AnarchistArtificer @ AnarchistArtificer @slrpnk.net

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2 yr. ago

My gosh, these are incredible. Thank you for sharing them. I cried at Select Star; that is legitimate art.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Way back, I found it hard to discover new people to follow on Mastodon, and I found myself wishing for a little bit of algorithmic feed, as a treat. I found it a shame that people were increasingly becoming anti-algorithm, full stop, because I think that algorithmic recommendation engines could be so powerful if they were leveraged for good (which, for many people, isn't the endless scrolling or maximal engagement that the current system optimises for).

I need to get round to setting up an RSS reader. I've heard that a few of those have an option to give some level of algorithmic recommendations, whilst still prioritising the stuff you've already opted into seeing.

"38 minutes is too long? What a world we have when folks cannot pay attention longer than a tiktok vid."

Short attention spans is an overly simplistic explanation. Of those who may find a 38 minute video to be too long, I think only a small fraction of those have that preference due to becoming accustomed to Tik-Tok and other short form content. I'm going to give a few examples of alternative explanations, and perhaps that will help you to cringe less.

I have a friend who has the unfortunate combination of being hard of hearing, and dyslexia, so lip reading is more useful than subtitles. They can cope with videos where it's mainly a person talking to a camera (so TC would actually be better for them than most video essays), but a lot of long-form videos have fancier editing or visual effects than that. Even when it is a relatively accessible video style, it takes more mental effort to be parsing spoken information.

I know someone else who is dreadful at processing auditory info, likely related to them being neurodivergent. Definitely no problem with attention span though, because they'll digest huge essays and books with zeal. They're young, so the majority of their peers are big fans of the short form videos like TikTok. We sometimes laugh at how sometimes they sound like more of a grumpy old person (with their "kids these days" rants) than I do (and I do my fair share of ranting too)

I know someone who can only effectively focus on auditory input when they're able to focus on something else visually, such as going for a run, or doing crochet. They prefer podcasts and audiobooks to videos, because it's easy to get lost if a video is expecting viewers to be at least half watching things.

I hope my comment doesn't come across like I'm telling you off or anything. A large part of why I wrote this is because I know that there are quite a lot of people who just can't jibe with long videos (for a variety of reasons), which makes me appreciate how OP was clear in their title. it's a little gesture of being considerate of other people's needs always brightens my day, especially on places like Lemmy, where it bolsters the wider sense of community

To cap off my comment, I'm going to end it on a positive by actually materially replying to the meat of your comment and adding to that discussion rather than just lecturing you: I have been a long time fan of TechnologyConnections because he's so enthusiastic that it's like he's casting a spell; when I first stumbled across one of his videos, I laughed at the absurdity of a 40 minute video on some boring and niche topic I didn't care about, but I ended up sticking around to watch the whole thing, and I came away from it with stronger opinions on appliances than I ever expected to have. I do love weird nerds who are so excited about their hobbies that they make learning about it fun. His vocal delivery makes it easy to follow along semi-passively without tuning him out.

Bad reactions to vaccines do exist, and can be severely disabling, but autism is not something that can be caused by vaccines. If your nephew is autistic, then this was not something that could be caused by a bad reaction to vaccines. It sounds like your nephew experienced a whole host of complicated issues relating to this vaccine though, and I can imagine how managing autism could be made more difficult through other disabling conditions.

If you're reading this, I want you to know that I'm proud of you. I know that I don't know you, but I don't need to know you personally to know that things are a lot right now, and have been for rather a while. If this comment makes you feel sad because simply existing is taking so much out of you that you feel like your life isn't much of an achievement, then I'm especially proud of you, because that's where I'm at, and it's hard.

Being very familiar with the cycle depicted in the OP is why I'm writing this comment: I know how hard it is to be kind to yourself when the world is bent on wringing you dry. Indeed, it's only through recognising our shared plight that I'm able to be kind to myself. Solidarity.

"So uh... Hi, I guess I'm a pretentious douche. IM SMRT"

It's okay, you're not nearly as bad as me, who instinctively shifted into a judgemental mindset after reading the first line of your comment (before checking myself on that nonsense)

I suppose I spent many years inadvertently training myself to be an asshole in this manner, so I shouldn't be surprised that it requires regular work to remain a "recovering asshole", rather than just an asshole. Because you're quite right: like what you like, fuck the haters indeed

Ooh, thanks for this link. I'm not a podcast person, but I have a friend who would love this

I have a disability that gives me quite a lot of pain, and my 1-10 pain scale doesn't actually go up to 10; I will never say I'm at a 10/10 pain, because that's saying it's the worst it could ever be, which is asking for trouble

"But we also have to be careful because presenting a minority group as already extinct exists to help continue the perpetuation of the genocide. As Judith Butler describes.

          An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all'

  

Thank you so much for this reminder; because of this, I have realised that this is a trap that my thoughts sometimes slip into. Hopefully I will be able to be mindful of it and check myself in future

Lmao

When I was a teenager, I promised myself that if nothing improved by the time I was 20, I would allow myself the escape of suicide — fuck anyone who would begrudge me that. The bar wasn't "things have to be fully better"; there just needed to be a non-zero improvement to prove that improvement was possible.

Ironically, this pledge probably saved my life, because it meant that I could tell myself "not yet" when I was in a crisis and at risk of harming myself. Fortunately, by the time I had reached 20, I had experienced some fairly significant improvements, and whilst my mental health was still rocky, there were parts of me that genuinely wanted to live.

