- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
- 
Erika Hammerschmidt
Blogs from 2021
(Note: For some of these posts, earlier versions went up on my private or public social media around the dates indicated, but not here on my home page. In revamping my page I have chosen to include those posts here. Links are included when a public version is available.)
Yikes
2021/01/11
First posted here and here on Twitter.
Limitations on free speech:
Don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
Especially as a command toward a buncha people with guns.
It can end up being interpreted as a command to those who have the power to fire YOU.
(Another more depressing interpretation could tie in to the current flooding of the public sphere with "free speech" so full of lies you can't tell what's real...)
("A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke." - Soren Kierkegaard)
(This is the real why you don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. Not because it causes chaos, but because it accomplishes nothing.)
(A theater has always been a place where people act out fiction, so truth shouted there will not be believed.)
(But these days, all the world's a stage.)
Fame and Ethics
2021/01/14
First posted here on Twitter.
I've been thinking for some time about the connection I see between individual people's popularity, and widespread ideas of... right and wrong, and what constitutes good sensitivity toward the marginalized.
I'm not really sure what to do with these thoughts yet. I just feel a need to put them into words.
I've noticed examples of this issue in discourse about race, gender, orientation and so on, but I'm not qualified to speak about every instance I've seen.
So I'll take the example of neurodivergence, since I have personal experience growing up with autism and various other mental diagnoses. From that perspective, I'll try to explain what the issue is that I've noticed.
See... when analyzing the hurtful things said about a group, there are a few different categories.
There are some things that are hurtful because their meaning is inherently hostile toward the group.
(For example, "all disabled people should be cured whether they want it or not.")
Then there's another category (which tends to include the worst slurs): things that are hurtful because they are pretty much only ever said with the intention of being hurtful.
Their literal meaning may not be bad, per se, but they are bad through association with the bigoted people who say them.
(Like "window licker." I did lick windows, as a child riding the short special-ed bus. They had frost on them. It was a fascinating sensory experience. But no one ever called me that as a compliment, or with genuine concern for my health.)
And then there's a third category: things that...
Well, the best way I can describe them is that they're hurtful when you think about them a certain way.
An example of this is the phrase "people with autism"... i.e. using person-first language, instead of the more preferred identity-first language, "autistic person."
Those who use person-first language are generally reasoning that it's better because it focuses on the fact that the person is a person, and deserves human rights, rather than focusing on what group they belong to.
This explanation sounds reasonable the first time many of us hear it. But among autistic people it is widely rejected, because of a certain opposite reasoning that became more widespread in the autistic community years ago.
Basically, that counter-analysis said that person-first language reduces the autism to a minor detail tacked on at the end... like calling women "people with femaleness."
I'm neutral on the question. And I don't, personally, understand this comparison.
That's partly because I don't have any real sense of what "femaleness" means, and it seems to mean different things to different people. But that's another whole essay .
And we DO have terms like "people with vaginas," "people with dresses," "people with nurturing instincts," "people with skills in emotional communication." Any part of what "femaleness" means, to any particular person, COULD be expressed with that syntax.
I kind of feel the same way about autism. For each of us, autism IS a list of features-- and the exact features are different for each person. Together they make up a large percentage of our identity, but they are traits that we have.
And because autism, or any whole identity, is made up of many individual, varying traits... I feel like any word we have for the whole concept is going to be inexact.
I think both "autistic person" and "person with autism" are vague terms that don't convey much information, and I don't feel a particular connection to either of them.
I recognize their value in discussing these issues, but I don't prefer one over the other.
And I don't think that putting one of the words first will automatically portray it as more important than the other, because that's... not how language works. There's no language that structures its sentences in descending order of word importance.
But that's just my own take on it. The majority of autistic people who express an opinion prefer "autistic people." And there are others who feel strongly the other way, due to the first argument I mentioned.
But I wonder: of the many autistic people who prefer "autistic people," how many would still prefer it if they hadn't heard a popular autistic thinker make the second argument? Or had heard it in a different context?
If they had heard the first argument more often, or from different people... how many might have preferred that one instead, or maybe ended up being as neutral as I am?
It definitely matters who you hear the argument from.
A definite factor is that many of us have more experience hearing identity-first language from other autistics, and hearing person-first language from non-autistics who think they know better than us.
A thing to remember about these categories of harmful words is that... the lines between them are debatable, and can shift. Something can start out being "bad if you think about it a certain way," and quickly become "bad by association, because only bigoted people ever say it."
