The Problem of TL;DR

I was reading a post today, which had a succinct summary at the end explaining what I had just read. It was not a scientific paper or even an economy journal. It was a simple anecdotal story from a person who used way too many words for a way too boring story. Yet there it was, a Tl;dr at the end, mocking the reader, simplifying the 6 sentence post and abridging it to 2 lines. Tl;dr, for the unacquainted is an acronym for Too long;didn't read. It serves the function of cutting down time of the reader to let them absorb the required information instead of actually reading the information.

The problem right now is not reading too little, but writing too much. Tl;dr tries to give a solution to
the problem that does not exist. To me, these textual bombardments of posts are no better than Tumblr GIFs in a Buzzfeed article. More words does not necessarily equal more knowledge or a better story, sometimes it is just a pile of overwrought ideas haphazardly scratched on the screen.

To get the redundancy of TL;DR, we have to first understand the concept of words. The English language has 26 alphabets. A dictionary roughly has 250000 words. It used to be, writing too little was our fear, but writing too much is just as bad. When things can be explained in 10 words we use a hundred. Like someone trying to organize his workload by creating unneeded files, successfully complicating the process. This is a direct result of what schools try to force on us.

It is counterintuitive to first write something going into tautologial and redundant details and then backtracking to a vague summary redifining what was already written. After reading a plethora of teenage angst and woe paragraphs, it's transparent that cutting down words to the core that both explain the post concisely and maintain the essence of the written piece is harder than it looks. Much harder than going on about an easily understood topic like the leaking wound of an HIV infected person.


One good story, written well and edited with brevity is worth a lot more than hundred stretched posts written by a bored guy trying to procrastinate on the Internet.

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Sleeping Late, not a problem

Sleeping late has been a moral issue and a cultural dilemma for a while now. When it's well-established that the circadian rhythm shifts later during your teenage years, I don't understand why early-rising moralists try to shove their ideology down our throats. Many teens are wired to feel tired later than adults. You'll never hear someone being called lazy for going to bed early.

I believe it is a remnant of ancient society's subsistence farming, irrelevant in the modern urban life, but forced to be carried out because of the deep rooted history behind it. Before electric light bulbs came around, someone who slept during daytime hours probably would have been looked down upon as wasting productive time, but now there is no excuse to be willfully ignorant. Even worse is when you're asked to just get up early to get work done. That's the same as me telling you to wake up at 3am instead of 9 to 'get work done'.

As for night owls being lazy, many people can still not comprehend the idea of sleeping late, and thus waking up later. If you're up 6 hours later than someone, then waking up late is not that absurd an idea. People who sleep late are often considered lazy, no matter what they're able to achieve in their one 24 hour day cycle while early risers are lauded for their productivity even if they hardly do anything else. If you sleep late working on a project, people will tell you at 8-9am to get your lazy ass out of the bed. Everyone's a bio student with vast knowledge about the sleeping patterns and how harmful sleeping late is, when all they have is a minimal understanding of science.

Also, god  forbid you try to catch up on some sleep during the weekend, then you're literally the lowest scum of Earth. Yeah, well, I'm not burning daylight because I am not a farmer waiting to sow his crops. And it is not all hearsay, there's some science to back me up too! This has got to be the dream city - Overpopulation becomes such a huge problem in the world in the year 2051 that cities start switching over to this to help unclog the congestion caused by so many humans. Half the city is awake during the day, and half the city is awake during the night. Cities become more productive, and congestion on roads is cut in half.

What about sleeping late, waking up early and then taking a nap in the afternoon? Wikipedia explains it perfectly.
Segmented sleep

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Accepting Apathy, Really What We Need?

 Listen to this post(experimental):
 

We're a generation raised not to feel. Someone beats you on the playground? You do not fight back. Someone curses you? You do not abuse him back, you stay silent and let it simmer. Someone backstabs you at work? You do nothing, because it is work and not an emotional circus. Nobody cares about anything anymore. Sure, you see a few freaks fighting for the cause of others, or some retards trying to make this world less of a shithole, but those people are morons AMIRIGHT?! Who cares if the world is going to shit, you just live out your life peacefully, that's what matters. Much like most things we humans don't like, we have successfully romanticized the idea of not giving a fuck, about everything.

The world is broken, ain't anything you can do about that now, can you. Nobody has the time to listen

to your sob story, it's just one droplet in the universe of oceans. Apathy is the unsaid topic everyone understands, but not many dare say out loud. After all, what are we but faceless creatures roaming the Earth, taking the form of whatever suits our wants best. Older generation likes to associate that with the internet, the loss of connection. But we lost the human touch a long time ago.

