New Testingstan

The thing that bugs me the most about SG-1 is how power creep affected the threat escalation each season. In season 1 it was Apophis and a couple pyramid ships. This was a huge threat and earth only succeeded because SG-1 disobeyed idiotic orders from Senator Ron Cox (COME ONNNN COHAAGEN!!! GIF THEZE PEEPAL AIHR). Then they meet the Asgard who could quite clearly take care of the goa'uld in five minutes... so why don't they? Because the replicators were kicking their arse. Who are a huge, HUGE galactic-scale threat, but are somehow vulnerable to P90s and C4. By the end of the show you had the Ori who were yet-another super-powerful villain race, only this time earth was more or less alone in having to deal with them.

Jung wrote: Naturally no-one's yet brought up the obvious ones that popped into my mind, which are that maybe the public face of atheism isn't terribly women-friendly and it tends to be men who are more drawn to the PWNED THAT FUNDIE WITH MY RATIONAL ARGUMENT MY REASON TOTES MAKES ME SUPERIOR TO THESE EMOTION-DRIVEN FOOLS culture because of deep factors in how masculinity and feminity is constructed in our culture.

I actually know a number of women who left the Mormon church because of how it treats women and ended up atheists since no other religion had any more compelling arguments. I know plenty of atheists, but very few who are a part of this atheist culture you describe. Is it an internet phenomenon?

Frankly, from all that I've experienced, I doubt that the misogyny inherent in popular atheism is any more egregious than that found in popular religion. But then, I have never felt the drive to seek out cliques of atheists who sit around and talk about how much god they don't have in their lives. Well, there's SDN, but I wouldn't call that site mainstream in any capacity.

It is in large part an internet phenomenon, but sometimes the internet atheists come together in the real world at various sceptic's congregations and whatnots. There they sit around to talk about how stupid other people are and what to do about it, and to do other rational things (like making sexual advances at women in elevators late at night).

These groups have a lot in common with the SDN culture, and it is probably for the same reason: The big and strong leader men everyone looks up to and tries to emulate. Everyone wants to be an Amazing Randi or a Dawkins or a Hitchens, shoving some unadorned Truth down the throats of them perpetuators of evil. The aggressive tone of course does little to convince the other side, but makes an impressive display for their own supporters.

Plus that you also have the "help we are being oppressed" thing from nerd culture, which was discussed earlier, further strengthening the group's sense of identity. If you question one part of the group culture, or even one member, you are just like them. If you purport to be a member of the group yourself, you are even worse: a heretic!

Of course, several prominent people, like PZ Myers, are willing to stand up for human decency when it comes to women, but on huge places like Reddit and others, the MRA has become part of the group culture and won't go away. Not until all their big and strong leaders tell these free thinkers to tone it down a bit.

the Ori were potentially interesting, in that SG1 just spent the better part of a decade beating up these false gods, and now the actual gods have come around...
but then they just turned them into the goauld (???) part two, and it was tupping awful (and pointless, because they'd already done that story before with more charismatic and interesting baddies)

and yeah I agree it wasn't the Farscape peoples' fault -- I don't really blame actors when things go wrong, in general. But why the flip wasn't Sam Carter made leader of the team? She's literally the most qualified person on the planet for the job, and then they go and give it to a fighter pilot as a reward for crashing his plane :/
(I know they gave in-universe reasons, but I think we all know why they chose to write it that way)

But why the flip wasn't Sam Carter made leader of the team

Umm. She was in season 8. It' just they did so many earth based/arc episodes and so little team adventuring episodes than it's hard to tell

Why she didn't resume command when she came back from maternity leave Area 51 is a mysterry. Aside from Ben Browder being their new leading man. Urgh.

Not that Ben Browder was bad, its just Cameron was a terribly introduced marty sue style character.

Jung wrote:Naturally no-one's yet brought up the obvious ones that popped into my mind, which are that maybe the public face of atheism isn't terribly women-friendly and it tends to be men who are more drawn to the PWNED THAT FUNDIE WITH MY RATIONAL ARGUMENT MY REASON TOTES MAKES ME SUPERIOR TO THESE EMOTION-DRIVEN FOOLS culture because of deep factors in how masculinity and feminity is constructed in our culture.

This is how I sort of view it. It's not necessarily that women are less likely to be atheist than men. It's more that since masculine culture tends to have a "Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women" mindset, and boys tend to grow up being saturated with this culture, men are more likely than women to be aggressive evangelical atheists. And since non-evangelical atheists tend to take a more "live and let live" attitude, they do not participate in the aggressive atheist culture, and so the evangelical atheists do not consider them to be True Atheists because they are not Fighting the Good Fight. Then, after they have determined that only they are the True Atheists, they look around at the lack of women in their clique and come to the conclusion that women are inherently more religious. And since they figure that women are inherently more religious due to the lack of women in their clique, they become hostile towards women since religious people are The Enemy they must crush, which makes women even less likely to join them, resulting in a feedback loop.

