I have finished the second draft of Calamity, the third and final book of the Reckoners trilogy. As I’ve said before, my second draft of a story is the one where I do “bug fixing.” Essentially, I read through again and tweak any problems I know the book has, trying to make it readable by my editor. I often do a polish and trim during or after this. (In this case, the book was clean enough that I did it during, doing about a 5% cut along the way to tighten the language.)

So, huzzah! The book, and the series, is a wrap. I’ll probably end up doing one to two more drafts on this book after alpha readers (my family, writing group, editor, and agent) and then beta readers (who are carefully selected by my assistant Peter) have a look at it.

But for now, my Reckoners plate has been cleared. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) someone just shoved another full plate at me: Mistborn, Shadows of Self. It’s time for the editorial and beta reader edits for that book, which is due into Tor in its (mostly) final form June 15th. So, there’s no rest for me this time around, despite wanting to someday have a chance to play Bloodborne. (Mmm…Dark Souls games…)

Anyway, as you can see from the progress bars on my website, I’m already halfway through the Mistborn revision, so I may finish ahead of schedule. June 15th or earlier, then, will mark my official start of work on Stormlight Three. I know a lot of you are waiting for this, and I’m eager to get to it. Things will go better if I get this Mistborn revision done first, however, since we’re not far away from that one actually getting released.

Thanks, as always, for your support and patience. I realize many of you would rather I just stick to one project—but time has proven to me that my writing is stronger if I keep a variety of stories moving through my brain. The books that you personally love are made stronger by me dividing my time.

Anticipated work and release dates of future books are:

• Shadows of Self (Mistborn Era Two, Book Two)
  Set for October 6th and up for preorder now! Working on final revisions currently.
• The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn Era Two, Book Three)
  Set for January 26th and up for preorder now! The final revision notes not yet back from the editor. Will probably be due in two or three months. (So I’ll need to take a break from Stormlight when they arrive.)
• Calamity (the final book of the Reckoners)
  Spring 2016 sometime. The date isn’t set yet; we’re talking with Random House about this right now. The book just got sent in, and editorial revisions will likely be due late this summer. My goal will probably be to do them during the same break where I do Bands of Mourning revisions.
• Alcatraz vs. the Dark Talent (The Evil Librarians Book Five)
  Summer 2016 sometime. Note that currently the plan is to rerelease all four of the previous books during the winter/spring with brand new art (and, at last, ebooks). Yay!
• Stormlight 3 (No official title yet, though I’ve bandied about many different ones, including Stones Unhallowed)
  Christmas 2016. My next project, starting work in June. Anticipated writing time: 8–10 months, plus interruptions for drafting other books. Follow along on the progress bar on my website.

There you go! As I’ve said before, my goal is generally to do two books a year—one large epic and one smaller teen novel. However, last year, instead of doing a large epic I did two shorter Mistborn novels. (Along with one tiny book, in Evil Librarians 5. Amusingly all three of these books added together are only around two-thirds the length of a Stormlight novel.)

Hopefully I’m not releasing too much. I don’t want you folks to get tired of me. One side effect of the way I approached last year is that I currently don’t have any novellas in the pipeline, which saddens me, as Perfect State, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, Legion: Skin Deep, and Sixth of the Dusk have all had very good receptions over the last year. So, I’ve been wondering if—while writing Stormlight 3—it might be good for me to squeeze in a novella-length story about one of the side characters, then release it next spring as a teaser. We’ll see.

As for what I’ll do when Stormlight 3 is finished…well, that’s too far off to judge. My eyes are solidly on Stormlight at this point, and it’s going to dominate my life for the better part of a year. Once it’s done, we’ll see. My next book could be Rithmatist 2, or it could be the final Wax and Wayne book, or it could be a new teen project to follow up the Reckoners. All three are things I’ll consider doing in the break between Stormlight 3 and 4.

But man…I don’t even want to think about Book Four right now. Book Three is looming large, and it’s almost time to settle in and get to work.

