I think this thread should be closed as propaganda. — Agustino

If there's going to be no intelligent argument backed up by evidence and just continued shouting about how EVIL George Soros is, it will be very soon. Or probably deleted. (At least that's what George told me to say).

*Wanders aimlessly away...*

For what?

No.

Who knows what I meant. Is there a search function for that?

(Apart from doing most of the work, @Michael is also the only person who remembers anything around here. Indispensable really. And worth every penny.)

Welcome @Caldwell and @Tobias! Cool to have you both on board.

I'm PMing answers to off-topic posts and then deleting them. The discussion is about beautiful things. Please carry on.

It is no more wrong to shove your fngers down a little girls throat so you can see her vomit and cry; than it is to inject me with a 30 day dose of Haldol. — XanderTheGrey

Well, by that standard I guess it couldn't possibly have been wrong to have injected you with a permanent dose of banning.

Probably — Benkei

So far, it's about as boringly regular and predictable a bubble there could be. The chart I posted earlier (when we were around "delusion / new paradigm!") :



The actual price graph now (1 yr period):



Notice any similarities? :-|

What's being attacked if the metaphor of violence is to be used is a part of the self that is essential to self-understanding (not so for all assumptions), extremely socially vulnerable (unlike most religious beliefs) and not a simple delusion (hallucinations etc).



(Y)

Is calling a trans woman a man (or vice versa --- i.e., calling a trans man a woman) a form of violence? — czahar

Lots of these types of discussions around lately, which are ripe for people talking past each other as it just depends on how broadly you define your terms. In a narrow common-understanding-of-the-word sense, no, it's not violence. In a broader more philosophical sense, yes, it could be. Slavoj Zizek wrote a whole book called Violence about this broader sense:

"We tend to fixate on what Žižek calls subjective violence: acts of assault, murder, terror and war. However, there are two other varieties of objective violence: "the 'symbolic' violence embodied in language and its forms", and systemic violence, the "often catastrophic consequences of the functioning of our economic and political systems".

Link.

Trump wants to run the country like he ran his casinos - get the right sort of people in (rich=winners!), keep the riff-raff out (poor=losers!). To the extent that he associates race with riches, there's a racist element to his thought, but primarily he's thoughtless and speaks from his gut fear of / contempt for the dispossessed. Concentrating on the racist aspect is also a bad strategy for his opposition in my view as it's not going to convince anyone who voted for him or is likely to vote for him not to do so again. Trump won working class whites the last time round; you're not going to get them back with academic arguments about racism every time he opens his big mouth.

Trump's comment seems more about a hatred of (and fear of) poor people than race. I imagine he referenced Norway because someone told him how rich it was. So for me, his major issue is that he's utterly ignorant and superficial, no more. I don't think race is anywhere on his list of priorities and if he is racist it's in a stupid no-nothing way not an ideological torch-bearing way.

Fair point. The donations go towards hosting costs. @jamalrob may be able to provide more details on the current state of play with regard to those.

We used to have upvotes, but after some debate we got rid of them. I don't believe a majority want them back so gone they shall stay.

Yes to old forum, Twitter feed or even Trump himself. :)

We've got all the fledgedness we need here as far as I'm concerned, but forum software is a matter of taste I guess. However, if it's not being dead you're after primarily then you're in the right place.

It died (or was murdered to be more accurate). Many of the old regulars are here now though, so if you look around you're likely to recognize a few.

Careful... We may have to hire you if you keep this up. ;)

Kudos to you. (Y)

I'm giving you a general guideline as to how I would approach the issue and speculating that Street may have been thinking along those lines. But, sure, he can speak for himself.

(Y)



I think it would depend on the circumstances. Defense of convicted pedophiles and rapists depending on how it was presented could make you look like an apologist for them and qualify you to be "obviously unsuited to the forum".

I've just noticed the whole child rapist aspect of that discussion now. It shouldn't be there as far as I'm concerned as it's off-topic.

...I have seen the real you a couple of times, and not the stage persona...

I know what you're thinking and feeling inside, which renders this show, and justifications fucking lies.

Sure, I'm obnoxious, but I'm me. I'm not a fraud. — Wosret

Well, apparently admins have to show high standards, so I shouldn't honestly tell you what I think of your childish meltdown or the idea that we should all appreciate your adolescent-level poetry as anything other than an attempt at humour. My bad for not being as obnoxious as you.

Anyway, can't keep coming back here to bitch, gotta actually move on... — Wosret

Yes, it was getting boring, so I'm closing the discussion. Pity you couldn't have left with a bit of dignity and / or grace, but good luck anyway.

