AnarchistArtificer
@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on USA | Doctors say they’ve unfairly taken on job of preventing patients’ medical debt 2 days ago:
I think a big problem arises when a doctor says a particular medicine or procedure is medically necessary, but the insurance company disagrees and tries to bullshit their way out of covering it. Doctors shouldn’t be having to spend so much time arguing against these situations, but many of them feel like they have no choice, because if insurance doesn’t cover it, the patient just isn’t going to get the medication.
- Comment on Almost the entire US South is now being blocked by Pornhub 3 weeks ago:
My understanding is that it’s not necessarily porn addiction that causes this, but a particular style of masturbation that some people refer to as “death grip”. Source: a friend of mine who used to masturbate every night before bed to sleep better, but this began causing issues with his partner due to ED. He eventually solved it by using a different grip while masturbating.
In short, if you feel like you’ve come away from this conversation with things to reflect on, then that’s great and I’m glad about that. However, “porn addiction”, as a term, describes a whole bundle of stuff that is still pretty poorly understood, because it can be hard to discern between symptoms and causes
- Comment on Bioshock creator Ken Levine discusses the future of narratives in games 4 weeks ago:
Your explanation is good and thorough.
I always struggle to know when to use the square brackets. The straightforward answer is to just quote directly where possible. But especially in interviews, someone’s answer may be jumbly, so the most honourable thing to do may be to use square brackets to make it easier for the reader to understand the speaker’s point, but you’re not being misleading.
For example, maybe this interviewee said something like “in the future, it — we might come to see that game development, and games overall, will end up turning out to be player-driven”, which could be straightforwardly shortened to what we see in the screenshot: “in the future, it [will be] player driven”. Square brackets, in the hands of a skilled journalist, can be used to manipulate a narrative through selectively quoting people, but they can also represent a speaker’s point far more authentically and cogently than the literal words.
"in the future, it will be player-driven
- Comment on Give us your best infodump. 1 month ago:
I agree. A great example of why can be found in this excellent article about an extensive “dossier” of fraud allegations against a top Alzheimer’s researcher: (science.org/…/research-misconduct-finding-neurosc…)
Specifically, this snippet:
“Microbiologist and research integrity expert Elisabeth Bik, who also worked on the Zlokovic dossier, contributed other Masliah examples and reviewed and concurred with almost all of the findings.”
Elisabeth Bik is someone who has an incredible eye for fraudulently edited Western Blots images and someone I greatly admire. Calling her a “research integrity expert” is accurate, but what I find neat is that (to my knowledge) she doesn’t have any particular training or funding towards this work. A lot of work she does in this area starts on, or is made public on PubPeer, an online forum. This is all to say that Elisabeth Bik’s expertise and reputation in this area effectively stems from her just being a nerd on the internet.
I find it quite beautiful in a way, because she’s far from the only example of this. I especially find it neat when non-scientists are able to help root out scientific fraud specifically through non-scientist expertise. As a scientist who often finds herself propelled by sheer enthusiasm, sometimes feels overwhelmed by the “Publish or Perish” atmosphere in research, and who worries about the integrity of science when there’s so much trash being published, it’s heartening to see that enthusiasm and commitment to Truth still matters.
- Comment on ugh i wish 2 months ago:
This might be helpful, or it might be unrelated.
Recently, I made mozzarella from scratch. In order to do that, I needed some milk that wasn’t homogenised. Homogenisation is the process of breaking up the fat globules within milk into smaller droplets so they’re more evenly dispersed throughout the liquid, meaning there won’t be a fatty layer that separates out when you leave the milk to stand.
