[FRIAM] Message to the non-posting 95%

Thu Jan 28 13:51:28 EST 2021

I used to have elaborate pattern matching in Emacs to guess at topics and to provide default filing.  I realized after some time it was all a waste of time.   The best way for me to handle e-mail is in real time.  Just remember ideas that are relevant and archive the rest.  Really I archive too much and should embrace more forgetting.   If I am behind on a list I do some random sampling to estimate whether it is interesting to read more.    High traffic lists are archived to the side, so that I can come and go.

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 10:37 AM
To: Russ.Abbott at gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Message to the non-posting 95%

Hi, Russ. You’re not proper non poster.  You’re  Russ1.  And I am always grateful for your posts.

A few key strokes in outlook will filter out any thread, but unfortunately, we bloviators are fond of thread bending , thread entanglement, thread chaos, etc.  Just as I write off some thread as having safely disappeared into a nerdish black hole (say, whether LISP is better than BLATHER or STAMMER), they start talking about the mind body problem and I miss a good one.

I got a message from a colleague (baiting me, no doubt).  I had written him saying that I thought objects were ephemeral and that the world was processes all the way down.  He wrote back to say, No, we need objects, because we need “landing places for qualia.”   And suddenly, I realized, I have NO IDEA what qualia are.  I remember from way back that you are a person who knows what qualia are.  Can you remind me?

Glen will probably say I am being annoying here, so you don’t have to answer.

Nick

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com<mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 12:18 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Message to the non-posting 95%

Hi, (breaking the eerie silence)

I'm still here. This thread illustrates why I rarely post these days. I liked Nick's original post asking non-posters to say something. But I found the ensuing discussion of spam not very interesting. If that discussion were to be carried on at all, it should have been in another thread, leaving this one to its original purpose.

A feature that you probably can't implement would be to allow readers to mark threads as non-interesting, which would exclude them from that reader's stream.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 10:04 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com<mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>> wrote:
This all reminds me of a point I *thought* Jon made about the death of the DJ. But now I can't find that post. A friend of mine insists he hates the radio. On the surface, it sounds like a typical complaint about being "constantly interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper". But I think it goes deeper ... into QAnon territory. Being *part* of the game, as opposed to a mere consumer of it, is an important part of social reality. Some of us spend more time in a state of transcendent calm, content to watch or ignore some process. Others tend to get in and stir things up, send out rhizomes. Some of us feel helpless when the dancing rabbits come on, our individualism shattered. Some of us revel in the absurdity of it. And some of us sing along because the jingle is an ear worm.

Scammers robocall me at least once per day. Inspired by the many scambaiters on youtube, I almost always press 1 to get my credit card rate lowered or to get that refund for the MacBook I didn't buy and have a long-ish conversation with them. After several attempts to get me to tell them my CC number [⛧], the "manager" yesterday finally told me to "fvck off". I'm like "You called me!?!" And he hung up. Ha! My time is even less precious than theirs. I can't help but wonder what his "employees" lives are like. Was the 1st guy on the call just as much a victim of his boss as I am? More? Or do they all live like Kings from the thousands of dollars they steal from the elderly?

[⛧] We have this terrible noise problem on our landline that's not due to unfiltered DSL. Renee' wants me to get rid of it. I'm not motivated to because it helps me tease the scammers. "Is that noise on your end? Hang on, let me try something ... [set the phone down and reduce some sim output] ... Is that better? Oh well, now what were you asking?"

On 1/28/21 9:29 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I don't let my spam filter automatically file my spam...  I visually
> scan the subjects and senders and depend on my peripheral vision to
> notice spam markers... if something is suspected spam but *isn't* I
> notice pretty close to real-time which means that there isn't a lot of
> negative reinforcement for false-positives.   I also try to be
> thoughtful about what I mark as spam... I don't for example, call things
> I simply am not interested in as spam.  Before I do a "delete spam" or
> "move marked to spam folder" I scan again, just on principle... I *very*
> rarely catch anything in that scan but you know "belt and suspenders"....
>
> I try to limit who I "subscribe" to and then whack-a-mole the allies
> that seem to spill over.  ActBlue and/or ButtigeigForPrez and/or
> BernieIsSoCoolItHurts seem to have gleefully given my e-mail address to
> another half-dozen or so other campaigns (DitchMitch, MakeGeorgiaBlue,
> OMGtheRedStatesAreComing, etc.) who then flooded me.   For a while they
> were a hydra it seemed... and I WAS tempted to overtrain my spam filter
> and send it direct to a folder or trash but got through it without doing
> that.
>
> Finally, after November I started unsubscribing from the campaigns I
> knew I'd opted into (even if by sly accident) and included an admonition
> that if THEY were the source of all the side-spam, they should rethink,
> because it ended up *inhibiting* my support for their cause(s)... though
> I am not sure that was very significant.

On 1/28/21 9:18 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Some readers want novelty -- they are channel flippers -- and others are looking for an activity or even a process.    And then there is a range in between.    I'd guess Roger and Nick on opposite ends of that spectrum.   I'm a channel flipper until I see something that looks like an itch to scratch or something to puzzle over -- a good distraction.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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