I only just learned today that, when someone from one instance gets banned from another instance, that person not only is no longer able to interact with the second instance, but people from the second instance actually can't see anything the person said from the moment they got banned even though they're still there. I'm disappointed to learn all my friends who got banned from my instance are still saying stuff and nobody told me, making it more akin to an instance forcing everyone to block them (because individuals blocking each other the same way work like this). And this is coming from the person who has fantasized about universalization of federation.

What's something about the fediverse that was most recently unobscured but that you know now?

I only just learned today that, when someone from one instance gets banned from another instance, that person not only is no longer able to interact with the second instance, but people from the second instance actually can't see anything the person said from the moment they got banned even though they're still there. I'm disappointed to learn all my friends who got banned from my instance are still saying stuff and nobody told me, making it more akin to an instance forcing everyone to block them (because individuals blocking each other the same way work like this). And this is coming from the person who has fantasized about universalization of federation.

What's something about the fediverse that was most recently unobscured but that you know now?

This post was inspired by a dream misadventure I had the other night where I was just minding my own business getting gophers out of the rice field, then suddenly on the intercom/announcements (which I did not expect to have in my dream, since I was outside, not in a building), a voice said "attention, this is a representative of the fediverse speaking... going into effect today, dreamland itself, err, everyone's dreams, are now a part of the fediverse; that is all, happy floating on cloud nine" and then suddenly a bunch of Stalingrad ninjas popped out of nowhere and ambushed me (yeah, how would you react if that's the case). So I guess I'm not even safe from everyone in my sleep.

I thought this would be relevant now more than ever (after having secured permission to ask about it) since there are three days left until Halloween, and after that, pre-Christmas-season will have begun (unless you consider Thanksgiving to be separate from that), and people will begin asking for things for Christmas.

I in no way want to imply I shame people for being needy and shamelessly asking for donations. If there are three guarantees in life, it's death, taxes, and people being economically down on themselves or being helpless in the face of their desires (because it's almost the same thing as the first two). It's just a part of life.

Every year, you will see a lot of beggars out and about, whether it's the guy with the bucket of cash and the bell at the store or that person who needs money given to them through "GoFundMe". I run a few services and the latter are quite common to have poured in by people, I find it hard to deny the request. The most common explanations are "my pet is sick", "I am homeless", and "I lost my job". Without a doubt, at least some of these people are telling the truth, but they get buried in with everyone else because there's no way to know. It's no different with homeless people who encounter you on the street, I know some people for years have advocated for some kind of system that separates homeless people based on their specifications, to intense backlash because people with their bias-charged minds think of it as a form of segregation for the unfortunate. Someone I know said they went to the Bahamas twice, eight years apart, and said they encountered the same homeless people taking advantage of tourists by using cosmetics to claim they have gruesome infected injuries and that they need treatment. People just don't know better.

This, in turn, causes them to have no choice but to develop an intense honor system full of competition, as in people will invalidate each others' issues, for example the person with a sick animal might say "your home was hit by a car, so what" and it becomes a rivalry. Some will resort to doing art for people, asking people to commission them, others will resort to scamming people, sometimes asking for people to pay first and then not granting what they promised, and occasionally you get pay-it-forward-esque schemes that are definitely intended to be helpful and address the issue but are very roundabout.

It's not a charged claim to say this happens with official organizations too. It's common for a location to have a dozen active donation organizations, things like GoodWill, the Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities. You will have some that are responsible with their money and some that have excuses in place to collect all the money. And I'm not saying specific names, but often they will defame each other, so all those good and bad reviews you see about certain services reflect absolutely nothing.

Related to all of this, I often have to ask people on an individual level "what makes your plea stand out", as in "if there was a sign you could give that this money you're asking for is going to a good cause, what would that sign be". Some will say they have no such sign but that they can't afford to not receive money just because they have no sign. Some will say they have a sign but it turns out to be something that doesn't prove their point, for example someone once asked for money to send his daughter to school and I asked for a sign, and he gave a picture of his daughter and said "I have this picture of my daughter, that's proof she's struggling to get into school". And some will do things like purposefully be a detriment to themselves to serve as the proof. You'd think one of these days someone would claim they got turned into a newt and needed a small loan of a million dollars to get hospital treatment for it.

