Trunk

Couple of things: 1. I'm still super busy at home, and so don't have the time to re-consider every angle and every view point at this time. I *do* want to go over this thoroughly, again, *especially* looking at pts of view that hadn't been fully explored previously. 2. The change that I'm making right now is to soften the punitive actions: as stated initially, they're too harsh. That was my poor judgement and poor attitude. Especially given that they're in PPDs. So, #1 revised becomes (I'll revise the original post to same) This is much less heavy-handed re: admin stomping around in members' PPDs. Much more gradual, with even worst case punishment (unlikely to happen, imo) still respects your ownership of your own threads in your own PPDs. That's it for me for a few days, As I said, I look fwd to coming back and reviewing again in more detail, Trunk

Community, Currently overwhelmed with practical 'real life' issues. I hope to have time to review things here later in the week. thanks for your patience, Trunk

@steve (Obviously) Super grateful for all your help on staff, your presence in membership, and maybe sometime in the future if there's natural space in your life that you wanna help in staff ... (video)

This thread is on my mind. I’m going to re-read the entire thread: try and see others’ perspectives more fully, and explore what adjustment/s (if any) that I might take to make things more amenable for each. Thank you for all contributions to the discussion, Trunk

HOLY MACKERAL!!, Excellent disclaimer. If we post one, gonna use that. The seperate subsection - more of a catch all - would be Current Events. Yeah, we could get more specific, but I think the Current Events section is a good model - not only for covid, but for Current Event kerfluffles that seem to happen every few years or so. I like that specific permissions must be granted to see that area, so for members who just wanna see internal arts stuff, it doesn't show up in their "show new posts" list. Not click-bait for conflict, doesn't cloud the board as much from there.

No, because that effectively cuts off debate ... the ability for differing views to be presented by members. If you read the line above your quote, here, and the rule change in the opening post, you'll see the the rule is crafted to allow varying pts of view. Staff is not going around deleting posts that don't fit their idea of truth, as your comment is suggesting is happening: Nope.

I'm glad that the community has offered feedback. There are permutations that I hadn't considered, and the various pts of view offered here have given me things to chew on (today and probably in following days). #1 opens the situation for staff moderating how a member moderates their own PPD, which I don't like. And which, admittedly is sometimes nuanced (not the blatant shutting down of opposing COVID opinion, which is what I was intending to target). And a more nuanced situation should trigger a more nuanced response ... but also I don't want to get into that whole complicated area w/ COVID. #2 excludes a topic from discussion within a member's own PPD, which I also don't like. Any way that this gets addressed, there's going to be a down-side that could cause offense. I'm trying to rule favoring safety. - Trunk

Decision made: Edited the rule to include the variation,

The Current Events section has the additional plus of hiding the discussion from not only the browsing non-members, but also hides those topics from members who’ve not requested access to the Current Events. It removes clutter, keeps a filter so that members can enjoy this board for its’ stated scope: internal arts. While I agree with most of what you said, I don’t intend to extend this strict action to “controversial topics” in general. The COVID issue is an extreme case, outside the usual. I do like people keeping Current Event stuff (politics, etc) in the Current Events section as a matter of courtesy, but I hope that it’s very unusual that staff has to moderate that as a matter of rule. (*ugh*, thinks back over last several years)

An additional (in addition to illness & death issue) aspect to COVID discussion is moderator staff's attention, energy, time. I'm not willing to spend more staff energy over this issue (which is *way* outside the scope of topic and stakes of TDBs in the first place), and not much of my own. I'll be mainly addressing this issue myself going forward. If it comes to much further time spent on nuanced adjudication decisions re: COVID, my move will be to simplify the situation through strong reduction: towards removing the issue from TDBs altogether (#2 or #3). As I outlined above. Normally, members are given very broad powers within their own PPD. Almost always, that's the way it should be and will be. However, in this unique case of the global COVID pandemic, I'm not for nuanced adjudication of members' sense of propriety of their PPDs ... it doesn't weigh in equally against the lethality of a global medical public issue. - Trunk

