andrewducker

What really sucks is that lots of rapists in the BDSM community have no idea at all that they are rapists. There isn't a lot of education out there about what is OK at a scene or a munch and some guys mistake being a dom and having a sub available means that they can do anything. Sometimes you meet newbies who have never even heard the term 'safe word."

If the people running scenes were more active in educating the people - particularly newbie dom men - who are invited it would probably cut down on a lot of sexual assault.

It would help some, but there's a point where education has to be translated into taking claims that consent was ignored seriously.

It's similar to that TV Episodes site, but I've been using MyEpisodes.com for the past few years and find it very useful.

The thing I particularly like about this one is that it produces an ICS feed that I then import into Google Calendar, so when I check my calendar each day it tells me what's ready to watch.

I'm not sure why a US-based TV-listings site is interesting... (lots of UK folks have linked it, US people linking it makes more sense).


I'm sick of supposedly serious journalists claiming that marriage is superior to non-married cohabiting. Really fucking sick. I think they have the correlation the wrong way around on the break-up stats; but I also really don't fucking care - if your relationship sucks you should end it, and doing so shouldn't be something that draws social ostracisation.

The majority of the TV I watch is made in the USA. About the only UK TV I've watched recently is Dr Who, and the site has that.

"Unrealistic expectations of relationships are a scourge on society."

Yeah. I wonder what would happen if we had fewer stories about "our eyes met across a crowded room" and more about "and then we put in a lot of effort to understand what made each other happy, and as a reward, it worked really well"... :)

See, that's a really nice message. But the way it was written made me too angry to get to that part... stupid story.

"How Marvel took The Avengers from a throwaway reference in Iron Man to a record-breaking movie"

Oh, that's awesome, I hadn't realised it had been such an ad hoc opportunity, but I'm really impressed that they did manage to assemble a bunch of films that work individually, but aren't wasted if they don't manage to culminate in one super-film.

"Sleep cancels out obesity gene"

Although I seemed to have missed it if the article reported any evidence of that from the study: it claimed there was correlation, but I only saw speculation about causation.

yeah, I thought that - e.g. fat/obese folks often snore or have sleep apnea which reduces sleep quantity/quality...

See which parties voted the way that you would want them to.

Oh dear... it seems my favoured political party would be a lunatic in a box making decisions at random by tossing a coin. This agreed with me more than the next nearest political party (Lib Dem at 44%). Conservatives agreed with me more than Labour which was a surprise.

Then again some of the issue summaries were kind of surprising and rather tangential to what the actual votes were: e.g. "All smoking should be banned" was a vote on advertising and smoking in public places. "Legal Abortion should be limited as far as possible" was in fact a vote to reduce the term from 24 weeks to 12. The one about the "right to strike" was a vote about prison officers (actually I think maybe they should but I do think some professions it's just too dangerous for them to strike, the precedents for a police strike are not good).

I got much the same result as you - 44% is as close as I got (also Lib Dem), next was the SNP, then Labour, then Conservatives.

Sadly, there are no coin-tossing lunatics running for election, so I will probably vote LD->SNP->Lab tomorrow.

I got 60-odd% green, 56% LibDem, before the coin-tossing appeared. No way am I voting LibDem for a while, though, after they voted to privatise the NHS. The tories were marginally ahead of Labour, presumably on civil liberties grounds.

What's weird is how low down the SDLP were, given that they're supposedly a left-of-centre party.

I think the choice to count "neither agree nor disagree" answers as the opposite of having either opinion skews the weighting. Coin toss is 33%, NOT 50% if there are three choices.

50% Coin toss (really 33%)
28% LDem
24% UKIP
22% PC
19% Con
19% SNP

Coin toss 50%
LDem 41%
Green 37%
SNP 35%
Con 33%
Lab 14%

what i want is a party that's unshakeably strong on personal freedom & human rights (after getting into power), economically centre or slightly left of, pro-nuclear, and slightly euroskeptic in the sense of "the EU is good and has its uses, but does it need to do all these things and why should it be an all-or-nothing if-you're-not-with-us-you're-against-us arrangement?".

Me too. Apparently the Lib Dems are next at 48% (although there are a bunch of issues I don't understand properly and remained undecided on, which could possibly affect that score).

I kinda think the arrests of people alleged to have named the victim in the Ched Evans case might do more to reduce rape culture than the actual prosecutions and conviction.

I do think that law (and particularly its enforcement) frequently does more by setting norms than it does directly.

Yeah.

I think a lot of the outrage following the Ched Evans conviction is people looking at the facts and thinking to themselves "That's me."

Or at least "That could be me."

I do hope that they're also looking at the dipstick who not only posted her name on his LJ but also ran a poll. (On reporting this LJ stated that they would only act if the victim herself reported it - as if she hadn't been abused enough.)

Oh, I damn well hope so. I did a post that repeated many of the tweets I found with the #freeched hashtag on twitter here:
http://philmophlegm.livejournal.com/235723.html

I was genuinely shocked. And about a third of the people writing those tweets were women.

That's horrific :( And sadly, I'm not surprised there were women joining in.

Would love to try C# on my android. I hope somebody on XDA-Developers figures it out!

"Radical Honesty - a step too far?"

That's really interesting. I think Jeff was exactly right when he said that radical honesty was too extremist to be a sensible lifestyle choice, but that it was seductive because it made us think about all the times we'd like to avoid lying but are afraid it will be impractical, when it can (often but not always) turn out to be useful.

However, I think there's a tendency to overcompensate. The first comment described someone who played the guitar, and everyone automatically told him he was great and he thought about becoming professional, and someone told him that he sucked.

Now, I think that person was sensible to give some accurate feedback. But I also think they were embarrassed to criticise against minor social norms, and hence in an almost self-parody exaggerated what they thought.

After all, they probably mean "suck" compared to a professional player, not compared to an average person (who probably can't play the guitar _at all_), so by suddenly shifting the basis of comparison, they're just making the guitar player defensive and less likely to listen.

It would presumably have been equally true but more accurate to say something like:

"You've picked up the basics but you're not of professional standard"

or "You've picked up the basics, but you would need to dedicatedly practice for several hours a day to approach professional standard."

or "You don't have the natural talent to ever be professional"

or "You're not outstanding in natural talent and don't have much dedication. You're not of professional standard, and I don't know whether or not you could be."

It's hard to combine tact and truth, and often impossible, but I don't think giving up is the correct long-term solution (even though it may be the only expedient option in the short term).