Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Nick Thompson]

Hi, Owen, and all, 

 

You have me right.  There’s a big difference between entertaining a question – 
noodling, if  you will – and demanding an answer.  

 

Confession time:  I come from a world in which success is measured out in 
published writing.  That’s not the only world, but it’s a world.  During my 12 
years with you folks I have seen a dozen great papers slip through our grasp 
and into oblivion on the FRIAM list for want of an easy way to transpose our 
correspondence into coherent text, text that could be read with pleasure by 
others.   I once was an experienced developmental editor …. Several edited 
collections on various subjects.  Every time I read one of these email 
exchanges I get itchy editorial fingers.  In fact, I always get itchy editorial 
fingers when I see good ideas go to waste.  

 

Owen, you are also correct that I have had this problem for years.  When I was 
a professor I spent a lot of time working with the writing of students.  I had 
a terrible time getting student to think of themselves as the sort of creatures 
who had ideas about the world which they needed to defend in writing.   I had 
an even worse time trying to convince them that people who disagreed with them 
were their great allies in developing an argument.  They saw papers as 
something you wrote to make professors happy, not as vehicles for changing the 
thoughts of others.  But to my joy, when email distribution lists came around, 
I got them to argue in email because they didn’t think of email as Writing.
In email, they found it easier to argue as if the arguments made a difference.  
But I never could get them to take the next step and edit their correspondence 
into collaborative writing.  I had to settle for letting them present their 
email-arguments, reprinted in sequence, in lieu of final papers, which I did, 
reluctantly, for years. 

 

Even since that time, I have wondered what if a software could be invented that 
would re-present an email discussion in its rhetorical order, so that email 
correspondence could readily be seen as a step to the development of published 
writing that convinces.  Would such a software unleash a flood of 
collaboration?   I dunno, but I would love to see.  

 

By the way, I have found the discussion about the “grammar of wanting” very 
interesting.  It is the kind of issue that normally would lead me to join you 
in the wallow, but I haven’t been feeling all that well, lately, and there has 
been lots of incoming, so I have had to watch from the shore.  Let me just say 
that I think that each of those ways of wanting corresponds to a different 
higher order pattern of behavior, and that all of you are as privileged as I to 
decide which kind of wanting I have been engaging in. 

 

Thanks for all your thoughts.   

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

  
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 8:28 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS 
NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

 

Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert thread(s) into 
posts/correspondence?

 

I take Nick seriously here, it has been his goal from the beginning, right?

 

   -- Owen

 

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Steven A Smith  > wrote:

Glen -

I am a Mozilla/Tbird Man myself but am used to many people clinging to very 
oldschool text-only (or worse?) mail tools.   I also don't have any trouble 
sorting the complexity of comment/response/inlining/inclusion in my head for 
the most part, but that is how my head works... I think that is excruciating 
unto impossible for some.

I do acknowledge/agree-to your description of the experience of "to want" vs 
"to be wanting"...  I personally mostly *want* what I want but I also know the 
feeling of *to be wanting*.  It isn't a simple question of expression... it is 
a deeper experience of association/dissociation and intention IMO.

Your example of the co-worker distancing himself from the responsibilty/agency 
of "breaking" something is a red herring in this case (I think)... it may be 
related, but not directly?

I agree that there is a distancing/abstraction from the itch as you put it, but 
at least in my own case, expressing it as "I am wanting" rather than "I want" 
is intentional and an attempt to be more responsible or precise about what I 
mean.

I suppose, a difference between "I want" and "I am wanting" involves 
actionability.   If I tell you "I want" something, you should be put on notice 
that I am likely to take action to pursue acquiring/achieving the subject of 
that wanting.  But if I say "I am wanting", 

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Owen Densmore]

Sorry to be pedestrian, but how about the OP's desire to convert thread(s)
into posts/correspondence?

I take Nick seriously here, it has been his goal from the beginning, right?

