Posts made by cteavin

@Dene:

I suspect that, when i posted more, in the past, i got in the same situation… I have stated views and countered people's opinions in the political forum but was 99% nice to people, i disagreed with some yes but not sure how differing views = bad rep

I realised today I have a red line - which is sad because it gives others - especially new people, the impression that i'm a bad guy when i am not. I am a guy that can be quite helpful & anecdotal & fun etc - But I  disagreed with other people who were just as forceful in their debating of politics and so now pay the price.

Amen brother. I got THREE down votes in reputation. Three. That's all it took to put me deep in the red. But to be honest, I wouldn't have even known what the red/green are supposed to mean if Fred didn't keep talking about it. I doubt new members have a clue and they'll learn quickly it's pretty meaningless.

@flozen:

I am all about the preservation and promotion of credible news outlets – those that employ time-tested, verifiable fact-checking and reporting methods.

The following Forbes article highlights some of these media:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2017/02/01/10-journalism-brands-where-you-will-find-real-facts-rather-than-alternative-facts/#21609a24e9b5

So, I would point to The Economist, BBC, The New York Times, National Public Radio (NPR), and TIME, to start.

There's the National Review (for my conservative fix), The New Republic (as antidote), and wire services like Reuters, The Associated Press and Bloomberg.

And Vogue.  But not YouTube.

Ah, The Economist. I used to read it weekly but now it's when I have the time – it's hands down my favorite magazine ever. I also used to read the National Review but it's hard to make the time to read the long-form articles these days.

I would read the Wall Street Journal if I could but I can't without a subscription and at this point in my life, I'd chose the Japanese version, The Nikkei.

I've never been into the fashion mags. I do like the occasional fix of pop culture in Interview, though. There's a hilarious interview between Erica Bhadu (sp?) and Ezra Miller this month. She somehow manages to take every comment he makes off in some mystical direction and he's clearly trying to stay on topic. It's great.

I can't dismiss YouTube altogether. There are a lot of alternate views out there that are worth hearing. Diamond and Silk comes to mind as does Beyond The Trailer's Movie Money weekly series.

@raphjd:

Without a direct and blatant call for debate, clearly there is a call for debate here.

Does Colin deserve to be MAN OF THE YEAR of GQ or anything for that matter?

We can quibble if you like but anyone coming through the forums who read the original post won't comes away with "clearly". My evidence? 31 people, as of now, have looked at this post and only four have posted and only you, R, have asked a legitimate question worthy of debate.

https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/best-horror-movies-2017?ref=facebook-869

The article lists twenty popular horror films from this year. Have you seen any of them or have different recommendations?

There are a couple on here I'm interested in, especially Raw and Tragedy Girls. You?

@Frederick:

All of those sites are to the right of CNN and MSNBC

I lost interest in CNN about 15 years ago. It's never been a good source of news.

I like balance. When I listened to Rachel M. I also listened to Fox. Now I mostly read the news, so I hit different sides by what's popular.

You're not going to answer the question yourself?

@Frederick:

I thought GQ stood for "Gentleman's Quarterly"
Apparently it stands for "Ghetto Quarterback"

I do like Colin's pig police socks though.

https://www.gq.com/story/colin-kaepernick-cover-men-of-the-year

Actually, this is closer to SPAM.

Flozen answered your question. The title asks what GQ stands for and he answered you.

In a debate forum, you made no call for a debate. You didn't bring anything up for discussion. At best, this should be in the humor section as you're trying to be funny. Unless you're looking for a chorus of people who agree with you, there is not potential for debate or discussion here, just insults.

Just curious.

Myself, I look at the world news feed on reddit to see what's trending. I then head over to Drudge to see what he has up on his feed. I'll click over to the Daily Yomiuri to see what's happening around me. If it's a slow news day I'll head over to Al Jazeera. That's it.

Where do you get your news and why?

My choices are to get three or four different perspectives.

I should. I've always wanted to combine painting with my photography.

You should buy an old school film camera and learn how to develop yourself! It's not hard.

True – but nothing happend. Mac?

TPBM just woke up.

I've never heard of Chinese curry.  :afr: I know a lot of Indians set up shop in Jamaica, so I'd like to see what they've done with the local ingredients.

A bath in the morning or the evening?

@raphjd:

I think it's obvious.

A group of people with very little reputation and very low thumbs up ratings (compared to what I had) were able to destroy my over 15k thumbs up rating.   All combined, their thumbs and reputation scored didn't add up to even a quarter of what I had.

