So it looks like I've managed to free myself from eXtwitter.

So it looks like I've managed to free myself from eXtwitter.

From their point of view, I suppose, I've managed to get my self in eXtwitter jail.

Some joker was handing out a lot of inane insults to anyone who disagreed with him, and his "friend" congratulated him. And he bragged that it was "fish in a barrel".

Really inane insults. Like 

We say it's so, and we are always right, so you're dumb!!!!

level inane. And worse.

Just to remind anyone who reads this, "fish in a barrel" is short for something along the lines of 

It's as easy as for me as shooting fish in a barrel.

 So I responded with 

So you think it's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, do you?

Well, you just shot yourself in the face.

Good thing your ammunition was only paintballs.

Except I abbreviated a bit:

"fish in a barrel".

Shot yourself in the face.

Good thing it was a "paintball"

Even in full grammar, yeah, it's pretty savage criticism. I acknowledge that. But a breech of rules? Abusive? Violent? Compared to the usual insult fest?

And apparently eXTwitter has some automatic bad language recognizer that can't parse English tenses and (not surprisingly) can't parse metaphors, and flagged it, automatically freezing my account. Said it was violent and abusive.

What?

If I had said

Go shoot yourself in the face!

that would be violent and abusive. But you have to be unable to parse past tense to read it that way.

I suppose the very topic of "shooting" is a dangerous topic, but, if that's the case, how is "fish in a barrel" allowed? Unless the bot is so illiterate as to not know where the expression "fish in a barrel" comes from. Maybe it associates the phrase with fesikh, or maybe with kingyo sukui. Or maybe it just has no semantic linkage for phrases at all.

Then it sent me an automated email telling me that, if I wanted to be a good little eXtwitterer and get my account back, I could delete the offending post.

Or I could appeal, but the language style (I fun my computer in Japanese.) indicated that appeals are frowned upon.

So I tried an appeal, but the whole process was in Japanese, leaving me unclear as to whether to use English or Japanese, and the appeal itself is length-limited like eXtwitter is, and whatever human examined my appeal apparently had just as much problem parsing English grammar and metagrammar as the automated gadget, or maybe just decided she (or he) didn't like my point of view.

So my first appeal was rejected.

Now, I will acknowledge, when people make inane comments at the level I am describing here, it's probably wisest to assume they can't parse abbreviated grammar, can't deal with strong metaphors, etc.

And since eXtwitter conversations tend to descend quickly to that level of inanity, I should not use abbreviated grammar, and I should choose less strong metaphors, unabbreviated, like 

You just shot yourself in the foot.

Although I'm not sure I want to hope eXtwitter's auto-nanny 'bot is capable of recognizing that's a metaphor, either. How do you teach a 'bot what metaphors mean?

But, as a metaphor, the problem with this hypothetically easy target game is 

• one, it destroys barrels of fish;
• two, salt water and fish fragments and possibly barrel fragments tend to splash back at the wielder of the gun;
• and, three, if there's enough water, the fish are swimming and the water gets in the way. You're not really guaranteed to hit the fish unless they are dead and packed fairly tightly, and, if they are packed tightly, fish fragments really splash all over.

And fish fragments turn smelly really quickly.

So, you get wet, covered with fish guts, and quite possibly injure yourself from barrel flack. 

And your face is the part of you that is most likely to get the splashback.

So,if you make a habit of shooting fish in a barrel, you're quite likely to shoot yourself in the face.

And if you make a habit of confusing paintballs with bullets -- or with fish, well, ...

Anyway, ...

Yeah, if I value my eXtwitter account, I would swallow my pride and say, all the above is not a reason to have to have my account frozen. 

Even if it amounts to giving in to the eXtwitter nannies and letting them continue believe they don't really have to think to do their jobs.

But, you see, it's been about a week, they haven't replied to my second appeal, and my account is still frozen, and ...

I've been significantly more productive and happier with life over this past week.

