kwyjibo's recent activity
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Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv
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Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv
kwyjibo Link ParentYep, exactly. I have seen The Rings of Power, I just didn't find it worthwhile to talk about it online but even if I did, I don't think I'd have the energy to make my points available anywhere....- Exemplary
Yep, exactly. I have seen The Rings of Power, I just didn't find it worthwhile to talk about it online but even if I did, I don't think I'd have the energy to make my points available anywhere. Setting that aside, because my opinion neither matter nor have to be heard, what disturbs me most is the dynamic this creates between good faith criticism and those who need to hear them. The toxic environment cultivated by the bad faith crowd narrows a broad spectrum of criticism into a neat little package that makes it convenient to ignore by those who need to take it to heart. I wish this was limited to just discussing what's on television, but it's prevalent in every aspect of society today, including where it's consequential.
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Comment on Alice Munro, Nobel laureate and master of the short story, dies at 92 (gifted link) in ~books
kwyjibo LinkIf you're not familiar with her work, or have only read a single book of hers like myself, The New York Times had published an article a few months ago that goes through her most notable books....If you're not familiar with her work, or have only read a single book of hers like myself, The New York Times had published an article a few months ago that goes through her most notable books. I'll purchase some of them myself today.
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Alice Munro, Nobel laureate and master of the short story, dies at 92 (gifted link)
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Comment on TV Tuesdays Free Talk in ~tv
kwyjibo LinkI started watching Sugar yesterday. I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. Its story is compelling and fun, but the choices they make about its form, the way it's shot and edited, gives it a lot...I started watching Sugar yesterday. I enjoyed the first episode quite a bit. Its story is compelling and fun, but the choices they make about its form, the way it's shot and edited, gives it a lot of freshness I had not seen from a series before. There's also Colin Farrell.
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Comment on The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power | Season 2 official teaser trailer in ~tv
kwyjibo Link ParentI can't possibly know if we read the same criticisms but I don't share the same opinion. There was a particular crowd of obnoxious people who shall go nameless that criticized the series for very...I can't possibly know if we read the same criticisms but I don't share the same opinion. There was a particular crowd of obnoxious people who shall go nameless that criticized the series for very wrong reasons, but other than that, I think the series deserved every serious criticism it's received given its ambition (budget) and history (Jackson's films).
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Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health
kwyjibo Link ParentI didn't feel like you were, no worries :) I kind of used your comment to write what I should've written in my original comment, which is that if you're only getting familiarized with the case...I didn't feel like you were, no worries :)
I kind of used your comment to write what I should've written in my original comment, which is that if you're only getting familiarized with the case after reading this article alone, take things with a grain of salt before coming to a conclusion. I get that it can be exciting in a twisted way to see how well established and trusted institutions can fuck someone's life up this badly, despite having many laws and procedures to prevent exactly that, but there's clearly more here than meets the eye.
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Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health
kwyjibo (edited )Link ParentThank you for your comment. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was favoring one side over the other. As I said, I was and still am completely ignorant of the case. The article has a clear...Thank you for your comment. I hope I didn't give the impression that I was favoring one side over the other. As I said, I was and still am completely ignorant of the case. The article has a clear bias in favor of Letby and I cannot judge it on its merits alone but given that it's the New Yorker, I don't doubt that it's been fact checked thoroughly as far as what's been put on print. As for what kind of omissions the article has, I have absolutely no idea.
I'm not necessarily interested in whether she did it or not. The UK has a court system and far better, informed minds than I have judged and will judge again the evidence. I find it a bit strange in general too, this compulsive behavior toward treating the pain actual people are going through as if it's a series. What I found fascinating about the whole thing was the investigation process, as well workings of the courts and all the other externalities around it and how each of them can affect one another.
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Comment on A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it? in ~health
kwyjibo Link(Archived link) I had no prior knowledge of anything mentioned in this long article but having read it, it's fascinating. Equally as fascinating is people's responses to it online. I've read lots...I had no prior knowledge of anything mentioned in this long article but having read it, it's fascinating. Equally as fascinating is people's responses to it online. I've read lots of comments about how much this article proves their priors one way or the other, strongly so, but I've also seen some about the NHS and the way media and courts works in the UK. (Not surprising though, given the article itself is somewhat about all of this.) Apparently the article is not even accessible in the UK because of contempt of court laws.
