It seems a little over-the-top to be angry at physicists from 30-40 years ago for being wrong.

Scientists aren’t priests, and science isn’t a religion. Expecting scientists to always be right, always be humble, and everything they add to “science” to be sacred and correct and immutable is a little silly.

This is how science works. It’s messy. It goes in delicious looking directions that turn out to be dead ends. Humans create ideas (with all the hubris and errors of being human) that other humans test (with all the hubris and errors of being human.)

I was struck by how angered she was by physicists thinking they were right and saying “we’re doing something real”. They were doing something real: they were exploring and testing an idea. Without that work, the idea could never have been proved wrong.

(My personal “string theory” is that string/cordage is humanity’s greatest invention, and my user name is a joke.)

Bicycle. No gas expenses, no tabs, no loan, free parking. I understand how it works and can mostly fix it myself for very little money. I can take quiet side streets and arrive in a much better mood, plus my fat lazy ass gets some exercise.

I got into a very strange argument with a relative (who doesn’t know any trans people -at least none they are aware of). They were absolutely convinced that ANY man is better than ALL women at all things. Athletic, intellectual, creative; men are inherently better at all of it.

Therefore, in their mind, anyone who was a man/boy at any point in their lives will be better at everything than a cis woman ever could be. So trans women will always dominate no matter what.

The profound misogyny at the base of their argument was flabbergasting.

Florida students who want to go to college in other states will need months of remedial education to catch up.

Maternal mortality rates in the US were already abysmal. And the difference between red and blue states is appalling.

Louisiana: 58.1 per 100k

California: 4 per 100k

What are the red states doing with all the federal tax money donated to them by the blue states? How could they remain this horrific when they receive so much aid? How can they look at their maternal mortality rates and unabashedly proclaim their states to be “pro life”?

(Stats from World Population Review)

Edit: and let us not forget that the #1 cause of death for pregnant women in the US is murder by their husband or boyfriend. That statistic is going to get worse now, too.

When libraries were first being forced to take books off the shelves, libraries in the free states started giving ebook access to students living all across the country. Now the red states are going to cut off ebook access, too?

This was the “hidden” impact of Dobbs that scholars were warning us about. It is going to be used in so many nefarious ways.

I’m finding Beehaw is sliding into a reddit-esque feel. I tend not to hang out as much or participate as much now because it leaves me frustrated and rage-baited and anxious. I suppose that is part of the consequences of the influx of redditors creating the environment they like. (And now bots are being welcomed with open arms, too.)

It’s sad to see posts telling folks to go to another instance if they want “community”, when the most endearing thing about Beehaw was the sense of community.

CBS dude rode on it and did an interview with the owner.

So many red flags.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29co_Hksk6o&feature=youtu.be

Good.

I worked in a fairly large clinic (office assistant type stuff) and always wondered why the top-surgery patients looked so much “better” than the mastectomy patients. Finally I asked one of the doctors, and he explained that top surgery is quite different than a mastectomy, with different protocols and goals and results.

Someone with training and experience performing mastectomies can’t just step in and do a top surgery.

Which is temporary, and due to the overload caused by Reddit’s drama. Nobody is mad at anyone else, the admins of all three instances are working together to get stuff running again.

Crack open a beer, lean back in your favorite comfy chair, and be patient y’all. And if the FOMO is tearing your soul to fragments, mosey over to Reddit for a while. It’s still there.

One instance out of 750+ got overloaded and had to block some of the flood for a bit. Welcome to the Fediverse!

Each of the three largest instances now are working to be a standalone replacement for Reddit

Beehaw has been it’s own thing for a couple years now. It has never wanted to be Reddit. They have done such a good job of curating their instance with excellent communities and membership that the Rexxitors want to join it and make it into THEIR replacement for Reddit.

And this particular sub is made of carbon fiber and titanium, so non-magnetic.

If you run into a financial ditch and don’t have emergency funds, contact the electric, water, medical, phone, credit card, etc. billing departments right away. Don’t wait until after you’ve already missed a payment or two! Jump right to it and set up payment plans. I helped a friend through a financial crash and was impressed how much leeway billing departments will give you if you reach out before you miss a payment.

