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scarp's comments
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scarp  ·  4671 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How will Hubuski maintain a high standard?  ·  
I think the fact that the focal point of content here is on the user and not something more broad like a subreddit helps each user get what he wants from hubski without imposing on anyone else. So while a subreddit might one day become flooded with subpar content, I don't expect someone who has consistently posted great content to suddenly start posting memes and image macros. The responsibility lies on each user instead of the community as a whole to generate likable content, so the scope of quality stuff coming in has a much narrower focus. At least, that's the theory.
scarp  ·  4683 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: How will history judge us?
They would probably shame the USA's obsession with military defense and terrorist hunting, and how we spend a disproportionate amount of time and money on those endeavors than we do on scientific funding. Of course, there are plenty of people saying that now -- just as there were probably plenty of people decrying 19th century racism -- but the minority voice of reason tends to get drowned out until it becomes the accepted view several generations later.

On a lighter note, perhaps they will find it quaint (or horrifying) that people used to drive their own cars. Maybe one day I'll tell my grandchildren of a time when huge box-like machines rushed by each other on massive expanses of concrete, separated only by painted white lines and contained by crude metal guard rails, killing a million people a year in fiery collisions caused by human error. Additionally, they ran on fossil fuels and pumped out poisonous gases from the rear. Almost everyone owned one!

scarp  ·  3358 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: It's been 1,680 days

Hi, Steve!

(It feels odd to call you that; I've only ever known you as thenewgreen. Same goes for "Mark" vis-à-vis mk.)

Nice to hear from you. I am definitely guilty of being absent from the site as well. In fact you have been single-handedly keeping me in the loop with hubski with your occasional shout-outs to my old posts and comments. I might try to get back to being a regular here, although I'm no longer sure I know how the site works. :)

I hope all is well with you. Judging by that last sentence, I'm betting you have some interesting stories to share. Keep me posted!

- John

scarp  ·  4639 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Update: Some small changes.
I wasn't directly involved in the incident that caused you to leave, but from I could observe people were annoyed because you kept demanding an apology without demonstrating why you deserved one. No one was intentionally trying to insult you, yet you blew up on them as if they were. Then you deleted the post and your half of the comments and walked away from the discussion. How are we supposed to react to that?

Yes, seriously. I would not want to be a seismologist if it meant I was responsible for the earthquakes I study.

scarp  ·  4670 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Art's classical nudes get Photoshopped to be skinnier (NSFW)
"Ewww, look how sickly thin she is! She must be malnourished and ripe with disease!"
scarp  ·  4693 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask hubski: spam
So basically anything submitted by hitech24. I think we should confront the user about it.
scarp  ·  3455 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How "Thank You" sounds to Chinese ears

Incidentally, I read this same article just a few hours ago. They explore different meanings of the word "sounds", but they pair nicely. In any case, I'm surprised you remembered my post from over three years ago!

scarp  ·  4683 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski: How will history judge us?
Massive, reckless consumerism.
scarp  ·  4721 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: No advertising, no problem
So by banning billboards, advertisers were forced to weave their work deeper into culture itself, thus making advertising more social and humane. I can't tell if that's good or creepy.

EDIT: I found a mini 10-minute documentary on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Nmnv0Ospg

scarp  ·  4741 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Some behind-the-scenes stuff.
> Hi there! Yes, we track who sees our player. We're sorry you find this unacceptable and hope you can find another service that satisfies your needs.

Wow. How did this person get a job handling customer complaints? That's just bad.

scarp  ·  4550 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Update: Hubski gets a refresh.
What a refreshing refresh! I've been in and out lately, noticing the small changes here and there along the way but this one is so dramatic that I just have to comment!

My first impression is that it looks great -- very clean and modern -- but I'm no longer sure how to read my hub. My natural instinct is to read down the first column and then move to the next, but that requires me to scroll down and then back up which isn't optimal on my small screen. Reading from left to right feels weird, too, because the tiles aren't aligned. Either way, my eye moves around the page a lot and I'm not quite sure where the focus is.

I like the direction you're going; it just needs a few tweaks. If I were less tired I might offer some suggestions, but for now I should sleep.

Edit: As an aside, the "related posts" section of the page shows up under the comment box for me. Do you know how I can fix that? I'm on Chrome / OS X Lion.

scarp  ·  4625 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: If 6.9B people lived in one big city...
Interesting indeed. I'm used to hearing figures on how much space the world's population would take up if they were standing shoulder to shoulder. It's nice to have a visual representation that's actually grounded in something I can picture and imaging living in.
scarp  ·  4648 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: AskHubski: What are the top ten most positively influential events in human history?
These are all fine lists and I think most of the good ones have been taken, so I'll just add a couple of my own modest suggestions.

The first one is perspective. And I mean this in two ways. Perspective in art, of course, because we discovered how to capture the world not just symbolically but how it actually is, in all its depth and variety. And perspective in philosophy: the sense of empathy and understanding that comes with the realization that each person experiences his own pain and pleasure, and that collectively we have positive and negative effects on each other's lives.

The second one, which may be tangentially related to the first, is optic technology: inventions like the microscope, the telescope and the camera -- devices which allow us to discover and experience our universe in new ways, and which lead directly or indirectly to developments in medicine, biology, astronomy, physics, space exploration and much more. Satellite photography and telescopic imaging in particular gives us a much grander sense of the size and scope of the universe and gave us images such as Pale Blue Dot, which of course directly inspired the admirable Dr. Carl Sagan to write the iconic book of the same name.

scarp  ·  4656 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: My new favorite YouTube Channel: Crash Course
Oh yes, I've been following these history lessons and they're super interesting and very entertaining; great for brushing up on fuzzily remembered world history courses or learning something new entirely. There's also a sister channel called scishow made by the same guys: http://www.youtube.com/user/scishow

There's also vsauce, veritasium and minutephysics that are all in the same vein. I love being subscribed to all of these channels because it almost guarantees that I'll have some cool brain food to watch every time I log in. Nerdwriter1 is another newcomer who is a very thoughtful and philosophical vlogger.

