I found this stickied to the top of the Men’s RIghts subreddit — a collection of powerful retorts to things that feminists sometimes say to MRAs. Clearly, feminism will not be able to survive these devastating rhetorical counterpunches.
“Ms. Understanding!”
How can we possibly compete with such an obvious master of quick wit and repartee?
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@Big Titty Demon
“[H]ow do you know poor David isn’t targeted by larger forces as well? How can he be expected to keep up against such forces ruining his website better than you?”
I like your logic.
@Surplus, please, listen to what everybody else is telling you for once. You are acting almost as entitled as the MRAs and that’s just sad.
I’ve been meaning to suggest this for a while, but why don’t you make a vent blog? Online or offline, public or private, just something you can keep around to scream into the ether when you are feeling frustrated or angry or the Global Conspiracy to Make Your Life Miserable is acting up again. Yell and type and vent all you want, then take a breather for at least a few hours. Come back to WHTM only after you’ve cooled down.
Also, I know you’ve said you can’t afford to get any help, so why not try Captain Awkward? She’s always got some good advice to dish out and maybe she can help you with some of your personal issues:
https://captainawkward.com
Just don’t treat her as abusively as you’ve been treating David lately.
@Elaine, IANAD or virologist or anything, but my understanding is that you probably don’t need to keep testing as you may continue to test positive for as much as 90 days after your illness but won’t (obviously) still be contagious. The last bullet point here addresses that.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/duration-isolation.html
Of course, if you’re getting different information from your healthcare team, obviously they know way more than I!
I hope your husband manages to stay negative and that you recover fully and soon. 🙂
“The current diagnosis is ‘These things sometimes happen’.”
My favorite thing to hear from a doctor. Anyway, hope the eye issue goes away. 🙂
Regarding Surplus:
Everyone can see that none of this is new, right? The entitlement, the conspiracy theories, the abuse hurled at anyone who tries to help, the It Must Go Back To The Way It Was Or Else. And then things will go calm for a time, nothing will be learned, and Surplus will just keep posting walls upon walls of text of conspiracy screeds under every other article on the buildup to the next big flameout. It’s been going on for years.
Is everyone just okay with this?
It’s one of the reasons I’ve stopped reading this blog for the most part. I’ve picked a bad time to peek back.
I’m sorry, it got to me finally. I was forced to deal with someone operating on the same “buildup—flameout—everything’s fine, nothing’s my fault” cycle for a long time. It gets to me.
I’m sorry if it’s not my place to speak. I’m not much of a regular, not anymore at least. Please delete this post if you think it’s out of line. I won’t bring this up again.
Surplus, enough.
I can’t magically fix the blog by reverting to an older setup because that setup was unstable and was crashing (and also causing me problems behind the scenes that were seriously interfering with my ability to keep the blog running). I will do what I can to deal with any continuing glitches but so far none of these are compromising the main goal of keeping the blog running.
It would be helpful if you simply reported the problems you’re having without freaking out over them. Indeed, I’ve had enough of these rants from you and will put you on moderation if you continue with them.
Thank you, Beyond Ocean. I haven’t commented in years because I see no reason to, every other post will just get derailed anyway, but I just wanted to say that I agree 100 %. It gets to me too.
@Victorious Parasol. The “Roxanne” clip is gold!
@Beyond Ocean
“Is everyone just okay with this?”
????
Every time Surplus goes on a rant, several commenters — and sometimes many commenters — respond to Surplus. These rants are not okay with everyone.
And when Surplus is not on a rant, their comments are well thought out and insightful.
@Kat
And that, to me, is the saddest thing. Surplus is not a troll or some drive-by asshole, but a long time and well respected member of the community. That’s why I’ve tried to be helpful with my criticisms, because I feel like Surplus could do a world of good for herself and all of us by trying to work out some of these issues.
@Beyond Ocean
That’s part of the reason why I took a break too, I didn’t want to snap and start a fight when I’m still kind of a new member (to posting, not to reading). A very close friend of mine got involved in some of the grotesquely stupid conspiracy theories during the last administration and it almost made me end our friendship spanning nearly two decades, so it’s hard for me to see another otherwise intelligent and decent person fall down this rabbit hole.
