Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@social.cleverlibre.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
This ... is a really good point. #Castles, #plantation homes, and the like are often absolutely beautiful. But we know they were built on horror, and I always feel a little guilty about admiring them. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, if the message is "we're still here, but you're gone."
i think what i love so much about castle ruins is that they give me hope for the time when the oligarchs' spoils have outlasted them & the aris...
@parkermolloy Transphobes know quite well they're actively making trans people _unsafe_ by imposing their own ideas of sex and gender on everybody. That's part of the appeal.
I guess there might be some people who have uncritically bought the "safety" argument but don't actually want anyone to suffer, and maybe pointing out the lack of safety will change some of their minds. Not many, though, I suspect. 😐
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
I don’t want to wade into the Discourse, but there’s a real issue with the appropriation of Say Her Name and Rest in Power. we need to respect Black movements, not appropriate them
but trans women face unbelievable levels of violence and we could use our own. So I submit to you:
for Brianna and Zachee and Jasmine and Destiny and too many others
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Friend: The menu says wings come with a choice of Dio. They mean dip, right?
Me: No. Dio.
Friend: But what...
*"Holy Diver" starts at another table*
Me: I think I'll have the "Rainbow in the Dark" tonight. Just throw horns at the waiter when you're ready.
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Daily Dose of Anti-Corona Humor
#AnticoronaHumor
#YearsOfTheVariants
#HowIsYourDayGoing
#AlasHeWentThere
@mike Yeah, it seems pretty good on core CS stuff. Not bad even in bioinformatics. But the further you get from that kind of thing, the worse it gets. It's like a distillation of the LessWrong groupmind!
@mike ChatGPT is pretty good on subjects that a lot of techies know about—not a surprise—which means it's lousy on paleontology. Probably even worse on, say, art history. Calling the training corpus "skewed" is maybe the most polite way to put it. 😀
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Just a reminder that using "the children" and their need for "protection" has been the basis of every horrific moral panic targeting a marginalized group.
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Thus is dehumanizing stuff. I really need allies to help fight back against it. https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/arkansas-lawmaker-hearing-asks-transgender-woman-penis-rcna70787
Just had my first mutual blocking on #Mastodon. Now I feel like I belong!
@KristianHarstad Jesus H. Sorry. Have a nice life.
@KristianHarstad All birds are equally related to _T. rex_, since they're all descended from a common ancestor that split off from the lineage that would lead to tyrannosaurs at the same time, sometime in the early Jurassic. It's vaguely possible that out of all modern birds, chickens have the genome most like that of the last common ancestor of birds and tyrannosaurs ... but it seems really, really unlikely.
The paleognaths—tinamous, kiwis, and large ratites such as ostriches and emus—are anatomically more like ancestral birds than are neognaths such as chickens. Most likely they're more genetically similar as well.
@LouisIngenthron @Runyan50 I can see your point. Certainly I think it's important to remember that it happened—that a mob of traitors were so determined to hold on to power by violence that they were prepared to lynch a Vice President *of their own party* to do so.
I guess it comes down to how it's presented. Pictures should be preserved and widely shown, for sure. Preserving the gallows and noose itself, in place, would carry with it implied approval. Same for a replica. We don't have a static mount of a Japanese torpedo bomber at Pearl Harbor, I'm pretty sure! And I'm 100% sure there's no statue of Himmler at Auschwitz.
Tools and symbols of evil acts, when they're preserved at all, should be museum pieces IMO. Put them in context, rather than just sticking them out in the public square.
@Runyan50 By neo-Confederate "logic," why not?
Seen on Quora: this is the best possible answer to the "we have to preserve #history" argument for keeping #Confederate monuments, bases named after Confederate generals, etc.
"A cannon from a Civil War battle is history. A uniform worn by somebody at #Gettysburg is history. Jefferson Davis’ desk is history. Robert E. Lee’s sword is history. A monument made by the #KKK in the 1890s or 1950s isn’t history of the Civil War. It’s just a monument made by the KKK or similar racists, and is no more history than a statue I sculpt today of Pharaoh #Tutankhamen is 'history' of ancient #Egypt."
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
'A new study offers a glimpse of the future by looking to the past. Mosquitoes that transmit malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have moved to higher elevations by about 6.5 meters (roughly 21 feet) per year and away from the Equator by 4.7 kilometers (about three miles) per year over the past century, according to the study.'
@cyrilpedia Well, that's terrifying.
@malwaretech My God, they've created an AI Trumper!
@fatsam Yet another reason for me to spend more time over here. Facebook's network effects can only offer so much benefit before the costs become too obnoxious.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran medic and infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
