Writing

Answering the “Nazi-punchers” 2

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Social media can be hugely deceptive in judging how popular ideas are. One side can be noisy while the people who disagree feel too intimidated to dissent. An example is the self-declared “Nazi punchers.” They’re self-righteous in their advocacy of violence, and they like to distort a footnote of Karl Popper’s into a “paradox of tolerance” that says they must be intolerant to be tolerant. But we don’t routinely see news reports of assaults of this kind, which is a clue that they’re more noise than action or few in numbers. Probably both.
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Sorry

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A draft post titled “Flanders Festival Ghent disgraces itself” got published in error. It was a draft which I thought I had made private. I don’t think there was anything wrong with what I said, only that I should be focusing more on topics of more long-term significance. It’s deleted now.

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After sticking to its claim that my video of A Trip to the Moon with original music violates their copyright, MK2 backed down when YouTube asked them to support the assertion. The video is safely back for the foreseeable future.

Six rules for responding to bad ideas

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SciManDan has put up a video which everyone trying to debunk bad ideas should watch. Nominally he’s talking about Flat Earthers. A lot of his videos are on that subject; a friend of mine likes to watch them, so I watch them too. Really, though, the six rules he offers don’t apply just to answering people who think the world is flat. They apply to any bad ideas you’re trying to knock down: socialism, Trumpism, “greedflation” theory, Moon landing hoax claims, whatever.

Watch the video, but I’ll quote his six rules here, substituting “[bad idea]” for “flat earth” to show the generality.
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Commentary on Aaron Ross Powell’s essay

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The essay “Surround Yourself With Those Who Are Admirable, and Distance Yourself From Those Who Aren’t,” by Aaron Ross Powell, has me feeling ambivalent. Each time he links to it on Bluesky (and he’s linked to it a lot), I want to say something, but I couldn’t put my concern in a few words. It isn’t obviously wrong, but its focus could encourage readers to cut themselves off from all who disagree with them. In general, I should add, his newsletter is definitely worth reading, and even this piece helped me to clarify my thinking.
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The rise of explicit censorship

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One of the clearest signs of emerging tyranny is censorship. The Trump administration is using a combination of harassment in the civil courts and threats of prosecution to censor speech. Paramount has caved in to Donald Trump’s legal harassment, handing over $16 million in extorted money. There was little chance they’d lose the lawsuit, but the government can hurt it financially in many ways. CBS News, the subsidiary of Paramount which was the focus of Trump’s actions, is now less deserving of trust than ever.
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Call it Emancipation Day

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Today, June 19, 2025, is a federal holiday officially called Juneteenth National Independence Day, more often just Juneteenth. It commemorates the announcement by Major General Gordon Granger in 1865 that, per the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Texas were free. Texas was the last Confederate state where the Emancipation Proclamation went into force.

This is certainly a day worth commemorating, even if it wasn’t the final abolition of slavery in the USA (that happened only when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified). I just wish it had a more forceful name. “Juneteenth” is meaningless; it doesn’t even tell you exactly what day it falls on. The full name is seldom used, probably because it would be confused with Independence Day on July 4. The obvious name for it is “Emancipation Day,” which some people use informally.
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