firecat

clearing out the 2014 linkspam

Sat, 03 Jan 2015 23:01:43 GMT

Why "you can just make your own clothes" isn't always a great alternative for people who can't wear straight sizes. I appreciate the reminder "There is no shame in not having a lot of craft skills, but there is shame in making people feel like they should have those skills."
http://meloukhia.net/2014/12/costuming_while_fat_and_uncrafty/
( Read more... )

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Alternative fandoms, outsider artists, plus how everything is tied together

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 05:14:07 GMT

I really like Moby-Dick (the novel by Melville).

I'm afraid I don't much care for this guy's artwork style, but he made 552 illustrations for Moby-Dick (one for each page of his edition), which I think is a great project.

http://www.tinhouse.com/books/fiction-poetry/moby-dick-in-pictures.html

He also claims to have "the world's largest personal collection of Nazgul art"

http://everypageofmobydick.blogspot.com/p/the-worlds-largest-personal-collection.html

This is a recent article about him.

http://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/artsmindsblog/wild-weird-world-matt-kish/

While digging around to find out more about this guy, I discovered there is now a biennial "marathon reading of Moby-Dick" in New York City. This happened in 2012 and 2014. In 2013 there wasn't a reading, but there was a "Moby-Dick Not-Marathon," aka a convention. The next marathon will be in 2016. Its Kickstarter campaign is a sight to behold.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amandabullock/moby-dick-marathon-nyc

I found out about Matt Kish via a pattern by Ann Weaver, "His Mark," in the new (50th!) edition of knitty.com:http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEw14/PATThismark.php

She has published two books of knitting patterns based on Moby-Dick. The paper versions of the books have illustrations by Matt Kish.

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I'm trying not to get snot on my linkspam (hack kof)

Sun, 14 Dec 2014 04:39:43 GMT

A psychiatrist thinks the patient-run web site about psychiatric medications, http://crazymeds.us , is great, but can't recommend it to their patients because it has offensive jokes.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/27/such-mixed-feelings-about-crazymeds/

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Anita Sarkeesian is on the cover of Business Week, along with the text "VIDEO GAME AVENGER: One woman's crusade to vaporize gaming's grossest trolls."

Need I say DON'T READ THE COMMENTS even though Business Week is moderating them.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-26/anita-sarkeesian-battles-sexism-in-games-gamergate-harassment

~

It's funny that this article about gender norms among "millennials" starts out by focusing on men who have chosen to decorate their fingernails. I've never decorated my fingernails before but recently I've started wearing nail decals. I vaguely worry that they make me present as too femme. But I'll save the details of my worries about gender presentation for another post.

It's OK to peek at the comments on this one. A couple of the top comments are along these lines:

"What is the incessant need to classify people in arbitrary "generations" and then build stereotypes around them? People are far too diverse to make such generalizations" (Lencho)

"This just in: Gender norms have never been challenged until millenials came along! (Don't tell David Bowie.)" (fictitiousengineer)

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/30/363345372/for-these-millennials-gender-norms-have-gone-out-of-style

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The gender norms article referenced this documentary about Bindle & Keep, an LGBTQ-friendly tailoring company.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/09/lena-dunham-lgbtq-tailor

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Lately company "wellness" programs have been in the news for forcing workers to undergo invasive medical exams or face large health insurance "surcharges." Good news on that front—the EEOC considers these programs inappropriate and has been suing to stop them.

In the Honeywell wellness program, employees and their spouses are asked to get blood drawn to test their cholesterol, glucose and nicotine use, and also have their body mass index and blood pressure measured. An employee who refuses is subject to a $500 surcharge on health insurance premiums and could lose up to $1,500 in Honeywell contributions to a health savings account. A worker and spouse are also each subject to a $1,000 tobacco surcharge if they refuse to do the screening. That means a couple could face a combined $4,000 in financial penalties.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/12/02/367842386/government-says-bosses-cant-force-workers-to-get-health-tests

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Time to rewatch Gangnam Style! It has been viewed more than 2.1 billion times on YouTube, thus forcing YouTube to upgrade its 32-bit video counter. "Going to the video page and hovering over the view counter will show an animated math easter egg."

http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/3/7325819/gangnam-style-broke-youtube-view-counter

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Hot link spam part 2

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 06:09:57 GMT

They stuck real-time translators into fMRI machines to try to figure out how they can do such a complex task. They found out a little but not as much as they hoped. Meanwhile, translators talk about some of the more difficult aspects of the job.

