Sally McKee
Dr. Kacy TillmanI sat by an election denier on the airplane and he started poking me in the arm to be emphatic about his views on people stealing ballots secretly and the airplane was full and I couldn’t move anywhere so I started explaining the yellow fever in very great detail, all the way down to telling him about the bloody vomit that looks like coffee grounds and it worked. He stopped talking to me. The moral of this story is you can’t out-weird an academic; our toolset is too vast. #vastearlyamerica
Helen@kacytillman brava!
ExpatriéThanks for the wonderful post. The problem with your approach, for me at least, is that it takes endless patience, and it’s somewhat analogous to speaking with a plant. I applaud your perseverance, which is beyond my capacity. I merely put on my noise canceling headphones and tune then out.
Aphrodite (recharging)I’m going to disagree with you.
It requires just a little more patience than the target.
The tactic is a bet that you know the tactically gross subject more deeply than the target knows their subject, which in this case is winning with house money since Dr Tillman actually has a knowledge base and the rube pushing the bullshit only knows either duckspeak responses if they’re a follower and only bullshit if they’re a leader.
BrainPilgrim
Hrothgir O'Domnaill@Aphrodite
This is why i used to travel with earphones. Whether I was listening to music or not, I'd quitely bop, and hum tunelessly.from time to time.Required no patience since I put them on as soon as the safety demonstration ended.
This is why i used to travel with earphones. Whether I was listening to music or not, I'd quitely bop, and hum tunelessly.from time to time.Required no patience since I put them on as soon as the safety demonstration ended.
@Hrothgir @Aphrodite That’s what I do as well.
John Carlson@Aphrodite @americanabroad @kacytillman This is a double win: getting out of an unpleasant conversation and into a conversation that is actually interesting. Any conversation about arthropod-borne pathogens is going to have interesting biology, ecology, history and there are such important lessons for public health applicable to non-arthropod vectored diseases. Well done!! 🦟
I understand the basis of your disagreement. I was speaking only on the basis of limited personal experience as a (former) academic and as someone who gets simply exhausted speaking to those who reject anything resembling empirical evidence. I applaud those who still believe it’s possible to have such dialogues. I’ve simply given up.
I’m just a hacker, though I attempt to maintain and expand a wide, not quite deep enough pool of knowledge. Personally I prefer a different approach, though, IRL.
If I approach with the attitude that I want to communicate, I have a puzzle in front of me to play with.
The puzzle is how to get through the thought stopping tripwires he’s allowed to surround his mind.
Success means they realize for at least a moment they don’t recognize who they are at the moment.
helplessduck
Ruth Horowitz@kacytillman love this story. Not an historian or even an academic, but curious about #vastearlyamerica . What does the "vast" mean in this context? Does it refer to the scope of a field of study or is it just an internet thing?
Luc Daigle@RuthHorowitz @kacytillman I'm curious about this as well...
@lucdaigle @kacytillman This seems to be the answer. https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-history-of-the-vast-early-america-matters-today
Echo Rivera, PhD@kacytillman absolutely brilliant 👏👏👏👏
Gdublya@kacytillman I’ll make sure to try this out at my Thanksgiving dinner. In public settings I would just pretend that I don’t speak English, but that will not work on Thursday.
Pat Piaskowski@kacytillman I love it! Will try it some time
MichaelH@kacytillman keep up the good work
Margaret Thomas@kacytillman Bravo! What an ingenious approach!
Lucilla Piccari@kacytillman I have to remember this method... 🤔😂
Eddie Knight@kacytillman This is another case of mastodon being a place full of uniquely practical content that is applicable to daily life.
Preston Green@kacytillman That is a superpower.
Shield Maiden@kacytillman Once, when I was a general nurse, I was arrested for being in the company of someone smoking drugs...at the Police Station I noticed one of the Officers had blue-tinged nails and club fingers and was a bit breathless. I advised him to go and see his GP immediately to have heart investigations....I was let out early, friend was fined!
MizzBassie@Judeet88 Good pickup! I hope it wasn't something horrible like cancer.
sitnuok@kacytillman That's awesome! I can take something borderline "edgy" over the cliff and make it uncomfortable in a heartbeat.
Sue Wilson@situok @kacytillman
Police attending my home after my husband's sudden death, opened a letter addressed to me. When I discovered this, I asked the young officer why they thought my pap smear appointment was of interest to anyone except me and my GP. He asked what a pap smear was ... so I explained. He was squirming by the end of the first sentence.
Police attending my home after my husband's sudden death, opened a letter addressed to me. When I discovered this, I asked the young officer why they thought my pap smear appointment was of interest to anyone except me and my GP. He asked what a pap smear was ... so I explained. He was squirming by the end of the first sentence.
@TweetSue @kacytillman Holy 💩 Sorry for your loss.
You win!
I can only assume he may have considered you as a suspect for something... briefly.
Sadly LEO's tend to focus their attention to the people known closest to the deceased.
Prolly thought Pap Smear was code for: "rub out my husband" or something equally nefarious.
@situok @kacytillman
Thank you.
I understand why my home was a ‘crime scene’, but the excuse was that they thought the letter might have something to do with my husband’s medical records – which, had they asked me, I could have produced in three minutes flat.
