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ykw this one actually has rights and is valid, I'll take his croissants😌

#he's making CROISSANTS I will take NO COMMENTS and NO OPINIONS

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Contrapoints transcripts having emojis in them is so perfect. Someone who does linguistics or communication or something say more about what makes it so good.

Because this:

is so fascinating to read. It's ... more than just a verbatim, yet less than a video ?

#also “your brain. in so small.” has an A(N)T for me since it came out #if I ever malfunction when someone does something dumb know that this is what my brain is playing on loop #but genuinely I love the addition of emojis as something a tone indicator ? a vibe indicator ? A point of emphasis of certain lines?

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Any Prof relying arguing that AI essays are bad and easily detectable, and then using an AI tool to detect it and trusting that tool is missing some... serious... technology literacy.

I'll be the first one screaming about AI-generated essays and I have done so before, but Uni needs to get its shit together to deal with them properly and avoid stupid mistakes that end up having massive consequences for students.

You don't just rely on AI detection tools (honestly ideally you don't rely on them at all, because they are just not reliable at this point).

You put in place procedures where a lecturer needs to put forward proper elements that support their doubts.

Procedures are fast enough that they do not let the student marinate in a state of unknown.

Procedures are made fair: they are standardised, students are given due information about the policies on use of AI, automated translation, risks and sanctions possible...

Faculty gets trained to understand that international students/non-native speakers may have writing styles that are very different.

Fwiw, I have not heard, at least in my academic circle, of faculty relying just on AI detection tools to bring forward any accusation that a student used AI, but US universities are a whole different breed, so maybe it is more of a problem there. - or maybe it is field dependent.

I hate so much that professors who still can't figure out how to send messages on Zoom think they're capable of spotting AI writing. Professors are just feeding essays into AI detectors with massive fail rates with absolutely zero critical thought about the tools they're using. I moved across state lines. I've spent years of my life trying to get this degree. But at any moment I could be expelled because I got a false positive from a detector that tells you ChatGPT wrote Anna Karenina.

#unis are BAD at dealing with this because they refuse to truly acknowledge the problem #it is so complex to deal with and unis are notoriously slow and heavy to change anything in their procedures #so they would rather wing it on a case by case basis rather than put in place standardized fair procedures #which would also signal to student that this is not acceptable behaviour #and at the same time ensure boomer faculty does not engage in dumbass behaviour #especially when it reeks of underpinning xenophobia #adventures in academia

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people who don't follow chess I promise this post is really funny

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I should be allowed to wear a badge that says "This is my [X]th night of insomnia, interact at your own risks". For my sake as much as for others'.

#delete later #friends we are feeling WHINY today

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if i can impart any one piece of wisdom to y’all, it’s to, whenever possible, assume good intentions

assume people are trying their best, want to be good and treat others well, and that when their behavior doesn’t align with those goals, it’s because of outside factors that are pushing them to their limit

it’s hard to do, it doesn’t always come naturally, but it’s worth it

#do it do it do it #and sometimes people have bad attention #most of the time people are just to burned out have either good or bad intentions #just assume everyone is doing their best with the intellectual physical and emotional bandwidth they have been granted

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the chocolate trigger thing is a myth??

Thank you for asking. The short of it is yes.

Chocolate as a posited migraine trigger came out of migraine journal studies. Basically, people suffering from migraine were asked to keep detailed journals of their lives, including what they ate, and this was compiled and trends were picked out.

One thing they found? People often ate chocolate before reporting a migraine attack.

There were two things going on here, though it took years for people to come to this conclusion. The first is that migraine prodrome can include sugar cravings-- so people who were already well on their way to a migraine attack were craving chocolate, ate the chocolate, and then reported the migraine. The second is that stress is a trigger of both migraines AND sugar cravings. Thus for someone had a rough week, the stress induced both a migraine attack and a desire for chocolate.

Later lab studies in which people who suffer migraine were given chocolate, or cocoa, or small doses of caffeine similar to what's found in chocolate, etc etc found that there was ZERO evidence for chocolate triggering a migraine. No component of chocolate triggered a migraine in sensitive people, even people who reported chocolate as a trigger.

So really, eating chocolate is a symptom of migraine, not a trigger of it.

