#anime milwaukee 2024

[slothbless]

🎶 Nibbly wants his sacrifice 🎶

I was recognized by 13 people and got asked for pictures 7 times at Anime Milwaukee, aw yea.

[sugaryrainbow]

Hi friends I need to post more but I’m a good 🫠🥲

I’m at Anime Milwaukee this weekend!! Im table N13 kinda in the back!

Trying something slightly different with my display set up! It still a work in progress but we’ll there ✨

[ghostfaceapologist]

“Ain’t that a kick in the head.” 🎲♠️

Photog

[maplesunflowers]

I’m so bad at remembering to take pictures at Cons but Hey! At least I took some selfies in my Nyo Russia and Ukraine cosplays!!!

I had so much fun at Anime Milwaukee this year, I was so surprised by the amount of people who were excited and complimented my Hetalia cosplays, it really made my Con!!! 💕💕

[iamalexjustice]

These pictures were taken by the wonderful Afrodyte Charlotte. You can view here work Here. https://afrodytecharlottephotography.client-gallery.com/gallery/amke2024?fbclid=IwAR2ZPlIahqOp7fA0PzkL-qgoSVe0_jrWTktaNOGECRZTCNgqgpOJT8R3BZI

[dakt37]

Shout-out to Lower Decks and Anime Milwaukee for giving me the inspiration and motivation to actually sew a complete, lined cosplay piece for the first time in two years.🖖

[yeenobabino]

Hi! If you found this page from one of my AMKE trading cards, congratulations!

I’ll be making more next year, so bring them back if you want to trade. I’ll try branching out to other franchises a bit more.

The cards are made from recycled paper and each are hand-drawn directly on the card. So they’re all one-of-a-kind!

I will probably bring them to some other Wisconsin-based events as well.

I really hope they didn’t get thrown out after the convention closed. If anyone was in the trading room, let me know if they were saved.

[searincosplay]

AMKE might have been a bust for me, but at least I got these cute photos of my Alfredo cosplay by HayleyStein Photo! It's giving promotional photoshoot for the Romeo's Blue Skies stage musical adaptation and I love it haha

I'm still really bummed that I missed most of AMKE after getting really sick, thankfully at least it wasn't c0vid since I tested negative multiple times. For the little bit I was able to attend AMKE on Friday, I was incredibly fatigued and struggling to function. For anyone I missed or barely got to visit with, I'm sorry and I hope to catch you at a future con 🥲

Speaking of which, I'm gearing up for C2E2, and will be posting progress on my repairs and upgrades on Magic Armor Link cosplay which was accepted into Crown! I'm so excited for it!

[parentsatcons]

Anne, Stephanie, Sarah, Alexie

Collection of sisters and in-laws and kids. (I couldn't keep it all straight)

Fifth year at AMKE. Have been to Colossal Con, Daisho Con

Read: Yotsuba& Watch: Demon Slayer, Fruits Basket Cosplay: Final Fantasy VII (as Jessie, Aerith, Tifa)

[aurlworthfightingfor]

Boom! Got my cosplay line up set. Complete with terrible photo edit for Sundays cosplay. 😂

[slightly2optimistic]

Anime Milwaukee 2024

I’m only in town for Saturday and wanted to try and attend but just saw Saturday badges are sold out. Does any one have an idea how I could still go?

[excalculus]

I saw some mentions of rabies going around again and have no clue what's set it off this time, but given recent scientific developments I want to revisit the idea of curing symptomatic rabies.

First things first: there is still no practical way to do this. The famous Milwaukee Protocol fails far more frequently than it succeeds, and even the successes are not making it out in anything like a normal state. It's been argued that it should no longer be considered a valid treatment [1] due to these issues; any continued use is because there's literally nothing else on the table.

However. There are now two separate studies showing it's possible to cure rabies in mice after the onset of symptoms. The lengths you have to go to in order to pull this off are drastic, to put it mildly, and couldn't really be adapted to humans even if you wanted to. But proof of concept is now on the board.

long post under the cut, warnings for animal experimentation and animal death. full bibliography at the end and first mention of each source links to paper.

