#popscience

[knife-red]

i am not looking forward to the upcoming dire wolf discourse lads

[moonsinkfoxgirl]

is it valid to eat paper

that highly depends on how healthy that is...hmmm...

unfortunately the literature does not seem to be very clear on the subject? like there is a bunch of talk about cases of xylophagia / paper-eating-pica but those all seem to be the ones that ended up in a hospital... like eating 2 rolls of toilet paper a day, which had very very grim effects on a woman, or one case of a little girl who both ate a bunch of paper and habitually smelled kerosene which was very unhealthy, but like, the latter probably was the bigger issue?

so on my brief search I couldn't really find any academic sources on how much paper would be safe to eat (not the angle doctors approach the topic from I'm afraid), just that large amounts are bad, and that ingesting toxic stuff is bad

so uh, a little bit is probably fine and valid?, but food amounts of paper are almost certainly not going to be good for your body

that being said my research was very limited, so let me clarify that I am not a medical expert in the slightest; when in doubt ask a professional instead of tumblr mutuals

stuff I looked at, all without paywall:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/ccr3.3157

https://journals.lww.com/inpj/fulltext/2014/23010/an_unusual_case_of_xylophagia__paper_eating_.14.aspx

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/70089/1/Choudhry_etal_MHR_2019_Xylophagia_a_meta_synthesis_of_the_literature.pdf

[alpaca-clouds]

How to Research Pt. 1 - Google-Fu

Alright. I have decided to make a little tutorial in how to use different ways to access information, especially scientific information. The reason for this is, that... Well, research has found that a lot of Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha struggle with doing online research, mostly due to being so used to use the internet via Apps. And having had to do a research project at university, where my fellow students massively struggled to find anything on the requested topic.

So... Let me start with the most obvious topic: Google.

Funnily enough I gotta say, that even a lot of my fellow Millenials struggle with google. Mind you, Google has become a lot less user-friendly over the years. Ten years ago it was a lot easier to google stuff, because Google pushed less advertisement.

It should be said, that these techniques also work with most non-google search engines. So, let me go through it.

How to Google

For reasons the question I will use to demonstrate this entire thing will be: "How many biological sexes are there?" Just because I had to show research on this in online discussions too often. (Me, that is, as an intersex individuum.)

The most intuitive way would probably be to directly ask google.

Now, on the first glance the results of this search do not look that bad.

Again, I am intersex. I am definitely not a male or female based on my biology. And obviously, as such I have read quite a bit on the topic before.

Now. One of the things you need to do, when doing research, is to be able to judge a source.

Scientific American is somewhat reliable as a starting point, but it is popscience, hence you should definitely not cite it if there is any other way.

The NIH is usually a reliable source. But, if you just look into the preview text (or read the abstract on the side) you will find, that the scientist completely just mixes through sex, gender and sexuality. Which... might not make for the best source.

The next one - from the Arizona State University - also is a bit too much on the gender part, and too little on the sex part. And if you look at the preview, you will also find something else there: Google has marked "gender" as an "exact result" by using bold fonts.

And lastly we have a result that is the private blog of some economics guy. Which... might not be a good source for this.

And if you scroll just a bit further down, you will find openly trans- and interphobic sites like Women UK and Emma.

This is the point where you should realize two things:

Maybe we should change the search

You really gotta be careful with what pages get brought up, when you use your google-fu.

See, here is the thing. Why in the nine hells is the 4th (!!!) result of the search some private blog of some dude? I can tell you: Google is basing the results partly on the SEO of the pages. And it just turns out that some economics blokes are actually really good at SEO stuff. That is search engine optimization.

Other than that, Google also basing stuff on traffic and how many people clicked at what link and probably some other stuff that us normal mortals will never understand.

So, how can you change the results? Well, you use the tools that google gives you.

Using " around a group of words or a single word tells google, that you want this exact group of words in the result and no variation of it.

Using - in front of a word or a group of words marked with " before means that you want to exclude these results.

And using * somewhere means, that a word can end differently and you will still accept it.

So, what have we learned from the other results before? Well, for one: We should definitely tell google, that we want to know about biological sex, not about gender. So we should probably mark "biologial sex" as an exact group. It probably would help also to include something like "intersex" because that way we give google something to go off on. Lastly: A lot of supposedly "feminist" sites will actually push their TERFy agenda. So, to exclude them, I will tag this search also as -"women's rights". And because I am not interested in someone's blog, I will also use -blog.

Hence we get the search term:

And look at the results I am getting:

Now, this might not be perfect - but it is much more like what I was looking for, right?

So, that is a quick primer on how to google-fu.

Tomorrow I am gonna talk a bit about Wikipedia.

