Danke.

Thank you, David, for that vast generosity. And we loved seeing you and enjoying your hospitality, and the Star's, in Tucson.

Ted Hesser & I sat down in a quiet place, talked for 2 hrs about all manner of weird, intricate, important, boggling science & heroic scientists I've written about for 40 years. Time flew.
Podcast: rb.gy/vrhxc9
Youtube: youtu.be/s3rLRll5xTk

Here's my convo with David Quammen, all about viruses, contagious cancer, accelerated evolution, conservation via CRISPR, and more.

Podcast: rb.gy/vrhxc9
Youtube: youtu.be/s3rLRll5xTk

Time Stamps:
02:17 - Cancer as an Evolutionary Phenomenon
05:54 - Virus…

We're overdue to converge and confer, David Dobbs. Hope yer well, & yer fambly.

Grateful & proud to be listed beside my friendly acquaintance, the late great Jim Salter.

And within Portland and other heat-dome cities, it's no different. The homeless are not safe. The poor and elderly with no AC are not safe. And they could be, if societies prioritized this. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

'No One is Safe' headlines in papers catering to the elite are utter crap. Rich Singapore is insulated (even glassed in) from the steaming heat 85 miles from the Equator. Nairobi's Mathare informal settlement, also 85 miles from the Equator, isn't safe. twitter.com/Revkin/status/…

Okay.
Oscar, don't eat the daffodils. Brad, don't eat the cat food. Boots, don't eat Oscar.

⁦Billy Mc⁩, did you bring us daffodils? Betsy & I appreciate them, and you. So does Oscar the Mildly Strabismic Cat. Thank you, friend! ⁦BGQ⁩

Thank you to the Internet Archive for fulfilling my Interlibrary loan request. Go #ILL !

I much enjoyed this conversation w Jim Herlihy for his podcast. We dug back into #Spillover , from Ebola to AIDS to SARS & Covid to the Next Big One. Jim Herlihy.

Thank you very much, Wilmore. Yes he did.
I hope you're well, and that your class is going brilliantly.

David Quammen David Quammen I am so very sorry to hear this sad news. I know how much he meant to you and Betsy.

Jerry Jeff Walker put his finger on it when he wrote 'Mr. Bojangles.' . . . 'Dog up and died, he up and died/ After twenty years, the old man still grieved . . .'

this situation can turn ugly (uglier given how bad it's been for wild birds and other animals so far). Increased sampling across all countries might give us more clues about the virus's progression. key Q for me: what serotypes can this virus reassort with?

as noted, the human case also has PB2:E627K. I wanted to highlight that this is unique to the human case (not surprisingly). Don't know of any lit on goat or cattle ANP32A (Tom Peacock ?), but it's generally good that the cattle viruses don't have more human muts.

Some thoughts on the H5N1 situation 🦆🐄🦠 First, the situation is very concerning. this virus does not trasmit h2h, but the more animals in close contact with humans it infects the more the chance of h2h becoming a possibility. Now onto the interesting mutations:

His standard walk was the most dignified, natural prance.
And yet, in the backyard, he would play the silly game we called 'Gunslinger' with his brother Manny: a long stare-down from 15 paces, then a dash attack when the other guy blinked.

We sure miss this incredible boy. Love you, sweet Steve David Quammen