"Two researchers in the US and Australia have discovered important mechanisms that prevent B cells from attacking the body’s own tissues in autoimmune diseases like arthritis, lupus, and multiple sclerosis—and in the process have won a prestigious prize.

Normally, the body’s immune system protects us from viruses, bacteria, and foreign substances. However, in autoimmune diseases, the immune system starts attacking tissues in the body instead.

Researchers had long tried to discover the cause of autoimmune diseases. But, Christopher Goodnow and David Nemazee, independently of each other, adopted a new approach.

They asked why we do not all develop these diseases. Their focus was on B cells which, together with white blood cells and T cells, are the building blocks of our complex immune system.

“They have given us a new and detailed understanding of the mechanisms that normally prevent faulty B cells from attacking tissues in the body, explaining why most of us are not affected by autoimmune diseases,” says Olle Kämpe, member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and chair of the Crafoord Prize committee that awarded the pair 6 million Swedish kronor ($600,000).

Neutralize B cells

In recent years, physicians have started to experiment by using existing drugs to neutralize B cells for patients with severe autoimmune diseases, including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, which has proven to be very effective at improving their quality of life.

Thanks to this year’s Crafoord Prize Laureates, we have gained fundamental new knowledge about what is happening in the immune system during autoimmune disease attacks.

“This also paves the way for development of new forms of therapies that eventually can cure these diseases—or might prevent them in the future,” said one professor of clinical immunology at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences...

More details from the video, since the article glosses over the particulars:

"The laureates discovered what is now called B cell tolerance.

When B cells develop in the bone marrow, not all of them are perfect. To remove the faulty ones, a mechanism starts, in which defective cells are programmed to destroy themself through apoptosis.

The laureates discovered two new mechanisms that are used if some of the bad cells are left. Re-editing, where the immune system alters the combination of receptors, and anergy, that silences B cells with self-reactive receptors.

The laureates were able to demonstrate that these mechanisms sometimes fail. This means that faulty B cells can cause an attack on the body's own tissues – leading to autoimmune diseases.

Thanks to the laureate’s discoveries, doctors like Anders Bengtsson soon felt able to start treating patients with lupus, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and many other autoimmune diseases, with medicines that eradicated B cells.

Anders Bengtsson: "I'm very happy that B cells has gotten so much attention because of the laureates. I have seen my patients getting so much better and getting a better life."

Autoimmune patient: "Today, I feel very good. I really have hope in the research that it will revolutionise things and perhaps even cure it all. That’s what I want, hope for, and believe in.""

-Article via Good News Network, April 6, 2025. Video via The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, January 29, 2025.

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I have twice DNF'd books about spirited historical women doing science-fantasy research adventures. Hopefully the third time's the charm?

This one was fun! Some pacing issues, IMHO, but not a DNF and I put the next book on hold.

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

Thank you for this addition!

I did a report on book banning once.

Actually, I did reports on book banning three separate times with three separate teachers, with three separate sets of parameters so I was able to write about the same topic in different ways, but this is specifically about the report I did in university. The actual specs for the report included that we were supposed to complete some kind of study or poll (this was not a science class). I put the questions out on a couple of forums I belonged to at the time and asked a few IRL friends as well. A lot of the questions were standard for this sort of thing, I think - were you ever assigned to read a banned book, did you ever read banned books on your own, did you read/were you assigned them BECAUSE they were banned or did you find out about them being banned later, what's your opinion on banning books, etc.

But there was one question I asked that ended up reshaping the entire thrust of my presentation: "Are there any books that you think SHOULD be banned, and if so, why?"

Here's the thing. Most of the forums I was posting on were fan spaces for a book series that, at the time, was one of the most banned/challenged books out there. It's a fandom that I have since entirely distanced myself from, that I one hundred percent do not recommend to anyone, that I will actively attempt to dissuade people from reading or talking about, and that I would like to not be popular anymore. I'm sure most of you reading this can guess which one I'm talking about (I won't name it or go into specifics because I don't want to trip any filters unnecessarily). But it was KNOWN that these books were banned in a lot of places. A lot of people wore the "I read banned books" badge with pride. I fully expected that the answer to that question would be a resounding "no" from the forums, and that I'd maybe get a few affirmative answers from one of the other spaces.

I was shocked. Not only did a lot of people come back with either "not exactly but I think we should keep [author] or [book] out of the hands of children" or "yes, [book]/anything by [author] should be banned because XYZPDQ", but not a single person who responded gave me the same answer. The only one I remember - keep in mind it's been almost twenty years - was that one person specifically said The Bone Collector, and for the "why do you think it should be banned" question, they only said, "No. I'm not explaining it. It's too horrible to even think about. Just believe me when I say nobody should ever be allowed to read this book."

