IJBMer Updates

KilgoreTrout

glennmagusharvey wrote: »

Wait, who's anti-Palestinian on HH?  I don't know who is, or at least who actively is, and I've mentioned the Israel/Palestine issue enough times that I would think I've have noticed it by now.

It's not precisely being anti-Palestinian. I'll elaborate.

The problems with Sredni started in a thread about Gal Gadot. Somebody made this thread saying that some people didn't like her because she was in the IDF. Here's a condensed and paraphrased version of how things went from there, to my recollection:

OP: Like she asked to be conscripted! What a moron you are if you hate her!

SREDNI: Yeah.

KILGORE: Look, it's not just that she was in the IDF, but she was there enthusiastically instead of reluctantly. And in 2014 she posted on social media to support the IDF's bombing of Gaza.

SREDNI: It's still stupid to hate her. I can't blame the rank and file for supporting what their country and army does all the time.

KILGORE: (I didn't say this, but I sure wish I did) Oh, they're just following orders then?

It went from there to Sredni bringing up how Hamas persecutes LGBTQ people, and how Israel is more tolerant, and I think he may have even said something about how Arab citizens of Israel are treated better than anywhere else.

Okay, the word for that first part is "pinkwashing". You might have heard it, but if you haven't, it's the tactic of trying to deflect criticism of Israel by saying "But they treat gay people well!" Yeah, well, so does the United States, relatively speaking. Doesn't mean we should just ignore it when the United States attacks some other country that doesn't have the same LGBTQ-rights record.

As far as how Arabs are treated inside of Israel: once again, I can't remember for sure if he said they were treated better there than anywhere else, and I'm not particularly inclined to revisit the scene of all that ugliness to have a look. But if he did say that, then it's no surprise that I got worked up, because that is simply untrue. There's a reason people are making apartheid comparisons, and it can't just be dismissed as "Oh, they're anti-Semitic."

Anyway, this all culminated in his mute/ban threat.

And sometimes even that doesn't work.  Lately I've run into a situation where I'm the lone Clinton supporter on a thread that's now dominated by a Johnson supporter (and obnoxious libertarian type) and a Trump supporter (who thinks that Trump will be a harmless, cloutless clown, and thinks Clinton will start wars with wild abandon) who won't stop responding to me no matter what I say, so I was like, screw it, not worth my time.  Not a great feeling to have, but sometimes some battles just aren't worth fighting.

Ironically, the reason I'm no longer there might be because I was trying not to bother with Sredni, since it would just result in a battle which wouldn't be worth the stress levels.

The last day I was allowed on HH, there were three people with whom I did not get along. Sredni was one of them, of course. So I was changing something in my profile when I saw that the site had an ignore function. I clicked on it. It asked me to enter the name of the person I wanted to ignore. I entered the name of somebody, and that was all there was to it. Then I thought "I wonder if it'll let me put Sredni in there, even though he's a mod." I tried it, it worked, I thought "Cool, now I don't have to read any of his bullshit any more and possibly get pissed off," and that was that.

Or so I thought. Now, many hours had passed since I put him on ignore and I had made a number of posts in that time without getting any message that what I did was wrong or getting any warning, so I could have been banned for some other reason. But maybe not, or maybe they saw I was ignoring Sredni and decided it was the last straw.

To me it kind of begs the following question. If you're going to put an ignore function on your site, and you're going to ban people for ignoring at least one mod, then why do you not either:

A) Set it up so that the ignore function can't be used on mods, or;

State in the rules and guidelines that ignoring mods gets you banned?

KilgoreTrout

Earthlight_Ray wrote: »

I'm actually laughing here. Apparently everyone is banned from heapers who doesn't agree with the admins' political views. Not just me. Actually that knowledge alone is vindicating and makes me feel a little bit better about the time I spent there. :,) It's not you guys; it's them.

I don't know, Ray. Maybe you're right, but in my particular case I have to consider the possibility that it may at least partly be me. Because in addition to TVT and HH, in the last couple of years I came within a hair's breadth of getting banned from another site, and if I had posted and read other people's posts every day instead of just going away for a while I might have actually gotten banned.

