The Awesome Videos Thread (with Extra Sauce!)

we had personal computers since I was like 4 or 5 in 1991, and have had some sort of internet since that. I was born in 87, but maybe I am an outlier?
You would be an outlier, since "The Internet" as we know it today (mainly the Worldwide Web) didn't exist until August of 1991. But services such as AOL and CompuServe definitely predated that, although they weren't really an interconnected network like we think of it today.

--Patrick
 
You would be an outlier, since "The Internet" as we know it today (mainly the Worldwide Web) didn't exist until August of 1991. But services such as AOL and CompuServe definitely predated that, although they weren't really an interconnected network like we think of it today.

--Patrick
to be fair I didnt really start using the internet myself until we moved to the current house, about 1998, give or take, but I remember my dad using it when I was in grade school for various reasons. my first experiences with networks was getting battle.net working so I could play Starcraft with my buddies KEKEKEKEKEKEKE
 
I started using dialup for local BBSes in high school..maybe 85 or 86. My first modem was an Apple Personal Modem used on a 2c. It did 300 baud, and even had a 50 baud mode for connecting to teletype machines. There were, if I recall, 5 other personal computers in the 2 neighborhoods I hung out in. One of my nerdy classmates caught hell for being quoted in the school newspaper for saying computers were the way of the future and every house would have one. lol

A friend of mine had usenet/internet access through college before the advent of the web as we know it, and I was jealous. I started using the actual internet at my job in '93, shortly after Mosaic came out for windows and mac. Back then, i was the "find it on the internet guy" because google didn't exist, and I knew how to find stuff on the half-dozen or so search engines that were competing at the time.

I didn't get broadband until maybe '98 or '99 when Roadrunner broadband hit Texas. By then, it was cheaper to go cable modem than use dialup with a dedicated phone line, so it just made sense. I was an early adopter amongst my online peers--it took me months (and sometimes years) to convince them that faster and cheaper was, in fact, also better. They were content with the dialup they knew.

I'm comfortable with 'dialup' being a millennial iconic noise.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Oh Webcrawler, how we miss the simpler times.

But you weren't enough... we had to have Metacrawler. In our hubris, we started the trend...
 
Heh... it weird to me because over here we had more Gen X experiences with movies and pop culture in general in the 90's, since we mostly got old stuff after the Iron Curtain fell (Dallas, Knight Rider and The A Team where 90s shows for us), but it comes to the internet, after teh late 90s, we seem to have gotten well ahead of you guys.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
From Tom Scott's post,
"In summary: no, Jill does not seem to hold all the views that people are ascribing to her, and I don’t believe she holds views that justify taking down an already-published video and disavowing her. But there are some things I definitely disagree with, and some things that are so far outside my sphere of knowledge that I would need to spend days or weeks researching before feeling even vaguely qualified to discuss them privately, let alone publicly."

As someone who formerly held homophobic beliefs, I'm glad that I didn't have people shouting "homophobe!" at me every time I posted anything on the internet. Having time to learn information new to me, without constantly being pushed to publicly document every single change in my viewpoint, gave me time to think and grow, rather than just be defensive and angry about the issue. I came from a background that was very passively anti-homosexuality, and then got caught up in an online group that was very actively homophobic. If that other forum I was active on hadn't imploded by trying to move to Facebook for hosting, I might have stayed caught up in that ignorant backwater of the internet.

Yes, Jill Bearup made a pretty awful post about her viewpoint, but then she took it down and shut up about the issue for seven years. There's no evidence of terf views in her videos that I've ever seen anyone point to. She hasn't doubled-quadrupled-octupled-down on the issue like other media creators have. From Tom Scott's account it seems like she grew, at least a little, in the 4 years between her removed post and when he spoke to her, and it's been another 3 years since then. I like to think that people can learn and change, and that I'm not just lying to myself about becoming a better person than I used to be.
 
