Strangequark's feed

  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 7

    Strangequark is now level 7 with 24,995 XP.

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    • Tribe Claiming You can claim tribes with max level 2.
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  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Rock Star

    Followed by 50/50 members! Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +4875 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    The Franklin Effect. Use it wisely.

    It's not got a huge amount of experimental evidence backing it up, but it essentially says that, if you want someone to like you, ask them for a favour. A small thing, usually, one they would generally perform out of politeness, like lending a book or helping you carry something. Although we would expect people to like us more if we do a favour for them, the human mind seems fantastic at resolving things in ways which benefit us. So if we have done something nice for someone, it must be because we like them, because we don't do nice things for people we don't like.

    Also, to be a better person, try to be vigilant in looking out for the corollary to this. Just as we must like someone because we have done something nice for them, we also believe that, if we have hurt someone, we must not like them. It certainly couldn't be that our action was expedient or beneficial for us, or that we really didn't care about hurting them, because we are good people. Therefore, we must not like them and there must be a reason for that. See: every dehumanising, demonising campaign against people we want to use or who our actions will hurt. History has plenty of examples. We hate the people we hurt. Be aware of this tendency, and be better than that. Know when you're rationalising your bad behaviour so you don't have to feel bad or apologise or act differently.

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  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Hat Trick

    Maintained a 3 day login streak 2/2 times! Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +1620 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 6

    Strangequark is now level 6 with 17,365 XP.

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    • Custom Banner You now have the ability to upload your own custom banner for any of your tribes.
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  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    I used to cycle through a few different games, but then I read an article about Marvel Puzzle Quest adding Kamala Khan and thought I'd try it out. All other games were usurped. At a long stretch, I'll sometimes play Text Twist or 2048, but MPQ is what takes up 99% of my mobile game time.

  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Rock Star

    Followed by 10/10 members! Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +2685 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 5

    Strangequark is now level 5 with 10,945 XP.

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    • Image Submission The maximum amount of images you can submit to a unique social gallery has been raised by 1 to a total of 6.
    • Custom Banner You now have the ability to upload your own custom profile banner.
    • Following The maximum amount of users you can follow has been raised by 20 to a total of 140.
  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Chatter Box

    Posted a total of 10/10 comments! Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +1340 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    I really hope that it plays out like that. I've already noticed the 'but free speech!' people in the lounge, and had to put my phone down so I didn't engage. It never, ever ends well with that particular group of people, so I avoid it when possible. I saw someone saying something like, 'keep the Reddit spirit alive!' and was glad that some people had pointed out that people came to Snapzu to avoid the 'Reddit spirit', which is often not something to be proud of. Many are saying that they left because Reddit had got too SJWish, and wanted this to be a less censorious place, when there are quite a lot of us who think that active moderation creates a more free space than just unfettered 'say whatever you want because free speech' rules, which just mean that the shoutiest, meanest people get prominence and everyone else sees a place where they do not belong, so don't speak up.

    It has so many great points, so much knowledge and kindness and worthwhile discussion, but the nature of a platform like that means that there are some really dark aspects to it, and the overriding controlling group of users all come from a specific demographic which has so rarely experienced active silencing, so think that not being able to post how much they hate [x] group of people on a privately owned site is a free speech violation.

    I hope that they trickle off to voat, or back to Reddit, or even that they stay here and abide by the house rules and add to the conversation. That would be brilliant (if unlikely).

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  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    Thanks for tagging me in this :) /u/spoderman, I'm sorry this is happening. I totally understand not wanting to cause trouble at work. Unfortunately, women are socialised very early to not make waves, no matter how inappropriate or bad the other person's behaviour is. And people are also socialised to expect that of women, so when we do stand up for ourselves, we're judged pretty harshly as arrogant or alienating.

    However, nothing will change unless we do, and being condescended to like that grinds you down in a way that it's hard to describe. Most of the people doing it are not bad people, they've just been taught the same things we all have: that women are out of their depth in STEM areas and need help. Some psychologists have suggested that it's also a kind of peacocking behaviour - they're demonstrating their own knowledge to impress others. So shutting them down in a way that doesn't take that into account can lead to even the nice ones having their pride hurt.

    The best way I found to do it was to, if at all possible, get other people to ask for my assistance in front of the person doing the over-explaining, which gave me a chance to demonstrate my knowledge. A friend of mine who is also a physicist, towards the end of her degree, had a group project which required extremely rigid reporting structure. When the group got together, one of the men focused on her and said, 'Now, this write-up can get complicated, so I can help you with that. There's a tool on the module website that formats most of the work, which I can go through with you, if you like?' One of the other guys was laughing, and said, 'er... [explainer], she wrote that tool. She's the adviser on this.'

    You might not have a situation like that which you can exploit, but often being able to point to a specific achievement and bring it up in conversation can help remind them that you are capable and experienced. If not, a more forceful but still polite method is to interrupt the explanation and say, 'thanks, but I've got quite a bit of experience with this' and then redirect the conversation rather than leave that sting hanging. Ask a question or something but not one which puts you in the submissive voice.

    There also seems to be some evidence coming up which suggests that women use the word 'just' as a way to defuse interactions where there is an imbalance of power. For example, 'I'm just checking to see if you've finished the coursework', 'I just wanted to ask if...', etc. It is a way of pacifying the other side, but it places the power in the conversation with the other person, and you're just stopping short of apologising for doing your job. Try to notice if you do this, and maybe spend a week trying to eliminate it and see how that goes if it is a habit you have.

