This certainly mirrors what I’ve seen on the ground. In the last 10 years, predatory publishers and publication mills went from known issues to the new normal. And yet despite how easy it is to publish, interest in reproducibility seems at an all-time low. It’s jarring, and I’m kind of making a career change out of research as a result, because what I do as a lowly assistant is essentially engineering results and marketing as opposed to anything having to do with discovery or science. I interpret it as capitalism’s going to capitalism.

This has resulted in a 47% growth between 2016 and 2022 in the global number of published papers (Hanson, et.al. 2023). Moreover, we should expect a further spurt of growth following the widespread advent of large language models in late 2022. During the 2016-2022 period there was little net increase in the number of PhD students globally or in the funding of science, both indicators of science activity. Increased paper productivity implies either that scientists became suddenly much more creative over the period, or had spent more time writing, and therefore reviewing papers: an increase in paper productivity but a decrease in scientific productivity.

Probably. I’ve noticed more servers added in new countries and new servers added in Canada in the last couple months

Right on! Maybe look into some of the fake eggs/omelettes that are available these days, so you can re-create something that you know you like. I had a vegan friend who really liked them. I don’t know that toast with peanut butter and banana is more calorie dense than an egg and bacon burrito. A smoothie might be nice in that hot Texas heat

Stop eating. You give me pats now.

Black tea: Yorkshire Gold (by Taylor’s of Harrowgate). Other: Celestial Seasonings Sleepy Time tea

Baby got back!

#allbirdsarebeautiful

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2021.622811/full

From all this research, it seems that the similarities between human and animal emotions might be closer than we would have expected a few decades ago. Animals react to their environments much as humans do. They respond emotionally to others and they evaluate situations in a similar way, becoming stressed and anxious in times of danger. While we may never know exactly how animals feel, studies have found that there are definite behavioural and physiological similarities in emotional expressions between humans and animals. We can thus infer, with quite some confidence, that animals can feel emotions. The more we discover about the behavioural and physiological components of emotions in animals, the more we understand about emotions, including our own ones, and how they affect the way we behave in our world.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s had difficulty getting through ISL (which is great)

You can be a trans ally regardless of how you identify gender-wise or how you feel about sharing your preferred pronouns to others.

There’s more than one way to be trans. But the mainstream centres a certain trans experience/narrative above all others that includes the gender binary and presuming everyone has enough privilege, safety, and support that they can broadcast their pronouns widely without risk of discrimination, job loss, etc. A lot of trans people do not enjoy that level of freedom of expression - temporarily while in transition or migrating to safer place, or permanently. It’s not uncommon to meet trans people who are critical of ‘pronoun culture’, which can refer to institutions doing the bare minimum to present a picture of inclusivity while failing to acknowledge current barriers.

I identify differently in different contexts, because disclosing my preferred pronouns is my right and I’m not going to do it to the detriment of my safety. Other people and institutions have to earn that trust first. So I generally don’t broadcast pronouns, and they aren’t that important to me. But when I see other people using them, I appreciate the roadmap for how they’d like me to interact with them.

I get a bit of a sense you might not yet have found an identity that really resonates with you. For me, feeling disconnected from my core sense of gender and feeling dissatisfied with life are highly associated.

I hope he’s enjoying his meal as he is soaked

There’s a cat in that image

Has Miez always liked belly scritches? Most sources say cats don’t like being pet on their belly, but Miez seems to love it

I’d never heard the scientific name before, and I thought it sounded a little Pythonesque lol. I know them more so by (house) sparrow, and we have them in Canada too. Looking at their Wiki page, it looks like they’re pretty much everywhere. I wonder if they’re the most widely-distributed amongst the global human population bird. I find them very cute, especially when they dust-bath

I’ve never seen one of these before. It’s working with a limited colour palette, but that’s a good-looking (aesthetically pleasing) bird!

Right on!

I got the sense they were only seeking already-prepared foods, eg the doordash mention. Maybe there are no grocery stores that sell a plant-based milk or a soy-based burger near them, but I wouldn’t assume that to be the 100% case even if there are no vegan restaurants

You look really cute

I love the ambient light you captured in this one. I knew it was sunset-ish by looking at it

It sounds like you don’t cook at home that much and that picking up more of those skills would solve all of your problems. It can be overwhelming if you’re in the newer stages! I sort of still am lol. But learn 1 dish you like at a time, maybe get a simple vegan cookbook for ideas, or crowdsource easy vegan at-home meals here. If you’re a newer vegan and are into faux meats more so than lentils, for example, then shop around a figure out which products you like. (That might also be an easy way of translating known non-vegan recipes/meal ideas to vegan ones)