Some quotes (I made some clarifications within brackets):
The police consulted with an endocrinologist, who said that the babies theoretically could have received insulin through their I.V. bags. Evans said that, with the insulin cases, “at last one could find some kind of smoking gun.” But there was a problem: the blood sample for the first baby had been taken ten hours after Letby had left the hospital; any insulin delivered by her would no longer be detectable, especially since the tube for the first I.V. bag had fallen out of place, which meant that the baby had to be given a new one. To connect Letby to the insulin, one would have to believe that she had managed to inject insulin into a bag that a different nurse had randomly chosen from the unit’s refrigerator.
Burkhard Schafer, a law professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies the intersection of law and science, said that it appeared as if the Letby prosecution had “learned the wrong lessons from previous miscarriages of justice.” Instead of making sure that its statistical figures were accurate, the prosecution seems to have ignored statistics. “Looking for a responsible human—this is what the police are good at,” Schafer told me. “What is not in the police’s remit is finding a systemic problem in an organization like the National Health Service, after decades of underfunding, where you have overworked people cutting little corners with very vulnerable babies who are already in a risk category. It is much more satisfying to say there was a bad person, there was a criminal, than to deal with the outcome of government policy.”
Schafer said that he became concerned about the case when he saw the diagram of suspicious events with the line of X’s under Letby’s name. He thought that it should have spanned a longer period of time and included all the deaths on the unit, not just the ones in the indictment. The diagram appeared to be a product of the “Texas sharpshooter fallacy,” a common mistake in statistical reasoning which occurs when researchers have access to a large amount of data but focus on a smaller subset that fits a hypothesis. The term comes from the fable of a marksman who fires a gun multiple times at the side of a barn. Then he draws a bull’s-eye around the cluster where the most bullets landed.
Dewi Evans, the retired pediatrician, told me that he had picked which medical episodes rose to the level of “suspicious events.” When I asked what his criteria were, he said, “Unexpected, precipitous, anything that is out of the usual—something with which you are not familiar.” For one baby, the distinction between suspicious and not suspicious largely came down to how to define projectile vomiting.
Letby’s defense team said that it had found at least two other incidents that seemed to meet the same criteria of suspiciousness as the twenty-four on the diagram. But they happened when Letby wasn’t on duty. Evans identified events that may have been left out, too. He told me that, after Letby’s first arrest, he was given another batch of medical records to review, and that he had notified the police of twenty-five more cases that he thought the police should investigate. He didn’t know if Letby was present for them, and they didn’t end up being on the diagram, either. If some of these twenty-seven cases had been represented, the row of X’s under Letby’s name might have been much less compelling. (The Cheshire police and the prosecution did not respond to a request for comment, citing the court order.)
Within a week [after the trial], the Cheshire police announced that they had made an hour-long documentary film about the case with “exclusive access to the investigation team,” produced by its communications department. Fourteen members of Operation Hummingbird spoke about the investigation, accompanied by an emotional soundtrack. A few days later, the Times of London reported that a major British production company, competing against at least six studios, had won access to the police and the prosecutors to make a documentary, which potentially would be distributed by Netflix. Soon afterward, the Cheshire police revealed that they had launched an investigation into whether the Countess was guilty of “corporate manslaughter.” The police also said that they were reviewing the records of four thousand babies who had been treated on units where Letby had worked in her career, to see if she had harmed other children.
Several months into the trial, Myers [Letby's barrister] asked Judge Goss to strike evidence given by Evans and to stop him from returning to the witness box, but the request was denied. Myers had learned that a month before, in a different case, a judge on the Court of Appeal had described a medical report written by Evans as “worthless.” “No court would have accepted a report of this quality,” the judge had concluded. “The report has the hallmarks of an exercise in working out an explanation” and “ends with tendentious and partisan expressions of opinion that are outside Dr. Evans’ professional competence.” The judge also wrote that Evans “either knows what his professional colleagues have concluded and disregards it or he has not taken steps to inform himself of their views. Either approach amounts to a breach of proper professional conduct.” (Evans said that he disagreed with the judgment.)
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A British nurse was found guilty of killing seven babies. Did she do it?
