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Potential Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is having his Anita Hill moment. The White House expects that Christine Blasey Ford will testify in some capacity at Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway says "This woman should not be insulted, and she should not be ignored."

Obviously, Kavanaugh could still make it onto the Supreme Court. But perhaps the President will have to look to the bench instead. How about Amy Coney Barrett? She's a woman, and the dogma lives loudly in her.

Remember, for every member of the Administration you defeat, there is an evangelical waiting in the wings. ✞👼

Trump picked the wrong judge (July 9)

The long silences of Christine Blasey Ford and Dianne Feinstein

Alleged AMD EPYC ‘Rome’ 7nm Based 64 Core Processor Performance Leaks Out – Scores an Incredible 12,500 Points in Cinebench Multi-Tasking Benchmark

If the "leak" is true, then it looks like AMD will double cores on the "7nm" node as well as increase IPC compared to "14nm" and "12nm". Leading to a more-than-double performance increase in some cases. Assuming your OS, software, or benchmark can use all 64 cores/128 threads.

That also means that the consumer desktop Ryzen chips could be boosted to a maximum of 16 cores, from 8. Which makes sense given that Threadripper 2 was raised from 16 to 32 max cores, probably to make room for the new Ryzens.

16 cores at $500? $350? Could happen.

Just another day, here. I have things to do, but I spent a couple hours killing aliens before heading out. First stop, fuel up. Then head south into Texas, for breakfast and shopping. On the way, I met a diesel 1-ton dually pulling a trailer. He was only notable because he left a cloud of smoke drifting beside the highway when he pulled onto the highway. Going on south, I reach my breakfast destination. Walk in, take a seat, ask for coffee, then order an 8 ounce ribeye, with two over medium, and homefries. "How do you want your steak, Honey?" As always, rare, just turning medium rare - I don't like it to actually bleed when I cut into it.

I got an unusually tough steak this morning - it didn't quite reach that "melt in your mouth" texture that I'm used to. Damned good steak, all the same!

Finish eating, light a cigarette, and smoke it before paying for my meal. Yes - in Texas, you can still smoke in the restaurants. Well, some of them anyway. If the owner of the restaurant has the balls to tell the state to go fuck themselves with a cactus. This is one of the reasons I like Texas.

While I'm smoking, a vehicle pulls up, some dude around 40 gets out, grossly overweight. Then two girls get out. Elder is overweight, for sure, younger is borderline. Can't call her fat, but she's not far from it. The two girls faces look familiar - think a second - look behind the counter - uhhhh - yeah, that's got to be their mama. Right at that border between way overweight, and actual obesity. She has a face that might be described as "interesting" if you're in a generous mood. In a less generous mood, "porcine" would work perfectly. Flattened snubnose, no lips, very high forehead. The daughters share her face, but they don't look so bad yet. The younger, slimmer, daughter can almost be described as "pretty". Give her a few more years, and a few more pounds . . .

Well, time to do that shopping. Spend an hour or so driving around town, picking this up, and that. Ended up at Wally World. Mmmmmm - easter candy!! I filled a shopping cart, thought about getting another cart, but was afraid the wife would call me a glutton - or worse.

Time to head home. Cross the Red River back into Arkansas, and drive a few minutes. WTF? DAYUM!! That cloud of smoke I noticed earlier is still hanging in the air? NO WAY!! I brake, do a U-turn, and drive back south past that "smoke". U-turn again, and idle right up to the smoke. Odd - I'm not aware of ANY kind of vapor that just hangs in the air for a couple of hours. I cut the wheels, and drive completely off the road, and edge into the cloud. Below the embankment, a water hole becomes visible, which is fed by an ephemeral which is dry right now.

Now, I'm kinda looking upward into this smoke. Lighter spots, and darker spots, it still looks smoke-like or vapor-like. But, now I can see little motes within the cloud darting hither and thither within the cloud. I finally get my eyes focused on this thing, and realize that some kind of gnats are swarming. They're much too small to be Texas' famed buffalo gnats, but sure enough the little suckers are swarming!

I'm almost curious enough to step out of the Trailblazer to get a better look - but I don't feel any real need to inhale a few thousand of these little insects. Then I realize that my 6-cylinder is probably inhaling butt-tons of them. Oh-well - put it in gear, and head home. I hope I didn't kill a hundred thousand of some kind of endangered species of gnats.

Optical illusions are pretty cool, if you have the time to stop to figure them out.

*sigh* The wife exclaims, "Oh, Halloween candy!" And, she begins plotting how she's going to give it all away. But, but, but - I didn't BUY it to give it away! Now I'll have to make another stop somewhere to guy another buggy full of candy!

I deliberately stayed away for a few days after my farewell post. I didn't even want to read the stuff I thought might show up in comments. But I finally decided to.

