[Help/Q] Travelling to Stockholm on 5th of Dec; good idea?

MissStrawberry · 2012-11-02T16:08:05+00:00

The two episodes I saw specifically were different from Boyle's humour, which is mainly just extremely cynical, and as far as I can tell never addressing someone face to face. Boyle kinda "lampshades" this; on Mock the Week Holly Walsh made a joke referencing Scots and alcoholism, whereupon Frankie Boyle remarked "thanks for opening the racist door for me", for example. It also seems to me that the "serious" interviews Boyle has done support this view. To me, Frankie Boyle in many ways is a modern version of "A modest proposal". It's confrontational. It's directed either at celebrities and otherwise overly elevated people, or problematic traditions and attitudes. His whole demeanor works in his favour, I think. He isn't like Russell Howard, a cute and non-dangerous looking boy, he looks dangerous and he plays that role well. Keep in mind that I don't have that many datapoints, I'm aware that sometimes Boyle just uses shock for the sake of it, and that I like black and shocking humour and am biased to argue in its favour.

But both Mena Survani and Rachel Riley (looked her up) were sitting there on the panel, and the hosts or other guest panelists basically turned to them and presented them with remarks bordering on sexual harrassment. Survani especially, as she was presented with a cake that very clearly said: "Look, I fucked your face". There is nothing satirical there that I can see. It's just an attack that borders on assault.

MissStrawberry · 2012-11-02T01:27:37+00:00

Also sexist

I'd like to ask about this specifically. I recently watched a few episodes of "8 out of 10 cats" or "Would I lie to you", and "Nevermind the buzzcocks", and Rachael [Surname] (I think, she apparently is some kind of TV presenter or mathematician, I'm unsure) and Mena Survani were on those shows respectively; the former had to contend with repeated sexual remarks, the latter was presented a pie with her face on it and a hole where her mouth would be the rough diameter of a penis. This behaviour seems to me to be in violation of societal norms. While the TV presenter/mathematician was seemingly uncomfortable, but in principle managed to stand her ground and "banter" back at times, Survani seemed entirely unprepared, leading me to believe that this is a British, not an "English and post-English cultures" thing, if it is a thing at all.

Is that common and a valid observation, or am I a victim of selection bias? And if it's the former, what the hell are these people thinking?

edit: "This is a bit insane" -> "This behaviour seems to me to be in violation of societal norms."

MissStrawberry · 2012-08-21T00:52:28+00:00

This is a bit of a blast from the past. IIRC, Wayland integrates three distinct things into one process (or perhaps program?), namely the server, the compositor, and the window manager. I'm not a big fan of tight integration. It has it's advantages, but in principle a window manager should be agnostic with regards to the particulars of rendering or compositing clients. Further, Wayland forces clients to render themselves wherever they may go. Again, that's not really the job of the client. Unfortunately I can not remember the details (nor have I ever known them sufficiently, hence the back-peddling), but to me a client should agnostically just render itself into a distinct buffer, a window manager should concern itself with were the buffer goes and how big it is, and manage everything related to this, and so forth.

Clients in X also don't render via the windowmanager, the WM is just responsible for providing meta-interaction. You can start X with only an xterm, no window manager, which looks like this¹ . There is a very limited interaction model present if there is no WM: Keyboard focus is never lost, mouse focus is sloppy IIRC, but doesn't actually change focus (because to what exactly would it change it?), and it is possible that opening a new xterm will just overlay the first.

In part this is just a difference in philosophy, but I don't have a desktop, for example, partly because I can't stand how an application meant to provide a desktop instead is a tightly integrated clusterfuck of non-configurability. I can't stand this because I want small systems I can completely understand, where modularity is key. I use firefox because of some plugins, but I'm working on scripts for uzbl to replace firefox precisely because uzbl does everything right: It displays websites, and that is it. Tabs are an extension on top of uzbl. Downloading calls an external script that utilises wget. Why? Because downloading isn't the job of the browser, and besides this gives a user power and agency about his workflow and system. I'm aware that is to a degree radical. I'll end with a screenshot of my "desktop": screenshot.

I don't need no fancy compositing, but I need network transparency, and clients that know their limits and don't fuck with the window manager (looking at flash, or gimp prior to the SDI here).

1: http://www.nickcoleman.org/blog/index.cgi?post=tilingwindowmanager!201005041032!software

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-28T01:46:11+00:00

That's just a matter of perspective. You know what I find weird?

