In response to comments on threads and in email conversations TBAT gets the sense that a number of readers would like there to be at least one "open" thread a week. Such a thread would serve three purposes: first, it would be a good place for people to have purely social conversations and share personal news without having to worry about whether it's relevant or welcome to the discussion; second, it would let people bring concerns/news/ideas to the board that they wish to share with other readers; and third, it would serve as a good place for people to take conversations that have become heated/off track.
The existence of such a thread would also allow readers (including but not limited to TBAT) to suggest that conversations that are derailing threads, or which are triggering, be taken to the nearest open thread.
Open Thread
What does your native language (if English is not your first tongue) or your native dialect of English permit you to say that you cannot express comprehensibly to an international English-speaking audience?
How does the particular structure and vocabulary of your native language / dialect shape your thinking?
__________________________________________________________________________________
The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)
Perhaps it's something to do with my autism, but I often feel "trapped" by language, and attempting to describe concepts that can't really be described by language. So, perhaps because I think in pictures, I find language doesn't really "shape" my thinking.
Posted by: Nicolae Carpathia | May 23, 2011 at 03:13 PM
I enjoy talking gaming with fellow gamer slacktivites so I will take this opportunity to do so.
I bought LA Noire last week. It is one of the most realistic games I've played. It feels like you've taken a time machine back to 1947 Los Angeles. Its very impressive.
Also I just finished playing Bioshock. I don't think I've ever played anything that I keep analyzing/turning around in my head even after I finished it. The way it played/deconstructed with the conventions of gaming was amazing and the commentary on Objectivism is quite interesting. I thought it was weird that vending machines sold ammunition until I thought about some more and realized that in a truly Randian Objectivist society, there would be absolutely nothing stopping you from making ammunition vending machines.
Also Big Daddies are about the creepiest monster I've seen in a game, especially considering that they used to be humans and the process through which they were converted to their current state.
I am going to play Bioshock 2 when I finish LA Noire.
Posted by: Jason | May 23, 2011 at 03:18 PM
Dear Slacktivites,
I have something of a dilemma. I finally got up the gumption to try and find a therapist, found one and got some real help. However, the therapist had to leave the state due to hir own obligations. I hate telephones with a burning passion and thus don't want to do remote sessions.
I find myself falling back into the same patterns, and while I now have tools to fight them, I'm not doing a particularly great job on my own. My family is being supportive of my efforts, but I feel I have no right to burden them with my problems.
What would you do, Slacktivites? I'm torn between the anxiety, expense and difficulty of finding a therapist I can communicate with and the possibility of losing all the ground I've gained, but if I can't do it alone now, can I do it alone ever? I don't want to be dependent on a therapist for the rest of my life, so I've got to find some way to support myself eventually.
I'm going to go pseudo-anonymous for this one, since it is rather personal.
Posted by: Pseudo-Anon | May 23, 2011 at 03:26 PM
Even the trailers for L.A. Noire make me drool with anticipation. If only my Xbox 360 hadn't died for the third (and #@$&ing FINAL) time...
Posted by: Nicolae Carpathia | May 23, 2011 at 03:33 PM
Pseudo-Anon:
I would ask your out-of-state therapist (or have a supportive family member call and ask your out-of-state therapist) for recommendations for someone in your area. This gives you some continuity and may let you start just slightly ahead.
If you need help, then you need help and that's okay. If you need help all your life? That's okay too.
Posted by: cyllan | May 23, 2011 at 03:47 PM
What does your native language (if English is not your first tongue) or your native dialect of English permit you to say that you cannot express comprehensibly to an international English-speaking audience?
"You're such a dag" or "this is so daggy". Incomprehensible to non-Aussies, and I've never found a way to translate it.
On a personal note, I went to the doctor yesterday - she's given me at least a week off work, put me on anti-anxiety meds, and sent me to a counsellor. My official diagnosis would probably be "stressed and depressed".
Posted by: Deird, who has had a hard time lately | May 23, 2011 at 04:16 PM
@Pseudo-anon; I find that "I should be ready / able to do this or that" is seldom a productive line of thought, in these areas. (And it's something I have to remind myself of now and then.) As Kit said, if you're not ready now, you're not ready now. I hope you find a new therapist who can help you find your way again.
Internet-hugs to you and Deird, if you want them.
Posted by: Flowers | May 23, 2011 at 04:32 PM
And on the question: I find it hard to identify what's hard to express in English, in English... :-)
Sometimes I miss a good translation for a certain expression, but usually it's more that i cannot think of the right one because I'm sort of stuck in either English or Dutch, depending on what I have been reading / speaking / hearing.
Something odd: when I'm in a restaurant and not speaking Dutch (because of the company or the country), I tend to default to French for the thankyous to the servers. Or maybe Italian or Spanish. (My French is bad, but I learned some in school; in Italian and Spanish I can maybe remember the thankyous.) Even in, say, Germany.
Posted by: Flowers | May 23, 2011 at 04:40 PM
I find myself falling back into the same patterns, and while I now have tools to fight them, I'm not doing a particularly great job on my own.
It sounds like you need some support right now.
'some support' is a pretty vague term, because only you know how much help you really need.
'right now' means the current situation; once you or your situation changes, your needs may change.
My family is being supportive of my efforts, but I feel I have no right to burden them with my problems.
Let me be frank. Right now, your perceptions may not be completely accurate. Your ability to correctly assign value and importance to things relating to your self may be significantly distorted. And this is a really good example: your family wants to support you. If asked, I think they would probably offer support. And right now, it seems like you want support, and would benefit from it. So when I read "I feel I have no right to burden them...", that feels like an odd distortion.
Let me make a less personal analogy. My father is retired, and could easily go to my house during the day while I work and take my dog for a walk; he likes the dog and enjoys exercise. I really want my dog to get exercise, but I work 40+ hours, and I feel really guilty that I'm not around a lot to walk him. Taking care of the dog is my responsibility, and my dad should enjoy his retirement, right? One option is not to ask for help: the dog doesn't get walked, I feel bad, and my dad (who is happy to help) remains unaware of any problems. The other option is to ask for help: the dog is happy, my dad knows I've got troubles but is happy to be helping, and I don't have to feel bad about having to work a little late.
I'm not trying to trivialize your situation, I'm just trying to show how your perceptions might be distorted. There may be a lot of good reasons not to ask your family for help, but "I don't have the right to burden them" actually isn't one of them. This isn't a situation about "rights", it's about needs.
if I can't do it alone now, can I do it alone ever?
When I first started to drive, I needed someone in the car with me. I had to have lessons, and it wasn't the kind of thing where I could just read a book and be OK. I needed an active, observing teacher providing me with feedback and guidance. My mom taught me how to drive, and it sucked. It also only took a few weeks.
My first car was an automatic transmission, and it was a nice enough car. It lasted me a few years, before I got in an accident and wrecked it. My next car was manual transmission, which meant that once again, I couldn't just drive on my own. I had to learn new skills, needed someone to teach me, ride along, hold my hand, give me feedback, and make sure I learned what I needed to correctly. It sucked too, but it was also only temporary.
You're learning new skills, and practicing putting them to use. Being trained for a job isn't the same as working the job. When you're in training, all you know is training, so it's reasonable to wonder if things will ever be different. But they will be.
One last thing: momentum counts. If you stop now, not because you feel you should but because of circumstances, it's going to be harder to start again later. Take advantage of the momentum you have.
Posted by: Rodeobob | May 23, 2011 at 05:06 PM
What does your native language (if English is not your first tongue) or your native dialect of English permit you to say that you cannot express comprehensibly to an international English-speaking audience?
I find I cannot quite explain Quebec politics (especially the more emotional aspects of it) in English. For example: "les autres" does not simply mean "the others"and the emotional punch of "maîtres chez nous" just cannot be translated into English. Nor is the racial (as opposed to linguistic) overtones of calling someone "an allophone" easily understood outside Canadian English.
I seldom hear an American use the phrases "take the mickey out of" or "slip him a mickey finn" the way a Canadian might.
Also, and this is harder to explain -- Canadians do say "eh" a lot but not in exactly the places where other people pretending to be Canadians do.
Posted by: Mmy | May 23, 2011 at 05:27 PM
Flowers: If you can find a satisfactory English equivalent for "gezellig" or "eet smakelijk", I'd like to know what it is. My cousins and I haven't picked up as much Dutch as we'd like from our grandparents, but this we have picked up and this we have been unable to translate to our satisfaction. "Cozy" for "gezellig" seems awfully limited, and English just borrows "bon appetit" for "eet smakelijk"... then again, English is the language that "has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." Perhaps it's natural that we borrow a phrase when we don't own one.
My native dialect of English has few words or phrases that translate poorly. I wish more people understood and used the distinction between "you", "y'all", and "all y'all", but it's not too hard to convey. Ditto with "might could", "might should", et al. But a lot of my family's language is extremely referential, and I miss a lot of the range of reference. I won't find as many Internetians (rhymes with Venetians?) who understand "I'm just not sure this plan was very well thought through" as "Perhaps if we built a large wooden badger..." (Heh. IMDB doesn't even have that quote. Perhaps that movie was too quotable.)
Posted by: Kirala | May 23, 2011 at 05:27 PM
Also, Australians have a tendency to say "yeah, nah" at the start of sentences:
"How was the footy match?"
"Yeah, nah, it was good."
Has a distinct meaning, yet I've never been able to explain what that is.
