Newtowner @danielle@octodon.social

I'd forgotten that I still had this account. I've missed Mastodon. I should hang out here more often

"The transcendence of pi implies the impossibility of exactly circling the square, as well as of squaring the circle."

It's probably the beer talking but somehow I find this funny. All I can imagine is my four year old child drawing a circle around a square and saying "see? it's easy?"

I do wish well-meaning guys would stop writing these self-flagellating pieces:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-28/confessions-of-a-confident-mediocre-man/8562708

While the literature is pretty clear about gender differences in average confidence, the within-gender variance is very large, and many "mediocre dudes" are marginalised on other, non-gender axes.

These pieces just invite pushback from malicious parties, and the people harmed aren't the authors of these articles.

@Gogogadgetpants omg the number of times I've had to stop my children from doing that. It's like they think that any gap that they *can* squeeze through is a gap they *should* squeeze through. So embarrassing.

Also thank you :-)

Well apparently I pass as female, at least as judged by the nice cleaning lady who pointed me to the women's bathroom because I couldn't remember the code to unlock the men's. It's sweet but I feel like an intruder. So glad there was no one else there.

@CobaltVelvet I think that's my concern: I personally don't want to disavow my given name, and in my case it would be disadvantageous to do so. I absolutely agree with the idea that "no deadnaming" should be the default, but ultimately it's the decision of the person in question. Deadnaming *me* isn't offensive because I am not offended and I have publicly declared that this is so. It bugs me that other trans folk have decided to get angry at cis people on my behalf when I don't care myself.

@CobaltVelvet nice work.

@benhamill I think that makes sense: if wearing a pink shirt undermines your own self concept and is unthinkable for that reason, that's fragility at work. If you're not personally worried about the shirt, but have reasons to fear ridicule, exclusion or violence from others, I think it's a valid thing no matter who you are. I certainly wouldn't be dressing the way I do if the dysphoria didn't feel even worse.

@Dianora Thanks! McCloskey's approach seems especially pertinent. Very useful.

@Pizzazz Heh. It's interesting to hear a line of thought so similar to my own but without the layer of anxiety that comes from actually being trans. It reminds me of when I was presenting a little femme back in the 90s, before I started thinking about gender identity. Apart from the awkward "false advertising" issue it never bothered me that people read me as a gay man... but the closeted gay guys I was hanging around with were a *lot* more worried about how they came across.

More confusion about the deadnaming taboo. How could I, as a mid-career academic, possibly handle my gender transition without permitting deadnaming? I've got over a hundred papers and a couple million dollars of grant funding under my given name. I *need* to explicitly refer to that history every single time I apply for a grant or a promotion, and every time I give a student a copy of an old paper. Deadnaming just feels like an unavoidable necessity to me. What am I missing here?

@DialMforMara Ha! Awesome.

I could imagine that would be a problem for a lot of guys. I have tiny legs, so that never occurred to me. Literal chafing only happens in those situations where I feel socially obligated to tuck for the sake of politeness.

Somehow I'm embarrassed not to have thought of that possibility.

@DialMforMara Not sure if I'm reading you right... Just to check: you're suggesting that the gendered "boys don't wear skirts" rule doesn't chafe so much for actual cisgender guys (whereas it's something that bugged me for years before I came out to myself), so it doesn't really seem like a thing worth bothering to push back against? Is that what you're saying? Seems reasonable.

@benhamill Genuine question: do you think that "fragility" is really the right descriptor though? From my perspective it seems pretty rational. I've spent decades trying to hide who I am precisely to avoid being a target. Why was it considered a reasonable precaution when I was doing it as a closeted trans woman, but "fragile masculinity" when a genuine cis dude does it?

More questions for cis guys: why *don't* you wear skirts? They're super practical garments (in some contexts anyway) very comfortable and work really well in the summertime. Like, I know why I don't... I've got so many old fears about being seen as the sissy or the tranny (fuck it: I've been called those slurs enough, I get to use them if I want), and feel like I've taken quite enough beatings for one lifetime already. I kind of assumed that was cis dudes worry too... But is that actually true?

Right, that's it: next grant application gets F.D.C. Willard listed as a PI.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1975-a-cat-coauthored-a-physics-paper

@sysadmin1138 Oh, I like that a lot. There's a gentle suggestion that folks should start shifting away from it, but it's not forbidden and I'll support it for as long as feasible. Backward compatibility matters, damn it.

Days since getting irrationally annoyed at the Cramér–Rao bound: 0.

"What a type you must consort with that you not fear beating for such an insult?" - Al Swearengen

The truly terrifying thing about that Deadwood quote, to me, is the belated realisation that the people around me have not in fact spent the last few decades expecting disproportionate violence to be the consequence of the smallest misstep or the tiniest hint of self-assertive behaviour. Sigh.

Signs of middle age #345: You psych yourself up for a big day by listening to your favourite high-energy music... which is Big Block Sing Song