The machine is trying to shut down, trapping you inside!

Fresh Posts

[Chat/2020/30/6]

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  • Author: ZXbJA0/z
Sup loser, i live in Canada, white minority neighborhood built by asians. It's okay, some health violations, some uncleaned houses, but it's not terrible. Chinese are not that racist or evil. Second generation children grow up without CCP brainwashing.

[Chat/2020/34/5]

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  • Author: +jEx9bnn
Novelty probably wore off for a lot of people. I barely check this place every few months.

[Chat/2020/34/4]

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  • Author: A1FlcQcN
What was the character limit before this? I notice there's a new minimum character limit thing, so that may have increased verbosity of individual posts, but I don't see how that makes less posts because posts are indicative of a dialogue, which a new character limit wouldn't effect, as ideas are being signaled.

[Hackz/2020/12/4]

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  • Author: tE9DWKNj
I did a good job of it for a while, and then I started talking to a girl, and it all went out the window. I know I'm still better at it than a lot of people are though.

I find my phone to be the most toxic and I'd rather not have one but for various reasons I find I need to. I don't install any apps I absolutely don't need on it, have the screen set to monochrome (Android settings -> simulate colour profile), and have wireless turned off. I'd rather just have a dumbphone, as I mostly only use it for text messages, but there are a few family Whatsapp groups that my trying to leave has caused tensions in the past.

I don't consciously try and restrict my habits on my computer, but it kind of happens naturally based on the fact that it doesn't have an internet connection; I use a mifi thing to connect to the internet morning and evening (and sometimes during the day if I'm expecting an email) and have everything set up to work offline and assume that I'll be offline as best I can.

Just by not having internet most negative things that I have found with my computer go away. Programming or whatever feels a fine use of my time. Sticking to something of a schedule makes it harder for me to fill my time mindlessly with scrolling.

Obviously the fact that I'm here right now suggests that the systems not perfect by any means.

[Chat/2020/34/3]

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  • Author: kuzZ3y0s
The verbosity of posts went up after the character-limit was introduced, which kept the number of posts lower than what was regular a few years ago

[Chat/2020/34/2]

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  • Author: 1ELJsiqY
I remember there was a period of spam, and the board kind of went dark after that.

[Meta/2020/1/18]

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  • Author: ccjIOK9r
In any anonymous communication forum, political free speech would ideally proliferate into discussion in which there is a healthy amount of people with varying enough opinions to prevent a echo chamber of the same opinion. Despite this, pretty much any time I've seen a political board on any chan, it always just becomes a bunch of people spouting the same opinions shunning or insulting anyone who doesn't agree, usually accusing them of being part of whichever group that is widely disliked on that board. You can see this in the other direction on places like reddit, in which, instead of getting (you)'s calling you a jew or something, you just get downvoted and called a bigot or something similar. It has become my opinion over time that online political discussion will simply never work, because it is just too easy for a community to become all of the same opinion. When an opinion starts becoming that of the majority, those who believe in it will continue to stay, as they see many other posters agreeing with them and defending their points, while those who disagree will start leaving to other places because they are tired of seeing no one else understand, or agree with, their points. So imo, the only way to keep a board away from this sort of thing, is to just never have a political board and enforce good discussion, or to just ban politics all together. I think ralee just shouldn't have a political board, as that attracts people who just want to shit up communities with unrelated political whining in the other boards. I think all that should be done is to just enforce productive discussion that doesn't devolve into namecalling, and to remove political posts that are unrelated to the topic.

[Chat/2020/34/1]

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  • Author: A1FlcQcN
Why has the RAL textboard gone inactive? Just look at how many posts there were in 2019, 635. We're basically half-way through 2020 and [Chat] only has 180 posts. That will total up to 360 by January 2021, more than half of last year's total posts.

[Chat/2020/33/4]

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  • Author: QljrVYgA
Raleigh pride world-wide! :smile:

[Meta/2020/1/17]

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  • Author: GNm3ClWa
@16 lol. k

(25 character limit)

News

Smilies (Textboards, not just for text)

by Prettyboy Yumi /
If you've used AIM or any instant messenger before, you're undoubtedly familiar with the wide range of smiley faces you can use to convey your feelings through IM. Now on RalEE, I've updated our jBBCode to handle a number of smilies itself :grin:
More information is available on the BBCode help page regarding their availability and usage.
I am also looking for your favorite smilies! If you think I've missed a few, or if you've got suggestions on ones to add, or even if you've made some yourself feel free to reach out to me (either on RalEE or via e-mail). I look forward to hearing from you!
~ Yumi

Endtroducing...: RalEE Powered by Machine Learning

by Prettyboy Yumi /
Hiyaya! While I've been soaking up the California sun these past few months I've also been hacking away at RAL under the hood. The most recent updates spawned a few different branches on Github which have all since been merged into master; most obviously, there is no more robocheck! Or rather, there is a robocheck but it's just a checkbox. Since RAL is entirely open-source you can browse the changes on Github; there's been a lot of behind-the-scenes change!