Posted by: Deird, whose internet is SLOW today | May 23, 2011 at 05:53 PM
Not quite what you were asking, but: in English one can, with considerable difficulty, make the protagonist of a story gender-unspecified. Sometimes people won't even notice. (There is an interesting rant by Melissa Scott on the fact that she wrote such a novel, and reviewers gendered her protagonist in their reviews, apparently without even noticing that she left the question open.)
The interactive fiction community got a lot of cool discussions out of one game where both protagonist and antagonist are gender-unspecified. Apparently getting the IF-writing tools to accommodate this was not trivial, and there are a few gotchas, but it mainly works--at least, opinions on who is what gender were quite diverse.
(I had a fun moment in that game when I forgot that my private assignment of genders to characters was not shared by the game: I typed "kiss her" and the only unambiguous "her" in reach was a leopard. Oops!)
My understanding is that in more heavily gendered languages you simply can't do this, and that the particular effect in these works is therefore untranslatable. (You can make a character neuter, but you can't leave them unspecified.) I suspect that in a language with even less gendering you could obtain gender-ambiguity effects you can't obtain in English. Number-ambiguity too, perhaps. I sometimes want to be equivocal between monotheism and polytheism, and I write "the Divine", but it's awkward to carry that through at length--and it probably comes down more on the monotheist side of the scale.
Posted by: MaryKaye | May 23, 2011 at 06:12 PM
re: language, a bunch of people are describing what linguists call "rich spots" in language - words or phrases that don't have direct analogues and take multiple sentences (minimum) to explain. Like "cool" is a rich spot in english. Try explaining it and it'd take you half a page to get all the connotations and gradations of it. And yeah, Mmy I hear that about Quebec. I was in university at the time of the last big referendum, and I was in debating circles at the time, and so we'd try to have "should Quebec leave debates" - one of my Quebecois friends saw these and said he'd never seen a good one outside La Belle Province, because it's not a rational case, it's a deeply emotional one, and people outside Quebec just don't get the emotions and the loyalty and such.
I read this big article in the New Yorker (I think - my google-fu is failing me trying to find it) a few years ago about the science of whether language determines thought. The conclusion they'd come to apparently is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis doesn't work - language doesn't LIMIT thought. You can explain things to people, eventually, more or less regardless of language. But it does make some thoughts unavoidable. The examples they gave were that English forces you to think about gender because we have to say his/her (I notice people here going to considerable lengths to use neologisms like "hir" to get around this). Another example is that in some languages they don't have directional words that are relative to a person, like "in front of you", or "left" or "right". Instead all directions are given as compass points ("north / east / south west"). Even a dancer wouldn't say "bend forward" they would say "bend south-east." That means you are obligated to track where north is at all times, because as you turn and move, directions change. Apparently people form these cultures have phenomenal senses of direction. There are stories of them being swept off boats in storms, and the people from that language swimming safely to the nearest island and being baffled as to why everyone else swam off in the wrong direction.
Wish I could find it to link, it was really really cool.
Posted by: Ecks | May 23, 2011 at 06:18 PM
...Ironically, I am finding myself feeling as if I'd be derailing the open-thread if I bring my response to the Nuking discussion in the Seuss thread here.
Posted by: Trinker | May 23, 2011 at 06:21 PM
@Nicolae: It's probably because it isn't.
I'm really a little annoyed at this open thread topic. These questions, in some way, relate to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language shapes ones thoughts. More on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
And the general consensus among linguists is that it doesn't, really. Or at least, not that much. Some effects do hold- a lot of work has been done in re: how many color terms your language has does relate to how you mentally divide up the color spectrum. Or, I see Ecks has kind of beat me to the punch- how one uses/thinks of directions. But some of the big things that people go around believing- that Germans are some how more harsh, and the French, romantic, because of their languages- are just not true, and lead to perpetuating all sorts of stereotypes.
For some more discussion on this topic (including the sub-topic: "Language Y doesn't have a word for X, so that means they don't do it" and it's sister, "Language X has 20 words for Y, so obviously they do Y a lot!") check out some of the posts on Language Log. A recent one is here, on the much parroted "fact" that Japanese doesn't have a word for "looting": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3031
That's not to say that any of the experiences stated above aren't real- but it's a fallacy to automatically assume that they're a product of one's language per se, rather than of society. Like, with Mmy's example- maybe the reason it's so hard to convey the meaning of "allophone" to an American audience is not because we don't have the word "allophone", or our American dialect is somehow unequipped to deal with it, but because we do not have such an overtly sharply divided society, linguistically (American society is, of course, divided in terms of dialects and language: People who speak southern English are perceived as being less intelligent, and so on, and there are all sorts of things going on with Spanish speaking Americans, but it's not as entrenched as the French/English divide is in Canada: we haven't had Spanish speakers actually vote on wanting to leave the country).
Posted by: Seabasser | May 23, 2011 at 06:27 PM
Tinker, YOUR POLITENESS IS DERAILING OUR ARGUMENT!
/joking :D
Posted by: Ecks | May 23, 2011 at 06:28 PM
@Ecks: ..Ironically, I am finding myself feeling as if I'd be derailing the open-thread if I bring my response to the Nuking discussion in the Seuss thread here.
Insert maniacal laughter here :)
I think, as with most other things around here, we should generally rely on our good judgment as to which thread to post to.
Posted by: Mmy | May 23, 2011 at 06:28 PM
I think this is a reference to Guy Deutscher's article in the NYT magazine from last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html
(Right city, wrong publication.)
I don't think anyone holds to the strong Sapir-Worf hypothesis. The weaker version is that language definitely does affect how one frames information.
Posted by: Trinker | May 23, 2011 at 06:36 PM
My native dialect allows me two useful features: the second-person plural, and layered auxiliary verbs ("we might could have fixed it if we hadn't waited too long").
Posted by: Lila | May 23, 2011 at 06:37 PM
Hey, does anyone remember that conversation on The Gay Lifestyle and how it's like Brigadoon?
I realized something today about why Christians like that phrase so much, and it might be worth a post here. But I'll need quotes! And a summary! And other supporting things, plus someone needs to be recognized for the Brigadoon joke. But I can't for the life of me remember where that exchange was.
Posted by: sharky | May 23, 2011 at 06:56 PM
Posted by: Nicolae Carpathia | May 23, 2011 at 07:35 PM
Mmy, you'll find "slip someone a mickey finn" in hard-boiled detective novels of a couple generations back. It seems to have died out as active slang in the US in about the 1940s or '50s. I'm interested to learn that it's still used in Canadian English.
Posted by: Dash | May 23, 2011 at 07:47 PM
Dash: Mmy, you'll find "slip someone a mickey finn" in hard-boiled detective novels of a couple generations back.
And in the movie "Annie" (speaking of beloved children's stories). :D
Posted by: Ruby | May 23, 2011 at 07:48 PM
@Dierd:
"Bogan" is another one I find difficult to find exact shades of translation for. "Daggy" is impossible.
With the "yeah/nah" thing, I've always taken it as a spacing mechanism, with the third 'yeah' or 'nah' (or word, occasionally) being the start of the actual response. I often hear and use it as "yeah/nah, yeah it was good" or some such though.
Posted by: lsn | May 23, 2011 at 07:49 PM
Mmy, you'll find "slip someone a mickey finn" in hard-boiled detective novels of a couple generations back.
The thing is I have heard people say it in "real life" quite frequently (leaving you to wonder what kind of life I have led that would offer me the opportunity of hearing people discuss such a thing.)
Posted by: Mmy | May 23, 2011 at 08:00 PM
@Trinker, That's the one! Well done, thank you, much appreciated [bookmarked]. You gotta love the interweb hive mind, it's fabulous. Wouldn't work if it wasn't powered by such smart people though.
@Seabasser
Good thoughts. While it's not dictated by language, there ARE different cultural patterns - and the best definition of "culture" I've heard is Schein's that it is the default assumptions that are understood by everyone in a place of work / area / country that are so much part of the background material of the place that they have a hard time articulating it if asked. In some places, frinstance, it is an unquestioned understanding that "we" have some meaningful ties in common, and that people coming in from elsewhere can be threats to our collective well-being. In other places there's an unquestioned understanding that everyone is different, and that new arrivals are welcome as they bring new things to the table.
I think in the nuking thread we were seeing a cultural disconnect of this sort. One set of cultural rules understands the world in terms of oppression and oppressed, and is very sensitive to the plight of the oppressed. Oppressors are perceived as ubiquitous, privileged, and fully responsible for the damage they cause. The oppressors frame of mind in this is irrelevant, as they are seen as having an affirmative duty to be aware enough not to cause damage. The analogy would be that if you walk blindfold through a china shop, you are absolutely responsible for the dishes you smash as you SHOULD have been smart enough to know not to do that, and you shouldn't be surprised or offended when people yell at you. Forbearance is a virtue, but is understood to have limits - once you've been stepped on 500 times in a row, it's quite justifiable that you lose patience with the next person in line. The oppressed must therefore be fully supported in their efforts to push back against and punish oppression in the manner they see fit, as any attempt to dictate tactics would be to further their powerlessness and presumes to invalidate their perception of oppression, and is therefore tantamount to undermining them and siding with their oppressors.
The other set of cultural rules, though, understands the world as being full of people coming from very different places who need to learn to get along with each other. It considers each interaction more or less separately, as a fresh negotiation, and puts upon people a duty to attempt to understand why other people behave the way they do. That means you have an affirmative duty to TRY not to tread on people's toes, but it's understood that this can sometimes be a difficult process with lots of ways to go wrong, depending as it does, on who you are talking to, and is complicated by any disinformation you may have picked up in the past. There are certainly general principles and guidelines that a good faith actor will pick up and learn along the way, making them a better person, but the main thing is to engage in good faith, doing your best to be attentive and learn as you go. When it becomes apparent that people are NOT acting in good faith, then the social contract is violated, and it is quite appropriate to punish or ostracize them (hence, nuking is viewed as perfectly appropriate in these circumstances). But punishing someone who IS acting in good faith, simply because they aren't following quickly enough (or whatever) makes you guilty of being intemperate and destroying the possibility of constructive engagement, and is considered upsetting and unfair.
