Sunk costs and opportunity costs for writers

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business economics writing on by

Economics is more personal than most people realize. Every choice about how to allocate your resources is an economic decision, and time is your most basic resource as a writer. You expend time on your work in order to get income. Sometimes you know exactly what you’re going to do today and what you’ll get in return. A lot of the time you face choices. Which of your customers should get your attention first? Should you put them aside for a while and look for new income opportunities? Should you keep working on a time-consuming project or give it up as a lost cause?

Two economic concepts are useful in making these decisions: sunk cost and opportunity cost.
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An assault in Congress on freelance writers

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing Writing as business and tagged law liberty writing on by

Previously I’d written about California’s AB-5, which put heavy restrictions on the number of articles freelance writers could sell. That was ultimately amended, after some major companies stopped using freelancers.

A bill now in Congress is raising similar concerns. It’s different from AB-5 in important respects but is still disturbing. The “PRO Act” has passed the House of Representatives and gone to the Senate. It would require clients to treat freelance writers as employees, but only in certain respects. To be exempt, writers would have to pass all three requirements of the “ABC test”:
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Dr. Seuss becomes “Doctor Sues” (UPDATED: APPARENT FALSE REPORT)

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

Update: It now appears that the alleged legal threat by Dr. Seuss Enterprises was a forgery. A tweet by Seth Dillon claiming receipt of the legal notice is “no longer available.” A Daily Wire post which reported the supposed threat now has the following added at the top:

Seuss Enterprises told The Daily Wire that the legal threat is fake and that Seuss Enterprises never demanded the retraction.

“The purported legal notice is a fake. It did not come from Dr. Seuss Enterprises or anyone associated with the organization,” Seuss Enterprises told The Daily Wire.

This morning (April 20), I can’t find anything on Dillon’s Twitter feed either reaffirming or retracting the statement that they received a notice from the Seuss organization. We can all make mistakes (as the original version of this post shows), but we need to correct them, especially when they make someone look bad.

Sorry about conveying erroneous information. Now I have to go back to all the places where I posted links to this article and post updates.

Original post follows…

In March, I wrote that Dr. Seuss Enterprises faced a difficult situation. It now seems I was wrong. They’re just nuts. They discovered a satirical Babylon Bee article and are now threatening to sue.
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Enough with the “phobia” epithets

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged phobia usage writing on by

Sometimes, to make a point you just have to lecture. This is one of those times. I don’t think most of my regular readers need the lecture, but you might like to point it out to those who do.

Start of lecture:

Do you know what the word “phobia” means? Merriam-Webster gives a single definition: “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.”

The central word is “fear,” which is what “phobia” means in Greek. It’s generally a reaction someone has no immediate control over, though it’s possible to reduce it with long-term measures. Examples are acrophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of enclosed places), and agoraphobia (fear of crowds). They don’t normally entail hostility, just a strong desire to avoid whatever it is.
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What does “Trust science” mean for writers?

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

Writing about science is hard. To start with, it’s complicated. Scientists deal in concepts which most people outside their field don’t understand. Most of us have no more than a vague idea of what a boson is (my spell checker doesn’t even recognize the word) or what the difference is between a brontosaurus and an apatosaurus (they’re the same beast).

An even bigger complication is the way science works. Scientists accumulate information, form hypotheses, and try to find out if their hypotheses explain the data. If they do, hypotheses build up into a theory. The term “theory” doesn’t mean a tentative guess, as it does in ordinary speech; it means a set of ideas which is the best explanation available.
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Do brown cows dream of chocolate milk?

This entry was posted in Writer ethics Writing and tagged chocolate journalism milk polls on by

Last week I saw a YouTube video purporting to show how dumb the masses are. It cited a poll which allegedly found that 7% of Americans surveyed think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It’s unlikely, if you think about it, that any significant number of people hold this belief, but it makes viewers feel good to think they’re smarter than others.

A search revealed that lots of sites uncritically reported this result. In fact, when I searched for a stock brown-cow image to stick on this post, many of the results referenced the poll. On the bright side, I found an article that looked carefully at the poll. Just now I found a Columbia Journalism Review article demolishing the claimed result.
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Harvard Library appoints content arbiter? 2

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Harvard libraries racism on by

The Harvard Library has appointed an Associate University Librarian for Antiracism. The press release announcing the position says that “we are a center for knowledge supporting our faculty and students in pursuing antiracism through their research, teaching, and learning. It also extends to our partnerships and collaborative networks, where we aim to support equitable access to a diversity of content, easy engagement with trustworthy information, and thoughtful preservation for the future.”
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Language shifts: “Social engineering”

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged etymology language social engineering on by

This was going to be an article on how writers on computer security misuse the term “social engineering.” However, my research quickly showed that the tech usage has almost completely displaced the original meaning. When that happens, it’s useless to say it’s wrong.

An example of the original usage can be found on encyclopedia.com under “Large Scale Social Engineering”:
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Thoughts on Uncle Hugo’s

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged bookstores on by

I’ve never been to Uncle Hugo’s bookstore. In fact, I’ve never been in Minnesota. But like many of you, I think now and then of Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore, which was destroyed by fire on May 31, 2020. An article which I read the other day reminded me of it in an infuriating way.

A fundraiser has been running since last year to try to restore the store in some form. Fans have been very generous, but half a million dollars is a huge amount to raise, and it’s still far short of its goal.

A recent article by Carz Nelson reports that there’s still hope. Owner Don Blyly remains determined. He’s still looking for a new location. Insurance helped, but much of what was in the store was irreplaceable. Old used books and signed editions can’t just be re-ordered.
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The Seuss affair 4

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged books censorship copyright on by

Dr. Seuss Enterprises has announced it will discontinue publication of six Dr. Seuss books. Its stated reason is that they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Whatever you think of this decision, you need to remember what every writer knows and many on the right forget: Publishers have no obligation to publish, except when they’re bound by a contract. The villain of the piece isn’t Dr. Seuss Enterprises, but absurdly long copyright terms. Theodore Geisel died in 1991. And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street was published in 1937. It won’t enter the public domain until, I think, 2033.
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