I had never heard about temp tracks, but this makes so much sense. That’s a powerful homogenizing force.

But what does it say?

https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE

You’re not a mean cow at all! As someone that’s about to start therapy with a spouse with a similar issue, you just handed me the beginning of the proverbial thread I need to start pulling on. So serendipitous!

I keep trying to point this out to my mother, who keeps overreacting to one news story after another. She agrees in the moment that it’s all theater, then goes right back to being outraged by every obvious bait story.

I can tell you, I’m a real molecular/microbiologist!

Tl;Dr: It’s mostly bunk.

Most of these services don’t analyze your entire genome*, but instead just regions of genes, looking for something called SNPs: single nucleotide polymorphisms. DNA is composed of four nucleobases, commonly represented by their initials: T and A, C and G. A SNP is a spot on a gene where there’s some variability in these, e.g., a C or A or even a T instead of a common G.

Through whole genome sequencing and statistical analysis, these companies were able to identify frequency trends in SNPs according to where the person lives and their self-reported ancestry. Now they use a cheaper, less comprehensive (but still fairly accurate) process to look for the SNPs that data suggests are most strongly correlated with different regions/ancestries and dole out your supposed ancestry.

There are problems.

Conclusions are only as good as your data, and the data are often based strongly on self-reporting, which in science terms is often referred to as “super fucking inaccurate”.

SNPs aren’t static - every child has some, about 20 to 60, that their parents don’t have. Many detrimental SNPs can lead to death, so most that persist have no effect, though some are weakly detrimental or, even more rarely, beneficial. That means there’s a limited pool of viable options, so your kid might have spontaneously developed a few strongly associated with a region they’re not at all connected to. You have a few too, as does your coparent and all of your parents. Through a couple of generations of new SNPs, a person’s ancestry results can shift. Through random chance and no new SNPs, one might inherit a combination of SNPs commonly seen in other regions, simply through the right combination of ancestors not at all from that area.

Some SNPs are better than others. Those on what are called “highly conserved” genes, i.e., fuck this gene up at all and you die, tend to be less common and more stable. If a defined group has an unusual SNP or SNPs on these regions, it’s a far better indicator of relatedness than a SNP on a gene for something like vitamin C synthesis, which we have but the process is broken so it doesn’t matter if we break it more.

In summary, these services are built on data of varying quality (shitty data) and moving targets of variable utility (shitty targets).

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

*If you can swing it, genome sequencing and analysis can be really interesting and useful for healthcare decisions. You can learn a lot about how you, specifically, work, and we’re learning more all the time.

Just be sure to get sufficient sequencing coverage, at least 30x if you want “good enough”, 100x or more if it’s medically vital and/or you’re looking for rare genes. 1x is fairly worthless, paying for it is a waste of money.

I also find it maddening, not only because it’s silly, but because the analysis is largely crap anyhow.

My mother’s family touted their “Irish heritage for three generations”, then quickly shut up when their genome analysis “proved” they were instead largely English. I’ve had to point out Ireland and England’s relative positions and ask them if they thought anyone in our ancestry might have ever moved from island to island. Maybe consider that they were from somewhere else in Europe even earlier? Now they’re “Irish” again.

Point entirely missed, JFC. They were Irish, their ancestors were maybe English, and way back, their ancestors were definitely African, but I don’t see them getting into African cultural heritage. Thankfully.

You’re United Statesians. I get the draw: they’re looking for genuine but effort-free connection, identity, and belonging in a country whose dominant culture is homogenization, commoditization, and exploitation, but their search for culture through tenuous connections to long-dead ancestors instead of family, friends, and neighbors is just as hollow and unfulfilling.

Don’t obsess about great³-Grandpa Pádraig’s life harvesting peat from the bogs; he’s long dead and probably would have hated you. Embrace what and where you are and utilize and improve what you actually have.

Linux is so much better now! My only gripe is inconsistent/buggy dock support, but resetting Cinnamon every 15-20 minutes is a small price to pay for freedom.

I was thinking a “poorly aimed” bottle rocket “from a neighbor kid”.

I’ll pit my Mario McRlwain against your Bobson Dugnutt any day.

There has been a lot of talk about their intent to change, but I fear I still see them leaning hard on the same maladaptive coping mechanisms that helped get us here. It’s still early yet, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned. I drew up a plan that I’m following, so I’m just waiting until I have enough info to know to continue or divorce.

