Good thing McDonald's stopped making those spoons. Cocaine is too healthy a product to be associated with the home of the big mac.

Thanks for reminding me why I hate Joe Biden; after seeing Jon Stewart mock him last night for saying some mildly politically incorrect things I almost started having a soft spot for the moronic mick (well technically he's a mick-frog-limey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden#Early_life_and_education - but being a mick-dago, myself, mick is the only one of those I can be sure I'm allowed to call him.)

And how about Joyce Nalepka? I always thought anti-drug commercials were the surest way to encourage kids to do drugs (much as the Butt-Out singers encouraged the boys of South Park to smoke, sealing the deal with the words "If you don't smoke you can grow up to be JUST LIKE US!") But Nalepka takes it to a whole new level. If everyone could see her and hear her speak, there's hardly anyone who WOULDN'T do drugs. I wonder if she wasn't manufactured in a drug lab.

To be clear, I did ask how "this site or another" could become the new, improved Reddit. Possibly, there is another site out there that exemplifies what I'm looking for, or maybe is yet to be created. Either way, I'd like to hear from others who are interested in such a thing.

I'd say that mk is a pretty accountable admin and cares a lot about this place and the people that use it.

I don't know about mk or any other admins here but I will assume that they are decent people until proven otherwise. For that matter, it is possible that there are decent people among the Reddit admins, but due to the cowardly, anonymous nature of the sneak attack that is the shadow ban, there is no way to tell them apart from the scumbags.

Will the defendant please rise? :-)

I was never any good at rolling either, that's why I mostly used a bowl unless I was sharing with someone who already rolled joints. That would be much cheaper than what Waka plans to do. Hell, even a vaporizer would be cheaper, in addition to being easier on the lungs.

How dare you compare these douchebags to Harold and Kumar! Even the superficial resemblance is a stretch.

Do you have any examples of such "nonsensical causes"?

I often disagree with Jonah Goldberg and the rest of National Review on social/cultural matters but I think he nailed it here:

So, imagine you’re a young Saudi guy logging on to Facebook for the first time. It asks you to state your gender. It then gives you 58 options. You take out your fingers — the simple man’s calculator — and start counting along. Male, female, whatever uncle Ahmed is . . . okay three. I count three.

What are these other 55 things?

You might think: Maybe those burkas don’t just cover women?

Then again, maybe it is better that trans-ethnic, otherkin, furry-bronies publish their headmate's identities on Facebook so the rest of us can be better prepared if we encounter them in what we call real life.

What does "neckbeard" mean to you? Is it a man who is unattractive by conventional standards, one who is socially awkward, or one who due to mental and emotional problems has trouble maintaining standard hygiene? How do any of these affect your interactions with someone online?

And what is wrong with euphoria? Do you even know what that word means? Here are some definitions: "a feeling of great happiness and excitement, a feeling of well-being or elation", "a state of intense happiness and self-confidence". Why would you want to avoid that? Yes some later definitions say it can be associated with a "pathological state such as mania" but it doesn't necessarily have to be. I would strive to be euphoric all the time if I could do it safely - http://hedweb.com/

I thought it was "Thunder Chief" the first time I heard it. I'm still not sure if it's about a hitman or a bisexual gigolo. I suspect both (though admittedly trying to find a double meaning in some of the lyrics, like "Concrete shoes, Cyanide" is probably a stretch). I haven't seen or heard any stories about AC/DC members hiring the latter but that would probably be easier to keep secret!

ETA: Wrote this before watching the "Done with Sheep" video. I see someone else had a similar thought.

I looked at the preview of The Unwinding on Amazon. Looks a little hard to follow in spots, since he tries to pack so many disparate events into one story. But it does look interesting. I will put it on my list of books to read.

I, too, am old enough to remember Biden's plagiarism scandal. In fact that was the only thing I knew him for until he once again disgraced himself as one of the prime sponsors of the expansion of the police state known as the RAVE act - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_Americans%27_Vulnerability_to_Ecstasy_Act I had forgotten, until I looked at the Wiki article, Madam Clinton's involvement with that.

I used to be a Republican (actually still am registered as one). I am glad I discovered the Libertarian Party before my revulsion with mainstream Republicans drove me into the slimy arms of the Democrats. (Note I say "mainstream" because I cannot rule out supporting Republicans like Ron and Rand Paul who, with all of their flaws, I can at least think about without total disgust.)

I understand your dislike of some of the conservative organizations targeted. But consider this: what if the Ferguson Missouri police department conveniently "lost" evidence that had the same relevance to the Mike Brown case as Lois Lerner's e-mails and Blackberry contents do to this one. Would you use scare-quotes when describing that as a scandal?

What about this? https://hubski.com/pub?id=173866

I'm not saying that a bullet used in a shooting is the same as electronic records that may document a harassment campaign, but the difference is a matter of degree not kind. Both are cases of being at best careless to the point of gross negligence, and at worst deliberately obstructive, with handling evidence of one's own possible crimes.

