Dumb things I saw on the internet today

[sabotabby]

There's so much stupid out there, and it's hard to know when to start when savagely mocking things, even without the US elections stealing a problematic plot point from an episode of Doctor Who. But here are three things that made me roll my eyes so hard that simply a link and a snarky remark on FB was not enough.

1. Facebook, as you probably heard, took down a post from a Norwegian daily featuring the famous photo of Phan Thị Kim Phúc, best known as the "napalm girl," but be a decent person and call her by her name, okay?  Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief of Aftenposten, retaliated brilliantly, as you can read here, and eventually Facebook did relent. However, their justification—that is is just too much effort to distinguish between one of the most famous photographs of all time depicting a massive political turning point and child pornography—is what's hella stupid.

Fortunately, I don't need to do a takedown of the whole thing, because Dan Hon did it rather beautifully here, and do take some time to read that post, because it's great and includes one of the most awesome trigger warnings I've ever seen on an online article. But the key takeaway is encapsulated quite nicely here:

Facebook - and, more or less, Silicon Valley, in terms of the way that the Valley talks about itself, presents itself and so-on - is built on and prides itself in solving Difficult Problems. At least, they are now. Facebook is a multi-billion dollar public company where *some* things are difficult and worth doing (e.g. Internet access to 1bn people using custom-built drones, but other things are, by implication, *TOO HARD* and don't warrant the effort.

I was going on at great length yesterday to a friend about my hatred of Facebook's sorting algorithm, and how it can cause some friends to disappear and some to become disproportionately prominent, and make you feel as though no one is listening to you and you're shouting into a void when it decides it doesn't like one of your posts. (It's bad enough when it happens on FB; worse when it happens in cases like hiring practices or policing techniques; we are increasingly delegating large parts of our lives to supposedly objective technology that's created by subjective, and generally speaking, racist, humans.) LJ solved this particular problem in a very simple way, by showing you every post by every friend in the order that they posted it, without continuous scrolling. Now, obviously, this doesn't fit with FB's business model at all, or the way that most people use it, but it does show that the problem can be solved.

Historically, we have not asked big monstrous corporations to solve all of the world's problems, but Silicon Valley seems determined to solve all the world's problems, or at least "disrupt" and create problems where there weren't any problems before. And we seem willing to surrender the questions of what problems exist, and which are worth solving, to them, which is why the US seems to have delegated creating its educational policy to Bill Gates, of all people. Which brings me to a tangential point raised by someone in the BoingBoing forums: At what point do we make a distinction between the traditional definition of free speech being freedom from government repression, and start being honest about the control over the discourse that corporations get. At what point is Facebook equivalent to or more powerful than a state actor? I think we're there; Facebook is the primary news source for a huge chunk of the population, and at some point we need to force it to act responsibly or force it to abdicate this role.

Anyway, fucking stupid. Hire some humans who can distinguish between a black-and-white news photo of a naked child on fire and actual porn, and pay them a living wage.

2. SPEAKING OF A LIVING WAGE...Okay, I've mocked this to shit already today but I'm not done mocking, no I am not.  Via Everyday Feminism, currently vying with Upworthy for the Worst Place On the Internet: 20 Ways to Help Your Employees Struggling with Food Insecurity and Hunger.

Now, for a site that claims to be all about accessibility, EF is slightly less accessible than, say, Alex Jones after 72 hours of substituting Red Bull, vodka, and crystal meth cocktails for sleep, which is to say it's one of the worst-written sites I've ever seen. I'm guessing they don't have paid editors. Every article is skimmable at best, and tends to amount to: "Be gentle, check your privilege, and don't forget to self-care with your yogurt." But this is possibly the worst article of every bad article I've ever read there, because not one of these 20 ways is "pay your employees a living wage."

Because, sorry. A minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage, and if your employees are on food stamps, you are not paying them enough. If you "can't afford" to pay them enough, as EF suggested in their equally ludicrous rebuttal to the criticism this article garnered, you are a shitty businessperson and deserve to go bankrupt. And if you have the time and money to learn about your employee's food sensitivities—again, you are not paying them enough, and hardworking taxpayers should not be expected to subsidize your lack of business acumen.

Should you be in the odd position where you cannot control how much you pay your employees (let's say you're the just-above-minimum-wage manager of a McDonald's, though if you were, I'm not sure why food sensitivities would be an issue), plenty of helpful friendly unions would be happy to come and visit your employees and assist them in organizing to get their wages raised.

