Contramuffin
@Contramuffin@lemmy.world
- Comment on Fabulous through the ages 1 week ago:
- Comment on geneticists 1 week ago:
Fwiw that qPCR curve doesn’t look that bad, just don’t have the y-axis be in log form
- Comment on Ke$he's Quantum Party 1 week ago:
Can she make a law that she cannot break? Checkmate Christians
- Comment on Why are you here and not on Reddit? 1 week ago:
I use Reddit through Relay and it’s gone now. Even if I want to use Reddit, I have to jump through hoops to use it.
- Comment on Do you care about up/down votes? 1 week ago:
To me, it’s a way to quantify how other people feel about my own positions. It’s neither good nor bad to be upvoted or downvoted. People have unpopular takes sometimes and you shouldn’t stake your identity on the amount of upvotes or downvotes you have.
Instead, upvotes and downvotes are most useful for other people to guage comments. Generally speaking, if a comment is universally downvoted, that likely means the position is unpopular enough that it adds no value to a discussion, and is therefore not worth engaging with.
I consider it to be a system built upon mutual understanding - that you don’t have to seriously engage with everyone’s viewpoints, and conversely, that nobody has to seriously engage with yours.
It becomes a problem when upvotes and downvotes are gamified like on Reddit, because Goodhart’s Law demands that it stops serving its purpose when people are only attempting to optimize their upvote/downvote ratio.
- Comment on “Yay! We made our project objectively worse!” 1 week ago:
It doesn’t get crispy, but on the other hand, less microplastics on your food, so that’s a fine trade anyways.
Pro tip: microwave for half the microwave time, then bake for half the baking time. That reproduces the original crispiness without the sleeve
- Comment on Anon goes camping 1 week ago:
If parasites weren’t an effective life strategy, there wouldn’t be parasites in the world
- Comment on No context needed. 2 weeks ago:
Have you never seen a bottle brush?
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to science_memes@mander.xyz | 5 comments
- Comment on PLEASE bro 3 weeks ago:
This is a map of signaling pathways in a cell. Essentially, how does a cell detect a stimulus and how does the cell respond to it. Signaling networks are notoriously difficult to parse, in major part because many of the proteins that make up the network are promiscuous (meaning that they target many types of proteins instead of just 1). Think of network as less of a series of defined steps and more of a chaotic mess. It’s so chaotic that most maps will select a theme (ie, hormone detection, stress signaling, infection, etc.) and only show the interactions that are relevant to that theme. Unfortunately, that also means that each map will show a network that’s completely different from the others, even though the proteins are the same.
The joke here is that it’s very tempting to make another map. This map is finally going to solve cell biology, I promise, we just have to make another map. Ignore the fact that we already have so many maps, just one more map is all we need
- Comment on I'm a console gamer so, Why the hate on the Epic Games Store? 4 weeks ago:
It was a while ago, I don’t remember off the top of my head which specific game I’m remembering. Doing a brief search, it appears that this happened to Unreal Tournament and Rocket League, though it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it before the unlisting. I think the concern was losing functionality, especially for server-based or multiplayer games
- Comment on I'm a console gamer so, Why the hate on the Epic Games Store? 4 weeks ago:
Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.
Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.
At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.
Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game
The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.
There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence
Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux
Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead
Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.
- Comment on Partner has ADD, do I have misophonia? 4 weeks ago:
I don’t think you seem to have any problems, but it sounds like you’re partner may have some things that they’ll need to work out.
People are creatures of habit - while it is true that your partner is being an asshole, I currently don’t have any reason to believe that they’re doing it out of malice rather than habit.
It sounds like your partner may need to seek professional help, because it is their responsibility to manage their ADD/depression, and it sounds like they may be struggling to do that. It is not your responsibility to manage it for them
- Comment on if pure water is not conductive why would condensation be an issue for electronics? 5 weeks ago:
Because it is really, really difficult to get pure water. Even distilled water isn’t pure. I’m not even sure you can get pure water outside of an industrial or laboratory setting
- Comment on It's My Nature 5 weeks ago:
Reference to an Aesop fable. In the original version, the scorpion stings the frog and both of them drown. The moral is that some people are intrinsically harmful, even against their own self interest
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
I find that high school really doesn’t expose you to many of the most interesting fields and careers out there, and the subjects that it does expose to you are typically taught at a very basic, foundational level. To put it simply, I strongly believe that you and many other people in your situation don’t know what they’re passionate about because they don’t even know it exists.
I think it’s the fault of the school system for not working harder to show the intricacies of actual careers, but for now, we just have to deal with what we’re given.
We can try guessing what sorts of things you may like if you tell us a bit more about yourself. What sorts of things are you passionate about (ie, hobbies, obsessions, interests, favorite subject in school), and why do you feel passionate about it?
- Comment on Linux help and actual pros and cons 1 month ago:
The distro itself doesn’t particularly matter. Unless you’re picking a niche distro or one designed for experts, all of them will have a good level of polish. What does matter is the desktop environment, which is the look and feel of the OS.
Many distros offer various desktop environments, and it can be a good idea to take a look at different desktop environments and see which one you like. I personally enjoy KDE Plasma, since I feel like it resembles Windows 10 the most. A bunch of popular distros like Bazzite and Fedora offer KDE Plasma variants. Alternatively, many people also like Cinnamon, though I personally think it looks somewhat outdated. Cinnamon is primarily offered by Linux Mint.
