Ben Taylor @VoxDei@social.cleverlibre.org

We can rebuild him; we have the technology.

Elusive glass octopus spotted in the remote Pacific Ocean. Only its eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract are opaque. This rarely-seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean. Image credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute

never change, the onion, never change

@Julf The ‘or’ clause is doing a lot of work there.

I remember when the Holocaust deniers hit USENET in the 90s. It is important to understand the tactics they used then because they have not changed since.

One very important tactic was to leverage the fact that some people would react to disputing the smallest detail of the narrative as they had learned it as being the same thing as holocaust denial itself. They used that to set the people correcting the record on each other.

There was only one actual neo-NAZI but he used multiple socks and reposted lots of material by other people from neo-NAZI publications.

What he would do is to start an argument by disputing a specific detail. Usually, this was pure bad faith relying on fabricators like David Irving as sources. But it wasn’t always. There were some accurate statements there such as the fact Anne Frank died of tuberculosis, not in a gas chamber and the UN report on the holocaust gave the figure of 5 million Jews murdered.

Now both of these statements while literally true were of course besides the point. Anne Franke died because the NAZIs put her in a concentration camp in unsanitary conditions which killed her before they could get round to murdering her as was their plan. And the UN report was the lower bound on a range of 5-6 million. The principal source of the uncertainty is that the NAZIs only recorded the first reason they arrested someone. A lot of trades unionists, homosexuals, dissidents, etc. who were also Jewish were murdered for other reasons. The UN found the total number of civilians and POWs outright murdered by the NAZIs was around ten million.

So when you look into the claims being raised to dispute the numbers, they are entirely bad faith distinctions without a difference. But folk who didn’t take the time to examine the claims and reacting according to their incorrect assumptions ended up playing into the neo-NAZIs hands by vehemently insisting on ‘facts’ that the neo-NAZIs could disprove.

The neo-NAZIs themselves are nowhere near numerous enough to run any sort of effective disinformation operation. But they don’t have to because Putin is always happy to oblige with funding and organization. Putin’s people had other nationalist causes to back in Britain (Brexit, independence), Spain (independence), France (immigration), etc. etc. None of those had quite the same valence in the Netherlands so they doubled down on their anti-semitism peddling holocaust denial.

Putin doesn’t care about policy outcomes, he happily funds anti-Semitic thugs in AfD, Golden Dawn, Britain First, etc. and at the same time funds rabidly racist Zionist parties in Israel. All Putin cares about is creating division.

So yes, the numbers are bad, but understanding what is causing it is more important.

In #bioinformatics, and #scientific #computing generally, raw #data is never ever in a usable form.

This is one of the many things #Hollywood persistently gets wrong: the #scientist / #hacker / omni-computer-geek opens up the file, stares at a bunch of #numbers or #symbols, and says, "Ah hah! If I #compile the #HTML to reverse the #polarity on the #IP #gateway, I can #deconvolve the #DNA sequence to #backpropagate the #cellular #metabolism of the #alien #plague! Oh, and make #dinosaurs if you want, but that's extra."

Bonus points if the screen projects on said scientist's face and reflects from the inevitable chunky-framed glasses. Scribbling equations backward on a transparent whiteboard may also be involved.

#Scientists, as I have said many times before and no doubt will need to say many times again, are people. We're pretty good with numbers, yes, as a rule. But what we're good at doing with those numbers is not reading and understanding them. It's using them as the raw materials for product which makes sense to the human brain. Words, pictures, and a MUCH SMALLER number of numbers is our goal. Also continued #funding, which is about the kind of numbers everyone understands.

Before we process the numbers, we need to "#preprocess" them. There are several intermediate steps between the really raw data and the cover story for next week's issue of _Nature_. Preprocessing is where we turn the glowing symbols projected onto our faces into something that kinda-sorta makes sense. It's still not really readable, but people looking at it, who know what they're looking at, can tell what it represents.

Usually this is in the form of one or more #tables: for a familiar example, think of an #Excel workbook with several large #spreadsheets. (In reality, storing data in Excel is a terrible idea, but I'll stick with that metaphor.) Nobody's going to read and digest everything in the workbook. You can look at the headers and a few of the values and at least have an idea where to start. Preprocessing gets you to that point.