If anyone knows of any other cool education channels, let me know! I can't get enough of them.

scarp  ·  4658 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Women in Comics: No, It's Not Equal
You're referring to the article linked in the main post, right? Because the author stated that her goal wasn't merely to say that comics are sexist and that that's a problem; she was responding specifically to the claim that the objectification of men and women in comics is equal, which isn't true. In that regard I think she did well.
scarp  ·  4682 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Update: The Oneness
Yeah, at first I thought it meant we could "reply" to a post with another post, as a way to present supporting or conflicting viewpoints in the same thread. Or something like that.
scarp  ·  4685 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: And the true threat to reading and literature, according to Jonathan Franzen, is...
Well, sometimes it is technology that's changing in negative ways. Let's not temper our critical voices for the sake of vanity. I think what Franzen is saying here is pretty loopy, but it's not because I'm hesitant to speak out against new technological developments. It's because the arguments for ebooks greatly outweigh the arguments against them. But for something like, say, cloud computing/storage, I'm not entirely sure -- and so I think it's worth discussing and debating before we march so confidently into that frontier.

There's a difference between being a luddite and having legitimate concerns, so don't doubt yourself so easily!

scarp  ·  4686 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Stickers
Tell us where you live and we'll send you stickers!

Sounds legit.

scarp  ·  4724 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Porn That Women Like: Why Does It Make Men So Uncomfortable?
> I find myself put off by a lot of the men (and women) in porn because they're just too disgusting to watch.

This. And a lot of the time the faces and noises they make are unintentionally comical and ridiculous, which makes it kind of hard to get into. Relevant: http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3593576/safe-for-work-porn

scarp  ·  4488 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hey Hubski -I'll Be Away For a Bit

Share some pictures when you come back!

scarp  ·  4647 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How about lists?
    Perhaps 'saved' would just be 'lists'

I think that might cause some confusion for new hubskiers. A "lists" button doesn't have an obvious or common meaning to most people, whereas a "save" button is pretty straightforward. So perhaps the current save button should open a prompt that asks which list the link should be saved to, so then the term has some context.

scarp  ·  4651 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Q&A about transgender people, gender identity, and gender expression.
There is a question I've been pondering which doesn't seem to be answered here, and it may be a bit of a tender one. Basically my question is: what does it mean to identify as a particular gender? Or put simply: what is gender?

The typical definition is the one defined in this article: "the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for boys and men or girls and women." But if this is true, then gender seems like a rather trivial and fickle thing. If a man wants to be a woman, does that merely mean that he wants to be a person who can wear dresses, makeup and wigs? Are these things the essence of womanhood? If not, then what is?

Perhaps what is really at issue here is the fact that our societies have built up rigid gender roles that make people feel uncomfortable taking on roles or behaviors traditionally only exhibited by the opposite gender. The alienation that a person feels might not be related to his sexual identity, per se, but rather the social stigma of aligning with unconventional gender roles.

I think the reason I'm having trouble grasping this is because I don't really consider my gender or my sex to be huge parts of my identity. In my mind, I am not "John the male" but rather "John the person."

scarp  ·  4654 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Stephan Gordon: In the Future Everything Will Be A Coffee Shop
I'd like to think that someday even power outlets won't be a necessity for these types of social settings once battery technology becomes more advanced and our electronics more efficient. Somehow a future of people carrying around clunky chargers everywhere doesn't seem ideal. I hope it will one day seem as laughable as the idea of huge old analog cell phones with five-minute battery lives seems today.
scarp  ·  4657 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: One Minute Fly
Are you unwell? Sorry if that is a sensitive or personal question; you don't have to answer it of course.
scarp  ·  4673 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Being Sleepy and Drunk Are Great for Creativity
This must explain why my best ideas always seem to come to me in that foggy state before dozing off to sleep. I always find myself jolting awake and scribbling whatever train of thought I had down because I know if I don't, it likely won't come back to me in waking hours. That might also partially explain my insomnia. :/
scarp  ·  4673 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Wau: The Most Amazing, Ancient, and Singular Number
Wau is one. Now I feel like an idiot.
scarp  ·  4675 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Question for Hubski: Why do people give? Why do you?
It's something that's hard for me to put into words. I feel like we're all swept up in the machinations of life on a planet of toil, hardship, inequality, disease, death, and general unfairness that the natural inclination is to ease the pain in some way. It's not a pain that we're always acutely aware of, but more like a sustained background throbbing or a residual headache. And although we try to numb the pain through work, play and artistic expression, it is through charitable work that humanity collectively tends to its wounds.

And in that sense, I do think that there is something to the penance angle -- we in the first world feel some guilt for all of the senseless, wasteful indulgences we take while billions of people still live in poverty, especially when the products of our modern lifestyle are so reliant on the labor of those same people and the resources of the land they inhabit.

For me, the most fulfilling form of charity is that which requires my time and energy.

scarp  ·  4677 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Rape tag
Yeah, my little sister (13) and her friends throw around the word "rape" pretty carelessly, too. I still find it weird and uncomfortable. Although I have to admit that the thought of dozens of kids going around dry humping each other on a playground is perversely funny in a way. The world gets stranger every day.
scarp  ·  4677 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What If We Paid Off The Debt? The Secret Government Report
Three wars and the housing market bubble were totally worth dodging that bullet.