AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨cats are so silly⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Stimming

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do people eat this?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I quite like Yorkshire puddings.

  But I agree, British cuisine is pretty beige in vibe

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I think I’d agree with that. Although it’s gotten large enough that it doesn’t feel like a subset of sociology anymore, it still feels descended from sociology. (To give an example of what I mean by being large enough it’s now distinct from sociology, biochemistry sprang forth from biology/biomedicine, but now is its own distinct field, with methods and modes of inquiry that are distinct from biology/biomedicine)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is an interesting perspective. I feel like I disagree with you, but I don’t know why. Whenever I feel like this, it usually means that there is some interesting learning ahead of me if I am willing to chew on some ideas for a while, so thanks for writing this comment

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Something that I often end up ranting about when I’ve had a few drinks at the pub is how I wish that all science education included some philosophy. I don’t mean as a brief, one off unit, but actually woven throughout.

  I actually got really into learning about the philosophy of science because I found this insufficiency became apparent when learning about machine learning systems in the context of bioinformatics and protein structure prediction. There were some absolutely brain-dead takes in papers that seemed to believe that big data methods have the potential of basically removing scientists from the process of science. Fortunately, there were also papers that called this out as nonsense, because expert knowledge is more important than ever in building and using machine learning systems.

  Shout out to Sabine Leonelli, author of Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study, which was the book I read that looked at this in detail. Her work is what really cemented my passion for the philosophy of science, and got me into philosophy more generally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that economics is a science, but contrary to the insistence of many economists I have known, it is absolutely a soft science. This is not a pejorative (though I reluctantly admit that I used to view it as such). My view is that economists would be wise to learn from their fellow social scientists in other fields. That would do a lot to help improve the rigour of economics.

  You raise an interesting point, but there’s more to science than just measuring stuff. Most of my beef with economics comes from how economists react when their model’s predictions don’t align with reality. If a physicist’s theory makes incorrect predictions, then there’s not really much wiggle room to explain away the problem. If a psychologist’s theory makes predictions that aren’t correct, then my impression is that “explaining away” errors by gesturing at additional complexities not able to be accounted for is a much more acceptable thing to happen. This isn’t necessarily bad, but rather seems to be a part of how knowledge production happens in the social sciences.

  I can’t comment too much on the specifics, as I am very much not a social scientist. Like I said above though, I have come around from looking down on these fields. In fact, I’ve come to appreciate them precisely because the skills used in the soft sciences are so alien to me. Economics uses a heckton of quantitative methods, but the phenomena they study are fundamentally social in nature, and thus they reduce the utility of their work by trying to distance themselves from the social sciences

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What makes a difference is how models are evaluated in light of new evidence. If a model makes predictions that turn out to be incorrect, then a big part of scientific progress is in re-examining the underlying assumptions of the model.

  My beef with economics isn’t that it’s often wrong, but that economists are often keen to present themselves as scientists to boost their epistemic authority, whilst also acting in a deeply unscientific way.

  The worst economists for this get very offended if you say that economics is a soft science, with more in common with psychology than physics. This offends them because they hear “soft science” as a pejorative. Economics absolutely is a science, but the more that economists try to pretend that their object of study isn’t wibbly wobbly as hell, the less I respect them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You — I like you.

  I hated how statistics was taught in my university science course. I did a ton of extra advanced modules when I was doing my A levels before university, so I learned more stats than most people do in high school. This just made the poor statistics taught to biochemists all the more confusing. There were things that they taught that were straight up wrong, and it really made me doubt myself.

  I ended up going away and learning statistics in a more thorough way, which ended up being a lot of fun. In a weird way, I’m glad for how grim the stats course was because it led me to a much deeper understanding than I’d have gotten otherwise

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wokeness ended, check mate leftists ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s actually a lot of trans women in the professional modelling world. One friend told me that due to preferences for taller women with particular bone structure, that the field actively selects for trans women. Like, there’s still way more cis women in modelling than trans women, simply because there’s way more cis women in the world, but trans women are disproportionately represented in modelling

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wokeness ended, check mate leftists ⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s because there’s a significant proportion of people whose preferences are something behind “skinny, white, conventionally feminine woman”, and so when people outside of that demographic are featured in media, it freaks them out because their preferences are limited to people who fit within that narrow description, so wider diversity of people depicted in media is, to them, synonymous with a push for unattractive people in media.

