Tavern on the Meta

At this point, my involvement in the network is so minimal, I'm like a guest observer at some secret weaponized leprosy trial. Just watching with casual interest, safely behind impact glass, as horrible things unfold.

Andras Deak

4:18 PM

@Magisch I know

John Dvorak

4:48 PM

At this point I wouldn't be too surprised if the email was, literally or at least in meaning, "Here's your promised email. We won't be hiring you back. <Signature>"

Andras Deak

meh

Magisch

From her response it could have been more like "Here's more detail on why we fired you and will uphold that decision. Btw this information is confidential and cannot be shared"

Mgetz

@JohnDvorak the proverbial TYFU letter

John Dvorak

@Magisch ouch

Magisch

Thats the extremely uncharitable assumption version but her edit does sound ticked off and monica rarely sounds ticked off, even these days

Andras Deak

4:52 PM

@Magisch reminds me of 1funny.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/sorry-car-accident.jpg

Magisch

even her blog post is more sad and hurt then outright angry

Andras Deak

Well I bet she's also running out of energy to be furious. Being sad takes less.

Magisch

Oh definitely

I'm out of energy to be angry and I'm not the person who got raked over the coals, publicly smeared and betrayed by the project she loved.

rene

@Magisch corporate HR probably dictates that. Not doing that might put them up for damages. This way they can negotiate their way out, assuming the other party is prepared to settle.

Magisch

@rene I never said they had many options

I bet their counsel is over every word they write to her

rene

4:55 PM

right

Magisch

they may have dug themselves a defamation per se hole that admitting any fault would just dig them deeper into

Andras Deak

it's not like they could act legally and with respect to a fellow human being, right?

Magisch

and you can't fault them for not giving more ammunition to be used in a lawsuit

rather, the sheer gravity to which they have messed up with the mistimed press comments might bar them from remediying it lest they admit fault

rene

this episode is far from over.

John Dvorak

I'd love to watch the lawsuit happen.

rene

4:57 PM

We've only just begun

Magisch

yeah monica isn't going quietly

Thats why the press statement isn't mentioned in the update post too I bet

rene

there is a song in there

Magisch

"for all that is holy please do not draw attention and admit that we libelled someone in full knowledge"

then again I aint no lawyer

Andras Deak

@Magisch "and when I say we, I mean that one person who we know is"

wonder how many people had to give a green light for that slander project

ArtOfCode

this is why you leave press statements to a trained PR team...

Magisch

4:59 PM

I'm still unconvinced. That was most likely a team decision. Also, we're not debating that here

real talk though, that is disappointing in the least

Andras Deak

which part?

Mgetz

@AndrasDeak Tomorrow is Yom Kippur a point you're supposed to put this sort of thing behind you. I'm going to make a guess that fits in too.

Andras Deak

@Mgetz right

Mgetz

@JohnDvorak forced arbitration. There would be no suit and any lawyer would probably council against it.

John Dvorak

oooh, devious

Andras Deak

5:01 PM

unless opt-out, or EU

Shadow

@Mgetz put behind you? How so? From what I know, we fast on Yom Kippur to ask forgiveness for our sins. But not religious, so might be missing some things, even after all those years.

Magisch

Using that to prevent a lawsuit would be such an unpopular move it might be worth to take the lawsuit instead

imagine if they did that

Mgetz

@AndrasDeak You know the problem with opt out is? You have to prove they saw it and accepted it.

Magisch

hell hath no fury like meta then

ArtOfCode

quite glad I opted out of arbitration, to be honest

Andras Deak

5:02 PM

@Shadow isn't there something that Yom Kippur sort of sets the tone for your whole next year?

Magisch

I'm pretty sure the forced arbitration clause won't survive a legal challenge in most countries

ArtOfCode

and I'm pretty sure I have an email confirming it

Magisch

lets be real the reason they added it is to deter class action plaintiffs

also I opted out too and I printed the response out

Shadow

@AndrasDeak not that I know of

Andras Deak

well you'd know

Shadow

5:04 PM

nah... I'm Jewish but not religious. I learned only the basics at school, and might have forgotten even some of the basics.

Mgetz

@Shadow Read the kol nidre prayer, also you're supposed to take the time between Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur to do Teshuva

Shadow

I do fast, out of respect for my religion, not out of religious belief.