   -- Owen

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:56 PM, Steven A Smith  wrote:

> Glen -
>
> I am a Mozilla/Tbird Man myself but am used to many people clinging to
> very oldschool text-only (or worse?) mail tools.   I also don't have any
> trouble sorting the complexity of comment/response/inlining/inclusion in
> my head for the most part, but that is how my head works... I think that is
> excruciating unto impossible for some.
>
> I do acknowledge/agree-to your description of the experience of "to want"
> vs "to be wanting"...  I personally mostly *want* what I want but I also
> know the feeling of *to be wanting*.  It isn't a simple question of
> expression... it is a deeper experience of association/dissociation and
> intention IMO.
>
> Your example of the co-worker distancing himself from the
> responsibilty/agency of "breaking" something is a red herring in this case
> (I think)... it may be related, but not directly?
>
> I agree that there is a distancing/abstraction from the itch as you put
> it, but at least in my own case, expressing it as "I am wanting" rather
> than "I want" is intentional and an attempt to be more responsible or
> precise about what I mean.
>
> I suppose, a difference between "I want" and "I am wanting" involves
> actionability.   If I tell you "I want" something, you should be put on
> notice that I am likely to take action to pursue acquiring/achieving the
> subject of that wanting.  But if I say "I am wanting", you can take some
> solace (or not) in knowing that I have not internalized that "wanting" into
> any formulated action. In the language of the 10 commandments, it is the
> subtle distinction between finding your house or wife
> attractive/compelling/desireable and actually finding myself making plans
> to move in and shag her first chance I get.   Yahweh didn't have PowerPoint
> and a numerically controlled stone chisel to put in these subtleties with
> sub-bullet points?  Or were those tablets clay, suggesting a 3d deposition
> printer instead?
>
> In the case at hand (Nick's want or wanting), I would say he is not asking
> anyone specifically to take action, to find or create the toolset he is
> seeking, he is just speculating out loud and probably *hoping* such things
> already exist or perhaps someone else actually *wants* the toolset enough
> to create it.
>
> Have I split the dead horse hair enough yet?   I am wanting to know (but
> don't feel compelled to tell me)!
>
> 
>
> - Steve
>
> On 10/28/16 4:45 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
>
>> On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
>>
>>> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at
 the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of threads,
 right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It helps a lot.

>>> I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe
>>> many will obtain one soon nor easily.
>>>
>>
>> It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine, Thunderbird
>> on another)... It's free and open source, which means anyone can have it if
>> they want it.  I also think I remember Eudora having a nice tree-based
>> threaded view.  Pretty much any usenet reader has it.  So, I'm confused why
>> others wouldn't use such tools.
>>
>>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts
 different from "Nick wants"?

>>> I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants...
>>> meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the implications
>>> of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or semantic roots of
>>> this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is interesting to me that
>>> you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I am probably conflating or
>>> convolving my own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I
>>> believe to be his own lack of clarity...
>>>
>>> For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same
>>> phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or
>>> Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in
>>> what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am
>>> *much* more likely to use "he is wanting" perhaps Renee's "I am
>>> wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?   If
>>> she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she be
>>> more likely to use the more assertive?
>>>
>>
>> That's intriguing, as is Marcus'.  I have noticed (and have the guts to
>> point out for some reason) that lots of people express their thoughts with
>> an external locus of control.  My favorite example was when I noticed the
>> CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken.  I asked my partner: What
>> happened to the CO^2?  

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

With a thread of any complexity it all, it becomes very tedious and tricky.  
However, you are right that just a few conventions observed by email writers 
could make it a lot easier.  Let's say you began every one of your messages 
with" BEGIN GLEN" (just above the header) and ended it with END 
GLEN.  A simple word macro could strip out all the quotations and we would be 
left with the bare messages.  Larding would be forbidden.  Now, I think a sort 
could reorder the messages in order of occurrence.  

Note the premise, tho.  We would have to get correspondents to start their 
message with those little bits of text.  I don't think even I would do it.  

Nick   

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 12:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS 
NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"


Let's think about what you're asking for a minute.  There are very few on the 
list who care to spend the energy to participate at all.  such lurkers 
undoubtedly have valuable opinions.  But there's some hurdle of effort (or 
unwillingness) that prevents them from expressing those opinions.  Of the 
people who _do_ participate, very few of them can find the energy to delete all 
the extra characters, even those added automatically by the mailing list 
software (at the bottom of each post).  I can't even explain how easy it is to 
delete that before responding.  That nobody does it is absolutely 
flabbergasting, to me.  But there it is.

