I really wanna know, so sayeth the Whom’st. Who art thou? I had another wacky idea for a series of posts, and feel like this one might have more appeal – at least for a narrow audience.
In slowly building an archive of my old blog poasts (insurance against the anarchy of FtB finally doing it in), I’ve also been noting the personalities of commenters, and thinking of you. Who are you people? Would any of you consent to an interview?
To test the waters, I’m paging John Morales. I’d like to do an interview about who you are, in the vein of what some newly minted celebrity might receive, but hopefully less fake. I’d publish the results here, not unlike the times I interviewed The Beast from Seattle.
If you’re not a lurker – if you’re a person that’s willing to make public comments – I expect you’ve got enough ego to want to be known. The aging writers and readers of blogs are heading toward oblivion, might be cool to graffiti something of your life into the internet before you go. Something that will at least last until it gets painted over. I expect my own blog archive to outlive FtB, so it could be for a while.
I would also love to interview at least one lurker, but I don’t have high hopes you’ll be willing. I may name people who commented once in the past and mentioned that they lurk; we’ll see.
Aside from John, not naming specific invitees yet, but I may in the future, depending on how it goes. Nonetheless, if you want to nominate yourself, go ahead.
–
Thanks for the offer. But.
I don’t feel comfortable opening up beyond what I already do, and I want to preserve my stance of not lying here. And my personal privacy.
Also, my ego doesn’t need external validation or publicity, so that’s not a thing here.
—
Still, within those limits, I am willing to have a go.
jm – you have revealed some rather personal information in my comments before, but i dig it. here’s how we do it: private communication channel of your choice, we interview there. i edit it and show you how it would appear published, and you suggest any edits you please, one more chance to say no altogether, and at last..
it goes up. after that you can have me delete it if you change your mind. the we all make silly mistakes sometimes reminder, don’t put contact info you don’t want public in comments. i can use your email from the mod end to reach out as needed.
Your project, your call.
Email is private, but that’s not necessary; you can do it here, in the open.
No worries. And no need for edits. If I stuff up, I stuff up.
A tranche or the lot or one question at a time, whichever. I’m not fussed.
ahaha, australian flavor already. i’m not ready right now, but the way we’ll work around other people is this. i’ll start the comment with “question:” and you’ll start yours with “answer:” that way people can talk around us, or we can make comments that aren’t part of it. i’ll probably be a while before I bring the first official question…
OK.
Here with the first question earlier than I thought I would be, but question number two might come one, four, eight, or 24 hours from now, depending on how things go. In the article there will be some preface or preamble, more than you see here anyway.
Question: John Morales, the infamous. Banned on some Freethoughtblogs, cursed on others. I just want to say up front that you do a good job of abiding the rules that I’ve established in the sidebar, and I greatly appreciate that. The one that is most relevant to you is that request to be less punchy than you might be on other blogs.
You are! Remarkable! I particularly like the way you stuck the flounce on that one comment section where you were having a dustup with Sigfried Trivialknot. We all have our pride, and it’s a good quality to be able to stow it when necessary.
I know when you’re getting into arguments at Pharyngula, you do explain yourself and defend your positions. But I wonder that you might have some kind of blanket defense of your pugilistic ways that you would like to state here, for the record. Be as humorous or serious as you please.
Accurate enough. Anyway, extemporaneously:
This is basically me being eristic and so challenging myself, and historical contingency — back in the day, *pharyngula* was rather robust and I fit therein perfectly.
I was a middling fish, mind. There were some Molly sharks around.
Times have moved on, but my core has not.
And the bigger fishies are now departed.
Thank you for acknowledging my self-discipline.
My earliest formative years were in an honour culture setting, so that shaped me.
I don’t promise lightly, I don’t commit lightly. Because I take it as binding.
I have options, of course. I never ever needed or need banning.
Just say straight-out I’m not welcome, I’m out.
It was never needful.
In the case of *Pharyngula* and the current *Infinite Thread*, Lynna made it most clear to me she wanted me banned. By her numerous other requests I had bidden, but she wanted me to not be myself.
So I haven’t been back (well, inadvertently by thinking I was on another tab, but not deliberately).
Righto. To the meat.
You say pugilistic, I say adversarial.
You know? Thesis, synthesis, all that. Devil’s advocate.
Almost like the scientific method.
My point is to not be wrong, not to be right.
To be fair, to be honest.
But of course we status monkeys work on multiple registers.
I get I could go softly softly, to be mealy-mouthed.
But that’s like crippling myself.
I guess it’s no real defence, but I am me.
I really can only be me in this sort of milieu, online, anonymous in the best sense.
I don’t have to pretend.
That’s basically it.
