Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 01-02-2016

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 01-02-2016

Feb 01, 2016 12:00

computers, cultural_appropriation, pregnancy, monkey, genetics, glasgow, society, women, economics, humans, copyright, thomasthetankengine, children, ocean, menstruation, immune_system, automation, ai, livejournal, starwars, data, selfies, design, jobs, marijuana, money, maps, socialism, photos, violence, viaswampers, oil, penis, allergies, microsoft, skills, music, islam, scotland, fungus, feminism, troll, time, lotr, london, france, russia, babies, viamorag, jews, neurons, links, history, men, vision, technology, 1984, sexism, uk, canada, testosterone, funny, cthulhu, geekery, people, internet, gender, pictures, psychology, food, suicide

Comments 42

gonzo21 February 1 2016, 12:18:27 UTC

I have never understood why guys send unsolicited dickpics. I mean I get it if you're flirting with a girl and she specifically asks, that's cool. But the sending of unsolicited dickpics to strangers is just bizarre. Do they truly think their penises are so magnificent that complete strangers will be driven helpless with desire and wish to hook up immediately?

Because I'm pretty certain that's never happened in the history of ever.

And christ, I'd run a fucking mile if i saw that cthulhu mushroom in my garden.

gonzo21 February 1 2016, 12:26:00 UTC

(I should note the link to the website where men explain why they do it isn't working for me. Which is why I'm just expressing bafflement instead.)

andrewducker February 1 2016, 12:52:40 UTC

Yeah, they seem to have taken it down, which is a real shame, as it was a really good article!

But basically there was a mixture of people who were:
1) Trying to get a reaction, any reaction. They were not having any luck dating, and were expressing frustration.
2) Dicks, trying to annoy people because they just liked annoying people.
3) Men whose thought process was "I'd like to see porn. Presumably women would also like this. I'll send some out and hopefully get some in return."

erindubitably February 1 2016, 13:07:25 UTC

Weird, I can still access/read it.

Thread 24

CALIFORNIA JUDGE REACHES DECISION IN PETA’S MONKEY SELF cartesiandaemon February 1 2016, 14:54:40 UTC

Yeah, that's about what I expected, but I'm glad to see it from someone fairly knowledgeable. The idea that the photographer had copyright also made sense to me.

I also think, I don't want to rule out that an animal might morally deserve copyright, if the balance of contribution was skewed in their favour over any human's, even if the law hasn't caught up with it yet, but I didn't think this case reached that threshold. Unsurprisingly, PETA focussed on getting publicity for themselves and the idea, than whether this particular case had merit.

Death of a Troll cartesiandaemon February 1 2016, 14:58:30 UTC

Woah. Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel.

One thing is that obnoxious behaviour is a mix of what someone *wants* to do, and what they have built the habits of: people can live quite different lives depending who they're interacting with.

Another is, it's possible to care about someone and also hate them: he was obviously non-toleratably obnoxious, but also, just by ongoing interaction with him, people cared about him.

And that, maybe more safety valves for ways for people to "start over" might be helpful to people who are into their current life too deep (whether financially, or socially, or due to medical depression), as a less-extreme alternative to considering suicide. Although I don't know how you'd do that.

gonzo21 February 1 2016, 16:30:33 UTC

Seemed from the article a bit like the text book definition of somebody with Borderline Personality Disorder. Very severe. Very untreated.

manintheboat February 1 2016, 16:32:18 UTC

Thanks for these!

I've never been in a dispensary but I'll visit one next weekend (I have endometriosis).

andrewducker February 1 2016, 21:25:11 UTC

My sympathy, that's a ridiculously sucky thing to have. Are you getting effective treatment for it?

(Is there effective treatment for it?)

manintheboat February 2 2016, 01:49:52 UTC

I had surgery and am 90% better! The pill makes it so I only have 4 periods a year, but those are still more than ideal. And another weapon in my arsenal is always welcome.

danieldwilliam February 1 2016, 17:16:22 UTC

I think the difficulty with the question of the impact of automation on jobs and incomes is that there are economic forces pushing the outcomes in different directions. Some automation destroys jobs by eliminating all the tasks in the job or they increase pressures lowering wages by changing jobs from a mixture of skilled and unskilled tasks to just unskilled tasks. Going the other way the automation might remove the unskilled part of a job or it might lower costs in an industry sufficiently that the industry can expand which creates jobs. Or it might allow things to be done that previously could not be done. And consumers benefit from cheaper goods or new services which changes their income - consumtion curves and allows them to consume more ( ... )

andrewducker February 1 2016, 21:26:49 UTC

Yeah, I think it's less clear than the "The robots will steal our jobs!" people make out. There will definitely be disruption, but I'm not convinced it's going to be as severe as they think, this week.

We're definitely going to continue to live in interesting, disruptive, times indefinitely though.

cartesiandaemon February 2 2016, 12:43:41 UTC

I tend to look at the history. Agriculture. Agricultural revolution. Industrial revolution. IT revolution. Every time, we never, ever, reach a point where labour is superfluous in the long term. Most of the jobs that use to absorb almost all of the population, now take a small fraction. But there's stuff for everyone else to do! It's not like we couldn't, as a society, benefit from 10x as many nurses, or 10x as many teachers. Unless we reach a point of true AI, which seems unlikely, I don't forsee need going away.

OTOH, in the short term, there often is lots of disruption. If you suddenly automate everything and need a literate population, the *next* generation may have jobs, but the *current* generation may be screwed, if there's no mechanism for reinvesting the new industry's profits in supporting people who need it. I don't think we're there, I think the shortage of jobs is "a recession" not "obsolescence" for lots of reasons. But it's possible we are reaching that point, I don't know.

danieldwilliam February 2 2016, 15:10:48 UTC

Aye. When I was a student of such things I was interested in Kondratieff Waves, like the Agricultural and Industrials Revolutions and there never seemed to be a point where we ran out of things for people to do.

But I think you're point about one generation not being able to transition from old, obsolete jobs to new jobs en masse is a good one. Whilst we may not run out of jobs we might well run short of jobs that former truck drivers or accounts ledger clerks can easily transition into.

The speed of change, I think, will likely be the key factor. Mass automation over 10 years would be very hard to adjust to. Spread out over 35 years much more benign on an individual level.

Thread 6