Pedro @PedroMiguel@social.cleverlibre.org

Capitalists are little different from monarchists, in that they they take a patriarchal view to those below them.

Both view the workers as their naïve children who don't truly know how the world works, and thus must be protected from the "burdens" of wealth by removing any opportunity to accrue it.

[ #antiCapitalism #socialistSunday ]

Science isn't always right

You heard that right, science fucks up sometimes, pardon my language

Actually, science fucks up ALL the time, constantly, without fail

For every 1 huge success, there are a string of failures.

Does that mean we shouldn't believe in it?

Nope.

Here's the thing

Most of what you believe is probably false.

Most of it.

Humans tend to cling to what they're told as children

People believe the earth is flat

People believe the clouds that form behind airplanes are "chemtrails"

people will defend, in some cases to their death (or someone else's), the existence of a deity there's no evidence for, aside from a nonsensical book written thousands of years ago by people who thought the earth was the center of the universe, didn't understand gravity, and thought the stars were gods watching us.

Because we cling to beliefs, and only change those when someone shows us we're wrong, and only if they show us in a way that makes US feel smart... and sometimes nothing can change our minds, humans are stubborn.

People probably mocked the first car, it was so inferior to a horse, it may go a little faster, but you keep a horse fed and watered, and treat it right, it'll keep you going for a decade, that thing's going to be a pile of rust, and I'll still be trottin along on my faithful steed. y'all are DUMB.

Point being.

Science, like humans, is wrong about a lot.

Difference is, science questions everything.

Science believes nothing.

So when a scientist is wrong, the scientist learns very quickly they're wrong.

And the act of being proven wrong, and wrong, and wrong again?

That's how you find what's right.

Once you've eliminated all the wrong answers, and you can repeat and test, and fail to prove the right answer wrong, you know. This is right.

I've believed a lot of stupid things in my life, I'm sure I still do

But I also know that science always learns the right answers, because it refuses to accept ANY answer, and fights to prove them ALL wrong.

When science fails, you have your answer.

Science isn't in the business of being right, it's in the business of proving things wrong.

Knowledge, from science, is the result of failure.

So if a group of scientists, who don’t like to agree, at all, says "this is true, and here’s the proof it's true, and here’s our peer reviewed studies showing this is true"

You know what peer review is?

A scientist says "I figured this thing out. Here's my evidence, here's my results, here are the variables I used", and another scientist says "HA! I'm going to prove you're an idiot"

and tries to prove the other scientist wrong.

If they fail, they admit they failed, they admit they couldn't prove it wrong. And so on. Many scientists try, and try to prove them wrong.

once all of the scientists have the same results, and all the anomalies are explained, you have a bunch of people pissed off ONE of them was right. Because their job is to prove them wrong. But they failed to, so they all accept the results. A consensus.

So yeah, if you don't trust science?

You're an idiot. It's science.

#Science #PeerReview #Learning #Facts #Consensus #Proof #Reality #ItsScienceBitch

A different perspective...

The marketing function -> Needless consumption -> Extra emissions -> Extra heating -> Ecological devastation including Wildfires -> Charred remains of homes, trees, wildlife.

That's why it's called Black Friday
#BlackFriday
#Enough
#Degrowth

To ensure cars didn’t take back control of #Paris streets as the pandemic was “ending” (no, it hasn’t ended), like they have in so many cities, Mayor #AnneHidalgo made sure that 60k parking spaces and many streets were permanently transformed into seating for restaurants, people places and bike-lanes.

Leadership.

#cities #urbanism #streets #streetsforpeople #peopleplaces #placemaking

A fascinating new report claims that companies like Google and Amazon are losing tens of billions of dollars on their voice assistant devices, despite widespread adoption, because the plan to sell them under cost and then make up the difference in money made from interactions isn't working, because their customers refuse to use the devices for anything that makes these companies money. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/#p3

#tech #industry #voice #assistant #alexa #siri #google #loss #bomb #failure

Oversized EVs waste energy (bc of giant batteries) and also endanger other road users.