Quick recap - rabies is a viral disease of mammals usually transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal. From a contaminated bite wound, it propagates slowly for anywhere from days to months until it reaches the central nervous system (CNS). Post-exposure vaccination can head it off during this phase, but once it reaches the CNS and neurological symptoms appear it's game over. There will typically be a prodromal phase where the animal doesn't act right - out at the wrong time of day, disoriented, abnormally friendly, etc. This will then progress to the furious (stereotypical "mad dog" disease) and/or paralytic phases, with death eventually caused by either seizures or paralysis of the muscles needed for breathing.

That's the course we're familiar with in larger animals. Mice, though, are fragile little creatures with fast metabolisms.

In the first study's rabies infection model, lab mice show rabies virus in the spinal cord by day 4 after infection and in the brain by day 5. Weight loss and slower movement start by day 7, paralysis starting from the hind limbs from day 8 on, and if not euthanized first they're dead by day 10-13. [2]

This study (fittingly conducted at the Institut Pasteur) had two human monoclonal antibodies, and wanted to see if there was any possibility they could be used to cure rabies after what we think of as the point of no return.

Injecting the antibodies into muscle saved some mice if done at days 2 or 4, and none if done later, even at high doses of 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight of each. Conclusion: targeting the virus out in the rest of the body is no use if it's already replicating in the CNS.

Getting a drug past the blood-brain barrier is, to use a highly technical term, really fucking hard. It's the sort of problem that even the best-funded labs and biggest companies in the world routinely fail at. And that's for small molecule drugs, which are puny compared to antibodies.

But this isn't drug development for a clinical trial. This is a very, very early proof-of-concept attempt, which means you're willing to ignore practicality to see if this idea is even remotely workable. So you can do things like brute force the issue by cutting through the skull to implant a microinfusion pump, which lets you deliver the antibodies directly into the normally-protected space around the brain. Combine this with the normal injections, and you can treat both the CNS and the rest of the body at the same time. Here's a survival graph of treated mice. X axis is days, Y axis is percentage of mice in that group still alive.

Figure 2A from reference 2, accessed February 2024

The fact that the blue, green, and purple lines did anything other than sink horribly to zero is unheard of. When the combination treatment was started at day 6, 100% of the mice survived. Started at day 7 (prodromal phase), 5 out of 9 mice recovered and survived. Started at day 8 (solidly symptomatic, paralysis already starting to set in), 5 of 15 mice recovered and survived. And when they say "survived", they kept these mice all the way to day 100 to make sure. Some of them had permanent minor paralysis but largely they were back to being normal mice doing normal mouse things. So, success, but by pretty extreme means.

Enter the second paper [3]. This was a different approach using a single human monoclonal antibody against Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV - closely related to rabies, similar symptoms in humans) to try for a cure without needing to deliver treatments directly into the CNS. They also made a luminescent version of ABLV that let them directly image viral activity, so they could see both where the virus was replicating and how much there was in a live mouse.

Figure 1 from reference 3, accessed February 2024

Mice infected with ABLV start showing symptoms around day 8. You can see in the figure that at day 3 there's viral replication in the foot at the site of infection, which has shifted into the spine and brain by day 10. So what happens if you give one of these doomed mice one single injection of the antibody into the body?

Done at day 3, the virus doesn't make it to the brain until day 14, and while disease does set in after that around 30% of the mice survive. Days 5 and 7 are much more interesting. Those mice still develop symptoms at day 8, but the imaging shows the amount of virus in their spines and brains never gets anywhere near the levels seen in untreated controls, and within days it starts to decrease. Around 80% of day 5 and 100% of day 7 mice survive.

Okay, sure, you can stop another lyssavirus, but technically you did start treatment before symptoms appeared. What about symptomatic rabies?

