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  • That documentation is supposed to explain how a thing works to people who don't know how it works. I know, sounds extremely obvious, but you'd be surprised how much documentation out there is written in a way, expecting you to already know what it's talking about. No. I do not. It is the documentation's job to explain ME what IT is talking about...

  • Conspiracies that require absolute lock tight secrecy to function at a basic level aren't generally tenable to be sustained for longer than a handful of years at a time at most. Somebody always fucks up or basically was just lucky nobody checked for awhile. The nessesity of any large scale collaboration creates inefficiencies and potential error points in the system. Even the best of the best spy agencies fuck up and get caught rather routinely, particularly when operating on their home soil. A lot of investigative journalists accidentally trip over stuff all the time but have good faith arrangements (or in some places laws) to not disclose the active manoeuvres of the state to the public.

    It's just really hard for humans in general to accept that events that effected them or things they care about very deeply personally weren't somehow also grand in design. Grocking sometimes it really is just random chance or stupid mishandling is not something we're well wired to handle. Stories of all powerful conspiracies masterminding the world scratch that itch... But logistically speaking the conspiracy aspect is completely unnecessary. If someone is trying to blame a nebulous bogeymen who exists as nameless, numberless ultimately wealthy but also totally off the books super spies.... chances are they are just trying to capitalize on making you feel flattered, smart and empowered by something "only you are smart enough to believe" - while feeding you bullshit they can personally profit from in some way with you none the wiser.

  • Related to the current election, that OG conservatives, or Reagan and Bush conservatives (referring to George H. W. Bush) are the same thing as MAGA conservatives.

    The difference is, the old guard blithely preserved the kind of policies that shredded social safety nets and business regulations in favor of tax cuts, leading to precarity and the rise of paranoia that led to the Trump takeover in 2015.

    The OGs just wish they had another mile or two of altitude to plummet, and are freaked out about the ground looming so close and rushing so fast. But they will still keep the same policies, and will still lay a ground of Ayn Randian, Reagan-worshiping Mitt Romney / Jeb Bush / Ted Cruz candidates until some other charismatic narcissist Mussolini-wanabe rushes in and plucks the whole party from their hands again. And they'll get all butt-smoochy with the new guy like Lindsey Graham did with Trump (after predicting how this loose cannon will end the Republican party).

    They didn't just buy the ticket to ride. They bought stocks in the railroad line, and insisted that fascism-backed one-party autocracy was the destination. They knew it since Reagan. By George W. Bush it was showing serious signs even before the PATRIOT act.

    So when people freak out today because we're on the brink of losing our democracy, I have to wonder where they've been the last two decades. How is it after George W. Bush, and torture and Iraq and the pig lagoons and Abstinence-Only sex ed, did you think another Republican president was a good thing? I know Clinton was scary, but did you take even one look at Trump?

  • That we'd all be better off if we accepted our own fallibility. That we are not perfect little robots, and as a result more tolerance and forgiveness in the world is necessary.

  • Spelling, punctuation, and the use of contractions. The part that really sells the irritation factor is when they try to say they’re correct by making up some definition for what they said or claiming “common usage”. I guess it’s because people don’t really read much anymore. Reading someone else’s words that have been carefully edited, corrected into good sentence structure, and spellchecked can really help get it your own head.

    They place the burden on the reader to decipher their made-up vocabulary. It really isn’t too awful, it’s just that people have to have read the correct way something is used yet insist on not changing.

  • We have figured out how to run everything, absolutely everything, in the 1950s.

    The original computer "AI" craze was started by "cybernetic systems" and for good reason. You probably only know of the bastardizations of "cyber-" that don't have anything in common with the original concept.

    The original concept goes like this:

    1. set a goal
    2. perform an action
    3. measure how much impact that had, did it get you closer to your goal or not?
    4. If you are at your goal, you're done,
    5. otherwise adjust your actions, got to 2. (This is "feedback" and the reason that word is now so common. People at the time knew)

    The faster you go through the loop, the faster you will figure out what works.

    You can measure anything you want, as vague is you want. Happiness, money, productivity. It's the way democracy is designed to work, in which case the feedback is vague and the cycle time is measured in years. It runs your thermostats, in your home, big national power grid power plants. It's how autopilots autopilot.

    The idea that "nobody could have predicted..." or "nobody responsible" is a myth. We have the science. We know how it works.

    Every failure we still experience is a failure we allow to happen. Because of profit, politics, or whatever.

    Didn't catch something "going on for years", maybe someone should check more often. "Crazy single individual causing a tragedy"? No, that's a person at risk, probably with social or mental problems you didn't take care of before, didn't flag, and didn't stop in time.

    "Nobody wants to work on our open source project" Really, how is your onboarding? Do people take a look at the docs/culture and run away screaming? Yeah?

  • Due process. Freaking due process. Or the scientific method or whatever you want to call it.

