AdamSmith

Thank you! Me too.

actually, I don't understand (have been in many Asian countries where it does have formal meaning); but here in the West, what does 'loss of face' even mean?

I believe that viewpoint is not correct, on all its theoretical foundations.

There is not any sarcasm in that above post. All this is so stupid.

I fully agree with every point you have made here.

Moi more than Omni sexual to go with that.

On the contrary. When I fuck up in my business (public press commentary on engineering modeling & simulation software), I make a big, public apology and retraction, and explanation of exactly why I failed the duty of my professional judgment.

@RA1: The Prunes of Wrath

The only cure for Steinbeck's 'greatest' novel! Thank you. I slogged through it about halfway to Oklahoma, then threw it in the wastebasket. Life is too short to spend it deliberately in such a Dustbowl!

You worry too much! move on to more important things. I won't go back there even if allowed.

Dinna worry! the response might even help the site self-correct. of course I also have some slight faith in global geoengineering to fix global warming...

Don't worry about it! (Just protect your own sanity in participating there, in whatever ways you can.) This is not a big angst thing with me. I just like, as a journalist, to put out all the stuff in a case. Honesty about any life experience is all we have.

What got me banned was the following chain of events: It began with me, essentially, hijacking my own thread -- 'The Organ' in the arts forum. Originated by me to discuss that musical instrument, then gradually broadened by me, whippedguy, and some others to classical music in general. Then! It seemed to start getting a bit dry, so I started posting stuff that seemed funny to me. Tom Lehrer song clips, etc. Gradually broadening out to things like the Harold Hecubah episode of Gilligan's Island and so on. Then eventually to comedy clips from TV etc that were not even musical. That, for some strange reason, prompted moderator Cooper to start cutting the 'non-music' posts out of that thread, and re-posting them in a new thread 'The Organ Alternative' or some such that he created in the General forum. Of course that prompted me to redouble my posting of funny mass-culture trash in my original Organ thread. That in turn drove B to ban me for a day. I wrote him an incensed PM asking Why? He wrote back, in effect, you hurt Cooper's feelings. (Whom I happen to know personally from the 2010-2011 residence in NYC.) I responded with a blistering PM saying how utterly stupid, not to say commercially suicidal, that was to put an 'employee's' feelings and interests above those of the site's 'clients.' I shortly followed up with an even more hotly worded PM about how the original HooBoy had been able to ride pretty effective herd over, in those days, a vastly more rowdy and noisome -- also far more intelligent -- crowd of posters, with a relatively light touch compared with the kindergarten-level approach employed by site management today. And furthermore, that the costs of such ham-fisted over-moderation and paranoia for control are only too visible in the already woefully, possibly fatally, degraded quality of participation and posters today. For that, I was banned, and blocked to boot. 'Banned for violation of terms of service' is what I see when I hit the forum's URL now. (I did, as you suggested, create a spoof IP shortly thereaftere, and looked in just once. That was enough.) All in all, well worth it, for the psychological benefits described above. @Latbear4blk, your efforts are genuinely appreciated. But there will not be any return. The psychic costs of participating there, uncovered by their removal, are simply too great.

Many thanks, but please DON'T give me back that dark temptation!

Also, honestly, no longer having available the temptation to go there and see the bottomless stupidities and not listening to each other -- I was not only banned, but my computer and phone IP addresses were actually blocked from viewing the site -- has proven a great boon to my mental and emotional health. Come to think, I highly recommend it!

I am just this way on nothing but Raisin Bran.