It's so frustrating because there are genuinely unlucky people out there but people have been lenient for so long out of fear of causing segregation of people in need and now it's clique-based as a result, the people who have the most luck with donations are the people who have amassed the most popularity, which renders the actual reason someone needs a favor done to be redundant (there was even a famous case a while back where someone on "GoFundMe" asked for a jug of milk and got a thousand dollars). And it's not like someone could be hired to just go to peoples' homes to verify they need money like the people at Guinness who verify world records. So especially in a world where actual major powers of the world have gotten in on all the scammy action, all advice or two cents that can be offered for would-be donors and/or donation seekers would be appreciated, aside from, of course, preferring to donate to people in person, this is not always possible. Maybe something like have something akin to "GoFundMe" where accounts are owned by local towns/villages/suburbs instead of individuals and have the towns do the approval process before adding them to the list, I don't know. Maybe other people have better ways of coming up with a solution. And feel free to ask for donations for your own issues (as well as to pin this, maybe it can help).

When a book becomes influential enough, someone might try to impersonate it, since publishing doesn’t follow any hard rules.

For example, I was explaining to someone that, after (surprisingly not before) I got a job at my local library, I took out a communist manifesto, which I later learned was a fake, with writings in there that were not consistent with the official communist manifesto, such as a call for free love.

I have also spotted a lot of fake versions of Mark Twain books come in, which has a lot of parts deleted or inserted based on the writer’s desire.

On the other side of the issue, lately I’ve been watching a lot of the events unfold in the middle East and have wondered why nobody just ends violence over there for good by making fake Qurans. One or two people have hinted they’ve tried, with some altered movements centered around it (would you call this government gnosticism), but it’s not something you always hear.

What’s the most severe example of a fake version of a book you’ve ever seen/encountered?

When a book becomes influential enough, someone might try to impersonate it, since publishing doesn't follow any hard rules.

For example, I was explaining to someone that, after (surprisingly not before) I got a job at my local library, I took out a communist manifesto, which I later learned was a fake, with writings in there that were not consistent with the official communist manifesto, such as a call for free love.

I have also spotted a lot of fake versions of Mark Twain books come in, which has a lot of parts deleted or inserted based on the writer's desire.

On the other side of the issue, lately I've been watching a lot of the events unfold in the middle East and have wondered why nobody just ends violence over there for good by making fake Qurans. One or two people have hinted they've tried, with some altered movements centered around it (would you call this government gnosticism), but it's not something you always hear.

What's the most severe example of a fake version of a book you've ever seen/encountered?

I was reading an article about the efforts by people not to ban books. While I think the sentiment is good-natured, as a helper at my local library, this is actually very problematic. People donate to us all the time, as is how libraries work. Sometimes the books are unpopular, unproductive, harmful, or just low tier.

I would never apply this logic to human beings, all humans have value if the system knows how to channel them correctly, but books are inanimate objects where their expected purpose is to be read (if you were to say a book is useful on the basis it could be used for something like ripping the pages out for wiping a floor for example, that would make its usefulness as a book cease). Often we are over capacity from the donations, so once a year we have a book sale at the church (libraries and churches getting along? Crazy, right?), but even then, a lot just isn't sold, and we're forced to either give them to another holding place or, in the worst case scenario, cremate or trash them. I am all for free speech, but freedom to produce speech is different from freedom to preserve speech, and I'm sure even the ancient Romans produced a lot of scribbly nonsense.

Suppose you were in my shoes and the library could preserve anything forever but not everything forever. What criteria would you use in order to decide what media (books, movies, games, etc.) gets to stay and what has to go?

Today's conventional wisdom is that both are spectrums. That means one person's experience with autism isn't another person's experience with autism, and one person's experience as a member of the LGBT can differ from another's.

However, that's what the whole point of the letters in the LGBT is. You could be a lesbian, asexual, aromantic, a lesbian who is aromantic, an asexual who is trans, and so on. Someone I know (who inspired me to ask this) has said they began to question why this isn't done regarding people with autism due to constantly seeing multiple people fight over things people do due to their autism because the people in the conflict don't understand each others' experiences but continue to use the label "autism".

One side would say "sorry, it's an autism habit."

"I have autism too, but you don't see me doing that."

"Maybe your autism isn't my autism."