Most milk that you buy at the supermarket would be both homogenised and pasteurised. I learned that pasteurised milk could work for cheese, depending on the specific temperature the milk was heated to during pasteurisation (because the required minimum temperature for pasteurization is below the temperature that causes issues for mozzarella, but some brands pasteurise at a higher temperature. Unfortunately most brands don’t say what temperature they pasteurise at, but I got lucky with the first one I tried). That part’s not especially relevant to you and is mostly cheese related
The thing I wanted to suggest, out of scientific curiosity more than helpfulness, is that I wonder how your son would do with pasteurised, non-homogenised milk — perhaps it’s the homogenisation that’s causing the problem, rather than the pasteurisation. If you do try this, I’d be interested to hear back how things go; I haven’t heard of anyone having issues like this before
- Comment on Rail freight scheme sees 64,000 less lorry journeys in first year 2 months ago:
Didn’t they sell off a bunch of the land that was going to be used for that? I remember being very upset at how spiteful of a gesture it felt
- Comment on Substack says it could be profitable — but it still isn’t 2 months ago:
I’m not actually doubtful of this, given that all it’s really saying is "We’re not going full enshittification… Yet "
- Comment on Rail freight scheme sees 64,000 less lorry journeys in first year 2 months ago:
It’s definitely good, but I do wonder (and worry) whether increased usage of rail contributes at all to the increasingly abysmal passenger rail services; when you look at the data, it’s horrific how overloaded the train lines are due to chronic under-investment.
That being said, even if this scheme was impacting passenger rail, it’s probably still good overall, especially if it leads to more investment in infrastructure (i.e. passenger rail being drastically involved in the future); I have plenty of beef with Starmer’s Labour, but I also recognise that the trains getting as bad as they are now didn’t happen overnight, so will take time to improve. (Which reminds me: I should read more about the recent budget)
- Comment on I put on my robe and my wizard hat 2 months ago:
I used to do leathercraft commissions. My best customers were LARPers ordering armour, scroll cases etc., and kinksters buying fancy collars, cuffs and harnesses. Sometimes these were the same people
- Comment on Netflix used to not have ads, now it’s ‘celebrating’ two years with them 2 months ago:
That said, we’re on Lemmy, in the technology community – I’m reasonably confident that almost everyone here who is going to read your comment has the skills necessary
Yeah, my comment was getting more at the fact I have loved ones whose behaviour I can shift in small ways, such as by sending a link to an add on to block ads.
Especially as the blockage isn’t necessarily the skills, but a more nebulous sense of unease that I wonder whether is linked to the “you wouldn’t download a car” era of anti-piracy ads
- Comment on Netflix used to not have ads, now it’s ‘celebrating’ two years with them 2 months ago:
Addons like the one linked are useful for me to share with friends. I have many friends who have a soft anti-piracy stance. Not due to ideological conflicts — it’s mostly that their inexperience combined with knowing that pirating is forbidden makes them feel uncomfortable. Adblocking carries a similar sense of discomfort, but much milder, so it can be useful as a small step for overly anxious family and friends.
- Comment on Do you really want it in your body??? 2 months ago:
“(But sure, Ebola needs our DNA in the sense that otherwise we wouldn’t be alive. But so do nuclear weapons in order to kill humans.)”
For me, the fact that Ebola is an RNA virus made the meme more absurd and funny, in a “cut off your note to spite your face” way
- Comment on lab toys 2 months ago:
My PI: “Oh, we don’t use that microcentrifuge, it will ruin your results” Me: “Oh damn, how long has it been broken for?” PI: "No, it’s not broken. It’s cursed "
I thought this was just exasperated hyperbole, but nah, there’s a lot of superstition here.
- Comment on Cry Harder, Kid 2 months ago:
Thank you for sharing; I watched it and found it so silly that I went and found an even longer one youtu.be/NBH3UvlZo90 It’s so silly. I was trying to ponder what sound effect would best match, but there’s so many, it’d be impossible to choose.
- Comment on THANK YOU 2 months ago:
I hadn’t heard about bulldog ants before and was incredulous about your statement, but damn, yeah, bulldog ants are wild
- Comment on Please be patient. 2 months ago:
I like the way one of my university textbooks frames the particle wave duality thing: “A single pure wave has a perfectly defined wavelength, and thus an exact energy, but has no position. […] [Whereas a classical particle] would have a perfectly defined position but no definable wavelength and thus an undefined energy” ^([1]^[2])
I am currently in my bed. I have a lot to do today, but I’m not sure how much I will get done because I don’t know how much energy have. Thus I conclude you are right and that I am clearly a particle.
^([1]: Principles and Problems in Physical Chemistry for Biochemists, Price, Dwek, Radcliffe & Wormald, p282)
^([2]: I’m practicing being more diligent with citations, in hope that good habits will make it easier when referencing is actually important)
- Comment on Please be patient. 2 months ago:
A big part of quantum mechanics is the fact that matter can show wave-like behaviour, which sort of breaks a bunch of “rules” that we have from classical physics. This only is relevant if we’re looking at stuff at a teensy tiny scale.