Andras Deak

> Significance Atonement for personal and national sins, fate of each person is sealed for the upcoming year

wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur, which can mean anything

John Dvorak

I don't envy anyone in the USA right now

Shadow

@JohnDvorak ?

Magisch

5:05 PM

I rarely envy anyone there

Mgetz

The entire theme is basically letting it go because god forgives, but sins against another person can't be forgiven until they forgive

John Dvorak

because arbitration

(also because their healthcare et al.)

Shadow

@Mgetz still, how it connects with putting things behind us?

Magisch

Here's a question for all the mods in here

Shadow

@JohnDvorak looks like I missed something here...

Magisch

5:07 PM

Do employees talk to you in the TL at the moment? We haven't heard anything really since a few scattered comments and ... press releases on meta

Mgetz

@Shadow I'm clearly failing at communicating. But the whole point isn't for sins against god per se, rather taking a moment to A) forgive ourselves of sins against god, B) clear any sins we've committed against others. Thus putting them behind us.

Magisch

Feels weird

Mgetz

at least that's what I was taught

Shadow

@Mgetz oh, I see now. Thanks.

I hereby apologize to anyone I might have offended, or did any wrong to, in the past.

Here, now it's behind me. :)

Mgetz

Like most jewish rituals of this nature it has deeper intent than the actual ritual itself

Grieving is another one

rene

5:10 PM

@Shadow I take offense in the future

Shadow

@rene I disagree

Now give ice cream!

(will stash it for tomorrow)

rene

PM 2Ring

At least Monica didn't say that she is saddened or disappointed. She said: "I am not satisfied and I have asked for a conversation". Sure, that's not great, but it's not hopeless, either.

Shadow

So what did I miss about arbitration here?

@rene wow! So much.. will share with my kids. Thanks! :P

Mgetz

@Shadow in the US SE requires binding arbitration

rene

5:13 PM

@Shadow Say Hi to the family from me

Shadow

@PM2Ring she's not the type to use extreme words or express their anger with strong words.. at least that's how I see it.

PM 2Ring

For all we know, David said: "You can have your diamonds back, but singular "they" is not negotiable". But there's not much point speculating.

Shadow

@Mgetz which means?

@rene sure thing! :D

@PM2Ring when? She posted a comment not long ago saying they still did not contact her.

I'm waiting for SE to contact me. — Monica Cellio 3 hours ago

PM 2Ring

There's a link up there. ^ Or see meta.stackexchange.com/a/334646/334566

Mgetz

@Shadow your right to a day in court is garbage because the 7th amendment isn't worth the parchment it's written on (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…)

Josh Darnell

5:16 PM

@Shadow Jeez, keep up Shadow ;-)

Shadow

@JoshDarnell sure! Now fill me in with your own daughter! ;)

How is she?

Walking already?

Magisch

on a less fun note, scientists have found the first couple dozen methane bubbling lakes in siberia

seems like we're in for a warm next year

Shadow

@PM2Ring oh. So what you quoted was written in the letter?

PM 2Ring

There's still about 5.5 hours before sunset in Monica's timezone, so further contact between her & David might occur today...

Mgetz

@Magisch well it's more that the coasts are in for a soaking

@PM2Ring unlikely? She's probably preparing for Kol Nidre?

Magisch

5:21 PM

@Mgetz Thats not the primary issue. A majority of currently inhabited land is set to become uninhabitable due to desertification and heat

And siberia thawing off does not mean you can suddenly build a farm there. It's still a mostly caustic swamp

Mgetz

@Magisch That's the theory but we'll see. We don't actually know the full effects

Gryphon

@Magisch As a Canadian, I'm OK with that.

PM 2Ring

@Shadow I just quoted what Monica added to that answer. She's not posting any of the actual contents of the email, out of respect for David.

Josh Darnell

@Shadow She'll be 2 soon! Walking and falling. And talking a lot haha.

Shadow

@JoshDarnell awesome! :)

!!/coffee Josh's daughter

SmokeDetector

5:28 PM

@Shadow brews a cup of Americano for @Josh's

PM 2Ring

@Magisch That's a bad sign. Still, I bet the amount of methane from cattle is far greater. At this stage...

