(Any/Comrade, Tankie for the unserious)

Marxist-Leninist with Meowist leanings (cat supremacy, but love all animals)

Labor organizer. USian.

Scientist, experience in vaccines/drug delivery/chemistry/analytics/biochemistry/protection of eggs dropped from tall structures

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  • 54 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Lol, what? WTF kind of advice is this?

    NO. You talk him like a peer and respectfully say “stop,” you don’t run to the fucking work police and try to get his ass in trouble because he’s annoying you and you never told him you were annoyed. Why would you complain to HR because someone annoyed you when they don’t even know they did it?

    Sure, let’s just escalate this shit and make his life worse, guarantee he’ll be pissed off at you because you didn’t react like a reasonable person, you did what the institution that most alienates you from your humanity suggested ( your workplace, complain to HR), and make the entire situation worse than it ever needed to be. Let’s just jump to firing the guy while we’re at it, because a negative tip to HR for a person in their probationary period might be that anyway!

    Fuck off with this advice.

    Going to HR at this point in this situation DOES mean you aren’t a team player. It’s like shooting your teammate’s knee out instead of passing the baton if you were running in a relay race.

    Talk to the man like a human.



  • In 2023, the US government returned the remains of some children who were sent to the boarding schools (it’s still ongoing). Aside from the bones of children, there were also animal bones. Why were there animal bones mixed in? Because the children’s remains were pulled from where the school’s rubbish was buried. Separating the bones after all this time would be difficult.

    I can think of no better reflection of how the US government treats indigenous people wherever it encounters them. Indigenous Americans have probably received some of the worst treatment. As always, actions speak louder than words.





  • More improvement in the area of vaccine technology, acceptance, and adoption of these techniques: alternative forms of administration, less reliance on boosters, improved thermal stability. A better understanding of the immune system, neuroscience, and human biology in general. I expected more infectious diseases to be eradicated such as HIV, TB, and malaria.

    These things are progressing and I see hope in how technologies are progressing, but I believe vaccine and infectious disease research and development have been severely limited by the industry’s obsession with intellectual property and pursuit of profit. Our understanding of human biology has improved, but thinking back to my teenage years, I was naive as to how complicated biology is and how little we actually understand.

    I’m still a bit salty no one ever brought dinosaurs back from the grave. Our progression in flight technology has been disappointing without flying saucers too.




  • As someone who meets your criteria, why would I ever put an antenna on my shit again when I can just pirate things or block the ads? An added benefit is that companies think both hurt them as if they are people and subverting their BS fills me with joy.

    Whether the commenters are talking cable or not, both are arguably garbage alternatives to more contemporary methods of streaming media except in special circumstances due to the abundance of cell tower coverage and bandwidth. I wish I could say that radio was not also lumped in with this, but again, 50% of airtime is ads and I find the radio in my car less useful with each passing year.

    You’re allowed to like something and have people younger than you disagree. Fighting and talking down to them isn’t going to change their minds. It’s cool that you still get use out of older technology for free, but not everyone gets the same value from it.

    If anything, don’t blame young people for ruining your technology, blame capitalism for enshittifying it.



  • I’ve been given some books on writing through the years, but never thought much of them. I didn’t read these full articles, but what I saw looked good: Article 1, Article 2 (mostly contains links to other articles on the topic).

    There’s a lot to consume there in terms of writing theory, but one of my favorite exercises is taking a certain writer’s style, identifying some of what is interesting about their style, and applying it to your own writing. The writing needs to be something connected to you and it helps if you can pick a topic that evokes emotion in you, even if it’s otherwise not something you consider to be a notable story. The important part is being able to tap into your own vulnerability because it can help what you put on paper to be genuine. This doesn’t mean everything you ever write needs to be this way, it’s just helpful and a good place to start and learn. It’s the whole idea of “putting your heart and soul or a part of yourself in your writing” but that people sometimes talk about. Once you learn to tap into that and break down the barriers, you can channel yourself into other writing much easier. Writing like you naturally talk can help, but it’s probably bad grammar for writing (except when writing conversations).

    Again, it’s not always easy and I have no clue how much harder this is if you live somewhere without native speakers in the language you are writing, but you need others to read your work. That’s what most writing is for!

    If you end up doing technical writing for science or similar, my best advice is keep the layman in mind. Most science writing is overly clunky and full of jargon and buzzwords that not only drive off the layman, but drive off scientists not in that particular field. It’s stupid and bad writing all to stroke the ego of the writer to get a false sense that they sound smarter. To many, it just makes the writing hard to consume. Technical writing should go into sufficient technical detail while aiming to be as easy to consume as possible, even if you make assumptions that the audience understands a topic. Here is an example of good technical writing.


  • While everything above and reading in particular is good advice, being a good reader doesn’t make you a good writer.

    You must read to learn and then apply those concepts in your own writing. Better yet, have your writing critiqued by a varied audience that includes at least one person with some training in English writing. Universities and libraries often have editors to help with writing or hold writer’s workshops where you can find these people and get help for free.

    To get good at writing, you must write consistently with pointed effort at improvement. This doesn’t start at writing many pieces, but at repeatedly revising a single piece. Even the writing of the most experienced author begins to shine only after polishing. The revision steps are some of the best opportunities to learn and to reach out for advice on how to improve a piece of writing.


  • All neutrality is false.

    This is media literacy 101. Once you can get past this, you find that outlets that wear their bias on their sleeves are refreshing over those who feign neutrality. They begin to come.of as aloof and condescending, because that’s exactly what they are. It’s not journalism, it’s theatre. Same thing goes with regurgitating exactly what government spokespersons say: that’s not journalism. Journalism includes investigation and critique. It’s not possible to give an unbiased critique.

    Looking at you NYT, you fucking dumpster fire. I only keep you around because a dumpster fire can provide warmth.

    I read from multiple sources to cross-reference what narratives are being pushed, and I find news outlets who are often labelled “biased” are the ones most likely to just lay everything on the table. They aren’t deliberately trying to direct you into how to think because they assume you agree with them. “This happened and we think it’s bullshit!”

    You’re also more likely to hear about stories that are left out or considered unimportant or are intentionally censored by the mainstream outlets. It’s more often the case that they will censor themselves than the government will directly get involved and this is far less from smaller news groups who don’t worry about being labelled as biased.



  • But the reality I see is that they are very easily manipulated by unregulated media like TikTok and would vote for the same extreme right wing party as old people. Surveys here in Germany are a bit disturbing…

    The same argument can be made for people of any age.

    Can’t we instead take away voting rights from old people? Also kinda wrong.

    The same can also be applied to younger people.

    Personally, I prefer to err on the side of including them. It’s unjust that we can take advantage of them in so many ways as a teen but they can’t participate in the political system that decides how they can be taken advantage of (work, school, taxes, military, etc.) I know I hated it at that age and as a general rule, I’ve tried not to repeat the same things the adults in my life did that pissed me off when I was a kid. It’s not a perfect approach, but it’s been the correct approach to avoid the problems it caused when I was growing up from being repeated more often than not.

    The only way to do right by them is to give them the right. If you are worried about them being manipulated too easily, education is a good fix.