"No, you're just using it as a crutch."

My friend responded to this by making a prototype for an autism equivalent to the LGBT system and says they no longer encourage the "umbrella term" in places like their servers because it has become a constant point of contention, with them maintaining their system is better even if it's currently faulty in some way.

But what's being asked is, why isn't this how it's done mainstream? Is there some kind of benefit to using the umbrella term "autism" that makes it superior/preferred to deconstructing it? Or has society just not thought too much about it?

Today's conventional wisdom is that both are spectrums. That means one person's experience with autism isn't another person's experience with autism, and one person's experience as a member of the LGBT can differ from another's.

However, that's what the whole point of the letters in the LGBT is. You could be a lesbian, asexual, aromantic, a lesbian who is aromantic, an asexual who is trans, and so on. Someone I know (who inspired me to ask this) has said they began to question why this isn't done regarding people with autism due to constantly seeing multiple people fight over things people do due to their autism because the people in the conflict don't understand each others' experiences but continue to use the label "autism".

One side would say "sorry, it's an autism habit."

"I have autism too, but you don't see me doing that."

"Maybe your autism isn't my autism."

"No, you're just using it as a crutch."

My friend responded to this by making a prototype for an autism equivalent to the LGBT system and says they no longer encourage the "umbrella term" in places like their servers because it has become a constant point of contention, with them maintaining their system is better even if it's currently faulty in some way.

But what's being asked is, why isn't this how it's done mainstream? Is there some kind of benefit to using the umbrella term "autism" that makes it superior/preferred to deconstructing it? Or has society just not thought too much about it?

A lot of the things we do on a daily or weekly basis have ways of doing them that can either be private or communal, some of these which we do not think to consider as having that characteristic.

For example, bathing in the Roman Empire used to be communal, but then Rome fell and citizens in the splinter countries began taking baths privately.

Receiving mail is another example. There are countries which don’t have mailboxes and everyone gets their mail at the post office in the PO boxes. It was the United States which pioneered the idea of the modern mail system, which is why we associate it as a private act.

There are activities as well which don’t have any history as jumping between one or the other that might benefit from it, for example I think towns might benefit if internet was free and freely accessible but only at the local library.

What’s a non-communal aspect of life you think should be communal?

A lot of the things we do on a daily or weekly basis have ways of doing them that can either be private or communal, some of these which we do not think to consider as having that characteristic.

For example, bathing in the Roman Empire used to be communal, but then Rome fell and citizens in the splinter countries began taking baths privately.

Receiving mail is another example. There are countries which don't have mailboxes and everyone gets their mail at the post office in the PO boxes. It was the United States which pioneered the idea of the modern mail system, which is why we associate it as a private act.

There are activities as well which don't have any history as jumping between one or the other that might benefit from it, for example I think towns might benefit if internet was free and freely accessible but only at the local library.

What's a non-communal aspect of life you think should be communal?

You might consider this a sequel to a past question I've had, except instead of teaching them how to be artists, it's teaching them how to be devout in whatever you follow. For the sake of respecting technicalities, the loosest definition of religion/ideology/politics will be used here, which is incidentally a definition where they have historically overlapped.

I have relatives who have mental challenges, and this question is inspired by my wonder all the time as someone who has lived much of his life in a very zealous religious community who has observed local missionaries (everyone is a missionary in this small town) try to get creative trying to teach the gospel to people who couldn't comprehend how an airplane works. Some of them have taken notes from psychologists and used toys inspired by the psychologists' usage of Mr. Potato Head toys to diagnose autism (not sure if they still do that), others have simplified the gospel into some extremely simplified analogies, made to fit the language model inside these individuals' minds, which both almost makes it resemble a cargo cult at times as the method used often has them using, for example, objects and their lack of object permanence as an allegory for prophets. So on and so forth. It's both fascinating and terrifying, but it begs my question when it comes to interspecies communication which is an interesting topic.

Suppose you absolutely had to do this, either for some consequentialist social reason or maybe for an experiment to see if adherence would be possible. What method would you perform?

You might consider this a sequel to a past question I've had, except instead of teaching them how to be artists, it's teaching them how to be devout in whatever you follow. For the sake of respecting technicalities, the loosest definition of religion/ideology/politics will be used here, which is incidentally a definition where they have historically overlapped.

