“The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson

As a genetics researcher, I needed to get my hands on the new biography of Dr. Jennifer Doudna. She’s most well known for being one of the two scientists that discovered the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9. This revolution cannot really be overstated, it has made manipulating DNA much easier, and ushered in a new age of genetics. Plus she won a historic Nobel prize with her collaborator Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier recently. So, I really wanted to read about her and figure out what her path through science was like.

To be honest, the biography itself was a bit of a mixed bag for me. It’s written by Walter Isaacson who has profiled many great figures in his writing over the years. What kept throwing me off though was how he kept inserting himself into the narrative. Isaacson kept discussing his own impressions and experiences with the subjects or just the topic of genetics which continually took me out of the subject of the book.

In all fairness, as a non-scientist, many readers probably appreciated his self-inserts to explain his personal experiences and opinions. But I can’t help but think that there’s a way to discuss this without mentioning himself as an author so frequently. At the end of the day, I’m not reading this book for Isaacson’s thoughts, I want to read about Doudna!

Isaacson does do a terrific job explaining all of these complex concepts to just about any reader. There’s full chapters on the science behind these concepts and how it changes over the years. There’s also further chapters on the ethical implications of these innovations and all of the different people and players who have impacted it over the years. At times, it leans more towards a profile of the field rather than a book about Doudna, but I did find it all interesting and enlightening to show the world that she was working in.

Of course the pandemic features heavily into the book. It starts with Doudna calling a meeting of her collaborators to prepare for the pandemic, and ends with vaccines being developed. I can’t help but think that the ending is more of a cliffhanger than anything else. The whole field will have changed in several years, and I’ll probably have to buy another book. Doudna is still working and publishing, and I’m sure that she is far from done revolutionizing the field. We shall see.

To sum up, this is a really well written book about genetics and science that’s accessible to anyone, whether you are a scientist or not. But it’s not entirely a biography of Doudna as a profile of the current field of genetics and one man’s impression of it. If you haven’t read The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee I would probably recommend reading that first, since it isn’t as up to date as this book. The two, regardless, go really well together, and we love spreading knowledge about science and genes!

This Is Beautiful: The Owl House Season 2

 I don't think I've written about this show before, but "The Owl House" is an incredible animated series from Disney that is gay! Because let's be honest, that's why we watch children's cartoons. It's for that sweet queer content.

The first season covered how Luz, an imaginative Latina teen, finds a portal that leads her to the Boiling Isles. Here magic and witches and mystical creatures all exist! Just like in Luz's favorite stories. Over the course of the season Luz figures out how to perform magic even though she's a human, and befriends Eda the Owl Lady and her demon friend King.

During season 2 the gay gets cranked up! Luz's classmate Amity goes from being a frosty cooler girl to wanting to ask Luz to Grom (it's prom but you also fight monsters, don't worry about it). The fact that there was an explicitly queer crush in season 1 was already ground breaking, but they finally ask each other out in the middle of season 2! It's super cute, I hope that season 3 goes more into their relationship since we didn't see a ton of it after they started dating.

The show is queer in other ways, Luz is confirmed to be bisexual and definitely isn't gender conforming. Her Grom outfit is intentionally a mixture of a suit and a dress, and it looks fabulous. Other characters also have queer parents and in general it's super LGBTQ+ friendly. Anyways, if you like gay cartoons, you are sure to like this as well!

Allyship

Let's talk a little bit about allyship shall we, I keep seeing misconceptions about it and would like to discuss what being a good ally actually consists of. So here’s a list of seven things anyone can do to become a better ally, and to just have a better understanding of what being an ally entails.

1. Being an ally is an active process, you have to do work. This is to educate yourself, examine your unconscious biases, and put effort into reading and researching the group you want to help. Only after that, does the real work start with educating others as well.

2. Similar to the previous point, don't expect members of the marginalized community to teach you everything. You need to do your own research, and talk to other allies if you have further questions. Don't expect minorities to do all of the work of educating you for free.

3. A good ally is out there walking the walk as well, just talking and teaching yourself isn't going to cut it. You have to go to the rally, donate to the charity, and call out bigotry when you see it.

4. Allyship is intentionally and consistently taking the backseat in the conversation. You are promoting other voices and opinions, not your own. In fact if you're a good ally, people will barely know that you are there they'll just know who you're promoting.

5. A good ally needs to be able to take feedback, you need to be open to being called out so you can improve. You are going to make mistakes and mess up, but being open to changing your behavior and being responsible for your actions helps.

6. You cannot (in fact) declare yourself to be an ally, this is a term that a member of the marginalized community gives to you. It's not the other way around. To declare yourself an ally when that has not been given to you is very disrespectful in my eyes.

7. Anyone can strive to be a better ally of any community, but very few people are really good allies. For example, there are many causes that I support, but there are few that I consider myself to be an ally of because I'm still learning how to best help. Be selective.

Allyship tends to get thrown around to the extent that it has ceased to really mean much anymore. But by fostering conversations around the term and what it means, hopefully we can stop that process and have there be some criteria for which to call yourself an “ally.”

This Is Beautiful: Neo: The World Ends With You

 I'm sure I'm going to be writing a lot about this game, but wow is it good! I have not finished it yet, but I already know that I adore this game. In a way I was going to love it no matter what, it's the long-awaited sequel to my favorite game of all time. Just the fact that it exists makes me happy.

