Monthly Archives: January 2025

What does the TikTok ban mean?

This entry was posted in Censorship and tagged censorship China Internet TikTok on by

Biden signed a bill banning access to an Internet service. The Supreme Court has upheld the ban, ruling in effect that claiming “national security” overrides the First Amendment. What happens next isn’t clear, but the sloppy news reports I’ve seen indicate that it could be worse than I thought. The law doesn’t do much directly to ByteDance, which is a foreign company. It’s really a ban on what businesses in the USA can do.

CNN’s report is typically sloppy and alarming in what it suggests.
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A strange experience on Bluesky

This entry was posted in Personal and tagged Bluesky Internet on by

I maintain the @filknews account on Bluesky, which is a manually maintained mirror of the one on Mastodon. It includes reports of upcoming conventions, online filksings, and other things of interest to filkers. This morning I got an email saying:

A Bluesky account you control has been assessed as a spammy, fake, or inauthentic account. Your account was reviewed by Bluesky content moderators and was found to be in violation of our Community Guidelines. As a result, your account has been taken down.
 
As a reminder, Bluesky requires that users not use Bluesky to do harm to others, including spamming, phishing or otherwise using technical means to disrupt the Bluesky experience for other users.

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Let’s bring back blogrolls

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged blogs Internet writing on by

Blogrolls used to be a standard feature of many, if not most, blogs. A blogroll is a simple thing: a list in a sidebar or footer of links to like-minded or interesting blogs. They’re a way for related blogs to be mutually supporting. I’ve added one to the sidebar of this site, and it will grow in the future.

Blogrolls were popular until Google modified its ranking algorithm to downgrade their links. Maybe they had a good reason; it’s easy to set up a bunch of dummy blogs linking to each other to boost their search rank. But even if they don’t improve a blog’s Google rank, the links are worth posting as an alternative to the search engines. Readers will find interesting blogs and add their RSS or Atom feeds to a feed reader, letting them keep up with information on their favorite topics or from their favorite people. They will in turn have links to other interesting blogs. It isn’t mandatory to reciprocate when others add you to their blogrolls, but it’s considered courteous. (Hint to anyone I’ve listed.)
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The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks 2

This entry was posted in Movies and tagged music silent movies on by

My latest silent film upload with my accompaniment is the 1920 The Mark of Zorro, starring Douglas Fairbanks. It’s one of the most libertarian films of the silent era, presenting a masked hero who fights against oppressive rulers in Spanish California. He wears a mask, appears when he is most needed, and has a secret identity as a rich but timid caballero. It’s obvious that he was part of the inspiration for Batman. The film was Fairbanks’ first role starring as an action hero.

As usual, the accompaniment is my improvised music, played on a Roland EX-50. For this movie, I wanted to sound a bit Mexican, so I did some research. It led to a wonderful discovery: the Spanish scale, which oddly enough is also the Jewish scale. The common source is the Sephardi Jews of the Middle Ages. I started noodling in that scale and, olé! It’s a tricky scale to use when creating harmonies; there’s no proper dominant chord. With some practice, I was able to weave between major, minor, and Spanish modes. Also, I tried to sound like a guitar in some scenes, as if I were a storyteller accompanying myself.
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The “Paradox of Tolerance” swindle 1

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship liberty philosophy on by

“Paradox of Tolerance” is a favorite slogan of censorship advocates. Most often they drop the words in a discussion without elaboration to give the impression they’ve said something profound. Some will mention its connection to Karl Popper. Few will cite his words, since they’re actually opposed to censorship.

The words in question are from a footnote in The Open Society and Its Enemies. The footnote is a bit unclear; Popper was adding a passing thought, not a polished commentary. Here are the words:
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