When you have a conversation between two people operating from conflicting sets of cultural assumptions, you end up with a never ending stream of miscommunication, because each side filters the other's statements through their own lens, and find themselves imagining the other person is saying things that they can't imagine any sane person would possibly think. It's not per se a language conflict, so much as a (sub)cultural conflict.
Or so it seems to me, but I'm often wrong :)
Posted by: Ecks | May 23, 2011 at 08:28 PM
@Mmy There was a murder mystery dinner show* down by Walt Disney World that had one character "slip a mickey" into another character's glass. During the solution reveal, the first character put a small Mickey Mouse figurine in the glass. That's become my default image every time I hear or read that phrase. ;)
*Said show is now out of business, but existed sometime in the late 90s, early 2000s.
Posted by: LKE | May 23, 2011 at 09:01 PM
Holy crap, LKE, are you talking about The Adventurers Club???
Posted by: Ruby | May 23, 2011 at 09:06 PM
I can say "It's raining" in about a dozen ways, all with their own distinct meaning.
It's raining. It's raining cats and dogs. It's spitting, it's spotting, it's drizzling, it's pouring, it's bucketing down, it's a shower, it's settled rain, it's patchy rain, the heavens have opened.
It feels very restrictive to be limited to just "raining", maybe "light rain" or "heavy rain", when discussing the weather with foreigners. I know what drizzle is and how it behaves and how wet it will make me, but describing that to someone without local knowledge is very difficult.
Posted by: Froth | May 23, 2011 at 09:07 PM
The anesthesiologist told me he was going to "slip [me] a mickey" as I was being prepped for thoracoscopic surgery. Then a nurse was telling me to wake up, the surgery was over.
I hate that.
Posted by: Doc Rocketscience | May 23, 2011 at 09:08 PM
I've never held to the Sapir Whorf theory, but one thing I definitely did notice from growing up in a multilingual* environment is that it is easier to avoid the fallacy of mistaking the "label" for the "thing". (An odd thing for a Platonist to say, I know...)
I also became very conscious of the sounds of words, and how they affected their meanings (German is the best language for swearing, unless you are swearing AT someone, in which case English is better) and the political implications of dialect (Briar is the dialect of choice when addressing animals and tools, but is considered disrespectful "sass" when used wth teachers or other authority figures, so that navigating between "the creek rose" and "the crick done riz" becomes reflexive depending on context).
Shared literature becomes a sort of private language, too, doesn't it? Practically Tamarian** in its usage of allusion and metaphor. Daughter and I, who share a love for a particular space opera series that likes to Play With Linguistics, irritate the spit out of family and friends by communicating solely with elaborate bows and song clips.
*"Proper" English, "Briar" (a rural variant of Southern USA English), German (grandparents) and Yiddish (most of my friends)
**Geek allusion alert!
Posted by: hapax | May 23, 2011 at 09:21 PM
@Ruby, Unfortunately, I'm not. I never got a chance to go there before that part of Pleasure Island closed down. The name of the group was "Murderwatch Mystery Theater" and it was hosted by one of the hotels near Disney, but not on the property.
(My dad says it was the Grosvenor Hotel. As all I remember about the Hotel itself is the that the play area was "Baskervilles" and the bar was "Moriarty's", I'll go with what he says.)
If you like Murder Mystery dinner shows, may I recommend Sleuths? (http://www.sleuths.com/)
Posted by: LKE | May 23, 2011 at 09:59 PM
There are certainly topics I can discuss with my husband much more easily than with anyone else, due to a highly developed shared vocabulary. As one example, "to black-archer" describes a specific type of logic error: when you estimate something and add a fudge factor ("there are 10 black archers in front of the tower, but there might be 10 more in back, I didn't look") and then remember the total and mistakenly re-fudge it ("there are 20 black archers--in front of the tower, but there might be 20 more in back.") It happens with times, prices, all sorts of things. (In the example from which this was taken, a roleplaying game, the player black-archered it *twice* and ended up with 80 black archers, to the amazement of the other players.)
When we're discussing something complex in one of our areas of mutual interest--roleplaying, computer programming, population genetics, SF) we can get things across to each other sometimes twice as fast as to anyone else. It's partly shared vocabulary (and refinements of meaning on standard vocabulary) and partly shared experience. I've known him for 25 years....
Shared vocabulary is so seductive. It can easily become a barrier that prevents anyone else from joining a discussion, but gosh, it's fun not to have to define your terms or wrestle meanings into order!
Posted by: Mary Kaye | May 23, 2011 at 11:03 PM
@Ecks
I learned the concept as AKICI$group (all knowledge is contained in...) Google and I get along pretty well.
You said: "It's not per se a language conflict, so much as a (sub)cultural conflict."
I call it a framing issue - which is what makes the perspective vastly different.
I suspect we're done with this discussion until the next round.
Posted by: Trinker | May 23, 2011 at 11:26 PM
@Froth
According to my mother, in the rural area of England she grew up there's a local word "siling" which refers to rain that is coming down in impenetrable sheets.
@Trinker
Sounds good to me. I was just thinkin' it all through too much as is my wont ;)
Posted by: Ecks | May 24, 2011 at 12:17 AM
I'm fairly certain a native speaker of French would not understand the common Louisiana phrase, laissez les bon temps rouler, since it's an English phrase translated into Cajun French.
Posted by: Coleslaw | May 24, 2011 at 12:27 AM
Update on Rapture scheduling (this seemed the most appropriate thread to post it)
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_APOCALYPSE_SATURDAY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT (apologies if my html-fu is weak)
Apparently Saturday was only a spiritual judgement and Jesus is sitting in judgement for the next five months. Gods be good...
Oh, and he's "not in the business of financial advice," which I'm sure will comfort the recently bankrupt among his followers.
Posted by: Serpent | May 24, 2011 at 02:07 AM
This came up on the Dr Seuss thread:
It is perhaps worthwhile to note that while I enjoy Making Light, I find it an oppressive and white-default space, and that many PoC (and social justice-identified white allies of PoC) I know eschew participation there because it's perceived to be PoC-hostile space.
... so I'm cross-posting my response here, as I think it's a question worth asking:
That's useful to know. Given that all your friendly neighbourhood TBATs are white, I think there's a good chance we'll need the odd wake-up call if we're going to avoid the same problem, so I hope people will let us know if we're screwing up. If anyone has suggestions for how to improve, it'd be great to hear them.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 02:22 AM
Totally OT: Hi again everybody! I've been offline for a bit due to family.
Vaguely on topic: I hold the weak Sapir-Whorf position, especially when it comes to metaphors. I'm also fascinated by research that relates our metaphors and other thinking to our bodies (for example, people actually do feel colder after social rejection - possibly the origin of "cold shoulder"?).
Along those lines, I recently taught a class on correspondences in magic that drew heavily on the book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, especially the ideas of how we categorize things.
Posted by: Literata | May 24, 2011 at 06:54 AM
Oh, language. English is my first language, the one I am most comfortable in, but Singlish comes in a close second as a native dialect of English, with all its heavy borrowing from Hokkien and Malay. Borrowed vocabulary like ‘juak si’ (very warm) and ‘lau hong’ (soft from humidity), which are attendant to the climate, are hard to translate into English, though.
Nottomention de rhythm of speaking isself is almost impossible to transcribe one. De thing about dialek is dat is spoken, cannot write de.
*shrug*
Posted by: mercredigirl | May 24, 2011 at 07:10 AM
@ Mary Kaye:
My husband and I have developed phrases in a similar way - ours are things that would sound absolutely ridiculous to outsiders who aren't familiar with our shared experiences, but for us encompass a very specific range of things.
"You're MY some bees" - You're really special / important to me; I like being around you; I want you with me
(I am, or I'm feeling) "Frog all over the place" - I'm feeling run-down / depressed / ugly; I need a hug; I need reassurance
"Wake up, Franklin; you're going to New Brunswick" - Let's go out; let's do something unplanned
Posted by: Gela | May 24, 2011 at 10:00 AM
I've found that non-word noises don't always translate well, but it's possible that that's because my second/third languages are still at the "I would like to eat chocolate. I love you. The weather today is unusually good." level.
Posted by: Dav | May 24, 2011 at 10:07 AM
Serpent, the URL didn't work. Could you summarize the story or give us a couple of words to Google? It sounds like you're talking about Harold Camping or someone like him making his excuses for the failed Saturday Rapture, and I'll like to know more.
Posted by: Dash | May 24, 2011 at 10:15 AM
Apparently Saturday was only a spiritual judgement and Jesus is sitting in judgement for the next five months.
At least he had an excuse prepared, apparently. What if he had been barricaded in a TV studio all day Saturday and the network carried a live shot of him paired with scenes of people doing just fine around the world? I would liked to have seen him dissembling, wiping the flop sweat from his brow and saying, "Uh, er, ummm, well..."
Posted by: Tonio | May 24, 2011 at 10:22 AM
I know that German is rife with what are called "flavoring particles" (like "doch" and "mal"). I'm sure that English is, too, but it's too familiar for me to see them, rather like a fish trying to perceive water.
