fallenpegasus | Entries tagged with usenet

I just got done working thru my blogroll in Google Reader, and culling about a third of them.

I still can't decide on a good folder/organizing system for them, so for right now I've got "friends" (people I know), "stuff" (gadget reviews, woot, etc), "sex" (NSFW stuff), "work" (related to paying work), and then just everything else, which is a mix of news, commentary, interesting people, and other stuff.

I've left the worst offender for size and time in, the Freshmeat feed. It's over a hundred items a day now, which is a pain to work thru, but it's been so very useful to quick read, it's like condensed serendipity.

I also reorganized my LJ Default View, making it smaller and more impactful. I will avoid the drama of "OMG unfriending", but I had to get a handle on the time it was taking to keep up.

Several years ago, I mercilessly culled the pile of email lists I was on.

About a year ago, I unsubbed to most of the USENET newsgroups I was reading. A while ago, I really tightened down my Gnus filters, and now I'm pretty fast with the "kill this thread" keystroke. Bram Cohen was incredulous that I was actually still using it at all, and I have to concede his point. Maybe I just need to make a clean break entirely from rec.arts.sf.*. However, it remains a working venue of "voraciously expressed opinions different from mine", where the venue itself isn't controlled by one of the opinionators. (Thus my rejection of "Making Light" blog. The [P|T]NH's wanted a rasf*-lite where nobody was allowed to disagree with them.)

As for TV, I'm way "behind" and unlikely to catch up, or even want to. I'm half a season behind on Dr Who, several YEARS behind on BSG, and enjoying the season break on the array of tech/cop dramas I had been watching (CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Numb3rs).

I do this cull, and get stricter and stricter, and yet, there is still SO MUCH STUFF to keep up on. But now with less "junkfood" reading...

Current Location: Home, Capitol Hill, Seattle WA

A USENET thread, wherein someone is argues that permitting freedom in choices is something to be avoided. I wouldn't have believed that someone would make the argument, but then, I'm a reactionary libertarian whackjob. (My words are in the blue.)

The "right one" is irrelevent and mostly illusionary. Most choices don't even have an intrinsically "right answer", they are purely personal preferences.

Most choices? No, not really. There are lots of choices that people can make very cogent arguments should be the "norm" and we need mechanisms of handling the driction that that entails in a society. We don't have the luxuary of everybody doing their own thing anymore.

And so once again, we're in the weird position where:
the "reactionary nutjob" (that's me) is arguing in favor of freedom, individuality, and respect for the actual diversity of people and thought.
and the "liberal" is arguing in favor of enforced comformity.
Your argument is exactly the same one made by the pre- and anti- enlightment cohort. They were wrong then. Why are you right now?

Current Location: Home, Capitol Hill, Seattle WA
Current Music: http://www.stars-radio.com/

Some people in the thread are claiming that the boredom, that the mind crippling, that the soul crushing, that goes on in public education, it is a feature, not a bug. One said:

I'm pointing out that we live in a world where most people can't earn a living by doing fun things because the nature of our economy is biased towards a lot of rather dull stuff that needs people to do it. That's a fact of life, we can't get around that until the economic paradigm shifts.

My response, lightly edited:

What do you think causes shifts in that "economic paradigm"?!
It's caused by changes in the attitudes, motivations, skills, and powers in the hands of the actors in that economic system.
What I want is a system that results in more people with attitudes of self-direction, self-motivation, with the attitude that learning is fun and never stops, and that fun and joy are attainable.
And you think that this will cause a collapse of society and the economic system...
And you guys are the ones who accuse libertarians of "hating peope" and having the "I've got mine" attitude.
You sound just like one of the old die-hard pre-enlightment types, arguing against the abolition of slavery, allowing the masses to vote and get above their station, and taking political power from the aristo class, because it would threaten "economic system"...

NASA will of course polish everything anyhow, but that's because NASA is run by rich communists who are quite unclear about basic economics. The Russian space program is run by impoverished captialists, who know the value of a dollar. link

Current Location: Home, Capitol Hill, Seattle WA

Actually the real question is whether we can afford to keep burning hydrocarbons, wherever we gets 'em from. x

So you do your part in conviencing the folks around you to be pro-nuke, yes? x

Indeed I do .. and yourself? x

I try. The problem is, it seems that everyone who already isn't convienced, the moment someone says "nuke", their brain turns off. Of course, it seems that for people who do think about energy and pollution and who are not already pro-nuke, the "brain turn off" function is already either on a hair-trigger, or is welded down. It's worse than the goddamn "for the sake of the children" problem. x

Atoms make baby Jesus cry. That's about the only explanation I can give for some people's reactions. x

Current Music: (Rachid Taha) Rock el Casbah.mp3

( A good rant I just read on USENET )

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A Place in the Forest

Entries tagged with usenet

Media Diet

The reactionary nutjob vs the liberal.

From a USENET argument thread I kicked off, about why I hate pub ed.

So true it hurts...

A recurring discussion in rec.arts.sf.written

"Stranger Danger" idiocy.

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December 2022

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