We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Let’s just accept that we live in a low-probability timeline

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · How very odd! · Self defence & Security · Social media nonsense · Sports · Sui generis · UK affairs

Continuing my series of “Newspaper headlines mentioning vaguely newsworthy persons that I thought at first sight were jokes but turned out to be literally true”,

Prominent lawyer Jolyon Maugham clubs fox to death while wearing kimono.

Well, I suppose it is traditional to kill foxes on Boxing Day.

Yesterday’s entry: The Attorney General reads “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”

December 26th, 2019 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)

The birds fall silent

· Media & Journalism · Science & Technology · Social media nonsense

“Twitter to ban all political advertising, raising pressure on Facebook”, reports the Guardian.

Having sent one tweet in my life, I am ill placed to say whether this is much of a loss to the world. Twitter is under no obligation to allow political advertising but Jack Dorsey’s stated reasons for forbidding it sound like a newly-ennobled Victorian peer attempting to efface the memory that he made his money in trade. Mr Dorsey, an advertising billionaire, thinks that the spread of political messages online “should not be compromised by money”.

October 30th, 2019 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)

Stackoverflow and pronouns

· Internet · Sexuality · Social media nonsense

Stackoverflow is a website so focused on getting good technical answers to good technical questions that thank-you notes are removed because they are noise. And yet somehow there is now a 17 point FAQ about the gender pronoun rules recently added to the code of conduct. Says one response:

I am all in favor of wanting to be respected, I really do, but this is the most overhead to “don’t be mean” I have ever seen.

Another takes aim at the people who run the web site:

Putting identity politics front-and-center in what is supposed to be a neutral, objective Q&A environment promotes division and strife, not inclusion, and more importantly, it distracts from the primary mission of these sites: getting good answers to good questions. Our values reject it.

If you truly value your community, that means respecting the community’s values, not attempting to impose new and incompatible ones by fiat. Your values are out of alignment with the values of the community you are supporting. Please fix them.

Another points out that too many rules do not help:

I would very much like if we could all get along. We have rules and moderators because in a big community, there’ll always be a few participants who can’t get along. But increasingly, getting along is against the rules.

One of two things is going on.

  • This is just people on the Internet arguing because they can and anyone with things to get done will simply ignore them.
  • This is an example of an attempt to infiltrate and change a community, and the resistance to this attempt.

See also: Linux and its code of conduct.

October 16th, 2019 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)

Fun on Twitter…

· Social media nonsense · UK affairs

“Corbyn’s policies will reduce hate crime in this country”

Yes indeed, Corbyn, being a Marxist & anti-Semite, will nationalise hate crime & it’s well know that nationalised industries are gawd-awful at doing what they set out to do, epidemiological research supports this.

– Perry de Havilland

May 25th, 2019 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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