Swiss Army Knife

Massimo,

I'm really sorry to see you leave, I've always found you to be considerate and respectful and with well thought out discussion points.  However it's absolutely your right to leave.

Fare thee well, where ever you go, and good luck.  Take my best wishes with you (even if others disagree)!

E

Morning Max, The Music Room is the perfect repository for the disaffected  :-)    And it's kind of why we are all Naimers anyway.

Best, Chris

Allante93 posted:

Moderated Post: Allante, Unfortunately I can't move your reply so I've removed it as it seems to be referring to a completely different thread in another room.  By all means post on there if you wish. 

==============================

Well, here we are, all. Three of us:

The Padded Cell!

I was just trying to inform, the members, the ignore button is accessible 24/7 , along with Huge's reply.

That's All!

You are not alone with your thoughts Max all though your words a more eloquent than mine and my own sword is blunt compared to yours.  I do share your boredom of repetitive threads and am myself also bored of the smug back slapping that seems to pervade some posts.

The Internet forum has bred some very strange digital personas who reinvent themselves from behind the computer screen into people of morals and of knowledge which is equal in its dishonesty only to the posting a fake picture.

Those of us confident enough in ourselves who choose to 'show' our true personalities on the screen and who are willing to be honest including grammar and spelling mistakes are becoming fewer I'm afraid but and this is a very big but Max by leaving you are depleting those ranks and leaving this excellent forum poorer.

There are still many excellent members who are prepared to be as open an honest as is prudent in this digital world and there is much NEW knowledge to be exchanged.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Bob, I fully share your feelings in regard to this Swiss mess. I wish that there was a forum rule  obligating members to use at least their first name, making this place a little more intimate and real. 

I am one of the fortunate few who keeps in constant touch with Max beyond the boundaries of this forum, but I am still hoping for another change of heart on his part, so we all can keep sharing his unique perspectives and humor.

Massimo - I've noted in your recent posts something of a thinner skin and occasionally in regard to (rare) comments I've made.

If it makes any difference - I replaced my SAK with a Leatherman Wave and, as the man with the broken neck says, I've never looked back.

 I see the NAim forum and little bit like a family Christmas, always like to have everyone together, but can end up aggravated with the same old stories  again and again. 

 I think this thread unfortunately is a little bit pointed, and more than a bit pot and kettle. 

We all can bug each other here, I "roon" threads  and obviously annoy many, but hopefully have helped some and maybe caused a laugh or two. 

Nearly every poster above me has bugged me at one stage or another, but like my brother, I'll still invite him this Christmas. 

Lighten up, it's a forum. 

.sjb aka John. 

Dear Max,

as you may know, Alistair Crompton is a fictional character coming from a novel by the late, great Robert Sheckley. It is not my real name, but very few here use their real name. Alistair Crompton is a very lonely man who, at the age of 12, was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and at least three different personalities were isolated and two of them – one totally devoted to pleasure, the other to violence – extracted and embodied in temporary bodies and sent on planets at the extremes of the known galaxy. One day, Alistair decides to invest all the money he has – obtained selling a stolen, extremely rare substance he took from the perfume factory he works in – to find the two persons with his missing parts and try a re-integration of his 'complete' personality.

Unfortunately, personality is not an inborn trait, but the product of character and life experience. One of the few things that life experience has taught me – my declared age is also a fake, everything here is a fake, from nicknames to, who knows, the systems owned, only some trade members have no fear to appear as who they are – is that to be integer – not in an ethic but in a psychic way – is difficult, and another is that every and any social gathering of people has codes, these codes rule, must be understood and followed or rejected. Your behavior shows that you neither follow the codes, nor have a chance to really belong to any of the various atolls that make this forum, even understanding, accepting and following them.

So, my humble suggestion is that either you decide, as you said 'once and for good' that you actually don't care for any social dimension of this hobby, and leave, or choose to use this as a way to experiment integration as a means to live better and make a fool of those who take this seriously pretending to teach to take it lightly. Anyway, remember that you are not a Brit, and as they say that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to earn half of what a man earns, so an Italian won't ever be a Brit (but he will, at least, be a European).