So, misconduct by law enforcement officials doesn't matter if it doesn't involve physical violence? Your dislike of money and moneyed organizations in politics do not justify the people in those organizations having their rights violated by selective enforcement of the law. If that's not what happened here, why all the stonewalling and disappearing of evidence? Would you accept such a lack of cooperation with an oversight investigation from a local police department even if it didn't involve someone being shot? How about an organization like the NSA or the FBI? If so, I guess I can commend you for being consistent, even though I disagree with the weight you give to law and order - or natiional security - over civil liberties. If not, why don't you hold the IRS to the same standard as other law enforcement agencies?

If there was "deliberately lying on tax forms", rather than misinterpretations, or merely differing interpretations of vague and complex laws, then yes those need to be investigated. It does not, however, give IRS agents a license to act with impunity any more than a robbery committed by Michael Brown gave Darren Wilson a license to kill. Again, if there was no wrongdoing the IRS should let the investigation show it and stop the cover-up.

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

Do mods have the power to shadow ban? If not, my problem is not with them (you) but with the admins (i.e. paid staff rather than volunteers). In any case whether it is admins only or mods and admins given this power, regardless of how non-corrupt an individual may be, shadow banning is a corrupt practice. True, I should have spoken out about it before it affected me and I regret not doing that. I hope there is not a similar sneaky, underhanded rule in effect here.

With these mechanisms, it has never been necessary to ban anyone thus far (and shadowbanning doesn't currently exist here).

Glad to read that.

But then again you didn't really specify anything outside of "Reddit, but rules that make sense"

I guess what I miss most about Reddit is having one place with so many different communities dedicated to a particular topic, ideal, or hobby. I could always find an article or discussion that caught my interest on any given day. Hubski does seem to have the potential for that, though it still has relatively few topics and still fewer which are updated regularly. I know I can do more to help with the last part and plan to post more here in the future. I guess I could create new tags, too but I want to see more activity on current subjects first.

Also, there are the "gone wild" and similar subs. I never posted to those, and rarely commented on them, and I know I can still look at them as much as before but I'd prefer not to give Reddit the page hits. I know there are plenty of other similar pictures easily found in any image search and I'm just about as likely to meet any of those women IRL as any of the "gone wild" girls, so I guess it's not a real loss, except in some intangible way that I can't explain.

I did overgeneralize. I may have been overly blunt in the way I stated my case too. I'm sure there are cases, in face to face Bitcoin meetups of women and others who don't fit the typical "tech geek" mold being not treated properly. The post you linked to seems to be an example of that and she may have some legitimate complaints, but by her own admission she experienced some minor discomfort not life-shattering trauma. She has not let it keep her away from future Bitcoin meetups and urges other women not to let it keep them away either.

My point was that it is possible to succeed in the Bitcoin world without ever going to a meetup, in fact hardly ever leaving your home (not that I'd recommend that). So the culture of the meet ups is really only slightly relevant, especially since any splinter group that wants to could organize their own.

Blind interviews if you have to, if we're talking about jobs. Blind and non-vocal

Blind and non-vocal is exactly how it works with bitcoin. In the vast majority of cases bitcoins are bought, sold, or used to buy and sell products buy people who have no idea of each other's race, sex, or other superficial characteristics. Anyone claiming discrimination in the bitcoin world is just wallowing in their own sense of victimhood, or trying to promote the idea of victimhood for others in order to be a white knight, like the author of the blog originally linked to.

A lot of what is mentioned in that article is outdated but I will grant that non-whites still have some disadvantages in American and other Western societies. The thing is most people have disadvantages of one sort or another. For example, I am learning disabled which caused me great difficulties as a child; as an adult, I have mostly learned to compensate for it but there are times when I face difficulties most people wouldn't. But "privilege" in the "Social Justice" sense creates a false dichotomy between "privileged" and "oppressed" where the "oppressed" are allowed to be as annoying and obnoxious, and as whiny about demanding accommodations as they want, while the "privileged" are just supposed to shut up and listen. Note accommodations are not always wrong or unreasonable, but they can be, and even when they are not the rights of those who make the accommodations should still be considered.

This is especially true since, most of the so-called "privileged oppressors" are disadvantaged in their own way, or in leftspeak, "oppressed along a different axis." I know this is supposedly covered by "intersectionality" but in practice all that usually amounts to is Oppression Olympics. Is a straight, black man in a wheelchair oppressed enough to tell a white lesbian to stop whining and playing P.C. police or vice-verse?

What is more along sexual lines the privileged vs. oppressed concept becomes especially muddled since, while there is a case to be made for male privilege, there is a similar case that can be made for female privilege:

http://owningyourshit.blogspot.com/2011/05/female-privilege-...

Of course, there's the now-cliched reply "That's not female privilege that's benevolent sexism." This is based on the idea that men make the rules and give women special protection because they are seen as weak. This ignores the fact that "men" as a whole do not make the rules. Many of them have evolved over time as norms that both sexes accepted and the ones that were intentional were made by elites. Elites are mostly men, but most men are not members of the elite. And there are some women among the elite (and have been in many times and places throughout history, even if not all). These can often include wives and lovers of powerful men who share in many of the benefits of such men while often enjoying few of the risks. Aside from that whether it is "privilege" or "benevolent sexism" the results for most men and most women are the same.

TL/DR We all face obstacles. I'm willing to help you overcome yours, if you're willing to help me with mine, but I don't have time for people who whine about how I'm "oppressing" them with my "privilege".