For now, I hope you enjoy the Mistborn books and Calamity as they are released. Thanks again for your support!

Brandon Sanderson
May 2015

Apropos of nothing, here’s a quick video of a Japanese illustrator who goes by the name Satsuma, working with a Northern white-faced owl perched on his hand. The clip is humourous in and of itself, but it’s especially fascinating to see the stabilization of the bird’s head and eyes while he works. Strangely mesmerizing. (via Tastefully Offensive)

___E___very friend I have with a job that involves picking up something heavier than a laptop more than twice a week eventually finds a way to slip something like this into conversation: "Bro,((It always starts with "Bro")) you don't work hard. I just worked a 4700-hour week digging a tunnel under ...

Movie Trivia: The original version of Alien didn’t cast Sigourney Weaver in the lead role. She ultimately landed the role when it was learned that the original lead, Mitzy the Cat, had a debilitating allergic reaction to cephalopods. 

Great Tree, Great Axe

If all the seas were one sea,
What a great sea that would be!
If all the trees were one tree,
What a great tree that would be!
If all the men were one man,
What a great man that would be!
If all the axes were one axe,
What a great axe that would be!
And if the great man took the great axe,
And cut down the great tree,
And let if fall into the great sea,
What a great splish-splash that would be!

... How great would all of these things be?

—John Eifert (quoting a Mother Goose rhyme)

If all the seas were combined into one sea, it would look pretty much like the Pacific Ocean, only a little bigger.

The poem's tree, axe, and human are more interesting.

The tree

Real trees can't grow taller than around 130 meters, thanks to physical limits on their ability to transport water. If they found a way around those limits, they'd face issues of fundamental physical strength; a kilometers-tall tree would crush itself.

Let's set aside these limits, and imagine that we built a single standard tree out of all the material in all the world's trees.

For our "standard tree," we'll use the oak tree from the Sylva Foundation's OneOak project. The project extensively documents every detail of a single oak tree. As part of the project, the tree was cut down in 2010. Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing, but it's as good a candidate as any for our model "standard tree".

The OneOak tree was 23.9 meters tall and weighed 14.385 tons.[1]Slightly more of the mass was in the branches than the trunk. By comparison, one paper estimates that the world's forests have an aboveground plant mass of about 470 billion tons.

If—ignoring the physical constraints—we combined this mass into a single tree, modeled on the OneOak, the trunk would be two kilometers in diameter. The upper branches would stretch about 75 kilometers above the surface—most of the way to space.

The human

If we used the same approach to combine every living human into a single body—again, ignoring the obvious physical constraints—that person would be close to 3 kilometers tall.

Proportionally, the person would have grown slightly less than the tree.

The axe

How many axes are there in the world?

Thanks to multiple meanings of the word "axes", this is a hard problem to Google.[2]That, and the fact that it's a weird statistic that no one has any real reason to try to gather data on even if they could find a way to do so. Instead, let's try to get a reasonable guess through Fermi estimation.

Since there's no central clearinghouse of axe-related information, I thought I'd try asking friends how many axes they had.

But this might miss a lot of axes; for example, some axes—like fire axes—are owned by organizations. To get a slightly fairer sample, I asked a bunch of friends around the country to estimate the number of axes and number of humans in their general vicinity.

Some people were in houses with sheds, and had a 2:1 human-to-axe ratio. Other people were in large offices with hundreds of people and at best one or two fire axes. The average seemed to be around 50:1—much lower than I expected.[3]I grew up in a house with a wood shop, and we always had a roughly 1:1 axe-to-human ratio.

Of course, surveying random Internet-connected people who I know is hardly representative; rural people probably have more axes, while the very poor might not have any. But it also wouldn't make sense for there to be substantially more axes than people, if for no other reason than that humans can only really use one axe at a time.

But absent any other data, I'm guessing the ratio of humans to axes is probably somewhere between 50:1 and 5:1.

This means that our combined axe would be a little small for our combined person. It would be only a little over half a kilometer long—barely more than a flimsy hatchet.