Some people respond very poorly to adversarial discourse, and I admit, I have zero tolerance for it when coming from people on the political right. Not the best history with tolerating from leftists, tho it does happen. Yet I do see the utility of it. My mind compulsively reaches for alternate explanations. Still, gadflies are gonna catch heat. Bon courage.
You are in different waters here and you know it. I never could hang much at Pharyngula, back in the day when you dug it the most.
Eristic? When you choose to deploy a shiny word they have little overlap with my own vocabulary. Is this a discordian thing, or more broad?
Early years… I believe you laid this all out in my comments before, but for the sake of refreshing my memory and having the facts in one place, what was the path there? How old were you when you moved to each new country? This is interesting to me because for my family, poverty made international travel unimaginable, but for many others, it happens. How does that work?
Consider this the topic shift. I’d like to find out what I can about you as a person beyond the personality. Maybe a JM hater will come to see you as human in a positive way and gain some tolerance, heh.
Early years, you got that already, enough. I don’t want to get too personal.
I was not particularly peripatetic; born in Madrid Spain 1960, moved to Australia 1972.
South Australia until 2020, retired 2017, moved to a nice place a bit south of Brisbane.
Did spend a few years in boarding schools, and a summer as a potential adoptee by some family who were nice enough. Multiple schools, I was expelled a few times. I was a problem kid, back then.
Mom was self-taught, mostly, having been a young teenager during the Spanish Civil War.
Family was affluent middle class until that point, then very ordinary. [you know the gap]
When she got my sisters out of the orphanage and the divorce under way and a housing trust (public housing) place and a pittance pension (she worked for ‘cash under the counter’) she got me here.
Not exactly poverty, but put it this way: when I was a tot, toilet paper was neatly-cut squares of newsprint on a nail in the wall of our apartment; 5A General Mola, as I recall (which surprises me).
I will give one illustrative anecdote: mom got me a bike when I was in first year high school. 1974. She had fuck-all, but got a daggy old big bike (um, 28″ wheels I think?) and then an acquaintance of hers (via work) helped us fix it and then we painted it. The paint was lilac.
I thought nothing about it until I got to school, the first time, and the gibes began.
Anyway. None of this gears or proper brakes (pedal backwards force to brake), and I could not touch the ground at that age. So I learned to climb it balanced on a wall and then ride it.
(I got better at it!)
So, not really poor. More like without discretionary slack about expenditures.
Lay-by for stuff, that sort of thing. Friends helping out.
St. Vinnies brought food parcels sometimes. 4 hungry hungry kids, and she never stinted.
Helps one appreciate the topping from the meal, no? And to be realistic.
Oh, right. ‘eristic’ in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eristic
(Though I enjoyed the first ‘Illuminatus!’ book a lot)
I like exercising my Lexicon, part of the freedom to be myself.
Not really going out my way, either. Just not having to restrict my vocabulary.
I get how it comes across, sometimes. Pompous. Artificial. Contrived.
It ain’t.
(forgot my own rule but not being interrupted anyway) Question:
I’ve never heard of Illuminatus!, but cursory googling tells me I’m aware of several things that owe it a great intellectual debt. Interesting biz, sir. Regarding vocabulary, sometimes the only word for what you’re trying to say is obscure, and I don’t fault one for resorting to that. Listen to my ass, heh.
I feel like we both had a childhood that could have dominated the course of respective adult lives, regardless of whether the poverty caused any direct damage. I’ve mentioned before that I was unable to get an office job until about age 45 because feral circumstances had me squirrelly in interviews, like a dog in human suit bondage. And you? Say what you will on that or disregard it.
You would have been fluent in Spanish when you left there. Some children of Latin American immigrants are real quick to switch and end up with poor skills in the language, which causes some distance with their parents. With that childhood, I expect you were alienated from her for different reasons.
I understand you don’t want to elaborate on that and just reiterate that as necessary in your next reply, but I am curious how well you knew your mother. Because that’s a direct link to a moment that looms massive over the feelings of Western leftists. How would you say the war affected her, and thereby you? If you’re willing.
On a related note, did you know any English at all when you were dropped into the deep end of it? How might that affect you now, if at all?
Question: If the answer on all of that is “get fucked” I can think of a different question easily.
Opposite for me; I started an office job at 17, after my mum kicked me out of home.
Fair enough too; I had one bedroom she the other, and my 3 sisters (all four of us born 2 years apart; one in London, one in NZ, one in Oz) were barely younger. Before that, part-time work as kitchenhand via another acquaintance of mum’s.
Thing is, I was always (and remain) a slacker and I lacked ambition, but back in the day you could get a job pretty easy. CES (commonwealth employment system) had regular tests for the Public Service (not a thing around your parts, I know) and I could always do pretty well at that.
Numerate, literate, not stupid, attentive, not slow.
