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from the some-people-just-can't-take-a-joker dept.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-monitor-violent-online-threats-light-joker-premiere/story?id=66031356
The FBI has received tips of threatening posts on social media calling for "unspecific mass shootings" linked to the release of the new psychological thriller, "Joker," starring Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix that will hit theaters this Friday, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News.
These threats have been circling online platforms since at least May 2019, but give no information indicating specific or credible threats to particular locations or venues, the bulletin said.
Some of the threats did contain references to a primarily online group called the involuntary celibate community, or Incels, and a subset that refers to itself as "Clowncels." However, the intelligence community doesn't necessarily regard the group as a whole as a violent one.
"While many Incels do not engage in violence, some within the community encourage or commit violent acts as retribution for perceived societal wrongdoing against them," the bulletin said. "Some Incel attackers have claimed inspiration from previous mass shooters."
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 04 2019, @03:08PM (40 children)
How in the heck are those two things related?
Seriously, though. This ought to be good.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @03:26PM (39 children)
Before September 1993 the Internet was a community, with our own ways and norms. Every year, we had some new immigrants, and they were a pita for everyone for a month or so; after which they assimilated sufficiently to become part of the community going forward.
Starting September 1993, this pattern broke down, the community was simply drowned in a volume of immigration beyond our ability to assimilate.
And that in turn brought about all sorts of regression. Bottom quoted email, in HTML, clients that automagically open attachments for the convenience of the malware. Whether email clients or web clients or what have you. The idea that the end user is an idiot who can't possibly understand what they're doing took hold across the industry.
And 'social media' is part of that pattern. FaceMash might have existed in some form without it being September, but it certainly would not have prospered as it has. That sort of scam requires a large audience lacking in understanding and common sense.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday October 04 2019, @05:40PM (17 children)
I can't believe that you are claiming that bottom quoted email is a result of events following Eternal September! Oh, we are doomed - somebody has replied to my email at the bottom! Quick, we must rise up and fight for our Constitutional Rights - I'm sure one of them mentions only top-quoting is permitted, doesn't it? AOL must be made to pay for what it has done [wikipedia.org]. Look at all the immigrants that are a result of AOL and bottom quoted emails!
Have you started drinking early for the weekend?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @06:05PM (15 children)
We're talking about how a means of communication was subverted and destroyed.
Bottom quoting may seem a small problem, but it's actually a pretty good example at that level of detail. It may seem a small thing but a world of small things all aligned in one direction has a very big effect.
Top quoting facilitates communication. Bottom quoting discourages communication. It's no mistake this is a 'business standard' - members of the managerial class don't actually want to communicate with their employees. They want to give commands, they don't want to read responses. Which is why they bottom quote.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday October 04 2019, @06:35PM (8 children)
Wow, that never occurred to me. I thought it was a matter of convenience so the recipient didn't have to scroll all the way down to find the reply. We didn't have wheels on our mouse back then (two buttons was a luxury), if I remember correctly, and with user interfaces being what they are, it would seem the less you have to interact with the machine, the better.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @06:51PM (6 children)
Strange?
"I thought it was a matter of convenience so the recipient didn't have to scroll all the way down to find the reply."
Do you have to scroll down to see my reply here? This is top quoting. Note how I associate my responses directly with the parts of your post each is intended to address.
"We didn't have wheels on our mouse back then (two buttons was a luxury), if I remember correctly, and with user interfaces being what they are, it would seem the less you have to interact with the machine, the better"
If you do need to scroll, the page down key should do the trick, I see no need for a mouse, let alone one with a 'scroll wheel' to do so.
So far as user interfaces, I've seen very few improvements and many, many regressions.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday October 04 2019, @07:18PM (5 children)
Do you have to scroll down to see my reply here?
A little, yeah. Here it makes sense.
I guess I treat email different than forums. More like postal mail, a regular letter, with no quote...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Informative) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @07:42PM (4 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @06:34AM (3 children)
I've read it - and Dan explains when it is better to use top-quoting, when bottom-quoting is more useful, and interleaved posting. So what. That only weakens your claim that only 'the chosen one' is the only acceptable method. Nevertheless, Dan is entitled to his opinions but that doesn't mean we have all got to follow the new Messiah Dan.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @06:40AM (2 children)
no, you don't have to listen to Dan. No one (save you) called him the messiah. I just find his points valid.
