What do you see coming in Weasyl's future in terms of development and users in general?

As far as development goes, I can't say a lot. Our dev team is amazing and have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, doing things like keeping our uptime high and the like. They're working right now on code refactoring and making future developments easier. I don't have any specific big projects that I could comfortably talk about at the moment because 1. I'm not a coding person and don't want to say things that just don't make sense and 2. I don't want to promise anything that we're not sure can be delivered soon.

As far as smaller updates, there's a lot on the table. More than I could mention. We have a Weasyl Redmine: https://redmine.weasyl.com/projects/weasyl that lets users suggest changes, report bugs, etc. And I definitely recommend following weasyldev for code updates.

As for users, to be honest I think things have been going well and continue to do so. I see a lot more people interacting with one another and people finding the way the site best suits them. It's kinda been neat to see people try something new and get to know some new people, it's something I rather like about the fandom in general, so I hope to see more of that in the future.

We the staff also have some plans for some Weasyl community activities. There's a Halloween activity coming soon that will be posted on the tumblr page.

Fantastic! I'm glad things are looking up for the site.

I feel like you've been doing an amazing job on running the place as well. :D

Aw thank you, I certainly can't take credit by myself. I know it sounds cliche but I literally couldn't do what I do for the site without the rest of the team.

No no, that's totally obvious! Teamwork is always the key when working with a project like this.

Weasyl is doing great. Keep it up you guys! ^^

What's the ETA of a clickable search button so i can fully enjoy the site on my 3ds and wii (all i have for internet)

I am unfortunately not the best person to ask on this. I focus pretty heavily on administration and moderation staff organization so I'm not really up to date on the fine detail dev stuff.
That's something that weasyl-dev on twitter could answer.

derp, my bad it's weasyldev

Which would win in a fist fight: gerbals or hamsters?

hamsters I think, they seem bigger, also gerbils have tails don't they? that's a weakness compared to the little nubbin tails of hamsters

What do you think of MENSA and their mission statement?

In theory I think it's a nice goal. seeking a certain type of likeminded individual to uphold a certain type of discourse and I do particularly like that there are scholarships for those children that are considered "gifted"

Often people sort of take for granted the problems "smart" children can have, because they don't struggle with material in the same manner. You see high IQ children fail out very easily as there's no money or room for programs to help, they get bored, they hate school and learning, and essentially there are many that treat a 10 year old like it's their fault for not liking school because it's too easy.

Realistically I think it's more an ego boost. This isn't to say it's all bad, it's just not as high minded and elite as people think. IQ is heavily affected by socio-economic status, but to be fairish to them it's hard to come up with a decent way to measure intelligence and quantify what sort of people you want in your group if the focus is high intelligence.

A lot of people seem to think high IQs are impressive. The number is generally not important, it's where they fall in the standard deviation. Just cause someone has a high IQ doesn't mean they're going to be a super genius walking computer type person.
Academia is rife with people with high IQs, it's essentially the same focus, fostering knowledge without the line to cut people out. But you probably don't think of the weird philosopher with goofy sandals as being someone that could easily join mensa.

Meh I dunno. When I was younger I was going to join. I decided against it since my career is focused on intelligent discussion and I don't have to pay dues. My opinion is probably also colored because the only reason I wanted to join mensa back then was to say I was part of mensa and I have now long since out grown wanting to flaunt my IQ, but that doesn't mean that's why others joined up.

Did you ever get to the point where you feel like you are really starting to know your field? Did it happen before or after your qualifying exams? Because I am trying to study for mine, and man, do I ever feel stupid right now! I even feel like slinking into my office, shutting the door, and hiding from the world. Feels like I'm about to get slaughtered in those written comprehensive exams. Did you feel like that?

Hahaha no. When I took my quals for my High Education Masters I felt like I still didn't know shit and just spent 2 weeks writing trying desperately to write enough to convince others that I knew anything at all.

Philosophy...god I felt like I knew something, even a bit at the start of my masters, now I am sure I don't. I have imposter syndrome so bad. Every class I teach I'm waiting for my students to just call bullshit on my lectures. A lot of my classes I just sit in the back stunned that somehow I'm the idiot that just somehow got in without knowing philosophy.

Apparently this is pretty normal. My dept is thankfully quite kind and awesome and most of us are like "nah I have no idea either" we're just trying to do what we can and try to learn something before time is up.
don't let it get to you.

Heck I have it on good authority that tenured professors often feel this way.

Why are bats so awesome? :3

because the german word for bat is Fledermaus, and I think that's beautiful

So, when is your first novel coming out and can I have a signed copy?

heh, if I ever actually sit down long enough to write a novel I'll certainly get you a signed copy

Awesome. Ditto for me. Might try to pen one this year for that 'write a novel in a month' contest.

What do you feel is the eventual result of the current state of American politics/economics?

man this is going to make me look dumb.

Okay I think the republican party is losing its grip on the meta game. By introducing the heavily right extreme group in order to confirm their own power between the parties, they've set it up so that to appeal to their own base you have to go really far to the right, unfortunately that means when the general election comes you have people needing to then appeal to a moderate crowd and I think they'll have a harder time winning over the moderate vote.

I don't know if that will play out this round, but I can see the right fragmenting in the the republican party being the extreme right and a new middle party being developed that more accurately describes the republican stance. Essentially I think we might see a whig party type ending for the republican party as we know it now.

I certainly believe that is inevitable, at least if the GOP keeps thinking that estranging and alienating potential voters is the way to go. Though... in selfish honesty, I wouldn't be too ruffled if that's the case. It's a real madhouse.

Oh, follow-up... are you driving or flying to MFF? I may have already asked this, but I don't seem to recall.

Driving with rio