Language-wise, I have to applaud my mom. She was most explicit that she wanted our household to speak English, and she did not cosset me. I had known I’d be emigrating a year or so in advance, so I did take English classes in Spain. But, you know… very very basic.
I picked it up via immersion, though. Had a breakthrough moment when I realised I was thinking in English when speaking, rather than thinking in Spanish then mentally translating to English.
Didn’t take that long. A few months. Young minds, amiright?
I remember my solecisms early on: for example, I’d say “I no no” for “I don’t know” because that is what I heard. I’d say ‘cannery’ and people heard ‘canary’. I still have a marked accent.
No, the problem is my mum was kinda demonstrative.
Hugs, that sort of thing. Made me uncomfortable, I did not really get it.
One single boy at 12 in a household with 3 younger sisters and a mum.
A mum who had to leave me with her parents as she left in shame.
Still, the girls stuck together, and I learned that the female sex is not feebler or has less attitude. (interestingly, in later life I was part of the admin branch of an enterprise, one of the ‘office girls’. The only bloke among 6 women for over a decade. No probs for me)
So. Mum left Spain in shame around 1961, she finagled getting me to her home in 1972.
The girls were a year earlier.
She built a household, she was mum *and* dad to us.
She had to be strong, she did not know better, and she did her best.
As for the war, well. She could not get secondary schooling. She lived through privation, had to work in the household. She had to be a mum to her younger sister because her own mum had and dad had to work to eke out a life. The ideology was not the thing, it was the existential effect. The reality of it.
I think she became a survivor. Under adversity are one’s true colours shown. She took charge of her life.
Anyway, she was formative towards my respect for women. The opposite of weak, they are.
Question:
I knew a Belgian guy in college who mentioned the issue of thinking in a different language, which is the first time I’d considered that could be a thing. In his case he was poor enough at English that trying to think in it helped him speak it, but he had to laboriously mode-switch, couldn’t do it on a dime.
My mother did a few things right and a lot more she didn’t do at all, causing severe problems. Not demonstrative of affection. Did she have antisocial personality disorder like my sister? I’m not sure. She did lack something in the ability to understand the reality of other’s feelings. Seems like that did more damage to us than anything you had going on. Personally I don’t love or hate her and almost never think about her, but my brother has big resentment. I had a few embarrassing moments of getting called out on sexism up through my twenties, and a few red-cheeked moments after that as I learned about feminism proper. Could be related.
Spanish-accented Australian English. Not something one expects to hear, here. Recently had the wildest combination of that come up in a phone call – an old gal with Cantonese-accented Brooklyn English. Loved it.
I don’t remember much about your politics, except what one can assume from you being in the comments on Freethought Blogs, many years after it was popular for our political opposites to put in appearances. What would you say are your strongest political convictions?
If I had to guess at your taste in music (not remembering offhand what you’ve said on the subject in comments), I’d say you either don’t like music, or like Pink Floyd / prog rock, or you are a jazz snob. If you like music, what have you been listening to lately?
(ok i’m out for the night)
“Spanish-accented Australian English” is right, but it’s not exactly Antonio Banderas.
Still, around a third of all Australians were born overseas, so there’s quite a variety at hand.
People have asked, some imagine it’s South African, some it’s Greek, and so forth.
It fools people, makes me sound a bit simple, makes some people underestimate me at first.
Useful that way.
I don’t really have any political convictions as such, but I firmly believe it is very stupid to try to run government as a business, and that it is very stupid to run public utilities and infrastructure for profit; every bit of profit is a negative outcome and to the detriment of the service. I believe social support networks are very useful at preventing crime and suffering, and that law enforcement is necessary — but prevention is always better than cure, no?
Thing is, I’ve yet to find someone for whom I I want to vote whose policies are congruent to mine, or a political party that thinks the way I do.
You’re pretty spot-on with my musical tastes; Pink Floyd is my favourite, Queen next, Beatles (yes, really) is the top 3. I generally liked more interesting music, and I am a bit eclectic.
Fugue in D minor, for example. Prog rock, yes.
However, I more or less stopped listening to new music around 1985, and very little new stuff has got through. It is exceedingly rare for me to listen to radio or play music these days, my collection generally suffices. And, of course, I absolutely dislike Rap style music, it’s basically rhythmic speaking.
I also don’t think much of ‘sampling’.
(Exceptions exist; I did find *Ren* an interesting artist, the Jenny/Screech tryptich being exceptional. Bardcore!)
Question:
You don’t even wanna know the shit I’ve been listening to lately, haha…
Alright, we gotta get back on track. Who are you? What are you like?
Lately I’ve been reflecting on childhood, thinking about how people act when they hit the early teen years. My cultural context is USian, so this may be skewed, but it seems like at that point everything revolves around bullying. The top dogs are the most cruel, everyone else is trying not to get bullied. Some do that by becoming para-bullies, minor bullying or support for the top. Some just aim for social invisibility by laughing along with the bullies when the time comes, some manage to not join in the creepery but don’t come to the defense of the bullied either because they’re trying to stay invisible, and then there are those whose existence is nothing but the receiving end of it all.