I highlighted that last comment in my presentation, along with several other of my "favorite" official reasons for banning books - the Alabama school board that banned The Diary of Anne Frank in 1984 because it was "a real downer", the district that removed A Raisin in the Sun because it was "pornographic", the library that took Charlie and the Chocolate Factory out of circulation because it "might be hurtful to children without parents", and things of that nature - and pointed out that all of these were the same thing. This was somebody saying "I don't like this, therefore nobody should read it, and I shouldn't have to explain why." I also pointed out that if you can't give a good reason, the whole thing falls apart, and then I quoted "Smut" by Tom Lehrer:

Go back to that paragraph I mentioned earlier, about those books that I no longer recommend to anyone. Notice how I phrased that. I don't recommend them. I will tell you all the reasons why I don't think you should buy them. I will tell you all the problems with the author, with the franchise, with the writing. I wish they were out of print, I wish they were deeply unpopular, I wish nobody would ever read them again.

But I still won't advocate for banning them.

It's so easy to twist a justification. Look at what I quoted up there! A Raisin in the Sun was banned for being "pornographic". One of the websites I used as a source responded to that accusation with "Did they read the same play I did?" At the time, I thought the comment was funny. Now, twenty years later, I realize: It was a buzzword. It was a convenient label. At the time of the challenge, just saying "it's pornographic" was enough. Obviously you're not some kind of sicko who wants to hear about all the pornographic details, are you? Freak! That's pornography! And they're teaching it in schools! We should get rid of it!

A Raisin in the Sun, for anyone who didn't study it at any point or read it (or watch the movie, which was very good), is a play/movie about a black family in Chicago in the 1960s. The family matriarch has been in domestic service for years, but she's just received a very large insurance payment from her husband's death and is retiring. Wanting to give her family, especially her young grandson, a better life, she goes out and buys a house...in an otherwise exclusively white neighborhood. The head of the homeowner's association (essentially) comes to visit them and offers to pay them a substantial amount of money to not move into the neighborhood, because segregation isn't officially a thing and they can't legally stop them from moving in, but they don't want them there. There's a lot more that goes on in the play, and I highly recommend you go and read it, but the point is that there is nothing sexual or titillating in the entire thing. The closest we get is a scene where the daughter (Beneatha, a college student) is gifted a traditional African dress from her boyfriend, who's Nigerian, and he shows her how to put it on over the clothes she's already wearing, and maybe the scene where the daughter-in-law (Ruth, a laundress) accidentally reveals that, having found out she's pregnant, she's planning to have an abortion rather than bring another child into the world/have another mouth to feed.

It's not pornographic. But someone didn't want it taught in schools, so they called it that to get it banned.

It's so easy to twist labels. If you, a liberal, agree that books with X trait are okay to ban, the people who don't want books to exist will find a way to say they have X trait, and then what are you going to do, admit that you like that sort of thing? Sicko! Freak! Pervert!

You don't have to like the book, or the author, or the topic. But if you're advocating for banning them entirely, you're functionally a conservative.

People have called The Diary of Anne Frank child porn (which is now more properly called CSAM - child sexual assault material) because in the book Anne discusses her own sexuality and masturbation habits in a very direct and relatively detailed way. And since she was 14 and thus a child (except 14 year olds are not children, they're adolescents) this constituted disgusting vile child porn.

Which is ridiculous any way you look at it, but that's the justification many people have used to get that book banned. We can't let people know that minors have any kind of sexual awareness or feelings, now, can we?

Thinking about how Anakin canonically both touched grass and got laid and was still Like That.

he was even at the club! and yet

Should I make a BlueSky, or is it as annoying as bird site?

alright, I'll give it a try. hopefully some real people follow me, it's just bots right now.

Boat media is about isolation and self imposed order, and all it takes to uphold that order. Boat media goes: what if there was a model of society On This Vessel, and there were Rituals to make sure it functions.

how i'm handling my students using AI to write papers:

-don't accuse them on using AI from the get-go and instead ask them to informally define all the huge words that they used in their essay which i know they don't know the meaning of

-ask to see their original file where they "wrote" the essay. go to version history to see if it was just copy and pasted and then just edited a bit. i keep an eye out for the shit like "certainly! here's an essay about...."

-if they own up to it, they can re-do the assignment for a higher grade even if there will be an automatic penalty. if they don't, i process it like plagiarism and get my supervisor involved.

And this is much better than the immediate accusations. Some students have a good vocabulary. Stop accusing them of faking their essays without proof, and this is a good way to check.

chappell roan in the mushroom kingdom voice: l-e-t-s-a-g-o, mama mia mario

You better start getting comfortable with the idea of an extremely broad anti-fascist coalition that includes tons of people who you strongly disagree with, because buddy, you're in one

have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

here’s mine

ah here’s the link guys