The world is broken. It is broken because we break it everyday. What is an ocean, but a multitude of droplets? Is this empathy towards apathy that's leading to humanity's dissociation? Each human is an individual sentient being, that's not a phrase to throw lightly. It is not the lack of connectivity, but the lack of will to connect that harbors alienation. The motto of the new world is 'Well, at least I didn't try".

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Not Everything Is Trolling

Watch this video to know the best troll

It seems to me, as people online grow accustomed to the word trolling, they are simultaneously trying to partake in this 'humorous culture' by posting troll work of their own. It's just the way people try to outdo each other without knowing what is that they are competing for. 

Everything a stranger does on an internet is a trolling attempt these days. Didn't understand something? Trolling. Didn't like the post? Trolling. Lame humour attempt? Trolling. Trolling has become synonymous with joking/pranking to internet laymen who want to be a part of something to bind them with other users and maybe even give them internet points(hint, they don't exist).

Guess what, Trolling refers to a very specific activity where someone actually tries to ruin someone's day in the most offensive way possible.  Usually this person will say extremely offensive and hateful things just to get an emotional response out of someone.

• Telling a joke directed at a friend is NOT trolling
• Criticizing someone is NOT trolling
• And most of all, stupid posts are NOT trolling attempts. Most of the time, they are just that, stupid comments by stupid people.
• NOT every rage comic created by a teen with questionable language skills has trolling in it.

America bombed Hiroshima, it trolled Japan so hard.

Guess what, Russell Peters telling a joke about India is not trolling, he's a comedian and he's doing his job. Nor is a critic criticizing Bieber, he's criticizing him or maybe even sharing his opinions.

If someone comes to you and tells you that your work sucks, that doesn't make him a troll. They are not trolling attempts, but you are a douche for thinking so.

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Humble Bundle: Every Gamer's Utopia

That's the entire gaming community coming together

Imagine going to a bookstore full of wonderful underrated books and you could pay whatever you wanted for them. The best part, the money would go to a charity.

Now this is not happy illusion, but an actual thing..except with video games. The thing is real innovation and demands applaud from every part of your soul. In a world full of greedy companies and cunning gaming corporations, indie developers show the way towards freedom.

This is one of those things that makes you respect online strangers even more. How long have you thought that a particular game was great but not priced accordingly? Now you can make open payment a reality.

WHAT IS HUMBLE BUNDLE

The concept is pretty easy to understand as well as unique. They promote a game every week(for Mac, Windows and Linux) and people an pay anything they want for the games in that period. The limit for acquiring Steam keys is a measly 1$ and that too because some spammers had to try and ruin the system and fake create thousands of accounts to pay .01$(the previous limit) and get steam keys for other purposes.

You can choose how much of the money you pay goes to charity and how much to the developers(plus some tip for those of you feeling extraordinarily generous).
There are multiple ways to pay for games and they are all quite simple. After that, it's a free ride to a better conscience AND an awesome game!

USER FUNDED

The developers earn money on their games during these few days only by the generosity of the internet gamers. Also, people who may have wanted the game but thought the price wasn't just, can now pay what they think is reasonable, or up to their capabilities. Even better, the same people can determine what the developers earn and what the charities get.

THE GAMES
I hear your skeptic mind saying-'But these games must not be good enough'. For those of you who may yet have doubts, I present to you these intuitive games that the company has allowed custom payment on for in the past couple of years:

Yes, this game too

• Amnesia: Dark Descent(now 9.99$)

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These Confession Pages Are Damaged Beyond Repair

This post is a direct response to the 'Confession Pages' popping up everywhere on Facebook





What is a Confession? 

• A formal admission of one's sins with repentance and desire of absolution.

• A formal statement admitting that one is guilty of a crime.

• An admission or acknowledgment that one has done something that one is ashamed or embarrassed about.

What human would even consider posting it  publicly 

I'll be damned if people think that a confession is a statement to whine or complain about people or things. I believe people still complain, crib and bitch through the anonymous confession media because they don't really know what constitutes a confession or intentionally post their most detrimental of thoughts.
Whatever, no harm no foul, right? But the second option is what that scares me. People use the most offensive  and abusive language verbally possible using the confession medium to get attention and create a controversy and rip out the people that they dislike.

So let me be clear on one thing. What juvenile shit people are passing of as confessions(both negative and positive, especially the latter) ARE NOT CONFESSIONS. They are their opinions and thoughts about people. I think we can all agree on that.

One of the things that is pretty baffling is that people 'confess' about what offends them. Now, that is their opinion. Society has created false values about opinions. Oh, so something offends you? So fucking what? Are we to take that as gospel and respect your decision to hate something/someone?