And I mainly wanted to post one more time to say THANK YOU to the many thoughtful and kind replies. I do know that 90+% of the people who post here are good folks mostly. And even though I've disagreed with many, we try to get along. Unfortunately, that 10% of trollish folks are overrepresented in how often they post and the vigor with which they (pretend to) argue.

A few of the trolls actually agreed that I should leave or take a break, which doesn't surprise me, because it will make their lives easier to sow discord here.

Anyhow -- to all the kind folks who posted replies saying that lamented my leaving -- all I'll say for now is that I'm going away for the moment. Maybe I'll check back in in a few months and see whether I want to participate again. But for now, I need to quit SoylentNews.

As for the rest of the replies...

Thanks to all the trollish posters for showing up and proving my points so well. It's good to have exemplars of the behavior so clearly right there under my post.

I'm not going to reply in depth to most of that, other than to say I'll freely admit I didn't behave kindly in the last thread I participated in before I announced I'd be quitting. In fact, I explicitly mentioned in my farewell journal that what frustrates me most is that I don't like the kind of person I become when having to fight against the trolls. I don't like yelling at people. I don't like being nasty. It's not in my nature, but when replying to people who act that way, I sometimes become a jerk too. I don't enjoy that.

But what I have NEVER been in any post on this site is insincere. (Except in occasional sarcastic posts, which I often mark to avoid misunderstanding.) But in that final thread, I was accused of "lying." And while I've been contemplating leaving SN for at least a month now, that sort of accusation is the final straw. Because I truly believe in what I post. I try to be sincere and to take others seriously, even when they act like jerks and post incendiary nonsense. And while someone could accuse me of being in error or misunderstanding something (in which case I'll rethink things, and sometimes I've even replied to posts to say I realized my error and changed my mind), I have never intentionally lied. I have never argued in bad faith. I have never posted merely to provoke.

And those few characteristics, dear folks, are the characteristics of what I called out as "trolls" in my farewell post.

To me, a "troll" is someone who posts more with the intent to provoke a response than to promote rational debate. I think that's a definition in accord with the old definition of "troll" commonly used on forums going back decades. More specifically, the difference between a "flamer" and a "troll" is that the "troll" also tends to post things he/she doesn't believe to provoke replies. In other words, trolls post in "bad faith." But I think the "flaming" and "trolling" often go hand-in-hand, so I don't tend to draw a huge distinction. If you're posting just to get people mad and reply in response, as far as I'm concerned, you're basically a troll.

But there are other related behaviors that are frequently used by trolls, even though by themselves I'd say they don't quite constitute "trollish" behavior. These include "debate tactics" which are designed more to "win" an argument rather than promote civil discussion. Such things might be useful on some sort of forum about debate (and I was on debate teams in the past, so I understand them), but they aren't about pushing the argument forward. They are about "winning."

I personally am more interested in learning the truth about something or coming to a more nuanced understanding of an issue than about "winning" a debate at all costs. But troll-like posters will often do things like deliberately ignore valid points in an argument that they can't dispute, while focusing on irrelevant minutiae to take control of the discussion and make it look like they are winning, even while ignoring the most salient points. They will selectively choose posts to respond to for similar reasons -- rather than actively discussing valid argument points, they'll attack posts that are less fleshed-out (while ignoring crucial points made in other posts), again to make it look like they are "winning." They'll also cherry pick data they often know is misleading or incomplete, but promote it as "the whole truth," again to "win" rather than to get at a broader perspective of what's true. Lastly, they get aggressive and combine ad hominem with other similar strategies to dismiss the other side and make them sound stupid (or provoke a response that makes them sound irrational).

If you want to participate in a debate club, those strategies can sometimes help -- until you get called out by the other side for behaving that way, in which case you'll lose in a debate that's being judged. Unfortunately, in the real world, we can't have rational judges on the sidelines judging these things and calling out bad behavior. Instead, people who "win" arguments are often the most persistent and those who adopt the strategies I mentioned.

Mr. Buzzard in his response to my previous journal rightly points out that this is part of natural human behavior. Lots of people want to "win," and they will adopt strategies to do so. But my point is that the majority of those who read posts probably don't care about who "wins" a debate -- they want to actually understand what is correct, which side has better evidence, etc. "Winning" an argument should not be the goal of rational discourse.

And trolling in the stricter sense -- i.e., true bad-faith argumentation -- makes all this worse. The only people who seem to enjoy that, as I noted, are those who are in for the "lulz." They take some sort of bizarre glee in provoking others into pointless (and often incendiary) debates. I don't think that's actual a trait endemic to the majority of people in their "human nature," but it's common enough that it can ruin good discussion in a lot of groups.