I'm trying to explore the process by which that happens.
And it often involves an idea being widely spread by a small number of people who happen to have a great deal of influence.
I see it pretty often in discussions of why a new book has bad representation, or why a scene in a movie is offensive, or why a casting decision is inappropriate.
Often, when one of these things is asserted in a particular critique, my inner dialogue-generator tries to argue it out, and ends up finding a counter-argument that seems to make just as much sense to me.
Sometimes I even find a reasonable-sounding rationale for why the original critique ITSELF could be seen as hurtful to the group in question.
(I don't really want to give more examples beyond my initial autism-related one. My goal is not to start arguments about whether specific things are good or bad, especially things relating to groups that I have no business speaking for.)
My point is, when I see a certain take getting a huge amount of popularity, my mind ends up exploring alternate takes on the same thing, and wondering why those takes didn't gain the same level of popularity.
Sometimes, I'm sure, this is just because I'm not part of the group affected, so I'm not thinking about it from a perspective that can truly understand it.
But other times, it later turns out that these alternate takes DID occur to other people of the same marginalized group. They were less popular people, and either didn't get noticed when they said it, or were attacked for challenging the more popular person's take.
Sometimes, once this comes to light, the predominant opinion changes-- it turns out one argument wasn't really that much more convincing than the other, even to the same people. It was just a matter of one argument getting more publicity.
And I only find out about this when the new one does finally get enough attention to get shared by someone I follow.
Imagine how many times they don't.
I wish I could believe that decent people everywhere have a strong intuitive sense of what is right and wrong, and what is racist and sexist and ableist and so on.
And to some degree we do, with the first and second types of harmful speech: the ones that are obviously harmful in meaning, and the ones that are slurs by their constant association with bigoted usage.
But when it comes to the third type, where valid-sounding arguments can easily be made on both sides, on the topic of whether it's harmful...
I think we're very easily swayed by the popularity and influence of whoever is speaking.
And that feels like a very bad thing to me, because fame is a form of power, and it's always a bad thing when power gravitates toward those who already have a lot of it.
But at the same time, it's the way power generally behaves.
And I don't have a solution for that problem, because putting any solution into effect would require having power.
Ugh
2021/01/15
First posted here on Twitter.
1 year ago, if you wrote a novel where a candidate used criminal methods to falsify election results, manipulate courts to rule against the true winner, and install a dictator who could only be ousted by violent means... it would've been SO CLEAR the bad guys symbolized the GOP.
And now the same novel would be taken as supporting the goddamn pro-Trump conspiracy theorists
God. It's always "accuse your opponent of that of which you yourself are guilty," with them. Isn't it.
(fwiw, I am not writing a novel anything like that. But I am in the editing stages of a novel in which resistance fighters work to overcome a dictatorship, and in the past couple weeks it has begun to feel like that entire premise is irrevocably tainted.)
(if our country's takeaway from this shitshow is "it's never okay to overthrow a dictatorship," I give up on America)
Funny Data
2021/01/31
First posted here on Facebook.
Okay, so those partially-heard jokes in Star Trek TNG always bothered me.
I could never find a way to complete them that would actually still be funny at all, even if you didn't know that they're Star Trek references.
But I THINK I FINALLY JUST DID IT
But they don't know each other that well, right. They just met in a bar, like the other night, and they all hit it off.
And the clone says, "We should all go bowling together tomorrow! But we gotta wear matching outfits, okay? Looking the same is a big part of my culture, you know. So I don't wanna be seen bowling with you two, not unless we all look the same."
So, right before they're gonna meet up, the monk is getting dressed... and he doesn't know what he's gonna wear.
He asks his roommate, "How do I dress up to match the guy I was drinking with last night? We gotta match, but what do I even know about him?"
And his roommate goes, "well, he's a clone, right? Just dress the way a clone dresses."
And the monk goes, "Ok. A clone. I can do that."
Meanwhile, the Ferengi is getting dressed and he doesn't know what he's gonna wear, either.
He asks his roommate, "How do I dress up to match the guy I was drinking with last night? We gotta match, but what do I even know about him?"
And his roommate goes, "well, he's a monk, right? Just dress up like a monk, ok?"
And the Ferengi goes, "Ok. A monk. I can do that."
So they all meet up at the bowling alley.
And the owner of the place meets them at the door, takes one look at them, and says...
Bad Places
2021/02/02
First posted here on Twitter.
