Election meta

cn: more board gaming than election politics, really

Usually around election time I write up a post about what I’m voting for on the ballot. Most things on the ballot are local, and not relevant to most of my readers, but I think it’s important to highlight and normalize the research process for smaller elections. The presidential election is important and all, but in all likelihood you’ve already made that decision so surely you can spare some time to research the smaller elections?

Unfortunately my last ballot didn’t really have any interesting local votes, so I guess we’re stuck talking presidents. Well shoot.

You know what, I want to talk about board games instead.

In games with three or more players, players are often presented with a choice to attack one of their opponents. This opens up a fair amount of strategic space, which board gamers sometimes sometimes refer to as “politics”. Common political strategies include:

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Origami: Budding Sonobe

Budding Sonobe

Budding Sonobe, my design, made from Sonobe units

This is one of those origami models that other people seem to like much more than I do.  I think it’s over-designed.

I thought I’d have it recursively branch multiple levels, and at each level one of the branches would have a “mutation”.  You can see the pinwheel design on the upper right branch, the pink cube on the left branch. All this on top of the blue/orange/red/green color scheme.  I didn’t branch very many times because it didn’t seem structurally sound enough, and also I wasn’t too fond of it.  But still, some people like it.  If you like it, maybe you can tell me why.

My guess is that people like it for its intricate design.  I think it uses… *counts to self* …60 pieces of paper, each one 3.75 cm.  The whole model fits in my palm.  Each sheet is folded into a Sonobe unit, which is just very standard and flexible origami unit.  If I were to try it again, I would keep it intricate but reduce the design entropy.

MBTI: A lukewarm analysis

MBTI, or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is probably the most popular personality test. It contains four axes: Introverted/Extraverted, iNtuitive/Sensing, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving. If you take the test, you may be assigned one of 16 personality types, for instance I would be INTJ.

The MBTI is regarded as pseudoscience, perpetuated by the popular consciousness and HR departments rather than academic research. One time I asked a personality psychologist and she said it was just so far off from reality that nobody even bothered talking about it. Psychologists prefer to talk about another personality model, called the Five Factor Model, also known as The Big Five. This has five axes, labeled Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN).

I’ve often remarked that although the Five Factor Model is supposedly more scientific, it’s clearly a lot less compelling. And isn’t that something? I couldn’t honestly say that I find astrology compelling, or ear candles compelling, but the MBTI, now that’s some yummy pseudoscience. I have some remarks on what makes MBTI a pseudoscience, what makes it compelling, and what its problems are.

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I read popular physics: Giant Atoms

Someone went and got me a subscription to Scientific American. So I’ve been looking at these popular physics articles, marveling at what they look like post-PhD. I will continue doing this until I get bored.

Today, I will look at an article in the February issue, titled “Giant Atoms”, by Charlie Wood. It’s a short article about the MAGIS-100 experiment, which I was previously unaware of.

I got two main points from the article:

  • The MAGIS-100 experiment drops atoms down a 100 meter vacuum tube, creating “room-length” atom waves.
  • The experiment will eventually be sensitive to gravitational waves, and new forces that interact with dark matter.

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Give and take: Preferences in sex

cn: Non-graphic references to oral sex

Many asexuals don’t want sex of any sort. However, if you listen to asexual and ace-adjacent experiences, you find a pretty wide range of stories, from people who don’t like to even think about sex, to people who are basically okay with it. You also have stories of people who like certain aspects of sex and dislike others. For instance, some people only like to “give” oral sex, and other people only like to “receive” it.

This is not just an ace thing. Historically, “stone butch” has been used to describe masculine lesbians who don’t want to receive sexual touch. Of course, this leaves out people who want to receive (sexual) touch but not give (sexual) touch. I know of two terms that have been coined to fill the void: “stone femme“, and “paper“. In this post, I will use “paper” because it doesn’t say anything about the gender, orientation, or gender expression of the person.

In sex-positive feminism, people who don’t like to give oral sex are frequently the object of derision, and moral approbation. Recently, fellow FTBlogger Giliell provided an excellent example of both.

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Link roundup: February 2020

Just a few links this month.  Enjoy.

[On the word “pedophile”] | Osteophage – Coyote discusses how the word “pedophile” refers specifically to the internal state or intent of perpetrators.  This runs counter to my usual philosophy about sexual violence: it’s the action and consequences that matter, not the perpetrator’s motivations.  Focusing on motivations is a bad idea because it gives people a way to excuse sexual violence by making unverifiable and irrelevant claims about perpetrators’ motivations AND it raises the potentially derailing question of whether sexual inclinations alone can be morally wrong.

If you’re wondering what words to use instead, the gold standard among researchers and activist organizations is child sexual abuse or CSA.  A perpetrator of CSA could be called a child sexual abuser.  A couple years ago I wrote a guide to sexual violence terminology, which was mostly based on researchers and activists, and I have to say that “pedophile” wasn’t even on my radar because nobody uses it.

Do not try to understand me | Pervert Justice – Crip Dyke talks about how trying to understand trans experiences can be a hangup for cis people, and isn’t really necessary to begin with.  I have to say, that being an ace activist/commentator, at least trying to understand the full range of ace experiences is part of the role.  But there are just so many different experiences, some quite far off from my own, that it’s foolhardy for even a dedicated activist to try to understand it all.  It’s more important to understand concerns and goals than personal experiences.

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