Another Alzheimer's drug slowed clinical decline in early-stage patients, but safety issues loom.
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Josh Nathan-Kazis
@joshnathankazis
Covering healthcare companies for Barron's. Opinions my own. Subscribe for updates: joshnathankazis.substack.com
New York, NYJoined July 2009
Josh Nathan-Kazis’s Tweets
This is very cool, and seems like a great argument for not having parrots as pets.
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This should have been obvious, but no, our story naming the Pentagon/Discord leaker didn't help the feds find him. They already knew at least a day before we identified him.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
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Do we actually know if the feds knew about Teixeira before the Times found him? The apparently incorrect reports of a Fort Bragg connection, sourced to unnamed officials, seem to suggest that they were looking elsewhere?
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I mean, the guy's name is Jacob Garlick? Is there a chance that this whole thing was a bit?
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This denouement makes 's video from last week on the auction for the building, already probably my favorite NY1 segment ever, an absolute work of art.
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On this Triangle Shirtwaist anniversary, something I did a few anniversaries ago on union that grew in fire's ashes: forward.com/articles/13601
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I wonder about despair, nihilism in the face of approaching very-intelligent AI. Why start on a physics graduate degree, say, if the computer is going to be better than you at physics before you’re mid-career? Why learn to write? Why do anything?
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The #Marburg outbreak in Equatorial Guinea is quite a bit bigger than we've been led to believe up till now. Nine confirmed cases, 20 probables. All but 2 of those people are dead; the epi links among some cases are unclear.
Not great.
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Really good story.
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NEW: A story about how rare books became a bona fide asset class for Orthodox Jews and the upstart auction house that made it happen
jta.org/2023/03/21/uni
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Pfizer's $43 billion acqusition of Seagen is predicated on its estimate that Seagen will earn $10 billion in revenues in 2030, a couple billion dollars ahead of Wall Street expectations.
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Lots of things to worry about this morning, but here's something I wrote that ran over the weekend about why virologists aren't losing sleep over avian flu: This "basically seems to be the same thing we have been facing since the early 2000s."
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Still, the ETF that tracks biotech (the XBI) is now down 5.3% today, after falling 3% yesterday.
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"Biotech companies… are dependent on their access to cash,” one analyst says. That means it's not great if their bank fails. Today, lots of biotechs are rushing to tell investors that they don't have deposits at SVB.
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SVB failure setting off big worries for biotech sector, where the bank plays a big role. ETF that tracks biotech stocks down 3% yesterday, another 2.6% today.
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There is a tendency, in this season of Covid anniversaries, to read #FlacoTheOwl as a pandemic metaphor. You know: Flaco’s doing fine, and maybe we’ve all still got it in us to fly around and kill rats, or whatever we used to do.
But I mean, come on. 1/6 joshnathankazis.substack.com/p/a-bad-omen-o
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Some leaders may be criticizing Netanyahu more openly than usual, but I imagine communities, institutions, etc., remain very split. And I think it’s time to think about what happens if the intra-Jewish political violence that Israelis keep warning about spills over.
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I wonder if the framing of the recent mainstream coverage of American Jewish discord over judicial reform, emphasizing rare criticism of the Israeli government by some leaders, misses what seems to me to be the real risk of conflict here if there’s intra-Jewish fighting there.
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Like, if there were intra-Jewish war in Israel, both sides would have partisans in the U.S. Not just national Jewish institutions, but also communities, synagogues, schools, would be split. If the sides are physically fighting in Israel, what happens on the ground here?
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In the winter of the year 43, early in the reign of the emperor Claudius, an eagle-owl appeared in the center of Rome. This was the worst possible omen, and 1,980 years ago today, a ritual purification was held for the city. 3/6
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The spectacular print of the eagle-owl and its owlets at the top of this thread comes from the collections of the New York Public Library. It's from John Gould's "Birds of Great Britain," published between 1862 and 1873.
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I worry, though, for the rest of us, and I can’t help but wonder what’s about to go wrong; what disaster Flaco’s appearance foretells. A world war? A plague? A flat tire? It all seems possible!
