Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@social.cleverlibre.org

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However bad you think it is ... it's worse. https://www.platformer.news/p/inside-the-twitter-meltdown

(via @Nephthys0xa )

"Kherson Occupation Deputy Kirill Stremousov claimed on the evening of November 8 that Ukrainian forces broke through Russian defenses and gained a foothold on the northern outskirts of Snihurivka (45km northeast of Kherson City). Stremousov notably died in a reported car crash on November 9."

I guess falling out a window is passe.

Meanwhile, in that *other* war, Russia has announced its withdrawal from Kherson. I've expected the withdrawal for some time—and now I expect it will be carried out with all the competence and professionalism that's characterized Russian operations from the day of the invasion—but I certainly didn't expect a press conference about it. This is extraordinary.

Hopefully they'll take Boebert with them. She'd be happier there anyway.

This is all over my feed at the moment. I'll preface it by saying that Spencer McDaniel is one of the best popular history writers in the field, and if you're not familiar with his work, you should be. But he's not perfect ...

I think he's half-wrong on this one. Right that there's no evidence for the defense hypothesis, and that the most likely reason is simple balance. Very very wrong about the idea that the attacker has an advantage fighting up a staircase.

Striking upward with a spear or a sword is exhausting, and with an axe it's nearly impossible. Whatever advantage the attacker would gain by access to the defender's ankles would be *vastly* outweighed by the defender's advantage in energy for strikes at the attacker's head, neck, and torso. There's a reason why holding the high ground was the primary tactical goal for most of recorded military history, right up until guns took over entirely—and it's *still* an advantage in most cases, because the poor bloody infantry still has to slog to the top of the hill.

I've never fought on a staircase, but I've done SCA melee combat on very steep ground. Zero doubt in my mind that it's better to be fighting from above than below.

Of course it's quite true that once an attacker was inside the castle, the defender had failed in the main goal: holding the high ground of the castle walls! But not every successful breach ended in victory. It's usually worth trying to hold whatever advantageous position you can ... compared to the alternative.

https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/18/no-medieval-staircases-werent-designed-to-give-right-handed-defenders-an-advantage

This is potentially very good news, via @Nephthys0xa. As with so many pieces of potentially good news, I'll believe it when I see it, but it's at least a place to start.

And now—try to contain your shock—a rant.

Do not respond to this post with bleatings about the "opioid crisis" or "alternative pain management" or "pain acceptance" or a link to a study sponsored by the makers of Tylenol. Seriously. Do not.

Over the last decade or two, I have watched several people I love, some of the people closest to me in the world, suffer from chronic pain. I have watched it chip away at their physical and mental capacities. I have watched it drive them to risky self-medication. I have watched it eat away at their very sense of self. I have watched it nearly kill them, and in a couple of cases I'm still not sure it won't.

I have also watched them get prescriptions for safe, inexpensive, easily available pain relief which dramatically improved their lives ... and then have that taken away. This is a story repeated millions of times. An almost unimaginable act of cruelty, made routine and mundane.

Listen to me very carefully.

A drug category like "opioids" which includes everything from tramadol and codeine on one end, to fentanyl and oxycodone on the other, is clinically meaningless. It may be chemically and biologically accurate. It may help us understand pain and the body's response. It may even be useful in new drug development. But it is not and never will be a guideline to what medication to give a patient who is actively suffering, right here, right now.

The blood of the thousands of people who deliberately committed suicide, who drank themselves to death, who overdosed on street narcotics, because they just COULDN'T TAKE THE PAIN ANYMORE—is on the hands of the people who decided to use the "opioid crisis" as an excuse to inflict agony on their fellow human beings, under the guise of concern.

So is the suffering of millions of people still living, every day, forever.

Those caring physicians and pharmacists and educators and regulators should be consumed with horror and self-loathing. They should know themselves for what they are, and take the possibility of undoing some tiny fraction of the damage they've done as their only motivation for staying alive themselves. They should beg for forgiveness, and accept whatever measure of it they get as unearned grace.

Of course they won't.

If anything I've said above makes you angry or uncomfortable or want to raise your hand and say "yes but" or "well actually" ... that's your problem. Go take a long look in the mirror and sit and think about what you've done. Then try to do better.

End of rant. I have work to do.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/03/1133908157/new-opioid-prescribing-guidelines-give-doctors-more-leeway-to-treat-pain

There is a meme, in the original sense of that word, going around that #Musk bought #Twitter to destroy it. Firing 3/4 of the employees, removing effectively all moderation, the $8 blue checkmark special ... it's all part of a cunning master plan. After that he'll put on an iron mask and buy a small Eastern European country.

