@sonhousesaid @Sleepyguy same here. My testers went I got only two wrongπ
Extra. I guess we have to PM calls, eh. I have been trying to figure out how to put my 80 meter wire up, even though it is half that, I only have 120 feet diagonally and need 130 or so. My house is in the way, big sucker, three story colonial from 1880 and trees in front are some 60 feet up but I tried everythin ...[text shortened]... y USCF is near the same as RHP rating here.
I seem to remember ONE time actually beating an 1800π
@sonhousesaid @sh76 So was that FMF did that? I would not be surprised. I assume he or whoever it was just had you come out as Jewish. OMG You are a JEW? If I had known I would never have talked to youπ BTW, I lived in Jerusalem for 3 years so that WAS a jokeπ
Did whoever it was give out your real name and address and home photo from Google? If so I would bet it was FMF doxing you.
...[text shortened]... versaries here. Me, my heritage is Irish, I carry my emotions on my sleeve. They do get my Irish up.
It wasn't FMF. I got to know FMF a bit years ago on other platforms and he's really a nice guy. I don't know why he did that to you, but I would never assume he would do something like that.
I do have a suspicion that it was a specific forum regular using a pseudonym handle (is that a redundancy?) but I have no evidence, and that person is no longer a forum regular anyway.
I only ever stumbled on one real identity in these Forums - PinkFloyd.
I asked him "How is {location}?" And he said, "How did you know that?"
I never told anyone, though. That wouldn't be cricket.
A couple of times I've basically given away my identity. Once, after I did so, Sleepyguy pm'ed me to lecture me about not giving away my identity on this forum. I poo-poohed it, thinking that it was no big deal.
Then, about a year later, I mentioned in some random post that I was Jewish, and got 5 pm's from the same nut about what he was going to do to me, how much he hated my kind and the like.
@spruce112358said The Golden Age of Debates... 2009.
US Debt to GDP ratio stood at 82% - about $12 trillion. Today we stand at 120% and inflation has become a problem. As one would predict. Keep inflating the money supply and inflation happens - it's impossible to stop.
See... I knew you were a closet conservative. π
@sonhousesaid @sh76 If you say soπ I added my bit about D64 too in an edit.
The reason I call Trump the fascist orange antiChrist is it is well known he IS the greatest threat to democracy we have had in over one hundred years.
No question she was intelligent, but was not interested in any conviviality or banter. She was just interested in burying you in a mountain of argument and insult. A "bit acerbic" is a massive understatement. There was a poster long ago named zeeblebot who would mostly post long copy and pastes and little else. But at least he showed some humanity and did joke around now and then. D64 merely behaved like ChatGPT if you told it to be hostile and insulting. Even when she did "joke around" it felt like a computer simulation of joking around. No doubt it was not her fault, as people with ASD don't realize they're being anti-social, but there's no question it sucked the life out of the forum.
@sonhousesaid @sh76 All well and good but FMF did me dirty VERY dirty. I was in a conversation with an Aussie ham, amateur radio dude if you don't know what being a ham is, I mentioned my ham call sign in a conversation I thought I was having with that lady down under.
Well the great FMF took my call sign, looked it up, not a huge problem to do, then posted my real name, my real address ...[text shortened]... though for me nothing outside of RHP hapened.
So I don't miss that assswipe FMF in the slightest.
Nobody should dox people in this forum. That was the wrong thing to do.
@kmax87said I think people were definitely more self aware and would acknowledge that there were other points of view that were also valid. So it happened occasionally but it happened.
Even you used to be much more deliberately and humorously mischievous (and mysterious, at times).
I hope you don't mind my saying so, but your RHP persona was neutered, either by age or by the D64 era, or both.
Back in 2010/2011, although there was plenty of nonsense and mudslinging as well, people were interested in real conversations.
Now it's mostly "you're a freak" this and "your orange God" that. There are still some good conversations, but they're buried in garbage.
Today, I think people actually sound dumber on this forum than they are in real life. Averagejoe is probably a smart guy in real life, but he gets to sound like a broken record here. Sonhouse is probably a very smart guy in real life, but he just sounds apoplectic much of the time here.
The loss of FMF on this board (he still is on other boards on this site, but won't come here for some reason) was enormous. Love him or hate him (and there was more of the latter), his savage one-liners and wry wit lent an air of frenemy banter.
Then the D64 era (which lasted a long time) just sucked all the life out of the board. Suddenly, instead of a bunch of reasonably bright people slinging yo mama jokes while occasionally arguing seriously, the forum was one big exercise in fighting with AngryGPT.
The forum can recover, but we need more threads like this where people talk on a personal level, not just "fu k Reagonomics" or "libs r turds"
Getting back people like FMF and Melanerpes and Teinosuke would also help, if possible.
@spruce112358said @sh76, I was intrigued to find this post in Thread 134753 in your profile:
RHP Supreme Court
11 Oct '10 21:15
In all honesty, Mel would probably be a better fit than I due to his lack of partisanship; but of course, that very factor means he'd never win the primary! π
My tripartisan Court, putting aside myself for the moment:
Lean right:
Spruce112358
...[text shortened]... hatever happened to whodey? He would be happy as a pig in ... this incarnation of the Debates Forum.
@mott-the-hooplesaid "Yesterday, the Biden administration continued their attacks on the private sector option for seniors on Medicare, Medicare Advantage. This is the second cut in two years. This latest round of cuts will cost seniors an extra $33 per month. That’s a $396 per year rate increase for a cohort largely on fixed incomes and still reeling from terrible inflation. Medicare Adv ...[text shortened]... . [/b]
@spruce112358said "The poll aggregation and evaluation site 538, part of ABC News, dropped the right-wing polling firm Rasmussen Reports from inclusion in its polling averages and forecasts."
"The decision comes after months of consideration that broke into public view in June. At that point, G. Elliott Morris, ABC News’s editorial director of data analytics and 538 lead, presented Ras ...[text shortened]... the change this week."
@spruce112358said I'm not trying to be flippant. I'm just saying the missing data is intractable - even for the best statisticians.
You have to get an estimate of how the people who you FIRST chose randomly to call but refused to answer would have responded. There are ways, but they are complicated and expensive and most pollsters don't bother - they just call someone else.
News ser ...[text shortened]... w poll, regardless of the quality, so there is nothing in it for pollsters to make it more accurate.
And you think that polling agencies such as Sienna, the WSJ and CBS don't know these things? You think they don't care about accuracy? They just want to sell their polls?
@spruce112358said Well - here's the problem. Surveys are only of willing respondents.
I'm voting for Biden. And I'm not willing to answer those surveys! I've ignored 4 or 5 so far. I'm not interested - maybe I'm never going to be interested. Apparently Trump voters are more interested - fine.
That's the missing data problem they have.
And no, Biden doesn't have to cheat. He's alr ...[text shortened]... know Roger Stone is FEVERISH with plans of how to cheat, though. Let's see what he comes up with...
Dismissing all polling data with one flippant wave based on your own theory is borderline childish. The people that run these polls have access to the same guesses about human nature you have and they do everything that they can to correct for them. Granted, some pollsters are biased and others are incompetent. But on the whole, polls tend to be pretty good predictors.
A LOT can change between now and November, of course. But dismissing polls that show Trump with a (modest) advantage because you came up with a one sentence argument that polling in general is a useless pursuit is akin to putting your head in the sand.