Another thing is how perfectly okay it is for people to create Facebook pages and let people's inner beasts ravage the dignity of other people and scrape for mindless controversies. This is  not unlike the rape culture we've been hearing about. How is it acceptable to create a medium to bash people, isn't this exact thing cyber bullying? You wouldn't go creating mutual groups to bitch and crib about other people, so why create cyber bullies online?

These pages are NOT a place to dole out judgment and abuse on human beings you barely know. And even if people know them, on what basis does this give them the right to publicly humiliate someone?

And people without a conscience do not get to decide what they can post and publish publicly. The admins and moderators of these kind of groups are like and attention whores. There's no other reason for those sadistic persons to continue posting obviously immoral and downright insolant assumptions. They are the real life grinches.

Internet is not a strange place that we are unfamiliar with. But do people become fiends on the internet? Is this the purpose of connectivity and socialization online? I'd just like you as a person(even if this is somewhat of an emotional appeal) to know that behind the screens, you are not a machine, not a sadistic beast that can derive pleasure from mutilating their own offline ethics and ideology.
This is both an assesment of the Pages, and a request to both the posters and admins to keep the shit low. Not everyone wants to get involved in a fight with a faceless man with ravine spectators to watch the show.

Share/Like this post and let your friends know exactly what you stand for.

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How We Encourage INTERNET TROLLS!!1!

Anyone who has ever steadily contributed to the internet has felt the nonsensical wrath of a group of users feared all over the universe(or maybe just the net) - The internet Trolls.

As Wikipedia describes it, In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.  

Not trolling, just stupid

And THIS is the true definition of an internet troll, not some made up prank or a cheap trick involving the internet. Not everything is 'trolling'. Posting in all caps, hoping to infuriate less intelligent readers and/or trying to dissuade contributors with made up over the top stories is not the traits of a troll, they are the traits of a sick attention craving human.

 Not to say that trolls themselves don't crave attention, but the true original trolls were innovative and ingenious in their inflammatory capabilities.
Everyone has seen this people up close, or as close as internet anonymity allows. But what is the reasoning behind these set of like-minded people and why do even good guys can have destructive alter egos online?


A TIME CONSUMING GAME
Trolling is viewed as a humorous pastime by the troll himself. It is a time consuming game that requires patience and skill to pull it off. The achievement is the provoked online victim. Now in no way does this make sense, but when hierarchy is no longer present, there is no authoritative figure and anarchy takes over, this is the kind of kick a stingy user can get.


DISSOCIATIVE ANONYMITY 
A simple reason is that people online don't usually know each other. And this in turn, encourages the 'you don't know me' behavior pattern where people lack any bond or a connection with the person they are interacting with. There is no indication of a real identity or measurable characteristics with the user and that makes it easier for people(even the good ones) to switch on their kamikaze insult mode.

Even if a troll is recognized, all it takes is a  couple of clicks to make another account or enable a proxy.


EVEN IF THE ANONYMITY IS REMOVED

People rarely feel the same responsibility while interacting with the person whose name and identity they know as they would've if it was a real time conversation. This inability to physically see the person reduces the morals of the person.

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Aaron Swartz And Copyrighting Knowledge©

This is Aaron Swartz. He committed suicide on eleventh January by hanging himself. Now, I did not know about him, or who he was prior to his name being everywhere on the internet after he killed himself.
But apparently, he was a very accomplished person. The guy was a genius, in the purest sense of the word. Here is the list of the things he did

• He aided in the creation of RSS. That is right, the RSS feed on this blog was partially created by this man.
• He helped create Reddit, an online community based website that lets users talk about varied topics and share articles. 
• He was heavily involved in Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Most of the images used on this blog are licensed under Creative Commons.
• He was a strong supporter of open information and copyright reform.

That's a long list of impressive accomplishments for someone who died as young as 26. He completely changed the way the internet works and gave it some of the most effective characteristics. 

Now the full story, Aaron hacked into Jstor which according to its website is a library that connects teachers, students, researchers and scholars around the world with scholarly content. Aaron downloaded more than 2 million articles on the website atttending to share it with the world and the less fortunate people from the third world countries. It was his personal belief that providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not for children in the Global South is outrageous and unacceptable. 

Those with access to these resources ” students, librarians, scientists”, you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not--indeed, morally, you cannot--keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world.      -Aaron Swartz 

If you choose to share the vast oceans of internet knowledge, it’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral, it’s a moral imperative.

Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy. 

