Another 52 weeks have passed and we’ve reached issue 104 of the newsletter. The latest issue has contributions from xero, vermaden, rocx.
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- 52 weeks of Unix Newsletter authored by venam 5 years ago | 27 points | 3 comments
Another 52 weeks have passed and we’ve reached issue 104 of the newsletter. The latest issue has contributions from xero, vermaden, rocx.
this has been a really fun project. here’s to another 2 yrs! 🍻
🍻
As someone who works at Xero (accounting software SaaS), I always find it funny seeing your username around the place ;)
ive been using that nick way before 2006 when they were founded. but happy to make you smile, for w/e reason
This is probably going to be an unpopular comment, but I’ll try it nevertheless
I recently unsubscribed, partially because I didn’t have the time to read new articles (or I had already seen them elsewhere, for example here), but what pushed me was this except from issue 102:
To me, you either think that political issues are serious and you mention them, or you just don’t (for whatever reason, there’s not reason it’s not legitimate) and ignore them – but think stance of saying “Cringiest articles of the year?”, and quasi proclaiming “I actively don’t care about issues others take seriously (and you shouldn’t either)” is just annoying and deterring.
And seriously, people mentioning the political dimensions of technical issues isn’t that omnipresent, that it’s preventing you from “enjoing the tech”.
Valid point.
I usually avoid political news, and this is what this is about, but thought this time of putting a message in the newsletter because we had already discussed that week on the forums about that same topic. It was in the train of the moment.
There’s probably nothing else in the entire newsletter related to this topic, it was a reference to a forums discussion.
Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.
The stance that politics, as a whole, should be ignored, has been a highly effective messaging strategy on the part of people whose views are aligned with the status quo.
Just to rephrase that in a way that makes the caveats in it a bit more obvious: I am not saying that everyone asking to curtail political discussion is doing so for political reasons; I am sure that many people say this for other reasons, such as sincerely finding politics stressful. I am saying that those requests end up serving the aim of preserving the status quo, and I am saying that a desire to preserve the status quo is itself a political position.
There are more remarks that I could make, relating an investment in the status quo to privilege theory, but I think that going into any depth on that analysis would be a distraction right now.
The majority of Lobsters voted in the last meta for politics to be in every story and comment section here if they can achieve that. They also predominantly vote for a specific kind of leftist politics whose members say the same stuff as you. If anything, I predicted you’re the privileged in-group posting a comment to a pro-similar-politics, echo chamber that would reward you and anyone supporting your statement with high votes (popularity/support). That’s exactly what happened with your comment followed by @Irene’s. So, just chiming in to remind you your views are compatible with the dominant, most-voting people on the site with nothing for you to worry about. It’s people outside those views that have to worry they’ll get hit with strong, negative comments in threads on UNIX newsletters and stuff. So, whenever you feel anything like this, submit it without worries since you have a ton of support here.
If anything, the people who say politics is so important are slacking off since Lobsters submissions and comments are still mostly technical, not politically beneficial. They should be submitting much more content on these issues like culture, technological methods to address this stuff (eg accessibility libraries/tips), content written by minority members underrepresented in tech, organizations that put money into this, and so on. Although a few submit some of that, the vast majority of political “work” on Lobsters are people in the political group(s) telling people in other groups that what they’re doing is wrong for (political explanation here) sometimes with lots of downvotes. On top of doing that, I strongly encourage all of you in the political activism group to reflect your stated beliefs in submissions, comments, and professional work to make stuff happen for real. Especially submissions: focus on politically-beneficial articles, esp written by minority members. I’ll believe all of you when 70+% of Lobsters submissions from all of you are advancing the goals for society that you claim is more important than tech write-ups.
I of course can’t prove it, but from my experience I honestly excepted that people would shun me for leaving a “off-topic” comment. I was surprised to see that there was a positive reaction, possibly because I don’t know the lobste.rs community as well as you do – but even if that hadn’t been the case (and I’m sure I could post unrelated comments on my views that would provoke such a reaction) I would have left my complaint for @venam to see.
And after all, I only mention “politics” because it was mentioned in a newsletter, I remembered. My point was (next to the one that I had no time to read all the articles) that I would have rather wanted the political submission to not be included (the secondary, deriving issue was the way it was talked about).
That recounting of the discussion is made of straw, and if it were true, I’d be confused about why you’re even still here. Most post comment sections do not go political (this is vacuously true, since 14/25 front page items have no comments at all, but even the remaining ones don’t seem very politically charged).
Let’s be real here: @zge was responding to text within the article itself which clearly carries a political statement. If the article says something is “cringy”, it is not off-topic to respond with a justified “no it’s not”. Responding to a political sentiment with additional political sentiment does not mean you want to involve politics in every story and comment section here.
Please get off your cross, so we can use the wood for something useful.
If it’s straw, look at the comment section to see what the number of comments are here for the technical vs political aspects of the article plus their voting support. No surprise that it supports my assertion. The comments in the other threads were usually in support of people calling out authors or other commenters about the political ramifications, from a specific vantage point, of their claims with more support for that than the technical aspects. I think the consistent, higher-than-technical-stuff support for such comments further corroborates my claim they reward political claims seemingly every time it shows up and (by their other statements/vote) support much more of it. However, there’s statements in comment section and action towards stated goals. About that…
“this is vacuously true, since 14/25 front page items have no comments at all, but even the remaining ones don’t seem very politically charged”
That’s what I’m calling them out for. The highest-voted stuff from the political side was about promoting inclusion, fixing social problems, modifying speech/actions to conform to their politics, and so on. Yet, there’s hardly any comments or political submissions at all from the same people who value politics higher than technical content. It’s like, “Do you care about this stuff that much or don’t you?” I previously said they were virtue signaling since most of them don’t submit crap that achieves their stated goals. How hard is it to submit one a week from each of them on anything they discuss in the comments? They put lots of time into the comments doing accusations or defending the need for political action but about nothing into the main content on the site. Their failure to act consistently with their stated priorities, at least here, is why the data you mention doesn’t show it.
“Please get off your cross, so we can use the wood for something useful.”
There’s no cross. The site’s politics changed over time to reward specific views/practices and shun others. I was pointing out the person who appeared worried about their compatible politics having a negative reaction had nothing to worry about. Actually, that person was slamming someone else while saying that with a lot of upvotes. I then encouraged them and everyone else upvoting it believing political angles were so important to actually submit stuff benefiting same political goals to Lobsters. More submissions helping every issue they upvote in political debates. I see almost none as you indicated. So, they’re either hypocrites doing virtue signaling or extremely busy doing good things for such causes outside Lobsters to point they can’t spare even a submission a week (or day). I’ve adapted to the New Lobsters by both ending my most mention of views they collectively discourage and encouraging them to do better about views/practices they encourage: submit politically-beneficial, inclusive content that minimizes harm in its many forms while the rest of us just submit deep, technical stuff (which may or may not do some of the same public goods).
nice work