So, when you ask whether it's really that hard, it spawns the questions: Is it 
really that hard to trim/edit one's replies?  ... to use the threading feature 
of one's email client?  ... to ignore threads or particular posters? ... to 
standardize things across email clients (e.g. the quotation prefix and "quote" 
line, plain text vs. html, character encodings)?

The answers to all these questions is "No"  it's not hard at all.  These are 
all problems that have been solved multiple times in other contexts.  But it is 
work (as distinct from play).  And work usually requires incentive.  What's the 
incentive?


On 10/27/2016 10:29 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Is the problem THIS hard?  It would seem to me that the first step would be 
> to simply reorder the email messages eliminating any previous email messages 
> automatically included in each subsequent message.  Once the messages were in 
> the right order and the inclusions of previous messages were eliminated, I 
> could write macro’s to get rid of the headers.  By inclusions I don’t mean 
> places where somebody intentionally pulled out a passage from somebody’s 
> message to comment on.  (I believe you call that quotation.)  I mean the 
> routine inclusion of prior messages as a part of the reply process. 

--
␦glen?


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe 
http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com



FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

I am a Mozilla/Tbird Man myself but am used to many people clinging to 
very oldschool text-only (or worse?) mail tools.   I also don't have any 
trouble sorting the complexity of comment/response/inlining/inclusion in 
my head for the most part, but that is how my head works... I think that 
is excruciating unto impossible for some.


I do acknowledge/agree-to your description of the experience of "to 
want" vs "to be wanting"...  I personally mostly *want* what I want but 
I also know the feeling of *to be wanting*.  It isn't a simple question 
of expression... it is a deeper experience of association/dissociation 
and intention IMO.


Your example of the co-worker distancing himself from the 
responsibilty/agency of "breaking" something is a red herring in this 
case (I think)... it may be related, but not directly?


I agree that there is a distancing/abstraction from the itch as you put 
it, but at least in my own case, expressing it as "I am wanting" rather 
than "I want" is intentional and an attempt to be more responsible or 
precise about what I mean.


I suppose, a difference between "I want" and "I am wanting" involves 
actionability.   If I tell you "I want" something, you should be put on 
notice that I am likely to take action to pursue acquiring/achieving the 
subject of that wanting.  But if I say "I am wanting", you can take some 
solace (or not) in knowing that I have not internalized that "wanting" 
into any formulated action. In the language of the 10 commandments, it 
is the subtle distinction between finding your house or wife 
attractive/compelling/desireable and actually finding myself making 
plans to move in and shag her first chance I get.   Yahweh didn't have 
PowerPoint and a numerically controlled stone chisel to put in these 
subtleties with sub-bullet points?  Or were those tablets clay, 
suggesting a 3d deposition printer instead?


In the case at hand (Nick's want or wanting), I would say he is not 
asking anyone specifically to take action, to find or create the toolset 
he is seeking, he is just speculating out loud and probably *hoping* 
such things already exist or perhaps someone else actually *wants* the 
toolset enough to create it.


Have I split the dead horse hair enough yet?   I am wanting to know (but 
don't feel compelled to tell me)!




- Steve

On 10/28/16 4:45 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks 
at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of 
threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It 
helps a lot.
I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't 
believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.


It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine, 
Thunderbird on another)... It's free and open source, which means 
anyone can have it if they want it.  I also think I remember Eudora 
having a nice tree-based threaded view.  Pretty much any usenet reader 
has it.  So, I'm confused why others wouldn't use such tools.


 Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your 
thoughts different from "Nick wants"?
I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick 
wants... meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands 
the implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the 
grammatical or semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over 
"wants") but it is interesting to me that you can call it out so 
clearly.   Unfortunately I am probably conflating or convolving my 
own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to 
be his own lack of clarity...


