I can accept that. I don't want to cause you further grief and now, finally, I think we've dredged through this whole thing enough. I'm thankful for the friendship we had if only for a brief period and if there's every anything at some point in the future my profile, email, facebook, (...) is always open.

Be good, Rachel. ANd best of luck to you and Jake.

In reply to this comment by alien_concept:
As this has all been made public again (thanks rasch!) I thought i'd post my e mail to gwiz here for all to see, if they so wish to, or even give a shit.


OK, so I'm not going back to VS again, so thought it'd be easier to just e mail you.

I'm going to keep it as brief as possible. Firstly, me ever saying I could fall for you was a reaction to saying you liked me. It was flattery and a way of letting you down gently, as I followed it straight up with the facts about Jake. Not that I didn't find you adorable and hilarious and good fun to be around, I did. But if that offhand comment I made is what's carried any of this on, then I'm a fucking idiot, and again I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.

As far as you and rasch, I really have no more to say on the subject. I know how he has been with you, and I know how he has always been with me. I guess we just have to agree to disagree on his intentions and favourability. There will never be a point when I don't appreciate his friendship to me, even if I don't always agree with the way he goes about things. And as for thinking you deleted my comment and posting it again, well pfft, that was dumb. I decided to make it a PM, because I really didn't want to bring it all out in public again, give you at least the chance to reply to me and put it all to rest. I showed him what I'd written because he was mentioned. That is it. I'm sure him making a bit of a twat of himself is going to make you feel a tad smug!

As far as pretty much everything else goes, it's all 50/50 on who is telling the truth and I'm pretty sure the best course of action from now on is to converse with neither of you. One way or the other it's all a pointless headache I don't need. Jake was over it before it started, as always. I did feel you undermined us, but you explained that you never intended to do that and I happily accept that.

I'm glad to hear you have found a girlfriend. I hope it works out for you. Be good to her, listen to her and when she is being unreasonable, ignore it don't argue with it, it's a woman's right for having to bleed once a month. Good luck

Rae

Absolutely. We have conservation on land that replants trees as we cut down others and helps endangered populations regain a foothold and sets swaths of wilderness aside as protected land that cannot be developed on.

Besides trying to protect sea life like dolphins and wales, we do little of this in the oceans and it is about time. While corporations dredge the sea bed and strip whole areas clean for their resources and hundred mile wide piles of plastic bags and other garbage float around the ocean. Helping to replant a coral reef is an excellent start.

On a personal level I don't eat ocean fish accept on a very rare occasion. Even if that means missing out on some of my favorite foods and only saving them for a rare treat. I still have my salmon (fresh caught is the only way to go,) catfish and tilapia.

Don't ever take a vacation again, edd!

Your conclusion is basically the same as mine. I made mistakes, sure, but this was not in any shape or form the right way to handle it. Flaming out is the coward's way out, slamming the door and flipping the bird to everyone on the way - I've never done that and I aspire to never do that in the future either.

I don't want to paint myself the sole victim here, because obviously I'm not, but I did try to contact both bea, ivy and ac and while ivy did talk to me she didn't want to talk about that, and the two others completely ignored me - so I had no idea what to think. (Clarification: This was before the thing exploded. I've talked to both ac and ivy now and I think we dredged through it quite enough. We're on friendly terms again, or as much as we can be.)

Anyway, I hope ac finds her way back here at some point in the future and I think that ivy is still around too. What happened, happened, and couldn't have happened in any other way.

Lord knows I'm gonna be real damn careful before considering anyone my friend again.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
what the fuck, mate?

I have to leave the Sift for some 2 weeks and it's a whole new Siftpocalypse all of a sudden. Honestly - last time I took more than a week off, 3/11 happened.

I just finished sorting through all the shit that hit the fan while I was away, and for what it's worth, while I did sometimes think you might have been obnoxious and balancing on the edge of what's appropriate and not in your convos, particularly with members that could be easily upset AND while a particular episode in your adventures in Texas appears to have been extremely ill-advised, the sudden outbursts in a_c's thread and the lack of communication that lead to that were, without a doubt, NOT an appropriate response to whatever you did or did not do.

Anyway, I'm very happy to see that you haven't left the site and continue sifting videos. I find it weird that so many experienced members just up and leave like that. I couldn't. If I ever felt like I didn't like the direction the place was going, I'd start talking about it before long.

And really, let's look at the bright side - at least there's a lesson for everybody involved in this.

I'm actually of the opinion that you're the same troll with 2 accounts (at least.)

A troll is one who deliberately causes strife for attention or to incense. I argue to correct errors or to advocate what I feel to be a 'more correct' position. In this thread I've merely disproved the factually erroneous claim that Olberman is 'almost even' with Hannity in ratings. I've done so by pointing out basic facts in the very data cited by the ones making the false argument. I typically find that neo-libs prefer to not to be called out when they are inaccurate, but in no measure does that make me a 'troll'.

