Interesting Articles

Capitalism's faults are that it's tedious, boring, makes you want to cut your friends' throats over a plastic house, & smells like formaldehyde?

In layman's terms, yes.

Some more from BBC News

Human science:
The real reason men grow beards
Did American Psycho predict the future?
The hidden psychology of failure
The surprising benefits of a mid-career break
Why we need a better way to measure farts
Why do we get 'eye floaters'?
Facebook is a growing and unstoppable digital graveyard

Japan related:
Can ninjas and women divers help Japan?
Is Japan's plan for more women in the workplace failing?
The drive for gender equality in corporate Japan

Other stuff:
Why the image of a mystery veteran keeps going viral
The dolphins that swapped babies
What has happened to al-Qaeda?
The female wrestlers of Bolivia
Tata Steel plans to sell loss-making UK plants
Germanwings crash: Have cockpit doors changed?

From somewhere esle:
Court Agrees With Florida: Skim Milk Is “Imitation Milk Product” Unless You Add Vitamins
Miscalibrations in judgements of attractiveness with cosmetics
Sex differences in perceptions of desirable body shape

Being that I live in Florida, the milk issue is something big here. That's an unintended consequence of reasonable old fortification laws that were taken way too far.

Neo Bahamut wrote:

Capitalism's faults are that it's tedious, boring, makes you want to cut your friends' throats over a plastic house, & smells like formaldehyde?

Sounds like someone sucks at Monopoly.

Monopoly sucks at being a game.

It's fantastic. The winner is always a slimy sociopath and Neo always dies penniless. You don't get that kind of realism with your vidder games.

I'm sure there are some SIMS that can mimic that.

German Unification Case Study.

Brief article about the differences between women's lives in East & West Germany.

Feminist Opposition to the Sex Industry Has Little To Do With Women's Choices.

While we have no issue with women "choosing" to work in the sex industry, we are very opposed to it no matter how much we say we aren't.

The comments are even worse.

New Atheism, Old Empire.

Because New Atheism couldn't get any worse.

"Prostitution and pornography are social problems" - should be revised to "prostitution and pornography are affected by social problems". They aren't causes, they're institutions that need to be made safer. Abolishionists are shit.

http://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/09/28/youve-heard-of-rape-culture-but-have-you-heard-of-pedophile-culture/

I cringed. She has a legitimate point. But it is buried in her melodramatic, black-and-white shitprose.

I only found the article on a page for Marxist memes.

Definitely not one of the best articles posted there.

Neoliberal Feminists Don't Want Women to Organize.

You've heard of trickle down economics, but have you heard of trickle down empowerment?

Nobody said that I lose at Monopoly, it's just really shitty.

The New Atheist article has some accurate points, but ironically falls into the same reductionism it's criticized for. New Atheism did not gain popularity because of the war on terror, & do I even have to say the irony of dismissing every critique as shallow imperialism & then completely ignoring their criticisms unrelated to Islam?

The "Pedophile Culture" is the kind of feminist literature I have a problem with. Once she said that she's not going to address the science of pedophilia, that should pretty much be an instant loss of credibility. Essentially, she says she's just going to make guesses at the etiology, which of course leads to absurd conclusions like that not liking hair=pedophile. On the subject of elephants being ignored, you ever notice how those arguments never accuse all women who don't like beards or body hair of being pedophiles? Sure, things like "jailbait" are legitimate examples of what she's talking about, but they're so thoroughly entangled in all of the bullshit. Also, the comments are kind of an echo chamber.

I tend to stay out of sex work debates, because they're rather sticky. There's some truth in what that lady is saying, that there's a lot of misrepresentation of the "anti" position, but on the other hand, if she honestly expects me to believe that not a single anti-porn feminist is disdainful of sex workers, she must think I'm really stupid.

Neo Bahamut wrote:

Nobody said that I lose at Monopoly, it's just really shitty.

I can see your tears, Yhwach.

Astarte wrote:

Neo Bahamut wrote:

Nobody said that I lose at Monopoly, it's just really shitty.

I can see your tears, Yhwach.

...Is what Yamamoto said right before it turned out he had no idea what he was talking about & was easily crushed.

