Badri @badri@scholar.social
- Programming toots
- @badrihippo@fosstodon.org
- Snipette
- https://www.snipettemag.com
Hi! I'm a #writer and #nonfiction #editor looking to explore and highlight the interesting aspects of our world. The magazine I co-founded, @snipette, aims to explain the world in an accessible way.
I also #read a lot, and am always on the lookout for interesting bits of #science, #culture, #history, or #philosophy which come out an some point or other in my articles, as well as people interested in writing about their work or ideas. Expect to see me haunting the local timeline!
Joined Apr 2022
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A bit more about the #Snipette. I started the #magazine with my friend Manasa in 2017 (we were both teenagers then) to explain the world in an accessible way.
Since we're heavy readers, we use techniques like #suspense and #metaphor to write better #nonfiction 😉
Simple doesn't mean shallow! At Snipette we often spend hours going through random #scientific #papers or digging up little-known #facts to make the article interesting 🔎
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Okay, I guess it's time to get on with the #introductions!
I'm Badri, based in #India (or should I say, #SouthIndia!). I #read a lot, both #books and articles, which I sync to my #ereader to avoid bright screens.
I edit a mostly science and culture magazine called #Snipette (more on that in a bit).
For my income, though, I'm working as a #programmer. I've been tooting at Fosstodon for a while as @badrihippo, but I decided to create an account here for the other side of me!
possible censorship
correction: the homepage and everything is working. But whenever I try to load a specific informational page I find off search results, like this one...
https://www.history.com/topics/renaissance/medici-family
...then it blocks me with that notice.
possible censorship
Is it just me or is everything on the History.com website blocked in India?
If it is the latter then it's very worrying 😳
Badri
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Hive-mind question for the #biology #evolution #evobio folks of Fedi: Say you were me, and you had a massive list of species names, many but maybe not all marked up with Catalogue of Life URLs (or other URLs to online DBs – output from gnfinder, if you know it).
What's the best way to to turn these into phylogenetic distances so that I could compute something like the phylogenetic variance of the dataset?
Badri
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Imagine #libraries don't exist, but there's this person who thought of them and is trying to convince everyone else about them.
-Borrow books for free? People are going to steal them!
-You can just come in to use a computer? Well that's just going to be abused by freeloaders.
-Staff? Who is going to pay them? Why should my taxes be wasted subsidising access to books for people who haven't saved and bought their own?
How many amazing things do we dismiss? What is our society missing out on?
Badri
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Why are you on Mastodon? What brought you here?
I’m here because I want to help build a friendly community and be part of it. What’s interesting in your world? I want to hear about it. Who are you? I want to know. What makes you smile? What did you learn today? What are you working on? I want to connect with people like you, people who have taken the time to find this rather special social network.
Why are you here?
When you start a new job or school or move to a new place, there's often a period of uncomfortablity before you learn to adjust—and if all goes well, you learn to fit in and be comfortable in your new environment.
How much is this about getting to know the place and the human capacity to adjust—and at what point is it different from Stockholm syndrome? Or are those just points along the same spectrum?
Perhaps we all have the ability, if we can't change our situation, to learn to live with it?
Badri
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I wrote a thing about relationship anarchy and disability, and what a relationship might look like when it's built around Disabled needs and wants:
https://write.as/cakefordogs/relationship-anarchy-and-disabledness
Badri
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Someone carved the alphabet into a tree and let it deform for five years and made a font out of it: https://bjoernkarmann.dk/occlusion-grotesque
Badri
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When I was a child, I learned that camels store fat in their humps. But I never asked myself what happens when they run out of fat.
Today I learned the answer: Their humps get floppy.
(Photo by Eric Chan, CC by: https://www.flickr.com/photos/maveric2003/9312715770 )
elon musk, silly joke
Being the kind of person Elon Musk is, he has many fans but he might also be very lonely. If so, this scenario may explain why he took over Twitter:
Someone advised him, "You need more company."
So he bought one.
Badri
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what is shadow banning?
Shadow banning is the practice of allowing people to post something, but quietly limiting who can *see* it. Its one of the basic rackets of corporate social media. Its deniable and the victim may not know they have been targeted. 1/n
Badri
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A point of etiquette:
As a courtesy to everyone on Scholar, we'd like to ask you to help keep from filling up the Local Timeline with very long threads
This means that if you are writing a thread, please do one of the following:
1. Make the first post Public and the following posts Unlisted (others will see the rest of the thread when they click the first post, but the following posts won't be on the Local Timeline), or
2. Add "Long thread" as a Content Warning (CW) for the thread
Thanks!
Badri
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Ah crap.. Almost all big bills are paid now except for the energy and internet yet.. Past month was just so brutal with costs 
We're still a massive €254 short for both bills😿 Would there maybe any way anyone could help us our a bit here?❤️
Badri
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Creators who work with characters and stories: Do you have an active inner voice (self-talk, internal criticism and such), and do your fictional characters often seem to have a will of their own (argue with you, won't follow your plan)?
Do you think all our spell-checks and autocorrect will halt the evolution of language because we'll all end up conforming to its style rather than trying out new phrases and letting language evolve on its own?
*looks at autocorrect's weird suggestions*
Hmm, maybe not 🤔
@socrates what's the emoji policy of this instance? If we had a seahorse I could use it to represent memory!
nonfiction review request, solarpunk
I just drafted an article which mentions #solarpunk, but since my knowledge of the subject is limited I'm looking for a second pair of eyes to make sure I'm not misrepresenting anything ⚖️
The entire article is about 1900 words, but the part describing solarpunk is only 311 ✍️
If you're willing to take a look please reply and I'll send you the link privately (trying to keep first impressions fresh). If not, #BoostsAppreciated 
Thank you! 🙂
#TIL that Mastodon can search words even if they aren't hashtags! But the results seem to be limited to posts that I'm involved in (either as a poster or through a mention)? 🤔
Badri
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Good morning folk and friends from far and near!
Today I wish you an energy boost ✨
- Programming toots
- @badrihippo@fosstodon.org
- Snipette
- https://www.snipettemag.com
Hi! I'm a #writer and #nonfiction #editor looking to explore and highlight the interesting aspects of our world. The magazine I co-founded, @snipette, aims to explain the world in an accessible way.
I also #read a lot, and am always on the lookout for interesting bits of #science, #culture, #history, or #philosophy which come out an some point or other in my articles, as well as people interested in writing about their work or ideas. Expect to see me haunting the local timeline!
Joined Apr 2022
