I’ve seen a bunch of people talking about Balatro, and some of my friends have been playing it. I should check it out

This isn’t adding much to the conversation but

MOOOOOOOD

I know this is just a joke, but most of the time when I show a friend a meme, it’s because it reminded me of them. I expect that they may have seen it already, but that’s completely separate from the reason why I would want to show it them

Internet history https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565231208569#bibr26-13548565231208569

One that I like that is also a curse rather than an insult is “I hope the rest of your day is as pleasant as you are”

That’s a great joke. The millipede’s enthusiasm is oddly endearing

This sentence took me multiple attempts to parse.

I think you’re right that only a tiny minority are directly responsible for the negative interactions, but as someone within academic science, there’s also a much larger chunk of people who don’t challenge the assholes or the systemic fuckery when they see it.

Minorities who face oppression are much more likely to be ignored if they report inappropriate or offensive behaviour; I directly know people who have been made to feel like they are the problem for highlighting a problem. This is especially common if it’s an established and respected academic who makes the iffy comments, because there’s a tendency to them like a senile grandparent at Christmas. If they’re a professor emeritus, there’s a sense of them not really being relevant anymore, even if they’re still respected, but it can feel tremendously isolating to see no-one step in to challenge the comments, either at an individual or institutional level.

It’s understandable to not want to rock the boat, but abstaining is easier for some than others.

I wonder whether it doesn’t have any inherent meaning. I mean, we all get the sense that it’s an insult.

I say this because one of my favourite insult formats is "you [multisyllabic adjective] [random noun]. Stuff like “You incorrigible spade” or “You abominable turnip”. They’re next to meaningless, but my intention is clear

Sometimes, I’ve found that headaches can be caused by muscle tension or aches. I grind my teeth at night, for example, and if I forget to wear my mouthguard, I have headaches the next day. Often the tension is hard to spot until it’s gone - I speculate that this is part of why sleeping tends to help with headaches.

If this is the cause, I’ve found that a strategy to identify and relax areas of tension is to work through an area and consciously tense the muscles, and then relax. It feels like turning something off and on again. Like if I’ve been doing computer work, my muscles around my eyes may be tired, and tensing the area for a few seconds and then releasing can help reduce that.

This is a useful perspective. I think things like sluggish internet can happen gradually and lead many people to become increasingly frustrated with their speeds, but also treating it like it’s normal. But as you say, it need not be this rubbish

I’ve heard this communication issue referred to as the XY Problem. Having a phrase for it has helped me to better recognise when it happens and respond as you do in your example.

I’ve gotten better at saying “I don’t know”, or “that rings a bell, but I’m not sure, can you remind me”, or “what does that word mean?”. Because I was The Smart Kid™ at school and I carried that on by heading to a prestigious university, I had a hell of a complex about looking stupid. Being smart was so tightly woven into my identity that I struggled to perceive myself outside of a framework of academic success or the nebulous idea of intelligence.

I got a hell of a lot smarter when I learned how to not know stuff though, because I got to learn unexpected things from unexpected sources. I worked on reframing my own intelligence/knowledge wrt my self view, and nowadays, I feel like the thing I’m most proud of is my curiosity, and my openness to learning new stuff.

I will say that as someone who was diagnosed somewhat later in life, I think part of why it wasn’t caught sooner for me was that doctors seemed to assume “oh, this would’ve surely been investigated already”, because I was such a complex blob of issues. Certainly the severity of my anxiety and depression made more sense in the context of autism.

I don’t know if you’ve ever done a quiz such as the Autism Quotient test before, but you might be interested in trying it. I like this version here, because it discusses some of the many problems that this and other similar tests have. Many diagnostic processes involve at least one of these silly little quizzes, usually the AQ, which I linked. Both doctors and autistics alike agree on the limited utility of these tests though, especially on their own, so take anything it says with a pinch of salt.

Data has very much been adopted by the autistic community, but it’s debatable to what extent we can think of Data as being autistic. Certainly his character resonated with a lot of autistic and other neurodivergent folk, but it’s likely that this wasn’t even intentional.

Yeah, that’s my sense too, as someone within low-level academia. Bibliometrics and other attempts to quantify research output have been big in the last few decades, but I think that they have made the problem worse if anything.

It’s especially messy when we consider the kind of progress and contribution that Nobel prizes can’t account for, like education and outreach. I really like how Dr Fatima explores this in her video How Science Pretends to be Meritocratic(duration: 37:04)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

That’s very cool, I see why you like it

I agree, this is great. I really liked:

“Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it’s usually the fault of the interface. You’ve forgotten how many ways you’ve learned to adapt to bad interfaces.”

and

"Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. "

I do this a lot too, and I also experienced people becoming frustrated with me. I didn’t enjoy that, so I now try to do this less. You may not have the same inclination as I do, but I will share something that I found helpful, in case you do.

The way I thought about it is that when you write an essay, or give a presentation, the structure is usually “Intro: here’s what I’m doing to tell you; Main: I’m telling you the stuff; Conclusion: Here’s what I just told you”. It can feel repetitive, but a good intro primes people for the info they’re about to receive, and a good conclusion puts a cap on things to make it easier to reflect on the whole.

Conveying the context before giving the yes/no answers makes it harder for people to make sense of the wider whole, because the meaning of statements is context dependent. For example, if the question at hand was "should we go to the shop?’ and I stated “the shop is going to close soon”, the actual meaning of that could be “we should go right now so we make it in time” or “We’re not going to make it in time, we should go tomorrow”. If I haven’t started by reasoning by making it clear whether I’m “yes, let’s go” Vs “no, let’s wait”, then people listening to my reasons have to hold both of these versions in their head, and puzzle out which is the most plausible take by fitting together fragments of interpretations. It can feel like information overload, and I found that people were more able to listen to context and reasonings if I led with a clear “thesis statement”