good. He has exploited his talent for using colorful language in the service of power by portraying himself in such a way that the media call on him to give the ‘liberal’ point of view when he is actually serving right wing interests.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries vigorously opposed the progressives in the primaries but after the election, realizing that he needs them to win in order to gain a Democratic majority and the speakership, has at least on the surface, tried to reach out.

The fierce establishment reaction was a notably different posture from that adopted by House minority leader and New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, himself a figure the DSA has openly targeted.

When asked on CNBC about DSA supporters chanting “you’re next” at a screen showing his face, Jeffries pointed to Donald Trump. “Our focus is going to be on ending this national nightmare in this country,” he said.

By Saturday, Jeffries had publicly congratulated the nominees on social media. “From public servants to union organizers to community activists, the path is different but the work is the same,” he wrote. “We must decisively address the affordability crisis and crush far-right extremism.”

Coming up on August 4th is the Michigan primary for the US senate seat where a progressive Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, is running strongly against the establishment candidate representative Haley Stevens , after a third candidate who tried to straddle the two wings dropped out.

The Senate primary in Michigan has come under scrutiny nationwide by Democrats, who are vying internally to decide whether the party should hew to the more traditional approach backed by national figures like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer or embrace the leftist wing, helmed by figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. While Stevens has seen the support of establishment groups that argue their methods are best equipped to take on former Rep. Mike Rogers, the presumed Republican nominee, El-Sayed and his backers have made the case that the energy lies with their movement.

El-Sayed has adopted a more aggressive posture on the campaign trail, such as in his modification of former first lady Michelle Obama’s famous line: “When they go low, we don’t go high,” El-Sayed has said. “We take them to the mud and choke them out.”

Even right wing political operative Steve Bannon has noticed the surge is support for the democratic socialist position.

To Bannon, it’s proof of something he’s said for months: The U.S. is in a transformational political moment, and leadership in both parties is way behind.

“We are facing a new politics. We’re seeing the dying of the old politics before us,” Bannon said in a Tuesday interview. “You’re seeing it burn to the ground before you.”

Bannon argues that Mamdani and his allies have tapped into a base enthusiasm the Democratic establishment has been sleeping on.
…

Here’s the thing I would tell people: We have a capitalist system with no capitalists. We have a very concentrated part of who controls capital in this country, and 80 percent of the people have no participation in, really, the capitalist system. You must be prepared to make radical changes to our system, and you must be prepared to stand in the breach, and to basically beat these people down, not just at the polls, but by government policy.
…

We’re in a fourth turning. And Mamdani and his troops, his forces, they understand that they’re playing for keeps. They believe that they are on the rise, and they have within their grasp to take control of the most powerful nation in the history of the Earth in its 250th year.

In the next three to five years, they believe they will get ultimate power, and if you don’t stop it, they just might.

Of course, he also does the usual scaremongering about these people being ‘Marxist jihadists’, the way Trump is now trying to do. We should expect the Republicans to double down on that.

Since December, CNN has featured Kalshi in a segment called “The Odds” at least 115 times. In these segments, Harry Enten, CNN’s chief data analyst, frequently suggests that Kalshi predictions are more accurate than other sources. While polling relies on volunteers, Enten repeatedly reminds CNN viewers that prediction markets are driven by people who “put their money where their mouth is.”

On January 7, Enten highlighted that, in six days, the odds on Kalshi that the United States would buy part of Greenland by the end of Trump’s first term increased from 12% to 36%. Enten said this was proof that “the people putting their money where their mouth is” are “absolutely taking this seriously.”

“Whoa… way up there now to 36%,” Enten exclaimed. “A tripling in less than a week. My goodness gracious.”

Wishful thinking by gullible people is not evidence.

The good news is that some people are trying to take down these corrupt companies.

On Monday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed a total ban on futures trading platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Tuesday to prevent the ban from going into place on Aug. 1, with the CFTC arguing its authority supersedes the state’s ability to regulate futures trading. Notably, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. is a strategic advisor for Kalshi and has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm.

You can tell that Kalshi and Polymarket are not to be trusted just by looking at the scumbags who are investing in it. They’re parasites all the way through. It makes me suspicious of the Young Turks that they are also taking Polymarket money.