For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same 
phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... 
or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of 
confidence in what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. 
Stephen of Guerin, I am *much* more likely to use "he is wanting" 
perhaps Renee's "I am wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same 
ambiguity of detail?   If she were more precise in her own mind about 
what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?


That's intriguing, as is Marcus'.  I have noticed (and have the guts 
to point out for some reason) that lots of people express their 
thoughts with an external locus of control.  My favorite example was 
when I noticed the CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken.  I 
asked my partner: What happened to the CO^2?  He said "It broke."  
>8^)  I asked for more clarity and he responded something like: "I was 
 and it fell over and broke."  So, I asserted: 
"Do you mean that you broke it?"  And he relented and said "Yes."


Perhaps there is something of that in both your and Marcus' response.  
It's a kind of removal/abstraction/distancing from any intimate 
knowledge or clarity surrounding the itch ... left wanting some 
scratching.

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A Smith]

For the TL;DR crowd, a summary of my last response might be as simple as

   "I am wanting" == Idle Speculation

   "I want" == Statement of Intent


On 10/28/16 4:45 PM, glen ☣ wrote:

On 10/28/2016 03:10 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks 
at the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of 
threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It 
helps a lot.
I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't 
believe many will obtain one soon nor easily.


It's just Mozilla Thunderbird (well, Icedove on one machine, 
Thunderbird on another)... It's free and open source, which means 
anyone can have it if they want it.  I also think I remember Eudora 
having a nice tree-based threaded view.  Pretty much any usenet reader 
has it.  So, I'm confused why others wouldn't use such tools.


 Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your 
thoughts different from "Nick wants"?
I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick 
wants... meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands 
the implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the 
grammatical or semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over 
"wants") but it is interesting to me that you can call it out so 
clearly.   Unfortunately I am probably conflating or convolving my 
own unsureness of what I *think* Nicks wants into what I believe to 
be his own lack of clarity...


For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same 
phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... 
or Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of 
confidence in what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. 
Stephen of Guerin, I am *much* more likely to use "he is wanting" 
perhaps Renee's "I am wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same 
ambiguity of detail?   If she were more precise in her own mind about 
what she wants, might she be more likely to use the more assertive?


That's intriguing, as is Marcus'.  I have noticed (and have the guts 
to point out for some reason) that lots of people express their 
thoughts with an external locus of control.  My favorite example was 
when I noticed the CO^2 regulator on our office keg was broken.  I 
asked my partner: What happened to the CO^2?  He said "It broke."  
>8^)  I asked for more clarity and he responded something like: "I was 
 and it fell over and broke."  So, I asserted: 
"Do you mean that you broke it?"  And he relented and said "Yes."


Perhaps there is something of that in both your and Marcus' response.  
It's a kind of removal/abstraction/distancing from any intimate 
knowledge or clarity surrounding the itch ... left wanting some 
scratching.





FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Owen Densmore]

That's why I recommend trying it by hand on a thread of interest.

Basically this is a form of "storyboarding", look at the sequence of steps
needed for the desired "correspondence".

The fine details emerge and help set the direction of the project more
clearly.

   -- Owen

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM, Nick Thompson 
wrote:

> At the very minimum, nick wants to take an email exchange and render it as
> a "correspondence", in the classic literary sense: i.e., *in the order in
> which it was written*.  Because all the messages would be on the page in
> front of you, no quotation would be necessary, except possibly in the case
> of larding.  Because Nick is a lazy old coot, he wants the software to do
> most of the work for him.  He then intends to strip away all the
> identifying material and fatten his purse by publishing your good ideas
> under his own name.  Now is that clear?
>
>
>
> Conceptually, this is easy as pied.  In point of fact, because of all the
> quotation, it is next to impossible.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS
> NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"
>
>
>
> Glen -
>
> > Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:
>
> >
>
> >https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7
>
> >
>
> > I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at
>
> > the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of
>
> > threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It
>
> > helps a lot.
>
> I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe
> many will obtain one soon nor easily.
>
>
>
> >  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts
>
> > different from "Nick wants"?
>
> I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants...
>
> meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the
>
> implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or
>
> semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is
>
> interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I
>
> am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think*
> Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...
>
>
>
> For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same phrasing
> to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or Marcus... or
> many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in
>
> what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am
>
> *much* more likely to use "he is wanting" perhaps Renee's "I am
>
> wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?
>
> If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she
> be more likely to use the more assertive?
>
>
>
> Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't
> here?
>
>
>
> - Steve
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 
>
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe
> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>
> 
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Nick Thompson]

