> We can't really count an animal not ever born as a 'saved' animal.

That depends upon your goals. If your goal is to reduce the number of animals that are slaughtered, then that might be a standpoint for ethical vegetarianism. If your goal is to have more animals living at any given time, then that isn't a good reason (because it can be reasonably assumed that economic pressure by vegetarianism results in a lower breeding rate).

In short: ethical-vegetarianism is complicated.

Thanks for sharing that video: I hadn't seen it before.

We may not be able to find a perfect control group (men who have never seen porn), but we could probably find imperfect groups based on society's norms. For example: we could compare people who watch one-standard-deviation or fewer minutes of porn to people who watch one-standard-deviation or more minutes of porn. Like all psychological research, it's challenging to isolate the biases (lots of people lie about their porn habits; if it's true that addiction takes place - as I suspect that it is - then many of them probably don't even know they're lying!), but it's still a starting point.

I'm an occasional porn user. I certainly wouldn't say that I was an addict. But I'm older than the average person on Hubski, and I'm aware that this probably makes a significant difference to how much pornography I had access to, and how early. When I was in my mid-to-late teens, Internet pornography involved slow downloads of mediocre images over dial-up modems, and video? That involved squinting just right at encrypted cable channels! Despite being a "geek", I didn't see Internet video porn until my late teens - and even then, we're talking about tiny snippets of low-quality video that would fit into tiny animated GIFs of today.

Again; thanks for sharing - great video.

I'm not sure that it's as simple as that your first pornographic experiences shape your sexual interests thereafter, as you imply, but I'll agree that there's a correlation. I just think that human memory is a fascinating and complex thing.

I can't remember the first "porn" I saw. But imagination is a wonderful thing; and I can remember "near-porn" things that I saw in my early teens that could be considered to be influences on my later sexual interests. I remember seeing some film, at about the age of 11 or 12 (with my parents, no less), in which a woman (riding cowgirl) tells her male partner that he's not to get off until she does, and thinking it was incredibly hot. In hindsight, it's easy to argue that this may have had an impact on my sexual interests.

But on the other hand, perhaps I remember that particular scene of that particular movie (whose name I've never been able to recall) specifically because it appeals to me now, as an adult. Memory is far more malleable than we are capable of understanding - or comfortable comprehending! There is no science in asking people what porn they first saw (i.e. first remember seeing) and how it affected them, because they're an enormous cognitive bias. Who's to say that we don't simply best-remember the sexual experiences that most-concisely fit with out current mental model. It's certainly the case with other areas, studies on memory show.

But whatever the case, I have a great attachment to giving my partners satisfaction as a priority. Contrary to the clip I remember, and in support of my memory hypothesis, this applies regardless of the gender of my partner. This is especially relevant as, at age 11 to 12, I was not remotely convinced of the possibility that I might be attracted to men as well as women.

In short; I'm not sure it's as simple as you'd like to think. Memory is a tricky beast, as my story shows.

Some of these are easier to read than actual CAPTCHAs I've come up against.

It saddens me that research into suicide and its causes remains hampered by the significant social taboo of the subject. It's still "not okay" in many Western societies - and in much of the world in general - to talk about suicidal acts, suicidal ideation, or suicidal feelings. As a result, the potential base of subjects for suicide research remains low, even where suicide rates are high.

I'm actually really impressed with it as an idea. I work on a project that facilitates volunteer management, and we're currently looking at ways in which volunteer achievement can be acknowledged. We were planning to implement our own internal "badges" (achievements, awards, whatever) system, but it seems logical that we should consider supporting the Open Badges standard so that volunteers can show off their "volunteering portfolio" on other sites. "Hey look, this guy's done over 100 hours of community centre work!"

Thanks for sharing.

What a wonderful idea. Unfortunately, it'll doubtless be easy - and fun - for programmers to circumvent, and then it's just the same kind of false-promise reassurance as, for example, Outlook being able to "recall" emails (actually, just sending another email that tells the receiving email software, if it's Outlook, to delete the original email).

