somename

@somename@hexbear.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DOGE cut 20% of APHIS the agency that protects U.S. agriculture and now the screwworm parasite that wipes out livestock has returned to the U.S⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was pushed out of North America by releasing large amounts of sterile flies, so that they’d mate and die without producing new generations. They pushed the range of the fly down slowly, until they hit Panama.

  That is a very narrow strip of land connecting North and South America, allowing for a ‘wall’ of sorts to be made, by continually releasing batches of the sterile flies from sites in the area.

  With Covid disruptions, and associated cuts to the department though, they’ve been creeping past the barrier, and there wasn’t a funding increase to push them back down. DOGE accelerated this by firing a bunch of the people involved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨lab toys⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Engineering is the most chud of all academic fields. Beyond the engineering stemlord aspect, there’s a lot of military money floating around.

  There’s some similar things with bio fields and pharmaceutical/bioengineering money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Breast Cancer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, machine learning actually has a ton of very useful applications in things. It’s just predictably the dumbest and most toxic manifestations of it are hyped up in a capitalist system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Slap a "quantum" on it = Instant flux capacitor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨years⁩ ago⁩:

  I think a degree of shut up and calculate is needed, at least in the beginning. Without a solid math based understanding of the fundamentals, trying to prognosticate on the ‘meaning’ of it is inevitably going to fall into pop-sci style stuff. You’ve gotta know what you’re dealing with a little.