Interesting Links for 15-05-2013

[andrewducker]

• Is belief in a Just World a defence mechanism for the powerless?
  (tags: karma justice psychology )
• How much did it cost to film the performance of Space Oddity on the ISS?
  (tags: music spaceflight space video )
• Increasing bacteria in the gut lowers weight and reduces diabetes risk.
  (tags: weight diabetes bacteria )
• Inside the $12 phone.
  (tags:

Comments

[bart_calendar]

The correction on that Gawker story is awesome.

[philmophlegm]

The whole article is brilliant. If anyone can read the thing without laughing, they're stronger than I am.

My personal favourite bit was the term used in one of the quotes to refer to the male equivalent of a mermaid:

"We refer to ourselves as Raychel's Library. We all share an otherspace called The Library! My front is a cisgendered female who shares a queerplatonic bond with her soul partner, Starrkat, who is also a multiples system. My system currently includes 3 members: Raychel (my lovely front!), Tonban (an older, wise, cisgendered male merkin… We turn to him for advice all the time), Asbiorn Snorrason (a genderfluid male-bodied Norse peasant, who is sometimes possessed by Loki. Ze's typically quite mild-mannered, but occasionally the impish Trickster god comes out to play!)."

"older, wise, cisgendered male merkin" is one hell of an image.

[danieldwilliam]

I think the comment on the article

“This must be how Republicans feel most of the time.”

Sums it up for me.

[nancylebov]

Libertarians don't exactly believe in a just world-- they don't believe people deserve to be mistreated by governments.

A lot of non-libertarians believe that anyone who's arrested must be guilty, and anyone who's guilty deserves whatever is done to them.

[philmophlegm]

Indeed.

[danieldwilliam]

I’m genuinely not sure what I’m meant to think about that otherkin article.

I’m left wondering if the whole thing is even real.

[danieldwilliam]

Some, all or none of the above I guess.

I'm going to have to have a couple of goes at getting my head round otherkin.

[andrewducker]

I mostly think of them as people who take their metaphors too seriously.

Many of us _feel like_ something other when growing up. X-Men is a metaphor for that, as is bits of Buffy, The Matrix, and oodles of other things that play on our sense of alienation.

To some people, for whatever reason, if they feel something then it must be true. So if their main point of empathy is through a particular avatar, then they feel that in some ways they _are_ that avatar.

[xenophanean]

I thought putting "demisexuals" in with the otherkin was a little harsh.

[andrewducker]

Yup. Demisexual seems to me to be a perfectly valid point along an axis from "Attracted to anyone who looks attractive, no matter their personality" to "Only interested in people who have a personality I mesh with absolutely". Most people are somewhere in-between, but it seems like a perfectly reasonably axis to measure behaviour on.