superiorlemon:

ANTE UP NOW IN VIDEO FORM

WHAT NOW?

superiorlemon:

homura as the seer of time

It’s the little things, sometimes.

Education Certification Map →

ambedu:

This website is really helpful! Education Certification Map allows you to click on each state and view a list of the requirements for certification in that state, as well as which state certifications have reciprocity. 

I’m not confirming if it is completely accurate, but as a first source, it is easy to use and has a lot of information!

Note To Self

I should spend more time on rationalist webrings and less time on … anything else, maybe? 

http://www.givingwhatwecan.org/resources/how-rich-you-are.php

I know it’s time to take that doctor’s social anxiety diagnosis seriously when

…merely posting to tumblr makes my face flush and my core temperature rise several degrees, I have difficulty thinking about anything but whether there’s some godawfully stupid thing in whatever I last posted, and also I have to force myself to leave bed or go outside so what’s up with that. (At least I’m no longer leading two tutorials a week.)

Or maybe it just says that I know I’ve acted foolishly in the past, I’m highly conscious of the fact that there is no privacy on the net, and anything I ever do online could one day come back to haunt me, an important consideration given the increasing panopticon possibilities of computing technology and the possibility that the current spike in authoritarian state power will continue.

Sometimes I’m thinking about Puella Magi Madoka Magica and I take a look at my own role in the university system and think not, “Which character do I aspire to be like,” but, “Which character am I like right now?”

Hey students! You can accomplish anything, if you only learn how! I want to help you achieve your goals!

Want to make a contract?

melchinafan:

WHAT HAVE I DONE.

Realism is a bitter pill to swallow

From “Revitalizing Voices in Our Democracy” (Protip: The U.S. is still a republic, always has been):

Her name is Kelly McGowan, 49, a professional facilitator, who works with social justice organizations on strategy and movement building. Originally from Buffalo, she’s lived in New York City for the past 25 years.

…

McGowan believes that OWS will be the rest of her life’s work. When she was in college, she was active in the anti-Apartheid movement and has worked on social justice issues ever since.

She made a bold prediction: “I think it will take at least seven years for us to figure out how to talk to each other and how to have deep conversations across class and race. It will be at least 20 years until there are radical changes.” McGowan went on to say, “a gentleman here said that it took 13 years to end the Vietnam War. I think that it’s got to take at least twice that to change our government.”

I know I’m part of the instant gratification generation or whatever, and I know it’s absurd to imagine that political change will be both rapid and effective, but … McGowan, and I know she’s making ungrounded approximations but it’s a fair reminder of the slow grind of progress, is talking in the 30-year range. We might not HAVE much more than thirty years to sort this shit out! On the one hand, it’s hard for me to imagine committing to a movement that isn’t predicted to pay off until as long as I’ve currently lived. (But: better twice my current lifespan than after I’m dead.) (But: I’m not sure I’m capable of sustaining that kind of altruism.) Moreover, I fear to imagine the state of things in thirty years if we don’t rapidly install guards against the gravitation of wealth to wealth. Prognostication and trepidation aside, there’s a larger concern with regards to the cost/benefit analysis of where one should apply one’s labor for the greatest benefit.

Serious time: if people with more experience than I think it’ll take 30 years, maybe one should butt the fuck out of politics except in one’s personal choices and put all one’s activism energy behind friendly singularity tech. After all, when we hit the technological threshold at which whatever we’ve built — whether AI, bioengineering, Von Neumann machine, whatever — can redesign itself more quickly than we can react to or predict the results of its revisions, our politics will not matter. Whether for weal or woe, that will be the “check please” of humanity, and there’s some metaphor here about being stuck with the bill but basically I just don’t want to be turned into paperclips. So. Today, I understand apocalyptic reasoning.

arcaneseamstress:

OMG WUTTTTT >u<

Yes Dave… He doesn’t need any reasons…. for what he does….

Thanks for the art trade prince-nickaider (｡´∀｀)ﾉ

There’s more! *intense interest*

dusking:

so someone showed me these godtier meduka edits …

Let the crossover BEGIN!

oh help what is happening

(Source: tsunpei)

"Recent feminist critics of science have done much to question such narrow conceptions of rationality. Scientists who conceive objectivity purely in terms of data collection and forms of reasoning have been shown to be insensitive to the bias in their background assumptions. Research which fits in with canons of rationality in the narrow sense has been shown to depend on assumptions which are accepted because they suit the researcher’s prejudices."

Does Science Persecute Women? The Case of the 16th-17th Century Witch-Hunts (JSTOR, sorry)

Hell yes, welcome to more reasons why we need to make the scientific community more diverse. Since objectivity is impossible given that the tools of measurement themselves are constructed by humans, we just have to have more varied subjectivities. Diversity in science isn’t about winning PC merit badges, it’s about doing better research by increasing the richness of perspectives brought to bear on any given line of research. That means we can’t just inculcate existing attitudes in people who look different, either: we need to make space for people to actually be different.

(Source: youarenotyou, via impromptuonedykedanceparty)

Why I Teach Critical Thinking

Harry’s eyes were very serious. “Hermione, you’ve told me a lot of times that I look down too much on other people. But if I expected too much of them - if I expected people to get things right - I really would hate them, then. Idealism aside, Hogwarts students don’t actually know enough cognitive science to take responsibility for how their own minds work. It’s not their fault they’re crazy.”

 - Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality 

EY writes this just paragraphs after mentioning the 1951 Asch conformity experiment. What this advocate of rationality has not mentioned is that another group of researchers repeated the experiment in the 1980s, well after the counterculture chestburster that erupted from the bowels of the ’50s. Basically nobody conformed. The problem in reasoning from the Asch study (and, in my classes, no-body mentions the attempt at replication!!) is contextual validity. Today, we have a different relationship with conformity and individuality than we did in 1951. 

The general principle is what holds true: many people don’t have enough information about how our minds work to use them responsibly. It’s like living in a world where nine out of ten drivers are drunk, but none of them know. They aren’t getting off the road. If you want to leave your house, you have to wonder whether today is the day you’ll get hit … especially, because of the basic nature of group formation,¹ those of us who deviate in more than one respect from the pattern expected by whoever’s most in power (poor and not neurotypical; queer and an immigrant; this writer is lucky enough to meet most of today’s “free pass!” criteria but has seen what happens if one doesn’t). The consensus version of sanity is deeply flawed: whether we’re conforming in the 1950s or irrationally self-confident (thank you, bourgeois self-esteem movement, for feeding trolls and their privileged grubs everywhere!), one’s placement in categories like “crazy” and “sane” has little to do with one’s humaneness or grasp on reality and everything to do with social context.

What are you going to do about it? Write fan fic?

1: Aboud, F. E. (2003). The formation of in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice in young children: Are they distinct attitudes?. Developmental Psychology, 39(1), 48-60. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.39.1.48