Who:
Aspie, polymath, slave to coffee, owned by cat, stranger in a strange land, fully biodegradable, attempted advocate for fairness, reason and sanity.
Where:
Where to Find MeGround Rules:
Pretty much any
CIVIL discussion on any subject goes, around here.
No, really, I mean it. It seems I have to spell this out:
Discuss anything that's reasonably on-topic, but KEEP IT CIVIL.
Violate this rule, and you're out. Approach the line, and I'll issue a caution.
Cross the line, and you'll get one warning. Ignore that warning, and say hello to /dev/null.¹
You'll find I'm pretty thick-skinned and not particularly easily offended, and willing to discuss pretty much anything as long as the discussion stays civil and intellectually honest.
BUT...
No cranks, please. Seriously.
...I have a low tolerance for bullshit, I do not suffer fools gladly, I do not have time to waste either on bigotry or on pseudo-scientific tinfoil-hat woo-woo (let alone outright frootloopery or crackpot conspiracy theories), and I absolutely
WILL NOT tolerate either trolling of any kind, nor deliberate intellectual dishonesty.
This, too, is out of bounds.Q: What do you mean by "frootloopery"?
Ancient astronauts. Pyramid Power. Secret Mayan super-civilizations. Immanuel Velikovsky (and his even loopier successors). "Planet Nibiru". Free energy and perpetual machines, even disguised and made to sound all
sciency-like by calling them "unity-plus" or "over-unity" machines.² The Bavarian Illuminati. UFOs. Alien moonbases. The Global Zionist Conspiracy. Troofers. Anything in that general pseudoscientific/conspiracy-theory vein. Anything that depends on declaring facts you don't like to be "fake news". If you have to ask yourself whether your favorite amazing ancient-wisdom-handed-down "esoteric theory" that is soundly rejected by normal scientific consensus fits into this category, then
yes, it probably does. Discuss them all you want in your own posts, but
please keep them out of mine.
This goes
DOUBLE for QAnon and any such Trumpist bollocks. You want to talk about conservative viewpoints? Great, let's hear it. You want to try to convince me that the 2020 election was stolen or that the Founders never intended to separate church and state in the first place?
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.Right then. So, moving on...
Feel free to ask me any question at any time. I reserve the right to say “I don’t know” or decline to answer (and if the question is
excessively stupid³ or intentionally rude/offensive, I
might even put you on ignore), but questions are free. Some questions, I might decline to answer
in public. But in general, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers.
There is a relevant Japanese proverb here:
Kiku wa ittoki no haji, kikanu wa matsudai no haji. "If you ask a stupid question, you feel stupid. If you don't ask a stupid question, you remain stupid." And if you seriously, honestly
want to know something, please don't be afraid to ask the question. Either I or someone else in this little space will do our best to answer it. But
don't ask me to do your homework or your research — or your thinking — for you. That's
your job. I'll gladly point you in the direction of the facts. Reading and understanding them is your responsibility.
Topics:
I'm going to
TRY to use relevant hashtags for anything I post that's not simple general interest. (Not that I know yet how much that is going to be.) I originally
expected the most common ones to be #STEM, #space, #science, #civics, #politics, #arms, #firearms, #scifi, and #aspie or #aspergers, but, well, you know what Robbie Burns said about mice and men.
The distinction between #civics and #politics is that I intend #civics to be as much as possible non-partisan, calm discussions of issues surrounding law, government, and their intersection with society. I make no such non-partisan guarantee for #politics, and it may get heated, but I will nevertheless always try to be fair.
I will try to consistently use #ironhand or #jarnhandr for posts on personal updates.
Why Ironhand? Well, because a long time ago a "Viking Name Generator" page tossed me out Alrekr Ironhand, and I liked it. It turns out to be pretty good identifier to use for my inner Norseman.⁴ And 'jarnhandr', well, is 'ironhand' in Old Norse.
¹ A Unix term meaning the circular file, the black hole, write-only memory, the place where unwanted data goes to die.
² Try as you might,
you cannot cheat the first law of thermodynamics. If something
APPEARS to violate the laws of thermodynamics, either
IT'S A TRICK or you have not taken
everything into account.
³ By which I mean, stupid enough that you're clearly either trolling or a crackpot. Or idiotic comments that make it obvious you failed freshman English reading comprehension.
⁴ No, not inner
Viking. Inner
Norseman. 'Viking' isn't a nation or an ethnicity. It's an activity, a
job description. Like 'freebooter' or 'explorer' — and having something in common with both of these, as well as with 'raider'.
Friendica software. To learn how to make your own, go look at https://friendi.ca
This could not have been written on Mastodon without splitting it into at least three posts. And it's not even a complex concept. 500 characters at a time is not enough to hold a meaningful conversation.