Okay. Enough faffing around. I’ve managed to get some traction with work so here’s to another solid few hours of documentation. Gonna break it up with browsing seek, just to start getting an idea of what to move to next.
I need to figure out what I’m doing by 18 Feb which is when I’m expecting the next rent increase email. By 18 Apr I gotta either have a really good reason to stay in Melbourne and the job to go with it, or have my next digs lined up.
Cake is in oven. Estimated cooking finish time 1620hrs. The oven won’t let me put in a time longer than 2 hours. Even technology has a short attention span these days.
Edit: Cake is now out of the oven, has been brushed with brandy and is cooling down under a foil cover. Next step involves more brandy and a thorough wrapping before putting it away to mature. A good rich fruit cake is a preserve, not a dessert. I will probably start eating this one in the latter half of next year.
Does the oven timer switch the oven off? If not surely in todays society there are multitude of better options for a timer :P
Effing terrifying. My work colleague’s sister just turned up on my FB. Which uses not my legal variant. About that cabin with established well…
Israeli occupation has arrested all the journalists and started storming the al-Shifa hospital 😬
When the Nazis occupied the Netherlands when my mum was a young teen they took over all the government functions. They ran the schools and changed the curriculum , the local police, all the medical, infrastructure, taxation, stopped elections, etc etc.
Has Israel been doing that?
Why is nuanced discussion so impossible on the internet? Is that people are inherently fucked or is there something about the medium itself that discourages it?
little from column A little from column B.
reading in text strips out any tone, so people will wildly misinterpret based on their own emotional state. Then you fold in the utter solipsism sitting in front of a keyboard gives you that provokes umbrage when challenged in your fiefdom. Now add issues that may be contentious that attract bad faith actors like flies and it all goes to shit.
People are not great at nuanced discussion at the best of times, but in real life people are somewhat forced to listen to other people and maintain civil relationships. People also seem to find it harder online to recognise when their behaviour is completely out of line - the sorts of harassment and bullying that is rife on the internet is rarely tolerated in real life groups.
The ability for people to segregate themselves into their own echo chambers and only associate with people who think like them has also worked to both make people’s views more extreme and to make people lose their skills in talking to people they don’t agree with. People often don’t recognise it in themselves though, possibly because they are “engaging” with fake straw-man versions of opposing thought - individual people and articles taken out of context and imaginary scenarios abound, and people love to argue those.
hard agree
and it’s the evil facebook and google algorithms ( for clicks, advertising revenue and stock prices ) that put people into echo chambers and made extreme negative views and reactions more acceptable
and like I said, it’s hard to resist social pressure, no one wants to be called sexist or racist or unpatriotic or unchristian , etc etc
People don’t like being called sexist or racist etc, but they sure do like hurling the accusations around at everyone else. I have also found logical fallacies can be wielded like a weapon instead of a tool - I have been accused of using every possible logical fallacy in a single short post, by a supposedly open-minded group who used it as a way of avoiding instead of engaging with the issues I wanted to talk about.
I think it mostly comes down to an inability to truly listen, and a lack of desire to understand what another person actually means. “Listening” seems to be a matter of listening for a few key terms so you can sort people into an “us” or “them” group, and then assuming you already know everything about what they believe.
is there something about the medium itself that discourages it?
Yes. The way the internet is designed , especially social media, news and advertisements creates lower attention spans and thus people don’t have the stamina or patience to read hard things.
Another reason, and this is not due to internets, is that educamation has been democratised. Some people if they are presented with information they don’t know or that requires some thought say they are being discriminated against.
Another is that it’s hard to analyse and refute logical fallacies . It takes a lot of expertise and practise to see how discussions are hijacked or influenced.
People will say nothing rather than risk being called racist or sexist and thus nuance is lost.
It bothers me when thinking and questioning is said to be supporting racism, sexism, etc etc. This is the opposite of freedom and only evil thrives in ignorance.
The refutation to most difficult issues and situations is. "I really want to help people and this is such an important issue that I am going to think about this and find out more. "
Please, in all issues listen and discuss. Changing people’s minds or tolerance of difference is not easy but it’s better than hate and division
