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Fundamental Defect in SN Moderation
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(1)
I'm wearing PAMPERS!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @06:22PM (2 children)
like is happening here, I might say something about it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @06:25PM (1 child)
friends! I meant friends!
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Monday May 02 2022, @11:24PM
None taken!
--
"And they are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!" -Gilbert and Sullivan, Now Give Three Cheers (I am the monarch of the seas)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday May 02 2022, @06:35PM (4 children)
Would you rather go down the slashdot road? It's been so long I almost forgot the name . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday May 02 2022, @07:41PM (3 children)
Before one can make that decision we need to know exactly what you mean by the "slashdot road".
I'm guessing that you mean the slashdot policy of "anon posting only if logged in". I've remained a lurker there, and I remember when this policy was enabled.
Before that the anon shitposting was rampant and absolutely terrible. It was bad enough that I made it so I only saw posts that were 2 or higher. With that rule in place I can browse at 0 again.
Is that something we should do here? I'd be OK with it, as I don't post anon. I know many of you would not be OK with it however. YMMV, of course.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday May 02 2022, @09:40PM (2 children)
Once upon a time slashdot had a fairly large number of active users. Going back and checking the site, there's not that many more comments than here on soylentnews. Also, when disabling the adblocker, the site is indistinguishable from the average enquirer type of site. Lots of junk advertisements. May the owners finally hit the last stake in that vampire's heart.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @04:35AM
Not "many more"? They average over twice as many stories and thousands of comments more than this site does in the same time period.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Tuesday May 03 2022, @02:17PM
Sure, but APK spam shouldn't really count. ;)
--
"Heaven on earth is all you see. You're out of touch with reality." - The Main Ingredient, Everybody Plays the Fool
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday May 02 2022, @06:57PM (3 children)
How much work this would take. A system doesn't need to perfectly prohibit any means of gaming. It just needs to make the gaming more expensive than the benefit to be gained.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @07:23PM (1 child)
Currently it is cheap to game the system, and the steady flow of new and old user names hints that there are MANY sock puppet accounts. Not sure how to solve that problem without punishing innocents on accident.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:34PM
Creating sock puppets is relatively easy to do. Persuading real people to go along with this plan is much more difficult. Someone who is that obsessed with moderation and their reputation here might well not have even three or four friends. Creating sock puppets is incredibly easy compared to getting three or four other people to care enough to go along with such a plan.
Coordinated moderation among real people is much harder to achieve. I know that Slashdot trolls set up a site called Anti-Slash, which purported to be a sacred jihad against Slashdot. They did allow users to submit lists of comments they thought needed to be modded up or down. Slashdot had a much larger userbase back then, around 15 years ago. But I highly doubt you'd find enough motivated random strangers here to make such a scheme work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:10PM
My take on this:
Feel free to summon your horde of admirers. I'll see your posts at +5 and make my own decision about the value of your posts. Same as I do for the posts at -1 ... since I'm set to see everything (logged in, posting AC).
One recent exception: with the latest apk shit, I've changed to browsing at 0 in a few cases, and modded a couple of those offtopic posts -1.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday May 02 2022, @07:10PM (7 children)
It's not a fundamental defect in moderation.
It is a fundamental defect in human beings. With the emphasis on fundamental.
Nobody seems to actually want unlimited absolute free speech of any kind. What happened to 8chan demonstrates that. People will go so far with such a repulsive message trying to push the boundaries beyond anything a sane person would tolerate. Then you cannot get hosting anywhere. The problem isn't that free speech is being suppressed. The problem is that nobody wants to hear it and maybe someone should re-think their message if it is really that repulsive that even Cloudflare won't permit it.
Thus moderation at a large scale on the internet is impossible. People will make it their mission to game the system and insure that they get moderated or banned, so they can cry about it in a public persecution complex.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @08:13PM
I have been silenced!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Djf-zdQUYAAhPkQ.jpg [twimg.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by owl on Tuesday May 03 2022, @03:20PM (5 children)
I would word it more that: Few wish to listen to the spew from the fringe when the fringe exercise their right to free speech.
A fair amount of citizens believe in the concept of "free speech", but what they typically object to is having to listen to the "free speech" from those who "push the boundaries beyond anything a sane person would tolerate". I.e., the common quip of "your right to free speech does not mean I have to listen to you".