    What do I mean to be implied by saying this? Suppose you encounter a situation where accusations are thrown around. Normally this starts by asking what the claim is before talking further about what is wrong with the action in question plus what separates it from hearsay. You might consult testimony/proofs/cross-examination for this, with some of this being more defining/damning than others. Things like you'd see in 12 Angry Men, like "you just said X when you're now saying Y", "what makes this indication of what happened, inarguable enough to not be found within reasonable doubt", and "you have all this testimony on one hand and the physical remnants telling us another thing".

    In short, it's supposed to be instinctual that what people want to do is to mark the truth via scrutiny when it would otherwise blend in with everything else.

    Alright, so you might be asking what I mean when I say this as my answer. The pen being mightier than the sword is not an idiom that anyone should have to say, but seldom has someone here ever had any issue randomly walking up to a crowd and making damning remarks about someone they don't like and instantly denting another individual in ways that should matter. Relatedly, someone might have what they insist is solid indication of something but isn't for the very fact that it's arguable and leaves room for doubt.

    I've seen an individual in particular do this, they go up to people and say "this person is a pedo", they then go up to another crowd, same thing, they say "this person is a pedo". Usually it has some super long elaboration too, complete with a mixture of things without solid indicators, things with no indicators, and actions which were already compensated for years ago. People in charge typically know better, but the common people have this idea in their mind that "this is a damning claim, logically it wouldn't exist for no reason", like have you ever seen a spiteful ex before? I myself am an arguable victim of this, chronically on numerous occasions, in all spheres of life, being unable to do so much as engage in hobbies without the paparazzi wannabe we know as the human populace chiming in. Sometimes they'll even pull the "well then prove the rumors are false" card which requires that you can prove a negative (which would make it not a negative in the first place). The social equivalent of chopping down trees so that I have to walk over them while walking on a path, hoping one day maybe a branch will jab me or something.

    One day a few of us asked about this and the response every time was "it's human nature to forego due process if someone can sense due process would be dishonorable", and that was one of the last straws that led to my misanthropy and the fact that, in a profound way, I detest the very essence of humanity, and why I often contrast neurodivergence with human nature, because it's often those of us who are neurodivergent who are considered as having the lesser states of mind. I beg to differ, we're not the ones who are showing how profoundly self-defeating we are. One might say I've even self-reflected months at a time just to contemplate if maybe I was the asshole. I'm sure I am the asshole sometimes, but that doesn't mean a learned person cannot see the holes. And people wonder why I feel sorry for the ultra stigmatized.

    • This is a lot for me to comprehend, but as for people randomly calling people a pedo is mind-boggling and down right gaslighting. Unfortunately I've had an experience of this myself, recently, just for making jokes with friends around my age. It wasn't my friends who were calling me a pedo or anything, but rather third parties who didn't like what they saw and slapped an ominous name on it, tried to build up accusations, and started misinterpreting pretty much everything.

      Mind you, I am a 17M. I don't like children like that, it's fucking disgusting. I am scared shitless to turn 18, am afraid to even consentingly joke around with my friends. I'm scared shitless to even get a relationship at all because of this and I'm afraid of false accusations from completely (hidden, or those who have grown to be) psycopaths. I'm afraid of human interaction, because I know these claims are nothing but baseless, but the problem is people eat that anyway and throw people the consequences they shit out.

      Also, these same people accusing me of being a pedo and a creep, are no more than 15 years old AND fetishizing men well over 20 years old "impregnating" them. It's disgusting, scary, projection, and worrisome to say the least. Shit like this makes me have no hope for society, I'm not sure how much longer I can stand to live in it.

      • Just be genuine and I think you'll be okay. I mean you never know - some people used to roam around and string people up on trees to hang them, sometimes fairly at random even (so long as they had a certain ethnicity or immigration status or whatever) - but all you can control is yourself so don't focus overmuch on what is beyond that.

        Also I believe that the literal, legal definition of pedo (or whatever, "statutory rape" I guess? I'm not searching for that term right now!:-P) excludes people who are 18 dating someone who is 17. It would be different if you were 20 dating a 15-year-old, but in general once you move past high school just don't go back and I think you'd be fine?

        Also children (even at 15 years old... and sadly also at 50) are going to play regardless, and that means slinging words around that they don't mean, or necessarily even know what the definitions are. Just don't be a pedo, and then even if they accuse you, there's nothing there to justify it so you should (fingers crossed) be fine?

    • You might find it fascinating to watch The Alt Right Playbook by Innuendo Studios on YouTube. It just might change your life. It's not fully about politics so much as, much more importantly, the method of discourse that has somehow become popular in the Western world, as many right-wing groups worldwide have started to use it and it has permeated our entire culture.

  • *lemmings

    Probably people who yell at cyclists for following traffic laws, bonus points for them also violating said laws without repercussion.

599 comments