Tag Archives: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Oct 08

Just posted this on FB. We shall see what results.

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Just posted this on FB. We shall see what results.

My dear fellow straight white male Christians who are empathising with women by imagining them as your daughters, wives, sisters or mothers:

Congratulations on making a start.

Can I make a suggestion, though? How about empathising with them simply as fellow human beings?

I assume you don’t have to picture another man as your son, brother, or father in order to empathise with him.

“But I don’t have to do that because other men are like me!”

Yes, exactly.

And once you’ve managed this with women – I have faith in you, you can do it – you could even try doing the same exercise with people of other races or religions or social classes. Fellow human beings.

“But how would I even start?”

Well, you could find a well-written fictional or nonfictional story – book, movie, TV show, whatever medium you prefer – from the point of view of a person you think of as different from you, and look for the common humanity: the desire to be loved, the longing for connection, the fear of rejection, the loyalty to family or people who are like family (which is where we started, after all), the courage and perseverance in the face of life’s struggles. Maybe post on your timeline and ask for recommendations.

Are you up for it?

Oct 08

You’ll see why this is in my Diversity and Representation collection in a minute.

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You’ll see why this is in my Diversity and Representation collection in a minute.

It’s puzzled me why, of all the many reprehensible things Trump has said, this latest one has finally led a lot of his “insider” supporters to distance themselves and even call for him to step down. The only thing I could figure out is that all of the other things are either things they could imagine saying themselves (if more subtly), or things they wish they could say, but know better than to say where anyone can hear.

This opinion piece takes a slightly different, but compatible angle: that this latest revelation is disrespect of members of a less-empowered group that a) were still, on the whole, planning to vote for Trump, and b) that are still considered bad form to attack even among Republicans: (straight) white women.

It’s kind of the reverse of the famous “first they came for the Communists” litany. Trump has systematically disrespected group after group, but has finally been revealed to have blatantly disrespected a group that his putative colleagues actually care about, both as people and as voters. And to have disrespected them as a group, not just individually (as he did with Megyn Kelly early in his primary campaign).

I was astonished to read elsewhere that he’s even apologised and said he was wrong, though he couldn’t restrain himself from adding riders that reduced the impact of the apology. Normally, he doesn’t ever admit he was wrong (sometimes denying that he said things he clearly said). However, if the linguistics article that was being shared around recently is right, this is just another example of saying whatever will achieve his goals, rather than an authentic apology and an actual realisation of wrongdoing. And a month is a very short period of time in which to prove that theory mistaken by his actions.

The linked article speculates that many of his supporters still won’t care. Indeed, my wife’s aunt, an inarticulately rabid Trump supporter, is still cheering him on, and I’m sure plenty of other white women (and evangelicals) still will – but a good many might also find this the final straw.

Originally shared by The Mary Sue

Why did #TrumpTapes go viral, as opposed to … anything else horrifying that’s happened with Donald J. Trump’s campaign so far? Let us explain.

http://buff.ly/2dVbyoU
Oct 07

“Why don’t they create new characters?”

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Originally shared by Herb “Chucky Sly” Burnswell

“Why don’t they create new characters?”

“Why are they changing an icon?”

“I don’t like this PC crap!”

“I don’t don’t like any kind of change.”

“They’re trying to force things on us.”

All of these sentiments are pretty common in this community. This article essentially busts the bubble on all of them.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/10/luke-cage-and-fan-culture-accepting-diversity
Oct 05

This book is part of the Noblebright Fantasy boxed set that C.

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This book is part of the Noblebright Fantasy boxed set that C. J. Brightley has organised, and that I’m participating in. I just finished reading it the other day. It’s a good story, well told, with a young protagonist who learns to trust and who has to show courage and perseverance to help her new-found friends.

So that makes 5 books (including mine) that I can recommend from this bundle. There are 12 books in all, plus some short fiction, and until Saturday it’s only 99c – after that, we need to put the price up for technical reasons to do with the size of the file.

If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to pick it up: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K3534QI

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show?id=1769431773

Oct 05

And here is the lowest layer of an entirely new technology stack, waiting for its compilers and its high-level…

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And here is the lowest layer of an entirely new technology stack, waiting for its compilers and its high-level languages.

Originally shared by Larry Panozzo

Tiny molecular machines. Their work marked the advent of nanobiotechnology.

James M. Tour, a professor of chemistry at Rice University in Houston, said the Nobel would bestow legitimacy on the field and help convince people that nanomachines are not just fantastical science fiction of the far future.

“No one is making money on these right now, but it will come,” he said. “These men have established and built up the field in a remarkable way.”

Dr. Tour predicted that the first profitable use of the technology might be machines that open up cell membranes in the body to deliver drugs. “It’s really going to be quite extraordinary,” he said.

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-10-nobel-chemistry-prize-world-tiniest.html

Oct 05

Via Larry Panozzo.

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Via Larry Panozzo. The article explicitly points out something I’ve been noticing for a while: at each stage of the development of technology, the previous stage’s cutting edge is packaged and standardised so that it can be treated as self-contained building blocks to make the next stage, which is why a twelve-year-old can now program a successful mobile game that would once have been beyond the most advanced computer scientists.

At the end, it talks about virtual decision support advisors, which sparked the thought: what about a future election where everyone used these advisors to decide who to vote for? All of a sudden, the candidates would need to switch from convincing voters to convincing AIs that their policies would benefit voters…

Originally shared by Ward Plunet

Deep Learning trying to go wide

A company called Bonsai joins a movement to democratize machine learning. Get ready to build your own neural net.

…But what if you could get the benefits of AI without having to hire those hard-to-find and expensive-to-woo talents? What if smart software could lower the bar? Could you get deep learning with a shallower talent pool? A startup called Bonsai and an emerging class of companies with the same idea say yes. Brace yourself for the democratization of AI. It’s a movement that might eventually include millions of people — and, some say, billions.

https://backchannel.com/you-too-can-become-a-machine-learning-rock-star-no-phd-necessary-107a1624d96b#.lbt0ljoyw