АLL F-!!1 TOPIC TITLE

abarker

@Onyx said:

I think it's three and seven eights of a metric fuckton for one imperial shitton.

That sounds about right. Now, if only someone can remember where a crapton fits in ...

Frank

Here I fixed it for you....

@Arantor said:

A fucktonage of meteoric misanthropy

It came from space and once it hit earth, mankind loathed like never before!

I think a particular novelist we chatted with earlier can work some magic here...

@Yamikuronue said:

I think I've got the blurb for my next title:

Delve into the sordid depths of inter-species necrophilia: the true love that dare not speak its name.

If she can tie some misanthropy and some meteors to her necrotic inter-species vamp/were love stories... I think we got the next summer block buster in the bag!

Filed under: Its almost 5PM and I don't know where my kids are...or what we are having for dinner

Groaner

@Buddy said:

All I'm trying to do here is to point out that from an outsider's perspective, it is really obvious that this web site is hostile to women

If you're an outsider and you have no vested interest in this community, why does it matter? Have you spent enough time within this community for your assessment to be credible?

I hear there are a lot of hostile people over at /b/ (and a million other websites full of far more hateful people). Why do these forums earn the privilege of your disapproval?

@Buddy said:

and that anybody who cares about women's place in technology would be wise to steer clear.

Was it ever the mission of these forums to be a family-friendly, politically-correct place of social justice activism? Has the business world ever been?

It's only been a short time in the industry for me, and I've already seen plenty of dirty, underhanded actions and people. I've seen people threatened with their jobs over personal emergencies. I've seen incompetent people get ahead by sleeping with the boss and then treating their former peers like crap. It only follows that a website dedicated to lambasting these practices will mirror the same frustration and bile that we all have collectively endured.

I don't see anything herein that inherently precludes women from participating. Heck, if you trust the anonymization of submitted articles, occasionally we have a female protagonist. It seems both genders are capable of identifying WTFs.

Buddy

@M_Adams, @boomzilla, I don't get why this is so hard for you to understand:

There exist human beings who own no capital assets.

All existing capital assets are already owned.
Assets cannot be created out of nothing.

=> there are people who are unable to enter the market without receiving assets that were previously owned by other people

ben_lubar

@Buddy said:

That avatar is amazing. How long have you been using photoshop?

Captain

Well, assets can be created. People do it all the time. And then they go on to use them as capital or sell them. Think art, software, etc.

GOG

@abarker said:

What's the conversion to an imperial fuckton?

IIRC, 1 metric fuckton = 1.6 Imperial shitloads

Filed under: hope that helps

dhromed

@GOG said:

IIRC, 1 metric fuckton = 1.6 Imperial shitloads

Be aware that the American buttload is much, much larger than the European; however there is some organic standardization currently in progress.

Buddy

The systems analysis community has a lot of lore about leverage points. Those of us who were trained by the great Jay Forrester at MIT have all absorbed one of his favorite stories. “People know intuitively where leverage points are,” he says. “Time after time I’ve done an analysis of a company, and I’ve figured out a leverage point — in inventory policy, maybe, or in the relationship between sales force and productive force, or in personnel policy. Then I’ve gone to the company and discovered that there’s already a lot of attention to that point. Everyone is trying very hard to push it IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!”

—Donella Meadows, Leverage Points

My first post on this forum was an obviously and intentionally provocative complaint about the nature of this website. The angle I chose was to insinuate that due to excessive embellishment of stories, it is hard to trust any assertions authors make about who trwtf is that aren't backed up by code. To cover my bases, I added a bit about some misogynistic comments that had been made in the comment section of the article I was talking about, very carefully worded to criticize the actual observable misogyny more than the actual choice of pronouns, though of course the fact that you can't know if genders were chosen by the author did play back into the lack of trust that had been my original point.

Alex replied that complaints about the gender of characters were the most common complaints he gets. It seems to me that discussing the gender of fictional characters is treating the symptoms of a problem while ignoring the problem itself. And the idea that there is a problem here was reinforced by the fact that the thread was then derailed into a collective session of moaning about feminists and misandry and whatnot.