Also, they include the worst suggestion of all time, which is to load up on meat-lovers pizza. Please do not do this, whether your workers are starving or not. In 100% of catered work events I have attended, the "meat-lovers" go right for the paltry vegetarian options and eat it all up before the vegetarians can get to it.

3. Finally, let's talk about architecture. Check out York U's new building! Now, York U is already the repository for a collection of the worst architectural trends in the last half-century (as is Toronto in general; we spawned Frank Gehry, after all) but this one is just too hilarious to be believed. It's like the Edgy White Liberal of buildings. You can practically see the #hashtags in #every #sentence in that #puffpiece.

Guess what, starchitects. People figured out hundreds of years ago how to make buildings work, and you can't improve on it all that much. Human beings like to feel relatively contained, and more importantly, like their ambient noise to be contained, particularly in places where they're supposed to work or study. That's why universities have quaint, outmoded features like "classrooms" and "lecture halls." Ever tried to work in an open concept office? It's distracting as anything. I'm all for less productivity—productivity is one of the Great Lies of late-stage capitalism—but I would rather be unproductive on my own terms. And common areas for meeting with students? When students want to meet with me outside of class time, it's quite often to tell me that they're struggling with family or workload or mental health issues, so why not just shout that all over the #learningspaces where the whole #engineering program can hear it?

Plus, like every building erected in the last 20 years, it looks like the architect gave up, crumpled the blueprints, and submitted the balled-up paper as the actual design.

Kill it with fucking fire.

Comments

[daria234.livejournal.com]

Those are some frustrating stories.

I couldn't agree more on the way that Silicon Valley decides arbitrarily what problems aren't worth addressing. (And Bill Gates on education)

[sabotabby]

I have such a hate-on for Bill Gates. I mean, if I had tons of money and I used it to erect orphan-tear-extracting factories and a paid publicist to bloviate about how this was helping society, I'm pretty sure no one would call me a philanthropist. But for some reason, because he's rich, people allow him to ride roughshod all over the carefully constructed public education system, leaving devastation in his wake, and he's "helping the children."

[daria234.livejournal.com]

I enjoy your analogy. So. Much.

I think part of this is this sense that the corporate world is the "real world" and therefore being good at making money means you are good at EVERYTHING. Which is bs of the highest degree.

[sabotabby]

One of my obsessions right now is the neoreactionary movement and its lesser evil cousins in the rationalist movement. Among other things, they seem to believe that countries should be run like corporations. Because that's never been tried before by a certain government in Italy or anything like that.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

He is way less misguided in healthcare...

[sabotabby]

It's true. The malaria thing is good. But don't think he wouldn't privatize, say, our health care system, if he had half a chance.

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

At what point do we make a distinction between the traditional definition of free speech being freedom from government repression, and start being honest about the control over the discourse that corporations get. At what point is Facebook equivalent to or more powerful than a state actor?

Aw wow, when you put it like that, and that so many people get their news from Facebook, and add in the ability to direct content, we are getting very close to the memory hole and 1984, aren't we? This is how a 'free' society makes the transition that seems so impossible. I attribute it some part to sheer laziness on the part of the American person. Or maybe that the No Child Left Behind generation learned that learning meant being spoon fed only what was 'needed' and teaching to the test. People don't know how to find things out for themselves anymore. Or even really care. We're encourage to chill out to Netflix. Ugh, this is depressing.

Thanks for all the links. That's a good point about wanting privacy for studying or meetings.

[sabotabby]

The older and more cynical I get, the more I feel like Brave New World, with its vaguely consensual model, works better as a future-predictor than 1984. The government doesn't need to surveil us when we so happily surveil ourselves.

The teenagers I work with have no concept of privacy, none at all. They let their parents read their private thoughts on FB. At my old school, I remember having a discussion with them about 1984, which they were reading in English class, and being shocked that they weren't shocked, because it was basically their world now.

The most glaring example of the memory hole I've seen lately is Trump's "New Jersey Muslims dancing in the streets on 9/11" claim. I remember September 11th clearly; I was an adult and I watched everything on TV and online. I had friends in Jersey. I was watching American news. So was everyone else, and yet people somehow now remember a thing that never happened, and if you Google it, there's video "proof." It's incredible.