Serocco wrote: »

Uhh, you clearly do not know me much. I have a reputation on forums.

I saw the interaction with you and Jane yesterday and I really had no idea what to say at the time, so I said nothing. It seemed to me like you were upset about Hillary walking back her statement about Trump supporters and were expressing that frustration, and Jane was upset about you expressing that frustration because, as she said, "You never turn off". I honestly have no idea what she meant: what does "turn off" involve? Not talking about politics? Not being upset about politics? You spent a lot of time not talking about politics, and went a long time without actually getting angry about anything. 

Also, apparently addressing somebody who doesn't read the thread and will never see what you write is an annoying rhetorical device? Like me writing "Richard Dawkins, just shut the hell up and stop trying to make everybody hate Muslims as much as you clearly do," is somehow bad because Dawkins is never gonna see it? I don't understand that thinking.

I'm not gonna say that Jane's awful or anything like that, because I don't think she is, and usually her and me got along great. I just don't understand her point of view in this case. I don't know if she was having a bad day and would have responded differently if she'd been in a different mood, or what.

I also kind of wondered if me jumping in and saying "Hillary was right to attack Trump supporters and shouldn't have walked it back" could be taken as hypocrisy, given that just a page or two earlier in that thread I had been going on about how scummy I considered negative campaigning to be.

My own feelings about Trump supporters: I'm sure at least some of them could be shown that actually they have no reason to be frightened of Mexicans, Muslims, or any other group they're scared of. Some of them are beyond help. But right now the question of whether they're just terrible people or misguided people is moot; either way, they're helping to make things worse, not better.

@Irdgck: I'm afraid I've forgotten where you're from, so where is this location you reside in with the crazy-ass politics?

glennmagusharvey

KilgoreTrout wrote:

A) Set it up so that the ignore function can't be used on mods, or;

State in the rules and guidelines that ignoring mods gets you banned?

I thought it couldn't be used on mods anyway, or there was a rule against ignoring mods, but there was also a rule against saying who ignored whom, so it's obviously a little hard to tell.

Pretty sure you can tell whether someone you've ignored has posted by simply logging out.

Maybe I should tell them to hard-code it so that mods can't be ignored?

KilgoreTrout wrote:

I saw the interaction with you and Jane yesterday and I really had no
idea what to say at the time, so I said nothing. It seemed to me like
you were upset about Hillary walking back her statement about Trump
supporters and were expressing that frustration, and Jane was upset
about you expressing that frustration because, as she said, "You never
turn off". I honestly have no idea what she meant: what does "turn off"
involve? Not talking about politics? Not being upset about politics? You
spent a lot of time not talking about politics, and went a long time
without actually getting angry about anything.

"You never turn off" most likely referred to Serocco's (and yours too) tendency to rag on Hillary Clinton for generally not being sufficiently liberal/progressive, or being too beholden to moneyed interests, or being too hawkish, or something along those lines.  Basically, "yet another liberal/progressive complaint about Hillary Clinton and how disappointed one is to have to be stuck with supporting her", and for better or worse, the two of you kinda made that your reputation when you joined HH.

I know that Serocco (and maybe you? I forget) started posting about some other stuff, which I appreciate, but I can see how some people (including myself) can see a post from Serocco (or you) ragging on Clinton again and have a "not this shit again" reaction to it.

KilgoreTrout wrote:

Also, apparently addressing somebody who doesn't read the thread and
will never see what you write is an annoying rhetorical device? Like me
writing "Richard Dawkins, just shut the hell up and stop trying to make
everybody hate Muslims as much as you clearly do," is somehow bad
because Dawkins is never gonna see it? I don't understand that thinking.

I disagree with this, though I admit that this rhetorical device can get irritating when overused.  Do also consider that this wasn't the only recent instance of it on HH, and for otherwise unrelated reasons, some people were already a little sick of it.

