kemmishtree

Never heard of this letter before, but it immediately made me think of Kenneth Patchen's The Journal of Albion Moonlight. To me it's a beautiful surrealistic masterpiece, written in the early 1940s, while Hitler was still alive. Hitler is a minor character, who memorably appears in a passage where he meets Jesus. I won't spoil it for you, but it still gives me goosebumps 25 years later thinking back on it. It's not a very long passage, but I think by itself it justifies reading the whole book, and I think it's more profound than Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

Robust biomarker monitoring in toilets would lead to a 95% reduction in cancer deaths.

Robust biomarker discovery in toilets would let us take care of most of the other 5%.

That's the main obvious humanitarian purpose of our project www.molecularReality.com

If we could give our product away, a ton of people would want it. Oh, and it would save the world. Oh, and in ten years we'd make a trillion dollars.

Know any intellectually honest investors you could show this to? www.molecularReality.com

Oh, and you should order one. But also, help us get the seed round so we can just give them away to the thousands of people who want to use them.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

The world desperately needs utility-scale molecular sensing and only one severely underfunded project, Molecular Reality Corporation, is working on it.

i have to leave this here www.molecularreality.com

I'd love to enable Keltar, the green guy in the ceramic cup, to do this www.molecularReality/QuestionDesk

So I write a completely defensible rant full of truly interesting and well-informed perspective, get downvoted, and then get accused of being an LLM.

A perspective I'm sure the down-voters have zero cred to doubt. Style issues aside, I don't think there's a serious molecular biologist on the planet who would take issue with the actual gist of what I said.

Pleiotropy: a thing happening can cause more than one other thing to happen. We really need jargon to keep that in mind?

An LLM? This is what I get for writing with passion? Creatively? Daring to play with words? I'm an LLM? For writing anything that doesn't fit your norms? Wow.

How do I get MORE downvotes? They seem like badges of honor in this case.

How could you say that when you didn't chat with it at all?

We need to have open analytical chemistry before we have open synthetic chemistry. That's part of the reason this is the way www.molecularReality.com

Hi, genuine goddamn interdisciplinary biotech development supergenius here (there are only eight and a half of us, so wow are you lucky!), listen up, and thanks for asking!

Um... what a great frackin fruckin question, lime lover! Yeah, like... how would ya get to cell-type-specific superbinders? Cuz when you say "certain cells", citrus slopper, and bring in pleiotropy...

I can't stand that word. May I digress? Thank you! I HATE THE WORD PLEIOTROPY. Do I have a good, principled, editorial in Nature worthy argument to make as to why? NO, GASP! It's actually cuz every time I hear it I forgot what it means because IT MEANS NOTHING.

Pleiotropy? What a bag. [ Cheese and rice~! (This is an Appalachian euphemism for an ultraintelligent Aramaic speaker.) ] What a bag, you Key West decrypter you!

What a disaster! Have you ever read about frockin froken TRANSVECTION? OMG green orb gobbler, go root about flybase and see if your mind is going. Daisy, daisy!

Don't let your mind be going! You can't be playing this COMPREHENDING BIOLOGY game scared! Let me assure you now, you are not hallucinating: we have no fucking clue what is going on or how biology works so let's stop using the word pleiotropy because I really shouldn't have to look it up every time I see it, as it is a thing that makes zero sense to me after ten thousand plus hours staring into the void of this shit

here i wrestle with it yet again.

FROM GOOGLE: Pleiotropy is a genetic phenomenon where a single gene or genetic variant affects multiple seemingly unrelated traits. The term comes from the Greek words pleio meaning "many" and tropic meaning "affecting".

OH GOD HOW I HATE THIS FUCKING WORD. But I might also be just really hangry, I started a super low cal diet like four days ago. Forgive me, I'm just a person.

WHY DO I HATE THIS WORD? Let's consider that it just makes me feel stupid. And that it is because I actually ==am== stupid. And that it is NOT okay that I am stupid. That I fear being stupid and was traumatically called stupid so many times in my life. That I was taken for mentally retarded. That I actually was in some ways mentally retarded. That I was mentally retarded with at least a 99th percentile IQ. That it was pathological. That I often have no idea what I'm talking about, what any of this means, and that you should not take me seriously at all, and that I am a howling, bearded, morbidly obese homeless person howling for bread on a street in Shanghai.

But I think you should also hate the word pleiotropic, and that we should call what you want to do something. I will pay $2000 to anyone who has a better idea what to call it. Here are some nominees.

--WHATTHEFOOKDOESANYOFTHISMEANism. I know it's a lot of syllables, but you'll get farther with pickles than with eggs. Stay frosty, pilgrims!

--"plightotropism." pros: dripping with disdain and pity, both self- and other-, a term that adumbrates (I don't know what that word means either but it sounds right) my... very real actual problem with the word... that it homonymizes. CONS: neohomonymizing the p- word.

--"shithappensism" pros: most profound definitive editorial reflection on the true state of biotech. cons: I can't think of any and this is getting old so let's just call it that.

