TED Blog

MakeLoveNotPorn / Full Stack Developer / Full time / New York or remote /

https://www.makelovenotporn.com/ launched in 2009 with this TED talk: https://blog.ted.com/cindy_gallop_ma/ The extraordinary global response led me to turn MLNP into a business. We're the world's first user-generated human-curated social sex videosharing platform (kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed you to socially sexually self-express and self-identify), celebrating #realworldsex as a counterpoint to porn - we're 'Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.' We're socializing sex to make it easier to talk about, in order to promote good sexual values and behavior. We operate a revenue-sharing model: members pay to rent and stream social sex videos, and half the income goes to our contributors, or as we call them, MakeLoveNotPornstars. In the era of #metoo, everyone's talking about consent, but nobody knows what it actually looks like in bed: every video on MLNP is a demonstration of consent, good sexual values, good sexual behavior in action. We're spearheading the Social Sex Revolution: the revolutionary part isn't the sex, but the social. More info on what we're doing here:

https://nowthisnews.com/videos/future/make-love-not-porn-founder-on-starting-a-social-sex-revolution

+ TechCrunch on our funding round last year:

https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/21/sex-the-final-frontier-cindy-gallop-raises-2m-from-mysterious-investor-for-social-sex-tech/

Our developer job spec and how to apply…

tl;dr,

people often claim that greater variance in mathematical ability accounts for lower numbers of women in high level scientific positions. this is doesn't match the data: one can't mathematically fit a gaussian curve to explain the distributions. thus the supposed scientific explanation for why women are underrepresented is actually faulty science.

likewise, genetic explanations cannot account for the recent and rapid ascendancy of woman in such technical areas (though we have a long way to go). participation at the highest levels of academic competition has increased dramatically.

given the holes in these, and other, explanations, it is both scientifically and morally irresponsible to posit innate differences as the governing factors. yet despite these arguments, many people still feel they have the station to proclaim some scientific basis for what would otherwise be evidence of continued unequal opportunity.

the scientific claims of a human group's inferiority must withstand scientific scrutiny far beyond that expected in physics for, say, proving faster than light neutrinos. yet the scientific rigor of studies of human inferiority is actually far below that of physics. i ascribe the difference to politics.

an actual big problem preventing women from advancing: being successful, as a woman, is anticorrelated with being liked. this is far from the fault of men alone -- it is a pervasive cultural bias.

see Sheryl Sandberg's TED Talk: why we have too few women…

Thanks for the great feedback!

An actual recommendation engine would be a lot of fun to build. It would be awesome to recommend products based on subreddit clusters, and similarities between users.

But I don't really want to build a giant AI that sifts through the entire Amazon catalog. I feel that it's a nicer user experience when you just offer a small selection of manually curated products, and some studies show that limiting the number of choices can make people more likely to buy something [1]. I used to list a few CDs and MP3 downloads, but deleted those after I decided that there are already much better music recommendation engines, and they're subscription based. My line of thinking is that I should just start doing a few categories really well, and then expand later.

[1]: http://blog.ted.com/2012/07/18/does-having-choice-make-us-happy-6-studies-that-suggest-it-doesnt-always/

Wow, impressively detailed and photographed article. If you are interested in such things, you should also follow the included link to Dan Barber's TED talk. Here's a version that doesn't automatically launch the video: http://blog.ted.com/2008/11/25/a_surprising_pa/

Also interesting that all the ducks are male. I've seen some recent commentary regarding chickens about how millions of male chicks are put to death since they can't lay eggs and there is no other market for them. Strange that ducks are the inverse. Seems like an opportunity for some enterprising duck egg farmer!

Edit: Oops, just read the section about the Moulard being a sterile hybrid. Maybe not a good plan to breed them. And wow, the comments on that page are truly excellent --- one of the best and most civil discussions on the morality of meat eating that I've seen online.

see "In praise of cooperation without coordination: Clay Shirky at TEDGlobal 2012"

"The result is Git, distributed version control, which Shirky is here to explain to us. It’s a distributed workflow that brings chaos back into the system. Yet there’s a beautiful innovation to ensure that said chaos doesn’t promptly override said system: a signature that creates a unique identifier for every single exchange. This enables cooperation without coordination. “I tell you this not because it is great that open-source programmers now have a tool that supports their philosophical way of working,” Shirky says. “I tell you all of this because of what it means for how communities come together.”"

http://blog.ted.com/2012/06/29/in-praise-of-cooperation-without-coordination-clay-shirky-at-tedglobal-2012/

Always be kind, and say it’s your fault.

If you don’t do it for the sake of the person you are asking for help, do it because it works better. That’s the most practical advice [0] ever given by Hans Rosling [1], the Fact master himself:

> In fact, I have the secret to how to get the best help immediately from any customer service, like the phone company or the bank or anything. I have the best line, it always works. You want to know what it is? When I call, I say, “Hello. I am Hans Rosling and I have made a mistake.” People immediately want to help you when you put it this way. You get much more when you don’t offend people.

[0]: Unless you are in charge of a developing country’s budget and have to decide between education and healthcare.

[1]: https://blog.ted.com/qa_with_hans_ro_1/