Magisch

At this stage the newest models show emitting no carbon by 2050 is not enough

Andras Deak

@Magisch perhaps all those zombie viruses will eat the methane

Magisch

we need to be removing billions of tons per year by that point to stave off the worst effects

Gryphon

@Shadow I don't feel like almost-2-year-olds need coffee.

rene

5:31 PM

@Magisch It is elections next year, so please don't bother politicians with stuff that is way beyond their fresh-date

Mgetz

@Magisch it would never have been enough

you can't just turn off the tap and assume thing change on a dime

Magisch

Maybe if we took this duely seriously in the 1980s when we first had concrete proof it was happening

Andras Deak

@Magisch we aren't even taking it seriously in 2020

Josh Darnell

@Shadow NooooOO0oo0o00ooO1!!!1!

=)

Gryphon

@Magisch I mean, newest models have been consistently overly pessimistic, so maybe we won't all die?

Magisch

5:35 PM

@Gryphon Where do you get that from?

I've never heard anything but "newer models show old models unsustainably optimistic"

seems like we've consistently underestimated how hard we'll be getting screwed by climate change

Gryphon

@Magisch Just as an example, the IPCC report for 1990 (which is old enough to give us a reasonable amount of data) predicted global mean temperature rise of 0.3C per decade, with uncertainty range from 0.2C-0.5C. Actual global mean temperature rise to date is just over 0.4C, almost 3 decades later. So that one at least was overly pessimistic.

PM 2Ring

About a decade ago, the left-wing Australian Federal government took bold steps against global warming, with a carbon emissions trading scheme. They got voted out of office, the carbon trading scheme was killed, and we've had right-wing Federal governments ever since.

Magisch

Thats because nobody votes against their short term self interest

"Why should we do anything? China first, if they've done all of it, then we'll think about it"

Here's a thought: Maybe self made climate change leading to catastrophe is the great filter

PM 2Ring

@Magisch Well, some people do. But the Green vote can't compete with corporate short-term self interest.

Gryphon

@Magisch I mean, there's pretty much no way this kills all of us. Earth has been a lot warmer than worst estimates say it'll become, I don't think we're going to turn into Venus. Then the survivors rebuild civilization and hopefully aren't stupid enough to do it again.

Magisch

5:42 PM

@Gryphon It could kill quite a lot of our collective knowledge and progress though

Gryphon

@Magisch Meh. On a cosmic timescale, it'll take a blink of an eye for us to go from stone age 2.0 to back where we are now. I don't think it works as a great filter.

Magisch

We still have no earthly clue how bad a self reinforcing feedback loop can get

for all we know there could be another trillion tons of methane under the ice, enough to hotbox the entire planet

Gryphon

Again, we've had jungles at the poles before. Earth isn't going to be Venus 2.0.

We cooled back down from that (although we're not sure why). We'll cool back down from this too.

John Dvorak

A humanity-destroying virus trapped deep in the permafrost would be an option

Alas, this isn't my idea originally

Magisch

I can't envision a virus that none of us wouldn't be by chance immune to

there are 7 billion of us

Mgetz

5:50 PM

@JohnDvorak you mean like a version of anthrax already better than the best weapon grade the soviet union ever developed that's been killing large herds of reindeer?

PM 2Ring

Agreed. Earth can't get as bad as Venus. But if civilization does collapse, humans can't simply restart the Industrial Age. We've consumed a lot of the easily extractable resources. Some of those take a long time to replenish, some are simply not replenishable, without many millennia of volcanoes, etc. Stuff like tungsten. Etc.

Magisch

Any virus that's ever been this deadly had the flash fire problem of burning out its infection vector. It would have to be one that nobody is immune to, with a long incubation time and high infectivity during incubation. I don't think such a virus exists or even can exist

Hell, the industrial era started primarily due to ready availability of coal and iron near the surface

most of these deposits are gone now

Mgetz

@Magisch The flu, H5N1 in specific

These things do exist

Magisch

@Mgetz There are quite a few people highly resistant to H5N1

and also it doesn'T have anywhere close to a 100% lethality

Mgetz

@Magisch yes and people will survive plague and anthrax too. But that doesn't mean it can't have a 50-60% mortality rate that then spirals out due to the massive depopulation

Magisch

5:52 PM

Even if a virus kills off 99,9% of humanity there's still 7 million people left

Mgetz

those sorts of death rates cause secondary collapses

Magisch

now competing for fewer resources and infrastructure

It's gonna be bloody terrible, but not extinction of humanity terrible

Mgetz

@Magisch no it wouldn't but it would potentially cause massive amounts of secondary deaths from malnutrition, waterborne disease etc.

canon

@Magisch But mah Fury Road...

