I think people get shy because they are afraid they’ll end up on a list. Just like in an abusive relationship, they self censor out of fear for their well-being. I get it, but I’m probably on a list already, so oh well.

But what does it say?

https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

Blåhaj zone is best zone.

Do you think they actually care about the long term results? I see these grifters the same as CEOs: maximizing immediate returns so they can get rich and fuck off, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up.

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I dunno, does it mount vertically or horizontally?

It’s so substantial, even chewy. I love oat groats for this too.

Thank you! I was looking for this comment before posting about it. Almost every grain can be cooked in large amounts of boiling water, like pasta.

You’re not a mean cow at all! As someone that’s about to start therapy with a spouse with a similar issue, you just handed me the beginning of the proverbial thread I need to start pulling on. So serendipitous!

I keep trying to point this out to my mother, who keeps overreacting to one news story after another. She agrees in the moment that it’s all theater, then goes right back to being outraged by every obvious bait story.

I can tell you, I’m a real molecular/microbiologist!

Tl;Dr: It’s mostly bunk.

Most of these services don’t analyze your entire genome*, but instead just regions of genes, looking for something called SNPs: single nucleotide polymorphisms. DNA is composed of four nucleobases, commonly represented by their initials: T and A, C and G. A SNP is a spot on a gene where there’s some variability in these, e.g., a C or A or even a T instead of a common G.

Through whole genome sequencing and statistical analysis, these companies were able to identify frequency trends in SNPs according to where the person lives and their self-reported ancestry. Now they use a cheaper, less comprehensive (but still fairly accurate) process to look for the SNPs that data suggests are most strongly correlated with different regions/ancestries and dole out your supposed ancestry.

There are problems.

Conclusions are only as good as your data, and the data are often based strongly on self-reporting, which in science terms is often referred to as “super fucking inaccurate”.

SNPs aren’t static - every child has some, about 20 to 60, that their parents don’t have. Many detrimental SNPs can lead to death, so most that persist have no effect, though some are weakly detrimental or, even more rarely, beneficial. That means there’s a limited pool of viable options, so your kid might have spontaneously developed a few strongly associated with a region they’re not at all connected to. You have a few too, as does your coparent and all of your parents. Through a couple of generations of new SNPs, a person’s ancestry results can shift. Through random chance and no new SNPs, one might inherit a combination of SNPs commonly seen in other regions, simply through the right combination of ancestors not at all from that area.

Some SNPs are better than others. Those on what are called “highly conserved” genes, i.e., fuck this gene up at all and you die, tend to be less common and more stable. If a defined group has an unusual SNP or SNPs on these regions, it’s a far better indicator of relatedness than a SNP on a gene for something like vitamin C synthesis, which we have but the process is broken so it doesn’t matter if we break it more.

In summary, these services are built on data of varying quality (shitty data) and moving targets of variable utility (shitty targets).

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

*If you can swing it, genome sequencing and analysis can be really interesting and useful for healthcare decisions. You can learn a lot about how you, specifically, work, and we’re learning more all the time.

Just be sure to get sufficient sequencing coverage, at least 30x if you want “good enough”, 100x or more if it’s medically vital and/or you’re looking for rare genes. 1x is fairly worthless, paying for it is a waste of money.

I also find it maddening, not only because it’s silly, but because the analysis is largely crap anyhow.

My mother’s family touted their “Irish heritage for three generations”, then quickly shut up when their genome analysis “proved” they were instead largely English. I’ve had to point out Ireland and England’s relative positions and ask them if they thought anyone in our ancestry might have ever moved from island to island. Maybe consider that they were from somewhere else in Europe even earlier? Now they’re “Irish” again.

Point entirely missed, JFC. They were Irish, their ancestors were maybe English, and way back, their ancestors were definitely African, but I don’t see them getting into African cultural heritage. Thankfully.

You’re United Statesians. I get the draw: they’re looking for genuine but effort-free connection, identity, and belonging in a country whose dominant culture is homogenization, commoditization, and exploitation, but their search for culture through tenuous connections to long-dead ancestors instead of family, friends, and neighbors is just as hollow and unfulfilling.

Don’t obsess about great³-Grandpa Pádraig’s life harvesting peat from the bogs; he’s long dead and probably would have hated you. Embrace what and where you are and utilize and improve what you actually have.

Oh hell yes. I take Jornay, so I take it before bed. If I take it with food, it kicks in later and doesn’t seem as strong, so I take it on an empty stomach at 21:00 now.

I also notice differences between days, mostly based on if I’ve gotten enough sleep or not and if I’ve been eating well and staying hydrated. Doing both makes my ADHD symptoms noticeably better.

I suspect it’s the lack of stress due to being a sociopath. Not caring about others has to make life pretty easy in some respects.

Or that the editor misquoted the source entirely. I’ve even found articles that are littered with “citation needed” that have persisted as such for weeks or months.

I think sometimes people unfairly discount Wikipedia’s utility and overinflate its problems, while others are too cavalier about them. Wikipedia is a useful starting point for research as long as the researcher has the knowledge required to evaluate articles and perform further inquiry into their sources.

Linux is so much better now! My only gripe is inconsistent/buggy dock support, but resetting Cinnamon every 15-20 minutes is a small price to pay for freedom.

We’re going to need a Butlerian jihad at the rate this is going.

I really dig that they often "show their receipts"and I’ll always take someone with citations more seriously than those without. I think it’s prudent to be even more sceptical of those replies, though, as it’s far more likely they have an agenda. That agenda might be as benign as educating others (it’s often why I cite), but it’s still best to think critically about the context, text, and subtext of their narrative.

Hoooooly shit you weren’t kidding!