To address EV car bloat, Norwegian officials have proposed a weight-based fee of NOK 12 ($1.10)/kilo over 500 kilos.

Example: An Audi e-tron would cost ~$2,330 more.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/norway-became-an-ev-paradise-now-it-s-imposing-a-weight-tax-and-bringing-back-the-vat-200685.html

#electricvehicles #cars #climate

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times: Encouraging kids to be who they are is suicide prevention.

Should grants use a lottery approach? 🎟️

"Research shows that, barring a minority of outstanding projects, grant winners and losers are not decided by a precise and objective identification of worthy and unworthy projects. Instead, the luck of the draw — who reviews what proposal and the opinions they hold — generally determines these outcomes."

"It is excessively wasteful in terms of researchers’ time."

https://www.statnews.com/2022/10/21/research-funding-broken-lottery-approach-could-fix-it/

#sciencereform #macademia #metascience @academicchatter

mastodon would do so much better if they'd just call instances "neighborhoods" and said that you should pick your neighborhood based on your interests, so that if you look out your window you'll see your neighbors doing things you find interesting. and that it's okay if you find out you don't like your neighborhood, because you can just move to another one! and all your followers will move with you

and then, yanno, make it easier to search for people you wanna follow cause that shit just sucks

A battery filled with algae is somehow managing to power this computer for months: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2319584-computer-powered-by-colony-of-blue-green-algae-has-run-for-six-months/

No-one's quite sure what's going on. Possibly the algae is serving as the medium catalyzing the interaction between the anode and cathode in the battery.

Except research shows the anode isn't degrading, which suggests ...

... the *algae* is producing the electrons.

Some thoughts on this in my blog post here, item 6: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lavaforming-ai-writes-heavy-metal-and-drones-that-deliver-hamburger-helper-59b9bcfda9a8

I bet you’ve heard of Galileo & Hubble, but what about Henrietta Swan Leavitt?

Leavitt changed astronomy. She figured out new ways to measure a star’s distance from Earth & her work helped determine the universe is expanding.

Her boss, Edward Pickering, published her findings UNDER HIS NAME. Later, Shapley used her findings to determine distances around the Milky Way w/o credit.

Leavitt’s work is still used today. So next time you hear about famous men in #science share her remarkable story.

I built this tool a year ago but I feel like Mastodon folks would like it

The "Weird Old Book Finder"

Type in a search query, and it'll find one randomly-chosen public-domain book that matches the query -- and present it for immediate reading: https://weird-old-book-finder.glitch.me

Why only one book? To prevent the paradox of choice! Just *start readin'*

Can't promise every book will be weird, but most are

A longer essay on how/why I developed it: https://debugger.medium.com/a-search-engine-that-finds-you-weird-old-books-3a74fbb5f3d4

This was a search for "mastodon"

We used to use sweepers and scopes to tune NMR probes. Now I like this Siglent spectrum analyzer with tracking generator. It has a nice big screen and it’s portable enough to put it where I need it. The reflection bridge was $10 on EBay. #NMR #NMRchat #chemistry #electronics

Simulate and Fit your NMR spectra in Python

Check out the latest mrsimulator, v0.70, at

http://mrsimulator.readthedocs.io

#nmrchat #ssnmr

view the Python notebook that generated the plot below at

https://mrsimulator.readthedocs.io/en/stable/fitting/1D_fitting/plot_3_Na2SiO3.html#sphx-glr-fitting-1d-fitting-plot-3-na2sio3-py

”The disproportionate scientific productivity of elite researchers can be largely explained by their substantial labor advantage rather than inherent differences in talent.” http://scim.ag/AV

It’s REALLY important that #Vancouver’s Downtown Business Association (#DVBIA), who were originally AGAINST downtown bike-lanes, later became one of their most vigourous supporters, because of EVIDENCE that bike-lanes are BETTER for downtown business than any street parking they replace. #cities #downtown #cityplanning #urbanplanning #mainstreets #bikes #bikelanes #parking

@aspuru +1 One way I have survived in academia is a policy of "no meeting Wednesdays". Time to focus on reading, writing, or learning something new... we at least deserve that!