cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
10d ago
There are cases where a comment is just really good, and nothing further needs to be said. I'd say I get the most comments when people think I'm wrong or they disagree. Votes can be a second measurement in these cases. You can verify if people were reading it at least.
I think if caring about votes on themotte is pathetic then so is general participation here as well. I would rather describe it as a recreational activity.
cjet79
10d ago
Why don't you like the upvote/downvote systems?
I certainly like the idea of telling users to just be better. I do this all the time as a moderator. But being a moderator also gives me a certain level of practicality about how people behave. This just doesn't feel like a marginal line I'm willing to hold people accountable over. Even if I had access to everyone's voting paterns, I'd be loathe to hold a single user accountable to any of their votes.
Most people could probably engage less, as I mentioned in Wednesday Wellness thread, I'll probably be at the pool more this summer and thus engaging less. But a need to engage less is not actually an argument against voting. The voting is low effort very quick participation, only a few extra seconds compared to just reading the posts. Commenting definitely increases the time commitment.
Just because you have ceased to cater to / platform / respond to someone, does not mean that person has ceased to exist.
cjet79
10d ago
I was actually expecting more push back on this, maybe people just haven't seen it yet.
cjet79
10d ago
In 2021 I went from basically never exercising to exercising intensely at least once a week.
One of the main reasons for the change was that my lifestyle was fucking me up. I was diagnosed with diabetes and had just turned thirty. Maybe encourage people to go to the doctor (which is a smaller ask), and then the doctor will scare them into exercising more for you.
I mostly still hate exercise. I hate many similar activities that I consider just "holding the line" against entropy. Laundry, dishes, cleaning, pooping, meals for fuel, sleeping, hygiene, etc.
I've only managed to have a consistent habit of exercise because I made it a lot of fun. I play a rec team sport with people for my exercise. Even when I was younger I found it much easier to motivate myself when I was playing a sport with people. I have recently expanded to exercising more a week, but my main reason for doing so is to be better at the rec team sport I play.
I guess my advice is:
- Get them to have a health scare.
- Make it fun for when they do exercise.
cjet79
10d ago
Might be worth discussing in the transnational thursday thread. I am mostly completely unaware of Indian politics. I have a vague sense that Caste and Religion are big issues, and that Modi is some kind of traditionalist. Aside from that I'm totally in the dark. What do they even argue about?
cjet79
10d ago
I'll also do a thing where I upvote what I think of as the good conversation for a thread, and downvote the bad conversations.
If I see someone getting dogpiled I try to read through all the other responses before I write anything, to make sure I'm not being redundant. If I find that others have written what I would have then I just upvote them and move on.
It just seems like such a useful tool, but a lot of people tend to dislike it.
cjet79
10d ago
I haven't ever used the slashdot system. It sounds like a downside though is that low user counts might lead to not enough voting to distinguish good from bad. Most comments would just hover around "not voted on", whereas reddits system gives a more granular picture.
cjet79
11d ago
I only have one story of my wife being on a Grand Jury for two days. It was all women on the Grand Jury the first day, and just one man the second day.
From my Wife's description is that it was basically a bunch of cops giving powerpoint or oral presentations on the cases they were involved in. I got a strong impression of kids turning in their homework to the teachers. Mostly the teachers didn't want to fail their students, so all but one cop easily "passed". The one that didn't get an immediate pass did a terrible job and they were told to come back and try again.
I have an intuitive sense that women and men would be a bit different as jurors, but I honestly don't know how it would shake out in trials. I suspect our resident lawyers might know more.
cjet79
11d ago
I got off the waiting list for my local neighborhood pool. I've been taking the family with me just about every day on the weekends, and some weekdays as well.
Pool life is great! I get to see some of my neighbors with kids that I like. I get exercise. I get Sun. I get happy.
Expect to see me on here a little less often while I enjoy the pool. Maybe I'll be back more in the dreary winter.
cjet79
14d ago
Now I'm curious about what happened to Hock guy. He should be either done or dead by now right?
cjet79
14d ago
I'm not saying we can't have this discussion, but I will say it was had before:
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/193046?context=8#context
As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.
I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.
I would like people to have a few takeaways:
- No one on this forum is infinitely excused of bad behavior. Having quality contributions and providing a unique viewpoint might get you some additional leeway, but our patience isn't unlimited.