The use of layered auxilary verbs that Lila noted upthread might qualify. (Trying to think how to translate the connotations of something like "you shoulda oughta be done listening to me!")
Posted by: hapax | May 24, 2011 at 10:24 AM
@Serpent: was this the rapture-retcon story you wanted to link to?
Posted by: Mmy | May 24, 2011 at 10:33 AM
I don't hold with Sapir-Whorf either, but it is fascinating to try and express ideas from a language that's set up for them in a language that's not.
At one point, when SixSpouse and I were looking at buying a mattress, the salesman was trying altogether too hard to get us to buy the very expensive one (of course) and was trying the "make friendly and then establish mirroring" angle, in which a salesperson imitates your gestures and then gets you to imitate hirs instead as a technique to establish rapport - unfortunately for him, both Star and I are on to that, and consider it dirty pool. (He was unsubtle about the mirroring part, which meant we flipped it on him and got him to do some mildly uncomfortable things, such as sitting on the floor, before he gave it up.)
I was in college studying Japanese, and he took an interest because he had some sort of a relative studying Japanese, and we got talking about some of the aesthetic vocabulary that seems to be unique to the language - specifically attempting to give concrete definitions to wabi-sabi and mono no aware, neither of which has a convenient translation or even a roughly analogous short phrase in English, and point out the differences between the two. I didn't have a lot of success communicating what I understand those to be, but it was a fun conversation and not at all what I expected in the mattress store.
Posted by: Sixwing, who wants to learn more languages | May 24, 2011 at 10:34 AM
He was unsubtle about the mirroring part, which meant we flipped it on him and got him to do some mildly uncomfortable things, such as sitting on the floor, before he gave it up.
Love it! Would the Sixes consider posting video of your shopping adventures? I listen to a radio show where one of the broadcasters plays tapes of his encounters with phone telemarketers. In one case, he had heard the same time-share spiel so often that he repeated it to the caller step by step, claiming to be psychic.
Posted by: Tonio | May 24, 2011 at 10:38 AM
To flare, meaning "to get rid of by or as if by radiating", is apparently not used by anyone but me. I have no idea how I got it into my head that flare could mean that, but it's firmly in my mental dictionary now. I always feel a bit surprised when I use it and nobody else understands me.
Posted by: Brin (not Meir) | May 24, 2011 at 10:42 AM
My joy: it is substantial.
Tangentially, I hold to the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, which states that 'strong' theories of linguistic relativism conquer 'weak' theories and then corral them into armies with which they may launch campaigns of categorization to command thought and demand allegiance from humans, for the glory of Kahless.
Sadly, it is treated without honor in most of academia.
---
For the longest time I thought 'blood ran cold' was a bizarre turn of phrase, as if your body temperature would plummet when something unexpectedly and quietly terrifying happened. Then a few weeks ago, I found myself in a position of being startled and scared in a quiet way and what the heck why does my circulatory system feel cold?!
It's entirely possible this had happened many times before and I never paid enough attention to realise this was what people were talking about. Ditto for 'woke up in a cold sweat'.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 24, 2011 at 10:58 AM
Brin: What kind of thing would one be getting rid of? It might or might not make perfect sense to me depending on context.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 24, 2011 at 10:59 AM
*cackle* Will, please receive this internet, packaged with fresh gagh.
Tonio, if I ever get video of such a thing, I'd be happy to share it. :D I don't know how we'd manage that without breaking the moment, but if I do, it is SO going on Youtube.
Posted by: Sixwing, who wants to learn more languages | May 24, 2011 at 11:00 AM
I grew up learning and speaking the Acadian version of French, but I've never been analytical enough about it to be able to clearly elaborate what ideas it expresses differently. Other than the matter of "ouvrir/fermer la lumière" literally meaning "open/close the light" but actually translating to "turn on/turn off the light". We covered that in grade 1, and I recognized it immediately because it was a common phrasing that a lot of francophone friends of the family used. The rest of my grasp of French is mostly reflex, where I say something because that's what you say, but without much analysis as to why. (The rest of my grasp of French is mirroring the words other people in the conversation are using, and just plain making things up.)
My recent trip to Montreal was a little odd for me, language-wise. I spent a bit under a week there, interacting with people that spoke English with a definite French inflection and accent and wording... and I started to absorb it. It dawned on me, as I stood in line for baggage check in the airport and prattled to my friends about busses and wheels or something, that I sounded really Montreal-ish when I did it. It was a matter of pace and inflection and wording, and it took me another day or two after that for my speech to drift back to "normal". Yarrgh, I just wish I could explain it a little better.
Posted by: Lampdevil | May 24, 2011 at 11:05 AM
Subcultures tend to have a lot of short-cut words. "Floon" is probably the hardest word to explain to non-LARPers; it's a combination of excitement, eagerness, and joy accompanied by lots of action centered around getting ready for an event.
Posted by: cyllan | May 24, 2011 at 11:28 AM
On language: Philadelphians use the word "jawn" to mean...just about anything--person, place, thing--for example, "me and this jawn" (referring to a friend) or "go to this jawn" (referring to a place). I have friends who say "up in this jawn" a lot. I'm not a native Philadelphian, so I don't use it.
Here's a funny one: Growing up in Long Island, when we played the game "rock-paper-scissors," we'd say, "rock-paper-scissors-says-shoot." No one else does that. Took me a while to catch onto that. Oh, and my mom's use of "Nah" startled a lot of New Englanders--it's sort of nasally. Common to New Yorkers, but not to many other people. Also, she doesn't say "fuggedaboutit" but she has said "fuggedit" in the past.
Um. I'm sure that there are other weird language uses that I use that I'm not thinking of right now.
Posted by: sarah | May 24, 2011 at 11:34 AM
From the Dr. Seuss thread:
I have a great deal of respect for the erudition and civility of Making Light, but would not uphold that space as a bastion of safety [for PoC].
Must we choose between the two? (And the point still stands: they have *excellent* moderation there.) I'm pretty sure Ta-Nehesi Coates' blog (from what I've seen of it) doesn't allow people to scream at newbies over minor issues, either. And when outbursts do happen, I don't see regulars pretending that nothing unusual has happened, or saying that trying to get someone to calm down or, you know, be polite to those who are politely questioning them is a "tone argument".
There are blogs where that happens. With the exception of Phyrangula, I don't tend to frequent them very often, because I honestly don't feel comfortable on them. I may lurk, but that's far more about rubbernecking than participating.
Either way, it seems that a decent chunk of the commentators here seem to define "safety" as being a place where they're allowed to scream at anyone who disagrees with them (however politely) about minor matters -- and to do so without repercussions. As far as I'm concerned, that's not safety -- because I for one don't feel safe in a place where I'm constantly worried about offending someone who is more confrontational (and has more time than me) online.
I'm bipolar. In part, that means that when I get mad, I get mad. I don't like it -- it's not good for me, nor is it good for anyone else. And I'd much rather be in a community that responds to overblown anger with concern ("is there anything wrong?") than tolerance and encouragement.
So I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed. It's definitely not something that should be dismissed the way some people seemed to want to. We need to decide what kind of community we want to be. Because from what I'm seeing, I'm not sure this is a community I want to be a part of anymore.
Posted by: LMM | May 24, 2011 at 11:37 AM
What kind of thing would one be getting rid of? It might or might not make perfect sense to me depending on context.
For an everyday example, flaring heat from a laptop that's played a bit too much Runescape by letting it sit upside-down and rest for a while. (Or, lately, on its side. Due to monitor trouble my laptop is now permanently stuck open, and trying to turn it upside-down would probably break it.)
I suppose "dissipate" is more or less the same thing (maybe with somewhat more passive connotations), but it's two more syllables and less likely to come to mind when I need it.
Posted by: Brin (not Meir) | May 24, 2011 at 11:56 AM
@LMM: thank you for bringing up your concerns, and I quite agree with you that the issue should be addressed. I have the suspicion/concern that people who are uncomfortable with abusive language - and frankly I'm a little tired of the word 'nuking', because it condenses all verbal aggression into a single package - are likely to stay silent about their discomfort for fear of being attacked themselves. If anyone is feeling that way, it'd be good to hear from them if they're willing to stick their heads over the parapet.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 12:17 PM
@Pseudo-Anon: You've gotten some great advice and encouragement from others. I'll just add a few thoughts of my own.
Generally speaking, remote therapy sessions are meant to be used in emergency situations that have to be taken care of right now and can't wait for an in-person session. For regular therapy, an in-person presence is rather important.
First, let me say that falling into the same patterns in perfectly natural and normal. Those patterns are familiar*. People often do it without even realizing it. When it happens, a therapist has three basic jobs:
1. Help the client become aware of the fact that they are falling back into the same patterns.
2. Help them "get back on track."
3. Encourage them to "go easy on themselves," as many of us tend to flog ourselves mercilessly for such "steps backward."
The good news is, you're managing #1 without a therapists help. Congratulations. You should be proud of it. You might still need help with #2 and #3, but that's okay. It'll come.
Progress. Not perfection. If you think you'd do better with the extra help, then by all means get it. But don't downplay the changes you're making, either.
It sounds to me like you're already making changes. So you're already in a different place than you were anyway. A good therapist will recognize that and congratulate you. And as that progress continues, your therapist will be less necessary.
I recently went through this, myself. I graduated from therapy. The last few months, we kept lengthening the time between my sessions. I needed her help less and less. Finally, we both agreed that things are going well enough that I can stop seeing her.**
If you keep making progress, you'll reach that point eventually. I don't know when. You don't know when. Your therapist doesn't know when. But that day will come.