No useless arguing with people who aren't interested so much in arguing as asserting that they, themselves, are the rightest of the right. Or the baddest of the bad or whatever. It would allow me much more effective use of my time, and much less need to be exasperated with how so many people seem to be satisfied with living uninspired and uninspiring lives.

I'm not sure I want back on eXtwitter.

If I do, though, I need to commit myself to a different approach. Telling people how wrong they are is a fool's game.

[JMR202410040632 addendum:] 

I'm inclined to delete the post, and get back on just long enough post the above as my final post, and turn my back to eXtwitter permanently.

Microblogging really isn't appropriate for anything but headlines and vanity. 

People try to use it for 'blogging, dialog, and such, but the format is too short, and the threading is too opaque. 

You really can't have a conversation, much less follow it. The most you can do is pretend to argue, but since it's about making short vanity pronouncements. It's all one-way.

And the moderation is the same -- their way or the highway. That's the archetype of abusive relationships.

It's not unreasonable to assert that eXtwitter is one of the root causes of the current fractious and tendentious political climate.

Could Elon fix eXtwitter? Could he make it a medium of actual eXchange?

Hard to say. Make microblogging an index to other services? 

Maybe have it offer to switch to a full blogging platform (WordPress?) when a reply starts exceeding the microblogging limit? 

Maybe let it index out to a dialog platform (something like slashdot) when the thread gets longer than five replies?

Definitely get the moderators to learn how to parse and communicate in English and the language they are supposed to be supporting. Arrange for on-the-job training, if necessary. Management probably needs to have the same kind of training, though, is my guess.

in it's present form, it just needs to go away. 

[JMR202410040632 addendum  end.]

 [JMR202411052002(JCST) addendum:]

Let's see if I can steer clear of the factionalism this time.

I feel like I'm being forced to "admit" the post was somehow against their rules. 

But they have not responded to my requests for a review. Been more than a month, and I need to update my profile.

Or maybe just delete the account and really get myself free of the twits. . Something to think about.

[JMR202411052002(JCST) addendum end.]

You Don't Have to be a Sexpert to Think Meaningfully about Sex

You don't have to try every kind of alcoholic beverage to know that people who drive under the influence tend to cause accidents in which other people die.

You don't have to try every kind of tobacco to understand that second-hand smoke is harmful to yourself. Nor do you have to have first-hand smoking experience to watch the effects of tobacco on your coworkers.

I personally can tell you a lot about that. It's one of the reasons I left the software industry. Watched too many companies get dragged to the ground because management and the board of directors had the engineers so focused on getting the job done that they failed to make sure that the job should even be done, much less that it was being done correctly. (Witness Bruce Schneier waxing eloquent on Crowdstrike.) 

And one of the tools engineers use to focus themselves on deadlines instead of safety is tobacco. Coffee is another. And pornography.

You don't have to experience every possible sexual position to understand that sexual position is not what sex is all about.

And you don't have to have sex with every person on the planet, or even just every attractive person you meet, to understand that quantity is not better than quality. Neither do you need to have sex with a whole lot of people to understand that carefully sculpted and painted-on beauty can hide some serious hideousness behind the endomorphin-induced haze.

Sometimes it's easy to see a whole lot of trees and miss the forest.

I'm not an expert on sex like Masters, Johnson, and Kolodny. But I have observed people getting hung up on sex and gender for over half a century, and with so much public focus on the topic these days, I'm re-exploring my previous analysis and understanding of sex.

Sex is an especially difficult topic, since even talking about it seems to make those endogenous (naturally-produced) opiates flow, and the flow alters the brain processes.

Even a single can of beer is said to be enough to cause professional drivers to become sloppy in the places they need to be not sloppy, and yet make them feel that their driving improves under the influence of just that little beer.

In much the same way that it's probably not wise to try to evaluate your ability to drive under the influence when you are under the influence, it's probably not wise to evaluate the effects of sex on you while you are under the influence of those natural peptides.