And heaven forfend that I be accused of being QM. I've noted that QM stoops to using profanities and sometimes gets incensed. I am not so mercurial or coarse. I consider such things to be the refuge of the intellectually defeated. Once a man is exhausted of logic with which to pursue an issue, they desperately puke out the filth of their true characters. It is a vain, sad attempt to remain engaged in a debate they have already lost by substituting reason with volume.

When you're literally a fountain of sparkling, pure intellect (such as myself) who operates from a position of superior reasoning, there is no need to dip into such cesspools. I allow others to dredge the noisome pond of ranting profanity with their mental slop buckets.

>> ^arekin:
Can rename the republican party to the douche bag party?


Only if you do the same to the democrats. Same group, same cut.

Then again, I don't think most people understand how political conventions work. You can propose just about anything, and every standing member can laugh your ass out of the hall over it too.

Maybe we can rename the video title to: "Olbermann dredging a partist ballot, while failing to understand conventions." Personally I don't think he's that stupid. He's just another flapping head.

"They can't be that stupid." KO, You vastly underestimate the depths of stupidity the GOP can dredge.

Anyone else getting sick of hearing "socialism" being bandied about as if it's a dirty word? Socialism != Communism no matter how hard the GOP tries to equate the two.

>> ^quantumushroom:
This Rush is more important:
The president is presiding over economic failure. The president is watching it, doing nothing about it. He's watching unemployment grow; he's watching the stock market plummet; he is watching people sign up for unemployment. The president of the United States is doing nothing to stop the downward spiral of this economy. He has no economic recovery plan. The truth is, the president of the United States and Rahm Emanuel, who, remember, said, "Crisis is too great a thing to waste." What does that mean? They want you suffering, they want you miserable, they want it worse, they want you rejecting conservatism. They want you rejecting capitalism. They want you turning to them in fear and desperation and angst for an immediate fix to the problem. They want you thinking you have no ability to fix your own problems. They think you have and they want you to have no ability to take care of yourself. So as the stock market now approaches minus 2,800 since Obama was elected, the statement today is to speed up the economic recovery, we're going to focus on health care. Ask yourself how that is going to get you your next job.


Why do I get the impression that that quote and that opinion about that quote comes from a conservative blog? I don't know what he meant, and I could not be bothered dredging up a link for something so irrelevant but if I had to guess it would be something along the lines of creating an opportunity to fund the development of massively underfunded and otherwise crumbling infrastructure by employing those who would have been otherwise left jobless by the layoffs in the construction industry.

How could you possibly think that worsening the situation now will cause people to blame conservatism. They will blame interventionary policy for failing. How could you possibly say that the US president has no recovery plan, have you been living under a rock? You may disagree with it but that does not disprove the former.

How has complete not-intervention combined with consistent tax cuts on the wealthy worked out for you in the past 8 years?

Let me turn your last point back around, how does improving health care not create a more dynamic and competitive work force in the long term and strengthen economic growth?

While thinking about the new siftquisition system, I thought it might be a good idea to have something in between suspension and ban. Maybe "demote", whereby the accused are simply stripped of their stars and/or otherwise handicapped?

BillO wouldn't have been a threat to anyone if he was reduced to a probie. No discard, no downvote... he'd have to become productive again first before he was able to be disruptive.

And since we normally work our way up to a ban with at least 1 suspension beforehand, why not require a suspension before banning even becomes an option? First SQ results in a suspension, second in a demotion, third in a ban, rather than letting the jury select the punishment? Again, I'm concerned with mob-mentality in the new system. Feels like it's only a matter of time before an unpopular user is banned for a minor offense out of spite.

As for choggie, I don't miss him. I never saw any value in his incoherent talented comments. No matter the topic, his comment boiled down to claiming that his eyes were opened and the rest of us were blind, usually by way of some childish masturbation metaphor.

Most of his videos seemed to be dredged rather than sifted.

Then he became an asshole to boot. I wouldn't stop him from returning, but I'm not anxious for it either.

Lily's at 17 votes, promoted moments ago. And 1009 views.

I recommend people post the before/after counts for their promotes here for the next few days to see what the actual effect is (or alternatively we could politely ask Lucky to dredge up the stats, but that would probably be a small bitch to code)... coding would probably be the most efficient way to quantify the change - run it for two weeks under this regime, compare to two weeks under old regime, see which system gets more votes. Two weeks reduces the "I'll promote crap" factor as anybody cranky enough to game the system won't be able to break the test too much (hopefully).

Incidentally - I pimped the Lily vid I promoted because I found it cool that the thumbnail shows her on a bike going from left to right. Which, I imagine, will be the order that the thumbnail takes as it "rides" through the five slots.

I do believe some kind of "+" or "maximize vid" option would be helpful, though!

Thus the relevance and credibility of the United Nations reaches a new low. Who'd have thunk it possible?