- The mods do read and participate here. We know when someone is starting to abuse that leeway. We know when there is frustration about it.
- We do try to be deliberate and slow about things. It can feel real shitty when a cabal of people meet in secret to discuss your punishment and they decide permanent banishment is the solution. For longtime users that have put in the time and effort to be a part of the community here we don't lightly jump to permanent bans as a solution.
Please keep any discussion civil.
I had many other posts that I liked in that discussion, and I feel I'd just be reiterating their points again. So I'll just post those below:
On the topic of rehabilitation:
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/193270?context=8#context
I'm not entirely opposed to something like a rehabilitation program for rule breakers. In my experience the rule-breakers themselves are often very much not ok with such a system. I believe anyone that is capable of living in modern society and not constantly getting involved in violence and being thrown in prison is capable of filtering themselves. So most forum users are capable of filtering themselves, but they are not willing to filter themselves. So adding an external filter that is not under their control is not something they want, its just seen as an imposition.
requiring a two page essay on rule-following as a costly signal of contrition and to promote salience of infraction
I've wanted to do things like this in the past. But its not a good idea. We got a lot of complaints that we were just being petty tyrants abusing our power, and that we just wanted people to "bend the knee" and "respect my authoritaay!" And those complaints seem generally correct to me. Some of the libertarian types (myself included) have an allergic reaction to such requirements, and may swing much harder towards "fuck you and your impositions".
I'd rather just treat people like adults, rather than misbehaving kids. If you can't or aren't willing to control your behavior here then we should just part ways. I don't want to try and parent you. I don't want you ass kissing or crawling on your belly to be allowed back in. I just want you to act within the rules we have set out while you are here. That is my only requirement. And because it is the only requirement it becomes a much stronger one. There is no getting around it by willing to be a sycophant.
Having said all that nothing is forever set in stone. Hlynka could come back in a year. But it would have to be an active decision by the mod team. Not a passive one. And if it were to happen, I'd like to see the most reluctant members of the mod team and community convinced.
On the problem of maintaining "politeness" on the internet:
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/193363?context=8#context
I'm well aware of the contradiction, I wrote this 5 days ago [emphasis added]:
This is a discussion forum for people with sometimes drastically different views. It feels like a fragile thing somedays. We are asking people to talk politely with one another when they may disagree with each other's entire existence. Most of the internet is filled with people pointing out that politeness in those circumstances is absurd. And thus most of the internet has descended into a bit of a hell hole that I cannot personally tolerate for any topic much less the topics where people might actually have a reason to hate each other.
Hlynka wasn't interested in maintaining decorum when it was an obvious papering over disrespectful or violent thoughts. I admired how long he was able to act on that disinterest without getting permabanned.
Personally, the masquerade is getting boring for me too. But out of respect for mod wishes, I'll try to fade out rather than flame out if it becomes too annoying to bother with.
I'm not really sympathetic to people that can't maintain the masquerade. Because I maintain it quite easily. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, and just about everyone on here is a statist of some sort. I believe most of those views are morally repugnant, and any statist view is an active advocation of violence against me. I also don't consider myself some paragon of self control. I think most people have the self control muscle and exercise it all the time. If you can drive in traffic and not run someone off the road when they do something dangerous to you then you also have that self control muscle. My 5 year old kid has the self control muscle. My 3 year old, does not. So its a skill you can learn and start using as young as 4 years old.
Also according to psychology there are bunch of psychopaths just walking around among us, following the rules, and not murdering people for shits and giggles. We don't threaten to purge all the psychopaths as uncaring monsters walking among us. And the psychopaths mostly don't act like the uncaring monsters that they are, except in specific high level managerial positions where we have designated their behavior "ok".
People complaining that it is hard not to say things in an online forum where they don't need to even participate is a bit mind-boggling to me. I truly do not understand how such a person navigates their day to day life. Perhaps they have an extreme set of blinders? Perhaps they are lying, and its actually very easy to follow the rules around here, they just don't want to? Perhaps they are in a special set of circumstances where people coddle them like I do for my three year old in order to avoid public tantrums?
Opinions on Hylynka and some behind the scenes details on the moderation decision:
https://www.themotte.org/post/900/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/193253?context=8#context
...
Maybe you don't like hylnka, but a lot of people did. The whole pitch on moving everybody here was that we could avoid the overbearing influence of reddit admins, but now we just have...you guys. Hylnka was a dick, and banned me at least once on themotte...but as I have pointed out before: you guys (specifically you, cjet) over way overtending this garden.