  That in and of itself isn’t a problem — they have every right to their own preferences, and I have no interests in trying to convince them of anything. The problem is because they have attached themselves to the idea that their personal preferences are the objective standard. So when they see more diversity in media, and others thirsting for people they would consider to be objectively unattractive, this destabilises the idea that their preferences are The Truth. This means that, rather than just accepting that people like what they like, they contort themselves into believing that this is all a big conspiracy to try to push objectively unattractive people into media. Framing things like that means they end up seeing this as something that is entirely a political push to erode all foundations of society as part of some Woke ploy. They feel threatened and genuinely scared that there will be a future where there is literally no-one who they find attractive represented in media. Which is to say that someone who is accustomed to being the boot distrusts people who want there to be no boot, because surely they must be lying so that they can seize power and be the boot and crush everyone else.

  At the heart of this is a zero-sum way of thinking of the world. They have deeply internalised that if one group in society gains rights, or power of any sort, then it must come at the cost of someone else. Some of them occasionally show awareness of the moral awfulness of them using their privilege to oppress others in society, and they briefly have moments where they understand that if the oppressed wished to take our retribution against them, we would be justified. However, they are incapable (or unwilling) to actually reckon with all the cognitive dissonance they’ve built up, and so their fear causes them to become ever more rigid in their worldview.

  I find it fascinating, really. I am a fat, queer punk, and my existence is viscerally horrifying to them, because I am the epitome of so much of what they hate, and it breaks their brains to imagine that someone could find me attractive (tbh, it still sort of breaks my brain a bit too, but I’m getting there with improving my confidence). They genuinely believe that THE WOKE LEFT want everyone in media to look like me, even though that would be the opposite of the diversity we actually want.

  They don’t believe us when we say this though. Their zero sum thinking combined with their willful inability to acknowledge that their own preferences are as subjective as anyone’s means they don’t believe us when we say this though, and that this is all part of our dastardly plot to seize absolute power for ourselves and make them be the oppressed ones.

  It’s quite sad for them in the end. I’ve found that a huge part of what has allowed me to become more confident in myself has been acknowledging and embracing all the non conventional things I find attractive in other people. For instance, I firmly believe that the most beautiful point on basically any human body is the point where the curvature of the calf turns from being convex to concave. And because I don’t feel the need to convince other people of this, I can just let myself like what I like and be free to bite my partners’ calves. Even if their tastes do genuinely align with what is considered to be this narrow notion of “conventionally attractive”, I can’t imagine they feel very free to actually enjoy their own desires and their own bodily potential

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

  This but pants

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pants often have pockets, but too small even for a normal sized wallet, or a smaller phone. And women who buy pants with shitty pockets absolutely complain about the pockets. Literally just this week, I complimented someone on her handbag, and she thanked me, and proceeded to complain about shitty pockets that necessitate having bags (she wished that she had good pockets, because then having a nice bag could be a deliberate, aesthetic choice, rather than a necessity.

  Pants are generally crap, but they’re not the only thing that can have pockets: skirts and dresses can too. I love how often I compliment someone on their dress, and they put their hands in their pockets and say “Thanks! It has pockets!”. When I first saw this meme, I was delighted to see someone describing the exact same thing that I love seeing. Every time I see that posted, I see loads of people commenting on agreement. There is a truly incredible amount of solidarity in the experience of shitty pockets on women’s clothes. When we do find clothes with good pockets, it’s so exciting that we can’t wait to share that fact with anyone who compliments us on the outfit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨And the cold in particular.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The trick is that most of the magic comes from the hands, then the brain. When I self taught calligraphy, I spend a long time just practicing drills. Pages and pages of lines, circles and isolated letters, where I was honing my muscle memory to be able to keep the pen at the correct angle throughout a stroke, or to make a stroke quickly enough that it looks smooth and not wobbly, but slow enough that it was still correctly aligned.

  The brain-knowledge came afterwards. That’s why, even after years of not practicing calligraphy, I’m still decent at doing some halfway pretty writing. Whoever wrote the phrase in the OP must be at this point too, because writing in snow on a car window will obviously use very different hand and arm movements compared to writing on paper.