I also have no nationality. I am a human part of the world and feel much freer avoiding all national characterizations. You could even try to disappear as Max_B and reappear with another identity. Life can be funny, especially if you lose any scruple and fear to mock who invokes to be mocked. And, as Brits say, with their unmistakable sense of empathy and sharing, there's one born every minute.

AC

AlCrom posted:

Dear Max,

as you may know, Alistair Crompton is a fictional character coming from a novel by the late, great Robert Sheckley. It is not my real name, but very few here use their real name. Alistair Crompton is a very lonely man who, at the age of 12, was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and at least three different personalities were isolated and two of them – one totally devoted to pleasure, the other to violence – extracted and embodied in temporary bodies and sent on planets at the extremes of the known galaxy. One day, Alistair decides to invest all the money he has – obtained selling a stolen, extremely rare substance he took from the perfume factory he works in – to find the two persons with his missing parts and try a re-integration of his 'complete' personality.

Unfortunately, personality is not an inborn trait, but the product of character and life experience. One of the few things that life experience has taught me – my declared age is also a fake, everything here is a fake, from nicknames to, who knows, the systems owned, only some trade members have no fear to appear as who they are – is that to be integer – not in an ethic but in a psychic way – is difficult, and another is that every and any social gathering of people has codes, these codes rule, must be understood and followed or rejected. Your behavior shows that you neither follow the codes, nor have a chance to really belong to any of the various atolls that make this forum, even understanding, accepting and following them.

So, my humble suggestion is that either you decide, as you said 'once and for good' that you actually don't care for any social dimension of this hobby, and leave, or choose to use this as a way to experiment integration as a means to live better and make a fool of those who take this seriously pretending to teach to take it lightly. Anyway, remember that you are not a Brit, and as they say that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to earn half of what a man earns, so an Italian won't ever be a Brit (but he will, at least, be a European).

I also have no nationality. I am a human part of the world and feel much freer avoiding all national characterizations. You could even try to disappear as Max_B and reappear with another identity. Life can be funny, especially if you lose any scruple and fear to mock who invokes to be mocked. And, as Brits say, with their unmistakable sense of empathy and sharing, there's one born every minute.

AC

Very strange 

There are also people here who don't expose their true (as in 'official' or legal) name or an image of their true likeness, as to do so could potentially expose them to prejudice or other unpleasant and unwanted attention.

Indeed some people on this forum will have previously encountered such unpleasantness in real life or on other less well moderated internet platforms and not wish to risk such behaviour disrupting this place (whether such fear is well founded or not).

Bob the Builder posted:

The Internet forum has bred some very strange digital personas who reinvent themselves from behind the computer screen into people of morals and of knowledge which is equal in its dishonesty only to the posting a fake picture.

Those of us confident enough in ourselves who choose to 'show' our true personalities on the screen and who are willing to be honest including grammar and spelling mistakes are becoming fewer I'm afraid but and this is a very big but Max by leaving you are depleting those ranks and leaving this excellent forum poorer.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

I meant true personalities ie. being themselves acting the same way on this forum as they do in real life to their friends and families and not to take on 'better' digital personalities who speak in pseudo 'posh' voices and who talk to people in ways they would never have the balls to in real life. Just be yourselves because when you pretend to be someone you are not you end up sounding like a bit of a knob.

Bob,

that's just what, in a sort of twisted way, I was saying. It's difficult to be integer. You deal not with people here, but with what those people choose (for the greatest part) to arrange as a virtual personality. I was trying to tell Max_B that he is choosing none, in my opinion of the two or three typical choices. For long, he's been as open and sincere as to provoke itching reactions; on the other hand, I remember (I've been following all this for much longer than it seems) one forum member once suggesting him to see a counselor because he was worried for M.'s mental health.