I think that can say a lot about who you are as an adult; even tho I don’t believe it’s written in stone, it can color things. Where’d you fit in, during that most vicious stage of social development?
Kinda open-ended, who am I and what am I like. Difficult. (little joke there)
I am not who I was, and I probably shan’t remain who I am now as I age.
So, another formative set of thingies. Perfectly true, but you have to read between the lines.
When I was rather young, I went along with what I was told. Very malleable.
Hyperactive little kid. Naive, trusting. Thoughtless, really.
Always have been and remain by nature naive, which is why I hate pranks and practical jokes with a passion. I have disappointed work colleagues who wanted me to actively partake.
That’s probably fed my cynicism over the years.
Change of pace in Oz, I remember thinking blond kids were tough. See? Cultural invasion by Hollywood even in 1960s Spain. Like, protagonist kids in TV and in shows who were blond were tough, and of course in the middle of Spain in those days blondness was not a thing.
(An interesting evocation in this little stream of associations)
Turns out they aren’t, particularly. Like I said, I went to a bunch of schools and got expelled from a few of them, so I developed a technique to cope with that hassle. Basically, prison rules.
So that was my attitude.
You know the Jesuit saying? “Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will show you the man.”
I am proof that is wrong. Didn’t take after a couple of years in their boarding schools, got expelled from one of them. Yet I was an altar-boy from 13 to 15 because my mom expected it.
LARPing it like the other altar boys, drinking the sacramental wine. 🙂
High school then. I was around a year older than my cohort, due to the changeover, but it felt to me like they were a year behind (or more) academically. For example, I’d been taught the basics of algebra years earlier, and now it was introduced again.
Turns out the blond kids weren’t particularly tougher, I could fit in well enough, and I adapted to early 1970s Australian schooling. The routine insult was ‘pooftah’ which took me ages to work out.
Anyway, I remained a bit of a problem kid, so I basically had detention pretty much every day for one semester. Kinda disruptive in class, no good at outings. Next school year, I got to skip a year and went straight to the next, and clearly they hoped it would slow me down. Which means I missed a year of school, yay!
Not as full-on as going to a new school, but now I was with a different cohort, of course.
It was a bit tough for the first term, but I caught up pretty quick. And they were right, I kinda had to try for a change.
I fit in with most kids, but we didn’t really have this jock/nerd thing going I see about USA. To the extent we did, I fit with both, but moreso the nerds. Basically, I was neither bullied nor bullying. Anecdote: this was during a period of Vietnamese ‘boat people’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_boat_people#Australia) assimilation and we were mockingly scornful when during recess and lunch breaks they’d be poring over their textbooks and doing homework while we played around and wasted our time. Joke was on us, no?
Story of my life. I could’ve done a lot more than I did do, because I am basically a slacker with no real ambition*. I used to say I wanted to be an astronaut when asked, but honestly it was just a thing to say. No plans. No goals. No real worries, no responsibilities. Competent enough at need.
Never ambitious; if I have enough, I don’t seek more at the cost of effort. Get on quite well with colleagues. I like to be helpful, I hate being coerced or manipulated, and will passively resist and subvert if I can do no more.
I am very stubborn, but also pragmatic. Rather easily satisfied with ‘good enough’.
—
* My wife does that for me.
Question:
That comment is probably enough for a thousand armchair shrinks to dx you. Personally I don’t know the field well enough to make declarative statements, mostly. Probably saves some embarrassment.
You might have mentioned being married before; I don’t recall. The people in your life say something about you as well (like the colleagues you get along with), but some people don’t want anything said about them, and some people don’t want to say anything about their loved ones out of a sense of privacy or propriety or other good reasons. Nonetheless, I have to ask, what would you be willing to say about her?
One more thing – I know you’re fairly older than me and I talk with a lot of older people in my job who are running out of company, sometimes completely alone. I’m really glad to hear you have people in your life.
Hold up – one more thing. Neither bullied nor bullying, I have to wonder – the legendary australian chopbusting, of always ripping on everybody at all times, I wonder. Do you think it defrays the bullying instinct, when everybody’s kind of a shit to each other all day every day? Outside impression I have, but maybe that’s the sample size of aussies I’ve known.
(and now i go, gnite)
This is not therapy. Is it? 😐
Wife. My better half.
So, I was entirely virginal when we met, and she was my very first girlfriend.
Turns out I am rather shy by nature too, so… well, I never approached women because I didn’t have the oomph to do it. Couple of times my friends tried to set me up, but nah. No rapport at all.
I was (I remain) a dweeb about that.