Anyhow, I don't know how to fix this on a forum. And I'm not at all arguing for some sort of draconian moderation system. What I feel like is once a forum gets taken over by this sort of crap, I'm no longer interested in participating. And I agree with some of the other replies that this appears to be the "new normal" on the internet. Yes, trolls were always there, back into the heyday of Usenet and before.

But rational (and civilized) discourse is losing its place in general, even in places where it used to be taken for granted.

As to Mr. Buzzard's point that it is "human nature," there are lots of things we don't accept in civilized society that are "human nature." Human nature would say it's okay for a strong man to club a woman senseless and drag her back to his cave and rape her. We don't generally think that's acceptable in civilized society. Human nature would say it's okay to steal another's food (or any goods) if you have a chance and want them. Again, we generally don't think that's acceptable in civilized society. Human nature might even say it's okay to attack or even kill someone who annoys you enough. Again, we don't accept that's productive for civilization.

The long-term view of civilization in the past thousand years has been a gradual decrease in things like murder rate, violent crime, and more generally a behavior of respect toward others. These things are against "human nature," but they help us all get along better. More importantly, they help society as a whole get along better.

It may be human nature to want to "win" arguments. It may be human nature of trolls to enjoy discord. But it's not good etiquette. It's not promoting rational discussion. It's not furthering our collective knowledge or making our society better (on SN or beyond).

And when I say "etiquette" I'm not talking about Emily Post and using the right fork at dinner. I'm talking about assuming good faith in other posts. I'm talking about NOT posting in bad faith. I'm also talking about things like avoiding name-calling or other needlessly inflammatory rhetoric. I'm talking about acknowledging when you're wrong (or at least quitting the debate), rather than cherry-picking bullshit points to keep debate going and make it look like you're winning when you can't actually respond to the most salient evidence. These last things often come from a sort of "jock" mentality -- you want to win, and you may not know as much as someone else about a topic or understand it as well, so you resort to other strategies that subvert rational discourse but make it look like you're more dominant in the discussion.

There are places where civil discourse still happens. I've been to many academic conferences where there is formal discussion after talks. And I don't think I've ever witnessed a "troll" in that environment. Yes, discussion can sometimes become heated -- but that's different from arguing in bad faith.

It *is* possible to ignore what some might call an the innate human urge to win arguments at all costs. It is possible to behave in a more civil and rational manner in order to promote better, more informative discussion that benefits us all (rather than just providing satisfaction for those who want to "win" debates or entertainment for those in it for the lulz).

If there are a large enough number of rational folks on a discussion forum, I suppose we could all collectively mod all such "bad behavior" posts into oblivion. But there doesn't seem to be enough here who agree with me to overcome the tide of BS. Moreover, we have a number of participants here who behave in erratic ways -- sometimes posting reasonable and informative stuff, and other times acting like jerks and trolls. Those last ones are the most difficult, because they end up being rewarded by the system. They log in, accumulate karma, get bonuses, and then feel free to post crap intermittently which drags down discussion significantly.

Again, I'm not claiming I have a solution, other than self-restraint. Just like you don't just kill someone and steal their car because you want decided right now that you'd really like to have it, I believe you shouldn't post trollish crap on a forum just because you think it's entertaining or want to win an argument at all costs. Yes, I am comparing murder to troll-like behavior, in that I think both ultimately work against civilized society. And chipping away at civilized discourse with the latter is one further step on the way to dragging down society with it.

Some may not agree with this final conclusion. But given the effects that troll-like behavior is starting to have within our society and government, I think it's a harbinger of really bad stuff to come. So while I don't know how to fix the moderation system here or figure out a way to promote rational discourse without using draconian methods, I'm not going to take time to support a forum that clearly has a large number of people who value such trollish nonsense.

Take from that what you will, but that's how I feel. The only way to really change is to do better, to model good behavior, to call out the bad. I believe humans can do better collectively, but right now we're losing our way against the trolls.

Again, thanks to all who said kind things about my previous posts here.

Cheers to all.

Myanmar's Suu Kyi: Rohingya Situation 'Could Have Been Handled Better'

Under international pressure over alleged genocide by Myanmar's army, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledged Thursday that her country's treatment of its Rohingya Muslims "could have been handled better."

Speaking at a World Economic Forum meeting in Vietnam, Suu Kyi also struck a defiant tone when a moderator asked her about two Reuters journalists jailed in Myanmar. She said their case "had nothing to do with freedom of expression at all."

It was a rare defense from Myanmar's soft-spoken leader, now 73, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She spent nearly 15 years under house arrest at the hands of a repressive military junta, during which time she became one of the world's most famous political prisoners.

However, her reticence on both the fate of the Rohingya and the jailed journalists has been condemned by human rights groups and one-time admirers worldwide.

Nobel Peace Prize is done for tbh.