You are perfectly right in principle, and the suggestion be yourself, which if thought for long starts to sound as a funny, meaningless paradox, is one of the most difficult tasks for a man, except for those lucky guys for whom this is a natural thing, like is a gift for cooking or music. Some are naturally spontaneous, if you see what I mean. For others, reaching a condition of spontaneity is the product of a long and hard work, whose last step is a kind of replay of the most painful of all events, birth.

But how can you be yourself in a group of people whose face, location, job, social status, attitude towards the minima of daily life is basically unknown? You exchange a lot of thoughts with 'people' you perhaps wouldn't touch with a stick in real life. Max_B's fault, in my opinion, is exactly that, for what I know and remember, he's always treated everyone as if he was dealing with a real person equal to himself. This, in any form of sociality, is impossible. The world, I repeat, is structured in groups and groups have codes: of speech, of behavior. A social internet forum allows you, in part, to get rid of all this and be 'free', but when you turn the PC off you are what you are, back again like an elastic released from a tension. I appreciate the fact that you seem to be one of those good and lucky people who are spontaneously kind and true, but we have some schizoids here, people with personality issues, and I can tell you that it's not me, nor Max_B. AC

Bob the Builder posted:

Just be yourselves because when you pretend to be someone you are not you end up sounding like a bit of a knob.

I appear under my real name (or, at least, the one Naim knew me under). Clearly such forthrightness doesn't always prevent one sounding like a bit of a knob.

To illustrate my perfect transparency - even my avatar is, incredibly, incredibly accurate.

Remember..

First, that everyone presents a façade to the world, both on-line and in real life, face to face; and this façade varies dependant on circumstances.

Second, that no one interacts with another person directly, we all interact with our internal mental models of other people, i.e. what we expect from them.

Bob the Builder posted:

Just be yourselves because when you pretend to be someone you are not you end up sounding like a bit of a knob.

 

I've had to google knob (I wasn't sure that you meant one of those things you turn the volume up and down with) and my search showed that it's not the most encomiastic term in the English language. I really hope it was not meant to allude to some behavior of mine. You see, I am always myself here, and that is precisely what caused some, let's say, misunderstandings.

Chris, yours in not a bad idea: but I spend my weeks talking about music (and, btw, I don't believe at all that music is what brings us all here, and you know it), so it's a little like asking a dentist to move to the Teeth Issues Forum and leave the Bra Sizes one.

Scooot posted:

AlCrom posted:

Dear Max,

as you may know, Alistair Crompton is a fictional character coming from a novel by the late, great Robert Sheckley. It is not my real name, but very few here use their real name. Alistair Crompton is a very lonely man who, at the age of 12, was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia and at least three different personalities were isolated and two of them – one totally devoted to pleasure, the other to violence – extracted and embodied in temporary bodies and sent on planets at the extremes of the known galaxy. One day, Alistair decides to invest all the money he has – obtained selling a stolen, extremely rare substance he took from the perfume factory he works in – to find the two persons with his missing parts and try a re-integration of his 'complete' personality.

Unfortunately, personality is not an inborn trait, but the product of character and life experience. One of the few things that life experience has taught me – my declared age is also a fake, everything here is a fake, from nicknames to, who knows, the systems owned, only some trade members have no fear to appear as who they are – is that to be integer – not in an ethic but in a psychic way – is difficult, and another is that every and any social gathering of people has codes, these codes rule, must be understood and followed or rejected. Your behavior shows that you neither follow the codes, nor have a chance to really belong to any of the various atolls that make this forum, even understanding, accepting and following them.

So, my humble suggestion is that either you decide, as you said 'once and for good' that you actually don't care for any social dimension of this hobby, and leave, or choose to use this as a way to experiment integration as a means to live better and make a fool of those who take this seriously pretending to teach to take it lightly. Anyway, remember that you are not a Brit, and as they say that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to earn half of what a man earns, so an Italian won't ever be a Brit (but he will, at least, be a European).