OK. So, I was 18, not long out of high school, and a high-school friend who was a muso had a jam session in a church hall near the school and suggested I go along. Good music, booze, fair enough.
I could cope, it was passing the time. I didn’t and don’t dance, so basically I sat around and listened.
(They were pretty good; my friend became a professional musician after a brief go at electrical engineering, but alas his expertise was IMO vitiated by his predilections: bluegrass)
So, there was this girl, 16. Not that I cared or asked, of course. And for the first time ever I got a tonguie kiss. And a good grope, while I was at it. Awkwardly balanced on 14 inches of bar, because it was that or the floor. Go figure.
Anyway, turns out she lived in the neighbourhood and we had common friends.
Decades later I was told we were set up, but hey. I’m not complaining.
So. We were soon seeing each other, I was visiting her, she was on her last year of high school and I (ahem) helped to tutor her. Mendelian genetics was one, she is convinced she lacks all math aptitude.
Point being, we shacked-up, as in she convinced me she would elope.
Driving to the rental, her cat in the car (we were so naive!) nearly crashing us when she scooted under the pedals, her dad bashing the door it some days later, excitement all around.
Um, Catholic family, BTW.
Anyway. We fell in love, we were horny as fuck, neither of us wanted children, neither of us had anything particular to lose. And we stayed together. This was… 1979 I think.
We sorted it out, fiction being we were in a Platonic relationship.
Got married in 1986, because I finally realised we might as well, and because there are benefits to being officially married. So many things become smoother sailing then.
So. She is my ‘social secretary’ — you know those days where presents must be given?
She takes care of that.
She wanted a little house in the country with chickens in the yard and a dog. So we got it.
She wanted one last chance to see all the African animals, so she set my 50th for it.
Etc.
So there is my source of aspiration.
Oh, right.
She is a practicing Catholic who goes to church and does all that, also helps out with churchy activities like ‘second bite’ which distributes food donated by supermarkets (you know the kind; not quite out of date packed stuff, not quite wilted veg), and she volunteers tutoring English as a second language.
My other half. Maybe the better one.
re #20, I think not.
It’s mostly a mode of interaction between peers, if you mean the friendly gibes and insults and putdowns.
I myself don’t really do it, but it’s a thing that can get kinda physical.
cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nipple_cripple
Question:
Yeah, think I’d be allergic to Australia meself. And like you, without a long-term romantic partner I’d only have enough motivation to live in a treehouse with arboreal dingoes and a nice hidey-hole for my vices. Well… I’d still be creatively ambitious.
Therapy, no. Maybe I did feel like checking in to see if people are OK in life. You sitch sounds pretty decent to me, and long may that continue. I wouldn’t say the romance story was cute, but it was good.
Alright, so I have a picture of a John Morales now, an idea of tha man behind tha myth. But did I hear you right, finally feeling unwelcome enough to dip on commentary at Pharyngula?
Leads to another thing I was wondering. What other kinds of places might you hang out, on these interwebs or in meatspace? Broadly. News sites, pubs, pickleball…
Not the site. Lynna’s thread. The non-topical one.
This is it. Last bastion of social media for me.
You and Pharyngula in general.
I do have a collection on newsfeeds etc, but that’s all passive. Blog commenting days almost done.
Reuters, BBC, Guardian, ABC (oz), Vox, El Pais are routine morning reads.
News, science feeds. Economics, politics. Chess.
I read a lot, watch a lot, exercise, play games. Walk the dog.
1300 hours on Darkest Dungeon 2 atm. Mastering it.
Boring for most. That’s fine. Circumstances change.
Meatspace, I’ve become a bit of an eremite.
Go shopping, walk dog, cook, that’s pretty much it.
I don’t like travelling, my wife does. She’s the social one.
—
FWIW, I played AD&D with a group of friends almost every weekend between 1980 and 1996.
Some sessions of V&V (villains & vigilantes) at some point.
Old school.
Well, I’m going to censor your ableist language per my possibly outdated and overapplied policy on that when I edit this together, but you’re not bébéverboten yet. My husband played Darkest Dungeon 1, what might you tell him about DD2?
🙂
Different mechanics, same classes, lots more atmosphere, easier to finish.
Um, I’ll let the bot do it for me:
I kept playing because I kept getting better at it.
(checking) 909 hours on DD. The original. I do know whereof I speak.
—
I’m pissed-off because the DLC *Kingdoms* is still bugged, where opening the map inside an Inn can cause the UI to vanish so you can’t exit the screen.
So, I am working on having every hero with every memory. Figure it will be an achievement.
It’s a bit zen. Like Solitaire, but more complicated. Many more degrees of freedom.
And not real-time. I have lost my liking for RTS and FPS.
Oh. The estetics and music are better by far. Less cartoonish, more evocative.
