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What's next for us?


Square Wheels

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41 minutes ago, Airehead said:

How about five new members in the next year?

Aire, you are a good leader. That is a smart goal.

How would we even go aboot that?  I do have two kickass lbs’s, but I don’t participate in group rides and such.  Let me see what comes to when you google cycling forums. But we would have to be careful. This place is very similar to the earlier lf when it had more members and it was aboot love of biking. It was Goldilocks size.  Intimate withoot tumbleweeds blowing through. :D
 

https://blog.feedspot.com/cycling_forums/

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Just now, Page Turner said:

...this is interesting, in this week's NYT magazine, on free speech in the age of disinformation.   I'm not suggesting this is where we are going, but you might enjoy it.

Can't read without an account.

No worries, I don't discriminate, I dislike everyone equally.  Oh, that said disinformation, that's too big a word for me.

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7 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

  Oh, that said disinformation, that's too big a word for me.

...'dis is some of the relevant information:

...The business model for the dominant platforms depends on keeping users engaged online. Content that prompts hot emotion tends to succeed at generating clicks and shares, and that’s what the platforms’ algorithms tend to promote. Lies go viral more quickly than true statements, research shows.

In many ways, social media sites today function as the public square. But legally speaking, internet platforms can restrict free speech far more than the government can. They’re like malls, where private owners police conduct....

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2 minutes ago, Page Turner said:

...'dis is some of the relevant information:

...The business model for the dominant platforms depends on keeping users engaged online. Content that prompts hot emotion tends to succeed at generating clicks and shares, and that’s what the platforms’ algorithms tend to promote. Lies go viral more quickly than true statements, research shows.

In many ways, social media sites today function as the public square. But legally speaking, internet platforms can restrict free speech far more than the government can. They’re like malls, where private owners police conduct....

Hot topics like that also ruin life.  I avoid the news.  Contentious topics have driven people away from here.

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9 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

  Contentious topics have driven people away from here.

...I know that you are convinced that this is the case.  Personally, I think maybe you are confusing the conflict with the subject matter.

It was pretty obvious to me that I was never gonna be best pals with @Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and I knew @Wilbur's antics from another forum ( the one I cannot name here.)

 

That in itself is different from whatever is the topic at hand....political or otherwise.

What I found fascinating in how that all played out on this forum was how the political got dragged into the Cafe, despite repeated pleas and admonitions, by the very people who have left and are now absent. These were, for the most part, Conservatives.  Having a separate forum where the political was permissible was not in their interests, apparently.  I am uncertain why that played out that way, but I certainly have some opinion about it.  

 

9 minutes ago, Square Wheels said:

Hot topics like that also ruin life.  I avoid the news.

...if you truly want this to be some sort of town square environment, (like the Chatterbox Cafe), I also find this hard to understand.  I guess you never ate breakfast on a regular basis in a place lie that in a small town or neighborhood. I can assure you it's a major source of entertainment.  The news is about where and how we all live. Probably the only reason I internet any more is to get a feel for the different takes of random individuals in places exactly like this.  You can only post so many classic bike restoration images before it starts to get repetitive.

 

Anyway. I'm not trying to put you on the spot. But the people who have left for this reason were poor at conversation,  and often close minded in their opinions.  I'm sorry you miss them, but I'm not especially apologetic for any part I played in their discomfiture.  If you can't discuss something...anything...without it "ruining life", then the problem is not with the other people in the discussion.  It's much closer to home. :) 

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1 hour ago, Zephyr said:

For me, personal political or religious beliefs are just that.  Personal.

I really dont give a rats ass what someone else believes or why they believe it.  They choose to believe it and the circular conversations that go around around trying to convince each  other that "you and wrong and I am right" is tiresome, and I much prefer a place like this without it.  

