Luke Ume: today proved you can literally buy anything off of taobao
L: we have an office cat now, a stray my boss got off the street
L: we bought a rabies vaccine off taobao
L: for like 30 rmb
L: and they're like do we send it to you and you give the shot?
L: we're like uh, nah
L: i mean it's easy to give a shot like this to animals
L: but it's hard to do it to your own pets
L: so for 20 rmb the lady drove to our office at 10pm, gave the shot and left
L: [she] was mad pretty too

beijing is the best.

"But I suspected that, like anything, the secret was to begin."

-Moxie Marlinspike

At least upload talks a week later or something.  People aren't buying the thousand dollar tickets to conferences to get access to the info presented, they're paying to hang out with the other people there, do the workshops, etc.

Organizers, your speakers will give better talks if they know the entire internet is watching. Your event will be more important, more influential, and will have more of an impact on the rest of the world.  You'll get even better attendance next year, too.

Speakers, if you're going to give a talk somewhere, ask the organizers whether they will be uploading the talks, and if not, whether they will allow you to record yours and do it yourself.  Unless you really believe everyone that matters is in the room with you, you need to do this.  And if you do, I'd like to introduce you to some of my friends in Beijing, who have never been to a conference in America. 

A: ...During a routine feeding study, however, we found that less than 5% of springtails (a soil-dwelling arthropod) survived after two weeks' of eating the fungus Laccaria bicolor, a fungus that is known to associate with the roots of Pinus strobus,  the Eastern White Pine.

All dead springtails were internally infected by L. bicolor, and a careful observation of the microcosms revealed that the fungus immobilized the animals before infecting them.

B: So the fungus eats the insects?

A: We radioactively labeled nitrogen, the main chemical nutrient derived from the insect's corpse, to be able to track its progress through the micro-ecosystem involved.  Up to 25% of the nitrogen in the fungus's plant partner was radioactive.

B: So the fungus traps and kills the insects, and passes their nutrients to the tree?

A: In order to break down the corpse of the insect, the fungus needs to make protein-cutting enzymes, which like all proteins, are made of carbon.  The tree gives the fungus the carbon in the form of sugar, allowing the fungus to produce these digestive enzymes and pass nitrogen to the plant.

B: ...

"In 1958, Democratic Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind."