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This idea was inspired by Sabrina's album, emails I can't send.
One of the biggest things you have to deal with as an artist is the interpretations that you get on your work. These can be both good and bad. It seems nowadays anybody can take something you said and twist it to mean whatever they want it to mean. They can take your words out of context, and they often do. This happens to popular artists, especially. Fans took one word from a lyric of Olivia Rodrigo's and assumed that one word, "blond" was talking about Sabrina Carpenter, and then they use it to either villainize Olivia, or to villainize Sabrina.
I recently had a situation where someone read into one of my own posts something that was not even remotely there. It was all based on one word. They took this one word out of context and used it to villainize.
Unfortunately, this isn't just common among artistry, it's particularly common in religions, particularly ones that emphasize the infallibility or inerrancy of that Scripture, or its unchanging nature. This leads us into religious Fundamentalism. It's not just religious Fundamentalism, however, that we must contend with. There is also *negative Fundamentalism* - a fundamentalism in direct opposition to the fundamentals of the religious fundamentalists. They both are rigid in interpretation. They neglect the bigger picture of words and interpretation so they can focus in on cherry-picking the small details that have just enough ambiguity outside of their context to validate what they already think.
When people think of Open Source, or Free Software, they tend to think of the Open Source Initiative, or the Free Software Foundation. Why shouldn't they? The narrative that has been pushed is that Free Software came first and then Open Source followed as some more lenient movement away from Free Software. Of course, as with religious fundamentalism, this misses the entire context of history. Open Source software predates Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond. They did not create Open Source software or Free Software. Passing the source code along with software releases was common, especially in Universities. There is this implication when this period is talked about, and this includes on Wikipedia, that before the 80s this was Free Software, not Open Source software. The reality is it doesn't really matter what we call it if it meant the same thing, which it did. The software at that time was often allowed to be modified, taken, and used in commercial settings, which would be completely against the entire idea of GPL, which is copyleft, that is, unless you kept the same license.
Being specific in how we talk is very important in conveying the right message that we want to convey. Too much ambiguity leads to misunderstandings and potential harm (socially and otherwise). This is most important when we complain about the things that are wrong, or when we are critiquing something. I can't help but continue to find that a lot of people in the unix/linux space are too broad when they criticize Microsoft, sometimes to the point of inaccurately accusing them of things. For example, Windows 10 and 11 have a search bar in the task bar that, when typed into, will search out to Bing. Many people have problems with that in terms of privacy, and it's absolutely valid to want to be able to turn that feature off. What is *not* valid is claiming that Windows is a keylogger because of it. That is so broad that is crosses the line into inaccuracy.
Paranoia is a dangerous thing, and it has become common in society in this moment in time. Paranoia leads to anger, the victim syndrome, and apocalytic thinking. Paranoia is why religious fanatics feel the need to take over their country or instill a Dictator to protect them from the "relativists" and "communists". Paranoia is why the extreme left feels the need to squash and kill all freedom of religion. Paranoia is dangerous...
Which is why people need to be checking their paranoia-tendencies with hard facts. For example, there is this idea being spread through many people that your phones are somehow tracking everything you are saying. Here's the reality:
1. You would notice if audio is being sent constantly over your network because your data usage will be up very high.
2. Google, Amazon, and Facebook, etc., don't have the computer power or capacity to sift through months of audio for billions of users, in hundreds of languages.
3. Even if they tried, it would probably not be cost-effective, and most of the information would be useless.
4. You would have to have multiple companies in on this conspiracy, as your phone's operating system has permissions that are intended to protect you against unwanted spying, say, from Facebook.
5. Your focus on audio is blinding you to what's actually happening, which is that Facebook is connecting your search and view history to that of your friends in their recommendations system. *That* is how they are spying on you, not through your microphone. You are willingly giving them this information by literally using their app to view posts. They use what you view to recommend those same things to your Facebook friends. This is a much smarter and more cost-effective strategy of making money than trying to process billions and billions of hours of audio, translating that into text, and then analyzing that text for the company names that are in their ads system.