I cried at the end of The Good Place.
And not in a good way.
cw: spoilers
cw: suicide
To be honest I've always hated works of fiction that claim that "immortality would make life meaningless." It feels more like sour grapes than truth.
And I have always struggled a LOT with my tendency toward the opposite feeling, that mortality makes life meaningless.
Because it means that nothing you do has any permanent effect. In the end everyone dies, and everything you ever did, someday, is either forgotten or so inaccurately remembered that it might as well be forgotten.
I've struggled with the feeling that that means nothing is worth doing.
And, paradoxically, I've struggled with thoughts of suicide around that thought-- because the idea of a quick meaningless death sometimes feels more manageable to me than a long slow death of aging while constantly feeling that every moment is meaningless.
At the time I watched that show, I was in a bad place, emotionally, for many reasons.
And at that time, the ending said to me, "Even in a world where everything was good and nothing outside your control ever threatened your life-- everyone would still get suicidal eventually, and in the end, the only option is suicide."
Which, goddamn it, might even be true.
But, at the time, it just ruined me. And ruined the show for me. I hated that ending. I still hate it.
I loved *so* many things in that show. And, somehow, I didn't see that ending coming, because everything I loved about the show caused me to trust that it wouldn't end that way. And it totally blindsided me.
I think I would hate it even now.
And now I'm in an amazing place. I've just moved to a beautiful city that feels like I've been dreaming about it my entire life.
I'm living with people who make so many moments of my life so enjoyable that I CAN actually live in the moment, and not spend so much time thinking about my mortality or whether or not anything is meaningful.
And all the things that were stressing me, and making me feel like my life was in danger, are suddenly GONE.
And it's fantastic. It feels like an unbelievable dream that I'm becoming gradually more confident I won't wake up from. I am actually enjoying SO MANY moments, and it's like I've really gone to heaven.
You know what? If this place could last forever, and I could last forever, I could totally be happy here forever.
There are more amazing things here than I can possibly count in a million years, let alone experience.
And guess what? Even if I had infinite time to experience them-- I haven't got infinite memory.
I can re-read a book a few years later and totally enjoy it, because I've forgotten enough of it. There's no reason I couldn't do that with experiences, too.
Sure... maybe if I spent a long enough time re-having experiences, and being aware that I must've done them before, even if I didn't remember it-- maybe it would end up feeling meaningless.
But the whole point of living in the moment... is enjoying the moment WITHOUT CARING whether it has meaning. Or considering the enjoyment itself to be the meaning.
And now that I'm learning to do that... No. I'm not going to entertain the idea that immortality is bad and death is good. Life is too damn awesome.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but you don't HAVE to believe that there's any limit on how long you want to live.
Especially if you can find a life where the moments are worthwhile for themselves.
Keep living.
Book Man
2021/02/02
The most relatable character in all of cinema is Mr. Bemis, the book guy from the Twilight Zone.
- Would rather hide in a bank vault, alone reading books, than do a customer service job.
- He comes out of the bank vault to find what is OBVIOUSLY the aftermath of an earthquake and evacuation. No people, no corpses except maybe one guy under rubble. Lots of damaged buildings, but things like books are still intact.
- Yet he jumps to the conclusion that it was a nuclear war and there are no humans left on the whole earth.
- He does experience an initial moment of despair, when he doubts whether there's anything worth living for. But he's clearly not invested in the hope that there's still some people left. Not even enough to check and see if they evacuated to the NEXT TOWN.
- And once he realizes there are still books left, he is TOTALLY HAPPY, no more mourning humanity at all!
- Yeah yeah, his glasses break, the episode makes it look like a tragic ending by stopping at that scene. You already saw him recover from one moment of despair. You don't think he can find a store with reading glasses as easily as he found a library and a gun shop?
- this is 100% me in the apocalypse, I will be no help to any of you, and you probably won't even find me.
Aphantasia
2021/02/02
First posted here on Twitter.
I'm rather fascinated with the concept of aphantasia: the condition of being unable to visualize images.
Mainly because it refers to a subjective experience that none of us can share except through language. Like the philosophical idea of people seeing colors differently-- it's hard even to express in language how our understanding of it differs.
Many of the words we use for thinking are hard even to separate from visual thinking. "To visualize," "to picture," even "to imagine," come from words that refer to images.
Yet they're often used even if nothing visual is involved.
"Imagine the sound"-- it's a sound, not an image.
