Xopher @99: His username is actually "weev"; brutal_honesty is just the community he posted that entry to. (I do not follow that community and I have no idea what the general tone of discourse there is.) In his personal journal he links to the same tehdaly entry our hosts have linked to and says he finds it very insightful.
I do not have enough technical expertise to even start attempting to evaluate whether the method he claims in the brutal_honesty entry is plausible. The tone of the entry reads to me like he was explaining how it could be done, but in a too-sarcastic way.
If you don’t think this kind of clusterfark is entirely possible, you probably haven’t worked in a large organization.
...or read Schneier's Beyond Fear, which has a lot to say about security in terms of interlocked systems. I read the book fairly recently, so I kept flashing back to it as I read tehdaly's and your interpretations of the chain of events. (This was not a "security" issue, unless you want to cast it as "protect the innocent little eyes of underage customers from the evil of 'adult' content," which makes the terminology and the ways of thinking compatible with security questions.)
Deciding somewhere in early middle school (6th/7th grade to Americans) that it was time I started reading the English books in the house too, and discovering Asimov's non-fiction popular science essay collections. Determined my career direction, if not my job; changed my appreciation of science forever; ultimately affected my overall world view.
That opening of McCain's speech made me twitch, too, but I thought the rest was classy because he basically concluded with "He will be the President now, my President as well, and I will work with him, and I want you to work with him instead of against him, too."
Actually, I just searched for the bit I liked best:
"...And I pledge to [Obama] tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.
"I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited."
His supporters and the boos, however, put me in search of a word that is the antithesis of "classy." I still cannot come up with one that fits my irritation enough.
D. Potter @#181: "Good Day, Sunshine?" "It's Getting Better All the Time?" "Let It Be?"
(My choice would be "Here Comes The Sun," where the lyrics fit oh so very well, but that's by Harrison.)
I did get the astroturfer flag implication from the original post, simply because I was reading this entry in the context of Making Light, and astroturfing has been a repeated subject here (also a repeated subject of scorn and mockery, which I cannot say it does not deserve). I have no opinions on whether it's unfair to expect all readers to come to every entry in a weblog with a sense of full hustory of the weblog, though. If you make everything very explicit in every entry, the established readership might be bored. I guess there is a balance to strike.
xeger @ 261: So true about eating your own mistakes being a good teacher. I guess the best learning experiences are mistakes so beyond the pale that you cannot eat them, though.
(I mean, no one around here ever thought baking soda and baking powder are functionally equivalent, so one should use the same amount of baking soda in a pancake recipe as one would use baking powder if one had any, and no one ended up with soap-flavored pancakes, no siree, no one around here at all.)
Steven and Zora, @53 and 227: Forgot my newly-started, fledgling contribution to Distributed Proofreaders in the things of things I make. I have not been able to make it out of P1-only stage yet, and when I do, I know I will feel guilty, because P2 and apparently P3 is most needed and I think I will enjoy P1 work the most... But then I guess everyone does. Or am I wrong about that?
Mikael @5: Unless you can manage to be assigned by the UN or whoever regulates such things, and approved by the State Department of the US or whoever regulates those things, I would not even go near a voting location on or immediately before election day. You would even need be very careful if you helped with campaigning. Real or perceived international meddling with elections is a very serious thing; four years ago I was very, very strongly discouraged from even considering to make a donation or going out to help take voters to voting locations or anything of the sort, not being a US national. Of course I can take part in political discussions, because the First Amendment covers everyone as far as I know, not only citizens---but anything that would concretely count towards influencing the outcome (or anything people would think would concretely influence the outcome) I would steer clear from.
I might be entirely wrong about this. Corrections appreciated.
Making: At work, code, article copy and teaching materials. At home, attempting to knit a skirt. "Attempting," because I have been following the adage "calculating ahead of time is for wussies" and going by eye/hand feel, so there is a good potential that the skirt is going to be not so successful after all. But I am using mercerized cotton yarn, which is gorgeous in the hand, so enjoying every minute anyway.