As I said above, @Michael's stated reason for the deletion was that the post was off-topic not because it was poetry. Besides, I'm the last person you need to talk to about the general merits of poetry, I've written a book of poetry and have a website dedicated to it. I don't write poetry in response to philosophical topics here though for several reasons, not least of which is because it's hard to communicate clearly that way to most people. Wosret can try to do that if he wants, and if it works, fine. If it doesn't, he may get moderated like anyone else. This time he got moderated. In any case, I like the colour he adds to the site and hope he decides to stay but the fact remains that poetry is difficult to do well and difficult to make relevant in a philosophical context, and is subject to moderation like everything else.

Fair enough. Anyway, I'll post here for you the poem of yours that @Michael judged to be off-topic and deleted, and that initiated your protest.

"I run away and hide the shame
I render you weak and lame
Numb your hands, numb your face
Insensitive to my disgrace

Poison you with every breath
worship falsity, worship death
Paranoia, distrust
Fear lust, and disgust.

Perhaps uncreated, but it can still be destroyed."

If anyone wants to discuss the merits of the decision further, please start a discussion in the Feedback forum. Cheers.

(My bets are on you and the power of Kundalini).

Ah, un beat me to the lover bit. But I'll put it in context. Put yourself in situations where getting it right is a big carrot and getting it wrong is a big stick. So, presuming you want to speak it, get out there and embarrass the crap out of yourself by getting it wrong until you improve, and have fun in the process. For listening skills, research suggests listening to something just above your level is best, so do that gradually. Don't jump into movies or music and expect that to work very well for a beginner, or if you do, at least scaffold with subtitles - first in your own language and then in the target one. For reading, read a lot - graded readers on a subject you're interested in would be best. Again, don't punch too far above your weight and do make your material something engaging. For writing, if you want to be really good, get a teacher one-on-one. You can't really wing that or you're likely to fossilize errors (you'll keep making the same mistakes over and over that will make you look bad if you need to write something important, especially in a work context.) And do other stuff like learning a set number of new words a day and doing online grammar and vocab tests etc. But don't expect that to work well as using it functionally in real life situations where you repeatedly fall on your public face but then get up again bloody but unbowed.

(Btw, the question thing is because I moved it to questions as it's not a Phil of Lang issue.)

What's supposed to be the difference between "current regulations" and "regulations that are already on the books"?

Anyway, more taxes bad / regulations bad / oversight bad binary thinking.

Yes, I'm for Halliday not Chomsky. The grammar is built up from how we relate to the world. Chomsky and his bloody trees. Bleurgh.

The mods have refused to allow this on utterly unexplained and arbitrary grounds. They say they desire feedback and a diverse mod team, but then turn around and say, "no, we don't have to listen to your feedback, and we're not going to make the mod team diverse by adding another mod." It would be the simplest thing in the world to shut people like me up if they would enact my suggestion, and yet, inexplicably, they refuse. So I will continue to have a cautious, skeptical attitude toward the leadership here, and to hell with them if they complain about my complaints. — Thorongil

Hopefully the above will help to show that we do listen to complaints. As far as mod hiring is concerned though, it was suggested to us by some that the addition of a female mod would help in terms of diversity. We've done that. It may be that the next time we hire we look for another conservative. I would support that too, but it would be unreasonable to expect us to hire specific posters at specific times on the demand of one or two or their friends.

I've reopened this as after reading Buxtebuddha's PM I see I misunderstood something about the specific incident and that was part of the reason I closed the discussion.

This has been dealt with before and the guidelines should be clear. Besides, your own behavior and the type of comments you are prone to suggest you may not be sincere. Even if you are though sufficient discussion has occurred for the moderator group to understand and note your perspective. If you wish to raise issues that relate to this topic but which have not yet been raised in this thread, they may be communicated by PM to one of the moderators.

There's a difference between a priest declaring John and Mary man and wife and me claiming they are.

(And there's a difference between a priest declaring John and Mary man and wife and declaring them supernatural beings.)

In this case, you don't have a reasonable case. Or any case actually. So, there doesn't really seem to be anything further to say here and I'm closing this discussion.

Anyway with regard to the general point:

By posting on the site you accept that we have full rights to edit and / or delete your posts. That's how moderated forums work.

However, we don't wish to misrepresent anyone, so if you feel any moderating action results in your ideas being misrepresented then you may complain about it and if you have a reasonable case, we'll restore the original (all changes are logged so everything is checkable). Your other option, of course, is to simply delete the content of the moderated post if you feel it no longer represents your views. Suffice to say, it's clearly not in the moderating team's interest or part of its purview to moderate anyone for any other reason except to enforce the site guidelines.

I can confirm "PIZZA" was Noble Dust's edit. You could have simply asked him before creating this discussion.