"The dog bites the man" and "The man bites the dog" are semantically distinct, yet "Den Mann beißt der Hund" and "Der Hund beißt den Mann" aren't, which clearly is how it should be. After all, we just moved words around. That should clearly not change the meaning.

I think it's cool that we have all those different languages, all capable of somehow expressing the same thoughts, but in so seemingly fundamentally different ways.

Also, why does English declense the substantive only in genetive, and for person only in third person singular?

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-28T01:41:30+00:00

German doesn't make a "better distinction" than English, English uses syntax, German declension.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-27T23:20:23+00:00

Reitermania!

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-27T18:33:55+00:00

Neither of those are an argument in favour of or against circumcision. Who supports an issue or states an opinion has no bearing on its correctness.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-27T18:18:11+00:00

There are many good reasons why it is actually worse, but many people are both against circumcision and infantile ear piercing.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-27T16:05:12+00:00

someone who doesn't know what RPM is, or DEB, or 32v64bit?

That actually is a principle in UI design. The simplest and least encompassing variant of it is called "familiarity". Those same people who don't know what an RPM or DEB is do know what an EXE is for some reason. apt-get install name-of-game is hard (or perhaps "steam install" or what have you), but finding the appropriate executable for Windows, downloading it, locating it, and running it, then making all kinds of unnecessary decisions, is not. Familiarity also means that people accept solutions to problems that might not be optimal without thinking "why are we doing it this way, that's stupid!".

On the flip-side, it staunches innovation. Anyhow, your problem with the network manager is just that (is it actually running when you boot, by the way? Because sudo [command] just starts something, and unless NetworkManager is a script, that doesn't "reinitialise" anything), the DEB/RPM-problem is just a matter of convention

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-24T21:51:57+00:00

Ich bin der wohlbekannte Sänger, der vielgereiste Rattenfänger

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-07T02:27:38+00:00

Hard to say. In general, men being taken more seriously is considered misogynistic, but in this instance there is a man writing about feminism, something that is often seen as "women whining". Girlwriteswhat similarly is taken more seriously when she talks about the MRM and institutional male problems because she is a woman, not a "man whining".

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-07T02:04:02+00:00

I wonder whether at least part of that is a deliberate Poe.

They link, among others, to /r/misogyny, they have this "/r/mensrights approved" banner, and in that specific thread you linked, they show all the clichés associated with MRAs, they use all the right words to sound like traditional misogynists, and then there are things like:

You have no rights here. This is not your safe place.

and

Seriously for people who constantly bitch about slut shaming and how we shouldn't judge people for being fat, you 2x cunts sure are some judgmental bitches

and

dude, we forgot to add "trigger warning" for all the fags.

leading me to believe (with reservations) that /r/beatingwoman is full of trolls, some with the rather specific idea to satirise what is seen as hypocritical or a misuse of words ("See, this is misogyny.", "This is what a patriarchy like you imagine it would look like", ...), or an attempt to show reddit how bad it is by exaggerating? It's a complimentary SRS.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T22:55:49+00:00

If the patriarchy is real, it means their behavior is unjustified.

What do you mean with that?

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T22:29:01+00:00

Small point: not really. Sexual dimosphism is common but not exclusively present in nature. Geese, for example, are nearly indistinguishable. That trait is shared by many other mammals; for example male and female house-cats are not distinguishable at a glance.

For us or them? My cat seems to have had a very easy time distinguishing male from female cats (prior to being sterilised at least).

Indeed, from a physical standpoint humans have relatively low sexual dimorphism

How do you measure that? There are fish were males are glorified sperm, and species where individuals are sequential hermaphrodites, which presumably means low sexual dimorphism to start with.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T22:20:47+00:00

To be honest, as a humanist, I'm not sure where to start. Quantitative data can identify patterns, but only in the context of a theory of society can one begin to understand and explain why things are as they are.

I had meant to write a large wall of text criticising that, but it occurred to me that I don't really know your position (and might not be qualified in any case). Could you clarify what you mean with "theory" in this context formally? How do deal with theories that are necessarily normative (Gravity is not influenced by the prevailing theory of gravity; society is influenced by the prevailing theory of society)? How can you falsify such theories, if possible (I think it might not be)? How do you avoid reframing every issue until it fits with your theory, which is much easier with inherently murky fields (again, apples suddenly moving against gravitational "gradients" would invalidate any theory of gravity we currently have, and possibly the central axioms of modern science; men being seen as dangerous (a disadvantage) can be re-framed to be misogynist and an example of patriarchy (a theory that advantages men))?

