Yearly Archives: 2020

Saying goodbye to Medium

This entry was posted in My writing and tagged Medium on by

I’ve cancelled my Medium account. It’s become a hangout for the most rabid haters of capitalism, as well as often featuring articles hating men, white people, and occasionally human life as such. I don’t know whether it got that way by the design of the people running it or because of other factors. It doesn’t matter very much. Medium has become a sewer.

A number of libertarian accounts can be found on Medium, but they’ve mostly gone inactive. They figured it out before I did, and they gave up.

I should still get paid for my articles till my one-year term runs out later this year. There’s no longer any point in getting a Medium account, but if you have one and feel like supporting me by reading my articles, I won’t mind at all.

Inaccurate headlines

This entry was posted in Commentary Writer ethics and tagged fake news New Hampshire news on by

Update:The Union Leader corrected the headline, possibly in response to my complaint. Kudos!

News websites want clicks to their articles. They’re what bring in advertising revenue. Too many of them mislead the reader or sensationalize the story for the sake of clicks. Sometimes they engage in outright falsehood. An example is an article on the website of the Manchester, NH Union Leader, which carries the false headline “Free staters continue to meet despite ban.”

The article is actually about the Free Keene organization, which has no connection with the Free State Project beyond being based in the same state. Most libertarians in New Hampshire regard Free Keene as a little crazy. Putting their health at risk to make a point isn’t very smart.
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COVID-19 and curve flattening for writers 1

This entry was posted in Writer ethics Writing and tagged coronavirus COVID-19 mathematics pandemic statistics on by

When we write about issues related to COVID-19 and other major health risks, we carry a serious responsibility. Most of us aren’t medical professionals or specialists in biological sciences, but we have to get as much right as we can. Giving false reassurances and spreading panic are both harmful. Advising ineffective or dangerous preventive methods is still worse.

When we write for hire, we present our clients’ opinions, not necessarily our own, but that doesn’t let us off the hook. A pandemic is too serious to spin and make excuses about it. If a client wants you to give out inaccurate information, please decline the assignment.

But anyone can give that advice. I’d like to talk here about a couple of technical issues that writers need to understand. The projected spread of the disease is a matter of statistics. You’ve seen a lot of advice urging us to “flatten the curve.” What does this mean, and why do we want to flatten it? You’ve also seen that the number of cases is growing exponentially. That’s true, but most people don’t clearly understand what it means.
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The target=_blank security issue

This entry was posted in Tools Writing and tagged HTML Internet technology writing on by

There’s a little-known security risk built into the design of HTML. It concerns links that open in a new tab or window. You make it happen by specifying target="blank" in an anchor (a) element. For example:

<a href="something.example.com" target="_blank">

The trouble is that when you do it, you put the page containing that link at risk. For some bizarre reason, the designers of HTML decided that the destination page should gain access to the window.opener property of the source page. This gives the target page — the one run by someone else considerable control over your page. For instance, it can redirect your page to another URL.
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Getting links right

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

Links are important in blog posts and Web pages. They give support to statements and lead the reader to further information. They make the page more valuable and trustworthy in the reader’s eyes. Broken links, on the other hand, make a page look dubious and outdated. A writer needs to pay special attention to get the links right.

Anatomy of a URL

Links are URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). They consist of a protocol, normally HTTP or HTTPS, plus a domain and a path. They may also contain parameters. For the article you’re reading, the protocol is HTTPS, the domain is garymcgath.com, and the path may vary depending on how you’re viewing the piece. The protocol is a mandatory part of the URL. garymcgath.com is not a URL, and putting it into a link will work only if the server is kind enough to fix it for you. https://garymcgath.com is a URL with an empty path. https://garymcgath.com/wp/blogging is a URL that points at my blog.
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Privacy and security concerns in Grammarly

This entry was posted in Writing on by

Note: This is the most popular post on my blog. I wrote it in 2020 and can’t guarantee that it accurately reflects Grammarly’s current state.

You can use Grammarly in multiple ways. It’s available on its website or as a standalone application. In addition, you can install it as a browser extension for Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Chrome. It’s useful as an extra “pair of eyes,” as long as you don’t let it dictate your writing. I used it to check this article. Most of its suggestions were silly, but it caught a garbled sentence.

If you’re concerned with your security and privacy, the website is the safest. You can be reasonably sure it doesn’t have access to anything except what you type or paste into its pages. The browser extension is the most troublesome, since it can look at anything you do on a Web page. Before you install any extension, you should strongly trust its source not to do anything malicious or careless. Extensions can create security vulnerabilities with buggy code. This is especially a concern with an extension whose functionality is as pervasive as Grammarly’s. For all practical purposes, it functions as a key logger.

Grammarly denies that its product is a keylogger, but its arguments are evasive and nonsensical. That only convinces me they don’t understand security and are trying to lull their users. This concern isn’t just hypothetical; in 2018 its code had a bug that could let sites that you write for see what you’ve written for their competitors.

My recommendation: Don’t use the Grammarly browser extension.
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The AB-5 nightmare begins in earnest 1

This entry was posted in Writing on by

It’s real now. California writers are losing work because of AB-5, which outlaws or restricts many kinds of freelance work. WriterAccess has sent an email to its California writers, which tells them:

  • They’re capped at 35 orders or projects for any one customer. There’s no size limit to a project, but it all has to be under one title.
  • All California writers must register as a business with the state and get an EIN for tax filing.
  • California writers will have to submit a revised business agreement with WriterAccess to ensure compliance with the new requirements.

To its credit, WriterAccess is trying to keep its California writers and give them as much leeway as it can. Other platforms are simply dropping California-based writers because they’re too much trouble.
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