So you feel like you still need help, so I'd encourage you to find someone to help you. You deserve it. And it sounds like you're doing great, even if it doesn't feel that way to you right now.
---
* Let's be honest here. There's a reason "the same patterns" exist. We tried them at some point, and at the time, they seemed to work for us. So we established them as patterns. And that's okay.
At some point, they quit working for us in some sense. So we decided it was time to break them. That's okay too. It just takes time, effort, and more than a few missteps at times.
The important thing is to remember that the objective is to change those patterns that no longer work for us. Not punish ourselves for the fact that they existed in the first place. Not to punish ourselves for occasionally falling back into them. Punishing ourselves just makes things worse.
** I still have my therapists number in my phone, and probably will until the day I die or the day she retires or moves out of the area. I'm doing great now, but I might need her again someday. And that's okay. In fact, it's a relief to me. In fact, knowing that I can always go back -- even just for a "quick checkup" -- made it much easier for me to make that leap towards ending my regular sessions.
Posted by: Jarred | May 24, 2011 at 12:34 PM
I'm just glad when people say it as rock-paper-scissors. Hearing it as paper-scissor-stone or other variants fills me with an instant and profound sense of Wrong. (Rock-paper-scissors was an integral game of my early childhood. One might well wonder how it could possibly remain interesting after about three rounds, and the answer is 'Allow people to be/play/use/cast anything they want, with an appropriate hand gesture to symbolise it, and then select the victor by whomever argues their case the best'. Family favourite involved a herd of sheep versus a flood of syrup. No winner was declared.)
---
Are we still talking about nuking? Okay, my position, then.
I personally am not afraid of getting nuked. It has happened, a couple of times; the first time I realised that I was phrasing my statements badly and in a way that appeared to support a sexist argument that I did not want any part of, and the second time I found on further reflection that part of my reasoning was in fact conditioned by patriarchal traditions. It's about as positive an experience as can be expected from being wrong.
I don't think nuking is the most effective technique; that's one of many reasons why I don't do it. I don't like it when people are angry with me, obviously, but that's rather the point. And more to the point, if I am thinking/saying something that could or does make other people angry with me, I would rather know about it than not. Setting some kind of policy, formal or informal, that tells people how angry they're allowed to be with me would indicate, to me, that I care more about other people not expressing anger at me than I do about not holding beliefs that are harmful.
Further to my experience, I haven't kept a running tally, but I'm pretty sure any question surrounding such volatile issues can still be phrased in a way that does not give offence. Or, to pick a concrete example that's more intelligible, it's possible to ask a question about sexism in Supernatural in a way that does not assert that THIS IS TOTALLY NOT SEXIST and yet also does not sound like a brainwashed dronebot who's just received the supernatural_is_patriarchal_evil.exe patch.
Some and or all of the above may be purely the result of my perspective and preferences. In general I dislike it when assertions are met with assertions; I find the results are unproductive, even when both sides have evidence.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 24, 2011 at 12:38 PM
Damn you, Will Wildman, my mother paid good money for that hazlenut creamer I just shot out my nose! (But the coffee was a free sample, so I guess it evens out?
I've not come across satisfactory English equivalents for "sabai" or "jai yen." And yet I'm not really sure I completely understand the full cultural import of the phrases in Thai either, since I only learned them as a small child.
Posted by: Lonespark | May 24, 2011 at 12:40 PM
Setting some kind of policy, formal or informal, that tells people how angry they're allowed to be with me would indicate, to me, that I care more about other people not expressing anger at me than I do about not holding beliefs that are harmful.
I don't think anyone's talking about setting a policy to regulate feelings. What's being discussed is behaviour, and as one can act on the same feeling in a dozen different ways, that's a separate issue.
I don't like verbal abuse because, apart from concern for people's triggers and the issues LMM mentioned, I like to engage with opinions I find objectionable as well, as do many other people here, but I like to try and do it forcefully but civilly. If someone else is throwing fire around at short notice, it completely torches any possibility of trying the civil option first, which very much limits my options. This semi-silences me - or at least, it means there's no point saying what I think - and I suspect discourages other people likewise from making the more interesting points in civil tones that I'd most like to read. Excessive flaming can silence the moderates as well as the offensive.
I also don't like too much swearing unless it's Izzy-style funny - and in fact, Izzy tends to be creative in her insults - because it's boring to read and after a while it all starts to look the same.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 12:46 PM
Since it's the open(ish) thread, something good for a change:
The Blessing of Abortion
All I've really got is applause. And the suppressed desire to punch in the fact the commentor who claimed to also be a reverend and compared her to hitler.
Posted by: Ross | May 24, 2011 at 12:46 PM
hapax: I know that German is rife with what are called "flavoring particles" (like "doch" and "mal"). I'm sure that English is, too, but it's too familiar for me to see them, rather like a fish trying to perceive water.
Hapax, y'see, I'm just, like, speaking as someone who, y'know, literally earns my living studying up the language, so I can totally tell you that English is like absolutely, y'know, free from, er, any kind of whatchacallem "flavoring particles," see-wha'm-sayin'?
(And those are just from a relatively vanilla version of American English.)
Seriously, English, like German and ancient Greek, is loaded with the things. They're most apparent in speech rather than writing, but we often don't notice them except when someone else is using them AND when the context is such that we find their use problematic.
There's been some very good research on the many uses of "like" in discourse. It's most common among younger people ("y'know" was an earlier generation's particle-of-choice, at least in some areas) and has a range of uses. Also frequently overlooked in the list of "flavoring particles" are the intensifiers, like "absolutely" and "totally" and (this will hit some pet peeves, I know, but deal with the fact that it's become an intensifier with little remaining of its original meaning) "literally."
Aren't you sorry you asked? :-)
Posted by: Dash | May 24, 2011 at 12:48 PM
sarah: Growing up in Long Island, when we played the game "rock-paper-scissors," we'd say, "rock-paper-scissors-says-shoot."
I remember that clearly from my childhood (also on Long Island), and then dropping the habit somewhere around college. I feel like I then spent years trying to figure out why people said, "On 3" but then went "One-two-three-SHOOT". (Which is probably also regional.)
Kit: I dislike the deliberate verbal agression as well, for what it's worth. I feel like there are enough problems with the unintentional tone problems of a written medium (Of which I'm plenty guilty--there are plenty of times I go back to a post later and say, "I wasn't trying to be rude when I wrote this, but apparently that's how it came across.") that we shouldn't be going out of the way to deliberately inflame situations. I also tend to agree with Ecks that you're more likely to win the hearts and minds by not furiously attacking people, or at least not alienate them that way.
Case in point, I used "nut" in a derogatory way in a previous post, and MG asked me nicely not to. Okay, sure, I'll watch that in the future. If she'd nuked me for it, I probably would have responded badly and posted something equally inflammatory to yank her chain. Anecdote =/= data, but I'm probably not unique.
Posted by: Chuck | May 24, 2011 at 12:48 PM
@Kit: I'll stick my head over. I...tend to run away from conflict. In some cases, I try to head it off, crack jokes, get in the middle and distract whoever is involved (my parents did *not* appreciate this technique when they were in the midst of dealing with my siblings). But in most cases, when there's a lot of anger around me, I tend to make myself very small and try not to attract attention to myself. Play dead, so to speak. On the internet, it's different--I just kinda disappear during those times.
With that said, I think that there's definitely a place for nuking, and there's a place for education and patience and--is the other one appeasing? But abusive language, I think, is different from that (maybe I'm wrong? I might be wrong there). I don't necessarily enjoy reading the threads that end up with a lot of nuking. Sometimes I learn something, but often I get lost in the nuking and then it's downhill from there for me.
I think some of that's just personality and history. I was an angry kid for a long time, especially in my late teens, and realized eventually that I didn't like people getting mad back at me. So I've mellowed, a lot, and also realized that getting really angry isn't good for me. (I can also hear my mom's voice in my head: "It's not *what* you said. It's *how* you said it.")
So there you go. Sorry this is a rambling mess, but I'm still figuring out a lot of stuff about the ways I react to others.
Posted by: sarah | May 24, 2011 at 12:51 PM
As this is the Open Thread, I thought here would be a good place to share. I actually just called out a friend to "Check Your Privilege," something that I learned about from here. It was a person that I'm very disappointed to have to do this on, as I thought him of all people would know better. Basically, a gay friend of mine complained about homophobia in the NBA, my second friend started some weird defending nonsense, and my first friend blocked him because he was being genuinely hurtful. So the problem was already solved, but I thought linking to the FNEs would be useful for him to understand why he was being so hurtful with comments he found bizarrely innocuous.
Posted by: storiteller | May 24, 2011 at 12:59 PM
If she'd nuked me for it, I probably would have responded badly and posted something equally inflammatory to yank her chain.
Doesn't the admission of this fact fly in the face of your statement in the paragraph preceding it where you said people shouldn't deliberately go out of the way to inflame the situation? Or are you arguing that it's okay to do so once someone else starts the flaming? Because I'm not sure I find that a defensible, let alone convincing, argument.
Posted by: Jarred | May 24, 2011 at 01:00 PM
@ Lampdevil: I grew up doing the "open/close the light" thing too, because that's what the Chinese phrase literally translated to. I also grew up calling all washcloths, towels and rags "towels" because Chinese uses the same word for all of them.
Yeah...as I've grown up, I've discovered a lot of my verbal quirks come from literally translating to English the Chinese phrases my parents often used.