I've always been a huge fan of:

Q: Why do programmers always mix up Halloween and Christmas? A: Because Oct 31 == Dec 25!

That, and the classic:

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and those that do not.

Another way to sell it would be as a gamble:

"We'll send you life support while you're there, to the best of our ability, but fundamentally you'll be on your own. And if we can develop a rocket to bring you back, and deliver it to you, then you can come home. But we might never manage to do that: you might be stuck there already."

It's not a new idea, of course. During the colonial era of many of the Western empires of yesteryear, this kind of "one-way ticket" was commonplace. When Britain sent prospectors to North America or convicts to Australia, none of them ever expected to come back again. It was a dangerous, one-way trip.

The only difference is that the colonists on Earth rightly believed that the territory at the other end was capable of sustaining life, indefinitely. They took a big risk, but the reward was worth it - the chance at a new life, their own land, and a new home. The humans who go on a one-way trip to Mars will be completely dependent on Earth to support them: there's no way that they can live up there independently. At least: not yet.

Full-time graveyard staff robots clear out withered flowers regularly; only the last 3,000 are shown.

Given that 50% of the graves have more that 3,000 flowers, I don't think that this statement is true.

It's simply not true. Tests have shown that SimCity will run for up to 19 minutes 'offline', including sending garbage to and from neighbouring cities and virtually all of the other features, so it's clearly technically-capable of being played offline, and a Maxis insider claims that the server dependency could easily be ditched.

No matter what EA claim, it's clearly all about the DRM.

The word "octane" has different meanings in different parts of the world. To understand how, you must first understand one of the physical properties of motor fuel.

One of the checmicals found in your fuel is isooctane, and what it does is helps the fuel to resist self-combusting when it's compressed. As you probably know, your engine works by compressing the fuel, igniting it, and then using the resulting "explosion" to push the piston back again and drive the crankshaft (in turn, in most engines that we're concerned with, this drives a piston to compress fuel in a different piston or pistons). Now gasoline's reasonably volatile, and if you compress it hard enough, it ignites all by itself: but isooctane helps to prevent that, allowing it to be compressed further without igniting.

There are a variety of different ways to measure how much isooctane is in a fuel, but they all boil down to basically the same thing: you put the fuel into a test engine that can vary the amount of compression it applies, and start burning it, gradually increasing the compression until the engine starts "knocking" (also known as "pinging"). This is what happens when fuel ignites prematurely, as a result of being compressed (i.e. before the spark plug fires), and it's not good for the engine nor for fuel efficiency. By measuring the pressure at which this happens, you can calculate the Research Octane Number (RON). Higher RON = more resistance to compression. If you drive anywhere in Europe or Australia, the number you're seeing (e.g. 95, 97) is the RON of the fuel.

Another way to measure the octane of a fuel is the Motor Octane Number (MON). This uses a different kind of test engine that proponents claim gives a better representation of the way that the fuel behaves under real-world conditions: at a higher temperature, faster engine speed, etc. The MON is always lower than the RON, usually by about 8-10 points (but exactly how much varies). In many countries with ratings for fuel, a fuel must meet a minimum rating of both RON and MON in order to be classified as "premium", but legislation varies.

When you drive in the US, though, what you're seeing is the Anti-Knock Index (AKI) (or Pump Octane Number). This is simply the mean average of the MON and the RON of the fuel. So broadly-speaking, a European 95 is about the same as a US 89, and a European 97 is pretty close to a US 93.

You should always use the fuel that your car manufacturer recommends. And here's why: if your car recommends regular fuel, but you put in premium fuel, it will have no appreciable effect whatsoever: the fuel gets compressed just the same, and is ignited by the spark plug just the same, and then provides the same amount of "push". In other words: premium fuel in a regular car is a waste of money.