However, because their relatively low reputation scores, they weren't able to do the same thing to my reputation rating.

With the thumbs ratings, you can have the absolutely worst rating and still destroy another person's rating.    The same can't be said for reputation.

No, but since the reputation is given as some kind of percentage of an existing reputation (or perhaps posts, you didn't specify how rep is rated) you have the exact same problem in reverse: One or a few people can obliterate another person reputation. I saw this first hand twice.

This is important because certain people use the reputation as proof that they're posts are good and others are not. That's false. That's demonstrably false.

The only thing that matters is the post at hand.

If you, or someone, could actually answer questions one - four with details, I'd like to know.

@raphjd:

1.  The more rep you have, the bigger the hit/boost is to the other person.

2.  NOPE.  Everyone is treated equally.    If an admin has 10k rep and a user also has 10k rep, the effect on others is the same.

3.  The stars are your forum level, as are the colors.   Newbs have the lowest with admins having the highest.

4.   Titles (except staff) are based on post counts.

Thumbs mean nothing either when a handful  of users can destroy over 15k in thumbs up surplus in a few months, simply by following their enemies around and down voting EVERYTHING they post, even filling porn requests and helping others use the site.

Anyone can ruin a positive thumbs rating, but it's harder to do that to reputation.   The same goes the other way, anyone can artificially inflate their thumbs rating when they clump together, but it's a lot harder to do that with reputation.

Let me just point out, if you didn't care, you wouldn't be asking.    I don't care about the tax rates in INDIA, so I don't look it up or ask.

No offense but you didn't answer with specifics. And my history says otherwise with reputation.

Well, I suppose I do care a little. I guess this means you deeply care about me considering all the attention I've gotten from you the past few days. I'm just not into S&M, so can we stop?

@raphjd:

I'll give you guys a hint.

Despite what someone says publicly, running to the helpdesk crying about something shows you care.

Are you talking about me?

I went to the Help Desk to ask how the points are given. Go read the message yourself. You gave me a minus rep. I never noticed the rep until Fred started pointing it out, so I started giving rep around. I had 20 points. Then you gave me a minus rep and I was in the negative. I wanted to know 1) how the points for the rep are given and 2) if you were using your status as admin to take off more points than you should. Those are fair questions, no?

So, let's find out what the rules are since you're on the inside.

1. How does the system decide who gets how many points of reputation?

2. Does the reputation depend on the level of the user (admin, hero, etc)?

3. What do those Stars mean next to our avatar and how do we get them?

4. And what do those titles mean, lurker, hero member, etc?

I still maintain that reputation is meaningless because one user can take away 20+ points on a whim whereas the thumbs up and down are fairer.

@raphjd:

The problem is, the identity politics is coming from one side; the LEFT.

It would be "racist" if it was the other way around, but of course the left never, ever believe that whites can be the victim of racism even when it clearly meets the made up definition leftists used so that only whites could be racists.  The same goes for sexism.

Imagine the shit storm if it was 3 white men and a VOC, "at the eleventh hour", decided to run and people started to tell her she couldn't run because she isn't white and has a vag.     
If it was reversed, it would be international news, not just local news that happened to make it to YouTube.

Don Lemon and Simone Sanders would be screaming "OH HELL FUCKING NO!!!  CRACKERS NEED TO FUCKING DIE!!!!   WE TOLD YOU ALL HONKEYS ARE RACISTS!!!".

Here's the thing, R: We agree.

Flozen even agreed that this particular case seeped in identity politics but instead of standing on that firm ground you both got into a fight. Not cool!

About this particular case there are two things going on.

1. Identity politics and 2) the man is legit less qualified. If you're going to maintain that he x, y, or z because he's a white guy, then you're playing identity politics, now.

The conversation could have moved in a direction to find more common ground or to look for solutions but things here quickly degenerate into name-calling and fisty cuffs. As an Admin you should be setting the standard so that conversations flow. This is why I'm pissed with you but ignore Fred (most of the time).

Most of my friends hold views I disagree with – Christians, Muslims, SJW's of some flavor, real racists -- and I get along fine because I listen and talk. There needs to be more of that here.

@raphjd:

What facts did flozen bring?    The white guy is running against VOCs, aka identity politics.     You told me that i wasn't supposed to talk about identity politics

You were the one to bring up thumbs, so I explained the history of it and how your leftist buddies abused it.  Now you are praising it as the better system.

LOL, you are so full of yourself.   When I'm bored I re-read current threads to see if there is something I might have missed.