@LMM: I agree with most of your sentiments, but your use of the phrase "overblown anger" really, really gave me pause. I don't like nuking, I'm not confrontational, but I can understand where it comes from and I don't think the anger in most of the cases is overblown. And who are you to judge whether someone's anger is overblown? If you suffer from oppression every day, oppression that so few people see or understand because of course this is a "post-racial, gender-equal" world, would you not get at least a little furious at times?
I also don't see the point in showing concern to a nuker and asking why they're angry because they usually make it pretty damn clear why. And to those of us who live under sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. every day, the matters that inspire anger are anything but "minor."
Posted by: BH | May 24, 2011 at 01:01 PM
I think that there's definitely a place for nuking, and there's a place for education and patience and--is the other one appeasing?
Personally I don't think we need confine ourselves to the terms of that article, wherever it was. I'd add another option, which is 'a sharp tone that focuses on the effects the other person is having but doesn't employ personal abuse.'
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 01:01 PM
@Chuck: I know for myself that a certain degree of harshness will trigger me to go into a "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" reaction -- which is especially hard to control because sometimes "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" is a valid reaction (for example, "You should't get so upset" is allowed to trigger a "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO!". So it gets very complicated if, say, I use abusive language because I'm upset, then telling me not to use that language might scan into my brain as telling me not to get so upset.)
----
The thing that weirds me is when people refer to rock-paper-scissors as "roshambo", which I grew up knowing only as the "game" where two players agree to take turns kicking each other in the junk until one concedes, but what really happens is that the first player kicks the second player, then immediately concedes defeat, losing the game but getting a sick thrill out of hurting someone (I wonder if they'll start calling it "gitmo" instead...)
Posted by: Ross | May 24, 2011 at 01:02 PM
First, some clarification of terms and parameters.
I have seen the idea presented that there's support for "screaming at newbies over minor matters". I think every element of that phrase needs examination. "Screaming", "newbies", and "minor matters". What defines screaming? Is it okay to define "this poster has declared that they're sensitized to certain sorts of insensitive cluelessness"? Is the target of Nuking actually a "minor matter", or does in only appear that way because of the privilege of the speaker and the majority of the audience?
Re: ML, compared with TNC's blog:
There's an interesting intersection between TNC's regular commenters and ML's. (And, incidentally, with people who comment in my journal spaces.) Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog isn't Nuker-free because he has an anti-Nuker stance, it's because (as far as I can tell, from following that blog via the reports of someone who's in that intersection) TNC doesn't tolerate clueless derailing of his topics for long. The urge to Nuke simply doesn't emerge frequently, because there's already a cluelessness-expression-barrier in place.
There's a notorious derailer of discussions of race and privilege (whom I will not further describe, out of respect for Slacktivist and the desire not to attract that presence here) who has attempted to engage in that presence's usual habits at TNC's blog. That presence has been shut down and addressed by TNC himself, and IMO in a "tone" that would have been perceived as inappropriate in other venues. (In fact, I don't see MG's jnnyss comment as any more strident than an average TNC takedown.)
TNC's viewpoint is respected at his blog, and he never needs to get strident about it as a result. I find that in most cases of discussions of privilege, the stridency is a result of the blithe assumptions of the privileged in asserting their points and "oh but I just want to ask if..." and recapitulating the *exact same few questions* that everyone else with no clue about the topic presents.
Whether here at Slacktivist, or at ML, or at TNC's blog, there's a certain sense among the more clued-in that one must be "at least this clever/clued-in" to participate. At TNC's blog, there's certainly a threshhold level for talking about race. Here, it seems to be in discussing religion (and I don't know what else). At ML, it's about SF/F literacy. All these places have a high level of regard for the clever turn of phrase.
ML is PoC-unsafe space because of the actions of some of its regulars (I am not going to give details, once again because I don't wish to attract outside drama to Slacktivist.) And more importantly, the silence of the majority toward those actions. I will say that when there's a mod team, and that mod team shows bias (consciously or not), that bias becomes apparent to an astute reader. Everyone has biases they're sensitized to; everyone has biases they're ...perhaps unaware of - this is privilege.
The question I pose to Slacktivites is this:
Is the desire to be as safe as possible for the expression of cluelessness, and thus creating a space where cluelessness about certain topics is the norm?
Or is the desire to be able to have potentially difficult discussions at the same level of thoughtfulness and erudition as already evidenced for other topics here?
Note that race and gender discussions beyond a rudimentary level are very, very fraught in our shared culture because it's already accepted among us that racism and sexism are Not Okay. The problem that goes along with it is that there's a tacit compact to ignore anything but the most egregious examples, and defining racism and sexism those most egregious actions, rather than as the larger mass of concepts that bolster the worst cases - *and* all the lesser ones.
Ack! I've gone on and on here. It might be better served as an actual thread, rather than a piecemeal service in the comments.
tl;dr:
Intolerance and tolerance need to be assessed for what is validated thereby.
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 01:02 PM
@Storiteller, good on you for calling out your friends. And my condolences for how this hurts. As was discussed on the thread about Dr. Seuss (and throughout the history of the community), even the most understanding people can have some astonishing blind spots when it comes to privilege and what things serve to marginalize others.
Posted by: Jarred | May 24, 2011 at 01:03 PM
I've never been to Making Light. I keep hearing it mentioned here and there, including by Fred.
And the connection in which I've heard of the moderators was RaceFail, and the main thing I remember (but I could be remembering it wrong) is that TNH eventually wrote something on one of her journals calling some of the folks articulating POC concerns nithings (nidings? not sure how one should spell it in English). There's a term I hope to never have to come up with a good translation for. It's more of a feeling. Outlaw. Abomination. Someone who should be, needs to be, cursed.
I just...what? People who criticized you and your friends on the internet?
And of course there's a huge question of clashing frames. I have run into several folkish-Heathen types since who view being told they're supporting something racist as a deep insult to their honor, and I don't get it. I feel like I need to write a dissertation about how we've all got this racist system woven into our wyrd and orlog and such before I can even enter discussions with them.
So anyway I'm glad someone brought up potential issues with Making Light...I looked back at the Suess thread and couldn't find the original mention, just Kit's hightlight.
Posted by: Lonespark | May 24, 2011 at 01:04 PM
Jarred: Doesn't the admission of this fact fly in the face of your statement in the paragraph preceding it where you said people shouldn't deliberately go out of the way to inflame the situation?
I think Ross pretty much nails it a little further down--it's an emotional reaction. An unpleasant, unhelpful emotional reaction that I wish I didn't have, but there you are. Should I be able to take the high ground and not react like that? Definitely. I should also be able to make myself go outside and take a walk when I start getting depressed, but I'm not so great at that either.
My point is that if we're all trying to keep it civil, that puts us in a better starting place for the inevitable misconstrued posts or emotional outbursts.
Posted by: Chuck | May 24, 2011 at 01:10 PM
[[Kit: Personally I don't think we need confine ourselves to the terms of that article, wherever it was. I'd add another option, which is 'a sharp tone that focuses on the effects the other person is having but doesn't employ personal abuse.']]
Oh, no, I don't think we should, either. The article is probably a good starting point but certainly not where we should end.
[[Chuck:I remember that clearly from my childhood (also on Long Island), and then dropping the habit somewhere around college. I feel like I then spent years trying to figure out why people said, "On 3" but then went "One-two-three-SHOOT". (Which is probably also regional.)]]
I haven't really heard "One-two-three-shoot." Most of the time it's "rock-paper-scissors-shoot." So many variations on one game. Hah. I'm glad someone else has played the LI way; otherwise I would have thought that it was a made-up memory (we moved to Massachusetts when I was 13, so a lot of my LI memories are blurred).
On Making Light: I've wandered in there a couple times and haven't stayed long. I'm not particularly interested in SF/F. I stumbled onto the RaceFail articles about a year after it happened (I really have no idea how I ended up finding them in the first place), and I read through all of them--literary rubbernecking, I guess. So there's that in the back of my head as well.
I've read TNC's posts but not the comments.
Posted by: sarah | May 24, 2011 at 01:13 PM
@Will Wildman - <3<3<3 for the Sapir-Worf hypothesis!
@Kit - If someone else is throwing fire around at short notice, it completely torches any possibility of trying the civil option first, which very much limits my options.
I disagree with your assertion completely. It makes you look even more "reasonable", and provides a backdrop of, "you'd be better off treating with me, rather than Over There".
It looks like you're concerned with...let's call it "tolerance of Nuking being the camel's nose toward neverending flamewar" - is that accurate?
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 01:14 PM
Is the desire to be as safe as possible for the expression of cluelessness, and thus creating a space where cluelessness about certain topics is the norm?
Or is the desire to be able to have potentially difficult discussions at the same level of thoughtfulness and erudition as already evidenced for other topics here?
I don't think anyone at all is arguing for the former.
The problem that goes along with it is that there's a tacit compact to ignore anything but the most egregious examples, and defining racism and sexism those most egregious actions, rather than as the larger mass of concepts that bolster the worst cases - *and* all the lesser ones.
If you're implying there's a tacit agreement to ignore minor examples here, I take exception to that. I've put in a lot of work over the years I've been here calling out what I felt to be under-the-radar prejudice.
I think there's a false dichotomy here between 'never calling things out' and 'no one ever expressing the least criticism of another poster's aggression level.'
As far as I'm concerned, we live in a complicated kyriarchy and things are not black and white. It's possible to be abused in one situation and abusive in another. For that reason, assuming that any behaviour is justified as long as it's in the service of a good cause is, to say the least, a risky assumption.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 01:16 PM
I disagree with your assertion completely. It makes you look even more "reasonable", and provides a backdrop of, "you'd be better off treating with me, rather than Over There".
