AnarchistArtificer
@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Crabs 23 hours ago:
I love that you did
- Comment on Crabs 1 day ago:
I think this Tweet is referring to carcinisation, if any of the nerds reading this don’t know what that is
- Comment on Performative Perp Walk 2 days ago:
Man, what assholes.
I was at a “know your rights” training thing for protesters and activists, and one of the things that they covered is that a super important and low risk thing way to support a large protest is to have people sort of “on guard” nearby the police station, ready to receive and support someone who was arrested, because the police like to release people at stupid times of night (especially if they’re salty that they don’t have enough evidence to charge you for a crime). In most cases though, (such as yours), there’s no-one to provide this support, and then you’re fucked.
I hadn’t realised how prevalent this spitefulness was until this part of the training , where multiple people shared experiences of this sort. I was already on team ACAB as it was.
I’m glad you made it home safe.
- Comment on The Automated Bot of Experian support phone line, refuses to let me to a real person... 🤬 3 days ago:
It sounds like you have this sorted now, but I will share my tip anyway.
My master password was a randomly generated pass phrase of a few words, such as what you can generate with Bitwarden’s password generator set to “passphrase”
Using an example I’ve just generated with that tool, if I had decided on a master password of “Daily-Exorcist-Nappy-Cornmeal”, then I would generate a few more passwords and write those down too. So I’d have a list that might look like this:
snowman
daily
uncanny
backer
exorcist
thinner
showoff
nappy
cornmeal
nifty
(I have bolded the words belonging to the actual master password from my example above, but obviously that’s not how it’d be written down. To remember that the passphrase has the words separated by hyphens, you could draw dashed lines around the list, like a decorative border. Here, I have also written words all in lowercase, even though the password has uppercase. (Though I would advise keeping the passphrase in the correct order, as I have in this example, because it’s easy to pick out the correct four words from a list like this, but harder to remember the right order for them).
I don’t have a safe either, but writing things down like this felt like a sufficient level of security against snooping family and the like. Though like I say, it seems like you’ve resolved this differently, so this is more for others who may stumble across this than for you.
I agree with you that the emergency access feature is great. A couple of years ago, my best friend died and I ended up being a sort of “digital steward” of all his stuff, because I was his tech guy and he had shitty passwords that I couldn’t convince him to change. In the end, his laziness meant we got to preserve some digital mementos that would otherwise be lost (such as his favourite decks on Magic:Arena). At the time, I was using a personal system to generate and remember passwords, and I was shaken to consider how much would be lost if I died. I feel far more at ease now with the Emergency Access feature from Bitwarden Premium (I also like being able to use Bitwarden for 2FA codes). I’m sorry that you had the unfortunate experience of being locked out of your stuff, but I’m glad you were able to secure yourself such that you’re protected from that in future.
- Comment on The Automated Bot of Experian support phone line, refuses to let me to a real person... 🤬 3 days ago:
“Eeyup, ars thar doin’? Ad be reyt, but av lost me notes of me password— tin tin tin”
(This was an attempt at transcribing someone saying in a heavy Yorkshire accent: “Hello, how are you doing? I would be okay, but I’ve lost my notes of my password. It isn’t in the tin”. (I had to squeeze in “tin tin tin” to this somehow because that’s one of my favourite mini jokes about heavy Yorkshire accents.)
- Comment on It's 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 Celsius), raining moderately hard, the rain is cold, and there's a guy blowing around wet leaves with a leaf blower. What the hell is the obsession with leaf blowers? 5 days ago:
Good word, I like it
- Comment on Pretty interesting when you really think about it. 5 days ago:
Personally, I find him irksome because I get a strong vibe from him that he thinks of himself as a very smart person, looking down on the intellectual peasants. Part of why I perceive him that way is because this is how I used to think, as an autistic nerd who built much of my identity up around being smart. That’s also why behaviour of the sort that shows up on /r/iamverysmart (such as many of NDT’s posts) makes me cringe so much.
