ganymede
joined 4 years ago
How do you benefit from clinging to an untruth?
OP is objectively and demonstrably incorrect in a number of their claims. So your question is quite valid. Are they in sheer denial and this is a certain flavor of cope? Or are they actually intentionally spreading propaganda?
Glad to see they've adjusted for inflation, have they also adjusted for cost of living?
Edit: For anyone (such as OP) who is confused by these terms:
well yeah most of its operating software was derived from opensource projects, but capitalists exploited those opensource project without giving the tinest bit back, so...
really? cos you've left me smitten
Below is my general sleep guide.
From your post these points sound the most relevant:
- Once in bed, no work/study/planning thoughts. Identify and then free your mind of any thought patterns which keep your mind going. Resolve to address them at another time.
- You can even pre-allocate a time to resolve them during regular waking hours. eg. before getting into bed, remind yourself that any thoughts which 'need attention' will be resolved at '12pm tomorrow' or 'during your commute' etc. If they pop up during the night, you already have a precooked answer which doesn't involve waking your brain up even more.
- Don't keep looking at the clock or trying to calculate how many hours of sleep you can get.
- Avoid looking at phone screen once you're in bed, if you need to adjust volume use buttons or remote etc with your eyes still closed.
General
- Observe if caffeine plays a role, you can eg. avoid it after lunch or after dinner - whatever works for you & your body.
Late Evening
- Avoid cold (bluer) colour lighting & use warm (redder) colour lighting from late evening until bed. This is important and melatonin effectiveness is directly controlled by this ^1^. To put it very very simply, we've evolved for redder light = sunset->sleep, bluer = day->awake. Angle of the light can also play a role if you want to go deeper into it.
- Schedule blue light filters on your phone & computers. Should be standard on modern phones & use something like f.lux for computer ^2^.
Before Bed
- Avoid alcohol, lots of sugar or sugary drinks for at least an hour or so before bed.
- Some other otc/"natural" sleep aids to consider: l-tryptophan, valarian, hops, passion flower, chammomile. There's some 'complex' products which are basically derived from these kinds of things eg. ^3^. [Always check anything you take for possible interactions with eachother or medication you're on].
- Supplements like magnesium can help reduce effects of muscle tension.
- Ensure any herbal teas or other foods, drinks etc don't contain more caffeine than you'd planned for. eg. some chocolates contain caffeine.
- Showering or bathing just before bed can help you relax.
In Bed
- Once in bed, don't keep looking at the clock or keep trying to calculate how many hours of sleep you can get.
- No work/study/planning thoughts. Identify and then free your mind of any thought patterns which keep your mind going. Resolve to address them at another time.
- Is temperature or air flow effecting you? Some people find an oscillating fan can help regulate the airflow & temperature, and the repetition can be soothing.
- Are sounds keeping you alert or waking you up? Consider fan, white noise machine or rain sounds ^4^. You can adjust the EQ to mask specific problem sounds, eg. bass for thumps, mids/high for clatter or voices etc.
- Is light making problems? eg. light from electronics in standby mode, light coming through or around edges of windows, other lights in the house? Identify and cover them or your eyes as needed. Remember blue light is not your friend at this time, blue LEDs might look nice but can mess with the brain chemistry of sleep ^1^
- Avoid looking at phone screen once you're in bed, if you need to adjust volume use buttons with your eyes still closed.
Sound
Falling asleep to sounds can sometimes help. Different people like different things on different occasions: music, YT, movies, TV, audio books, ambient soundtracks (rainforest, crackling fire), even boring monotone talking can be good. Avoid any ads if streaming or TV as they're designed to grab your attention.
There are music genres almost designed for sleep, various ambient genres can be great especially if they employ low frequency variations and alpha, theta and delta wave type transitions ^5^. There's a bit of bs around this, but also some legit bio-entrainment science too. In general find what works for you.
If listening, consider using your phone & use a sleep timer app on your phone to automatically gradually lower the volume and switch off after a scheduled time, this can help avoid being woken up by it later in the night. Find the timer periods which work for you. Also ensure your alarm will still wake you.
References
^1^ https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/88/9/4502/2845835
^3^ https://www.flordis.com.au/products/redormin-forte/
^4^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JyE47-Ykjo [Download rather than stream to avoid interrupts/ads during the night.]
