Coder Myk Bilokonsky asked Twitter for things “that everyone in your field knows and nobody in your industry talks about because it would lead to general chaos.” The answers came from all over, and they range from life-altering to useless. Some are cold hard facts, some expert analyses, some are unfounded opinions. Here are the most interesting, shocking, and informative.
Myk’s own answer is in line with a lot of cybersecurity advice: your data is always less secure than you think.
Mine is: literally everything you have ever done on the internet was logged somewhere and can be associated with you if someone is persistent enough. Hell, private investigators can buy your browsing history from your ISP now.
Today’s best encryption *will* eventually be broken.
— Myk – 🇺🇦🌻🇵🇸🍉 – Here To Help (@mykola) November 24, 2019
Coder Maciej Cegłowski chimes in:
No one is capable of securing large data collections over time. All major and some minor intelligence services can break into any of the major cloud services, but usually human error gets there first. https://t.co/mrWoRfAkbU
— Pinboard (@Pinboard) November 27, 2019
Recycling programs are not going to solve our problems:
Waste management guy here. There is no recycling program, industrial or municipal, that can ever repair the damage done to the environment by consumerism. 99.999 percent of what you throw out stays thrown out. https://t.co/feN5lB2eAS
— ⚡️Lightning Slim⚡️ (@LightningSlim1) November 25, 2019
Libraries throw out books all the time, and it’s fine:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199507265641955330
Petitions are just mailing-list builders, says Matt Fitzgerald:
Many of the political petitions you sign never get delivered. They’re simply there to capture your email address. Campaigns burn through lists of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people just like you. https://t.co/aQrtE8PvIe
— Matt Fitzgerald (@fitz350) November 25, 2019
On top of the explicit difficulty settings, video games can have secret difficulty adjustments to keep you feeling accomplished, says game developer Eric Holmes:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199393585696854017
“Off the record” isn’t a legally defined term, says journalist (and former Gizmodo editor) Maddie Stone:
There’s no enforcement mechanism for “off the record.” It’s just a handshake agreement. Yet, it works. https://t.co/0HZ15ypZWv
— Maddie Stone (@themadstone) November 27, 2019
Opera casting is a racket, says stage director Amber Treadway:
Opera singers pay to audition. They pay just for the CHANCE to audition. Sometimes they pay the submission fee and still get a no. And companies take their fee and let them fly out and sing, with zero intention of casting them. https://t.co/qKNljNnQbg
— Amber Treadway (@treadway_amber) November 27, 2019
The stand-up comedy industry is propped up by corporate gigs, says comedian Kath Barbadoro:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199572883124760576
The illustration industry is propped up by custom furry porn, says illustrator slimm:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199604840147693568
A few of these “secrets” might make you go “Oh come on, everyone knows that!” But think about how much the world behaves as if no one knew that. For example:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199506052380680195
While plenty of believers treat the Bible as poetry and metaphor, it might surprise them to know that this was the original intention, says seminarian Alex M. Griffin:
The Bible uses literary devices to make theological points. Ita original authors didn’t actually mean for you to always take everything literally. https://t.co/nXijbfcQ2q
— Alex Griffin (@alexmarcgriffin) November 27, 2019
In other obvious yet infuriating news, your professors were probably never taught how to teach:
Professors receive little to no teacher training while in graduate school https://t.co/ZXuEiabSIJ
— anthony christian ocampo 🇵🇭🏳️🌈 (@anthonyocampo) November 27, 2019
https://twitter.com/a/status/1198724389942026246
The majority of higher education faculty have no preparation for the work of teaching. And most elite universities, even ones paying lip service to teaching and learning, have no intention of taking necessary steps to change this. https://t.co/mGyuL0pE8N
— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) November 27, 2019
You really don’t have to “rate and review” your favourite podcast:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199527576424726530
It’s pretty obvious that speeches are ghostwritten, but less obvious that all other important policy documents are too:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199513758550376450
Lawsuits and top-down pressure have successfully had a chilling effect on journalism, says Guardian columnist Moira Donegan:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199689013944365059
It’s nice to know that the one famous mitochondria fact, used as a meme to illustrate how little people remember from school, is not precisely correct:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199523755959234561
This fucked me up when I first learned it years ago. Like so many concepts I learned in school, the concept of a “species” is actually a construct built by scientists, not a physical absolute:
No one will ever successfully define what a species is https://t.co/okEmSGW1S3
— John McCormack (@LAevolving) November 27, 2019
You can’t really know anything about a planet until you shoot a spacecraft at it, says planetary scientist Emily Lakdawalla:
Historically, whenever we send a spacecraft to a world, we discover that most of the papers that scientists have written about that world before are at least partly and more often mostly and sometimes egregiously wrong https://t.co/MPYGp24lrI
— Emily Lakdawalla (@elakdawalla) November 27, 2019
Hank Green, author and popular YouTube personality, says that platforms like YouTube only work because they inflate the expectations of the people making the actual content:
YouTube/TikTok/Twitch/etc’s success are reliant on constantly teasing massive numbers of people with potential rewards that will come for only a tiny percentage of them, making it different from Hollywood only because, on YouTube, at least you get to own your own work.
