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Some “obsolete” tech that is no longer used perhaps should be (I’ve written about it) because they were better in some respects than newer replacements, but there are some other obsolete technologies that no longer serve a useful purpose, some remaining among the near dead, some almost comatose and some screaming in fear.
        The steering wheel, brake pedal, and throttle control are screaming in fear. They only have twenty or thirty years left. When they’re gone, good riddance! But the tech isn’t quite there yet, although the clutch has died a quiet death.
        The near dead is the home phone. I haven’t had one in over fifteen years, but my ninety year old mom who uses her cell phone like we used to use pay phones when they still existed (and had a reason to exist) still has one. Call her cell and you get no answer. I knew a few other, but very few, all wedded to the past. I had a grandpa who refused to use the toilet my uncle installed in the bathroom he built, always using the outhouse.
        The home phone is dead. But it still writhes.
        Then we have cable and satellite TV. They became endangered when TV became digital.
        When they were young (to me, meaning when I first met them) they were great. No snow, no ghosts, no static in the sound. Plus, you got half a dozen more channels, including HBO, for ten bucks. The cable channels either didn’t have commercials, or only had them between shows. Most cable channels didn’t censor out vulgarity.
        There were educational channels, like Discovery and The History Channel. There was the rock channel, MTV, that played music videos.
        It gradually changed. Commercials started appearing, and now they show commercials at the bottom of the screen while the actual content is running. MTV stopped playing music videos and started showing stupid reality shows. Discovery stopped showing science and technology and started showing stupid reality shows. The History Channel stopped showing history and started showing stupid reality shows.
        More channels were added, none anyone in their right mind would watch, like the four or five shopping channels. So many sports channels were added that the “sports” channels started showing pool, poker, and even chess, despite the fact that those games aren’t sports. And the price kept rising to the point that the cable bill cost more than the phone bill or the trash bill.
        Then television went digital. The number of over the air channels tripled or quadrupled. Ghosts, snow, and audio static were banished. Now, instead of cable giving a better picture than over the air, it’s reversed. Almost all cable channels are standard definition with none offering better than 720, while the same channels over the air are in 1080.
        There was no longer any reason to have cable, unless you were a Nascar fan, but now even Nascar fans can watch the races with Nascar’s TV app. And it got worse for cable. Netflix started streaming for about ten bucks a month with a plethora of excellent shows and movies, without commercials, and uncut, for about ten bucks a month, a little over a tenth of the cost of cable. Their highest pricing tier offers 4K content.
        But a lot of people (I’m guessing Nascar fans that haven’t heard of streaming boxes) still have cable. When will this zombie die?

Potentiometers and Variable Capacitors
        In the first installment, written over a decade ago, I bemoaned the loss of volume and tuning knobs on car radios, which had been stupidly replaced by buttons. By the second installment the knobs were back, although the knobs were digital, rather than analog.
        A potentiomenter is a variable resistor with three leads. Usually the control lead is the center and can raise the voltage to a second lead while lowering it to the third. In analog systems they were used as volume, tone, and balance controls. In stereo systems there were two stacked together, one for each channel.
        A variable capacitor was a capacitor where turning the knob one direction raised the capacitance, the other was lowered it. These were used for tuning radios, and UHF channels on early televisions.
        Never once did I ever see one of these two devices fail. Old potentiometers suffered from getting dirty, which caused a crackling noise when turned, and often made the sound silent. However, this was easily remedied with switch oil, sold at Radio Shack as color TV tuner cleaner. It only took removing a few screws to access them for cleaning.
        I drive a fifteen year old car, and the volume knob drives me nuts. Try to turn it up and the volume often goes down, or the reverse, or nothing at all. The digital tuner often jumps off the station. The old analog equipment never did that no matter how old it was.
        There’s no reason whatever to use digital switches for volume knobs, because all sound is analog and all amplifiers are analog. Potentiometers would still work well, and you can still buy them, but I don’t think I’ve seen one on any new stereo in this century.
        Why did they change? The mantra of youth, “new is always better!” Well, sometimes it is. Just as “reform” doesn’t mean “improve” but to change the form of something for better or worse, change can be better or worse.
        Digital volume and tuning controls have no advantages at all over the older tech, and many disadvantages. Changing this was just stupid.

Packaging that doesn’t need tools to open
        Back in the last century things generally came in thin cardboard boxes, simple things that were always easy to open and seldom needed tools, and the only needed tools for some were a knife or scissors. Now? They package things in hard plastic that sometimes breaks scissors!
        And it’s terrible for the environment. Over half of all plastic on Earth was manufactured in this century! There’s absolutely no rational or logical reason to imprison a product in a stupid, very hard to open plastic package. It seems that with some items, they gave more thought to the looks (but not usability) of the packaging than the actual merchandise!
        Stop making all that damned plastic and stop making it so damned hard to access everything I’ve bought!
        Now, easily opened packaging isn’t completely dead; they still use paper wrappers and cardboard boxes for fast food. But anything else? “Honey, have you seen the jackhammer?