These are just barely legal gambling sites. Let’s make them illegal.

P.S. There is no evidence that we are imminently going to get evidence that aliens exist.

I guess I’ve made it now. I got a partnership offer.

Dropping you a line because we’ve been looking closely at a select group of creators to bring into the fold for the rest of 2026. Your page jumped out at us – especially how you capture the culture around pushing boundaries and living boldly.
Nothing about it feels corporate or safe – and that’s what we need when we’re considering brand fit.
We’re not interested in a quick send-and-forget partnership – we’re aiming for something that gives you wings to do what you do best.
Want to learn more? Reply and I’ll walk you through the details. This time of year tends to move fast, so didn’t want to wait too long to connect.
Appreciate you reading this, pzmyers.

It was from Red Bull. I’m flattered by the “pushing boundaries and living boldly” comment, but no, just no. Part of my “living boldly” ethos involves rejecting corporate influence.

Also, I’ve never had so much as a sip of Red Bull, so it would be dishonest of me to promote it.

The problem isn’t conservatism, it’s authoritarianism. We are living in a country with a rising authoritarian minority that wants to shut everyone else down, and that is a problem. And that’s why Ohio is a problem — authoritarians want to dictate the content of a college education.

Ohio universities’ new centers to combat “liberal bias” aren’t popular with students, so a Republican leader wants to require attendance.

Bringing in America’s 250th anniversary, the Republican supermajority in Ohio’s legislature wants to expand civics education at colleges and universities. That hasn’t been getting the warmest of welcomes on campuses.

This puckered prune of a beancounter doesn’t like free speech

So this Republican, Jerry Cirino, has passed a new law.

S.B. 1 focuses on what Cirino calls “free speech,” banning public universities in Ohio from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, having “bias” in the classroom and limiting how “controversial topics” can and can’t be taught. “Controversial” under Ohio law includes “belief policy that is the subject of political controversy, including issues such as climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.”

I appreciate how the report mentions that Cirino is a “free speech” advocate, and the next word is “banning”. It goes on to say that he opposes “controversial” ideas, in which he gets to categorize what ideas are to be policed. “Climate policies”? Climate change is real and has serious consequences (witness the heat wave we’re experiencing now), but Cirino wants to control discussion of what to do about it.

“electoral politics, foreign policy”…do Ohio universities lack political science and history departments?

I know Republicans hate DEI, but Ohio is a diverse state, and universities tend to hire from an international pool of academic candidates.

Ohioans can’t even discuss immigration policy? Are we just supposed to accept a conservative white man’s opinions without recourse to evidence, or the consequences, or the literature?

The primary consumers of college education are 18-22 year olds. Lord forbid that marriage and abortion be a topic of interest and concern among that group.

Jerry Cirino is a retired medical device company executive. Don’t assume that he therefore has experience in medicine or engineering, though — he has a BS in business and an MBA, and has completely foregone the kind of breadth of knowledge a typical liberal arts graduate gets, and instead has been narrowly focused on making money.

Yet he thinks he has the qualifications to overhaul higher education in Ohio? Jesus. This really is the age when incompetence rules.

Well, maybe I got my wires crossed a bit there, but legumes are important in the garden, and I have a lot of them around, so I think they do deserve some attention.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Nothing to see here, because this is a freshly tilled patch where green peas were. I harvested about 2 kg of peas from 250 g of seed, which is not very impressive tbh. If I were growing peas to save money, it would not be very efficient. But I am mostly growing peas to improve the soil, which is why I immediately sowed this patch with peas again, this time with yellow peas. Those won’t be harvested at all; they will be tilled in green as a fertilizer sometime in August/September, after which this patch will be sown with durum wheat to test if I can grow it here.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Yellow peas started to swell up, so I do hope to get my own seed for the future to compensate for the very disappointing germination rate of bought seed. However, this probably won’t be impressive either, because many pods are attacked by pea weevil Bruchus pisorum. This pest is a problem in my garden, and there is not really a good solution.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Leftover green pea seeds from last year had a nearly 100% germination rate, and it looks like I might get a 1000% dividend. I am letting the whole patch fully ripen to get my own seeds. This variety grows extremely fast, so it is eminently suitable as a green fertilizer both in the spring before other crops, as well as in the fall after the main season. And the green peas are very tasty too. But the seeds are fairly expensive, thus the effort to grow my own.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