Naaah.

First of all, if he really wanted Twitter to go away, he could do that, you know? Fire *all* the employees, travel around the world personally pulling the plugs on every server, auction off the physical assets, and go back to cars and spaceships and flamethrowers. Nothing's stopping him. There would be lawsuits, but he's looking at plenty of those already: a few more should be no big deal.

Second, if there's anything bigger than his stock portfolio, it's his ego. Twitter is his most visible public forum. It's where he shares his semi-coherent ramblings with the world for legions of followers to repost like the words of the one true prophet.

Third, it's a rather large investment, and while I'm reasonably sure he'll lose a lot of money on it, I don't believe he *wants* $44 billion to disappear. His fan base might start experiencing seeds of doubt, and we can't have that.

A much simpler explanation is that he's in over his head.

He doesn't understand what makes Twitter valuable to its current user base. He has no grasp of how small his cult is in comparison to the internet as whole. He thinks his imprimatur is so magical that everything he touches will be a hit. He believes every word of his utopian babble, no matter how incoherent. Worrying about contradictions is for the little people.

Destruction will come, sure as the snowfall. But it won't be the work of an evil genius. That's *my* job.

Why despite all the advances in #AI, I'm just not that worried about #Skynet, part the nth:

I just coined the word "horrilarious" and I expect to be using it a lot.

A #spider is crawling around on my computer while I am trying to #science. So #goth.

Valor pleases you, Crom, so grant me one request. Grant me completion of this tech report. And if you do not listen ... then to hell with you!

@freemo Is there any way to follow a hashtag?

Hello, all. I've been around for a few days but haven't yet made an #introduction post. So here we go.

I'm a #bioinformatics consultant with [The Bioinformatics CRO](https://www.bioinformaticscro.com/) working on a variety of small and large projects ranging from fundamental genomics to clinical decision support. Before that, for several years I was a postdoc and ORISE fellow specializing in high-altitude medicine and physiology at the University of Colorado Altitude Research Center. My academic background is a nearly even mix of #biostatistics, machine learning, and biology.

The ARC* has been sadly moribund for a few years, but thanks to collaborations with other groups, we're [starting to get more active again](https://harcsummit.org/). Hopefully I will have more to say about that in the future. Meanwhile, feel free to ask me anything about #altitude medicine---I think I still remember most of it.

Years before _that_, I was an Air Force #medic (after a brief stint as an Army infantryman) followed by a couple of years as a civilian EMT. My time in patient care informs my approach to science: the numbers I crunch represent human lives.

Otherwise, I'm an armchair #paleontologist hoping to be able to call myself an _amateur_ paleontologist again one of these days---by which I mean actually spending some time in the field and/or the prep lab---a too-occasional science fiction writer, and chronically sleep deprived. Also, my life is the internet: it's cats all the way down.

*Fellow #Primeval fans may recognize the jacket in the picture. My wonderful fiancée found it for me when I was hired at the ARC, for exactly the reason you think.

@trinsec Okay, I went back and looked: I didn't realize the Reply feature quoted automatically. Still learning my way around.

@trinsec, thanks, but I don't think I quoted anyone—or at least I didn't mean to!

A dinosaur fairy tale
--------------------------------

Once upon a time, a mother _Spondylosoma_ had three chicks. When they were young they played happily together, and all were much alike. But as they grew older they became quarrelsome, and no two of them could long be in the company of the third. Their mother grew tired of their bickering, and called them all together in a forest clearing one last time.

"We can no longer live as a family," she said. "You must each choose where you will go."

"I shall go out to the plains," said one, "and grow huge and mighty."

"I shall dwell by the river," said another, "and have many children who shall live their lives in many different ways."

At last the third, who had long been the most quarrelsome of all, was ready to speak. "I shall live on the plains, and by the river, and here in the forest, and even in the sky. While you two eat the plants that grow in your new homes, I will stay true to our mother's teaching, and hunt for my supper. Your children shall regard mine with dread, and mine regard yours as food."

When they heard this, the siblings who had spoken first ran off to the plains and the river, to begin their lives anew. The third stayed there in the clearing, to speak with their mother for a while longer. Finally it was time, and she gave her last child leave to go.

But to this day, no one knows which of them was the oldest, which was the middle, and which was the youngest. For they were all hatchlings together, you see, and the order in which they broke out of their eggs is lost forever, like shell fragments on the forest floor.

The End.

Nonfiction, because they're still describing what we observe, even if what we observe is made up. For example, literary criticism is nonfiction, even though the subject itself is (usually) fiction.