While I’m obsessing about cooking (in a winter funk) allow me to share my two favorite recipes of all time...
1. This date cake. No, srsly. And I am a “dark chocolate or nothing” devotee. It takes some work (and a food processor for the dates) but it’s without compare; perfection.
It’s a Karen Mordechai recipe from Sunday Suppers. Couldn’t find online except this reprint from Smitten Kitchen: smittenkitchen.com/2014/11/date-c…
(Dates are super sweet, but rich in magnesium, potassium & iron. They are positively narcotic in this cake—it’s like chocolate soufflé or tiramisu, only better.)
(Note: you do have to use a few tablespoons of whiskey for the toffee syrup topping. And you have to use heavy whipping cream & whip your own cream for the topping, with no sugar, for the contrast.)
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Let’s remind ourselves of what was so bad about delta, what made it so much more pathogenic: it was fusogenic. Via something called “syncytia.” Syncytia fuses cells. It turns your lungs into a glump. BA.2 is also fusogenic via syncytia.
And BA.2 is more contagious than omicron. It is basically the Pi variant: more contagious than omicron, as fusogenic as delta.
NONE of our monoclonal antibody treatments work against BA.2. Which should give a clue about how well current vaccines will work. And prior infection—even with omicron—provides trash immunity too.
Great. The dark red you see is where I live. Also, where omicron started—the Javits anime convention last Nov. Hello, BA.2 explosion
These midtown zipcodes include the central NYC transportation hub: the 42nd st station sees the most action, and trains from every borough feed there
Meaning: everyone who lives elsewhere in nyc but works in midtown gets off at 42nd. The area directly around this station is Times Square, tourist capital of hell.
WHAT ARE T CELLS ANYWAY & WHERE ARE THEY? Are they lying in wait like superheroes, to save all the days? No...
“T lymphocytes originate from bone marrow progenitors that migrate to the thymus for maturation, selection, and subsequent export to the periphery. Peripheral T cells comprise different subsets including naïve T cells, which have the capacity to respond to new antigens..”
... memory T cells that derive from previous antigen activation and maintain long-term immunity, and regulatory T (Treg) cells which keep immune responses in check.”