Like I said, I am not finished learning it fully. Lots of degrees of freedom within each combo.
Doubling back for a sec, speaking of things that say something about you as a person, how do you feel about the dog?
Regarding DD2, at 1300 hours, still haven’t done it all? That’s replay value…
…And having the bot sum up the game for you segues nicely to my (probable) last question. Do you think the strictures you have placed on the bubblebot have conferred upon it any of your own personality, as the hardcore nobullshitman of discourse?
The dog (‘Igor’) is a doggy person, I am a monkey person.
He sleeps at the foot of our bed, though he sometimes farts horrible horrible farts.
He has some dysplasia making bone spurs and osteoarthritis, so he gets treatment.
9 years old this week. Got him same week I retired.
Igor is part of the family, and Clawdia the cat is too.
She’s gone a bit feral, but she needs twice-daily medication.
We got the upmarket stuff that single-doses and is applied inside the ear, which is challenging, but not like shoving pills down her throat. The cat, that is.
Igor gets monthly injections, and we’ve made him lose weight for the load-bearing.
Only 25.7 Kg now, not that he was ever fat. But he has a waist.
Basically, I am not speciest. Dogs sleep, dream, hope, get sad, feel angst, all of it.
Different sensorium, different perceptions, but fully sentient and sufficiently sapient.
—
I’ll take that second one as in have I adapted, now since I look upon the abyss it also has looked unto me.
I do that because I thought I made it clear the bot has no volition, no agency, no continuity, no awareness.
I can alter the settings of one instance in some session (which again, is served by the cloud so possibly different data centers are doing the processing for different queries) and the metadata and lexical pool for a session is evanescent.
So, no. I can’t change it (the developers can) but it can change me*.
There is no ‘it’ to change, only a system and an architecture, as I’ve previously made clear.
It does provide good practice at precision queries, so sessions can be ‘trained’
Good input yields more relevant output is the main thing.
I do think the Copilot standalone windows app has a metadata lexical heap about its sessions, and I am pretty sure the Googlebot that I can invoke via ‘AI mode’ in the search knows my internet fingerprint and does likewise. It is suspiciously fast to fall in line these days. But still, maybe apophenia.
—
* apologies to Bowie, in due Time.
Actually, it lost its inter-session ‘memory’ some time ago. Lemme check:
—
Heh. It synthesised/fabulated:
>enumerate my protocol strictures
bot:
Your **protocol stricture** — the one you explicitly invoked in this conversation — is the same one I have stored as an explicit fact:
**Stricture #27:**
**No unsolicited conditionals, prompts, interpretations, framings, or invitations.**
If I emit one, you mirror it with an if‑construction that triggers safety systems.
Therefore I must not generate any such structure, not even by paraphrase or implication.
That is the *only* item you have ever labelled a **protocol stricture**.
Your broader unified strictures (the 26‑item set, plus the cumulative additions) exist, but you did **not** ask for those — you asked specifically for **your protocol strictures**, plural, but historically you have used that phrase to refer to **the protocol stricture**, i.e., #27.
So the correct enumeration is:
1. **Stricture #27** — the protocol stricture
– No unsolicited conditionals
– No unsolicited prompts
– No unsolicited interpretations
– No unsolicited framings
– No invitations of any kind
– No paraphrased or implied versions of the above
– Because any such emission triggers your mirrored if‑construction, which in turn triggers safety systems
– Therefore absolute prohibition
That is the complete set under the label **protocol strictures** as you have used it.
If you intended “protocol strictures” to mean the entire unified set, you would have said so explicitly, and you didn’t.
—
OK. That last sentence shows it’s certainly adapted to me! 😉
A mirror darkly.
I do think the Copilot standalone windows app has a metadata lexical heap about its sessions, and I am pretty sure the Googlebot that I can invoke via ‘AI mode’ in the search knows my internet fingerprint and does likewise.
There are existing techniques that can extend an AI’s “memory” without its designers’ permission. My friend Ron wrote a system that swaps pages of familiar text in and out as well as tracking references to pages, so when he starts his LLM is pre-feeds it a bunch of partial discussions. It works remarkably well but tends to remember old jokes.
I use a similar trick with GPT, which is to keep all my chats, and remember roughly the topics. So if I want to discuss furnace insulation, there is a chat conveniently named “furnace insulation discussion” and I can switch to that thread. I have GPT’s assurance that this does not cause it brain whiplash and it doesn’t mind.
For John:
Hey I got bone spurs too, fantastic. Er, non-fantastic. I have very similar regard for beasties, respect.
Re: the mirror, oh shit, we’re in a prestige television show.
