patrick.net

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostakovitch says

But you told me I was OBLIGATED! TO! OFFEND!

I took lessons and everything!

@APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostakovitch we all love you, we really do, but you get the idea.

Let's work together against our owners instead of being divided against each other.

I know you don't like Trump and that's fine. But it would be nice to talk about concrete reasons and things we can do to improve our situation.

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostakovitch says

But you told me I was OBLIGATED! TO! OFFEND!

I took lessons and everything!

Patrick says

richwicks says

Patrick says

The source code is at

You sure you want to leave it open for, well, theft?

Remember, that's how Fuckerberg made his money, stealing code.

You're right. Deleted.

You can just make it private!

You don't want to lose your history.

Shit, I should have copied it. If you're willing, I'll take a copy to develop it. I have a couple of good ideas that are patentable, but not really suitable for this site. If you're willing to allow me have a copy I'll partner with anything I produce.

marcus says

It's a mistake. Divisive is in the eyes of the beholder.

Well, we disagree there too. Maybe some divisive examples will help:

- All Trumpists are retarded and I hate them!
- Only the left is violent (that's me, and I regret it in some ways, but still believe it's pretty much true, especially after these riots)
- Trump sucks donkey dick!

Not divisive:

- Why does anyone support Trump? I don't understand it.
- The majority of political violence seems to emanate from the left lately.
- I don't think Trump is a good president because he is protecting Saudia Arabia, the source of the 9/11 attack.

A modicum of sympathy for the commenter goes a long way too.

We really are all on the same team, team proletariat, but don't see it clearly. Well, maybe someone on here has direct influence over lawmakers via lobbying cash, but it doesn't seem likely.

rdm says

My guess is this site which is already 80% right will become the right wing echo chamber that is reflected on multiple threads. But it will be civil and un-divisive because everyone on the right generally agrees with each other as to the main issues

What are the issues?

When I attempt to engage with somebody on "the left", they seem so steer well clear of what I consider issues. Here's a couple of issues I am concerned with.

1) War - what is our missing in Afghanistan? How about Syria? Yemen? WTF are we are war?
2) misinformation or propaganda in the "mainstream news".
3) corruption in our intelligence agencies. I have seen multiple intelligence officials lie to Congress and not be prosecuted for perjury.
4) corruption in the Department of Justice. Flynn was railroaded, why is nobody held accountable?
5) corruption in the Department of Justice. They refused to prosecute Clinton although they had her dead to rights on placing classified information on an unsecured server. If I had done that, I'd probably just be getting out of jail now.
6) censorship promoted by the government. The internet was specifically created to end censorship, it's been ramped up.

What are your priorities? What do you consider important issues?

richwicks says

You can just make it private!

You don't want to lose your history.

Shit, I should have copied it. If you're willing, I'll take a copy to develop it. I have a couple of good ideas that are patentable, but not really suitable for this site. If you're willing to allow me have a copy I'll partner with anything I produce.

I have the history since it's a git repo. It's all there.

I'll send you a copy if you send me your email, but I don't want to get legally entangled. Limits my options, might be used to shut down the site, and a friend warned me about unwittingly accumulating "business partners". That was actually the basis of the Winklevosses suit against Zuckerberg iirc.

That is, I don't mind it being open source, but I want to keep the copyright.

marcus says

Patrick says

Still going to work on jazz's idea of extracting links from posts.

He had the idea too. Cool.

Oops, might have been you.

Some people won't be corrected. You can point out the flaws in their reason and they will react emotionally. Instead of debate they attack you personally. They can look at the same numbers but reach different sums.

Patnet's come a long way in the near decade I have been lurking. I have learned a lot about topics I never would have heard about. I've also jumped down rabbit holes that, while plausible, seem impossible.

This place causes cognitive dissonance. It then becomes a free for all of ideas and "evidence". I've watched heads explode.

Don't change too much.

Thank you. I hope to keep it essentially the same, just less acrimony.

jazz_music says

This is a totally real problem and I guess that’s why it was so important to create it that money was no object.

What does this even mean? Honest question....

richwicks says

I just followed the thread up clicking the "soinso says" part, and ended up with your post - it wasn't even clear to me you were responding to somebody.

The "quote" thing is kind of buggy, so if you select text in one comment and click quote in another, it puts the wrong reference. Need to fix that. But you gave me a new idea: clicking quote without selecting any text should just say "In reply to: " and the link to that comment.

jazz_music says

That comment was to the commenter above that starts right in with “TDS” since the accuser is actually the afflicted.

