Zagorath
@Zagorath@quokk.au
- Comment on AAAAA 3 days ago:
Isn’t the left character Zelda?
- Comment on Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial 5 days ago:
I play the clarinet and I taught myself circular breathing for one particular piece. I can guarantee you it is not a standard technique. It’s not even something that you can expect a professional player to be able to perform. I think I’ve only ever seen one performer use it.
It can be handy as an option for long fast passages, to avoid needing to sneak in a breath. Much less useful for holding a single long note, because it’ll impact your embouchure and put a hitch in the note that can be disguised between notes in a faster passage.
- Comment on Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial 5 days ago:
The didgeridoo is customarily played using a technique called circular breathing. Because this involves forcing air out of the mouth using the cheeks, it is exceptionally difficult to do on instruments and in mystical styles where maintaining a specific embouchure is required. Which means it’s not practical on brass or reeded wind instruments playing most conventional repertoire.
- Comment on Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial 5 days ago:
That is, indeed the “joke”, such as it is.
- Comment on Why are people trying to raid Scientology buildings around the world? 2 weeks ago:
Seriously. Next time, ABC, just send me a quick DM. I’ve got your back.
- Comment on Why are people trying to raid Scientology buildings around the world? 2 weeks ago:
Those two organisations deserve each other.
- Comment on ABC radio kills third party internet radio streams and embedded links. 2 weeks ago:
I hope this doesn’t affect podcasts. Podcasting is an open standard and the ABC Listen app is a closed system.
If I can’t listen to their podcasts in my preferred podcatcher I’ll be sad, but not enough to start using another app for it.
- Submitted 2 weeks ago to news@aussie.zone | 12 comments
- Comment on Wild Ones 2 weeks ago:
Biologically speaking, there is no way to define butterfly in a way that includes everything people consider butterflies and does not also include moths.
- Comment on Literally exactly how it works, too. 3 weeks ago:
So uhh…sorry for this comment being as long as it is. I was initially basically just going to leave the first paragraph and then link to two or three videos demonstrating the claims. But then I wanted it to be of value even if you don’t spend the time watching the videos. And so I had to rewatch the videos myself to summarise salient points. And that led me to finding and rewatching yet more videos. And then I had to summarise those. And the comment just blew out.
The first paragraph should serve as a TL;DR if the rest is too much or not worth the time. And jump to the last paragraph for other recs.
Sabine Hossenfelder
Hey, just be very careful about her. She knew her stuff with astrophysics, but has since become very jaded even within what was once her own field, and she has a nasty habit of speaking with great authority about matters outside her expertise, and getting it wildly wrong. And often doubling down rather than adapting when corrected. And also of spreading a message that emboldens and encourages science deniers, despite not being a science denier herself.
Here’s a video about it from a former ABC journalist who I think is being overly generous to Hossenfelder at times (in particular regarding Hossenfelder’s take on trans people), but which nonetheless does a good job of laying out the problematic way she presents certain views.
And here are a few more videos that take a more directly critical approach. Professor Dave Explains’ first video. This is probably the strongest, because it makes every effort to present things from Hossenfelder’s point of view and assume she means well. One key thing this video does is point out that the fact that she comments on fields outside her expertise is not a problem. The problem comes when she refuses to properly update her beliefs (and retract claims) when she gets corrected, and she often does not sufficiently caveat her views with her lack of expertise in this subject.
Professor Dave Explains’ second video, a followup a week after the first addressing some responses to the first one.
eigenchris explains why she’s wrong about trans teens. In short, Hossenfelder plays the bothsidesism game to appear as reasonable, but to do so ignores significant amounts of evidence in favour of trans affirming care, and ignores significant problems with the limited evidence in favour of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” (i.e., the idea that people think they’re trans even though they aren’t purely because it’s “socially popular") in order to present it as a reasonable view.
Rebecca Watson (Skepchick) also does a much shorter video about this trans misinformation. She also points out that Hossenfelder hides her citations behind the Patreon paywall, making it impossible for most viewers to do basic fact checking. Watson also follows up about how Hossenfelder is wrong about capitalism. The video links over to this much longer video by Unlearning Economics (a creator I have watched before and enjoyed, but I have not seen this particular video recently enough to recall it), but spends most of its runtime explaining the many ways Hossenfelder was wrong about penicillin, by falsely claiming it only took off thanks to capitalism, despite the Australian Government being one of the biggest drivers of its uptake by producing enough to use for the Australian Army during WWII (with enough leftover for civilian use), and despite numerous capitalists from the UK and US actively choosing not to invest in producing penicillin until promises of significant tax breaks for aiding in their own war effort.
Now, I’ve got my own separate problems with Watson that have led me to stop watching her. (Namely: that she seems more interested in dunking on people than actually spreading good information. The Adam Conover video was an awful hit piece, and the pinned comment was nothing but anti-union propaganda. And she refused any update, not even pinning someone else’s comment pointing out the update, after Conover put out a complete retraction of the thing Watson was dunking on him for. Not to mention the significant amount of time in that video spent dealing with style issues rather than the actual substance. Just gross.) But in these two videos she does a really good job of laying out the facts and deferring to experts who can demonstrate why Hossenfelder is problematic.
