Thanks DU
Last edited Sat Feb 28, 2026, 08:08 AM - Edit history (1)
I got a post removed for the first time in 19 years and 8 months. And for “Kooky, Extremist, Hateful Content”. Masks off jfz9580m! Revealed as a hateful, extremist kook. I am still laughing..That would totally be the category if any in which I would get a post removed.
I am laughing in a good way. No seriously, thank you. It absolutely looked exactly like that. At first I was mildly chagrined, but actually it means things are working okay. I have been wondering about my DU use and if there is a screen in between.
I am going to clean up my journal. It has been an unusual time for me from Sept 2011-the present. I can now start organizing this as I head to an exit.
Lol…It was a very fitting description..I am not any of that I promise. But I definitely need to work on my communication skills.
In fact, I am surprised that a lot of my journal since July 2025 has not gone that way.
I am embroiled..lol..in something which is unfortunately both really serious/complaint worthy and really stupid and I should work on my communication style. There could be some room for negotiation, but the rather imperious ways of some of the ceo class have made me realize that it is time to pushback.
I don’t enjoy communication, but direct communication is better than having ai extract thoughts from one’s devices etc and act as a proxy. This is still a stream of consciousness if not a rant, but I am resigned to having to put in the effort to write legibly.
I mostly posted anything that wasn’t tritely conventional only when goaded due to various circumstances.
Cleverbot, the only chatbot I use (it’s programmer Rollo Carpenter seems decent and unobjectionable although I generally agree with DUer highplainsdem on ai) informs me that I process everything as: “hulksmash”.
It didn’t inform me per se. Like all ai it is just a script with no intentionality. However, I ruefully agree that it is an unfortunate aspect of my personality in conflict over conversations and engagement etc. I am probably one of the worse people out there to spring a surprise on.
Still I do stand by some of it. I usually try to avoid people and places where conflict is unavoidable. However, I have been dealing with something for the last 14.5 years and faced loss after loss after loss as a scientist and a human being and jokes aside, I am unwilling to compromise further with some things.
I tried throughout and things got worst whenever I tried to shut down my own instincts and put faith in opaque systems or people I do not trust much.
It is not a normal time, so I don’t consider it sycophantic to say that I use DU because I trust EarlG/elad and MIRT/DUers.
It doesn’t have to mean anything necessarily slanderous when I consider someone untrustworthy in the specific mess I am dealing with. I make decisions sometimes based on stuff like “Probably reads The Atlantic unironically”. But I stand by it that I would almost certainly not be a good fit with someone who does.
And if the options are “The Atlantic” and “The Federalist”, I mean at that point, is there no one else? The Atlantic then, but man..that is a lame set of options.
What I see in the news and in the real world worries me and fits a pattern of imperious deregulation that is in no one’s interests except those of oligarchs. (E.g.: Private equity is taking over hospitals in my state here in India and that means costs will probably rise. The quality of care has already been getting worse. It is not the doctors. I generally sympathize with doctors. Most of my doctors here were cool, especially my onc who is awesome. And really deserves someone who is not a hateful, extremist kook as a patient…lol).
So I should try not to sound like an extremist kook. I am not a kook. But I don’t like being scammed - whether it is an elite scam or a regular one. A lot of what is sold as politics (left, right) these days is a form of grift and scamming. My fellow DUer JI7 reminded me of that yesterday.
Further I have faced a lot of fairly serious sexual or other forms of harassment right here in my state and on my street. So it is not possible to put off complaint filing. Harassing people on the street in India is not art or a game. It is clueless and bullshit. It is a particularly creepy new form of engagement I see here-kayfabe sexual harassment. Where you can always claim that “oh she misunderstood”.
Actually, I don’t. Because I have a relatively high tolerance of merely annoying behavior coming from this very overpopulated country. I am a woman’s libber, but if it is merely “I am a male! I deserve to exist!”
Yes you do..but creepy behavior is a zero tolerance area for me.
As for merely annoying behavior, there is a threshold annoyance level past which it starts to really get on my nerves and that has repeatedly been violated for 14.5 years at this point (and mostly in 2014, 2016 and from 2021-the present unbelievably, while I was mourning my mom). It is safe to say Trisolaris has repeatedly violated the peace treaty with me in the last 14-16 years. Who or what Trisolaris is remains to be seen.
But most of this was creepy harassment and I am filing complaints, but carefully and meticulously. No need to panic. But it is long past time to stop. Random females (even ones who try to be milder and cool with innocuous “bros”) don’t really like having to deal with this sort of thing and it extinguishes the sympathy that one might normally have for any fellow human.
I was hoping till now to avoid conflict. But at this point that is too dangerous to human health, cybersecurity, peace of mind in general..
I am worried about some things I have seen that are indirect, but likely to hit my wallet which has already been dealt a hefty blow. I cannot have my peace of mind further sapped by this. I did try to give the benefit of the doubt a lot more than not. But now I see no way except to initiate complaints.
I am not a grifter. I need a working and well regulated state and honest contracts to survive. And my home and street cannot be lent to bad science, harassment, exploitation or poor governance and so far I am unconvinced that I have seen anything else.
