firecat

( health/weight content trigger warning )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/748807.html

Emphasis on "tinkers"—they've made a change to their interface so you can display a third name (a "nickname") alongside your first-and-last-name, but you can't display the nickname by itself, so you can't be pseudonymous.

There's a long discussion of it here.

There are a number of comments by the author of the original post, Yonatan Zunger, a chief architect at Google, that make me bang my head on the desk repeatedly. I can't figure out a way to link to the comments directly, but here's one that particularly caused head-banging:

We thought this was going to be a huge deal: that people would behave very differently when they were and weren't going by their real names. After watching the system for a while, we realized that this was not, in fact, the case. (And in particular, bastards are still bastards under their own names.

DUH!!!

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/748374.html

Originally posted by

kate_nepveu at announcing 2012 Con or Bust auction

I am pleased to announce this year's auction to support Con or Bust, which helps fans of color/non-white fans attend SFF conventions. Bidding starts Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 12:01 a.m. EST (GMT -5) and ends Sunday, February 25, 2012 at 11:59 p.m. EST. You may post auction offers and make donations now.

For more details, please see these updated posts explaining how to:

As a reminder, Con or Bust is now helping fans attend all cons of their own choosing, not just WisCon as in the past. (Requests for assistance to attend cons in April, May, and June 2012 will be taken from February 15 through 25; see the "request assistance" link for more details.) Because the demand for assistance is greater than before, please spread the word widely!

More information about Con or Bust.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/748149.html

via

moominmuppet

http://eminism.org/blog/entry/291
"Reclaiming 'victim': Exploring alternatives to the heteronormative 'victim to survivor' discourse"

The article discusses the rigidity of societal narratives around people who have been subjected to violence. I quote from it below the cut-tag.
( cut-tag )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/747597.html

( clicky for piccies )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/747445.html

via

andrewducker

http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/your-body-wasnt-built-to-last-a-lesson-from-human-mortality-rates/
"This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the 'Gompertz Law of human mortality.' Your probability of dying during a given year doubles every 8 years." The article goes on to explain what we can conclude from this statistic: "By looking at theories of human mortality that are clearly wrong, we can deduce that our fast-rising mortality is not the result of a dangerous environment, but of a body that has a built-in expiration date." (Also, the law refutes the popular notion that thin people don't die.)

via

onyxlynx

Face-recognition camouflage: http://www.cvdazzle.com/

Four rhetorical techniques the media or government can use to increase fear and hatred in the populace: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2011/12/05/new-lse-research-the-psychology-of-security-threats-evidence-from-rwanda/

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/747169.html

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows isn't the best movie ever, but I found it very entertaining. I'm not going to pay much attention to the reviews of M. LaSalle of the SF Chronicle in the future. (He gave it 1 star out of 5.)
( spoilers ho )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/746817.html

http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things/

One could also describe this post as "how to be a fan of things that have problematic elements, without necessarily being a fan of the problematic elements themselves." And/or "how to be a fan of what you're a fan of without attempting to defend it as perfect and without badgering other people to consume it if they have decided they don't want to."

Liking problematic things doesn’t make you an asshole. In fact, you can like really problematic things and still be not only a good person, but a good social justice activist (TM)! After all, most texts have some problematic elements in them, because they’re produced by humans, who are well-known to be imperfect. But it can be surprisingly difficult to own up to the problematic things in the media you like, particularly when you feel strongly about it, as many fans do. We need to find a way to enjoy the media we like without hurting other people and marginalised groups. So with that in mind, here are my suggestions for things we should try our darnedest to do as self-confessed fans of problematic stuff.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/746637.html

http://www.dietsurvivorsgroup.blogspot.com/2011/12/magazine-madness-third-times-charm.html

Judith Matz rewrites magazine headlines.

Example:

Women’s Health:

Fight Fat (And Win!) Melt Pounds And Trim Inches In Minutes A Day

My Edit:

Stop Fighting Fat (We’re all Winners!) Melt Away Your Self-Criticism And Add Compassion For Minutes A Day

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/746297.html

I was delighted to discover that the moderators of the excellent LJ community

50books_poc, for reviews of books by people of color, have created a sister community on Dreamwidth:

50books_poc

The announcement is here along with a request for input on how people want the two communities to interact: http://50books-poc.dreamwidth.org/374.html

Dreamwidth has extended for an indefinite time its offer to get a free account with no invite code.

To get a free Dreamwidth account, just visit the Create an Account page.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/746239.html

Glass octopus sculptures

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/745749.html

Some of the media I read/saw/listened to/downloaded/purchased in 2011. Sadly, not in any kind of order. If you've consumed any of these, I'd love to know what you thought. If you want to know more of my opinions about any of these, just ask.

( Paper Books and eBooks )
( Audio Books )
( DVDs/Movies/TV )
( Music )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/745357.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140627.htm

Excerpt:

In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice....

People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. "Of course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it" Roets says....

It's virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think.