It looks like you're concerned with...let's call it "tolerance of Nuking being the camel's nose toward neverending flamewar" - is that accurate?
Since I'm the one actually making or not making the posts, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell me what effect they're likely to have. I suspect I have spent a lot more time closely observing what it's like to be me than you have.
I don't understand the phrasing in your second paragraph. As much as anything else, I'm sick of the term 'nuking' because, as I said, it covers too many different kinds of behaviour and hence leads to unclear discussions.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 01:19 PM
To flare, meaning "to get rid of by or as if by radiating", is apparently not used by anyone but me. I have no idea how I got it into my head that flare could mean that, but it's firmly in my mental dictionary now. I always feel a bit surprised when I use it and nobody else understands me.
I've heard it in the context of flaring off natural gas or methane from oil wells. In that, it means to burn it, but that sounds different from what you are talking about.
Or are you arguing that it's okay to do so once someone else starts the flaming? Because I'm not sure I find that a defensible, let alone convincing, argument.
I don't think he meant it was defensible, so much as that is what he would do, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not. Although Making Light is problematic, I do like their required "Preview" button. It prevents a host of issues, including making someone re-read what they said to ensure it's not assholish. It might also prevent some runaway italics.
Posted by: storiteller | May 24, 2011 at 01:21 PM
@Kit -
I've been trying to be precise in the parameters I'm drawing, while reading you words with maximum slack and still expressing how you're coming across to me. And yet I'm feeling straw-manned, and I suspect you're feeling the same.
What you *just* wrote above me, I am in strong agreement with.
I am not accusing you of willful blindness to oppression. I am saying that all of us are steeped in that culture, and that we are acting to escape that in various ways.
I suspect that the term "Nuking" is indeed at the heart of the disjuncture. Perhaps it would be useful to define it more clearly.
I've seen all sorts of things defined as "Nuking", mostly to do with the offense that the "Nukee" took. This is so variable as to be useless, IMO.
So where does "Nuking" begin? What is the Slacktivist definition of Nuking?
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 01:24 PM
I am noticing that I miss two features available on some other fora -
1) the preview button, and also a bottom of page note of what markup language is allowed
2) the "the thread has been added to since you started this comment" feature, as I notice I'm cross-posting with Kit and it's not clear when I'm not au courant with that was just said.
@Kit -
Since I'm the one actually making or not making the posts, I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell me what effect they're likely to have. I suspect I have spent a lot more time closely observing what it's like to be me than you have.
I boggle, because I don't think I was talking about how you should feel about it at all, but rather how you might be perceived, and how effective you were likely to be.
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 01:28 PM
Trinker: Is the desire to be as safe as possible for the expression of cluelessness, and thus creating a space where cluelessness about certain topics is the norm?
Or is the desire to be able to have potentially difficult discussions at the same level of thoughtfulness and erudition as already evidenced for other topics here?
There seems to be a rather substantial excluded middle here. I think it would be useful to distinguish between
(1) people who are apparently trying to derail the discussion,
(5) people who are truly at a lower level of understanding of certain concepts and who are asking questions that spring from that lower level of understanding,
(10) people who have a bad day and say something in a way they didn't mean it.
I gave those entries the numbers they have because there's a good amount of space between them, and I don't necessarily think it's useful for this particular discussion to lay those distinctions out in detail. And I don't think those are points on a linear scale--(10) is qualitatively different in certain ways, but I used it to indicate a level of cluefulness that just doesn't come across the right way.
The point is that there's a lot of distance between "let's be as safe as possible for every instance of cluelessness" and "let's have high-level discussions that take as given a degree of cluefulness." I also don't think that allowing for a degree of cluelessness among commentators automatically leads to that degree of cluelessness being the norm, just as allowing for a degree of either love or dislike for, let us say, Doctor Who has not led to either stance being the norm.
We've also in past years experienced some regularly recurring derailers and the rest of us have generally managed to proceed with some high-level discussions by metaphorically stepping around their comments so as not to get any on our shoes. (This is not to say, BTW, that I'm not in favor of moderation in some cases.)
Posted by: Dash | May 24, 2011 at 01:36 PM
@Trinker - where did you get the idea that I said you were talking about how I should feel? Read over what I said again. I said that I've spent more time closely observing what it's like to be me - which, as I mentioned effect in the previous sentence, should be taken to mean that I've almost certainly observed how other people react to my posts more closely than you.
As far as 'nuking' goes, people seem to be using it to mean 'flaming somebody with justification', and assuming that it's always justified if you do it in the name of the marginalised. I'm not so sure.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 01:38 PM
Thank you, mmy and serpent, for the link to that article about Camping.
Words fail.
Also, news flash: apparently May 21 was the last day to repent 'n stuff, so if you missed it, sorry!
Posted by: Dash | May 24, 2011 at 01:41 PM
I could have phrased that more clearly; when I said "...that I care more about other people not expressing anger at me than I do about not holding beliefs that are harmful" I was attempting to refer to actions (expressing anger) rather than purely feeling.
I definitely think concerns around triggers are important, and everyone seems to be doing their best with the warning system.
I think we've seen counterevidence for this, in that a person who makes an offensive statement and is met with both a moderate and an intense response is more likely to engage with the moderate one - it's happened in discussions of sexism, usually with a side order of pretending the (intense) woman doesn't exist in favour of speaking with the (moderate) man.
(Alternatively, they may ignore the moderate response and engage only with the intense response because they find it easier to lob flames back rather than defend their position, but it seems to me the reaction of any poster to any response of any intensity has far more to do with the kind of person they are than the kind of reaction they are first presented with.)
A sufficiently intense reaction to something does often lead to derailed discussion, but derailing is a group activity and can occur in just about any environment. There was a thread in the latter part of last year where Fred referred to someone (Limbaugh?) as 'a big fat liar', was asked to not use the word 'fat' that way, and swiftly amended it to, I believe, 'freakin'. And the thread nevertheless immediately descended into a prolonged firestorm about fascist language police.
---
I've heard similar arguments before from other people, and I still find it very difficult to sympathise with anyone who's essentially saying "Other people should control their behaviour to account for the fact that I won't control mine".
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 24, 2011 at 01:45 PM
Now hang on just a second. At what point in the Seuss thread was anyone personally abusive of anyone else? I saw a lot of criticism, some very harsh, of other people's points, but I don't recall any personal attacks at all.
Also, I don't think anyone is out to nuke every comment they disagree with, and its an unfair strawman to claim that. Everyone involved in this debate would have gotten nuked a hell of a lot if that were the case.
Posted by: Froborr | May 24, 2011 at 01:48 PM
This, too.
Posted by: Froborr | May 24, 2011 at 01:53 PM
@Froborr: I don't think this conversation is really about the Seuss thread anymore. After all, Kit's question was this:
[[I have the suspicion/concern that people who are uncomfortable with abusive language - and frankly I'm a little tired of the word 'nuking', because it condenses all verbal aggression into a single package - are likely to stay silent about their discomfort for fear of being attacked themselves. If anyone is feeling that way, it'd be good to hear from them if they're willing to stick their heads over the parapet.]]
So, yeah. In any case, it's probably a good discussion to have.
Posted by: sarah | May 24, 2011 at 01:55 PM
@Kit -
...at this point, I'm finding the way you're responding to me to be... perhaps the best term is unhelpful. (I'm feeling needled, and denied helpful information, and probably a bunch of other things you'd ascribe to a Nuker approach. But given my impression of your opinion on Nuking...I'm left wondering what effect you're aiming for.)
I'd add another option, which is 'a sharp tone that focuses on the effects the other person is having but doesn't employ personal abuse.'
Is the above Nuking to you? If not...then I'd restate your stance as "no flaming". The place where I see difficulty is that in many discussions, while I start by characterizing someone's *comment* (expressed thought, etc.) as "having problematic aspects"...by the end of several rounds of interaction without apparent change, I'm left with the strong impression that this person identifies with that problematic concept, and is in fact a bigot.
Which then can be dismissed as an ad hominem attack, and flaming, and personal abuse.
Is there space in your framework for asserting that someone's repeated phrasings and responses come across as espousal of bigotry?
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 01:55 PM
@BH: And who are you to judge whether someone's anger is overblown? If you suffer from oppression every day, oppression that so few people see or understand because of course this is a "post-racial, gender-equal" world, would you not get at least a little furious at times? ... And to those of us who live under sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. every day, the matters that inspire anger are anything but "minor."
@Tinker: I have seen the idea presented that there's support for "screaming at newbies over minor matters". I think every element of that phrase needs examination. "Screaming", "newbies", and "minor matters". What defines screaming? Is it okay to define "this poster has declared that they're sensitized to certain sorts of insensitive cluelessness"? Is the target of Nuking actually a "minor matter", or does in only appear that way because of the privilege of the speaker and the majority of the audience?
The discussion in question was on the Dr. Seuss thread. To briefly summarize, MG asserted that all of Seuss's behavior was mysogyny. An admitted lurker (first-time poster) said that she thought that Seuss's use of male characters could simply be sexist and not mysogynistic. MG started yelling at her and accusing *her* of mysogyny. I can't seem to get the link to work, but it's on the first page of the comments thread.
That is, as far as I am concerned, overblown anger. *Especially* since it completely derails a conversation: it doesn't matter if you killfile the person, everyone will still be responding to them.
Add to that the fact that when, several hundred posts later, someone started objecting to MG's behavior, several people attempted to dismiss the concerns as thread "derailment".