From Tom Scott's post,
"In summary: no, Jill does not seem to hold all the views that people are ascribing to her, and I don’t believe she holds views that justify taking down an already-published video and disavowing her. But there are some things I definitely disagree with, and some things that are so far outside my sphere of knowledge that I would need to spend days or weeks researching before feeling even vaguely qualified to discuss them privately, let alone publicly."

As someone who formerly held homophobic beliefs, I'm glad that I didn't have people shouting "homophobe!" at me every time I posted anything on the internet. Having time to learn information new to me, without constantly being pushed to publicly document every single change in my viewpoint, gave me time to think and grow, rather than just be defensive and angry about the issue. I came from a background that was very passively anti-homosexuality, and then got caught up in an online group that was very actively homophobic. If that other forum I was active on hadn't imploded by trying to move to Facebook for hosting, I might have stayed caught up in that ignorant backwater of the internet.

Yes, Jill Bearup made a pretty awful post about her viewpoint, but then she took it down and shut up about the issue for seven years. There's no evidence of terf views in her videos that I've ever seen anyone point to. She hasn't doubled-quadrupled-octupled-down on the issue like other media creators have. From Tom Scott's account it seems like she grew, at least a little, in the 4 years between her removed post and when he spoke to her, and it's been another 3 years since then. I like to think that people can learn and change, and that I'm not just lying to myself about becoming a better person than I used to be.
I want to preface this by saying I don't think there's anything wrong if people enjoy her videos. Unlike some creators, she at least doesn't use her platform to spread problematic views, so I see no problem with anyone who chooses to enjoy her content, you do you.

Now, with all that said, if I know someone used to have shitty views, and they've deleted all evidence and refused to talk about it since, and when asked says they don't talk about their views and that they are private, I'm going to assume they still have shitty views.
 
To be clear, I did not post the links as any sort of "Aha! See?" confirmation, I merely posted them to add additional context to Poe's otherwise terse statement.

--Patrick
 
I want to preface this by saying I don't think there's anything wrong if people enjoy her videos. Unlike some creators, she at least doesn't use her platform to spread problematic views, so I see no problem with anyone who chooses to enjoy her content, you do you.

Now, with all that said, if I know someone used to have shitty views, and they've deleted all evidence and refused to talk about it since, and when asked says they don't talk about their views and that they are private, I'm going to assume they still have shitty views.
I can't even judge the degree to which her original views were shitty. The second-hand accounts range from shitty to tone deaf. Hard to make a call based on that alone.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
To be clear, I did not post the links as any sort of "Aha! See?" confirmation, I merely posted them to add additional context to Poe's otherwise terse statement.
And thank you for that context. I took your post as a "here is additional information", and assumed that if you'd wanted to make any statement that you would have done so.

I can't even judge the degree to which her original views were shitty. The second-hand accounts range from shitty to tone deaf. Hard to make a call based on that alone.
The Reddit comments that PatrThom linked to included an archived version of the post (which is now not loading for me). I don't feel like trying to summarize an article I can't currently re-read to make sure I'm correct, so hopefully it will load for anyone who wants to see what the fuss is about.
 
if I know someone used to have shitty views, and they've deleted all evidence
I consider myself an overall decent, upstanding person who happens to have posted plenty of things that I regret, but the only thing keeping me from removing them is my massive-and-potentially-irrational hatred of the concept of depublishing.

--Patrick
 
And thank you for that context. I took your post as a "here is additional information", and assumed that if you'd wanted to make any statement that you would have done so.



The Reddit comments that PatrThom linked to included an archived version of the post (which is now not loading for me). I don't feel like trying to summarize an article I can't currently re-read to make sure I'm correct, so hopefully it will load for anyone who wants to see what the fuss is about.
I was able to get the text of it:
If You Strike Them Down They Will Become More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine

I was reading an article in NYMag recently called The Careful, Pragmatic Case Against Punching Nazis and it had particular relevance to those of us in England because of this thing that happened last week.

“They Are No Better Than Fash”
Last Wednesday a sixty year old woman got punched and kicked and mugged by four(ish) transgender rights activists at Speakers’ Corner while she was waiting to attend a debate on the Gender Recognition Act.


