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[Reelya]

I'd forgotten about this one, it's about how postmodernists claim that reality as a whole doesn't exist because it's a socio-linguistic construct:

As Barbara Ehrenreich put it, “Students taking courses in literature, film, ‘cultural studies’, and even, in some cases, anthropology and political science, were taught that the world is just a ‘text’ about which you can say anything you want, provided you say it murkily enough.” She claimed that one of her children reported you could be marked down for writing “reality” without putting it in inverted commas.

Seriously, you can screw people up permanently by making them doubt that reality itself exists. This can't be healthy.

Luce Irigaray, another postmodernist, described E=mc^2 as a “sexed equation”, which “privileges the speed of light over other [less masculine] speeds that are vitally necessary to us”

And Luce Irigaray also claimed scientists couldn't solve the turbulence equations in fluid mechanics because they're biased against fluids (which are feminine) in favour of solids (which are masculine).

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Imagine if people bought into stuff like that, it'd actually be pretty bad for women. If I'm believing that special relativity is inherently sexist then I'm probably just going to take "men are superior to women" over "existence is a flawed perception of society".

[Bohandas]

How is "postmodernism" in this sense of the term distinguished from Dadaism or Paranoid-Schizophrenia

[Egan_BW]

Wait how is the speed of light masculine?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

How is "postmodernism" in this sense of the term distinguished from Dadaism or Paranoid-Schizophrenia

Because dadists are mostly laughing at you behind your back, and schizophrenics are horribly tormented by their perceptions, but postmodernists are the most dangerous of the three by far, as they are both smug beyond reproach and deadly, deadly serious about everything they assert.

Wait how is the speed of light masculine?

What, isn't it obvious?

[Reelya]

I just discovered Arielle Schlesinger's blog. She's the postmodernist computer "scientist" who wanted to do the post-modern post-patriarchal transhumanist programming language which doesn't feature objects (because objectification) or boolean logic (because binaries are oppressive since traditional bits can't be both on and off at the same time).

Very informative blog. I'd consider it satire, except there's way too much dry analysis and obscure postmodernist textbooks referenced.

Yeah there's no way to tell whether she's a troll or an actual crazy person.

Scarily:

Ari Schlesinger is a PhD student in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and the Research Project Manager for csteachingtips.org.

Here's her site for comp. sci. teaching tips. There are a lot of warm an fuzzy tips here. Any actual technical advice seems utterly useless.
http://csteachingtips.org/browse-all

There are several good ones, e.g.:

Compare objects in Java to cloud-hosted documents, such as Google Docs, for a relatable analogy to explain object references with.

WTF? How is talking about Google Docs and cloud hosting going to help students understand the object model?

Wait how is the speed of light masculine?

The speed of light is unreasonably inflexible. Stubborn inflexibility is a patriarchal trait. A good feminist speed would vary based on other's needs.

[IcyTea31]

Wait how is the speed of light masculine?

The speed of light is unreasonably inflexible. Stubborn inflexibility is a patriarchal trait. A good feminist speed would vary based on other's needs.

So that's why in SF lasers travel at a relatively avoidable ~40 km/h?

[Reelya]

Blasters are clearly plasma bolts, not lasers.

[SirQuiamus]

I just discovered Arielle Schlesinger's blog.

This blog has already given me enough laffs to cure a dozen hangovers, and I've only read the first few posts.

Thank you, Reelya.

[Reelya]

I'm glad you found that entertaining. She only started the blog recently and I think she has an educational requirement to blog every week (a common component of degrees these days) so she should keep the insightful posts coming!

I especially like her second post where she critiques "HCI Theory: Classical, Modern, and Contemporary":

It seems in today’s world, theories need to prove their usefulness to the field, not so much intellectually, but in their application to the “design of technology and work" ... These incognito-capitalist criticisms range from not being easy to use, to not being quick to produce...Isn’t some of this scholarly exploration about wrestling with what seems impossibly unknowable?

HCI here stands for "human-computer interfaces", i.e. it's a textbook from her course about building user interfaces. Unlike Arielle, I'd prefer my human-computer interfaces to not require "wrestling with what seems impossibly unknowable". This is really classic post-modernist way of looking at something, you give them a textbook on some actual practical topic, e.g. fixing motorcycles, and they're critiquing it because it gives straightforward information about how to fix existing motorcycles, and not challenging the dominant ideology in which motorcycles always have two wheels and an engine...

Part of what was so disheartening about all the literature on Distributed Cognition we read this week was the focus on maximizing efficiency—particularly in the work place.

Maybe that's because technology is intended to make things better, not make things extra-complicated for no reason. Unlike postmodernism, nobody is going to fund you to make a complex system which doesn't have any useful purpose. Hence, the textbooks focus on how to build stuff someone might actually want.

[Helgoland]

Eh, I could see that sort of critique having a point when it's work efficiency vs worker comfort. That's not the case here, obviously, but I think this is the sensible seed from which this tree of horrid nonsense grew, metaphorically speaking.

[Graknorke]

Weeb shit invading rave.
Managed to get a couple of laughs out of me. First the general theme and also the drop. As did the comments. There was one "I recognise that hentai moan!" and also some miscellaneous dank meme shit.

EDIT:

Spoiler: I'm not even sure this is particularly funny or if it was just residual laughing from being caught off-guard (click to show/hide)

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anime fucking sucks nerds

[TheBiggerFish]

What in Armok's name IS this...Uncomputing Unscience NONSENSE?!
BURN THE HERETIC.

[Baffler]

I dunno, despite her primary motivation being insanity, a programming language that doesn't use objects or boolean logic might be interesting. Inefficient and mostly useless, but interesting.

[Dutrius]

There a several languages that don't have any Object Orientation support, being more logic based instead.

I suppose you could get away without a boolean type if you just used an integer instead (or a byte, depending on the language's implementation of types. A byte would usually be about equivalent to a bool, because of how it gets stored in memory). Heck, I once used an integer to store several different boolean values at once, purely to keep the size of data files down.