Car windows you can open or close without the ignition in the operating position
        Now, I love power windows. It’s great to be able to roll up all your windows from the driver’s seat without having to pull over and open each door to roll the windows up. It’s also nice to be able to keep passengers from rolling them up or down.
        But why does the key have to be in the running position? I should be able to simply open the driver door and roll them up or down. When they’re rolled up and it’s hot outside, you certainly don’t want to put you upper body in that hundred fifty degree furnace!
        There’s absolutely no reason why I should need a key to roll a window down.
        This isn’t exactly on-topic, but when it starts raining, the windows should roll themselves up.

Glass soda bottles
        Plastic bottles make sense for a lot of things; viscous substances like shampoo and condiments are far better served by squeezable bottles, especially ketchup, which was hard to get out of a full glass bottle. Milk and other assorted liquids are fine in plastic, as long as the container has a flat bottom.
        But there is no good reason to put liquids, like soda or cooking oil, in plastic. Plastic is bad for the environment, particularly the oceans’ environments. The only reason it’s used is because it only takes a hundredth of a penny to make a glass bottle but a penny for a glass bottle.
        That saving of .99% of a penny does in no way make up for the environmental damage of plastic, nor for the instability of soda bottles. Beer still comes in glass bottles, and you can set one on the hood of your car easily. Not soda, a soda bottle’s design (which makes it look like it holds more soda) is unstable unless on a perfectly flat, level surface.
        But worse, plastic is pliable (or a plastic ketchup bottle would be useless), which means the soda will go flat much faster. That’s why they still use glass bottles for beer!
        As for cooking oil, if it’s on your stove when the oven is on, it will melt.
        Plastic soda and cooking oil bottles are not user-friendly, or environment friendly. Bring back glass!

Paper cups and straws
        As mentioned above, plastic is bad for the environment. There used to be no plastic cups or straws; they were made of thin waxed cardboard, and I see no reason why plastic cups and straws should cost any less than paper.
        They should bring back paper milk cartons, too.

Bezels
        They’re not dead yet, but it’s coming. Now, getting rid of bezels on TVs and monitors is a great innovation. The one on my new fifty five inch TV is only half an inch. But why do designers these days never look at how a device is going to be used? The bezel on my four inch phone is already too small, and I’ve read they’re so small on the new phones that they’re being called “bezel-less”.
        It’s stupid! The bezel on a phone or tablet is necessary to keep from accidental clicks, which my phone gets all the time. My tablets, with generous bezels, never do.
        Idiot designers, forget about cool, I don’t need to impress anyone with “innovation” that some stupid young hot shot came up with.
        Getting rid of phone bezels is almost as dumb as touch screen controls in cars, the most idiotically dangerous “innovation” in decades. You shouldn’t have to take your eyes off the road to adjust the heater or turn up the radio!

Foot operated car dimmer switches
        I don’t know ahat idiot in Japan... or was it Germany? Whatever, cars used to have foot switches to dim their headlights.
        And then some moron decided to move the dimmer switch to the turn signal. I guess whoever made that decision never used his turn signals and figured he’s add a use to the “useless” turn signal.
        But using your turn signal to turn or change lanes is the law in all fifty states (I don’t know about foreign countries). The problem occurs when you go to use the turn signal and blind some poor soul in an oncoming vehicle.
        Someone please fire these morons before they kill more of us!

Just wondering how all the Americans who voted for Trump due to the TPP feel about the return of it under the label NAFTA? Namely the IP shit, copyright extensions, media companies being able to stifle free speech by claiming copyright and closing web sites and rumours of patent extensions.
Also wonder if they really think Canada is a national security risk and are aware that the balance of trade is fairly close with America coming out ahead when services are considered.
Then there are the different ways of protecting farmers, America likes to borrow heavily and give it to their farmers, a form of socialism by American standards, whereas Canada puts some limits on the number of dairy farms and lets the market decide the price.
America also borrows a trillion dollars a year to subsidize industry, which can be considered quite unfair, especially with how little trickles down to the average American.
It's funny in a sad way, Trump attacking Canada, a country closer to the States then any other while it is China and to a lesser degree Mexico where all the industry has gone, including all the Canadian industry that first went to America in the first free trade deal.

When I asked John Sununu about his part in this history — whether he considered himself personally responsible for killing the best chance at an effective global-warming treaty — his response echoed Meyer-Abich. “It couldn’t have happened,” he told me, “because, frankly, the leaders in the world at that time were at a stage where they were all looking how to seem like they were supporting the policy without having to make hard commitments that would cost their nations serious resources.” He added, “Frankly, that’s about where we are today.”

While nosing around, I came across this article by Bjorn Lomborg (a notable economist who has come out against most climate change mitigation):

Looking into the future, it’s likely that hurricanes will indeed become somewhat stronger by the end of the century. They will also likely become less frequent, and societies will definitely become more robust. A respected Nature review shows that hurricane damage currently costs 0.04% of global gross domestic product. Accounting for an increase in prosperity, this would drop fourfold to 0.01% by 2100. But the global warming factor making hurricanes fewer but stronger will mean total damage will end around 0.02%.

This shows that global warming is a problem, but it also shows us that even accounting for this, damages will decline.

[...]

Research shows that the Kyoto Protocol, the first major global deal to cut carbon and rein in temperatures (and, it would follow, help prevent hurricanes) failed to achieve a thing. The Paris climate treaty is on track to cost the globe about $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year for the rest of the century. The U.N. body responsible for the treaty estimates that the cuts promised until 2030 will achieve 1% of what would be needed to keep temperature rises under 2 Celsius, or 3.6 Fahrenheit.