For now. https://t.co/BmzGUTAZ9L
— Hank Green (@hankgreen) November 27, 2019
While Facebook knowingly lied about its audience size, digital media everywhere is running on shaky metrics, says podcaster and video maker Mike Rugnetta:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199582087130550272
Some sizes of clothing are subsidized by others, says lingerie writer Cora Harrington:
Different sizes take different amounts of time and money to make. https://t.co/sPve1K9FpL
— Cora Harrington (@lingerie_addict) November 27, 2019
If you’re swimming in or near the ocean, there are sharks all around you:
There’s a decent chance a shark is within 100 yards of you if it’s a comfortable swimming temperature and you’re in a body of water connected to the the ocean. That said, most of them will be quite small. https://t.co/nCYc2iluAM
— Chuck “Charles” Bangley, PhD (@SpinyDag) November 27, 2019
Researchers and scientists will happily send you their work for free:
Academia is no longer my field, but: most researchers will send you their scholarly articles for free if you email them – you don’t actually have to pay for that publication (funds which don’t go to the researcher at all anyway).
Saw on twitter years ago & it’s worth repeating https://t.co/zZsSgcSWAq
— Jordan.tsx (@JordanGMassing1) November 25, 2019
[referenced url=”” thumb=”” title=”” excerpt=””]
Most essential oils you can buy aren’t even real, says scent consultant Nick Gilbert:
https://twitter.com/a/status/1199061728425852928
Alcoholics Anonymous is running on reputation, not on results, says Marie Davis:
This IS my field and you are right. Harm reduction works!
— emily taylor (@uniquelyemily) November 27, 2019
As are rehab clinics, says Tracey Helton Mitchell:
The vast majority of rehabs do not work. This drives up the cost of private health insurance, as well as choking out other effective treatments that aren’t as “popular”.
— tracey helton mitchell MPA she/her (@traceyh415) November 26, 2019
Outpatient treatment for one. Many systems have abandoned OP treatment that cost less and can be more effective for 28 “spin dries”. Also many rehabs are based on the 12 steps and do not allow patients to be on medications for recovery.
— tracey helton mitchell MPA she/her (@traceyh415) November 26, 2019
A few of the joke answers were actually funny:
the latch on that gate over yonder hasn’t been catching right since spring and any of these cows could get out at any time but no one says anything because you know what? let ’em run, see how they like it on their own https://t.co/vM4tTVdRkZ
— whit (@whitneyarner) November 27, 2019
the earth is hollow like a Kinder Egg https://t.co/ZJckJ6b0R0
— JP (@jpbrammer) November 27, 2019
Most TV is only shoulders up to hide our lizard tails https://t.co/QFO33vjB7C
— Elizabeth Nolan Brown (@ENBrown) November 27, 2019
Everyone who designs websites has struck and killed someone with a car https://t.co/oLB8LxPFGB
— illy bocean (@IllyBocean) November 27, 2019
nobody know how computer work – nobody – magic rock that can do numbers – but nobody knows how https://t.co/3FwA1rCJ92
— dan nolan (@dannolan) November 27, 2019
For more industry secrets, read all the quote-tweets of Myk’s question here. Don’t make life decisions based on any of these statements without fact-checking.
Oh, but remember, professional fact-checking is actually a house built on sand:
Magazine fact-checkers often have to rely on books and daily newspapers, neither of which have fact-checkers. https://t.co/Y7FnxJThCc
— Christopher Bonanos (@heybonanos) November 27, 2019
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.