@David:
It wasn’t unstable and crashing all through 2021. The problem started early in 2022. So, reverting to a configuration from before the crashing started should work. There was no need to (apparently) revert it all the way to before September 2020 … when, as I recall, it had been unstable and crashing.
In any event, we have several very old but serious problems reappearing here, particularly comments getting eaten, pages coming up out-of-date by as much as an hour or two sometimes, and the like. The layout is in some ways more awkward (more scrolling to get to recent comments, since it’s now below instead of beside recent posts). The quote button and other editing features have gone missing. The site’s become a disaster area for the users, even if it might be more convenient to run at the back end.
Everything was peachy back in, say, June 2021. Why not just put it back to the way it was working then?
At the very least, please give us an ETA on when things will be back to normal around here. “Back to normal” means, at a minimum, quote button, side by side recent posts and recent comments, and pages are all in sync with each other if you load several in different tabs again.
Though really, this partial outage has been ongoing for over two weeks now, and surely that is more than long enough?
What the hell? I’d posted a comment here a few minutes ago, then reloaded and the comment was there, but now after reloading again, it and a comment above it have vanished???
Reposting.
@David:
It wasn’t unstable and crashing all through 2021. The problem started early in 2022. So, reverting to a configuration from before the crashing started should work. There was no need to (apparently) revert it all the way to before September 2020 … when, as I recall, it had been unstable and crashing.
In any event, we have several very old but serious problems reappearing here, particularly comments getting eaten, pages coming up out-of-date by as much as an hour or two sometimes, and the like. The layout is in some ways more awkward (more scrolling to get to recent comments, since it’s now below instead of beside recent posts). The quote button and other editing features have gone missing. The site’s become a disaster area for the users, even if it might be more convenient to run at the back end.
Everything was peachy back in, say, June 2021. Why not just put it back to the way it was working then?
At the very least, please give us an ETA on when things will be back to normal around here. “Back to normal” means, at a minimum, quote button, side by side recent posts and recent comments, and pages are all in sync with each other if you load several in different tabs again.
Though really, this partial outage has been ongoing for over two weeks now, and surely that is more than long enough?
What the hell? I’d posted a comment here a few minutes ago, then reloaded and the comment was there, but now after reloading again, it and a comment above it have vanished???
Reposting.
@David:
It wasn’t unstable and crashing all through 2021. The problem started on January 11, 2022. So, reverting to a configuration from before that date should work. There was no need to (apparently) revert it all the way to before September 2020 … when, as I recall, it had also been unstable and crashing.
In any event, we have several very old but serious problems reappearing here, particularly comments getting eaten, pages coming up out-of-date by as much as an hour or two sometimes, and the like. The layout is in some ways more awkward (more scrolling to get to recent comments, since it’s now below instead of beside recent posts). The quote button and other editing features have gone missing. The site’s become a disaster area for the users, even if it might be more convenient to run at the back end.
Everything was peachy back in, say, June 2021. Why not just put it back to the way it was working then?
At the very least, please give us an ETA on when things will be back to normal around here. “Back to normal” means, at a minimum, quote button, side by side recent posts and recent comments, and pages are all in sync with each other if you load several in different tabs again.
Though really, this partial outage has been ongoing for over two weeks now, and surely that is more than long enough?
Rare commenter here; regular reader for years. I don’t care if this comment ever shows up publicly, but I hope David sees it just so he’s aware. I’ve not been getting email notifications of new posts for the past ~2 weeks, and I don’t know if this glitch is universal to all subscribers or not. Also, the subscription button seems to have been devoured by an unruly mammoth, at least when viewing the site in Firefox or Chrome, so I can’t try to kickstart the notifications by re-subscribing. That’s all, no rush, I can remember to load the site every couple of days to see what’s new. Thanks to David for having the patience and commitment to continue trying to fix the broken/corrupted/obsolete code.
Surplus, you’re giving David a recap of your end user experience and assuming that experience is authoritative in terms of diagnosing the cause and developing a solution. As an IT pro who’s just spent a week telling a client IT team that they do not, in fact, know what their build looks like in our system … Trust me. What you are doing does not work because you lack information. And no one expects you to have the information.