^5^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Wave_patterns
no idea
but google cache is being shut down, then google announces they'll be participating with IA.
now this.
really not a good time in history for our ability to easily document web history to be getting messed with.
agreed the existing system is deeply flawed and currently on a trajectory to critical failure.
regarding peer review itself, this is another point. people regard peer review as this binary thing which takes place prior to publication and is like a box which is ticked after publication.
which is ofc ridiculous, peer review is an ongoing process, meaning many of the important parts take place after publication. fortunately this does happen in a variety of fields and situations, however not being the norm leads to a number of the issues in discussion. further it creates an erroneous mindset that simply because something has been published that its now fully vetted, which is ofc absurd.
also agreed, the process should be blind. i believe it often already means the reviewer's identities are hidden, but i also agree the authours should be hidden during the process too.
don't see the role as unpaid being a problem though, introducing money would complicate things alot and create even more conflicts of interest and undermine what little integrity the process still has.
i really love your idea of standardising the process in a network-like protocol. this would actually make an excellent RFC and i'd totally support that.
on a similar vein, this is why i've been advocating for a complete restructuring of support given to reproduction. as you mentioned, the current process is vulnerable to a variety of human network effects. and among other issues with that problem, i also see the broken reproduction system playing a role here.
as it currently stands, reviewers can request more explanation or data, introduction of changes/additional caveats etc or reject the paper entirely. what this means is a reviewer can only really gauge whether something sounds right, or plausible. and as you correctly identify, certain personalities or flavours of prevailing culture will play a role in the reviewer's assessment of what merely seems like it's plausible or correct etc. this has shown to make major breakthroughs more difficult to communicate and face unfair resistance, which has frankly held back society at large.
whereas if there was an organised system of reproduction it's no longer left to just a matter of opinion in how something sounds. this is ofc how its supposed to work already, and sometimes does, but all too often does not. imo it would be a great detail to include in your idea for a protocol-based review process.
i don't envision this as always being something which must take place prior to publication, it can and should be an ongoing process. where papers could have their classification formerly upgraded over time. currently the only 'upgrade' a paper really receives is publicity or number of citations. the flaws of which are yet another discussion again.
unrelated: @OP looks like you accidentally posted this many times. Imo would be good to delete the others to keep the conversation in 1 place.
I generally agree. The system is utterly rotten.
Only thing I'd mention slightly counter to that is peer review - as a process - is still something I believe is useful.
That is, the process of people with relevant domain expertise critiquing methodology, findings etc. When its done right, it absolutely produces better results which everyone benefits from.
Where it fails is when cliques and ingroups are resistant to change on principle, which is ofc actually an anti-scientific stance. To put it another way, the best scientist wants to be proven wrong (or less correct) if that is indeed the truth.
It also fails, as you identify, when the corrupt rot of powerful publishers (who are merely leeches) gate-keep the potential for communicating alternate models.
It also fails where laypeople parrot popsci talking points without understanding that peer review is far from infallible. Even the best of the best journals still contain errors - any genuine scientist is the first to admit this. Meanwhile popsci enthusiast laypeople think that just because something was printed in any journal, that it must be unequivocally 100.000% truth, and are salivating at the opportunity to label any healthy dose of skepticism as "antiscience" or "conspiracy theorist" etc.
It also seems to fail when popsci headlines invariably don't include the caveats all good scientists include with their findings etc.
Final point which I think would help enormously is its very very difficult to get funding or high worth publications in reproduction. The obsession with novelty is not only unhealthy, it's unproductive.
Reproduction is vastly undervalued. Sadly its not easy to get funding or support for 'merely' reproducing recent results. There's two reasons why this should change, firstly it will ofc help with the reproducibility crisis, and it will also afford upcomers excellent opportunities to sharpen their skills, and properly prepare for future ground-breaking work. To put another way, when reading a novel paper you think you understand it. Only when you take it to the lab do you truly understand.
gonna use this as an opportunity to launch my ted talk:
there's no such thing as anything but "race mixing" since every single human on the planet is a mix of different ancient races anyway
(or to put another way, race is a bs term anyway since we're all homosapiens)