AcademicalNerd @academicalnerd@social.cleverlibre.org
People are more important than wires.
Joined Jan 2021
@trinsec
Good point, although I tend to get this one on YouTube.
2021-02-27, 08:47, Saturday
Day off. Watching Lex Fridman's [podcast](https://youtu.be/ifX_JnBfxTY) with Eric Weinstein, round 4. Beautiful conversation, highly recommend.
Got my birthday gift from my uni group, about 10 months late but it's fine. Two small bags of good coffee and a bottle of amaretto. Never thought I needed one, but it seems like I did. Gonna give it a shot.
2021-02-26, 07:03, Friday
I'll have to go to uni for a few classes today. Corona here seems to be slowing down, but it's still a bit unnerving to go into subway during rush hour. And there will be a test on crystall chemistry, a very confusing subject. We'll see how it goes.
Yesterday a new class started. The professor reminded me of something. The most important thing for teacher - for anyone - to remember is that we are all humans. Most of the time we do bad and annoying things not because we are evil but because we are forgetful and collectively dumb. I wish I could remind that to this professor, but this will basically grant me a failed class and it's not like you can fail a class here in Russia.
Yesterday there was an interesting thought: we are always told that doing mistakes is fine, it is part of the learning process. And it's true, but the sole existence of the word "mistake" implies consequences, doesn't it? So I'd reframe it: mistakes are always punished and you'd better avoid the expensive ones. You'll uninevitable make some because you are human, so don't expect it to "be fine" somehow, instead be ready to pay the price.
@namark
I agree with peer-review point and digital signatures, more or less. On the "why is this a thing" I refer you to this beatiful [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PriwCi6SzLo) by "medlife crisis" on scientific publishing, how it has formed and why it is still the way it is.
# On Publishing And Publishers
TLDR: a quick overview of the situation scientific publishers created and ways to partially solve the problem, or rather bypass it.
Tags: #qotojournal #sciense #publishing #essay
1. Introduction
There is a problem in our world, that is not widely talked about, especially on media. These are scientific journal publishers, or rather the system that they have established a long time ago and keep using (and monetizing) to this day. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for capitalism, it's when it gets in the way of important things when I get slightly disappointed.
Let's agree on the important stuff first: the era of lonely geniuses is long time over. The science and scientific advancements in the 21st century depend on cooperation of dozens, hundreds and thousands of people throughout the centuries. Information obtained years and decades ago is used to build new knowledge upon. A student in my faculty is required to have at least 20 citations in their coursework in the end of the first year, and it's not an issue - we usually approach 30 mentioned sources and research even more while doing the literature review. This is a bare minimum to become acquainted with the material. Scientific knowledge can be represented as a tree graph, with it's roots in ancient philosophy and it's leaves reaching into quantum physics and abstract algebra. To cherish the fruit of this tree, one needs to reach it's branches or, abstaining from the methaphore, to research everything that has already been done.
The access to this knowledge in the current model is pricey: one article costs between 30 and 50 dollars and journal subscriptions are expensive even for universities. Of course we violate the law and use Sci-hub extensively. This is very wrong, fundamentally wrong: people should be able to do their work legally, especially when this work is to solve humanities' problems and improve peoples' lives on the broadest scale possible. And don't get me started on the trouble it takes to do the fact-checking on all the articles that are on the web. It would have been so much easier to just read the source. Tough luck!
So there is, as I have mentioned, Sci-hub: illegal, but convenient and free way to obtain most of the articles, otherwise paywalled. For downloading textbooks and various books libgen is very handy and very illegal. Sometimes useng orchid or researchgate is possible to contact authors and request a full-text and even ask a few questions, but this is slow and inconvenient; not everyone is on these plaforms, which makes things worse. There is no way to quickly dismantle the "rule" of publishers, the have been around since the beginning of 20th century. They claim to be important because of the peer-review but I am unsure whether the peer-reviewing is that expensive, especially in modern world.
2. Analysis
So let's list the benefits of scientific publishing. There are some, obviously, and I'm not here to deny them.
1) Peer review. The most important step to keep most of the junk out of the system. Here I refer to pseudoscience and badly written papers as "junk" to save some space.
2) Verification of scientists and institution affiliations. This makes the industry exclusive, but keeps junk out of the system, again.
3) Storing articles and providing a way to access them via identification system (doi).
4) Keeping track of citations.
Now let's get to downsides. There is plenty, as mentioned above.
1) Paywalls.
2) Very slow system.
3) No way to communicate with authors.
4) Publishers have control over the entire thing.
