Cycling isn't legitimate transportation...apparently
MeowZedong @ MeowZedong @lemmygrad.ml Posts 0Comments 492Joined 2 yr. ago
MeowZedong @ MeowZedong @lemmygrad.ml
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I was being reactive too and that made me crass. Did that commenter deserve it? Not really.
My point wasn't directly to prove someone wrong (their content wasn't wrong, just poorly explained), it was my gut reaction to what I perceived as a type of scientist of any level who sees themselves as better and smarter than everyone else. The most effective way I've found to shut this down is to bully them about their own weaknesses because the majority of this "STEM is the only viable education and makes you smarter than everyone else" attitude only ever comes from people who've never done anything else with their lives.
Most of these types have never held a full-time job besides working in a lab and the totality of their professional and academic experience is in science. Communication, art, history, the "soft" sciences, are things to be made fun of and contain nothing useful in the minds of these types and that leaves them wildly unqualified to communicate science in any format. Their presentations suck, their explanations suck, and their writing and figures suck even if their science is very well done. This means their science is effectively useless because a huge part of the scientific process is communicating what you've done. Almost all of these people become PhDs and then continue this behavior long into their careers! It's not every PhD, but it's a significant portion.
The comment I replied to sounded to me like this type of person (the poor science communication, not the ego part), so my gut reaction was to reply as if to one of those people. I left my other reply because it seemed like a waste of time to shit on the only useful reply while contributing nothing to the conversation myself, so I get why it also looks like an ego trip. I'd peg my actions as more self-righteous than conceited, which is also a problem of ego. :)
Everything you've said is true and you'll just have to take me at my word when I say that the approach you described is how I approach others in my offline and professional life. I work hard to make sure my own science communication is always accessible to my target audience and gives what I see as the necessary context surrounding the topic as well. My intention is never to talk down to people with less experience in an area than me, but no one is perfect and I'm sure it can come off that way occasionally.
That said, my first comment was made in short temper against an assumption/projection of a person and it's something I'll probably do again despite knowing it's not the most useful approach because I'm a fallible human and this type of forum tends to have a culture that encourages this behavior. What I mean by this culture comment is very evident on Reddit, but less so on the spaces I frequent on Lemmy. Commenters frequently leave very confident replies that are factually incorrect or unclear. There is no other way to combat this directly than to call it out and doing so in a way that shuts them down. Not shutting them down leads to drawn out arguments where the person who is wrong dogs in their heels. Yes, you are right that putting someone on the defensive just leads to more of stubborn replies.
I believe poor or inaccurate communications of technical topics can be more harmful than keeping the comment to yourself. It creates an uphill battle for those with expert knowledge and for those who don't have it, but are trying to learn. At that point, correcting the mistake becomes more about educating the commenter. Yes, corrections can theoretically help others, but I find it largely just propagates the false information. That's why I prefer to shut that part of the discussion down.
Additionally, I work in a space where credentials are weighted heavier than factual accuracy, direct critiques of those with power or credentials are dismissed as uncivil, while those from positions of power are not. The only ways to combat that force is to put your nose to the grindstone with those hopes that you one day gain the power that will lend you authority or you stop caring about credentials, offer a direct critique and deal with coming off as an asshole sometimes.
I guess I'm done justifying myself now, but I hope you understand the point of my justifications was to help explain the reasoning behind my approaches rather than to counter your critiques and absolve myself from my approach. I do justify my actions for myself, but sharing your reasoning always helps with empathy regardless of whether your actions are right.
I care less about replying or sharing my knowledge on social media these days, but your critiques are welcome and I have thought about my replies the last few days as well. Ultimately I decided to brush it off and move on after my last one despite disagreeing with your first reply, but I respect good faith discussions and think your last comment deserved a thoughtful reply. Thanks for putting up with me sharing most of my thoughts at length. I usually try to keep my comments short and unserious because I know that my serious replies tend to become very long otherwise.
You're right and I'll try to be less reactive and aggressive the next time I see a scientific comment that disappoints me. I replied more to a projection than to the actual commenter and they didn't deserve such a harsh response. Thank you for calling it out (and fuck Sheldon Cooper).
