Hacker News: Herodotus38

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)"

Herodotus38 — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:08:09 +0000

Great song. I will check out that version. I first heard a version by The Furies.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "The rise of eyes began with just one"

Herodotus38 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 04:02:04 +0000

Thank you. For those interested the paper this article is based on is:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)...?

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:53:23 +0000

There are resources that publish homilies for priests to give. Here is an example for English speakers.

https://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/liturgy/sunday-resou...

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?"

Herodotus38 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:04:57 +0000

My grandfather taught me the basics of using it and I still have his, but haven’t used it in decades and need a refresher.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Baffling purple honey found only in North Carolina"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 05:54:05 +0000

There’s a hopefully unrelated concept called purple urine bag syndrome I have seen. Not completely understood either but this paper thinks due to a combination of dietary tryptophan breakdown from constipation and colonic E coli load, urinary bacteria, and reaction with the plastic tubing of the catheter and bag.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3894016/

New comment by Herodotus38 in "How many video games include a marriage proposal? At least one"

Herodotus38 — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:47:53 +0000

I remember that video! 14 years ago it inspired me, to program a text adventure game proposal for my wife (still happily married). Thanks!

New comment by Herodotus38 in "New antibiotic targets IBD and AI predicted how it would work"

Herodotus38 — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 04:54:18 +0000

Not directly since we all have it. It’s a bit confusing from the article but basically they discovered an antibiotic which can target a narrower spectrum than before which will minimize messing up your natural flora and allow drug resistant enterobacter (e coli is a main species, but not the only one) to be over represented. There is an association with ibd and. microbiomes that have e coli over-represented. And there are some subtypes of e coli that appear to be associated, see:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29141957/

New comment by Herodotus38 in "The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping"

Herodotus38 — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 17:05:55 +0000

I didn’t see any mention in the article about the rise of obesity as a possible cause.

Aside from the social aspects which could be debated, older obese adult men are more likely to have medical conditions that would decrease their ability to have sex.

I think the other reasons they posted are valid but was expecting a comment on that.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning"

Herodotus38 — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:33:05 +0000

Ahh I bet that is where the confusion is. I am a physician and I have used methylene blue in severe shock and methemoglobinemia but I was a bit worried the parent comment believed it’s a valid CO treatment.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "New protein therapy shows promise as antidote for carbon monoxide poisoning"

Herodotus38 — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 15:26:28 +0000

Hello, I would be interested if you could give evidence that methylene blue "works great" for carbon monoxide poisoning in humans.

It is not the standard of care in any guidelines I can find from any country. There is a paper from 2018 out of china showing some benefit in a rat model: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bcpt.12940

New comment by Herodotus38 in "A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union"

Herodotus38 — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 19:16:33 +0000

No they were in college in the 80s when things were more open, but Andrei’s point was that compared to a lot of other sciences, molecular biology like cloning genes was decades behind because of the past.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 02:23:03 +0000

Thanks for the follow up I couldn’t find it!

New comment by Herodotus38 in "A brief history of the absurdities of the Soviet Union"

Herodotus38 — Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:21:40 +0000

This may be covered but one absurdity that I came across was https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

When I was an undergraduate working in a molecular biology lab my two mentors, Andrei and Svetlana were Russian emigrants. Andrei taught me, in the 00s, that he couldn’t do the level of molecular biology in Russia because the downstream effects decades later put them far behind in the technical and cultural knowhow. Genetics was banned.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Just how bad are we at treating age-related diseases?"

Herodotus38 — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:00:40 +0000

Interesting, I wouldn't classify IPF (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis) as a disease of aging in the same way as the other diseases (MASH, Alzheimer's, etc..) like the author did here. Although I do appreciate the intent to show how limited we are. It's kind of like how cancer is clearly a disease of aging but it wasn't included in here because people think of it differently.

I treat a lot of old people, and IPF is at least a couple orders of magnitude rarer than the other conditions listed. Age does play a role because it shows up when people are older, but there is something else at play in it (autoimmune, genetics) that makes people hit the unlucky lottery.

I bring this up so that people reading this don't conflate normal aging related changes to the lungs with IPF. IPF is a horrible disease that kills the person in a few years (2-5 after diagnosis).

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Dilbert creator Scott Adams says he will die soon from same cancer as Joe Biden"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 19 May 2025 22:04:36 +0000

It should be patient dependent. Screening everyone is not currently thought to be useful but those with risk factors should be screened after a discussion of risks/benefits. Your father having prostate cancer (especially if he was diagnosed before age 65) is a risk and I would advocate for it, especially if it something you are worried about and you understand that sometimes a PSA can be falsely elevated in benign conditions, which may mean you get a biopsy that ultimately wasn’t necessary, and the potential risks that could have.

For a good short overview: https://www.cancer.gov/types/prostate/psa-fact-sheet

And read “is the PSA test recommended…”

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Spaced repetition systems have gotten better"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 19 May 2025 04:22:15 +0000

I haven't seen it mentioned yet with CTRL-f and I haven't used Anki in a while, but has there been work put into modifications in Anki or other programs using spaced repetition along with interleaved practice to also see if that improves studying.

Interleaved practice explainer: https://openlearning.mit.edu/mit-faculty/research-based-lear...

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Fluoxetine promotes metabolic defenses to protect from sepsis-induced lethality"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 19:03:52 +0000

I am also not your internist but wanted to upvote and second this comment. Op mentions being 29 years old, but should have a gi tract evaluation. Not necessarily now when dealing with the bacteremia but should be discussed.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Ironclad link between red meat and cancer identified"

Herodotus38 — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 16:51:21 +0000

Here is a direct link to the research article for those looking in the comments: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38885349/

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Caltech Develops First Noninvasive Method to Continually Measure Blood Pressure"

Herodotus38 — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 15:51:51 +0000

Aside from the home use, If this could be proven to be just as accurate as arterial lines this would be a huge benefit to patients in the ICU or undergoing major surgery where continuous blood pressure is needed. I hate putting in A-lines.

New comment by Herodotus38 in "Starting Hospice"

Herodotus38 — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 06:47:02 +0000

Thank you for your posts. They meant a lot to me and I will use them to try and help others. They have helped me.