She the Man. Hacks review: Donna Brazile lifts lid on Hillary and the Democrats' disaster The former DNC chair’s memoir of election defeat has it all: Russian hackers, campaign drama and a reigniting of bitter internal feuds Twice in the past five presidential elections, the Democrats won the popular vote only to meet defeat in the electoral college. In 2000, a mere 537-vote deficit in Florida and the US supreme court stood between Al Gore and the White House. Sixteen years later, Hillary Clinton garnered a 2.86 million vote plurality, only to see her ambitions dashed in the Rust Belt. Both times, Donna Brazile was there, first as Gore’s campaign manager, then in 2016 as the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Brazile most certainly has a story to tell. In Hacks, her new book, she points fingers, names names and self-absolves. Replete with f-bombs, male anatomical references and tales of alcohol consumption, the book is an easy and vivid read, everything one expects in a first-person campaign narrative – except for its detailed discussion of Russia’s hacks, WikiLeaks, and threats to Brazile herself. On that score, the book is down-right alarming. Three titanic egos – Barack, Hillary, and Debbie – had stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes Donna Brazile From the get-go, Brazile bristles with contempt for Robby Mook, the data-driven Clinton campaign manager, and Brandon Davis, Mook’s emissary to the Democratic National Committee (DNC). She is respectfully disapproving of Clinton’s hauteur and tin ear, which she captures with a deft touch, and bathes Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Brazile’s predecessor at the debt-ridden DNC, with acid-laced kindness. Brazile also takes the Obamas to task for standing idly as the Democratic party imploded on their watch. As Brazile tells it, “three titanic egos – Barack, Hillary, and Debbie – had stripped the party to a shell for their own purposes.” Brazile pummels Mook. Mincing no words, she declares: “I want to talk about the arrogance and isolation of the Clinton campaign and the cult of Robby Mook, who felt fresh but turned up stale, in a campaign haunted by ghosts and lacking in enthusiasm, focus, and heart.” In Brazile’s view, campaigns are supposed to be about competence in execution, passion and fun. On this score, Mook was 0-for-3. Worse, Mook and his men sought to put the kibosh on Brazile’s efforts to bolster the DNC and the Democrats, which tack was driven in large measure by sexism but not racism, according to the African-American Brazile. Over a conference call with the Clinton campaign’s high command, Brazile recalls, genital size became the measure of all things. She announced: “This feels like power and control. Gentlemen, let’s just put our dicks on the table and see who’s got the bigger one, because I know that mine is bigger than all of yours.” Interestingly, Huma Abedin, Clinton’s supposed alter-ego, is never present during these dust-ups, giving the impression that she was simply Clinton’s kid-sister and disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner’s ex-wife. Abedin as strategic player? Not so much. After Clinton’s “deplorables” speech at Cipriani Wall Street and her collapse at the 9/11 ceremony in lower Manhattan, Brazile writes that she was forced to take stock of Clinton’s candidacy and assess the possibility of replacing the ticket, a power actually possessed by the DNC. In Brazile’s view, a combination of vice-president Joe Biden and Senator Cory Booker would have been a dream team, particularly in the face of Donald Trump’s appeal to white working-class voters and the Democrats’ dependence on minority turn-out. Brazile also writes that Clinton’s failure to immediately come clean about her bout with pneumonia “fed the impression that Hillary was lying to us”. As to be expected, Brazile goes easy on Brazile. She makes no mention of the DNC spending scarce funds in get-out-the-vote efforts that targeted Chicago (in reliably blue Illinois) and New Orleans (in predictably red Louisiana). She also pushes back hard against accusations that she leaked primary debate questions to the Clinton campaign, even as she was a CNN commentator. Still, Brazile acknowledges that as the result of binding agreements hammered out by Wasserman Schultz, the DNC had become a Clinton campaign subsidiary. Yes, the Bernie Bros really had reason to be angry. The fix was in. Brazile also deals with race, gender, and identity politics. Hacks recounts how turnout among black women dropped from Obama’s presidential bids to Clinton’s run, and discusses incarceration as an issue of particular concern to African American voters. At the same time, Brazile, an adjunct assistant professor, writes of how her students disapproved of identity politics. Sounding awfully like Columbia’s Mark Lilla, Brazile comments that her students thought Clinton spent too much time “trying to appeal to people based on their race, or their gender, or their sexual orientation” and not enough time on the issues. In reality, even with Donald Trump, this is a problem the Democrats must address. Running up the score in Blue America, without an eye toward America’s interior, is a surefire way of making 2020 a rerun of 2000 and 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/05/hacks-review-donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-democrats-donald-trump

Xanxia was the queen of Zanak. She was practically frozen at extreme age in time dams and watched over by the Captain. Biography Xanxia was the queen of Zanak at some point. She was rumoured to have evil powers and the ability to live for hundreds of years. She staged galactic wars to demonstrate her powers, but ended up ruining the planet. When the Captain crashed landed, she saved him by fitting him with cybernetic parts, which she used to control him. At some point, Xanxia created a hologram of herself, with which she could pretend to be the Captain's nurse. She persuaded him to jump Zanak continually through space to plunder planets for rare minerals to feed the time dams. Xanxia hoped to create a permanently youthful, viable body by preserving her true form in its last few seconds of life. The Fourth Doctor dismissed this as foolish, stating that there wasn't enough energy in the universe to keep the dams running forever. She would always be dependent on the last few seconds of life in her old body. Xanxia was defeated by the Doctor when Zanak was prevented from materialising around Earth. The distraction caused by this failure allowed the time dams and the mountain in which they were enclosed to finally be destroyed by the Mentiads. (TV: The Pirate Planet) http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Xanxia

Yeah, I don't deny that at all. I was a committed contributor and participant for fifteen years, and I miss it.