Note to Dennis

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for the response. I was just amazed that you had put so much effort into your Quora account and they stiff-armed you like that. I imagine there's more to that story than you said there on Twitter. HA!

I figured I'd use this homemade platform to respond since it factors in to the conversation anyway. I made 3 accounts on here. I post under my real name account and it's possible somebody would see this note there. This pseudonymous account is seen by no one unless I give the link. You can respond here or any other way you like. I just now sat down in the office and I wanted to get started on this. I'll figure out Signal later. I didn't realize they had a desktop app - and even one for Linux. That's cool.

I deduced from your bio information on Twitter (or might have been Quora) that we are close to the same age. I was in the class of 1986 at the University of Richmond. It was there that I met Carl Milsted, a fraternity brother and lifelong close friend. Carl went on to UT-Dallas and got his doctorate in Physics, then came back to Virginia to do some government work coding GPS satellite stuff. During that time he was very involved in the LP of Virginia and later North Carolina. In 2006, after a few years of frustration with the LP National, he orchestrated a coup of sorts at the convention in Portland to try to force the Party to choose whether to be an actual political party or stay a group of philosophers.

The Portland Plank Massacre

As for me, I consider myself a little "l" libertarian since I never had much involvement with the Party itself, though I was a member. As such, until recently I really had no idea of the animosity between the cosmopolitan/internationalist Libertarians, and the more localist/LPNH types (Von Mises caucus?.) Forgive me for not knowing the terms very well. Carl can give the entire history of the LP right down to the finest details but I still have trouble defining terms. From your Tweets, I know we are like-minded, though.

What initially caught my eye about your Quora Tweet was that Quora had censored you. This Fnora project is a direct result of the shadow-banning that Carl and I were experiencing with blogsites we were working on both together and separately, so, Carl, who is a phenomenal old-school, code-to-the-metal coder decided to take a shot at a new kind of social site for a higher IQ crowd. This is it. Carl is coding Fnora in Go

Posts can be the size of Tweets or they can be full blogposts. Carl created a markup language that's simpler and more forgiving than HTML he calls QTML which facilitates more complex and styled posts, or, users can just enter regular text, or, a mix. Messaging works perfectly and even they can be styled with QTML. We've added a "View QTML" button on all posts and messages so people can learn from the posts of the more proficient users. Here's the tutorial.

Carl is finishing "Groups" this week at which point, probably after Christmas, we will get together and hammer out the UI/UX. There is quite a bit more to it than I've mentioned here - one important item I failed to mention is that users can filter their posts as to who receives them, and another is that Carl, being a mathematician, will be including code in QTML that facilitates complex equations. What I am going to be proposing to him is that he create a public feed that highlights good quality posts and mini-blogs just so the site looks a little more familiar to new users who are comfortable with FB and Twitter.

Back to the Quora dilemma, if you ever wanted to copy some stuff over, we will definitely be needing some content and you could take and answer any questions. I could help with that. I, myself, am going to be creating a couple of Substack-like accounts; one is an Edible Landscape Design course, and probably a second one that is a sort of rant page called "Eclectic Arcana." Carl has a ton of political content to put up but he's so deep in the coding he doesn't have time for it now. I'll likely be doing the Fnora Founder's Blog, too. Creating these blogs/mini-blogs takes a little bit of finagling at this point - basically creating an account like "Libertarian Ethics" and then just populating it with the posts in order. If you ever felt like sharing your work as a page post on Twitter or FB, those users could respond to it under the article in Fnora. Now, for sure, Fnora is a work in progress as this is the .net test site, and we are far from finished. To be honest, we aren't sure what form it will eventually take, but whatever that is it will be fast and solid code.

Last thing here, Dennis. Please do not infer any pressure on any of this. Mostly, I'm just impressed with all the content you've done and I had no idea Quora would ever jam somebody up that had provided that much content to the site. If you have the time, I would be interested in your thoughts on Fnora. We have a long way to go on it. At some point we'd like to put together an "alpha group" of first users to give feedback, identify bugs, suggest features, etc. I'm going to list some links to some of Carl's work. Some of his original sites are really old. I do most of the blogging on the greenandfree and fnora sites and I handle the corporate, legal, and money-raising aspects. Carl does the heavy lifting so it's my job to keep him sane and run interference

Thanks so much, Dennis,

Steve

P.S. If you feel like messing around with the site, you can set up an account anytime. I think you'd be the only non-family member on there at this point. HA. The sign up is pretty straight forward except for the invite code which is "Yellow Submarine." Feel free to contact me if you have any problem. And again, zero pressure or expectations on this. I just enjoy your tweets and your writings.

Green and Free

Green and Free Blog

(Carl's)Holistic Politics

(Carl's) Holistic Politics Blog

(Carl's) Alter Ego on Substack

#1

Dennis Pratt on Dec 17, 2022 10:13 PM

Hey, Stephen, hopefully this works. :)

My writings are public domain. There are 1800+ libertarian posts, iterated and tested, that you could use to populate your project.

One possibility is to write a script to automatically upload one each period (i.e., week?), give me a heads up, and I'll edit it for this platform (better title, take out Quora references, etc.)

In this way, you can develop a constant stream of good content? And I'd have another platform to link my material to - especially to edit it (now >2 years unable to make changes.)

I'm too busy building liberty right now to help with design. But the content might be valuable.

I would start with the Tour documents. (I actually have two tours I completed.) https://dennisebook1.quora.com/Overview-to-Dennis-Tour-of-Libertarian-Ethics

I do from time to time write:

Mises: https://mises.org/power-market/emerging-free-state

Liberty Block: https://libertyblock.com/how-a-national-divorce-might-go/

But I don't have a home for my writing ths any more (and I'm pretty busy building the libertarian homeland).

If I had a secure place where my stuff would get out, I could refer it to people, and I could obtain regular backup downloads (in case bad things happened), I would be inclined to write new stuff.

Anyway, tell me what you guys think. 781-413-6014

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