The problem then becomes, how do they "not hear" the things they find objectionable from those pushing the boundaries beyond saneness. Since almost all internet communications platforms provide no way for the recipient to specify a filter list, these folks turn to the only knob they see (i.e., the "if the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails" reaction). And that knob is: "if platform X blocks insane user Y then I won't have to listen to insane user Y's rants". Which is censorship, no matter how much "but... the children" rhetoric it is wrapped up within.
This is one of the things that USENET got right with the user local killfiles in each client newsreader. If someone objects to the postings of user Z to the point that they no longer want to read/hear any of it, they add user Z to their local clients killfile and their newsreader filters away user Z's posts. The result is that user Z was not prevented from speaking (i.e., no censorship) but as well, offended reader Q was able to enact their "right to not have to listen".
This works very well for USENET, given the decentralized nature of USENET. It could also work for centralized "forums" as well, but few if any give each user the ability to block other users from their reading stream. And as well, this requires some active decision making on each user's part, and we well know that most of the internet masses want mommy&daddy facebook to do the work of cleaning their read stream for them so they don't have to do any thinking themselves.
The problem this presents for the centralized systems is now each user's DB footprint just grew by the size of each users personal "killfile" list, and the systems have to build a way to edit/manage that killfile list as well. As well, the centralized system has to now filter every retrieval through that users killfile before rendering the page view to that user. The extra storage, and extra processing, may have something to do with why so many web-media systems don't provide this type of feature. Or it may simply be that far too many web-dev's today have never used USENET nor a USENET newsreader to have ever encountered the local killfile feature, and those same web-dev's are surely not going to build a feature they do not even realize exists.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @04:54PM (4 children)
If it take you three paragraphs to explain the "perfect" censorship mechanism then you have already failed!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @07:02PM (2 children)
Do you disagree with my curt delivery or the fact that users won't use a system that's as complicated as that?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday May 03 2022, @08:31PM (1 child)
Users won't use a system as complicated as that. It is the 21st century. We no longer value education. Instead the uneducated use words like "elites" as a pejorative to describe the educated.
The magic censorship button needs to be a single big button that says:
Click here to make all bad things go away!
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:27AM
And that's how delusional elites rise above all the human debris.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @06:33PM
Don't be an ass, the description of the solution is "allow users to locally filter content." The rest was what most people appreciate, context and details. I think that USENET option is the best way, let users filter what they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:03PM (3 children)
Now everyone will know how to win the journal. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:28AM (2 children)
People spend too much time moderating out of anger. The art of moderation for comedy I dead, and its a damn shame
Dropping a +1 funny on a post that was written extremely well and you could tell the author believed fully is comfy. Even better when the author gets buttmad over the moderation. This has been used to great success against aristarchus, Runaway, and many other such cases.
Fun more, fight less.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:56AM (1 child)
I'd probably get miffed if my bans stuck... and if this place were my home, like it is for a few of you. Some people see this as their literary career! Look at it, 20-points down in one day, and 90% of my posting was frivolous or downright funny.
I do go ages without bothering with this dump. Which of course it is. But it's so badly run, and I was surprised to see one very low-numbered leader is just plain lost. But the point is, I was playing with you — cat v mouse — since there are a few dynamic IP addresses in the pool. I can take a solid -20 in one day, just for fun.
And last weekend was fun. And good exercise. Look at how easy it is to stir the pot! It's not a very big pot. And Monday must've been hell for a few itchy trigger fingers.
And the lesson is... well, I guess it's lost to eternity or posterity or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @10:42PM
Post in haste, regret in... the moment after you clicked the [Submit] button. Yeah, [Submit] to baser instincts. I did a knee-jerk reaction to an eye-rolling post, and I'm sorry. Even to the roll-ee. That it was an old Simpsons quote [soylentnews.org] doesn't help. Some people should mind my own business.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday May 02 2022, @09:10PM
If you can assemble a virtual army, why not give them a template message and have them all write your congresspeople on a topic? Even better, tell them that will automatically upmod your posts on SoylentNews at the same time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:28PM (13 children)
Who cares? I don't mean this to be snarky, either. If someone cares that much to convince several other people to create accounts and mod up their posts upon request, that person is the loser. That takes a lot of effort and coordination, significantly more than just creating your own sock puppets and modding them up. If someone is willing to put in that much effort to mod up their posts on a site that doesn't really have that many active users, they're the loser here. Sure, their posts might end up at +5, but they've still lost by wasting all the effort to make that happen. I'm skeptical that this would actually happen, anyway. If someone is that obsessed with this site that they feel the obsessive need to convince their friends to mod them up, I can't imagine that person has a lot of friends. I don't see this as being something that's worth being concerned about.