The other way around is even worse: a premium-fuel car is tuned to compress the fuel more than a regular-fuel car. But when you put regular fuel in a premium car, there's a risk that the fuel will auto-ignite in the piston prematurely (i.e. before the right point in the stroke). This means that the "explosion" pushes backwards against the movement of the crankshaft - known as "pinging" for the noise that it makes. Using regular fuel in a premium-fuel car lowers fuel-efficiency and increases wear on the engine. Many modern premium-fuel cars with engine management computers can compensate for using the "wrong" fuel by adjusting the ignition time, but it'd still be better if you just put the right fuel in it to begin with.

That's a little bit of a simplification, but it's broadly what you need to know.

If Charles Darwin had survived long enough that he were alive today, scientists would be seriously interested in his genetics.

I find that pleasing.

Its a fun activity to be enjoyed by two people.

Or three. Or more. Or, arguably, by one.

I'm interested in why you feel that evolutionary psychology has such a low credibility. I'm not deeply well-read on the subject, but I wouldn't have said that it was significantly less-credible than psychology as a whole (which, of course, produces testable theories, although it's often incredibly difficult to isolate biases). As far as I understand it, evolutionary psychology is simply about the study of the possible evolutionary reasons for psychological phenomena.

Well-explained. It seems that you're saying that it's sometimes acceptable to infer policies and ideologies from the collective behaviour as a group. And on reflection, I agree. My real concern, I think, is that judgements like this, made from the outside, serve only to further polarise the behaviour.

For example, describing Reddit as sexist, as an outsider, has the effect of removing Redditors who do not want to be considered sexist (probably because they're not), which in turn increases the net-sexism of the community. Labelling a community from the outside may help to shun them from wider society, but it doesn't help to fix them: that has to happen from within. (not that I know the best strategy to do that with Reddit and sexism, though, although I try to do my part to downvote/criticise/educate where appropriate)

That's an interesting question. Can a community ever collectively hold an opinion?

If I form a society which specifically states that its stance is that "blue-eyed people are superior to brown-eyed people", then that organisation could be meaningfully described as being prejudiced. If they act upon that, they could be described as discriminatory.

But the community - that's the people in the society. There might (or might not) be some people in my society that don't share my opinion. Perhaps some misunderstood our motto, "blue good, brown bad". Perhaps some consider themselves to be infiltrators, trying to spy on us on behalf of the browns. Perhaps there are others who are in Blue Club because their parents, or their friends, or somebody they're attracted to is in it, and they don't actually agree with it. Perhaps some are members just because they like the people there, and not because they necessarily agree with the overarching politics.

So I would say: Blue Club, the society - the one with the outwardly-stated opinion - is generalised. But the Blue Club members? Not so much. You might say, "our survey showed that all of the members of Blue Club, an organisation that claims that blue-eyed people are better, hold the opinion that blue eyed people are better than brown-eyed ones", because that explains the limitations of your measurement. But to say "all members of Blue Club are ocularist"; perhaps an overgeneralisation.

And perhaps more-importantly: whether or not it's true that everybody in Blue Club agrees with me, it's still not-productive to attack them as individuals. Attack the policy, not the person. If we observe that Someplaceistan has laws that make it impossible for women to get jobs, or that make them "property" of men, then it's not fair to say that "all Someplaceistanis are sexist," or even "all Someplaceistani men are sexist". What we are disapproving of is the policies, not the people; and the sooner we can see the difference between the two, the sooner we can build bridges to understanding, rather than blowing them up.

As you've observed: saying than an entire community is prejudiced is prejudiced (e.g. "Redditors are sexist."). We all do better, as a species, when we focus on our own experiences. E.g. "When I went to Reddit, the comments by many of the people there made me feel that they were being sexist towards me." The latter

(a) focuses on the individual, rather than sterotyping the group, which helps to defuse discrimination, rather than fuelling it, and

(b) focuses on the experience, which is important in allowing others to empathise with us, which in turn is valuable in breaking down discrimination

Even in the developed world, there still remains a great deal of legal and political sexism (the pay gap, career choices, maternity/paternity leave), as well as an even larger amount of social sexism (mens and womens roles, boys and girls toys, etc.). We've come a long way, but there's a long way still to go. Still: we're moving in the right direction, and it's okay to relax a little about it all.