Don't use complex sentences when they aren't needed, and don't use big words if you don't understand them. It's really as simple as that. Getting your message across is what is important, not sounding smart.
Clarity is very important. Language exists to communicate with other people, so you need to use language that other people understand. You don't speak Spanish to someone you know doesn't speak Spanish. Grammar isn't just some made up restriction that is meant to be used to penalize people. It's there so people understand what you are saying. Fortunately, natural language usually has redundancy in cases of interferrence, performance issues, or even competence issues (note that these are the linguistic terms, performance and competence, and they are not meant to have negative connotations).
When you are providing instructions or a summary of what led up to a situation, don't leave parts out that are necessary to understand the full context of what happened. This is an extremely important one that people trip up on all of the time when they report bugs to software. The developers end up having to hand-hold them into getting them to describe the exact steps that they took so that the developers have some inkling of an understanding of what the context of the situation even is to begin with. If you want to know why telemetry data is used by so much software, it's because of this. Communication between software developers and users is challenging, because either users are not being clear by missing details, or developers are not being clear by using technical language.
So, this is something I frequently think about, and I just can't understand other people's perspective on this. People like to hurl this at someone during arguments as some weird way of villainizing them, by claiming that they think they are always right about what they think. The problem? Everyone thinks they are always right about their opinions, or they would not have those opinions. Why would you have an opinion that you think is wrong? That doesn't make any sense. I'll leave it at this.
This is another thing that I just personally cannot understand - the idea that people just throw out opinions in a conversation for fun without knowing what they are talking about. The common response to challenges of their opinion is that they weren't serious about it. Uh, what?! If you aren't serious about it, then why the hell are you over here defending your position for the past hour? That doesn't make any sense. Why would you talk about what you know that you don't know?
I expect people to talk about the things that they think they know, and I expect them to think that they are right about these things, because that, to me, is what is rational - you don't talk about the things you know you don't know, and you don't hold opinions that you know are, or think that they could be, wrong!
This is going to be a controversial take. The problem is politics has gotten so mixed up that there are now social conservatives who are atheists and who hate Muslims, while there are religious people who embrace LGBTQ+ people, recognize the existance of global warming, believe in modern science and modern biblical interpretation, and who are social liberals. What you know about right and left is mostly wrong. I have a longer article on this that I haven't published, but I will perhaps in the future. What was once a focus on individual freedom has now become socially conservative and, frankly, just deplorable because libertarians emphasize their own freedoms at the expense of morality and social justice.
Let's just say that there are two extremes, and the two extremes push their own agendas on each other, overgeneralize people, use literal/fundamentalist itnerpretive methods, take words out of context, and have a shallow knowledge of history. The problem is the extreme left are not the people who support LGBTQ+ people, they are not the feminists, they are not the activists that work to help the poor, racial minorities, women, or LGBTQ+ people - they are the militant atheists who do not realize that the original militant atheists are social conservatives.
The explanation for this is simple: We went through a period of needing individual freedom and autonomy, and now we are in the period where individual freedom and autonomy needs to be balanced with Social Justice. What was once liberal/progressive has become conservative, but this did not stop the ever progressing liberal/progressive ideas. They continue to evolve and change as we as a society learn and grow, and that is a good thing.
Liberalism/Progressivism means to progress, but that doesn't always mean piling things on top, or continuing in the same philosophical direction. It means questioning the past and creating a balancing act between past extremes. This is a natural process that happens in every field. Feminists question and critique other feminists, not because they are anti-feminists, but because sometimes progressing means recognizing the bad in past progress as well as recognizing and strengthening the good in past progress. The same can be said for Queer Theory, Liberation Theology, and many other fields. For example, as a gay person myself, I critique Foucault's notion that sexual identity or sexuality is the result of power dynamics. Foucault liked to reduce everything down to power plays, and I believe that misses a lot of nuance.