It's perhaps a much bigger issue that there's group think and that moderation functions as a de facto agree/disagree vote. But I'm not sure how you'd fix it, for one. And I still think that moderation does more good than harm, particularly in diminishing the visibility of spam. If there's a feature I'd like to see someone add to the code, it would be to provide an option to sort the posts so that the highest rated ones are displayed first.
I think what you see here is that a lot of people don't really feel they have anything useful to add to stories that are posted on the front page, so they don't post. Those stories get few comments. The exception is when there's a story that lots of people can relate to, such as about old computers like the C64. Otherwise, a lot of the comments end up in journals that discuss political stuff, because everyone has an opinion and likes to argue. In those instances, I think it's better just to steer clear of those journals. If we put as much effort into talking about technology as we do arguing about politics, this site would be amazing.
But with your specific issue, if someone's willing to actually go through all that effort, they've lost already. I don't think enough people are willing to do so to meaningfully have an impact on moderation. Yes, moderation is flawed, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:43PM (6 children)
Dear nostyle,
I wasn't planning on posting in this thread because I try to avoid being banned more than twice in a given week. However, based on the parent to this post, you were a tad too subtle for the room.
You know, some people can't go to the pedi-parlour without an entourage. They're always funny...
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:09PM (2 children)
If you're getting your IPs banned multiple times per week, perhaps you should take a hint. I'll be happy to clarify the hint for you. Here goes:
Go outside. Leave your parents' basement. Try talking to a woman, though I strongly recommend against telling her about how much time you spend fretting over moderation. Definitely take a shower before you try to approach a woman, though. And by woman, I mean someone other than your mother. Go to a restaurant or to the movies. Getting your mom to bring food down to the basement doesn't make it a restaurant. And sorry but watching porn on your computer doesn't count as going to the movies. Seriously, try leaving the basement and focusing on something other than this site and moderation.
I'm just your friendly OP trying to offer some helpful suggestions here. I hope this helps! :)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:14PM
Your grandchildren dress you funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @12:02AM
Haven't you heard? There's a pandemic.
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Monday May 02 2022, @11:09PM (2 children)
Thanks, my dear perceptive AC. I see they have seen too much of you already. It's a tough crowd.
I wasn't planning on posting today, but then silliness beckons, and the journals must churn.
--
"So if you're tired of the same old story, oh, turn some pages" - REO Speedwagon, Roll with the Changes
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @11:17PM (1 child)
Tough crowd?
Nah, I think it's less about chewiness of the gristle, and more about thickness.
Complete Buffalo Springfield [archive.org] Catch it while you can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @11:21PM
Thanks! There's one Buffalo Springfield album there that I don't already have on CD.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @09:47PM
The author of this journal gets downmodded a couple of times, writes a journal about it. No modgangbang required.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @10:51PM (2 children)
Yep, right over their heads, no sense of humor.
Honestly, I've had an entourage. Loudon Wainwright III was right.
(Score: 0) by adamantine on Monday May 02 2022, @11:38PM (1 child)
A dead skunk, in the middle of the road, stinking to high heaven?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02 2022, @11:42PM
I was referring to them laughing at everything you say and applauding your farts, but you're right.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @05:00PM (1 child)
The problem with talking about technology on this site is that the same anti science armchair nutjobs show up in those threads too.
When damn near 40% of the population has adopted the political position that science is a fundamentally bad thing then talking about technology is pointless. 'Cause all you're reading is armchair quarterback hottakes bout how flawed the science and technology is from someone who clearly has no understanding of the topic at hand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:36PM
Your grandmother dresses you funny.
In my case, there are family credentials predating the integrated circuit. Some have actual credibility, but don't want to deal with the emoji-lickers, hereabouts. There are some like me, who stop short of trying to contribute when a tempting and tangible topic drifts to putrefication in a few short-attention-span hours, when it should be allowed serious time to develop. And then there's the problem of who benefits from the expertise... certainly not the shrinking drip of tourists. I've found my original lines (zingers) re-purposed by the left, and I don't want to do that any more before the election. I'm just doodling around, hoping there will be a real platform this fall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @12:43AM
I don't think you're missing anything in your analysis. That's pretty much how it is. Moderation is completely pointless, other than for the weird RNC fascist vs. DNC conservative mod war.