Dave has a third video. It’s much longer and might be worth watching if you’re still on the fence. It shows some of the more recent claims from Hossenfelder of her getting more and more extreme in her anti-scientific institutions takes, and then does interviews with current scientists about what they do and how it conflicts with Hossenfelder’s warped explanations.
For former academic astrophysicists who occasionally make videos about the problems with academic science or with the popular response to science, I would highly recommend Angela Collier and Dr. Fatima. Though neither are exactly the same niche that Hossenfelder purports to be in, since they don’t typically do science news reporting.
- Queensland government in ‘integrity crisis’ over alleged undisclosed affair between two ministers [during which time Minister for Sport Tim Mander moved the Olympic Sailing from Moreton Bay to the Whitsundays in electorate of Amanda Cam], opposition sayswww.theguardian.com ↗Submitted 3 weeks ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to melbourne@aussie.zone | 8 comments
- Comment on Batteries 5 weeks ago:
Maybe sometimes, especially among the bigger and more infamously privacy-invasive sites.
A lot of the time, though, it’s just that it’s the easiest way to write a website. Particularly if you’re using modern frameworks, you have to go quite a way out of your way to send static HTML that works well without JS enabled.
- Comment on Think Bold 1 month ago:
Too much pollution? Release wolves
in factoriesin boardroomsFTFY
- Comment on Protesters arrested at Brisbane pro-Palestine rally featuring banned phrase 1 month ago:
by the jews
You mean like the Jewish Australians arrested today for standing up against the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide?
- Comment on Protesters arrested at Brisbane pro-Palestine rally featuring banned phrase 1 month ago:
I thought this was, yet again, a shit article on the subject from the ABC. A total failure to provide context to explain the ongoing genocide and our government’s support of the genocidal regime that leads to local protests having a very direct, real purpose. Literally no attempt to explain the meaning of the phrase, no contextualising the use of the term “hate speech”. Not even scare quotes around that term.
It’s quite telling that there’s no by-line on the article.
Here’s a better article. It doesn’t go as far as I would like in contextualising it properly, it but it at least does the bare minimum necessary for journalistic integrity.
Also, side note: according to a Facebook post/video by Michael West Media (but not any proper article from them that I could find), those arrested included Jewish Australians.
- Comment on NSW premier told to resign after protest laws struck down by top court 1 month ago:
fr. that’s like…the whole problem.
- Comment on It's called fashion, sweaty, look it up 1 month ago:
What was her response?
- Submitted 1 month ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 1 comment
- Comment on What's in a name? 1 month ago:
Han Solo hates snakes?
- Comment on Wacky 1 month ago:
Sorry but I don’t trust that infographic. Over 50% in Australia? Try more like 15. If it got Australia so badly wrong, how accurate are other countries?
- Comment on I need support sometimes 1 month ago:
nathan_fillion_castle.gif
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Being anticompetitive is far from the only way a company can be shitty.
Steam had to be sued by the Australian government into following the law regarding refunds for faulty products.
They have always been at the forefront of shitty gambling mechanics in video games, with their random loot boxes and tradeable skins.
And until recently, the hyper-consumerist FOKO-inducing structure of Steam sales was pretty awful.
- Comment on New Rumored Xbox Game Pass Tier Includes Only First Party Games 2 months ago:
Age of Mythology: Retold, and its 2 (soon to be 3) major expansions.
- ABC journalists to strike for first time in 20 years with widespread news disruption expectedwww.theguardian.com ↗Submitted 2 months ago to news@aussie.zone | 0 comments
- Comment on Asked LA Fitness to cancel my membership, they offered to freeze it for $10/month instead 2 months ago:
I thought I heard that California had a law requiring cancelling be just as easy as signing up? Is that not the case? (Assuming the name of the gym is an indicator of the city it’s based in, and not the state or country.)
- Comment on Live: ABC calls Labor win in South Australian election 2 months ago:
Sitting at 30-4-0-0 now.
Not quite the 0 seats that some polls were reporting a month ago, but still a shockingly bad defeat for the Liberals and a major indictment on their continuing rightward shift since Abbott.
- Comment on Huge swings to ONP, against Libin today's SA election, small swing against ALP, towards Greens 2 months ago:
- Huge swings to ONP, against Libin today's SA election, small swing against ALP, towards Greensquokk.au ↗Submitted 2 months ago to australianpolitics@aussie.zone | 12 comments
- Comment on [Video] Australian police seizes “Wanted - Netanyahu" sign saying it is antisemitic 2 months ago:
An event hosted by the jewish community intended to try to ease tensions and rebuild cohesion after a terrorist attack directed at them isn’t an appropriate one.
An event hosted by an explicitly-zionist (and therefore pro-genocide) organisation is always the appropriate place for protest against Israel’s genocide. No matter what they ostensibly claim the purpose of that event is.