If an experienced axe user can chop down an eight-inch tree in 15 minutes, then chopping down our giant tree—if the rate is proportional to the axe size and square of the tree's diameter—would most likely take a few weeks of chopping.

The fall

The tree would weigh between 1% and 10% as much as the Chicxulub asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

It would strike the ocean with much less speed than the Chicxulub asteroid, and the energy release would be much less substantial. However, it would still be moving at kilometers per second, and would be able to displace a gigantic amount of water.

The Chicxulub impact created a giant tsunami; the buried layer of jumbled sand mixed with a fossilized forest it left along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico was a crucial clue in discovering the location of the crater.[4]For more on this discovery, I can't recommend the book T. Rex and the Crater of Doom highly enough. It's written by Walter Alvarez—one of the researchers who found the first evidence for the impact—and is one of the best pieces of popular science writing I've ever read.

There have been some beautiful simulations of the Chicxulub tsunami. The exact details of the tsunami depend on a lot of factors, but it seems safe to say that waves at least tens or hundreds of meters high would inundate every coastline and destroy virtually every coastal city and many farther inland.

In other words, the Mother Goose poem in John's question probably wouldn't wipe out the human race, but it would probably be the deadliest single disaster in our species's history. Even by the ghastly standards of old childrens' fairy tales, that's pretty bad.

Axe law

In closing, I offer my favorite piece of axe-related legal trivia:[5]That's not a long list, but the things on it are all pretty memorable.

Lawyer Kevin Underhill, of the legal blog Lowering the Bar, highlighted the wonderful 1998 case People v. Foranyic. In this case, he writes, appeals court ruled "that there was probable cause for police to detain someone they see riding a bike at 3 a.m., carrying an axe."

So if you're two miles tall and heading toward the coast to cut down the world's only tree ...

... watch out for cops.

Sharpening is a mystery to many, some do it well and others don’t. There are quite a few methods to sharpen an image including the use of a High Pass Filter, Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen and Camera Shake Removal in Adobe Photoshop CC. However, it’s similar to hearing nails on a chalkboard when I see an image that is over sharpened. I’m no saint, I’m certainly guilty of cranking Unsharp Mask, I just never found the right solution. Until now. [more]

This one goes out to all the city cyclists who have pulled up to the bottom of a steep-ass hill with three words echoing through their head: Oh. Hell. No. The Norwegian city of Trondheim built a special bike-lift that gives folks with wheels a free ride, no pedaling required.

Read more...

smokeporch:

All the single ladies

Electronic Store | CO, USA

(I am waiting in line, the next to be up, when I hear this a customer start shouting about how she refuses to show ‘some Mexican’ her ID in order to purchase something.)

Customer: “I don’t know where you get off asking to see MY ID! I don’t ask to see your green card!”

Employee: “Your credit card doesn’t have a signature on it, so I have to get an ID or I can’t let you use it.”

Customer: “This is so rude! I cannot believe you people are even allowed to ask for it, for ANY REASON!”

(Having had enough, and just wanting to buy my videogame, I start walking towards the customer.)

Me: “Ma’am, what’s the problem here?!”

Customer: “This illegal wants to see my ID!”

Me: “She’s obviously not illegal, but if you don’t want her to see your ID, then maybe you can just let me see both cards and I’ll verify it to her?”

Customer: “That’s fine. A nice American boy doing the right thing. Thank you.”

(The clerk hands me the credit card, and the woman hands me her ID. I look at them and nod to the clerk. I don’t hand the lady back her ID, though.)

Me: “So… your name’s [Name].”

Customer: “Yes, that’s right.”

Me: “You live at [Address]?”

Customer: “That’s what the ID says.”

Me: “Do you know my name?”

Customer: “Uh, huh? No, I don’t. Of course not. Don’t be silly. We just met.”

Me: “Do you know my address?”

Customer: “Well, obviously I wouldn’t. What’s your point?”