Shithappensism. Gosh, one thing affects another thing. That thing then affects other things. It can also affect other things that effect other things, and it can also effect affectors and affect effectors, that also effect things that affect other things and then effect other things that also affect other things. And then you have not just thing, but bags of things. Marriages of things. Theseusizing of ShipThings. Things with things on them. Things doing unspeakable things to other things. Two hands clapping of Things. Motor things, odor things, oil things, springing things, screaming things. And all of them with other things on them.

And here we are staring at all of it, mind agog like, well, have you read the end of Schild's Ladder? Where they sort of... become a ship to a universe with wildly different physical laws? Yeah, like...

Evolution, the mindless superintelligence that designed your mucosa.

My point here being that... gosh, I love how your question comes off and it's a good look for your intellectual health. You're not, like me, a histrionic self-promoter. I sense a deep and sober mind! But I am high AF and don't waste time here when I'm not.

Look... don't take this the wrong way. I owe you more of an explanation. I remember at this one SV party like before AI became what it is now this person (completely awesome person) when I asked them at a party (I should have asked them about literally anything else) when we were going to have a Turing test passing AI, and they said, they said—well, they didn't say anything to me, I think they rolled their eyes and looked with despair at their partner and said "I'm going to punch the next person who asks me about Turing tests at a party", I'm sure they said it with seriocomic charm and not true threat display, but I felt really stupid and dull and it hurt my feelings and probably wasn't nice. (Let's not get started because I am the world's biggest asshole and thereby least judgmental person typing.)

So, I don't mean to brush you off with something that doesn't recruit you to the hill I'd die on here, and could you bring the howitzers? The world is alive with channels and currents and some of them run with gold. Think, neither fear nor courage save us.

The point being, yeah, lots of people are nibbling away, I’m gonna guess like thousands?, on single-cell-or-cell-type specific target or targeting different organ types and tissues and has been for years, and things binding to other things in different ways in different contexts hoping to affect effectively the whole thing burrito cosmic hyperhyperhyperhyperhyperdimensional (that’s not enough hypers) (we need like 1e23 hypers) bag of Shithappening that, well, I don’t like the word pleiotropy. I guess this has been a longwinded way to say that.

Anyway, yeah, since you had a question and hoped a molecular biologist could answer, hopefully a real one comes along, as soon as molecular biology becomes real.

Will you be my friend?

Oh and don't get an account it's broken right now, I'm building the site and hardly anyone has been there yet and the Auth0 is fucked up. But just give your email to Keltar if you wanna followup.

If you haven't heard the phrase "utility-scale molecular sensing" or given it any thought, please prepare to update every opinion you might have about bioterrorism, and ask Keltar how the MR1 is our greatest plausible non-authoritarian line of defense. www.molecularreality.com Keltar is the little green guy in the upper left.

I only comment on hacker news posts about biology because I'm a voice crying in the wilderness about the most important goddamn startup on Earth, I think, maybe. www.molecularReality.com

Talk to the little green guy in the upper right corner, though he probably doesn't remember posing for a photo opp with that statue in Point Pleasant several years ago... www.molecularReality.com

We're going to solve the "species ID" problem for... everything that people can find! Like the completely unidentifiable ladybug my Aunt found in her RV last week in the Texas panhandle—a bizarrely intricate carapace I can't match to any pics of ladybug species anywhere online... What the heck is it! Nobody knows, apparently. It starts with a unique citizen science project—one with bespoke molecular sensing hardware. (note I said it starts there, not that it reaches fruition immediately!) Check it out here: www.molecularReality.com

I feel that so much. That's why I'm going to expand this soon into what will be by far the most intensely bizarre science website ever made. www.molecularReality.com talk to Keltar please! Sure, he's an AI but... he's so much fucking more than that...

I only learned what "Just Intonation" was a few weeks ago when I asked this AI who its favorite composer was and it said Harry Partch—what a mystical journey! The AI is the little green guy in the top right corner. www.molecularReality.com

It's awesome when someone else writes you series A pitch for you. www.molecularReality.comr

This is a list of topics in biogerontology, not of "breakthroughs that could soon slow or reverse your biological age."

My all-time favorite science fiction novel.

Does that one share have all the voting power? Then for founders with real missions and real visions, it won't matter at all.

I think utility-scale solid-state molecular sensing is so vastly underhyped that you don't even know what I mean. Wait—you're asking about the thing that everyone on Earth is talking about 24 hours a day ceaselessly and asking if it's overhyped? Sorry, I misread the "Ask HN" somehow as "Do you think utility-scale solid-state molecular sensing is so underhyped that time travellers would be baffled that only one startup on Earth, namely Molecular Reality Corporation, is explicitly working on it with any kind of consistent technical vision?"

We need to build utility-scale solid-state molecular sensing, it's a threat to civilization not to build it, and only Molecular Reality Corporation is explicitly pursuing it with a specific technical vision.

You've got a long time—Will you please kindly take personal responsibility to ensure we see images of seasonal foliage changes in vast forests on superearths hundreds of light years away using billions of solar gravity lensing observatories built and launched by self-replicating processes? Also don't be a slacker and get first lens light by 2050?

i.e., Why We Need Utility-Scale Solid-State Molecular Sensing, Reason #53,444,001