Anyway, read the whole essay here. 6/6
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I’m not necessarily proposing a ritual purification of New York City, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt? I hope Flaco lives. I hope he keeps moving north, to Fort Tryon Park and then Inwood Hill Park, and then over the river and up and up and up until he’s hunting moose calves. 5/6
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The ritual seems to have worked. Cladius survived another decade, the empire took Britain that year, and Rome itself was spared the sack for nearly another four centuries. 4/6
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In the winter of the year 43, early in the reign of the emperor Claudius, an eagle-owl appeared in the center of Rome. This was the worst possible omen, and 1,980 years ago today, a ritual purification was held for the city. 3/6
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That would be nice, if Flaco were a symbol of post-pandemic renewal; a herald of some approaching day when every March doesn't remind us of that March.
The nature of the eagle-owl, however, is not to serve as that sort of portent. 2/6
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There is a tendency, in this season of Covid anniversaries, to read #FlacoTheOwl as a pandemic metaphor. You know: Flaco’s doing fine, and maybe we’ve all still got it in us to fly around and kill rats, or whatever we used to do.
But I mean, come on. 1/6 joshnathankazis.substack.com/p/a-bad-omen-o
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Simpler times.
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Do I clean my cell phone with a Clorox wipe? Or Purell? Or do I throw it into the East River?
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"Pliny relates the eagle-owl’s appearance in Rome in the year 43 as a historical incident, but he himself was a student in Rome at the time, and perhaps he even saw with his own eyes the ominous bird, the terror it spread, and the desperate rituals that followed"
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I've spent the weeks obsessing over #FlacotheOwl, glued to @BirdCentralPark's feed. But here's what's been bothering me: Why is Flaco's past a blank? Was he born wild? So I looked into it. What I found makes his story even more impressive. 1/6 joshnathankazis.substack.com/p/a-bad-omen-o #birdcpp
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In the year 43, an eagle-owl appeared in the center of Rome. This was the worst possible omen, so they ritually purified the city. It seemed to work.
Last month, an eagle-owl appeared in the center of Manhattan. So far, no purification has been ordered.
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The upshot of all this is that that evening in early February was the first time in more than three decades that Flaco or any of Flaco’s ancestor-owls had spread their wings and flapped away.
The full story is here. joshnathankazis.substack.com/p/a-bad-omen-o 6/6
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The parentage of Xena's mother, Martina, is also unclear, though she seems to have been born captive in the U.S. in 1995. Flaco is one of fifteen of Xena and Watson's offspring as of 2017. 5/6
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Flaco's father, Watson, was born to 35 and 36 in Oklahoma in 1998. Flaco's mother, Xena, was born in Missouri in 2002. Her father, Sinbad, arrived in Missouri in 1990, when he was a year old. His parentage and background is unclear. 4/6
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Flaco's earliest-known ancestors appear to be a group of four wild-born owls imported to Canada in the mid-to-late 1980s. Those four owls, among them, begat two of Flaco's grandparents, known as 35 and 36, in 1990. 3/6
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There's an official registry that tracks the lineages of all captive Eurasian eagle-owls in the U.S. I found Flaco there, and Flaco's whole family, going back generations. All of Flaco's parents and grandparents have spent their lives in captivity. 2/6
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I've spent the weeks obsessing over #FlacotheOwl, glued to 's feed. But here's what's been bothering me: Why is Flaco's past a blank? Was he born wild? So I looked into it. What I found makes his story even more impressive. 1/6 joshnathankazis.substack.com/p/a-bad-omen-o #birdcpp
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I found the official record that tracks the lineages of captive Eurasian eagle-owls in the U.S., and identified Flaco’s parents and grandparents. All six were captive-born.
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Some thoughts on Flaco the Owl, the emperor Claudius, "The Once and Future King," the pandemic, the naming of captive Eurasian eagle-owls in North American zoos, augury, and the AZA Regional Studbook.
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