That was the first half of the attack. And here’s the second, where they manage (and they have to wrestle her to do it because she is not letting go of that camera) to get the camera off her wrist, smash it, steal her memory card and knock her to the ground where they continue to kick her:


(She pulled one of their hoods off though, which is why there is footage of their faces.)

And then this charming individual can be seen on camera mere moments later declaring “I’m happy they hit her”.


The NYMag writer argues that punching Nazis can lead to more fuel for Nazi arguments, which may well be true.

But watching young men beating each other up has got nothing, NOTHING, on watching four young people beat a sixty year old woman.

Because the problem is, when you beat up a sixty year old woman for possible holding opinions you don’t like at SPEAKERS’ FRICKING CORNER, people find this worthy of note and start writing newspaper articles about it.

They ask things like: what were her attackers protesting? What had this 60 year old woman done to offend them? Well…she was WAITING TO ATTEND A TALK ABOUT PROPOSED UPCOMING CHANGES TO LEGISLATION. AND SHE HAD A CAMERA.

And then they say: wait, what?

What Is Gender?
The event was called What Is Gender? The Gender Recognition Act and Beyond and it was due to take place on the 13th of September.

There were supposed to be four people at the debate.

- Two representatives from Stonewall, the UK LGBT+ campaigning organisation, to talk about why gender self identification would be a good thing,

- Julia Long, a lesbian feminist activist, and

- Miranda Yardley, a transsexual woman who has been critical of the proposed changes to the GRA to allow ‘gender self-identity’

(Gender self-identity: if you say you’re a woman/man, then you ARE a woman/man and can have the Gender Recognition Certificate to prove it. No diagnosis of gender dysphoria or action on your part is required. You’re a man/woman now, and you and your vulva are entitled to access male-only spaces, and you and your penis (and beard, if you feel that way inclined) are entitled to access female-only spaces. You know. Changing rooms. Prisons. Sports. Toilets. That sort of thing.)

Except two things happened.

First, it ceased to be a debate because the two Stonewall speakers pulled out because of…reasons. I don’t know what the reasons were.

Second, the location for the event had to be changed because the venue cancelled on them due to ‘safety concerns’.

They found a new venue, but to prevent them from being cancelled again, the people who were going (basically all women) were told to meet at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, and then they’d be told where the event was and go from there.

This didn’t stop a long Facebook thread where transgender rights activists rang round venues within walking distance of Speakers’ Corner to try and find out where the event would be, but they didn’t manage to do so.

(Side note from Wikipedia: “Speakers’ Corner is an area where open-air public speaking, debate and discussion are allowed. Speakers here may talk on any subject, as long as the police consider their speeches lawful, although this right is not restricted to Speakers’ Corner only. Contrary to popular belief, there is no immunity from the law, nor are any subjects proscribed, but in practice the police tend to be tolerant and therefore intervene only when they receive a complaint.”)

image
And then there’s Maria MacLachlan.

“She had been trying to film the protest when some of the trans activists began to shout, “When TERFs attack, we fight back.” She asked them, “Who’s attacking?” At this point, MacLachlan says a young man in a hoodie tried to grab her camera. “I think he knocked it out of my hand but it was looped to my wrist. He turned back and tried to grab it again. I hung onto it.” As the two struggled, MacLachlan pulled back the hood of the man holding her camera, so onlookers could photograph his face, and another man ran over and began punching MacLachlan. Wood and a third man pushed her to the ground, where she says she was kicked and punched.”

Great publicity for your arguments, people, good job.

And oh yes, I’m so glad you’re happy for them to hit her, Pink And Blue Hoodie.

Are you similarly happy that when a young woman IN YOUR GROUP tried to stop them from beating an old lady and destroying her property, one of them broke off specifically to push her?

And then squared up to her until someone of comparable size (blonde hair on the left) told them to back off?

Yeah. I mean, this woman, who came out to protest on your side, is clearly a secret TERF who also deserves to be physically intimidated, right?

But maybe you’re right.

Maybe punching TERFs (aka 60 year old women) and shoving women who try to prevent you from doing so is a really perfectly sensible move. Yes yes. Very well thought out.