To the second;
When is it better to use bottom quoting (he calls it top posting?)
Please specify.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:03AM (1 child)
When people want to hear what YOU have to say without having to either skim what has already been said - they were paying attention weren't they? - and it is where the email opens up. They want answers, not the crap that preceded you finding the answers. The military is a good example, but many government departs also follow suit.
I think that you might be making the assumption that everybody uses the same email software that you do. We don't. I had to use, in addition to regular desktops and commercial software, other equipment for sending a receiving emails. It had to be installable in the back of an armoured vehicle, or within a command bunker. But, nevertheless, it used the same protocols as commercial emails do. It also opened emails at the bottom, not the top. For a person using that equipment it makes sense to write your reply at the bottom. It then complied with regular document formats in that you could read from top to bottom, much like on our own site, and follow a discussion or conversation.
There are commercial offerings that do precisely the same - even the link you provided mentions them.
Your 'preference' for a certain style of email usage is simply that - your preference. It doesn't make everybody else wrong, It has nothing at all to do with 'immigration', you are not using an elitist communication system limited only to nerds who were working before most of our community were born but one that is available all around the world to a huge number of people. They are free to use it as they wish.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:32AM
I get that. I'm not criticising you for having to work with that garbage.
I'm criticizing whoever it was that decided to force a programmer to write that scat and impose it on you. And many many other human beings.
"There are commercial offerings that do precisely the same - even the link you provided mentions them. "
Yes yes yes!
That's my point!
Virtually every offering does this post September.
Prior to that, community standards prohibited it.
One tiny little example of how community standards protected us;
In early 1993 if you googled email virus you'd get a great page that helped n00bs understand a little bit about how computers worked, and reassured them that no, they couldn't get a virus just by opening an email. Only by saving and executing an attachment. That gave the room a human needed to gauge the danger in steps.
By 1996, however, the state of the art had progressed so far that almost anyone on the net could download Outlook Express which would autoexecute vbs attachments. For hilarious and/or catastrophic affect.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 04 2019, @09:19PM
"I thought it was a matter of convenience so the recipient didn't have to scroll all the way down to find the reply. "
it is! it's breaking the fucking thread logic for convenience of the asshat who can't be bothered to find where he's actually supposed to fucking reply. goddamn windows using monkeys!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday October 04 2019, @06:48PM (3 children)
Well, as we are communicating now then I can disprove the claim that it has been 'destroyed'. And, if you are looking at email more specifically, then let me put your mind at rest - it still works and is used by millions every day.
Personally I don't have a problem with either top- or bottom-quoting. If I am at the wrong end of an email then Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End will get me where I want to be. It is such a quick action that I don't even notice that I have done it in many cases.
I agree that advertising hasn't done anything to improve the internet, but with adblocking sofware and NoScript I rarely see any adverts anyway. Of course, that shouldn't be a problem for professional/work/business emails: apart from invitations to help some poor soul move huge quantities of money from somewhere to somewhere else, I don't recall seeing a graphic advertisement in an email for a long, long time. But that might be down to the sort of company I keep and communicate with. Spam still exists, of course, but most of that is also filtered out efficiently by software.
I still cannot make the link between AOL and immigration - but I'm only just starting my Friday evening drink so perhaps things will be more clear in a hour or two.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 04 2019, @09:21PM (2 children)
"Personally I don't have a problem with either top- or bottom-quoting. If I am at the wrong end of an email then Ctrl-Home or Ctrl-End will get me where I want to be. It is such a quick action that I don't even notice that I have done it in many cases."
ffs, it's not about getting to the top or bottom. it's about being able to reply to specific things without a bunch of confused, responses from the monkey you're trying to explain something to.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @06:29AM (1 child)
Having never experienced this problem - perhaps because I write clearly (but I doubt that) or I communicate with intelligent people - this is a complete non-issue. What you are describing is a problem with the person you are communicating with - no amount of rewriting email software or imposing 'rules' regarding top- or bottom-quoting is going to change their ability to understand what they are reading.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:20AM
Only insofar as you're referencing the fact they have not yet been properly acculturated to the proper use of text.