Unfortunately, being human, living in bodies that naturally produce those peptides, it can be nigh impossible to escape their influence.

Maybe it's best to admit up front that our perceptions on sex are going to be bent.

Since it's probable that the cold light of morning never really comes, maybe it's best to try to reexamine our impressions, logic, and conclusions under the influence of different groups of those naturally produced peptides.

This may turn into a short series of blog entries behind my modesty barrier. If so, I'm inviting everyone along for the ride.

Kakaa Denka （かかあ天下）Wikipedia Page Translated with Google's Help

Feeding the Japanese Wikipedia page on かかあ天下 (Kakaa Denka) through Google Translate produced a remarkably readable translation, if you interpolate some of the weirder translation artifacts. ("We", for some definition of "we", used to talk about "translationisms", but that bit of coinage has been usurped by some weirdness of its own, so I'll use the term "translation artifacts" here. It's probably more technically accurate anyway.)

Note that the Japanese Wikipedia page is flagged as having problems due to lack of reference material and evidence of personal research, or whatever that is in English.

Note also that this is the translation of the page as I am reading it now, and if the page itself is later edited, those edits will not be reflected here. 

(If someone else doesn't beat me to it, I guess I'll clean the translation up eventually and eventually add an English page for it myself. I wish I had more time to participate on Wikipedia.) (Cleaned-up translation below the results of Google Translate.)

Again, the Wikipedia page in question: 嬶天下 (Kakaa Denka)

Original output:

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Kakaa denka refers to a family where the wife's authority, power, and dignity exceed that of her husband.  

It is said to be a specialty of Joshu, along with ``Karakkaze.''  This is because the area once known as Joshu (Gunma Prefecture) had a thriving sericulture industry, and there were many households where the wife had higher economic power than the husband. On April 24, 2015, the Agency for Cultural Affairs announced that ``Kakaa Tenka - Gunma's Silk Story'' was selected as one of the first 18 Japanese heritage sites.

overview  

Originally, it meant ``a strong wife who protects the house (from winds, etc.) while her husband is away'' or ``My mother is the best in the world (hardworking)'', but it also means ``to protect my husband from the wind.'' It is most often used to mean ``strong wife'' and is sometimes used as an antonym for ``hushu kanpaku''.

Kakaa Tenka in Joshu  

The reason Kakaa Tenka is considered a specialty of Joshu (Gunma Prefecture) is that women in Joshu were responsible for the silk industry, including sericulture, silk spinning, and weaving, and had higher economic power than men. The word is used to describe active and hard-working Joshu women, based on impressions of Joshu's harsh weather environment, such as thunder and wind, and Joshu's harsh temperament (specific examples of prefectural characteristics #prefectural characteristics). .  

Kakaa Tenka as seen in ancient tales  

In archeology, the wife of Kamitsuke no Kimi Kanojo Katana (Kamitsuke no Kimi Kanojo Katana) is mentioned in relation to Kakaa Tenka. Cornered by the Tohoku Ezo, Katana is now weak, so they give him a drink and give him encouragement, while at the same time holding a bow and making a sound on the string, they use their wit to give the opponent the illusion that a large army has arrived. I helped. Judging from the custom of tooth extraction during the Kofun period, it is thought that women could become the head of a household until the 5th century, and the strong position of women is thought to be a vestige of this.

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First pass cleanup, with original Japanese for reference:

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かかあ天下（嬶天下）（かかあでんか）とは、妻の権威・権力・威厳が夫を上回っている家庭を指す。
Kakaa denka (かかあ天下・嬶天下) is a term in para-colloquial Japanese for family structure in which the wife's authority, power, and dignity exceed that of her husband. 

[I'll note here that, in my understanding, it's broader than just family-specific structure, and should be legitimately considered a local social structure in which the women's authority, power, and dignity exceed that of the men.]