KilgoreTrout wrote:

@Irdgck: I'm afraid I've forgotten where you're from, so where is this location you reside in with the crazy-ass politics?

Poland, I think.  Eastern Europe in general is a wellspring of darkly humorous political craziness.

To be fair, basically place has its weird political quirks.  I'm pretty sure there are people in the United States wondering why the fuck mainland China is so damn stubborn about not recognizing Taiwan as an independent country, while I'm also pretty sure there are people in China wondering why the fuck Americans keep on giving serious consideration to glaring idiots like George W. Bush and Donald Trump and others for the presidency.

KilgoreTrout

glennmagusharvey wrote: »

Maybe I should tell them to hard-code it so that mods can't be ignored?

Couldn't hurt.

And I guess I understand the reaction to ragging on Clinton after doing it so often before, even when it had been a while since the last time.

Earthlight_Ray

I hang out with mostly conservative people these days. I like an atmosphere where you can just clear the air and say what you want, and this tends to breed conservatives rather than progressives, who tend to run places with an agenda. I've always been a nature-loving hippy with a strong distrust of the government, and probably always will be. I will support the green party until I die. Most people don't agree with my worldview. I've given up caring about politics, certainly arguing about politics online! Lots of things are wrong with the world and make me sad and have personally caused a lot of suffering for me, but I can't do much to change them, especially when merely keeping myself alive has been such a challenge. But it's more important to speak than to be heard, I think. >>

As for heapers, it is simply, in my view, a tumblresque hugbox, except instead of sending an army of teenagers to encourage you to commit suicide if they don't like you, they just ban you and pretend you're a bad person, a troll of the week type character or whatever. I wasn't the first cool person to get banned from there as I can clearly see I am also not the last (can you believe they banned the author of Listening to 11.975MHz?). It's a pretty common problem with a lot of internet communities so you should only hang out in places that are neutral. When you're afraid to speak anymore for fear of being silenced or harassed, it's time to leave and go somewhere better.

lrdgck

To cheer you guys up, I don't remember any of you for the frothing-at-the-mouth school of rhetorics, so at least that's not the problem. Not that it made a difference though.

KilgoreTrout

Earthlight_Ray wrote: »

I like an atmosphere where you can just clear the air and say what you want, and this tends to breed conservatives rather than progressives, who tend to run places with an agenda.

I was actually thinking about this a little earlier. Like I remember when I first saw "The Life Of Brian", part of the plot was how the various resistance groups hated one another and spent too much time arguing and getting in each other's way than actually accomplishing their goals. This was satirizing, as I'd learn shortly after, the way the left in real life were often at one another's throats.

When I saw the movie, I wasn't aware of anything like that going on IRL. It seemed to me that all liberals pretty much agreed on everything.

Years later, I got onto Twitter, and it turns out...NOPE! On several occasions I've seen people I follow get into arguments with one another which result in real lasting hatred. These are people who want the same things, but they argue over what should be minor stuff.

glennmagusharvey

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

I like an atmosphere where you can just clear the air and say what you want, and this tends to breed conservatives rather than progressives, who tend to run places with an agenda.

Surprised you say this about conservatives, because I have the exact opposite experience as you do.  With progressives I can just clear the air and say what I want, and actually talk about real, practical issues, and real and practical solutions, but if I'm around conservatives they try to argue down everything I have to say by claiming that I have some sort of agenda, and meanwhile advancing their own pet issues.

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

I've always been a nature-loving hippy with a strong distrust of the government, and probably always will be.

At least it beats being a nature-hating douchebag.

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

I've given up caring about politics, certainly arguing about politics online!

probably a good idea lol

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

As for heapers, it is simply, in my view, a tumblresque hugbox, except instead of sending an army of teenagers to encourage you to commit suicide if they don't like you, they just ban you and pretend you're a bad person, a troll of the week type character or whatever.

I've got a very different impression of heapers, though I don't really feel like unearthing this whole argument and relitigating it all over again at the moment.

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

the author of Listening to 11.975MHz?

who's that?

lrdgck wrote:

To cheer you guys up, I don't remember any of you for the frothing-at-the-mouth school of rhetorics, so at least that's not the problem.

