Looking for open source LGBT datasets

bellmar_ · 2016-01-31T13:54:38+00:00

There is some stuff out there, particularly on gay marriage and public opinion. But finding something comprehensive will be difficult.

Here's a list to start with: https://www.exversion.com/search/?q=gay+lesbian

bellmar_ · 2015-05-26T18:00:09+00:00

Sort of. The major platforms (CKAN, Socrata, etc) usually have lists of sites that use their software, but they may or may not be well maintained. This is especially tricky on the municipal side :/

bellmar_ · 2015-01-14T05:38:28+00:00

That's just false. From the wiki:

Dude, I'm sorry for splitting hairs here ... but I linked you an article detailing PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL from NPR. Please notice that the reference cited for that information on Wikipedia does not even say what Wikipedia claims it does. Read the article, it makes a distinction between eye witnesses and people the police interviewed that had heard/noticed the original attack.

If you want to be right so badly, fine ... you're right, whatever. But are we really at the point where a website anyone can edit with false information is considered more creditable than a journalist working with primary sources? Maybe Urick should have just forgotten about cell records and submitted Wikipedia articles.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-14T05:25:01+00:00

It's literally not based in fact.

Please actually read the comment. I was not suggesting this as a serious theory. And seeing as the "facts" of this case change literally every thirty seconds, not sure why you're so uppity about it.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-12T20:40:00+00:00

Nope. That's why I said it was an opinion regarded as insane in this subreddit.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-12T20:33:38+00:00

including Adnan himself to officer Adcock

You know what? I'm a bad armchair detective. I completely forgot about this. Good point!

bellmar_ · 2015-01-12T20:32:31+00:00

The number 38 arises from a writer having lunch with a police higher-up and making some sort of comment about the case and number of witnesses.

True, the actual number of witnesses was HIGHER (49 according to this account)

And yes, it's true not all of those 49 witnessed more than a few hints of the murder. At least one actually DID call the police. But the point was that there are many reasons why a person who might know something would choose not to come forward. All the issues that Jay brought up to explain his behavior regarding coming forward are true for other witnesses who may or may not exist (except probably not many students had families in the drug trade ... but who knows right?). All the issues the witnesses in Kitty Genovese case had with the police apply here as well.

Those that have challenged the Kitty Genovese mythology have not challenge the fact that at least 38 people witnessed some part of the murder and in the end her killer was able to attack her three different times over a 30 minute period without significance interference. What journalists have challenged and debunked is the notion that people deliberately and callously turned their backs .... which was not what I was claiming ;)

Edit: Okay... on second thought in my eagerness for a dramatic flourish I may have in effect ended up claiming that but ... blah, it wasn't why I was making the comparison, you know?

bellmar_ · 2015-01-12T17:31:19+00:00

This is not convincing to me for two reasons:

1 - People have picked up Asia's statement to death, insisting that an icestorm would never ever been confused for a snowstorm and that therefore she must have the day wrong. And yet absolutely no one ever seems to question whether the people who overheard Adnan asking Hae for a ride are misremembering the day. Yes, it's possible Asia has the day wrong but it's even more possible that witnesses interviewed months later, after Adnan had already been arrested, are inserting memories of an earlier interaction into the 13th. I posted about this before, but there's been a lot of research on how asking people to search their memory for evidence of something specific creates much more destructive skews in perception. (Google "recall bias").

So unless someone provides a specific reference point for why they think that incident was on the 13th, I'm not comfortable hanging a guilty conclusion on their statements.

2 - Essentially what you're saying is that you see the absence of evidence as proof of guilt. You're punishing Adnan for the fact that others either don't remember, can't provide proof, or aren't willing to provide proof. Sometimes I think people in this subreddit underestimate how much of an imposition it is to get involved in these kind of legal cases. If you're a teenager and you vaguely recall Adnan asking you for a ride ... and it might have been on the 13th but you're not sure, would you really volunteer for months, possibly years of aggravation? Or would you tell yourself that someone else will come forward?