The rodent-adapted rabies strain CVS-11 starts causing symptoms as early as day 3 after infection, and untreated mice die between days 8 and 11. The same single dose of antibody saved 67% of mice treated on day 5 and 50% of mice treated on day 7. Without making the luminescent version of the virus there's no real-time imaging of the infection, but you can still track symptoms.

Figure 2 from reference 3, accessed February 2024. CVS-11 is the name of the rodent rabies strain and F11 is the name of the antibody.

Disease score is a combination of several metrics including things like whether the mice are behaving normally and whether they show signs of paralysis. In untreated mice it goes up and up, and then they die. If one of those lines starts coming back down and continues past day 10 or so, that's a mouse that recovered. The success rate isn't as good as against ABLV, but again, this is a rabies strain specifically adapted to rodents and treatment wasn't started until it was well-established in the CNS.

So how on earth is this happening? The antibody neutralizes both ABLV and rabies really well in a test tube, but we've already established that there's no way a huge lumbering antibody is making it past the blood-brain barrier without serious help. Something about the immune response is clearly making it in there though. And it turns out that if you start trying this cure in mice missing various parts of their immune systems, mice without CD4+ T cells don't survive even with the treatment. By contrast mice without CD8+ T cells take longer to work through the infection, but they eventually manage it and are immune to reinfection afterwards.

To grossly oversimplify the immune system here, CD4+ are mature helper T cells, which work mostly by activating other immune cells like macrophages (white blood cells) and CD8+ T cells (killer T cells) against a threat.

Normally, T cells are also kept out by the blood-brain barrier, but we know that in certain specific cases including viral infection they can pass it to migrate into the brain. In the brains of the infected mice for which antibody treatment either wasn't given or didn't work, you can find a roughly even mix of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells along with a whole lot of viral RNA. But in the brains of those successfully fighting off the infection, there's less viral RNA and the cells are almost exclusively CD4+. So the antibody doesn't work by neutralizing the virus directly - something about it is activating the animal's own immune system in a way that gives it a fighting chance.

Again, neither of these proof of concept treatments is really workable yet as a real world cure. The first one is almost hilariously overkill and still has a pretty good chance of failure. The second is less invasive but careful sequencing still shows both low-level viral replication and signs of immune response in the brains of the survivors even at day 139, so it may not be truly clearing the virus so much as trading a death sentence for life with a low-level chronic infection. But now we know that 1. curing rabies after symptoms begin is at least theoretically possible, and 2. we have some clues as to mechanisms to investigate further.

Not today. Not tomorrow. But maybe not never, either.

References:

Zeiler, F. A., & Jackson, A. C. (2016). Critical appraisal of the Milwaukee protocol for rabies: this failed approach should be abandoned. Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, 43(1), 44-51.

de Melo, G. D., Sonthonnax, F., Lepousez, G., Jouvion, G., Minola, A., Zatta, F., ... & Bourhy, H. (2020). A combination of two human monoclonal antibodies cures symptomatic rabies. EMBO molecular medicine, 12(11), e12628.

Mastraccio, K. E., Huaman, C., Coggins, S. A. A., Clouse, C., Rader, M., Yan, L., ... & Schaefer, B. C. (2023). mAb therapy controls CNS‐resident lyssavirus infection via a CD4 T cell‐dependent mechanism. EMBO Molecular Medicine, 15(10), e16394.

[catbatart]

2024 Conventions

I'll likely update this post as the year goes on, but since I'm doing a few new cons in different parts of the US this year, I wanted to make a post for it!