Now It would be fair to have a look at alternatives and what they can provide. I'm writing this without references so please correct me if something is off.
Sci-hub: free way to bypass paywalls. Solves problem 1, creates legal problem.
Researchgate and orchid: a way to communicate with authors. Solves problem 3 partially.
oaDOI and similar sites: they keep track of open-access articles, this partially and legally solves prolem 1.
That's it for the most part. It's not like publishers are going anywhere, as well as doi system. Not in the near future. Maybe we'll come up with something better than sci-hub, maybe torrent-like system for rticles, who knows. Verification of articles can theoretically be done using blockchain technology. I have no idea what's next or how to solve the problem, but I am putting Alexandra Elbakyan in my "acknowledgements" list.
Dixi.
2021-02-25, 08:20, Thursday
This morning I remembered where I was almost a year ago, in March of last year. Miserable wreck, brewing coffee with shaking hands and second guessing my decisions. Malleable, manipulated with ease and unconfident to a disgusting extent. It's been a while and I learned a lot, most importantly to document my own code and neglect others' opinions. There is a long way to go, but I now have a person to walk alongside and a couple tricks up my sleeve to make a ride more cozy.
@rick3
Go for it! If this is your first time starting bujo or any thorough planning at all, keep two things in mind:
1) planning is a skill with rather unpleasant learning curve, like programming, so take your time;
2) keep your planner near you and reference it as often as possible, it is an easy mistake to open your notebook in the morning and in the evening, but it's not what you should be doing;
Anyways, good luck with this.
It does, indeed. When I was stupid and young, or rather even younger and more stupid than I am now, I spent e couple years being a miserable wreck because I was taking things way too seriously. So yeah, having fun is the name of the game now.
2021-02-24, 07:04, Wednesday
Back to my usual schedule. I am a morning person, and it is way more comfortable to wake up at 6 am than to do so at 7-8 am. The old tale about the world that is geared towards early risers is plain bullshit and I stand by it: all the fun stuff happens at night, all the streams, raids in MMORPGs, meetups and parties all happen at night. So being a weirdo that starts falling asleep around 9 pm is not at all helpful, to be honest.
# Non-fungible tokens
An interesting thing I originally saw on tiktok: blockchain technology that allows for creating unique collectibles in digital space. I might use it at some point, once I have enough audience and material.
2021-02-23, 12:41, Tuesday
Off to a late start today, going home from my countryhouse. In the night temperature dropped to -30 here and water froze in pipes. Fortunately, or rather thanks to the experience, I had some water prepared in buckets. Enough to do the dishes at least.
Now that I took two days off I need to finish a lot of stuff for work and studying. I hope I'll manage.
Also, @FailForward , you might find a few other channels interesting if you liked Veritasium. There are a lot of projects John & Hank Green do, there is styropyro with lasers and stuff, 3blue1brown, flammablemaths and Smarter Every Day for a more general scipop.
Also I strongly recommend checking out Exurb1a, although it isn't exactly scientific, just one of my favourite creators on the platform.
2021-02-22, 17:38, Monday
Plans are changing rapidly and it's okay. Explicitly stating that things didn't go as planned and reworking plans according to new reality is the best way to avoid overplanning and anxiety.
# Staged
A great sitcom with short 20 minute episodes. David Tennant and Michael Sheen are trying to rehearse a play on zoom. Highly recommend.
@FailForward @skells @mathias
Good. Lord. Tried deltachat out today, it's sooo good. Ridiculously good. Like telegram, but actually, you know, secure. And the client is pretty good, too.
2021-02-21, 08:30, Sunday
# Nerdassasin
So I heard this term from Joe Rogan's podcast. It referred to nerdy guys who got pumped in the gym and now are both smart and pumped. I am kinda trying to do this so here are a few things to consider early on. Maybe it inspires someone, who knows.
1) Nutrients. Hit your macros, make sure there is no avitaminosis or overeating. We, nerds, tend to neglect healthy foor, which is wrong. Read up on basic metabolism biochemistry, it's always useful to know the basics.
2) Habits. Chances are your lifestyle is sedentary. Walk more, walk faster if you can, prepare your cardiovasular system for bigger loads. Stretch carefully, don't put too much strain on your body early on. Make sure you move as much as you can, think of it as being an animal. Animals don't need to stretch or warmup, they just move a lot. Also, look up pandiculation.
3) Tendons. Most importantly: don't lift weights early on. Your muscles will become stronger, but your tendons will lag a few weeks behind, so you risk injury around two weeks in. I suggest doing bodyweight progressions to build some strength and stamina, as well as proper technique.
