In the sack: Lemon

Wet: Citrus overload. The Colon Blow of Citrusland. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Dry down: Nothing? Could it be nothing? It's nothing.

The touch: Very slightly and pleasantly oily.

The feel: The false Capped are doing the Tripod Timewarp again and there is some clutching at Toys ’R Us.

The magic of our lives: A good start.

Final verdict: Repeatable.

It has come to my attention that AJ has made some updates. He says,

Of course, the two responses above are fundamentally contradictory: if Clint's right a ban (or similar) would've been appropriate, in spite of Joerg's claim. On the other hand, Google's sole definition of "snarky" seems to be "A colloquialism meaning short-tempered or snappish." which doesn't seem terribly applicable here -- however short tempered anyone was, anon left before anyone had a chance to lose theirs. Sadly, the rest of Clint's epithet assumes you've got some idea what the problem is in the first place.

Apparently I've been too cryptic, so I will attempt to rectify that slightly.

The episode begins, I believe, with Anthony invoking a reference to “secret changes”. Ryan perpetuates the joking. Matt acknowledges the Sneakers reference, though it could have been interpreted as approval of the discourteous and disrespectful banter. “anon” expresses his confusion about this apparent disparity between the charter of the channel and what is occurring in practice. Ryan implies by inquiry that no such discrepancy exists. “anon”, clearly frustrated, storms off in a huff. Anthony cites this occurrence in his blog. As far as I am aware, none of the channel moderators listed on the Charter have made their opinions known publicly.

In other examples, we see Anthony wielding the Charter as a threatening weapon. In this case, we see a failure to self-censor. It does not surprise me at all that someone would not want to put up with this.

So I am not saying that either AJ or Ryan or Matt should have been banned for this; that would seem rather extreme and unproductive. I am saying that I have little faith in the #debian-tech team to enforce things fairly.

Alexis writes that we should just ignore trolls.

Some people use the word “troll” to refer to someone who makes provocative utterances in a dishonest manner in order to elicit excited responses, usually of a particular sort. Some people use the word less specifically, and view the motives and execution of the “troll” to be largely irrelevant. Others use the word to denote anyone who disagrees with them.

I think that such labelling of anyone who is not being malicious is generally counterproductive, as it leads to division, conflict, dehumanization, and high blood pressure.

Is it really that much easier to write someone off as hopeless than to attempt to understand foreign viewpoints?

Incidentally, this whole Teletubbies metaphor doesn't wash. Teletubbies don't preach harmony while trying to control or expel people overtly. They say « Big hug! » and « Aww! » while psychically nullifying your mind.

Tinky-winky for DPL.

In the free space, between the notility and the wire
Did a spot cam be apple day
Yet urging on, like wind and fire
Reigned spotted chains of stained McCrae

In the sack: Mango vomit

Wet: That's right. Mango vomit

Dry down: Yes, yes, mango vomit

The touch: Slight greasiness

The feel: Little eddies. Dragons and a cloaked Death. The kissing of lips, the kissing of toes, the smelling of armpits, the coming to blows. The kissing of toes, the kissing of lips, the smelling of armpits, the coming to grips.

The magic of our lives: Must be a coincidence, but I don't see a gollywog on a pin.

Final verdict: Nah.

In the sack: Sweet strawberry ammonia candy

Wet: Bread-in-a-can. You remember bread-in-a-can, don't you?

Dry down: OOS with reluctance

The touch: Crazy oil goodness

The feel: Orange groves, lemon groves, lime groves, but no citrus to be found. Tonsils, sweet tonsils. A frozen banana.

The magic of our lives: Homegirl done grunted at the maksha router.

Final verdict: To be stapled in.

Steve, I think this is a crock. We have enough uninformed voters as it is; encouraging more people to vote without caring does not seem like it would have positive effects. At the very least, I would expect it to elicit more “protest votes” than we've had in the past.

Joey Schulze conspiciously omits the reason that James Troup gave him in response to his recent request to become an ftpmaster.

I'm betting that it has to do with separation of duties. Joey is already a member of the Debian System Administration team. Having a member of DSA also be in ftpmaster would be very dangerous and is not a risk that Debian should ever take. Who knows what could happen?

Jörg, your use of ASCII confuses me. Do you mean ⅔, 2 ÷ 3, 2 ∕ 3, or a relative pathname called 2/3 ?

