“Science without morals and ethics leads to amazing developments, but often misguided or twisted understanding, and unbridled human suffering.”

Exactly this. I see way too many scientists who may not be actively bad people, but they convince themselves that it’s possible to do science in an apolitical manner.

I believe that science is able to get as close to objectivity as is possible to achieve. However, individual scientists can never be objective, and the more they think of themselves in that way, the less objective the resulting science is.

I’m really glad you made this comment, because otherwise I was going to have to be the one to make this comment, and I wouldn’t have explained things nearly as well as you did.

You have my sword!

• Sincerely, Me, a natural scientist

It’s analogous to a combined count of how many people have commented on the post, or shared it (or “reblogged”, to use the Tumblr term). It might also include likes? I only use Tumblr occasionally so I’m not sure.

I don’t know why Tumblr counts things like this. I sort of like it though — it makes it feel like a distinct place. Tumblr hasn’t escaped enshittification, but it makes me happy that it still exists as a little pocket of weirdos

Piggybacking off this to add more lightbulb jokes.

The best joke I’ve ever heard was delivered by a German friend with an incredible deadpan delivery

How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

!“One. We are a very efficient people”!<

Another one!

How many emos does it take to change a lightbulb?

!None. They all just sit in the dark crying.!<

(I should clarify that I find this one funny because when I first heard it, it very much applied to me. I felt mildly attacked, but not in a hurtful way)

Piggybacking off your comment to leave a pirate joke of my own.

“What’s a pirate’s favourite letter?”

(Ideally, the audience will reply “Arrr!” this this. It works best if you prime them for this by doing a bad pirate impression earlier in the conversation, or tell a joke such as “What’s a pirate’s favourite animal? An aardevark!”)

“You might think so, but a pirate’s true love be the C (sea)”

Bonus joke! What’s a pirate’s least favourite letter?

!Dear Sir or Madam, your IP address has been recorded downloading infringing copyrighted material on…!<

I’m sad that Jimmy Carter won’t get to see this.

He once said that he hoped that the last Guinea worm would die before he did. His nonprofit, the Carter Foundation, did incredible work in pushing forward here. He was able to negotiate a 6 month humanitarian cease fire to allow aid to high-conflict areas of South Sudan, which had one of the highest incidence rates for Guinea worm disease.

That’s an absolutely giant cat and surely must be of significant scientific interest

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

I really like the book "Means and Ends by the historian, Zoe Baker. She also has a YouTube channel where I have learned a lot about anarchism, but I especially like the book. It’s one that I bought a physical copy of purely because after reading it digitally, I knew it was a book that would be great for lending to friends.

The book only covers the period between 1868 and 1939, but this was a key period for the development of Anarchism, and I found it useful for understanding how Anarchism has developed as a school of thought or ideology. Anarchism has an especially high level of disagreement amongst anarchists on what Anarchism actually is, and that is inherent to Anarchism, I reckon. Baker grounds her analysis in the history really effectively and it really helped me to understand the wider conversation that was taking place in this period, which helped me to understand Anarchism as it is understood today. It’s a super accessible read, and I found Baker’s style to be quite fun to read also.

The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

Here is a song that relates to your comment

“Art is for Amateurs”, by Jam Mechanics (a collaboration between Narcissist Cookbook and Bughunter)

Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

Next time someone asks me what PDF stands for, this is what I will tell them

(I’m reflecting on how many times I’ve been asked what PDF stands for, because my comment would suggest it is a thing that happens often.

Doofensmirtz_meme.jpeg: “if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what PDF stood for, I’d have two nickels. — which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice”

I think I’m just most people’s token techy friend. Or more specifically, I’m the techy friend who also knows loads of random shit and really enjoys answering random questions)

That’s sort of like saying “I’m overheating because my apartment is 32ᵒC, let’s turn on the heating and see how we feel once it’s 45ᵒC”

I love the fact that you wrote this in a science meme sub. I like getting learning alongside my memes

(I’m a biochemist, so I didn’t learn anything in this particular instance, but I frequently find my day brightened by helpful people like yourself, who take the time to explain stuff)

Pole dancing actually requires an incredible level of athleticism, and as such, is a pretty fun way to get in shape. Some people who install a stripper pole in their home will no doubt be the kind of people you describe, but that’s not the only kind of person who might install a pole at home.

I know a couple of people who do pole dancing as a sport and have a pole installed in their home. They’re both people who seem like archetypical examples of people who have their shit together. For these people, installing a pole in their home is analogous to a weightlifter purchasing a squat rack so they can lift at home — basically just a way to practice without having to travel.

I’m not trying to suggest that your caution is unwarranted — if I were the person in the OP, I would feel pretty anxious about knocking on their door about the problem, because it’d feel like a bit of a coin-flip: are they going to be the kind of person who has a full fledged liquor bar in their kitchen, or someone who engages pole-sport as a productive way to stay fit? Because one of those people would likely be much less easy to work through issues with.

I guess my goal in writing this is to convince you that there are at least some people who install a pole in their home who are nothing like the archetype you’re envisioning. I’m not suggesting that they are the majority — I have no idea what the relative prevalence of these different archetypes are. However, they do exist.

Did anything improve after that?

I feel like the target audience is “temporarily embarrassed [billionaires]”^[1]

That is, people who are not billionaires, but like to imagine themselves as having the ability to become one.

[1] the original quote that this is from uses “millionaires” but years of the upwards flow of wealth meant the quote needed some updating.

The tone of voice that William Jackson Harper (Chidi) took in his reply absolutely makes the joke