But when it comes down to toilet seats? Man, that's getting silly. You're going to wash your hands when you're done anyway, right? So touching a probably-pretty-clean-actually toilet seat for a few seconds isn't going to hurt you. You leave it whichever way you like; I'll leave it whichever way I like; and we'll both be nice to one another... it'll probably work out.

tl;dr: Be nice to one another.

I love the idea, stemming from a page linked from that comment, that programmers could make use of two (or more?) different colours of comments.

I'd love to be able to, for example, write comments beginning with a # or /* and have them be one colour, and those beginning with a # or /** and have them be a different colour. Combined with some coding practices, you could quickly differentiate between, say, your ?Doc markup (saying what parameters a method accepts, what it outputs, and what it does) and your "plain old comments" (saying how a particular block of code works and why, showing an alternative way that was tried, or cross-referencing some other code or project).

I might have to go implement that into my text editor's rulesets and give it a go.

The debate about why certain online communities attract a majority of men while others attract a majority of women often seems to focus on the following:

* Debate/discussion versus chat/socialisation sites * Whether the "major topics" (think: top 10 subreddits, etc.) are male-focussed or female-focussed * Critical mass of users of a particular gender (early adopters) * Whether or not anonymity is allowed or encouraged * What controls are in place to report inappropriate content

I'd like to suggest an alternative (partial) explanation. It's not an opinion that I hold, but it's a possibility that perhaps should be considered:

Perhaps men and women are naturally inclined towards single-sex communities. This is linked to the "critical mass" idea, above, but with the additional conclusion that it is even harder to reverse the trend. If we treat services like Foursquare as outliers, we could quickly find evidence for the hypothesis that, in choosing a "space" online, men look for places where men are, and women look for places where women are.

Of course, there are exceptions: there always are. But if only 50% of men and 50% of women worked by this criteria, we'd expect to see communties with about a 75%/25% split (and, in fact, we'd probably see a variance from that because of the number and size of those communities, of course).

Is one of the things that attracts men, more than women, to Hubski, the fact that it is predominantly male, and not female?

I'm sure that a sociologist or an anthropologist can throw some weight at this, but isn't it the case that for a large amount of human history, societies have biased men to spend social time with men, and women to spend social time with women. We're getting better at it, in Western society, I think, but the historical bias is still there. Think back to your school days and whether you had more same-sex friends or opposite-sex friends: there'll be outliers, of course, but most people will say that they had more same-sex friends. Why?

It's possible that the root of the gender divide in our online communities shares the same root as that in our offline communities. Perhaps we shouldn't be asking "Why are there no women on Reddit?" and "Why are there no women on Pinterest?", and instead ask "Why are men generally inclined to socialise with other men and women with other women?"

Perhaps the answer's sociological or psychological: perhaps we're conditioned this way by millennia of historical sexism. Or perhaps it's biological? In the same way as other species have clear gender-based roles (male lions either live with many females, or completely alone, for example), maybe we humans have our own similar tendencies? But whatever the cause, it's possible that to answer the question we need to cast our nets wider than "online communities".

Okay: so let's look at the other options:

#2 is a critical mass problem - "if a site has a critical mass of women, it will be used by women". Looking at the way that some social networks and other websites' communities work, I can see why this might be the case. Sexism against women on the web is endemic, and this makes many online communities unappealing to women (men, on the other hand, will sometimes overlook it; so men continue to join and women don't). If you look at the online communities where this is not the case, they are either communities in which a critical mass of women already joined (e.g. Pinterest), and thus are self-regulating, or where community membership is "opt-in", rather than "opt-out": Facebook and Twitter, for example, lean towards a model whereby you socialise first and foremost with people you already know (or, at least, people you select) - compare to Reddit, for example, where your very first experience is to be bombarded with the most popular stream of the firehose.