The green site attempted to use a random sample model. Back in those days we only got 5 mod points every other week and we liked it that way, until we didn't. So they introduced metamoderation. That didn't really solve the problem. So the red site here decided to give everybody 10 mod points per day. It used to be you had to get 20-ish some odd karma before you could mod, but these days they let every idiot with positive karma upmod. I think you still need 20 karma to downmod.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday May 03 2022, @02:07AM (8 children)
I mod by conscience. The same as I am posting by conscience.
Time to time it looks like as if I have an agenda, and that's because my lifetime experience, which formed my opinions. Not ashamed of that.
I am too old to bow to any personal oppression nor I am begging for support. I am used to defend myself from attacks, either physical or mental.
Nor ostrakism has any effect on my worldview.
But generally, there is no honesty in many soylentils, and that reflects the overall poor quality of western population. It just intensifies my antagonism to decadent culture.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday May 03 2022, @02:20AM (2 children)
This isn't just any old chuunibyou, it's....advanced chuunibyou! So this is what happens when you incubate that auto-fellating idiocy into your 40s...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday May 03 2022, @11:27PM (1 child)
You should take your life... easily.
Proceed.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:55AM
Not only knows it, but is beginning to realize that nobody is being fooled. By anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @03:17AM
And then some others, so sure that it would gnaw at their conscience all night if they were to let something that could possibly be repugnant pass by unsquelched, feel compelled to piss on everyone's shoes. So then, there's the fable of "The Ladybug and the Pissant."
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @05:02PM (3 children)
Have you considered the radical notion that the rest of us are doing the same thing you are?
Or are we just that inscrutable other that must be eradicated?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @06:24PM (2 children)
Oh, you're scrutable enough... that was a theme of recent exercises.
And, no, your agenda is certainly not the same as some others.
Honk! Honk!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @07:05PM (1 child)
Good! If my words and actions match up and my arguments are predicable that probably means that I'm not constantly changing my positions like certain other folk around here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @10:03PM
Oh, right, you're the one who made the foxpaw about "ingesting." Nice to see you checking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 03 2022, @04:24AM (21 children)
Like yourself, I have family and friends around the world. And, I'm half-seriously trying to imagine the responses I might get, if I tried to enlist them into - uhhh - gaming the system. "You want me to WHAT?!?!?!" "But, WHY?!?!?" "Have you lost your last marble?"
I suppose I could bully one or two into doing as I wished. I could probably bribe one or two more. If I wanted more than that, I guess I could check into 4chan or something, to recruit a fan club. Remember, those few that you might bully or bribe are probably going to be pretty unreliable.
Oh - I'm forgetting that some people take likes and dislikes seriously. I could probably find three people with whom I could barter upmods, on a quid pro quo basis. Maybe three people. Most don't take moderation that seriously.
To be perfectly honest, if I were so far gone that I took moderations that seriously, I would hate to face the reactions of family and friends when I asked them to join SN, just to moderate me, and people I agree with. Running a bot army is far simpler, easier, and has fewer 'downsides' to it. A bot won't look at you all squinty-eyed, and ask, "WTF is wrong with you Dad?" And, the bots won't huddle after Thanksgiving dinner, and whisper your name repeatedly, while keeping track of where you are, and what you're doing.
It's just too much trouble, unless you really are bonkers.
I'm not even sure I could recruit people for that purpose at the local dive. "Hey, Festus! I'll buy you a drink for five upmods an SN!" Festus was well on his way to being drunk before I got to the bar, and he's mostly illiterate even when he's sober!
If you could successfully pull this off, you live a life that is completely alien to me. I just can't imagine persuading people to go along with the program. Far easier to get a couple of them to cut cords of firewood for me! Or, change the transmission in my car. Or, help me to build another out building. If I'm going to bully anyone into doing something, it will be weeding a couple rows in the garden!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Troll) by adamantine on Tuesday May 03 2022, @06:29AM (16 children)
Doubt seriously whether this is true. At least of any who would acknowledge the relation, if Runaway were doxxed.
True, dat.
Not serious, until you can get someone permabanned.
Fair question, Father.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 03 2022, @12:10PM (15 children)
Oh, hai ari! https://soylentnews.org/~adamantine/ [soylentnews.org] You know, if you had any family or friends, you could use the plan laid out by nostyle, and your socks would be far less obvious! "WTF is wrong with you Dad?"
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @03:19PM
Confessed sock puppeter trying to take the high road? You must be a conservative for such levels of hypocrisy!