Me: “[Full Name] who lives at [Address], why would you give me your ID without knowing who I am, what I want, or what I would do with it? I know who you are and where you live now.”

(The customer just stares at me, speechless as I hand her back the card and the clerk gives her the items she came in to buy.)

Me: “Oh, and by the way – I’m Italian, so think about how badly you just screwed up as you walk back to your car. I’m not saying I would change my locks. I’m just saying I’d be smarter about things!”

首先?一?抱歉，距上一篇文章到?在，已?隔了好?十天才?文章。本人也承?自己有一??散，一直?有什?太大的?力想新文章的?容，另外我也不知道草榴社??面有多少LOL的玩家，最近Season4?始要?分，所以也拉慢了我?文章的?度。

回?正?。有看?我以前的文章的人都知道我比?喜???於CA集?旗下片商的文章，其??也很?怪我，CA?在是?和人都不缺，尤其是?意方面突然好像柯南的眼?整天反光一?，搞得有?在日本有?界北都的片商?立?群的感?，尤其S1、Moodyz、Ideapocket三???????。其他公司??一姐?例如AliceJapan的小?南去了S1，KMP的神???去了Moodyz，SOD的吉川あいみ去了CA的新片商TeamZero，新人也因??多前途好兼DMM???售平台，?而?相?入CA的片商。??如何，我都是????大於??，希望更多新?肉??到不同的片商，??才能激??意。

?了??多，我?始介?一下女??的群?的分?。一般而言，我上面?的女??都????女?，?名思?，就是片商和?名女??了?家?片的??，?名女?只能跟?一?片商合作（?然，也有一些女?是身兼??片商的??合?，例如AV一姐吉?明步就是S1和Maxing共同??）。??女?因?有相??定的片商支持，所以一般而言只是一?月根?片商的主?的安排，拍?一部大概?小?左右的作品，而??女?的?件一般?好，收入也?多。但片商也不是菩?心?，一般的女??都?有?片安排，片商根?市???，女?的外貌身材，?予3片、6片、12片等?度不一的??合?，如果女???，片商??力??，如果?量萎靡，?一名女?也只有被淘汰的境地。

另外一?女?我?可以????女?。?一?群??有固定的片商????，所以她?可以四?的去不同的大小片商打短工。?一?的女??源大都是?素人?始拍片，拍一下拍上?，但是又?有片商????的可?人，也有是本?是??女?，由於被片商清洗后被逼?奈打短工的可?人。??女?由於?有什?保障，每一片的收入也比??女??得要少，所以她?可以每一?月去很多片商拍片，用?量??收入上的不足。一般而言，??女?的尺度?大，?片?率高，但受?注度?不足。但如果???女??有高?量的女?，?倒不?得，?在AV女?界??女?TOP3如果?有太大的????是波多野?衣、?井步、上原?衣，她?3位的收入一?不比??女?低，而且要?她?做??的公司多不??，但是她?也有她?的?持吧。?也好，??女???就可以?我?多看她?一眼，而不用1?月等死就2?小?。

CA集???有?的?老?可以像曼城一?用金元政策收?很多高?量的??女?，??女?也仲有被吸收的途?。今天介?一下我?人???界最好的??女?片商之一的WANZ。WANZ??不??很多人熟悉，作?小片商也?有太?大的???力和大????。但是小片商也是有好的策?，不靠??女?只用走穴的??女??一?可以在??的大潮中找到一片新天地。

WANZ旗下最王牌的系列??就是ランジェリ?ナ，??系列的主?就是各?高??衣的展示。我以前?是?不同人看片都有不同人的口味，如果??就穿不同的衣服而言，我?人?得最吸引人的是黑?OL系列以及?衣系列。一件好看的高??衣，?人?是欲拒?迎性感的味道。在??的地方遮?，少了些?曝露的性感，多了不少的?惑。在片中?衣???著前?的褪去，一?深情的?吻伴?著半?胸罩和胸部的晃?，性感挑逗的意味不言而喻。尤其?於看?很多衣服很快?去的片子，???奏?慢但激情不?的片子?眼。吊?、蕾?……??最?粹的性感?道不??你有喜?的感?？

