From: ibuprofin@painkiller.example.tld.invalid   
      
   On Tue, 29 Mar 2016, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, in article   
   , Thomas Prufer wrote:   
      
   >Moe Trin wrote:   
      
   >From the few active groups I still read, my problem has been a few   
   >regulars that do post worthwhile content occasionally, but start threads   
      
   or respond to them   
      
   >with egregiously off-topic political crap. This in turn inspires answers   
   >and rebuttals. And a more-or-less polite "Oi, don't do that" was met   
   >with, well, you can killfile me/the thread,   
      
   That's why about a quarter of the lines in my killfile relate to Subject:   
   lines that have one or more "controversial" words.   
      
   >thread drift is ok,   
      
   as long as it doesn't get completely away from the original subject   
      
   >and a particularly annoying attitude of "well, here there are people   
   >that read this, and all the on-topic groups are dead".   
      
   A quick scan of the logs - I am subscribed to 79 groups at the moment,   
   and an average of 30 of those groups DON'T have posts in a given month.   
   Ten additional groups are over 90% noise.   
      
   >But these are easily recognized and killfiled, generally: most from one   
   >anonymous server,   
      
   Most anonymous servers and remailers use Message-IDs or usernames that   
   are trivial to filter on - and I do, primarily because all of those posts   
   I see using them are wasted time/bandwidth.   
      
   >> Well... maybe Usenet is dying.   
      
   >Eh. As is POTS (plain old telephone service),   
      
   Several jurisdictions require the "phone" companies to offer it, but I've   
   noticed that the costs keep drifting up - they QUOTE a low price, but add   
   taxes and "other fees" - so the actual cost is doubled.  It's definitely   
   cheaper here to buy dumb cell phones with pre-paid air-time cards.   
      
   >rotary phones,   
      
   Yeah, but have you noticed they're no longer charging an extra fee for   
   tone dialing.  (Just checked - I have two phones that I can set to   
   "pulse" dial, and that mode still works on my POTS line.)   
      
   >coin phones,   
      
   trying to remember the last time I saw one...   no luck.  But how much   
   of that is due to increasing costs of a phone call, and the fact that   
   "EVERYONE" has a portable phone of some kind and that many people empty   
   the coins out of pockets/purse and don't normally carry any to feed a   
   phone if one were available?  (Quit smoking about 20 years ago, so the   
   driver's ash-tray in the car has a couple of $ of coin stashed there, but   
   that's more for parking meters the city uses as an income source.)   
      
   >snail mail,   
      
   That's an on-going "discussion" - and I rather doubt it's going to   
   completely disappear any time soon.  Package delivery out here in the   
   boonies is a main reason.   
      
   >Oh, and I thought red dice meant "will race", black dice "won't race".   
   >But I probably read that here...   
      
   But what about the pink dice with black dots?  The "Encyclopedia Of Bad   
   Taste" (ISBN 0-06-092121-8) from 1990 says J. C. Whitney sold a ton of   
   those, before paring back their offered choices to just white with black   
   dots.   
      
           Old guy   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)