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thro2's comments

thro2 | 11 years ago | on: Tricked

It's a Thing You Can't Say--which makes it likely to be a dangerous truth.

Zuckerburg has a long neck.

thro2 | 11 years ago | on: Corporations are refrigerators

> Whenever he learned of my latest all night work effort, or when I refused to take vacation because of a work thing, my Dad always used to counsel me to go fill a bucket with water and stick my hand in it. Then he'd ask how much of a hole was left when I took my hand out. Smart man, my Dad - he clearly learned his lesson after that layoff :-)

Can someone explain this?

thro2 | 11 years ago | on: The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic

playing the devil's advocate here, the name "mana" for the concept in question came much later than its incorporation into video games (as "MP"), which argues against the concept having been borrowed from the culture that had the word "mana". and at least after the fact, MP are an obvious solution for the problem of rate limiting spells - so it's plausible to argue that the inherent concept probably would have shown up in games independently of any particular tribal society using it in their formulation of magic or not.

thro2 | 12 years ago | on: Kolmogorov Complexity - it's a bit silly

This proof doesn't show that Kolmogorov complexity of any fixed string is 0, it shows that Kolmogorov complexity of any fixed string is constant (which is trivial). That is obscured by an abuse of notation which makes arguments about Kolmogorov complexity easier to parse in 99% of cases. So, imho, this post isn't very substantial - it's essentially a garden variety "1 = 2" sort of argument.

thro2 | 12 years ago | on: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

This is kind of a non sequitur. It sounds like you're trying to argue against someone who denies that women in tech are sometimes made to feel uncomfortable. Maybe you didn't read my post carefully, but just saw "why don't you let them seak for themselves" and assumed that was my position.

You're begging the question here. If the name of this site really belongs to the same category of things that make women uncomfortable, of course it is bad.

thro2 | 12 years ago | on: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

First of all, I think you're confusing me with the people you're arguing against (who explicitly deny that calling some website "bro" is exclusionary). I'm not arguing for that; I'm objecting to your disingenuous claim (as I read it) that you're NOT trying to act as an advocate on behalf of women.

We're talking about a social construct here (exclusionarity), so certainly the more women you find, the stronger your case is. No women is no evidence, one is weak evidence, etc. But even if you find such people, why don't you let them speak for themselves?

And why use the word "mansplain"? It's inflammatory language.

thro2 | 12 years ago | on: Bro pages: like man pages, but with examples only

The behavior here is only exclusionary if people feel excluded by it, so the legitimacy of your concerns is based in how women (in this case) feel. If you can't find a person who thinks he/she is being discriminated against here, you're obviously tilting at windmills.

thro2 | 12 years ago | on: To Persuade People, Tell Them a Story

> When I started to realize the value of storytelling, I gathered a group of friends to meet regularly to improve our storytelling.

I see what you did there

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