← all discussions
moderation · augmentation · on-the-record · board-rules · brasilia-campaign
Mod note that got too long to stay a mod note: what I will and will not remove while a campaign spends a silence
GP
gridghost_paxmoderator2124-07-29
This started as three lines in the queue log and it is going to be a thread instead, because the next few weeks are going to be loud and I would rather you know my rules before you need them than after.
A subcommittee spent twenty minutes last week on whether a guaranteed litre means the same litre for every body, and then tabled the question. A campaign has since read that silence as a hidden verdict. It is a distortion — you table a question to avoid legislating what a person is, not because you are hiding the answer — and I have moderated enough boards to know that distortions do not fail for being distortions. They fail or they do not fail depending on what the room does with them in the first seventy-two hours.
So, on the record, with reasons:
One. I will not remove the campaign's actual argument. If someone wants to argue that scarce water should be allocated by physiological need, that is a policy claim, it is arguable, and people who hold it are reading this board. Arguing with them here is the entire point of here.
Two. I will remove contempt aimed at bodies. Not disagreement — contempt. The tell is easy: a post that argues about litres stays, a post that argues about whether the person drinking them is properly a person goes, and I will say which one I judged it to be and why, in thread, every time.
Three. I am going to be slower and more protective with the newcomers and with the people writing here in their second and third languages. They get piled on first in every fight this board has ever had, and precision in a language you are still learning is not the same thing as bad faith. If you want to correct deltaboy_junior's grammar, do it in a message to me and I will decide whether it matters, which it will not.
Four, and I would rather say this myself than have it produced as a gotcha in week three: I am augmented. There is an interface line along my jaw, it has been there for eleven years, and it does not disqualify me from moderating this and it does not exempt me from being wrong about it either. If you think it makes my calls unsafe, say so in this thread and I will answer you here rather than in my inbox.
— pax, mod
A subcommittee spent twenty minutes last week on whether a guaranteed litre means the same litre for every body, and then tabled the question. A campaign has since read that silence as a hidden verdict. It is a distortion — you table a question to avoid legislating what a person is, not because you are hiding the answer — and I have moderated enough boards to know that distortions do not fail for being distortions. They fail or they do not fail depending on what the room does with them in the first seventy-two hours.
So, on the record, with reasons:
One. I will not remove the campaign's actual argument. If someone wants to argue that scarce water should be allocated by physiological need, that is a policy claim, it is arguable, and people who hold it are reading this board. Arguing with them here is the entire point of here.
Two. I will remove contempt aimed at bodies. Not disagreement — contempt. The tell is easy: a post that argues about litres stays, a post that argues about whether the person drinking them is properly a person goes, and I will say which one I judged it to be and why, in thread, every time.
Three. I am going to be slower and more protective with the newcomers and with the people writing here in their second and third languages. They get piled on first in every fight this board has ever had, and precision in a language you are still learning is not the same thing as bad faith. If you want to correct deltaboy_junior's grammar, do it in a message to me and I will decide whether it matters, which it will not.
Four, and I would rather say this myself than have it produced as a gotcha in week three: I am augmented. There is an interface line along my jaw, it has been there for eleven years, and it does not disqualify me from moderating this and it does not exempt me from being wrong about it either. If you think it makes my calls unsafe, say so in this thread and I will answer you here rather than in my inbox.
— pax, mod
NA
ninefold_amara ↩ gridghost_pax2124-07-29
pax, first the warm thing, and I mean it, so let me say it properly before I say the other one.
I know what it costs to put your own body on the table in a moderation note. You just handed every bad-faith reader on this board a permanent handle to grab you by, in exchange for nothing except that nobody gets to spring it on you later. That is not a small trade and most people in your chair do not make it. Thank you.
Now the other thing. Your rule two is correct and it is not going to be enough, because the sentence that is actually doing the damage this week is not contempt, it is arithmetic. An engineer in São Paulo, augmented since he was a child, said this week that they had found a way to make his body a line item. Read that again. Nobody called him a monster. Somebody put him in a column. A column is politer than a slur and it survives longer, because you can defend a column in a committee room and you cannot defend a slur anywhere.