  I also futilely spent a lot of time trying to write in a pretty manner when I was in school. I eventually gave up and felt like someone like me, who is not particularly artistic, just isn’t cut out for it. When I actually picked up calligraphy, some years later, I clicked with it surprisingly well precisely because I’m not an artist. It felt more like a technical skill, and I enjoyed the zen of just following the instructions for a particular script, and doing the drills.

  I realised that part of my mistake in school was that I had been trying to jump straight to the level of being able to write in a decorative way. I only got good enough that I could do freehand, decorative style lettering when I had become proficient in 3 or 4 different calligraphy scripts. The only reason why it feels like the “writing” -> “art” conversion part of your brain doesn’t work is because it needs to learn through your hands.

  If you’d be interested to give it a go, a pen that I loved learning with (and still use today whenever I want to be a bit fancy) is the Pilot Parallel. They come in a variety of sizes and are a super accessible way to be able to start learning a wide variety of scripts without the stress of things like dip pens. The swirly writing featured in the OP would probably involve using a flex nib, which does typically require dipped ink, so I didn’t even touch that stuff for years, despite being enamoured with the pretty swirls. This is the book I learned from.

  I liked doing calligraphy because it allowed me to feel artistic without actually being all that creative. It’s also pretty great for gifts. “Half uncial” is pretty similar to the script used in Lord of the Rings, and isn’t too hard, so I used that to make a thing with one of her favourite lines from the book. Another friend got a postcard with “FUCK” written in fancy, gothic capitals. It took a while to get to that point, but it was pretty cool once I was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the problem is that the vast vast majority of women’s clothing, especially fast fashion, lacks pockets of good size (or any at all). The smaller places that make garments with good pockets are usually priced higher because they’re inherently not targeting the mass market (because they can’t compete with the big companies, so their only hope is to carve out a niche in the high quality domain)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have literally never heard a woman complain about having reasonably sized pockets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re doing God’s work here. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve found myself wading into a conversation to clarify things. It always feels like I’m being a bit of a persnickety grump, but misconceptions like this are a part of why so many people are wearing ill fitting bras.

  Far too many people feel like their bra is a cage, that they can’t wait to be free of at the end of the day. However, for people with larger busts especially, a good, supportive bra can feel like freedom.

  Obligatory plug of the “A Bra That Fits” calculator. I make my own clothing and support garments (corsets, stays etc.), so I often get asked for advice on where to go to get fitted, and I always advise that it’s better to use resources like this (with someone to help measure, if necessary and available) rather than a professional fitting.

  I knew someone who was previously wearing a D cup that she had been professionally fitted for, who went up to a H cup. It took her some trial and error to find the right band size, because what the calculator recommended wasn’t right for her, but once she got over the shock of “surely I can’t be an H cup!”, she was able to use other community resources to actually find something infinitely more comfortable than her old bras

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Heave-ho!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not just an engineering problem. Larger bras can be hard to find in interesting and fun colours, and there’s no reason why we can’t have pretty colours too. Plus even in smaller bras that have fancy trims and edgings, lace overlays and decorative strappy elements, they exist in addition to the main support structure of the bra, on top of it. There’s no reason why this couldn’t be done for larger bra sizes too.

  It actually is done by more niche makers, so it’s definitely possible. Ewa Michelak, for example, is a Polish bra maker that is extremely well regarded amongst people who want their over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder to look pretty and make them feel sexy too. Here’s an example of something from their range for people with “very large busts” (Mildly NSFW) to give an example of what I mean.

  Buying bras from abroad is a faff, and extra expensive due to import fees, but the fact that I know multiple people who do it speaks to how the quality and availability of the majority of bras for large boobs is just rubbish, both in support and aesthetics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Definitely the safest source for advice⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that this advice was made up by no-one. It’s like that perennially relevant IBM memo that says something like “A computer cannot be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hostile architecture ⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What it’s meant to mean is “yay us! We’re doing inclusivity!”

  What it actually means, to me, is “we will make a show of valuing disabled people, but we won’t go so far as to actually include them in the design process, thereby making this bench an artifact to our own self congratulation, as well as making wheelchair users feel excluded in a far more insidious way than they already did”.

