Since new friends come (yay!) and old ones sometimes go (boo!), I think it might be helpful every now and again to just let people know what happens on my Wall most mornings. TL;DR: Be nice, shut me up if you want to, I post to inform & encourage discussion not necessarily to endorse. For a longer explanation, read on: Welcome to Alans News and Links - ANaL (pronounced Ah-nal of course, how else?). Thats the name my friends have given to this little mini-blog that I do every on my Wall. (If memory serves it was Cyle that came up with it but I could be wrong - it’s been a while). Most everything I post is public and can be seen by anybody on or off Facebook and Ill usually post about 10 or so items a day - your milage may vary. As such, you dont have to be my FB friend to see them and you can follow me from my home page. The subjects are all over the place, but you will often see items on science, politics, pop culture, religion and sociology. Two recurring concepts are the Robot Revolution - my name for the deployment of computerized technologies that are replacing humans, such as 3D printing, Google’s self-driving car or IBMs “Watson”; and the Road to Oligarchy, what I see as an ongoing slide away from Western democratic principles and towards massively greater income inequality and a shift of power in the service of the interests of the 1%. You can stop seeing my posts in your newsfeed anytime by just going to my home page and choosing “unfollow”. I very much encourage discussion on anything I post, from my friends or members of the general FB community. I ask that you be civil. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with anybody else’s position, it just means that you treat them with a minimal amount of decorum. Don’t be an asshole or a troll - posting crap just to provoke an emotional reaction. I you do you get one warning, then you will be blocked if you are not a FB friend. Thankfully over all the years I’ve only ever unfriended one person - though I have had a couple of others unfriend me. Also, if you’re going to comment on an item I’ve posted, I ask that you read the article first. My intro will sometimes bring up issues associated, but not directly related to the article at hand: the only way to get the full context is to look at the piece itself. The fact that I post an article does NOT mean that I agree with that position. For example, I am a political liberal but will often post pieces by conservative writers; I am Agnostic but will post religion-related articles quite frequently. I feel that it is important to get other points of view including - especially - those that are opposed to mine. A post isn’t an endorsement but is often an invitation to see, maybe even appreciate and discuss unfamiliar or alternative arguments. I know from Real Life or non-FB communications that there are a lot of “lurkers” - reading but not interacting. That is, of course, perfectly fine. It just pleasantly surprises me sometimes who you are :-) Ok, this has gone on long enough. Here’s your morning ANaL.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 09:45:42 +0000
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