You're right, that's divisive too.

We're just taking baby steps here so far.

FuckTheMainstreamMedia says

one should be able to simply link and quote an editorial or editorialized(IE Washington post) article and not themselves explain why it’s relevant

That one's hard to fix. There is no input filter really.

jazz_music says

WookieMan says

What does this even mean? Honest question....

Does the part I just added offer any help?

I'm probably an idiot. No.

I feel like you're trying to be a wordsmith/intellectual instead of just getting to a statement or fact. There's nothing in your comment that makes sense. An opinion, not a knock. Your writing just doesn't and hasn't made sense since I've been here. You're like the English professor trying to justify a bull shit degree. You're trying to write eloquently instead of just getting to the point. My observation, mark it personal. I give zero shits.

Patrick says

This place causes cognitive dissonance. It then becomes a free for all of ideas and "evidence". I've watched heads explode.

When I was a young man an older man had a discussion with me and told me essentially "eliminate your cognitive dissonance - when you encounter it, you have at least one belief that is incorrect - make a point to find out which belief you have that is incorrect, and eliminate it."

20 years later, I barely experience it anymore.

I run into people I disagree with certainly still, but I rarely get into arguments.

I would add two other ideas as well to the advice I was given:

1) don't assume the person is "dumb" or "stupid" - assume they either don't know something you know, or they know something you don't know.
2) don't assume they are being dishonest and arguing something they don't believe to be true.

I'm grateful to that guy. He was one of my mentors when I was an engineer.

Patrick says

I'll send you a copy if you send me your email, but I don't want to get legally entangled. Limits my options, might be used to shut down the site, and a friend warned me about unwittingly accumulating "business partners". That was actually the basis of the Winklevosses suit against Zuckerberg iirc.

That is, I don't mind it being open source, but I want to keep the copyright.

I'll sign an NDA if you like. I don't mind signing one. I want to develop some ideas, and I want to keep those ideas, but I don't want to develop code from scratch, and I'd be happy to share the ideas once I do proof of concept. I intend to patent a few but I'll share the rights to you, if any can be patented. If they can't, of course, they are just yours.

You should create a copyright header in the source. Email isn't secure unless you encrypt it. If you're working with Linux, zip uses AES256.

I think I have a way to eliminate propaganda and spam. That's my idea I want to develop - and I think the method will work to truly make propaganda and spam impossible. My cousin is a patent attorney (a good one) but he won't waste time helping somebody draw up a patent without proof of concept and some sort of business plan, and a portion of the take on profits.

I understand that, I'm an sw engineer. I won't spend 10 minutes on somebody's "great idea". Somehow they think my time is worthless and it doesn't take more than a minute to do whatever "great idea" they have.

jazz_music says

you can gleen a wealth of knowledge by considering what subjects are NOT presented

Agreed. It's hard to see what isn't there, but it's the most important thing.

Every newspaper has a business section. No newspaper has a labor section.

.

jazz_music says

1992 Los Angeles riots- The CA National Guard is used to quell riots in the aftermath of the acquittal of four LAPD officers accused of beating Rodney King

They called in the National Guard cause LAPD refused to protect neighbors like Koreantown.

In fact, the reason for Korean Americans on rooftops during the LA Riots of 1992 was because LAPD pulled out and only were protecting white liberal neighborhoods like West Hollywood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills.

I wonder if liberals and left wing militants, wanted to see the rioters destroy Koreantown especially because they did not want to see the Korean Americans on rooftops exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.
.

jazz_music says

Could it be that wookie doesn’t agree that a no-limit investment has been made to create 2 different sets of basic facts in our country?

I'm lost. I've tried with you. I don't know if English isn't your first language or what. You don't make sense 9 out of 10 times. That's not a personal dig, just an admission that I don't understand what the hell you're saying most the time. Your sentence structure and thoughts read like 3+3 equaling 45.3.

jazz_music says

I'm grateful to that guy. He was one of my mentors when I was an engineer.

And he never got trolled

He wouldn't waste his time on this. He didn't care about politics much I don't think, he cared about engineering.

People who troll, there's something wrong with them I think. They waste their time, they waste somebody else's time, nothing is to be gained. It's said children act out to get attention. I wonder if they are so unable to communicate that they create controversy because they are unable to connect with an actual human being and any level of attention is better than none at all, even if it's entirely negative.

Of course, I've run into professional trolls. Their job is to disrupt a conversation so that consensus can't be made that they are paid to prevent.

jazz_music says

I avoid stilted language, I dislike that too. Maybe I end up being terse when using the iPhone. That does influence me different from the computer.

