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It's been one heck of a week:
Against the backdrop of record-setting numbers of COVID-19 deaths and infections in the US and around the world, there was turmoil in Washington, DC. As court cases surrounding the presidential election were filed and dismissed, a close race in Georgia was coming down to the wire and with it control of the US Senate. While the US Congress was completing the Electoral College tally and certification, a mob formed outside — and eventually broke into — the US Capitol. This resulted in a 4-hour lock-down. Eventually, the intrusion was repelled, and the Electoral College count was completed: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was confirmed as the 46th president of the United States of America.
Conspiracy theories have flourished. Propaganda has streamed forth across multiple platforms. Tempers have flared.
And SoylentNews has been there for you. And have you ever spoken up! Two of the most-commented stories in the site's nearly seven-year history were posted in just the past week!
Insomuch as the activities in the US Capitol were far from the US' most shining moments, neither were things all unicorns and rainbows on SoylentNews. Tempers flared. People were attacked and called names. I even accidentally deleted a story and the 17 comments attached to it! [NB: Problem addressed: the delete button no longer appears by default for our editors.]
IRC (Internet Relay Chat):
Even our IRC service was not free from controversy. We had a spate of nick (nickname) impersonations. Going forward, IRC users are free to use whatever nick they like with the following caveats:
- Prefix / suffix of a nick is fine for practical purposes (e.g. ${nick}_laptop)
- Impersonation or misrepresentation will not be tolerated
- The use of another user's website nick or derivative thereof on IRC will be subject to sanctions up to and including perma ban.
Further, we understand conversations can easily ramble from subject to subject, but there are separate channels for different topics. (Use the /list comand to see what is available.) As #soylent is the default landing channel, we want to keep the discussions there civil. Name calling and personal attacks are grounds for a timeout. I have had discussions with deucalion (the site's CEO and also IRC-maintainer) about these activities.
NOTE: we are NOT going to sit there watching every discussion, poised to take action. But, if such activity is seen by staff on IRC, they are free to take such actions as they deem necessary.
Aspirations:
As I approach posting my 10,000th story(!) to SoylentNews, I think back to when it all started. How a group of people got together. They shared freely of their expertise, of their free time, and of their hard-earned funds. They tried to create a place free from corporate overlords where people could engage in discussions that focused primarily on technology, but with a dabbling in other areas and current events.
SoylentNews provides a forum for discussion. It also provides tools so the community can express themselves in the comments and moderate those comments, as well.
This got me to thinking. What are our aspirations today? What are our guiding principles? I will list some of my guiding principles, and I encourage the community to share what guides them in the comments.
- "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." --H. L. Mencken (cite)
- "People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." -- Isaac Asimov (cite)
- "If you speak when angry, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." -- Groucho Marx (cite)
- "Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean."
- "Don't get furious, get curious" -- Miley Cyrus (cite)
- "Humiliation is when someone points out my shortcomings. Humility is when I confess them myself."
- "I need not participate in every fight I am invited to."
- The most difficult behaviors to observe in another person are the ones I dislike in my own.
- "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." -- John, Lord Morley (cite)
How about you? What sayings guide your aspirations?
Thank You!
Lastly, I thank all of you for supporting me as Editor-in-Chief. I have no formal background in writing or management. I've made mistakes, but I've tried to own up to them as they happened. I strive to be fair, impartial, and open-minded. Under the watchful gaze of the community, I have grown. It is my hope that I may continue to earn your respect and continue in service for many years to come.
(Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday January 11 2021, @10:53PM
Yeah, you press these people in real-life, they go from "We didn't cheat and you're terrorists" to "okay, okay, we cheated like fuck but the ends justify the means because Orange Man Bad. We're anti bad-guy and our opponents are the bad guys. How can people not understand this? We can never be terrorists because we're fighting the bad guys. It's so simple to understand, everything we do is justified because we're on the right side of history!"
Meanwhile, they're built the closest modern equivalent to a Nazi regime. "Anti-Fascists" fighting as brownshirts for the very same corporations they claim are oppressive, with a core tenet of fascism and national socialism being state control over industry (again, the industry "Anti-Fascists" are fighting for). A "grassroots" movement acting as enforcers for fuckhuge corporations literally using slave labor to make their products. Now they have shown themselves to be the true oppressors, and no amount of control and "It's okay when we do it" and other nonsense over the media will change the sentiment of the checkout line, which believes that Antifa/BLM are thugs and COVID-19 is a hoax.
No competent regime would push ahead so recklessly -- it's obvious that they're afraid of something, getting sloppy, and that their hand was forced somehow. What would you think if you were a tech startup considering using AWS? Better create a contingency plan, because they don't even need a real reason to wipe out your AWS infrastructure overnight. You can ditch AWS, more painfully, but you can. The oppressors' leadership are boomers and Jews, with the former generally being too out of touch to make sensible decisions and the latter being too arrogant to avoid overplaying their hand too early. Bernie and The Squad being, of course, controlled opposition.
They could have easily got away with building their regime and successfully enslaving everybody had they been a little more patient and subtle about it. Well, we can only hope that cooler heads prevail and everything normalizes into a boring politically moderate next 4 years of 1 meaningless token gun law and military involvement in Syria in exchange for domestic stability. The ball is in the Democrats' court now, if they want to full-throttle this game of chicken, so be it.