"Picture yourself having that conversation"-- what you're picturing has far more to do with words and emotions than a picture.
So our minds are already quite prepared to take those terms metaphorically.
If one's own experience with imagination does not involve literal images, one can easily assume those words are always metaphorical.
It requires some mental gymnastics the first time we even try to conceive of those words meaning different things to another person-- try to think of another person's experience with that mental process being different.
I had to do this twice.
The first time I learned about aphantasia, I thought of the people who make that preposterous claim that "it's impossible to think without words."
The people who argue that animals, babies, and nonverbal autistics can't possibly have thoughts, "because they don't have language."
The people who have *so* much trouble understanding the idea of "thinking in pictures."
Or the ancient philosopher who came up with that bizarre argument (which somehow became a respected theory) ...that it would be impossible to visualize a picture, because it would require an infinite chain of "homunculi" inside your brain, each looking at an image of the last one looking at an image.
I suppose when THOSE people imagine a visual scene, they just imagine a description of it in words.
(Of course it can't be only words. To think in words you have to know their meanings. They'd be thinking in words plus the meanings they convey.)
(For me, meanings usually involve at least some visualization. But for them, meanings must be nothing but raw data, under the surface, hard to separate from the words themselves, because they ALWAYS go along with words.)
When I learned of aphantasia, I immediately realized "That's what those people have!"
But years later, I began having conversations with other people about how they visualize.
And I found the other end of the spectrum.
Other people, when imagining a picture, LITERALLY see it. They close their eyes and it's like the insides of their eyelids become a movie screen.
Their brain supplies the images in the same way it would supply them for a dream, a hallucination-- or even reality. It's the same way it processes visual information that actually enters their eyes.
(I suppose the only way those people can even tell the difference between imagination and reality is through the context of how they brought the image up.)
(If I consider that there are people who think like that... I can begin to understand how some people may get imagination and reality confused sometimes.)
And I realized that type of visualization is nearly as foreign to me as the all-in-words type.
From those people's perspective, I could be considered to have aphantasia.
My experience is at some midpoint between the two.
My visual thoughts are neither verbal descriptions nor literal sights.
And it's hard to put into words exactly what they are, in a way that makes it clear they aren't either of those things.
They're definitely visual; there are often no words involved at all.
But it's not seeing. It's... IMAGINING seeing.
My brain, not my eyes, is where I experience it.
I don't know how to explain it any further to someone who hasn't had that experience.
And the imagined sights tend to be vague. Or perhaps "brief" is a better word.
Instead of seeing a clear image for a long time while it stays unchanged... I imagine little bursts of sight, like a picture that shows up for just a split second.
I can't see more than a brief flash. It only shows what I can look at in one glance. I have to re-conjure it if I didn't get the information I needed the first time.
And sometimes there isn't enough information there at all.
If I've only seen something a few times (whether it's a person's face, a piece of art, or the layout of a room) I usually can't bring up more than the vaguest idea of what it looked like.
My picture gets more detailed the more times I see a thing in real life.
But I don't think it ever gets as detailed as the pictures in the heads of people who literally SEE their thoughts.
I suspect, though, that it might be more accurate than those.
Or at least less inaccurate.
My visual memory tends not to fill gaps by making up things, which is apparently a common flaw in eyewitness testimony.
My mind is used to memories having gaps. It's used to having only the vaguest outline, with only certain parts being clear.
The only reason I can ever state what I saw with any confidence, is because I store the information in other forms.
If I say "I remember seeing Elle eating a banana in the kitchen last night," I don't have a picture in my head clear enough to identify Elle, our kitchen, and the banana.
What I have is a very vague mental picture-- plus the information, like a label on the memory, that it's a memory of Elle eating a banana in the kitchen.
(The label is not always in words. Sometimes it's just pure information-- which I can put into words later, and which is associated with a picture, but can exist in my head for the moment as neither words nor pictures.)
(I've also noticed that putting a memory into words makes the visual memory less clear. When I pull up the memory, I get the words I put it into, and less of the memory itself.)
(It's like my mind realizes it can get away with compressing the image file to near-unrecognizability, now that I've saved the contents of it in a lower-memory text file.)
So, when I think about my memory of Elle eating a banana in the kitchen, it's vague, but I can remember the fact that I recognized all those details at the time.
I can usually also remember the degree of certainty I felt about each thing I saw, at the time I saw it. Usually depending on how much attention I was paying to each detail.
