Interesting Links for 24-12-2016

[andrewducker]

Tory and Labour MPs gang up in bid to strip London Assembly of PR voting system (tags: labour Conservatives politics voting proportional_representation london OhForFucksSake ) Men: this study suggests it’s a really bad idea to cry in front of your colleagues - Research Digest (tags: patriarchy emotion men work OhForFucksSake ) Rogue One Missing

Comments

[wildeabandon]

Whilst I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that James Barry was a woman, spending your entire life pretending to be to wrong gender seems like an extraordinarily drastic thing to do voluntarily, so I find it far more likely that he was just a man who did the best he could without access to modern hormone treatments and surgeries.

[brixtonbrood]

Life as a middle class woman was really really restrictive in nineteenth century England. Forcing yourself to live that way every day of your life and repress every urge for self-expression and adventure is also extraordinarily drastic. It drove many women insane, or had them locked up.

[bunn]

Yes. And once started on the career of living as a man for entirely rational and comprehensible reasons, there would be every incentive to stick with it, and it would get harder and harder to stop.

[steepholm]

All the same, the point stands that James Barry may well have been a trans man. It's difficult to say whether living in the wrong gender for fifty years is more or less difficult than living as a middle-class Victorian woman. I've done the former, at any rate, and can testify that you'd need an overwhelmingly strong reason to do it voluntarily. Then, again, there's never any lack of ways to erase trans people from history - to read them as gay cis men, adventurous cis women, etc. No one knows the truth about Barry, but this biography fails even to consider the possibility that he was anything other than a cis woman.

Carrie Fisher News

[lsanderson]

I'm shocked! She looked so good at the end o' Rogue One!

RE: Carrie Fisher News

[ice_hesitant]

I'm pretty sure that was CGI.

RE: Carrie Fisher News

[lsanderson]

Oh come on! Next you're going to claim Peter Cushing ain't back from the dead!

[wildeabandon]

Whilst I wouldn't completely rule out the possibility that James Barry was a woman, spending your entire life pretending to be to wrong gender seems like an extraordinarily drastic thing to do voluntarily, so I find it far more likely that he was just a man who did the best he could without access to modern hormone treatments and surgeries.

[heron61]

Taking apart the ridiculous anti-AI essay that's been making the rounds

I agree that some of the arguments against AI panic are dodgy, but that makes sense given that the author (like myself) find the entire AI panic belief-set to be ludicrously wrong headed. I've read both the article and the rebuttal, and to me there are two key points to the argument:

1) I live in California, which has the highest poverty rate in the United States, even though it's home to Silicon Valley. I see my rich industry doing nothing to improve the lives of everyday people and indigent people around us.

But if you’re committed to the idea of superintelligence, AI research is the most important thing you could do on the planet right now. It’s more important than politics, malaria, starving children, war, global warming, anything you can think of.This is (from my PoV) crucial and doesn't even mention that fact that climate change could end or seriously impact industrial civilization &/or result in hideous resource wars. We know this is a very real and

Only three passengers on BA flight enjoy champagne

[drdoug]

Given their recent industrial relations woes this could be subheaded "BA Press Office pull a blinder and earn their salary's worth and more with a single story".