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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Deirdre,<br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">A few years before you came out against Scientology, a few of my co-workers were "fascinated" with it. One of them brought some electronic box into the lab. I don't remember if he was trying to fix it or reverse engineer it. Another actually quite his job and moved to Los Angeles to be part of Scientology. A few months later he had come back. Didn't elaborate much about why he was disillusioned. <br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div>The following from one of your linds sounds too much like 2020 pollitics. If it's inconvenient, just call it fake news.<br><blockquote><p><i>"Freedom of the mind requires not
only, or not even especially, the absence of legal constraints but the
presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the
one that uses force to assure uniformity, but the one that removes
awareness of other possibilities."</i>Alan Bloom, Psycho-Politics</p></blockquote></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><br></div></div><div><br></div>
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On Wednesday, March 18, 2020, 1:53:54 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>Quoting Dire Red (<a shape="rect" href="mailto:deirdre@deirdre.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">deirdre@deirdre.net</a>):<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Anyhow, if you'd looked at Arnie's signature lines the last, oh, 20<br clear="none">> years, they'd have looked…familiar in pattern.<br clear="none">> <a shape="rect" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150624180738/http://www.lermanet.com/faqs.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20150624180738/http://www.lermanet.com/faqs.html</a><br clear="none"><br clear="none">As Deirdre's point was unclear from the above, she's referring to this<br clear="none">block down near the bottom, which apparently was one typical variant<br clear="none">among other bombastic and personal breast-beating examples:<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Sincerely,<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Arnaldo Lerma -- I'd prefer to die speaking my mind than live fearing to<br clear="none"> speak.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> The only thing that always works in scientology are its lawyers<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> The internet is the liberty tree of the new millennium Secrets are the<br clear="none"> mortar binding lies as bricks together into prisons for the mind<br clear="none"> <a shape="rect" href="http://www.lermanet.com " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.lermanet.com </a>- mentioned 4 January 2000 in The Washington<br clear="none"> Post's - 'Reliable Source' column re "Scientologist with no HEAD"<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">As a refresher, there is a .signature block social convention among<br clear="none">polite people, originating on Usenet but widely observed in e-mail-based<br clear="none">forums as well. It is:<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">o Confine yourself to no more than four 80-character lines. This is<br clear="none"> called the 'McQuary Limit', and I allude to it with the expression <br clear="none"> 'McQ!' in every one of my .signature blocks where there's enough <br clear="none"> free character space to insert it.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> You will not be imprisoned by the Internet police for violating the <br clear="none"> McQuary limit. You'll just be quietly classified as a self-indulgent <br clear="none"> jerk. And, no, this has nothing particularly to do with 'needing to<br clear="none"> save bandwidth over dial-up lines' or such rot. It's a matter of <br clear="none"> avoiding being a self-indulgent jerk. Yes, it's an arbitrary limit.<br clear="none"> Limits socially arrived at, that you should observe to avoid coming<br clear="none"> across as a self-indulgent jerk, tend to be inherently arbitrary.<br clear="none"> No, neither the US Constitution nor resolutions from Brooklyn <br clear="none"> neighbourhood associations entitle you to scream and yell and throw<br clear="none"> tantrums over being classified as a self-indulgent jerk.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">o It's considered bad manners to hurl crude and inciting propaganda<br clear="none"> into your 4x80 personal-expression space. Although that's McQ-compliant, <br clear="none"> you'll nonetheless be considered a self-indulgent jerk. Because, <br clear="none"> really now.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">o As a really poor choice of standard delimiter (but it's the standard<br clear="none"> and we're stuck with it) you / your software should always delimit<br clear="none"> the signature beneath the rest of your message using the following <br clear="none"> three-character line, flush-left by itself (without quotation marks):<br clear="none"> '-- ', followed immediately by a hard return.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Yes, an obligatory invisible trailing space character. Ugh.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> The use of this standard delimiter ensures that readers can, if <br clear="none"> they wish, auto-suppress disply of .signatures, which in turn helps<br clear="none"> preserve the convention that you're free to say pretty much anything<br clear="none"> you wish in your own .signatures (as people annoyed by them can <br clear="none"> filter them out with easy standard filter mechanisms).<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Saying 'my software won't allow me to do it correctly' will earn<br clear="none"> you pity and a reputation as a lamer. Saying 'My employer requires<br clear="none"> a mandatory 20-line legal disclaimer that I'm not allowed to change',<br clear="none"> ditto.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Saying .signature size limits are now obsolete and applicable only<br clear="none"> on Usenet and BBSes will get you roundly mocked as _a fortiori_ a<br clear="none"> self-indulgent jerk.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">Our on-again, off-again contributor from Brooklyn elects to kick to the<br clear="none">curb the first two of those three courtesy guidelines in his ludicrously<br clear="none">long and loudly ideological .signature block underneath Every. Single.<br clear="none">Post.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Pro-tip: Don't bother to tell him he's being a self-indulgent jerk by<br clear="none">so doing, unless you really wish to receive about ten separate long<br clear="none">e-mails of self-justification that are all about him.<div class="ydp553ff0b9yqt3582664329" id="ydp553ff0b9yqtfd02041"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">conspire mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br clear="none"></div></div>
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