Matt Seymour @realmattseymour@qoto.org

@thomasfuchs I know a chap with this collection: http://www.computermuseum.org.uk/

I think my favourite is Marconi TAC. No ICs in this 60s computer and the cabinets are huge. None of your standard racks here, these are much taller.

The Art Deco Bank of Ireland building in Belfast is absolutely superb. It stands empty, which is a real shame.

I've inadvertently started listening to an album on shuffle and the 'wrong' track coming on second has unsettled me sufficiently that I've had to go and do something else for a bit.

@arteteco @rnitsch @peterdrake well put. I think we're in agreement there. I do have to reassess my initial comments and acknowledge my own bias.

@PakkonenCT @ChrisWilson she just turned around too fast?

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake Thanks, I'll give that a read.

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake ok, apologies. The male greater variability hypothesis is the issue at the heart of this. The argument has been made this is based on socialised sexism with some work done to seek out examples in other species to prove it’s a thing. My limited understanding is that it’s far from proved or agreed upon.

@RunningInCircles@mstdn.io delicious

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake I fear you're trolling me now.

I've always wanted a Citroen DS... If ever I have more money than I'm quite sure what to do with, I'll get one like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzo3dsa_X6A

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake Because the politics don’t go away just because we’d like them to, means this sort of thing can happen. I suspect it was entirely avoidable.

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake The author clearly expected the paper to be cause controversy. The topic is controversial, and it doesn’t take much reading around to know that. What little reading I’ve done tells me the idea is far from universally accepted and quite possibly falls into the area of bias in the first place. So to cite work, which has been questioned for bias, as a basis for this paper is always going to be problematic. All, of course, just in my opinion.

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake I think we probably agree on most of that. I don’t know this guy or the interactions he’s had with people and we only have one side of the story so can’t really make a judgement either way, yet we all have. It’s easy for someone to frame their position as open to critique without them really being so, something I’ve encountered a few times.

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake Finally, I'd suggest that taking the attitude of true science being devoid of politics and bias, is a route to being completely blind to your own biases (which it's hard not to be anyway) and therefore lead to deeply questionable results in some cases.

@rnitsch @arteteco @peterdrake From the account of the author it sounds like the guys involved are basically asshats who knew full well what they were doing and rather than trying to find a way through the difficulties, you know... the politics, they just ploughed on regardless. I can think of a few ways this could likely have been avoided. Involve a woman, for example, in the work. Two men putting out a paper that adds fuel to an argument that brings up strong emotions is a recipe for political suicide. And lo... that's what happened. People are people and if you take the attitude that people in academia are somehow different then you're going to run into these sorts of problems. Screaming "censorship" doesn't help. It makes it easier for the whole thing to be brushed off as a bitter old white dude upset that women are working in his field now. Whether there's any truth in that is irrelevant because politics.