Sick and tired: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say “Scientists researching treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome say they face online abuse and harassment. Some are leaving the field. It’s a ‘new normal,’ they say, and patients may lose out.”
(tags: research culture psychology internet trolling medicine) Originally posted at Name ( Read more... )

The Fireplace Delusion : Sam Harris "I recently stumbled upon an example of secular intransigence that may give readers a sense of how religious people feel when their beliefs are criticized. It’s not a perfect analogy, as you will see, but the rigorous research I’ve conducted at dinner parties suggests that it is worth thinking about. We can call ( Read more... )

Oh my. The feminist bloggers have taken on the Internet Hate Machine known as Anonymous. Encyclopedia Dramatica (very NSFW and extremely offensive, don't blame me if you get fired) has the scoop on the post which might have been from Biting Beaver that started it all, as well as the on-going aftermathSome of the commenters on the feminist blogs get ( Read more... )

I guess most people on LiveJournal saw their proposal to turn LJ into MySpace (lj_dirtycache is particularly good fun for anyone who's ever looked at bands' sites on MySpace). What's funny about LJ's effort is that LJ clearly understand what is going to provoke their users to apoplectic rage until they realise they've been had. By comparison, Facebook was a bit ( Read more... )

Bruce Schneier rightly points out that defending against what happened last time isn't a good way to make yourself secure against an enemy that can easily switch tactics ( Read more... )

Mindful of the recent LJ drama about breastfeeding icons, I propose we take LiveJournal's codebase (which is open source) and start a site where it is compulsory to display breasts in your default icon. That'll show the Patriarchy! Start using those tools to back up your livejournal now, because titsorleave.com will be live soon ( Read more... )

Ruth Gledhill writes for The Times about Making Sense of Generation Y, a report issued by the Church of England, based on a survey of 120 people aged between 15 and 25. (If you're a little older, like me, you're on the Gen X-Gen Y cusp, in the MTV Generation, despite which I don't think I've ever watched more than a minute or so of MTV ( Read more... )

YHBT. YHL. HTH. HAND.

The cartoons were part of a debate on artistic self-censorship in the face of fears of violence from Muslims. They were designed to provoke a reaction. Imagining it from a Muslim point of view, we might say they were trolling Muslims. A troll wants you to respond. Some Muslims have done so in spades, proving exactly the point ( Read more... )