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An Antidote To Corporate Media


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2015 Feb 9, 7:43am   714,248 views  602 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  




Patrick.net is an online forum, a bit like Twitter or Reddit, but with much more freedom of speech than either of those. Almost anything goes, but a few things don't, such as deliberately personally insulting another user, or deliberately misrepresenting what another user said.

I got the patrick.net domain name back in 1995 when I was one day too late for patrick.com. Missing the .com name turned out to be fine. I prefer the .net name now because life is all about human networks. This site was just my personal blog from 1995 to 2004.

In 2004 I started writing about the housing bubble, which catapulted the site to national fame for a while. I was interviewed on NPR, on Nightline on TV, and in other corporate media that I have since learned to recognize as poison. Here are my original the articles about the housing bubble (the dates on them are much later because I updated them):

https://patrick.net/post/1282720/2015-07-11-ten-reasons-it-s-a-terrible-time-to
https://patrick.net/post/1282721/2015-07-11-eight-groups-who-lie-about-the-housing
https://patrick.net/post/1282722/2015-07-11-37-bogus-arguments-about-housing

The big housing bubble popped in 2008, and traffic fell, since it was no longer controversial to assert that we really had had a housing bubble.

About then, I decided to just let the public discuss other topics with each other and wrote my own forum software. I'm a programmer, so that was fun. At first I was kind of disturbed at the number of conservatives on the site, but as I discussed things with them and saw San Francisco literally turn to shit under far-left Democrat extremists, I changed my thinking.

And yet I didn't change my thinking all that much, because once again, I'm opposing corruption of government by the oligarchy. Before, my enemy was the NAR (National Association of Realtors) and I still think the NAR is nothing but institutionalized crime, but there are bigger fish to fry now, especially since the worldwide campaign to inject every human with a dangerous and ineffective genetic experiment, which was never approved by the FDA. (They approved "Comirnaty", which is not available, to deceive the public.)

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-september-21-2022


It’s like Pharma just backed a truck up to the Progressive Values Factory; stole everything; modified core values in order to maim people, make money, and implement global totalitarianism; and the left is just out there smoking a cigarette on the loading dock saying, “Sounds good to me.” What!? What the heck happened to the left? Is there no one remaining in that tribe who is capable of logic and reason!? Quite literally the worst industry in the world stole the left’s most cherished values and no one on the left is the slightest bit offended by this (even though they are offended by everything else)!? We live in the bizarro upside down world.




I could go on, but you'll get the idea by reading the site.



I have a platform of ideas for improving America: https://patrick.net/post/1303173/2017-02-19-patrick-s-platform

And an explanation for how we got to this point.

Site Rules

1. Do not deliberately insult the other users personally.
2. Do not deliberately insult the site. It's free to use and does not even have ads.
3. Do not misquote people.
4. Do not post porn except in the tits thread. No actual sex and no homo porn please.
5. If you feel you must post racist or anti-semitic jokes, please put them in the political incorrectness thread.
6. Do not post illegal content, unless the US law making the content illegal is itself clearly unconstitutional. In that case, please do post it!
7. Do not threaten another user with violence or you will be quickly and permanently banned.
8. Do not post spam.
9. Do not promote the obviously ineffective and very dangerous toxxine. Millions have died from it, far more than from the virus.

If you're wondering why your comment was flagged, please click the "edit" link on it. It should be pretty obvious when you read your own words again. If you think there was a mistake about the content being flagged, please write p@patrick.net When you edit and save your own flagged comment, it will go back into moderation where it will get reviewed by a moderator again.

If you're suspicious that comments are flagged for political reasons, note that you can actually see any flagged comment in the html source of that page. Use "View Source" in your browser. Yes, it's inconvenient, but that's deliberate, to keep those comments out of the conversation stream.

Please use this effective debate technique:
1. State your opponent's position so that he agrees with it 100%. This is so that you argue against what your opponent is really saying.
2. State points of agreement, and anything you learned from your opponent.
3. Give your reasoning for why your opponent is mistaken.
4. Make it clear that you are attacking only the point and not the person.

Site Functionality

If you ignore another user, you will not see that user's threads or comments. To see whom you're ignoring and to unignore, look on your edit profile page.