Love your "rub out my husband" comment 🙂
Thank you.
I understand why my home was a ‘crime scene’, but the excuse was that they thought the letter might have something to do with my husband’s medical records – which, had they asked me, I could have produced in three minutes flat.
Love your "rub out my husband" comment 🙂
@TweetSue @kacytillman It was a risk... I took a chance at a joke. I was hoping that since you brought it up it would be ok.
@TweetSue @kacytillman Then a splendid pair we will be...
Shush🗽WearADamnMask😷💉💉💉WHOA!
That sounds like a huge trampling of privacy law/s!
It is illegal to open others' mail where you are, isn't it?
@Shushorchid
Yes, it is. I made my feelings clear to the senior officer ... and it was a learning experience for the young officer.
Yes, it is. I made my feelings clear to the senior officer ... and it was a learning experience for the young officer.
Then it was grounds to file charges, yes?
I hope that you did.
It doesn't matter that the junior officer was inexperienced, or whatever...b/c that was a civil violation of rights, which could have negatively impacted you, if it were another type of sensitive info, etc...
Newbies getting taps on knuckles, hardly does anything to rein in bad behaviour...
@Shushorchid
I had worked for the police previously, so 'know the ropes': plus I had other things on my mind, and my husband's funeral to arrange.
I had worked for the police previously, so 'know the ropes': plus I had other things on my mind, and my husband's funeral to arrange.
@Shushorchid
Thank you. All good.
Thank you. All good.
Gigawatt121@kacytillman I love this story so much. And that is brilliant. I guess I'd have to opt for explaining the molecular mechanism of smell in such detail as to bore him to death
Don’t forget to mention the olfactory markers emitted by those with certain conditions.. and act quizzical after mentioning them.
“5-α-trifluorophosphene is a reliable indicator of..”
(sniff)
“Hmm. Thought I smelled it..”
(sniff)
“wait - there’s that weird tingle… Um, nevermind.”
(sniff)
“oh f… Completely unrelated, do you have your affairs in order?”
@kacytillman @Aphrodite Even that might be too interesting. I’m talking molecular minutiae that melts the brain with its blandness.
“So the olfactory receptor identified in the main olfactory system is a 7-transmembrane G-protein coupled receptor. Each one has a broad tuning curve for the ligands that they can bind which results in overlapping sensitivities to various molecules.Now, the G-protein associated with …… sir? Sir? Are you falling asleep? There’s more….”
if said person is going to have performative anxiety over imagined threats, said person should at least be kind enough to keep those performative anxieties to themselves in public
nothing focuses the mind inwards as swiftly as the implication of imminent mortality (don’t ask why i know this first hand several times over)
@Aphrodite @Gigawatt121 @kacytillman
Aphrodite, see, you'd have me asking questions, like I'd ask Gig, too!🤣🤣🤣
Now this makes me wonder about if cultists would be curious about unrelated cultists talking points, as these...🤔😅
Gig, though I may not understand most, if not all of it, you'd have me transfixed, and asking questions for clarification...🤣🤣🤣
Now I'm sad that if we ever run into each other, I won't receive this treatment, simply because I'm not a conspiracy theorist... Not fair, I say!😜
@Shushorchid @kacytillman Haha if you have questions ask away. I have all this knowledge rattling in my brain and I don’t even use it anymore since I’m out of research now. I also know about the molecular basis of taste which is super wild and the single greatest paper I ever read in the field where they literally figured it all out. Such a paper is super rare. But that dude destroyed it.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
See, to me, this is truly a topic for an actual conversation, so that it is processed in real time, w/o distractions. I wouldn't even know where to start a convo, with no background in the subject, but someone imparting knowledge on it, gives a starting point...😉
I think I'd be thrilled to witness this being done to a cultist, just to see their possibly confused reaction...🤭
westhillknits@kacytillman Love this tactic!
Stefan Edward Jones@kacytillman If this were Twitter I'd post that gif of a guy in a theater slowly clapping.
Jennie Blake@kacytillman I deeeeeply enjoying going into ridiculous amounts of detail on the pedagogical and inclusive practice implications of setting timings for learning activities, when I want to drive someone annoying away to a different conversational partner.
Thette (they/them)@jnyrose @kacytillman No, no, come back, tell me all about it! /gen
@jnyrose @kacytillman But also I do this to people I don't want to drive to different conversational partners. 😭
@vic @kacytillman It's useful for all occasions! 😆 (It has taken me sooooo long to learn that not everyone wants to learn everything you might know about a topic, but confusingly some of them do!)
Fish Head@kacytillman
I think I’ll be able to escape by repeating “Bayes-Price-LaPlace posterior probability density distribution.”
jargon, weaponized.
jagged jargon.
Clive ThompsonThis is basically why I've been a science journalist since the 90s
There is no one weirder to talk to than academics
not even close
dcissell 🇺🇦@kacytillman I have to follow you too for this outstanding post.
Dmitri ☕️
Yusuf Toropov@kacytillman important safety tip, thanks for sharing. You are my hero
Dave Woodrum@kacytillman I absolutely love this!!! ROFL! I hope you were persistent with your conversation when he tried to back away from the discussion.
LakeRNistired@kacytillman I am not worthy of this post! Brilliant! 😂