From wikipedia:

For the effect on the cultures of staphylococci that Fleming observed, the mould had to be growing before the bacteria began to grow, because penicillin is only effective on bacteria when they are reproducing. Fortuitously, the temperature in the laboratory during that August was optimum first for the growth of the mould, below 20 °C, and later in the month for the bacteria, when it reached 25 °C. Had Fleming not left the cultures on his laboratory bench and put them in an incubator, the phenomenon would not have occurred.^[39]

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin}

I find the Fleming's story totally plausible - maybe he just used awkward wording ? He put a diluted Staphylococcus inoculum on the plate, (as is normal) with the intention to have the colonies grown after he returns from holiday. And when he returned from holiday, the colonies indeed did grow - except there was no growth, clear circle around the fungus. So he should have said, that colonies were absent around fungus, not destroyed - but is this imperfect wording so implausible ? Is the original text available somehere ?

I don't care whether the window was open. The moulds find their way to appear on Petri dishes even if you believe you worked in a perfectly sterile way. 

You write somewhere here in the comments, that those clients who are telling the truth are new to the system (or innocent, but those do not interest me now) while most lies come from repeated offenders. Shouldn't it be the opposite ? Shouldn't the experienced ones have, well, the experience, that telling truth to their lawyer gives them better results ? What if they tried and did not see the difference ? Combine it with your often repeated feeling, that you are useless. And your article about 11 words, which describes a situation, when you dramatically helped the client, for whom you apparently felt sympathy, but it was more an emotional move, not a technical one. (You simply asked the judge to reconsider her harsh decision).

OK, I know, a more straightforward explanation is, that the new clients are less stupid, that's why they are new, and did not have legal problems many times already.

But still, aren't the lies a lame attempt to gain your sympathy, because they correctly believe, your sympathy is the most valuable thing that can make a difference for them ?

I have found this older post and read the comments, one pointing me to actual advice to prevent being raped, which a police department wrote up: https://police.charlotte.edu/safety/sexual-assault-prevention/reduce-risk-becoming-sexual-assault-victim

Some of it easy to follow, but some would be difficult or very inconvenient to obey.

"If you live in an apartment, avoid being in the laundry room or garage by yourself, especially at night."

"Exercise extra caution when using underground and enclosed parking garages. Try not to go alone."

Ultimately, we sometimes make tradeofs in favor of living normal life without a need to be paranoid or babysitted all the time.

I am in Duolingo learning French, and the one thing I am trying to keep is the "streak", i.e. the long uninterrupted chain of attendance days.

In fact, I am allowed to skip a day or two, if I pay by gems I earned before. (I also regularly earn more gems by constantly renewing the bet, that my streak will not be interrupted, which has a circular self reinforcing effect.)

I basically ignore the incentives other than the "streak", and it works well for me. I am at unit 21 after a year and most people I know did not get this far in any duolingo language.

Edit: The creators of Duolingo are apparently learning on the go, how to gamify the learning best. Since I started, the layout has changed at least twice. But, to my satisfaction, the "streak" thing is still there.

Phone contact +421 908 158 110 . We might change a location, call if you are late.

What are the opinions now,with omicron being out there in some countries, and coming to others ? Our kids are 6 and 4 years old. The 6 year old had her second dose only yesterday, because our country was slow in allowing vaccination. The younger one is unvaccinated because there is no aproved vaccine for her.

I am very suspicious about statement that I cannot avoid getting omicron, unless I take extreme measures. Why ? Because I have heard the same about delta and it was false.

I have a friend in Germany, she teaches at school, where rapid antigen testing 3 times a week prevented the school transmissions. They know it, because if a child is flagged as a contact, they test them daily, so they have this feedback.

I pulled away my children (3 yo and 6 yo) from school and kindergarten and they did not get delta. The delta peak in our town did happen already. The kids also did not go indoors apart from our home and the granparents. Are these extreme measures ? In some sense yes, because it put a great strain on a relationship with my partner, I can feel he is dissapointed in me in a last few days. But from what I was told before about the terrible delta, I thought this might be insufficient ! We do not mask at the corridor in our block of flats, which contains 8 other families. Children can play outdoors with other kids. My partner did go shopping masked by FFP2, I went to work masked by FFP2 in the corridors.

My experience is, that preventative measures work. But if you believe, there is no point trying to avoid infection, you will get infected.

EDIT: Ouch, I was wrong. Apparently, there are many single nucleotide polymorphism, that come up in GWAS and which are NOT in protein coding regions. Non-protein-coding SNPs actually constitute 90 percent of stuff found in GWAS !!!

The other part of my argument still stands. There are other variations in DNA apart from single nucleotide polymorphisms, like repeats. And they would not show up in GWAS.

Previous text:

At a bioinformatic summer school, there was a talk, that humans and apes chimpanzees have very similar genes. And many scientists believe, that the most important difference between humans and chimps does not lie in the sequences of protein coding genes. Rather, it is suspected, that the regulatory regions are the thing that matter most. It may be more important how much of certain proteins is produced rather than what exactly those proteins look like. This "how much" question is regulated by other proteins, but also by weird things like how far away some genes are distanced from each other by non-coding DNA areas, how are the non coding DNA areas spatially folded. Some regulation is achieved by repeats, too.

So, duh, I am not surprised, that GWAS sees less genetic effects than twin studies. (RETRACTED PART The GWAS is focusing on protein coding genes almost exclusively.) It is focusing on minuscule point differences - single nucleotide polymorphisms ! It covers just a part of what matters in DNA variability.

Years ago, I have seen this book review on Bryan Kaplan's Selfish reasons to have more kids (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nzsHQzsvwLw6g4pyE/review-selfish-reasons-to-have-more-kids)
It argues, based on adoption and twin studies, that it is difficult to proove effect of parenting on almost anything. Among the rare exceptions listed, it is mentioned, that parents have "A small effect on educational attainment, but no effect on grades in school or on income". So to me, it was weird, that the book The Genetic Lottery focuses so much on one rare parameter, the educational attainment, that can actually be affected by adoptive parents. Why not study the grades or income instead ?