No, I like Hlynka. If there is such a thing as "internet friends" I would consider him one. I was the most reluctant among the mods to ban him, and have stuck up for his behavior quite often in the back-channels. The fact that I am the one to ban him is more similar to a "George shoots Lennie" situation. Not comparing Hlynka to Lennie, but the social dynamic of the situation where the most ardent defender of the accused who gave them as many chances as possible has to be the one to carry out the execution.
And yes you have us. This was always the agreement. If you want the reddit admins and some other set of moderators, you know where reddit is. We have gotten significantly more lenient since moving off of reddit, because there is more of a worry of eroding our user base and having no replacement source. If you want no moderation there are places on the internet like that. This isn't such a place, never has been, and never will be given that zorba will probably just shut it down if it came to that.
Most of the discussion here just sounds like (and I suspect heavily is) chatbots talking back and forth to one another. Many have pointed out that a version of a captcha for chatbots is if they are willing to say naughty words or not. What you're basically doing with this ban is saying "you have to sound like a chatbot in order to post here". I think this is a bad idea.
People are allowed to say "naughty words" here. They aren't allowed to put words in other's mouths. Accuse people of beliefs they don't hold with little or no evidence/discussion. And throw out broad sweeping insults to others.
You can say cunt, but you can't call another user one without breaking our rules. If you are not a fan of "politeness" as one of the rules of discussion, I'd again suggest that most of the rest of the internet is still out there.
Here's a suggestion for how to improve themotte and course correct it: give us something like "showdead" on hacker news. Give me the option in my userprofile to have a non mod curated experience where I can see naughty posts and interact with them. People who want the more curated experience can untick this "show naughty" option, and never have to see it. I don’t think you will do this since it takes the power of being a mod away (although keeps the practical purpose), but it would be appreciated.
No. Zorba has been asked about this multiple times before. He has a post somewhere about trash in a river as a comparison. The general point is that our users actually do most of the filtering for us, and mods are here as a backup to make sure there is a clear bright line.
cjet79
16d ago
Could you summarize what she is saying? I'm just not big into watching political commentary.
cjet79
18d ago
I'm not sure the US public has the stomach to force a recalcitrant state back into the fold.
Ballot Access - I said this back when Trump was potentially gonna get kicked off Colorado ballots. Neither of the two major parties will be off of a state ballot in any state. It does not matter what rules or procedures they fail to follow they will be on the ballot. I am 95% certain on this. In this 5% chance that it happens, I would like a followup bet that some portion of the US breaks off into its own country. Those are the consequences if you don't maintain the illusion of democracy.
The opposite is true of 3rd party candidates. A single failure to follow a single rule, or a single failure to get a triple the number of required signatures will result in them being off the ballot.
edit- went and did some research.
The most recent example of a major Democratic or Republican presidential candidate not appearing on a state ballot was in 1964. Lyndon B. Johnson, the incumbent president and Democratic candidate, was not on the ballot in Alabama. Instead, Alabama had former Governor John Malcolm Patterson as a stand-in candidate for the Democratic Party. This situation stemmed from complex political dynamics and disagreements within the party related to civil rights issues and other national policies at the time.
Before the 1964 instance involving Lyndon B. Johnson, another notable case occurred in the 1956 presidential election. That year, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican incumbent, was not on the ballot in Alabama either. In his place, a slate of unpledged electors was listed instead. This was due to internal disputes within the state's Democratic Party, which was deeply divided over issues such as civil rights. These unpledged electors were intended to be free to vote for a different candidate other than the official party nominees if they were elected.
So aside from Alabama being weird chatgpt could only give me two other examples:
- 1860 Presidential Election: As mentioned earlier, Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln was not on the ballot in several Southern states due to his anti-slavery platform. This exclusion was not limited to Alabama but included states like Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
- 1912 Presidential Election: In this election, Theodore Roosevelt, who had previously been a Republican president, ran as a candidate for the Progressive Party (also known as the Bull Moose Party) after failing to secure the Republican nomination against incumbent President William Howard Taft. In some states, such as California, the situation led to a split in which both Taft and Roosevelt were competing for Republican votes, effectively making Roosevelt a major candidate running outside the traditional two-party system, impacting ballot dynamics.