And then you get the social equivalent of a Larsen.

so a lot of the syria editorials are saying "(putin|obama) was playing chess while (obama|putin) was playing checkers"

(depending on what publication you're reading, the names might be reversed. i've literally seen that same sentence from both sides.)


anyway what bugs me about that is.....


checkers (apparently aka Draughts) is fucking hard. like i'm not too bad at chess, but i get pwned like a n00b in checkers almost every time. the internet tells me it was a lot harder for computers to figure out than chess too


i think checkers has an underserved reputation for being a children's game

Leader A was playing Farmtown, Leader B was playing EVE Online.

In both cases, it's all about getting a lot of friends

The other day, on the tv journal, they spent 5 or 10 minutes recounting the coup of Pinochet against Allende in Chile, making sure to say how bad it was, and sympathizing with the loyalists and Allende. But during these 5 or 10 minutes, not once was there any mention, or even the littlest hint of acknowlegment that the coup had been provoked and supported by the USA, by the CIA.

And without transition, at the end of this commemorative report was a 30 seconds segment on Obama presiding the celebration of the 12th anniversary of the 11th of sepgember 2001.

I lack words to say what this makes me feel.

No one is allowed to criticise the US or be Muslim on that holiest of days :I

TEO is down.

Dammit Mal, stop buggering up the signal!

Gands wrote:TEO is down.

Dammit Mal, stop buggering up the signal!

Fox canceled TEO's bandwidth.

Gands wrote:TEO is down.

Database index corruption, apparently.

adr wrote:checkers (apparently aka Draughts) is fucking hard. like i'm not too bad at chess, but i get pwned like a n00b in checkers almost every time. the internet tells me it was a lot harder for computers to figure out than chess too

No, you're just bad.

Seriously, checker is a solved game; it has a search-space of around 10²⁰, while chess is around 10⁵⁰.

phongn =

so i'm chatting with ppl about linux right now

i started a shitstorm by saying i envy windows. windows rox

but now we're just blabbing and one of the things i said was "i wish there was liek a recursive user system so your limited accounts of root of their own private domain"

and someone just said "that's what selinux is for"


but selinux is so hard to use child accounts would be easy to use.


then again i suck at checkers which apparently is an easy game after all.

so maybe selinux isn't that hard to use???????

adr wrote:but selinux is so hard to use child accounts would be easy to use.

so maybe selinux isn't that hard to use???????

It's a pain in the ass to set up properly (like most Mandatory Access Control systems).

There was a pretty good one for Star Trek Voyager episodes too!

And the Robert Beltran gripe generator.

so i just chatted with the mormon missionaires about god this time... for an hour. went over a number of topics and we foundsome level of abstract agreement

but one of the points where i'm having a hard time finding common ground is prayer. i think it is a silly thing with very little redeeming value. whereas i can look at the scripture as a fascinating exercise in literary analysis, prayer just seems too weird. so they say you have to believe it will work if it is going to work...

but aint that a confirmation bias? how can you trust such an glaring flaw? ah you see, that's where the faith comes in.


i'm finding their perspectives genuinely interesting to talk about, but it is just a matter of time before they ask me to get in on the rituals and that's prolly the point where we'll have to go our separate ways

adr wrote:so i just chatted with the mormon missionaires about god this time...

See that was your first mistake.

oh i've talked to them a couple times over the summer (they caught me one day when i was walking the small dog back shortly after i got her. or rather, she caught them. if i was alone i prolly would have just walked right by without any interaction)

but this is the first time we've gone in-depth about god. the other convos were all quite brief and generally off topic.


but they're nice guys and it is giving me some new stuff to think about. you see i've never really experienced religion at all. raised atheist, spent most my internet time places like sdn, etc.

so i figured i'd talk to them just to expand my knowledge a bit, maybe get an experience point or two in the religion class, and in that sense it has been fairly successful

but it isn't something i'd want to do seriously. visit yes, join no. so i'll listen and i'll talk about things, but doing the rituals isn't something i want to do and i'm sure that's a looming dealbreaker before too long.



BTW one of the things we talked about today was my impression of jesus christ. i said i think he, as generally described, is a great man who walked the walk as well as talked the talk, and an inspiration in similar league to other great men in history like jean luc picard and the castro brothers

when they left they said "thank you for being so nice to us"


kinda a weird thing to thank someone for.... unless most people out there are in fact mean to them

but jesus would be nice to everyone

So my ex texted at 0730 to demand that I take the youngest because she has a deadline today and there are no spots in childcare. I chose to ignore that, because I'm sick of her arbitrarily deciding on custody arrangements.

She sent a facebook message at 0830. Ignored that too. Then she tried to call at 0900. Yup, ignored it.

Right now she's hammering on my front door. Been doing that for five minutes.

Jesus christ.

Hey IB

Thoughts ?