4) Cardio. Don't neglect it, this is one of the best things for your brain.
5) Nerd the fuck out of this. Read up, learn anatomy and metabolism mechanisms, know what are fats becessary for, where does lactate come from and other stuff. Set a goal, like 10k run or single-hand push up, and work towards it, as you would with any big project. I suggest checking out bioneer for inspiration.
Good luck.
2021-02-21, 08:05, Sunday
Taking a day off. The 23rd of February is a national holiday in Russia, the dumbest one I know. "Defender of the Motherland's Day", the day all men get presents and are reassured that they are (or will be) the Defenders of our country, i.e. the army and the likes.
Militaristic propaganda at it's finest. Here is how army works here: all men aged 18-27 are to spend a year in the army, unless they are getting an education at the time. The conditions are terrible and you don't get any choice, basically free "slave for one year" card. No one really cares if you are a pacifist or whatever, and having medical conditions doesn't necessarily allow you to avoid this: unless it's severe (there are some regulations) you go along with everyone else.
2021-02-20, 07:15, Saturday
Because of how bizzare holidays are in Russia I don't get to rest today. A bummer, honestly; hopefully four full days off afterwards will make up for this. By the way, keeping a journal pays off: I manage to record ideas before I forget them. Here is one.
# I don't like BuJo community
I try to adhere to what I call "the golden rule of planning": spend around 1% of the time planning the thing and 99% of the time doing the thing. It takes me up to ten minutes to write a day plan, an hour or so to make a weekly layout and about the same to do a monthly review. Yearly review takes up to three days, maybe four if I'm unlucky.
Since the beginning of 2021 I've been using bullet journal for planning. And it's almost perfect, there is only one think I dislike: the community. Google it and you'll see the pretty calligraphy on spreads with drawings and colored pens all around the place. This clearly takes more than ten minutes a day.
The bullet journal is supposed to be a tool with two purposes: plan the day, week or month and get anything that comes up into the inbox, you own ideas as well as any deadlines/appointments. I tend to throw some notes about the day in there, too. It is not a sketchbook, cookbook or a colorbook that you see on the internet.
The bullet journal, or any journal, is a tool that is used often. It gets messy. If it doesn't you are using it wrong. My Leuchtturm1917's hard cover A6 dotted notebook has 180 pages inside and I usually fit one day on one page, black gel pen, nothing fancy. It's simple, nasty and sometimes hard to read because of my handwriting. It works.
@FailForward @mathias
That looks dope. I added it to bookmarks, gonna nerd into the thing later...
@mathias @FailForward
I use telegram daily, not for security perks as there are none, but mostly for convinience and dope stickers. And there is signal if tg goes down or whatever.
2021-02-19, 08:20, Friday
The following was written in the subway from smartphone, I just happened to have an idea. Enjoy.
# The hive
We spend the majority of our lives in cities, as humans of the modern era. It's nothing new or exciting, but I urge you, reader, to stop for a moment and appreciate just how bizzare things have gotten lately.
Imagine a bee hive or an ant colony, the complex structure animals create to dwell in, to ensure comfort and safety. This is what we are, this is what we do. All the asphalt you are used to, all the roads and stores and houses and scyscrapers are a part of an enormous ant hill that expands underground, in the air, even to radiowave frequencies.
Unlike ants or bees, we don't have a predetermined physiological roles in our colonies and hives; any attempts to artificially create those proven to be disastrous for humankind. We do have roles, though, that's for certain. The question to ask oneself is which role do you play? What do you consume, produce, or ignore entirely? Whom do you serve and served by? Are you happy with those answers, and if not, what would you like them to be? The answer to this simple question lead me to where I am today. It might do the same for you, who knows.
That's is for today, thank you for reading. Have a good day, be safe, don't do illegall stuff (or don't get caught if it's torrenting blurays), benefit your hive. Peace.
2021-02-19, 07:02, Friday
The first day of in-person classes. To be precise, I have two classes in uni, then 2.5 hour long break and two more classes in zoom. I am not exactly looking forward to this. To explain why, here is a rough outline of my average holiday/online learning day:
06:00 - wake up, bruch teeth; breakfast, coffee, write here
07:00 - deep work, usually c++/matlab, for 2-3 hours
10:00 - running, around 4-5k these days, thenm shower
11:00 - lunch, break and family time
13:00 (or 14 if I'm lazy) - more work, some translation if necessary; homework or personal project work
16:00-17:00 - go out for an hour-long walk
This is pretty much the perfect day. I work up to 6 hours and this can go for a long time without burnout. With five classes a day it just doesn't work, unfortunately, but I'll do my best.