The misogyny is so hefty. “Men are inherently better at everything than women, women are inherently worse at everything than men. Trans women are men, therefore inherently better than all other women at everything and must be disqualified…”

I wish I could remember the quote (and who said it) about how all the various forms of sex/gender/orientation hate boil down to misogyny. It was erudite and extremely effective.

This reminds me of an article about journalism and the internet, from ages ago. A class was asked how they would research for a topic (it was some recent political event, I don’t remember). The class confidently answered “the internet.” The professor struggled to get them to understand that wasn’t enough. Yes, there is all kinds of stuff about this event on the internet, but how did it get there?. And more importantly, what is missing?

Sure, all the sexy AI stuff gives us goosebumps and sounds great. But how did it get there, and what is missing? Someone somewhere has to do the actual original work first, or it’s just making collages from the same library over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, hundreds of immigrants a day are moved to reception centers all across the country.

You know what? They don’t need expensive charter busses paid for with state taxes - their travel is paid by federal taxes. And they don’t need expensive private security to force people to stay aboard at gunpoint. They aren’t lied to, and they know where they are going. And they aren’t dropped on a sidewalk unannounced - they go to a reception center that has resources for them and knows they are arriving, and they are documented every step of the way. They don’t miss their immigration appointments because their appointments are scheduled near the reception center they move to.

Abbot is spending huge amounts of his state’s money to do a terrible and illegal job of duplicating a TINY portion of what the federal government is doing efficiently every day.

Also, immigration is at the lowest it’s been in 20 years. All this crap Texas is pulling is utterly pointless. We need new people who are eager to work - we don’t need to make child labor legal again. https://globalmigration.ucdavis.edu/20-years-declining-immigration-and-disappearance-low-skilled-immigrants

People who have been engaged in an authoritarian system for so long that they “can’t see the forest for the trees” are lost when they experience anything else. They are driven to recreate the centralized authority, because it is life as they know it.

Yup. Beehaw is a food truck with 33 menu items. If you want something that isn’t on the menu, you mosey over to one of the other food trucks in the Fediverse Food Truck Rodeo to get it. (Clever food truck analogy stolen from someone else’s post)

A “final solution”, as it were.

Far-right podcast host Joey Mannarino announced he would be “dumping out my Frosted Flakes” over its association with Mulvaney and switching to Froot Loops. He did not seem to realize that both cereal brands are owned by Kellogg’s, so he’s not actually sending his money somewhere else.

Well…

“The JCU trial provides sufficient proof of concept that infection with live hookworms is safe and appears to have some sort of beneficial effects on people’s metabolic health, which will hopefully be confirmed by future clinical trials designed to confirm efficacy and explore how hookworms influence metabolism,” said Dr Paul Giacomin, AITHM Senior Research Fellow and immunologist.

Eat less vs feed a crop of worms in my guts…. Hmmmmm. I mean, it’s an efficient way of making sure you don’t absorb all the calories you consume. It would be a bummer if my worms’ eggs were infecting people who didn’t over-eat and would be harmed.

The anti-inflammatory aspect is intriguing, but there has to be better options for creating that response.

This “give you worms so you can continue to overeat without consequences” approach is far too reminiscent of the ancient Roman vomitoria. There has to be a less wasteful way to deal with obesity and its metabolic consequences.

That is pretty darn awesome.

Some people view sex as a means of expressing affection and connection, rather than as a means of having an orgasm. They would have no issue buying a sex toy to get their physical needs met, however hiring a person wouldn’t make sense to them because of the lack of emotional connection.

“You have the freedom to speak, and I have the freedom to stop listening.”

My opinion is biased by having been homeless and hungry as a kid.

We did not beg, so we didn’t get money to spend. The help we got (food and clothing) was donated from charity groups.

From a child’s perspective, it was a dangerous and desperate time with no options. So as an adult I’m focused on how to reach the quiet suffering ones. I donate to community charities, who can get the most out of my money and give help to the people who don’t stand on street corners.