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Comment on Megalopolis | Teaser trailer in ~movies
kwyjibo LinkThis sure looks like is going to be a wonderful spectacle. I really, really hope I can see it in IMAX but I doubt it will even get a theatrical release where I live and given the cost-cutting...This sure looks like is going to be a wonderful spectacle. I really, really hope I can see it in IMAX but I doubt it will even get a theatrical release where I live and given the cost-cutting measures of non-IMAX theaters, I might just skip and wait to see it on my TV despite my excitement.
I'm also looking forward to reading the reactions after the Cannes premiere. I obviously don't know if it will be worthy of Palme d'Or (what that even means is another topic) but I do hope it wins something because I want Coppola's big bet to pay off in some way.
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Comment on Megalopolis | First look clip in ~movies
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
kwyjibo Link ParentNot at all. Despite not having been engaged with anyone here privately, I have a baseline of trust with established members such as yourself and that extends to moderation, too. We can have...I know it's probably pretty annoying having me essentially just say "trust me" in response to your concerns and suggestions.
Not at all. Despite not having been engaged with anyone here privately, I have a baseline of trust with established members such as yourself and that extends to moderation, too. We can have disagreements here and there and that's natural, but I don't have the slightest inclination that anyone's acting in bad faith.
I wasn't going to make an extra comment to point this out, but since I'm replying to you, I may as well mention that I hid my post with a note.
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
kwyjibo Link ParentThank you for your insight. I mean, look, since you're speaking from experience not just as a long standing member of the community but someone as an insider, at least compared to a regular member...Thank you for your insight. I mean, look, since you're speaking from experience not just as a long standing member of the community but someone as an insider, at least compared to a regular member like me, I'll take your word for it. If I had remember the things you'd mentioned, I wouldn't have started this topic but I only had vague memories of the past and I didn't make the connection that they're in any way related to what I intended to talk about.
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
kwyjibo Link ParentI do agree with your comments, but I'd like to clarify that I'm not advocating for users to police the moderators or their decisions. If there was transparency over irreversible moderation...I do agree with your comments, but I'd like to clarify that I'm not advocating for users to police the moderators or their decisions. If there was transparency over irreversible moderation decisions, I think there should also be a firm rule against members of the community debating said decisions for the reasons you've outlined well.
I do disagree with you that deleting an entire topic or a comment thread is a useful tool against against people carrying their disagreements further into other threads, though. I don't think I've ever had a heated discussion with anyone in this community, let alone a long standing one, but if I did I'm sure I'd remember their name and just wouldn't engage with them anymore. I wouldn't follow them into other threads and take jabs at them for some vain gratification. Would everyone act the same way? I doubt it but that's why there's moderation, which is doing a great job except for this one thing.
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
kwyjibo Link ParentI hope my post wouldn't be considered as needless meta drama/debate. I do agree with your comments but as I said in my post, wouldn't it be better to have some faith in the community, too? I think...it's a lot of extra work for little benefit, and total moderation transparency would also likely just lead to a bunch of negatives as well, like excessive rule lawyering and needless meta drama/debate.
I hope my post wouldn't be considered as needless meta drama/debate. I do agree with your comments but as I said in my post, wouldn't it be better to have some faith in the community, too? I think most of us can figure out a bad faith actor whose sole intention is to stir the pot. We're a relatively small community. I don't know you personally, but I do know your username. I'm sure my name is familiar to you. We're anonymous, but with time we accrue a degree of reputation within the community that no one in their right mind would be willing to throw away just to stir something up. Maybe I'm being naive, I don't know.
I believe I have read that blog post before, but I'll read it again. For the record, I am generally happy with how Tildes is being run. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be here. There's just one thing that doesn't sit right with me.
I mentioned this briefly but perhaps I should've elaborated it further in my post. Commenting takes time for all of us. We want to make sure we're heard and understood correctly by those who don't really know us and come across as decent and open minded, so we try to choose our words carefully. If I engage in a conversation with a person or a group of mutual interest about a disagreement that we have and that post gets removed without a warning or explanation, I feel like that's not mindful of the time people spend contributing and it further disincentives people into not doing so anymore.
If I were to give a concrete example of how transparent moderation can be, I'd point people to look at MetaFilter1, which is a somewhat similar community to Tildes (of which I'm also a part of). I honestly do not know how they handle removing topics themselves, but for comments, they have a reasonable solution.