Magisch

@Mgetz sure, but not even the most virulent strains of ebola reach 99,9% lethality

Mgetz

5:54 PM

@Magisch my point is you don't need that

Magisch

It's gonna be collapse of society terrible, but not extinction terrible

Mgetz

in fact that is detrimental to the virus

50-60 is good enough in most cases

actually even 40%

Magisch

even with all the secondary effects you wouldn't be able to wipe humanity out

some 100.000 people is enough genetic diversity to repopulate

Mgetz

wipe out no, massively depopulate yes

canon

What you've really got to be worried about is some corn, rice, or wheat blight...

Gryphon

5:55 PM

@PM2Ring We haven't consumed it. We've actually refined it, making it easier for post-apocalypse humans to get. And the stuff in alloys can be either extracted or, well, those alloys were useful in the first place, they'll probably be useful again.

Magisch

But yeah, collapse of society terrible might already be coming with runaway climate change

what do you reckon happens when 5 billion people realize where they live is about to become uninhabitable?

Mgetz

@Magisch and you thought the syrian refugee crisis was bad...

wait until water becomes problematic

Gryphon

@canon Again, would be collapse of society terrible. Not extinction of humanity terrible. Give us 100,000 years and we'll be right back here.

Magisch

@Mgetz That most likely happens before heat does

John Dvorak

All of the bananas are clones of each other. If a banana disease appears, we lose all of them. We've already lost one brand this way.

Mgetz

5:57 PM

@Magisch correct

Magisch

100.000 is a stretch. We have incredibly efficient recording systems. A couple databases of how stuff works survive and we can build off that

Mgetz

that will start wars first

PM 2Ring

@Gryphon Yes & no. Eg, mining tungsten from dead lightbulbs in landfill isn't impossible, but it's more expensive than the way we mine it today.

Magisch

even collapse of society terrible wouldn't throw us back into the stone age. Understanding how a boiler or turbine works isn't impossible if you have the remains of one lying around somewhere

Mgetz

@Magisch look at the roman empire's collapse, that's how far back we could go

Gryphon

5:58 PM

@Magisch Meh, 100,000 was a worst-case estimate.

Magisch

When the roman empire collapsed information was not easily reproducible

John Dvorak

Seeing a boiler won't teach you how to metallurgy

Magisch

I could have the majority of the sum total useable industrial knowledge of humanity on a hard drive at my home today

Mgetz

@Magisch actually the knowledge disappeared over time

it didn't collapse over night

Magisch

yeah, because writing it down was the only way of preserving it

now we have methods to instantaneously copy enormous data

John Dvorak

6:00 PM

@Magisch even if the hard drive doesn't get destroyed directly, it will be unreadable before you learn how to make a computer again

Magisch

screw the hard drive, I can make a book printing press

or some cold storage thing

no catastrophe is going to wipe out every working computer on earth

canon

@Gryphon cockroach farmers...

Magisch

someone somewhere will have a thing with a local copy of wikipedia or similar

or a university library

Mgetz

@Magisch using what electricity?

John Dvorak

No problem. A little muddy water can do wonders to your collection of books

Mgetz

6:01 PM

when the manufactured parts break how will you repair?

Magisch

@Mgetz a diesel generator

Mgetz

when you run out of fuel?

Magisch

oil isn't all gone, burn something else with hydrocarbons in it

Gryphon

@Mgetz I can make a hand-cranked generator for 2 bucks and an hour of my time.

Magisch

or modify it to work off of steam made by burning wood

Mgetz

6:02 PM

@Gryphon and you're going to stand there cranking it all day?

Magisch

salvage a couple dynamos from a bike and have someone bike

Mgetz

what about the compressor?

and the expansion valve

Magisch

you just need to get at the information long enough to start saving it

Mgetz

what about growing food? do you have seeds?