In a video statement a day after the shooting, Belford said two officers were helping someone get into a locked car when a supermarket employee told them several people were leaving with stolen items. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/police-fatally-shooting-a-pregnant-black-woman-captured-on-video-set-to-be-released

I have a hard time seeing a 7-months pregnant woman being part of a gang of thieves and running from a store with her arms full of bottles of alcohol.

And if she was part of the gang, you record her license plate and get the security camera pictures and call her in. What the hell are cops being taught?

It’s very telling that their protocol was messages every 15 minutes, but they were so used to losing contact with the Titan that nobody bothered to report the sub missing for several hours. The voice recordings could prove problematic for them.

Kind of an aside, but didn’t the dudes who figured out insulin refuse to patent it because they thought it would be immoral to profit off something people need to survive?

Bike lanes are not my favorite thing to ride on. I’d far rather move over a block and ride down a quiet residential street than ride down an arterial in a bike lane.

(Trails, of course, are awesome.)

And those who are in crucial meaningful jobs are pushed to their very limits, overworked because “your job is your calling.” (Nurses, teachers, social workers, etc.)

Yes, I’m serious.

They presented their ideas the way every excited scientist does. Being angry at them for that is kind of silly. Should I be angry that I was taught the “fact” that animals and plants migrated between stationary continents via land bridges? That scientists were excitedly drawing up complex bridges and timelines? That they told everyone about their fabulous revolutionary bridges? Nope. It’s just one funny step in a funny dance humanity does.

Angrily putting up a picture of herself as a child in the 90’s who was excited about string theory and saying she was betrayed by later work? I don’t get it.

You are posting in Beehaw right now.

You are creating and debating in Beehaw at this very moment.

Lemm.ee (your home instance) is federated with Beehaw. You can do everything on Beehaw that a member can. This is how the Fediverse works. No need to wait for acceptance, no need to cry. Welcome to Beehaw, Lugado! <throws lei around your neck, hands you a beer>

From the other side… If you are a woman with cancer, you quickly discover that everything is aimed at breast cancer patients. Women’s support group? Sorry, only for breast cancer patients. Women’s retreat weekend? Breast cancer patients only. Class on how to stay beautiful while you hair is falling out? For breast cancer patients.

The loss of a (limited usefulness) boob is seen as far more devastating and worthy of care and support than the loss of a lung, lobe of liver, bone, rectum, patch of skin, eye, etc.

And every damn thing - cards, flyers, books, pamphlets, posters - for women with any cancer is pink.

Children don’t need librarians and books! They need in-school detention centers!

https://governorsfoundation.org/gelf-articles/early-literacy-connection-to-incarceration/

2/3 of kids who aren’t reading at grade level by 4th grade end up in prison or on welfare. Why would Texas want to reduce literacy in their schools?

When I start feeling like that, I pick up my garbage-grabber stick and a bag and stroll through my neighborhood picking up trash.

It’s a small thing, but it’s a physical and immediate thing. It’s almost meditative due to its simplicity.

And random people stopping to thank me is pretty nice, too.

Yesterday while grocery shopping two men walked by as I was contemplating bread choices. One of them was saying, “yeah, it’s ok, I’ve got the sore throat but I don’t have the rest of the Covid symptoms yet.”

At that moment I really wished both he and I (and everyone else in the store) were wearing masks.

Find another way. There are always options.

CGOB has plenty of journals from people riding 15-25 mile days, people on recumbents, people on trikes. People are even starting to tour on ebikes nowadays.

I got fucked up by cancer. I experimented with options to find what works. Am I gonna win the Great Divide? Nope, sure won’t. Can I ride the route if I wanted? Yup, with some modifications I can totally do it.

Find your modifications and your options. Kick some ass.

A fascist tactic that is used in politics all the time.

She ended the article saying the family moved to Oregon.

That is what needs to be done. Trying to prove to the Christian nationalists that you are “one of the good ones” is never going to work, and historically has never worked dealing with fascists.