See also: Aung San Suu Kyi defends jailing of journalists in Myanmar: 'They have every right to appeal'

Previously: Evidence Of Rohingya Mass Graves Uncovered In Myanmar
Reuters reporter says Myanmar police planted 'secret' papers
World reacts to sentencing of Reuters journalists in Myanmar

Apple is happy to use women and people of color as art, not authority

"Apple's boardrooms look nothing like its advertisements."

Site seems to block archive.is. Wayback may be available later.

He's gay, believes in God, and voted for Donald Trump. Here's why a top VC says being an outsider has paid off in Silicon Valley.

• The venture capitalist David Blumberg is a white man in Silicon Valley, and still he says he's a minority.
• In addition to being a supporter of President Donald Trump, the investor is gay — he has two children with his partner — and has a strong faith in God.
• Blumberg said that after coming out as a Republican more than a decade ago, he "got dropped from a lot of cocktail-party lists."
• But being an outsider has its advantages, he says.

I'll enable comments. What the heck -- have at it, guys!

I'm leaving. This will likely be my final post. I admired this experiment, and I wanted to support it (as I have by subscribing). I once thought the Slash moderation system was the answer to fixing the internet. I thought Slashdot failed just because of the ads and flamebait stories posted by editors.

I no longer think that's true. There seem to be a lot of folks here who are here for the lulz, posting crap just to provoke discussion. I'm a proponent of rational discourse, and that's simply not possible here with the large number of prominent, persistent trolls.

I'm sure a bunch of them may post here and claim they aren't trolls. I don't care -- have at it guys. Some may debate the meaning of "troll." Again, I don't care. You know what you are -- and whether it fits your particular definition of troll, you are not promoting rational discourse.

I realized last week that I truly can't remember the last time I actually LEARNED something from a comment here. I've certainly tried my best to promote informative posts when I can. I've tried to avoid nasty arguments that devolve into name-calling, but I realize that my patience has grown thin. I don't like the person I've become in responding to asinine comments. And I'm not getting anything out of this site that's positive for me. Unlike the old Slashdot, where I'd actually learn something occasionally from the comments section.

So I'm done. Cheers to the Mighty Buzzard for his technical expertise, but he is also a primary reason I'm leaving, along with a bunch of other trollish posters whom it is unnecessary to name individually. Everyone knows the main ones. And just to be clear, I include not only the conservative nutcases but people like Aristarchus in that mix -- whom I like for his erudition, but who also behaves like a troll in his submissions. But I don't blame him for being driven mad over the millennia after arguing with the loonies here. Point being, this has nothing to do with hating conservatism or whatever -- it has to do with the loss of rational discourse (or perhaps it was always non-existent here and I just hoped it might get better).

I no longer have hope for this experiment. So I have better things to do.

Cheers to all.

Actors and fans defend 'Cosby Show' actor after articles job-shame him for working at Trader Joe's

An honest man doing an honest day's work used to be something to be celebrated in America. But it didn't seem like it -- over the Labor Day weekend, of all times -- after actor Geoffrey Owens was spotted at a Trader Joe's in New Jersey, bagging groceries.

It all started with an article in the Daily Mail late last week. A customer at the store in Clifton, New Jersey, spotted Owens -- best known for his role as son-in-law Elvin Tibideaux on "The Cosby Show" -- working as a cashier and snapped a picture.

The image became the basis for the Daily Mail's story under the job-shaming headline, "From learning lines to serving the long line!" The details in the story were just as insulting: "Wearing an ID badge bearing his name, the former star wore a Trader Joe's T-shirt with stain marks on the front as he weighed a bag of potatoes."

The story exploded on social media over the holiday weekend after Fox News picked it up and tweeted out its own version. But the articles seemed to produce a flood of support for Owens, as well as a conversation about job-shaming and classism. Other actors, as well as fans, defended him.

Geoffrey Owens' message to job-shamers: Honor the 'dignity of work'

Leave him alone, he's not a rapist.

It's OK to job shame anyone working at the Daily Mail.

Black Strap Molasses (song)

The song's lyrics discuss popular health foods of the time. The verses make "absurd" claims about the supposed benefits of these foods, and the chorus runs:

Black strap molasses and the wheat germ bread
Makes you live so long you wish you were dead
You add a little yogurt and you'll be well fed
On the black strap molasses and the wheat germ bread.

One contemporary review interpreted the lyrics as referring specifically to the "Live Longer" diet advocated by nutritionist Gayelord Hauser. Hauser, labeled a "quack" by the American Medical Association, gained widespread popularity in the mid-twentieth century promoting "wonder foods" including blackstrap molasses, wheat germ, and yogurt, as well as brewer's yeast and powdered milk. He was known as a nutrition guru to many Hollywood celebrities.

Molasses.