SamLR.com

WR Storm of Things

Posted: 9th Feburary 2020

Welcome back. Quick PSA: I help organise Electromagnetic Field it's awesome, you should come. Our call for participation is now open so if you have a talk, workshop or installation you'd like to show folks: enter it!

Today's readings are bit later in the day today because I went to Sunday Assembly (East End edition) this morning, which is when I usually write these. It was interesting and if a family-friendly secular celebration of life (with talks and singing) sounds good to you I'd definitely recommend trying it out, everyone there was very friendly. I'll probably pass for the time being as it's not quite what I need right now but I'm sure I'll end up there again. Anyway, excuses aside on to this week's stuff, and apparently I've found a lot (I've been ill) so here we go.

The emotions evoked by music by Alan Cowen this is a great site to play around on: samples of music grouped by the emotion they evoke as rated by ~2,500 people in the US and China. There's a press release on it here and it's got some more interesting details but in general I just found it fun to play with.

Board-game piece from period of first Viking raid found on Lindisfarne by Esther Addley I love board-games and have fond memories of Linisfarne, this links them making me want to return to the latter. It also is the first I've heard of DigVentures (who found the item) who're apparently "a platform that enables civic participation in archaeology and heritage projects" which is cool[1].

NSW and Victoria just jumped 1.8 metres north by Liam Mannix. This fills my programmer's heart with equal parts glee and horror. The former because I love watching the assumptions about our systems break down and the latter because I'm sure this will make for some horrible bug reports.

The hidden heroines of chaos by Joshua Sokol. The latest in a long line of "women scientists not getting the credit they deserve" articles. It does a good job of both covering the story and explaining why they didn't get the credit they should of. At least here the reason they didn't get the credit is "society as a whole" rather than "shitty 'genius'"; as Lorenz[2] actually credited them (albeit in acknowledgements rather than authorship).

Typecast as a terrorist by Riz Ahmed. A few years old this one but sent to me by a friend off the back of a conversation about how a dominant culture can shape what labels you can apply to yourself.

I’m Autistic and Sick of Feeling Excluded from Queer Spaces by Chrysanthe Tan. Discusses the difficulty of navigating queer spaces whilst autistic. As well as having an excellent check-list of things to do to improve access for people with autism it also is a great example of why intersectionality matters.

People-pleasing can be a result of trauma. it’s called ‘fawning’ — here’s how to recognize it by Sam Dylan Finch. This is a tough one to write about: it's the first of three[3] and the listicle style really annoys me. That being said, this is a thing I do. It's a thing I struggle with. And it's not something I've seen discussed before so maybe it will help you too, if not maybe it'll help you understand me instead.