本系列?2013年初才?始?作，到?在才一年的??，片子也才十?部，在很多人的??中都?予很高的??，我所以予以推?。尤其我建?可以看一下波多野?衣、橘?花、藤?ゆい的作品，?都是我?人喜?。

wanz055 ランジェリ?ナ 保奈美（上原保奈美） 2013/03/01

 

wanz059 ランジェリ?ナ なみ（?乃なみ ） 2013/04/01

 

wanz064 ランジェリ?ナ ?衣（波多野结衣） 2013/05/01

 

wanz069 ランジェリ?ナ ゆい（藤?ゆい ） 2013/06/01

 

wanz078 ランジェリ?ナ 千草（原千草） 2013/07/01

 

wanz092 ランジェリ?ナ まお（仓多まお） 2013/09/01

 

wanz105 ランジェリ?ナ ゆな（椎名ゆな） 2013/10/01

 

wanz121 ランジェリ?ナ えり（保坂 えり） 2013/12/01

 

wanz133 ランジェリ?ナ ななこ（森ななこ ）2014/01/01

 

wanz142 ランジェリ?ナ ?花（橘?花） 2014/02/01

 

wanz156 ランジェリ?ナ 美?（工藤美?） 2014/03/01

 

wanz168 ランジェリ?ナ みお 2014/04/01

 




ps.展示美??衣???不算?意的?型，Ideapocket也?始??，4月1日?期打?炮的是RIO。?部片子?面RIO也是展示著穿著?衣的她是如何挑逗大家的??，非常值得期待。

ipz351 ランジェリ?オ 裸体よりもエロい至?の下着性交 Rio 2014/04/01
 


——————————————————我是分隔符————————————————————

下面是?人必?的磁力?接，有需要的可以看?下?。

wanz055 ランジェリ?ナ 保奈美（上原保奈美）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:7be827b81e579e13aa51951450b7b96cd3cf4762&dn=WANZ-055

wanz059 ランジェリ?ナ なみ（?乃なみ ）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:6faa4b0ab4ad4cc817fdf2275bfaef30d82f2f97&dn=WANZ059.avi

wanz064 ランジェリ?ナ ?衣（波多野结衣）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:281b78e22576561f4dff9df7fff64ca894ff024e&dn=wanz064%20%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8A%20%E6%B3%A2%E5%A4%9A%E9%87%8E%E7%B5%90%E8%A1%A3

wanz069 ランジェリ?ナ ゆい（藤?ゆい ）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d02041e817da2f91e0197426c748cb175c0ea6d8&dn=0531-wanz069

wanz078 ランジェリ?ナ 千草（原千草）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:889112c50cf68d9e2178e58bee1a408a8a660d5c&dn=WANZ078%20AVI

wanz092 ランジェリ?ナ まお（仓多まお）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:90a23e84036a7805904d22a621283a51378887b0&dn=wanz092

wanz105 ランジェリ?ナ ゆな（椎名ゆな）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:ac95cec2467f163465cb790b744f90dc7ac1f028&dn=%23_wanz105

wanz121 ランジェリ?ナ えり（保坂 えり）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:f4e22613e3cd26a1c4e9a75a883925cba8149a63&dn=%23_wanz121

wanz133 ランジェリ?ナ ななこ（森ななこ ）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:bd8f41e6c02c2772812c4a187a86067396c96152&dn=%23_wanz133

wanz142 ランジェリ?ナ ?花（橘?花）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b833c770619223040d32ab87e78811cabed69158&dn=wanz142.mp4

wanz156 ランジェリ?ナ 美?（工藤美?）

magnet:?xt=urn:btih:48a8e74354c536ee7b55af2c1f6853abc5d429d4&dn=WANZ156AVI

——————————————————我是分隔符————————————————————
PS.找?子的方法，我?是?不?其?地?出?，就怕有些人找不到我以前的帖。
第一步在百度谷歌什麽的找一?叫BTDigg的?站，或者?入?址http://btdigg.org/
 

