Election 2016!

Rand al'Thor

12:02 AM

... the heck

@ArtOfCode *couple of years

bleh

Rand al'Thor

Assuming by "here" you mean Europe.

bleh

JK

Shog9

@Randal'Thor row faster, dammit!

Rand al'Thor

@Shog9 There's already a row between the High Court and the government.

Shog9

12:08 AM

I expect videos of wig-slapping

Rand al'Thor

No, that was the last PM ... oh, wait, you said "wig".

Kaz

12:30 AM

this was a really good article.

Kaz

12:55 AM

Shog9

1:09 AM

@Kaz y'know... This touches on something that's been bugging me all day.

After coming across this "tweet storm"

I'm from the rural midwest. All of this talk about coastal elites needing to understand more of America has it backwards.

Tweeted by pwthornton on November 9, 2016 at 2:15 PM

(or whatever the kids call those things where you just reply to yourself until you manage to get an entire thought out on Twitter)

To be fair, the guy who wrote it is, from the sound of it, coming from a fairly well-off bit of whatever rural midwest he's from.

So I think he's probably being honest in his observations

But...

I had to work for a long, long time just to be able to move from one town full of failing industries to another town full of failing industries

And, yeah, he's quite right - totally broadened my horizons. Met folks who were very different from the folks I'd known. Different races, religions, etc. All that good stuff.

But... The practical difference was that now I lived among folks who were dealing crack and addicted to meth instead of just drunk.

Went to a Baptist church instead of Lutheran.

Lamented the decline of the steel mill instead of the boot factory.

Ignoring superficial things like skin color, they were the same people. Dead-end jobs / no jobs, old folks living on meager pensions that the young folks never even had a chance at, a dwindling population of union loyalists watching their local fight half-heartedly for jobs that were leaving and never coming back.

Folks who voted Democrat did so 'cause that's what they'd always done; folks who voted Republican did the same. Neither really expected anything to change.

And then I actually visited the coast, visited San Francisco and San Diego and New York. Beautiful buildings, busy people, unbelievably high prices.

To this day, I have no idea how people actually manage to live there.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Shog9 Very long box.

ArtOfCode

Ssssh! Shog is reminiscing :)

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

whispers: keep going! we like it

Shog9

;-P

I'm sure there's a trick to it. You give up stuff that you don't need, stuff you never really thought of as luxuries: car, pet, furniture, personal space... And in return, you get a slightly higher wage which you put toward the insane cost of housing that would make the crackheads next door in my small town think twice.

And maybe, just maybe, if you get really good at cutting your life down to the absolute bare essentials, you earn enough slack to afford some of the dazzling forms of entertainment that only a large city has to offer.

I really don't know.

and that's what's been bugging me

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:26 AM

Where does internet factor in if this were today? @Shog9

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC the net makes it a LOT cheaper to meet folks who are unlike yourself.

But... You gotta want to do that

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Shog9 Like me. Like us. That's the most thoughtful message of the week - maybe the month.

The net allows you to learn things you could never learn conventionally.

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC oh, you could

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Shog9 harder, less likely

Things people would be unwilling/don't care to teach.

The internet is a huge secret santa event.

Shog9

I mean, I know folks who hit the road in college and visited cities throughout the country, and in other countries... Slept on park benches or hostels, met folks in seedy bars, really did broaden their horizons.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:30 AM

^

Shog9

Wasn't, uh, entirely safe

And still wasn't cheap

Definitely not something you'd do if you were a responsible adult with folks who depended on you not ending up in a hospital somewhere

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

The fact that I get to speak with a prominent employee of the world's 15th most visited website is widening. And you can be normal, and talk to regular people.

Shog9

Or you can open up your browser, open up IRC, find a group of folks with different backgrounds and... just talk to them.

right

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

TNB is very diverse - people living in turkey, indonesia, some military, very diverse

The internet is what we make of it - and we made it an open, welcoming place.

(except for 4chan and "those" sites)

Internet has renegades everywhere.

1000000000

@Shog9 Time was that all new apartments in NYC in buildings with more than 6 units were automatically subject to some form of rent control to help keep the prices reasonable. However, it became optional in the 70s. I have relatives and friends who are only able to live in NYC because they have a rent stabilized apartment, but they are hard to get one's hands on and becoming an increasing scarcity.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:34 AM

I have a +200 meta post that represents my view on the internet. I contribute back, and my opinions are heard.

The internet doesn't care who or what you are. It cares about what you have to say.

1000000000

There were also some parts of NYC where property became much more affordable for brief peroids of time (eg Rockaway right after Hurricane Sandy)

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

If you can be nice to people, people will give to you and you will give to others without realizing it.

@1000000000 :P

@Shog9

Shog9

it can at least

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Shog9 at least what?

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC sorry. The internet can work that way - listen to what you have to say, share what others know, without making you prove your membership in the right tribe first. Doesn't always though.

At its best, it's still built on people. Nasty, selfish, beasts that we are.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:37 AM

@Shog9 If you go on the right sites and be the right person and be respectful. Most of all, learn.

The internet allows enjoyable networking, prevents your life from being an echo chamber.

Shog9

When it works, it works because folks try hard to make it work. Allow for each others' failings, work to understand them, spend more time listening than talking.