I have relatives who have mental challenges, and this question is inspired by my wonder all the time as someone who has lived much of his life in a very zealous religious community who has observed local missionaries (everyone is a missionary in this small town) try to get creative trying to teach the gospel to people who couldn't comprehend how an airplane works. Some of them have taken notes from psychologists and used toys inspired by the psychologists' usage of Mr. Potato Head toys to diagnose autism (not sure if they still do that), others have simplified the gospel into some extremely simplified analogies, made to fit the language model inside these individuals' minds, which both almost makes it resemble a cargo cult at times as the method used often has them using, for example, objects and their lack of object permanence as an allegory for prophets. So on and so forth. It's both fascinating and terrifying, but it begs my question when it comes to interspecies communication which is an interesting topic.

Suppose you absolutely had to do this, either for some consequentialist social reason or maybe for an experiment to see if adherence would be possible. What method would you perform?

Even as someone who tends to play along with bans, this seems like a weird concept. I'm referring to those moments you walk into a club or a service one day and the people in charge say something along the lines of "you're banned from our establishment because we learned you're an artist that deals with controversial subject matter" or "we banned you because we heard that was you who engaged in those reckless activities that sent that one person to need care".

We barely are able to enforce the Hague convention, so it makes me wonder what the mindset is when people try to take this on, as outside your jurisdiction, something could potentially be of any kind of context, as rules, etiquette, and protocol can differ enough between clubs and services that it's almost as if the laws of physics can sometimes seem to differ.

One day, I witnessed a conversation between some rule enforcers and someone I know, and the suspicious rule enforcers asked why the individual so often likes to remain as low a profile as possible, and the individual responded "if I was as open about myself to everyone as everyone else is with each other, the amount of restrictions I'd have would quintuple due to the sheer amount of people who have grown a habit of hating me for no ethical reason whatsoever", which also drags the issue of openness into the conversation.

Or... or maybe I'm wrong and/or am missing something. What's your opinion on this practice? And what stands out to you as the last or most notable time this happened?

Even as someone who tends to play along with bans, this seems like a weird concept. I'm referring to those moments you walk into a club or a service one day and the people in charge say something along the lines of "you're banned from our establishment because we learned you're an artist that deals with controversial subject matter" or "we banned you because we heard that was you who engaged in those reckless activities that sent that one person to need care".

We barely are able to enforce the Hague convention, so it makes me wonder what the mindset is when people try to take this on, as outside your jurisdiction, something could potentially be of any kind of context, as rules, etiquette, and protocol can differ enough between clubs and services that it's almost as if the laws of physics can sometimes seem to differ.

One day, I witnessed a conversation between some rule enforcers and someone I know, and the suspicious rule enforcers asked why the individual so often likes to remain as low a profile as possible, and the individual responded "if I was as open about myself to everyone as everyone else is with each other, the amount of restrictions I'd have would quintuple due to the sheer amount of people who have grown a habit of hating me for no ethical reason whatsoever", which also drags the issue of openness into the conversation.

Or... or maybe I'm wrong and/or am missing something. What's your opinion on this practice? And what stands out to you as the last or most notable time this happened?

Was wondering this in celebration of the fact dolphins have officially been confirmed to have their own translatable proto-language, a longtime speculation we kind of already knew and which fulfills a friend's prophecy. It's common to train animals to perceive and perform art, and/or for them to already have a sense of what it is. Give an elephant a brush and a canvas and they'll paint glyphs of other elephants, chimps can draw avant-garde "masterpieces", and pigeons can even be trained to recognize the difference between good and bad art.

Dolphins surpass all of these animals in intelligence. But there's just one problem, they live underwater. And water tends to destroy most art mediums. Paper canvases shrivel, residue washes and floats away, hammers made for sculpting tend to strike softer, sculpting ice floats, fashion requires sources of fabric you can't get underwater, you get the idea. A dolphin's life is Murphy's Law for an artist. But for an artist, if there's a will, there's a way, and humans are known to challenge what we expect to be ways in which art can be created, such as with crop circles, Nazca lines, shadow art, and soap sculptures made from microwaving soap into molds. What improvised method/means of artform would you coach dolphins to do who want to be artists if you had to do so in some way?