debate && debauchery

Trans woman. 30-something.

[sinister--potato]

[angelspouse]

(with the intention of ordering grapes from the lemonade stand) hey

[videolottery]

Someone should make a disco elysium spiritual successor that takes place in a maze and follows a protagonist who has to eat all the dots in the maze whilst avoiding several ghosts

[dragongirlbunny]

you can actually homebrew this in d&d 5e

[griffonatrix]

SCROLL UP!!! THIS IS A PAINTING

[pokemon-cards-hourly]

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

potato battery? no. potato usually fried by itself. potato starchy enough to go in oil without batter

[im-mender]

Potato battery? no, it only threatened you, which is assault

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

yes. good. fried potato taste very good with a salt

[communistkenobi]

I had a lot of/still have some vestigial arrogance about quantitative methods over qualitative ones, probably in a combination of scientific misogyny + STEMlord superiority. But doing regression analysis and quant-heavy data analysis makes me realise more and more that you can justify basically any claim with numbers, and that you can construct your research in such a way as to output the numbers you want. which does not mean that all data are made up or that quantitative knowledge is all false. I think stories about scientists straight up inventing numbers or fudging experiments on purpose prove that there is a real difference between fraudulent and non-fraudulent research. but those data must always be narrativised & are always already narrativised. The act of presenting numbers itself is doing some of that narration because you’re already arguing that these numbers are worth presenting

[communistkenobi]

People in the notes are rightfully pointing out common issues with data manipulation and pre-loaded conclusions in scientific research (i.e., the academic version of asking "so, how often do you beat your wife?" and so on), but I should have clarified that I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about completely legitimate, above-board scientific research.

For example, I've had students ask me (in good faith) how it was possible for international medical bodies to report different counts of COVID-19 cases during the early years of the pandemic. And one of the answers is that you need to first define what you mean by a "COVID-19 case." Do you include self-reported incidences? Waste water data? Geo-fenced social media posts about people complaining about their coronavirus symptoms? Federal estimates? Hospital data? How do you compare countries/territories/substate entities with mandatory reporting mechanisms vs countries/territories/substate entities that rely only on voluntary self-reported cases? And what combination of these do you use? How you construct what you mean by "case" is going to impact the outcomes you report. These different counts of COVID-19 cases can all be true simultaneously, not because numbers are made up, but because they all come out of different methodologies that can be equally valid.

And this is true across all science, not just social science. Bill Clinton said it best lol: "it depends on what your definition of the word 'is' is." This feels obvious when you look at scientific research that uses "skull measurements" as their object of analysis - the concept itself is white supremacist, regardless of how "sound" the research is. But even something as apparently self-evident as a COVID-19 case still requires a definition, and how you define your variables is necessarily going to impact how the research goes and what conclusions are drawn.

These definitions are always embedded in political & social assumptions. And again, this does not mean that science is all made up or nonsense or whatever. There is a widespread fetishism of "objective knowledge" that is itself ideological - the idea that knowledge can be divorced from all historical and political contexts, that you can scrub bias from research and simply report the facts. Valuable, well-supported, well-constructed scientific research is always embedded in these contexts. Not just as a result of researcher assumptions, but of the material context it exists in - what research resources are available, how & what research gets funded, the academy's relationship to the state & non-government bodies that both provide data and use that research to inform policy, the historical relationships universities often have with settler-colonialism and imperialism that give them access to "foreign" research subjects, etc etc etc.

So my overall point (which I didn't communicate well) is that data can always say what you want to some extent, for good and for ill. And research results (at least in my experience) tend to surprise you in ways that require explanations, which themselves can be fully justified, but again, exist within many different contexts that influence how you interpret them - and not just the results themselves, but your own surprise at your results

[peak-widow]

my stats teacher started the first day of class by invoking the old quote, "there’s three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"

[gay--dog]

play video games win video prizes

[highlandcattleofsaarela]

[lakevida]

i love poison omelette

[the-bone-thief]

-1

[skeletor-at-the-skele-store]

-1

[sanleigh]

-1

[lakevida]

got some kick to it i tell you what

[codexnuminous]

the great thing about fl lore is that it's just. SO MUCH. 'Victorian London pulled down into giant cave beneath the earth by mysterious hooded figures living in a giant shopping centre' is a great premise all by itself! but 'the mysterious figures are actually bats. from space. and the shopping centre is alive + their boss + a crab + in love with the sun (this is why everything is happening)'?????? absolutely wild. incredibly compelling

[shopcat]

look at this wonderful gif of scallops getting scared and scattering like a flock pigeons

[elioftheasphodel]

whatever. go my scallops

[whitachi]

last night I had the experience of "referencing a tumblr post that you think is widely known but turns out to not be as widely known as you thought it was" last night and it was this post. whatever. go my scallops

[gothicprep]

are you gonna pick those penne noodles out of the boiling water one by one like a man, or are you gonna use a strainer like some kind of democrat?

[stateownedslut]

Reactionary sub: I'm literally biologically designed for you to use and abuse me. It's just my body doing what is natural.

Dialectical materialist sub: Historical trends in productive forces have produced a moment within the superstructure wherein I derive sexual satisfaction from roleplaying taboo subject matter.

Liberal sub: nobody knows why I get a funny feeling in my tummy when they call me their kid

[tamamita]

Good Lord, the Iranians massacred some Yankee soldiers in Jordan

[fenrirsclaws]

[tamamita]

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

all roads lead to road dude. and when in road do as the rodents do.

[pitbolshevik]

speaking of trans clothing: no newly out tboy do not buy the $60 special afab boxers

[pitbolshevik]

i stupidly bought a pair of these when i was like 19 and just assumed i needed trans specific clothing and honestly the only difference i can find between them and just regular boxers you can buy at target is that the expensive ones have a pouch for packing purposes. that's it. everything else is exactly the same.

[foothive2-deactivated20190813]

all boys do is listen to acid rock and stare directly into a flashlight 

[foothive2-deactivated20190813]

its working

[foothive2-deactivated20190813]

i can feel it working