White runner beans are starting to bloom. But surprisingly, some plants have red blossoms, so there was some cross-pollination with the red runner beans. Which is annoying; I wanted to get a pure white strain, and I am getting red blossoms from white beans. The hybrids will be perfectly edible, but…

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Various bush beans are starting to look less pathetic, and first flower buds are showing up too. I do hope to get my own seeds for the next season; buying bean seeds over the last few years has been very frustrating and disappointing.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Alfalfa is now knee-high and flowering. I won’t mow it; I will let it grow until the end of August, then I will mow it and till it in. A lot of weeds sprouted in the alfalfa patch, whose seeds were suppressed in the lawn. That will be a bit of a problem the next year, when I want to grow spelt here.

And now let’s switch to native legumes that are important in my garden.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I did mention already that I wish to gather seeds of the bush vetch Vicia sepum to propagate it more around my garden for the future. But that is not the only native legume for which I have plans.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

White clover Trifolium repens grows anywhere on the walk paths, and I intend to encourage it to do so by not mowing it too short. It is a pesky weed in a vegetable patch, but a valuable asset elsewhere due to its ability to resist being trodden on and to alleviate soil compaction.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Bird vetch Vicia cracca grows in the meadows outside my garden, and I found a plant in an area where it was not mown when making hay. I will harvest its seeds, and I hope to propagate it in my garden too. Fast-growing, local nitrogen fixer, excellent for composting. And when it sprouts as a weed in a vegetable patch, it does not compete much with anything and is easy to manage, remove, or simply leave to be.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Several patches of red clover Trifolium pratense appeared in my front yard. I have mown the lawn around them so the heads ripen. I want to harvest the seeds too. It is an excellent nitrogen fixer; in my area it grows better than alfalfa, and bumblebees love it.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And the last legume whose seeds I wish to propagate around my garden is bird’s foot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus. It is not as fast-growing and big as others, but it is pretty, pollinators of all kinds love it, and it is reasonably drought-resistant. Thus, another good local alternative to alfalfa.

The main downside to all these native plants is the same one that alfalfa has – the seeds are teeny tiny and fairly difficult to harvest. We shall see whether I succeed or not.

For many of these, to my surprise, it is also possible to buy seeds – they are sold by a shop selling beekeepers’ equipment and accessories. Although I would prefer to get seeds from local plants. These are uncultivated wildflowers, and thus they should be pretty genetically diverse across CZ, and indeed the whole of Europe. With seeds from local plants, I have a guarantee that they are genetically adapted to the local environment. Seeds from plants that were, most probably, grown in a warmer climate and better soil at lower elevations might not do as well here.

I am still really seriously considering buying a packet of seeds of each in the spring, mix them up, till the poorest soil in my garden (my front yard), and sow the mix there to see if something comes of it. The seeds are not that expensive, and it might be worth it even if they have a poor germination rate.

two baby juncos out of three eggs are workin on life out there, good luck to beasts.

some personal stuff i can’t get into.

no 4th of july miracle of death for tyrants, sigh.

at least i’m in a home with air conditioning (knock all the wood) and nowhere near the weather conditions of dc.  that’s a vision of hell right there.  how you keeping cool?

–

I also made an Instagram reel as I strolled through the building.

Transcript below the fold.

Let me take a moment to talk about my local movie theater and my role in it, and why I’m making videos about the movies I see.

The Morris movie theater is an old institution in my town. It was built in the 1930s, and I know some of you are laughing at the idea of calling a 90 year old theater old theater “OLD”, but keep in mind that this town has only existed for about 150 years, and was incorporated in 1902. It was little more than a whistle-stop to serve a few grain elevators and a community of farmers for a long time. It’s mark of distinction was a Catholic Indian school built in the 1880s, which fortunately later evolved into a liberal arts college that employs me. This theater was an important center for entertainment in the area, and flourished during the early days of Hollywood and the development of the movie entertainment culture in America.