Turtle Bay should be dredged and given back to the sea.

I guess you already know my suggestion from the other night! A 'random selection of submitted videos' page. For when really bored people like me at work have already dredged through the entire queue and new sifts.

Okay, I'm not sure, but I think I'm the only person here who actually works for Wal-Mart.

The minimum wage in Idaho is the same as the federal, which now is 6.55 an hour. Yet I started at 9.10 an hour, and I received a 40 cent raise within two months. If I move to overnights, I will receive a 1.50 an hour shift differential, putting me at 11 dollars an hour. Not too bad for the cost of living here. And I didn't need a union to negotiate that for me.

In the video they warn of Wal-Mart's downsizing of its 401K and profit sharing incentives. My answer...so what? Why would anybody put their entire 401K into one company? Didn't Enron's employees learn that the hard way eight years ago? And besides, everyone in my store just received a 250 dollar profit-sharing bonus for passing the sales goal. Once again, no union was needed.

About the politicking...I don't care if someone from corporate tells me who to vote for. They won't fire me for voting for Obama, because 1) I don't need to tell them about my vote and 2) I'm not voting, anyway. Doesn't matter to me in the slightest bit. And besides, if they fire me for that I'd sue them, and they know it. They are much more afraid of a lawsuit than they are of a union.

And about the overtime? If you get it, they have a talk with you about it, then remind you to leave early next time. Some of my friends that work there, if they have an hour of overtime, will be told to take a two-hour lunch. That isn't to cheat them out of overtime, because they aren't supposed to be scheduled that many hours, anyway. Don't think of it as Wal-Mart saving money; think of it as workers not being overworked. And in the end, nobody complains about a two-hour lunch, anyway.

Oh, and the ending, with the guy talking about Wal-Mart employees starving at their lunchtimes? I don't know if he's working at the Ethiopian Wal-Mart, but I've never seen anybody go hungry because they don't earn enough. 17K a year is below the poverty level for a family of four? Yeah, if that's the only income for your family! I work with a woman who has five kids, and she does just fine. You know why? Because her husband also works full-time. It's called "family planning," and if you're starving to death in the break room...wtf is wrong with you?

--
I don't care for Wal-Mart much, but that's just because I hate dealing with its customers all day at the deli. Talk about dredging the gene pool for scraps!

I make a good living at Wal-Mart, and I don't care that they have no union, because they don't need one. IMO.

Oh for fucks sake, I thought I was free and rid of Chacarron forever, but nooooooo! You had to go and dredge it up again. hahaha.

no takers??
firetruck
nobody gets the prize..
Mr. Hoard, I keep fergettin' it's yer livelihood-and I know you know how much hatred their is for haters. You still don't get it do ya?? Have I not gone out of my way to explain myself with regard to my contempt for your vibe at times?? Your perception perhaps, is what's askew, again: while a Marijuana user myself, I blame the marijuana in your case. Labels, labels, and more labels-ad-hom, neo-con, I really don't know which labels place me in a tidy box, to be filed in the "Oh he's one or more of those" categories....why???
Because you never give up the sacred cow....Unlike most folks, I don't necessarily care what you think or say as much as I want to know why you say or don't say, think or don't think. Sorry to bust your version of relaxation-perhaps you are witnessing another, and yes, their have been a few, who have left this place out of sheer frustration. (not unlike what dag's head felt like 8 or so hours ago, after all that cheap Aussie wine, or what mine felt like reading the same thread, w/o wine)

I too relax here, but experiential awareness being a dynamic thing, I also get wound up, frustrated, just as much or more than yourself, as do we all-I can't be asked to abruptly halt something for want of understanding-If I should ever become siftquisitionated, new rules will have to be added to the already, long-winded tomes.

If my legacy here is to be eternal asshole, mine for you would be, Eternal Panderer....a title which I came up with on the fly, and had to check a dictionary to make sure it fit...funny, the definition I was thinking of alludes to the schoolyard homophone you were called on the blog, by some qm-type.....

relax.
I am not your enemy, and don't hate your input, and like so many of the directions your dredging of the internet takes me-you have given me many hours of satisfaction here, as well as many moments of other-(damn,I'm gettin' some blood-fill in the ol' Vienna sausage)

You think too much in one direction, me in another-welcome to the world of the real. You need people to be who they will, to remember who you are.God help the Canadians, and these pussyfied Americans, both of whom would babble themselves into box of scorpions, and then talk about the long-term effects of the pain, the poison,all the while standing in the box. My frustration must be in my head as well......told ya we juxtaposed well-

I have called Hillary a cunt here, clitless, etc., and all I get is ignored-at the very least, you will never suffer that- I try to call it like it may be, not like it is-

Go back and read the siftquisition you always refer to, the answer is there, i've told you more than once.....simply checks and balances

I used to live with people like this. Thanks for dredging up those memories. Oh... oh... thank you so very much.