These same food diary studies also led scientists to (briefly) believe that alcohol might PREVENT migraines. Why? People who reported fewer migraine attacks drank more alcohol. The actual finding here? People who have more migraine attacks don't frequently drink alcohol because jfc who wants a drink when they have a migraine (also migraine fucks up social lives). Alcohol, unlike chocolate, DOES trigger migraine attacks.

So these are the kinds of limitations of food diaries when you are trying to figure out what triggers your migraine attacks, and also why doctors emphasizing food triggers, especially chocolate, get a side eye from me.

That said, there is ample evidence that when people feel in control of their health, they tend to feel better. If you believe that chocolate triggers migraine attacks and you feel like limiting chocolate helps you, I'm not going to tell you to stop.

But if your doctor handed you a pamphlet with 20 year out of date information on migraines that included the idea that you had to stop eating chocolate and cheese (no evidence for cheese, either, eat your heart out), I'm here to say your doctor is at least 8 years out of date with the literature.

TLDR; chocolate fine, alcohol bad, doctors lazy, science progresses

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"Detox diets" are for Prometheus and Prometheus only. If you want to claim that you need your lemon-cocumber-water every morning to cleanse your body start by getting the wrath of the gods upon you, you cowards.

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(having mildly hard time drawing) i hate doing this shit i’m never doing it again (having mildly fun time drawing) i love this shit it’s what i was born to do (having mildly hard time drawing) i hate this shi

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I am all for hyping Babel, I really am, I love the shit out of this book, flaws and heavy-handedness and all, I recommend it to everyone.

But also. My hot take is that I don't think it tops The Poppy War. Maybe Babel is technically better (idk, because I idk much about what makes "good"; "technically good" fiction writing), maybe it was just more marketable, maybe it is more mature writing, maybe more people could relate to a Dark academia story, and maybe Babel has a permanent parking spot in my brain.

By The Poppy War bypassed the brain, the heart and the guts and carved itself on my fucking bones. Read it. READ IT.

#I see so much hype for Babel and rightfully so ! #but turning this one into a movie/TV show is the easier move #adapt the poppy war if you dare you cowards #anyway I can't wait for Katabasis

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How do you take notes when you are researching something? Do you write them down by hand in a notebook? Do you type them up in a document somewhere? How do you organize them? How does it all work?????

excellent question, anon who sent this like 3 months ago. i have traditionally done it one of two ways--when i was reading for my exams i used microsoft onenote and had a notebook for each reading list with every source in a separate "page." which worked okay!

for seminar papers in grad school, and now for discrete projects like articles, solicited chapters, etc., i tend to have a single google doc with all of my research for that particular project--i use the outline pane to move between them since the document becomes very unwieldy, very fast--this is a short example, and the document is 22 pages long.

the benefit of this system is that i can just search my google drive via keyword and find the notes really easily! the downside is that because things are kind of silo'd according to whatever project i first read them for, i don't always remember that they exist when i'm working on something else. and i'm at the point where i've published enough stuff in my little subfield that i really am repeatedly returning to the same sources for different information.

which brings me to zotero :) haven't decided how i feel about taking notes in the app itself--it's not aesthetically super great, but it is functional and i appreciate that you can keep your notes linked with the actual document and that you can also connect each source to related sources/notes/etc. i'm also happy with being able to leave a note to identify why i wanted to read that source in the first place, bc my memory is Real Bad, or to flag chapters that i want to come back to later but don't need to read or take notes on now. example from the top of my zotero library right now:

that first note (highlighted in red) is a reminder of why i saved this book reference--it has a chapter on some inquisitions i think are neat! maybe not for the current project but if i ever come back around... the bottom two sources--"the medieval coroners' rolls" and "an apology"--i have linked together (which you can't see in that screenshot) because, as the note on "an apology" states, it has a ton of corrections to the originally-published footnotes for that article. this is the kind of information that would 1000% get lost if i tried to keep track of it in a google doc, so zotero is winning in this area for sure.

#adventure in academia #listen to soap stones kids she is actually the best #lowkey got me through a big chunk of my phd funk and does not even know it :')

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My favourite kind of academic(-adjacent) books are those that explain in details why numbers are NOT actually, a neutral and totally unbiased thing.