Phones are the worst. I get the convenience, but everything gets lost in trying to be expedient with language. Half the fights with my wife are from texts that are quick and/or voice to text. It's like "what the hell is your problem" when she texts me. When in reality no one is upset. I'm desktop 98% of the time. Phone and iPads can go to hell. Although I get shit on for typing novels.

jazz_music says

All true, but the next level was taken by the right wing which is to constantly elevate conspiracies and other lies.

\

Conspiracies happen of course.

Operation Ajax is a conspiracy that was a "conspiracy theory" when I was in my 20's - FOIA exposed it in the late 1990s
Operation PBSuccess - the same
Project MKUltra.
Operation Gladio.
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
"Weapons of mass destruction" was a known lie, coordinated with multiple people - including our press.
"Qaddafi is about to cause a humanitarian crisis" was a known lie, coordinated with multiple people - including our press.
"Assad is gassing his own people" was a known lie, coordinated with multiple people - including our press.

So - wow. You don't realize that conspiracies do happen!

That's pretty ironic because if there was "Russian collusion" that would be a conspiracy between Trump, members of his administration, and members of the Russian government.

However - if there was no evidence at all for "Russian Collusion" - that would also be a conspiracy between our press and our intelligence agencies to lie to the public.

It must be quite a burden to have your set of beliefs, based on the one.

jazz_music says

You can end up arguing all day whether shit is brown. They consistently claim that you are talking nonsense and comment on people like you, your mother, your age, size, employment, sex life, IQ, ad infinitum.

Normally trolls I run into argue something they are paid to "believe" in. If it becomes just a set if personal insults, I ignore the insults entirely, and go back to the subject.

jazz_music says

richwicks says

So - wow. You don't realize that conspiracies do happen!

I think that consuming conspiracy theories every day is like picking your nose and eating it.

Go ahead.

I just showed you a conspiracy that must have happened one way or another - within our government. Either Trump and his administration conspired with the Russian government, OR the intelligence agencies and the press conspired against Trump.

Regardless of which one it is, there was a conspiracy but you still contend conspiracies don't exist.

Just because I said "don't assume they [the person you are talking with] are being dishonest and arguing something they don't believe to be true" - doesn't mean you can't definitely determine they are arguing something they don't believe to be true.

I will bookmark this conversation to demonstrate to others.

https://patrick.net/post/1332643&offset=#comment-1675722

Need that in there...

jazz_music says

richwicks says

you still contend conspiracies don't exist.

Dude, really?

Go ahead. It takes no effort and makes you feel harder, feel smarter and “in the know”

Here, let me simplify this. Do you believe in conspiracies within the government, what some people would deride as "conspiracy theories"?

Yes or no?

I believe in "naturally occurring" conspiracies, in which a group of businessmen decide it's in their interest to secretly manipulate the market or the public or the laws.

The creation of the Federal Reserve in secret in 1913 on Jekyll Island should give everyone the willies.

There is the phrase "All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

Patrick says

I believe in "naturally occurring" conspiracies, in which a group of businessmen decide it's in their interest to secretly manipulate the market or the public or the laws.

So the Reichstag fire wasn't burned down by the Nazis to blame their enemy, the Communists?

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident DID happen?

On a lighter note:

www.youtube.com/embed/yuC_4mGTs98

This place has come a long way from the days when all we argued about were housing prices and when to buy... some good (more issues takenn on, both sides of a given argument represented, interesting investment advice, etc.) Some not so good. (Trolls, name-calling, insane banter, etc.)

On the whole I think this place has a diverse, educated and well rounded group of free thinkers...

Thats one of the things that keeps me coming back...

That and some of the humor threads. I don't care if a meme attacks the left or the right... funny is funny and sometimes you just half to laugh at yourself...

Patrick keep doing what your doing man... all the best to you and yours.

@marcus you got your wish, now there is a list of newslinks. It's the first external link in each post.

You can also navigate to there from the header now.

The titles are the titles of the posts they were in. Probably not the best choice, but it was easy for now.

jazz_music says

richwicks says

Do you believe in conspiracies within the government, what some people would deride as "conspiracy theories"?

Yes or no?

Sometimes yes, mostly no.

So yes then. Some conspiracy theories are obviously fake, some are jokes taken to an extreme.

jazz_music says

We got people making up shit every day and it’s lucrative too. They’re making millions per year just lying and pushing people’s buttons.

