@RealFake Oslo, Norway

@RealFake over 30. and i do go to bars and talk to people. i worked up the courage for that, eventually. chat is easy but it's also superficial. and i get the impression that adults don't really want friends. they're either there for light conversation or for getting laid. doesn't feel like the right kind of space for finding buddies.

@RealFake i've been in those circles for a bit since i was an early hire in a Bitcoin startup and was an insider to the action. the cofounders were a bit where i'm now. very focused on what really matters in life. but maybe also a bit cynical. in it to milk money out of people.

@clacke the issue is that most FOSS projects have no "customer service", because no product was purchased, and "management" (the maintainer) doesn't have to listen directly to customers, because he's not getting paid for that.

@clacke but most users feel like customers so they have the expectations of paying customers, i.e. mostly powerless to make changes, so all they can do is complain.

@clacke and unless you know how to code, you *are* powerless in that situation. as powerless as with a paid product but now you don't even have the right to complain.

@FallenFadedLostItAll seeing as i never experienced that, i don't know what that's like - i've only been in physical confrontations that didn't have a happy ending

@FallenFadedLostItAll and as for physical activity, in childhood, the sort of feedback i got when i participated in that was rarely positive and more often negative

@FallenFadedLostItAll thank you, that's a good pep talk

@FallenFadedLostItAll it's on the wall at the foot of my bed now - let's see how it works out

@FallenFadedLostItAll why?

@FallenFadedLostItAll i'm a bit weird.

but i feel it's not so bad to give each other some reminders that, behind the keyboards, there are humans, in meatspace.

people who find physical struggle such as running appealing see something in it that i don't.

it would be healthy for me to understand exactly what.

how much authority should science have? it's clear that it has a good deal of predictive power, but how do you begin to objectively determine this power?

it seems to me that we are currently falling into a trap where we have nothing to balance out what the scientists are saying. academia is busy protecting its reputation.

but wouldn't it be better if 2 or 3 equal and opposite parts of the establishment had a critical look at each other's work?

having academic scientists criticise each other's work is like asking the police to investigate itself.

if you think my arguments are inconsistent, it's because they're values-based, and i consider this permissible

if it agrees with humanism, i'll go for that, usually.

i consider the major world religions as sharing some of those values.

people who defend safe space instances are people who believe that if you protect people, this will allow them to grow.

people who defend free speech instances are people who believe that if you challenge people; this will allow them to grow.

the truth of the matter is that you need a little of both. if your ego is never challenged, you become spoiled. but if it's constantly challenged, you can't cope with that, because it's too stressful and painful.

perhaps some of these safe spaces exist for people who have been challenged too much and need time to recover.

if they're going to serve that role, as refugee shelters, their temporary nature needs to be acknowledged. what the free speech people are concerned with is that these safe spaces become permanent. this would prevent growth. you don't keep refugees in camps forever.

the less money you have, the more paperwork there is.

today, it feels like my day job is to do spreadsheets and paperwork, because that's what i have to do to file an application for money.

i do not enjoy office work and i don't care about finances, so that'd be a good reason to work to get *away* from having to do that.

i'd like people who like numbers and computing to do this work, but i've got nothing to offer them back. for now. so i have to do this in the meanwhile.

and it pisses me off just as much as programming does. makes me mad.

@space_cadet this isn't entirely right.

you might need to do it all on your own *at first*. you just have to.

but the idea is that you must pull in people who love that kind of shit. there are people who love to crunch numbers, work with tables, sort out all the details. and they aren't big-picture kinds of people. they love getting the little details right.

it's not useful to think of a preference for fuzzy things as "ADHD" and a preference for detail as "Asperger" if you're going to run a business.

the way you look presentable to a nerd is by not looking very presentable.

my self-trained Bayesian spam filter has concluded — not entirely unreasonably — that all email is spam