    If none of this is relevant, please feel free to message me privately if you want to elaborate on your situation but not in public - it's really, really tricky to navigate the STEM world in a way that doesn't mark you as 'one of those hairy-legged, shouty feminists' (which I totally am, but it doesn't go down well). Maintaining a social working environment while not taking any shit is a pretty difficult balance to strike.

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  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Good Image

    Reached a reputation rating of 67%. Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +1340 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 4

    Strangequark is now level 4 with 7,640 XP.

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    • Tribe Membership The maximum amount of tribes you can join has been raised by 5 to a total of 60.
    • Pattern Banner You now have the ability to select a pattern for the banner of any of your tribes.
    • Snapzine The maximum amount of snapzine editions you can create has been raised by 1 to a total of 6.
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    I kind of get where you're coming from, but the health at every size movement is less about convincing people that being fat is super healthy and more about dismantling the extreme view that has been adopted by society that you cannot be both fat and healthy. As it stands right now, people encourage otherwise perfectly healthy people who exercise, run marathons, eat well, etc, to adopt unhealthy behaviour (mental health problems regarding obsession, anorexia, or physical damage through starvation or over exercising) just to be thin.

    Everyone knows people who can eat whatever they want and not put on an inch, no matter how little they exercise, but the idea that there could be a corollary at the other end of the scale is just unthinkable. So HAES is about eating healthily, exercising regularly, checking health markers like bloodwork, lung capacity, etc, but not obsessing over weight or dress size. Everyone else's fixation on the weight of a person who is perfectly healthy, just fatter than you'd like them to be, is the issue the activists fight against.

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  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    That's pretty brilliant :-) Thank you for the welcome!

  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    Absolutely. I really hope that the original users will be able to actively maintain the community. If we start screwing stuff up, smack us on the nose with a newspaper ;-)

  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    I'm generally of the unpopular-on-Reddit opinion that active moderation is more 'free' than just free-for-all speech. Communities which allow things like heavily racist or misogynist rhetoric automatically make that a place where marginalised groups do not feel welcome, and are therefore much less likely to post in. So it's free only in technicality, not in practice. Active moderation, which accounts for these trends by editing or removing content which violates a set of rules of conduct, provides a space where you are much more likely to get a diverse range of insight and experience simply because it isn't just the shoutiest, most persistent people who get the platform.

  • 8 years ago
    Text Post Strangequark

    Fantastico

    discuss in posted into

     
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    Thanks for your reply :-) There have been quite a few studies done recently on the experience of a female-gendered online presence as compared to that of a neutral or male gendered one, which have been fascinating (and pretty depressing). It is certainly something I've experienced as I moved from a much more feminine username to what is, to me, a neutral name but which is apparently coded male to many because it's physics based. Especially in conversations about more intellectual stuff - politics, science, etc - I am not condescended to nearly as often under this name.

    I am beginning to feel more comfortable speaking about controversial subjects outside of my immediate, closed friendship group. This change is almost completely down to using a different name, because I was put off years ago by how people acted towards me when I was clearly female online. I was lucky that this was before the rape/murder threats became so common, so I didn't have to deal with that, but the slurs ('You stupid bitch', etc) and the more 'benign' forms of condescension were bad enough. Like when I would have written posts using specific terms and insight which indicate a higher level of familiarity with a complex subject, and have multiple replies from men who seemed to want to take me under their wing and teach me stuff. Which would be fine, if they were at my level or above me, but they insisted on explaining in tiny words the very basics of the field and expecting me to be super grateful for it. I'm always grateful for new knowledge, for people sharing their experience and expertise, but these kinds of people just seemed to see a woman talking about a 'man' subject and assumed I was out of my depth. There was also always the assumption that I must be coming from a place of irrational emotion instead of logical analysis, which was infuriating. Is infuriating, because that still happens.

    With the neutral name, though, I've been finding my voice a bit more. It's funny, because I'm known among my friends for being one of the most outspoken and ranty people there, especially in person, but being opinionated online was just exhausting until I changed my username. So I was really glad to see /u/bogdan's note that it isn't clear unless you go to the profile, which is something I had worried about. I just really didn't feel up to going back to keeping my mouth shut, and didn't want to be dishonest and say I was male, either (although I totally understand why many women do).

    As for the ratio, I would obviously prefer a more diverse community, but I'm so, so used to existing in male-dominated spaces (theoretical physics, gaming, disability activism, politics) that it's pretty much just what I expect. I totally know what you mean about being surprised at the concern - I've been aware of the issues surrounding women online for years, and thought I knew where I was with that, but suddenly having to make that choice with a place connected (now) to the Reddit community really sharpened the focus for me.

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  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 3

    Strangequark is now level 3 with 3,215 XP.

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    • Pattern Banner You now have the ability to select a pattern for your profile banner.
    • Following The maximum amount of users you can follow has been raised by 20 to a total of 120.
  • 8 years ago
    Achievement Strangequark

    Rock Star

    Followed by 2/2 members! Congratulations Strangequark on this achievement!

    +1310 XP
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    That's really good to hear :) I really hope that our influx stays mindful that we're in someone else's house right now and that we don't screw everything up ;)

  • 8 years ago
    Level Up Strangequark

    Level 2

    Strangequark is now level 2 with 1,240 XP.

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  • 8 years ago
    Text Post Strangequark

    Reddit refugees: let's be mindful of the culture here so we don't change everything with the influx (or at least, change responsibly). Snapzu original...

    37 comments in posted into

     
  • 8 years ago
    Comment Strangequark

    If it weren't for the Sushi tribe I'd feel concerned that my clone had joined Snapzu while I wasn't watching her. Yay for your awesome list of tribes :)