Commentary

The “Pro Act” bill threatens free expression

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

The more I hear about the “Pro Act” bill (it’s not an act till Biden signs it), especially from its supporters, the more convinced I am that it’s a threat not just to writers’ livelihoods but to free expression.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the bill is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. On the surface, it just grants freelancers a freedom we didn’t have before, the freedom to deal with clients through organizations. This ignores the reality of labor law, which gives unions the power to compel employers by force of law to enter into agreements. Outsiders often have the choice of joining the union, giving the union money without joining, or not working for a unionized employer.
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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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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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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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The decline of Apple’s Books app

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged Apple ebooks software on by

When it comes to Apple’s software, Plato may have been right. Every change is for the worse. Catalina is outrageously slow. The Books app on the iPad has always been an advertising medium, but it’s gotten really out of hand now.

A few days ago, The Magic Battery magically disappeared from my new iPad. I don’t know why. It’s still on the old iPad. My best guess is that it no longer allows Epub files which I created myself.

Another book, one of the few which I purchased from Apple, is now reachable only by going through a page advertising the other books in the series.
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Virtually absurd

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

When you don’t see people face to face and all your interactions are by phone or over the Internet, life can take on an unreal quality. It feels as if we’re living virtual lives, not real ones. Maybe that’s why writers put the adjective “virtual” on virtually everything. Instead of real learning, we have “virtual learning.” There was talk of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates having a “virtual debate,” apparently in lieu of actually debating. Yet perversely, people we barely know on Facebook are “friends,” not “virtual friends.”

We need to hang on to the reality of life. The term “virtual” means being not quite something or being simulated. If something is “virtually impossible,” it still has a glimmer of possibility.

Many things are now simulated on the Internet because we can’t do them in real life; there are virtual meetings, virtual classrooms, virtual attendance, etc. That’s legitimate. But the outcomes ought to be real. Virtual classrooms should result in real learning, or what’s the point? Distance doesn’t make things less real. People have debated by correspondence for thousands of years; why does distance suddenly make debates “virtual”?

The word “virtual” is an antonym of “literal.” Maybe the long history of abusing “literal” has made the abuse of its opposite inevitable. If you can say someone “literally exploded” when there was no explosion, then why not say you “virtually learned” when you actually learned?

“Virtual,” like “algorithm,” is a trendy word to stick everywhere because it makes the writer sound computer-smart. But it’s virtual smartness, just the appearance of it. Let’s hold on to what’s real in life and not dismiss everything we do at a distance as “virtual.”

Twitter notes

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged publicity social media Twitter on by

Since I’m promoting self-published work, I should work on my visibility on Twitter. That’s what everyone says. Don’t look for expert advice here, since I haven’t topped 500 followers. However, I’ve been making an extra effort lately, and I can offer some notes on how it’s worked.

Not that I like Twitter very much. It’s manipulative, giving publicity boosts to some tweets and accounts while leaving others in the shadows. Whether “shadowbanning” is real may be a matter of how you define it; certainly some users find themselves consigned to low visibility. Twitter is a game where the dealer hides the cards and doesn’t tell you the rules.

But if you play, you can improve your visibility. The first step is to link to your profile a lot. Probably I need to do more of that.
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The return of lily-white writing? 1

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged race writing on by

Boskone 58 pocket program coverBack in the “Golden Age of Science Fiction,” all the leading characters were light-skinned by implication. Well, all the human characters. The aliens were often green or blue. It wasn’t that the authors set out to portray white-only casts or mentioned every character’s appearance; it was just the default, and most writers (themselves light-skinned) rarely thought about it.

The situation slowly changed. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, published in 1959, presented a thoroughly international and multi-ethnic military. We’ve reached the point where characters of all physical types and ethnic origins appear in SF. It’s happened in nearly all kinds of fiction; I’m focusing on SF because it’s what I’m familiar with.

But now there’s a nasty push back. Some people want fiction re-segregated. At first I thought it was just a fringe movement with no significance, but it’s gaining in influence. I keep seeing would-be writers apologetically posting to Reddit, asking whether it’s OK for their stories to have characters whose skin color doesn’t match their own. The responses are overwhelmingly “yes,” so it’s still on the fringe, but it’s a toxic idea that needs firm rejection.
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