I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing.

You’ve got to be careful with rolling your eyes, because the parallelism of the two eyes means that the eye roll can be twice as powerful ^1

(1) If measured against the silly baseline of a single eyeroll

Finland is very good for people who hate smalltalk.

I love stories like this because it makes me reflect on random people I’ve seen who have stuck in my memory for years who probably never noticed me. Makes me wonder if anyone remembers me for something random like this

Social constructivism applied to science argues that an objective, observer-independent reality doesn’t exist, (or that if it does, it’s not accessible by humans, which is functionally the same thing). Under that framework, then whenever we talk about gravity, we’re not talking about some objective truth, but our attempts to model what we perceive as an objective truth. Hell, the only way we’re able to have this conversation at all is because I wrote “gravity is a social construct” and you understood what I was referencing enough to disagree.

What is your understanding of a social construct? I wanna make sure we’re on the same page about definitions

I shouldn’t have left my previous statement without any elaboration — that was a pretty inflammatory comment to make and I apologise.

When I say “gravity is a social construct”, part of what I’m getting at is that the natural world is distinct from scientific knowledge we create when attempting to model the natural world, and that our scientific knowledge is, by necessity, socially mediated.

I like gravity as an example of this because of how fundamental it is: even animals have some level of intuitive understanding of gravity — they don’t need to understand what parabolic motion is to be able to demonstrate it when they jump over things.

But also, our understanding of gravity has vastly changed over the years. In the 1800s, astronomers had measured Mercury’s orbit so precisely that they found it to be inconsistent with what Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity would predict, so they figured there had to be another planet closer to the Sun. Turns out there wasn’t though, and it was only after Einstein’s theory of relativity that Mercury’s weird orbit could be explained.

They had good reason to guess that another planet was responsible for Mercury’s orbit though, because the same guy who made that guess (a French astronomer, Urbain le Verrier) had actually predicted the existence of Neptune just a few years earlier; he had used Newtonian gravity to analyse the orbit of Uranus and found that it was slightly off from what observers had been measuring, and deduced that there must be another planet that nobody had seen yet that was causing these perturbations.

These two examples show two different ways that we can respond to experimental observations not matching with our theoretical understanding: sometimes it’s productive to assume our current theory is correct and that our observations are wrong or insufficient in some way, and sometimes we fix the disparity between what we see and what we know by amending our theories, like we did when we learned the limits of Newtonian gravity. Choosing which hypothesis to investigate is how science (and scientific knowledge) is socially constructed.

Disclaimer: I’m a biochemist, not an astrophysicist, so talking about gravity isn’t my primary domain. Many of these ideas are articulated far better in this video essay by Dr Fatima (and I suspect some of my phrasing is subconsciously borrowed from this video — this is bad citation practice on my part)

Anki is incredible for learning, it’s one of my favourite tools.

If you’re able to, make your own flashcards— it makes a huge difference. Bonus tip, if you’re making your own flashcards, it can be useful to use pictures rather than a language you already know for the answer. For example, if I was making a card for the word “apple” in French, I’d have one side saying “une pomme”, and another side with a picture of an apple. It makes it so that the new language isn’t mediated by English as much, and I’ve found I get better at thinking in that language much quicker (especially for languages with grammar that’s different to other languages I’ve studied)

I read this article a few months ago that I found quite interesting: Original link Unpaywalled link

The manufacturer in this blames the DEA, and whilst I don’t trust a pharmaceutical company to do anything other than ruthlessly maximise profits, in this case I’m inclined to believe this depiction of the DEA as the overly persnickety bad guy (because I have even less reason to trust the DEA)

I’d argue that cops existing also counts as “doing harm” to the people who would be cops. I remember a while back when I learned about how cops are trained (stuff that causes them to see everyone as a potential criminal who wants to kill them), I felt profoundly sad because as well as the harm that the cops cause as a result of this, it also just seems like a terrible way to live. I honestly feel sorry for cops

For one, I think that you should be told when you’re rejected from a job. The uncertainty of waiting is one of the worst parts of job hunting in my opinion, and it’s made worse by the fact I can’t just assume that if I haven’t heard anything, I haven’t got the job, because some places have hiring processes that seem to last for months. I get that if you’re offered a job months down the line, they probably hired someone else, fired them and are now moving down their list of next best candidates, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to keep people in the dark for so long.

Wow, I knew chiropractors were quacks, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Thanks for sharing this; I’m sorry that you didn’t have this information when you most needed it.

Gravity is a social construct

I’m in academia. I like how many vibrant and wonderful people I meet. I love asking PhD students to tell me about their research areas, which are often so absurdly niche that I have no idea what it means, but I love being made aware of my own relative smallness. And I love being challenged to think about my own privilege in being here, how the ivory tower of research has been and is still a force of oppression in the world, especially in the context of colonialism. I like being challenged in this way because it prevents me from becoming comfortable in my ideology and challenges me to think of what science would look like in a fair and just world, and indeed, whether it would exist at all. These might seem like odd things for me to count as my favourite aspects but it’s because I love science, and I firmly believe that if you have to lie about something in order to love it, that love is no true love.