A problem is just another name for a puzzle, so I got to thinking. I am. like you say, an outsider here. And I already know about the echo-chamber effect of online communities. I know I don't stand a chance of convincing anyone here to change anything. But what Donella Meadows says about positive feedback loops is that they tend to occur within a larger system of negative feedback. So I figured that if I could at least let you guys reach a consensus and have it recorded here that the wtf forums does not care about women, then maybe natural forces would take over.

Because I think that competition is good, and barriers to entry are bad. And unlike our libertarian friends here, I do believe that there exist natural barriers to entry for people wishing to enter the field of programming, in that learning to program represents a significant investment of time, money and energy. And if you're here to compound those barriers to entry, then you are part of the problem, not just for women, but for all of us.

dhromed

That's all cool.

But I think the lack of women on TDWTForums is representative of the lack of women in programming, not of TDWTF's women-disrespecting tendencies.

There's some bullshit rationalizations like "women just naturally don't like that stuff" and "I'm going to redefine feminism to something I don't like so that I can disagree with it, demonize it, and not have to think about what I say and do", but I do not think for one minute that TDWTF actively belittles or looks down on women.

So I think your case is that in general I guess it's true, but it's presented (or maybe in this situation people just have a habit of feeling personally attacked) as a direct complaint against TDWTF, and well then obviously you're going to get some defensive blowback.

I don't think that troll-with-a-top-hat style is a good way to start a discussion.

boomzilla

@Buddy said:

there are people who are unable to enter the market without receiving assets that were previously owned by other people

So what? You're just another envious asshole who can't stand to see other people doing better than you because you're such a special snowflake.

boomzilla

@Buddy said:

So I figured that if I could at least let you guys reach a consensus and have it recorded here that the wtf forums does not care about women, then maybe natural forces would take over.

And a despicable consensus that would be. Which is to say, an incorrect consensus.

@Buddy said:

And unlike our libertarian friends here, I do believe that there exist natural barriers to entry for people wishing to enter the field of programming, in that learning to program represents a significant investment of time, money and energy.

I am one of the libertarian minded people here, but this strawman of yours is pretty dumb. It certainly doesn't represent my ideas on the topic.

boomzilla

@dhromed said:

There's some bullshit rationalizations like ... "I'm going to redefine feminism to something I don't like so that I can disagree with it, demonize it, and not have to think about what I say and do"

But why bother with all that when the real thing is so terrible to begin with?

@dhromed said:

but I do not think for one minute that TDWTF actively belittles or looks down on women.

Only inasmuch as they are people just like men. Obviously, we really hate men, as most of our terrible stories are about men. Fuck, what horrible bunch of man haters we are.

Buddy

@boomzilla said:

So what? You're just another envious asshole who can't stand to see other people doing better than you because you're such a special snowflake.

No. In the interests of increased competition, and therefore economic efficiency, I think that it is desirable to have as many people participating in free market trade as possible. It is my understanding that people who are unable to enter the market are not participating in free market trade.

PJH

So then, on a scale of MPS to Tunnelrat, what are people's opinions on this one?

boomzilla

@Buddy said:

No. In the interests of increased competition, and therefore economic efficiency, I think that it is desirable to have as many people participating in free market trade as possible. It is my understanding that people who are unable to enter the market are not participating in free market trade.

So...what would improve the current situation (i.e., people already own stuff)? Also, enter the market for what? There are lots of markets, and most of us start at the bottom somewhere. Some make it farther and bigger.

You say that you want people doing stuff, but then you say it's terrible that people have already done stuff because it might make it more difficult for other people to replace those people. This is not a very convincing line of argument so far.

boomzilla

@PJH said:

So then, on a scale of MPS to Tunnelrat, what are people's opinions on this one?

My opinion is that's a fucked up scale.

PJH

Thanks. Suggestions for orthogonal ax[i]es greatly appreciated...

GOG

@Buddy said:

It is my understanding that people who are unable to enter the market are not participating in free market trade.

And what is stopping them, precisely?

cartman82

Everyone, stop it, just STOP IT.

Don't you see that your misogyny and misandry are barriers to reading?

GOG

@cartman82 said:

Don't you see that your misogyny and misandry are barriers to reading?

Aw, but flamewars are so much fun!

boomzilla

@cartman82 said:

Don't you see that your misogyny and misandry are barriers to reading?