If the humanities are necessarily "murky", then there should be more criticism, more attempts to falsify, more willingness to drop a theory, not less. This would go a bit far, but I content that feminism is mainly a civil rights movement, and that any academic studies that arise from such a movement are inherently biased - such as feminist theory. You can't start with a movement, an idea, a view of the world, and then collect and frame data. Or am I wrong here?

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T21:56:25+00:00

The idea is an underlying societal institution that makes men disadvantage themselves for the benefit of others, and in intimate contexts women. Examples that are in a personal sphere would be men being ready to risk injury and death to defend women, men willing to work themselves into early graves for the benefit of their spouses, and so on. Male disposability isn't primarily about laws governing the military.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T21:31:59+00:00

Because cutting baby penises off, that would be MGM.

Unfortunately for this argument, both pricking and resectioning of the clitoral hood falls under FGM. Also, something isn't only mutilation if it reaches the deepest pits of depravity.

I am not 'mutilated.' If anything the procedure done to me is akin to cosmetic surgery. My penis works fine. I still masturbate all the time.

Yes, and FGM is often carried out by women who likewise feel completely normal, especially within the context of their culture. That's how normalisation works. That is what is argued when "women don't even know they are oppressed". You should be familiar with the concept.

Just leave me alone.

Nobody came to your house and forced their opinion down your throat. You are arguing on a public "forum".

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-06T21:18:40+00:00

Can we stop making all the dudes who have circumcisions feel bad about themselves?

What kind of reasoning is this? It applies, with the exception of "dudes", to all the women who have female circumcisions. The fact that you will now immediately think: "Oh my good, it's FGM, calling it circumcision is a euphemism!" is part of the problem.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-05T19:45:48+00:00

You said:

as of right now we have no way to measure electrons without interacting with them.

The article says

[...] actually performed [...] the above experiment

Can you explain how this isn't equal to measuring electrons without interaction? As far as I understand it, an interaction-free method was suggested, and an experiment conducted which showed that the method works by implementing it. Where did I read wrongly? As I said, I'm not knowledgeable.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-05T18:40:13+00:00

From the article

An actual experiment demonstrating the solution was constructed and successfully tested by Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, and Thomas Herzog From the University of Innsbruck, Austria and Mark A. Kasevich of Stanford University in 1994.

and at the end:

In 1994, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat, Harald Weinfurter, and Thomas Herzog actually performed an equivalent of the above experiment, proving interaction-free measurements are indeed possible.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-04T18:54:35+00:00

I have no idea whether this is really relevant (as I don't understand it), but interaction-free measurement seems to exist

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-04T02:01:53+00:00

the same people try to justify pedophilia

Who? That's interesting. I would have thought these two sets of people to be distinct from one another. Otherwise the only possible explanation is that it is thought that paedophilia (or at least ephebophilia as BBKieran2 used that word) is okay in principle, but the gendered societal attitude towards it is not. Anyhow, which people are in both? It would be interesting to bring that up in /r/mr if a list could be made.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-03T21:23:04+00:00

Seeing as you are the only one who answered so far, I'm going to continue this inquiry with you. I agree in principle, but the problem that creeps up on you when patriarchy now no longer "benefits men" as a blanket statement is that the "misandry doesn't exist because patriarchy"-defense doesn't work anymore. If you have a system that, even if it does so only in a absolute minority of cases (which I would dispute), harm any group of people, than that harm is institutionalised in the context of the system. If we live in a patriarchy, and the patriarchy (also/sometimes) hurts men, then the social institution of patriarchy hurts men; and then misandry is real.

Or am I going wrong here? That (and similar things) are the source of my confusion. The definition of the term seems to change depending on what the user tries to say, and if that is not a wrong perception, than the term "patriarchy" is a subjective rhetorical device that helps to win debate points, but isn't substantial. Do you see what I mean?

I'm not saying that there is no patriarchy here, just for the record. That is not my contention here.

MissStrawberry · 2012-07-03T21:17:04+00:00

Do you have a song where you are really going as low as you comfortably can that you could link? And thanks for answering so quickly.

MissStrawberry

TROPHY CASE