MESSAGE
| DATE | 2015-03-22 |
| FROM | Rick Moen
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| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] in the hands of god, we are all...
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Quoting Ruben Safir (mrbrklyn-at-panix.com):
> No - it is the opposite. Eventually EVERYONE comes to agree with me.
> It just takes them to long to get their heads turned on straight.
This is where the Internet breeds delusion: See, if you were in the
same room as your audience, you'd be able to see their eyes glazing
over, intensely studying the dots on the ceiling, finding reasons to be
elsewhere, and otherwise finding socially-graceful ways to ignore and
avoid you. By contrast, on the Internet, you cannot actually see people
hitting the 'd' command, plonking you, or rolling their eyes and
ignoring what you say, and thus the Internet becomes the crank's most
cherished comfort.
When blogging started, at first I thought they were silly, and then I
realised the invention was crazy like a fox: Suddenly, tens of
thousands of delusional and boring people can minutely detail their
innermost thoughts and opinions, patting themselves on the back for
advancing the state of public knowledge, and the rest of us can quietly
and effortlessly ignore them. Fabulous invention! And it gets them off
Usenet! Win!
Perhaps sensing the trap in an inconvenient display of awareness, you
are _not_ sending sententious and ridiculous broadsides to a blog, but
instead barraging multiple mailing lists with them to _force_ people to
be exposed to your ineffectively argued and polemical advocacy posts.
(Hangout is a special case, of course, as it appears tailor-made for you
and for your thoughts-du-jour on everything and anything. No, CABAL's
mailing list is not a parallel case, as there is at least a minimal
expection of LUG topicality, enforced against everyone starting first
and foremost with me, the listadmin.)
What you don't see, by the convenient way the Internet conceals the act
of futility and looking-away, is all the many people who habitually
disregard the current arrival from Rubenworld after verifying that the
first two lines are just as ranty as the earlier ones.
> It is not a smoke detector. It is a COOKIJNG ALARM. There is a huge
> difference.
As chance would have it, right when you telephoned me, I was cooking
potstickers again, such that you when greeted me with 'What's cooking?' I
cheerily responded 'Potstickers!' Cooking in a wok, using olive oil,
which tends to generate smoke (because I'm too stubborn to usually stock
and favour for wok-cooking higher-smoke-point oils such as sesame oil).
A wok is practically the worst-case example for smoke generation,
especially when you're a stiff-necked Norwegian[1] too stubborn to
switch to sesame seed oil.
We talked for 20 minutes until I done cooking and chowing down the
potstickers, and you'll notice that the dining-room smoke detector 8'
away from the wok did not go off, probably because I didn't burn
anything and was attentive. But no windows or doors were open.
The dining room smoke detector doesn't _always_ go off when I cook, you
see. Not even with wok braising, and even with stubbornly wrong choices
of cooking oil.
So, what the Gehenna is wrong with _your_ kitchen? Maybe you need,
like, a vent? A window? Moving to somewhere else with a better kitchen?
> I'm sitting smack dab dead center of the founding of the American
> Republic as you know it today, not that anyone in Brooklyn cares.
>
> Why is this important right now?
Because I'm an intellectual magpie.
[1] Jews are not the only historical example of stubborn cusses, Exodus
32:7, 32:9, and 33, and Deuteronomy 9:4-6, notwithstanding, nei? (I'm
not sure the translation of k'she oref is unambiguous, honestly, but
'stubborn' is my best shot.)
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