Earlier this year, while running through my usual patrol duties of online harassment discussions, I began to notice a conversational pattern. Usually there are several similar branches of conversation within this topic, particularly visually apparent in actual indented threads. (ex: reddit) I noticed that one branch of the discussion often seemed to be trimmed in the same place. Right around here:Thus, taking a cue from Godwin's Law:As a discussion about online harassment and bullying grows longer, the probability of a commenter linking to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory approaches 1.Of course, this version doesn't preclude Godwin's Law within the discussion itself. But one other similarity between linking the GIFT comic law and Godwin's Law is part of one of the latter's established corollaries: once Godwin's Law has been fulfilled, the discussion is finished. Or at least, that branch of it.The GIFT is used as a convenient explanation for why...

One of the best Computing Science courses I took in university was actually more of a writing course. It focused on some of the well-known disastrous case studies of our field. It warned us against both technological utopianism and the idea that technology is somehow neutral in our society. It served us well by reminding us who our products work for: the users. People. Society. Humanity.I was indirectly reminded of this years later while working for a company in the hotel industry. Our dev team was being led and assisted by a few outside consultants. Along with architecture, processes, and best practices, part of their job was to change the dev team's culture. One teaching that has stuck with me is to actively fight the urge to develop an Us vs. Them mentality across teams. Dev vs. QA. Dev vs. Sales. Dev vs. Marketing. Dev vs. Management. The fact is,...

Alright it's been long enough that it's time for me to just acknowledge that and get on with it. So this is me just trying to get this recap out of the way. I need to clear my mental pathways, so let's do dis. I know for sure that I want to explore at least one topic separately in a later post, but perhaps I'll reflect on others at a later date as well. Apparently I have some sort of superhuman capacity for delayed gratification, because it took me months to finally buy and build a gaming PC. With a friend to help pick out the parts, I started to purchase them as they came on sale after Christmas, completing the full set of purchases weeks later. Having a gaming rig is pretty great! I'm really enjoying the Firefall beta. It's nice to feel myself getting better at shooters. My...

My brain has been in crazy overdrive lately but it's been a jumble for weeks. Hey, wait a minute, didn't I start a blog specifically to mitigate that? To-do lists don't fix a messy "augh I can't concentrate on just ONE amazing thing" head, but idea extraction does!So for the first extraction procedure: I've become obsessed with the concept of "experience over information" lately. It's really an amalgamation of my previous big essay posts. As such, I'm going to start with some of the same material in order to explain the concept. Heh, this whole blog is just going to end up one giant extended essay in itself.Rhoulette characterized the concept through the common idea of "pix or it didn't happen" and its relationship to "a picture is worth a thousand words." This is easy to mentally skip over because we hear the two phrases so often, but there...

I've long disliked the caustic methods of Richard Dawkins. I've had similar issues with Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins has a very arrogant, abrasive tone. Fans of Dawkins love his biting wit and his haughty yet matter-of-fact smackdowns. Okay, sure, I also love me some smackdowns. The youtube clips of some of his best lines can be a rare guilty pleasure.In contrast, Neil deGrasse Tyson has a very open, understanding and personable way of speaking that engages everyone who listens. The man is fucking pumped about astrophysics and he's absolutely delighted to help you understand why. You can feel it bursting out of him all-at-once and you start to get frustrated on his behalf at how the slowness of language is obviously mistranslating his intensity of feeling. He's a favourite guest of Stephen Colbert's and the two have a great rapport even out-of-character. This video is old, but it's a brilliant moment...