I'm very curious about that last statement. At what point does the "basic way" that a person thinks develop? Is it nature or nurture, and in what proportions? If it's true that some people need to reduce ambiguity more than others, do we know what contributes to that? Is it possible to teach people to tolerate more ambiguity, or to tolerate ambiguity in more situations?

I'm obviously assuming here that tolerating ambiguity would generally be a good skill to have (although I think it might lead to problems in situations where immediate action is required). I really dislike prejudice and the damage it causes, so if training in tolerating ambiguity might help diminish it, I would be in favor.

I think I've learned to tolerate ambiguity a lot better over the years, so my personal experience makes me doubt the assertion that it's impossible to change the way people think. It's possible that being on antidepressants is what made the difference for me, though.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/745181.html

I was in Walgreen's just now, and the cashier was wearing a button front and center on her uniform that said "Is my smile a 9?"

I assume that she had to wear it. I was tempted to ask, but I didn't want to waste her time because there was a long line. It made me furious on her behalf. If your policy is that employees should act friendly, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that, but I really don't like requiring employees to wear buttons that invite the customer to police their behavior (behavior that has nothing to do with whether they're doing the work of cashiering correctly).

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/744724.html

So here's what I want.
An ebook reader app.

It works on both the iPod/iPad and Android smartphone.
It stores books and bookmarks in the cloud so when I open the book on a different device, it remembers where I was.
It also stores books and bookmarks locally so I don't need to have wireless access to use it.
It lets me upload and store DRMed and non-DRMed epub format books.

Here's where my research has gotten me so far. These apps meet all the criteria except the one listed.

Bluefire: Doesn't store bookmark data online.
Google Books: Can't upload your own books, as far as I know.
Kobo: Stores bookmark data online for books you get through its store, but not for books you upload.

Do you know any apps that fit all the criteria?

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/744677.html

http://www.themarysue.com/helen-mirren-doctor-who/

You guys, Helen Mirren just said in an interview that she would like to play the Doctor on Doctor Who. And then I exploded. Wow. Helen Mirren. Doctor Who. With a creamy “wants to play” center.

I don't need that much convincing...it's just that I find the number of episodes daunting compared to the amount of time I spend watching TV by myself...the OH having said he doesn't want to watch Dr Who.

...although come to think of it, he might well watch Helen Mirren do Dr Who.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/744342.html

I have been looking at this web page for the past several days and I have to stop myself from licking the screen.

http://www.madagascarminerals.com/cat-labradorites.cfm

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/743987.html

Pix from my trip to Santa Cruz last weekend.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cat-and-dragon/sets/72157628479480933/

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/743441.html

For the rest of the year, creating a free Dreamwidth account will not require an invite code: just visit the Create an Account page.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/743182.html

Interesting book review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman-book-review.html">"Two Brains Running" by Jim Holt (a review of Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman)

Excerpt (emphasis mine:

What does it mean to be happy? When Kahneman first took up this question, in the mid 1990s, most happiness research relied on asking people how satisfied they were with their life on the whole. But such retrospective assessments depend on memory, which is notoriously unreliable. What if, instead, a person’s actual experience of pleasure or pain could be sampled from moment to moment, and then summed up over time? Kahneman calls this “experienced” well-being, as opposed to the “remembered” well-being that researchers had relied upon. And he found that these two measures of happiness diverge in surprising ways. What makes the “experiencing self” happy is not the same as what makes the “remembering self” happy. In particular, the remembering self does not care about duration—how long a pleasant or unpleasant experience lasts. Rather, it retrospectively rates an experience by the peak level of pain or pleasure in the course of the experience, and by the way the experience ends.
...
Kahneman’s conclusion, radical as it sounds, may not go far enough. There may be no experiencing self at all. Brain-scanning experiments by Rafael Malach and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, for instance, have shown that when subjects are absorbed in an experience, like watching the “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” the parts of the brain associated with self-consciousness are not merely quiet, they’re actually shut down (“inhibited”) by the rest of the brain. The self seems simply to disappear. Then who exactly is enjoying the film? And why should such egoless pleasures enter into the decision calculus of the remembering self?

This intersects in interesting ways with my studies and experiences in Buddhism, especially the notion that the mind constructs the self, and the self isn't some kind of unchanging core. (A metaphor I found useful is that the mind constructs the self the way a hand constructs a fist.)

Also I've known for much of my life that what I want to do in the moment and what I want to have done are different, and I frequently noodle about how to reconcile them or rebalance the amount of energy I spend on each. My behavior tends to mostly toward what I want to do in the moment, and toward habit.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/743011.html

On Sundays I usually do the Q&A meme from Sunday Stealing (my Q&A posts are usually friends-locked), but this week they borrowed from a public post I made responding to the "21 questions for Dreamwidth" meme. (They have altered the wording of the questions to apply to the blogosophere in general.) So I have already done it.

http://sundaystealing.blogspot.com/2011/11/bud-is-back-meme.html

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/742750.html

Recently I dug out my pretty-old-by-today's-standards camera (a Pentax Optio S4, which fits into an Altoid's tin) and took myself to the San Francisco Zoo and, on a day with interesting clouds, to Marina Park in Emeryville, which has great views of the bay and three different bridges. Photos are in the San Francisco set on my Flickr page. A couple of my favorites under the cut.
( two photos )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/742124.html

Finished watching the British TV show Life On Mars. Waah! I loved it and didn't want it to end.