MAGfest (Jan 18-21): National Harbor, MD Emerald City Comic Con (Feb 29-Mar 3): Seattle, WA Anime Milwaukee (Mar 8-10): Milwaukee, WI Indiana Comic Con (Mar 22-24) Indianapolis, IN Who's Yer Con (Mar 29-31): Indianapolis, IN Midwest Gaming Classic (Apr 6-7): Milwaukee, IN

Upcoming: Pop Con Indy (Apr 26-28): Indianapolis, IN Anime Central (May 17-19): Chicago, IL OMG!Con (Jun 14-16): Owensboro, KY Anime Ohio (June 21-23): Cincinnati, OH Anime Iowa (July 26-28): Coralville, IA Lafyette Comic Con (Oct 26): Lafayette, IN Grand Rapids Comic Con (Nov 15-17): Grand Rapids, MI

Definitely let me know if you'll be attending any of these! :D

[iamalexjustice]

And these are the voice actors that showed up for anime milwaukee 2024. Bryn Appril, Caitlin Glass, Patrick Seitz, Erica Mendez, and Laura Stahl

[brookstonalmanac]

Holidays 9.25

Holidays

Acne Day

Armed Forces Day (Mozambique)

Binge Day

Bob Uecker Day (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

Bruderklausenfest (Obwalden, Switzerland)

Crocus Day (French Republic)

Daf Day (France)

Day of National Recognition for the Harkis (France)

Dominion Day (New Zealand)

Flag Day (Cape Verde)

Franco-Ontarian Day (Canada)

Global Day of Climate Action

Haustmanuour (Iceland)

Hazara Genocide Memorial Day

International Ataxia Awareness Day

International Coaches Day

International Day for Dreamers

Join A Cabal of International Bankers Today Day

Kamarampaka Day (Rwanda)

Math Storytelling Day

Mediterranean Coast Day

National Comic Book Day

National Daughter’s Day

National Day of Non Violence (UK)

National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims

National Emergency Medical Services Suicide Awareness Day

National Harki Day (France)

National Homage Day of Harkis (France)

National ‘If You See Something, Say Something’ Awareness Day

National John Day

National Math Storytelling Day

National 9 to 5 Day

National Open the Magic Day

National Psychotherapy Day

National Roadkill Day

National Research Administrators Day

National Schnauzer Day

National Tune-Up Day

National Wade Day

National YogaFit Day

National Youth Day (Nauru, Turks and Caicos Islands)

Old Holy Rood Eve

One-Hit Wonder Day

Open the Magic Day

Origin of Life Day

Revolution Day (Mozambique)

Salute the Sun Day (China)

Sandra Day O’Connor Civics Celebration Day (Arizona)

Santa Cruz Day (Bolivia)

Sir Hammer De Roburt Day (Nauru)

Uno Day

World Ataxia Awareness Day

World Dream Day

World Lung Day

World Pharmacists Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Bakery Day

National Cooking Day

National Crabmeat Newburg Day

National Food Service Employees Day

National Lobster Day [official, also 6.15]

National Quesadilla Day

World’s Biggest Coffee Morning (UK)

Independence & Related Days

Canterbury South Province Day (New Zealand)

Dracul (Declared; 2017) [unrecognized]

Present House (Declared; 2011) [unrecognized]

4th & Last Wednesday in September

Hump Day [Every Wednesday]

Maple Leaf Day (Canada) [Last Wednesday]

National Rehabilitation Day [4th Wednesday]

National Women's Health and Fitness Day [Last Wednesday]

Rowan’s Law Day (Canada) [Last Wednesday]

See You at the Pole [4th Wednesday]

Wacky Wednesday [Every Wednesday]

Website Wednesday [Every Wednesday]

Weird Wednesday [4th Wednesday of Each Month]

Whatever Wednesday [4th Wednesday of Each Month]

Whole Grain Wednesday [Last Wednesday of Each Month]

Wishful Wednesday [Last Wednesday of Each Month]

World Dense Breast Day [Last Wednesday]

World School Milk Day [Last Wednesday]

Weekly Holidays beginning September 25 (4th Full Week of September)

Minimally Invasive Surgery Week (thru 9.28)

Festivals Beginning September 25, 2024

Belgrade International Theatre Festival (Belgrade, Serbia) [thru 10.4]

