Posts by Simon

4

Some message delivery errors occuring

by Simon in

fyi: not sure if new message notifications are working right now, seeing a lot of errors in the logs.. investigating ....

Simon

Anyway, apologies if some messages weren't delivered, possibly for the last week or two.

They should be processing and showing up as I type.

4

Some message delivery errors occuring

by Simon in

fyi: not sure if new message notifications are working right now, seeing a lot of errors in the logs.. investigating ....

Simon

So the geniuses at Google provide a cloud console for managing apps, including one to update queue settings.

What it doesn't do is use the current values for all the fields, so if you adjust one setting you inadvertently wipe out some others. Unfortunately, the ones it wipes out happen to be the most critical of all, so queued tasks then get delivered to the wrong service and ... well, errors happen and things don't work.

4

Some message delivery errors occuring

by Simon in

fyi: not sure if new message notifications are working right now, seeing a lot of errors in the logs.. investigating ....

Simon

FYI: Not sure if new message notifications are working right now, seeing a lot of errors in the logs.

Investigating ...

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

What job is out there either in Croatia or that allows you to work remotely that pays over $130,000 USD for a two year art/design school grad whose main experience outside exJW activism is landscaping, window washing, document review and proofreading his wife's translations?

The thing is, *HE* isn't capable of doing that work. He's keeping all the earnings generated by the work of multiple other non-paid volunteers.

Lloyd gets to spend all the money, likely even claiming his many trips as "expenses" to his business, while other people work for free. I wonder what you put "hookers" down as? Entertaining? Meals and travel? LOL

I'm willing to bet that Tibor is paid based on the cheaper end of the local going rate in local Croatian currency, not a proportion of the income based on the relative effort he contributes.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

I’m ashamed to say that I produced that video and am in it…..the minute I found out about lloyd, it was the first thing I thought about. It still makes me sick to think about it.

I don't think anyone should have any regrets about things they did when it's the other person that undermined it and makes you feel that regret.

But notice, you feel bad, in hindsight, because you are a moral, caring person. The guy with no regrets has no morals, and feels no shame for anything he does. He's happy to use people to further his own goals without any real regard for how his actions impact those people.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

Also 100% agree with that!!!! I also think we need to be slow to put our hands in our pockets….we don’t HAVE to financially support anyone. We can if we want, but we don’t have to. I’ve seen so many comments about people wanting to “move their financial support to xxx person”…..why?

When it comes to getting a message out, the internet is the ultimate in "cheap", you can actually do most things pretty much for free.

What changes is when you want to make money. There can be legitimate reasons for this, maybe you have incurred some costs travelling to do research (but again, most things are online now, so why?) or to interview people (ever heard of video conferencing?). Pretty much anything you can think of can be done remotely online at zero cost.

The reason for travelling usually comes down to promotion. Same with someone doing a book tour - they want to shake some hands and build up some 'aura' to gain more followers. Why? To sell more product.

This is where things can easily change. Because even if all you are doing is putting a Google Adsense ad on your website, you are making a choice. You are inconveniencing someone and providing a worse user experience intentionally to make money.

I made that choice. You will see the ads at the top and side of this site. At one time I was spending several hundred dollars a month for database and web hosting and even if you're on a decent salary, it can be a drag on your finances. Thanks to technology innovation (the cloud) and competition, and some refactoring, it now costs less than $100 per month and if I spend some time on development I can drive the cost down further still. The fact that there are only 2 ad-slots instead of the 3 permitted is because the 2 work to cover the costs and maybe at some point only 1 would be needed. I think I had a PayPal donate button for a short period too, but I always felt a little uneasy when someone donated and worried what would happen if I thought I needed to moderate something that person subsequently posted.

The point of that is to demonstrate that even with the best of intentions, you almost certainly will be making tradeoffs between what is best for your users and what is best for the revenue. Hopefully it's not too bad of a tradeoff even though in an ideal world any ads are really "too many".

But further along the spectrum you get to the point where what you publish makes a difference. i.e. you can easily have to chose between what's true and factual ... and what is popular and sells. The minute you start making decisions based on what $$$ it will generate, I think that starts dictating all your behavior from then on.

No longer is the monetization there to cover the costs of creating content, but the content is there to support the monetization efforts. It's flipped. The more money, the more compromised the decision making becomes, to the extreme that if you are 100% dependent on the income as your sole means of living ... you have pretty much guaranteed that you will always be making decisions based on generating the most revenue. It's inevitable human nature. At that point you're running a business.