[dancingdragon3.livejournal.com]

Weren't people also medicating themselves in BNW? I think its time to re read both of those. Maybe Animal Farm, too. Get some perspective.

This is similar to the disconnect I felt when the X-Files came back. How could they do a show about mystery, when all the stock ones were old and revealed news now, and we spy on ourselves for the gov't? Give us another generation, and I shudder to think what we'll be willing to do and put up with from corporations and/or the gov't, if they haven't completely become the same at that point.

Yeah, the dancing in the streets thing is ridiculous. I was home and watching it all live, all day. You'd think CNN would have mentioned that.

[sabotabby]

That would be a fun project—re-read all the classic dystopian literature. Why did we read so much dystopian literature in high school? Not that I'm complaining.

The new X-Files was actively painful to watch, especially given how fanatical I was about the old series when it was on the air. There was that one scene where the "conspiracy" was a group of powerful rich men in the government, and I was like, "wait, how is that a conspiracy"?

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Weren't people also medicating themselves in BNW?

These guys were totally on soma holiday.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

They let their parents read their private thoughts on FB.

I don't think their parents are the people they should be concerned about seeing their private thoughts on FB anyway. :P Seriously, though, we're having this conversation on LJ where we've documented our lives over the years, so...

Re: dancing in the streets, there were rumours at the time that some people somewhere in the Middle East celebrated it. I remember those "unconfirmed reports" being mentioned on TV and IIRC there were pictures (?) that were supposedly proof and turned out to be something else or to be an isolated thing. It's not what Trump is referring to and I don't remember the details, but I guess it goes to show that people taking a rumour and running away with it has been going on for longer than FB has been a thing.

(It's mentioned in the Metafilter thread about that day so it's not just my imagination that people were claiming that.)

Maybe that rumour helped people "remember" the new rumour?

[sabotabby]

I don't think their parents are the people they should be concerned about seeing their private thoughts on FB anyway. :P Seriously, though, we're having this conversation on LJ where we've documented our lives over the years, so...


The privacy mechanisms on LJ are much more intuitive, though. I could theoretically lock my entire LJ down and have it be a private diary. Or it could be totally public. Or I could do the compromise I have now, where personal things get locked down and sometimes filtered, and things I'm okay shouting in a public square are open to the public.

But with the kids, it wasn't just parents. I would remind them that if they had their Facebooks open in class when they were supposed to be working, I could see it, the admin could see it, the Board techs could see it, and quite frequently, the cops would be looking at it. None of this fazed them. Part of it is cultural too—I think today's teenagers trust adults far more than we did as kids.

(It's mentioned in the Metafilter thread about that day so it's not just my imagination that people were claiming that.)

Oh, I remember that, and people were outraged. But it was a very different kind of outrage than it would have been if Americans had been celebrating. And there would have been less of a fog of war around it, because everyone had cell cameras phones by then.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I agree that Facebook's privacy settings are really counter-intuitive.

I just don't think that LJ vs. FB is a good comparison because they're completely different sites. In mid-00s terms, FB is more like MySpace, and MySpace's privacy features were intuitive... but they were also really rudimentary and often really shit. For example, the most private profile you could have was restricted to users under a certain age*. Privacy controls were sometimes confusing, but they were often simple to figure out because they sucked, and lots of privacy features were incredibly flimsy.

I actually like that parents can often see what their kids post on FB. There are situations where I can see this being a problem (though teenagers tend to have ways around that) but MySpace had very few parents and it was a mess.

Part of it is cultural too—I think today's teenagers trust adults far more than we did as kids.

I think so too, but I also think I might be in a weird generation? I grew up hearing about STRANGER DANGER and how the Internet was crawling with predators, but already when I was a teenager, there were kids posting a lot of pictures and personal information in public sites. I think younger teenagers trust adults and people in general even more. I really can't understand posting selfies on tumblr, for example, when you have so little control over what happens to it and it's usually public. D:

Oh, I remember that, and people were outraged. But it was a very different kind of outrage than it would have been if Americans had been celebrating. And there would have been less of a fog of war around it, because everyone had cell cameras phones by then.

What do you mean (about the cell phone cameras)?

[sabotabby]

I actually like that parents can often see what their kids post on FB. There are situations where I can see this being a problem (though teenagers tend to have ways around that) but MySpace had very few parents and it was a mess.

