A Sunday totally open thread

TBAT are taking the day off.

Although one of us may occasionally look in on active threads none will be continuously moderated. Please self moderate.

Warning: Although TBAT will not be monitoring threads they may decide to go back and read the comments. If, at that time, they find any comments that violate board policies such comments will be immediately removed.

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Enjoy your well-deserved day off.

Thanks for all you do.

[Izzy]

Seconded! Were it possible over the Internet, I'd offer you all a round of drinks at least.

[Froborr]

Enjoy your day off!

[chris the cynic]

Have a happy day off.

[Sereg]

Woohoo, mods are gone! Nakey time!

*ahem*

How about an open thread about thread? I've been embroidering a heraldic design for an SCA thing, and while I'm using just regular DMC floss I'm doing it on silk. I don't know what the right term is for the kind of silk I'm using, but the threads are a bit slubbed and it's a stiff, taffeta-like fabric. Can I iron it? How else would I get the foldy creases out?

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Hmm. Is it actual silk or poly-something that is being sold as 'silk'? Do you have a scrap piece that you can test iron? I'd definitely recommend using a pressing cloth if you are going to try.

[Sereg]

It was on the remnants table unlabeled, but it's identical in every way except color to the other piece I have that was labeled 100% silk.

of course, I have to go buy an iron first... hope I can find one that's not too expensive.

I still need a job btw. Mostly been working in customer service/tech support, I have a BS in biology but haven't been in a lab since 2001, and if I never have to say those two phrases again I'll be happy. At this point I'll take anything but I got fired from a temp assignment after two days because standing still causes more pain than I can deal with.

[Raj]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIT!

[lonespark]

Awww, Sereg. Unemployed solidarity fistbump/hug.

What part of the country are you in?

[Amaryllis]

sereg: of course, I have to go buy an iron first... hope I can find one that's not too expensive.

Except that I read that as "iron FIST" and thought vaguely, "you can buy those? Where, I could use on of them myself. No, must be some textiles term."

lonespark: Unemployed solidarity fistbump
"What, with the iron fist-- I must have read that wrong...oh."

*excuse self to pour a cup of coffee*
*STRONG coffee*

Anyway, good luck with the job search, to both of you.

Happy birthday, Kit!

[The Board Administration Team]

@Everybody: RD dropped by over night and made a number of comments on the "nice guy" thread. All consisted mainly of adolescent jibes and sneers.

For the moment we are leaving them up so people can, if they wish, see how little such comments add to the conversation.

[Literata]

Thanks, TBAT.

[Brin]

Oh, is it birthday time? Happy birthday, Kit!

(Raj, do you keep a list somewhere of Slacktivites' birthdays? I'm starting to wonder if I'll wake up one November morning to find my birthday party has started without me. (Not that I would necessarily have a problem with that.))

[Raj]

(Raj, do you keep a list somewhere of Slacktivites' birthdays? I'm starting to wonder if I'll wake up one November morning to find my birthday party has started without me.

Well, Brin, so much for that surprise party I was planning to throw for you!

Actually, to answer your question, I do keep a list of friends' birthdays, and yes, Kit and many other Slacktibuddies are on it :) (If anyone reading this would like to be included in my B-day list, feel free to drop me a line at rajtrekker AT gmail DOT com, or Facebook me or whatever. Oh, and mine is November 3 - shameless plug I haz it.)

[katster]

I tend to be a lurker, so I didn't offer it up as a link in the blogaround, but I figure here will work...

I write a fanzine, generally for the science fiction community, but of course, fanzines can wander off onto all sorts of topics. This one ended up being about depression, particularly how it affects me. Obviously, it's triggery with regards to depression and mental illness, and I do make one mention of suicide, but it's mostly about the isolation and loneliness.

You can find the blog page with the link to the PDF of the fanzine here.

I hope you all like.

[The Board Administration Team]

@kaster: Many of the people who have sent in links for the blogaround over the months have been, like you, lurkers. Readers are a vital part of the community here.

If you would like us to add your link to the blogaround let us know.

[katster]

Sure! That would be awesome, if y'all wouldn't mind. :)

[Anon from a 2nd world country]

*hugs to the tea-bat*

I hope that my posting anonymously won't cause me to be mixed up with the misbehaving anonymous people, but I am discussing my country of residence and I have privacy needs.

tw sexism, discussion of women returning back to work after childbirth

Look at question five on the questionnaire the government of the country I live in sent out to all its citizens!

5. There are those who think the [national] government should provide accentuated support to women, particularly those mothers of young children who want to return to work. Others think that there is no need for this, that mothers with young children should stay at home with them. What do you think?

[] The government should encourage corporations towards flexible employment, and to provide in office daycare for the children of female employees.

[] There is no need to support women's return to work after childbirth, they should remain at home with the children.

[] I don't know.

Are we living in the 1950's or are we living in 1984?

all the questions are like that. false dichotomies, choose between two inadequate options, racist dogwhistles (not in this question but in others), doublespeak, newspeak, questions designed to make you feel like a jerk if you pick one of the options, and there's the certain knowledge that whatever answers you pick, they'll be ignored. Laws based on the 'outcome' of this questionnaire are probably being signed into effect as we speak, even though we have a month or two to return them. But hey, at least they are pretending to consult us so that they can later claim they took our concerns into account? That counts for something, right?