Word order is a particular problem in fish meetings, which Miles said she dreads. In a long sentence about a particular variety of fish, and in a language where the noun – the name of the fish – comes towards the end, the interpreter is left guessing about the subject of the sentence until it's completed.

http://gizmodo.com/inside-the-weird-brains-of-real-time-translators-1660521550
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I've heard of most of these words but not all, and I had no idea in some cases that they were considered native to one side of the pond or the other (e.g. "jaywalk" is American, "dodgy" is British).
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/the-fourth-untranslatables-month-summary.html
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Kelli Dunham writes brilliantly about Heather McAllister, Brittany Maynard, and assisted suicide
http://www.xojane.com/issues/assisted-suicide-heather-macallister-brittany-maynard
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Here is a comic that seems to do a pretty good job of explaining asexual orientation.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/10/5-myths-and-misconceptions-about-asexuality/
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Jonah Soolman is a nutritional counseling practitioner who works in the Health at Every Size paradigm. He attended the Cardiometabolic Health Conference, at which various procedures and products aimed at "weight loss" were much discussed. He writes: "Following this paragraph is my list of key moments from the conference. By default, I was going to group them by disease state, but given the circumstances perhaps it is more appropriate to categorize them by the emotional state they created." The headers for the article are "Interesting," "Startling," "Disappointing," "Frustrating," "Horrifying," "Infuriating," and "Made Me Want To Throw Something."
http://www.soolmannutrition.com/2014/10/cmhc/
~

Paintings of migraines by artists who experience them.
http://dangerousminds.net/comments/migraine_headaches_depicted_by_artists

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Hot link spam part 1

Wed, 26 Nov 2014 05:22:14 GMT

I've been vaguely trying to learn the ukulele, and I discovered this guy Alistair Wood, a musician and writer who maintains a web site called Ukulele Hunt. Here he performs his beautiful adaptation of Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song" for the ukulele. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyis-5m5brM
~

DapperQ calls itself "GQ for the 'unconventionally masculine.'" This post discusses masculine fashion for people whose bodies don't conform to the tall, thin stereotype of androgyny (which just so happens to match the tall, thin stereotype of every kind of fashion).
http://www.dapperq.com/2014/11/ask-dapperq-curvy-androgyny/
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Proof that political sensibilities and entertainment can mix with hilarious results: Unused audio commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for The Fellowship of the Ring DVD. Excerpt:

Zinn: You view the conflict as being primarily about pipe-weed, do you not?
Chomsky: Well, what we see here, in Hobbiton, farmers tilling crops. The thing to remember is that the crop they are tilling is, in fact, pipe-weed, an addictive drug transported and sold throughout Middle Earth for great profit.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unused-audio-commentary-by-howard-zinn-and-noam-chomsky-recorded-summer-2002-for-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-platinum-series-extended-edition-dvd-part-one
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By the Racialicious Team: Voices: The Michael Brown protests you didn't see (because the media were too busy showing violent protests instead).
http://www.racialicious.com/2014/11/25/voices-the-michael-brown-protests-you-didnt-see/
~

By Janee Woods: 12 things white people can do now because Ferguson
http://qz.com/250701/12-things-white-people-can-do-now-because-ferguson/
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A fat guy who is an employee of a Sam's Club in Mexico dances with great enthusiasm in front of a display of stereo equipment (the song is "El Serrucho" by Mr Black).
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=550861918348080
~

Yudkowsky does a great job of explaining a way to approach the hateful voices that people sometimes have in their heads. (I call them my brain trolls.)

"when you have a thought, you write it down
like, say
'You are different from the others. You will never know their innocence… and that is why you should hate your own existence. Die. Die. Die.'
then you figure out whether, if your life were a fantasy novel, these words would be spoken by figures wearing black robes, and speaking in a dry, whispering voice, and they are actually withered beings who touched the Stone of Evil
and if so then you don’t listen"

http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/post/103192100330/cognitive-trope-therapy

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clearing out the old linkspam

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 07:44:24 GMT

Why I roll my eyes when individuals are exhorted to help California's drought by taking shorter showers.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater
~
( Read more... )

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I'm too busy reading social media to keep up with my linkspam

Sat, 04 Oct 2014 20:49:42 GMT

The ridiculous and erroneous lengths that athletic organizations will go to, to try to ascertain whether the people participating in athletic events for women count as women.

16% of his male athletes had lower than expected testosterone, whereas 13% of his female athletes had high levels of testosterone "with complete overlap between the sexes".

In other words, the gap that exists for testosterone between men and women in the general population does not exist among elite athletes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/athletics/29446276
( Read more... )

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repopulating Dreamwidth linkspam

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:13:10 GMT

State of the firecat: Happy. I went out and stood in the first rain of the season last night!

~~~
Comments left for others:

Things you don't want your doctor to say while peering into your body cavities: "Oh, wow."

