Oh, go on then...

[j4]

Fill in the blanks:

I ____ j4.
j4 is ____.
If I were alone in a room with j4, I would _______.
I think j4 should _____.
j4 needs ______.
I want to ____________ j4.

I'd like to know who says what, but I don't really mind anonymous responses. Really I'd just like to see as many responses as possible, because it's moderately interesting and IT'S NOT ANOTHER BLOODY CLICKY-BOXEY AM-I-GOTH-OR-NOT QUIZ.

And I must say, actually, it'd be refreshing to see some honest-to-goodness dirty responses to this meme. Or is everybody too polite and too British to say things like "I want to fuck [whoever]", or "[whoever] needs a damn good seeing-to"?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank you for pointing me at those.

That's about two-thirds of the distilled product of fifteen years or so's thought. It did seem to spark off a rather satisfying lot of replies.

I think I agree with pretty much everything on it -- there's a couple of things I sort of want to follow up on, but a) I haven't really organised my answers properly, and b) I'd feel a bit silly trying to re-start a discussion from two months ago...

I'm emailable, and I'm always willing to noodle about axioms. *grin* This is, I think, just the sort of topic on which we would end up talking if stuck in a room together.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'm emailable, and I'm always willing to noodle about axioms. *grin* This is, I think, just the sort of topic on which we would end up talking if stuck in a room together.

You say "stuck in a room together" like it'd be a bad thing! :) I'd be delighted to talk to you about stuff like this, though if I'm honest I'd rather talk about it in real life, over endless cups of coffee, into the small hours of the morning. (God, how I wish I had the time/energy to still stay up talking like that.) Emails about this kind of thing tend to rapidly lose all semblance of wieldiness, and they're open to small misunderstandings turning into huge hairy angst-fests, when in real life such things could easily be sorted out with a quick "no no no no not like that" and a lot of handwaving.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

You say "stuck in a room together" like it'd be a bad thing! :)

Hardly, dear.. just not seeming like a very plausible thing at the moment.

I'd be delighted to talk to you about stuff like this, though if I'm honest I'd rather talk about it in real life, over endless cups of coffee, into the small hours of the morning.

So long as I can have my caffeine in cold carbonated form, you're on.

Emails about this kind of thing tend to rapidly lose all semblance of wieldiness,

I suppose not everyone thinks of 100K as the point at which an email is getting overly long.

and they're open to small misunderstandings turning into huge hairy angst-fests, when in real life such things could easily be sorted out with a quick "no no no no not like that" and a lot of handwaving.

If you've found it so, then our experiences are pretty close to diametrically opposed; the number of times having the extra five seconds to edit the almost-right thought into the right thought has saved something for me is past easy reckoning. Talking's always first draft.

*hug* I'd be very happy to hear from you, but only if you feel like it. I hope this did not come across as pressuring otherwise.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I suppose not everyone thinks of 100K as the point at which an email is getting overly long.

About 60K is getting too long IMHO. To be honest though at the moment I'm having serious trouble reading anything sustained... i.e. longer than a page on the web, longer than a couple of pages on email.

[email vs. f2f]
If you've found it so, then our experiences are pretty close to diametrically opposed; the number of times having the extra five seconds to edit the almost-right thought into the right thought has saved something for me is past easy reckoning. Talking's always first draft.

This is true, and when email does work it works very well. There are a lot of things I find it easier to talk about on email (though that doesn't necessarily mean the communication is working better in those cases) and being able to edit one's words is definitely a good thing. However... talking has things like gestures, and tones of voice, and eyes, and hugs, to smooth over the bits where it all goes pearshaped. It's also, IME, much easier to type something nasty in response to those impersonal words on the screen than it is to deliberately fling abuse at the friend you can see sitting there in front of you.

I think this is something where mileage can and does vary, and where my mileage varies from person to person, context to context, mood to mood. At the moment I'm getting very bogged down in written communication, partly because I'm not very well in various ways and partly just because there's SO MUCH of it; I really miss the kind of long late-night conversations I used to be able to have, and I think that a lot of the time people don't have deep conversations any more because they can just say "Oh, I'll stick it on the web" or "It's on my LJ".

I think it partly depends what the purpose of the communication is. Frex, I think your axiom clusters really needed to be written down; and if we were trying to hammer them out into an absolutely watertight format, then I think email would be the way to go about it. But if we're just exchanging ideas, to my mind that's more about social bonding than about getting ideas fixed on paper, and real-life conversation is a better medium for that sometimes. Sometimes. I'm not sure any more. I think this is just one of those gut instinct "This would be better than that this time" feelings.

I will see if I can cobble something coherent into an email, though, since you asked. And no, I don't feel pressured; I just want to make sure you're forewarned that I'm not really at my peak in electronic communications at the moment.