Dissecting this a bit further, it’s not necessarily that I think he thinks he’s better than other people — rather the opposite: some of the most intellectually arrogant people I have known are, at their core, deeply insecure and feeling the need to justify their interests by presenting themselves in a certain way.
- Comment on Depressing awful town 5 days ago:
There must not be much overlap in the countries we’ve visited then, because I’ve never seen this personally; one of the things I was glad for when I returned to the UK after while backpacking through Europe was being able to buy cheddar cheese in supermarkets again — it was non-existent in all the European shops I’d visited, and we usually settled for Edam or Gouda
- Comment on Important life choices 5 days ago:
It was an obtuse, lazy and (in hindsight) now very funny joke.
“Neoliberal” because one of the key ideological aspects of neoliberalism is the emphasis on individual responsibility. The big example that comes to mind is how the phrase “carbon footprint” was coined and popularised by oil companies as part of an advertising campaign to shift responsibility for climate change from fossil fuel companies to individual consumers.
“Greenwashing” was getting at the bullshit around recycling (which you also highlight in your comment). Often this isn’t as blatant as it is here: even if there were two bags, it’s likely that very little, if any, of the “recycling” bag would actually be recycled, and that the effort spent in separating recycling from regular trash is wasted energy that only perpetuates the feeling of doing something positive for the environment.
I found the image striking because although it isn’t hard to spot that there’s only one bag and that it doesn’t matter which hole someone throws their rubbish, I think it’s likely that someone passing by quickly wouldn’t notice this (especially if opaque bin bags were used). This is offensive to me because I’m finding that many people nowadays are struggling with chronic decision fatigue due to being worn down by the modern attention economy, and I consider the “personal responsibility” facet of climate change PR to be a facet of this. That’s what caused me to comment, but I didn’t know how to capture what I wanted to convey in a quick and straightforward manner, so I went for the lazy reply that, in hindsight, didn’t add anything meaningful to the conversation. I hope this is clearer, despite lacking in brevity
- Comment on Every time I search a windows error 5 days ago:
This is one of my favourite xkcds because it made me more consciously aware of the peculiar intimacy of the situation in the comic. Furthermore, in addition to the link that exists between me and someone on a forum with my particular tech problem, it also made me feel connected to everyone who had a different problem to me, but were also desperately trawling forums for help
- Comment on How would you forgive someone that poisoned your dog when they only offer bad faith apology ? 1 week ago:
Regardless of what your next steps are, I’m sorry for your loss.
- Comment on Important life choices 1 week ago:
Neoliberal greenwashing go brrr
- Comment on Depressing awful town 1 week ago:
That doesn’t look like any cheddar I’ve ever seen
- Comment on Just kill one guy 1 week ago:
The way that I often hear it described is the spark that blew up the powder keg that was Europe at the time. Obviously a spark alone would do very little without the gunpowder there to be ignited, so there’re definitely different levels of causation, but I think there is a sense in which the assassination can be seen as a causative element
- Comment on UK doctors and nurses with long COVID to sue for compensation 1 week ago:
This is intriguing. I wish them all the best, and I expect that if they are successful, this would be a boon not just for doctors and healthcare workers with long COVID, but many other people experiencing long COVID; things are improving somewhat, but we still have a long way to go in better understanding long COVID (both scientifically and societally).
- Comment on Is there anything Lemmy has more/better content for than Reddit and other mainstream sites? 1 week ago:
Hello, fellow human!
I hope your day has been full of the various human things, such as eating, and sleeping. Certainly I have been enjoying those things; as a human, I get plenty of sleep and food and other human things.
- Comment on Spotify suddenly cut off app developers from a bunch of its data 2 weeks ago:
For recommendations and discovery (which was a large part of what kept me with Spotify), I’m a big fan of listenbrainz.org In the time I’ve been using it, the recommendations have gotten way better, and I appreciate their efforts towards transparency.