I’m sorry you’re feeling frustrated and hopeless about your relationship. It’s really demoralizing when the other person doesn’t want to hear there’s an issue, or understands but there are issues with them working on it. I’ve experienced both from both sides and understand it’s often more complex than it seems, but it still comes down to if they have the commitment and follow through necessary to make positive, sustained change, because that’s hard to do. Really hard.

If I may provide some unsolicited advice, couples counseling can be great. If you go that route or have already and want to try again, I’d recommend seeing a therapist that specializes in couples and is experienced in providing therapy for any conditions present, like ADHD, borderline personality disorder, or PTSD. The Gottman Method is great. Couples counseling is also most effective in conjunction with individual counseling, so partners can really dig into their own experience and what they bring to the relationship.

Better! We’re working it out, so that’s good, but we have over a decade of things to go through, plus working on ourselves as individuals. It’s exhausting.

My partner was the one to pull the divorce card, actually with no warning whatsoever. It’s so appropriate for a relationship that turned out to be significantly defined by poor communication.

In retrospect, the critical signs were pretty obvious, but we both mistook them for other things. We had become very emotionally disconnected, but we were preparing for a huge move out of the country with a small pack of house pets so each of us thought that’s why the other was stressed. This actually was true for me while my partner was stressed because they wanted to run screaming but didn’t feel comfortable saying anything.

We had both been withholding some major concerns about the other throughout our relationship, so each had a second, secret narrative that wasn’t being discussed or challenged in couples counseling. Plus we both have CPTSD from shitty childhoods and have cross-reactive behavior. Lots of angst here.

This stuff can sneak up on you if you don’t have healthy habits that help identify and prevent it, but it’s clear as day once you learn. We’re getting there and we’ll be better people for it, but it’s brutal sometimes and we’re just at the beginning.

I highly recommend solving the important ones and learning to let the rest go, speaking as someone whose marriage just exploded over exactly that.

That sounds just like my ex. I remember our last flight together.

Flight takes off at 14:00? No problem, it takes 30 minutes to get to the airport and we have to check our bags in at least 45 minutes in advance, plus “undefined overhead”, so we’ll leave at 12:15.

What then happened is 12:00 hits. Nothing is planned in advance, so we call around to get a cab. Oh, none are available for 25 minutes? Shit. Cab shows up at 12:30. Late but still good. We arrive at the airport at 13:00, thankfully without traffic. We wait in line twenty minutes to check our baggage, five minutes late but they still take it. We hit security at 13:30, but luckily the line moves fairly quickly and we get through at 13:45. We run to our gate while the airline calls for us over the PA system, arriving at 13:55, just before they close the doors. We only made it because the flight was slightly delayed.

She couldn’t understand why this wasn’t good for me. We still made it, right? Yep. And that’s one of the many reasons she’s my ex.

Tell me you have a recipe. I need it. NEED.

Yes! This exactly. I’m learning Italian and having a dictionary open on one side would be awesome.

It’s an expression and might be an old people thing as I’m older. It’s something like “Cats are going to cat”, i.e., cats will do cat things as it’s in their nature.

Going, presumably.

I’m there with you. I’m properly allergic to a few foods I really love, including almonds and (non-celiac) wheat. My wheat allergy is just mild and I can avoid some of the fallout if I pop a Benadryl first. It’s likely an extension of my severe grass allergy, which also doesn’t kill me.

Many people don’t understand food allergies, thinking food allergy means instant anaphylaxis. That’s when you see these “purity test” bullshit posts where the waiter refuses to serve the person “faking” an allergy for their own safety (and I’m sure everyone claps). I can eat about a pancake’s worth of wheat once every week or two and just be a bit uncomfortable for awhile. If I ate like a whole pancake breakfast? It gets ugly and uncomfortable, sometimes for a few days.

So if I snag a bite of my partner’s pancake, I’m not faking an allergy. My self-control just sucks sometimes.

Same, it’s great. Battery life is extended, the fan isn’t screaming, and I have great process continuity between devices since I’m usually connecting to a central point.

Great article! I’ve been trying to explain VPNs to my family members for years and it just doesn’t stick. I’ll send this their way next time.