I have a tendency of avoidance. It comes with the Social Anxiety and not liking confrontation. Instead of dealing with problems I escape into literature or tv shows. They are my comfort place. I can understand them. Their worlds are more consistant than the real world, and I am not putting myself at risk watching a TV show. But this means I frequently procrastinate, and some of my problems do not get solved.
I also avoid talking to people about my emotions. I don't feel safe talking about my emotions. I don't feel safe revealing my emotions to people in public. Only on rare occasions, with specific people, do I do this. This means I keep a lot inside, and I go on with my day pretending to others that I'm just fine when I am not. Because usually people do not care to know my feelings, or people will use them as a way to attack you. That's been my experience most of the time. It can sometimes take a lot for me to open up to people, depending on the circumstances.
I feel comfortable smiling and laughing in private, but I don't in front of other people. Having people know what I like or dislike, how I am feeling at any given moment - I do not like that. It feels like a violation of my privacy. I actually liked the masks during Covid for this very reason: I got to hide part of my face.
I will never get why the nicknames "man", "dude", or "bro" are used in general, but what I don't get even more is knowing that someone is gay and using those terms for them anyways. Sure, some gay men actually do use these terms, but most of the gay people that I have been around do not talk like this at all. In fact the movie "bros" has this particular plotline where the main character actually makes fun of his love interest for using these terms with his friends. I just do not get it.
But also, I don't get why nicknames like this are ever used. I never use them because they are just so awkward in the first place. When you are speaking directly to someone, they know you are speaking to them, so a nickname has no point. And in cases where you want to get their attention, just say their name! We have names for a reason!
But this is most likely just a result of my awkwardness, I suppose. I say this all, and yet I actually don't mind being called "bud". Yes, I'm contradictory.
Software development has gotten too political and fundamentalist: Don't support Microsoft or you're a traitor! Open Source is for the people who want to take other people's code without credit, or for companies to exploit smaller programmers! You're dumb for choosing to give your private data away to Google! Open Source is a threat! We can't let the mainstream in or they will ruin this place! GPL is communism! You're wrong for wanting compensation for your work! Everyone should be using ed and gawk or they aren't real programmers! The people who use terminals are stuck in the past! Don't reinvent the wheel! The wheel was reinvented multiple times! Rust sucks! Rust is the best programming language ever! Use the right tools for the job! No, use Unix tools for *every* job! Vim is faster! No, emacs is! No, VSCode is! VSCode is too slow and uses web crap! At least VSCode isn't ancient and antiquated! Language servers are so helpful! Language Servers? Who needs that crap! I don't need no IDE fluff, I'm a *real* programmer! The people who use syntax highlighting and other IDE stuff clearly don't have good memories! Plan before you code! No, code as you plan! Data-Driven Development! No, Test Driven Development! No, Entity-Driven Development! No, Declarative Programming! No, Object-Oriented Development! The only Truth is Functional Programming! Only fools use purely Functional Programming! Only uneducated idiots use outdated Procedural Languages! OOP was twisted by Java, the True OOP is Smalltalk! OOP has been terrible from the beginning! No, Simula was the first OOP language, and was more successful than that Smalltalk crap! Bet you idiots can't do Brainf*ck! Clean Code!!! Optimized Code! No, Unit Tested Code! What are these stupid Code of Conducts!? Let's just Not Be A Jerk, that's my "Code of Conduct"! These CoCs are just Corporate liberals tyring to persecute us by making them ambiguous enough that they could fire anyone at any minute for any reason! Multics was trash, was slow, was written solely by Ken Thompson, completely failed, and didn't offer anything to computer history! Unix was terribly designed! The only thing I stole from Multics was the hierarchical filesystem! Unix invented time-sharing! Microsoft stole DOS! Windows has always been buggy and has crashed, but I've never had one single bug or crash from Linux ever, because Linux never crashes or bugs out! System libraries are the best thing ever, keep disk space dramatically lower, and are great for security! No, they are horrible for security and one update could break the whole system! That's why we have AppImages! AppImages? You should be using Snap! Ew! Canonical has turned corporate!
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