fred_mouse

One month after controversial adult-content purge, far-right pages are thriving on Tumblr -- Content: neo-nazi images. Comment: while the various other shenanigans weren't enough to get me to close my tumblr down, this might be. I've added it to my to do list, because there are things on there I want to preserve before I delete it.

11 cultures that don’t celebrate New Year’s Day on Jan 1 -- after some flailing trying to remember the name of the Vietnamese New Year (which I think I concluded is Tet, although it isn't mentioned in this article), I read several articles about New Year's celebrations. This was the most wide ranging of the lot, and the only one I left open. Does suffer from not having done the images very well.

Several items from the ABC:

Living with migraine means a world of pain, stigma and searching for a cure -- I learnt a few things, some of the information is over generalised (I read bits out to chaosmanor, who helpfully provided additional information about where the article is overly limiting in the diagnostic criteria and descriptions).

Five incredible women who made their mark on history -- highlights a book on 21 historically important women; these are five examples with some brief commentary. I'm intrigued enough to add the book to my list of historical reading for the year, if only to add some populist feminism to the range.

Australian tennis 'idiots' Bernard Tomic and Nick Kyrgios are stealing the shine off our women's game -- I love the fact that while the headline says this is about Teh Menz, the first two paragraphs are about the women players. Yes, the rest of the article is about the poor behaviour, but this particular turnabout was delicious. There was also a lovely twitter thread linked in the middle about commentary and the newness of Australian Women's Cricket at the international level; several others of the links were interesting reading as well, for those who are interested in assorted sportsball games (I am, I'm just not very enthusiastic).

Tiny houses look marvellous but have a dark side: 3 things they don't tell you in marketing blurb -- a bit flippant, but at least there is some commentary about the cons? I don't go looking for tiny house stuff, so most of what I'm seeing is pro, because people I know are fascinated with the idea.

Screen time given too much blame for its effect on young people's mental health, study finds -- about bloody time. The DOI linked in the article goes to the abstract and a paywall, but I'm fascinated by the description of the statistics. Most relevant quote I spotted: The context and the content are far more important than how long they're spending online.

The Indigenous doctors breaking the mould to lead the way in Aboriginal health -- good to see positive reporting on Indigenous topics.

With much time online and little attention span comes many short articles, but also vagueness and inability to work out which tabs the ones I wanted to blog are. So, the first set of somewhere between one and many :}

The Teens will save us - faux fascism classroom experiment goes differently from historical

Teacher who survived school shooting wants a therapy dog, not a gun in her classroom

Capital gains tax exemption changes expected to ignite expat property fire sale

Mr J Says - on representation of Asians other than Asian-Americans in the current cultural commentary

For the record, I'll be voting 'yes' -- Amanda Vanstone on why the marriage equality vote is about religious freedom as much as anything. Also, she gets out the toasting fork for Tony Abbott. Now, I don't necessarily agree with Vanstone on a lot of topics, but I do listen to her on the radio a lot, and I appreciate the way that she approaches topics, even as I shout at the radio.

Blind Reading is in Braille or Large Print (Elsa Sjunneson-Henry) -- This is a topic that I've been ranting on for years, the misuse of 'blind' when the speaker means 'anonymous' or 'ignorant of'.

 23andme uses data for crowdsourced depression study - and with much larger numbers than previous studies, finds some significant genome associations. 

Science Fiction Writers of America Nebula suggested reading list - books eligible for the 2016 Nebulas recommended by members of the SFWA. I keep thinking I'm going to go and look at it and find what is new that I could be reading, but the truth is I have too many books as it is, so I'm going to stop looking at such lists. 

At the far ends of a new universal law - Quanta Magazine, Statistical Physics article about the Tracy-Widom distribution, which shows up in 'tipping point' models, as well as lots of other areas of science where there are systems of interacting components. 


So, you must talk to the woman wearing headphones - Fabulous response to the misguided post that suggested that a man who wants to talk to a woman wearing headphones needs to just keep persisting, rather than respect her right to ignore him. 

Why do we judge parents for putting kids at perceived - but unreal - risk? - mostly a review of a very interesting research project that looked at both morality and risk judgements on a series of manipulated scenarios, and how the rating of the 'morality' of the situation affects peoples response as to the 'danger'. 

Women of Samsung walk out - National Strike for Equal Pay hits Korea [note: this is not a true story, read to the end]

 Sendle - new alternative to Aust Post for large packages - makes sending larger items more reasonable.

Forvo - pronunciation dictionary, multiple languages. Interesting to see that Tartar has one of the highest number of options - mostly through the efforts of one person, who has an order of magnitude more pronunciations than the highest English speaker! There are lists of words/names that need pronunciations - I had a look and a think, there were a lot of names on the list (cricketers, tennis players. Some I was reasonably sure I could do, some not so much). 