~~~( Read more... )

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equinox linkspam

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 04:52:30 GMT

If you have 33 minutes or some subset thereof, Stef-Bob sez sit back with your favorite mind altering substance, or not, and check out this animated video score of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." Definitely right up there with the best laser light shows I've seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IXMpUhuBMs

~~~
( Read more... )

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linkspam on controlled substances (i.e., sudafed)

Sat, 06 Sep 2014 23:46:45 GMT

Bacteria are building major metropolitan areas in my sinuses, so this linkspam is fluffier than usual.

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Epigenetics is a new way to blame mothers! But the article goes further than that to examine how people's values and sense of "how things ought to be" influence how they use the concept of causality.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/08/25/343121679/using-science-to-blame-mothers-check-your-values

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Captain Awkward sums up in one post 90% of what I've learned about social interaction in 52 years.

http://captainawkward.com/2014/09/01/618-my-ex-is-pushing-me-out-of-our-friend-group/

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Ganked from jae. What would happen if a rock musician's guitar were suddenly replaced with a giant slug?

http://slugsolos.tumblr.com/

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Erik Kwakkel, a medieval book historian, posted about some medieval books that were bound in complicated ways.

In a way that's hard to explain, these make me think about the Burgess Shale, a bunch of fossils from a period when animal body plans were even more diverse than they are now. I guess it's something like "When [life | bookbinding] was young, we still had the resources to experiment with outlandish designs." Click the second link to get an animated gif of a binding that included six different books.

http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/post/58806441078/siamese-twins-the-bookbindings-above-are-as-odd

http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/dos-a-dos.gif

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Animals will eat almost anything, and veterinary X-ray technicians will photograph it and send it in to a contest sponsored by Veterinary Practice News.

content warning: animal suffering discussed.

spoiler: all animals recovered.

Favorite quote: "This patient recovered fine, but the $1.29 did not go toward her bill."

http://veterinarypracticenews.com/2014-X-Ray-Contest-Winners/

~~~

A cheetah gives birth to four cubs (article and edited highlights video of the birth). One of my responses was "aww, kawaii" and another was "this whole 'live-bearing of young' idea could use some tweaking."

