Interesting Links for 15-01-2014

[andrewducker]

• Behold, the first photos taken from the moon in over 40 years!
  (tags: moon china photos )
• Disney's Frozen Is Headed for Broadway
  (tags: musicals disney )
• Sales of electric cars near double in 2013. (To 1% of all UK cars, but it's a start...)
  (tags: cars electricity )
• Man Poses As Woman On Online Dating Site; Barely Lasts Two Hours
  (tags: dating

Comments

[gonzo21]

Wow, Edinburgh residents will just love that. :)

[andrewducker]

Certainly will! People shouldn't be doing more than 20mph in residential areas!

[naath]

Cambridge is heading that way; there has been a lot of noise :( but I think we'll get it eventually, on most roads anyway.

[gonzo21]

I've always thought of any city, Edinburgh seems to be the only one even vaguely interested in pursuing a rational transport strategy.

It's just a shame they dropped the ball so incredibly badly on the tram thing, I think they've lost all credibility forever because of that.

[alitheapipkin]

That stuff about procrastinating is great. I've gone from being a miserable procrastinator to a happily productive worker by changing to working in a team where everything is planned meticulously and somewhat micro-managed. It might be some people's worst nightmare but it works wonderfully for me, and now I'm committed to the process rather than the goal (another tip I read somewhere), I can happily micro-manage myself with minimal input from my line manager. I still spend a bit of the day 'pratting around on the internet' (as this comment shows) but now I do it as a break to help me refresh for more productivity later in the day, rather than as an avoidance tactic to put off what i should be doing.

It has seriously changed my life. My stress levels are so much lower and my current boss thinks I'm great and can always reply on me to get stuff done in time without a mass panic at the last minute. And I don't work late into the evenings or at weekends anymore.

[rysmiel]

Feh. I've been gender-obscuring online for a decade or so, and I am running at roughly 60/40 in whether people who don't know me's assumptions about my gender are accurate or not, because it matters to me that outside certain specific and very limited contexts (medical professionals and those of my partners who have a gender preference) it shouldn't matter.

[franklanguage]

Look at my name: am I male or female?

I originally called myself "Frank Language" on another site because I knew from experience women online were outnumbered by men, and I might as well keep 'em guessing as long as I can.

Some people on LJ have guessed I was a wimpy guy, so I guess it works. (I'm a girl, for those who didn't know.)

[momentsmusicaux]

I've read another report of that guy with the online dating thing, and both (though this one in particular) were needlessly and stupidly harsh towards him.

It's not a gender thing that 'he can't simply ask women what their online experience is' (as the other article put it). It's a human thing.

Many years ago at uni, I and a bunch of others were relentlessly banging on to the student union and the uni people about better adaptations for wheelchair users. We got some sympathetic noises, and assurances that everything was ok. It wasn't until we did a silly stunt of forcing the union officers and uni committee members to go round for a whole day in a wheelchair that they actually understood that problems we were talking about: there's a lift but it's always full, the toilet has a stack of bar supplies in it, the door at the top of the ramp means you roll back down, another door smacks you in the face, and so on.

Humans are utterly lousy at really understanding what experiences are like for other people, even when they are repeatedly

[momentsmusicaux]

Of course, I am failing to understand how the authors of those articles are failing to understand this principle, in calling them stupid.

[andrewducker]

:->

It's true though - if your culture is so different to other people's culture then you find it very hard to see the world through their filter.

[erindubitably]

Humans are utterly lousy at really understanding what experiences are like for other people, even when they are repeatedly told.I kind of have to take exception at this - I think it's a lot easier for some groups to understand or at least sympathise with other groups' experiences, because they've experienced similar things themselves. I haven't experienced racism, but I damn well believe when other people describe situations in which they have, because I've faced discrimination of other flavours before and I know what people are capable of. I don't need to dress up in blackface and experience it myself to agree that it's a problem and needs to be dealt with

[erindubitably]

This Heroic Dude Made A Female Dating Profile. What He Learned Will Blow Your Mind, Unless You're Female.
- Up Worth It (@UpWorthIt) January 15, 2014