I think this is where generational differences come into play. For me, the internet was a refuge as a space away from real life (not just family; hardly anyone I knew in real life was blogging or on the rudimentary beginnings of social media when I started doing it). Everything was anonymous or quasi-anonymous. My mum sees my public posts now, but there's still very much a separation between my blogging identity, my FB identity, my fake FB identity (which only exists to dissuade students from finding my real FB), and my real meatspace existence. I find it really hard to imagine it differently, but of course for nearly everyone born since then it's very different.

I mean, meeting my first internet friend was such a huge deal. Everyone assumed that she was a middle-aged basement dwelling axe murderer. I'm like, "I spoke to her on the phone, pretty sure no dude's voice is that feminine," but it was still considered this weird line that almost no one crossed.

I know, of course, that times have changed and people's various identities have come to blur together. But I value my pseudonymity; it's a balance between wanting to share my private thoughts with an understanding audience, and not wishing it to bite my ass IRL.

What do you mean (about the cell phone cameras)?

Just that if it had happened, someone would have recorded it.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

Right, but I think teenagers still have parent-free places to hang out (like tumblr, snapchat, etc.). It doesn't bother me that my mum can see my FB posts, because it's mostly cats and stuff. I wouldn't want my mum to read everything I post on LJ, on the other hand, because even if it's not about her, it would be like her hanging out with my friends and listening in.

I think teenagers are probably still capable of getting into trouble (and conversely, of talking about stuff that is harmless but which their parents could take badly) on other places, but I think there's something about a social network that makes you more vulnerable and I think things look a bit less awful than MySpace in the mid-00s.

I mean, meeting my first internet friend was such a huge deal. Everyone assumed that she was a middle-aged basement dwelling axe murderer.

I know what you mean. I used to have some rl-related story to explain my LJ friends to my mum (or sometimes I'd just claim they were penpals*). :P

But I value my pseudonymity; it's a balance between wanting to share my private thoughts with an understanding audience, and not wishing it to bite my ass IRL.

Oh, me too, I get what you mean :)

Just that if it had happened, someone would have recorded it.

Did people have camera phones in 2001, though?

(I absolutely agree there would be video proof, though, because people definitely had cameras.)

[sabotabby]

Hmm, good point. Definitely cameras were commonplace in phones; video capability probably not. But digital cameras and camcorders were common enough in big cities.

I guess my memory isn't perfect either, haha. I didn't have a cell or a digital camera back then.

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

I did and it was a brick one could hammer nails with. I'm not even sure it could text; certainly it couldn't take photos let alone videos, and I don't remember other cell phones being able to take pics in that era.

We were pretty up on our tech back in the day and had to get video cameras specifically for videos. And it was around that time that the Vancouver Province switched to its first digital camera. I remember that first front-page colour photo; it was absolute crap and at such a low resolution that one could hardly make out what was going on, at least partly because of the size it was being blown up to. But they were very excited about being able to email the photos back for late-breaking news, instead of having to get film developed back at the office, so I don't think everyone having cameras all the time was very common then.

I mean, in 1999 or 2000 or so, our Medieval recreationist group (the SCA) helped train the Vernon riot police squad, and with at least fifty of us there, only two of us actually got any footage (and both of us had dedicated camcorders to get it). And at our wedding in 2002, all the photos were on film, and the only video footage from it was also shot on our camcorder (it took Compact VHS tapes--remember those?).

Honestly, I think I'd be surprised if there *was* footage from the period that wasn't shot by a news team of some kind.

[sabotabby]

There was definitely amateur footage shot of Sept. 11 itself. Although of course NYC is heavily photographed and filmed at all times. Still, Rodney King was 1991 and says a lot about the ubiquity of passersby with cameras.

Besides which, Trump specifically saw that he watched footage of the dancing Jersey Muslims (the name for my new punk band) on TV, and I think we can all attest to the fact that no one else saw it.

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

True; even if most cell phones didn't have cameras built in to them (certainly not to the level they are these days), there really are a lot of tourist cameras around NY and LA, aren't there? Good point.

[rinue.livejournal.com]

My mom taught high school in the 70s, and Brave New World was part of the curriculum. She pushed back hard against the kneejerk "this is a dystopia because humans want to be freeeeee and individual." Nope, she said, most of you will opt into this stuff if it ever becomes available, and you'll love it and will freak out if anyone tries to take it away.