If you asked me, "How sure are you that it was a banana, and not an apple or a sandwich?" I'd have a pretty good idea of how sure I was.
But that doesn't have much connection to how clear the visual memory is NOW.
Same with any visual thought in my head.
And also other senses, come to think of it.
My memories of sounds are the same.
This whole exploration of people's different visual thinking patterns may also apply to auditory thinking.
I've heard there are people who literally hear a voice in their heads whenever they think in words. Are there others who just imagine seeing the words in writing?
On this topic, too, I'm between those extremes, in much the same way.
And yet I can still use these vague forms of memory very well.
I can accurately mimic voices I've heard.
I can draw realistic pictures, even though it requires a lot of trial and error to get it right.
When I get it wrong, I know what lines I need to change to get closer to right.
When I get it right, I can tell.
Even though my conscious visual memory of what I saw is nowhere near as detailed as what I'm drawing.
I don't know how it works.
But human minds can be amazingly good at finding ways around whatever limitations they have.
I-Statements
2021/03/15
First posted here on Twitter.
In some of my long-term friendships and family relationships, I'm dealing with an unplanned side effect of Learning to Speak Tactfully.
You know how therapists sometimes tell you to phrase concerns in the form of an I-statement? Like instead of saying "You don't respect me," saying "I don't feel respected."
At first glance, that second statement looks gentler.
Except, you and the other person both know that the therapist taught you to say it.
So the words stop mattering, and the meaning is understood the same.
When you say "I don't feel respected," anyone who's familiar with your therapy will hear three implications:
1. You're the one I don't feel respected by.
2. This means you should change your behavior.
3. I'm only wording it this gently because I've been taught not to say it as angrily as I feel it. You can assume I'm SUPER MAD at you, hidden under all this niceness.
With me, it's a bit more complicated. I was raised in Minnesota. I did not have to learn this from a therapist.
Anyone who knows me well enough is aware of my phobia of outright conflict, and the meanings that can be hidden under the gentle-sounding things I say.
In Minnesota, this "second-person I" is normal speech, and there are at least two versions of it.
The other one is the leading-by-example kind.
It's grammatically a bit different. For example, instead of saying
"You smell bad"
it comes out as
"I need a breath mint. Do you want one?"
or "I need a shower. Shall I use it now, or did you need it first?"
I hardly ever use this variant. But the fact that it's possible, and that people who know me know it's possible, means that ANY "I-statement" I make can be interpreted as having such a meaning.
By this point it's so bad that I DO NOT HAVE a way of expressing my concerns that won't come across as an attack.
It has become hard for me to talk about anything I plan to do, without other people in my life interpreting it as a criticism of them, and feeling like they have to explain why they're not doing the same thing.
And if I say "I don't feel respected," people start trying to defend themselves against the words they heard, which were "I'm very angry at you for not respecting me."
Sometimes I wasn't even saying that! Sometimes I was trying to talk about some totally different person's disrespect-- or even about my own difficulty recognizing people's expressions of respect for me.
And even if it was directed at them, sometimes I'm not even angry-- sometimes I'm just trying to understand where they're coming from.
But all those nuances are lost. Any nuance I try to add is gonna be interpreted as Minnesotan snowsuit padding, with no purpose but to hide the hotness of anger underneath.
I'm trying to learn bluntness. I'm trying to learn to say what I feel, at the level I feel it.
But I've lived a long time as someone who ONLY uses blunt expressions of anger when the anger is so overwhelming that it overcomes all control.
Coming from me, even a statement as simple as "I'm angry at you" sounds utterly terrifying to those who know me-- and will lead to either terrified de-escalation attempts, or proportionately angry retorts.
And, anything less than those words-- is still assumed to be a toned-down, passive-aggressive expression of anger.
To some degree, the layers of padding and sugar-coating can hide my meanings from me, as well. I'm not always sure MYSELF how strongly I feel something, or at whom the feeling is directed.
As I write this, I wonder if even now I'm deluding myself and you with all these I-statements. Maybe deep down, my frustration is less with my own Minnesotan speech challenges, and more with other people being so quick to assume hidden meanings even when I'm trying so hard not to hide them.
Can we just invent telepathy already?
Holy crap.
Is this why Vulcans invented the mind-meld?
