#UpTrustFeedback grab bag

1. I can't write two posts at once.  It shows a current draft if I try to write a new draft in a new tab.  But also it says "can't post, no content", because somehow it hasn't sync'd properly.  I'm currently getting around this by just posting the first one knowing I can edit it later.
2. You just lost some text that I had drafted as a comment [EDIT: maybe it's still there but I can't find it].  This is a result of two distinct failures in how your app is set up:
   1. You didn't use `onbeforeunload` to keep the page from changing when there was drafted text that hadn't been used. "Are you sure you want to..."
   2. I wasn't intending to change pages! I held the Cmd key while clicking on Home, which, if you use links in an ordinary way, would have caused that click to open the link in a new tab. But you're doing some fancy extra javascript, and so it didn't, and instead it just navigated to Home in the same tab and lost my comment draft.
3. I just now tried to use cmd+[ to de-indent the list item, and this navigated to a completely different screen, which would have lost the text again if you guys weren't pretty good at saving drafts.  Please don't violate standard keyboard shortcut expectations by doing something that looks like it completely loses all of my work!
4. If I put a title, it shows up as small bold text at the top of the post.  But if I put a header in the post, I can make the post have a title, visually.  But the "title" is not it.  This is confusing and weird.
5. In general, there are too many options.  Like formatting is kinda nice but it evokes the idea that we're gonna be all fancy.  As an extreme example, why on earth am I choosing whether a link should open in a new tab?  Just have some sane default and don't present me with so many choices.  (Good sane default is "new tab for off domain, same tab for same domain")
6. The lil icon buttons below the post are too tiny.  Also it's confusing to have the reply count distinct from the button to make a reply. I keep wanting to push the reply count button instead.
7. Why are you summarizing all emoji reactions as eg ♡ 4 ? That's not a very good way to summarize 🤔🤷😤😒.  Pick a non-heart more neutral icon, or show the actual reacji! (I'd recommend the latter, as it's much richer).
8. Don't call what we write or read here "content" 🤮  The word has much of its history in advertising and marketing—it's the thing that's not the ads, around which ads can be placed.  That starts us off with a framing that what we write doesn't matter, it's just stuff that fills the space.  Instead be willing to talk about things as "perspectives" or "takes" or if you don't want to be so bold, just "posts".
9. If you can't edit a post after people have reacted to it (which is fairly sensible!) then it should tell you that when you hit the EDIT button, not the SAVE button (after making said edits)
10. Lots of random other lil things
    1. sometimes the title of the page is stuck on a different post name than the one I'm on
    2. inconsistent use of cursor:pointer when hovering over buttons (notable, it's absent from the profile icon in the top right)
11. no way to follow specific people? maybe this is intentional? you want to magic-algo things?  but it's sad—I see someone say something interesting and I want to like...  not lose track of them. and maybe the way to do it is to updoot more of their bops, but it feels somehow unsatisfying, and annoying if I'm like "cool I'm done gonna sign off for now"
12. if I hit the feed again, either show me something I haven't seen before or say "that's all for today", but don't just show me the same few posts I saw before

Gun violence in the USA schools. This weekend Stephanie got onto an instagram rabbithole which took her into some dark, near-conspiracy places about gun violence. The sad bit was of course the increase in polarization, rather than an increase in compassion, or even solutions focus. It’s much easier to blame an other than try to sort out a super complex, nuanced, and ambiguous problem.

This topic is interesting in general to me, and it kicked off a beautiful discussion on the UpTrust slack thread (it seems we’re influencing ourselves to be better online conversationalists everywhere!), but it also made we wonder how to solve the school-shooting issue in the USA? What are the nuanced, synthetic perspectives? For example, even comparing data about school shootings across the world can be shaped, interpreted, mixed. Many of the countries that have fewer school shootings (all of them) have much higher death-by-firearm rates, or death by gang-violence, or war, etc. So it’s difficult to get good comparisons, even if we ignore cultural approaches. Also

How do we take an integral approach which addresses all four quadrants?
- UL psyche: mental health—but what does this mean? Where does the money come from to increase such mental health?
- LL culture: US roots in revolution and gun ownership, media, glorification of shooters
- UR behavior: Gun safety training? mandatory? What can we learn from Israel and Switzerland, who have similar or higher gun ownership rates but no school shootings? Quick research: it seems like increasing metal detectors and stuff is NOT a solution that works. What other behavior changes do?
- LR systems: Gun control—even as a gun owning Texan, I think it’s obvious at this point that things need to change. I don’t have much research or understanding so probably people have a lot to say about the nuanced ways of doing this, and I’m sure I’m naive in my suggestion here but it seems like there could be various licenses like there are for driving; the more dangerous a weapon is, the more training you have to prove you’ve had like getting a commercial driver’s license. It also seems like we could clearly do a two year experiment: Write a new law that expires in two years and look at the data: did we stop the shootings?

anyway this is super inchoate, but I’d love to get the collective brain’s nuanced take that can genuinely steel man all sides, understanding and including the validity of the right-wing arguments as well as seeing the problems of the left-wing solutions, the bits left on the table.

How should I landscape my house? I am working on landscaping the home I bought in October, starting with the front yard due to a couple of issues. First, there is a big dip in the yard that floods every time it rains heavily. Second, the driveway is right in front of my bedroom window, causing headlights to shine into my room when people come and go, and limiting my ability to open the windows due to privacy concerns.

I’ve hired a permaculture landscaper who is currently working on a design. Meanwhile, I need to decide what to do about the driveway and whether to add a carport.

I could really use some opinions on the following:

• How would you deal with the flooding issue?
• What would you suggest for the driveway or adding a carport? I can move the driveway to the other side of the house or leave it as is.

I can post photos if there’s a way to do that. I have many ideas also but curious to hear what folks think with this info.

I want a new archetype for libertarian well-being activist. Maybe it’s an old archetype and some German philosophers have been talking abt it for centuries…

My climbing gym is called Crux; the original location is moving because the rent is too high, and the landlord won’t work with the climbing gym…

The gym is in a part of the city that used be considered south, but now is centralish. I think all of austin loses when we lose places like this. We lose our character and our well being.

I want the landlord to be the libertarian well-being activist. My mom does this for the Relateful Studio. I didn’t ask and no one makes her; hardly anyone knows and she doesn’t get any tax benefits; we still pay her a good bit each month but it’s under market. She’s doing exactly what she wants to be doing with her money and investments: supporting her son’s vision.

The climbing gym landlord isn’t a bad guy, probably. Maybe he has loads of debt; maybe he has a wound from childhood that he’s trying to heal, but
Is the climbing gym landlord doing exactly what he wants?

I want endosymbiosis activists; where what they do is good for the whole and them, and they sacrifice neither. I want this to be a meme, that people strive to be. I want them to brag about it in their hearts, and try to remain undiscovered. I once heard that in Judaism the best mitzvahs are the ones no one knows you did.