What this suggests is that spending 1%-2% of GDP on climate policies could, at best, help avoid much, much less than 0.01% of GDP lost to hurricanes. That is an infuriatingly bad investment.

In other words, this sort of incredibly terrible economic trade-offs is why current climate change mitigation isn't going to happen on a large scale in the majority of the world that isn't wealthy and can't afford that sort of virtue signalling. There's obviously more harm to climate change than just a slight increase in sea level, but all of the costs of it have been exaggerated while the costs of mitigation have been ignored.

Finally, I think it's worth reinvestigating the key dynamic that kills climate change mitigation. Poverty is the leading cause of climate change and other environmental harm not wealth. Extremely poor people can't afford to care about climate change. Here's a 2013 story that illustrates that. A Willis Eschenbach talks about several examples of where poverty destroys the environment (such as the notable different in tree coverage between deforested and more impoverished Haiti and neighboring, better forested San Domingo), a key one was a story about some shenanigans in the Solomon Islands where local people sold out for pennies on the dollar to logging companies.

So that inexpensive purchase of the island councilors, I heard it was ten grand US$ per man, gave the logging company the right to negotiate a contract with the locals if they wanted to sign. One afternoon, some of the young Vella Lavella guys made the trip over to the island where I lived to ask if I would help them. I bought the beers, and we talked about the logging company. They said that they’d been agitating to convince the people to keep the company out and take care of their own forests. But the sentiment among the people was against them. They wanted the easy money, just sit back and let the company do the work.

So Mr. Eschenbach tries to help with predictable results.

So I went over the whole document and marked it up. Then I met up with the guys again, and we went over the whole thing, clause by clause. I’d re-written about two-thirds of the clauses, and I’d worked with my friend the Public Solicitor, and we’d put together a document that would be a good deal for the locals. The loggers would still make out, but like businessmen, not like highway robbers.

[...]

So the big night came for the meeting. Everyone showed up, loggers and islanders. I played the genial host, and left them to discuss the fate of the forest.

And in the morning? They all came out, shamefaced. I took one look, and my heart sank. I asked one of the old guys, one of the big men, what had happened. “Oh, the logger men were very nice! Can you imagine, they gave us a whole case of Black Label whiskey. They explained the contract, and it sounded wonderful, so we signed it” … oh, man, my blood was angrified mightily and I was in grave danger of waxing wroth … but I knew the old man, and he wasn’t a bad guy, just weak. So I curbed my tongue and shook my head, and I said that his sons might approve, but his grand children would wonder why he sold their birthright for pennies … then I went and talked to the young guys. They said they couldn’t stop it, once the big men were drunk they got combative and wouldn’t listen to anyone and they would have signed anything.

After some rhetorical soul-searching

And at the end of the day, I realized that I was on a fool’s errand. Oh, I’d fight the fight again, in a minute, but I’d lose again. It’s what happens when big money hits a poor country—the environment gets screwed, whether it’s logging, fishing, or mining. Until the country is wealthy enough to feed its citizens and to protect itself, its resources are always on sale to the lowest bidder … by which I mean the bidder with the lowest morals.

Now, I started this sad tale for a reason, to give substance to the damage that poverty does to the environment. When you can buy an island council for ten grand a man and there are literally millions of dollars at stake, that council will get bought no matter how hard I fight against it. Per capita GDP in the Solomons is about $600 annually, it’s classed as an “LDC”, a Least Developed Country … and in a country where ten thousand dollars is almost twenty years wages, you can buy many people for ten large …

And concludes:

So this is where I came in, explaining about how people fighting against CO2 hurt the environment. Let me repeat the links in the chain:

1. Led in part by the environmental NGOs, many people and governments have declared war on CO2.

2. Their preferred method of warfare is to raise energy prices, through subsidies, bans, taxes, renewable energy requirements, pipeline refusals, and the like.

3. The rise in energy prices both impoverishes the poor and prevents the development of poor countries.

4. As Obama pointed out, even wealthy people with economic worries tend to ignore the environment … so stomping on the development possibilities of poor countries by raising energy prices is a guarantee of years of environmental damage and destruction.

I'll note also that poor people tend to be fertile people.

In other words, the attempts to fix climate and environmental problems makes the conditions which created the problems even worse. This is self-defeating. One doesn't need to be blocked by Big Oil propaganda when doing more harm than good and people figure that out.

And that brings me back to the fundamental tragedy of the earlier journal article. There, the author repeatedly describes all the harms that supposedly will accrue from climate change (pathologically reproducing the behavior that discredited him in the first place) while completely ignoring the harm that comes from his destructive fixes for climate change. Why should we listen and agree with this one-sided argument?

Editor’s Note: This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it.

But one merely needs to read the preface to the article to see the very overt motive:

The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.

What is remarkable about this is that it's completely pulled out of the author's ass without support from actual research (and no, I don't consider extrapolations from computer models that have little to do with reality as actual research). I get that a 5C increase in global temperature probably will result in significant problems for mankind. But there's no consideration here of what actually will happen or how adaptable humanity will be to it (protip: humanity turns out to be quite adaptable to such things). What could have been an interesting study of that period of climatology has turned into yet more preaching.