How about #3: there's something about the format itself that makes women more-likely to use it? Maybe, and I've certainly had female friends say this to me (of Pinterest), but I'm not certain that there isn't some confusion between this and the previous point: a society is built by its members, and - again - the first thing you see on the front page of Pinterest is the popular shares, which as we all know are dominated by women. This isn't a reflection on the format of the site, but of its makeup: i.e. option #2. Sure, there are aspects of Pinterest's design that meet aspects of stereotypical "girly" design (the floral logo, for example), but I don't think that these are significant in themselves.

In short: I suspect that your second suggestion, that a core critical mass of women is the fundamental force that shifts a website to having an ongoing female presence.

Old guys like me didn't move fast enough to participate.

By the time I saw it, it was over.

All I can say is: how can you have a copy of FTL: Faster Than Light that you've never played. That game's awesome.

I have a Steam backlog, too, but it's nowhere near as long as yours. I have a book "waiting list": I wouldn't call it a backlog, because the rate at which books are added to it fluctuates and books rarely "jump the queue", so there's nothing on there that I'll never get to: it's just a matter of time.

When I'm under pressure and doing too much, I get a backlog of emails, especially in my personal account. I try to process to Inbox Zero, but I can only manage it on a good day. On a bad day, it's far too easy to slip into the habit of using by inbox as a to-do list, which in turn only generates more stress - I've got to get better at that.

I've got a slight backlog of board games: I think I've only got two board games (and, separately, two expansions) that I own but have never played, but I'd probably have more if my partner hadn't had me agree to a moratorium on more board games purchases until we'd at least played everything that I already owned.

Oh, and I've got a little backlog on paperwork relating to my dad's estate: it's taken far too long (he died almost a year ago) to get things underway, owing to some legal complications, but now that we're finally moving I've got a heap of paperwork I need to do that I simply haven't found time for. I've learned a lot about being an executor this last year, and my god there's a lot of stuff that you (potentially) have to do!

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini

Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, by Robert M. Pirsig (read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, if you haven't already, first).

People keep mentioning Aldous Huxley, so I'm disappointed that nobody's suggested After Many a Summer.

Sorry: didn't think about the fact that "double glazing" might not translate well!

It's also known as insulated glazing or double-pane: basically, windows with two (or more) sheets of glass, separated by a gap of air (or, in more-fancy models, argon gas). This provides significantly more insulation than a single pane of glass alone, and so dramatically improves the energy-efficiency of the house (heat loss through windows is a big way of losing heat from your house; after loft insulation and draft exclusion, it's one of the biggest ways to have an impact).

Here in the UK, a huge number of houses were built during the rapid expansion of the cities in the 50s and early 60s, driven by the reconstruction of war-damaged areas and our (more-limited than the US) "baby boom". Later, in the late 80s, 90s and early 2000s, as energy prices steadily climbed (and coupled with increasing concern for energy waste and environmental impact), there became a significant market for retro-fitting the windows of these houses with new, modern, double-glazed models. Into this market gap sprung a large number of companies selling double-glazing installations. In order to spread the message about the benefits of their product, and to compete with their many rivals, double-glazing firms employed shady marketing tactics, which quickly became among the most-hated. Having a door-to-door double-glazing salesman appear at your door was just slightly worse for most people than, say, having somebody at your door trying to tell you about the superiority of their religion.

As well as door-to-door sales, double glazing companies famously used cold calling, dodgy product comparisons (I was instructed, for example, to pay special attention to the houses of people who'd had aluminium-framed windows installed: these were originally sold as more-durable than the PVC-framed alternatives, but I was to spread rumours that their ability to stop condensation and leaks was less-good than PVC-based windows), and aggressively-marketed fake discounts ("I shouldn't be doing this, but if you sign here today, I can put it through on a special offer and get you 25% off," says the salesman, knowing that he already put the price up 40% in anticipation of using this tactic).