The Tools of Campus Activists at UC Davis Are Being Turned Against Them.

Jean-Paul Sartre on How American Jazz Lets You Experience Existentialist Freedom & Transcendence.

But I like my existential angst. We've come to a mutual understanding of one another. But Jazz is pretty swell as well.

https://medium.com/@infiltrator7n/a-point-by-point-analysis-of-rational-wiki-s-list-of-gamergate-s-claims-part-6-78eaad84a293#.jtgrp2qys

GamerGate tries to debunk Rational Wiki, & the ending rant about SJW whitewashing & how they're a bunch of cowardly assholes who use dismissive insults because they can't stand up to scrutiny amuses me greatly.

By Yamamoto, are you referring to Yamamoto Isoroku?

No, Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto.

Wow I feel like a Super Dork for that one.

Argh! Lifestyle Consumerist Politics!

Short and dated article about apparent outrage over Walmart selling Banksy prints because muh capitalism or something. It's hard to understand why leftists get mad at what they do.

Let Us Be Terrible: Considerations on the Jacobin Club

Neo Bahamut wrote:

https://medium.com/@infiltrator7n/a-point-by-point-analysis-of-rational-wiki-s-list-of-gamergate-s-claims-part-6-78eaad84a293#.jtgrp2qys

GamerGate tries to debunk Rational Wiki, & the ending rant about SJW whitewashing & how they're a bunch of cowardly assholes who use dismissive insults because they can't stand up to scrutiny amuses me greatly.

I too appreciate irony.

This was always a hot topic in school, since people had always seemed to associate constellation-based theories of pyramid construction with UFOs. I always argued that just because an archaeologist states an opinion that pyramids are constructed based on star patterns doesn't mean that they're making a leap toward aliens.

Sir Robin wrote:

Being that I live in Florida, the milk issue is something big here. That's an unintended consequence of reasonable old fortification laws that were taken way too far.

. . . What do you more specifically mean in the second sentence? You somehow managed to loose me there but I'm curious enough to ask you to clarify.

Sir Robin wrote:

This was always a hot topic in school, since people had always seemed to associate constellation-based theories of pyramid construction with UFOs. I always argued that just because an archaeologist states an opinion that pyramids are constructed based on star patterns doesn't mean that they're making a leap toward aliens.

I have heard theories about the pyramids were built to correspond with Orion's belt, and somewhere about it being aliens who built the pyramids - but never the two combined.
But thanks to having to check what constellation Cygnus is I might now know which the pseudo-Orion's belt constellation is. Yeah, I like to look at the night sky but I have no idea what the constellations are called most of the time. Except Charles' Wagon and Orion's belt.

Link won't open.

I think Orion's Belt is an asterism, not a constellation. I've never heard of Charles's Wagon.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/04/why-do-we-give-robots-female-names-because-we-dont-want-consider-their

I disagree with this article entirely, but I'm putting it up anyway because I think there is a phenomenon worth mentioning here, it's just the theory that's wrong. Here is what I would argue instead:

Products like Siri are designed to be friendly & nonthreatening, so the designers go for female anthropomorphization, because they're supposed to be "emotional" & "nurturing."

Now, when you have a Robot Apocalypse or a Killer Robot setting, typically the robot is masculine or completely inhuman. Same idea, but in reverse. When we think of threatening things, we go for big, strong, violent men. Or inhuman monsters. Or exploit the uncanny valley by creating a semihuman (usually masculine) but non-relatable monster, a la Slenderman.

The robot girlfriend is an exception to this rule, because it's a morality tale. Whether it's an enlightened moral like "using women as objects will come back to haunt you" or something less cerebral or progressive like "real men don't use technology to score" depends, but the result is generally the same.

Though that might be a relatively modern trend. As far as I am aware, Pygmalion wasn't punished by Aphrodite for having his lady sculpture brought to life, nor was Gepetto for wishing for his puppet to become a son. I could just be misremembering, though.

I find it pretty interesting. The parallel between women and cyborgs/AI seizing their own means of reproduction especially.

On the other hand the article seems to defeat itself. We give them female names because "we don't want to consider their feelings", but we are only concerned with their feelings because of their parallels with women? Why not distance them from the whole issue via androgyny or inhumanity?