I think a lot about how to reach other people, to share the love that I feel for my subject, and though I haven’t done much teaching yet, I look forward to being able to learn from my students as they learn from me.

It’s a bit more complex.

The bacteria causing this (Streptococcus pyogenes) causes hundreds of millions of illnesses each year, ranging from the mild “strep throat” to the extremely severe scarlet fever. Whilst there have been a few outbreaks of antibiotic resistant strains of this bacterium, that doesn’t appear to be what’s going on in this outbreak, so thankfully the underlying streptococcus infection should be treatable with standard antibiotics.

Unfortunately, the condition that’s actually killing people (Streptococcal Toxic Shock Syndrome (STSS)) is caused by exotoxins released by the bacteria, and killing the bacteria only stops further exotoxins from being produced — antibiotics can’t do anything about the exotoxins that have already been secreted by the bacteria. If you’ve ever wondered why we can’t cook spoiled food to make it safe to eat, this is a large part of why — exotoxins are often better at sticking around than the bacteria that produce them. It doesn’t help that exotoxins are often super potent toxins (Botulism is a particularly potent and well known example).

It’s not clear what causes some cases of Streptococcus pyogenes to escalate and non-eventful cases of strep are common enough that treating every case with antibiotics is implausible. It’s tricky because if symptoms are severe enough to warrant a diagnosis of STSS, then things will have already progressed enough that the exotoxins present s risk to health even if antibiotics are administered. This outbreak of many cases of the severe STSS is concerning because it might indicate that the strep bacteria has evolved to be more deadly, but we really don’t know why there’s such a cluster of severe illness in one place.

I wonder what would facilitate people to make their own solutions in this way. Like, I have made a few apps or automation things myself, but if I look at my “normie” friends who don’t have the level of tech familiarity that I do, they struggle with whatever out of the box solutions they can find. Poor IT education is a big part of this, and I’ve been wondering a lot about what would need to change for the average “normie” to be empowered to tinker

No pressure to watch the video, especially as not everyone enjoys consuming content in that form.

Anthrocentrism is part of what I mean, especially if we consider that historically, colonialism has had a lot of power to draw the line between who “counts” as fully human or not. A depressingly common motif is the cyclical logic of “this is what we understand human intelligence to be” -> “these people do not have the signifiers of human intelligence that we understand” -> “therefore these people aren’t intelligent” -> (those people are less likely to be considered as the general understanding of ‘intelligence’ expands and evolves).

“In fact, you’re usually hoping it’s a vagina goo shart because you can just wipe that out with toilet paper and move on with your day.”

Oh man, this is relatable. Reading this transported me to past situations where I sat uncomfortable and anxious until I could get to a bathroom and check. Solidarity

I’ve never used a cup before, but I know for certain, you can’t really do that with tampons, because it would be way too dry and eugh, even imagining that is making me shudder. Most women who use tampons know how unpleasant it feels to pull out a dry tampon; I have to be careful near the end of my period not to use a tampon with too high an absorbency if I want to avoid this. I may switch to pads near the end.

Periods can come without warning though. Some people have a super low flow early on, so they might get more warning (if they go pee and there’s a lil blood when they wipe), but also sometimes it’s heaviest at the start, which is why many women have embarrassing stories of their period taking them off guard and bleeding through their clothing onto a chair or something. Someone might wear pads if they’re expecting their period - you can get lighter absorbency pads that might suit this better. Older women might wear pads like this at other times - my mum occasionally pees a little if she sneezes too hard, so she wears lightweight pads at other times of the month.

It’s easier if you can predict when your period will be. I’ve never had a regular cycle, and I thought the whole “my period is 2 days late and I’m anxious that this might mean I’m pregnant” thing only happened in movies until a friend anxiously messaged me about it. Turns out some people do have that level of regularity - I might actually ask my super regular friend what she does when expecting her period, come to think of it. But yeah, for many people, it can’t even be predicted to the day, or even the week.

Edit: reading other responses to your question made me think of amother point: even if you have irregular cycles, it can be possible to predict by various bodily signs. Something that I don’t hear talked about much is how vaginal discharge changes over the menstrual cycle. When I’m ovulating, there tends to be more discharge, and it’s slippery and clear, almost like egg whites in texture. At other times in my cycle, it might be more white coloured, or more creamy, or more sticky. I find it gross and fascinating in equal measure — sometimes I’ll just stick a finger up there to check if I’m unsure where I am in my cycle

The other person who you replied to makes good points - it’s always going to be context dependent and it drives me mad when I’m out and about and have so many signals projecting “leave me alone” (such as wearing headphones, being on the phone, studying etc.) and a guy hits on me.

However, if someone is generally approachable, I’ve found that the best compliments are on something the person has consciously chosen about their appearance. So stuff like graphic t-shirts (especially band t shirts), hair styles (I love people with dyed hair because this presents to me an easy option for compliments).