AnarchistArtificer

In a genetic sense, it is a dysfunction of the gene that causes this. It's neat because we can actually trace the history of human migrations by looking at the distribution of this particular allele (version of a gene). We have analysed DNA from ancient remains of early Europeans and found that the A allele is absent. It appears like this version of the gene first emerged in an ancient East Asian population.

This gene also determines whether you have dry or sticky ear wax. It's a neat gene because it's uncommon for physical human traits to be controlled by one gene — most human characteristics are controlled by multiple genes (polygenic traits); ginger hair is another example of a monogenic trait. ABCC11 is neat because it affects multiple traits: sweat smell and earwax dryness.

It might also be implicated in breast cancer risk (I can't tell whether that's in an increased risk or decreased risk), but we don't really understand yet how that would work. From skimming the research, I would say we generally don't understand how this gene works at all. We do know some stuff about it and how/why it works, but we're still a decent way off of actually understanding its implications.

Thanks for sharing that post, it was super interesting.

I wish I could see behind the scenes in the Windows UI discussions, to see how we get to what we have today

Man, I hate people like you, because I am constantly reminded of how I really need to get round to checking out Searx, but I never get round to it.

(I am joking, because the only person who is putting pressure on me about this is me, and that's because finding time to do this is something I want to do. Thank you for reminding me, even if I will keep procrastinating)

Sorry to reply to this so late, I procrastinated because unfortunately my answer is that I don't know of any communities, perhaps because I'm a scientist who loves maths rather than a mathematician.

However, I will use this opportunity to share some fun stuff from people I like.

https://youtu.be/H0Ek86IH-3Y by Oliver Lugg on Youtube is great. His channel is very eclectic though, and there isn't much pure maths. I love his shitposting tone though, and he has a discord community that were pretty mathsy when I was in it.

A blog-type site that I enjoy is Tai-Danae Bradley's https://www.math3ma.com/about, largely because I've discovered many other cool researchers through her site.

I also really enjoy Eugenia Cheng's books, especially as someone who is interested in understanding how to write good scientific communication that is accessible without "dumbing things down". I recently finished "The Joy of Abstraction".

Apologies that this isn't what you actually were looking for. I share your distaste at Reddit: I have used Reddit occasionally for those niche communities that aren't available elsewhere (yet!), but the atmosphere is increasingly toxic. I fear that smaller communities that flee are congealing in harder to discover places, like Discord.

It reminds me of the recent Crowdstrike fiasco: apparently kernel level access was needed for their anti-malware to be able to properly work (because that way their net can cover the entire OS basically), but that high level of access meant that when CrowdStrike fucked up with an update, people's computers were useless. (Disclaimer, I am not a cybersecurity person and am not offering judgement either way on whether Crowdstrike's claim about kernel level access was bullshit or not)

In a similar way, in order for identity theft monitoring services to work, they surely will need to hold a heckton of data about you. This is fine if they can be trusted to hold that data securely, but otherwise... ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

I share your unease, though I don't feel able to comment on the correctness of your mindset. Though I will say that on an individual level, keeping an eye on your credit reports in general (from the major credit agencies) will go a long way to helping there (rather than paying for serviced that give you a score and other fancy "features", you can request either free or v. low cost report which just has the important stuff you need to know.)

I also know that if you want to be extra cautious, you can manually freeze your credit so basically no new lines of credit can be opened in your name. This is most useful for people who have already been a victim of fraud, or they expect to be at risk (such as by shitty family, or a data breach). I don't know how one sets this up, but I know that if you did want to set up a new line of credit, you can call to unfreeze your credit, and then freeze it again when your application for the new credit is all done. I have a friend who has had this as their default for years now because of shitty family.

I agree that there's a strong incentive for even entirely self-interested people to cooperate. I was listing altruism as one of many pro-social behaviours, not as a subset or requirement for cooperation

I'd argue that capitalism is unnatural because even if we work from the assumption that resource hoarding is natural, it's also necessary to take into account the fact that evolutionarily, humans got to where we are via traits like altruism, cooperation and forming communities. Capitalism is far from natural — it's an insidious subversion of human nature

I had to do it for the first time last year and I was slightly giddy from the novelty of it.

I don't think I comment way too much, but probably sometimes it's too much. Those times it's because online existence is a form of escapism, and sometimes that's useful escapism that helps me to survive, and sometimes it's maladaptive escapism. Often it's both.

For me it's a texture problem. I didn't notice until I was prescribed some high fluoride stuff that's a mildly minty blue gel which is infinitely preferable to most toothpastes I've tried (for those curious, it's a Colgate 5000ppm fluoride toothpaste, prescribed by my dentist because of temperature sensitivity)

At my current university, I am firstname.lastname-4@university. My previous university, a much smaller one, I was fortunately firstname.lastname@otheruniversity, but the email client informed me there were two other people with my name there. It's wild because I didn't think I had a super common name.