Micellaneous New Year's News (incl. Minecraft) · 1:10pm Jan 1st, 2018
Happy New Year everyone.
Let’s hope that 2018 is better than 2017. Disappointed to note that I only managed to publish three stories here last year. I will see if I can do better in 2018. Invisible Shades of Rainbow and Infinitely Too Many Pinkie Pies were well received, and my most read new story, Crystal Glass Ceilings, managed to piss off some readers, please others, and hopefully educate some more. Success all around.
A few things to announce. Firstly, I guess most of you have seen Horizon’s blog post: The elephant in the equine room about a traumatic incident at Bronycon, but if you haven’t, do read it. I also draw your attention to the Twitter thread he links to, highlighting how sexual harassment at conventions is more common than usually acknowledged. As he explains well this behaviour is totally unacceptable, but it can end up being, in effect, accepted, because in the aftermath it is easier for everyone involved to brush it to one side than to discuss it. It is not easy to write about these incidents and credit to Horizon for making the effort to do so. The fandom likes to think we are a friendly welcoming community. Unfortunately this is not universally true, and it is important we acknowledge this and work to improve it.
Secondly, I posted something on my Particle Gadgeteering blog about Robert Hooke. If you would like to enhance your New Year’s Day by reading an account of science in restoration England, please take a look: Early Modern Gadgeteering: The Work of Robert Hooke
Thirdly, any Minecraft fans here? I need your help.
A group led by one my friends has developed a project to build the ATLAS particle detector at CERN in Minecraft. She did this with a small science outreach grant, working with groups of schoolchildren. It is now public, so you can download and explore the underground beamlines and particle detector components: ATLASCRAFT
The question is where to go from here? There is a lot more which could be built. Could this be further developed as an online community project? I could get involved with this, but is it worth it? I’ve so far resisted trying Minecraft as I suspect it could be addictive and suck up my limited free time, but it could be worth the risk. So it is now on my to-do list to download and try it out. Perhaps any Minecraft enthusiasts here could advise me:
Can anyone suggest any sort of crash course to let me become proficient in as short a time as possible?
Take a look and give me your honest opinion. Is this project likely to get much interest from the wider Minecraft community, or will it just be dismissed as an educational gimmick?
How can we best promote this to the world?
It’s not my project, but I really want to help them out and see this succeed.
Happy 2018 to you too, Pineta!
I like the Cern in MineCraft. It is too bad that we do not have SuperConductingSuperColliderCraft, but the USCongress, in its infinite stupidity, put an end to that.
It saddens me that 3 PegaSisters may have been drugged. We can make things safer:
* Use a phone to capture an image of all those entering the party with their nametags.
I suspect that I shall be dragged over the coals for the next suggestion, but do not use mind-altering substances with strangers. Call it victim-blaming all you want, but if one drinks to loss of consciousness with strangers who might very well have just got out of prison for killing people just to watch them die, do not be surprised when 1 or more of those strangers who might like torturing small animals takes advantage of one’s self-caused incapacitation. ¡Keep your wits! Be like Adam Ant:
¡Be a Goody 2-Shoes neither drinking nor smoking when in the company of strangers!
This sort of MC project is a huge time sink. I learned the ropes myself through experience so I'm not sure about crash-courses. Sorry.
Did not know about Atlascraft. I'll have to look that up.
I thought that was a totally different incident and didn't follow the link until I read the comment. Apparently this one is worse. I do have one question: What counts as creeping? As long as there's no touching, one person's creeping could be another person's nervousness. I've seen it happen with celebs a lot, where people follow them around a bit, taking longer than it would with non-celebs to realize that they aren't actually engaging in conversation and thus presumably want to be left alone. In that case, merely asking would do wonders (remember Once Upon a Zepplin), but I don't know if that's what is being referred to or not.
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One woman basically didn't. She took a few sips, but only from drinks multiple other people were drinking from (which is a bit of a sanitation issue, but that's unrelated). A more pertinent lesson might be 'don't have strangers in your room without safeguards.' Ultimately, the extra people around functioned as a safeguard, but sad as it is, it might be necessary in the future to take names (from the nametag so they don't lie) of anyone entering the room party. If there's alcohol, you can justify it by needing to verify age.
Of course, this isn't to shift blame (at least not on my part). Rather, as some analyses of the parasprite episode say, you can't control what other poeple do so the lesson one takes must be what one's own actions can be. In that episode I tended to identify with Pinkie Pie, so Twilight's lesson didn't make sense until that was pointed out.
Yeah for analogies!
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Evidently, I am not clear; the biggest dispenser oa daterapedrugs are the victims who drink until they loose their wits or even consciousness. Then a scumbag who was hoping for this takes advantage of the self-administered ethanol for raping. ¡Stay sharp! ¡Refuse to be a victim! If one uses mind-altering substances in the presence of strangers, one might as well wear a sign saying “¡Rape & Rob Me!”. Never take food or drink from strangers and watch your food and drink like an hawk.
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What’s being talked about here is serious stuff - assault / attempted rape – things which are very clearly totally unacceptable. Of course there are more issues – stalking, photographing people without consent – and this does lead into a grey area as you describe. But we’re not talking about the precise wording of a zero tolerance policy here (leave that to the con organisers). The message I take from Horizon’s story is that when something like this happens, which is clearly a problem, it’s important that we all come out and say so and make it clear that anyone who thinks this is acceptable is not welcome in the community. As he says “Scary as confronting it is, silence is what allows the bad actors to flourish”
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Don’t do this. Survivors of rape and assault often feel guilt and shame and saying it’s their fault for drinking is just making that worse and will discourage them from seeking help. The only person responsible for rape is the rapist. And note that 90% of rapes are not by strangers but by men known to the survivor.
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The other stuff was a peripheral issue that was brought up. Perhaps not the place to address it, I suppose.
Walabio, while I understand your sentiment, you might want to be a bit more tactful on how you present it, as Pineta demonstrates. And as said, that wasn't even at issue here as one of the targets had been drinking water.
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I know that the rapists are scum and deserve to rot for a long time in prison. I just notice that some young people celebrate being allowed to drink or getting into a party with booze by drinking to excess. They risk alcohol-poisoning (too much ethanol suppresses breathing) and predators taking advantage of them. Frankly, when I was young, I did not see the appeal of doing something, which at best, leads to headache, so I never drank or used narcotics (maybe Adam Ant is really a Brony posting under the pseudonym ⸘Ŭalabio‽, but probably not). To Young people considering getting hammered to see what it is like, I have 2 pieces of advice:
Drinking in an uncontrolled environment is dangerous both directly from the ethanol and from predatory people, so I recommend against ever doing so.