I'm sure there's some hypocrisy in my replies, but that's not going to stop me from doing the same again. I've worked with scientists for a long time and the way most of them communicate is a pet peeve of mine.
TLDR: If I interpreted what you are getting at, no. The rest of the comment is about questions surrounding yours that I think are more relevant.
If you inhale a certain amount of virus particles vs drinking the same amount of virus particles, the amount of virus particles that are able to infect cells would be lower in the drink than what was inhaled. So no, the amount of virus particles that can infect you would be lower in the milk.
Fun side fact: there are some routes in your gut to access your immune system, such as the lacteals. Some vaccine researchers have targeted these, but it's notoriously difficult to produce an oral vaccine that is effective as administration by other routes.
The route of infection isn't always important once an injection takes hold. If you get infected by the same virus via drinking vs inhaling, you're still infected with that virus and your body will still have to fight it off.
Quantity doesn't matter so much once you pass the bar for an active viral infection because viruses produce an obscene amount of replicates once they infect a cell. The bar for infection does vary by the pathogen and route of exposure, so it can take a much larger quantity of virus particles for an infection to take hold through your gut than through your lungs. Different viral species are able to more efficiently infect you via different routes as well.
Aside from those effects, how are differences in the route of an infection important?
- The types of protection your body provides against infection varies by route. Mucous, antibodies, the types of immune cells, the density of immune cells, and environmental factors like pH and clearance of mucous (how quickly it is removed and replaced) all affect how difficult it is for a pathogen to get through and infect it's target cell type. Some examples are: your nose protects you by catching things in the mucous and then running out your nose or down your throat, your stomach is acidic and lined in mucous, so viruses can't get through as easily and are likely to be destroyed by the acid, the layers of your skin make it extremely difficult for anything to get through unless you get an open wound.
- The route of the infection changes the types of immune cells that encounter the pathogen, which can affect the type of protection your body develops against that pathogen. Sometimes this is the type of cell formed, but it can also be where are most of these cells located.
A pathogen in your muscle (or an injected vaccine) will produce cells to fight the infection and cells to remember the pathogen as well as help fight an infection caused by that pathogen in the future. This can reduce the severity and length of symptoms you experience with future infections.
A pathogen in your mucous membrane (I'm mainly talking your nose and nasal-spray vaccines) will produce all of the types of protection that would be produced in your muscle, but it can also produce antibodies that will interact with the pathogen and prevent a new infection from occurring.
Vaccine researchers are trying things like nasal sprays instead of intramuscular injections in order to target this preventative immune protection. This isn't the only potential benefit, but it's one reason to do this and some vaccines are available as nasal sprays.
All of this is generalized and immunology is vastly more complex than I made it sound here. To be frank, immunology is so complex that we still largely are guessing during vaccine research. We know things, but everything in the immune system is interconnected and there are still many things we don't know. We only have part of the puzzle and are missing the picture on the box. Even when we do find an effective treatment, chances are it was an educated guess, but we don't actually know all of the mechanisms behind the protection.
Hopefully that helps make things a bit clearer.
Drinking infected milk sounds like an ineffective and potentially dangerous way to protect yourself, but frankly, it's not entirely without merit. I definitely won't be doing it.
What a long-winded, asinine answer. Using scientific jargon doesn't help communicate your meaning to the layman when you do not bother to actually explain the meaning of the jargon you use.
Put the effort in to explain the science properly. If you can't, then you don't know the subject well enough. If you won't, then you shouldn't be communicating science.
The article is listed on ResearchGate.
For anyone looking for an alternative to Sci-Hub (the GOAT), you can make a free account on RG and send a request to the authors for a copy of their paper (about two clicks to perform).
Most researchers will send you a copy within a day, maybe two. If you copy the title or the DOI link into a search with "ResearchGate" it usually shows up in most search engines.
I think we have more pressing issues in certain airplanes at the moment, but that's a good point.
1060 W. Addison St., Chicago, IL
Now we're cooking ruining the respiratory health of our youth with gas.
More believable than the meme.
The point of my comments is that neither party represents the people, my focus is only on the Dem's because they market themselves on that platform.
The only real difference between the parties besides that marketing is that the Dem's make excuses when they can't pass a popular (with the people) bill. They put the blame on the Republicans and do little to find a way to make it happen.
