Blixa is a Punk Rocker
Cold today. Sunny, but cold. Our high was only 45F, after a nightly low of 30F.
And I had a very productive day. Again. Taking apart The Night Watchers and reassembling it in a way I never have done with a novel, it's interesting. It's not exactly editing, though I am doing a great deal of line/dialogue editing along the way. It's more like, I imagine, film editing. This work will concern roughly the first half of the novel, before I write the second half, and I should be done with this reordering in only a couple more days. Also, I did quite a lot of work on MP2. And I contacted our micropaleontologist on the study, Andy Bowman (Tuscaloosa), to ask if he'd look at a sediment sample relevant to mine and Drew's TP3, and he was agreeable. I'm going into McWane Monday afternoon, and I'll get the sample then, so Jun can take it to Tuscaloosa to pass on to Andy. I did some with the Bashi.
On Facebook I inadvertently started another interesting thread when I wrote, This "logic" that dominates so much of social media and that drives calls for "deplatforming" and "cancelling," that claims there is a moral obligation to shut down people with whom we disagree (and true, some of these people are loathsome, though others are not, and really that's beside the point). But...why? Do these acts of censorship actually function as a force of good in the world? Do they in any meaningful way diminish something that some people consider evil (others will disagree in each case)? Does the damage these "deplatforming" acts do have different and disproportionate effects, due to the relative wealth and power or lack thereof of those being targeted, devastating some and hardly scratching others? Or...is it only something that ultimately powerless people do because it makes them, however briefly, feel good, and the motivation, effectiveness, and consequences be damned? The chilling affects on free speech be damned. I suspect the latter. This is social media's version of frontier justice, of the vigilante taking the law into their own hands. And empowering the powerless often leads, merely, to more violence. Is it genuinely moral to rule with fear, with the threat of a public trial by countless faceless judges?
"Show me an organization where people are afraid to speak up, afraid to challenge dominant ideas lest they be destroyed socially, and I'll show you an organization that has become structurally stupid, unmoored from reality, and unable to achieve its mission" ~ Greg Lukianoff
And yes, my Facebook is private.
The Rent Party continues. Please, please, please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. Stimulate the economy, you know. Thanks.
Later Tater Bean,
Aunt Beast
3:34 a.m.
And I had a very productive day. Again. Taking apart The Night Watchers and reassembling it in a way I never have done with a novel, it's interesting. It's not exactly editing, though I am doing a great deal of line/dialogue editing along the way. It's more like, I imagine, film editing. This work will concern roughly the first half of the novel, before I write the second half, and I should be done with this reordering in only a couple more days. Also, I did quite a lot of work on MP2. And I contacted our micropaleontologist on the study, Andy Bowman (Tuscaloosa), to ask if he'd look at a sediment sample relevant to mine and Drew's TP3, and he was agreeable. I'm going into McWane Monday afternoon, and I'll get the sample then, so Jun can take it to Tuscaloosa to pass on to Andy. I did some with the Bashi.
On Facebook I inadvertently started another interesting thread when I wrote, This "logic" that dominates so much of social media and that drives calls for "deplatforming" and "cancelling," that claims there is a moral obligation to shut down people with whom we disagree (and true, some of these people are loathsome, though others are not, and really that's beside the point). But...why? Do these acts of censorship actually function as a force of good in the world? Do they in any meaningful way diminish something that some people consider evil (others will disagree in each case)? Does the damage these "deplatforming" acts do have different and disproportionate effects, due to the relative wealth and power or lack thereof of those being targeted, devastating some and hardly scratching others? Or...is it only something that ultimately powerless people do because it makes them, however briefly, feel good, and the motivation, effectiveness, and consequences be damned? The chilling affects on free speech be damned. I suspect the latter. This is social media's version of frontier justice, of the vigilante taking the law into their own hands. And empowering the powerless often leads, merely, to more violence. Is it genuinely moral to rule with fear, with the threat of a public trial by countless faceless judges?
"Show me an organization where people are afraid to speak up, afraid to challenge dominant ideas lest they be destroyed socially, and I'll show you an organization that has become structurally stupid, unmoored from reality, and unable to achieve its mission" ~ Greg Lukianoff
And yes, my Facebook is private.
The Rent Party continues. Please, please, please visit the Dreaming Squid Sundries shop. Stimulate the economy, you know. Thanks.
Later Tater Bean,
Aunt Beast
3:34 a.m.