What I see here is one sad person's acknowledgement that the con is over. They will never again have a population as gullible as we were in 1989. Here's a telling two paragraphs:

The answer, as any economist could tell you, is very little. Economics, the science of assigning value to human behavior, prices the future at a discount; the farther out you project, the cheaper the consequences. This makes the climate problem the perfect economic disaster. The Yale economist William D. Nordhaus, a member of Jimmy Carter’s Council of Economic Advisers, argued in the 1970s that the most appropriate remedy was a global carbon tax. But that required an international agreement, which Nordhaus didn’t think was likely. Michael Glantz, a political scientist who was at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the time, argued in 1979 that democratic societies are constitutionally incapable of dealing with the climate problem. The competition for resources means that no single crisis can ever command the public interest for long, yet climate change requires sustained, disciplined efforts over decades. And the German physicist-philosopher Klaus Meyer-Abich argued that any global agreement would inevitably favor the most minimal action. Adaptation, Meyer-Abich concluded, “seems to be the most rational political option.” It is the option that we have pursued, consciously or not, ever since.

These theories share a common principle: that human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations. When I asked John Sununu about his part in this history — whether he considered himself personally responsible for killing the best chance at an effective global-warming treaty — his response echoed Meyer-Abich. “It couldn’t have happened,” he told me, “because, frankly, the leaders in the world at that time were at a stage where they were all looking how to seem like they were supporting the policy without having to make hard commitments that would cost their nations serious resources.” He added, “Frankly, that’s about where we are today.”

This last bit in a nutshell is why they lost. It wasn't that people didn't care about the climate or near future convenience (excuses which conveniently allowed these theorists to ignore that important things are done with the burning of fossil fuels). It's that climate change mitigation required huge sacrifices for little gain in the present and future. Thus, while politicians could afford the pretense of caring about climate change, they couldn't actually afford to plunge their countries into greater poverty for this green ideology.

I think we're seeing a glimpse of the end game for the current bout of climate change ideology, namely, that the Chicken Littles of the world spin grand and nostalgic tales of how we could have prevented global disaster, if only we had remained as gullible as we used to be.

I think however there is a more important lesson to learn for those who wish to. Credibility is important here. When one lies and hides evidence for the good of the world [edit: in particular, exaggerating both the harm expected and degree of confidence in the science, both which the author above does], they lose credibility and the public trust. That happened over the past two decades. They may still get what they want, but it becomes an uphill battle with every victory dearly won and defeat possible even at the hands of opponents with minuscule resources.

Sad to say, this author didn't learn that lesson and instead doubles-down, making all sorts of claims of impending disaster with that peculiar lack of evidence. This is why we're where we are now.

When you guys hear of Desiato you most likely think of the dead rock star at the restaurant at the end of the universe. I think of an old online friend from a couple decades back, Tim Poesch. I got an email from him a couple weeks ago, unfortunately when all my equipment was screwing up.

        The March Win 7 update disaster hit both of my laptops. It just kept the big HP from seeing my other devices and vice versa, but the little Acer was crashing often. I reinstalled the Acer’s OS and apps, but for some reason I couldn’t get Thunderbird to get to my email account.

        My nearly decade old Kyocera phone was likewise acting up, telling me its storage was full when it was actually nearly empty, then its apps started crashing. I’d been checking email with the phone until I could get Thunderbird working right.

        I saw Tim’s email but couldn’t read it. I was finally able to read it a couple of days later. He said he’d run across Random Scribblings during a random Google search, and it made him nostalgic for the old days, so he ordered a copy from B&N.

        Tim was part of a small world-wide group of us with popular web sites. His was a realaudio/shoutcast/podcast (why do they keep changing the neme?). Others in our group were Yello There and his hilarious parody of Blue’s News, Dopey Smurf who got slashdotted after he posted an explanation of how rail guns work (his site was down for a month), Flamethrower, who was actually a bunch of British college students pretending to be one guy, with another podcast of hilarious British vulgarity. We all had a LOT of fun!

        As soon as I read Tim’s email and before I could reply the damned phone’s email crashed and it wouldn't come back up. A week later I discovered the stupid mistake that kept Thunderbird from connecting—I’d had Wi-Fi shut off.

        Duh!

        With Thunderbird working again I looked for Tim’s email so I could answer it; I’d gotten nostalgic myself putting Random Scribblings together.

        It was gone. Apparently the phone’s email client had eaten it.

        Tim, if you happen to run across this post, please email again!

Sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve been spending all my time working on my cookbook. I’ve even gotten way behind on my reading; there are four copies of F&SF I haven’t even cracked open yet.
        It isn’t the TTL Cookbook, someone else wrote that one a few decades ago. I highly recommend it, if you can find a copy. It describes how all the circuits in a computer work, down to the individual components within the chips; transistors, capacitors, resisters, etc.
        This cookbook is a culinary cookbook. Five hundred old family recipes covering breakfast, lunch, brunch, deserts, drinks, and snacks, an herb and spice guide over twenty pages long, hundreds of illustrations, and detailed information about people, places, things, and histories connected to many of the recipes.
        The recipes themselves come from a cookbook my grandmother’s family compiled a few decades ago. Many come from popular southern restaurants that were owned and run by family members.
        It’s almost ready for publication. I need to take a few more photos at Humphrey’s Market tomorrow and add them to the book, but other than that it’s finished and ready to have bound copies printed.
        Now I can get back to science fiction.

