Info on certain last minute Coalition announcements: the now-rescinded opt-out Internet filter and the very much not-rescinded proposal to investigate “increasingly ridiculous research grants” by the Australian Research Council
Science
For my birthday you could, if you like, donate to the Ada Initiative
This week I turned 50. Various nice people are doing nice things for me, which is nice.
If you too would like to do something that will make me feel warm and fuzzy …
Rifts getting riftier: naming and shaming the harassers
Well, this got interesting fast. The floodgates appear to be opening in the atheoskeptosphere with regard to people deciding that keeping names out of the we-need-anti-harassment-policies discussion wasn’t doing much good for effecting change.
While we’re talking about workplace and convention harassment incidents (particularly amongst the groups for which conventions are also workplaces), I’ve been meaning to link to this excellent post from last month about why conventions are harassment hotspots (there’s Science! on this).
Shame File of the Day: SMH headline is pure bafflegab about “Supermoon”
“Super moon to bring wild weather to Sydney” – oh no it didn’t.
More silencing tactics aimed at Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs Women in Video Games
A short while ago Anita Sarkeesian published another video to her Feminist Frequency YouTube channel. Within an hour it was taken down by YouTube because it had been flagged as containing objectionable content. Feminist Frequency appealed the takedown, and it was quickly restored. Good on YouTube for restoring the video so quickly, but why doesn’t YouTube have a better mechanism for immunising known target accounts against vexatious complaints?
Spacecraft exploring the Solar system
Last week’s news of plans to clear up humanity’s space-junk, aka orbital debris, currently cluttering up Low Earth Orbit, alarmed quite a few folks. In better space news, the many non-junk bits and bobs we’ve got floating around up there are busy gathering data so that we can learn more about our planetary and stellar neighbours.
Evidence-based medicine
With the (non)efficacy of homeopathy making the news again (with rumblings that the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is considering delisting various homeopathic remedies), I was reminded – after I wondered how in hell they got listed by the TGA in the first place – of a post I first published four years ago:
Happy Pi Day
Mmmm. Pie.
*waves extravagantly at the internet* We’re back!
We seem to have lost the last few days of posts/comments, at least for the moment (thus the choice of ‘meh’ image to accompany this post). So if something you said recently is still moving you, by all means repeat it here.
This is aesthetics not health
Fat bellies and men’s health. Does correlation really equal causation?