At the very minimum, nick wants to take an email exchange and render it as a
"correspondence", in the classic literary sense: i.e., in the order in which
it was written.  Because all the messages would be on the page in front of
you, no quotation would be necessary, except possibly in the case of
larding.  Because Nick is a lazy old coot, he wants the software to do most
of the work for him.  He then intends to strip away all the identifying
material and fatten his purse by publishing your good ideas under his own
name.  Now is that clear?  

 

Conceptually, this is easy as pied.  In point of fact, because of all the
quotation, it is next to impossible. 

 

Nick 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

 

-Original Message-
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Friday, October 28, 2016 4:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS
NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

 

Glen -

> Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

> 

> 
https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

> 

> I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at 

> the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of 

> threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It 

> helps a lot.

I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe
many will obtain one soon nor easily.

 

>  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts 

> different from "Nick wants"?

I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants... 

meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the 

implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or 

semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is 

interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I 

am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think*
Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...

 

For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same phrasing
to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or Marcus... or
many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in 

what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am 

*much* more likely to use "he is wanting" perhaps Renee's "I am 

wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?   

If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she be
more likely to use the more assertive?

 

Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't
here?

 

- Steve

 

 

 

 



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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

   https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at 
the content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of 
threads, right?  If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It 
helps a lot.
I agree... but I think many/most don't see this view and I don't believe 
many will obtain one soon nor easily.


 Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts 
different from "Nick wants"?
I think it is my perceived tentativeness of what I think Nick wants... 
meaning I'm not sure he knows what he wants or understands the 
implications of what he wants.   I'm not sure about the grammatical or 
semantic roots of this (why I use "is wanting" over "wants") but it is 
interesting to me that you can call it out so clearly.   Unfortunately I 
am probably conflating or convolving my own unsureness of what I *think* 
Nicks wants into what I believe to be his own lack of clarity...


For contrast, I think I would be MUCH less likely to use the same 
phrasing to describe my understanding of what I *think* YOU want... or 
Marcus... or many others here who have a crisper sense of confidence in 
what you are asking/suggesting.   Our patron St. Stephen of Guerin, I am 
*much* more likely to use "he is wanting" perhaps Renee's "I am 
wanting" vs "I want" reflects some of this same ambiguity of detail?   
If she were more precise in her own mind about what she wants, might she 
be more likely to use the more assertive?


Hey Nick!  Don't you love it when people talk about you like you aren't 
here?


- Steve





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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Steven A Smith]

Marcus -

What a wonderfully cryptic yet compelling explanation/example?   Are you 
suggesting a certain grandiosity?  Or another way of alluding to the 
ambiguity I am suggesting?   Or perhaps an emotional wanting vs a more 
intellectual wanting?


"Enquiring megalo-minds are wanting to know!"
- Steve

<>

Read:  "I am large I contain multitudes." Like, say, an amygdala and a 
frontal cortex, the latter remarking on the functioning of the former.

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Marcus Daniels]

<>

Read:  "I am large I contain multitudes." Like, say, an amygdala and a 
frontal cortex, the latter remarking on the functioning of the former.  

Marcus

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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[glen ☣]

On 10/28/2016 02:00 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

The biggest challenge (I think) to leaving all the text included (other than just 
text/data bloat) is that many of us aren't responding to the entire linear text of every 
response that came before... we are often responding only to part of it which suggests a 
tree structure rather than a simple  linear "thread" as we colloquial call 
it... it is more of a multi-filiament?


Just to help ensure my sanity, my email subject window looks like this:

   https://goo.gl/photos/thJWHVxy8cfPv3Qq7

I've always assumed everyone else's does too... So, when one looks at the 
content of a mailing list like this, they can _see_ trees of threads, right?  
If not, I highly recommend a modern client. 8^)  It helps a lot.