Grapes for Grades (Dania Beach, Florida)

Grundy County Corn Festival (Morris, Illinois) [thru 9.29]

J. M. Tawes Crab and Clam Bake (Crisfield, Maryland)

Nairobi International Book Fair (Nairobi, Kenya) [thru 9.29]

Norsk Høstfest (Minot, North Dacota) [thru 9.28]

Ottawa International Animation Festival (Ottawa, Canada) [thru 9.29]

POP Montreal (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) [thru 9.30]

Santa Fe Wine & Chile Fiesta (Santa Fe, New Mexico) [thru 9.29]

SCHLINGEL International Film Festival (Chemnitz, Germany) [thru 10.3]

Versailles Pumpkin Show (Versailles, Indiana) [thru 9.28]

Feast Days

Abadir and Iraja and Companions (Coptic Church)

Albino Appreciation Day (Pastafarian)

Any Port and Lemon in a Storm Day (Pastafarian)

Aunarius (a.k.a. Aunacharius; Christian; Saint)

Anathalon (Archdiocese of Milan; Christian; Saint)

Blessing of Ale Day (Celtic Book of Days)

Captain Beefheart Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Cadoc (Christian; Saint)

Ceolfrith (a.k.a. Colfrid; Christian; Saint)

Cleopas (Christian; Saint)

Day of Mercury (Travel Blessing; Pagan)

Enderi (Quelle the Elven Fading Season; Starza Pagan Book of Days)

Euphrosyne of Alexandria (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Nmmu (Sumerian Goddess of Primeval Sea)

Feast of Nariwiinyapah (God of Immortal Water)

Finbarr (a.k.a. Barr; Christian; Saint)

Fermin of Amiens (a.k.a. Firmin; Christian; Saint)

Henri Lebasque (Artology)

Lancelot Andrewes (Church of England)

Mark Rothko (Artology)

Mme. de Motteville (Positivist; Saint)

Nicholas of Flüe (Christian; Saint) [Switzerland]

Phyllis Pearsall (Artology)

Pyanopsia (Fest of Beans; Celebrating Apollo & the Horae)

Robert Brackman (Artology)

Rudy the Spider (Muppetism)

Samvatsari (Forgiveness Day; Jain)

Sedna (Eskimo Goddess of the Sea & Underworld; Everyday Wicca)

Sergius of Radonezh (Christian; Saint)

Shel Silverstein (Artology; Writerism)

Toad Tempting Day (Shamanism)

Vincent Strambi (Christian; Saint)

William Faulkner (Writerism)

Yom Kippur began last night (Day of Atonement) [10 Tishrei]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Shakku (赤口 Japan) [Bad luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

Arctic Splashdown (Animated TV Show;Jonny Quest #2; 1964)

Ava (Film; 2020)

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Pt. 1 (WB Animated Film; 2012)

The Beatles (Animated TV Series; 1965)

Beaucoup of Blues, by Ringo Starr (Album; 1970)

Chariots of Fire (Film; 1981)

Crash Drive or Oedipus Wrecks (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 57; 1960)

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (Documentary Film; 2015)

Evita (Broadway Musical; 1979)

Fender Benders ir The Asphalt Jungle (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 58; 1960)

FIshin’ Around (Disney Cartoon; 1931)

Freaks and Geeks (TV Series; 1999)

Get Off of My Cloud, by The Rolling Stones (Song; 1965)

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 2004) [Discworld #33]

Happy Days (ComiColor Cartoon; 1936)

Heroes (TV Series; 2006)

Hotel Transylvania 2 (Animated Film; 2015)

The Hustler (Film; 1961)

I’m a Slave 4 U, by Britney Spears (Song; 2001)

The Intern (Film; 2015)

Intruder in the Dust, by William Faulkner (Novel; 1948)

I Wanna Be a Sailor (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

The Last of the Mohicans (Film; 1992)

Little Swee’Pea (Fleischer Popeye Cartoon; 1936)