Another question was about whether we should support small businesses or whether we should be fair and support all businesses equally. Why are they bothering to ask us our opinion if the questions are all leading and encouraging us to say what they want us to say?

[The Board Administration Team]

@Anon from a 2nd world country: I hope that my posting anonymously won't cause me to be mixed up with the misbehaving anonymous people, but I am discussing my country of residence and I have privacy needs.

It certainly doesn't mix US up. You did absolutely everything that one could possible ask of someone who had good reasons (and do you EVER have good reasons) for posting anonymously. You emailed us ahead of time, you told us when you started to use a different stable email address--you always kept us in the loop. Thank you.

In fact you are our example of what someone SHOULD do.

In fact one of the things that annoys me about people who want to change their usernames because they "do not want to be judged" etc is that they are making things more difficult for people like you who have very, very good reasons for not using the same username all the time.

[The Board Administration Team]

@katster: done :)

[cjmr, spamflagging, on her son's netbook]

spam just above from petter joe

[Mike Timonin]

Izzy - I join you in wishing we could share drinks with everyone - the joy and the sadness of the internet, really.

[Literata]

N+1 to that. Forget synthehol; I'd settle for tele-alcohol.

[Sereg]

Lonespark - Southwest Virginia, the part that everyone forgets is there. It's the only place I can live and be relatively sane.

[Winter]

Happy birthday, Kit.

The news these days seems to be making a lot of us crave a good stiff drink.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Happy birthday from me too, Kit.

TRiG, now happily signed in again.

[Ross]

In the spirit of open-threadedness, we've talked a few times about color vision, and I know at the other place we all love the mantis shrimp, so I cam across this neat pair of articles about how color perception is influenced by language. The first part talks about the pattern in which colors get names (If you know how many words a language has for basic colors, you can predict pretty accurately what they'll be and which colors they'll group together), and the second part reports the rather interesting result that having different names for two colors seems to make it easier for a speaker to distinguish them visually -- but only in the right side of your visual field.

(One thing I thought was interesting: A linguistic distinction between blue and green doesn't occur in the hebrew bible. In japanese, that distinction is effectively modern -- so modern that traffic-light-green is described as blue.)

[Beroli]

Happy one-day-late birthday, Kit.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

Thank you Ross, for giving me something else fascinating to read while procrastinating...

[Ellen Brand]

Ross- One of my favorite episodes of Detective Conan, a mystery anime, revolves around the fact that a witness who describes a coat as "ao," blue, is in their... seventies? Around that. So the coat is actually green, and the twenty-something police detective trying to make sense of the contradictory statements is very confused, because he thinks of the coat as "midori." It was cool, and is one of the reasons that a commercial dub of the property was doomed from the start. :)

[Froborr]

@Ellen Brand: That's awesome.

*adds Detective Conan to list of anime to watch*

Sadly it's a pretty long list at the moment... I'm supposed to be doing a panel on religious symbolism and giant robots in September, so Escaflowne, Rahxephon, and something I'm forgetting are ahead of it. (Technically so is Gundam Wing, but I've watched enough to know I'm not watching any more.)

[Kitryan]

@Sereg
You've got dupioni. It can almost definitely be ironed, regardless of it's fiber content. Steam will help with the creases, be careful of water spots, which will mark silk. You may want to use a press cloth to be extra safe.

[Nick Kiddle]

//Except that I read that as "iron FIST" and thought vaguely, "you can buy those? Where, I could use on of them myself. No, must be some textiles term."//

Our club badge depicts a fist holding a length of iron bar, and is thus sometimes referred to as an iron fist. The badge from my childhood, which I think looks way cooler, has a fist holding a length of chain (I believe the links of chain have added symbolism, but I can't swear to this). One of my medium-term ambitions is to get this badge tattooed onto my arm, but first I need to find a suitable image to show to the artist. So I am, in fact, trying to source an iron fist.

[Kellandros]

Ross-
Saw an article today about the inverse of color blindness- they are trying to study a segment of women who have 4 active cone types in their eyes rather than 3:

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/health/some-women-may-see-100-million-colors-thanks-to-their-genes-450179/

Nick Kiddle-
I see quite a variety of possibility on a Google Image Search; perhaps you can find some inspiration there?

[Ellen Brand]

Froborr- If it takes less time, you MAY have a better time finding the manga than the anime. The licenser only seems to be doing the movies, and the only fansubber recently got shut down. The manga is still being scanlated, and can be found on places like Mangarush, I believe. Also, the VIZ translation isn't bad, if you can get past the absolutely atrocious name-changes for localization.

That said, Detective Conan (Known in the US as "Case Closed") is a really awesome series, whose anime and manga continuities stay surprisingly close to each other, mainly because Aoyama Gosho, the manga-ka, is a sneaky, sneaky gentlman and likes planting Chekov's Guns that will go off something like 50 chapters later.

THAT said, this is not a series to get into unless you are prepared to invest significant amounts of time. The series is up to 800+ chapters of manga and 650+ episodes of the anime, plus 16 movies, plus 20-some OAVs. If you want the "purest" story, the manga's probably your best bet, but all the side stuff is really a lot of fun.

(On a further note, Aoyama Gosho really, REALLY likes sneaking characters from his earlier work in, to the point where Kaitou Kid, the protagonist of his previous series "Magic Kaito" is a recurring character and pain in Conan's ass. :))

[sarah]

Coming in late, but @Raj: November 3rd FTW!