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/08/05/birth-of-rare-king-cheetah-cubs-captured-on-video/

~~~

It's about time that heavy metal got mashed up with J-Pop.

The article goes on about how "traditional" metal has these rigid genres. When did that happen? It was all pretty fluid back in the 70s.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2014/09/04/345778225/deal-with-it-headbangers-babymetal-is-here

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linkspam got rather long this week, so have a cut-tag

Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:15:24 GMT

I like this post about self-care, ableism, and activism for two reasons. One, this person has the same experience with anger that I do.

Some people can sustain rage. I'm not one of them. Anger lights me up like a burning oil slick, and the smoke fills my lungs and clouds my eyes. Anger consumes me from within, and unfortunately comes with pronounced physical deterioration as well as emotional. It could, with some stringent control, be channeled into some sort of constructive output, but most of the time I do not have that control, and it's probable that I never will. It simply isn't the relationship that anger and I have.
...
Ironically and disappointingly, this means drastically turning down the volume on what news of bigotry or theories on social justice to which I am exposed....I need to be able to function as a person before wading in to battle. We all do.

Two, this:

the industry (for lack of better word) of activism is based upon the principles of labour laid out by a patriarchal and imperial system, the same system we are trying to dismantle. The value and worth of the work you do is measured against external criteria determined by what is best for the economy; not the individual.

http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/self-care-in-social-justice-ableism-in.html

( Read more... )

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More lists of introvert traits that aren't necessarily

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 21:59:25 GMT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/introverts-signs-am-i-introverted_n_3721431.html
"23 signs you're secretly an introvert" by Carolyn Gregoire

Starts out well:

Think you can spot an introvert in a crowd? Think again. Although the stereotypical introvert may be the one at the party who's hanging out alone by the food table fiddling with an iPhone, the "social butterfly" can just as easily have an introverted personality.

Then ignores all that in favor of a list of traits that introverts supposedly have.

Bold = I have it
~~Strikethrough~~ = I don't have it

~~You find small talk incredibly cumbersome.~~ Nope. I like small talk. I just have to be in the mood for socializing. Which happens less often than it does for most extroverts, but not never. "We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people." I don't think small talk creates a barrier between people. It lets people who don't know each other very well talk about a few things that they might have in common, and gives them the opportunity to discover more things in common.
( Read more... )

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Randall Munroe claims that Livejournal is larger than Tumblr

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 19:47:01 GMT

Updated Map of Online Communities

http://xkcd.com/802_large/

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This looks useful

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 03:41:49 GMT

http://www.donotlink.com

With donotlink.com, you can link to sites without promoting them in search engines.

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Definitive comment sections

Sun, 04 Aug 2013 04:36:38 GMT

Apparently there's a whole series of these.

The comment section for ever article about bikini waxing ever

Favorite:
31. I’m Paleo, so I believe that accidentally eating pubic hair is natural, and certainly better than ingesting grains and legumes.

(via andrewducker)

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New theory about social anxiety/spectrum behavior

Wed, 31 Jul 2013 22:13:40 GMT

(Well actually it's from 2006 so I don't know how new it is.)

http://www.nexuspub.com/articles_2006/interview_porges_06_ma.php
"How your nervous system sabotages your ability to relate: An interview with Stephen Porges about his polyvagal theory" by Ravi Dykema

The bad: The title of this article sucks, and some of the language is annoying and patronizing, and there's some sexism and heterocentrism, and there's a "Dos and don'ts" graphic that completely misses the point.

The good: Stephen Porges has come up with a theory that explains what a lot of people who have anxiety issues and difficulty with in-person socializing (because of being non-neurotypical or having PTSD or other reasons) already know: it works better if we feel safe, and a lot of us tend feel safer in quiet environments and in environments where we are not constantly pressured to engage in eye contact.

A lot of his conclusions aren't going to be news to people who have these issues, but I figure it could be a good thing that someone is trying to sort out some neurochemical reasons for this stuff, especially because Porges seems to be saying that the same mechanisms operate in people who have "diagnosable disorder" levels of difficulty and people who are anxious in some social situations but it doesn't get to the level of a disorder.

Excerpts:( Read more... )

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fat acceptance is beautiful

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 22:49:40 GMT

http://ineedfatacceptance.tumblr.com/

This is a Tumblr with photos of people of various sizes (mostly fat) holding signs that say "I need fat acceptance because..." along with their reason.

The project took place at NOLOSE this past weekend.

It's making me cry.

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Awesome

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 01:19:24 GMT

Cats resembling pin-up girls (some images NSFW)

http://catsthatlooklikepinupgirls.tumblr.com/

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misunderstanding chemistry

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 02:36:21 GMT

In the Pipeline is a blog written by an organic chemist who works in pharmaceutical development. He writes with intelligent laypeople in mind.

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/21/eight_toxic_foods_a_little_chemical_education.php refutes some of the misinformation in a fearmongering Buzzfeed article called "8 foods we eat in the U.S. that are banned in other countries." (The article is actually about chemical additives, some of which are not actually banned in other countries.)

I have felt especially fed up by pseudoscience lately (possibly having something to do with the latest shenanigans of the AMA *cough*). So this post scratched a particularly irritating itch of mine. A couple of excerpts:

If we're going to play the "made from the same atoms" game, well, strychnine and heroin are derived from the same harmful chemicals as the essential amino acids and B vitamins. Those harmful chemicals, in case you're wondering, are carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen.
...
If you're having chicken and rice and you want to worry about arsenic, worry about the rice.

Read the comments if you like to see people named "Anonymous" questioning whether the blogger is a real scientist.