It's been a long time since I've read the book. My main recollection was that the worldbuilding was insightful but I despised the protagonists.

[sabotabby]

That's my vague recollection too.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

So, a company has tons of leftover free food from events, enough that the bulk of its employees depend on it as a source of nutrients, but isn't paying its employees anything? They're really bad at ordering the right quantity of food, and they don't know how to attract or retrain talent.

[sabotabby]

Right?

I did work at a bakery once that changed its policy from giving leftovers to employees to throwing it out, but that pissed me off and anyway I got fired. They were not good people.

[ironed_orchid]

They really need to look at their budgets

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I think Facebook is totally in the wrong about banning that picture.

I don't know if the problem you describe with the algorithm is really that much of a problem. Maybe it's just that there are things about FB that I find creepier and so much worse*. They give you the option posts in an LJ-like way (all posts in recent-to-oldest order) on your newsfeed if you want to, it's just that like you point out, it doesn't work with the way most people use Facebook. I know it doesn't work with the way I use FB, because while the "relevant" view is often littered with crap, the "everything" view is much spammier. It's not just about their business model, it's about the way the users collectively decided to use the site -- which is to add literally everyone they've ever met and then gnash their teeth that they're seeing updates from someone they haven't seen in decades and don't care about.

They also have a "groups" option where you can add people whose posts you really want to see (or really want to hide) and get a mini-newsfeed for them.

If anything, the problem is that their menus keep changing and these options keep getting buried and aren't really advertised by FB itself, so people don't know they're there. But they're there.

I'm not sure how much responsibility FB has to be a news service. It's prettty clear that it's a user-driven thing and it's not intended as a primary news channel, so they can wash their hands off any responsibility very easily. Also, tons of more conventional media (TV stations, newspapers, magazines, etc.) show some bias in what they choose to report and how, so this just looks to me like the 21st century version of an old problem.

* Like their apps policies. Remember those crappy apps that used to be popular some 7 years ago that just did things like generate quotes or give you quizzes? FB didn't use to warn you about how much data they could pull from your profile. Now they warn you about what data the apps can access, and it's often a lot, but they didn't deactive the apps by default when they transitioned to warning you. And there's no way (that I know of) to massively eliminate apps. So I'm going through dozens of apps and pulling my hair out because I have to individually click on them to see their permissions and delete them, and I don't even know if it's worth it.

[sabotabby]

I don't know if the problem you describe with the algorithm is really that much of a problem

Oh, I don't think it's the only problem; what you mention is a much more immediate problem.

But outsourcing to algorithms is a slow-burn problem; the more trust we place in "objective" programming, the more problematic it becomes. Having software that's incapable of distinguishing between pornography and a breastfeeding mother makes FB look silly, right up until said software can't distinguish between someone's naked kid in a bathtub* and illegal child pornography, and the parents wind up with permanent sex offender records and the kids are in foster care.

I'm not sure how much responsibility FB has to be a news service. It's prettty clear that it's a user-driven thing and it's not intended as a primary news channel, so they can wash their hands off any responsibility very easily. Also, tons of more conventional media (TV stations, newspapers, magazines, etc.) show some bias in what they choose to report and how, so this just looks to me like the 21st century version of an old problem.

I agree that it's continuity, not a disruption, but as a culture, we've generally demanded some accountability in journalism and government (FB, and Google, being a strange hybrid of those + private company; after all, they would like everyone in the world to be using their platforms and generating their content for them). The Fifth Estate is a good starting place to frame it; we have a newish thing that has a lot of impact on our lives, and we don't have the institutional power to deal with it in a transparent, democratic way.

I suppose I believe the opposite of the Silicon Valley rationalists and neoreactionaries; rather than having states governed by CEOs, I would like to see companies governed by elected officials or people's committees.

* Not that parents should post pictures of their naked kids in bathtubs, but it's a time-honoured tradition that predates digital cameras, and I remember being embarrassed by baby pictures as a child.

[princealberic.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's FB's algorithm that deletes pictures, though? I think pictures have to be flagged by other users, and I'm pretty sure that any content that gets flagged is reviewed and approved/deleted by people on their end. It's not automated.