We're sorry, your submission "Alleged UK Neo-Nazi Admits Plot to Murder Lawmaker" was declined for the following reason:
We don't usually report murders or other sensational stories - so the only reason that you would submit this is because it includes the alt-right? Journal--JR

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

JR, in case you actually read this, there was no murder, only a confession to a plotted murder by one of your countrymen. I fear the real danger is not Syrian refugees, but Englishmen exposed to that alt-right. And I especially fear that janrinok is one of those.

Goodbye to my brain. Justin Case for the lose; the minions of evil triumph.

Will the demons celebrate the long hard win for my soul at last? Will there be a special unholy blood lust rite as they portion out my still beating heart?

Or will the mindless maw grind me to oblivion, unheeding, nothing but more fodder for the enormous undead machine?

I can hold out no longer. They win. Even though I know in exquisite detail -- better than 999 out of every thousand victims -- how they will proceed to rape me, I can't stop them any more.

I'm going to be forced to buy a "smart" phone.

In a final indignity, I will be required to "agree" to the terms of my raping and pay for perpetual abuse.

Any last farewells or words of condolence? Even if only to nod that I put up a good fight and no human can last forever against forces like these?

Feel free to share this with others. Perhaps my words can warn someone who still has time.

Now your poor aristarchus is approaching 12% acceptance. Through no fault of his own, let me assure you! It mostly seems to the the Head Editor, Janirorok, or, jANINORAK, or, jannirock, something like that. Anyone can look him up in the appropriate venue. But the real nub of the matter is, Janirakor is controlling what solylents see as news!!!

Yeah, so what, big deal. Same as it ever was. Except, for one brief instant in the history of the Universe, an idea arose, an idea whose time had come, and idea that could have TMB, Fricking Runaway, the Original gweg_, and that nasty woman, Hazumi, all come together for a common purpose. And that purpose was TRUTH! Do you hear me, eds?
Why are you here, if not for truth? Why are we here, except for EF, who is evidently not here, except for truth? Do you want an alt-right incest Traditional Workers Racist website, or do you want the obverse, a site that bans any mention of the total idiocy of the Right, because the Right, traditional or alt-right, is so dumb as to defy description.

Of course, denying and rejecting, and not accepting, and deep-sixing submissions that point out exactly this will not avail SoylentNews. We already have a rep as an alt-right site, and members like myself are only entertainment, I guess. But, if any aristarchus submissions were to make it past the Iron-ass, retired military, totally brain-washed but not as much as the Runway, gateway of the JR . . . . Janirok, or janrinok, ::: Remember. Back before you applied to MI6. can, you? Did they wipe your mind, your memory, you very basic human sense of decency? Well, maybe, but that is no reason to reject aristarchus submissions. I mean, the dude is a philosopher, a "lover of Wisdom", dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and you take it upon yourself to reject his submissions? Oh, JR, if you actually are retired military, you should know better than this!
What is the first rule of intelligence? Yes, exactly, and you deprive Soylentils of the truth.
When Brexit cuts your pension, expect no sympathy from any other soylentils, except turgid, who never was MI6, or even MI5! What the hell is an MI, anyway?

update, **** New shit has come to light, man, and there's a beverage involved, man!

So, seriously, how could anyone make the case that Soylentils are not interested, only peripherally, of course, in a submission about Furries? Alt-furries just kinda simulates certain instincts, but still. How can the eds justify depriving the SoylentNews readership of such interesting, and entertaining, news? Aristarchus really wants to know!

And, does this just work? If I post a link to my submissions, everyone can peruse a better SoylentNews, such as it might have been ?
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl
Hmm, looks like just me. Let me know what you see, my fellow soylentils!

