This sounds like just standard traffic analysis. Nothing to do with WhatsApp or any other messaging platform. It’s been in use since at least WWII.

Who is talking to whom? How often? Under what circumstances? How do patterns of communication correlate with events? Who are the hubs of communication (ie leaders)?

The big difference between then and now is that instead of needing rooms full of people drawing graphs by hand, there is software to handle it. In turn, that means it’s not really important to have initial suspects to get started, because the computers are quite happy to tease out interesting signals from total communications. That also increases the likelihood of false positives, but the kinds of people who do traffic analysis at this level aren’t usually the kinds of people who worry about a little collateral damage.

It seems like a pretty tall order to construct a system of communication that is useful for coordinating activities, affordable to operate, and secure against traffic analysis. At best, you’ll end up back in a situation where other intelligence will be required to identify a manageable pool of suspects.

You still can. I do it all the time.

It’s entirely possible that I’ve missed more recent legislation, so take this with a grain of salt. Canada has a “blank media tax” courtesy of the record lobby back in the recording tape days. There was much pushback from consumers when that fee was applied to things like video tapes, recordable CDs, hard drives, etc, but still exists as far as I know.

The recording industry was pushing for laws more in line with other jurisdictions, primarily the US. The government was open to it, but would then abolish the fees on blank media. Industry backed down because they get more from that fee distribution than they would ever get by having more restrictions. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from trying to shame us or blow smoke up our asses.

That means we are already paying a licence fee allowing us to copy recorded or broadcast material for personal use. “Personal use” is defined by what it’s not: rebroadcast, playing for the general public, and reselling. Thus, making a strictly personal copy is fine, as is making a copy for a friend, copying from an original you’ve borrowed (from a friend or from the library), recording legal broadcasts (like from radio, etc), and recording concerts unless the terms of admission expressly forbid it, etc.

They’re called “dessert forks” in the same way that some people call the small spoons “dessert spoons”.

Until now, I’ve never seen anything with epoxy that I found visually impressive. And you went all the way to stunning!

I feel like the kind of fun you speak to here is increasingly common and may be the only type of fun some people actually have but I feel like the idea of challenge doesn’t capture all possibilities.

Yes, as the conversation continues, I realize that I put too much emphasis on one aspect of what I find fun. Although it’s in the sense of accomplishment that I most often find pleasure, I certainly do have fun doing other things.

You could be right. I have no access to any formal study of sports fans, so I have no idea what “average” might be. As with most casual “analysis,” I’m limited by my personal experience and am projecting from that. It’s not scientifically appropriate, but if I always limit myself to the scientifically appropriate, I have no opportunity to learn from those who know better.

A much better phrasing would be “here is what I’ve learned from the sports fans I interact with…”

Well, I answered the questions to the best of my ability, enjoyed thinking things through enough to feel comfortable contributing, enjoyed seeing what others had to say, and feel good that I have both more awareness of the characteristics of those things I find most enjoyable and what other people think.

I deliberately left out the words “entertainment” and “fun” in that paragraph, but let me return to them now.

I don’t know enough to either agree or disagree with your contention that my separation of entertainment and fun is generally unproductive. You write of objective measures, but I don’t know if you’ve considered whether those measures might be improved. Maybe there are better terms than mine to distinguish between active enjoyment (what I call fun) and passive enjoyment (what I call entertainment). And maybe there is truly no difference in outcome.

That doesn’t change the fact that I at least think I get more enjoyment out of active engagement, even if the activity is as slight as trying to understand the specific reasons a particular movie was watched through to the end while another was turned off after 10 minutes.

I hypothesize that a complete set of measurements that captures magnitude, not just a binary state, would be able to distinguish between the passive enjoyment I get from funny animal videos, the somewhat more active enjoyment I get from analyzing a movie, and the much more active enjoyment I get from building a boat or writing a new story or writing a new program. But that is a mere suspicion and actual research would be necessary to determine the validity of that hypothesis.

I guess I distinguish between “entertainment” and “fun”. I, too, am entertained by things, and being entertained is an important part of enjoying life.

As for the “sports ball” fans, the ones I know seem to know the rules, the players, player stats, team stats, the pros and cons of various plays under different circumstances, etc. As much I don’t get it, I would hardly call something passive when time is put in doing what I can only call study. There are probably a higher percentage of “critic-level” sports fans than "critic-level"movie fans. How many people can name 5 directors, 1 editor, 1 cinematographer, and 1 costumer? Contrast that to the wealth of knowledge of the average sports fan.

I still don’t get the spending more money you than you can afford on memorabilia and other garbage trinkets, the making it a large part of your personality, the animosity with the other teams, the violence to their city when they lose, and many other bits, but the watching makes sense now.

I think most of that can be explained by a kind of tribalism. The whole system encourages the “fanatic” roots of being a “fan” over or in addition to the “mere passion” for the game. In fact , the Saskatchewan Roughriders football team goes as far as ads stressing the importance of the fan as “the 13th player” on the field (there are only 12 actual players on the field at a time). This has led to a fan base that might be more likely to attend a game in person when the team is struggling. That seems to be a bit of an anomaly in professional sports. (More amusingly, the team also blew a couple of very high profile games by accidentally fielding an actual 13th player! That in turn led to jokes that a dozen beer in Saskatchewan came with 13 cans and references to our inability to distinguish between “a dozen” and "a baker’s dozen, both of which seemed to only increase the “tribal” passion of the team’s fans.)

As far as I can tell, the passion exists without the worst of the fan tribalism at the recreational and kids level. On the other hand, that passion and the whole “coach/analyst” thing might explain many of the toxic behaviours that arise in “hockey parents”.