Wow. I finally get it now.

antiquarian

These "academic" definitions also serve as a useful warning. If someone is obviously using words in ways that don't match the dictionary definitions, they are not worth arguing with. If they use "privilege" as an abstract noun you can safely ignore whatever else they have to say.

boomzilla

@antiquarian said:

If they use "privilege" as an abstract noun you can safely ignore whatever else they have to say.

Dude. Check your old guy privilege already.

Filed Under: I never spell privilege correctly the first time, I'll get off your lawn now

Onyx

@boomzilla said:

Dude. Check your old guy privilege already.

Regular user atm. I can su if you really want.

dkf

@Onyx said:

Regular user atm. I can su if you really want.

And you're listed in /etc/sudoers, of course.

Onyx

@dkf said:

And you're listed in /etc/sudoers, of course.

Of course. That's done automatically if you specify "Male" when using the adduser script.

boomzilla

You still need to remember to be added to the oldboys group.

dkf

@boomzilla said:

You still need to remember to be added to the oldboys group.

Why would that be relevant?

Oldboy (2003 film) - Wikipedia

antiquarian

Even what counts as an asset changes over time. Crude oil wasn't an asset 300 years ago because no one knew what to do with it.

antiquarian

Wait, you're not a Marxist? I guess @boomzilla was right after all.

boomzilla

You guys should know that by now.

Buddy

Look, all I was trying to do was to defend my statement that capitalism is a system in which private parties could own the means of production, and that a logical conclusion we could draw from that was that in capitalism, private parties are able restrict other parties' ability to work productively. I thought that if I showed an example where a private party owned the means of production, and was therefore able to prevent another party's access to the means of production, thereby restricting that party's ability to produce, that would prove it. It seems pretty solid to me, I'm not sure what the problem is.

A thing about me is, I just love efficiency. I will support whichever system I believe is going to be the most efficient. And while I am very optimistic about the power of the free market, I am not convinced that any laissez-faire / capitalism setup will ever fail to devolve into total monopoly. Especially not if all libertarians share your "less people in the market => more market share for me" attitude.

GOG

@Buddy said:

I am not convinced that any laissez-faire / capitalism setup will ever fail to devolve into total monopoly.

In this you are absolutely correct: market consolidation is a positive feedback mechanism.

DrakeSmith

@Buddy said:

Especially not if all libertarians share your "less people in the market => more market share for me" attitude.

It amazes me that the same people that think people left to their own morality will automatically screw over the less fortunate in the name of gaining more stuff are the same ones who think that people under control of the government will work for little to no reward in the name of community and the global village

boomzilla

@Buddy said:

I'm not sure what the problem is.

Yes, neither can I.

@Buddy said:

...private parties are able restrict other parties' ability to work productively...

As always, left unsaid is the important part of this: "compared to what?"

@Buddy said:

Especially not if all libertarians share your "less people in the market => more market share for me" attitude.

TDEMSYR

GOG

@DrakeSmith said:

It amazes me that the same people that think people left to their own morality will automatically screw over the less fortunate in the name of gaining more stuff are the same ones who think that people under control of the government will work for little to no reward in the name of community and the global village

Try living in a Communist country. It's amazing how little reward people will accept.

Filed under: gulags focus the mind wonderfully

antiquarian

"So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."

DrakeSmith

@GOG said:

Try living in a Communist country. It's amazing how little reward people will accept.

I worked with a guy who grew up in Poland and spent much of his young adult life there (he's nearly a senior citizen now ) and the current direction of the US scares the crap out of him.

GOG

@DrakeSmith said:

the current direction of the US scares the crap out of him

Me too, but probably for different reasons.

Filed under: not my problem, though

antiquarian

@DrakeSmith said:

It amazes me that the same people that think people left to their own morality will automatically screw over the less fortunate in the name of gaining more stuff are the same ones who think that people under control of the government will work for little to no reward in the name of community and the global village

This is especially mystifying given the revolving door between government and big business.

boomzilla

@GOG said:

Try living in a Communist country. It's amazing how little reward people will accept.

They'll go after whatever they can, of course. The main difference being that most everyone else tends to benefit from people being successful in free enterprise, but tend to suffer from people being successful in government.