It had fallen on hard times, though. The entertainment industry was reliant on these small town movie houses, but the revenue has been shrinking, in part because of contract clauses that required showings, no matter whether the movie stank or not. This is why multiplexes are all over the place — because they spread the gamble out, one stinker doesn’t dominate your revenue for weeks. So one of the big steps the Morris theater had to take was to remodel and add a second theater. The main theater holds over 250 people, and the additional micro theater holds only 18, but it’s a way to dump a contractual obligation. Although…the micro theater is nice and cozy, and I actually prefer to watch movies there.

Keep in mind, though, that that was a major expense for a business with only a small revenue stream. We have a theater board that makes decisions about investments to improve the theater, and putting in a second theater was a costly one. We’re also looking at essential maintenance, like repairing the roof, and quality of life improvements, like completely remodeling the two bathrooms. We also have to be prepared for emergencies, like what if a projector dies on us? We’re also dealing with a lot of obsolete equipment. Like, would you believe the computer that controls the projector is running Windows 7? I’m always surprised by how slow that thing is.

Running a small town theater is a marginal enterprise. The only thing keeping us viable is a clever little trick: we don’t pay the staff. We’re all of us, every one, volunteers. Every one working there is invested in keeping the theater running.

So we’ve got volunteers to staff the concessions, making popcorn and running the cash register. We’ve got a volunteer accountant keeping the books for us. We have a couple of incredibly dedicated people who handle programming the scheduler and fixing things when they break down. A couple of volunteers recently came in and completely repainted the lobby, and it looks stunning now. I’m one of several projectionists: I come in once or twice a week for a three hour shift, turning everything on and counting the money in the cash box, helping out with concessions, and at the end sweeping up spilled popcorn and shutting everything down. Many hands make light work, and I’m willing to put in a few hours to help keep everything running.

All of the profits from this theater are poured back into maintenance and capital improvements. It’s a wonderful example of mutual aid and community cooperation.

Clearly, people value having a movie theater in town, even in this age of streaming services and home theaters. I assure you, if you want to focus on the movie, the theater is not the best way to optimize your finely tuned cinematic experience. The theater is a community event: we get families coming in, when we show those horrible PureFlix movies church congregations will show up, certain movies will draw in special interest groups who will bond over a shared experience. Me, I personally like the familiar surroundings and memories of past theater gatherings, the smell of popcorn, the people settling in around me. It’s worth it to me and a lot of other people.

I guess the question is…why? Why are so many people willing to sacrifice time and effort for an old theater? I don’t have a good answer, other than that we’ve adopted movies as a significant element of our secular culture, which shouldn’t be surprising, since plays predate movie technology, and story-telling with dance and masks and music and drama and comedy are human universals. I think Morris would be a poorer place without a theater.

And, after saying all that stuff about human universals and communal effort, I have to tell you that the movie this week is Minions & Monsters, the 7th in a series of animated movies featuring these strange little yellow guys who speak in incomprehensible lingo. I’ve found them kind of annoying, one of those weird cultural memes that sort of sail past my understanding, but I must confess…this movie clicked with me. There are a couple of reasons for that.

One, I just told you a bit of the history of the theater in Morris, and the plot of this movie (it actually has a plot, and a good one) revolves around film making in the 1920s … and also splices in references to movies from the 1950s and elsewhere.

Two, it included a mini-Cthulhu. The minions are trying to make a monster movie, so they use an old book to summon a monster to star, and they got this cute adorable little green tentacled thing. But they still remain true to the mythos: while he might be cute, he’s still planning to destroy the world.

Third, it is a kids movie, but it still includes enough references to classic adult movies from this era and beyond to amuse me.

And fourth, it’s a good moneymaker. Our theater relies on blockbusters to bring in the crowds to buy our popcorn (concessions are the real money-maker for the theater), and this movie sold tickets. We had lots of families come in for the show, and families buy treats to keep the kids in line.

The bad news, though, is that we were making bank at the concessions, and I had to help because we had a long line in the lobby, so I missed the first 45 minutes of the movie. It’s OK, though, because I recognized all the tropes and could fill in the blanks.

