Mary Chernyshenko

Karma: 441

Mary Chernyshenko 28 Feb 2021 18:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: philip_b’s comment on: Suspected reason that kids usually hate vegetables
I’m from Ukraine, and it’s similar here (also, parsnip, radish, beetroot and pumpkin are among the most common things). A curious variation common in the villages but not in the cities is that if you grow it, you don’t buy it. This often means that people in the city get theirs starting earlier in the season.

Mary Chernyshenko 27 Feb 2021 20:29 UTC
8 points
on: Different kinds of language proficiency
I speak Russian, Ukrainian and English and am slowly learning German. I also have studied and forgot Tatar, Hindi and French (there was some rather twisted education planning involved.)

I feel like the languages occupy their own niches, even the forgotten ones. German feels like really elaborate English with the promise of expressing thoughts more nimbly and precisely. Tatar helped Hindi through some words of the same “Turkish” origin (I mean words like “kitap(b) - a book”), and Hindi was fascinating in its unlikeness to most anything. I still have this “standard of otherness” in my mind. French… is like knitting phonemes, it was taught to us a process more than a language. English is for building from sometimes not-intuitive blocks, and yes, there is that chasm. Russian is my tool for “fencing”, “being witty”, easy to use like a well-balanced knife. And Ukrainian is what I do :)

We were told, when we began studying English, that the more languages you know the more times you’re human. Still, nobody said we’re gonna like the end result, for some reason.

Mary Chernyshenko 8 Feb 2021 7:03 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Angela Pretorius’s comment on: Catching the Spark
(And then fungi evolved to cope with endothermy.)

Mary Chernyshenko 28 Jan 2021 10:07 UTC
2 points
on: Open & Welcome Thread—January 2021
Does the feeling of having one’s nails too long have a name and a place in the classification of sensations? I mean, some people find it uncomfortable to just have theirs “longer than the nail bed” (me too). It’s not like our nails even start to get in the way of doing things, we just have a sensation (kind of an itch), I’d say like “holding” something with the edge of the nail and the nailbed. Is this from touch receptors detecting a different creasing of skin? It goes away when I pay deliberate attention to it.

Mary Chernyshenko 26 Jan 2021 21:05 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Dirichlet-to-Neumann’s comment on: Leaky Delegation: You are not a Commodity
I just think that people go to restaurants specifically to eat something “strange”, to put themselves into a situation where one kind of has to order what’s offered. It’s not like one can’t buy ready-made food in a shop, so restaurants aren’t “the” alternative to homemade cooking. (I mean sauces, preserves, cakes all can be found in many places.) Restaurants are just an “uncommon” alternative, a plunge to be taken.

Mary Chernyshenko 25 Jan 2021 14:31 UTC
1 point
on: Exercise: Taboo “Should”
I kind of get behind the “self-grown produce is less fattening”—you put in work, it takes out fat. Work, in many people’s minds, is “good”. Also, try chewing through a free-range hen, not a chicken. Builds muscles, hen.

Mary Chernyshenko 24 Jan 2021 8:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Matt Goldenberg’s comment on: Everything Okay
(It seems to me that the OP was about people interacting, not just personal preferences.)

Mary Chernyshenko 11 Jan 2021 8:10 UTC
1 point
on: You Have About Five Words
Seems like today the size of the phone screen defines how much of the text one is willing to read (an unselected someone). It’s still unclear what people do with it later and how much they retain. But reading in itself seems not so tightly limited; five-words-at-most is what I expect from billboards. But I also expect them to be more like roadsigns/reminders, not original messages (and really I would be surprised if someone treated the words as something beyond advertisement.)

Also, repeated exposure is a thing, which is often the case when one coordinates many people. And the ability of factions to work together although their “core texts” are very different.

Mary Chernyshenko 10 Jan 2021 19:09 UTC
3 points
on: Hammertime Day 9: Time Calibration
My worst case of planning fallacy was when I thought I’d just come back to work after the maternity leave. I did get a job, then another, and then another, but I’ve never actually come back.

Mary Chernyshenko 10 Jan 2021 9:57 UTC
3 points
on: Thoughts on Mustachianism
You know, about that garbageman thing… you most probably won’t be happy, but if you are the garbage truck driver, you’re going to bring happiness and be The Hero for some very sincere people below age four.

