Using Pokémon to Detect Scientific Misinformation

There are legitimate scientific journals, and then there are legitimate-sounding ripoff “predatory journals” that will print almost anything for a fee. Matan Shelomi submitted an article to one:

On March 18, 2020, the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research published my paper claiming that eating a bat-like Pokémon sparked the spread of COVID-19. This paper, “Cyllage City COVID-19 outbreak linked to Zubat consumption,” blames a fictional creature for an outbreak in a fictional city, cites fictional references (including one from author Bruce Wayne in Gotham Forensics Quarterly on using bats to fight crime)…

Some would argue that editors cannot recognize Pokémon names, but lines in the text such as “a journal publishing this paper does not practice peer review and must therefore be predatory” or “this invited article is in a predatory journal that likely does not practice peer review” would have tipped off anyone who bothered to read the articles. These papers did not slip in under the radar; they were welcomed in blindly.

https://www.the-scientist.com/critic-at-large/opinion-using-pokmon-to-detect-scientific-misinformation-68098

Yes, they are spying on you

At least 87 percent of the world’s most-popular Web domains engage in some form of digital tracking without you ever signing in, according to investigative journalism nonprofit the Markup. Many, it found, even covertly record the way you move your mouse or type. This is the hidden tech that lets companies learn who you are, what you like and even the secrets you look at online so they can tailor what you see, make ads follow you around — or even sell your information to others.

The good news: You can run a privacy check on any site yourself by using the free tool made for the audit, called Blacklight.

Click here: https://themarkup.org/blacklight, type in a web address (eg cnn.com), and shudder.

The semi-good news:

There are steps you can take to protect your privacy on the Web.

For most people, I recommend making one simple change: switch browsers to one that includes automatic protection. I like Mozilla’s Firefox, but Apple’s Safari and the new version of Microsoft Edge also provide some protection, as do the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo and Brave.

I mostly use DuckDuckGo myself (DuckDuckGo.com). Original article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/25/privacy-check-blacklight/.

This overlooked variable is the key to the pandemic

A growing number of studies estimate that a majority of infected people may not infect a single other person. A recent paper found that in Hong Kong, which had extensive testing and contact tracing, about 19 percent of cases were responsible for 80 percent of transmission, while 69 percent of cases did not infect another person. This finding is not rare: Multiple studies from the beginning have suggested that as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission, and that many people barely transmit it.

An important point about the spread of COVID-19: contact tracing needs to find out who you got it from, not who you might have given it to, because that person probably infected everyone around them. This also explains why outbreaks are so unpredictable and apparently random.

Full article (approx 4,800 words): https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/.

New holidays

I have observed these new national holidays. The especially bad things about these holidays are that (a) they are unscheduled and can happen on any day; and (b) they can happen multiple times in a year:

National Red Traffic Light Day

When every light you hit is red.

National Slow Driver Day

When every driver in front of you is lost, confused, or incompetent.

A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

I’ve copied the entire contents of https://www.bar.com/bar-jokes/grammar-walks-into-a-bar here just in case that site ever disappears:

A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

A question mark walks into a bar?

A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

A synonym strolls into a tavern.

At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

A dyslexic walks into a bra.

A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.

A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

Choosing the right people in your life

If someone offered a chance for you and a team of your choosing to go on a quest that had a prize of $10 million at the end, how carefully would you choose that team? You’d likely sit down and carefully analyze the most critical characteristics for your team to win the quest.

Well, the quest is called life, and the prize at the end is worth more than $10 million.

————————————————————————–

Choose people who choose you back

Choose authenticity

Choose people that help you grow

Choose people who are different than you

Choose character over charisma

Choose often

Details at https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-choose-the-right-people-to-be-in-your-life-997737ca4288.

Procrastination (part 2 of 2)

Another frequently-useful technique for dealing with procrastination is the “How do you eat an elephant?” method. The answer is simple: One bite at a time.

It’s pretty straightforward. If the reason you’re procrastinating is that the problem seems overwhelmingly large or complicated, cut the problem into smaller pieces. If those are still too big, no problem — slice each piece into smaller pieces. Keep doing that until it’s easier to do the pieces than to keep cutting them. (This is also known as the “salami technique.”)

I have twice had friends who needed to clear out or reorganize a room that was overstuffed with things, but the task seemed overwhelming.

“Can you work on it for 30 minutes?”

“I don’t know where to start.”

“Okay, ten minutes? Just one box, or just five pieces of paper?”

“Maybe.”

“One minute?”

“Well, yes, of course.”

Okay. Do that. At the end of the minute, you can do one more minute, or you can declare victory for today and save the next minute of cleanup for tomorrow. Make sure you stop before it gets to be a chore. And every minute that you make any progress is one bite of the elephant. Some links about procrastination:

https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/3-tricks-to-start-working-despite-not-feeling-like-it

https://time.com/3663897/4-steps-stop-procrastination/

https://time.com/4232649/awesome-life/

https://www.martynemko.com/articles/light-your-fire-matchbox-ways-get-motivated_id1596 (and several other articles at martynemko.com)

Procrastination (part 1 of 2)

As a practically professional procrastinator, I’ve learned some techniques for dealing with this.

One of the main reasons I procrastinate some things is because I’m not sure how to deal with them. For example, filling out an insurance form where I had a special case that wasn’t covered by the usual paperwork.

I finally decided that whoever gets the paperwork would be an expert and would know better than I did how to handle the situation. So I filled out the parts I could, included a note about my special situation, and sent it off. A few days later they called me, we discussed it, and I only needed to fax over a page of other documentation. Problem solved! (Except for finding a way to fax it… apparently faxes would be handled immediately but an emailed scan of the document would take at least a week. Didn’t make sense but whatever.)

I call this the “Other Person’s Problem” procrastination technique.The internet has a ton of stuff on procrastination; apparently it’s a common problem. Here’s one link to analysing and dealing with it: https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/how-to-stop-procrastinating-by-using-the-fogg-behavior-model. I also used this as my 2020 New Years resolution: “Procrastinate later! What’s the rush?”

Longevity FAQ: A beginner’s guide to longevity research

A clear and quick intro to major points of longevity research: caloric restriction, insulin/IGF, parabiosis, senescence, autophagy, hypothalamus, reproductive system, mitochondria, sirtuins:

Hi! I’m Laura Deming, and I run Longevity Fund. I spend a lot of time thinking about what could increase healthy human lifespan. This is my overview of the field for beginners.

https://www.ldeming.com/longevityfaq