[our-queer-experience]

how would you feel about a blog that’s not strictly for a queer identity, but an our _ experience for others, i kind of want to make one for neurodivergent people but i wanted to run it by you first

i’d be fine with it! i created this blog because i was lonely and i wanted to talk to other queer people and share experiences, to have a space that felt like an actual community. i’m also autistic and i think that’s one of the reasons i felt that way, because i struggle so much with connecting to people. as long as there’s no popscience being spread and any “information” has a source that is reputable and not from a tiktok or a tweet or a paper no one’s heard of, i’m fine with that!

[futuristicstarfishcollection]

"The evolutionary unit is not the individual, it's the group" Richard Dawkins would like a word.

I kid I kid. The effects of group selection and in particular kin selection are underplayed by Dawkinsians, there's compelling evidence that kin selection is why we age. That being said I want people to acknowledge they are doing fundamentally the same thing that TERFs are doing here. Pretending that they can use science to solve questions of politics and philosophy, because science contains unassailable facts. It is very very annoying no matter who's doing it and I would like people to stop.

Also what is the latest research on the group selection explanation of homosexuality? I've been hearing this in popscience sources for literally the last decade and have never checked to see if it was nonsense or not.

half baked morning rant

I do want to make it clear that the reason I talk about HRT and its biological effects so much is not because HRT or medicalization defines your gender.

Its because, for me personally, the interface of my biology education and my transition was mostly centered around figuring out what sex hormones do. I learned about basic biology principles like DNA organization, gene regulation, cell biology, and physiology in high school and undergrad. Taking that understanding and extending it to the mechanisms that hormones use to change gene regulation, and by extension, the rest of your body broadly, was something I did as my understanding became more complete in later undergrad and grad school. It was the key to me starting my own transition.

Why?

Because it was the first time I realized that the "basic biology" arguments of transphobes were complete and utter bullshit. From that point, it was a cascade. As in, wait, if dynamic changes in gene expression are considered "biological" to them, and I know that isn't true, then why am I believing anything they say about anything else? When they talk about gametes, and try to include infertile cis people in their definitions of biological sex by talking about what gamete you're "intended" to make, what do they even mean? Why does my current gene expression not define that "intent"? And wait, back up, why is the brain suddenly not considered part of our biology? Why are neurological differences suddenly not "biological"? Why can we say someone's thinking patterns aren't "biological"?

Backing up even further, why does any of this matter more than psychological gender, or sociological gender? If the way we navigate society is gendered, that affects a lot of our lives, and we're just throwing that away?

Basically, being educated about how deep the biological changes of HRT really go was the first domino to fall when I worked through my internalized transphobia.

This is one of many reasons why I hate, hate HATE the concession that uninformed allies and even many trans people themselves give: "well NO ONE is saying that you can change your biological sex, sex and gender are completely unrelated, sex is binary and gender isn't!!!!!"

Well. I am saying that you can change your "biological" sex, I am saying that biological sex isn't binary, and I am saying that misunderstanding of those points has set back transgender advocacy. It makes medical decisions surrounding us less informed, it poisons conversations about how we interact with society, and it makes trans people feel like their gender and sex are less "real" than cis people's.

Not to mention the horrific way it discards intersex people from the conversation entirely.

Recently, I've seen this point enter the mainstream a little, by using intersex people and variation of sex in other species as a "counterargument" to "binary biological sex" thinking. It still doesn't sit right with me. One, because it uses intersex people as a prop for trans advocacy while not actually addressing the needs of either group. And two, because it completely disregards that your current biology and physiology is not 100% predestined from birth, and using people who were "born this way" as a prop does absolutely nothing to increase people's acceptance of trans people who change their biology later in life.

Ugh. This got away from me but yeah. That's my sipping coffee ramble for this morning. If anyone wants to add comment or correct me on discourse here, please do. Especially if you're intersex- this is all the observations of a perisex trans woman.

[science-selected-yura15cbx]

Do moral values change with the seasons? | PNAS

https://t.me/science_yura15cbx/440/910

Психологи обнаружили, что моральные ценности людей меняются в зависимости от времени года / NV

Ктоб сомневался

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313428121

https://techno.nv.ua/popscience/psihologi-obnaruzhili-chto-moralnye-cennosti-lyudey-menyayutsya-v-zavisimosti-ot-vremeni-goda-50440928.html

[themslash]

there's something about that specific popscience book writing style that's so fucking annoying. i think it has to do with a type of desperation that can be felt when they appear to be writing for people who don't normally care about the sciences. i'm not into stem professionally, but i have a deep interest, and its really annoying when the author is trying desperately to convince me to care about the topic when i already picked the book up. like i'm reading on purpose.