You can import listen data from music streaming services, so if anyone is curious, I’d recommend setting it up and seeing how it goes; I only recently got round to cancelling my Spotify, but before then, I had it set up so my Spotify listens would show up on my listenbrainz.
You’re quite right though that there aren’t any straightforward replacements for Spotify. Personally, I’m returning to the seven seas, which is why I’m so appreciative of listenbrainz — that discovery stuff really was the last big thing chaining me to Spotify
- Comment on Workplaces need to do a better job at supporting menstruating workers 2 weeks ago:
It’s also that even time off can be difficult to get, because of a lack of acknowledgement of variability in menstruation. I have seen way too many situations where a manager (or whoever is responsible for okaying time off) underestimates how bad it can be for some people, possibly because no-on close to them has bad periods, so they think that everyone who struggles is playing it up for time off work.
Something that really icks me out is that there have been a few times where I have been used as a comparator to shame colleagues; I have always been blessed with light and pain free periods, and when I was on hormonal contraception, they actually stopped entirely. This meant I never needed time off for menstrual reasons, and this was used to sort of say “well Ann presumably menstruates and just gets on with things, so why can’t you?”. Many of us have had the experience of asshole managers who micromanage employee sickness and are exhausting to deal with, but there’s a subset of those who are extra assholish around menstruation related sicknesses. Something I’ve seen once was someone who seemed to be tracking the periods of her employees, and would call up to query times if you had taken period related time off and it didn’t fit into her predictions. I can only assume that she was fortunate to have super regular periods, but many people who do suffer enough to need time off work can’t predict their periods to that degree of accuracy.
But as others have said, it’s not just about time off, but sometimes it’s small stuff like taking additional or longer bathroom breaks. Or, when someone has come back from a menstruation related sick day, jokes like “you feeling better? Great, just make sure you don’t bleed on the chair, haha”, to the entire office. Obviously that’s inappropriate and the kind of thing you’d report to HR, but it’d be less prevalent if people were less weird about menstruation in general.
In a way, I appreciate your being confused by this, because if more managers thought about this like you do, this wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue. But way too many people make it weird.
- Comment on Posture check 2 weeks ago:
The rear view mirror thing is a good tip. You’ve made me realise I sort of did this somewhat without being aware of it (I tended to be attentive when adjusting my mirror, so more often than not, it would be set in accord with good posture). Now I am aware of this, I can be much more deliberate in making this happen.
- Comment on Good to see AAFES looking out for my health 2 weeks ago:
I know I’m just a random person on the internet, but I’m super proud of you for this. Like, making that decision and turning a serendipitous situation into an active choice takes a strong sense of will. Congrats
- Comment on Good to see AAFES looking out for my health 2 weeks ago:
I have a couple of friends who smoke and I really enjoy heading outside with them when they go out to smoke. I especially enjoy it when it’s very cold out, because nothing makes me appreciate the cosy warmth of my home more than a brief spell of bracing cold.
Shame about the passive smoking though
- Comment on Rational Self-Interest 3 weeks ago:
I always find the “rational self-interest” folks funny, because they always seem to imagine people’s inner nature to be anti-social and ruthless. Over the last few years, I have been working on being kinder, and I am the primary beneficiary of that work. Trying my best to not be an asshole is me at my most rationally self-interested.
- Comment on Give us your best infodump. 3 weeks 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 3 weeks 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 Social media users probably won't read beyond this headline, researchers say 4 weeks ago:
The paper mentioned in the OP, ( www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-02067-4 ) (paywalled link)
- Comment on Don't mock feet hands it's a real thing 4 weeks ago:
The Cult of the Red Circle teaches that if you circle irrelevant things, people will be desensitized to aberrations.
Ever wonder why some pictures have useless red circles, highlighting something obvious? This is why.
- Comment on Why do people say "quote unquote something" and not "quote something unquote" ? 4 weeks ago:
I’m from the UK and I feel like I’ve heard enough UK English speakers saying “quote” that I had never thought of it as an American thing. That isn’t to say that the distinction you make doesn’t exist though, just that it may be variable across demographics or contexts.