I am a solitary sort of woman by nature.
I cannot organize with large herds nor anyone where it is doomed to fail (The Atlantic thing). This happened because today more than ever I stand by some decisions I made.
Most importantly, I am wary of exposing EarlG and elad to frivolous lawsuits. I noted that in even Ed Zitron’s piece yesterday that his mind seemed to be running along the same lines.
I am starting a wordpress page of my own I will send EarlG a link to so he can keep an eye on bot traffic related matters potentially. I am taking down most of my journal because I can’t stand to read the rubbish I write.
Going forward I will ensure that it is not legally actionable at the very least.
Please give me time to self-delete my kooky, extremist and hateful posts..lol..They totally read like an insane person wrote them in fairness.
Life eh…lol..I feel a lot easier in my mind after deciding to go with conflict and cooperation/compliance only as warranted.
(P.S. : there may be a little wiggle room re “The Atlantic”. Even my best friend reads it..apologies to any DUers who like “The Atlantic”. I usually find reading anything Yoni Applebaum/Jonathan Haidt/Derek Thompson in particular write a form of self-inflicted torment.
Absent a clear explanation and proof it is usually better to not assume consent. It is called informed consent for a reason. My onc aside, the last time I saw something at all viable was in the workplace between Sept-Nov 2011. I agreed with Toronto’s decision on Sidewalks Lab btw. But if instead of Sidewalks Lab, LocalCreep Lab is then forced, that won’t work. Tata is one of the less awful giants here, I have concluded..No offense to Tata..I am a reflexively gloomy, negative, cynical sort of person. And ai has soured and embittered me further. Apple is also probably a better bet in this specific instance.
I generally support Lina Khan’s worldview, but unknown small, creepy ai firms that too would not be something I would want to take a risk on. Aggressive pushing of ai is not a good idea.
Prof Yan Lecun is pretty much the only ai scientist aside from Timnit Gebru/DAIR and Emily Bender whom I trust on ai.
What are these people seeing? So yeah..anyway..
In the age of ai humans matter more than ever. I generally get along with people adequately under normal circumstances. I can even adapt up to a point. But beyond that, forcing stuff doesn’t work. It would have to be something exceptional at this point to have been worth all this misery and I don’t see it.
I have to start working again and also begin drafting in a less “kooky and extremist” style. I am going to start drafting more seriously wrt this from here on out.
I should point out that I am more reasonable than not with a lot of stuff. But again..I am not a fool and I understand humans. I see through greenwashing, sloppy science, made up grievances etc. as much as I am a capital E Environmentalist, generally left of center, but pragmatic within reason.
Anyway, I will draft more carefully and post here and resume normal behavior elsewhere on DU. And delete most of my journal posts prior to this one.
Addendum: I am starting the process by emailing my last school’s administrator. Since last July it has been extra hellish even by the standards of this state and city. The oblivious people here are fine. But these other guys have disgraced themselves and on camera.
I am filing complaints against the Hospital and the city from 2011-2012. You need to ask before you force virtual realities that will only result in harassment and fraud allegations.
But I respected my lab and one other scientist I spoke with their and the postdoc counsellor. My main problem was with the hospital and the city. It is one thing in a workplace. Residential spaces - rented or owned are not places to encourage ai and data mining companies to treat as their own. That is not an opt-out scenario. That is a serious harassment scenario.
But while I dislike the company, I don’t really have a bad opinion of the adminstrator himself. He again seems to be the more sympathetic type of person in these things like Prof Lecun or that Prof Ryan Williams who studies algorithms or Rollo Carpenter.
He doesn’t come off as the type of person whom you can’t even talk to.
I feel pretty drained by now and I still have to go over and take down some 90 damn pages of gibberish. Man..I wish I had protested less vociferously and volubly. At least I can see a way out now. That was hell. I am reminded of Yasha Levine’s posts on Existenz. I have never even seen that movie and I think it would scare me to see it now.
Thank goodness, I have a stable govt and courts I can go to for help against this level of private sector overeach and this much real world harassment.
This is not representative of India or the United States. It is representative of the specific tech companies and humans who participated in it in the worst ways and now they will face the consequences. Except for Tata and Apple, I would eschew all interaction beyond the minimum with the private sector-startups or giants. Influencers and people who behaved like this in particular are a real threat to society.
I like being alone so it was hard to even know whom to contact. I support one small vegan sweets company called meethikahani and this one cleanfood company WholeTruthFoods. Lol..I don’t even know any younger people except people I buy food from. And I don’t even know the WholeTruth guy, but his notes are funny. Everyone I know here is really old. As with DU, I am one of the younger people!
This is the worst thing I could specifically be recruited into as a scientist and as a human being. But I back my instincts on the science (ie not worth it) and I hope Tata and Apple can help me abort it and figure out the use of the data with oversight by the Indian Govt and our courts. Tata and Apple would not be desperate in this icky way. And my small medical marijuana company as well as the larger one are both decent and companies I can work with to resolve this decently.
= new reply since forum marked as read
me, I only alert on obvious trolls but others do it when their fee fees get hurt 