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 03 2022, @05:04PM (1 child)
I think that if Ari chooses to make a fresh user account and does not abuse the mod system anymore then we should welcome him back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @05:40PM
Sounds like a big city district attorney. We're now seeing how that works out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @06:19PM
Saw that one coming last week, when out of the blue a stranger started innocuous posts in one of your threads. Just testing the water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @09:42PM (10 children)
While you're at it, who's Puffin [soylentnews.org]?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 03 2022, @10:52PM (9 children)
Puffin *could be* an ari sock, but doesn't seem to be. Yet, at least. Puffin may very well be a legitimate new member, based on what he has posted so far. Time will tell . . .
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:31AM (4 children)
Whinge some more you sock puppeting hypocrite ;^)
(Score: -1, Troll) by adamantine on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:17AM (3 children)
Say, what? I am who I am. I am aspiring to be nostyle's friend. This Runaway character I am not so sure about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:58AM (2 children)
I tried to be nostyle's friend... pffft. He misses half of my jokes, and he's never bought me anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @05:37AM
nostyle takes the last cup of coffee, and never makes a fresh pot so no one likes working with nostyle
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @07:58PM
Soylent News confirms it:
-nostyle
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday May 04 2022, @02:33AM (3 children)
Who cares? At the end of the day I just want to know who TRDT was.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @03:01AM
While you're checking, see if you can find what "APK" means. Something about appointment books, left over from Windows 98?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @06:39PM (1 child)
That was me, used a trump-writing basic neural net that would translate any post into trumpisms. Wasn't perfect, had to clean up a few things on most posts, but saved a lot of time and frankly mental issues. Intentionally talking like trump is a strain at first but then encourages lazy thinking. Pump out a basic paragraph for structure, let the machine, erm, "translate."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 06 2022, @09:25PM
10 EL-PRINTO "¡Covfefe! ¿Yo hablo inglés?"
20 VOYA 10
30 ALTO
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Tuesday May 03 2022, @07:31AM (3 children)
I don't need to imagine this.
Back around 2013 in the Obama years, I got tired of some of the political wrangling about a particular issue. I realized that I could utterly eliminate it by introducing a certain recommendation to the site that was accepting and forwarding suggestions for executive action to the Obama white house.
So I did.
Now for the president to take it seriously, it had to be voted up by the public to a certain extent, and for the suggestion to be voted on by the public, fifteen supporting signatures had to be registered by other individuals to the proposal while it was in "draft" form. So I put out the word to family and friends, explaining the strategy.
Mind you, I didn't want this to be seen by the public, nor be forwarded to Obama's desk for action. I only wanted the political insiders to see what sort of can of worms they were playing with, and frighten them enough to stop the wrangling.
In the end, eleven signatures were attached to my draft proposal. I was done.
A day later the conversation changed. Probably only a coincidence, though. Political wrangling has a pretty short half-life.
True story.
--
"Tell me, where is sanity?" - Ten Years After, I’d Love to Change the World
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @04:43PM
Bet I had more fun than you did.
And I never even had to leave my mother's basement.
I'm still looking for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 10 2022, @04:32AM (1 child)
Continued from another thread...
It's a bummer that you haven't shaken that tiny devil from your shoulder.
I was driving to work one day to a job on the coast, when a radio voice announced that a big celebrity had died. It was one of those megastars who some admired to no end. I didn't. Light traffic, I mulled it over, and came up with a great gag about the day. Honestly, it really was killer! You probably wouldn't believe it, but I'm about the least-callous, least-intimidating jerk around.
I told the line to a friend at work, who had been a big fan of the celebrity. He cried, and he laughed. A lot. Soon, he saw it all in context — as finally did I — and it ended with just a hand on a shoulder. Tears passed, and all those years, it was part of him. Life in context... baggage and all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 11 2022, @08:14PM
Nobody comes here any more, so here's a prize for the weary wanderer. Don't get misled by the titles on the main page. Drill-in on each, and click "SHOW ALL," on the middle-right of each page, and pick-a-pop. Some storage- and bandwidth-gifted might want to click instead on "VBR MP3" to gorge on several gigabytes at a sitting. Set aside a quiet week, and prepare to have your mind blowed-up-real-good.
Clapton, Hendrix, Herbie Hancock, Radiohead... [archive.org]
No, not "Honk." You know what Clarabell The Clown said on the last Howdy Doody show? Yeah, words like that.