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Idea Whose Time Has Come
Drawing inspiration from a 1988 Saturday Night Live bit, Peter Thiel et al are proposing and funding an athletic competition wherein the competitors can take a slew of performance-enhancing drugs.
From an entertainment perspective, yeah would be hilarious to watch. But from a legal perspective this is pretty sketchy. Most countries ban the use of these drugs without a prescription. Are the athletes all going to live and train in Moldova? Sounds like a blast.
Belly Up
We like seeing an interesting stock ticker symbol over here and whenever a funny one surfaces, we tend to love it or hate it. Fractyl Health went public and reserved the ticker: GUTS.
So, they must be totally focused on solving some gut issue. Yeah, that gut issue known as Type 2 Diabetes. In a way, overfilling of the guts does cause it for most people, so sort of accurate.
This is a double whammy too - not only is it a cool ticker symbol, but it's also a drug company going public on the back of nothing. None of their products have been put into a single human. None of their technology is particularly new.
#notmymoney
Periodic Tables
A layout scheme we occasionally see in science settings is the good ol' periodic table. Companies may have a standard one on the wall in their lab, or they may use it as a design element on their website.
Here we have a Team page using peoples' initials in place of a chemical symbol, which looks alright, but is a bit risky if they hire someone named Frank Underwood. If he interviewed for the job and didn't get it, could he sue on the grounds that they denied him solely because they didn't want to redesign the website? Who knows. But we do know they aren't the only company with that layout idea.
Other than the team page, a periodic table is sometimes used as the website menu. Allosteric tried that, which unfortunately ends up being very boring looking.
Let's end on a more aesthetically pleasing use for a periodic table, featuring Popcorn the dog.
VenomAid
Is this company selling the worst drink ever? Thankfully, no.
They're in the snakebite diagnostic business up in Denmark. And before you start acting like that's a weird place for a snakebite diagnostic company to start up, they do indeed have one snake that is venomous - the European Adder.
But it hasn’t killed anyone in Denmark in quite some time. So, in a way, this is a bit like a company in Ireland working on solar technology. Sure, they can do it. But aren't there better places?
Ought to be Illegal
In biotech, monoclonal antibodies have been main stream for years now and they're universally abbreviated as mAbs.
Therefore, it should be strictly forbidden to name your drug product MABS-139 when it’s not a monoclonal antibody!
Furthermore, this company names all their products MABS-XXX and adding to the confusion, some of them are indeed antibodies, though they are antibody-drug conjugates, aka ADCs.
Why can’t they be like Iprogren, who has a product named ADC-012 that is actually an ADC?
We demand truth in pipelines!
Deficit of Grammys
We know you all were in suspense about the Grammy Awards. Specifically, you were waiting to see if Rocket Pharmaceuticals CEO Gaurav Shah would add another trophy to his shelf. Alas, he and his wife will have to wait another year.
Their song “Abundance of Millets” lost out in the Best Global Music Performance category. The winner there was "Pashto" by Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer & Zakir Hussain, featuring Rakesh Chaurasia. It's not even a song, but a rambling instrumental, though it’s not too bad once you get past the first two minutes of nothing.
Logo Roast
There are many ways to get a logo cheaply designed nowadays. You can hire someone overseas on Fiverrrrr. You can create a Logo Tournament, which seems pretty cool.
Or you can call up your middle school’s art teacher who will have the kids whip something up.
NANO MRNA, who went all caps even though it’s always written as 'mRNA', must have opted for the local middle school with their dreamy, multicolored, tilted logo.
3/10
No
Last week there was a sensational article about Alzheimer’s being communicable. Since people only read headlines, they didn’t get to the part where it’s communicable if someone grinds up an affected pituitary gland and injects it into you.
Not really something the layman should worry about.
This week’s junk Alzheimer’s finding is that picking your nose will kill you.
Ok, it wasn’t that extreme, but it was almost as dumb. There was no actual science – just scientists guessing that since Alzheimer’s is neuroinflammatory and so are infections, and since your fingers have germs and your nose is close to your brain then picking your nose might give you Alzheimer’s.
The biggest bulls**t indicator is the question mark in the article's title. As many of us know, any time a news source asks a question in its title, the answer is 'No'.
"Does drinking wine extend lifespan?"
"Will coffee shorten your life?"
"Will the Lions win the Super Bowl?"
No, picking your nose will almost certainly not give you Alzheimer's.
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