Damo Mitchell is on facebook (you don't have to 'friend' him, you can follow), and posted the below yesterday. It's not anything new, common virtually everywhere (as all the deep truths are). As an author pffft! (a blog, anyhow ) I find writing, especially about internal arts (might be anything felt to be of great import) ... I find writing to be just grueling, torturous, lots of re-writes, and very satisfying... yeah, so, I'm admiring his writing. Not only eloquent, resonates as someone who is familiar with the actual parts, but also spoken in a non-sectarian manner. I'm betting that he rewrote those two paragraphs a lot... *if* he typed that out just tra-la-la, I am so jealous!, gonna go throw plates in the kitchen!

My impression is that yin yang relationships are structurally integral in a way that describes life processes... like a blade of grass has roots stem blade. I can't rattle off all the rules of yin yang, but Bob Flaws wrote a book quite a while back that has these sorts of statements https://www.amazon.com/Statements-Traditional-Chinese-Medicine-Mandarin/dp/093618552X/ ... and this is more from a perspective of chinese medicine (not esoteric Taoism). (And I think that this book *used* to be a slender paperback that was much less expensive). My experience is that sometimes people just mention any opposites willy nilly and interpret that as yin yang ... and maybe some of that is correct ... but my sense is that, also, it often goes way off the rails by what is meant by yin yang and that the topic bares further study.

Norm MacDonald passed away recently, RIP. He battled cancer for 9 years and no one knew, badass. His Netflix series “Norm MacDonald Has a Show” (a series of interviews) is absolutely charming. So I’ve been watching compilations of his comedy that are surfacing on youtube. Enjoy.

I The movie clips are dramatized fantasy. The rings are used primarily for training (not weaponry). It’s always seemed an interesting idea to add a little bit of weight to qigong training, but holding onto light dumbbells while doing qigong is kinda klunky. Here’s a non-fantasy video. P.s. My curiosity is especially how they’d affect the results of sinew-changing types of methods, movements. ... but I’ve no direct experience with these, so I’m quite open to whatever someone says who has a bit of direct experience.

@liminal_luke has decided to take time away from moderating, and so I just adjusted his security settings to "regular member". Three cheers for all the help and discerning empathetic presence his staff-time has provided to the moderation team and to the community. - Trunk

Ok. The new banner has been posted. A number of people helped move this along, each of which were essential in getting this from unstuck to moving forward and done: - Thanks to the community for prompting this issue, and for all images suggested. Especially to @Gerard and @Bhathen. - Thanks to @steve for helping to resolve a technical issue. - Thanks to @liminal_luke and especially to his partner, Jose Muro, whose digital art skills helped integrate the chosen graphic on top of the cleaned-up banner. His contribution is greatly appreciated. Jose's instagram art page: https://www.instagram.com/josearte33/ "As hard as we try, nothing gets done alone". - Trunk

@Bhathen Thank you for your contribution! We've got a couple of people who've stepped up now (both with more digital graphic arts skills than I) and I will be choosing from the produced variations sometime soon.

Done. Thank you to @steve for your assistance. And to community for prompts.

I am looking into this issue further.

@Earl Grey and everyone, Re: supporting the growth of alternative-to-TDBs discussion forums: TDBs is over burdened. I've thought this for a long time. I think it'd be *really* healthier if there were several other Daoist discussion sites that grew to be big n' healthy, and that TDBs became somewhat smaller. I'm quite happy and supportive when a member makes a go of it... discussion sites are super easy to start, but harder to build a sustainable base. I'm glad to provide the thread that I mentioned earlier, in support. You are not breaking any rules here by starting a site! And if some members here migrate to that site, either exclusively or back n' forth, more power to you! That means you're providing something valuable. TDBs can't be everything to everyone. cheers, Trunk

@Cleansox TDB's doesn't allow blank posts, so, yeah, having to leave a period is normal. @Earl Grey Better now?

I tried a small tweek, unsure if I fixed anything: please check and get back to me. Also, on a separate issue: I want to make sure that you've seen this thread (especially the 2nd post):

Thanks for the 'heads up'. I will take a look at this later today.