接著?入你喜?的作品的番?，譬如是snis020、snis005什麽的，其他片商也一?，iptdxxx、starxxx什麽的都可以。
 

然後?看到一堆?子列表，可以找一?下?量比?大的，按磁力?接，迅雷就?自???，然後就等下?好了。??磁力?接也可以?入到迅雷云播放，或者把磁力?接下?得?的?子上?到百度云，??就可以??播放，省硬?空?了。如果???站上??有?片的信息，可能?上做?的人??有做出?，或者??到?片的??，可以?天。
 

根?我在?子?站搜的?果，以上的片子大多都能?找到?子。希望有需求的人，可以搜一下。有些片子可能?史比?久?，下?可能??有?速，建?先把?子?到百度云，然後再下?，或者迅雷用?去淘??一??毛?的??VIP?高速通道。


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上一篇文章我介?了DMM2014大?即???了，3月3日也?始投票。很多??女?在Twitter和Livedoor上面拉票，如果有?趣，可以投一下票。投票地址可以找回我上一篇文章的?接。??我PO我的最?希志和RIO的拉票Twitter，希望她有好成?。

 

 


——————————————————我是分隔符————————————————————
最近我的文章的??量不是很大，不知道是不是被其他?文的人因?雷同而拉低呢？???，大家喜?看我就???吧。下面是我最近?文的?接，如果不是用t66y地址上的朋友，把?址的前?替?掉就可以了，大家?多多支持，多多1024。

[Owen原?]S1王牌系列——交わる体液、?密セックス介?
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1311/979386.html

[Owen原?]自拍界的?杆——カンパニ?松尾
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1311/985439.html

[Owen原?]Ideapocket社的?情——?つめ合って感じ合う情?SEX
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1311/987898.html

[Owen原?]我要打十?——1日10回射精系列介?
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1312/993034.html

[Owen原?]??style——?と○○の甘い性活系列介?
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1312/997157.html

[Owen原?]即???的女神——大?未久
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1312/1001783.html

[Owen原?]突然来一发——いきなりSEX系列介绍
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1312/1006329.html

[Owen原?]?射片的圭臬——Digital Channel系列介?
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1312/1008980.html

[Owen原?]2013年度DMM?售量最高作品
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1401/1019301.html

[Owen原?]我的醉?——泥醉系列介?
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1401/1026609.html

[Owen原?]那些年大咖共演的W片
http://www.t66y.com/htm_data/7/1402/1028625.html

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strappingyounglil:

I want a pet owl!

by Waster

Now You Know useful websites:

• pipl.com - a search engine for finding people.
• privnote.com - write a note to someone that
• will self-destruct after they read it.
• recipepuppy.com - search for recipes based
• on the ingredients you have.
• thefuckingweather.com - a more profane look
• at the weather.
• wolframalpha.com - a computational knowledge
• engine.
• wikirhymer.com - an online rhyming dictionary.
• unlistmy.info - find out which websites store
• data about you, and tell them to unlist your info.
• thistothat.com - find out the best way to glue
• this to that.
• and daily facts here!

I find the Don't Read The Comments movement kind of sad.

Comments sections are frequently misogynistic, homophobic, racist, and very often POORLY WRITTEN. Why bother reading them?

— Don't Read Comments (@AvoidComments) March 8, 2014

In 2006 I said that a blog without comments is not a blog and I stand behind that statement. There have been brief periods where my own blog has been temporarily without comments, but they will always come back as long as I'm in charge here.

I'm a fan of comments, warts and all. They're noisy, sure, but in my experience they reliably produce crowdsourced knowledge in aggregate. I understand being pressed for time, but if you want the complete picture, in the same way that you should follow all those little citation links in Wikipedia articles, you should read the comments.