Someone else has already mentioned that electrons are a fair bit smaller than protons and neutrons (around 1840 times smaller) and this means they tend to have a smaller momentum than protons or neutrons, which means they have a larger wavelength, which was easier to measure experimentally. That’s likely why electrons were a part of this theory, because they’re small enough that they’re sort of a perfect way to study the idea of things that are both particle and wave, but also neither. In 1940, quantum mechanics and particle physics were super rapidly moving fields, where our knowledge hadn’t congealed much yet. What was clear was that electrons get up to some absolute nonsense behaviour that broke our understanding of how the world worked.
I like the results of some of the worked examples here: www.chemteam.info/…/deBroglie-Equation.html , especially the one where they work out what the wavelength of a baseball would be (because that too, could theoretically act like a wave, it would just have an impossibly small wavelength)
TL;DR: electrons are smaller than protons/neutrons Smaller = larger wavelength Larger wavelength = easier to make experiments to see wave-like behaviour from the particle Therefore electrons were useful in figuring out how the heck a particle can have a wavelength and act like a wave
- Comment on Are 'micro-apartments' converted from offices the answer to the housing crisis? 2 months ago:
Without regulation, it’ll make it worse. (31 minute YouTube video by Evan Edinger)
- Comment on Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity promote scientific racism in AI search results 2 months ago:
It’s frustrating how common IQ based things are still. For example, I’m autistic, and getting any kind of support as an autistic adult has been a nightmare. In my particular area, some of the services I’ve been referred to will immediately bounce my referral because they’re services for people with “Learning Disabilities”, and they often have an IQ limit of 70, i.e. if your IQ is greater than 70, they won’t help you.
My problem here isn’t that there exists specific services for people with Learning disabilities, because I recognise that someone with Down syndrome is going to have pretty different support needs to me. What does ick me out is the way that IQ is used as a boundary condition as if it hasn’t been thoroughly debunked for years now.
I recently read “The Tyranny of Metrics” and whilst I don’t recall of it specifically delves into IQ, it’s definitely the same shape problem: people like to pin things down and quantify them, especially complex variables like intelligence. Then we are so desperate to quantify things that we succumb to Goodhart’s law (whenever a metric is used as a target, it will cease to be a good metric), condemning what was already an imperfect metric to become utterly useless and divorced from the system it was originally attempting to model or measure. When IQ was created, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was. It has been made worse by years of bigots seeking validation, because it turns out that science is far from objective and is fairly easy to commandeer to do the work of bigots (and I say this as a scientist.)
- Comment on Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’ 2 months ago:
I’m super dubious because Starmer has done very little to earn my trust, but I would be very keen to be surprised, or even proven wrong
- Comment on YSK that there's a better index than the BMI to measure obesity called the Body Roundness Index 2 months ago:
That’s an extreme case, but the point still stands. For example, right now, I’m pretty fat, because I haven’t shifted the weight I gained over COVID. Even though I’m visibly way larger than I was, I’m not much heavier than I was pre-covid, because I’ve lost a heckton of muscle. It’s insane to me that BMI will look at me pre-covid, and look at me now, and say “that’s the same picture”. Especially because I personally found that the best and safest way for me to lose weight was to focus on getting strong and fit first.
- Comment on Opened an old scientific instrument to see if it works... 3 months ago:
I have a running list where I have been collecting words that I like for the last few years.
“Shrewd” is a good word and it’s going on my list. Thank you for the contribution.
- Comment on Infinite Suffering 3 months ago:
I found linear algebra super hard until I learned it a second and then third time, from different angles. I found it harder to understand when it was taught in a pure maths context, but coming at it from the applied side made me go “oh, so that’s why that’s like that”
- Comment on UK academies ‘very sorry’ for policies saying pupils must attend when unwell 3 months ago:
“In their letter withdrawing their pledge, Glenmoor and Winton schools flagged research by the children’s commissioner that showed that only one in 20 children who are persistently absent achieve five good GCSEs.”
