Christopher Cox

Good morning. I wrote about what happened when the tallest dam in the United States nearly failed, and whether it could happen again: nytimes.com/2023/06/22/mag…

@HeatherMallick I had no idea it was rare!

From this excellent piece by Rafil: curbed.com/article/nyc-id…

One of my favorite paragraphs of the year:

@culturepulp The boxset idea is wild! (Also, Chris Heath—who isn't on Twitter—wrote the story. I was just an accomplice.)

It’s a great and occasionally surprising longform read by @cwhe , w/ sympathies and mild disgust shifting moment to moment, and I kind of want someone to release all the different books, essays, poems and unpublished manuscripts in a boxset with this piece as the introduction

“Somewhere in the void between ‘Write what you know’ and ‘Do no harm’ sits a whole world of possibility.” Four college pals all chronicled the same infidelity from four very different perspectives. Plays a bit like Fleetwood Mac, only w/ midlist authors. vulture.com/article/hannah…

@thomasbeller And then Ann Beattie shows up!

@cwhe Many incredible things in this, especially the fact that all this sounds like an Ann Beattie story. Vintage Thunderbird, for example. Also, I want to read Nights and Weekends.

@sweatybikeman @meaghano well, when you put it that way...

@PilumPress fair enough

@cwhe Je refuse!

@meaghano Did you read the whole thing?

@cwhe narrator: she did not see why

@PilumPress Just for fun!

@cwhe Honest question. (I've been frozen for a few decades). Who are these people and why should we give a flip?

@schwarz Thank you!

Thank you to @cwhe for writing about some EXTREMELY EXCITING advances in immunotherapy treatments for cancer. I know from direct family experience that decades of cancer research are now paying off & making it possible to extend & save people's lives. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

@StasLazarev @intelligencer I do wish I had as many characters to play with here in X as you do! In any case, thanks for reading.

@StasLazarev @intelligencer The strongest statement that these early results themselves are representative of a breakthrough comes from Carl June, who is more qualified than I to make that judgment, but again it's held up against all the other information in the article about the limits of what we know.

nymag.com/intelligencer/… I find such articles in popular media irresponsible. Media continues to overhype cancer treatments without any credible, high-quality evidence of efficacy. @intelligencer describes CAR-T therapy for glioblastoma as "a revolution," "breakthrough," and suggests it is "changing cancer treatment forever." However, there is no good data to support these claims. The @NEJM study (PMID 38477966) that this article in @intelligencer bases its claims on involved only 3 patients. Tumors did shrink quickly after CAR-T infusion but regrew in 2 of the 3 patients within just 3 months (!!!). This article does NOT mention it. Choosing what information to report and what to conceal is bad journalism. It is concerning when media claims treatments from a 3-subject study are "changing cancer treatment forever." It's plain disingenuous and give patients false impression and false hope. Inadvertently, such articles serve as a promotional tool for a treatment intervention (i.e. CAR-T therapy) known to be one of the most expensive in oncology, with costs ranging between $500,000 and $1 million. While I truly hope for meaningful improvements in CAR-T therapy through rigorous large-scale multi-institutional trials, it currently remains an experimental treatment with efficacy that is not yet established. I understand that journalists (@cwhe) may not have enough knowledge to critically appraise data, but that is exactly why they shouldn't use clickbait language to overstate the efficacy of highly experimental therapies.

@michaelbsacks Thank you!

@cwhe Incredible story

Brain tumors shrinking overnight. I wrote about it: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

All feet are trochees, including trochees, except for anapests, which are dactyls.