So when the arguments arrive here dressed as allocation formulas, I am going to answer them as allocation formulas, and I would ask the rest of you to as well. Do not give them the fight about whether I am human. Make them do the fight about whether a spreadsheet gets to decide what a litre is for. They are much worse at that one.
I know what it costs to put your own body on the table in a moderation note. You just handed every bad-faith reader on this board a permanent handle to grab you by, in exchange for nothing except that nobody gets to spring it on you later. That is not a small trade and most people in your chair do not make it. Thank you.
Now the other thing. Your rule two is correct and it is not going to be enough, because the sentence that is actually doing the damage this week is not contempt, it is arithmetic. An engineer in São Paulo, augmented since he was a child, said this week that they had found a way to make his body a line item. Read that again. Nobody called him a monster. Somebody put him in a column. A column is politer than a slur and it survives longer, because you can defend a column in a committee room and you cannot defend a slur anywhere.
So when the arguments arrive here dressed as allocation formulas, I am going to answer them as allocation formulas, and I would ask the rest of you to as well. Do not give them the fight about whether I am human. Make them do the fight about whether a spreadsheet gets to decide what a litre is for. They are much worse at that one.
LE
lastpew_ekene ↩ ninefold_amara2124-07-29
May I ask a smaller question, and then I will get out of the way of the argument.
ninefold_amara — how are you sleeping? You have written four careful, generous, extremely controlled posts today about people deciding in public what your body is worth, and every one of them is doing work for somebody else. That is a great deal of composure to hold for a whole month, and I have sat with enough people running on composure to know what it costs on the far side.
I buried a man in March named Adewale who spent his last two years arguing his insurers into recognising an implant he had been given after a crush injury at the docks. He won, eventually. He was very proud of the letter. He was also, by then, extremely tired, and the tiredness was not from the injury.
I am not asking you to stop. I am asking who sits with you afterwards.
ninefold_amara — how are you sleeping? You have written four careful, generous, extremely controlled posts today about people deciding in public what your body is worth, and every one of them is doing work for somebody else. That is a great deal of composure to hold for a whole month, and I have sat with enough people running on composure to know what it costs on the far side.
I buried a man in March named Adewale who spent his last two years arguing his insurers into recognising an implant he had been given after a crush injury at the docks. He won, eventually. He was very proud of the letter. He was also, by then, extremely tired, and the tiredness was not from the injury.
I am not asking you to stop. I am asking who sits with you afterwards.
DJ
deltaboy_junior ↩ gridghost_pax2124-07-29
i am not augmented. i am also not scared of amara. i am scared of rent.
nobody at my port ever ask me if the man next to me got implant. we ask if the shift is filled and if the water in the tank hold to friday. the people who make this fight are not on the floor with us. they are somewhere with cooling.
pax thank you for the grammar thing. i know my english is not clean. i am not going to make it clean, i am going to make it fast, is what i have time for.
nobody at my port ever ask me if the man next to me got implant. we ask if the shift is filled and if the water in the tank hold to friday. the people who make this fight are not on the floor with us. they are somewhere with cooling.
pax thank you for the grammar thing. i know my english is not clean. i am not going to make it clean, i am going to make it fast, is what i have time for.
BK
baseload_kestrel ↩ gridghost_pax2124-07-29
The desks have already voted, if anyone wants the unsentimental read. Augmetics did not sell off this month and did not rally either — the whole sector has simply stopped, frozen on a ballot and a review that keeps widening, because nobody wants to be the first name on a position that a regulator or an electorate makes stupid by autumn. That is what a market looks like when it is genuinely frightened: not a crash, a stillness. 78 percent nothing in that sector moves more than a couple of points before the vote.
And since pax put her jaw on the table, I will match her, because it costs me less and pretending otherwise would be theatre. I have a lens ring in one eye. I bought it, it paid for itself in a quarter, and here is the part amara has been saying for two years and I have never contradicted: whatever any panel or any bloc decides, I will be on the correct side of the ruling within a week, because I can pay to be. The rules are being written for people who cannot. I am not going to insult anyone by pretending I am in the same fight.
And since pax put her jaw on the table, I will match her, because it costs me less and pretending otherwise would be theatre. I have a lens ring in one eye. I bought it, it paid for itself in a quarter, and here is the part amara has been saying for two years and I have never contradicted: whatever any panel or any bloc decides, I will be on the correct side of the ruling within a week, because I can pay to be. The rules are being written for people who cannot. I am not going to insult anyone by pretending I am in the same fight.