In fact, why not go ahead and punch MORE women who are concerned about the implications of changes to gender identity legislation!

Go ahead and beat the women who are concerned that gender self-identity could mean that ANY violent man can just say he’s a woman, walk into female-only spaces like changing rooms, and be legally OK to do so.

What could possibly go wrong with using violence to prove that concerns about male violence in female spaces are unfounded? Nothing, that’s what.

What could possibly go wrong with making The Sun (though LOL at “a member of TERF” like it’s some kind of shadowy organisation and not a slur), The Times, The Daily Mail AND The Morning Star agree that your behaviour was unconscionable?

Nothing, that’s what.

There is no possible way this could possibly backfire.

There is no possible way that drawing attention to the things that these women are concerned about and wish to debate will cause them to get a very sympathetic hearing on Sky News:


Go ahead and punch women who are concerned that a double rapist (that is to say someone who nonconsensually stuck a penis into, in this case, a 13 year old girl and a disabled 15 year old girl) is serving a sentence in a women’s prison (penis and all) because, you know, they have a certificate saying they’re a woman.

With a penis.

Which they have nonconsensually stuck into vulnerable young women.

I’m sure everyone will be totally on your side. They deserved it, those nasty lesbians and feminists and transsexual women with their ridiculous concerns about WOMEN’S SAFETY, UGH, WHO CARES.

Or maybe you’ll just make these women more determined to ensure that while transgender people are entitled to the same rights as everyone else in terms of housing and employment and so on, that doesn’t include the right of you and your penis to be housed in a women’s prison after you’ve been convicted of rape.

It doesn’t include the right to beat women who disagree with you, and it doesn’t include the right to hand out sterilising drugs to and perform double mastectomies on gender non-conforming thirteen-year-olds. (Come to Texas! Sterilise your teenager with testosterone!)

In other words, every time you beat a so-called TERF, you make sympathetic compassionate people say, as Miranda Yardley did:

“I think I’ve just gone Full TERF. And that was in scare quotes, because TERF’s a shit word. And anyone who uses that word is using that word to dehumanise women.”


But hey. You do you. I’m sure everyone will agree that it was totally justified.

Yeah.

Let me know how that one goes.
 
I consider myself an overall decent, upstanding person who happens to have posted plenty of things that I regret, but the only thing keeping me from removing them is my massive-and-potentially-irrational hatred of the concept of depublishing.

--Patrick
I don't think there's anything wrong with depublishing yourself. But my statement wasn't an -or- statement, it was an -and- statement, you need the whole thing.
 
my statement wasn't an -or- statement, it was an -and- statement, you need the whole thing.
I know, but this time I was making a comparison with myself, and I assumed it obvious that, unlike Jill, -I- am someone who is not shy about sharing (the majority of) my beliefs, so that last part did not apply (to me). That said, I (personally) do not see the unwillingness to publicly confirm any change of opinion any more automatically damning than anyone else who invokes the 5th Amendment. Yes, the person is hiding something, sure. But is it the same thing we think they are hiding? Or something else entirely?

--Patrick
 
Damnit. I really liked her videos. The fact that Tom Scott (in this link) decided to take the video with her down after talking with her says volumes. He doesn't get into what she said about her views, just that "Her answer was complicated." And then he still took the video down. Tells me enough to know that he didn't like the answer he got.

I had her book on my amazon wish list. No longer. I've also gone and marked her channel as "do not recommend" on youtube.
 
The blunt was a genuine surprise.

--Patrick
It's not really blunt, it looks more like a wood drill head to me.

And the likely reason it went in so well is because the head was wider then the whole arrow body, so once it made a hole it had nothing to stop it, like some of the others that also penetrated easily.
 
It's not really blunt, it looks more like a wood drill head to me.
It does rather resemble a Forstner bit, doesn't it? But it's a small game arrowhead usually referred to as a "blunt" because the design is supposed to penetrate flesh, but not get stuck in the wood of the tree if you miss.

--Patrick
 
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