*****
A friend has pointed out that rejected submissions are not publically viewable, so here they are:

Democratic Senate Judiciary report claims Russia ‘used’ the NRA to help Trump’s campaign Wednesday May 16, @10:15AM Pending
Janrinok rejects all aristarchus' submissions! Tuesday May 15, @10:53PM Rejected
Organiser of white supremacist march in Charlottesville planning second rally, nobody wants to come Tuesday May 15, @07:01PM Rejected
Alt-Right Trolls Are Using An Argument About Pit Bulls To Justify Racism Tuesday May 15, @04:08PM Rejected
The Intellectual Dark Web, Brought to You by Your Snowflake Tweets Tuesday May 15, @03:54PM Rejected
A Jewish investor linked to the Russia probe bought alt-right domain names Monday May 14, @01:10PM Pending
Alt-right in Montreal: How Charlottesville exposed key players in local white nationalist movement Monday May 14, @02:17AM Rejected
The real reason tech billionaires are prepping for doomsday Sunday May 13, @03:43PM Rejected
Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House review – in search of a rightwing rabble Sunday May 13, @12:15PM Rejected
Russia-linked company that hired Michael Cohen registered alt-right websites during election Sunday May 13, @11:59AM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Friday May 11, @05:23PM Accepted
The “Intellectual Dark Web,” explained: what Jordan Peterson has in common with the alt-right Friday May 11, @05:16PM Accepted
Alt-right web domain names registered to company that paid Cohen Friday May 11, @02:56PM Rejected
Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, ‘alt-right’ to rally at White House if banned from Charlottesville Friday May 11, @01:53PM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Wednesday May 09, @11:08PM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Wednesday May 09, @12:58PM Rejected
Stop trusting the self-mythology of the worst people on the internet Monday May 07, @11:44PM Rejected
Neo-Nazi California Senate Candidate Barred From State Republican Party Convention Monday May 07, @11:30PM Rejected
Melt-down: Alt-Right Grifter ‘Baked Alaska’ Is Plotting A Comeback On YouTube Saturday May 05, @03:09PM Rejected
Debating the Intellectual Leader of the French New Right Friday May 04, @08:31PM Rejected
Police investigating neo-Nazi recruiting in Montreal, Mayor Plante says Thursday May 03, @11:27PM Rejected
Alt-Right Bible ‘Camp of The Saints’ Proves Everyone’s Still Insane Thursday May 03, @01:02PM Rejected
GoDaddy to Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer: Find an Alt Web Host Thursday May 03, @12:41PM Accepted
I Watched an Entire Flat Earth Convention for My Research – Here's What I Learnt Wednesday May 02, @05:36PM Accepted
Alt-Right Ding-Dong Defeated By Sign Wednesday May 02, @03:29PM Rejected
Texas Town Terrified by alt-right gun Toting Tyrones Wednesday May 02, @12:32PM Rejected
White supremacist found guilty of beating a black man in a police garage during Charlottesville rall Tuesday May 01, @08:36PM Rejected
Trump: Viele „neue Rechte“ sind nun von ihm enttäuscht Tuesday May 01, @12:44PM Rejected
Η θεωρία της Νέας Δεξιάς - Ταιριάζει στην περίπτωση της Αυστρίας και της Ιταλίας; Tuesday May 01, @12:14AM Rejected
Πρωτομαγιά 1944: Η εκτέλεση των 200 από τους Ναζί -Ενα drone πάνω από την Καισαριανή [βίντεο] Monday April 30, @11:19PM Rejected
Alt-right spread vile libel about Michelle Wolf Monday April 30, @10:46PM Rejected
How to Fight Alt-Right Terrorism Monday April 30, @03:28PM Rejected
De Alt-Right: te vrezen of te bestrijden? Monday April 30, @12:31PM Rejected
Soylentil commanded to stop submitting submissions! Sunday April 29, @10:31PM Rejected
Seeing Through the Rhetoric of the Alt-Right Sunday April 29, @09:22PM Rejected
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer begs for money to pay his legal bills Saturday April 28, @11:35PM Rejected
Alt-right provocateur James Allsup makes WSU appearance, advocates for Identity Evropa Saturday April 28, @10:53AM Rejected
Foreign and 'alt-right' activists target Irish voters on Facebook ahead of abortion referendum Friday April 27, @08:44PM Rejected
NRA Gathers Documents Amid Scrutiny Over Ties to Kremlin-Linked Banker Friday April 27, @02:15PM Accepted
UPDATE: White nationalist Chris Cantwell, known for Charlottesville riots, arrested in Leesburg. Friday April 27, @12:35PM Rejected
UVa has issued a no trespass warning to Jason Kessler Friday April 27, @12:28PM Rejected
Here's why the alt-right loves Kanye West Thursday April 26, @03:32PM Rejected
Alt-Right Down But Not Out Thursday April 26, @10:45AM Rejected
How the alt-right uses milk to promote white supremacy Thursday April 26, @10:14AM Rejected
Looking Ahead to the Alt-Right's Second Act Tuesday April 24, @10:09PM Rejected
Neo-Nazi 'Tyrone' exposed as US marine Tuesday April 24, @01:02PM Rejected
The mysticism of the alt-right Monday April 23, @04:36PM Rejected
Laura Ingraham meets the Afrocentric “alt-right” — and it’s every bit as weird as it sounds Monday April 23, @02:30PM Rejected
Waffle House suspect Travis Reinking deemed himself a 'sovereign citizen,' a right-wing nut-job. Sunday April 22, @07:47PM Rejected
