marcela

@marcela@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientific Exposure⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Maxwell insisted on grand titles – “International Journal of” was a favourite prefix. Peter Ashby, a former vice president at Pergamon, described this to me as a “PR trick”, but it also reflected a deep understanding of how science, and society’s attitude to science, had changed. Collaborating and getting your work seen on the international stage was becoming a new form of prestige for researchers, and in many cases Maxwell had the market cornered before anyone else realised it existed.

  If you explain to any outsider that what we call science is a game of collecting and showing off units of prestige, they will be flabbergasted. Maxwell catered to the most superficial and vain aspects of the human psyche, and traded in a measure of righteousness. This is genius, I will grant him that, but opposite to the objectives of science. He made the worst possible metric about which to measure everything, and created a global system of narcissistic organizations selling their souls to publish to these journals.

  And scientists are the least probable to rebel against this status quo. If anything, it will make them appear as big-time asses who are full of themselves. They are bound to project more legitimacy onto the system, similar to doomsday cultists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientific Exposure⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Aspesi was not the first person to incorrectly predict the end of the scientific publishing boom, and he is unlikely to be the last. It is hard to believe that what is essentially a for-profit oligopoly functioning within an otherwise heavily regulated, government-funded enterprise can avoid extinction in the long run. But publishing has been deeply enmeshed in the science profession for decades. Today, every scientist knows that their career depends on being published, and professional success is especially determined by getting work into the most prestigious journals.

  It is the departments’ choice to cancel subscriptions anytime and start publishing on their own terms. They are equally to blame when they esteem reputation above all, and measure reputation by publishing to these journals. Let’s not pretend that big-shot universities are simply taken hostage by a handful corrupt billionaires. They’re in on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientific Exposure⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers tend to fall into a sort of stunned disbelief when describing this setup. A 2004 parliamentary science and technology committee report on the industry drily observed that “in a traditional market suppliers are paid for the goods they provide”. A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.

  Racket.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A rant on left-wing online infighting⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Extracts from Katherine Cross’s Log off: Why posting and politics almost never mix. Pasted verbatim.

  It’s worth taking a second to define weaponized sincerity. Weaponized sincerity is where extreme takes are born. It’s a mode that deploys ever more esoteric manipulations of social justice concepts for the purpose of being edgy or controversial, while still earnestly pursuing some noble idea. It’s the 0-to-60-in-two-seconds-flat acceleration of an innocuous bit of posting into a mass callout. It’s being nebulously accused of being X-phobic or silencing Y-group or being imperialist when all you were doing was, for instance, delivering chili to your neighbours.

  One evening in 2022, a relatively prominent lefty Twitter user posted the following:

  several guys moved in next door, students I guess. and I’ve gotten two confused door-dash drivers for them in the last week, and their trash can was completely overflowing with pizza boxes. i don’t think they cook. i am feeling such a strange motherly urge to feed these boys… They’re incredibly quiet which is a real surprise. I dunno if they’re renting or what but I would like them to stick around. Maybe I will make a big pot of chili this weekend when it gets cooler.

  This, somehow, ignited a firestorm. She was accused of coddling “manchildren,” of being “presumptuous” or otherwise rude, of ableism for ignoring potential allergies, and of being a white saviour.

  “For the love of god, stop babying men. This is why they learn to take advantage of their wives” went one tweet, apparently blaming this woman for the endurance of sexism and unequal marriages. Another tweet read, in part, “The intent was good, right? No. It was presumptive and stereotypical [white people] shit.”

  The harassment went on for days.

  It was a flaming gout of internet rage that reached into the stratosphere of the mainstream press. Even the Washington Post reported on the controversy — and it got its money’s worth from the world’s most efficient content farm. The article wasn’t just a news report; it was an advice column. WaPo food reporter Emily Heil used the incident to ask etiquette experts for their opinions on how best to share food with strangers.

  The social media food fight left us exhausted but also wondering: Have the rules for giving home-cooked foods changed? Does the simple act of baking a casserole or cookies for a stranger have to be so fraught? We asked two experts for guidance.

  Imagine the horror of having such an innocuous post lead to three people you’ve never met dissecting your behaviour in the pages of a national newspaper.

  In the event, the leftist in question delivered the chili, it was well-received, and the young men helped her fix a fence. Outside the swirling cyclone of Discourse, a rather ordinary and charming exchange took place. On Twitter, this pot of chili had to be saddled with the unbearable weight of some of the most important issues of our time. Even a Le Creuset can’t hold that.

  But, worst of all, because most of the Washington Post’s newsroom is on Twitter, they made this sorry spectacle into everyone’s problem. Even New York City’s Fox affiliate got in on the action, with an article entitled “A Chili Controversy? Neighbor’s Good Deed Draws Online Outrage.” Their source was the Washington Post.

  I’m talking as if weaponized sincerity was the opposite of shitposting, its natural enemy. And in one sense it is. But, like all true opposites, it’s also a twin. Weaponized sincerity is the horrible second helix that wraps around irony culture, feeding off it and nourishing it in equal measure.

  BTW while looking for this I found out she also defines sincerity like this:

  One of the things I really can’t forgive social media for is how deeply it has corroded our sense of sincerity, making it uncool to care.

  The one rule, if you can call it that, is to not appear to take anything seriously. Sincerity is anathema to shitposting.

  So, all in all, I can figure she draws a continuum from irony culture, like people “so deep in layers of irony they don’t know who they are anymore” to weaponized sincerity, like, people who will take everything literally to the exteme of its political and ideological severity. She seems to be placing “real” sincerity to a point closer to the center than its “weaponized” counterpart. But I am no expert, I just have seen this happening over lemmy and it clicked, so I think she is onto something.

  Also a disclaimer, I am personally more on the weaponized sincerity side.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A rant on left-wing online infighting⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Weaponized sincerity is a term defined by Katherine Cross (“Log off”) as an online behavior opposite to trolling, and genuine in intent, but equally harmful as malicious trolling. The example she herself gives is about a woman who cooked a meal for her refugee neighbors or sth, and after a couple hours people were at each other throats, fighting about her infantilizing immigrants or not. It is ubiquitous in Lemmy and once you learn about it you can’t unsee it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you think of any now?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, this is something that felt off indeed. But please explain. So http(s) is the world of http requests, but you can also have other services like ftp, ssh, bittorrent and what not. Is that what you mean? So the WWW is just the global interconnection of web pages strictly, over the Internet? Would this apply to any internet? /genuine

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you think of any now?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is this …mansplaining?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you think of any now?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  An internet in theory is a network of other computer networks (not single computers). The Internet is the world wide web.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would have to happen to make everybody realize we weren't exaggerating when we said Trump would be like Hitler?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh they will totally NOT deny that there will have been gas chambers.