Quickies
Quickies: Fighting sexism in science, the origin of dogs, and why fall smells like fall
- A new twist in the fight against sexism in science – “A conversation about sexism in science broke open this year. Sharp organizing and social media are sparking real change. What was once whispered privately in laboratories and offices is being discussed publicly, loudly, and clearly.” From Amy.
- 15,000 years ago, probably in Asia, the dog was born – “The most recent common ancestor of today’s dogs lived in Central Asia, Dr. Boyko said, although he cannot rule out the possibility that some dogs could have been domesticated elsewhere and died out. Or dogs domesticated elsewhere could have gone to Central Asia from somewhere else and then diversified into all the canines alive today, he said.”
- Why do we smell the change of seasons? – “Whatever your fall traditions are, they influence how you sense the world. So it’s probably fair to say that no two people smell fall the same way.”
- Flirtmoji designer admits some vulva emoji were inadvertently plagiarized – From Courtney.
One slight nitpick: Those aren’t actual emoji. An emoji has a specific Unicode value. Those are emoticons, which can basically be anything.
Someone really needs to standardize the terms in internet grammar. (That is to say, standardize what nouns and adjectives are, not whether adjectives come before or after the noun they modify or how they’re declined.)
This will be a problem forever dominated by a “who cares?” response. No standardization body will ever make people care about not using “literally” as the exact opposite of its intention, much less be cognizant of highly technical distinctions between standardized UI elements and custom ones.
I agree with this statement partially. When we are talking about the average person who doesn’t care about the technical definitions of terms, then yeah, totally, who cares. BUT, if we are discussing this in a technical way, I would expect the writer of an article about Emojis/Emoticons to know the technical difference and use the correct term in the same way I would expect a writer of an article on science to know the scientific definition of a theory.