To get another user's attention, mention that user in a comment with an @ character prepended to his username ( for example @Patrick ) and then he will get an email of that comment, unless he has emails turned off.

If you type or paste in an image URL ending in .jpg, .png, or .gif it will be converted into the visible image in a thread or comment. You can also upload images, mp3 audio, mp4 video, and pdfs (under 10MB) from your local computer.

You may not post large sections of copyrighted material unless you have explicit permission from the copyright owner. But excerpts for discussion are fine, and in fact protected by law.

If you include an embed video url from Rumble, Bitchute, Vimeo, NewTube, or BrandNewTube, the thread or comment will display the video. Please try to avoid YouTube urls, since YouTube routinely censors or demonetizes politically incorrect videos, such as those about the dangers of the toxxine.

These basic html tags all work in threads and comments: a audio b blockquote br code del font hr i iframe img li ol p strike sub sup u ul video vsmall

You can surround a word or phrase with the * character to make it bold, or the _ character to make it italic, or surround a word with - to strike it, or you can just use the b or the i or the strike html tag.

Searching

Prepend + to require a word or - to exclude it: +Tunnel -Sky
Search for phrases by putting them in quotes: "Tunnel in the Sky"
Search for the beginning of a word by appending the star character: Tunne*

Shortcuts

^t will jump to the text input box at the bottom of a thread
^s will jump to the search box at the top of each page
^f will open your file select menu to let you select an image or pdf to insert in the text box

If you click "pin" at the top of a thread, it will get saved to your pinned list. For example, here is patrick's pinned list

There is a thread for each zip code in the US. You can have local discussions there about anything, or you can post things for sale, etc. To find the thread for a zip code, just do a search for the town name or zip code.

I also have a list of all US Congressmen as separate threads, where you are encouraged to comment on how good of a job you think they're doing:

https://patrick.net/post/1377838/2022-11-29-us-congressmen-lists


« First        Comments 29 - 68 of 602       Last »     Search these comments

29   Dan8267   2016 Aug 1, 8:04am  

@Patrick, what's with all the spammers? Have they broken the captcha you are using? Maybe it's time to switch to another.

Chances are these spammers aren't targeting PatNet specifically, but rather have bots that target common platforms like PHP. Maybe a simple speed bump in which the user has to play a little "guitar hero" game with arrow keys to register a username.

30   marcus   2016 Aug 5, 2:15am  

Patrick says

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.

--Justice William Brennan, speaking for the majority

Maybe you should add something along the lines of:

We also have some free thinkers on this forum that understand that an idea being offensive or politically incorrect does not in and of itself make it good.

31   Patrick   2016 Aug 5, 11:40am  

spam deleted.

32   Patrick   2016 Aug 5, 11:41am  

marcus says

an idea being offensive or politically incorrect does not in and of itself make it good

also true.

33   Dan8267   2016 Aug 11, 7:31am  

Google should have a public way of hurting the page rank of spammers. If someone spams a forum, send the link to Google to reduce the advertised website's page rank. Granted, we'd have to deal with saboteurs, but the benefits would outweigh this cost.

34   Patrick   2016 Aug 11, 4:31pm  

Ah fuck. Yes, I did make some changes this morning.

Ironman says

It looks like the "quote" function isn't posting the name of the poster quoted,

Quote thing seems to work ok for me.

Please tell me which threads with long titles are not found!

35   Patrick   2016 Aug 11, 7:27pm  

OK, made a little progress. It seems to happen on Safari, but not Chrome. At least I have a starting point to look at.

36   Patrick   2016 Aug 11, 7:41pm  

Hmmm, confusing because I didn't change anything about the code that does that stuff:

https://github.com/killelea/patrick.net/blob/master/html/functions.php#L2217

37   Patrick   2016 Aug 11, 8:27pm  

OK, I think it's fixed now. Quotes should always have "(user) says" in them. Thanks for telling me about that.

Ironman says

Trying from my phone (Droid), doesn't quote the name either.

38   Patrick   2016 Aug 11, 8:48pm  

Ah yes. Also fixed as of now. Please check.

39   Patrick   2016 Aug 12, 11:07am  

@Ironman you're right.

