Venting thread

[Raphael]

malloc: I might partly know how you feel. I find it very difficult to find entertainment that "clicks" for myself, too, though usually the problem is not about politics.

Linguoboy: Your building has what? Anyway, commiserations.

[Raphael]

Unrelated: apparently, my cellphone spent a day or more in "do not disturb" mode without me noticing it. Either I hit some wrong button, or it "imagined" gestures I didn't make (it does that sometimes). And that was the one day when, at one point, someone tried to make an important call to me. In my life right now, that happens about once in a blue moon. That Murphy guy was clearly on to something.

[Linguoboy]

Linguoboy: Your building has what? Anyway, commiserations.

My building has two shared water heaters. My apartment has a Brita pitcher so I can filter the nasty minerals out of the water I drink and a shared bidet installed by my housemate so I feel clean and fresh every morning.

My current annoyance is with the HOA board. The president is a friend of mine and she's like, "heads up, the guy next door is going to take down the shared fence and the boxwoods along it" and I'm like "is all that on his property?" and she's like "I dunno". Like could you fucking check? You're the president and you don't care if someone dispossesses the HOA of property which is legally ours on your watch? So I guess it's my job to contact the Cook County Recorder's office today.

(Also, what kind of moron takes out a metal fence in good condition because he "doesn't want to maintain the gate"? Just take the gate off!)

[Raphael]

So my Mom occasionally helps kids prepare for tests and exams. Now, she got contacted by a mother whose daughter she had already helped out in the past, a colleague of hers, about a test on Tuesday. Problem is, it's about a topic she knows basically nothing about, and about which I don't know much, either. Makes me feel bad for the poor kid.

[malloc]

Goddamn it all to hell. I am three days late on my rent payment. An unmitigated disaster on top of everything else facing me now.

[Raphael]

Do you find it appropriate if a doctor's assistant prepares an examination of you and, at the same time, talks on the phone to another patient about an appointment? Sure, she waited until the call was over before starting the examination itself, but I still found it a bit rich (though I didn't say anything). Am I being petty?

[Ares Land]

It's annoying but not unusual.

Here at least some (not all, but a significant number) medical professionals can be pretty rude.

[doctor shark]

Do you find it appropriate if a doctor's assistant prepares an examination of you and, at the same time, talks on the phone to another patient about an appointment? Sure, she waited until the call was over before starting the examination itself, but I still found it a bit rich (though I didn't say anything). Am I being petty?

I wouldn't think it rude, but definitely not the most professional.

Minor: Went out for lunch with some of my lab group. About an hour later, I was in the bathroom throwing up intermittently for the next two hours to the point of having to leave work early (which I felt horrible about, given that I have a student who's finishing soon and needed some help getting ready for the defense). And I don't know if it was something with the food, or food plus weather (it's ~27ºC outside, which is quite warm for this time of year, and the A/C in the offices is not very good), or whatever the case is.

[Travis B.]

Do you find it appropriate if a doctor's assistant prepares an examination of you and, at the same time, talks on the phone to another patient about an appointment? Sure, she waited until the call was over before starting the examination itself, but I still found it a bit rich (though I didn't say anything). Am I being petty?

I wouldn't think it rude, but definitely not the most professional.

Agreed.

Minor: Went out for lunch with some of my lab group. About an hour later, I was in the bathroom throwing up intermittently for the next two hours to the point of having to leave work early (which I felt horrible about, given that I have a student who's finishing soon and needed some help getting ready for the defense). And I don't know if it was something with the food, or food plus weather (it's ~27ºC outside, which is quite warm for this time of year, and the A/C in the offices is not very good), or whatever the case is.

Uck. That sucks.

[Raphael]

Looks like last night, I either had a rather nasty bug, from which I recovered unusually quickly, or some weird psychosomatic stuff.

[Ares Land]

Looks like last night, I either had a rather nasty bug, from which I recovered unusually quickly, or some weird psychosomatic stuff.

Ah, that sucks. Could be the heat; but Covid (a pretty mild variant?) seems to be doing the rounds again.

[Raphael]

Ah, that sucks. Could be the heat; but Covid (a pretty mild variant?) seems to be doing the rounds again.

Thank you for the heads-up. Whatever it was, it might have returned a bit today.


Unrelated: the school where my Mom works has an infestation of a specific type of caterpillar.

[Man in Space]

I’ve deleted my Reddit account.

[Ahzoh]

Last Friday a small baby deer hit our car. We thought the insurance (State Farm) would cover it but we learned on Tuesday that our car's resale value is too low to be worth covering, so we either have to sell them the car for $4k or pay the $3600 repair cost out of pocket.

Insurance companies are a scam.

[WeepingElf]

I’ve deleted my Reddit account.

Did you delete it on purpose because you were frustrated with Reddit, or was it a mistake?