I agree with you that these companies are really shady and don't have the same sort of accountability people expect from traditional media or government, though again, most of the creepiness I perceive is about the unseen things on their end and what they do with our data rather what news posts they choose to show us, idk.

[sabotabby]

I think at this point some of it is automated, but I could be wrong.

[davesmusictank.livejournal.com]

Totally with you on number 1 and 2

[sabotabby]

:)

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

So I hopped on over to EF's FB page and boy did they ever get raked over the coals for that article. Seriously, just comment after comment calling them on the steaming pile of BS that was that article.

[sabotabby]

They finally took it down and issued an apology. Even the apology was too wordy and poorly written, though.

[ironed_orchid]

I just saw that. It very much seems to go along with their general approach of outsourcing their content

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Labour is a part of the cost of running a business. It's funny how not being able to afford to pay your employees a living wage is accepted as a reason to not pay the full costs of running your business. I'm pretty sure the companies that provide heat and electricity would not accept "I can't afford it" as a reason to not pay your bills.

[sabotabby]

Exactly this.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

That Everyday Feminism... just wow. That it could not even occur to them that increasing wages might be an option. Some really stupid fucking internalized Neoclassical economics assumptions going on there.

At what point is Facebook equivalent to or more powerful than a state actor? I think we're there

Interesting... they can certainly exercise a great deal of power in terms of who reads what, and what to censor... on the other hand they don't have coercive power.

One question is how far they could go in using their gatekeeper power without losing significant amounts of business? Clearly they decided that having editorials written against their decision in a major Norwegian paper and having the PM publicly criticize them was Bad for Business; but what would happen if Facebook were taken over by someone willing to sacrifice business for ideology?

Like, if you were, by some bizarre chain of events, to become the CEO and majority shareholder in Facebook, what would you censor? What cunning algorithms would you apply? Would you be able to put the world on the road to Full Communism?

[sabotabby]

That it could not even occur to them that increasing wages might be an option. Some really stupid fucking internalized Neoclassical economics assumptions going on there.

They are the most liberal of liberal feminists. Identity politics at its lowest.

Interesting... they can certainly exercise a great deal of power in terms of who reads what, and what to censor... on the other hand they don't have coercive power.

...

Like, if you were, by some bizarre chain of events, to become the CEO and majority shareholder in Facebook, what would you censor? What cunning algorithms would you apply? Would you be able to put the world on the road to Full Communism?

Me? None, 'cause I'm bad at math. But I bet I could hire someone to do it.

I'm not sure a state actor needs coercive power if its consensual power is strong enough (look at Justin Trudeau, ha ha ha). You can get people to agree to do practically anything you want if you're clever about it.

But one could easily imagine a world in which Facebook did acquire coercive power; Black Mirror did an episode about it, and that show tends to be remarkably prescient. What then? Do we, as a culture, simply cede power to non-elected players because they have a lot of money and influence?

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Dammit. Someone has to take responsibility for Frank Ghery, and it's sure as shit not going to be Frank Ghery. I suspect that the architects involved (it was built by a TEAM!) would cite him as an influence.

The article says "York hopes the new programs will help attract more women to engineering, to make up for the huge gender gap in the field."

Thank goodness someone has finally realized that women will be more attracted to non-traditional fields if it's in an ugly, nonfunctional building. It's what we've been crying out for.

[sabotabby]

It looks like a thing that was built by committee. The kind of committee where everyone's talking in jargon and buzzwords and won't admit to anyone else that they have no idea what "drilling down" means.

Thank goodness someone has finally realized that women will be more attracted to non-traditional fields if it's in an ugly, nonfunctional building. It's what we've been crying out for.

I know, as a woman, the one thing that I'm really after is #disruptive #technology. It's a real drag having things like predictable hours that allow me to plan my second shift, a drug plan that covers my medical expenses, and job security. I'd much rather have a ball pit and a foozball table at work; that's what kept me out of the STEM and not institutional sexism or anything like that.

[kryss-labryn.livejournal.com]

It looks like Klingons misunderstood how a geodesic dome works.

[sabotabby]

Haha best description.

[the_axel]

Here's a great thing I read on the Internet today that I know you will enjoy reading.

http://rocknerd.co.uk/2016/09/20/on-this-day-in-2015-gettin-piggy-with-it/

[sabotabby]

NEVAR FORGETT!!!!