"no amount of rewriting email software or imposing 'rules' regarding top- or bottom-quoting is going to change their ability to understand what they are reading."
That is technically true but seems deceptive in context.
Their ability to understand is a sort of an abstract constant.
But one method of constructing replies is particularly conducive to bilateral communication; civil discourse if you prefer.
The other is particularly conducive to very counterproductive failures to communicate; to commanders who haven't even read the reports issuing suicidal orders with the unread reports attached underneath.
So? I'm a bad guy, for choosing a side here?
No, I'm really not. I'm as good a guy as I'm allowed to be.
Yippie!
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 04 2019, @10:08PM (1 child)
...so let me get this straight, it's people with crap net.manners, not the complete commercial and corporate takeover and whorification of the Internet aided and abetted by corrupt politicians, that's the real problem here? I'm with Jan on this one; you've been hitting the sauce early.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @12:57AM
Yes, please do get this straight. That's not what I was saying at all.
It isn't one or the other. It's a system where the one feeds back to the other.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 05 2019, @10:34AM
Now, we're saturated with grind games optimized to keep us pushing buttons. They have better graphics, but the game play has regressed so much.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 04 2019, @06:06PM (20 children)
Ah, we are using different definitions of "immigrant". I would have used "n00b", but I suppose that term is not political enough for today's internet.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday October 04 2019, @06:53PM (19 children)
I hadn't realised that he might have meant something other than immigrants, i.e. people moving between countries!
I'm not sure why he chose to use that particular word instead of one that makes more sense in daily conversation; I don't think that it has helped his argument.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 04 2019, @08:52PM (1 child)
I assume it is some sort of smokescreen to conflate the two. Convince people that dislike eternal september to also dislike immigration. Because "new people entering a place" = immigration or some bullshit. Shit, even I am too young to have been around for the beginning of eternal september.
Or maybe it is some dogwhistle for people over 50 and in technology, iduno.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Friday October 04 2019, @09:09PM
That's an incredible bit of projection there.
To take it seriously is to immediately disprove it. If I was trying to convince people that immigration is bad this would be a horrible example to do it. No one was born on the internet, without immigration the community would have never existed in the first place.
I don't think immigration is a bad thing, not at all. But reality is nuanced. Most things aren't just wholly good or wholly bad, they have complicated relationships with other things, they can have positive effects in one setting and negative effects in another, often simultaneously!
"Because "new people entering a place" = immigration or some bullshit."
That's not bullshit, that's actually what the word means.
"Shit, even I am too young to have been around for the beginning of eternal september."
And that does make it a difficult conversation to have. If you've never known what I am talking about, how could you be expected to miss it?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday October 04 2019, @10:30PM (11 children)
I think it's because he, like several other people on this site, is slowly becoming radicalized. The process isn't quick enough for the victim to spot it, any more than syphilis is, but to those who know the signs and can see it happening it's a kind of mental body horror. He was always a bit skewed, but I hate to think he's going to end up like Runaway or something...shame. There's enough fucking entropy around without people trying to become its living avatars.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 05 2019, @04:13AM (8 children)
I assume you meant Arik who seems to parrot the alt-right propaganda / emotional hysteria pretty often. I thought nitehawk was just making a dumb joke.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @05:05AM (7 children)
That statement allows me to fairly confidently categorize you as an SJW.
Why? Because only that particular form of hysteria could justify quite such an absurdly wrong characterisation, in my experience.
The fact is I'm not alt-right, I'm not any form of right at all. I am and have always been a Yippie! [wikipedia.org]
If you frame me as a right winger that pretty much guarantees you won't understand a word I say going forward.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:11AM (6 children)
I see you can use a font that allows me to control what I see on my screen. I wish you would do so more often, please.
Or is that something that one had to do 'back in the day' when all we had was green screens and teleprinter-style keyboards? I remember them too, for I too was there. Perhaps I should blame the immigrants...?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:45AM (5 children)
*Breathes deeply.*
YOU have control over what shows on your screen either way.
