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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We certainly are entitled to it not getting worse. It should therefore be at least as good as it was in December.
Because he can! All he has to do is stop whatever he’s been futilely trying to do and just revert everything (except the posts and comments tables in the database, of course) to how it is in some backup from December. But he seems to be fixated on trying to get it working again by twiddling knobs instead of giving up on that approach and simply reloading the last good configuration from before this all happened. Even though, after two bloody weeks of that, it’s clear that his current approach is simply not working.
No. The site is broken and it needs to be fixed. The only action I can take in furtherance of that is to keep raising a fuss each and every time the site reminds me in any way of its broken state, and to try to recruit others to join in doing so, until such time as it is fixed. You are familiar with the concept of collective action in the face of recalcitrant management, right?
Besides, I AM MISSING OUT ON READING AT LEAST ONE NEW COMMENT. That’s not just a cosmetic problem. That’s seriously broken functionality that makes the site no longer even fit-for-purpose. It’s eaten several of my own comments since this started, too, but I at least am diligent about making sure they actually posted successfully and retrying if need be until they do. “Chaos Engineer” apparently made the mistake of just trusting it to work, without the “and verify” part, and probably isn’t the only one to have done so.
Plus, surely we all want the quote button back?
Let’s make it formal. Either here or let’s pick an older thread that’s otherwise not getting much traffic and use comments there to sign a petition to get, at the very least, the quote button restored. If enough of us sign, the management will not be able to ignore us any longer and will have to cave to our demands!
Then what will?
@ Surplus to Requirements
ChaosEngineer in the other thread wrote:
Like a lot of people here, this means next to nothing to me, as I am not some IT expert, so I can’t speak to its validity. On that note, ranting and demanding someone furnish you with a exact description and a perfect solution… well, you ain’t getting it from me, that’s for sure.
@.45:
Thanks … though this makes clear that this site’s problems are even stranger than I’d thought, if you are seeing a different (more up to date?) version of a page here than I am. If WHTM is showing different things to different people that’s extremely disturbing …
Also:
You are the kind of customer that gets hauled out of the store in handcuffs. And I am very very sure that David is well aware of your complaints. Not engaging with you is not the same as ignoring you.
Just by way of comparison, I haven’t been able to see one of my favorite webcomics since August of last year. Dunno why. It doesn’t matter whether I am using my desktop or phone. I can see and access everything on the website EXCEPT the actual comic picture.
You know what I did about this? Nothing. Nada. Squat. Zilch. Zip. Zero. From the comments on there I can see nobody else is having a problem, so I left it all for them to enjoy and moved on with my life. It was and is ONE webcomic.
I realize it is not the same and I don’t have as much invested in that comic as you clearly do in WHTM, but is it really worth it to raise a fuss? All you are doing is irritating people, particularly David.
Improvement is something that takes work, and just because the old system is convenient for you doesn’t make it ideal for him or anyone else for that matter. David’s world does not revolve around making some dude he has never met from thousands of miles away happy.
@ surplus
David is not some 19th century mill owner 🙂
The simple fact is, none of us here are entitled to anything. David provides us all with a site we appear to find useful and entertaining; and he demands nothing in return. It’s a genuine ‘pay what you want; if anything’ model.
I can appreciate your frustration; but stuff like this is just part of the vicissitudes of life.
No-one forces us to use this site. If we find it unsatisfactory we can vote with our feet (or whatever the computer equivalent is) and go elsewhere.
Personally I love this site. I’m very grateful to David for all his hard work. Remember, this is just one bloke and some cats. I think it’s very important to cut him a bit of slack when things go wonky. He has enough on his plate providing content; without all the technical hassles as well.
So how about we just back off for a while, give David a bit of breathing space, and see how things pan out? Pressuring people is not only a bit rude; it’s counter productive. No-one performs well when they’re being hassled.
And as someone who remembers 300 Baud dial up bulletin boards this site, in whatever configuration, might as well be jet-packs as far as I’m concerned.
@Surplus:
“We certainly are entitled to it not getting worse. It should therefore be at least as good as it was in December.”
No, we’re not. David could entirely destroy this site if he wanted. He is not providing a contracted service. He’s simply writing a blog that many of us enjoy reading.