Magic, by Bruce Springsteen (Album; 2007)

Me and Bobby McGee, recoded by Janis Joplin (Song; 1970)

The Mindy Project (TV Series; 2012)

Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 2003) [Discworld #31]

Mr. Saturday Night (Film; 1992)

My Girl, recorded by The Temptations (Song; 1964)

On Photography, by Susan Sontag (Essays; 1973)

Pain Strikes Underdog, Parts 3 & 4 (Underdog Cartoon, S2, Eps. 3 & 4 1965)

The Partridge Family (TV Series; 1970)

The Princess Bride (Film; 1987)

Ramblin’ Man, by The Allman Brothers (Song; 1973)

A Raw Deal or Two Aces and a Pair of Kings (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 163; 1962)

The Rebel, by Albert Camus (Essay; 1951)

Rocky Draws the Line or Who’s Got My Ruler? (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 164; 1962)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Film; 1975)

Ronin (Film; 1998)

Roseanna, by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö (Novel; 1965)

Shark Jaws (Video Game; 1975)

Silver Spoons (TV Series; 1982)

Sioux Me (Woody Woodpecker Cartoon; 1965)

The Story About Ping, by Marjorie Flack (Children’s Book; 1933)

Story of O, by Pauline Réage (Novel; 1954)

Strange Days, by The Doors (Album; 1967)

Stumptown (TV Series; 2019)

Those Were the Days, by Mary Hopkins (Song; 1968)

Utopia (US TV Series; 2020)

The Vanishing Private (Disney Cartoon; 1942)

X, by INXS (Album; 1990)

Young Sheldon (TV Series; 2017)

Today’s Name Days

Irmfried, Nikolaus, Serge (Austria)

Sergei (Bulgaria)

Firmin, Kleofa (Croatia)

Zlata (Czech Republic)

Cleophas (Denmark)

Ago, Agu, Agur, Ako, Koido, Koit (Estonia)

Kullervo, Oivi (Finland)

Hermann (France)

Irmfried, Klaus, Serge (Germany)

Evfrosyne, Evfrosyni (Greece)

Eufrozina, Kende (Hungary)

Aurelia, Caterina, Sergio (Italy)

Rauls, Roderiks, Rodrigo, Vingra (Latvia)

Aurelija, Kleopas, Ramvydė, Vaigintas (Lithuania)

Ingvar, Yngvar (Norway)

Aureli, Aurelia, Aurelian, Franciszek, Gaspar, Herkulan, Kamil, Kleofas, Kleopatra, Ładysław, Piotr, Rufus, Świętopełk, Wincenty, Władysław, Władysława, Włodzisław (Poland)

Vladislav (Slovakia)

Aurelia (Spain)

Signild, Tryggve (Sweden)

Rostyslava, Thekla, Thecla, Volodyslav (Ukraine)

Barrie, Barry, Braxton, Moriah (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 269 of 2024; 97 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 3 of Week 39 of 2024

Celtic Tree Calendar: Muin (Vine) [Day 25 of 28]

Chinese: Month 8 (Guy-You), Day 23 (Ren-Chen)

Chinese Year of the: Dragon 4722 (until January 29, 2025) [Wu-Chen]

Hebrew: 22 Elul 5784

Islamic: 21 Rabi I 1446

J Cal: 29 Gold; EIghthday [29 of 30]

Julian: 12 September 2024

Moon: 41%: Waning Crescent

Positivist: 17 Shakespeare (10th Month) [Lady Montagu]

Runic Half Month: Gyfu (Gift) [Day 4 of 15]

Season: Autumn or Fall (Day 4 of 90)

Week: 4th Full Week of September

Zodiac: Libra (Day 3 of 30)

[animemke]

Anime Milwaukee is back!

Our 2024 dates are March 8-10, 2024 at the Wisconsin Center. 🍓 Theme: Sweet Sixteen 🎨 Art: Macarena Duarte