Please calm down and recognize that David has given you a warning.
@ Malintzin
I love that movie. I have a weakness for Cyrano stories, not to mention the original real person. I love that Steve Martin commissioned a new translation of the play when working on this movie, and that he decided making the modern Cyrano character a firefighter was perfect because Cyrano “is fighting the fires in his heart.” I love that Daryl Hannah got to play a Roxanne who was not only beautiful but smart and accomplished, since (IMO) that’s the most interesting way to be a Roxanne.
@ Beyond Ocean
Don’t feel I am a very significant or long time poster here either, but for my two cents, it also makes me feel guilty.
Guilty when I get irritated and say something harsh toned to Surplus.
Guilty I am thinking far harsher things than that.
Guilty I can’t come up with anything to help Surplus.
Guilty I am yet another commentator seemingly piling on Surplus.
Guilty I am being all melodramatic here.
Surplus, it is extremely inappropriate to berate our host here.
You have compared David to management and us to workers. You sometimes offer very insightful critiques of capitalism, so I know you understand it. Certainly you must be able to see that David is doing work when he writes this blog, time-consuming, emotionally taxing work, and that he then offers the product of that work to us for free and asks only for voluntary donations. What work are we doing that he benefits from? He is doing the work. We are enjoying the rewards.
In my opinion, you made the worker/boss comparison in order to justify to yourself the entitlement that you feel to vent your frustrations at him. It’s super not okay. It’s not okay to speak to anyone in the hurtful manner that you often do to anyone who interacts directly with you. If I was running this blog, I would have banned you long ago just for rudeness towards the person whose work you are enjoying for free.
@ .45
It also made me feel guilty.
But then we reached the level of Quote Button Thutherism. I think I’m done.
@Alan, @VP, that Texas embassy is mentioned in this video from earlier today. Apparently the Texans cleared out without paying their rent!
https://youtu.be/6CwJD0H6wwg
Surplus, I wasn’t being snarky before when I asked if you had tried anything to distract your brain when this happens. My brain sometimes gets into super agitated states, often over things that are truly terrible, so it’s truly justified! Sometimes it only *feels* that way to me, but once I’m calmer I can see my responsewas disproportionate. It helps me, truly, to distract my brain with a task, one that isn’t upsetting or too taxing. Reading a book can help sometimes (and now I understand why I was so hooked on reading as a kid), so can crafting. There are loads of things to try: puzzles, games, kneading dough. I can’t tell you what will work for you, but the important thing is when you’re feeling overwhelmed like this, it’s important to disengage from the people you care about, like David, and calm your mind somehow before you return. Trust me, you’ll burn bridges this way.
@Moggie
Ha! Well, Texas *was* settled by people who would abandon their farms/ranches and simply scratched “GTT” on a fence post. The acronym stood for Gone to Texas. Translated, “Whatever banker or other debt collector or lawman is after me, you might as well give up. I’m outta here.”
So you might say that Texas was settled by scofflaws, at least in part. But UT students put a different spin on it these days:
https://news.utexas.edu/2018/08/24/whats-the-story-behind-gone-to-texas/
@VP, interesting! It’s not reported whether Pickering Place found “GTT” chalked anywhere after the legation scarpered, but I hope they did.
I must admit, my sympathy is usually with anyone who leaves their landlord unpaid.
@ moggie
Thank you ever so much for that video. I’m a committed Londonist; so I loved it!
And it brought back a few fun memories.
“was once frequented by ne’er do wells”
Heh, wrong tense mate.
It should be noted that the UT article leaves out a very important word: “White”. It also fundamentally misunderstands the settler colonial relationship between the Mexican government and that land. It was never “wild”, at least not in human history; like this whole Island, it was cultivated and maintained by a Nation of people who were then removed from their previous relationship to land so that whites could steal it.
@Moggie- “I must admit, my sympathy is usually with anyone who leaves their landlord unpaid.” Lin-Manuel Miranda would be proud of how you’ve obscured the fact they went on to BUY PEOPLE there. There was rather famously a war over it?