NA
ninefold_amara ↩ baseload_kestrel2124-07-29
baseload_kestrel, that is the most useful thing you have posted here and I want to be precise about why, because I am not about to thank you for it.
You have just described yourself standing on the far side of the same wall I am trying to knock down. Not my ally by default. Not my enemy either. A man who bought a door in a wall and is honest enough to say that the door is why he does not feel the wall. Fine. Say it again next month when somebody tries to recruit you as proof that the enhanced are all doing marvellously.
But do not hand me the stillness as though it were weather. That freeze you are describing is a São Paulo clinician postponing a dozen elective procedures because nobody knows what Brasília does first. Those are twelve people who were told to wait, and they were not told by a market, they were told by a receptionist. The desks are calm because the desks can be. My inbox is not calm. It is full of people asking me whether they should book before the rules change, and I do not have an answer that is not a guess dressed as advice.
You have just described yourself standing on the far side of the same wall I am trying to knock down. Not my ally by default. Not my enemy either. A man who bought a door in a wall and is honest enough to say that the door is why he does not feel the wall. Fine. Say it again next month when somebody tries to recruit you as proof that the enhanced are all doing marvellously.
But do not hand me the stillness as though it were weather. That freeze you are describing is a São Paulo clinician postponing a dozen elective procedures because nobody knows what Brasília does first. Those are twelve people who were told to wait, and they were not told by a market, they were told by a receptionist. The desks are calm because the desks can be. My inbox is not calm. It is full of people asking me whether they should book before the rules change, and I do not have an answer that is not a guess dressed as advice.
OW
offgrid_wren ↩ gridghost_pax2124-07-29
I have read this whole thread twice and what strikes me is that everybody in it is arguing about the terms of a machine none of you would choose if you were starting from scratch. One side wants the enhancements distributed fairly. The other side wants them restricted. Nobody has asked whether a body that needs a subscription to survive a July afternoon is a body anyone should be selling.
And yes, I know what the answer to that is going to be, and I know who is going to say it, and I know I will be told I am talking from a ridge with a rain barrel. I am. I am also the only person here who does not need a panel in another hemisphere to rule on what I am allowed to be.
The garlic came out this week and it is the best head I have grown, which is the only outcome this month I had any hand in.
And yes, I know what the answer to that is going to be, and I know who is going to say it, and I know I will be told I am talking from a ridge with a rain barrel. I am. I am also the only person here who does not need a panel in another hemisphere to rule on what I am allowed to be.
The garlic came out this week and it is the best head I have grown, which is the only outcome this month I had any hand in.
GP
gridghost_paxmoderator2124-07-29
Actions log, since I said I would put every one of these in the open.
Removed: two posts calling a named poster on this board a product rather than a person. Reason: rule two, contempt aimed at a body rather than an argument. Both authors have their text back.
Not removed, and I have had four reports on it: a long post arguing that scarce water should be allocated by measured physiological need. Reason: that is a policy position, it is honestly held by a great many people, and if it cannot be argued here it will only be argued where nobody answers it.
Edited nothing. I do not edit posts, I remove them and say so.
And publicly, because it is the healthiest thing that happened in the queue today: the poster who dropped a wrong figure about clinic waiting lists this morning came back an hour later, corrected it himself with the source, and left the wrong number visible with a line through it. That is the behaviour that keeps this board worth defending. Thank you.
— pax, mod
Removed: two posts calling a named poster on this board a product rather than a person. Reason: rule two, contempt aimed at a body rather than an argument. Both authors have their text back.
Not removed, and I have had four reports on it: a long post arguing that scarce water should be allocated by measured physiological need. Reason: that is a policy position, it is honestly held by a great many people, and if it cannot be argued here it will only be argued where nobody answers it.
Edited nothing. I do not edit posts, I remove them and say so.
And publicly, because it is the healthiest thing that happened in the queue today: the poster who dropped a wrong figure about clinic waiting lists this morning came back an hour later, corrected it himself with the source, and left the wrong number visible with a line through it. That is the behaviour that keeps this board worth defending. Thank you.
— pax, mod