That is also fixed now.

Please tell me more bugs and suggestions.

40   Patrick   2016 Aug 12, 2:06pm  

Ironman says

Hey wait, when did I become your technical guinea pig? :)

When you started volunteering. Thanks!

41   Patrick   2016 Sep 29, 9:56am  

If you want to write a post totally anonymously, just enter it while logged out, and when it asks for an email address put in some crap email like this@that.com. The post will go into moderation and I'll get notified that it needs approval. There's a delay for approval, but then your post is anonymous.

42   BayArea   2016 Sep 29, 10:09am  

Patrick, just curious...

What server are you using for this site?

Your own private server, third party domestic server, third party international server, Hillary's private server?

43   Patrick   2016 Sep 29, 10:40am  

It's a single virtual server on Digital Ocean. So essentially my own private server. I'm happy with them, much more pleasant to use than AWS:

https://www.digitalocean.com/

44   Dan8267   2016 Sep 29, 2:28pm  

Patrick says

If you want to write a post totally anonymously, just enter it while logged out, and when it asks for an email address put in some crap email like this@that.com. The post will go into moderation and I'll get notified that it needs approval. There's a delay for approval, but then your post is anonymous.

Or just use an alt like every other troll. Do people really need more anonymity than an account not at all associated with your real identity anyway?

45   Dan8267   2016 Sep 29, 2:29pm  

Patrick says

Ironman you're right.

Name something you never hear.

46   Dan8267   2016 Sep 29, 4:14pm  

Ironman says

Dan8267 says

Name something you never hear.

CIC had sex with a human.

47   900d   2017 Jan 6, 9:31am  

Your site is being perused and critiqued by the dreg cohort of the finest e-biz board within the Web, (redacted link)

48   Booger   2017 Jan 6, 7:00pm  

Patrick says

In other words, patrick.net exists to protect offensive speech,

Fuck Yeah!

49   indigenous   2017 Jan 15, 10:36am  

If I make a new post and it drifts down the list it disappears.

IOW the posts do not appear to be in chronological order?

50   HEY YOU   2017 Jan 15, 10:42am  

Ironman says

Example: HEY YOU comes back as HEY20YOU if you click on his user name.

I'm insulted! It should be HEY100%YOU!

51   Patrick   2017 Jan 15, 11:11am  

indigenous says

If I make a new post and it drifts down the list it disappears.

IOW the posts do not appear to be in chronological order?

By default they are in chronological order of activity (creation or new comment), and you eventually have to go to the second page to see a post if no one has commented on it lately.

But there are tabs for sorting other ways: number of comments in last week, number of likes, newest post creation time.

52   indigenous   2017 Jan 15, 1:23pm  

Thanks

53   justme   2017 Jan 16, 11:02am  

Has there been any discussion recently of of username histories? I do find it laborious and confusing with all the people that change their names. Another problem with changing usernames is that old posts are harder to understand since the user is now known by a different name.

Hmm, I wonder if I edit and put @patrick in after the fact, will he still get an email?

54   Patrick   2017 Jan 16, 11:07am  

Hi @justme yes, I got an email when you edited and put that in.

Should there be some limit on the ability to change usernames? It does get confusing when they get quoted under one name, but have since changed it so that the old quote and new comments appear under different names.

55   Dan8267   2017 Jan 16, 11:28am  

This site was a lot better when all of CIC's post were redirected to his goat porn collection.

56   justme   2017 Jan 16, 11:57am  

Patrick says

Should there be some limit on the ability to change usernames?

I think one username ever per email address is a good idea. By the way, are you as admin able to retrace the changes of usernames? I history of usernames on the user "homepage" is work but would be very informative.

57   Patrick   2017 Jan 16, 12:07pm  

I cannot easily trace changes of username, because the previous name is overwritten in the database when a user changes it.

It would be possible to trace some name changes by looking at quotes of user comments, but it would be a lot of work, and still not reliable because the quotes could be edited at any time. I suppose I have backups and could look at the state of the database over time, but that would also be hard.

It would be easier to create a new table of names which shows changes over time from now on. Is it worth the work?

What does gmail do? Can you change your gmail address and retain the same account?

