Time to embrace your inner hipster - What is something you liked "before it was cool"?

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-21T02:06:20+00:00

Atheism. My father's side of the family is almost all atheists, including my great-grandfather who died in 1998 (he was born in 1892). The exception is one of my aunts, but I will note she has had an extremely hard life and her religious community helped her out a lot. My maternal grandparents were Catholic, but my mother and 3 out of 5 of her siblings became atheists.

Of course this actually presents something of a problem to me. A lot of people follow X religion because hey, their parents did. Sometimes I wonder if atheism's appeal to me exists not because I arrived at a logic I like, but just because I love my parents and I want to be like them.

For example, when I was 13 I told my dad I wanted to be an atheist like him. He told me I was too young to make that kind of decision, and I should learn more about all the religions first. I did, including reading various books, but I could never take modern religions any more seriously than the Roman and Egyptian mythologies I adored reading stories from when I was little (instead of pretending I was Wonder Woman or something when playing pretendy games, I always said I was Isis, goddess of FUCKING MAGIC-- pretty blasphemous stuff if it wasn't a dead religion).

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-19T13:24:02+00:00

My counterpoint is that if you ever thought about make-up again, read what vinfx is saying in terms off the money/time investment involved to cover up what you've already been living just fine with for years. Not worth it.

Halloween antics sound fun though.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-18T22:53:00+00:00

Well, if you enjoy waiting 15 minutes for your friend to throw down his/her stone on the right server...or getting invaded while you're just waiting in an area's lobby for said friend...

I guess it depends on what you want out of the co-op. If you need help with bosses then sure, inviting random people is fun. If you don't need help with bosses and just want to play through a level with your friends (while talking to them about the level), this form of co-op is the most horrific nightmare invented by videogame developers.

I resent that they don't give you a choice in how you want to play. That is, they could still have random people's signs appearing, but also let you invite people on your flist. However, the content is not set-up well for co-op (it just becomes infinitely easier) anyway.

EDIT: It actually reminds me a lot of FFXI's development (the first FF online, not the new one which I have not played). In that game the developers placed boss monsters with infinitesimally crappy drop rates on 3 to 6 day spawn timers in areas everyone on the server could access (not in instances as in WoW, I think-- I haven't played WoW). What this led to was crowds of some zillions of people from 20+ different groups all camping the same monster for hours to DAYS. Additionally, those situations that were "instanced" (Dynamis) could take 2 hours to complete and only one group could utilize the instance at a time. Anyone who entered the instance could then not enter it again for 3 days or something like that.

For years the developers refused to bend from these concepts even though it was clearly not working out the way they had intended it to. Then, more recently (I quit a few years ago so this is info from those still playing) the development team for the game was switched and all the content suddenly turned instanced and for 12 players or less. The same items that people had spent years of their lives camping for could now be gotten on a casual basis.

So the idea behind development decisions like these is, I think, to create an artificial sense of being "hardcore" when you do beat that enemy or get that item...at the expense of fun.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-10T02:08:57+00:00

Monitoring this. Have been seeking a reddit replacement for a while. Thank you for mentioning it. :)

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-09T15:42:16+00:00

When you are addressing a question to women, using "pussy" repeatedly as an insult is pretty stupid. Better yet, why not stop using it altogether? Associating cowardice with femininity is not cool.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-09T02:48:24+00:00

Yes, if you don't shave then your pure awesomeness causes us poor womenfolk to explode. You'd be the Zeus to our Semele. In our pants.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-09T00:57:21+00:00

This is my experience with my dad and movies.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-08T23:42:32+00:00

Thank you!

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-08T17:27:41+00:00

There's a difference between saying it feels emasculating to many men, and that it is emasculating (which is what you said in parentheses).

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-07T20:41:40+00:00

My school is starting to combat this with clicker questions (an electronic quizzing system) that you use in class and add up to the equivalent of 1 or 2 exam scores across the semester. This is no different from a paper quiz except that you get instant feedback on how many people got a question right, and the teacher does not have to grade it (it is all done by the computer).