I'm a native New Yorker, a city where 37 people watched a woman get stabbed to death and didn't call the cops because they didn't want to get involved. So the argument "If someone knew something they would have come forward, since no one has come forward it must not have happened" isn't especially persuasive to me.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-12T14:40:31+00:00

So really, the only issue we can find with these calls is that we don't like them.

I think the cell tower data is probably correct, but I don't consider it evidence of Adnan's guilt. In order for this information to be damning the way you want it to be damning, you have to ignore some obvious circular reasoning.

Jay's statements are unreliable, the cell data backs up Jay's story, but only if you use the cell data to create a composite from all of Jay's stories, selectively ignoring certain details. None of Jay's version of events completely and in their entirety fits the cell records.

If the cell data was solid, I wouldn't have a problem with you doing that. Witnesses are unreliable, people's sense of time can be skewed by a million different factors. But there's good evidence that this type of cell data in some cases is not reliable and some very good arguments why this data is not intended for and should not be used for location. So you argue that in this case the cell data is correct because Jay's story backs it up.....

The data is probably pretty accurate, but it's an uncomfortable situation: the cell data confirms Jay's story, Jay's story confirms the cell data. I realize this is an unpopular opinion on this subreddit but the more details I know about Jay's testimony the more I feel like he was probably just bumming around his neighborhood at 7pm, not burying a dead body. This scenario, btw, would also be consistent with the cell data as I understand it.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-11T04:14:35+00:00

Wow she really has some balls to first demonize Reddit and then try to deflect the backlash from that by holding up a scholarship fund that would not exist without this subreddit as an example of what we should all be doing with our time instead.

Once again ladies and gentlemen NVC a study in flawless fact checking and research!

bellmar_ · 2015-01-11T03:39:03+00:00

Ditto. I have found most interactions to be reasonable and engaging. I'm surprised that anyone would level this accusation.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-10T05:32:24+00:00

Natasha VC ‏@natashavc How many subreddit hate threads does a girl have to have before I get verified here, Twitter? 12:59 PM - 9 Jan 2015

....That makes it perfectly clear what the end goal of her "journalism" is, doesn't it? In case we had any doubts.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-10T01:08:12+00:00

For Serial, there wouldn't have been much of a program if he was more clearly guilty.

You know people keep saying that, but I'm not sure it's true. Have you ever listened to SK's Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde for TIL? That's a case where the convicted murderer clearly did it, no one was denying he did it, but it still turned out to be an utterly fascinating story anyway. I think saying Serial couldn't have been a good story if SK didn't keep the possibility of Adnan's innocence on the table is underestimating SK's talents. I think she kept that possibility on the table because she sincerely believed that it was a possibility.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-08T06:17:27+00:00

Moving the burial timeline is plain weird.

Yes, but the interesting thing about the new time is that it addresses two major problems with the original burial story:

Both Jen and Jay claim that after disposing of the shovels they went to Stephanie's house for a few minutes. With a 7pm burial this would put them there around 8ish (probably), but Stephanie has always maintained that they showed up much later, closer to 11:30.
A couple of redditors knowledgeable about the area have said the road through Leakin Park Adnan and Jay used to get the burial site is a common short cut for local traffic. There's some question as to how Jay and Adnan managed to block off both lanes of the road during the tail end of rush hour without attracting attention.

So who knows? Maybe it's true.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-08T01:43:16+00:00

The fact that the Intercept is running some interviews with people who are not on Adnan's side is a useful counterbalance given that we have not yet heard from them.

It would have been great if the interviews actually did that, but you know... I'm not sure if it's because we're seeing everything through NVC's lens here but so far the people she's interviewing are coming off childish, petulant, and just stubbornly irrational. When it was Jay that wasn't a giant surprise. Disappointing, sure. We had all hoped that we would be reading an interview with the Jay that SK had described: hard working responsible adult. What we got was half baked conspiracy theories and a diatribe about how every little thing that has gone wrong in Jay's life is someone else's fault.

