Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.
Why does hotshoe always bring gender into things? Sexist.
One of the four dipshits makes a not-necessarily-sexist-pig comment about me having a hard-on, then definitely-pig Patrick says a man can dream (about me having a hard-on) then dipshit number 3 idly pretends to wonder why I “bring gender” into things.
Fucking dipshits.
Mothers shoulda drowned ’em at birth.
hotshoe_,
Trigger warning
From The Rules: “Address the content of the post, not the perceived failings of the poster.” The two statements are functionally equivalent.
Well, that and I mentioned once that I vote Libertarian (despite them being a bit too Big Government for my taste). That seems to be my most unforgivable sin.
Johnson/Weld 2016!
Don’t make me invite Milo Yiannopoulos here.
I actually worked for Weld. He’s a hot shit, (Repo Man was his favorite movie and Pale Fire his favorite book) but he’s no libertarian.
Your most unforgivable sin is actually that you’re a pompous dimwit with a Napoleon complex.
walto,
Love that film
Ayep.
walto, to Patrick:
Don’t forget “team player”!
That’s a good thing, so long as it doesn’t TRUMP everything else.
/Patrick Defender.
I’ve talked with Patrick offline about business, etc. I’ve found him to be quite humble. He rates very highly on the Hughes Index [Aptitude/Ego].
I’m not denying we have different experiences, but maybe its a partial product of how we interact?
Sure. But consider. I take it you’re a programmer. Suppose you were working on government contract and he said to you, “Wow you have no ethics at all. You’re basically a thief, feeding yourself and your family with money you have stolen from innocent citizens.” Then, you start noticing that he’s a bully. And when you call him on that and ask him to stop he calls you more names. Then (maybe naturally) you start noticing other sorts of piggishness and confusion that maybe you wouldn’t have if the guy hadn’t insulted you.
Would you still have a cordial relationship with this person?
walto,
I’m not a programmer. Cashier is what I told Mung.
I don’t think he’d say that, and it would be wrong. The government pays me, don’t steel anything. Does the government? It takes, with our consent because we structure and vote for it. Is it broken? Yes? Do I know the fix? Nope.
It is what he said, though. If you don’t think so, look it up.
Well if he did, I disagree with him.
I appreciate that. But again, if he were insulting you–and maybe your wife too (mine is an administrative judge) and many of your colleagues, friends, teachers, mentors, etc. for the work you’ve done most of your adult life, all based on confused, nasty Randian precepts about what is and isn’t moral–what is and isn’t in the public interest, maybe you wouldn’t be so cordial either.
Offering a drink or a faux self-deprecating “Oho” might not do it for you.
I have nothing against any of the mods or their decisions. I’ve had maybe two posts sent to guano, one of which certainly qualified. Any others, I don’t remember.
As for other posters, I haven’t seen many of the posts that get sent to guano. That’s probably because I stopped paying attention to the people who frequently get sent there.
I quit paying attention to them not because their tone is offensive, but because their posts are generally vacuous. And if they do happen to say something of substance, someone else having more patience or more knowledge that I have will call attention to the post.
I’m here more to learn stuff than to score points. If I post assertions, it’s more to see if there’s any strong agreement or disagreement than to win an argument.
walto,
I’m with you, its hard separating the person from their beliefs, if there is such a separation. I guess the charge is ‘complicity’ but that can always be levelled by a minority position at a majority.
Another thought – this forum focuses on divisive issues so that’s the discourse here. When I win the lottery and then get out of rehab a year later I’ll host the TSZ get together. In that environment I suspect we’d all get in really well – we care about the same ‘big questions’.
I’ll look forward to that. And I may have a Brazilian investment opportunity for you!
What’s her name? 😉
Thanks for the kind words. You may be the first person to ever call me humble.
At the end of the day what matters are the ideas, not the baseless insults. I’ve got my inner Don Draper working for me.
Which insults are the “baseless” ones?
But Atlas would just shrug.
Glen Davidson
I have to assume that most judges spend most of their lives doing good works, or attempting to do so. Doesn’t mean a thing in the context of questioning whether particular laws are productive or counterproductive.
I hasn’t been too many years since judges sent people to execution for relatively minor offenses. Nor too many years since Prohibition. Nor too many decades since England sent people to prison for being homosexual.
