Life

The more I read Medium, the more I like it. For a change, a site focusing on essays on diverse topics without hyperbolic “You Won’t Believe What Scientists Have Found Inside A Grapefruit!” titles, complete with “Stories You Might Like” sections at the bottom (IFLS, I’m looking at you. You’re great, but stop using third-party traffic referers, please). Medium’s presentation is clean, text-focused (no annoying sidebars with Things I May Like) and the typography is wonderful. ...

Given the amount of data that we post about ourselves online – on Facebook, on Twitter, Tumblr, blogs, etc, the dataset that effectively describes you as an individual continually grows. With some clever analytics and sufficiently large sample size, trends can be inferred with alarming reliability and predictions about individual behaviour can be made with a frankly scary degree of accuracy. Jennifer Golbeck describes how scientists, governments and companies make use of this data to profile individuals and build a comprehensive picture of you based on seemingly unconnected events, actions and trends. ...

A friend of mine created a “street harassment form” to print out and hand to people who catcall/yell at you/objectify you in the street. Presented without further comment. ![]

Because all girls are drama-prone harpies. Everyone knows this. sigh

Fuck yeah.

If I ever become a parent, I will do my damndest to do this. Other humans’ lives are not mine to control. I can provide advice, describe what worked for me in the past and offer a stable, safe space to return to when shit hits the fan. However, dictating what other people, especially any potential kids of mine, do to the extent of “you will have sex when I say it’s OK for you to have sex” is abhorrent. ...

Amanda Palmer has been making beautiful music. Having signed on to a record label with her band, they recorded an album and it sold around 20,000 copies. The record label called that a “failure” and walked away. Here’s the story of how it happened and what happened next. There’s an NSFW moment at around the ten-minute mark. 

Cross-posted from here: https://tinyurl.com/ya2fd8v and well worth a read. Gentlemen. Thank you for reading. Let me start out by assuring you that I understand you are a good sort of person. You are kind to children and animals. You respect the elderly. You donate to charity. You tell jokes without laughing at your own punchlines. You respect women. You like women. In fact, you would really like to have a mutually respectful and loving sexual relationship with a woman. ...

Of course, women nevergo to work with a smile on their face after incredible sex made awesome by Durex lubricants. Women stay home and are grateful to be fucked. If you’re working in the marketing industry, please take a moment to think about what you’re creating and the image you’re putting forward. Consider acknowledging female sexuality as being a Thing and admitting that women, too, love sex on their own terms. ...

Reposted from Joe Gordon-Levitt – a poignant and stirring read. Cover photo by Moyan Brenn – CC Why Society Still Needs Feminism Because to men, a key is a device to open something. For women, it’s a weapon we hold between our fingers when we’re walking alone at night. Because the biggest insult for a guy is to be called a “pussy,” a “little bitch” or a “girl.” From here on out, being called a “pussy” is an effing badge of honor. ...

Preamble: this is going to be relatively short and a lot of things here won’t get necessarily their fair share of exposure and the detail level is somewhat lacking in places. I hope to write more on specific topics covered here later. tl;dr: “This is a work in progress” Essentially, I have two questions: Why are women deemed attractive by the majority of society/the media/you name it when they are seen as limited or vulnerable in some way? ...

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time after I finished my accidental essay on polyamory thinking as soon after I completed that, I was walking along and more thoughts sprang to mind. Anyhow, today’s topic of choice is the use of language in effective communication in a relationship context. God, that was a mouthful. It’s simpler than it sounds though. For the purposes of disambiguation, I refer to “relationships” in all their multifarious flavours, varieties and forms, not solely polyamorous, monogamous or even romantic ones. ...

Ah yes. Now we’re talking.. A descriptive graphic of the proliferation of language designed to describe women who like sex vs men who do and the gender divide inherent therein. Try it yourself – see how many words for each of the four categories you can think up and see what the distribution looks like for you. ![]

Dumb Ways to Die is by far and away one of the best videos promoting safety I’ve seen. It was created for the Melbourne Metro. The original has since amassed 170 million hits on YouTube and has spawned a bunch of spinoff clips, including a version from Cinesaurus about the Curiosity Rover. Also, there’s a motherfucking Karaoke version available on YouTube and iTunes. It’s a ridiculously chipper song about dumb ways to die. ...

This is my first foray into writing about polyamorous Things. In this post, I’m attempting to collate all of the wisdom I’ve collected so far – none of this should be taken as gospel. Some of it might fit you like a glove. Other bits, not so much. Feedback in either case would be awesome.  What’s happening in your life? So you’re with your partner and feel that it’s time to take your relationship to a new level of openness and trust? ...

Vihart’s videos on Youtube are an endearing mix of maths, silliness, drawing and, in this case, snakes. I’m especially fond of how unabashedly excited she is about geometry, pi, snakes, numbers and mathematical quirkery. Anyway, SNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKESNAKE

I don’t really have a preamble to this… Just watch it. It’s badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkLM-IlwwPk