Erik Franks

I can't figure out if vaccines work or not. Tough one. Need Sherlock Holmes on this one.

The other thing I've learned: the Vision Pro has perhaps the most passionate fans of any Apple product on social media. They want to see the product they dropped four grand on -- or their spatial app/content businesses -- succeed. Obviously. Apple will succeed here.

The myth that meat is manly isn't new. Just ask @Schwarzenegger. "I lived in that world,” he says. “This is great, great marketing for the meat industry. But you’ve got to understand. It’s marketing. It’s not based on reality.” vegnews.com/men-meat-healt…

Pandemics have killed millions of people throughout history. How many deaths were caused by different pandemics, and how have researchers estimated their death tolls?

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▶️ Live Now! Tune into this year's Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium spring meeting. In partnership with @JHUAPL, hear from NASA and industry experts as they discuss @NASAMoonBase and technologies to support long-term exploration on the lunar surface: go.nasa.gov/4uafDWZ

At the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium meeting this afternoon, where people who have spent the last six years studying the infrastructure needed for a lunar base are having their moment.

⭐️ @projectceti: New Paper! “The phonology of sperm whale coda vowels” shows whales produce vowel-like sounds organized in patterns, akin to human phonology. Learn more here: doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2…

Los Angeles treating a 2.25-mile airport shuttle (delayed by 3 years, $880 million over budget) like it's a space launch

@LunCoSim I’ll be out there. Coming from LA.

🚀 Urgent help needed! Earlier we shared that our project was accepted for a lightning talk at @JHUAPL Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) Spring Meeting. Now we also have a separate opportunity to put up LORS poster at the conference. Our goal is to get visibility so that as many people as possible learn about what we’re doing. This is also to acknowledge @OfficialMoonDAO who sponsored us and made this possible. Event details: · April 29–30 – Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory’s Kossiakoff Center, Laurel, Maryland So if anyone here is going to LSIC in Hopkins (or knows someone who is) and can help bring the poster – please reply or DM, ASAP And please share this message with anyone who might be attending. Time is extremely tight. Thanks! 🙏

At LSIC this week presenting PERDEX in the Tech Showcase. Percussive excavation + rapid enclosure of intact icy regolith → reduced surface area, reduced heating, reduced volatile loss. Key step toward scalable lunar resource extraction. #LSIC #ISRU #MoonBase

@united respectfully: Can you also remove any passenger that has their window shade down during taxi, takeoff, ascent, descent, or landing? Or make them switch to middle seat instantaneously if caught? Thanks for considering.

In a world that often feels deeply polarized, it is rare to find a topic where almost everyone agrees. The treatment of farm animals is one of them. Surveys across many countries show that a strong majority of people, regardless of their diet, oppose common practices in animal agriculture. In the chart you can see survey data from the UK. Given these surveys, and with the increasing availability of plant-based meat alternatives, one might expect people in these countries to be shifting away from consuming animal products. But the data shows a different story. At a global level, meat consumption is not only high but also increasing. Each year, hundreds of billions of land animals, fish, and crustaceans are farmed and killed to produce food. There is a clear gap between what people want — meat produced without suffering — and what the food system delivers. Understanding this gap is the first step to closing it. In a new article, Pablo Rosado makes the case that one of the biggest opportunities of our generation is to build a system where the food we eat reflects the values we already hold.

Expanding into space and taking care of Earth aren't competing priorities — they're the same priority seen from different altitudes.

Pete Davidson shows off nearly bare arms in Las Vegas after dropping $200K to remove his tattoos trib.al/k8UilQZ

Death rates for cervical cancer in the United Kingdom have fallen by 80% since 1950— Cervical cancer death rates among women in the United Kingdom have fallen by around 80% since 1950. You can see this reduction in the chart. This progress happened for a couple of key reasons. The first was the introduction of population-level screening programs in 1988. Across the UK, women are invited to get a regular smear test to detect precancerous changes or cervical cancer cases early, when treatment has much better odds of success. Another, and more recent innovation, which could put the UK on the path to eradicating cervical cancer completely, is the rollout of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. This protects someone from the HPV infection, which can later develop into cervical cancer. In schools across the country, girls in their early teens are offered the HPV vaccine, effectively offering them long-lasting protection. I was one of the first cohorts of girls in the UK to receive this, and it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for. The UK is not alone in its progress: a number of countries have managed to reduce cervical cancer death rates in recent decades. (This Data Insight was written by @_HannahRitchie.)

NIH slowdown hit women hardest. Five years of gain erased in ~1.5 cycles. Female PI-led R01 grants ⇣938 with $444M gone. This chart is the cleanest capture of this loss. Cuts landed where women lead: breast, ovarian, and gynecologic cancers. Dig deeper & the gap keeps widening: ▫️ women start small: $0.94M vs $1.4M for men ▫️ larger losses: 57.9% vs 48.2% for men ▪️ early-career hit hardest: 59.8% of affected assistant professor grants are women led This is how you reset a generation: ↳ cut funding → fewer labs ↳ fewer labs → fewer leaders ↳ fewer leaders → fewer women at the top Pipelines don't bounce back, they just thin out silently. If you are a woman in science, now is the time to pay attention Read more about this in first comment below = = = = = Source: NIH RePORTER via Jori (@jori_health) Method: PI gender-inference is non-trivial. Jori classified 91% algorithmically, then we manually reviewed profiles to classify another 6% (ie, ~ 3% remain unclassified). This chart reflects the 97% classified names with high confidence. = = = = =

1/ In the AI/robotics revolution, the biggest winner is actually going to be @ycombinator—because the world is about to need 100x more founders. And YC creates great founders at scale. Sounds weird but hear me out for a hot second 🧵👇

Those eating plant-based diets average about twice the estimated daily protein requirement. The myth that proteins from plants are incomplete, necessitating protein combining, was debunked decades ago by the scientific community. bit.ly/2HRBT4r

I think globally crowdsourced space missions are actually a pretty interesting model, and potentially a real accelerant for the space industry. Not being paid to post this, I just think it’s worth drawing attention to: @OfficialMoonDAO is running a crowdfund to send Frank White to space — the person who coined the term “Overview Effect” in 1987, despite never having been to space himself. There’s also an open second seat. If you contribute, you can help govern who gets it, or try for it yourself. If the minimum isn’t reached, contributions are refunded. I just think this is a neat experiment in whether decentralized communities can help fund real human spaceflight. Campaign closes in 12 days: moondao.com/overview