I also have some calligraphy projects that I need to take up: Thank-you gifts for some people, a wedding gift for a friend.
Yes, we are all driven to make things. To leave something behind, to feel useful, to achieve something concrete---those are some reasons one may come up with, I guess. Also, to learn a new skill or to sharpen those skills---to be able to make better things of the same sort. That links to the hacker-sense, I guess: In Hackers, Steven Levy described the hacker passion as "to make tools to make more tools," and learning skills to make more things seems related to me.
Also there is the total concentration and peace that descends upon one when making something intricate and concrete---if you have one (1) item to completely focus on, and the stress and worries of the outside world may diminish in your mind. I know I actively seek that peace when I work on a calligraphy project.
Very glad to hear about freedom! Freedom, I say! And reiterating best wishes about recovery; change what you have to, ask for what you need.
Avadaggio at #2: "[Is] he trying to win over the still-disenchanted Hillary supporters?" I'm not, nor can I be by virtue of non-citizenship, be involved in US politics, but as soon as I read that he chose a woman, that was my first thought.
Cynical? Maybe.
Oh, so that's what that font is.
I have immense respect for people who can recognize and distinguish fonts on sight. I love playing with fonts, but have never had the level of patience/obsession/time required to train myself to that level.
By the way, according to the guidelines on the closed comment threads this, being the latest Open Thread, is the right place to post about this: I found the Cluttering Bug post again through a link years later, and was following through the links on the post. The first link to the Humane Society towards the end of the entry ("the Humane Society’s two-part article on how to conduct a large-scale intervention") went to a webpage that I would not be visiting at home and should never ever be visiting over the work network. I am not quite sure what happened, maybe a case of URL hijacking in the intervening years, but the esteemed maintainers might want to have a look.
Zvi @107: Thanks, I was thinking/reading the same way. The comma makes it much easier there for me to consider the "if" as conditional.
Way, way too long past my formal English grammar studies to be able to analytically describe why that's so, however.
Done. Yes, the e-mail address for the Match It for Pratchett site
strangely begins with the word "junk," but that seems to be intentional.
I will come back here and try to decipher them later, since right now I do not have the time, but I will have to pause and remark on how much I appreciated the laugh from realizing you conjugated "ROT-13".
Summer Storms at @#115: Ah. Yes. I proofread my comment, too, truly I did. There is a "not" missing there.
I blame whoever stole the dilithium crystal.
Serge @# 28: Oh, those... shiny... things? Erm... um. Ishould have taken out an even number to keep the polarity the samedidn't touch them either I swear.
*shifts out of the room shiftily*
On a more serious note, Patrick at #106:
Another point made by the FSM is that all religions look crack-brained to those outside of them--including yours. Anyone who finds this observation "insulting" probably needs to rethink.
To start with, I completely agree. But that feels like a little bit of a dead-end to me: The people who do get the point that all religions seem a bit cracked to nonbelievers are the same people who will find the FSM incredibly insulting, and work the hardest to ignore/deny that particular lesson of Pastafarianism. What kind of an approach would ensure anyone in that situation could be encouraged to rethink?
That is a beautiful analogy---perfect match.
I still do run across the problem of explaining such behavior to newcomers, though. The newcomer might be my younger sister, or someone who has not spent that much time online---and I've found the (relatively basic) concept of a troll to be somewhat difficult to explain. Perhaps because I cannot emphatize enough with the troll to try to get across its motivation to a third party.
There are probably a few good webpages (and I do remember one very nicely illustrated one about USENET stereotypes, but sadly not well enough to search for the link) that one can point newcomers to... Right?
Serge @#21: I swear I didn't get anywhere near the conduit with the new portable superelectromagnet... Really.
I am also glad that FSM has seemed to attract "professional" interest, though.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 4 |
| 2008 | 12 |
| 2007 | 24 |
| 2006 | 21 |
| 2005 | 7 |
Total: 68 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Zeynep:
Show all comments by Zeynep.