It always amazes me when people like you come to the site an think EVERYTHING revolves around you.    Oddly, we've had about a dozen in the 12ish years the site has been going.    The site existed and did well before you got here and will continue after you leave.    You aren't special

I don't bully people.  Unless you mean I treat them equally.

You have the same information on loop: X happened on a college campus + feminism = the white male is oppressed. That's it. That's all you ever bring to the table.

Flozen brought up the fact that the white dude had zero qualification and accepted that it was identity politics; you bring up college politics + feminism = the white man is oppressed. (It really comes off as that repetitive.)

And you forget you brough up the thumbs two days later after making posts that were not replied to. Why? It's not important. Ah, because you're bored. Sounds like you should make better life choices.

The bolded is exactly what I told you in a different post. Do you feel original for bringing up what I told you? Do you feel empowered? What is the point in telling me what I already told you? Again, you can not be fifty. I can not accept that.

And yes, you do bully people. Those aren't my words. Those are from other members. That's how you make them feel. Go look into my PM folders.

@raphjd:

If it had nothing to do with the topic, then YOU want off topic when you brought it up as a lame attempt to insult me.     YOU should follow your own "advice" and do better, much, much better.

I do love how you keep showing you are a hypocrite though.

The topic was on point; Flozen brought in facts; you ignored the facts and went off on a tangent; I pointed the tangent out; Fred said to ignore people with red; I said rep doesn't matter it's thumbs – TWO DAYS LATER you commented on the thumbs. YOU obviously cared enough to keep thinking about it. Two days passed with three messages you posted in the thread that no one responded to so that you made yet another message suddenly bringing up thumbs up/down.

Those are the facts.

And telling you to adhere to a higher standard is exactly what members should be telling you to do. You work for the site. You're an admin, yet you use your position to bully people, call them names, and downvote them into red. You don't do your job well; if you did, these forums would have more traffic. That's on you. I know this because other members complain about you to me off-site, or did you overlook the messages in the forums of people saying they don't post because the environment is hostile? So be an adult and act with professionalism like an admin should or give up the position to someone who would take it seriously.

@Frederick:

You're remarkably unfunny, and this scatological allusion to African-American skin color should earn you a warning, but of course, it won't.

Stop deflecting the issue at hand and allow it to be discussed.

---

You are the one defecating the issue at hand.

Actually, Fred, you started a digression. You thought it was funny and Flozen didn't. Flozen maybe didn't need to make the connection to scat color and skin color but there is no need after to make another joke about having meant something else.

The original topic still stands. Unless you're taking a figurative piss on it to prove a point, you should stick to topic of monuments and the extension of free speech.

@Frederick:

One flaw in the "thumbs" is that you can see how many thumbs up and thumbs down you have..  but while it does show you who gave you a thumb, it doesn't specify which members gave you a thumbs up and which gave you a thumbs down.

I would also point out that you have lied to me several times about giving me a thumbs down. I have my own special way of knowing that.

You don't need to know who voted you up or down for each post. You have anonymity online whereas I use my real photo and have my real webpage making it easy for people to find me, so I have to take responsibility for anything callous I say here. Unless you feel your real name should be used in this forum for you take full responsibility for everything you've said, the anonymity of the thumbs is a good thing.

The second sentence is irrelevant.

If someone gives you a thumbs down that you don't think you deserve, you can disregard it. However, if you get multiple thumbs down, rethink. Let me phrase this differently, if someone is getting hate on and offline, that person has to either think the world is crazy or they're not fitting in. How they chose to think about it is up to them. The same is true with any feedback one gets in a forum.

I will say this, the person who gave me minus reputation put as a comment for the reason SJW. That's it. The post it was attached to had nothing to do with anything SJW. That kind of caprice is why the reputation is bs.

This caught my eye this morning.

A young man in the UK peed on a war memorial. Should the act be punishable because it's a memorial? What if the act was a political statement, would that constitute exercising free speech and be protected?

I'm curious what people think about this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/12/man-urinated-war-memorial-remembrance-sunday-ordered-apologise/

This is all over the Japanese media this morning. The tone is reproach. Personally, I think the POTUS using Social Media is positive as it gives any sitting person the power to communicate directly with the electorate, especially a part of the population that no longer watches TV or reads newspapers.

So POTUS responds to Mr. Kim from North Korea with a jab at his height and weight. This is clearly Donald speaking and not the persona of POTUS.

Is this okay or not okay in POV? And please stay on topic, here.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/11/politics/north-korea-trump-asia-trip/index.html