I'm super excited to push us into the next major release! If you ever want to collaborate, don't shy away from e-mailing me or opening a pull-request; together there's nothing we can't do! Plus I've always wanted to pair program in a totally sexual way...

Oh, right...: machine learning! We've been plagued by an increasing amount of spam within the past few months. And while I've been enjoying my vacation / public-servanthood in San Francisco I've kept a keen eye on the site. When we opened over a year ago (under the a different domain name too, time flies!) I was hesitant to delete any posts, but I came to see these posts contribute nothing to our community; actually, they detract from our originality. This spam doesn't seem to be created by robots (they would fail the robocheck) but rather by (sub-human) .onion users. In any case, I have added ample ability to the new RalEE to flag and hide these posts while simultaneously teaching the software to recognize and prevent these kind of posts... so, if you ever find that the site refuses your post, try being a little less spammy ^.^

Mumble Server!

by Prettyboy Yumi /
We now have a Mumble server!
Host: mumble.prettyboytellem.com
Port: 64738

Mumble is a voice-chat software which has been around since 2005; I'm excited to host a server where we can communicate in real-time! And it's not made by /g/ so it's practicaly guaranteed to stay around longer.
I've gotten the opportunity to test-drive it recently; if you've used Teamspeak or Ventrilo then it'll all come naturally. Download the client from the official site or fetch it from your distro's repositories.

Maybe you've noticed the recent, sporatic down-time? I can tell you that it's not just those BOFH at Spectrum but on the contrary I've been upgrading my mess of home-servers which keeps these sites (i.e. RalEE.org, prettyboytellem.com, howler.space, and raamen.org among others) in running condition! Sometimes there's so much maintanance to do and so much I want to explore that I don't have time between school and everything to do it all! If you ever want to lend a hand (either with maintainance or with the server finances) please reach out!

There's room if you want to come live in the server-room with me too.
~ Yumi

FUTURE SEQUENCE #001

by Prettyboy Yumi /
Hello; we're closing in on the first anniversary of RalEE: on January 6th we will have witnessed the passage of our first year. This is a wonderful thing for a community to close in on and I'm glad that we have braved the rough waters well: there is nothing that makes me happier now than to think of how far we've come and how much farther we still can go in demonstrating the gems of our text-based, BBS community around the Internet.

To celebrate this milestone I will accelerate the release of FUTURE SEQUENCE #001. This experiment was originally planned for a much, much longer timetable but owing to a handful of unexpected early-successes, Future Sequence #001 will begin on Jan. 1, 12AM (GMT+0) and last until Jan. 6, 12AM (GMT+0). During these five (5) days RalEE.org will be inaccessible due to the future : I hope you will be understanding. RAL will be accesible again from Jan. 6th onward.

For the duration of the future sequence RAL will be operating in altered-state and as such your experience of the Internet may deviate from normal.

We hope your future-sequence goes well: until then...

New Domain and Welcome to v3.0

by Prettyboy Yumi /
Hiya; I just got around to adding some new things into RAL last night and finally I've decided it's tme to say it: welcome to RAL v3.0!

We even have a new URL to go with the recent changes: we're now on-line at ralee.org which is very easy to remember, especially for our newer friends. There are also lots of new themes to complement all these changes so check them all out (or you can find them anytime in the panel at the top of the page).

Finally I want to point out the brand-new Sysop / Co-sysop panel; I'm looking forward to recruiting a handful of co-sysops so that we can help our little community grow even more!

Version 2.0

by Prettyboy Yumi /
Oh, does something look different? It's RALv2.0! We've come a long way since January and this redesign makes me feel that it's only up from here! Special thanks to hellbaby for contributing the [Anime] and [Music] banner! If you'd like to get in on the behind-the-scenes action, join our IRC (howler.space:6667).

About

RAL is a text-only message board / forum. It is written by Prettyboy Yumi.

First, you may notice that there are a number of different boards which have a single focus. These boards are called Continuities because unlike boards, posts are never archived and threads are never locked: conversation is continuous, so it is called a Continuity; each has its own focus. The focus is a glimpse into realm of truth that is afforded by the Continuity. However, the truth is not freely-given and is hardly objective. Therefore, you should post to expose this truth. In turn, posting could not exist without this focusing truth so please respect it.

RAL is named for the beautiful city of oaks in North Carolina, Raleigh.

Rules

There are a few guidelines you should follow:

  1. No spamming
  2. Do not post anything which is explicitly illegal in the United States
  3. Lurk more - it's never enough