When I got frustrated with Facebook a few years ago (after about 10 days trying), I considered deleting my account, but I decided only to deactivate it. Since then, I have reactivated it, but don't use it much. Basically, I use Facebook as a bulletin board service that offers groups for a wide variety of interests. It sucks at that, but for some subjects I wish to discuss with other people, I haven't found anything better yet, so I grudgingly use Facebook.

[Travis B.]

When I got frustrated with Facebook a few years ago (after about 10 days trying), I considered deleting my account, but I decided only to deactivate it. Since then, I have reactivated it, but don't use it much. Basically, I use Facebook as a bulletin board service that offers groups for a wide variety of interests. It sucks at that, but for some subjects I wish to discuss with other people, I haven't found anything better yet, so I grudgingly use Facebook.

I used to have a Facebook account but not use it just to "reserve" it for myself. However, in recent years I've found a number of groups I have been interested in, and have ended up actually using Facebook as a result - not really in the way that Zuck probably wants me to use Facebook, but, as you say, as a bulletin board service.

[Raphael]

Last Friday a small baby deer hit our car. We thought the insurance (State Farm) would cover it but we learned on Tuesday that our car's resale value is too low to be worth covering, so we either have to sell them the car for $4k or pay the $3600 repair cost out of pocket.

Insurance companies are a scam.

Really messed up.

[Man in Space]

I’ve deleted my Reddit account.

Did you delete it on purpose because you were frustrated with Reddit, or was it a mistake?

The former.

It frustrates and depresses me to see so many people fundamentally misunderstand the protest. People are whining about “power-tripping mods” and saying “sweep, sweep, jannie” (try as I might I cannot help but take that personally, and with a long history of being bullied IRL, name-calling like that really gets under my skin).

The admins have, for years, ignored the volunteer community on which they depend to keep the site running. The API issue is the progression of this trend, and they have doubled down by lying about it (Christian recorded his phone calls, thankfully, and his challenge to them to show when he acted in bad faith has, thus far, gone unanswered). Other devs have reported trying to contact Reddit over a period of years with no response.

spez called us “landed gentry” and said that the protests “aren’t democratic”. This is straight-up gaslighting: Reddit is not, and has never been, a democracy, and the official line is that the API thing is a done deal (despite the pushback)—so how is that democracy? spez is trying to rewrite history and shitting on the volunteers on whom the site depends.

I modded a few subs with five- or six-digit subscriber counts. One of them was /r/ScenesFromAHat. I didn’t start it; rather, the mods saw my participation in the community and thought I was a good fit. The position, with all privileges and responsibilities, was offered to me, and I accepted.

SFAH required constant maintenance. We had a couple relevant rules: Responses must be acted out in scene form; multiple responses must be in separate comments; and if an OP wishes to respond their own prompt, do so in the comments so it can be voted on. These rules, particularly the first, were violated with impressive frequency. I had other duties as well—I helped shape policy, I participated in CSS testing, I helped engineer special events…at one point, I got Colin Mochrie himself to address the subreddit (that cost me IRL money but I was happy to do it because the community was worth it to me).

I reiterate that, contra spez, Reddit has never been a democracy. It’s been a hierarchy all the way up. This is not a bad thing, as different subreddits have different metas. Some are one-man shows (the Australian electrician whose name
I forget had one to share his stories), some are officially run by companies or studios (/r/RocketLeague), some have strict standards for quality (/r/AskHistorians), and some are gimmicks (/r/Amish). For over a decade, the admins were content to let this state of affairs exist—you had an idea for a community, so you set it up according to your guiding principles, and went from there. As a mod, you were expected to be of good remit, the price of this privilege. The admins likewise have had obligations to their users, including mods, and they have time and time again failed to support them. The API debacle is simply metastasis.

I slung my hook when the subs I took private were threatened. They have made it clear that I am not welcome there; therefore, I left.

[zompist]

For what it's worth, you did the right thing. All the big sites seem to be in a mood to alienate their users and destroy themselves.

[WeepingElf]

For what it's worth, you did the right thing. All the big sites seem to be in a mood to alienate their users and destroy themselves.

Seems like that. Indeed, I am considering deactivating my Facebook account again because I can't find any discussion group that suits me. I am looking for a German-language forum about the topic of sustainability (which I have started a blog about), and I am considering starting a forum on my own. There are several Facebook groups on that topic, but none of them is really good, in most of them, people just post photos of their vegan dishes My plan is to find Facebook groups where I can meaningfully announce the existence of my blog and find people who are interested in it, but I haven't found the right ones yet.

And the UI of Facebook just sucks rocks, and it is not really its purpose to use it as a bulletin board service, so I am abusing it and have no right to complain Also, I have always been sceptical about media controlled by a single greedy corporation or, worse, a crazy multi-millionaire.