Alan

Nerd. Dislikes kale. Way over on one end of a non-binary scale, he/him. Social democrat policies improve freedom for all. (Handle unrelated to Foreign Policy)

[Alan @peacefinder]

"Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky."

[southpaw @nycsouthpaw]

Just 11 adults are responsible for 60% of requests of ban books from school libraries nationwide, according to a Washington Post analysis of the 2021-2022 school year. https://t.co/DVi5zJN35S

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

Reminder that the United States could have been the world leader in 5G technology instead of China if we had just given *one guy* a green card when he needed one

[Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB]

It seems it never occurred to Elon that we were lying.

[Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma]

There’s something very morbidly funny about the fact that towards the end of his Senate career, Romney preferred to work with colleagues he saw as sincerely insane over those who were cynically faking insanity

[Jonatan Pallesen @jonatanpallesen]

Incredibly, the placebo effect is (mostly) not real.

It is a result of statistical confusion. Whenever you have a group with extreme values, they tend to exhibit regression to the mean. Eg. on average, sick people tend to become more healthy over time.

Thus if you give one group medicine, and one group placebo, the placebo group will also tend to get better over time, because of regression to the mean.

People have then misinterpreted this to think that it is the placebo pill that actively does this.

If you want to demonstrate a placebo effect, you have to construct a study where there are three groups:
• A. treatment
• B. placebo
• C. no treatment, no placebo

If B and C get different outcomes, that would demonstrate a placebo effect.

When this has been tried, mainly there has been no provable placebo effect. See the paper in the screenshot. (There is some evidence for an effect for pain, but this get's into a slightly different debate.)

The fact that the placebo effect is mainly not real, fortunately frees us from having to come up with convoluted explanations, as to why the placebo effect would work even when we tell the patient that it is a placebo, as in the quoted tweet.

[Matthew Mcdevitt @industrialite]

Just in case anyone on my short list has forgotten that Sarah Kendzior busted these f***s years ago. And years before that id’d the cultural malaise that feeds them.
https://t.co/MvhYsLmxDI
Wherever you get yours.

[Alan @peacefinder]

@robertgraham It does follow a long-standing offline behavior of getting the last word and walking away. (Or hanging up, or marking as junk, or filing a restraining order, or…)

So I don’t find it particularly troubling that it happens online too.

[Amanda Rivkin Häsler @amandarivkin]

“People, I think, just get so wedded to their vision of themselves as fighting 'The Man,' fighting the power that they are blinded and taken for a ride by Russia, in this case serving as useful idiots” https://t.co/x6HK6Tp36O

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

“Bro country” as a sub-genre tends to be tedious because it prioritizes commercial value to a specific demographic—aggrieved, conservative white men—over storytelling, which, in my humble opinion, is what historically makes country music so damn compelling.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

here are many commentators correctly pointing out that the song amounts to a symphony of racist dog whistles, but also: I just find it so incredibly boring as to be tedious beyond belief.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

I’ve been listening to country music all my life, and I gotta say that Mr. Aldean’s latest single sounds as though ChatGPT were asked to write an excessively generic bro country song sung by a white nationalist and this is what we got.

[Alan @peacefinder]

@choochoobear I was just looking for that a couple days ago, I was afraid it had been purposefully retired. So uhhh good I guess?

[Alan @peacefinder]

@Enstone Gotcha. Relatedly

[Alan @peacefinder]

@Enstone Wait, is the platform adding follows now too? I’ve gained dozens of obviously fake followers but I didn’t think the platform was forcing me to follow anyone

[Alan @peacefinder]

It’s pronounced “sheet” I assume? Or is the vowel a bit off?

[Alan @peacefinder]

@MooseMustache @BenjaminCrew1 Also though there is too much shoddy history in supposedly historical dramas. The genre has proven itself untrustworthy by routinely choosing drama over truth.

(Still, folks probably should wait until after to fact-check.)

[Joseph Fasano @Joseph_Fasano_]

I just can't get over this poem.

[Brent Toderian @BrentToderian]

In case it isn’t obvious, the point of drawing everyone’s attention to “The Playbook” is the hope that everyone will see it for what it is, and not contribute to it or fall for it.

[Classical Studies Memes @CSMFHT]

Who the fuck is CLSOPDTRD