It doesn't mean you're corrupt and that people shouldn't be able to support your endeavours if they want, but IMO it takes someone with strong ethics and morals to not be compromised by the setup. Because it's a business, anyone else doing the same thing is now competition, taking away views that could be yours (in a business where views = $$$) so now you have an incentive to try to out-compete them, either fairly by creating good content, or unfairly by bad-mouthing them and driving them out of business (which is actually easier when they are not in it for the $$$, because it is all just unnecessary aggravation for them - pain with no benefit).

Think about why you are being asked for money. Do you really need to fund someone's trip for a meetup? Why aren't they paying for it themselves, given that the benefit is to them, for self-promotion, to meet their followers? Likewise for the time they spend - they chose to spend time on their project instead of with their family, how does sending them money alter that? All it really does is encourage them to spend even less time with their family doesn't it?

As Andrew Gold mentioned on his video, it's better to not have all your eggs in one basket, instead of depending too much on one community, belong to many. That way if one ends up becoming a disappointment, well, you are not so impacted. Same with content creators - if you do want to support people, give less but to more people. Don't give huge amounts to one, and put them on a pedestal because you risk two things: first, you may be hurt if you discover that they are not "all that" and were using your monetary donations for unsavoury things, and second, you may compromise your own morals by feeling you have to ignore what they have done and keep supporting them (something many JWs do when they find out about WT wrongdoing).

So think twice before sending $$$. It can be a really nice thing to do to support someone, but maybe think of it more as a tip than a fee - beware if they are claiming they have costs (for what, exactly, you don't have to upgrade their equipment to hear the message) or need you to pay for their time (why, you didn't hire them?). Your contribution could inadvertently make things worse.

8

Levels of dependency both inside and outside of the JWs

by joe134cd in

just been looking at posts over on reddit, with people bragging of attending the memorial under the influence.

ok fair enough i guess.

but it got me thinking.

Simon

If someone answers "No" to the question of "Is a pot-smoking JW really a JW ...?", then that person is committing what is called the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

I know what you are saying, I think it's based on a fear of the example you give of someone being abusive. You don't want to let the WTS off the hook by saying "well they are not really a JW!"

But I think those are two separate things. One is whether people truly believe and follow the teachings, trying their best to live up to it. And the other is people who happen to self-identify as being a member possibly because it provides them some cover and access to people, but who's actions show they can't possibly really believe it.

Only the first is really a JW, but the latter is still the WT's responsibility for providing that environment and not policing it well enough.

Obviously smoking pot is nowhere near the same severity of crime in secular terms, and like most things in the WTS, how serious of a crime it is will depend to some extent on the individuals involved and the local congregation. But I'm not sure it's something many people who genuinely feel that they are trying to be JWs will be doing.

So I still believe that the proportion of people who smoke pot will be higher among exJWs, who know then don't want to be a JW, than those who think they do.

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

Yes, we all stand together, and we promote other voices who are putting out great, non-formulaic, content that's actually designed to help people, not keep them perpetually as subscribers or donators.

The silent majority has a voice, he doesn't speak for it and never did, despite what he claimed.

If he attacks one of us he attacks all of us and we stand shoulder to shoulder.

OK, I have to stop now or I'll start throwing in lines from 300 or Braveheart ...

11530

It's been a long 9 years Lloyd Evans / John Cedars

by Newly Enlightened in

original reddit post (removed).

Simon

@Simon Atlantis says you should send us a bag of Dark Chocolate Oreos for breaking the record on here for a thread. LOL

Happy to oblige if you message me your address, but it's at #3 in the all-time-longest thread list right now ...

... but it doesn't look like Lloyd is going to get a dose of common sense anytime soon, so who knows where it will end up!

8

Levels of dependency both inside and outside of the JWs

by joe134cd in

just been looking at posts over on reddit, with people bragging of attending the memorial under the influence.

ok fair enough i guess.

but it got me thinking.

Simon

Is a pot-smoking JW really a JW or someone deluding themselves / afraid to make a hard choice?

I think the prevalence of drug taking is always going to be higher outside the group than inside it, purely because there must be some who don't partake of anything due to the religious mandates against it.

Alcohol is the main, acceptable, mind altering drug-of-choice for JWs.