Oh yes, your private conversations with Mustafa are cluttering up
mailboxes. I suppose everyone's mailbox on his private list. If you do a
reply to all I expect that everyone else will get your messages. As
things stand, I am only getting Mustafa's side of the conversation and
if I am going to get yours I have to arrow down to the quote part. I
have only bothered to do that on a couple of them though. Here is what I
have been doing lately. As soon as I see that a message is from Mustaffa
I send it to my spam folder. Actually, I don't know which folder is
actually my spam folder. In Thunderbird I have two folders. One is
labeled bulk mail and another is labeled junk mail. I don't know which
one to use, so I just copy the message to both. Then when I get through
looking at my email I go to both folders and delete the copies. I don't
know how this works exactly, but often newsletters ask you to not delete
their emails from a spam folder because it generates a spam report. They
prefer that you just unsubscribe. I don't know who it is reported to nor
what the consequences of being reported are, but they do not seem to
want you to do it and they find out when you do. There was once a
certain newsletter email that I got regularly from a certain web site
that accidentally ended up in my spam folder once and before I realized
what it was I deleted it from that folder. Soon after I got an email
from them asking me to please not delete their emails from my spam
folder again or they would have to unsubscribe me to prevent any further
spam reports. So I don't know what the effect is, but I suppose I am
generating spam reports against Mustafa now. I tried to block him
recently, but the dialog for setting up a rule in Thunderbird is unclear
to me. I tried to specify that every message from that particular source
be sent automatically to the trash folder and then deleted from there.
At that time I didn't think of specifying that they be sent to the spam
folder and deleted. I'm not sure that I can do that anyway though. Well,
I ended up sending every single email I got over a twelve hour period
into oblivion. I then deleted the rule and decided that it was safer to
do it the way I am now. I could just delete his messages as I come
across them, but I think he should suffer some kind of punishment for
harassing people with his religion. I don't know what the punishment is,
but if these legitimate entities are so anxious that we do not delete
their emails from a spam folder then there must be some kind of
consequences for it. Sorry I haven't been reading many of your side of
the conversation, but I send them to the spam folder before I get that
far. In his latest message he was deriding westerners for using toilet
paper. That's as far as I got before it went to the bulk mail and junk
mail folders. I intend to delete them from those folders as soon as I
get through this current stack of emails.
___
Thomas Paine
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
On 4/22/2020 11:26 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Now there's a place where you and I differ. These encounters you've
mentioned have "exasperated" you. I have also had many such
encounters over my lifetime, but I get a chuckle out of them. In
fact, I have often thought of writing them down in a "Humorous Book
entitled, "Quaint American Humor".
It is my experience that when I'm talking with the sorts of folks you
described, I mentally decide that I am speaking to God. The effect is
the same. When I was attempting to become a true Believer, I found
that God was always too busy to really listen to me. Wise folks would
tell me, "God works in mysterious ways". I came to believe that God
was taking a long, very long coffee break. Yesterday I posted a
question asking what the organizations of the blind were doing about
the looming demise of our proud Post Office. One answer was, "They'll
come out okay. They always do". Yes, initially I fume and fuss, but
at some point I begin to chuckle at the thought of this blind guy
standing in front of a mail box with spiderwebs hanging on it, waiting
for his Talking Book to be delivered.
Another person wrote me, "UPS and Fed X will deliver our books and stuff".
I answered that those private carriers would charge far more for the
service, a service which would no longer exist since it was between
the NLS and the Post Office, and besides, those private carriers did
not deliver to the outlying rural areas of America." She replied,
"You'll always say anything just to trash President Trump". Huh? I
don't recall bringing up the name of the Pandemic Grinch.
Lately my old buddy Mostafa...or Mustafa, has been writing me
off-list. At least I hope our "conversations" are not cluttering up
anyone elses email. Mustafa is a prime example of what it is like to
attempt to persuade a block of granite that it can think by itself.
Anyway, since we're all going to die, we might as well go out laughing.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis...chuckle chuckle chuckle
On 4/22/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Just dropping by to blow off some steam because I am feeling exasperated
again. I seem to feel exasperated a lot and this story explains why.
Here is a part of a conversation I had yesterday with a relative. She
says, "I think China sent that coreena virus to us on purpose." In case
you think I am misspelling the word corona I am only spelling it the way
she pronounced it. I say, "Why do you think that?" She says, "I heard
that it came from the communist part of China." Feeling my exasperation
rising again, I say, "Which part of China is that?"n She says, "I heard
that it came from Woohoo. That must be the communist part of China." I
say, "Why do you think they sent it on purpose?" She says, "Because
they're communists." I say, "Why would communists want to do that?" She
says, "Because communists want everyone to die." I say, "Why do you
think that?" She sighs and says, "Do you even know what a communist is?"
At this point I am tempted to say that, yes, I know what a communist is,
but you don't have a clue what it is. Encountering ignorance does not
bother me. It always offers an opportunity to teach something. What
bothers me is, for one thing, the assumption that on a topic that has
been one of my special interests since I was a teenager and have devoted
much time studying on my own and have participated in with a lot of time
invested with other people who shared my perspective on the subject,
that I am the one who does not know what he is talking about. And
furthermore, I have explained what communism is to her time and time
again and it appears that everything I have ever said about it just went
in one ear and out the other. Usually when I explain it as soon as I
finish talking she starts telling me about some recipe that she tried or
something similar. That should be a clue that I was not being listened
to. Her statements this time, though, showed ignorance on a number of
levels and rather than just repeat things I have told her so many times
before I decided to inform her of some other things that I have not
spent so much time on. I tried to explain something about the geography
of China and the political situation there. I also explained that it did
not make much sense that they would have unleashed the virus on purpose
when they were the ones who were first effected and strongly effected at
that. When I paused she started telling me about the personal life of
someone she knows, but whom I have never met and am uninterested. That
is, she made it clear to me that I may as well have been talking to
passing clouds. Do you see why I spend so much time feeling exasperated?
As I was typing this I was reminded of another incident that happened
way back when I was in college that was similarly exasperating. Bear in
mind that when this happened I was majoring in biology, but I really
don't think anyone needs to have studied biology to understand what I
was trying to say. I was working in the cataloguing department of the
school library in the work-study program. There were some secretaries
there who saw some birds hopping around on the lawn. It was a cold
winter day too. As they were looking out the window one of them started
cooing about how they were going to have babies. I looked too and saw
what they were referring to. The other secretaries agreed with the
assessment that the birds were pregnant. I explained to them that they
were seeing the effect of the low temperature. The birds were fluffing
up their feathers to trap air and to give themselves some insulation.
That is, they were trying to keep warm. To this day I don't know why I
didn't mention anything about birds laying eggs, but it just didn't
occur to me at the time. Nevertheless, a bird's pregnancy takes place
outside of the bird's body and they do not show signs of an impending
hatching. What do I get in reply to my explanation? I am told,"We're
women so we know about things like that." Again, the assumption was that
I was the one who did not know what he was talking about. I calmly said,
"Did you know that I am a biology major?" The reply was, "That's some
kind of science, isn't it? Doesn't it have something to do with
flowers?" Again, just some steam release about having to go through life
feeling exasperated with people. --
___
Thomas Paine
“One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
