Interesting Links for 13-06-2014

[andrewducker]

• When messaging potential dating partners, don't "include all". It will go badly.
  (tags: relationships internet epicfail )
• Inside the adult ADHD brain
  (tags: adhd brains neuroscience mri )
• The British electoral system could see a government of the third and fourth largest parties.
  (tags: politics uk voting democracy )
• Gecko-inspired tech lets

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

How I would laugh if UKIP got the most votes and the least seats.

[andrewducker]

I won't.

Because a system that allows that basically says "You cannot win democratically. The system will ignore you. If you want to be heard then you'll have to resort to other methods."

And those other methods are _far_ worse than UKIP getting 27% of MPs.

[andrewducker]

As an aside there, the point of democracy, to me, is to prevent violent revolution. It's to allow power to reflect the (general, ish) will of the people without those people having to gather arms and chuck out the people they don't like.

A democratic system which errs too far from the (general, ish) will of the people risks reverting back to violent change. Which is why I'm against even the most benevolent of dictators - it's a non-stable system which is constantly at risk of descending into the worst of mankind.

[danieldwilliam]

Aye - that's democracy's first and probably most important outcome.

[andrewducker]

We got a headstart on discussing the democratic failure piece yesterday, after it was posted on Twitter.

[momentsmusicaux]

The thing about female sci-fi fans is just so horribly sad.

And I wonder how long it pervaded. When I found that a female schoolfriend of mine was watching the new Doctor Who, I remarked with surprise that she'd never given the slightest indication of being into it when we were at school, and my and another (male) friend were obsessed with it. Was that because she didn't feel she could reveal that interest, or just because Doctor Who in the 80s had an air of tragic uncool about it?

[quirkytizzy]

I am eternally grateful that Nerd has become Cool. Even 20 years ago, when I was entering High School, it wasn't SO bad. I can't imagine having to hide something you were so in love with, or having to struggle with deeply embedded discouragement of being a woman who loves science fiction.

[inamac]

Being a student who read books (for pleasure) was odd enough in the 60s, whether male or female and regardless of the content.

I may have been lucky - we studied 1984 for A Level, and were expected to read elsewhere in the genre (at an all-girls school) and I'd been a fan playing at 'Daleks' in the playground when Dr Who started. It was never a problem for me being a female SF fan in London in the 1960s. Though I have heard horror stories from US fans fleeing the cops with stocks of K/S fanzines and making it across the state line just in time.

[quirkytizzy]

AHAHAHAHA about the douchebag who texted all those women at once. Nice try with the save of "I'm buying all of you a drink", but nooooo, not gonna work dude, lol.