Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

@oldclumsy_nowmad Hah!

@drdrowland Yeah. Possibly a bot or paid troll rather than just a garden-variety jackass. Quora these days makes it really hard to report users, but (I think) you can still report specific posts easily enough. Of course, who wants to go down the list of hundreds of bullshit posts reporting each one?

I do so love it when someone tells me to "read a basic #textbook" in a field where I've not only read basic textbooks, but some advanced ones as well—and as it happens, that I'm getting paid to work on *right now*. #Immunology, in this case, but it's a widespread phenomenon.

Well no, I don't love it, but it does at least provide some brief amusement. Link, for the curious: https://thinktankredux.quora.com/Im-still-going-to-try-to-keep-from-posting-about-politics-in-general-but-Ill-make-an-exception-for-matters-of-medicin?comment_id=156316551&comment_type=3

"Okay, we're clearly at the beginning of a #movie. Now, is this a wacky #comedy with incompetent #gangsters who take ever-more-ridiculous pratfalls in a futile attempt to recover their loot, or a gritty #thriller where the viewpoint characters are in way over their heads? Help me figure it out ... fast."

"I am humorously pretending not to understand context so I can deliberately misinterpret your statement! Look at me! I am very clever!"

Whoever first said puns are the lowest form of humor might have had a different opinion if they'd lived to see the internet.

I'm still going to try to keep from posting about politics in general, but I'll make an exception for matters of #medicine and #public #health. Not only is it of course a subject near and dear to my heart, in the big picture it may well be the most vital issue of our time, and of any time.

#Infectious #disease taken as a whole has killed more people throughout history than any other cause of death, and it's not even a particularly close race. Most people living today have never experienced a world without #vaccines and #antibiotics. We have forgotten the terror carried by even the whisper of plague. #AIDS and #covid, terrible as they were and remain, are the merest echoes of the horseman's hoofbeats. This is a *good thing*.

We're about to learn again. Monarez and many other dedicated people at the #CDC did their best to keep that memory buried in the past, and it wasn't enough. Dedicated traitors to humanity have dug it up and brought it back to life, to shamble through our streets rotting and stinking and hungry for living flesh.

But maybe she'll at least get to go on record telling the alleged people who enabled this horror exactly what they've done. Every disaster movie begins with ... you know the rest. Future historians will remember that not everyone was complicit, if there's any such thing as history at all.

Okay, I lied: now would be a great time to listen to some Small Faces.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Because I talk a lot about #writing on Facebook, I get a bunch of book ads on my feed. At least I assume that's why I'm getting them. I know when I've been talking about other topics, I tend to get ads for things related to those topics. Not with dinosaurs, oddly, even though I know there's a bunch of paleomerch out there. Everything else, yeah.

Most just come across as mediocre, and a few as quite good. I've bought at least one book due to a Facebook ad, and been pleased with the results.

About a third sound absolutely awful. Mind-bogglingly bad. The characters and situations are irredeemable cliches. The plots are absurd. The writing style, the way words are put together, is cringe-inducing. The dialog sounds like nothing no actual person would ever say.

Yeah, I know: "never judge a book by its cover" is a maxim for a reason. But when the ads are most likely written by the authors themselves, and they include excerpts that read like fingernails down a chalkboard ... well, there are only so many hours in a day, you know? I have shelves full of books I've read many times and will happily read again. Also a fair number I've either never read, or read so long ago I've forgotten all the details, but remember enjoying. It takes a lot to make me add to the book mountain, these days.

Even by those standards ... Larry Correia? Really?

I don't think I'm a great writer. I do think I'm pretty good, and getting better as I knock the rust off my skills. Enough people seem to agree that I plan to keep doing it this time. (Like I did all the other times, but let's not talk about that.) Compared to these clowns, I'm Nebula and Hugo and Pulitzer and Nobel material all in one.

Guess I need to start posting about the Civil War again so I can get more ads for the Stonewall Jackson Commemorative Zippo. Which it would take an act of God to get me to buy, but I'm still more likely to pay for that than "American Paladin." Please.

This is why I still can't be that worried about Skynet.

And let's face it, "velociraptor" is just a really cool, evocative name.

This subject comes up fairly often, so I'm putting my mini-essay here as an easy reference. Feel free to share, or copy and paste with attribution, as you see fit. Comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcome. 🦖 🧪 🚀 ✍️

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Michael Crichton's main reference when writing #JurassicPark was Gregory Paul's Predatory #Dinosaurs of the World. That's how we ended up with human size "velociraptors," later retconned to the considerably larger #Utahraptor. Although the poor creatures still have broken wrists and a severe case of mange.

Paul is a notorious #lumper, who likes shoving distantly related organisms into the same #taxonomic category. (The opposite of lumpers are #splitters, who try to put every specimen into as distinct a category as possible.) But even he never claimed they were the same species. Rather, he put them into the same genus, making #Deinonychus into another species of #Velociraptor, i.e. V. antirrhopus instead of D. antirrhopus.

This isn't entirely a crazy idea. Lots of modern genera have species with similar body plans but enormous size differences. Consider #Panthera, the big cats, which contains species from P. uncia, the #snowleopard, to P. tigris, the #tiger—even though tigers are generally about five times the mass of snow leopards, similar to the ratio between D. antirrhopus and V. mongoliensis.

However, there are enough other differences between Deinonychus and Velociraptor that even Paul has long since admitted this was a mistake. No #paleontologist now doubts they each belong in their own genus. Unfortunately, since Jurassic Park has so thoroughly cemented the idea of the big V, I doubt it will ever go away.

This is how "intellectual" #creationists and #antivaxers sound to #biologists, BTW.

@lemgandi Especially when I'm drying my clothes!

Not posted for agreement, if you share from my post please leave my commentary intact, terms and conditions apply, see your local grumpy scientist for details ...

This type of "#humor" is shit.

"#Cardcatalogs were our #Google! #Polaroids were our #Instagram! #Payphones were our #iPhones!"

NO THE FUCK THEY WEREN'T. They were very useful in their time, but the modern versions are *better*. Which is why it's difficult to find a card catalog or a Polaroid camera these days, and a payphone is practically impossible.

Grow the hell up.

Or as we say in #Colorado, "Tuesday."

After making a #vampire joke elsenet, I suddenly thought of a portmanteau I can't get out of my head: "#hempire." This is, of course, the word used to describe a giant chain of #dispensaries owned by a bloodsucking creature of the night.

You can still get useful health information from some US government websites, if you know what you're looking for. Here's an example, which I'll explain.

https://www.cdc.gov/covid/hcp/clinical-care/underlying-conditions.html

As you may have heard, #HHS Secretary #Brainworm and his jolly crew of mass murderers have placed restrictions on the updated round of #covid #vaccines. Specifically, they've restricted recommended #vaccination to those over 65 or at high risk.

"High risk" isn't actually defined, because fortunately, most of these bedbugs in human form are as stupid as they are evil—and they're pretty fucking evil. The linked #CDC page, however, lists a variety of #medical conditions which may be enough to convince health care providers that you qualify.

If you have *any* of the listed conditions, any decent #physician, physician assistant, #nurse practitioner, or other #provider with prescribing authority should be willing to write you a #prescription. This will make your life dramatically easier, not to mention longer.

Oh, and if not, that means your doctor wants to kill you. Run.

No doubt the #Einsatzgruppe will eventually get around to banning #mRNA vaccines entirely, followed by all covid vaccines, followed by all vaccines. Secretary Brainworm *definitely* wants to kill you. For now, though ...

Good night, and good luck.