For most types of data, preprocessing is fairly standardized. You don't have to write your own code: someone else has already done that work for you. Just pick a #software #package, run the raw data through it, glance at the output to make sure nothing went horribly wrong. Now you're ready to write the code only you can write, to discover the Secrets of Life Itself. Now is the time for SCIENCE.

Or _Nature_. Or _The Journal Of Obscure Subfield Ten People In The World Know Exists_. Or a tech report. You know, whatever.

Careful readers will have noticed the word "fairly" above. In fact there are multiple #algorithms to choose from, and multiple packages implementing those algorithms, and #documentation written at 3:00 AM by an exhausted #postdoc who really just wanted to check the #cell cultures one last time and grab the remaining half a chicken salad sandwich from the break room fridge and go home and crawl into bed for a few hours' sleep before dragging ass back in tomorrow. Shower optional.

Other exhausted postdocs and their harassed #principal #investigators, who get somewhat more sleep and a somewhat finer grade of chicken salad but are much more worried about upcoming funding application deadlines, may or may not bother to write down which package they use to preprocess their data. Or what specific parameters they tuned. Or if they even know how they're supposed to use the damned thing: there's a really good chance they just ran the data through on the default settings, got something that looked reasonable, and called it a day.

Amazingly, most of the time this doesn't really matter. Data has a life of its own. The bigger the data set gets, and these days nearly all data are "big data," the more likely it is that any reasonable method will produce similar results. Good thing too, otherwise science (and _Science_) would grind to a screeching, shuddering, smoking halt.

Sometimes it matters a lot. Careful scientists check, just in case. I try to be one of those, and when I'm not, my coworkers pick up the slack. Luckily for me, for most of my career I've found myself in the company of those who live up to that standard, and I can mostly convince myself I do the same. Another item on Hollywood's long list of sins: science is not a solo enterprise. In fact it's deeply social, which is one of several reason why the stereotype of scientists as loners is a load of crap. But I digress.

In case you're wondering if this has a point, yes it does, and here it is: all the above is why my boss recently sent me a message saying, "Woah yeah ok so maybe you do need to process from raw after all. B/c idk wtf that is."

Without any irony at all: I love my job.

Some people at the FT set up a Mastodon instance and quickly discovered it's way more work and risk for a corporation than it was worth.

(Paywall bypass link) https://archive.ph/vx6Sk

I predict a lot of this will iron out in the long term but it's interesting to see the lawyers clanging the alarms like they do with any new thing.

A Conservative MP in the UK just jibed “Well they shouldn’t have come here illegally” when a question is asked regarding approximately 200 unaccompanied refugee children who have been abducted from, or gone missing from detainment locations across the south of England.
The jibing MP used to be a teacher.
There is no information available on the whereabouts of the children, potentially being trafficked and exploited.
Children…
Something has gone extremely wrong in the UK, it’s shockingly vile.

A few years ago I shared this story on Twitter and then had angry libertarian men complain that I'd cheated and had actually made a cartel, not a cooperative. They weren't happy that I pointed out that no rules had been broken. In fact it was the lack of market regulation in Monopoly that allowed us to do what we did. Plus we did it fully openly and the fourth player was able to join our coop if he'd wanted.

Wanna see the most disingenuous y-axis ever used on a graph?

For those who know …

I’m seeing this pattern more and more on mobile. This popup is perfectly sized so that, on first look, it seems there is not option to reject cookies. Turns out, you can scroll down and reveal the configuration button. #DeceptiveDesign #noconsent

Archway to your dreams. Taken on Glastonbury Tor this morning before sunrise.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #sunrisephotography #sunrisephotography #archway

Just a reminder... that Women got the Vote .... not because that time had come ... but because they took the Protest to the street.

The Tories are trying to take the Right to Protest and the Right to Strike away from us

Support the Right to Strike... Support the Right to Protest

#JoinaUnion

"embroidered 3D terrain reliefs" is not a category I was aware of until today, and 😍WOW😍 (https://linktr.ee/Victoria_Rose)

(first saw via https://twitter.com/Aerial_stitches/status/1613298856845770761)

What a sky this morning. It was just one of those mornings that was so very special. Taken on Glastonbury Tor about 15 minutes before sunrise.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #sunrise #sunrisephotography

Happy Friday everyone. Sunrise in Glastonbury this morning.
#glastonbury #glastonburytor #somerset #landscapephotography #sunrise #sunrisephotography

Ex-Amazon employees on the almost impressively cynical way Amazon smile started: