Here is what I mean by this. Out of all the times I've been to a doctor, been visited by a cop, called the cops, been to court, went to school, and so on, I've realized lately that I haven't had a single good experience with any of them.

Doctors either always tell me nothing is wrong when something is wrong or said something was wrong when something wasn't. Got traumatic brain injury? Oh it's just a bonk on the head. Got blue balls? Bring em in, doc needs money. The presence of doctors here is so inconsistent with recovery from things like illnesses that the place resembles the stereotypical Sparta-obsessed fascist nation where hospitals don't exist by design.

Police and courts will give you no luck at all stemming from having absolutely no consistency with how they deal with things whatsoever. I've seen child abuse cases where babies are left with behavioral issues that mirror those child rehoming documentaries and the abuser gets two months, while also seeing small cases of assault that lead to two years. I've had instances where I ask police about something they can do. "We'll look into it" they say. Nothing happens. The next thing that happens, they're blaming me for a dead tree from my yard with a branch that snapped off and fell on a neighbor's fence, and I go to get sentenced.

My teachers were like these examples too. Did I benefit even once from my teachers? No. Did I benefit from the social environment? No. Did they treat me like Mr. Burns treats Homer? All the time. They didn't see me as a person, they saw me as a goal. And they would never mind cheating their own rules to achieve it.

And the moment they don't think they have a job to do regarding you, the same jobs they half-ass anyways, they treat you less like an individual to remember and from time to time treat as an equal human and more like a bird you pushed out of a nest without intent to hear from them again. And I didn't realize this until recently, that I have no positive experiences with public servants. Makes me almost not want to work.

Anyone else?

Here is what I mean by this. Out of all the times I've been to a doctor, been visited by a cop, called the cops, been to court, went to school, and so on, I've realized lately that I haven't had a single good experience with any of them.

Doctors either always tell me nothing is wrong when something is wrong or said something was wrong when something wasn't. Got traumatic brain injury? Oh it's just a bonk on the head. Got blue balls? Bring em in, doc needs money. The presence of doctors here is so inconsistent with recovery from things like illnesses that the place resembles the stereotypical Sparta-obsessed fascist nation where hospitals don't exist by design.

Police and courts will give you no luck at all stemming from having absolutely no consistency with how they deal with things whatsoever. I've seen child abuse cases where babies are left with behavioral issues that mirror those child rehoming documentaries and the abuser gets two months, while also seeing small cases of assault that lead to two years. I've had instances where I ask police about something they can do. "We'll look into it" they say. Nothing happens. The next thing that happens, they're blaming me for a dead tree from my yard with a branch that snapped off and fell on a neighbor's fence, and I go to get sentenced.

My teachers were like these examples too. Did I benefit even once from my teachers? No. Did I benefit from the social environment? No. Did they treat me like Mr. Burns treats Homer? All the time. They didn't see me as a person, they saw me as a goal. And they would never mind cheating their own rules to achieve it.

And the moment they don't think they have a job to do regarding you, the same jobs they half-ass anyways, they treat you less like an individual to remember and from time to time treat as an equal human and more like a bird you pushed out of a nest without intent to hear from them again. And I didn't realize this until recently, that I have no positive experiences with public servants. Makes me almost not want to work.

Anyone else?

Perfectionists tend to wonder this, now I'm asking.

Perfectionists tend to wonder this, now I'm asking.

Consider this installment three of my previous question which is the second installment. For Election Day, I was researching the history of voting which has taken many forms. At one time in history, people voted by dropping rocks in holes corresponding to their candidate, with the one with most rocks being the candidate who won. We've had many forms "of voting", from rocks in a well to paper ballots to voting machines to whatever this anime concept with glowy lights is. Each method has had supporters and critics, for example critics of voting machines will say it can be rigged, critics of paper ballots will say papers can be mismanaged, and critics of counting yard flags as a method will say it's too tedious to do it all.

Suppose we discovered dolphins could understand democracy. So here you are coming up with a way to "express a vote". Underwater, paper shrivels, tech may short-circuit, it's hard to dig a hole with classic equipment, etc. unless you have a way to make something work. How would you teach dolphins to manifest voting in a non-rigged yet massively usable way?

Consider this installment three of my previous question which is the second installment. For Election Day, I was researching the history of voting which has taken many forms. At one time in history, people voted by dropping rocks in holes corresponding to their candidate, with the one with most rocks being the candidate who won. We've had many forms "of voting", from rocks in a well to paper ballots to voting machines to whatever this anime concept with glowy lights is. Each method has had supporters and critics, for example critics of voting machines will say it can be rigged, critics of paper ballots will say papers can be mismanaged, and critics of counting yard flags as a method will say it's too tedious to do it all.

Suppose we discovered dolphins could understand democracy. So here you are coming up with a way to "express a vote". Underwater, paper shrivels, tech may short-circuit, it's hard to dig a hole with classic equipment, etc. unless you have a way to make something work. How would you teach dolphins to manifest voting in a non-rigged yet massively usable way?

I only just learned today that, when someone from one instance gets banned from another instance, that person not only is no longer able to interact with the second instance, but people from the second instance actually can't see anything the person said from the moment they got banned even though they're still there. I'm disappointed to learn all my friends who got banned from my instance are still saying stuff and nobody told me, making it more akin to an instance forcing everyone to block them (because individuals blocking each other the same way work like this). And this is coming from the person who has fantasized about universalization of federation.

What's something about the fediverse that was most recently unobscured but that you know now?

I only just learned today that, when someone from one instance gets banned from another instance, that person not only is no longer able to interact with the second instance, but people from the second instance actually can't see anything the person said from the moment they got banned even though they're still there. I'm disappointed to learn all my friends who got banned from my instance are still saying stuff and nobody told me, making it more akin to an instance forcing everyone to block them (because individuals blocking each other the same way work like this). And this is coming from the person who has fantasized about universalization of federation.

What's something about the fediverse that was most recently unobscured but that you know now?

This post was inspired by a dream misadventure I had the other night where I was just minding my own business getting gophers out of the rice field, then suddenly on the intercom/announcements (which I did not expect to have in my dream, since I was outside, not in a building), a voice said "attention, this is a representative of the fediverse speaking... going into effect today, dreamland itself, err, everyone's dreams, are now a part of the fediverse; that is all, happy floating on cloud nine" and then suddenly a bunch of Stalingrad ninjas popped out of nowhere and ambushed me (yeah, how would you react if that's the case). So I guess I'm not even safe from everyone in my sleep.

I thought this would be relevant now more than ever (after having secured permission to ask about it) since there are three days left until Halloween, and after that, pre-Christmas-season will have begun (unless you consider Thanksgiving to be separate from that), and people will begin asking for things for Christmas.

I in no way want to imply I shame people for being needy and shamelessly asking for donations. If there are three guarantees in life, it's death, taxes, and people being economically down on themselves or being helpless in the face of their desires (because it's almost the same thing as the first two). It's just a part of life.

Every year, you will see a lot of beggars out and about, whether it's the guy with the bucket of cash and the bell at the store or that person who needs money given to them through "GoFundMe". I run a few services and the latter are quite common to have poured in by people, I find it hard to deny the request. The most common explanations are "my pet is sick", "I am homeless", and "I lost my job". Without a doubt, at least some of these people are telling the truth, but they get buried in with everyone else because there's no way to know. It's no different with homeless people who encounter you on the street, I know some people for years have advocated for some kind of system that separates homeless people based on their specifications, to intense backlash because people with their bias-charged minds think of it as a form of segregation for the unfortunate. Someone I know said they went to the Bahamas twice, eight years apart, and said they encountered the same homeless people taking advantage of tourists by using cosmetics to claim they have gruesome infected injuries and that they need treatment. People just don't know better.

This, in turn, causes them to have no choice but to develop an intense honor system full of competition, as in people will invalidate each others' issues, for example the person with a sick animal might say "your home was hit by a car, so what" and it becomes a rivalry. Some will resort to doing art for people, asking people to commission them, others will resort to scamming people, sometimes asking for people to pay first and then not granting what they promised, and occasionally you get pay-it-forward-esque schemes that are definitely intended to be helpful and address the issue but are very roundabout.

It's not a charged claim to say this happens with official organizations too. It's common for a location to have a dozen active donation organizations, things like GoodWill, the Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities. You will have some that are responsible with their money and some that have excuses in place to collect all the money. And I'm not saying specific names, but often they will defame each other, so all those good and bad reviews you see about certain services reflect absolutely nothing.

Related to all of this, I often have to ask people on an individual level "what makes your plea stand out", as in "if there was a sign you could give that this money you're asking for is going to a good cause, what would that sign be". Some will say they have no such sign but that they can't afford to not receive money just because they have no sign. Some will say they have a sign but it turns out to be something that doesn't prove their point, for example someone once asked for money to send his daughter to school and I asked for a sign, and he gave a picture of his daughter and said "I have this picture of my daughter, that's proof she's struggling to get into school". And some will do things like purposefully be a detriment to themselves to serve as the proof. You'd think one of these days someone would claim they got turned into a newt and needed a small loan of a million dollars to get hospital treatment for it.

It's so frustrating because there are genuinely unlucky people out there but people have been lenient for so long out of fear of causing segregation of people in need and now it's clique-based as a result, the people who have the most luck with donations are the people who have amassed the most popularity, which renders the actual reason someone needs a favor done to be redundant (there was even a famous case a while back where someone on "GoFundMe" asked for a jug of milk and got a thousand dollars). And it's not like someone could be hired to just go to peoples' homes to verify they need money like the people at Guinness who verify world records. So especially in a world where actual major powers of the world have gotten in on all the scammy action, all advice or two cents that can be offered for would-be donors and/or donation seekers would be appreciated, aside from, of course, preferring to donate to people in person, this is not always possible. Maybe something like have something akin to "GoFundMe" where accounts are owned by local towns/villages/suburbs instead of individuals and have the towns do the approval process before adding them to the list, I don't know. Maybe other people have better ways of coming up with a solution. And feel free to ask for donations for your own issues (as well as to pin this, maybe it can help).

When a book becomes influential enough, someone might try to impersonate it, since publishing doesn’t follow any hard rules.

For example, I was explaining to someone that, after (surprisingly not before) I got a job at my local library, I took out a communist manifesto, which I later learned was a fake, with writings in there that were not consistent with the official communist manifesto, such as a call for free love.

I have also spotted a lot of fake versions of Mark Twain books come in, which has a lot of parts deleted or inserted based on the writer’s desire.

On the other side of the issue, lately I’ve been watching a lot of the events unfold in the middle East and have wondered why nobody just ends violence over there for good by making fake Qurans. One or two people have hinted they’ve tried, with some altered movements centered around it (would you call this government gnosticism), but it’s not something you always hear.

What’s the most severe example of a fake version of a book you’ve ever seen/encountered?