Spunk-Monkey's blog

My sister-in-law used to be the gorgeous, quick-witted, well connected go-getter. She was a swimsuit model for a spell, has always loved animals, and is great with kids. In the ten years I've known her she's developed the chain-smoker's leather skin, sunken eyes, tired. She lives off of her unemployment insurance, won't apply for a job, spends all her money on alcohol and cigarettes, visits family just to use their laundry facilities or raid the fridge... everyone wants to help, but continuously they get burned. Ever opportunity she's provided gets wasted, and she continues to drive herself into a worse situation while crying "poor little me".

Why do i bring this up? Because today feels exactly like so may times when she stops by unannounced to visit (and raid the fridge). You can try to help, point out what is clearly in her best interest, arrange a job interview, give her AA info subtly or shake her and refuse any more money... but the result is the same. She goes through the motions and pretends to listen until the laundry is done. She always manages to convince even the most cynical that this time she really will make it to that AA meeting. But in the end: she's drunk again, has no job, is getting evicted, needs to borrow money, Lionel is on the radio, and Sam is having his last scheduled show.

Every call to AA brought variations of the same advice: don't help her. Stop doing anything for her; don't let her come over, arrange no help, change the locks if necessary. She has to discover her own rock bottom if she's every going to try and help herself. Until then, all we're doing is enabling her downward spiral.

It's time now to wash my hands of AAR. Until Sam gets a regularly scheduled show, i'm not listening. This has been too painful to watch over these years, and it's not getting any better. I'm not going to watch this happen to Thom and Rachael as well. AAR is dead to me, because it's proven to be dead to itself.

I'll still be around the blog, hoping to find news that AAR makes the right choice.

Cheers!
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Spunk-Monkey

A Troll's Guide to Blogging Effectively (or die trying)
or:
Just How Naïve Is Spunk-Monkey? I Mean Really?

I must preface this by saying that I do not presume to declare rules. So far as i know, these are NOT rules. I only recently dragged my ass up from lurker status, so just know that I only have as much authority as any other member. Probably less, in fact.

A lot has been discussed here about new members, and suspecting one or another as being a troll. I for one sure can't say who is or isn't; it's a slippery slope to judge anyone's intentions, but i suspect a few people are being mis-labeled. As long as a poster is not actively engaging in name calling, i would like to give him or her benefit of the doubt. Conversely, if a post is factually inaccurate or just fucking goofy, i'll respond to it as time permits. Therefore, on the premise that some people who post are in earnest and unjustly receiving the stink-eye, here's a handy list of ideas to keep yourself more welcome than not, in no particular order, suitable for framing or wrapping fish...:

Get to know people. Be social. First post? Say hello. Discover each other's personalities, posting habits, ideas, etc. Earn a little respect by showing a little respect. That doesn't mean you have to do a dance on everybody's birthday, but any shared forum is just an extended community. Remember that the reaction to a newbie anywhere is guarded, and largely based on first impression. Imagine if a stranger walked into your living room and told you that your opinion on this is or that is just plain wrong because talking-head "___" said so. I imagine you'd have a strong negative reaction as well. If you get to know others here, you'll probably find you like the people (when you agree or not). The more you like interacting with them, the more they probably like interacting with you. The best, most constructive debates are invariably among friends.

Tact. Be respectful. If someone makes an attack on you, the messenger rather than the message, try not to rise to it. Ignore it and remain on topic. In the end, unless the parties involved are known to be good friends, the insult-er will probably come off looking like a horse's ass whether that blogger "wins" the argument or not. So unless you know it's going to be taken in jest, it's probably not worth engaging in insults. I've experimented by engaging with unwarranted barbs to relatively respectful trolls, seeing if they would take it in jest, but it doesn't help. As it wasn't responded to in kind, i just looked like i was being a dick.

One huge reason for this is the most obvious tell: if someone joins the blog, immediately posts articles meant to get a rise out of others, but does not have enough affinity to chat or enjoy other's company, that's probably a troll. A genuine blogger enjoys the company of others here, and it shows.

Try and keep relatively on topic during a discussion. Trolls are notorious for scatter-shot postings that can't be taken seriously for the sheer number of logical fallacies they contain. It's a favorite of the conspiracy theorists, like that video about the World Trade Center being a controlled demolition. In it there are an incredible number of inaccurate and misleading proposals, each one put forward before the previous one can be honestly addressed. The final result gives an impression that it's irrefutable, when in reality it's just too tedious and time consuming to refute each point one at a time. Troll posts are often like this, and are usually ignored or responded to in the briefest of responses. The troll does a little dance thinking he won, when in reality he hasn't convinced anyone.