Magisch

There are highly autonomous doomsday savings facilities around the world prepping for this very scenario

Mgetz

6:03 PM

@Magisch facilities that nearly flooded recently

Gryphon

There's basically no way humanity goes extinct (outside giant killer asteroid or some such), and even if we somehow lose everything, we built up from nothing the first time around. We'll do it again.

John Dvorak

Use a lava extruder to generate cobblestone. Use solar power to crush the cobblestone into gravel. Sift the gravel to gather precious stones and seeds. Let the seeds rot. Once you have one cubic meter of soil you can grow trees.

Mgetz

@Gryphon the point was more that it's easy to regress to a pre-industrial state

Magisch

@JohnDvorak Hey, I know that...

you dont get solar panels until later. You do the manual labor yourself and hope your food doesn't run out before you've grown apple trees from nothing...

Andras Deak

@Magisch something something Rosetta Stone

Do you know how hard it is to future-proof nuclear waste sites? And that's as simple as conveying "Don't go there, you'll die, no we're not superstitious fools and we're not joking". It's very hard.

If large-scale technology collapses the number of machines that can untangle your legacy data will diminish fast. Ultimately you're stuck with English (or other local) text on paper.

John Dvorak

6:15 PM

What's paper? Do you mean your ancestors used to store information on wet trees?

Gryphon

@JohnDvorak No, technically they're dried-off wet trees.

Andras Deak

Update on The Register theregister.co.uk/2019/10/08/stack_overflow_apology

@ArtOfCode it ^ cites the total number of signees as the number of mods signing it; perhaps some clarification is in order?

John Dvorak

I love that they copy/pasted an entire paragraph directly from MSE

> While this affair attracted a lot of attention, it's only one of the many sources of disagreement and tension between community volunteers and the company that profits from them. There's also unrest about mandatory binding arbitration, animated ads, user fingerprinting for ad targeting, and changes in the way site content is licensed.

Scratch that. 75% of the article is copy/pasted or paraphrased from the second apology.

> Sorry mods, we'll do better, promises CTO (again)

2

that parenthetical bites the most

Magisch

6:33 PM

They messed up the score numbers too

Journalism eh

Gryphon

@Magisch Report on the FACTS? Why would we ever do that when we can make up random stuff?

John Dvorak

FACTS = False Accusations, Copy/paste Text and Slander?

Gryphon

@JohnDvorak No, it can't mean that. You see, if it meant that, no one would be able to complain they don't report on the facts.

ArtOfCode

6:53 PM

@AndrasDeak Thanks, I've pinged a correction to them

Andras Deak

thanks

user473022

7:39 PM

question that i'm just tossing out into the void: user that harassed me serially and started acting up again after the mass mod exodus has been suspended for a year. user's profile is still visible, but when visiting the user's questions, the name for who asked it is all grayed out, and it doesn't have user's display name; just "user#####" where #'s are random numbers. is this what automatically happens when users are suspended for a year?

Gryphon

@weakdna I know that happens when users are deleted. I didn't know it happened for suspended users as well.

Kevin B

pretty sure it doesn't.

user473022

huh. weird. i got a notification that said "user was removed", and i gained rep, but it doesn't look like he's actually been removed, just suspended. maybe that was someone else? still doesn't explain why his questions are no longer associated with his user though.

Gryphon

Are you sure the account wasn't deleted?

user473022

pretty sure. when i see user's profile on other networks, user is still shown to be on writing, just with 1 rep and a banner that says "this user is suspended to cool down, ends october 2020" or something like that

202324

7:44 PM

@weakdna there's no use in removing a user account instead of placing a suspension.

user473022

then i guess it was someone else? wack.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@weakdna The user probably deleted and recreated their account, resulting in a new user code. The system automatically reinstates suspensions in case users try to get around them that way.

user473022

i don't think user did delete their own account though - user still exists on other sites on the network

Andras Deak

@ArtOfCode fixed now

Kevin B

it is possible to request deletion of just one account and not all

but... I mean, it's probably not worth dwelling on this.

202324

8:14 PM

12

Q: An update on my resignation notice

As promised, I'm on my way out. I am unsustainably exhausted after the past few weeks, and... it's time for me to go. I don't see another way. But I have some final thoughts, and I can't leave in peace without writing them down. This post is not about me. I will perform a magic act: to cut a gna...