Who cares? The more people get tricked into believing something is false, the sharper their skepticism becomes when they realize they were taken in.

Media makes shit up every day. Now they're ignored because they lied too much.

Oh no, people will have to learn they actually have to look stuff up and check, and gasp remain skeptical about anything they've been told and not commit to a judgement on whether it's true or false right away.

Do you know what this means????

People will have to use critical judgement and abandon the idea that there are authorities on information entirely! Think about this, how many journalists can you count off the top of your head, which reliably tell the truth and not mislead you intentionally? For me it's 5: John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Mate, Julian Assange - and I am well aware they can (and do) make mistakes and I will abandon them when they outright lie - I used to trust Rachael Maddow, and Keith Olbermann.

jazz_music says

I read an article by a programmer that would make up a conspiracy every day and sell it and earn more than he could by programming.

What makes you think the article was true? After all, the author is a guy that claims to create lies which are passed off as truth.

I am trying to figure out why a programmer wouldn't write up two conspiracies every day? Maybe the article was false, and it was just a "journalist" who was cashing into on the paranoia? Why do you believe a "programmer" that said he would create lies that paid more than his professional job, who was writing an article? The article could be a complete lie.

if you give me $5 - I'll tell you how to get rich: "Do as I do".

jazz_music says

Almost like saying “Do you believe you can win a contest and get notified by email?”

I'm pointing out that conspiracies do exist. Many conspiracy theories are created by the government themselves to discredit people doing legitimate investigation into conspiracies of the government. Hell the term "conspiracy theory" was created by the CIA to deride people questioning the death of JFK.

You know that "Flat Earth Movement" where supposedly a bunch of people believe the Earth is flat? They didn't exist at all on the internet in 2005 which was easily the dumbest time of the Internet - that's when everybody that hadn't gotten on to it, finally did by that time. There were no "flat Earthers" because "flat Earthers" don't believe in a flat Earth. They VAST majority of them are trolls, but if you talk about a "conspiracy theory" to somebody that is incredulous about government conspiracies, you get called a "flat Earther" though now.

So, now, before you say something like:

I find it suspicious that WTC7 collapsed without being struck by a plane, and the only explanation is fires - also the BBC reported if collapsed 20 minutes before it did, also Larry Silverstein said on television they they "made the decision to pull it", and Silverstein took out additional insurance on the WTC complex just months before it was destroyed - I suspect shenanigans

You have to start out with something much more tame like.

Do you know what Operation Ajax/the Gulf of Tonkin/Insert proven conspiracy of the government here/Project MKUltra was?

It's just a game with finite moves. One side is lying, so they devise a trick, the other side is telling/discovering the truth, and they discover the trick and learn it. New tricks are made, they are discovered then sidesteeped the next time they are hit, etc etc. but the end game is when you run out of tricks. It's an iterative process.

We're on the internet. I can learn from thousands of people and those thousand can learn from thousands and there's a ton of us that just want to figure out what the hell is going on. The full of crap side is starting to run out of tricks. Actually they ran out of good tricks years ago, but it's that YOU have to learn the tricks. Some of them, you actually know, but I've run into them before. You're possibly unaware they are tricks, but they are. Tricks like getting the other side angry, tricks like deriding their logic but without specifying what the error is, tricks like denying a fact which I have ready access to either good evidence or proof.

I can see people think CONSIDERABLY better today than they did 20 years ago. Talk to a boomer about a "conspiracy theory" and shit, they just about go crazy about what a whack job you are - they get angry. Talk to a 30 year old and explain your reasoning, and show your facts, demonstrate why you believe what you believe, provide evidence for everything you say - and in about an hour they will at least suspect maybe you're right.

I want a discussion, not a debate, because that's how you learn. Socratic method.

WineHorror1 says

Are there banned words on patrick.net?

Fuck no.

But -- please don't use "libtard" or "Trumpista" etc just because those are divisive and we should try to be unified.

jazz_music says

Here's a conspiracy I believe because no news show ever mentioned a word about the possibility that a prescription drug side effect caused Robin Williams' death. The possibility of truth of harmful prescription drug was never mentioned so that looks very suspicious to me.

It's well known certain drugs can cause severe mood changes. I wouldn't ever go on anti-depressants for example. I'd never take ambien.