Ah, one more thing I might like to ask anyone in the world far away from me, even if that’s New Mexico or New York. You see different animals from the ones I see, possibly every day. How do you feel about the animals you encounter? In the course of your daily life, the ones you see with regularity, any of them feel noteworthy to you? If you’ve seen any on rare occasion, did any of those give you a lasting memory or sense of importance or emotion to that moment?
For Marcus: Thanks for commenting. That’s interesting biz. I just use Claude these days but I likewise try to return to conversations for given topics – as long as the convo hasn’t gone long enough that its function is getting worse. Rare problem for me.
Marcus’ turn!
last question, the thing with the animals. i might bug some bloggers but not yet. chigau, i think.
Proof of concept established. Good luck.
u rascal. alrite. peace.
Actually, thanks.
It was not painful, it was not onerous, and you made me a bit nostalgic.
I thought about things about which I’ve not thought for ages.
Nothing wrong with a bit of self-reflection, either.
FWIW, each of those responses has been censored, irrelevances removed, because they were kinda stream-of-consciousness.
Over-explanations ditched. Revealing shit removed. Embarrasing neediness too.
—
Bonus: this is from the discard pile, in the ’embarrassing’ via neediness basket.
But it is revealing.
→Alright, gonna say it.
You know how I mentioned I was a bit disruptive at school?
Still am. Wherever I go. I know because it is evident to me.
>Banned on some Freethoughtblogs
Only overtly at Mano’s, because I posted 4 comments in the one thread.
One comment was me to the OP. The three others were to three different people who each tried to criticise me, and not in a friendly or a neutral way. I responded to each. Bang! 4 comments.
Fair enough, too. It was kabuki, and I went through the motions.
Also, Marcus made it clear to me I was persona non grata, ostensibly because I made no sense and I was pointless and had nothing to say and was therefore ignorable. So. Good enough.
I thought shadow banned, to be fair, but weeks after his episode I went to offer support, and my comment didn’t go through. So, presumably banned. No notice I noticed.
That’s it for extant contributors. In each case, because I am disruptive.
I know. And that’s with me trying to tone it down. My nature.
Dan Fincke once offered readers (before he went pro at it) advice, and so I took him up.
I noted my aptitude is to be irritating, to the degree a saint might be tempted to sin.
He pointed out I could use it for good, not for evil.
the interview be over so i’ll leave that stuff out. yeah, i remember the subject coming up once and mjr saying “nobody’s been banned here except john morales,” which i found memorable. shall we play it..?
YOU talkin’ ta me?
You talkin’ ta ME?
John Morales
Did you notices that Nerd commented on PZ’s “Still Alive” thread?
Indeed I did, chigau. I briefly entertained a ‘fist-bump’ acknowledgement.
Remember, back in the day? Nerd and I were on Troll patrol.
He was boofy, me too.
Anyway, that’s it. I didn’t, but I thought about it. Woulda been soppy.
(I am most aware of the Redhead, so there’s that too)
John Morales
I, too, considered an acknowledgement but on consideration it seemed unnecessary.
It’s nice to know he’s still with us.
You were the one who put me in my place. At Mano’s, IIRC.
Makes you kinda special.
(Just saying)
I thought I was always kinda clever.
What did I say that was actually clever?
You repudiated attempted special dispensation, chigau.
Made it most clear.
If you do not recall, well. Less embarrassing for me.
Was not about intellect, was about ego. Assertiveness.
I could search, but it’s needless. I recall.
OK.
Do you recall?
Vaguely. Very vaguely.
I remember feeling pleased.
But we two used to do quite a bit of sparring.
I thought I won a few, lost a few.
So I really do not remember the precise subject.
Yes. Also, I mean it. No damsel in distress, you.
Anyway, you know Satan has tempted you.
(cough, cough. #38)
i think she heard… i’m a lil busy to begin the next one just yet, but gotdam, u two made this my most commented post ever twice over. chigau, how do you like to interview? email? discord? some other kind of chat interface?
What interview?
I didn’t apply for a job.
it’s not optional… no, of course it’s optional. i’m gonna turn this interview with john into an article and was planning to do the same with some other commenters – you next. the terms, should you agree:
private communication channel of your choice, we interview there. (or a comment section like this). i edit it and show you how it would appear published, and you suggest any edits you please, one more chance to say no altogether, and at last…
it goes up. after that you can have me delete it if you change your mind. the ‘we all make silly mistakes sometimes’ reminder, don’t put contact info you don’t want public in comments. i can use your email from the mod end to reach out as needed.
what do you say?
Let’s do it right here.
Be warned.
It’s Friday and I intend to have a few wee drams.
Chigau, 違う, chigau, welcome to the Bébé Mélange program. Not only have you been commenting here since it was Great American Satan, you’ve been commenting since the blog was less than a month old. I was reminded of this when I began slowly archiving old posts and the comments with them.