「からっ風」と並んで、上州名物と言われる。かつて上州と呼ばれた地域（群馬県）は養蚕業が盛んであり、妻の経済力が夫より高い家庭が多かったことによる。2015年（平成27年）4月24日、文化庁は日本遺産の最初の18件の一つとして「かかあ天下 ―ぐんまの絹物語―」を選んだと発表した。
It is said to be a special characteristic of the Jōshū (上州) area, in association with karakkaze (からっ風 [extreme drying/freezing, downburst leeside winds from the nearby Jōetsu region mountains]). This is because the area once known as Jōshū (primarily Gunma Prefecture) had a thriving sericulture industry, and there were many households where the wife had greater economic power than the husband. On April 24, 2015 (Heisei 27), the Agency for Cultural Affairs announced that Kakaa Denka - Gunma's Silk Story was selected as one of the Eighteen Primary Cultural Properties of Japanese Heritage [English page here].

概要 Overview

本来は「夫が出かけている間の家を（からっ風などから）守る強い妻」や「うちのかかあは（働き者で）天下一」の意味であるが、「夫を尻に敷く強い妻」という意味で使われることがほとんどで、亭主関白の対義語として用いられることがある。
Basically, kakaa denka indicates "a strong wife who protects the household (from the strong karakkaze downburst winds, etc.) while her husband is away", or means "the lady of our house is the best (most hardworking) in the world''. But it also generally carries the semantic of "a strong woman who takes the lead" [or, literally (but politely), "... who positions her husband behind her backside", thus, taking the brunt of the wind], and is sometimes used as an antonym for teishu kanpaku [loosely, Japanese version patriarchy, or the tradition that "the lord of our house is the emperor's representative"]. 

上州のかかあ天下 Kakaa Denka in Jōshū

かかあ天下が上州（群馬県）の名物とされる理由として、上州の女性は養蚕・製糸・織物といった絹産業の担い手であり、男性よりも高い経済力があったことがあげられる。雷や空っ風といった上州の厳しい気象環境や、気性の荒い上州人気質（県民性#県民性とされる具体的な例）に対する印象から、活発で働き者の上州女性を表す言葉として用いられる。
A reason given for considering kakaa denka a special characteristic of Jōshū (Gunma Prefecture) culture is that the women in Jōshū took the lead in the silk industry, from sericulture to silk spinning and weaving, and had greater economic power than the men. From impressions of the thunder and karakkaze winds typical of the harsh climate of the Jōshū area, and from the rugged disposition of the people of Jōshū (see Specific Examples of Personality Characteristics Considered Typical of the Various Prefectures -- 県民性#県民性とされる具体的な例), kakaa denka is used to describe the energetic and hard-working women of Jōshū.

古代説話に見られるかかあ天下 Kakaa Denka as seen in tradition

考古学では、上毛野君形名（かみつけのきみ かたな）の妻が、かかあ天下との関連で引きあいに出される。東北蝦夷に追い詰められ、弱腰になっている形名に対し、酒を飲ませ、叱咤激励すると共に自分達は弓を持ち、弦を鳴らすことで、相手に大軍が来たと錯覚させる機知を行い、手助けをした。古墳時代における抜歯の風習からも、女性が家長と成りえたのは、5世紀までと考えられており、女性の立場が強いのはその名残とも考えられる。
In Japanese archeology, the wife of Kamitsuke no Kimi Katana (上毛野君形名) is brought up as an example of kakaa denka. When Katana is weakened and cornered by the Tohoku Ezo armies, she gives him sake for drink and a scolding for encouragment [and gathers and arms the women]. Using their wits, they help [turn the tide] by noisily lifting their bows and strumming the bowstrings to give the enemy the illusion that a great army has arrived. Also, based on customs of tooth extraction [dental work] during the Kofun period, it is thought that women could become heads of families through the 5th century [CE], and the tradition of strong women [in the Jōshū/Gunma area] is thought to be [corroborating] evidence of this.

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First clean-up pass complete.