“Because he can! All he has to do is stop whatever he’s been futilely trying to do and just revert everything (except the posts and comments tables in the database, of course) to how it is in some backup from December”
It’s not that simple. It is very common for updates to mess things up and it’s not always appropriate to roll back updates. We don’t know what caused the issues to begin with, but we do know that David is a good guy and he’s doing his best. If you think you could do better, I recommend you write your own blog.
“That’s seriously broken functionality that makes the site no longer even fit-for-purpose.”
You are free to not read the blog.
“Let’s make it formal. Either here or let’s pick an older thread that’s otherwise not getting much traffic and use comments there to sign a petition to get, at the very least, the quote button restored. If enough of us sign, the management will not be able to ignore us any longer and will have to cave to our demands!”
David knows the site isn’t working. He’s not ignoring us. He’s working in the background. Let’s instead give him some space and trust that he’s a good person who is working as hard as he can.
*pokes head in to see why the comments on this post have gotten so active all of a sudden*
*backs slowly out again*
Good call
Apropos nothing really, but I had to have an injection into my eyeball today. I was amazed though how painless it was. Then the nurse laughed and said, wait til the aesthetic wears off. Hoo boy was she right.
It was a pretty fascinating experience though. You can actually see the drug coming out of the needle. It’s like having your own built in lava lamp.
So! How about that weather we’ve been having?
Speaking of weather, we had a scare in my part of Texas this past week – namely, another round of very low (for this state) temperatures giving me serious flashbacks to last February’s winterapocalypse. Luckily we didn’t get the kind of snow and ice storms we had last year, and House Parasol didn’t even suffer a flicker of outage.
Still, I don’t think I’ll really relax until spring, so I’m making sure we have snacks and other food that either doesn’t need to be cooked or can be cooked on the stovetop – like many other Texans, we have a gas stove since natural gas is still cheap here. We have matches, we have extra blankets we can add to the bed if necessary, and Mr. Parasol has promised to listen to me more carefully this time, since I grew up with nasty winters and he didn’t.
We’re as prepared as we can be.
@Alan:
“It was a pretty fascinating experience though. You can actually see the drug coming out of the needle. It’s like having your own built in lava lamp.”
Nope nope nope nope nope. I do not like the thought of that.
Also, hoping your eye feels better soon.
@Surplus
I would like to invite you to consider why you believe this to be the case. Really reflect on it. What is your reason for being so entitled?
Have not your own circumstances changed since December? Did you not tell us about the conspiracy the power company has against you, and in fact all of Facebook and the Canadian medical system also have against you?
If that’s true, how 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?
@ Vicky P
@Alan
I did not know that, but I can’t say I’m surprised! There are a lot of little leftovers from the Republic of Texas days.
@ Vicky P
The Confederacy had an embassy here too; in Liverpool. Liverpool was the location of the last surrender of the civil war.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/08/world/liverpool-confederate-links-intl-cnnphotos/
The civil war has a minor legacy in international law. To enable the European powers to be able to trade with both sides, they defined the north and south as ‘co-belligerents’.
The rationale is still a precedent for defining who’s a belligerent and who’s an insurgent. Thank goodness that sort of thing is never an issue these days.
@Alan I rather like the idea of an on-board lava lamp, but the thought of this involving a needle made me want to run away screaming in the key of Cm and abject terror.
I hope your eye is well and that all of you is untraumatised by the experience.
David used to joke that his two cohabiting cats constitute the management of We Hunted The Mammoth Inc. Perhaps that’s also a subtle hint on how seriously business-oriented this site is intended to be.
Alan – Sorry about the pain, but you perhaps meant the anaesthetic rather than the aesthetic wearing off?
As a teen I once got those pupil-enlargening eye drops and then felt almost blinded walking home on a bright (sunny and snowy) early spring day. Then I duly went to spook my sister with the huge pupils before the aesthetic wore off.
@ Alan Robertshaw
Ah, I have had that experience several times each eye. For me it most definitely hurts when they stab me, but the worst part is actually when they take a cotton swab and clean out the sanitizing gel they smeared on the eye. I know they are trying to be gentle and quick, but with my eye already experiencing a stabbing pain, it feels like they are shoving it in hard and wiggling it around for a half hour.