1: I get that we're talking about different scales of operation, but from the outside looking in, that also seems like a choice.
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Comment on Should moderation be more transparent? in ~tildes
kwyjibo Link ParentI hadn't known that, thank you for the information. I think the general point of my post still stands, but had I known the information you've given me, I would've advocated for the mods to have...I hadn't known that, thank you for the information. I think the general point of my post still stands, but had I known the information you've given me, I would've advocated for the mods to have the ability to remove topics and posts as well without compromising on my desire to have more transparency.
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Should moderation be more transparent?
Before starting this topic, I thought I'd start a discussion that wasn't held before. @cfabbro and other commenters who have better memories than I pointed out that this isn't the case. They've...
Before starting this topic, I thought I'd start a discussion that wasn't held before. @cfabbro and other commenters who have better memories than I pointed out that this isn't the case. They've also laid out it's been tried and was unsuccessful. I stand corrected.
I do not want to contribute any noise to the website, so I'd appreciate it if @Deimos can lock or remove the topic all together, if he deems it appropriate. I'd also appreciate it if no further comments are made so as to not put any further burden on moderation. I apologize for wasting everyone's time.
My original post
Frankly, I'm not sure if I should even be writing this as it will likely end up consuming more of my time than I intend to spend on it, but as someone who's relatively a veteran member of this community1 which I'm happy to be a part of, I want to voice my only disappointment with it to see what the rest of the community think and try to explore if there might be better way to do things.
Let me preface my post with some baseline opinions that I do hold.
Tildes is a private platform, in that it's owned by a single person and managed by a few select moderators. These people have, I assume, shared opinions on how to run a community based on their priors. This is well within their right. This post is not about some misguided criticism of Tildes because it lacks free speech or whatever. It's a private community that we're a part of because we're allowed to be in it. It'd be disappointing, but people who have the power to do so can show me the door today and I'd not hold it against them.
I have no doubt moderating the website as well as moderators have is a time consuming, thankless job and they do it not for any gain but to contribute back to the community they too are happy to be a part of. My post does not intend to criticize the moderators themselves.
What prompted me to write this post was the apparent removal of Macklemore's Hind's Hall topic. It was a topic of personal interest and I had followed the discussion as well as I can without contributing to it myself, other than some voting and a couple of labeling that I thought was justified. I understand and somewhat agree that the last time I read the comments the conversation had veered off topic to the election and voter preferences2 but, despite the conversation getting circular, it seemed civil. It had valuable contributions from opposing views and I learned from it but now it's gone. Maybe something happened and people started to attack each other in the comments when I was asleep but as of late last night my time (I'm currently in a GMT+3 zone), that was objectively not the case.
Regardless, this post is not about why that specific topic was removed3. It's just the most recent example of a trend, or rather the general pattern with which the moderation decide on how to handle topics that can sometimes be controversial. I'm not a native speaker and it can be hard for me to turn a phrase sometimes, so let me be clear: there are topics that should be removed without seeing first how the community will respond to it. For example, I personally don't take kindly the posts that seem to think someone's existence or dignity as a human being can be a matter of discussion. I think these topics should and rightly do so get nuked out of existence. But in the case of the most recent example, I don't think that was the case.
What I'd suggest, or rather like to put forward is the idea of some kind of a moderation log that show the rest of the members of the community how and why a moderation decision was made. We already do have this system as "Topic log" in each thread, but its scope seems narrow. I, as someone who enjoyed following the aforementioned topic, would've liked to know why moderation decided to take the action that it did, instead of, say, a seemingly more agreeable action to lock the topic down to new comments. It would've helped preserve the discussion and frankly, be more respectable toward people who put their time into contributing to it as it had long, thoughtful posts in it.
I guess that's the crux of the issue for me. The moderation is so opaque that I don't even know who the moderators are, even as a long time member of this community. They're not listed anywhere that I can find. I know that @cfabbro and @mycketforvirrad often add tags and @cfabbro has in their bio that they're a moderator, but I also seem to recall, maybe wrongly, that there's a hierarchy between the mods themselves with regards to what they can and cannot do. I do believe that who ever they are, they are acting in good faith but I also think there's a great information asymmetry between moderators and the rest of the members of the community. Deimos and the moderators shoulder the thankless burden of maintaining the health of the community, but I don't think it'd be far fetched to say that the rest of the members play a part, too. So why not give us the benefit of the doubt sometimes, trust us to have respectful disagreements without getting involved too much, but when you do, let us know why you did4?