Typically we all have seen and only know one or a few facets of each of our personalities.  We all act different ways in front of different people, naturally, because we respond differently to different stimuli, and I'm pretty sure y'all haven't seen some aspects of me that I've never shown y'all myself.

KilgoreTrout wrote:

When I saw the movie, I wasn't aware of anything like that going on IRL. It seemed to me that all liberals pretty much agreed on everything.

Years later, I got onto Twitter, and it turns out...NOPE! On several occasions I've seen people I follow get into arguments with one another which result in real lasting hatred. These are people who want the same things, but they argue over what should be minor stuff.

That's one reason why I think it's better to figure out common ground, and to just walk away from arguments over insistent principles.  And if people insist on arguing about principles, just don't bother.  Results or bust.

Earthlight_Ray

Haha. Anyone can say they like nature. Would you pay higher taxes for cleaner air? Would you sacrifice medicine research data to spare animals from experimentation? Would you allow the government to survey your communications in the name of counter-terrorism? I don't speak in tautologies. :V

To answer your other question, a Corporal Ethan Forsythe. We owe it to his treatment at heapers that he took his comic offline. It was good stuff, too. RIP :c

glennmagusharvey

Earthlight_Ray wrote:

Would you pay higher taxes for cleaner air? Would you sacrifice medicine
research data to spare animals from experimentation? Would you allow
the government to survey your communications in the name of
counter-terrorism?

Yes, it depends on the experiment, and likely yes if they're clever enough to get their hands on it.  (Only the first question is an environmental issues though.)

As for that guy, I hear he's somewhat of a jerk, and I remember him being rather abrasive so that doesn't surprise me, but I don't know him well, so I will refrain from commenting further.

Naas_Human

Earthlight_Ray wrote: »

To answer your other question, a Corporal Ethan Forsythe. We owe it to his treatment at heapers that he took his comic offline. It was good stuff, too. RIP :c

Is it not the same 11.975MHz on Comixology?

Stormtroper

It's possible that, while putting a mod on an ignore list might not be banworthy in itself, it can lead you into disregarding warnings and such, which will get you banned sooner or later.

"Hillary was right to attack Trump supporters and shouldn't have walked it back"

What did she say? 'cuz that sounds damning.

lrdgck

Tell me please this is the Pepe incident.

KilgoreTrout

Stormtroper wrote: »

It's possible that, while putting a mod on an ignore list might not be banworthy in itself, it can lead you into disregarding warnings and such, which will get you banned sooner or later.

I considered that. But in the time between when I actually did it and when I became banned, none of the posts I made were argumentative or anything, so I doubt I received any warnings. I believe I said the following and nothing else: wondering how people who believed in trickle-down economics reconciled that belief with also being against raising the minimum wage (because if you believe rich people having more money is good for the economy, then why do you not also believe poor people having more money also good for the economy?), telling Cherry that I hoped she was feeling better after she'd made a post saying she was unhappy a day or two before, and a short conversation about Colin Kaepernick wherein the only participants were me and Glenn. (Ignore on there means you can see when somebody's posted in a thread but not the contents of their posts, so if Sredni had posted in the Kaepernick thread I would have known.)

"Hillary was right to attack Trump supporters and shouldn't have walked it back"

What did she say? 'cuz that sounds damning.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-basket-of-deplorables/

Without commenting too much for now, I have to say I'm entertained by the phrase "basket of deplorables". I mean, a lot of Trump's supporters absolutely ARE deplorable because they're bigots, so I'm not saying that she's wrong, but just...I never thought I'd see that combination of words together. "Basket of deplorables."

Earthlight_Ray

https://www.comixology.com/11-975MHz/comics-series/27105 Hmm. I'm pleasantly surprised.

Serocco

I really don't like how the media is criticizing Clinton for stating facts about Storm Trumpers.

Their neutrality bias is showing again.

lrdgck

Heh. Our currently-in-power party has a penchant for calling their opponents' voters with names like "second-rate people".