- Comment on Social media users probably won't read beyond this headline, researchers say 4 weeks ago:
I wasn’t sure how to lazily and semi securely send you a pdf, so check your DMs
Wish it were possible to safely share this stuff more widely, but in the meantime, internet nerds gotta help each other out
- Comment on How do you go about evaluating sources of information for truth/credibility/etc.? 4 weeks ago:
To some extent, I don’t.
Which is to say that in and around my field (biochemistry), I’m pretty good at sort of “vibe checking”. In practice, this is just a subconscious version of checking that a paper is published in a legit journal, and having a sense for what kind of topics, and language is common. This isn’t useful advice though, because I acquired this skill gradually over many years.
I find it tricky in fields where I am out of element, because I am the kind of person who likes to vet information. Your question about how to identify work as peer reviewed seems simple, but is deceptively complex. The trick is in the word “peer” — who counts as a peer is where the nuance comes in. Going to reputable journals can help, but even prestigious journals aren’t exempt from publishing bullshit (and there are so many junk journals that keeping up even within one field can be hard). There are multiple levels of “peer”, and each is context dependent. For example, the bullshit detector that I’ve developed as a biochemist is most accurate and efficient within my own field, somewhat useful within science more generally, slightly useful in completely unrelated academic fields. I find the trick is in situating myself relative to the thing I’m evaluating, so I can gauge how effective my bullshit detector will be. That’s probably more about reflecting on what I know (and think I know) than it is about the piece of material I’m evaluating.
In most scenarios though, I’m not within a field where my background gives me much help, so that’s where I get lazy and have to rely on things like people’s credentials. One litmus test is to check whether the person actually has a background in what they’re talking about, e.g. if a physicist is chatting shit about biology, or a bioinformatician criticising anthropology, consider what they’re saying with extra caution. That doesn’t mean discount anyone who isn’t staying in their lane, just that it might be worthwhile looking into the topic further (and seeing who else is saying what they are, and what experts from the field are saying too).
As I get deeper into my academic career, I’ve found I’m increasingly checking a person’s credentials to get a vibe check. Like, if they’re at a university, what department are they under? Because a biochemist who is under a physics department is going to have a different angle than one from the medical research side, for example. Seeing where they have worked helps a lot.
But honestly a big part of it is that I have built up loose networks of trust. For example, I’m no statistician, but someone I respect irl referenced a blog of Andrew Gelman’s, which I now consider myself s fan of (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu). Then from that blog, I ended up becoming a fan of this blog, which tends to be about sociology. Trusting these places doesn’t mean I take them at face value for anything they say, but having that baseline of trust there acts as a sort of first pass filter in areas I’m less familiar with, a place to start if I want to learn about a perspective that I know the rough origin of.
In the context of news, I might start to see a news outlet as trustworthy if I read something good of theirs, like this piece on 3M by ProPublica, which makes me trust other stuff they publish more.
Ultimately though, all of these are just heuristics — imperfect shortcuts for a world that’s too complex for straightforward rules. I’m acutely aware of how little spare brain space I have to check most things, so I have to get lazy and rely on shortcuts like this. In some areas, I’m lucky to have friends I can ask for their opinion, but for most things, I have to accept that I can’t fact check things thoroughly enough to feel comfortable, which means having to try holding a lot of information at arms length and not taking it as fact. That too, takes effort.
However, I got a hell of a lot smarter when I allowed myself to be more uncertain about things, which means sometimes saying “I don’t know what to make of that”, or “I think [thing] might be the case, but I don’t remember where I heard that, so I’m unsure”, or just straight up “I don’t know”. Be wary of simple and neat answers, and get used to sitting with uncertainty (especially in modern science research).
- Comment on "I never asked for this" 4 weeks ago:
That’s her right arm, not left. Are we onto something here? Is the true gender divide that men want a badass left arm and women want a badass right arm?