"our society does not allow the expression of emotions"
"but then people can just assume I'm having all sorts of emotions I'm not having"
"well F them"
"but what if there's an emergency where I HAVE to prove what I'm feeling"
"ok. fine. BUT ONLY IF ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY"
Call me when Minnesota ups its game to Vulcan level. Then MAYBE I'll come back to visit
a browser to end internet inequality
2021/3/20
So I have an idea for an app that would be so ridiculously simple to make, and (if adopted widely enough) would solve some of the absolute worst problems with the internet.
It would just be a simple web browser (with mobile and desktop versions) that lets you 1. bookmark web pages, and 2. use the back and forward buttons to navigate from page to page WITHIN YOUR LIST OF BOOKMARKS.
It doesn't really need any more features-- just that, and a field to type in URLs.
The idea is so obvious that I feel like someone MUST have come up with it already. But if so, I'm having a hard time finding it.
Basically I think that the internet's worst habit is... feeding inequality, by making the rich richer and the poor poorer, making the famous more famous and the obscure more obscure... regardless of the value of what they have to say.
And that's killing independent creators, while also making internet usage a depressing experience for almost everyone.
I think the only way to fight this would be to have a way to check up on the pages we follow, WITHOUT an algorithm using some company's financial interests to decide what we see.
The posts that get chosen in that way, by social media giants like Twitter and Facebook, usually aren't the best things for us to see-- either in terms of making us happy, or making us better people.
And I think if we have a bit more choice in what we see, that's gotta be is a step in the right direction.
So how do we do this?
One option is to use a RSS reader-- which doesn't work for every site, and can be prone to glitches, because you're not viewing the site in the way it's designed for.
Another option is just to bookmark every website and personal social media page that you follow, store the bookmarks in a folder-- then click the button to open ALL bookmarks in the folder in different tabs at once, then click through them one at a time.
Most browsers (mobile and desktop) do have that option. But that method is far from perfect. Compared to using a RSS reader, it has some flaws:
For instance, it still shows you sites that haven't updated in a long time, so you'll sometimes end up checking on a site and being disappointed that it's got nothing new since last time.
(But how bad is that disappointment, compared to the feeling of doomscrolling a Twitter feed that's algorithmically curated to make sure you're never satisfied?)
And the advantage, compared to a RSS reader, is that it actually takes you to the sites, so you interact with them the way the web-designer intended. Less chance of glitches, more ad revenue for struggling artists.
Another flaw, of course, is that having too many tabs open at once could be hard on your browser, and hard to keep track of.
But the biggest, most fatal fatal flaw of the method is just that it takes several steps to do.
In this thread it took me 10 steps and 23 screenshots: here
It's not HARD. But to get the kind of spread that the Twitter or Facebook app has achieved, it would have to be RIDICULOUSLY easy. Like, one-or-two-click easy.
The moment that something starts to look like a chore, the vast majority of people would rather go with the misery they know, instead of bothering to try it.
Now, I don't call myself any kind of expert on app design. But I feel like we could have something like... just a simple web browser app, where the back and forward buttons navigate a list of your bookmarks.
The bookmarks could be anything. Some of them can be personal Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or other social media pages that you follow-- and since the algorithm isn't trying to sift them all into one feed, it doesn't get to sift out stuff you might actually want to see!
Plus, you could also include personal websites that aren't on the big social media platforms-- remember when those actually got traffic??
And, if it took just one click to add one as a bookmark, and just one click to navigate to the next bookmark in your list...
Then, people could follow all their favorite social media feeds, AND all their favorite independent websites, all in one place... with equal or less effort compared to how they do it now.
Now, there remains the issue that, if you've locked yourself into a bubble of people you're following, you still may have some trouble finding content from outside that bubble.
(Or, from the other perspective: people who make that content may have trouble breaking into your bubble.)
This problem already exists with the current social media giants, and to some degree it's exacerbated by their algorithms.
If one of your friends shares a post from a little-known artist that they want all their followers to see, the algorithm might still decide that only a few people get to see it!
But, if what you're following is your friend's personal page on the social media site, using an app like the one I suggest-- then you're more likely to see that shared post.
Still, we could use some change in the overall culture around sharing each other's posts, as well.
Ideally, this whole project would go along with something like the Webrings from the 90's and 00s.
To help each other reach audiences, groups of friends with websites could put links to all sites in the group onto each of their sites, along with encouragement to visit and bookmark them all-- so if you find one you'll find them all, and you can follow as many as you like.
