You also disappeared for a couple months.
Really. I totally don’t remember that. God I swear the number one symptom of getting older has been memory issues. It’s crazy. I used to have a near eidetic memory now I forget all kinds of stuff. 
I now have every post on the website muahaha (except this one)
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Fucking big brother.
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Just wait until 27o hears about this.
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Get him people!
I actually made it all the way through Cryptonomicon but then Stephenson was like “Hey, I got two more books just like this!” and I tapped out.
One of the things I’ve learned from listening to the IDEOAT podcast is that a whole lot of the sci-fi authors I liked as a kid is super problematic and honestly these guys are just very bad storytellers. I remember loving Snow Crash as a boy, but the IDEOAT review of this book made me rethink my shit.
Also, the Piers Anthony episode of IDEOAT really slapped me upside the head. I used to like him, but, ugh, this is just not okay.
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So I was trying some spectral clustering to see how the forum separates into groups. Here I’ve clustered everyone into three groups based entirely on their likes. Roughly speaking, the image below plots users according their likes. If you want to know the mathematical details, here is the wikipedia article.
There are three groups. The purple group encompasses most of the users. Contrary to what @zarapochka believes, she is not an “other” and belongs to this group. If I had to guess, the yellow group corresponds to users who have political disagreements with the purple group while the cyan group participates in more discussion outside of politics. The most extreme point of the yellow group is @monetary_expert and the most extreme point of the cyan group is @Pauwl. Both of these users have a lot of likes within their groups.
Cluster Purple
StrontiumDog
bigt2k4
baddis
TheHip41
prana
ViridianDreams
grue
Jbrow
AllTheCheese
oneeyedtripping
Fossilkid93
SirOsis
dlk9s
LFS
kre8tive
wirelessgrinder
All-InFlynn
JackBando
geewhysee
WichitaDM
nobody
TheNewT50
churchill
jmakin
clovis8
Riverman
Spinetta
kerowo
tomrh3
ripdog
jman220
joltinjake
Catastrophe
Koss
skydiver8
Marksman
TimBuktuuf
Goebs80
Sogge
spidercrab
StimAbuser
simplicitus
IrishRunner
poopypants
00cooler00
Rivaldo
sriracha
Twist
Boardgamer
MrWookie
■■■■■■■■■■■
ggoreo
Ikioi
R.C
Trolly
mosdef
Deuce
SensiblePerson
MattyLice
CanadaMatt3004
LongtimeLurker
RiskyFlush
NhlNut
Soulman
goofyballer
jalfrezi
Joog
Devil
eyebooger
Coasterbrad
Fatboy8
Dutch101
chupacabre
Aofrantic
MichaelDavis
SenorKeeed
suzzer99
Thin_Slicing
Hired_Goons
gman42
TheDuker
hey_you
Nicholasp27
Rugby
jwax13
MikeLikesOrgies
ChrisV
LouisCyphre
ThisGuy
ElSapo
bobman0330
Lostrich
JohnnyTruant
mukdukaluk
TrueNorth32
anon
smrk4
nunnehi
DodgerIrish
King_of_NY
zarapochka
FuncrusherPlus
MimosaDef
fidgetUK
beetlejuice
Chippa58
otatop
iron81
MaxCut
Smacc_25
lovemuffin
Supwithbates
DrChesspain
alex
d2_e4
dreamcrusher28
marty
oscark
Namath
superuberbob
Lawnmower_Man
Tilted
boredsocial
Sabo
la2sb91
Tiptopdaddy
wiper
Kep
Chuckleslovakian
whosnext
olink
feedthabeast
PocketChads
LodenPants
MysteryConman
Danspartan
zikzak
Cluster Cyan
Yuv
mjiggy
seities
miliboo
SwankyWilder
Rexx
Pauwl
cassette
pyatnitski
Cluster Yellow
microbet
hokie
RegretS
6ix
MakeHaste
monetary_expert
catfacemeowmers
tabbaker
meb
jerry
MasterofthePwn
anachronistic
nonfiction
■■■■■■■
eeAWW
Crunchyblack
vaya1
dogsballs
Watevs
imjosh
The names are ordered in how close they are to the center of their respective group.
Unfortunately this doesn’t include all users so people like @Heritagenothate are not included because they have too few likes.
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Yellow team!!!
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Team cyanide!
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team yellow should be team red and team purple should be team green (team neolib$ > team reds obv)
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I guess as furthest from the centre of the smallest group I can claim to be the outsider’s outsider? Though maybe here that makes me the most inside of all?
I don’t think the groupings there mean anything political really - at least not the purple group - it’s all over the place.
You know what I Iove to think about? Jeff Bezos, the Zuckbot and friends doing all this except its with every aspect of all of our lives and our innermost thoughts and dreams rather than just our posting on a dumb message board.
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I’m on the outer which means I’m in the cool group and all you losers should be aspiring to be there.
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We have a poster named dogsballs?
Imagine joining a specialized forum and then posting outside of its primary focus, what kind of weirdos would do that?
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They’re just showing they’re not stuck to Politics.
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We have several off topic exiles here from 22. The off topic forum here is way, way, way better than anything that currently exists on 22, and far more active. For instance - video games thread, programming threads are better than the old ones on 22.
I dont like arguing politics so I just lurk to get good takes. I prefer posting in OT threads
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