Now for a little thread hijacking:

...  I think Nick is really *wanting* more than is implied by the specific 
question. ...


Renee' uses the grammatical construct like "I am wanting ..." or "She was wanting ..." all the 
time.  It drives me batty, though I've kept my mouth shut about it so far.  I suppose it's correct in some sense.  I 
just cannot make myself think that way.  If I want something, then I want it... not wanting for it or anything weird 
like that.  Maybe you can tell me how "Nick is wanting" structures your thoughts different from "Nick 
wants"?

--
☣ glen


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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[┣glen┫]

In reaction to Nick's question, I re-installed VM (https://launchpad.net/vm), 
which I used to use.  I think you used gnus, but maybe RMAIL... I used to 
generate digests to store or forward various threads and such back when I used 
VM.  It doesn't seem to work the way I remember it, though.  I _almost_ 
reinstalled it awhile back in order to collect my own posts for programming 
MegaHAL to create geprbot.  But I got lazy and used sed instead.

All that to say, I'm ... about ... this ... close ... to going back to emacs 
for my mail client.  Luckily nobody cares enough about my time to schedule it 
for me.

On 10/28/2016 12:30 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> My favorite is that Outlook's re-encoding of :-) shows up as the letter J.
> That kind of defeats the original purpose of text art -- that it is portable 
> across clients.  I heard the latest version of Emacs now supports Webkit 
> HTML.  For me, quoting sanity went to hell when I stopped using Emacs for my 
> mail program.   Well now Emacs does HTML, but I have been hijacked by the 
> calendar capability in Outlook.   Obviously I wouldn't want to lose the 
> ability to have other people schedule my day.  


-- 
␦glen?


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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[Marcus Daniels]

"... to standardize things across email clients (e.g. the quotation prefix and 
"quote" line, plain text vs. html, character encodings)?"

My favorite is that Outlook's re-encoding of :-) shows up as the letter J.
That kind of defeats the original purpose of text art -- that it is portable 
across clients.  I heard the latest version of Emacs now supports Webkit HTML.  
For me, quoting sanity went to hell when I stopped using Emacs for my mail 
program.   Well now Emacs does HTML, but I have been hijacked by the calendar 
capability in Outlook.   Obviously I wouldn't want to lose the ability to have 
other people schedule my day.  

Marcius

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Re: [FRIAM] THREAD BENDING ALERT: Was "Is Bezos a Bozo?" IS NOW"Reading Email exchanges chronologically"

[┣glen┫]

Let's think about what you're asking for a minute.  There are very few on the 
list who care to spend the energy to participate at all.  such lurkers 
undoubtedly have valuable opinions.  But there's some hurdle of effort (or 
unwillingness) that prevents them from expressing those opinions.  Of the 
people who _do_ participate, very few of them can find the energy to delete all 
the extra characters, even those added automatically by the mailing list 
software (at the bottom of each post).  I can't even explain how easy it is to 
delete that before responding.  That nobody does it is absolutely 
flabbergasting, to me.  But there it is.

So, when you ask whether it's really that hard, it spawns the questions: Is it 
really that hard to trim/edit one's replies?  ... to use the threading feature 
of one's email client?  ... to ignore threads or particular posters? ... to 
standardize things across email clients (e.g. the quotation prefix and "quote" 
line, plain text vs. html, character encodings)?

The answers to all these questions is "No"  it's not hard at all.  These are 
all problems that have been solved multiple times in other contexts.  But it is 
work (as distinct from play).  And work usually requires incentive.  What's the 
incentive?


On 10/27/2016 10:29 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Is the problem THIS hard?  It would seem to me that the first step would be 
> to simply reorder the email messages eliminating any previous email messages 
> automatically included in each subsequent message.  Once the messages were in 
> the right order and the inclusions of previous messages were eliminated, I 
> could write macro’s to get rid of the headers.  By inclusions I don’t mean 
> places where somebody intentionally pulled out a passage from somebody’s 
> message to comment on.  (I believe you call that quotation.)  I mean the 
> routine inclusion of prior messages as a part of the reply process. 

-- 
␦glen?


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