Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
found this linked in ed zitron comment section for some reason: https://www.funraniumlabs.com/2024/04/phil-vs-llms/
jokeās on you, MSDSs are already dogshit. these things only exist to cover ass of manufacturers and are filled with generic, useless advice https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-msds https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/un-safety-data-sheets there is MSDS for sand, MSDS for tear gas and ethanol lists the same dangers, toxicity is overemphasized (because itās common) and some other dangers like explosiveness are underappreciated (because itās not), we donāt even need LLMs for this, humans (lawyers mostly i guess) did the same on accident
also bonus points for first-principling what could have been instead of asking somebody that actually knows, like any proper rationalist would do. also, vinyl chloride is not reactive with water and spraying pressurized containers with water can be a sensible thing to do, because this cools them down, so it decreases pressure meaning it decreases risk of rupture, which would be a bad thing, if manageable for firefighters to do it safely. see: some fires involving propane tanks
Slander! MSDS will tell you to use the right one (āappropriate respiratorā), itās your job to figure out what it is
one of those cases of āminimum legally requiredā type of things? maybe with a dash of āthe specification and requirements were written ${time} ago and havenāt evolved a lick since then, despite much shift in industry and progressā?
there are no real enforced requirements of accuracy, most of typical known hazards are covered by generic useless advice and everything else is just filled by āno informationā
ah, vibes-based danger diamonds
itās less of this and more of prop65 the size of rationalist footnote
actual pictograms are not vibes based, there are thresholds for toxicity, flash point etc
You know, I would expect the at-a-glance symbolic information to be more useful just from sheer accessibility. But I never would have expected them to be more accurate and rigorous than the detailed safety sheets.
MSDS is a multi-page document that is mostly filled with boilerplate, but you could expect some more detailed precautions and instructions, like for example in case of HF burn apply calcium gluconate cream, use special glass for diazomethane because it can explode in contact with ground glass surface, pay special attention around whatever-class of compounds because these are potent sensitizers, or such. most of the time itās not there, because people that write it never used these compounds, and people that do donāt read that and donāt need reminder after that detailed advice propagated to them via what is basically folk tales from labmates. itās more useful to have a comprehensive chemical engineering handbook or similar resource (as searchable pdf) that has listed dangers for common dangerous reagents
from that second link upthread:
Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh, still better than an LLM directly endangering you with bad advice
as if we needed LLMs for that. at least two of my profs have abstract tattoos left from experimenting with homemade explosives when they were in high school
as reminders? or are they just that metal?
(e: mostly unsure whether you mean ink or scartissue with āabstract tattoosā)
sorry if that was unclear, metal acetylides that they played with when ignited give off a cloud of fine metal particles and soot, they had hands close enough that these particles got embedded in their skin, permanently. so basically tattoo ink but explosively deposited
ah, gotcha. so, metal, but not quite the type I had in mind! no worries on the initial confusion, was just not entirely sure what you meant wrt mechanism
I lolled.