I think. I know I do. Are you less than me?
I choose a posting mode that interferes least with what I am sending. If I have particularly long link that would be disruptive and I want to abbreviate it to a single word, then I'd choose html mode and curse for some period of time as I go back through and tag all the <p>s and <blockquote>s and et cetera. I'm not setting that as my default mode, because it's a bunch of extra bullsquat to get the same results 9 times of 10. Because I don't need that ability anywhere near as often as I need the ability to see things like <brackets> and {curlies} and [braces] and
line breaks
show up as I intend.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @12:07PM (4 children)
So, let me get this right, I just want to understand your viewpoint.
The 'immigrants' (noobs) were/are wrong for not complying with 'accepted norms' regarding email formatting and they are, therefore, to blame for everything bad on the internet. But you can choose to format your comments differently from everybody else because 'you are just making life easier for yourself'. Perhaps you might apply that same principle to all the other internet users who do not want to do things your way with regards to emails?
Sauce for the goose, and all that...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 05 2019, @01:31PM
Arik is an example of a fucking snowflake brought up in the culture of exceptionalism. It's just me, me, me, me and fuck you, got mine. So what do you expect? It's just another middle-aged disillusioned blowhard blaming all his perceived ills on "the other" because he's too exceptional to see the very problems in himself.
Want to know how radicalism starts? You start with exceptionalism which is quickly followed by disillusionment because the world doesn't give a rats ass about your beliefs. But you can't blame your core values for it, you must blame another. So the easy skape goats come - the immigrants, jews, blacks, any "other" group. And then it snowballs from there.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @06:13PM (2 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @07:05PM (1 child)
I'm understanding what you have written - I'm not sure if that is what you intended to say.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @08:05PM
No. Not even close.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday October 05 2019, @04:53AM
I think that's a bit of projection too.
I mean, really, you think I'm being 'slowly radicalized?" I've been a radical for my entire adult life, plus some. If anything I've been mellowing as I approach my dotage.
But, more broadly, yes, there's a slow process of radicalisation, or perhaps more aptly polarisation, affecting not just me, or a few posters, but the entire society. You too.
That's something I'm very concerned about, and I don't want to exacerbate it, I want to counter it. But I'm not going to try to counter it by being deceptive. I am what I am, I think what I think. If you disagree with something I say, you're always welcome to tell me why, and I will listen actively. I will try to understand. If we all did that, I think it would go a long way to counter this polarisation. But if we avoid each other and only talk to our own echo-chambers, then I fear our society is doomed.
"The process isn't quick enough for the victim to spot it"
Yeah, actually, it is. Even if you aren't good enough at introspection to spot it in yourself, it should be easy to see it all around you and extrapolate a little and realize it's probably affecting you too.
"He was always a bit skewed"
And just what do you mean by that?
Skewed? Biased? Well, sure, we all have biases.
I'm biased towards building things that make peoples lives better, rather than things that take those lives, or devalue them or make people helpless or hopeless. If that's what you mean by skewed, then great, I'll own the description.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Saturday October 05 2019, @12:48PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 05 2019, @10:52AM (4 children)
Or between outside the internet and the internet. To use a word slightly outside its normal context is a normal thing.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @11:29AM (3 children)
My dictionary, and several others that I have found on the internet, define immigrant as :
That are lots of alternatives for somebody who joins a group or established organisation: e.g. newcomer etc. Somebody suggested that 'noob' would have been much more appropriate to the idea he was trying to convey.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday October 05 2019, @12:05PM (2 children)
My take is that as long as we understand the meaning of the word, and it's not used to push a fallacy (for example, demanding we call ICE because there's immigrants, no doubt illegal, in SN - a poetic meaning rhetorically conflated to a stock definition from law).
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday October 05 2019, @12:15PM (1 child)
And that is exactly where the problem lay - several of us were unable to make the leap from immigrants to noobs - they are not accepted as being the same or even similar in meaning to each other. We didn't elephant your teapot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 05 2019, @01:51PM
To be fair, if there weren't the daily arguments about immigration going on right now, you probably would have gotten his meaning. Context is a bitch, especially on the internet, where people from many different places are all mixed together, reading each word in their own local context.