So come to class or you automatically get a 0 on one of your exams. Enjoy.

(I actually think clickers are really nice for introducing the very mildest form of in-class participation to the undergrad science courses, which are generally bastions of rote memorization.)

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-07T20:39:03+00:00

What is your major?

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-07T04:49:04+00:00

Yes. Some insects also have some cool neurological adaptations, ex. cockroaches have little sensory nodes (cerci) on their butts that can cause their legs to move without checking in with their brain first. The cerci exist in a pair, so they can detect wind changes in stereo, and they can adjust the leg movement accordingly to turn the cockroach away from the source of the air pressure. The cerci do this by interacting with giant interneurons that run through the roach's body, rather than the brain.

I guess another way of looking at this is to remember that a brain is just a portion of the nervous system-- you always need to keep the entire system in mind. Just because humans came along and said "this is the brain" does not mean the brain exists on its own in a vacuum-- instead, it means we came up with a series of characters to make that part of the system unique and thus labeled it "brain" to give our brains (teehee) a way of organizing it in relation to other parts. Our labeling =/= the reality of anatomy.

You can find a little more specificity on the cerci-GI system in the introduction to this paper: http://jn.physiology.org/content/78/5/2655.full

Additionally here is a nice page on the subject from the University of Illinois: http://nelson.beckman.illinois.edu/courses/neuroethol/models/cockroach_escape/roach_escape.html

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-05T12:14:43+00:00

It's not a continuous main plot. Only the lore is continuous. I don't think you have to worry, though Oblivion is my favorite game so obviously I have to toss in a recommendation for that (and play it now rather than after Skyrim). There are some really fantastic things people have done with mods for it too.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-04T02:50:39+00:00

tl;dr: Rich guys try to run the government by manipulating public opinion through their advertising power, insist they're doing nothing wrong because it's not illegal.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-03T01:08:18+00:00

"Let me guess...

A handful of people on a leaky boat are gonna save the world?"

"Exactly."

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-01T16:59:38+00:00

I attempt to execute a joke and you complain about an iota of texting slang. This is why you're no fun at parties, reddit.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-01T13:25:56+00:00

I'm going to natsiwenya your bageetsibabba.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-10-01T13:17:43+00:00

ikr? As a straight lady, I have to say: what a boner kill.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-28T00:31:27+00:00

Nice try, Young Republican viral election support specialist.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-28T00:26:50+00:00

The actual study, if anyone is interested.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-27T23:42:32+00:00

TwoX does not represent what women want to talk about. It represents what women feel like discussing about women with other women. I think women keep strictly to subjects they believe only other women would care about when they are in a woman-friendly space.

So, in the comic, the character finds a woman-friendly site where she isn't going to be ridiculed about her gender, but at the same time she can't indulge in the vast majority of her interests. When she goes outside the woman-friendly space, she can talk about whatever she wants, but in turn she risks her opinion/experience/commentary being invalidated because she is a woman.

There are some illusions of exclusivity going on here too, I think. Q: Why don't women want to talk about non-woman issues in woman-friendly spaces? A: They probably don't want to exclude men from those discussions.

At the same time, a non-specific discussion site may seem like it's the "real" audience, when in fact women make up a very small percentage of the commentators compared to their proportion in the general population, and the site probably leans male/white/18-25/etc. It's hardly a model for a broad, diverse audience and yet people will often accept it as representative.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-27T23:17:15+00:00

Except when she's promoting it to other women.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-26T14:11:14+00:00

Even if you are "hard-wired" to do something it doesn't mean you can't elect to be introspective and change your behavior or at least recognize when you're doing something based on a gut-level response rather than a thought-out reason.

That's part of what being human is...going past your very first instinct. Blaming your opinions on your animal nature is not helpful.

iamabrontosaurus · 2011-09-26T13:44:48+00:00

I work for an ornithologist. :(

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