Not being able to be picky about your job/salary isn't discrimination, it just is what it is. It would be discrimination if a company was systematically hiring women and men with similar credentials, and refusing to pay women as much as the men. Who knows, that probably does happen at one or two companies because people are scumbags, but it would be interesting to try and prove.

Pretty much. I don't think there's much we can do for our generation, gotta get them young and teach kids to look at things differently (girls AND boys.) I've talked to younger female CS majors who were afraid they wouldn't be able to get a job because they wouldn't get hired because they're a woman. That's not really the problem, it's that well, they're conditioned to worry about that stuff, like they're inferior, and if they worry too much then they'll get all nervous and screw up the interview.

Also, men play the same game. It's not like there's some club where they only tell men about negotiating salary.

That's just business though. If they came out and said "We can offer up to X amount" then everyone would ask for the highest amount, they wouldn't say "oh no, that's too much, I'll take the lower end of the bracket." It's just like negotiating the price on a car. It's their own responsibility to research what their job (or car) is worth, and it's not like it's hard these days with salary calculators and things online.

I don't think having rules is going to make a difference. People just need to suck less. Reddit has rules, and subreddits usually have their own rules, but you still get tons of jerks. People are absorbed in their own little worlds, especially the hateful ones. They forget they're interacting with other humans. Anyone who's ever worked retail knows what it feels like to have a customer just walk up yacking on their cell phone and not say hello as if you're just some machine, or in fast food, customers are notably more nastier in drive thru vs ones that come inside to order (because they don't see your face at first.) Also it's why they say when you're lying on the ground hurt/dying, that you should call out to someone specifically, and look them in eye and ask for help, because people are just so absorbed in themselves and assume someone else will help.

On YouTube, etc. you just see an extreme version of this self centeredness because they have total anonymity and they can just go on and say awful things with no real repercussion.

I'm not really convinced it's a discrimination thing. I think it's women not asking for raises or higher salaries when they start a job. When you're negotiating a job offer, they have to low ball you, but there's usually a range they can offer, and if you just ask they will give you more. Some just don't ask. Women have to deal with a lot of issues like it being ingrained them since elementary school to not seem bossy, so they learn to not speak up and be assertive. Impostor syndrome is also pretty common. I was pretty shy, unassertive, and underpaid my first year in software engineering. I was lucky to work some place where I was encouraged to speak up. After my confidence was built up after a year, I asked for a raise from $15/hr to $25/hr (I was part time as I was finishing up school.) My boss had to ask a higher up, and they gave me $28/hr. All I had to do was ask. I'm sure that at some companies some women might never break out of their shell though, and that's unfortunate, but it's really hard to undo years of conditioning.

I guess my point is it's not really an issue of people at companies being discriminatory, it's how our society raises our girls. As an aside, I think that's also why there isn't many women in software engineering, because they aren't exposed to programming as children.

The choice of language for a particular task often just comes down to personal preference. For example, some people love Ruby, but I find the syntax kind of gross, so I use Python whenever I can.

It's still the issue of wading through a crowd of people trying to find someone you're compatible with. Just because women have a lot of men approaching them, it doesn't mean a guy they're compatible with will ever actually approach them. Particularly if the woman isn't projecting herself in a way that would attract the men she wants, or if she's not even bothering to approach men herself.

To be fair, dating for everyone is a numbers game. Just because an attractive woman has men swarming around her it doesn't mean she actually wants to be with 98% of those guys.

There's a really great ted talk relating to that:

When I started playing MUDs back in the 90s, my character was usually named Zaelea. I eventually changed it Zaylea to emphasize the pronunciation and I just keep using it for stuff like this.

My mom has been obese as long as I can remember, and even in the morbid category at one point (but had gastric bypass surgery and that brought her back down to simply obese.) However, me and my sister were never fat when we were < 18. That didn't happen until we got older. I was able to reverse it before it got too bad, but my sister just got out of control. I think in some cases, even if the obese parent manages to keep their kids a healthy weight, the kids still see how they eat and such and end up getting fat as an adult (particularly if emotional eating is the problem.)

Years ago, a family friend up and gave all his stuff away, and then moved to Hawaii to live in the forest in a loin cloth. My aunt went to visit him periodically (he'd go into town sometimes.) Eventually, he disappeared and no one could find him. It was eventually assumed that he got bit by a snake or something and died. Living off the land and without money and such is heavily romanticized and not all it's cut out to be.

Student loans bum me out. I've thought about things like living abroad, or moving out to the country etc, but I have to stay put, close the city, making as much as I can, for at least 5 years, if I don't want to spend the next decade or more paying them off.

I briefly dumped my smartphone while trying out Ting (didn't want to invest in a phone for that network until I was sure I liked it.) I could certainly live without a smartphone, but it's convenient to be able to look up things on a whim. I'm not the kind of person that constantly glued to my phone at every idle moment though. I don't use Facebook, Twitter, etc. Yes, occasionally I get shit about not being on Facebook because someone wants me to see some photos or whatever, but I don't care.

I went without a car until I was 24, so I can tell you, no, people did not talk on the bus before (not in the DC area anyway), besides normal polite things like "excuse me." (well except once some guy randomly said to me getting off the bus "Don't let anyone make you think you aren't beautiful" have no idea where that came from.) I did go to a company lunch one time that was kind of weird because everyone was staring at their phones. Situations like that almost make me feel like I ought to be doing something on my phone.

There's something about this article that makes it sound like the girl is a variant of a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl."

I travelled once alone to Taiwan (I had a friend living there I met up with but was mostly alone) and I was surprised at how lonely I felt. I kept wanting to tell people back home about the beautiful things I saw, and photos couldn't really do some of it justice. I don't think I'd want to travel alone again after that.