I wandered into the P&R section once or twice just out of curiosity  and after reading a couple threads half expected to see a thread where everyone submitted a pic of their dick to see who's was biggest(I would not have won)

This is a place to be happy and carefree, not confrontational and I like it that way

...am I wrong in surmising that's why there was a separate forum for political and religious discussion ?  Anyway, I put it to you as well: have you ever eaten breakfast or lunch with a group of people on a semi regular basis at some cafe or restaurant ?  Was there some treaty arrangement where politics and the news were off the table for discussion ? I mean, I've done that with some genuinely egregious assholes in the fire department.  We all knew where everyone stood on that stuff.  We all continued to order the same stuff for breakfast.  We all went home afterwards, and we all took naps.  Not a big deal.

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1 hour ago, Page Turner said:

...am I wrong in surmising that's why there was a separate forum for political and religious discussion ?  Anyway, I put it to you as well: have you ever eaten breakfast or lunch with a group of people on a semi regular basis at some cafe or restaurant ?  Was there some treaty arrangement where politics and the news were off the table for discussion ? I mean, I've done that with some genuinely egregious assholes in the fire department.  We all knew where everyone stood on that stuff.  We all continued to order the same stuff for breakfast.  We all went home afterwards, and we all took naps.  Not a big deal.

Page:  I made a mistake of posting under another, where you got mixed up too (under I need a vacation). This is what I just wrote and copied here :

 

 

Like you, I believe that after awhile a forum after several years...can't /shouldn't hide some difficult topics. The discussion doesn't have to go on for super long. And I have always felt here...in this forum, the potential for us to learn....gently..and more lightly, but still learn (if it's not signicant learning), about how different or similar some of our lives/experiences can be ...even if 1 thing binds us together:  speaking english (this is serious point, it is a power language and this why I myself can even participate here.) and love of cycling/bikes.

I actually get bored if life goes on for days and days talking about safe topics. That's why I didn't join lunchroom table discussions at work every day.  every one was walking around certain sensitive topics and not learning anything different from what they knew or experienced in life.  So I just decided some days to eat alone lunch happily in front of my work computer.

So i will continue to cooperate in this forum..and occasionally post certain topics that might seem completely outside of some people's experiences here in this forum.  I am not ashamed of....my experiences and articulating them.  And I ask that threads about my experiences be not hidden.

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IMO the problem with a no politics ban is that there are subjects like Covid-19 that totally surround and control our lives and which are so immersed in politics that it's almost impossible to talk about them without at least hinting at politics.  These topics are tolerated here until someone blatantly invokes politics.  So reality is that we don't really have a ban on politics.  We have a subjective ban on politics so long as no one gets upset.  I agree that was what P&R was for.  The problem there was that some who went there voluntarily didn't like what they heard and then complained or abandoned P&R and brought their politics out into the general population where they didn't get disagreed with quite as strongly.  Unfortunately, an uncontrolled P&R doesn't work either.  It ends up as an insult fest or like one Debating forum on Politics that cannot be named it becomes the home of flocks of trolls.  The net result seems to be that such places eventually move into one camp or the other where people not in the majority are squeezed out and go somewhere more friendly to their version of the facts.

SW forum for me is a pleasant vacation from such places but only because I try hard to not upset SW or one or another of the mods.

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11 hours ago, Old No. 7 said:

I am kicking around the idea of a forum cookbook. We post a lot of recipes. We seem to like eating as much as riding. I have this school work going on right now though, so it’s just an idea.

I like this idea. I happen to know someone who has experience in book formatting and self publishing. Might require putting a team together to get it done, but I'm sure we can handle that.

 

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I once made a cookbook of all my Mom's  favorite recipes.  This was not formatted nicely, and there were no pictures or graphics, just a page for each recipe.  Her recipe collection had been accumulated over decades with some written in a spiral book, some pages from magazines inserted randomly, some on notecards from friends and some on loose paper linked with a rubber band to her spiral notebook.  I wrote them all out, had books spiral bound at some copy place and gave copies to all our immediate family members for Christmas.  It wasn't fancy, but everyone has been glad to have it.

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