Life

A friend and fellow blogger, Villiljós, linked a disturbing post about how terrible an organisation PETA actually is. Read it here. The thing that shocked me, upon cursory examination of a fraction of their publicity is just how openly misogynistic and abusive to women it is! In all of the footage I’ve seen, women are routinely abused or are shown as looking like victims of abuse. Why is it specifically women that are portrayed as standing in for all the animals that are ‘abused’? ...

The European Union’s panel of talking heads that are responsible for Science, I guess, have knocked some rocks together, made fire and rightly deduced that there aren’t enough lady scientists in the place. Clearly, something needed to be done! Lady-scientists are important to humanity! They’ve got boobs that will improve the performance of all the boy-scientists in the Europe Joint Sciencing Facilities. Right? Anyway, the clever bods at the PR department released this gem. ...

Welcome to the life of more or less ever designer/front-ender/developer/creative ever. These guys truly are clients from hell. Via clientsfromhell.net

I came across this lovely drinking game on thoughtcatalog.com and feel I should share it! The Overthinking Persons’ Drinking Game When you experience a vague sense of inequity or deprivation but don’t have a template for whether your expectations are fair, drink. When you aren’t sure whether the lingering sensation that you aren’t liked enough is a rational response to unfair circumstances or is in fact symptomatic of your tendency to blame your environment for your own failure to self-actualize, drink. ...

I saw this video on failblog, of all places. A bit misplaced, I thought. Neil Gaiman gave a graduation speech at a university to a bunch of arts graduates. He talks about how important it is to make mistakes and learn from them, how important it is to face success, which nobody prepares you for and how to learn from that, too. Also of grave significance to me is his advice that whoever you are, chances are you’ll come up with something new and some will say it can’t be done because your idea is outside their carefully-crafted model of reality. ...

Last year, I went to Burning Man, a festival quite unlike anything else on earth. To call it an ‘Arts Festival’ would be doing it a disservice. I won’t go into the ins and outs of it because it’ll take me several hours to write something satisfactory. Instead, check this out. It’s done the rounds on the Internet and has gone spectacularly viral since its release and is still one of the best Burning Man videos I’ve seen. ...

This infographic makes a great argument in favour of using a blogging platform – ideally self-hosted – as a means of sharing content. Having a blog, I’m fully in control of my content – I own the copyright, I can modify, show, hide, publish and delete at will. The “danger” that prospective employers and so on can look you up on Facebook and other social media sites and may refuse to employ you based on what they find there is easily mitigated by the control that you have over your content. ...

Being ashamed of failure is one the most dangerous psychological traps people fall into. We all do it – every time we’re scared to act because we’re worried about what might go wrong. Every time we want to change something but can’t because we don’t know what will happen if we do. So we get stuck in a loop of wanting to act, but being paralysed. Brené Brown’s talk on TED is illuminating! ...

This is a flowchart for mapping out whether a discussion is viable that I fully intend to print and hand out to people who insist on trying to bludgeon you to death with their beliefs. Support rationality!  Can you follow this? Ok, we can talk.

These days, the hypocrisy in Hollywood has reached astounding levels as the MPAA, RIAA and other media associations have been beating their breast and shouting to anyone who will listen that illegal filesharing and torrents are killing their profits. However, the truth is that firms like NetFlix are losing more money in paying the MPAA’s extortionate licensing fees than they lose to those pesky Swedish Internet Pirates. Peter Kim of paralegal. ...

I came across this on this rather wonderful collection of awesome media. Pusheen makes me rather happy in the feelings! I love little things that cheer people up!

Some people run a shop to make money. Some people run a museum to preserve something. How about giving away moments or experiences?

Unintentional alliteration aside, I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but didn’t quite know what to say. Before we go on, I invite you to watch this video. No, really, watch it. Read more about positive psychology here Breaking up the learning process One of the things that so appeals to me about object manipulation disciplines in general is the progressive nature of the learning process. ...

Looking cursorially at the newspaper headlines about Abu Qatada, the ‘hate preacher’ who was enflaming Muslims against the western Infidels, I’m struck with an interesting thought. Free Speech by preprintPeople have, predictably, made the knee-jerk response that ‘People should not be allowed to preach hatred like that’ and comments of that ilk. What fascinates me is how, yet again, most folks don’t think it through. Yes, the man is unquestionably a shady character and having him peddle his ideologies to the impressionable can be seen as a Bad Thing. ...

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) has gone dormant for now, thanks to a massive outcry by millions of end-users who are, ironically, far better clued up about how the Interpipes work than the legislators debating the bills and a host of big-name companies, like Facebook, Yahoo, Google and so on. It’s really awesome to see the industry rally together to fight a piece of legislation that is so badly conceived that it would wreck many more lives and sources of revenue than it would save. ...

There is a terrifying new Bill in the works over in the jolly old US of A. It’s called the *Protect IP* bill. It’s been backed by some pretty powerful conglomerates and it’s primarily driven by the entertainment industry. While I wholly oppose piracy and believe in supporting artists for the hard work they do, I also utterly disagree with what is happening right now, *this*very moment, to the Internet. The Protect IP bill will bring to accountability any provider of a platform or medium or means to share content – ISPs, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, uncountable forums, any blogs and many other outlets for free speech. ...

I saw this a while back and it’s the simplest intro to any event I’ve ever seen but it’s the more powerful for it. It’s since been remixed and made awesomer. It’s really really worth watching. To Write Love On Her Arms is a charity dedicated to helping people get through depression and the work they do is pretty amazing and you should go check them out and support them! ...

I’ve been following the escapades (you’ll see the pun momentarily) of ExtraCreditz for some time now. They’ve been posting hugely informative videos about all kinds of aspects of gaming that aren’t often coveredby mainstream gaming media. Unfortunately, The Escapist decided they’d screw them over after Alison, their animator injured her shoulder. $103,814. People REALLY like ExtraCreditzThere was a fundraiser to help cover her surgery as the insurance company – something that terrifies me about the USA – said they wouldn’t pay because it was a ‘pre-existing condition’. ...