(There might be spoilers in the comments.)

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/741803.html

Max Airborne shares her experience at the Oakland General Strike. Her group did meditation in front of a Chase bank branch and some of them gave away money.

http://maxairborne.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/practicing-generosity-at-the-oakland-general-strike/

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/741518.html

This week's Q&A meme.

Sunday Stealing: The Madness Meme, Part 1

1. Have you ever licked the back of a CD to try to get it to work?
( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/741296.html

There was an estate sale at my parents' house Friday and Saturday. There is some stuff left over, which will be available free tomorrow (Sunday) from 10am - 12noon. (I won't be there, my real estate agent and her friend are handling the sale for me.)

1815 Valdez in Belmont, 10am to 12noon.

You can see pix here:
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/zip/2687665352.html

Leftover goodies include:

Long blue 60s-style sofa
6 green-upholstered parson's chairs (4 in great shape, 2 need simple leg repair, must take entire set)
Office supplies
Dog toys (new and used)
Books
Textbooks (mostly calculus)
Kitchenware
Office chair floor pad (for carpeted area)
Wingback chair with footstool
TV w/built-in VCR
Rolling AV stand
Very large, very beautiful cherrywood desk
Small white bookshelf
Electric Coffee grinder
Crank coffee grinder mechanism (for woodworkers - you build the box to fit the mechanism)
Outdoor furniture (some teak, some plastic)
Old pillows (kinda done as pillows but the stuffing is great for crafts)

... and other random small stuff.

If you're interested in the larger pieces please bring enough muscle and a big enough vehicle to carry them out. No holds. No early birds, please - we won't open the door until 10am. Everything needs to be gone by noon!

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/740897.html

I volunteer for Peninsula Humane Society, which has built a spiffy new center at 1450 Rollins Rd., Burlingame, CA

Here are some services that PHS offers at the new center:

Microchip Mondays --$20 microchip for dogs and cats, no appointment needed.
Group Tours -- M-F, 10:30 am- 5:30 pm. Contact Scott Delucchi at 650/685-8510 or delucchi@PHS-SPCA.org
Kids' B-Day Parties for ages 6-12, Sundays, beginning soon. Contact Katy Schwarz at 650/340-7022, ext. 308 or kschwarz@PHS-SPCA.org.
Meeting Space for Local Groups and Companies. Hold your next meeting, team-builder or brainstormer at our Lantos Center, Mondays and Fridays, 2-5 pm. Meeting space looks directly into a cat condo! Suggested donation of $100. Contact Scott Delucchi at 650/685-8510 or delucchi@PHS-SPCA.org.
Furchandise Retail Store. Proceeds benefit shelter animals.
40-45 cats and kittens available for adoption.
Watch staff and volunteers working with shelter dogs in our Dog Training/Exercise Park with a retractable roof and water fountain.

In addition:

Wing for rabbits, small animals, birds and non-traditional pets
Viewing windows for the public to observe our Kitten Nursery and Wildlife Treatment
Dog obedience classes

Here are services still offered at the PHS center at Coyote Point:

Owners looking for lost pets
Owners surrendering unwanted pets
Spay/Neuter Clinic and vaccination clinics

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/740339.html

National Public Radio (NPR) has a web page asking for comments on the topic "What does it mean to live in a nation where one out of every three people is obese." (The nation in question is the United States.)

http://www.publicinsightnetwork.org/form/apm/0d2dd143dca7/what-does-it-mean-to-live-in-a-nation-where-one-out-of-every-three-people-is-obese

The lead-in to the comment section says:

Americans are getting bigger. And it's not just changing our health, but our nation's infrastructure, spending habits, economy and state of mind. What changes have you noticed to the way we live?   Tell us here. Your response will help shape a national reporting project on obesity.

Here are the comments I left them.

What conversations do you have - or avoid having - about weight?
( Read more... )

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/739964.html

Via

moominmuppet

"Mortgage defaults are causing health problems in people over 50" by Annalee Newitz

Excerpt:

The study was led by University of Maryland epidemiologist Dawn E. Alley, who said:
More than a quarter of people in mortgage default or foreclosure are over 50. For an older person with chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension, the types of health problems we saw are short term consequences of falling behind on a mortgage that could have long-run implications for that person's health.
...
While this information may seem like common sense, this study is one of the only examples where such "common sense" has actually been confirmed scientifically.

Well, I'm glad research like this sometimes sees the light of day.

Original study