One thing I did notice though is that it gets less painful every time. I theorize the doc keeps hitting the same spot and small amounts of scar tissue that don’t really feel pain as much end up forming(?) Anyway, I’m glad now that usually about a half hour to an hour later most of the stabbing feeling goes away and I am left with a slight dull throbbing for a day or so. Used to be that it hurt pretty good for two days straight.
You’re not the first person I’ve heard say it doesn’t hurt when the needle goes in though. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, I dunno.
Anyhoo, have fun not rubbing an itchy eyeball for the next three days. That gets old. ?
@ opposablethumbs
It was rather trippy. Now though it’s a bit like driving through the Stargate sequence in 2001 so I’m trying to source an eyepatch.
You’d think they’d have them in Penzance; what with all the pirates.
“Apropos nothing really, but I had to have an injection into my eyeball today. I was amazed though how painless it was. Then the nurse laughed and said, wait til the aesthetic wears off. Hoo boy was she right.”
May I ask why that was necessary (the injection)?
Also I second the motion to be patient with the site issues. It blows, but the issues can be caused by all kinds of things, likely quite the hassle to find.
I’ve read about multiple people on here getting a covid variety recently, so I hope everyone is doing well/better.
As for the ‘counter-arguments’ posed by the OP will definitely succeed in people just giving up talking to whoever posed them. I assume they’ll take that as a win (‘HA! They didn’t even know what to say! I am a supergenius!’).
@ lumipuna
Well it does look pretty cool. I’m going to tell people I was in a prison fight.
@.45
Ouch, my sympathies.
But yeah, the injection itself wasn’t even unpleasant. Quite an interesting feeling in fact. I have at least two more shots coming up though; so I’ll see how they pan out.
@ battering lamb
I’ve somehow managed to burst a blood vessel at the back of my eye. No idea how. They put me through a battery of tests to see if there was an underlying cause. But when we went through my results the only thing that showed was that I suffer a bit from smugness. Basically it was like a rubbish episode of House. The current diagnosis is ‘These things sometimes happen’.
I am very grateful though that it’s now being treated; and as always the staff were lovely. Hooray for the NHS!!!
@Alan: I myself go back to 110 baud modems, so the internet of today is literally beyond my wildest dreams back then.
Also, being married to a retired network engineer who got paid a handsome sum to make all this stuff work, was an internationally-recognized Big Deal, and still couldn’t get the damn things to do exactly as specified despite it being his job and working so many late nights, I certainly don’t expect David and his cats to debug entire infrastructures just so we can make fun of stupid toxic men.
Also, I hope your eye is better soon. Both a friend and my brother have had to have many pokey things done to their eyeballs (more “things that just happen”) and they found them very disquieting but it beats going blind in one eye. And yes, everything’s all fun and games till the anesthetic wears off — always.
Glad they were able to see you (har har) in a timely fashion. Check your eyeball gravel quarry carefully for a very tiny blue police box; it’s their natural habitat.
And practice your best “YAAARRRR”. You’ll have the patch all set for “Talk Like A Pirate Day” in September. You might be able to cobble together something on your own with the elastic left over from a decommissioned face mask or two.
@Vicky: The husband and I have kept all our cold-weather gear too, because you never know. We’ve got a little camp stove and some other oddments left over from our Scout days, and the sleeping bags are at the ready. Of course, we live in California where our power stays on a bit better and the state government is mostly functional. Hope you don’t need your gear.
@ gss ex-noob
On a related note, the location used for Magrathea in the 1980s version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is now the Eden Project.
https://medium.com/justin-k-prim/filming-locations-for-the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-and-more-8018c4fb9437
https://www.edenproject.com/mission/our-origins
Surplus. I’ve explained the workaround for the latest posts not showing up at least a half dozen times. It’s not new. It’s been around for *years*. My best guess is that it’s an issue on either wordpress or a plugin, but I can’t really verify that because it’s all a black box to me.
Regardless, you’re not being denied access, it’s just that, when you click on the link, the page it takes you to is sometimes a bit stale. What you need to do instead is click on the article title and scroll down to the comments. The new comment will be visible.
To reiterate: click on the link from “Recent Posts” rather than from “Recent Comments” to view the comments that aren’t loading.
You don’t even need to do this every time, just when it doesn’t load.
I know you’re about to hurl a bunch of abuse at me for daring to suggest you click one additional time, so save it. I won’t read it, anyway.