Consider your sources, as well as how others will consider them. Suppose you want to share smoking-gun proof about any issue, like: without provocation, candidate "A" just called candidate "B" a big fat doodie head. If your only source is someone with a detailed history of distortion and misdirection like Limbaugh, Coulter, Stossel, or anyone at FOX, it's almost guaranteed to be ridiculed. Find a reliable source for it; any mainstream journalist is a step, albeit a limited one. Footage or audio of it can provide some degree of evidence, but it's usually not very hard to fake or edit any footage to change context. And anyone can get something listen on Wikipedia, at least for a while. If, however, you can find corroborating reporting from someone you suspect is more widely respected by your target audience (like Seder, Maddow, FAIR, etc.) at least you will have something to build from. Sure, even Sean Hannity can tell the truth when it suits his purposes, but many sources are more known for dubious claims than verifiable accuracy.

Try not to be too suspicious of trolls. Some people might be returning trolls, but maybe not. We could play "who's who" all day, but without a lot of effort it's neither verifiable nor constructive. Personally, even if i knew someone had been banned for abuse but came back under a new name, i would like to extend the courtesy of a second chance (under a watchful eye, but still an honest chance). If they get banned again, so be it. But it's not worth the potential cost of harassing a newbie just becuase there's a similarity to a known asshole. If you suspect a troll, the SPIT rule does very well. If a blogger does have trollish intentions, engagement, confronting and even banning tends to just validate the troll. Ignoring a troll will make him feel unwelcome, smaller and more insecure. If you suspect a troll, it's usually not a good idea to call them out unless there's a particular fact that you can refute empirically and letting it stand unchallenged will fuel myth and misconception.

Brush your teeth. Nobody brushes or flosses like they should, as my intensive dental repairs can attest. It's just a good idea, and blogging is as good an excuse as any. And smile while you type.

Bottom-line for me: The blog only gets poisoned if we respond with poison or let trolls chase us away.

I'll stop here before i ramble on about the differences between FACT and OPINION, the incredible coolness of a person when they graciously admit to having been wrong, how dubious poll results can be, etc... but that's really the kind of difference that makes people interesting. Season to taste.

I'm sure there are many more ideas, and perhaps others would like to contribute?

Respectfully shutting the hell up now,
- your friendly neighborhood Spunk-Monkey

This setup works fairly well for me, and might for others interested in faster load times. And there are probably better methods, but this might give you some ideas to build on. And this should be especially useful to dial-up users.

First, install FireFox. It's a browser just like Internet Explorer, but it's written so anyone can add tools and plugins as they like. And you don't have to get rid of IE, it easily imports your bookmarks, and if you like, helps you feel like you’re helping to stick-it to Microsoft.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Once it's installed it's a good idea to use the import wizard to grab your bookmarks, passwords, etc from Internet Explorer.

In order to squeeze the most out of it, install some extensions or add-ons. Most are written by people who just wanted to add a feature somewhere, and they can be anything from managing your downloads to weather indicators to one that makes web pages look like they were written by the Swedish Chef. The more you install, the slower your computer will likely get. So here are the add-ons i use:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Adblock Plus
Most advertisements, at least those that are banners and animated graphics and such, are automatically ignored. Sometimes it will contact a site to get a list of known advertising management companies, which makes it possible to more provide more accurate blocking. You have the option to disable this feature for specific websites, which I do at places like progressive bloggers. I know that advertisements are important to many bloggers or other sites, so if i can handle it i'll disable it for them, let them get a little more advertising space. Make sure you grab the PLUS version. Adblock without the plus is an older version.

FasterFox
I had listed this as something i had found to be fairly useless but unobtrusive. Now I know better. And as we all know, knowing is half the battle. (Unless of course GIJoe is a fucking lyer...)

Flashblock
THIS is the crowning touch! With this baby installed, all flash based content (be it YouTube videos, animated banners, etc) are not loaded. Instead you get a polite little block of space with a flash logo in the middle. If you want to see it, just click-n-go. But when you refresh the page it is once again a polite frame of nothin'. Joy! You’ll find yourself enjoying Lucille for who she really is rather than the load times.

IE View
This is good to have, since occasionally some pages will not load appropriately. If you find a page that doesn’t work quite right, like the AAR stream, BlueRootsRadio, etc... if it's not behaving quite right in FireFox, click the link and it will launch that same page in IE. It’s the best of both worlds. And you can set it to automatically do this whenever you visit that page.

Talkback
It's just there when you install FireFox. I leave it de-activated. It causes no harm, but it's not really worth turning on unless you find your browser crashing.

If you have any questions, feel free to ping me at spunkmonkey2@gmail.com and i'll either help if i can or share your misery.

Cheers!
Spunk-Monkey