I'm sorry if this reads as disjointed mumbo jumbo. I'd appreciate it if my post is taken in good faith that it is written and if you want me to clarify something, you can ask me directly to do so. My intention with this thread was to start a conversation to see what the community's opinion on how the website is being moderated, so while I'll read every single comment, I will not be contributing to it further unless it's necessary.
1: I had a different account from early 2019 that needed to be removed due to privacy reasons. Since name change was not possible, I created this new account with the advice and help of @Deimos.
2: Though it could be argued that it was a relevant discussion, given the spirit of the video and the part where the artist reveal their own voting preference.
3: I will refer to it to help me make my point but please do not assume I'm obsessed about that particular topic.
4: I do realize this would inevitably increase the workload of moderators. My suggestion isn't that moderation should justify every action they take but there are some actions that are irreversible, which happen few and far in between, that I think should be justified. (Keep in mind what I mentioned in my preface.)20 votes -
Comment on Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of May 6 in ~news
kwyjibo LinkMasha Gessen, whose essay on the Israel-Palestine conflict from the perspective of contemporary Europe caused some controversy late last year, was on Haaretz Podcast this week. It was as...Masha Gessen, whose essay on the Israel-Palestine conflict from the perspective of contemporary Europe caused some controversy late last year, was on Haaretz Podcast this week. It was as refreshing and clear eyed as you'd expect from them. It's worth a listen, if you have the time.
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Comment on Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of May 6 in ~news
kwyjibo Link“You Have Been Warned”: Republican Senators Threaten the ICC Prosecutor over Possible Israel Arrest WarrantsIn a terse, one-page letter obtained exclusively by Zeteo, and signed by 12 GOP senators, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Florida’s Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz of Texas, Khan is informed that any attempt by the ICC to hold Netanyahu and his colleagues to account for their actions in Gaza will be interpreted “not only as a threat to Israel’s sovereignty but to the sovereignty of the United States.”
“Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators tell Khan, adding that they will “sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.”
On Friday, The Hague-based office of the chief prosecutor published an unprecedented statement on Twitter, calling for an end to threats of retaliation against the ICC and attempts to “impede” and “intimidate” its officials. The statement added that such threats could “constitute an offence against the administration of justice” under the Rome Statute.
The timing of this rare public rebuke now makes more sense: The U.S. senators’ letter was sent to Khan a week earlier, on April 24.
If Khan does issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in the coming days, it won’t be the first time he has gone after a controversial world leader over alleged war crimes – or been sanctioned for doing so. In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his alleged responsibility “for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children).” The Russian government responded by putting Khan on a “wanted” list.
I don't think I did a good job expressing myself, because I wholeheartedly agree with every point you made. Let me try again.
What I meant by environment was systems, rather than individual examples. I don't subscribe to the argument that art is wholly subjective, but it's mostly subjective. That being said, I'm absolutely not in the habit of criticizing someone because they liked something I disliked, or even thought was badly made. People's taste are different, develop according to their environments, and if you've found your niche, more power to you and to hell with everyone else. In this particular example, we're talking about films and TV series. They're inconsequential. (This is what I tried to imply with my last sentence in my previous comment.)
Obviously not every criticism need to be taken to heart, even if it's coming from good faith people. What I'm saying is, bad faith actors create an environment within particular systems that are much more consequential where people who're getting criticized can bundle up the good criticism with the bad and package it all as bad, hence escaping any sort of accountability. I'm not, and was not, talking about The Rings of Power when I make this point. It'd be obnoxious of me to demand accountability (what would that even mean?) for the content of a series, because it's entertainment. I didn't like it but some people did. Since I didn't like it, I'll either give it another chance (I will) or move onto something else. That's simple and not important. What I was trying to touch on is how a similar dynamic is prevalent in other environments that are much more consequential, like politics, because the same people who criticize The Rings of Power for having "too many Black people" are mostly the same people who think Libs of TikTok is the greatest source of journalism since I. F. Stone or something.
I hope I was able to express myself more clearly this time. I apologize for the initial confusion. Talking in abstract concepts, given that English is not my native language, is not my strongest suit.