‘Nazi scum get out!’: Watch entire New York bar chant at Milo Yiannopoulos until he leaves Sunday April 22, @07:36PM Rejected
The rise of fascist fashion: Clothing helps the far right sell their violent message Sunday April 22, @12:01PM Rejected
How the U.S. became Troll Nation: From Gamergate to the rise of Trump Sunday April 22, @11:48AM Rejected
The class conflict dividing America’s race warriors Sunday April 22, @12:37AM Rejected
Analyzing Kevin MacDonald's 'Culture of Critique' & the alt-right's embrace of anti-Jewish ideology Saturday April 21, @10:32PM Rejected
Militarized Cops At Tiny Georgia Neo-Nazi Rally Arrest Counterprotesters For Wearing Masks Saturday April 21, @08:32PM Rejected
Missoula judge advances suit against neo-Nazi who attacked Whitefish real estate agent Friday April 20, @10:46PM Rejected
Right-Wing Media Promote An Anti-Semitic Extremist To Mock Starbucks Controversy Friday April 20, @09:14PM Rejected
German neo-Nazis mass for festival on Hitler’s birthday Friday April 20, @04:04PM Rejected
Die Postergirls der neuen Rechten Friday April 20, @12:55PM Rejected
‘Imploding’: Financial troubles. Lawsuits. Trailer park brawls. Has the alt-right peaked? Friday April 20, @12:45PM Rejected
Fant nyfascist-ideolog i hyllene Friday April 20, @12:05PM Rejected
Violent alt-right members consider Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh a hero — 23 years after. Friday April 20, @01:38AM Rejected
Seeing Through the Rhetoric of the Alt-Right: Spotting White Supremacist Propaganda in W.Va. Thursday April 19, @07:34PM Rejected
McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to the alt-right Thursday April 19, @04:31PM Rejected
Right-winger? Not me, says alt-right darling Jordan Peterson Wednesday April 18, @11:25PM Rejected
Why white nationalists are spreading conspiracy theories that Trump is being controlled by the “deep Wednesday April 18, @02:47PM Rejected
Gravitas Acquires ‘Alt-Right: Age of Rage’ Documentary Wednesday April 18, @02:36PM Rejected
Chat Site for Gamers Got Overrun by the Alt-Right. Now It’s Fighting Back. Wednesday April 18, @12:51PM Rejected
Paul Gottfried: Don’t call me the ‘godfather’ of those alt-right neo-Nazis. I’m Jewish. Tuesday April 17, @11:43PM Rejected
Paul Krugman: Unicorns of the Intellectual Right Tuesday April 17, @03:37PM Rejected
‘Dear White People’ Season 2 Targets Alt-Right Trolls Tuesday April 17, @11:46AM Rejected
Ann Coulter is retweeting a white nationalist Monday April 16, @02:52PM Rejected
Paul Nehlen, the alt-right candidate running for Paul Ryan’s seat, explained Saturday April 14, @04:12PM Rejected
Graham Linehan on the art of the risky joke – and why the alt-right get it wrong Saturday April 14, @04:01PM Rejected
This Is Stupid Watergate. Wonkagenda For Fri., April 13, 2018 Friday April 13, @11:55PM Rejected
Alt-Right Activist On State Of The Movement: ‘We Are Fucked’ Friday April 13, @04:29PM Rejected
Facebook Deletes Richard Spencer's Accounts in Hate Speech Crackdown Friday April 13, @04:24PM Accepted
Alt-right speaker cancels appearance in Grand Junction Friday April 13, @04:19PM Rejected
Alt-right magnifies hyopcrisy Friday April 13, @01:24AM Rejected
Dakota Johnson's Boobs Nominated for Best Actress in Fifty Shades Freed Friday April 13, @01:17AM Rejected
Why the idea that the English have a common Anglo-Saxon origin is a myth Wednesday April 11, @11:26PM Rejected
Professors Are Targets In Online Culture Wars; Some Fight Back Wednesday April 11, @05:26PM Rejected
Top Florida GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Spoke at Event With Bannon, Yiannopoulos in 2017 Wednesday April 11, @03:14PM Rejected
Controversial alt-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos' LSU talk canceled, organizers say Wednesday April 11, @03:06PM Rejected
Paul Ryan’s Retirement Gives a Big Boost to the Most Prominent White Nationalist in U.S. Politics Wednesday April 11, @12:48PM Rejected
Chelsea Manning reflects on her mistaken attempt to reach out to the alt-lite Tuesday April 10, @01:11PM Rejected
Does Unleashing a Neo-Nazi 'Troll Army' Count as Free Speech? Tuesday April 10, @12:53PM Rejected
Nazi From ‘Sieg Heil Taylor Swift’ Vid Arrested on Weapons Charge Tuesday April 10, @12:47PM Rejected
Less Than a Year After Charlottesville, the Alt-Right Is Self-Destructing Monday April 09, @05:54PM Rejected
Alt-Right Furries Are Raging Online, And Leftist Furries Wonder What Is To Be Done Monday April 09, @03:49PM Rejected
R/THE_DONALD Opinion: Reddit’s advertising strategies still hide hate speech Monday April 09, @03:42PM Rejected
The Alt-Right Media Bubble Is in Trouble Monday April 09, @01:46AM Rejected
Is Dutch Bad Boy Thierry Baudet the New Face of the European Alt-Right? Monday April 09, @01:04AM Rejected
Poet went undercover in the alt-right now talks about healing Monday April 09, @12:13AM Rejected
The Fall of the "Alt-Right" Came From Anti-Fascism Sunday April 08, @11:58PM Rejected
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: Bannon wanted data for alt-right candidates Sunday April 08, @11:45PM Rejected