I empathize with the complaint, believe me:

I used to believe that as an online writer, I had an obligation to read the comments. I thought that it was important from a fact-checking perspective, that it somehow would help me grow as a writer. What I’ve learned is that if there’s something wrong or important or even, sometimes, good about a story, someone will let you know. I’ve over the years amassed an amazing community of Salon readers who engage via email, who challenge me, who inspire new stories, who are decent people and treat me like one in return. What I was getting in the comments was a lot of anonymous “You suck, bitch.”

I admit it’s depressing for one who’s invested almost her entire career in online community to throw in the towel on it in this way. I want it to be better. But it’s just not. As a colleague once observed, “I just can’t take another letter from Angry Bad Divorce Guy.”

But that's so many pesky words, isn't it? TL;DR. Allow me to illustrate with a graph that your brain can absorb in milliseconds:

What is wrong with people, amirite?

I humbly submit that this is asking the wrong question.

What is wrong with us?

I agree with Anil Dash. If your website is full of assholes, it's your fault.

As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we've developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online. But, by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to prevent the overwhelming majority of the worst behaviors on the Internet.

If you run a website, you need to follow these steps. if you don't, you're making the web, and the world, a worse place. And it's your fault. Put another way, take some goddamn responsibility for what you unleash on the world.

In other words, if you are unwilling to moderate your online community, you don't deserve to have an online community. There's no end of websites recreating the glorious "no stupid rules" libertarian paradise documented in the Lord of the Flies in their comment sections, from scratch, each and every day. This ends exactly as you would expect it to.

However, demanding that every online community, every comment section, have active moderation is a tough sell:

• Skilled moderators are difficult to find. A bad moderator is often worse than no moderator.
• Do you have the budget to pay full time moderators?
• Are your moderators around 24/7?
• If you have a single moderator making unilateral decisions, who appeals their decisions? If you have multiple moderators, how do they resolve disagreements?
• What happens when your moderators inevitably burn out or move on?

One of the reasons I launched the Discourse project was due to the utter lack of understanding of how you build software to help online discussion communities moderate themselves. Their survival depends on it.

What I learned building Stack Overflow, more than anything else, is this: the only form of moderation that scales with the community is the community itself. We became quite skilled at building systems for self governance of online communities, and one of the things I'm proudest of is that – if we did our jobs well – decades from now Stack Exchange will still be a network of viable, functioning, entirely self-governing communities.

It's always a people problem. This is absolutely true. But it's also true that software can profoundly affect people's behavior, and provide tools for encouraging positive behaviors while modifying and mitigating negative behaviors. All that stuff Anil Dash described as your responsibility? Discourse handles it automatically, even if the owner installs and then walks away forever.

These are the principles of civilized discourse that Discourse is founded on, that our discussion software is designed around. Civilization begins with software that actively works to help you create safe environments for having reasonable conversations with other human beings. On the Internet, even!

This is all a very long winded way of saying that effective immediately, Coding Horror is using Discourse to power its discussions.

You may have questions, so I will attempt to answer them:

• This blog is now hosted on Ghost, which doesn't natively support comments. All previous TypePad comments were converted into Discourse. To the best of our ability, nothing was lost.

• Discourse is still beta, but late beta. Expect changes and improvements as we make our way to 1.0.

• Discourse is a companion area to this blog, a clubhouse for the community. You can visit there directly at discourse.codinghorror.com

• Every new blog post here results in a corresponding topic being automatically created in the Discourse discussion area.

• I do not, and will not, offer in-page commenting here. If you want to reply with a comment, you go next door to the community clubhouse. There's a fairly strong, but permeable, membrane between the editorial area here and the community area there. This is intentional.

• At the bottom of each blog entry here you will find read only versions of all replies to the Discourse topic associated with this blog entry. I might eventually switch that to a "best of" algorithm so readers see the best comments without having to wade through dozens or hundreds of replies.

If you like what you see, Discourse is 100% free open source software, so you can easily set up the same system for your own blog. We even have a WordPress plugin to assist.

Now who's ready for some dogfooding?

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