BassFishing

>local Pegida demonstrator arrested because of swastika on shirt

>Picture of shirt is here: http://www.ad.nl/dossier-nieuws/pegida-voorman-vlak-voor-rechtszaak-opnieuw-opgepakt~a5b7c207/

>standard populist move of equating fascism/communism/antifa/ISIS as the same evil

The more I see this type of "lol, ignore context" rules lawyering, the more I want Holland to have something akin to the Murkan First Amendment. In the past few years someone was arrested for shouting "Fuck the King" and a politician had to pay a fine because he called another one racist. It's all the same mix of overreach and incompetence, and I hate it. 

Stormtroper

^^ That's awful.

^ That article has swastikas on it. Fucking nazis.

lrdgck

^^ You might be interested to learn that around here, there's been a court ruling that painting swastikas on the walls is all fine, because apparently in the mind of a prosecutor, the kind of people who paint swastikas on the walls just desire to share with the world their fascination with Indian culture.

Central Avenue

HAPPY ROALD DAHL DAY EVERYBODY

GUESS WHO'S BACK

glennmagusharvey

the ghost of Roald Dahl

lrdgck wrote: »

^^ You might be interested to learn that around here, there's been a court ruling that painting swastikas on the walls is all fine, because apparently in the mind of a prosecutor, the kind of people who paint swastikas on the walls just desire to share with the world their fascination with Indian culture.

Haven't they adopted the distinction that swastikas turned 45 degrees and without dots between their legs are Nazi swastikas?

lrdgck

Pffffthhhhmweheheheh nope.

--edit--

"I have a name for our son: 'Gotham'!"
"Why do you want to hurt our child?"
"I don't, I want to call it 'Gotham'."
"You want to hurt it."
"No - but it's the only way so that in the night, when it begins to cry, you wake me up saying 'rise, Gotham needs you'!"

glennmagusharvey

lrdgck wrote: »

"I have a name for our son: 'Gotham'!"
"Why do you want to hurt our child?"
"I don't, I want to call it 'Gotham'."
"You want to hurt it."
"No - but it's the only way so that in the night, when it begins to cry, you wake me up saying 'rise, Gotham needs you'!"

That father is a bad man.

Meanwhile... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/LOL#Alternative_forms

Note the last one, whose usage is a question mark.  The internet is so weird that not even a dictionary can define it properly.

lol.

lrdgck

That father is a bad man.

But you gotta admit, he's a bit of a joker.

Concerning LOL:

Wikipedia has an article on Loyal Orange Lodge.

glennmagusharvey

So apparently these are things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Strom_Thurmond , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Strom_Thurmond_Dam

These are also things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Strom_Thurmond_Dam#Dam_naming_controversy , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Strom_Thurmond#Renaming_of_lake

Well, at least the namesake famous segregationist senator is sleeping with the fishes.
[/politically charged snark]

(Imagine a presidential campaign part of whose premise is comparing every state favorably to South Carolina, just because.  Would be an idiotic idea but fun to watch.)

KilgoreTrout

Speaking of naming things badly.

On the flip side (that is to say, cool names for things), guess what a city in Turkey is named? I could give you the Wikipedia link, but choose instead to link to the Dinosaur Comics strip I learned it from yesterday while continuing my archive binge:

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1334

Naas_Human

For some reason, there is a recent Batman character who literally calls himself "Gotham".

TheConductor

^ His sidekick is called Gotham Girl. The idea is that they want to respresent everything that's good and pure about Gotham City. 

SPOILER: They fail. 

lrdgck

Fun fact: the Wikipedia entry for the city of Batman is protected. The reason cited is frequent vandalism. Hehe, I wonder why.

By the way, I'm told Spanish for Batman is "el Hombre Murcielago". Yeah, I know it's just a literal translation, but it totally makes me think of some ridiculous Hispanic Batman with a thin mustache and irresistible appeal to ladies, or if not, at least some kind of a bat-themed Mexican bandito from a really weird western.