a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  3720 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 22, 2014

I

Android is OS X. It isn't iOS and I'm okay with that. I'm actually kinda likin' it. Would happily ditch the globular weird Android emoji, though. WTF.

II

A colleague and I were bemoaning the fact that "douchebag" is a difficult sobriquet to level at a woman. I reflected that "douchebag" is a great word in that it's a non-sequitor that is only offensive because it is used for offense. My colleague suggested "douche-hag" which gave me a chuckle but it occurred to me that "hag" makes it very gender-specific. I've become much more aware of gender issues since having a daughter and I'm recognizing more and more that the default for women in English is belittlement, not empowerment.

III

The new Mac Mini is out and it's expensive and the RAM is soldered. I could build a Hackintosh that would dust the shit out of it for half the price. Meanwhile I'm listening through Doubletwist so I could reasonably jettison iTunes, especially since I have a 24TB server. So I'm trying to decide between buying a Mini and restoring the status quo or doing something completely different and go over to FLAC. Lord knows I have enough ratio on a handful of trackers to get serious about it.

IV Michelin Pilot Road 2s have treated me great for the past 7800 miles, which is unheard of for motorcycle tires. But for the past 200 they've gone from "unsettling" to "disquieting" to "disturbing" to "terrifying." Francesca is therefore in the garage (a friendly neighbor volunteered a parking spot - talk about awesome) and I took the Dodge this morning.

Which proceeded to bust a bead on the shitty-ass road into this weird-ass job.

So, hey. Glad I dissipated my tire karma on something with four of them, rather than two.





lil  ·  3720 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I'm recognizing more and more that the default for women in English is belittlement, not empowerment.
That's a powerful realization. Read that line galen and remember that George Orwell or whatever you want to call him said it too, but in different words. as in
    But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought
_refugee_  ·  3720 days ago  ·  link  ·  

oh my god klein i read the worst article about douchebag on facebook the other day It was so bad it wasn't worth sharing on Hubski. I not only disagree with it but think it's stupid. So only read it if you wanna rage a little.

user-inactivated  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Someone posted it in on Hubski. I couldn't finish it, to be honest.

_refugee_  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I don't think I saw it here. I didn't like it. I didn't think the author did a good job with their argument. I was really confused as to why Batman/Bruce Wayne was somehow, arbitrarily a douchebag. Like the author was very good at saying "So-and-so! They're a douchebag!" The author was not good at saying why.

And also he called John Wayne a douchebag and kind of lost me there.

And also he said Cyclops is a douchebag when really all Cyclops ever did was love Jean Grey and not get along with Wolvervine, he was actually generally kind of a better person than Wolverine?

kleinbl00  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Best "douchebag" quote I ever heard?

douchebag - someone you don't like

douchebag in Hollywood - someone more successful than you

There's a fair amount of "sour grapes" to it, and I think the fact that it's a sobriquet leveled at white men has more to do with the fact that we have so many other slanders to level at other races and genders. Women will be called gender-specific things. Other races are likely to get something other than "douchebag" first.

His comment on the lack of white-people slander is linguistically deaf. Ethnic slurs are used to delineate "other" and when you're a white male, that ain't you. Read a book about China once, for example, that pointed out that the word for "japanese" basically means "foreign devil" and if you want to talk about any other race of foreigner, you have to say the equivalent of "foreign devil, other than Japanese."

user-inactivated  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Can't believe he said Batman and not Superman, who is known as to be a dick

elizabeth  ·  3720 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I bet you could change the emojis if you're willing to waste your time on that. I'm not sure if this tutorial works on OS X but it's worth a try if it's something that bothers you.

As for insults, I find that asshole is a good gender-neutal one. Everybody has/can be an asshole.

kleinbl00  ·  3719 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, the problem with that is I need to root it and I'm not ready to root it. Thanks, though.