What really grinds my gears is my frustration with me, wanting to connect with someone but not having the courage to approach anyone for fear of having them laugh at me or being disdainful toward me.
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People overpromising on things that someone else has to deliver, especially when the person making the promise has no idea how messed up things are and how much work is required to make it happen. You want to be that nice and make it happen that fast? Do it yourself. Don’t unload responsibility for your inability to say “no” onto someone else.
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Ohhhh, and people who say they wanna take you to lunch/coffee/somehow get together, and you ask when and hear…
https://media.giphy.com/media/l2R013mIf1ZXdvoyI/giphy.gif
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That sounds kinky.
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People who are happy to let sexism slide, but as soon as anyone calls it out, declare they don’t want “to see that crap in this community” where “that crap” is feminism/basic decency.
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This x1000.
See also racism, classism, and really any kind of discrimination.
Its so fun when the calling out of the thing becomes the thing being called out. /sigh
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Fuckin’ A!
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Per The Other Site — here’s today’s ‘top clickbait story’. Bet you can guess who the author is just by reading the headline!
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But… that’s basically true.
Pressed juice (that is, not blender-ized fruit) is, in fact, basically sugar and water. Might as well drink soda, at that point.
Smoothies and whole-fruit-blended-into-drinkable-form? That’s a totally different thing. Same amount of sugar, but buffered by the fiber and whatnot.
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Yes, I’m aware that fruit juice is very high in fructose and is very sugary, and it should be consumed in moderation.
The point is that Cory has a habit of posting these things as clickbait, with very dodgy sources, emphasizing the alarmism and terror elements of anything. Remember when BB used to post articles about “wonderful things” – say, an article from Xeni about the joys of juicing fruits and vegetables at home, with the caveat that they have sugar, so to drink in moderation? Instead we have JUICE IS SUGAR WATER!
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His tone has gotten somewhat more alarmist/fringe over the last few years. I’d totally agree to that.
It leaves me to wonder if his constant scouring of the net for content to post for so many years has left him a bit crispy around the edges? Xeni seems to have weathered somewhat better on that front, but yes: there seems to be less of the magical there and more of the oh-my-god-look-at-this-thing sort of vibe.
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Further evidence that Randall Munroe reads this site:
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I think it’s a combination of a bunch of things – as you say, maintaining his output of articles must lead him to scrape the barrel quite a bit, and he has a habit of posting things which he’s clearly just skimmed the first sentence of. His tone was also much more… nuanced before his career became focused both on security/digital rights and writing speculative fiction about such. I can only imagine that if your entire life is essentially focused on thinking about digital security and Tor, you’re going to get a wee bit paranoid and fringy, even about something like orange juice.
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It’s felt like the focus of his career (for the last, say 5? 6? years) has firmly been on his novels- at that’s (obviously) a totally fine choice. But it means that his BB posts often feel like they’re done out of obligation. I guess what I mean is it feels like he clearly doesn’t give a shit about the quality of his work there anymore.
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I can imagine that having access to article stats incorporating the numbers of views, average length of time spent reading, numbers of ad-clicks (and conversions) - and yes, the amount of comments generated as a result - would over time tend to influence people to adapt their output to whatever brings in the stats. (Especially if money and/or competition is involved)
The dark side of gamification. 
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Okay - one of the dark sides of gamification.
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You! Yes, you! With the four children, the huge baby-carrying backpack and the fucking pushchair on the packed commuter train in rush hour!
Stop asking your crying child if he wants to get off the train. He never wanted to be on this train because he’s three years old and not a commuter. What could you possibly be doing as a family that absolutely requires that you get this train and not one in say, 15 minutes, after rush hour is over?
Aaaaaand breathe. I fucking hate commuting.
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I have not been back to the Owlstar since this place opened to me, and I find @doctorow’s contributions to be something opposite to the reason I’m here. I’m not going back, but Cory was part of what made that place cool. Quibble all you like, but he’s got a grip on the corporate bullshit of this world like none of the other authors did. Even Xeni.
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It’s true that Doctorow is prone to both hyperbole and alarm-ism; I noticed that immediately upon joining the BBS.
But again, the site I came from was so much worse, and so much more toxic; so I can readily overlook pretty much any of Cory’s obvious clickbait… especially since he doesn’t really engage the community one on one.
SodaDead’s former head honcho was not only ‘interactive,’ he was passively creepy as fuck.
O_o
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Cory was a big part of what drew me to BB in the first place, absolutely. I loved the way the three main authors balanced each other; it often felt like the three of them were in the same room together, riffing ideas back and forth, with Cory’s articles cutting through the BS, as you say. These days? His articles are 95% BS. So I try to ignore them.
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