Mary Chernyshenko 9 Jan 2021 18:58 UTC
3 points
on: How do you assess the quality / reliability of a scientific study?
A thing I pay attention to is how seamlessly the introduction leads to the question the authors picked. If there is a jarring break I try to imagine what kind of intro the paper needs, and then it’s usually clear if I do understand enough to think about it. For example, if the actual intro is written from the ecological angle but the imagined one is zoological, and I really need to understand it, I should just ask a zoologist.

Mary Chernyshenko 9 Jan 2021 18:01 UTC
5 points
on: Science in a High-Dimensional World
There’s a parallel need to review the actual purpose for which you are doing all of that. It can be mutable.

For example, suppose you culture some unicellular algae, and you notice the cells can be more or less rounded in the same dish. You shrug and discard the dishes with too elongated cells to keep the line pure and strong. You learn what parameters to keep constant to make it easier.

And then someone shows that in point of fact, cell shape for this group of species can vary somewhat even in culture so we have been wrong about the diversity in the wild this whole time. And you read it and hope in your heart that some very motivated people might one day deviate from the beaten path and finally find out what’s going on there, despite this looking entirely unfundable.

Mary Chernyshenko 8 Jan 2021 19:19 UTC
1 point
on: Helpless Individuals
It’s quite possible to raise money for microgrants (c. one-paycheck amount) for young scientists. From individuals. And then keep it up year in and year out. And add more subcategories (e.g., a friend of mine started with a single grant for both botanists and zoologists, then a year later there were two, and now other people started running their own and we have four.)

You can’t fund big science this way, but people do pay money. You probably can’t raise money for any kind of science, but it’s not a general rule at the very least.

Mary Chernyshenko 8 Jan 2021 16:03 UTC
1 point
on: Condition-directedness
I have a friend who’s kept working on environmental issues for two decades now (creating and protecting nature reserves, organizing databases of rare species finds etc.) Looking at him, it’s hard to say if he is condition- or ambition-directed. He created a niche where other people come to take root and can now sketch out their own five-year plans. It’s definitely different than being a teacher.

Mary Chernyshenko 7 Jan 2021 14:29 UTC
1 point
on: Evening drawing
We have geese and we take pictures of them, but I’d love to be able to draw them. There’s so much poured volume and chiseled grace in an almost-monochrome shape. They grow—you can see the beaks getting longer in “adolescence”, and they molt! Their heads sit at different angles on their necks, their stride can be purposeful or leisurely. And when there’s snow on the ground and they are suddenly not the whitest thing around, their curves acquire a subtle metallic shine (at the base of the neck, at the invagination of an eye etc.).

I don’t have the time, though, but geese are great.

Mary Chernyshenko 7 Jan 2021 7:13 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Zvi’s comment on: Fourth Wave Covid Toy Modeling
Thank you, it will be interesting.

Mary Chernyshenko 6 Jan 2021 22:10 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Mary Chernyshenko’s comment on: Covid 12/31: Meet the New Year
ChristianKI just wrote about the need to not overdo the more physically demanding tasks after isolation.

Mary Chernyshenko 6 Jan 2021 22:02 UTC
3 points
on: Mary Chernyshenko’s Shortform
Pre-covid, quite a few customers seemed to want to be validated by personal communication with shop workers. (I mean e.g. customers who would tell the consultants about their wonderfully clever children instead of asking for the thing they want to buy. Or even describing the thing.) I kind of wonder how they manage now. On one hand, the shops are fighting for clientele, and on the other, they are online.

Mary Chernyshenko 6 Jan 2021 21:49 UTC
2 points
on: Fourth Wave Covid Toy Modeling
(yes I live in a cave where I don’t think the new strain is being identified) Why does the old strain disappear? And shouldn’t we expect yet another strain after very many people get infected? (Of course, it could go whichever way with it spreading faster or not.)

Mary Chernyshenko 1 Jan 2021 15:31 UTC
1 point
on: Covid 12/31: Meet the New Year
(just throwing it out there) Since this is our second year with covid, maybe we can make a more informed effort to prevent other maladies to lessen the overall strain? I mean, on the individual level.

We used to have a baseline for how sick we become and when to more or less expect it (chronic or seasonal things) and/or how often Shit Happens (accidents). We might want to adjust it.

It used to be ok, to look for something for the pollen allergy in the spring or in the fall, but if one already knows one will need it later, why not buy it now? If there’s a vegetable garden one is too old to tend alone, then plan around the need to invite more people to do it*.

Father Frost brought me a new toster :) I thought “oral contraceptives in bulk” were kinda not his thing. Now I think I was wrong.

*where I live this would be a sacrilege. Lots of people come greet their neighbors when the time to plant potatoes strikes again.