But basically, I think just the widespread adoption of this incredibly simple app idea could:
-increase the chance of lesser-known, marginalized creators being seen
-allow viewers more freedom to choose what to see
-allow the spread of good posts that algorithms may hide for unfair reasons
So, could such an app exist? Does it exist already? If so, why is it not immensely more popular and easy to find? What can we do to fix that? And are there any further concerns and obstacles I haven't thought of?
A side note: I definitely don't think this needs to be just ONE app! Monopolies are part of what got us into all this trouble in the first place! Ideally there'd be lots of developers making their own versions of it, so each user could use the one that works best for them.
It's not like trying to invent a new social media platform-- which is mostly always doomed to fail, since a social media platform can't survive unless all or most of the people from the old one migrate there.
(Also, social media platforms depend on being able to make money and satisfy their stockholders-- so they tend to become evil and corrupt over time, when that becomes the only way to increase their profit any further.)
If I were designing a version of this app myself (assuming I could code, which I can't)... I would make it totally free and open-source.
I'm not thinking about either money or exposure with this project. I'm aiming for maximum adoption because it will make the world so much freaking better for EVERY independent coder, author, artist, and so on.
But to be honest-- I'm happy to see any developer share any version of this in any way.
If you have any related input or ideas, I wanna hear.
a mystery no one thought was a mystery
2021/04/10
First posted here on Twitter.
It took me until, like, practically now to fully GET the beginning of Veruca Salt's "I Want it Now" song in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).
So, before the singing, she starts out with some spoken words.
"Gooses. Geeses.
I want my geese to lay gold eggs for Easter."
I always felt that was.... weirdly phrased.
Besides the bizarre attempts at pluralizing "goose"... the rest of the wording also doesn't QUITE fit the setting.
She says "my geese," but she doesn't have geese.
She WANTS geese that lay golden eggs.
Also, "golden," not "gold," is the adjective that's used everywhere else in that scene.
And Easter's over (according to Mike Tevee)... so I doubt she specifically cares whether these eggs are laid for Easter or other occasions. Maybe? But not definitely.
The wording isn't WRONG, but it's... well, I think "marked" is how they say it in linguistics. It's definitely marked.
A more natural wording would be, "I want geese that lay golden eggs (for Easter?)"
And it was like a couple months ago that I realized why!
The song was stuck in my head, I was singing every verse to myself.
Presents and prizes
and sweets and surprises
Cream buns and doughnuts
and fruitcakes with no nuts
and then... I sang the spoken intro as well.
I want my geese ta
lay gold eggs for easta
....It was marked for the goshdang RHYTHM.
Mind. Blown.
(I think what kept me from realizing it earlier.. is that she does NOT recite those lines as if they're meant to have rhythm and rhyme. I'm almost positive that the writer of the lines intended it, but the actress treated them like any old sentence)
(Still don't quite get the point of "Gooses, Geeses" though.)
POCKETS
2021/04/12
First posted here on Twitter.
I support everyone's right to have good, full-sized pockets on their clothing
while also acknowledging that purses are WAY better than pockets and if I HAD to choose one or the other I would definitely not choose the one that results in forgetting your keys in your other pants
The ideal option, obviously, would be a return to old-school fashion where the pocket IS a detachable purse, worn under the dress and accessed through slits in the sides, and is big enough to contain an entire chicken
Additional perks:
-No more purse-snatching; pickpockets have to learn actual skills
-Brings back giant poofy dresses
Birds and Bats
2021/04/25
First posted here on Twitter.
sideways twitter icon:
devil ghost, or chibi batman?
am i a dragon
2021/05/02
First posted here on Twitter.
I do not breathe fire
I breathe a highly flammable gas, though
I mean I inhale it, combine it with carbon from by body and exhale it much less flammable
I'm an anti-dragon
Sir
2021/05/09
First posted here on Twitter.
Seriously can we just stop using "sir" and "ma'am," they are more trouble than they're worth
In solidarity about "ma'am" are:
- trans guys
- young ladies who were raised in an environment where "ma'am" was only used for old ladies
Halfshell
2021/05/19
First posted here on Twitter.
As a kid I never understood why the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were "heroes in a half shell"
Any reference to oysters on the half shell sailed over me
(being a hyperactive 10-year-old, in the show's target audience, I did not get invited to fancy dinner parties serving oysters on the half shell)
gaslying
2021/05/19
First posted here and here on Twitter.
I wonder if there's a word for the thing that some of us call "gaslighting" but that is not exactly lying.