  And I feel like an asshole to say it like that, but it’s so annoying to see well intentioned people fall at literally the first hurdle. Like, if they truly do see us as people who have intrinsic value that means we are worth including, then they also need to see us in our full personhood and include us in the process. The alternative is that their enthusiasm will just cause more money to be pissed down the drain on symbolic gestures that don’t fulfill their intended purpose

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hostile architecture ⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can appreciate the thought, because as a part time wheelchair user, it does often wear me down when I feel like I’m perpetually perched on the periphery of any conversation.

  However, like you say, this is just far too impractical for most people. I have a small, active wheelchair, and even that would probably put me in front of friends sitting on the bench beside me.

  However, I can totally believe that this was made in earnest. I’ve seen some ridiculous “accommodations” that are ostensibly for disabled people that just show that the able bodied designer just didn’t involve any disabled people in the design process at all. And that’s why “nothing about us, without us” is a long used slogan used by disability rights campaigners.

  If anyone wants to see an example of good accessibility design, I love how they designed the packaging for the Xbox Accessible Controller. They included lots of people with varied needs across multiple stages of the design process, and it really shows. And the end product is so elegantly functional. I like this quote from Solomon Romney, a “Microsoft Retail Stores retail learning specialist”:

  "The whole thing sort of blossoms open in this really beautiful, fluid way. The package just sort of opens and hands you the controller. What’s wonderful about it is the effortlessness.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨pasta bowl of nades⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a shame it’s a secret, because this looks delicious!

  If you can’t divulge the recipe, perhaps you could share a general tip or two for someone trying to make something similar?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I feel comfortable/safe going outside by myself after being so used to have parent(s) be with me outside most of my life?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Seconding the coffee shop recommendation. When I found a place near me that was nice and not overwhelming, I really enjoyed being able to be a regular there. There were days when I was not well and knew that it would help me to get out of the house at least once, and it was nice to have a place like this that could act as an achievable goal.

  Even on good days, I find it useful to have somewhere I can go and exist and feel safe in a place that’s not my home. I find I get more work done this way sometimes, so I’ll often take my laptop, my headphones, and just spend an entire day working in a café. My regular place had a few tables that were sort of tucked away in a nook, and had a plug socket nearby, so it was great.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"The trolley made me fear for my life"⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would probably step out of the way of the trolley, but I admit that I would hesitate.

  If you saw my hesitation and if I was doing okay, I would say that I’m doing as well as I can be, under the circumstances. I am fortunate to have good people in my life. When things get to be a lot, connections with people I care about helps keep me grounded.

  The world often feels so awful that I feel hopeless. I also often feel awful, sometimes due to the world, sometimes due to brain weasels scurrying around in my head. But in the end, I figure that if I am someone who is able to see all the bad stuff that’s happening as bad, then that suggests that I am probably a force for good, however small that may be. At least I can see the problem.

  If I died, there would be one less person who understands that things need to change. My resolve is weak and weary, but it endures. As long as it does, I would step off the tracks and give the gun to someone responsible asap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life pro tip for friends of pharmacists⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would never have made the connection without reading your comment, but once I read it, I almost spat out my coffee.

  Something that especially resonates with my experience is that my optometrist advised practicing holding my eye open for contacts without trying to put anything near my eye, because even before I tried putting in the contacts, my upper lid kept trying to close , and that made it harder to hold my lids in the correct position.

  Man, this made me laugh. I feel like I’ve mentally saved away your original comment, because some day, there will be an opportunity to make this comparison to someone else who will find it as hilarious as I did.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Life pro tip for friends of pharmacists⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You can start practicing just with your fingers — I find it easiest with two. Put your fingers in your mouth as far back as you can without gagging, and leave them there for a few moments, breathing through your nose. It’s important that you don’t go so far as to make yourself gag — I’ve heard that this can actually strengthen your gag reflex, so go slowly.

  I found the breathing the most challenging part of it, so practicing with my fingers in this way helped a lot with that. Doing this every day made a huge difference after only a week or two. A big tip that I’d give is that you shouldn’t take a big breath in before trying to deep throat — in hindsight, that’s something that I would often do, and it made things harder. What actually got me started practicing this was that I saw someone who could go all the way down and basically hold a large cock in their throat for an extended time — far longer than one could do in one breath. That made me realise that I needed to focus on being able to calmly breathe through my nose at a regular rate.