58   anonymous   2018 Feb 2, 9:15pm  

How about just banning users who get paid to post here with manufactured talking points from organizations such as ShareBlue?
59   WookieMan   2018 Feb 2, 9:23pm  

anon_d2f7c says
How about just banning users who get paid to post here with manufactured talking points from organizations such as ShareBlue?


I just looked up ShareBlue. I don't really care about left or right. I don't believe that was your point, but who knows. I do actually agree with the sentiment though. I know it probably happens a ton, but straight up copy pasting from an article without sourcing it is not cool. I wouldn't ban these people, but if you cannot come up with original comments or commentary on an article, just stop. At some point you'll see the puppet strings attached to your fingers as you're typing.
60   anonymous   2018 Feb 2, 9:43pm  

oh no just memes is all we need to "discuss" something
61   WookieMan   2018 Feb 2, 9:46pm  

anon_4460e says
oh no just memes is all we need to "discuss" something

This is annoying too, I'll agree with that. I can't lie, some of the non-political ones are rather funny from time to time. So if plagiarizing is a 10, then memes are like a 5/6 in my book of annoyance.
62   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Feb 13, 11:50am  

Hi Pat,

There's a comment that includes an attack on the site as a whole. I don't see an option to "Disapprove" a post.
63   WookieMan   2018 Feb 13, 3:05pm  

TwoScoopsPlissken says
Hi Pat,

There's a comment that includes an attack on the site as a whole. I don't see an option to "Disapprove" a post.


What thread is it in? I'm check recent stuff now.
64   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Feb 13, 3:12pm  

It's gone now from my mod queue.
65   anonymous   2018 Feb 13, 4:31pm  

TwoScoopsPlissken says
It's gone now from my mod queue.


So it’s official! We have another new mod

Congrats on the gig

MAGA!!
66   anonymous   2018 Feb 13, 4:33pm  

Praise kek!

Kek kek reeeeeeeee!

Pepe will bring Hilldog to justice

We just need a few million more man hours from the great MAGA folk to finally sleuth out the details
67   justme   2018 Feb 13, 4:40pm  

The State Assembly of West Virginia is also against free speech. In fact, they are so much against free speech that they forbid "personal comments" about other members of the assembly. Case in point, assemblywoman Lissa Lucas is forcible ejected from the speaker stand for reading a list of politician names, donor names and amounts of campaign contributions.

www.youtube.com/embed/fHl1rYpXWis

It is amazing to see that even a state assembly can have rules that censor the speech of its lawfully and duly elected members. Absolutely frightening. Should this not be a case taken to the Supreme Court?
68   anonymous   2018 Feb 13, 8:22pm  

justme says
The State Assembly of West Virginia is also against free speech. In fact, they are so much against free speech that they forbid "personal comments" about other members of the assembly. Case in point, assemblywoman Lissa Lucas is forcible ejected from the speaker stand for reading a list of politician names, donor names and amounts of campaign contributions.

www.youtube.com/embed/fHl1rYpXWis

It is amazing to see that even a state assembly can have rules that censor the speech of its lawfully and duly elected members. Absolutely frightening. Should this not be a case taken to the Supreme Court?


As someone who acted as parliamentarian at a contentious hearing I applaud the removal of these people.

In my case we had 125 WEEKS of public meetings during the planning process. We hade a core group of committed people- some lobbyists- some committed volunteers who poured their blood sweat & tears into this. We begged and pleaded with the public to join various committees to have their say on matters of substance. Yet NO ONE came!

Yet when it's time to vote- when the 17 people who probably spent 5,000 man hours drafting the best bill they could- about 600 people (not a single one of which could be bothered to participate) came to speak against it.

I gave them each 45 seconds to speak. Add in the transition time walking to and from the podium that's 10 FUCKING hours.

Many left so it took only 6 hours. Yet it was clear not more than a dozen of them had actually read the 85 page document and could speak intelligently about it.

So yeah it looks oh so awful when you see a YouTube clip of a mic being cut off. Yet as someone who was there on the battle lines as the 2.5 years of planning was voted upon, all I can say is FUCK THESE SPEAKERS who show up at the last minute to speak!

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