As someone who grew up on a shitty council estate in a socio-economically deprived area of the country, I’m a little exasperated by the backwards understanding that measures like this show. The majority of people who die from old age have grey hair, but this doesn’t mean that hair dye will help reduce deaths from aging.
I sympathise with the school, because they almost certainly have some understanding that it’s a big blob of complex things that underlie and link attendance to attainment, but figuring out what to do about that is a whole other problem. Certainly though, I think this level of attendance requirements is silly
- Comment on Former Disco Elysium devs are working on a spiritual successor at new studio Longdue, though Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov aren't involved 3 months ago:
Selfishly, I hope you’re right, but with the addendum that I hope they don’t try too hard to recapture that lightning, and that they trust in their own ideas. I also hope Rostov, Kurvitz and Helen Hindpere (writer who also lost her job as things fell apart) find success and fulfillment in their future. It’s fucked up that they won’t get to work on Disco Elysium — especially Rostov and Kurvitz.
This is probably a bad example, given how it turned out, but I’m reminded of how it felt to be a Halo fan in 2013 — Halo 4 had recently come out to a mixed reception. It was the first Halo game to be developed by 343 industries rather than Bungie, and some of the disgruntled fans hoped that Bungie’s then-upcoming new game, Destiny, would scratch that itch. Destiny could obviously never be a replacement for Halo (some fans found it easier to consider the franchise to be dead), but jt wasn’t unreasonable to hope for (despite it eventually not working out that way ¯\(ツ)/¯ )
- Comment on 18 treated for severe nausea in Stuttgart after opera of live sex and piercing 3 months ago:
"Holzinger, 38, is known for freewheeling performances that blur the line between dance theatre and vaudeville. Her all-female cast typically performs partially or fully naked, and previous shows have included live sword-swallowing, tattooing, masturbation and action paintings with blood and fresh excrement.
“Good technique in dance to me is not just someone who can do a perfect tendu, but also someone who can urinate on cue,” Holzinger told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year."
That’s hilarious
- Comment on A Record Number of Scientific Papers Were Retracted in 2023 For Being Fraudulent or a Having Conflicts of Interest 3 months ago:
Something about potential wide scale fraud came out recently about a prominent Alzheimer’s researcher. This article covers it quite well: science.org/…/research-misconduct-finding-neurosc…
It’s grim, especially when considering the real human cost that fraud in biomedical research has. Despite this, like you, I am also optimistic. This article outlines some of how the initial concerns about this researcher was raised, and how the analysis of his work was done. A lot of it seems pretty unorthodox. For example, one of the people who contributed to this work was a “non-scientist” forensic image expert, who goes by the username Cheshire on the forum PubPeer (his real name is known and mentioned in the article, but I can’t remember it).
- Comment on Based on true events 3 months ago:
Do you apply toppings right to the edge? I’ve never had this problem despite using an absurd amount of cheese, and I was puzzling to figure out why. I think it’s because the crust rises up to act like a boundary that encloses a big lake of cheese.
- Comment on Why do social workers get upset when you don't want their help? 4 months ago:
When I find myself becoming irked by someone offering help I don’t need, it helps me to think of things in terms of people who slip through the gaps: the system that the social worker is a part of strives to help those who need it, and you not needing that help makes you a false positive. You were likely flagged because sometimes when someone is living in their vehicle, this is a symptom (and reinforcing factor) of their life being in disarray. That is to say that some people who superficially look a lot like you are in need of support, and not catching these people would be false negatives. Bonus complication is that many people who do need this help may also be resistant to support (for a variety of reasons).
Given that no system is perfect, and the error rate will always be greater than zero, we can ask the hypothetical “is it better to have fewer false positives and more false negatives, or more false positives and fewer false negatives?”. Put a different way, when you’re bothered, that’s you slipping through the gaps in a system that has opted for more false positives with the goal of helping as many people who need it as possible.
Unrelated to everything else I said, I’m glad you’ve been able to find a way of living that you’re happy in — it is a challenge when the life that is best suited for us is one that society considers “abnormal”, so I’m happy to hear about anyone who has broken into what works.
- Comment on The Failed Migration of Academic Twitter 4 months ago:
I think I saw a paper on this kind of thing over a year ago. Iirc, it said that engagement is lower on Mastodon, but higher quality.