he made me a fucking dog

You just said you weren't American in your last comment. How do you know what it's really like for black people over here?

Thanks, I'm not a native English speaker but I'm trying my best. Any other problems? I'd love to improve my writing and speaking.

This is my friend Theron. We did a combined concert at one point where the orchestra and jazz ensemble were playing in the same concert. Before the show, a few of us were hanging around, and he started to play the piano. I had to stop what I was doing and just listen. To put that into context, I'm the sort of person who won't stand for an ovation when everyone else in the concert hall is. For the Cleveland Orchestra (one of the best orchestras in North America). I don't give out praise lightly.

Isn't it crazy to think how one passive comment in the vain of "oh by the way I use hubski" on a popular website can send so many people over here?

Love the concept, hope the momentum keeps building for you guys!

I agree with you. The problem I'm trying to address is how we confront the public with the issue of racism. I think the message shouldn't draw comparisons with whites, as it adds an us vs them to the message. Instead, I think we should point out the hardships and stop there. I think nothing comes out of going farther.

For example, I was born in a country where my people have experienced genocide. I moved to the US with my surviving family. I was raised by my grandparents. My father died in the war and my mother giving birth. I've experienced ethic cleansing and racism at its worst. I can't but find myself at times drawing comparisons to my life and minorities. If I do that, I'd mostly see their problems as minor in comparison. Infact, I'm white as can be, and I'm been told by some that I'd have no clue what racism is like because I'm white. Those kind of messages almost alienated me and probably have others. I'm only saying don't draw comparisons or make it us vs them. Unite not alienate.

So how guilty should some random 16-year-old white person feel about slavery, considering he had precisely nothing to do with it?

It's not meaningful to talk about personal responsibility or guilt when it comes to dealing with issues of systemic racism. The idea is that we ought to sympathize with the struggle of oppressed groups and turn that into a push to reform the system; not out of white guilt, but out of moral conviction.

Can our white, Western culture be both hypersensitive about racial issues and racist at the same time?

Yes. Interpersonal racism is treated as an unforgivable sin and a taboo, while systemic racism lies basically untouched. "SJWs" on the internet love to shame individual people, but they never manage to do more than talk about fixing systemic racism because nobody has the courage or sheer ability to organize and engage in direct political action IRL anymore. It's all displaced rage arising from feelings of political impotence.

That is really fascinating. With the dawn of Business Intelligence systems and Big Data, we are creating opportunities for information and knowledge to be synthesized in greater capacity and of higher quality than ever before. From an information sciences standpoint, this seems to relate somewhat to the top half of the DIKW Hierarchy. The article seems to muddle the "understanding" layer that is commonly seen as being a necessity for wisdom from knowledge, and adds intuitions as some exterior entity perhaps falling between information and knowledge - the lingering representation inferred from sensory input, later used to construct the knowledge concepts.

As for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, this is the first I've heard of it, and it certainly appears fascinating! I could imagine how having distinct words for subtly different concepts would aid in differentiation down the line. However - and, I freely admit, with nothing but my own intuition - I don't quite think that the confines of language set boundaries on what concepts we can identify; they do strongly impair our ability to communicate said concepts with others, however. It seems to me that the only things limiting our ability to conceptualize new things and attain further information about anything are the types and quality of data available. Language makes it easier to draw connections and communicate concepts, but it does not cause any hard boundary to be drawn around intelligence - only the limits of our data and processing methods do.

Thanks for sharing this article!

Again - it's not that you haven't experienced hardship. It's that based on your skin color, you are much less likely to continue to experience hardship.

I dated a Serbian. One of my best friends is Croatian. We hang out with Albanians. From a mile high, all anybody can really tell about any of them is they've got bushier eyebrows and eat more lamb. You need to be in the know to get the nuance of that particular ethnographic clusterfuck. On the other hand, a black kid can experience prejudice from across the street simply for being a black kid.

No one is saying white people don't experience hardship. What's being said is that white people don't experience hardship driven by their whiteness. It's not an easy discussion to have, but it's worth having. And those of us benefitting owe it to those of us suffering to have it on their terms.

Thanks for posting. Here are my questions for the researchers:

Do men in uncommitted romantic relationships have more or less testosterone?

What about committed unromantic relationships?

Were there only binary choices on this study? Committed or uncommitted? Romantic or nonromantic?

Does sexual frequency affect testosterone levels by raising or lowering them? "Committed" and "romantic" seem imprecise. I know a lot of people in committed, romantic relationships who have infrequent sex. Does lower testosterone cause the infrequent sex or is it a result of it?

In evolutionary terms, then, would this suggest that species survival is improved by lower testosterone levels among committed men? (theadvancedapes)

Financial independence is definitely going to be big here. As long as they are paying for you, you are going to feel beholden to them. So, you need financial independence as quickly as possible. I'd say take their advice on where to live, as they will know way more about finding a home at this point. Make sure though that they see it just as advice, it may help to just refuse to rent their favorite place, even if you like it, so that they can see that you want to be making this decision.

Financially, I'm not sure how it is in Russia, but in the US, writing books isn't generally something you can count on for a steady income unless you are an experienced and rather well known writer. Once you finish the books, you'll be lucky to find an agent within the first 50 tries. They then have to try to find a publisher, which could take another long while. The advances for new authors will be small, if any, and most of the hard work (like promotion, getting reviews, sometimes even stocking it in bookstores) will fall on you. The royalties will be miniscule once they start to come in. kleinbl00 and _refugee_ are two people here who are active in the American writing community that can hopefully correct any mistakes I made here.

If you are looking at doing translating though, freelancing is always an option. There are plenty of sites online want to facilitate working freelance, like Fivver, and you can always set up your own website with a portfolio and contact info. I can speak for the financial implications really, but because it is freelance work, you can accept the gigs you can manage. There is also a smaller need for credentials, being a linguistics student will be plenty for most the people who need a freelancer. Plus, it seems like you have a very solid grasp of English; I didn't realize you were Russian untill you started #russiabynatives. Beyond that, you'll likely be looking at teenager jobs, but they may be necessary to make your way. I think you'd find your independence worth it.