If you like that, I also recommend the posts with the tag "Things I Won't Work With." Some of them are laugh-out-loud hilarious. http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/things_i_wont_work_with/

None of this is intended to be an opinion about what anyone does or does not eat.

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Our symbiotes

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:47:12 GMT

The symbiosis between humans and our bacteria fascinates me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/say-hello-to-the-100-trillion-bacteria-that-make-up-your-microbiome.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

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Ursula K. Le Guin writes about old age

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 03:53:47 GMT

And she writes about it brilliantly, as she writes about so many things.

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/06/10/the-diminished-thing/

Excerpt (but this isn't the best part. Go read the whole thing. And definitely read the poem she uses as a frame):

Americans believe strongly in positive thinking. Positive thinking is great. It works best when based on a realistic assessment and acceptance of the actual situation. Positive thinking founded on denial may not be so great. (Like, look at Lance Armstrong.)

Everybody who gets old has to assess their ever-changing but seldom improving situation and make of it what they can. I think most old people accept the fact that they’re old — I’ve never heard anybody over eighty say “I’m not old.” And they make the best of it. As the saying goes: Consider the alternative!

A lot of younger people, seeing the reality of old age as entirely negative, see acceptance of age as negative. Wanting to deal with old people in a positive spirit, they’re led to deny old people their reality.

(via Body Impolitic)

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Best response yet to the SFWA thing

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 02:41:50 GMT

http://nkjemisin.com/2013/06/continuum-goh-speech/

(A summary of the issue and a list of more opinions is here: http://www.jimchines.com/2013/06/roundup-of-some-anonymous-protesters-sfwa-bulletin-links/)

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In which firecat is angry about injustice

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:14:36 GMT

Kiera Wilmot is a 16 year old black girl who attends high school in Florida. While at school (not during school hours) she engaged in an extracurricular chemistry experiment that produces a small explosion and some smoke. No one was injured and no property was damaged. She was expelled from school and will now have to attend an expulsion program. She was also arrested and charged with two felonies ("discharging a weapon on school grounds").

Rocket Boys: A Memoir is a book about some white teenage boys in a coalmining town in the late 1950s. They build and test rockets. Their first attempts cause property damage, but many of the adults they know help them. They win a science fair. The author and protagonist of Rocket Boys became a NASA engineer. The book, according to Wikipedia, "is studied in many American and international school systems."

Wikipedia claims: "According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 39.4% of the total prison and jail population in 2009. According to the 2010 census of the US Census Bureau blacks (including Hispanic blacks) comprised 13.6% of the US population."

http://www.change.org/petitions/polk-county-school-district-don-t-expel-kiera-wilmot

https://www.change.org/petitions/polk-county-state-s-attorney-drop-felony-charges-against-16-year-old-kiera-wilmot

http://raniakhalek.com/2013/05/02/prosecutor-behind-kiera-wilmot-arrest-filed-no-charges-for-white-teen-who-killed-little-brother/

http://www.policymic.com/articles/39061/kiera-wilmot-arrest-racial-inequality-arises-from-a-science-project-gone-wrong

"Would a White Girl Be Prosecuted for a Botched Science Experiment?">

http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/the-case-around-fla-teen-kiera-wilmot-is-part-of-a-bigger-more-disturbing-pattern/

"Kiera Wilmot's School Expulsion Is Racist"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/education/black-students-face-more-harsh-discipline-data-shows.html (This one is not specifically about Kiera Wilmot, it's from 2012.)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/urban-scientist/2013/05/01/florida-teen-charged-with-felony-for-trying-science/ "I can’t name a single scientist or engineer, who hadn’t blown up, ripped apart, disassembled something at home or otherwise cause a big ruckus at school all in the name of curiosity, myself included." --DNLee, a biologist and animal behaviorist (one of a few black women who didn't manage to get the science harrassed out of them).

http://www.policymic.com/articles/39381/kiera-wilmot-how-her-arrest-and-expulsion-exposes-americas-racial-discipline-gap

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Paradigms of practicing medicine

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:12:08 GMT

This essay basically says (my own words) "In our enthusiasm for evidence-based medicine (which uses statistics and large population samples to evaluate treatments and create clinical guidelines), let's make sure not to throw out things doctors learn through many years of practice seeing one patient at a time." It says it really, really well.

"Why do we always end up here? Evidence-based medicine’s conceptual cul-de-sacs and some off-road alternative routes" by Trisha Greenhalgh, M.D. (Journal of Primary Health Care 2012; 4(2))

Excerpts:

Researchers in dominant paradigms tend to be very keen on procedure. They set up committees to define and police the rules of their paradigm, awarding grants and accolades to those who follow those rules. This entirely circular exercise works very well just after the establishment of a new paradigm, since building systematically on what has gone before is an efficient and effective route to scientific progress. But once new discoveries have stretched the paradigm to its limits, these same rules and procedures become counterproductive and constraining. That’s what I mean by conceptual cul-de-sacs.
...
the skilled practice of medicine is not merely about knowing the rules, but about deciding which rule is most relevant. This remains under-acknowledged and undertheorised in the dominant EBM paradigm. Illness may be a narrative, but just as in law, just as in literature, there is no text that is self-interpreting.
...
I think something sinister is happening, mainly because of the striking circumstantial resonance between the reductionism of EBM and the reductionism of contemporary policymaking.
...
EBM isn’t inherently wrong, but it plays to a vision of science that is characterised by predictive certainty—a vision that is taught to schoolchildren and perpetuated in the media, a vision of simple logic with readily deduced details and rule-governed consequences. It is this logic, coupled with the values of consumerism, which appear to have prompted the coalition government to develop a one-dimensional metric of human happiness which will light up like a thermometer bulb when policy tickles the public G-spot.

These books that she mentions sound very interesting:
How Doctors Think by Kathryn Montgomery (not the book of the same name by Jerome Groopman)
Complex Knowledge by Professor Hari Tsoukas
Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions by Martha Nussbaum
The Logic of Care by Annemarie Mol

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