ABS respond to concerns about privacy with upcoming census

"A scientist calculated the cost of not being a straight man and she wants a tax cut" (commentary on multiple countries)

HPV vaccines are working. The article focuses on the vaccination rates in the USA, which are lagging behind other vaccination. Australian rates are presumably higher, given that it is provided free through the schools (to all children ages 12-13; before 2013, only girls got it. Info from here)

A psychologist has a little rant about how the character of Sherlock Holmes is not a sociopath (or a psychopath)

• apparently, naming babies for instagram filters is a thing. Not convinced that this isn't along the lines of parallel evolution.
• [slow loading page; insists on loading lots of spare crap] supposedly what today's [american] kids want to be when they grow up. Youngest apparently told someone recently that zie is going to be a research statistician when zie grows up, and when the adult was unkind and unpleasant about 'what kind of career choice is that', zie was apparently polite. Termagant, who was adult-in-charge*, reports then pointing out to unpleasant adult that youngest's parent is a research statistician...
• Free historical costume patterns [chances of me remember this? nil. Chances of me emailing myself so I find the email later? reasonable]
• 10 verbs that are contronyms [I love that word!]
• A young woman with a life-limiting condition wants to talk about sex (very simplistic article in some ways, sad that this is as far as this conversation has gone in some areas)
• and one that ysabetwordsmith  might appreciate: Giant Goanna in Thurgoona (NSW)

and a set about attitudes to home cooked dinner. This appears to be a very North American teacup storm right now, but I'm sure that the attitudes aren't restricted to there.

• Amanda Marcotte at Slate slams the ideal of the home-cooked family dinner
• Joel Salatin at "Mother Earth News" responds
• as does Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist
• Sarah Kliff at Vox Topics has some very pointed things about the problems people face trying to provide food for their families, and actually brings research into the conversation!

I'm not going to weigh in with an opinion. Some days the balance in our house goes home cooked meal but I have to lie down to eat it. Sometimes it doesn't, and that may or may not mean that I eat with the family. And I kinda like the time eating together, but I rarely make it through a meal sitting up. So, urgh. Ignoring the 'meet the unachievable ideal or Fail! Your! Family!' feeling that I've managed to get out of the first three, and appreciating the last.

And now, I have five tabs (not counting this one) open in this browser. Two are stories I'm going to read now; one is a long article I'm going to read later; one is about surrendering a cat to the Cat Haven; one is about raising mealworms to have tasty tasty treats for chickens.

* I don't remember if Termagant was reporting themselves as having been there, or if Owls was there, and the story was being relayed second hand.

I'm taking a day in bed, because ?virus?. And catching up on reading. Interesting stuff to be added here.

• Adelaide "school formal" for LGBT (no mention of I?) youth
• more R graphics (can't remember why I still had this one open)
• GGplot2 graphs (yes, more R) - some useful ideas here, including how to dump a set of graphs to a pdf, and then specific ones to high res files.
• immunocompromised man dies after intestinal worm gets cancer - ain't nature wonderful
• vaccinations in the US: out of 25 million vaccinations, 33 bad reactions [where bad = anaphlylaxis; no deaths, one hospitalization]
• youtube video: Imogen Heap "hide and seek" (beautiful ..umm, word that means the way that the intervals between notes sung at the time blend together). I'm hoping to remember her name to try and actually buy some, as I think eldest will like it too.
• Lego VW camper van. Because I'm a sucker for such camper vans, and I'm kind of keen on LEGO too.
• screw finding your passion - and this is the one that nearly had me exploding at workmate who was all 'but it must be possible for everyone to find a job they are passionate about' while I'm all 'some people work to get through the day/pay the bills/eat' and 'high passion jobs less available than people who would be passionate about them' and 'suuuure, some people might be passionate about those jobs that you don't think look like fun, but they are going to be a lot rarer than then number of people required to *do* those jobs'. 

possibly more later. I've managed to close three windows, so maybe 20 tabs down in the weekly snipe tab hunt.

on the language of 'not all men' and the way that it allows men to distance themselves from the everyday sexism experienced by women.

And yes, I'm deliberately leaving out the word 'some' from any part of that sentence. If, as a man, you need to tell me that you aren't part of this, I don't need to hear it. If, as a woman, you need to tell me that sexism isn't experienced by all women, I don't need to hear it - right now, some woman is biting her tongue in response to casual sexism, because dammit, she needs that job. For those who don't fit on the narrow gender binary, I do understand that it is more nuanced than that.

I am willing to be involved in nuanced discussion. I'm not up to necessarily debating in great depth/with great clarity.

Why It's so difficult to diagnose autism in girls - "clinicians need to look beyond tools developed for boys".

Religious children meaner than agnostic and atheist kids, study finds - article a bit ho-hum, first comment is argh, but there are some good comments later on by people who went and *looked at the paper*.

After listening to women, long time anti-abortion congressman becomes pro-choice - yay him, but )(*^(&$$$$ did he not think that they were the first people to be asking, not the last?