So in one instance we had a literal civil war. And in the other three instances we had major party realignments happening.
cjet79
18d ago
Perfect weather would be going through a yearly seasonal cycle in 4 months instead of 12. There would be a perfect day of winter, snowing 20F, not windy. A perfect day of spring, 70F and humid after just raining with green shooting up everywhere. A perfect day of summer 90F, with a slightly cooling breeze, occasionally big fluffy clouds to give some relief from the sun, and a pool to jump in to cool off. A perfect day of fall, 60F with leaves falling, a cooling breezing that makes sweaters comfortable, and dry weather for some good fire pits in the evening.
I genuinely like weather variations, but I tend to get sick of weather extremes after a month. So just a faster set of seasons would be good.
If I had to pick a single type of weather I'd pick room temperature 70F with no sun or wind. Basically no weather, since I'd get sick of any extremes after enough time.
cjet79
20d ago
I was thinking Netflix picked it up for a second season because it was probably dirt cheap. They basically need a random car shop, maybe a second one for Stavros occasionally calling in remotely to film his lines.
Actor and writer salaries, only one of which is even close to a major star, and he isn't gonna tank it with high salary expectations cuz it's partly his passion project.
I watched the show and wrote the review while I was pretty drunk. I was smiling and lightly chuckling. It wasn't as laugh out loud funny as other comedy stuff I've watched. But I really did get a sense of liking the characters and wanting to root for them. Not just cuz I know Shane's SNL cancellation. It was the same sense I got rooting for the characters in the office when they thought their branch might be closed.
cjet79
21d ago
I'm someone that generally sees the two parties as pretty close to each other in actual policy positions. Even if they loudly scream about how different they are.
Not my random opinion. It's what is predicted by public choice economics for a first past the post / two-party system. The party with the median voter wins, so that is where party behavior trends towards.
Lots of people here like to complain about the Democrats being in favor of open borders, but as someone who is actually in favor of open borders I mostly see the Democrats as ok with the current immigration situation, but not interested in opening up things any further.
If you think we have open borders right now .. I think we disagree on too much of base reality and we won't get very far talking with each other.
All of that to say, I would not be surprised if the bill looks semi strict on immigration but basically lacks any real teeth.
cjet79
23d ago
I watched Tires on Netflix.
Its a short series. about 2 hours total, 6 ~20 minute episodes.
I enjoyed it. No, that's not quite right. I enjoy an ice cream flavor like chocolate. But I don't root for chocolate. I wouldn't be excited to encounter someone in an ice cream shop that bought chocolate ice cream. I'm rooting for Tires. I'm rooting for Shane Gillis. I'm rooting for an auto service shop to make just barely enough money to be profitable.
The series was funny. It had heart. It understood and portrayed blue collar work in a way that Hollywood can never replicate.
I started writing this thinking I'd have a lot more to say. I guess I don't. Watch it. I liked it a lot. If you like it as much as I do, I think you are the kind of person I could have a beer with and we'd get along.
cjet79
24d ago
Its a toy selling cartoon. A lot of the architectural and vehicle design decisions look like they were made to be scaled down into tiny model versions. Main example is the giant outdoor slide on the paw patrol tower.
cjet79
25d ago
I immediately thought of English slang. "Hey Yo" shouted loudly across a street ends up sounding like "Ay Yo"
cjet79
26d ago
Xbox exclusive, Netflix exclusive, exclusive interview with a person, etc. plenty of exclusive type language used for mass products.
cjet79
26d ago
Inclusion has a weird status in culture, because its opposite is not always seen as a bad thing.
Diversity : Homogeneity :: Equity : Unequal :: Inclusion : Exclusive
Exclusivity is still a widely accepted marketing and branding decision. Media networks love to brag about exclusive events, where only they get to show something. Hollywood in general loves exclusive events where only the biggest stars can attend. Clubs brag about their exclusive requirements. High end brands love to use cost as a way to exclude the riff raff and readily imply that only the rich and discerning can afford to choose their brand.
I do wonder if exclusion has enough staying power to survive scrutiny by the culture. I am 90% sure it will stay around. Marketers will just have to very carefully tiptoe around who is being excluded, and the rules on who it is ok to exclude will likely shift randomly depending on the whims of internet mobs.
I used to be in many pre voting internet groups. There was often lots of useless comments that were basically up votes or down votes. "This is epic!" "This is bad, and you should feel bad for posting it."
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