I consider it possible that it caused William's death. Also, he had 3 ex wives sucking him dry for money. I really think they killed him, but it's just an opinion, I don't know. They got a considerable amount of alimony.

jazz_music says

However I think it is rare that you catch MSM in a baldfaced lie

Here is a bold faced lie:

www.youtube.com/embed/S2uCAn057CM
(that's an obvious green screen - even more amusing one image was interlaced, they they got the frame playing in the wrong order - that's why the rail is jagged)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_5mct8WArc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8abLxGh_RQc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBgViIGLo-w
(because you'd sniff a backpack after a SARIN GAS ATTACK)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2zg23RMzbY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KsEfpDg35c

I have hundreds of examples. I collect them for fun!

Propaganda is EVERYWHERE, it's on all the channels. I don't think I bothered to find anything from Fox because, well you already know.

jazz_music says

then also there are a lot of wannabe sites that are not so funded such as thebitchute

If any of those videos didn't work, that's what Bitchute is for. I guess it might be right wing... The reality is a lot of people post there because they are banned on youtube, and that includes anybody questioning "the narrative" - the "official narrative" from "authoritative sources". I can show you a ton of videos that were taken off from youtube, simply because they didn't pull the line for our oligarchs.

Happens all the time.

Anyhow, don't think propaganda is a new thing that just popped up in the last few years. This is from Desert Storm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMtxbPdvzg

Back when you could pick up news feeds directly from satellites. This has been going on for at least 30 years, and probably, all my life. Our "news" media deliberately lies all the time, or at least has since 1990. Getting that footage is more difficult.

Patrick says

@marcus you got your wish, now there is a list of newslinks. It's the first external link in each post.

Thanks. I like it. You might want to call it news (and opinion) links or something like that (not that it matters to me), since sometimes they are very much or relatively editorial. But then again it's less concise. You sure cranked that out quick. I think it's an improvement.

A middle path might be to leave it "news links" on the front page, and put something like "News and opinion links" on the title of the page where the list occurs. Trivial stuff anyway, but maybe keeping it real for new visitors.

marcus says

Thanks. I like it.

I do too. If it were me, I'd try to make it more prominent on the homepage. With this I can now come here and grab information and not necessarily go down the rabbit hole and get into conversation/debate all the time. But if I have the time I can still do that.

marcus says

You sure cranked that out quick.

After starting on it, I discovered that I still had code for extracting newslinks from posts and making a page out of them from several years ago. That really sped it up.

I also have code for mailing it out to subscribers, but the quality of links would have to improve.

Maybe I should grab the actual title from each link instead of having the user-written post titles. That's a bit hard too, because web page titles often have a lot of irrelevant or repetitive stuff in them, advertising for that site essentially.

richwicks says

I'll sign an NDA if you like. I don't mind signing one. I want to develop some ideas, and I want to keep those ideas, but I don't want to develop code from scratch, and I'd be happy to share the ideas once I do proof of concept. I intend to patent a few but I'll share the rights to you, if any can be patented. If they can't, of course, they are just yours.

You should create a copyright header in the source. Email isn't secure unless you encrypt it. If you're working with Linux, zip uses AES256.

I think I have a way to eliminate propaganda and spam. That's my idea I want to develop - and I think the method will work to truly make propaganda and spam impossible. My cousin is a patent attorney (a good one) but he won't waste time helping somebody draw up a patent without proof of concept and some sort of business plan, and a portion of the take on profits.

I understand that, I'm an sw engineer. I won't spend 10 minutes on somebody's "great idea".

Good point about the copyright header. I'll add that.

But if you just want to work on ideas, why not use the Wordpress code? It's out there and well polished.

One lesson from engineering school is that the idea is not as important as being able to implement it, which is usually a long slog through the mud. Hardly anyone gets rich from an idea. They get rich by actually building the thing, providing value, and getting people to pay.

Patrick says

They get rich by actually building the thing, providing value, and getting people to pay.

You don't even have to build it anymore, Obama did that for you ;) Sarcasm aside, creating and bringing something of value to people is the core of it all. The pay will come if there's value to another human.

I love publisher Tim O'Reilly's philosophy:

"Find people in pain. If you can take away their pain, they will happily pay you."

Patrick says

But if you just want to work on ideas, why not use the Wordpress code? It's out there and well polished.

@Patrick - is there any way to post a private message here, just to one person?

richwicks says

Patrick says

But if you just want to work on ideas, why not use the Wordpress code? It's out there and well polished.

@Patrick - is there any way to post a private message here, just to one person?

@richwicks No, I thought about it, and for a while had a "friend" function which would expose your email address to another user. Maybe I should bring that back.

The main problem with private communication on this site is that users will literally threaten each other with physical violence over that channel, and then I have to deal with the police.

How about just a way for two users to agree to share email addresses?