[surferjoe]

Selfish from Fernando Lazzari on Vimeo.

Two girls, two phones and a filtered reality.

Written & Directed By F. D. Lazzari

Katie: Natalya Micic Phoebe: Raffy Elliston Produced By Lucia Reig Director Of Photography: Rob Wilton Sound Designer: Charly Schmukler 1st Assistant Director: Barbara Toschi Art Director: Isobel Power Smith Colourist: Peter Oppersdorff @ MPC London 1st Camera Assistant: Daniel Anthony 2nd Camera Assistant: Francis Sylver Gaffer: Ersan Berskades SFX Make Up: Jess Heath SFX Makeup Assistant: Eleanor White Costume: Isobel Power Smith Sound Recordist: Matthew Williams Production Assistant: Rossella Mora Editing + Vfx: F. D. Lazzari Camera: VMI Lighting: Greenkit Music Tracks : Asa Martin “She Ain’t Built That Way” galaxykidgamma+freesound.org “bhloop”

©2018 Popscience/Lobizon Films London, UK

[semiprofessional-cheese]

Like, today we had an email thread going around about communication in the workplace and how we can improve it. And there were like 5 different popscience articles shared over the course of this thread, each with their own framework with 2-4 different communication styles everybody gets sorted into and a single paragraph about how if you know yours and you know the other person’s you can work together to communicate in a way that works for both of you :))) If you just psychobable hard enough you can personality quiz your way out of a toxic workplace culture i pwommy :))))

And like. One of them was based on the four humors. Yes my communication style unfortunately stems from the fact that I have an excess amount of black bile. Yeah that’s why I’m so difficult to work with. Sorry. Maybe I’ll do some bloodletting about it later. idk.

When I finally leave this job I'm making myself a tshirt that says "I survived a toxic work environment" or something. That won't happen for a year or more though due to the ✨✨life circumstances✨✨

[doce0]

more articles and fun facts on instagram: doceo__

[tania-sultana]

Passion, what good is this?

I look at all these people who have become something. From politics to business, from Sports to science, in real life or fiction; I see people who have become something had one thing common in them. Do you want to take a minute and make a guess? From Marie Curie to Gandhi, from Steve Jobs to Buddha, everyone had one thing in common. I don't think in their early days, they had planned of becoming someone renowned. Some of them didn't even have a goal, didn't envision what the future would look like for them. The one common thing they had was that they had fallen in love with 'something'. This 'something' comprised a lot of things: technology, science, space, insects, and what not! We cannot say everyone who had got a passion had become someone renowned but certainly they had lived a life of love and satisfaction. On contrary, many, who did not choose a path of passion, rather followed a path that would be practical/necessary would live their lives just to the purpose they chose. There will be Bread and Wine in these lives but no Sparkle in their eyes. Passion is good for our eyes, too keep them young while we grow old, to keep them soft when things around us get hard.

[quantumzafry]

(🇮🇹 nel primo commento😊) 🇬🇧 Let's go back to talk about the physics phenomenon of radiation pressure! (I'm referring to my second post😉) When a comet comes near a star it starts releasing gases in a process called outgassing. This produces a visible "coma" and sometimes a tail: the one we see in every single comet representation 🌠 This coma feels a force exerted by the star's radiation pressure, that causes the formation of a tail oriented in a way that it always points away from the star. It may feel a little counterintuitive but the tail does not "follow" the path of the comet but stays radial to its orbit around the star! This is because the pressure of the star's radiation literally pushes the particles of the coma and tail away (#socialdistance at its finest guys, the tail can reach a length of 3.8 astronomical units!!). Here I chose to show you the beautiful C/2019 Y4 (or ATLAS Y4), a comet discovered on December 28 2019 that fragmented on April 9. Swiping left instead you can watch a little animation about the behaviour of the tail of a comet! - Credit:ATLAS, Wiki - #physics #astrophysics #solarsail #spacecraft #spacemission #esa #nasa #eso #solarsystem #earth #space #popularscience #popscience #popsci #science #comet #atlasy4 #atlas #comettail #radiationpressure #orbit #star #sun https://www.instagram.com/p/B-9NdB9pAIG/?igshid=utezxqisplpa

[l33tspeek]

Found some old magazines 🤔 posted on Instagram - https://ift.tt/2HdBbyG

[bhoobhransh]

Double check!

[science-selected-yura15cbx]

Квантовые датчики могут путешествовать во времени / NV

Это исследование демонстрирует, как запутанные частицы могут вести себя как одна частица, движущаяся вперед и назад во времени. Ипать.

https://techno.nv.ua/popscience/kvantovye-datchiki-mogut-puteshestvovat-vo-vremeni-50433994.html

[goretzki]