And I think that tribalism at the team level is behind most of the toxicity inside the locker room and in team behaviours outside the arena. The Canadaland podcast group recently did an excellent series on the problems inside junior hockey that highlights the problem.

All of which is way way off topic, but I hope we’re deep enough in the thread to not matter.

I guess I didn’t express myself clearly. I’m not talking about enjoying difficulty for the sake of difficulty. Nor am I talking about the joy that comes from an engaging entertainment. I’m talking about the spark that comes from accomplishment.

I played in a community band for 35 years. Every hour of practice at home was focused on maximizing what could be accomplished in rehearsal. Every hour of rehearsal was focused on maximizing the impact on the audience. Every hour on stage, moving the audience was the reward for all the hard work. I didn’t know of anyone in the band who had a different attitude and still got enough out of band to keep showing up.

Of course there are many ways to have fun. Sports fans obviously have fun watching a game, but pay attention to how they talk. They’re coaches and strategists and tacticians and referees and analysts, not mere observers.

I think that one thing shared across everything fun is challenge. Not just a challenge, but one that is possible to make progress against. Participation in shared goals often plays a role, but without challenge, boredom reigns.

Nobody joins a recreational sports team to sit on the sidelines or to just wander around the field of play. They join to participate, to contribute, and to meet the challenge of making important contributions, which means gaining or refining skills.

The same could be said of joining a community band.

Why are video games so popular? If there was no difficulty getting through or it was impossible to get through, they would fall flat.

In any activity that I call fun, whether it’s going for a row, building a boat, writing a new bit of software, or tackling calculus, there is always an element of challenge or opportunities for continuous improvement.

The first party that offers the following as their platform will get, not just my vote, but my membership dues and time, even if it means risking that a truly horrible party/leader gets in under our current system.

The world does not remain static. Although there are some foundational principles that can remain static, the constitution should be something that evolves with the world.

There is ample evidence that voting systems can be optimized to ensure that the preferences of the people are reflected in the governing bodies. Current recommendations are that we implement <this> or <that>.

There is ample evidence that sortition based citizen assemblies have a positive impact on policy and governance. There is some evidence that such assemblies may in fact be all the governance required.

There is ample evidence that the very structure of our society and economy are major determinants of poverty, health, population numbers, violent crime, property crime, employment, and innovation.

Under our current system, businesses are dictatorships with little more than profit underlying decisions. Government is not a business, but a service to the citizenry. As such, decisions should be made with service as the motive, not profit.

We will work towards identifying and implementing systems and policies that follow existing and emerging evidence whether we are in power or not. In fact, we pledge to work hard enough while not in power that we not only influence the policies of whoever is in power, but are ready to hit the ground running should we form the government.

I think the problem is both simpler and more horrifying than most of us want to admit.

It’s actually pretty simple. Outside of the actual expertise we’ve acquired through education, training, and experience, we just coast along in neutral with no brakes and no steering. Even when we have expertise, we often engage it unthinkingly by rote.

Every little bump in the road shifts our path this way and that.

Every hill slows us down or speeds us up. If we get caught between two hills, all progress stops.

Every curve with guardrails causes us to change course. Every curve without guardrails tips us into the ditch or over a cliff.

Then we make up stories to explain what happened in terms that show we were in charge the whole time.

The only protection we have against ourselves is that a few of our fellow travellers are looking around and documenting things, but most of us prefer our own stories.

A few of those attentive travellers use what little awareness they have to control the direction of others by telling stories that are compatible with our personal stories.

Unless and until we have enough of those more aware fellow travellers guiding us into positions where we are least try to occasionally look around for ourselves, we will always be at the mercy of our own story-making.

Heh. I agree. My only experience with Xplornet was in trying to support people who had it. No internet is far preferable.

We bought a cabin at the lake with an eye to retirement. Dysfunctional workplaces led us to move there nearly 15 years early. We figured that if we were going to work anyway, we might as well do it in a restorative environment.

There is no cell service, landline service is noisy enough that my very nice modem is lucky to hit 20 kbps, and I knew too much about ExploreNet to tolerate their “service”. I’m no fan of Musk or the concept of Starlink, but the price/performance is stellar (sorry) and it’s nice to be able to get stuff done without having to drive in to the library, especially given that it’s only open 15 hours a week.

I spent a decade without internet. I never did figure out how to get Chromecast to work. Even for plain screen casting it insisted on needing an internet connection. Most of my stuff at the time was YouTube rentals that allowed downloads, so I got the hardware that let me use HDMI to connect my phone to the TV.

Looks like it still has rubber tires, so probably just fine.

I can see why! That’s beautiful!

And if you tape it into the corner of your combination square:

• the rule part of the square keeps the reference faces aligned vertically
• the nail can’t tip toward one board, causing vertical misalignment
• consistent centering (or off-centering, if that’s what you want)
• I find it’s easier to position the rule on my layout markings than to position a handheld nail. There is a slight offset, of course, but if that’s a consideration, do your layout to compensate.
• I find it’s quicker, too.

If you are doing floating tenons, just mark the ends. If your tenons need to be vertical with respect to your reference face, use a long nail or screw, mark the tops, adjust the height, mark the bottoms.

If you can tolerate more offset or are willing to always layout to compensate, drive a woodscrew vertically in a long narrow block with only 2 square faces. Adjust the screw depth as appropriate. The block gives you something to hang onto without taping anything.

And now I bet you’re envisioning the construction of your own dedicated jigs made from scraps and wood or drywall screws.

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Thanks for the book recommendation!

It’s fairly expensive, but it turns out that there are several copies of both first and second edition available through my local library.