Making these articles free to the general public and sharing it with the world, Aaron Swartz was charged with crimes with the maximum prison sentence of 35 years. To put that into perspective, here's a list of crimes that carry a maximum sentence of less than 35 years in the US:

1. Manslaughter
2. Bank Robbery
3. Selling slaves
4. Helping Al Quada develop nuclear weapons
5. Violence at international airports 

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Censorship, A Banned Idea

Censorship curbs the right to speech of people, taking a statement out of context to be made incomprehensible. The post is about a topic that has confused and bothered me for a long time.

Worldwide
With the passage of time, the world governments are responding to the wishes of the majority. The majority, we are told, looks at the net as a dangerous monster - to the average individual, the net is nothing but a threat, threatening to steal the childhood from their children. But will banning the net indeed help your children? Remember that the apple was forbidden, and that's why Eve wanted it.

Of course, no one has any idea about how the majority views the net, but since only a small minority are actually on the net, the majority's ideas are likely to be based on media reports rather than on actual experience, which is nothing short of delightful and life changing.


Those in favour often say that scenes of people consuming alcohol or smoking tobacco influence people to copy them, but do they mean that the most adaptive and intelligent species in the world is nothing but a cheap imitator of little stunts?

The net with its inherently changing nature and the array of promises it holds, including the end of mass media, the beginning of individual media, and the equality of it all, seems ideally designed to further the cause of education and developing the human brain in a far more interactive fashion. And people want to censor that.
Censorship is telling a man that he can't have a pizza just because a baby can't chew it.

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United As One, Divided By Zero

Greetings.
Unemployed persons and students, wage slaves and farmers, priests and rock stars.
More and more of us are poor and starving.
More and more of us are being killed and imprisoned.
More and more of us are being censored and monitored.
More and more of our rights, hopes and dreams are quickly being stripped away.
The world of today is a dark place. The many live under the rule of the few.
This is true all around the world.
This shit, has got to go.

For too long our need to belong has been perversely used by those who wish to rule us.
Since time immemorial, we the people, have been separated and divided.
Since time immemorial, we the people, have been conquered and ruled.
But from time to time, we the people, unite.
Such is our history, for we do not forgive, and we do not forget.

That which has been before, has been a remarkable progression.
That which is today, is a remarkable situation.
And that which is to come, is without precedent.
Make no mistake. History is in the making. The window of opportunity is open.

As technological advancements give us a new global consciousness and unprecedented unity, governments, corporations and old world establishments are threatened at their very core. As a result they are now fighting us all in a war. Never before have so few tried to fight so many.

Their tricks are numerous, their methods are dangerous and cruel.
But in times of mass propaganda, lies and oppression - indeed, in times of universal deceit, one word of truth outweighs the whole world.
Truth is revolutionary and courage is contagious.
I ask you to understand this, for to understand, is to transform what is.

The time has come for what we all have been waiting for.
You are the idea to which time has finally come. You are the calm and the storm.
You are anonymous. We are anonymous. Embrace the anonymity.

The time has come for you to pick up your personal responsibility.
The time has come for each one of us to speak the word of truth.

The year invites all human beings to create something and present it to the world. Put something out there for the world to see. Never be silent. Always be bold.
Listen and speak, learn and teach, read and write. Create. Revolt. You decide your own level of involvement in human evolution. But never fear, for you are not alone.

In 2012 the world is divided by zero. In 2012, who is Spartacus?

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Mental Fallacy

Fallacies have interested me since forever, they are flaws in our reasoning prowess, faults in our arguments that if known can really help change the stride of a debate or an argument. They are tricks and Mental traps often used sneakily by advertisers and anyone with something to say.(The argument that because something is 'natural' it is therefore justified,valid,or better).
When thought about, fallacies are like illusions of our mind, just like paranoia. They are too important to overlook in the human mind. Like a paradox, they can seem to have no beginning nor an end, instead what they have is a middle, a fair ground which if magnified upon reveals a slope towards the user of these tactics.
Some of the most common fallacies of our mind are also the most powerful,

The strawman fallacy: By exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable or valid. One of the more dangerous fallacies at it also recognises yourself as calculative.
Example: After Will said that we should put more money into health and education, Warren responded by saying that he was surprised that Will hates our country so much that he wants to leave it defenceless by cutting military spending.

Click on image to expand

Slippery slope: You made out like if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.
The problem with this reasoning is that it avoids the issue and instead it turns the discussion toward the future . Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact occur,confusion arises.
Example: Colin Closet asserts that if we allow same-sex couples to marry, then the next thing we know we'll be allowing people to marry their parents, their cars and even monkeys and thus same sex marriages cannot be allowed

Personal attack: You attack your opponent's character or personal traits instead of engaging with their argument. This one of the most widely used counter argument form and also completely groundless.

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