With the right desktop environment, Linux isn’t actually particularly technical. There’s definitely been a push recently to try to make things more user friendly. From time to time, you might still have to open terminal to do more advanced things, but I find that you can generally get by.
However, the way you do things in Linux is pretty different than in Windows, and it definitely takes a bit of getting used to and building up a new set of muscle memory. You will get frustrated that something isn’t where you think it is. My advice is that you should dual boot and keep a copy of Windows, so that you can switch back to Windows when you just need to get stuff done.
As for gaming, basically everything just works out of the box. I don’t even bother to check for Linux compatibility. Make sure to enable compatibility in the Steam settings and you should be good to go. The only time when games don’t work is if a game uses an anticheat that specifically blocks Linux - if you plan to play online games, it might be worth checking if the anticheat that it uses allows Linux or not. I haven’t tried modding so I can’t comment too much about that
- Comment on mmmm proper mammilian 1 month ago:
Mmmm, no, very mammalian
- Comment on Anon uses Windows 1 month ago:
Ironically, windows games run better on Linux than Linux games run on Linux. I wouldn’t worry about it, Proton (the thing that lets you run Windows games) is extremely good now. Just make sure to enable it in your Steam settings
- Comment on How long does it take for someone to reach a high level of drawing? 1 month ago:
Depends on how much you like drawing. If it’s something fun for you, then it’s not time wasted and it’s definitely worth the effort.
I will say that while constant practice is definitely important, it’s also important to have structured practice. Practice without structure will just lock in bad habits.
By far the fastest and easiest way to improve quickly is to practice blocking. This is a technique where you simplify an object or a scene into simple geometric shapes - cubes, spheres, rectangles, etc. You draw out those shapes onto the page. Then, you add in the details. This forces you to map out where the objects are in your composition before you start drawing. Not only does it help with spatial awareness, it also lets you notice if the positioning of objects doesn’t look quite right and requires fixing, before you’ve spent a lot of time on drawing that object
- Comment on in case of emergencies, light it. 2 months ago:
Ok but that one at least has a reasonable explanation. The temp control on the edges aren’t as good as in the center, so it’s more prone to messing up.
Have you ever tried using a qPCR machine? That shit is actual black magic and you just have to hope that the spirits are feeling merciful that day
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I’m on board with spending federal funds on crypto. Cryptosporidium parvum that is
- Comment on Clothes company cannot "cancel" an order that hasn't shipped, must ship it and do a return. 2 months ago:
Technical debt applies not just to coding! (though it’s most often talked about in that context) It’s the general idea that whenever you rush a project by taking shortcuts, you have to spend more time later to sort it out (and let’s be honest, it’s never actually going to get sorted out)
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Perhaps not necessarily wrong, but people sometimes don’t like hearing the truth. I don’t agree with the other comments that you should support him - to me, that sounds like bad parenting to not at minimum set up a backup plan when things start to fall apart.
My take on this situation is that you may have to tell him in a more subtle manner. Fortunately, professional athletes are known for being notoriously competitive, where even talented people can lose out on an opportunity simply out of bad luck. This could give you a way to voice your concerns in a way that doesn’t directly imply that he’s not cut out for the job, ie “you still need to be very lucky to go pro. I was very fortunate, but we shouldn’t be counting on luck for your living. You can still try for it, but I really think you should also have some backup options if things don’t work out”
- Comment on Protein printer 2 months ago:
On the flip side:
nooo you can’t just wash your hands I have to spread to other hosts otherwise I’ll die
haha water goes brrr
- Comment on Caption this. 2 months ago:
A Russian peasant peeps through a hole in his walls and sees a coin, before transforming into a beast
- Comment on Unstable 2 months ago:
In organic chemistry, there’s a concept called delocalized pi orbitals. The exact reason why it works is complicated and outside the scope of organic chemistry, so I’m not sure if I can really explain it anyways. But the takeaway is that when you see a double bond, single bond, double bond pattern, that generally indicates that the bonds are actually being shared across the entire motif. ie, it’s not really a double bond, it’s more like… a 1.5-bond.
Having the bonds be shared across multiple atoms gives that region of the molecule special properties, the primary of which is that it tends to be really stable. The reason for that is that any disruption toward that region (eg, adding an electron) gets distributed across the motif, so that each atom is only minorly disturbed.
And the bigger the motif is, the more stable the region is because it’s able to distribute disturbances better.
Benzene (the hexagon motif circled) is made exclusively of this double bond, single bond, double bond motif. And as a result, it’s well known for being extremely difficult to modify or destroy. You really have to jump through hoops to do any sort of organic chemistry with benzenes. The motif circled in testosterone still has delocalized pi orbitals, but it’s not as extensive as a benzene, and so it’s less stable
- Comment on testtomcels 2 months ago:
To summarize: paper got published last year that had this as a figure. It got widely ridiculed because there’s no way that this figure passed peer review. Turns out the reviewers did point it out but the editor ignored it
- Comment on get good, little kitty 2 months ago:
It’s very simple:
- Learn about primer design
- Forget primer design
- Use a primer designer online
- ???
ProfitPrimer fails- Cry
- Comment on Acetone: A Thread 2 months ago:
Acetone evaporates quickly. You just let it sit for a minute and it’ll dispose of itself
