You’ve seen those articles, maybe while trying to look something up. Lists of obscure and remarkable facts. “The strangest vehicles ever made.” “Ten ridiculous laws that are still on the books.” “Eight things you didn’t know about broccoli.” These “listicles,” as the little lists are often called, can be entertaining, but as a rule they’re unreliable information sources. Most are written by freelancers without in-depth knowledge. They repeat popular myths and lack citations. They’re the modern-day descendants of Ripley’s Believe It or Not.
This type of article is easy to skim, and readers who see one with a remarkable claim are apt to share it. This makes it good material for filling out blogs that exist to attract attention to a website. I’ve written some myself and made a strong commitment to getting the facts right. Other writers are more concerned with finishing the piece fast so they can collect their fee and move on to the next assignment. Unless a piece is by an author with relevant expertise or at least on a site that avoids fluff, you shouldn’t treat it as a reliable source.
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On Wednesday, January 10, I’m going to try something new: presenting two short silent movies on Zoom with live keyboard accompaniment. This will be at 8 PM Eastern US time. It’s going to be an experiment; Zoom has all the components necessary, and I’ve tried them out, but performing for a live (well, real-time) audience always brings surprises. I’ll post the link here a couple of days before the event. User capabilities will be locked down so that Zoom bombers shouldn’t be able to do anything more than be annoying in chat, so sharing the link will be OK. (But I’ll still ask not to share it on Facebook or Xitter; no sense pushing my luck.)
For this one I’ll use my free Zoom account, which limits the event to 40 minutes. If it goes well, I may revive my paid account to allow more time. Or maybe I’ll learn how to use Twitch. The movies will start about 5 minutes after the event opens, since the time will be tight.
Update: After some experimenting, I’ve decided Twitch is a better platform for the purpose. The audience can’t do more than type into chat, so I don’t have to worry as much about who shows up. The presentation will be on www.twitch.tv/madfilkentist, and you can follow me on Twitch if you’re so inclined.
The program will be two short movies of the early silent era: Edison Studios’ Frankenstein and George Méliès’s The Impossible Voyage.
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“One down. Two to go. This forced resignation of the president of @Penn is the bare minimum of what is required.”
That’s the kind of language you might expect from the Minister of Truth in a socialist dictatorship. It’s from Elise Stefanik, a Congresswoman from New York. The offense for which Stefanik and many others are seeking to remove three university presidents is the failure to regard advocacy of genocide unconditionally as harassment.
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I’m the kind of person who always needs to have a project or two going. Things have been slow in that department lately, and FAWM is still about six weeks away. The two novels I wrote were enjoyable to do, but fiction isn’t my strongest point. The research I did for them has proven fruitful, though. I thought about writing a book on the Protestant Reformation and its effect on the emergence of personal freedom. I can’t claim to be a professional historian, though, and the readership would undoubtedly be small.
But I can write songs. The idea I’ve developed is a song cycle which combines music and history while connecting to my novels. Hans Lorenz is Thomas and Frieda’s son in The Magic Battery and Spells of War. He’s a small child and isn’t developed much as a character, but he has strong musical abilities. In this cycle, the adult Hans is the singer of songs which could get him into bad trouble for the ideas they expressed; but doing that runs in his family. (His father was on trial for his life, his mother’s book was burned, and his grandmother was killed in prison, accused of witchcraft.)
The first song, which I’ve put up on SoundCloud, is “Deva Prison.” It presents history which most listeners won’t know, so it’s followed by a short talk by “Hans” to his audience about the facts behind the song. This is a pattern which I plan to follow in other songs in the cycle.
A fact that might get a few people more interested: Dávid Ferenc, the subject of the song, was the founder of Unitarianism.
If I achieve my goal, this cycle will present some important history which isn’t familiar to most modern audiences in an entertaining way. Let me know what you think.
According to a Des Moines Register article, fourteen state attorneys general have accused the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, and Reuters of serious crimes. The accusations appear highly dubious. The claim is that these news organizations have paid freelance reporters who have ties to Hamas and have thereby committed the crime of “material support for terrorism.”
A Fox News article corroborates the main points and adds some details. I don’t consider Fox News a very reliable source, but when a news outlet makes the people it generally supports look bad, it’s more credible, and the Fox News article has a bit more nuance than the Register article.
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The term “gaslighting” has become popular on social media. “To gaslight” means — or at least once meant — to manipulate people to make them think they’re insane. Today the word often serves as an all-purpose tool for attacking someone who says you’re wrong.
A Time article discusses the stretching of several psychological terms, including gaslighting:
Perhaps the most often misconstrued word of the past few years, “gaslighting” has been widely adopted as a way to describe any act that’s insensitive, a lie, or simply a difference of opinion.
Some of you may not have found time yet to read my historical fantasy novels, The Magic Battery and Spells of War. If you haven’t, you can get them now for just $1.00 each from Smashwords with the coupon code SG36X. This offer is good for the rest of 2023.
Mastodon was supposed to be the answer to many social media problems. Instead of being one site under the control of one group of people, it’s many independent instances. If administrators on one became troublesome, you could move to another. You could find an instance that reflected your values and had the kind of people you like. It’s become something different.
Eugen Rochko, the founder of Mastodon, recently boasted:
I’d like to get it out there that the onboarding experience changed a fair bit this year. We don’t force people to choose a server anymore, so getting started shouldn’t be any more complicated than on any other site.
In the strict sense, no one was ever forced to choose a server. As far as I know, no court has ever ordered anyone to get a Mastodon account. But everyone who uses Mastodon has to choose one, and that hasn’t changed. It’s just that people now are herded into the big servers and have to make an extra effort to pick any of the others. That’s a step backward, toward monolithic social media.
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Does US federal law mandate a “kill switch” for alcohol-impaired drivers in cars made in the future? According to several fact checkers, no. However, an article by Jon Miltimore for FEE shows that it does.
The issue isn’t one of what the law contains, but of terminology. In claiming there is no kill-switch mandate, USA Today refers to the very text that mandates it:
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