That is kinda missing the point and the comparison is off.
Except a joke itself, nothing is a joke, nothing is by definition humor except itself.
It is sort of like saying that an engine is not a plane, by no definition can an engine fly.
Which is true because an engine doesn't fly, planes do. (Or Apache Attack Helicopters)
Humor is something you build using other parts, it's more than the sum of it's parts, no single part in of itself is humor.
Secondly, there are no rules what humor is and what it is not except that it provides laughter and amusement. If somebody laughs about a rape joke, it's by definition humor, albeit (depending on joke) not a good one by most people's standards.
Lastly, there is something called "Gallows Humor" in which (to quote Freud) "the ego refuses to be distressed by [...] reality. It insists that it cannot be affected by the traumas of the external world."
As Wylie Sypher puts it, Gallows Humor is "to be able to laugh at evil and error means we have surmounted them".
It's a natural human instinct. (I'm shamelessly copying of Wikipedia here, I'm no expert in all topics)
So while, yes, rape is not a joke and it's a very horrible thing to those it happens to and we as a society should make efforts to not allow it to happen, it can only be healthy to make humor and jokes about it. Not to diminish the victims but to diminish the perpetrators. The perpetrator is worth nothing more than a joke to us, they have no further value or meaning in society and ought to be locked away forever after we thoroughly laughed, helping the victim to recover in the next step.
That is what I want from a strong and healthy society.
There's really nothing wrong with making a concerted effort to be more polite or accepting on the internet or anywhere else for that matter. Framing wanting to have good self-presentation and wanting to be a great coder as mutually exclusive is clearly disingenuous.
Saying things like this is really really dangerous in my opinion, because in addition to being totally false it can discourage someone struggling with depression / anxiety / whatever from seeking treatment because they don't want to feel "numb." I'm sure I can speak for not just myself but many others here and say that without antidepressants I'd probably be dead, and the only part of life they've eliminated are the lowest valleys of depression. At one point I considered not taking them because I believed in this same misconception (I was afraid to lose my creativity), but I'm very glad now I did not give in to that fear.
Please do not spread misinformation about potentially life-saving medication.
Medication can be necessary in extreme cases, to stabilize a patient whose thought processes are too disorganized to undergo therapy. This is the professional opinion that I've received from multiple therapists. More professional opinions at [2] and [3].
It's hard to believe that all the thousands of people that are prescribed antidepressants are going through severe (i.e. crippling) depression. I'm glad that you experienced only mild/no side-effects, but that it appears this is not the case with the majority of patients [1].
Someone struggling with depression/anxiety/whatever should seek treatment for the causes of their suffering, of course.
However, the common mantra is that a pill will solve your ill, the fact that antidepressants are prescribed like candy (second only to antibiotics) should hint on this. The problem is that, at best, the pill will help you with symptoms and will not solve the underlying causes (often related to trauma handling or with how one deals with the hardships of life).
If the person doesn't get charged in the end, eventually the police will stop showing up when the Port Authority calls because someone takes a picture.
Delicious costs $9K/month to run on AWS, so funding would definitely help there.
As far as I can tell, the site is now being run by some regretful SEO dude in Canada, and I don't think it would take a large suitcase of money to get it away from him.
When I talked to them about buying the site, the Science Inc. people were very clear that they intend to keep the delicious.com domain for some (presumably awful) new project.
This would make sense if they same VC also asked a male founder if his wife was pregnant, and if he was going to abandon the startup for his family. Except we all know they wouldn't dare ask that question, because it would be extremely rude and potentially illegal (?). But for some reason it's ok with the female founders, again because of the idea that "mothers should be mothers" that this VC expressed in the text message.
Why do you think this doesn't come up? As a single father of course it came up in every funding/hiring discussion I ever had.
And it was perfectly reasonable for them to ask, due to the roles I was being offered. If I got offended by that, I didn't understand the sheer amount of work and effort those positions were going to entail.
If I'm hiring a 9-5 support tech, it's irrelevant. If I'm hiring a "kills the company if it's the wrong hire" position, you bet your ass I'm looking at it from every angle. And someone being able to commit 100% to that is very key - doesn't matter if it's kids, sports, hobbies, whatever. If you decide you want work/life balance, a startup founder is not for you. At least one that is funded by VCs.
It's not OK to discriminate against anyone. But here is at least one reason it is still done, even after almost everyone agrees that women can be great executives:
Hours per week spent on unpaid child care among dual-earner couples; respondent working full-time. Women: 49.8, Men: 27.2
Women and men still behave very differently as populations. This is not cause for discrimination against individuals, but it does explain (but not morally justify) the existence of different priors on members of the two populations.
I believe the authors argument is that the VC's (or at least this particular one) use the antiquated idea that "mothers should be mothers" to subconsciously look down on woman founders who pitch, because they should be at home "being mothers" instead.
