AnarchistArtificer
@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on Why do people say "quote unquote something" and not "quote something unquote" ? 6 hours 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 6 hours 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.? 2 days 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" 2 days 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?
- Comment on Rail freight scheme sees 64,000 less lorry journeys in first year 3 days 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 Rail freight scheme sees 64,000 less lorry journeys in first year 3 days 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 5 days 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 That funny feeling 1 week ago:
I am perplexed by you, but I am glad that you have something that makes you happy.
- Comment on Do you really want it in your body??? 1 week 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 1 week 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 I don't think it's possible for me to complete this Steam achievement 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, that kind of mocking is a direct attack at me, and I honestly like it because I feel like my weird achievement hunting is definitely mockable (especially because I already know how ridiculous I am and thus will not change in this respect)
- Comment on what should one archive in a fascist regime? 2 weeks ago:
I have to believe in a future where people look back on this from a world with less hatred in it than it currently has. I want to give the perpetrators of hate as little plausible deniability as possible.
I have to believe that even though looking back on history didn’t seem to help us avoid this situation, that there will be people in the future who are wiser and empowered to make better choices for them and their communities.
It’s a fantasy, and I honestly don’t care if it’s unrealistic. It’s what I need to believe to keep going. I need to believe there can be something better after this, regardless of whether I’ll get to experience it.
- Comment on The most powerful brain on Twitter 2 weeks ago:
I wonder if it’s a case of trying to make a habit of good practice. I’ve gotten into the habit of citing stuff when writing online, even if the context wouldn’t really demand that (or slapping a [citation needed] onto the end of stuff I know I could cite, but I’m too lazy to do and I want it known that lack of sources mean my assertions are questionable)
- Comment on The most powerful brain on Twitter 2 weeks ago:
If this were a shitpost, I would unironically love this.
Unfortunately, I think it isn’t intended that way, so thumbs down from me
- Comment on Cry Harder, Kid 2 weeks 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 weeks 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. 3 weeks 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. 3 weeks 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 Row as Starmer suggests landlords and shareholders are not ‘working people’ 3 weeks 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 draw.io changed license from Apache 2.0 to non-FOSS-license on August 27, 2024 4 weeks ago:
Who is David Kinne and what did he do?
- Comment on This Working Class Waitress Could Decide Who Controls Congress 4 weeks ago:
Not necessarily. I am recalling a friend of mine who is aiming to become a professional actor, but has only received small roles thus far. In between gigs, she works as a waitress, but her family’s wealth is such that she has a tremendous safety net that others don’t. Indeed, she has said that she’d be unable to become an actor if she were actually reliant on her waitressing income
- Comment on Jimmy Carter Casts His Ballot for Harris in Georgia 5 weeks ago:
A sentence from that article that I love:
“Ten [states] specifically mandate the counting of absentee ballots regardless of the voter’s corporeal status.”
“Corporeal status”. I love it. I’m probably going to semi-ironically incorporate that phrase into my lexicon
- Comment on Infinite Suffering 5 weeks ago:
Though I do wonder whether a sufficiently good lawyer could argue that it’s not attempted murder if you knew they were immortal
- Comment on Infinite Suffering 5 weeks 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 Is there a way to have a "watch later" or "favorite" list that works across different websites? 5 weeks ago:
I like to use Hypothes.is for annotating stuff I read in depth
- 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 5 weeks 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 Currently downloading The Witcher 3 for the first time. Got any advice for me? 1 month ago:
There’s a reason one of the difficulties is story only.
That is something I appreciated about the game, it makes it clear that lower difficulties are valid ways to pay the game
- Comment on Currently downloading The Witcher 3 for the first time. Got any advice for me? 1 month ago:
Oh yeah, I really wish I had played on a higher difficulty for this reason. Especially because one of the most immersive and thematically cool parts of the game for me was the main story section near the end of act 1 where you have to make a blade oil to fight a >!werewolf!< . (Vague wording to minimise spoilers in my main comment.) I really liked this because it made me reflect on what it means to be a Witcher — how the knowledge might be more important than the mutations and the magic.
An additional point to the prepping is that being open-world means that you can potentially go to areas or take on challenges far beyond the “intended” level. On lower difficulties, I didn’t feel sufficiently punished for being audacious in that way, and I think the potential for punishment is part of the fun of the audacity. Especially when getting destroyed like this isn’t the game “fuck you for even trying”, but rather a “try exploring some more, find some new recipes and come back later (or just read the bestiary and find out that you already have the item you need)”
- Comment on This moon decoration my wife got 1 month ago:
Eh, there’s a reason that Mildly infuriating exists as a community — sometimes the best way to exorcise one’s aggravation is to give space to the annoyance by sharing it with other persnickety people.
- Comment on Fields of Mistria is one of the most impressive games I've ever played 1 month ago:
I don’t think I’ve personally played any games with that, but I think it can be a problem? I get the sense that it may vary game by game, but as I say, I have no direct experience or knowledge