As someone affected by these bills, I really don't care why they can't do what we want, only that they aren't doing it. As an elected official, if it's not possible, they need to make it possible. I guarantee this is the standard they are held to by those who fund their campaigns.
I understand the reasons they give for not being able to pass certain bills, but that doesn't mean they aren't excuses. A government should be run by the people and for the people. When it's not, you're seeing the minority party actually controlling the majority party and it's a matter of a power imbalance. D and R can and do work together when they want to, but neither of them does this for us.
I'm not disagreeing with you because I misunderstand how the US government works, it's because I understand and disagree with how the government works. The system needs to be changed and the parties with the power to do so are not enacting meaningful change. The only way to change a system is through leveraging power and the only power the people have is numbers.
So why apologize for them? Why buy into their excuses and defend their actions?
I'm well aware of these instances and they were included in my link. I'm saying that these are not a good justification for their inaction.
If it's important to protect your citizens why not amend the rules? The Republicans have no issues with this tactic. The Democrats are toothless and complicit by not taking the necessary actions to properly represent their people.
Do you think their corporate sponsors accept these kinds of excuses?
Lol, do you think history is only the last 4 years? They've had more than 50 years and multiple instances of having the supermajority. Has there been a 50 year filibuster?
How many times have the Democrats submitted a bill to modify RvW?
Here's the answer: "we never really felt it was necessary."
Keep making excuses for this abusive relationship we've had with the Dems. If things the majority of people actually wanted were passed, the Dems wouldn't have anything to dangle in front of us and say, "hey, if you don't vote for us, the other guy will take away these rights of yours that are in limbo."
Excuses and bullshit is all they've had for decades. I'd say a century, but I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Got to give credit where it's due.
Still making excuses for the purposefully incompetent Democrats, huh?
Funny how the Republicans always manage to accomplish their ghoulish goals, but the Dems never seem to substantially progress any of the social benefits they promise to the people while quietly progressing all of the corporate goals they weren't so vocal about supporting during the campaign.
You'll notice I gave as much credit as they were due. Capable of letting Roe v Wade get overturned while having executive control, but incapable of codifying it when they had a majority in the Senate, SCOTUS and the executive branch.
They're worse than incompetent, they're complicit, and they'll keep stringing people along with the threat that things will get worse if you don't vote for them...as they participate in making things worse for everyone but their big $ donors.
Looks like he's just doing the shit that the US government already should have been doing based on existing programs that were actively mismanaged in the past. Promises not kept through administrative technicalities.
Not a bad thing, but a far cry from the political win it is touted as. Essentially, "we are no longer actively trying to fuck over people who applied to old debt-relief programs." Weighing this against the predatory nature of student loan policy in the US, the unforgiving bankruptcy policies Biden directly helped put in place over a decade ago, and his failure to achieve the two student loan relief efforts he promised (or publicly campaigned on if you want to get pedantic), I'd say that the progress made is wholely insufficient.
We can simultaneously recognize that there has been an improvement while also recognizing that it has not been enough and these politicians must be held accountable for these policy failures.
These are not the markings of a promising or successful presidential campaign.
For sure. It can be useful for others, even if the person you're interacting with has a rock for a brain.
Literally the only answer this one deserved.
...did you read anything any of us have given you?
Lol, you know liberals choose not to read. I'd poke fun by saying they can't read, but that would be giving them too much credit.
I believe RevLeft recently had guests on and they mentioned even basic medical supplies such as ibuprofen were hard to come by. Maybe it would be possible to bring some of these types of supplies too?
Reviewer 1: looks, good, great paper!
Reviewer 2: Not enough statistical significance. Use more mice. MORE SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!
I throw studded tires on my bike in about 15 minutes and go about my day as normal. It takes about 30-60 minutes to do the same to my car and I'm sore for a couple days after. Also, unless I'm driving 5+ miles, the car is usually slower or equal in time for the commute. The bike is faster and far easier to maintain. The commute isn't much different, but I'm forced to ride sidewalks because my city plows into the bike lanes. Maybe if I had a car with heated seats, I'd miss the car.
On the bike, I fall probably once per season, but that's always the result of doing something reckless like jumping over a small snow bank or riding into large chunks of ice that I should have gone around.