Unicode solves all communication problems.

I think one of the devotee hobbyists should set up a survey to help debunk the myth of monoculture and illuminate some potentially-depressing patterns that may live in the cracks between tribalist boundaries.

I suggest something like this list of hostile acts.

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
deadbeef-1550-53xy-114d-490b20ec1fe3
[   ] 1: Alice makes fun of Wally for writing terribly broken patches (to his face)
[   ] 2: Wally makes fun of Alice for writing useless bug reports (behind her back)
[   ] 3: Alice sucker-punches Wally in the gut.
[   ] 4: Wally calls Alice a useless, scabies-infested neo-conservative
[   ] 5: Alice calls Wally a retarded troll version of Michael Milken
[   ] 6: Wally tells lies about Alice to everyone, pitting them against her
[   ] 7: Alice emails Wally some questions, with M-F-T and Reply-To set to Wally
[   ] 8: Wally willfully ignores all communication from Alice
[   ] 9: Further disthrustion
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don't Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

One could do all kinds of fun stuff with this, adding and removing context for actions, since that type of thing matters to some people, even some of those fine people in the audience with some sort of borderline personality disorder.

I might rank number 8 as “most epicly-proportioned hostility” and number 3 as “least epicly-proportioned hostility”, whereas my friend Alpesh, who claims to be a pacifist, but refuses to acknowledge that verbal abuse is violence, might do the exact opposite.

Somewhere in the vast and unspoiled natural beauty that is New Jersey, right around the corner from K-Mart, lived a man named Stellan Andrews. He lived with his wife, his enormous children, and a host of psychotic delusions.

Stellan had always known that he was special. From a very early age, it was clear to him that he was superior to the other children, and as he aged, he discovered that he could employ his above-average intellect and cunning to manipulate social systems to his advantage. By the time he was 18, he thought himself invincible.

His ambitious and power-hungry nature was tempered by a fair amount of social ineptitude and an utter lack of empathy for anyone who was not similarly power-hungry and evil as he. This led to a perception of him as bright and eccentric at best, or more frequently as one of them there smartypants weirdos who thought that he was too good for his neighbors in the mobile home park. His friends were few and tended to be outcasts with sociopathic tendencies. These friendships were intense and codependent until abrupt ends; one person would demand too much, the other would demur, the first would stand firm and uncompromising as this would now become a significant issue about loyalty and value and importance, and after a short-lived blowup, they would never speak again. Throughout, extreme amounts of jealousy would rage in both directions, and so Stellan never had more than one friend at a time.

In between friendships, though also during them, Stellan spent much of his time tinkering with technology. He dissected and rebuilt radios, televisions, computers, and anything else he could get his hands on. He played with model rockets and explosives of many types, though without fail it was his friends who were more interested in these types of activities. With them, he also played with guns, but he never had any interest in doing so on his own.

After high school, Stellan enlisted in the Army, despite a fundamental distrust of government and a lack of passion for most of the various relevant interests of his now-forgotten friends: guns, history, tanks, U.S. Cavalry catalogs, and dolls that were called “action figures”. However, he did enjoy strategy- and war-games, which never had any relevance to his military career. The only aspect which appealed to him was the power hierarchy, and this seemed more natural to him than any other social structure he had experienced.

He was stationed in Laos for a time, and that is where he met his wife. She was a Chinese rabbi, and since she spoke no English, they hit it off smashingly. With not much to go on about her personality, he romanticized her into his perfect woman, and by the time his delusions were shattered, they were raising children in New Jersey. Neither was particularly happy. She sublimated nearly all of herself into her work at the local pan-Asian synagogue, and he, now more social than he had ever been in his life, entered into a sinister and twisted game.

It was called Perfidy, and there were a couple hundred participants across the entire country. These players had a few things in common: they were moderately sociopathic; they harbored great contempt and resentment for the average citizen, whom they characterized as a stupid sheep or cow; and they believed that they, as superior creatures, were entitled to control the proletariat for entertainment purposes.

The game, to boil it down to some sort of boiled-down nutshell, was the structured use of random and unwitting people as pawns in a giant and complex strategy game. The players who excelled were accomplished manipulators and liars, or, as they preferred to call themselves, social engineers. They were also cold and dispassionate.