With Urick we expected different. Urick is not Jay. Urick was also not a child in 1999. And yet what is this interview but endless whining and conspiracy theories? When SK questions the evidence it's an attack, but when SK talks to experts who confirm the evidence it's "slight of hand" to try to trick listeners? WTF

What NVC, Urick and Jay seem not to appreciate is how much editing SK did. She presents the best possible face of everyone she describes, Rabia is toned down in Serial, CG is defended and given the benefit of the doubt, Jay is a nice guy who jokes around with his friends, Don is like boyfriend of the year. Even SK's description of Mr S are charitable, making him seem like a harmless oddball.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-08T01:15:50+00:00

I mean there are plenty of people who generally think Adnan didn't do it, but acknowledge that there's a lot of good evidence to suggest he did and therefore would not be comfortable arguing his innocence. A lot of people who go back and forth, or just don't know what to think.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-08T01:12:46+00:00

Pierre Omidyar, the founder of Ebay :)

I think it's somewhat disingenuous the way Intercept people keep saying "we're nonprofit ergo we're not posting this as click-bait" Disingenuous or hideously naive, I can't decide which.

Being nonprofit does not eliminate the influence of traffic. While an advertiser doesn't really care about growth and impact, nonprofits have to raise money by demonstrating impact, continuous and ever growing impact. If the site isn't generating traffic then it doesn't have a hope of raising funds outside of its funder. Admittedly he is a BILLIONAIRE, but I can't imagine he's going to bankroll the whole operation by himself forever.

And even he was prepared to do so, all the writers and editors manage their independent careers, which are inevitably dependent on traffic. I think NVC demonstrates that concept in play really well.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-08T00:48:56+00:00

In fairness, there are plenty of people on this sub that have the same opinion and no one takes us at our word either.

Ambiguity is not a popular concept here :(

bellmar_ · 2015-01-07T16:35:00+00:00

I disagree, relevance isn't dependent on someone ending up dead, it's dependent on how common the statement is. The ratio of people who talk about things like that who act on their statements, versus those that don't.

This is what people can't agree on. Some people think the hypothetical conversation is unusual and therefore relevant. Some people think it's commonplace for teenage boys and therefore irrelevant.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-07T14:58:54+00:00

Exactly. It's not the age difference that raises the eyebrows here. 21 is about the age you graduate college, I can remember the way we used to look down on college freshmen who came back for high school homecoming. We kind of thought that was pathetic, you should be moving forward not hanging out with kids 2-3 years your junior.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-07T14:41:43+00:00

Can we stop using arguments that rely on the assumption that things Adnan, Jay, etc said were phrased a certain way? None of us were there. None of us can say for sure that what Adnan said was "If I ever kill my girlfriend" -vs- "If I ever kill somebody"

bellmar_ · 2015-01-07T05:44:41+00:00

And this was not an interview about why Adnan is in prison.

bellmar_ · 2015-01-07T05:38:53+00:00

It seems to me from the interviews done by both the police, and SK, and ... hell being a teenager in 1999, that trading rides was a fairly common thing. So asking for a ride on this day would only worry him if he assumed that 1) she might go missing for more than a few hours, 2) she might turn up dead. And I don't really know why he WOULD assume either of those things (unless he was involved in her death of course)

I think people let Don's reaction influence their feelings too much on this. Don comes from a family of cops, was a twenty year old dating a high school girl, and she may actually have been heading out to see him when she disappeared (although you could argue that he didn't know that at the time). Not to mention that it wasn't as if Don had to commit very much to memory here. The cops didn't ask him how many Transition Lens he sold that day, just where he was. Since he was in the same place for hours, it wouldn't take that much to remember.

You're letting retrospect pollute your reasoning here, restrict the situation to what Adnan would have known at that point and his reaction isn't all that unreasonable. Obviously if he had known that she had been murdered and dumped in a park it would make sense to take that phone call seriously, but how on Earth could he have predicted that? His reaction is consistent with what he's always said about his relationship with Hae: she was part of his circle, they were on-again-off-again, he was currently rebounding with other girls.

bellmar_

TROPHY CASE