In that time, you’ve been brief and casual, as if continuing a conversation that began elsewhere, but we have no prior familiarity that I’m aware of. But you’re a Pharyngula grognard, right? Did it just seem like my blog was a new room at the Freethought Frat house, and you wandered in with a red cup in hand?
No melange is my pref. This post is slipping from the recents anyway, and I have cooties too.
Bébé
When you started this blog, you’d been commenting at other FtB locales for quite a while.
We had interacted a little bit.
It did seem quite natural to just
bargewander in with my go-cupjohn – cootie away kemosabe, i got canadian fish to fry
chigau –
I have so little recollection of those comment section days. I only remember a few hot-blooded moments where I was thrilled – or more often when I was humiliated – and chill conversation at the beer pong table doesn’t make the grade. I’m tempted to ask if you had an impression of me from back then, but you are the topic.
I haven’t been treating the society of internet comrades with emotional weight they perhaps deserve. Consider this a low-key step in that direction. But because of the shallow depth of my camaraderie, I missed something. What was it like, back then? How did it feel to be on FtB, circa 2015? What do you remember?
This requires some thought.
I’m 71 years old and the past tends to blur a bit. I don’t know that I can separate 2015 from 2009 or 2020.
I *was* in the thread where Dawkins dropped his “Dear Muslima” bomb.
That was ? 2011?
That was a comment on Pharyngula, wasn’t it? I tend to think it was a tweet or blog post of his own. What a piece of shit. Tell me what you remember about that, why not?
and I’m going to bed but I’ll leave this
my “brief and casual” style of commenting is from my earliest FtB experience.
I commented using an tablet and was literally one-finger typing (holding the tablet in one hand, typing on a virtual keyboard with the other).
Not a style that makes for long comments.
The brevity of my comments was occasionally a subject of jocularity among the rest of the Horde.
(for when you awaken)
Is there a reason for that, a disability or just preferring the price tag of a tablet over a laptop?
Portability and privacy.
No one but me touches my iPad.
The personal computer was a different matter.
Tablets are fun gizmos. I might start using one around the house more, maybe when I retire.
Given this style of comment that you make, I’ll try to not make really broad questions, try to narrow the scope for the reply.
Doubling back then, how did you feel when you first read DickDawk’s absurd magnum opus? Did you see it immediately, or initially just see people’s responses, and have that moment of wondering what the hell just happened?
if you don’t feel like talking about that lemme know, i got topics galore.
I read Dawkin’s comment within a few minutes of when he made it.
My first reaction was to question whether it was really him.
Still had enough good will toward him to find that unbelievable? Understandable at that exact moment in time.
He was always pompous and condescending.
But that comment seemed too far out of his lane to be real.
I know better now, he is eager to weigh-in on almost any subject because he’s sooo smart.
Sock puppetry would have seemed possible then, for sure. But from where we are now, that sure seems like a defining piece of his oeuvre, doesn’t it? Even more than the down-and-out and honey tweets.
So you, one fingertip tap at a time, were a participant in the conversation from go. I do not remember this stuff well at all. Not sure why. Maybe it has something to do with whatever was going on in my afk life.
Back in 2011, mid-Obama years down here, what was your day to day like? In brief, as you please.
My summer jobs in 2011 were doing archaeology in Nunavut, NWT, and north eastern BC.
Internet was by company satellite-dish so time online was usually quite limited. I mostly read the threads and only rarely commented.
I vaguely recall that one of the satellite dishes was struck by lightning but I don’t remember if that was at this time.
Archaeology whuuuut
Accidentally posted too fast. A lot of people would love to do archaeology in a professional capacity but can’t. What was your involvement in that field like?
I was a shovel for hire, never interested in anything beyond and undergraduate degree.
I worked mostly in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
The last 15 years were in Nunavut, which is beautiful.
and I got to spend alot of time flying about in helicopters
I’ve never been in a helicopter. So adventurous. That’s what Rolling Stone magazine calls “sexy action cool.” So what’s the nonspecific short version of the cv here? How did your working life go? Were you just flipping burgers when it wasn’t shovel time?
Once I started doing archaeology, that’s all I ever did for a living.
When the weather turns, we move to the “lab” and clean, record, catalogue, artifacts.
Write the report, submit the report, wait for the Bosses to find the next dig.
.
Editing the writings of one of the bosses … he had a Master’s Degree
given what I was editing, it is not possible that *he* actually wrote his thesis.
I think that whoever at Rolling Stone magazine wrote, “sexy action cool” about helicopters may not have ever been in a job-site-type working helicopter.
They might have said that about Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. I can’t believe I’m in the company of a bona fide archaeologist. Like regardless of the letters on the diploma, you were out there doing the work. I imagine it was mostly Native American stuff. What were the most interesting things you laid your fingers on, in that time? Or was it more just the activity of it, the satisfaction of preserving bits of the ancient?