I will admit: when I saw MG's post, the first thought that went through my mind is: "This forum has gone off the deep end. I will never post here again." Because, at the end of the day, my opinions about (say) disabilities are probably somewhat different than yours (*). And if politely expressing my opinions about a subject means that I am going to get flamed by someone who is not called on it, then this is not a forum worth participating in.
This is probably all I will say on the issue. I have attempted to make these posts as clear as possible, and put way too much thought into them (this one took the vast majority of my lunch break, for example). I have said my part.
(*) Due to my personal experiences with Aspergers syndrome, for example, I think a hypothetical cure would be very desirable. That may or may not get me banned at a site like Shakesville, but expressing my belief that people who feel like me are marginalized and dismissed as not being part of the "mainstream" autistic community almost certainly would.
Posted by: LMM | May 24, 2011 at 02:00 PM
mmy: Also, and this is harder to explain -- Canadians do say "eh" a lot but not in exactly the places where other people pretending to be Canadians do.
Seems like here in the U.S., people try to imitate the Canadian "eh" as though it were an interrogative imposed upen sentences that weren't meant to be interrogative. So that everything becomes a sort of rhetorical question: "Oh, the sky is blue, eh?" (I think perhaps there's an element of conflating Canadian speech patterns with stereotypical Minnesotan ones.)
But the few times I've actually heard the linguistic feature in its natural habitat, it seemed to function more as a form of punctuation. Like, a full stop or a comma that you can hear.
My sample size is small and my observational powers limited, so I do not offer this as any sort of authoritative analysis.
MaryKaye: Not quite what you were asking, but: in English one can, with considerable difficulty, make the protagonist of a story gender-unspecified. Sometimes people won't even notice.... My understanding is that in more heavily gendered languages you simply can't do this, and that the particular effect in these works is therefore untranslatable. (You can make a character neuter, but you can't leave them unspecified.)
I recently shared a short story with my critique group that had an intentionally ungendered protagonist. It was in second person point of view. By the time I got to asking myself what gender the "you" was supposed to be, I couldn't see a compelling reason to impose a gender on the narrator. It just seemed beside the point. So I specifically left out the gender of the narrator's lover - not that gendering him/her would necessarily justify an assumption about the narrator, of course, but again, I just couldn't see any reason for imposing a gender on him/her and maybe accidentally inserting some sort of gendered stereotype subtext or whatnot.
(This sounds terribly wishy-washy as described. It worked a lot better on the page, or so my critique group tells me.)
In any case, it seemed that everyone in my critique group simply assumed the narrator was their own gender, and the lover whichever gender they themselves were predisposed to. Which I thought was a neat outcome. No one reported feeling bothered by not having a definite "she" or "him" in the text. So. English being relatively ungendered plus English readers (or, argumably, human readers) having assumptions and biases about gender equals interesting stuff.
I expect you could do about the same in any language where "you" isn't gendered, if you kept the narrative claustrophic enough to never hear another person refer to the narrator in third person. And if you didn't mind a second person narrator -- I understand some people can't stand stories written in that POV.
Posted by: Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little | May 24, 2011 at 02:05 PM
@Trinker: the reason I'm only defining nuking briefly is that, as I said, I think the community may be working a variety of different definitions, and I'm not empowered to speak for anyone but myself. I'm just waiting to see if anyone else produces a definition.
Is there space in your framework for asserting that someone's repeated phrasings and responses come across as espousal of bigotry?
That's a rather rhetorical way of putting it, but if you're asking if it's my personal opinion that it's reasonable to say 'The things you say support bigotry', then yes, of course it is. If you're asking if I think it's reasonable to say 'You come across like you're endorsing bigotry', then yes. If you're asking if I think it's reasonable to say 'You're a bigot' ... I'd say it fairly predictable that it'll turn the thread into an exhausting and boring slanging match, that it's not necessary to make the point, and that it depends on making a definite statement about somebody that's harder to support, and is hence something that makes me cast my eyes up to the ceiling and sigh, 'Oh boy, here we go...' every time I see it.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | May 24, 2011 at 02:07 PM
I think there's a good description/explanation in How To Be A Canadian, but the Ferguson brothers. Paraphrasing, they expand "Raining priddy hard, eh?" into something like "So, what do you think about the weather right now? If you want to talk about it, that is. Seems to me it's raining pretty hard. I mean, I'm not an expert, I'm not a meteorologist or whatever, so if you've got another perspective I'm open to it, but if you were to ask me, I'd say it looks like right now it's raining. And priddy hard too, eh?"
(My personal battle right now is 'aboot', as my American friends do not apparently distinguish between 'oot' and 'out' unless the latter with pronounced 'owt'. These are three distinct sounds, dagnabbit!)
I may have a limited understanding of the language, but given what I know of pronouns and gendering in Japanese (i.e., they are avoided), I'm pretty sure an entire novel could be written without gendering anyone and without twisting sentence structures too badly, whether it was first, second, or third person POV.
Posted by: Will Wildman | May 24, 2011 at 02:18 PM
Okay, first of all, I am really uncomfortable with the fact that we're now on Day 3 of The Referendum on MadGastronomer While She Isn't Here. Apparently harsh language is a big no-no, but holding a community discussion on whether to silence someone while they're not around is A-OK?
But it appears that if I don't participate, this thread'll be pure anti-nuke echo-chamber, and that's got potential for nasty consequences when one of the main figures in the discussion is a mod.
Here's what actually happened in the Seuss thread:
(1) Three different people posted bog-standard derailing for dummies arguments.
(2) MG posted a takedown of all three, with a warning that next DfD argument was getting nuked.
(3) Phoenix strawmanned or misunderstood MG's argument.
(4) MG nuked Phoenix.
(5) A good bit of discussion, including some relatively mild nuking, later, Phoenix explained herself better and/or changed her mind.
(6) Jesurgislac Debate II: Revenge of the Referendum on a Person not Present began.
Do you notice where the other two people MG told off didn't come back? Two out of three ain't bad, and I'm not convinced it wasn't three out of three.
Posted by: Froborr | May 24, 2011 at 02:23 PM
@LMM -
T*r*inker, please.
I responded to you in the Seuss thread, but evidently you didn't see it. Ah well.
I think you're mischaracterizing the interaction between MG and Phoenix, but I accept that this is how it appeared to you.
I believe you're operating from a fundamental error in conception re: misogyny and other bigotries/oppressions. Intentful oppression is only the very tip of the iceberg. These things are better judged by their effect, rather than the intent of the enactor.
Lack of female protagonists may not be intentful erasure, but it serves to create an environment where women are seen as non-heroic, passive, etc. And yes, that is misogyny, even if it wasn't created by a mindful misogynist.
That's not a minor matter, that's the very heart of the matter.
I saw MG start with a sharply worded -but not *Nuking*- response. Is this what you saw, or did that *first* response seem too much to you?
Posted by: Trinker | May 24, 2011 at 02:24 PM
I warn people that I have probably missed important contributions to the discussion on nuking/flaming and therefore may be repeating someone else or making a point that has long since been rebutted. (Note: due to a mixture of meatworld concerns I have been monitoring the "backend of the board" without reading all the comments.)
I value deeply the civility of this place and would very much appreciate it if people who felt shouted down/disrespected/intimated would poke a nose up long enough to let others (especially members of TBAT) know. As hard as this is for people who know me only from my current online postings but I was a very early reader of Fred's who then retired from posting (and even reading) from responses to my early posts which I felt to be silencing/unwelcoming. It took me years to feel really comfortable on the board and I admit that much of that had to do with me being so angry with a number of posters that I was willing to be yelled down in order to speak.
I don't want anyone else to have to go through that but I do not feel confident that I always am aware of how others are feeling. Also (and here I put on my TBAT hat for a moment) based on page hits we have far, far more readers than we do posters. But our readers are also a very, very important part of our community and we cannot know what makes them feel uncomfortable unless they tell us.
If someone feels that their voice will be shouted down if they post please drop me an email to the slackmods or to me. If you go to my own blog you can post a comment anonymously to any open thread and I'll see it and answer it.
Now, back to "me" as opposed to "TBAT-me" -- I think I have learned to deal with the behaviour of some posters by simply mentally killfiling them. When the discussions about the impact of such postings begin to dominate a thread I sometimes feel sick to my stomach and I stop doing more than casually monitoring the thread.
@LMM: someone started objecting to MG's behavior, several people attempted to dismiss the concerns as thread "derailment".
That was probably me. I was hoping that the whole thing to "go away." I hope I wouldn't have responded the same way had Phoenix been one of the people discussing her behaviour. I wasn't "dismissing the concerns" I feared that by repeating over and over again what MadG had said things were getting worse. Next time I feel that way I will ask other readers how they fell instead of presuming I know/understand.
Posted by: Mmy | May 24, 2011 at 02:26 PM
I'll swear there was a comment back there which mentioned Pharygula, but I can't find it now. The comments at Pharyngula have been getting a lot more confrontational of late, and PZ Myers has tried to reign it in by imposing a "three strikes" policy. No going off the deep end until the person has been clueless or bigoted in three separate comments.
I find it impossible to keep up with Pharyngula these days, so I can't say how well it works, but it might be something to consider.
TRiG.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | May 24, 2011 at 02:27 PM
As for the ostensible thread topic: I can't think of anything I say that doesn't have an English equivalent, because that's the only language I speak. There are a few Americanisms that take a few extra words in other variants (I recently learned American "cookie" and English "biscuit" are not exact synonyms), but nothing inexpressible.
My fiancee and I have some verbal rituals we go through, mostly consisting of quoting things at each other. Nothing as cool as private slang, though. I'm jealous!
Posted by: Froborr | May 24, 2011 at 02:28 PM