By the time I was (in desperation) doing this job, in about 2001, most houses already had double-glazing - either because they'd had it installed in the 90s or because they were new buildings (and UK building codes require energy-efficiency standards to be met in new construction). In the early to mid 00s, many double-glazing companies collapsed or merged, as the market dried up and they were only able to sell to the smaller market of construction companies. There are few single-glazed homes left in the UK, and most of them are so because their owners simply don't want or can't afford double-glazing (it's true that it saves you money in the long run, but the outlay of replacing all of your windows makes it among the least cost-efficient ways to save money in the short term). This made it a hard and hostile market, and for somebody like me - too honest to be a salesman! - it was impossible to become good at.

And so, I quit. And every time I mention this job that I did, once, people look at me with the same kind of revulsion that they usually reserve for traffic wardens and politicians.

tl;dr: Two panes of glass with an air gap between, for better energy-efficiency. Also; a history of double-glazing in the UK.

Damn. Just missed it.

Once, during a summer in the middle of University when I was having trouble making ends meet, I took a job as a door-to-door double glazing salesman. It was the worst job I've ever had, and I was abysmal at it (I hated lying to people to try to make them want to buy something that they didn't really want and generally didn't need). I hated every minute of it.

All of the work was on commission, and I'd been told that it usually took a few days at it before you got the hang of it, so I stuck with it for just over a week. That's when I got my first sale; some lady who'd thought my pitch was worthwhile. But she called up the company later that day to say she'd changed her mind and didn't want a quote after all, and I realised that no matter how hard I tried, I'd never be enough of a con man to be good at this job (which I already hated).

I simply didn't turn up for work the next day. When my boss called me, I said, "You didn't lose any sales by me not being there. This really isn't for me; I quit."

If you're putting Pink Floyd albums in there, you really oughta have Division Bell too. That album's just a whole world of dark, sad, interconnected beauty.

Facebook suspected my account on account of me using a "fake name" (I wasn't). It took six weeks and two pieces of government-issued photo ID to persuade them that I was really me: the whole time, they kept my account "live" but didn't forward me any messages, so anything my friends sent me just disappeared into a black hole until I got back in.

Then I left Facebook. Like you, it seemed to be "God's Will", or something, that I ought to by that point. I wasn't comfortable knowing that they could - and would - lock me out and assume my identity in the eyes of my friends.

Well said. But for me, striving for better-ness does not imply that I an not happy with where I am right now. I'm comfortable and satisfied with where I am (not least because I know which direction I'm heading in).

And when I look back over my life, and see the times at which I hadn't yet made so much of myself, they're generally still pretty good: I have, so far - on average - lived a happy life. That's not to say that bad things haven't happened; that I haven't had hard times and emotional struggles. Just to say that I've typically been happy throughout, and that I've learned to do better and better and finding happiness.

Sometimes I describe myself as a professional comedian.

Many years ago, I did a bit of open mic. I was pretty good at it, and got given a paid gig as a warm-up to a "real" comedian. That was the only time I've ever been employed as a comedian. The one time I ever got paid for it.

It's not that I didn't like it - it was fun. And I'm sure I could have done more. But my interests are diverse and my life is busy, so I moved on. A little while later, a friend of mine had her first novel published, and started describing herself as a professional author. I joked that I must then be a professional comedian.

Maybe I'll do it again, one of these years. I enjoyed doing it, and I'd enjoy it again. But right now I'm busy with other things: my "day job", running a non-profit, volunteer work, a couple of courses, and - when I find the time - a spot of paramotoring. But everything changes, and perhaps someday I'll find myself on stage again ("the one guy in the room that's not laughing", as I've described it before).

Was I a successful comedian? No. If I'd have been doing that paid gig over and over, 36 hours a week, I still wouldn't earn as much money as I do now (and when would I find time to write new material). But success is what you make it. For me, all I needed was to once be a "professional comedian", and to know that I could go down that road again.

Everybody at that gig thought that I was there for them. But I wasn't. I was there for me.