I really don’t give a sideways fuck whether people’s intentions are good. I have a right to question whether government actions are good or bad, productive or counterproductive.
I am not a Randian. I do not have any knee-jerk opposition to welfare or government spending, but I have a long list of things governments do that are evil or counterproductive or inefficient or unnecessary.
I know you do. But there are such lists of evil and unproductiveness in every sector. When governments fuck up they can do a lot of harm, because they have a lot of power. They can do a lot of good too, and they have.
I have only one “principle” in political debate. The use of force or coercion, or the spending of non-trivial amounts of money, should be tied to measurable goals, the goals should regularly be measured, the methods should be abandoned or modified if the measures do not improve.
My father was a policy making bureaucrat for 29 years, and everything he did followed those rules. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations.
That’s a good principle.
ETA: And I’d add that, wherever possible (which is way more than at present in the U.S.) those goals should be set by people, not bureaucrats. I think technology (in the areas of voting and polling) should be used to determine governmental preferences much more than they are now.
IMO bureaucrats often have too much power in the area of setting goals, and elected officials have too much power in areas that are basically technical/actuarial/economic–and should be handled by “experts” (i.e. bureaucrats). Admittedly, though, it’s extremely hard to get those boundaries right, which was what the old BBC show “Yes, Minister” was about.
Kinda like that Don Draper character pictured above.
keiths comment here needs to be moved to guano.
Too funny. Hotshoe labels me and fifth as “Dumb and Dumber”, but she can’t take it when I refer to her as “Dumbest”.
Hypocrisy, thy name is hotshoe.
But you used the superlative, not the comparative.
It makes all the difference.
Glen Davidson
Nope, keiths is lying when he claims I “labeled” him (or fifth) in my comment.
My comment was addressed to walto and contained a hypothetical pairing of Dumb and Dumber, who are not named as anyone in particular. If you think Dumb and Dumber point to some persons who happen to be in that thread, okay, but that’s your subjective reading, not what’s in black and white.
keiths is the one who decided to make it personal by addressing his comment to me and directly naming me “Dumbest”.
Now keiths gets away with his lie about me, because it’s in the Moderation thread, where the rules are different.
But his comment in the Elon Musk thread still needs to be guano’d for directly breaking the rules.
The Mung / Hotshoe convergence continues.
This is sagely. Search for your own wrongness, don’t assert your rightness*
*I may be wrong about this.
Rich:
It’s both funny and sad. At least they have each other.
Read hotshoe’s comment…
and then read her rationalization:
It’s remarkable, and fascinating. Does she really think readers won’t notice the hypocrisy?
It’s magical.
Kinda like a corpse turning into a zombie.
Glen Davidson
Its basic evolution: Mung wants the Alpha Tard niche vacated by Joe / Frankie, thus leaving the habitual “Guano!” crier spot free for any motivated individual.
My own view of the hypocrisy question here is whether Patrick’s ruling stands that the remark “People who say X are idiots” is never (contra RB and me and guess you and Rich now) ad hom, while the assertion “Y is an idiot” always is. If that ruling stands, then Hotshoe, who simply restated it above, has (the lusting) Napoleon on her side, and you two squealers (plus RB and I) are wrong.
It’s a farrago of strange bedfellows I tell you!
It is indeed sage.
There are at least three things one may do with sage advice:
1. Give it.
2. Take it.
3. Talk about how one follows it.
In my experience, petrushka concentrates on 1 and 3.
Too much sage ruins a good stew.
I have no more sage advice.
Glen Davidson
This is a lie. If only keiths were as “skeptical” as he pretends to be.
As someone who can never admit they are wrong I can only wonder at the opportunities you’ve turned down. You have only yourself to blame.
Call it the “broad brush” rule and don’t forget to apply it fairly.
Is that an ad hominem? Because we all know you won’t.
I know you’re no programmer, and your memory sucks so you probably aren’t even a computer.
Are there any other moderators active at TSZ besides Patrick, or is he the sole survivor now?
So? You’re no threat to their hegemony. Bully for you.
Right. Which is why ad hominem goes to Guano. So that we can focus on the issues, not the personalities. Except when some mod turns a blind (cowardly) eye.
Are you taking that bet up, Mung? That empirical test?