I also have no nationality. I am a human part of the world and feel much freer avoiding all national characterizations. You could even try to disappear as Max_B and reappear with another identity. Life can be funny, especially if you lose any scruple and fear to mock who invokes to be mocked. And, as Brits say, with their unmistakable sense of empathy and sharing, there's one born every minute.

AC

Very strange 

May I ask why?

AC

Max_B posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

Just be yourselves because when you pretend to be someone you are not you end up sounding like a bit of a knob.

 

I've had to google knob (I wasn't sure that you meant one of those things you turn the volume up and down with) and my search showed that it's not the most encomiastic term in the English language. I really hope it was not meant to allude to some behavior of mine. You see, I am always myself here, and that is precisely what caused some, let's say, misunderstandings.

 

 

Max,

Please be assured your posts are very, very individual and sometimes a little eccentric and so not at all false.

For your information know in this context means penis.

Bob the Builder posted:

For your information know in this context means penis.

What an ENORMOUSLY confusing context.

Huge posted:

Remember..

First, that everyone presents a façade to the world, both on-line and in real life, face to face; and this façade varies dependant on circumstances.

Second, that no one interacts with another person directly, we all interact with our internal mental models of other people, i.e. what we expect from them.

Of course they do Huge but let's all stick to the same one shall we not use multiples and treat each other with respect, thoughtfulness and kindness and if we can't then take what comes back on the chin.

Adam Meredith posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

Just be yourselves because when you pretend to be someone you are not you end up sounding like a bit of a knob.

I appear under my real name (or, at least, the one Naim knew me under). Clearly such forthrightness doesn't always prevent one sounding like a bit of a knob.

To illustrate my perfect transparency - even my avatar is, incredibly, incredibly accurate.

The use of made up monikers is fine my name is really Nigel so I call myself Bob.

Bob the Builder posted:

The use of made up monikers is fine my name is really Nigel so I call myself Bob.

Bob the Builder posted:

For your information know in this context means penis.

You are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Adam Meredith posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

The use of made up monikers is fine my name is really Nigel so I call myself Bob.

Bob the Builder posted:

For your information know in this context means penis.

You are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Except that unlike the Soviet Union, he still (apparently) exists!

Adam Meredith posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

The use of made up monikers is fine my name is really Nigel so I call myself Bob.

Bob the Builder posted:

For your information know in this context means penis.

You are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

And I'm really female.

Bob the Builder posted:

Adam Meredith posted:

Bob the Builder posted:

The use of made up monikers is fine my name is really Nigel so I call myself Bob.

Bob the Builder posted:

For your information know in this context means penis.

You are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

And I'm really female.

And also I'm not really a Builder at all but an unemployed Nail technician.

I use a 'user name' rather than my own name, the selection of which has a certain significance as well as being the title of an Edgar Broughton song, simply for protection of my identity in this online world where identities are too easily stolen or information used for personal detriment. (E.g. who in their right mind would let the local burglary brigade know what specific bits of desirable electronica with a good resale value they have?).

However, I have the same persona here as I do in 'real life', and behave no differently with friends or with workplace colleagues etc - and the same thought goes into everything I say, do and write. I have the same desire for the world to be a better place than it is, and for standards that I believe in to be upheld, etc etc., but at the same time recognising that others are different, and seeking as far as possible to live in harmony. But of course, given the nature of the forum I am selective in what of 'me' I choose to share, as indeed I do in real life, being a very private person with only very few people truly knowing me well.

I sort of assume that in general much the same applies to everyone on the forum simply to a greater or lesser extent, but at the same time, being an inherently reserved and cautious person, I do recognise that is not necessarily the case, and some members could be presenting a completely fabricated persons: such is internet life - but that certainly need not necessarily be negative.

Max, I do not know you, and am not even sure if we've ever had any direct exchanges on the forum, but I have learnt to recognise that your posts are often worth reading. However, as you note this is your second expression of a desire to leave, so I assume you either have or will soon. You come from a country whose cuisine I love and where I have started to take more holidays, with the intention of spending considerably more time there once I retire - there is plenty to maintain your interest off the forum, so all the best to you.