There are a number of changes to the new game from the original one, like the fact that the streets are in 3D. I've talked about this previously when the demo came out. The art is certainly a glow-up. What's wildly different now about the game is that your opponents aren't so much the Reapers, the bad guys in the original, but the other Players in the Reaper's Game. I'm interested to see how much this one pits you against the others, because the original was a lot about teamwork. 

There's also been a couple references to Neku as a legendary Player that turned the game on its head. Of course there was going to be some sort of legend about him or whatever, but I'm also interested in seeing where this goes. I know he eventually appears, I'm fascinated to see how he changes over time.

Finally I've run into a pandemic reference, if in a roundabout way. I don't think the writers could fully avoid it, Rindo was designed before the pandemic and he wears a mask as a fashion statement. Essentially there's a reference to a pop group that is made up of germ-phobes that practice hand washing and social distancing. I think if that's all that it is, that's great and I'm actually amused by that. Hopefully that's all, I don't think I could handle the pandemic being in this game.

I am annoyed with some things about the game. You can't easily use HP restoring pins during battle, and battle in general I don't think is as great as the original. Might be a bit of a hot take, but I prefer the touch screen controls with the buttons that control your partner as well. In Neo, you control each pin with a different button. It's just less customizable to me, I'm just button mashing no matter what I equip. And the 3D fights make it harder for me to tell what's going on, which character I'm controlling. Maybe this'll change as I go through the game, we'll see.

Other nitpicky thing I'm complaining about is the shops. You can only eat within a restaurant now, and strangely enough you cannot sell pins in a restaurant? Only place you can sell pins is in a shop. So I continually have to leave the restaurant, head to a shop, and then return with money. It also means that you cannot buy food and save it for later. Which I'm finding increasingly annoying. And everyone has to eat in a restaurant. The details of this system I find pretty irritating, the original game's byte system worked just fine.

Anyways, this game is amazing and everyone should play it. I'm taking my time getting through it, but it'll for sure be back once I'm done with it.

Bilbao, Spain

This past 2 weeks I was on a hiking trip through the Basque Country in Spain! It was a very different kind of trip for me. We essentially arrived in Bilbao, Spain, then took a train out to the countryside. From there we hiked our way back over the course of a week, stopping in B+Bs along the way. It was wild! My feet hurt a lot!

So like I said we started in Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country. It’s a gorgeous place, it actually reminds me a lot of Italy with the similar architecture and pedestrian streets. Many of the churches are in the gothic style, and there’s plenty of beautiful public parks and fountains that add to this. One interesting difference though is that Bilbao is on the side of a mountain, so there’s at least 3 different levels of streets that I could see. The whole city is stacked on top of each other! It makes for interesting views, and I imagine driving around is an interesting time if you end up on the wrong level.

We really only had time to see the Guggenheim museum within Bilbao itself, and it has an awesome collection. Before you even enter the museum, you can see the very shiny architecture and a couple statues outside of the building. The most popular is Puppy, a giant statue of a puppy covered in flowers. It’s regularly maintained and the flowers change, so the colors change over the years and seasons as well!

Once inside there’s a good number of larger art pieces on the ground floor, while the upper floors have changing exhibits and a permanent collection. I thought the selection was very cool, there was an exhibit on 1920s art, looking at how artists moved on from the trauma of the first World War. Very relevant.

After that, it was mostly a lot of hiking. The mountains were incredible, and we had a good number of ridge walks. Parts of the hike were difficult, but the views made it worth it. It definitely wasn’t my favorite way to travel, but I am glad that I did it. It made for a nice change to be out in nature walking around. We saw a lot of cows, as well as horses and sheep.

I do wish that we spent more time in the city, but it was an interesting way to experience northern Spain. I got to see more nature and rural towns rather than just the big city. It was exhausting and my feet still hurt, but the pictures that I have made it worthwhile!

This Is Beautiful: McCartney 3, 2, 1

 (Yes I am working on writing about my vacation, but this also has to be said.)

The Hulu series "McCartney 3, 2, 1" is surprisingly good! I am a card-carrying Beatlemaniac but whenever I see a new Beatles thing I am a little skeptical. There's only so much you can pull from 10 years of a band being together and at some point it's just a money grab since so many people are so into them. But this show is really cool to watch and listen to!

It features Sir Paul talking with Rick Rubin about his life and primarily his music. It takes place entirely in a studio with the two of them playing old tracks, separating out the different parts, and discussing how the song was made and came about. It's a lot like "Song Exploder", a podcast that does a similar thing, but Beatles edition. And there's a good amount of McCartney's solo work in there as well.

It honestly was really engaging since they paired the conversation excellently with old footage of the boys and of artists that influenced them. Plus, McCartney talks very openly about different songs and how they wrote all of the parts while putting it together. The focus is really on the music rather than anything else, which is quite refreshing since I didn't need another dive into his personal life or whatever. I've spent a lot of time reading about the Beatles' writing process and I learned quite a few things from watching this!

There's going to be a lot of Beatles content coming out later, and this show has set the bar pretty high! Definitely worth a watch if you are a Beatles fan, or just a fan of music and music production in general.