Like sorry dear, but your data comes from somewhere and that somewhere is full of thing you are trying to measure.

#anyway I am writing on a thing about al as data and I am back into Bad Numbers and Invisible Women and The Quiet Power of Indicators #and I am so mad none of them is on most social science syllabus #adventures in academia

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Not being able to participate in a discussion extremely relevant to you without revealing intimate details of your life so you just sit there pretending you don’t understand anything about the topic while your brain turns into a gigantic clenched fist. = akin to torture

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Why are double-spaces such a big deal. Why. Who cares. Give me one (1) good reason I should care about the occasional double-spacing in my writing if it still fits the word/character count WHY DO WE CARE

#adventures in academia #once I am done with this grant application my braincells are taking a vacation

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I feel like. Part of the reason we're seeing hot takes like "video games like Stardew Valley are bourgeoisie and you should feel bad for playing them" and "if any actor in a TV show even hints at supporting any part of Israel then we need to boycott that entire show" and stuff like that is.

Online activism does virtually nothing. It does virtually nothing, guys. You can reblog and repost stuff all day and it does nothing. And so there's this desperate need in people's minds to Do Something, but social media platforms have so thoroughly trapped us into the idea that This Is How You Connect With People, that we think blogging = activism.

But nothing we've reblogged thus far has made a significant difference in the world. So we keep reblogging, desperately, convinced that if we root out the real evil in our media consumption or if we pare down our beliefs to the One True Ideal and force everyone around us to share that ideal, then finally Something Will Change For The Better.

Log off. Go give blood; there's a critical shortage right now. Help someone in your community; it might not fix wars that are thousands of miles away but it'll help that person. Call or email your local representative about issues that matter to you. Fucking vote. Do something in the not-online space. It'll matter more than 100 posts in a row about Important Things.

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Ok, I am going to guess this is about this new movie of which I have seen posters? And I start by saying I have no idea what it is about, and I am basis this purely on this map.

Totally agree with all the above, with one caveat: The Loyalist States are the ones in a shit situation, geo-strategically. They have borders with ALL other parties (?), and I am going to assume there is no alliance happening her, for simplicity's sake. They are the Germany of the US, and even without proper coordination, the moment conflict breaks out on one border, every other party will do so with their own border in hope that they human resources are stretched thin. Even if war is now less about "how many men" and more "how many drones" esp if this was to take place in the US, resource attribution is still a zero sum game, and that's a whole lot of borders to attribute resources to.

And now I'm a bit mad this is a static picture, because if we knew what was the dynamic at the time of this snapshot (at least who's growing, who's weakening) we could have a lot of fun with predictions. Purely now, I kind of want to put my money on a NPA+Western forces alliance against the Loyalist States and everything they will conquer in the south. NPA's territory looks like it would be hellish to fully control anyway, and Western Forces have more resources, wealth, and access to international trade by sea at least for now.

Also : love Texas just being Texas.

Also also: I no, I kind of want to see this movie now, and it might be a terrible movie.

Look, I’m willing to give Alex Garland the benefit of the doubt, but this is stupid. The Loyalist States are obviously winning this, they probably have as much industrial capacity as all of the other forces combined. Their biggest competition would be the Western Forces, but they’re doomed as long as they remain unconnected. If they don’t try and take Arizona and New Mexico on day one, they’re idiots. The New People’s Army states specialize in tech, wheat, and the arts; not a threat. And the Florida Alliance would disintegrate as soon as all of the other states realize it’s called the “Florida Alliance.”

#this was fun I HAVE THµINGS TO DO AND NEED TO STOP PROCRASTINATING

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There is an absolute idiot of a paper by people from computer science a dude from Amazon that put together a model that can predict the outcome of a human rights case based on the algorithm being fed the facts, the relevant law, the parties submission and the entire analysis AS SUMMED UP IN THE RULING OF THE COURT ACTUALLY DECIDING THE CASE. No

My dudes really went "if you give me aaaaaaall the ruling but the two final lines, I can predict the two final lines" good for you mate so can a moderately smart 12 year old.

#HOW IS THIS REAL #the entire team of five researcher has exactly one (1) lawyer I am screaming #lawblr