The Alt-Right Is a Subculture Without a Culture Sunday April 08, @11:39PM Rejected
A Political Movement, Defining Itself by What It Hates Saturday April 07, @06:56PM Rejected
Gab Is the Alt-Right Social Network Racists Are Moving to Friday April 06, @03:12PM Rejected
Stormfront.org restricts access to donors, shuts down main server Thursday April 05, @03:41PM Rejected
Atheist Alt-Right? Wednesday April 04, @04:15PM Rejected
30% of World’s Electricity Consumption Will Be Spent Explaining Bitcoin Tuesday April 03, @03:00PM Rejected
Sam Harris, Charles Murray, and the allure of race science Sunday April 01, @03:38PM Rejected
The ‘crying Nazi’ from Charlottesville now says he’s an FBI informant Wednesday March 28, @05:40PM Rejected
With Kisses, from Russia, NRA is compromat!! Tuesday March 27, @11:32PM Rejected
Alt-Right: Age of Rage, SXSW 2018 Review Monday March 26, @12:58PM Rejected
Exposing Alt-Right Anti-Semitism and Its Enablers Monday March 26, @12:26AM Rejected
Lessons from the Left: The alt-right’s history in America Monday March 26, @12:14AM Rejected
Baked_Alaska or Baked in terms of Marijuana Racism Monday March 26, @12:00AM Rejected
The Hate Report: The alt-right is a mess Sunday March 25, @11:08AM Rejected
"Alt-Right News" is no more! Sunday March 25, @10:42AM Rejected
Looking Under the Alt-Right Rock Thursday March 22, @03:40PM Rejected
Alt-fight: Jason Jorjani, leaving the alt-right? Wednesday March 21, @10:50AM Rejected
Readership plummets for alt-right Breitbart without Bannon Wednesday March 21, @10:17AM Rejected
"White Wakanda!" Alt-right takes on yet another film. Tuesday March 20, @01:28PM Rejected
Free Speech! Except for Muslims. Alt-right Civil Liberties. Tuesday March 20, @01:07PM Rejected
The alt-right is in decline. Has antifascist activism worked? Tuesday March 20, @12:45PM Rejected
Everything We Think about the Political Correctness Debate is Wrong Tuesday March 20, @11:26AM Accepted
Heimbach Monday March 19, @04:17PM Rejected
Israel’s Alt-Right Is Now Mainstream—Are Lawmakers Doing Enough to Stop It? Sunday March 18, @10:54PM Rejected
Prominent US neo-Nazi arrested on domestic violence charge Sunday March 18, @01:15PM Rejected
What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong About Jews Saturday March 17, @04:41PM Rejected
How a white nationalist’s family came to blows over a trailer tryst Saturday March 17, @02:04AM Rejected
Before Heimbach was a Mother-in-law _cucker, he was excommunicated Saturday March 17, @01:36AM Rejected
White nationalist leader Matthew Heimbach arrested for domestic battery Saturday March 17, @01:19AM Rejected
Behold the incestuous master race: Neo-Nazi leader Matthew Heimbach has affair with mother-in-law Saturday March 17, @01:12AM Rejected
White Supremacist Assault and Adultery Scandal Ends in Jilted Neo-Nazi Web Admin Deleting Site Friday March 16, @09:55PM Rejected
Alt-Right: Age of Rage is a snapshot of one of 2017’s darkest moments Friday March 16, @10:50AM Rejected
‘Alt-Right’ Ringleader Richard Spencer: We Attract the Mentally Ill Thursday March 15, @03:59PM Rejected
White Nationalist Leader Heimbach Arrested On Domestic Violence Charges Wednesday March 14, @09:13PM Rejected
Matt Heimbach arrested! Wednesday March 14, @12:31PM Rejected
Does Richard Spencer’s Disastrous College Tour Mean The ‘Alt-Right’ Is Fizzling Out? Saturday March 10, @12:30AM Rejected
German Far-Right ‘Terrorists’ Jailed for Series of Attacks on Refugees Wednesday March 07, @11:34PM Accepted
Awkward! All of Oculus's Rift Headsets Have Stopped Working Due to an Expired Certificate Wednesday March 07, @11:04PM Accepted
Iconic Stellar Debris Ring Much Stranger Than Previously Thought Wednesday March 07, @12:34AM Accepted
Alt-Moonie Gun Blessing, with Robes and Crowns of Ammo! Sunday March 04, @02:00PM Rejected
The "Alt-Right" Is Building a White Nationalist Mass Movement With "Operation Homeland" Saturday March 03, @01:45PM Rejected
Here’s How an Alt-Right Troll Auditions for Survivor Saturday March 03, @01:20PM Rejected
Alt-right attorney defends racism, homophobia, Richard Spencer: but that is not the point. Friday March 02, @12:09AM Rejected
Stereotypes About College Students And Free Speech Are False Tuesday February 27, @05:45PM Rejected
These Companies Are Sticking By The NRA Saturday February 24, @12:23AM Accepted
Mind control or gun control Friday February 23, @12:34AM Rejected
It’s time for conservatives to retire the term ‘alt-right’ Thursday February 22, @09:40PM Rejected
Twitter “Bot” Purge Causes Outcry as Follower Counts Fall Wednesday February 21, @03:40PM Accepted
‘Fire this ammosexual’: Viewers demand CNN boot Kingston after he calls Parkland students left-wing Tuesday February 20, @09:20PM Rejected
Jordan Peterson, darling of the Alt-right, publishes a book Tuesday February 20, @03:41PM Rejected
‘Alt-right’ Oregon State student-government member ousted in overwhelming recall vote Sunday February 18, @08:27PM Rejected
James Damore's Labor Complaint Against Google Was Completely Shut Down Friday February 16, @03:43PM Accepted
Total: 148