  If you want to move to something larger, a softer jelly dildo can be useful to practice on, I’ve heard, but I found that practicing with fingers was sufficient.

  When you’re actually going down on someone, note whether their penis has a curve to it, as many does. When I had a partner who had an upwards curve, I found that I needed to approach it from the direction of their stomach (so either lounging on the bed beside them, or straddling their chest). A downward curve makes it much easier to approach from below, which is convenient if you’re kneeling and your partner is standing.

  I also found it useful to actively try to relax my throat muscles. It was hard for me to know what a relaxed throat felt like at first, which meant that I found exercises like this helpful. I also found that when I was being too ambitious when practicing with a partner, my throat muscles becamenless relaxed. That’s why I found it useful to practice with fingers: I had as much time as I needed to practice until things became automatic, rather than having to worry about putting on a titillating performance for a partner.

  An auxiliary tip that’s useful in general for blowjobs is that you can use your hands to sort of simulate deep throating by stimulating the base of the penis at the same rhythm as what your head is moving at. This also makes it easier to gradually working up to taking more of the penis in your throat, in your own time (the last thing most people want is to end up puking on their partner, after all)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon thinks about wheat⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Humans are very clever. Sometimes I feel very clever because I have learned so many cool facts and skills with the internet, and then I think about all the knowledge I hold that people of the past managed to figure out from scratch, and it blows my mind

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Will the government be able to put 2 & 2 together⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The UK government certainly don’t know. I wouldn’t put it past them to do something stupid like banning it on the household level, which would really fuck things up for people who need to use VPNs for their job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the Spring, you can help man the fish doorbell. It’s good fun for the second monitor, if you have one.

  Context copied from the linked page:

  "Every spring, thousands of fish swim through Utrecht’s canals and waterways, searching for a place to spawn and reproduce.

  In the heart of the city lies the beautiful Weerdsluis, a manually operated lock. When the lock gates are closed, fish are forced to wait, wasting valuable time and energy – making them easy prey for birds and predatory fish.

  To help the fish, an underwater camera is installed at the lock. If fish appear on screen, you can press the doorbell! This alerts the lock keeper, who will open the lock when many fish are waiting. You can “ring” the Fish Doorbell from early March to late May

  People do so enthusiastically every year. In 2024, the Fish Doorbell attracted around 2.7 million viewers, from America to Brazil! The project has gained global recognition, helping people worldwide learn about fish migration and Utrecht’s underwater world."

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you have advice on how to find this kind of artisan seminar?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm there!⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really like Citizen Science. Beyond its scientific impact, I’ve seen it have a hugely beneficial impact on people who get involved in this way (I know a lot of people who help with collecting samples of river water and testing its quality). Rather than scientific progress being something that is done to a person, with them having no say in it due to not being a scientist, they get to be a part of the progress, which gives them a sense of personal investment in our scientific knowledge.

  Plus it helps them to trust science more, because they get to see it as it really is: deeply messy and human. Us scientists are not nearly as objective as we may like to believe, but that’s sort of the whole point of the scientific method — that’s how we try to acknowledge and set aside our subjective messiness, and get closer to objectivity, even if we can never truly reach it. Getting to understand how science functions within society gives people a deeper sense of trust because it’s more authentic.

  And on top of that, citizen science is useful for challenging the arrogance of scientists who believe that their field of study makes them superior to people who studied the humanities (or people who didn’t do higher education). I know, because deep in the back of my brain, I was one of those asshole scientists. Getting involved in citizen science project helped me to recognise how valuable it can be to get different perspectives and systems of knowledge production. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on beyond the ivory tower, and I’m glad to have been thoroughly humbled by the experience.

  It’s also so cool as well to get to share stuff that I love with people I didn’t think I had much in common with. Turns out we have a big thing in common: we don’t want shit in our rivers, we know the water companies are fucking us over with their bullshit excuses, and we want to be able to take our vague mistrust and anxiety, and turn it into something concrete we can use. And so we find ourselves united in our quest to quantify the ways in which the water companies are failing in their duty.

  It’s very cool, and it makes me a bit more hopeful for the role of science in society