Subdermal is a lot easier than implanting in other compartments, e.g., intracranial. For example, hormonal birth control exists as an implant.

But, there’s fascinating research into how the brain rejects implanted electrodes, e.g., neuralink. Lots of work has been done developing materials that are less likely to be rejected by the brain and the brain’s immune system. For example, electrodes can be coated in chemicals to make them less harsh to the body, and flexible materials can be used.

I’ve been chasing the high from Elite Dangerous on my HOSAS setup for years. Thankfully, the recent updates have breathed some new life into the game.

X4. Come for the arcadey spaceflight simulator, stay for the galactic-scale empire building, leave for another save file once the Xenon start sending multiple I-class battleships against your Teladi allies but they cannot muster the strength to repel them and the entire gate network falls because you were too busy solving the Paranid Civil War.

Unfortunately there’s a lot of truth in that statement, especially in the case of rare disease. It’s really difficult to convince a company to spend billions to develop a treatment that will only cure 1 in 100,000 people without letting them charge an arm and a leg, and giving them a very long exclusivity deal so they can continue to charge high prices. So much of that cost to develop is due to the dozens of other failed drugs and formulations they tried on their way to success.

I don’t have a solution for the problem, and I’m always a little suspicious of anyone who claims it’s easy to solve. I think the UK has a decent idea, the NHS basically decides if the cost of a drug will be covered by insurance by comparing the expected benefit and the current cost. If the ratio is too skewed, they refuse to cover the medication. In theory, this should be an incentive for a company to charge less. In practice, it leads to some companies choosing not to market in the UK.

Here’s a bit of hope for you, scientists have figured out how to trick the body into producing any protein or antibody they want, through technology like gene therapy and mRNA vaccines. We’re about to cure a lot of diseases that used to be 100% fatal. Diseases that kill kids and adults alike.

Most things seem to be getting worse these days, but at least we’re making progress in other areas.

For me and mine, it’s carrots. Do you know how difficult it is to find carrot-free items? Impossible.

Agreed, seems like a no-brainer. Typically this stuff is handled at an institutional level, with bad professors losing/ failing to achieve tenure. But some results have much bigger implications than just “Uh oh, I cited that paper and it was a bad one.” Often, entire clinical pipelines are developed off of bad research, which wastes millions of dollars.

See also, the recent scandals in Alzheimer’s research. https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

Touche, forgot this was PatientGamers. Grim Dawn is basically the same sans MMO. It’s the best ARPG I’ve played like, ever, and it’s due for a huge DLC soon. Goes on sale for very cheap often.

Unlike Last Epoch, it’s more item-focused. Unlike PoE, the items aren’t a total nightmare to optimize…

A handful if my PoE friends have picked up Last Epoch which I’ve found to be more approachable. Little less MMO but a very similar game.

Nah. Fenced epee for a bit in a college club. Height advantage was pretty great. I guess it just depends on the weapon.

Outer Wilds was the best game I played on PS4. I strongly recommend experiencing it for yourself.

I would say the space ship/0g flight is maybe 30% of the gameplay, and you don’t need to be really excellent at it, thankfully.

Can’t say I’ve heard anything since launch, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

Grim Dawn Item Assistant is your best friend. While you’re at it, Rainbow Item Names (or whatever it’s called).

Well if you liked PoE I doubt you’ll like D4. It’s a much simpler game. Sadly my only advice is to try GD and Last Epoch again. I’ve got hundreds of hours in the former and I just got 10 hours into the latter.

Last Epoch feels like a more approachable PoE. I thoroughly enjoy how the skills interplay with one another, but I still prefer the itemization in Grim Dawn.

The only reason I’m not playing GD currently is because I have too many QoL mods installed so my cloud saving doesn’t work, but I can cloud save for Last Epoch for my steam deck lmao.

My job is 8:30 - 5 with a 30 minute lunch break. So almost.

But, we also get 2 days/week at home, and can flex time as required. Tons of international work, so the flexible hours are a godsend when time zones are against us.

It’s a salaried position and depending on your supervisor and stage of your career, you’re expected to work 40-45 hours a week. Deadlines and ugly projects tend to increase hours work. I’m very lucky, as my industry can be pretty brutal with sudden ends to projects and unexpected layoffs.

We’ve got some really good theories, though. Neurons make new connections and prune them over time. We know about two types of ion channels within the synapse - AMPA and NMDA. AMPA channels open within the post-synapse neuron when glutamate is released by the pre-synapse neuron. And the AMPA receptor allows sodium ions into the dell, causing it to activate.

If the post-synapse cell fires for a long enough time, i.e. recieves strong enough input from another cells/enough AMPA receptors open, the NMDA receptor opens and calcium enters the cell. Typically an ion of magnesium keeps it closed. Once opened, it triggers a series of cellular mechanisms that cause the connection between the neurons to get stronger.

This is how Donald Hebb’s theory of learning works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory?wprov=sfla1

Cells that fire together, wire together.

Actually, neuron-based machine learning models can handle this. The connections between the fake neurons can be modeled as a “strength”, or the probability that activating neuron A leads to activation of neuron B. Advanced learning models just change the strength of these connections. If the probability is zero, that’s a “lost” connection.

Those models don’t have physical connections between neurons, but mathematical/programmed connections. Those are easy to change.

I’ve been quoting Jordan Peterson for years?! Ahhh fuck.

Actually, we’ve got some pretty sophisticated models of neurons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project?wprov=sfla1

See my other comment for an example of how little we truly understand about neurons.

Even assuming we can model the same number of (simple machine learning model) neurons, it’s the connections that matter. The number of possible connections in the human brain is literally greater than the number of atoms in the universe.