I come from a big extended family, so I had lots of brothers and sisters and swarms of cousins, and in my childhood we’d take turns staying with my grandmother and my Uncle Ed, who probably shaped my tastes in entertainment more than I am aware of. We’d go to the corner drug store and buy a bunch of comic books — which was far more feasible in an era when they cost 15 cents each — and we’d soak in the superhero milieu for a while. Then we’d go to a matinee, which would consist of Japanese kaiju or old horror movies starring Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi, and sometimes slapstick like the Three Stooges. We’d go home and watch Soupy Sales on the TV (if you don’t remember him, it would be an hour of pies thrown in faces), and later we’d watch Batman — the one with Adam West — or The Avengers — the one with Diana Rigg, rawr — and stay up late for the creature features, when Uncle Ed would usually fall asleep.

It was paradise. It also rotted our brains, so you can blame the content of current popular cinema on what Boomers grew up on. Sorry.

Anyway, the Minions & Monsters movie was all of that mixed up in a lumpy smoothie of slapstick and cheesy old horror movies, so it resonated. The audience also made me feel good about what I was doing.

There was a little girl who came up with a ten dollar bill clutched in her hand to order popcorn and candy. She was all alone and shy and very, very serious about her mission. I was impressed — she was taking her first steps towards independence and learning how to deal with the world. I hope I wasn’t too scary.

There was a little boy who was maybe getting a bit overstimulated by the movie, so he’d discharge a little energy by running up the aisle to the lobby, where we had this big poster on the wall. He’d stand in front of the poster, flex his arms, and babble at it in incomprehensible toddler-speak, which is about as comprehensible as minionese, before scampering back down the aisle to his family.

Obviously, the audience was having a good time. That’s why I’m in show business, after all!

I can’t say much about the details of the movie, because I was swamped with scooping up popcorn and filling pop orders, but I am volunteering at another showing tonight. I’m torn between hoping we get another big crowd that’ll bring in good money, and having light attendance that let’s me sneak away to actually see more of the movie.

If you want to learn more, a webcomic I’ve been subscribed to for a great many years is the Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom), at goominet.com/unspeakable-vault/, and the creator is employed by Illumination, the animation company behind all the minions movies, and he gives some of the inside story on how it was made. It’s how the uncanny valley between cosmic horror and children’s movies was populated and pacified and made safe for mass market audiences.

I recommend this movie if you have a childish heart or if you have children.

From ScienceDaily: Light switch wakes sleeping cancer cells and makes them vulnerable again

Some cancer cells evade treatment by entering a dormant state triggered by stress hormones. ETH Zurich scientists have created a light-controlled molecular switch that selectively destroys the receptors responsible for this survival mode. In laboratory lung cancer cells, the approach woke sleeping tumor cells and could help make future cancer therapies more effective while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

It sounds counterintuitive that you want the cancer cells to be active, but the ScienceDaily article explains it:

In certain forms of cancer, including some types of lung cancer, stress hormones can trigger this response. Specialized proteins called glucocorticoid receptors detect those hormones inside tumor cells. Once activated, the receptors can push the cells into a dormant state where cell division slows dramatically. As a result, many therapies become far less effective.

So, in other words, we can only fight them effectively when they are active.

The ScienceDaily article is based upon the paper Light-controlled disruption of cancer cell dormancy via photoswitchable stress hormone receptor degraders by Karina M. Freitag et al in PNAS.

I will freely admit that the actual paper is a bit above my biochemistry level, but the “significance” section is fairly understandable, especially combined with the ScienceDaily writeup

Stress hormone signaling through the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) induces a reversible, drug-tolerant dormancy state in cancer cells. However, systemic GR depletion is not viable due to its essential roles in non-pathological physiology. In this study, we developed light-responsive Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras (photoPROTACs) that enable reversible, wavelength-specific control of GR degradation. PhotoPROTACs featuring arylazopyrazole photoswitches showed potent, isomer-dependent GR degradation and high target specificity at nanomolar concentrations. In addition, transcriptomic profiling in lung cancer cells revealed that only the active isomer disrupts dormancy-associated gene networks, highlighting the potential of photoPROTACs to target GR-driven dormancy exclusively in cancerous tissue.