Stellan lost his head. He had just been outmanœuvred by Jack Breig from Delaware, and he was livid. As the bile rushed into his mouth, he lost his firm grasp on strategery, and succumbed to vengeful instincts. Within days, he and Jack were getting far too personal. His rage abided when he succeeded in triggering Jack's divorce. In response, Jack proved once again that he was Stellan's better. The next day, Stellan was arrested for a crime that he did not commit. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. His family was not pleased.

He returned home a felon. No longer able to get credit or a job, he reacted in the most natural way possible: he joined the local Plan 9 Users' Group.

[To be continued...]

All this niggling about delegations disturbs me. You would have thought that Ian Jackson would have cleared this up but he seems to have confounded the issue by paragraphs of equivocation after a firm and sensible statement.

For someone used to nearly-nonexistent labor protections, the idea of not being able to fire someone without due process is one step away from a totalitarian dystopia.

Americans look at European employment laws with amazement and horror. The employees might see the added job security as comforting, but the knowledge that one can quit on 5 minutes' notice is comforting as well, and it is not a freedom that most would sacrifice. Employers see the added security as a potential nicety, but also as a terrible burden. « Not only do we have to keep paying them after we fire them, we have to give them places to sit! » It's tantamount to Evil Communism.

I'm sure you can guess what Europeans think of American labor laws.

Anyway, having anyone with augmented privileges not be fireable at the drop of a hat seems like madness to me. So I'll continue to believe that we can can anyone on the “org chart” any time we damn well please. Any other situation would mean that they have too much power.

Wouter, I don't know what's not ideal about this.

I was led to believe that one was required to give 2-3 months notice in either direction, regardless of cause. Here, actually serving one's two weeks is considered slightly beyond responsible and polite. What are the standards in Belgium?

ZOMG 0.1.6 will now prefer Mutagen to eyeD3 if it is installed.

In the sack: A cluster of conifers huddled together in the midst of a scary deciduous forest.

Wet: Rosemary with oil of baby.

Dry down: OOS6

The touch: Oleotastic

The feel: The push and pull. The tease and coax. The rapture. Russell. Chmmr. Shofixti. The shimmering of alibis.

The magic of our lives: Lumps from without

Final verdict: Deism is overrated.

There were cufflinks again, but the cycle is broken
It's been quite a few days since the last time we'd spoken
For if I must shoulder the onus inventive
To entice and allure and provide an incentive
Mayhaps I'd rather be writing in ballad meter

As EMF wavicles fly through the air
Bouncing off objects with nary a care
Getting fractured in the echo and sway
But it's so hard to dance that way
(when it's cold and there's no music)

Turn the midnight radio up for that sweet sound
For they might play Bowie, I to thee propound
It's not really work
It's just the power to charm
I'm still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

And straight from the 80's rings out the refrain
With magic and sadness and heartbreak and pain

And we danced.

I used to be into quotations.

There was a guy. He was very Jewish. He had bad skin. He was morally bankrupt. He was ugly. He smelled bad. As you might imagine, there was an entire gaggle of girls trying to get into his pants.

They were a bunch of Christian fundamentalists, affectionately called the God Squad by some, malevolently called the God Squad by some. They wrote him the scariest love letters and poetry I have ever seen.

Finally, he had to choose one, and I was relieved that he did not choose the one who had adapted Culture Club lyrics to express whatever foul sentiment she was trying to express. Instead, he chose a sweet girl who lived with a crazy, flat-chested, exhibitionist midget hooker who claimed to be allergic to marijuana and aspired to be an architect.

Now the evil boy and the sweet girl with a tenuous grip on reality performed the proper rites of the barnyard dance and became officially socially-ensnared. She drafted a timetable by which they would traverse numerous stages of physical intimacy. She showed him this timetable. He deluded himself into thinking that this timetable was much more volatile than it was. Much later on, he dumped her for a girl that was much less Christian.

In the meantime, though, their dry-humping was interminable. He very quickly earned himself the nickname "Sticky Shorts", which, come to think of it, was far better than most of his other nicknames.

Then once, for a moment when her legs weren't spread, she mentioned to me that she had heard that I was into quotations. I acknowledged this and she became very excited. She was into quotations too. She felt the need to prove this to me. It was rather close to that time when I concluded that quoting was lame and that I would stop living vicariously through the words of others and idolizing ink and all that other stuff from that GNR song.