My post-20 life has been messy, because I literally never expected to get this far. It sort of feels like a bonus level in a video game. It's pretty surreal.

Enough about me though, I want to hear a bit about you, if you're willing to share. What's something that gives you zest for life? Something that fuels the hope that I'm feeling from your comment?

I feel you. Having to grieve the person you could've been is one the tragedies of having been forced to survive rather than live. The most difficult part of healing is somehow forging a new life in which you can thrive.

That's something that I've been struggling with lately. If I structure my life around who I am right now, then the result is a routine of misery where I don't chase anything of joy. However, if I try to build a life for the person I would like to be, I find I don't fit inside that world, and I crumble — demoralised by overambitious burnout. The tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be is a tightrope that I need to somehow balance on if I want to make progress.

Solidarity, friend. You deserve better than what you have had.

I can't actually access the full paper (either via university access, or Anna's Archive/sciDB), so I can't comment on specifics, but their extended abstract mentions that that they used "Cox proportional hazards models, general linear regression, and Poisson regression models were applied to assess the associations between red meat intake and different cognitive outcomes."

Speaking as a biochemist (i.e. someone well versed in reading scientific papers from the life sciences, but who does not have particular training or experience with the quite different context of clinical medicine research), it looks fairly legit, in that those statistical methods are typical of what I'd expect for something like this. That's vague, but it passes the sniff test, I suppose.

I was initially dubious of the journal/research on the basis of being unable to access the paper (and not knowing anything of this journal), but I feel comfortable in dismissing those concerns after have a wee gander at the journal itself (it seems fairly prominent and well respected). Having not read the paper (nor being familiar with this specific area of research), I am far less able to judge the paper itself, but at least it's not a case of dismissing the research outright because of the journal being sus.

Without knowing your background, it's hard to gauge whether this explainer on some of the stats methods mentioned above would be appreciated, but here you go, just in case.

It has been translated into English (this translation is dated 2017)

However, far be it from me too discourage anyone from learning a language. After all, what better exemplifies the fallibility of translation than this story?

There is indeed! It's one of the things that makes this such a humourous story

Edit: https://archive.org/details/powersofdarkness0000vald Here it is! Enjoy (even if one's enjoyment is just in knowing that this exists)

I agree with much of what you say, but I was confused because the judge blocking the executive order isn't the same as trying to make the administration do a thing; it's more like telling the people at the NIH "ignore what that guy just said, business as usual (for now, at least)". If that's the case, I'm unclear on why things are still blocked up at the NIH. Because of this, I took the radical step of reading the linked article.

In many ways, it didn't help; I suppose it makes sense that one of the harms of someone willfully breaking the rules is that it becomes harder to discern what those rules actually are (were?). However, one of the lawyers quoted in the article suggests that the NIH officials who are currently carrying out the blocked order may be in contempt of court. This makes sense to me, based on the understanding I outlined above. But wait, there's more.

After the block continued to be de facto in place despite being blocked de jure, the judge issued another ruling to try to force the Trump administration to rescind the order. This is concerning because as you highlight, this Judge has no recourse to enforce this judgement. Whereas before, the blocking of the order was the Judge speaking to the NIH officials, those top officials have seemingly gone "no, we're not listening to you, we're listening to him". As I have said, they may be in contempt of court by doing this, but that's not relevant when we're looking at urgently ensuring that years of research isn't ruined by this. By issuing a new ruling to try to force Trump to rescind the order, the judge has been forced to step outside of normal procedure in a way where they're doomed to fail; it's fairly obvious that Trump will go "no, make me", and then fuck knows what the judge is going to do.

I think the judge knows this too, but what the fuck can they do (in their role as a judge) in this situation? Oh man, it's so fucked.

Pectinase'll dissolve the pith if you're a particular kind of weird, lazy nerd

I'm more likely to have conversations. I tended to lurk pretty deep in threads on Reddit, or on niche hobby communities, but that vibe is much more available here.

There seems to be more good faith discussions here. I see more people apologising, or responding well to being called out. I realise this is largely a function of size of the site, and thus this nice energy is likely fleeting, but I am heartened by it nonetheless; people like us will always exist, and there will always be a place for us (even if we need to make it ourselves).

The main reason I like vi/vim is that if you're having to use multiple different computers (such as if one is a sysadmin, or in my case, does scientific computing), because if you're running on Linux, you can be confident that vi/vim will be on it.

For personal use, I've been using emacs, but I can't recommend that without feeling like I'm suggesting you try some heroin. I enjoy emacs because of it's complexity and how much power it gives me to modify it. It's very easy to fall into feature creep and over complexity though. That's why I can't recommend it — it's good for me because I am a chronic tinkerer, and having something to fuck around with is an outlet for that.

I would recommend learning the basics of vim though. As you highlight, getting back to your current level of productivity would take a while, even if you loved vim and committed to it wholeheartedly. It is possible to try it out with little commitment though, for the perspective. If you're on a machine that has vim installed already, try the vimtutor command, which will start the ~30 min long inbuilt tutorial for vim. I liked it for giving me perspective on what on earth vim even was.

I know you don't use it anymore, but I just want to fistbump you re: sublime text. I really loved that as a basic text editor that was, for me, just a slightly nicer notepad.

I'm reminded of something I saw recently where a guy had a mini old screen for typing, but an e-ink main screen. It was a DIY cyberdeck, and weird enough that I don't think it's useful for you or OP, but I figured you'd find it interesting to hear that your suggestion seems to be on the right track