3

But... You can still get that echo chamber if you want it.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

^

DrMcMoylex

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC A lot of people use the Internet to make an echo chamber

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

If you reflect and introspect you can stop it.

1000000000

If I just want an echo chamber, I just talk to myself

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:39 AM

:P

@Shog9 SE is perfect because it allows people to govern themselves. The switzerland of sites. Even the tiniest suggestion or problem is rendered as a meta post.

1000000000

I find that people are less likely to bother me with their opinions if I am in the middle of a conversation with myself

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

The internet is broken free of traditional social norms. Often because it is a mixing of cultures.

Twitter, SE, Reddit - these sites; people care about your ideas, not who you are

@Shog9

Shog9

@1000000000 Yeah... I think this is something that gets really hard to wrap your head around if you're not familiar with it; NYC is really, really dense. Like, a wealthy town in Colorado, there'll be a trailer park outside town where the folks who run the restaurants and stuff live. So you come from that & assume that there must be a place "away" from where everything happens where the people live. And, there are. But space sorta distorts around the means of transportation.

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC that's the goal at least. Hopefully we do achieve it sometimes.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

I have many subconscious biases - unintended racism, sexism, stereotypes. The internet frees me of that by censoring that information.

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC it can do better even: by showing you that the stereotypes don't necessarily align with reality, it can free you from the weight of those assumptions completely.

Kaz

1:47 AM

Checked my facebook for the first time in months today. Echo chamber as far as the eye can see. It's disappointing.

Shog9

But... For that to work, you do have to be open to learning something about the folks you're interacting with.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@Shog9 I often consciously know they don't align with reality, but they continue.

I dislike face photo avatars for a reason. It prevents me from learning the person before the exterior.

I'm 100% open to learning things about folks if I have gotten to know who they are first

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC which creates sort of a balancing act for the software design: you don't want to force folks to expose their personal details if they don't want to (screw you, real-name policies), and you don't want to rub personal details in folks' faces when they're not ready for it (big-ass author bios at the top of a post anyone?) - but you do want to create a pathway for those things if possible.

Kaz

I had the same running up to the election Once I had my bubble burst (about 3 months before the election) it became painfully obvious that everywhere I go to for news. And entertainment. And insight. All completely biased.

1000000000

@Shog9 Yeah, trying to figure out the whole system of renting and property in NYC, while at the same time making sure you had a stable job there, and the million other things you need to worry about while moving would make for virtually insurmountable barrier. I know very few people who live in New York who did not come to New York when it was a shit hole.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:50 AM

@Shog9 My only reaction is total agreement.

1000000000

Heck the renting system is so potentially exploitative that the city puts ads in the subways reminding tenants of their rights.

Shog9

I mean, imagine I'm horribly prejudiced against Dutch people. I assume they're all lazy hot-heads who can't write. Then I visit Cerbrus's profile and am shamed and enlightened.

2

That's... A thing you'd want to happen.

You can't really make it happen

But you can perhaps design the software to not prevent it from happening

Kaz

@1000000000 Sounds a lot like London. The salary you'd need to get a mortgage for the average house in the cheapest London borough is something like £100,000 per year.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

If you ask, say, a person living in X about some random statistic Y, you learn Y, they learn what "foreigners" are curious about.

Slightly unrelated: The internet gives people new ways to communicate; starring, careting, faces, etc.

ArtOfCode

:)

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:55 AM

@Shog9 I even have prejudice against my own race.

ArtOfCode

Not that it tells you whether I'm happy or just trying to appease you out of a misplaced sense of social responsibility and irrepressible desire to fit in, but... it's a start :P

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC I don't know what your race is, but I'm sure you have plenty of company. Use that to empathize, but don't let it get the better of you.

1000000000

@Kaz There are still some parts of NYC that are somewhat affordable but they are very far flung and its difficult to commute to the center of the city from them.

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

@ArtOfCode Ah, the information expressible by two characters.

@Shog9 Indeed. I am learning to get rid of all prejudices.

1000000000

Also NYC does have rent control/stabilization which unless I'm mistaken London does not have

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

1:57 AM

If you looked deep enough, I believe you would have a tiny stereotype or prejudice against $(random.select(races)).

@Shog9

1000000000

But its slowly dying out as new apartments are created without rent control and old apartments leave the rent control system

Kaz

@1000000000 Nope.

1000000000

However, on the other hand, the UK has more reasonable squatting/trespassing laws

Shog9

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC Funny enough, traits I was most prejudiced against when I was younger didn't really budge when I found myself living and working along side people who exhibited them. It's easy to see the worst in folks when you're primed to do so, and... So I did. It wasn't until I found myself talking to folks online, and realized where they were coming from that I could see my own failings.

1000000000

Sadly rent control seems to become one of those FDR era policies meant to help reduce income inequality that politicians managed to convince people we were better without

noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC

2:06 AM

I believe that 99% of my prejudices are completely irrational, but I just can't get rid of them

@shog9

It is nice how two random people across the world can meet by chance and have such a meaningful discussion. @Shog9

(very random but): canada flag = peru flag + maple leaf

Chilean flag is just a really lazy american one. It looks nice though.

Shog9

2:28 AM

@noɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC Cheers, brother. I'm gonna go drink a lot of whisky now ;-)

Kaz

3:04 AM