What I mean is:
The thing where someone else assumes you are wrong, delusional, overreacting, imagining things, and tells you so
They genuinely believe it
But their reason for believing it is based in sexism, or some other type of prejudice
From the victim's viewpoint, of course this can't always be distinguished from deliberate gaslighting.
And from the perpetrator's viewpoint it may feel like reasonable criticism.
And there may be gray areas.
But it's a distinction that's kind of important, I think
Because I understand the term "gaslighting" to mean a specific type of manipulative behavior with a specific goal... I try not to use the word at all anymore.
Because I cannot know what someone else's goal is. And *telling* them what their goal is WOULD be gaslighting.
(that is, it would be gaslighting if my goal was to convince them to doubt what they originally thought their goal was.
and I can't think of any other motive for saying such a thing, so I don't.)
(I mean I guess another motive could be "I believe they are deliberately manipulating me and I want to let them know I believe that," but that's not a thing I'd ever do because it would be confrontational and accomplish nothing except a fight)
Luckily I don't have anyone in my life right now who causes this question to come up at all.
I'm just thinking about it because I've seen discourse about gaslighting recently, and thinking about how it's impossible to identify without reading the other person's mind and knowing their intentions
(and/or knowing the exact facts of the situation in which they're trying to convince you of their version of events, but there's no actual proof)
UFO
2021/05/21
First posted here on Twitter. and here on Tumblr.
If it's "unidentified" for us, but the aliens know what it is... then it's not really a #UFO now, is it
Stop erasing the aliens' perspective
Specifying "unidentified (by us)" kinda like specifying "discovery (by Europeans)"
Flesh
2021/05/21
First posted here on Twitter.
So this morning for some reason I imagined a conversation that probably never happened, years ago
Reporter: "Who are you wearing?"
Lady Gaga in her meat dress: "no one you knew"
Zuko
2021/05/28
First posted here on Twitter.
Uncle Iroh is disappointed none of these are tea
Correction: uncle Iroh is disappointed that one of these IS tea
Seymour
2021/05/31
First posted here on Twitter.
My brain free-associating on yesterday's sugar high:
the protagonist of Little Shop of Horrors is named Seymour
haha I just remembered a joke with the punchline "Seymour Butts"
more butts = more anus
more anus = Moranis
Rick Moranis played Seymour
aaaa need more candy
After Party
2021/05/31
First posted here on Twitter.
2 wolves inside me:
"At the party you said 2 things that got no response, so they were probably in bad taste and people hate you for them"
"Erika you KNOW that 90% of everything you say isn't noticed at all. They were lost like tears in rain, breath in wind, shit in a mudslide"
Meg
2021/06/01
First posted here on Twitter.
Morning free-association:
Meg is a nickname for Margaret
Margaret spelled backwards is Teragram
A teragram is equivalent to a megatonne
Meg could also be a nickname for megatonne
Sand
2021/06/05
First posted here on Twitter.
I was raised on Monty Python and my found family is very aware of Star Wars memes
Result: every trip to the beach involves a Cockney-accented version of "I DON'T LIKE SAND"
"Can't I have sand, egg, sausage and sand without the sand in it??"
"SAND, SAND, SAND, SAND, LOVELY SAAAAAND"
Anyway: I used to be scared of the idea of everything about living in California-- including going to the beach. But it turns out beaches can be totally amazing and have adorable tiny hermit crabs!
Taters
2021/06/06
First posted here on Twitter.
"frying potatoes?"
"yep, they were growing eyes, so I figured I'd halt their evolution before they develop brains and the ability to feel fear and suffering"
"...thanks, I'm never eating potatoes again"
(Roommate convo, explaining why I now have plenty of taters for myself)
Dress Codes
2021/08/09
First posted here on Twitter.
Apparently it's back to "if schools can enforce ridiculous dress codes, they can enforce masks" season.
It's a valid comparison, but not in the way it's usually posed.
Schools can't effectively enforce either dress codes or masks!
I went to high school.
Students adjust their clothing to their preference when no authority figures are watching.
Make a schoolgirl put on a cardigan over her sleeveless blouse, and she can take off the cardigan any time of the day you're not looking. And quite likely will.
Make her wear a mask if she doesn't want to, she can do the same thing.
This is SUPER EASY to do with masks. There is no way they can force perfect use all the time.
It's fine that they can't perfectly enforce the dress code. Spaghetti straps don't hurt anyone.
It's NOT fine that they can't enforce masks.
One of these will kill people. One won't.
SCHOOLS SHOULD NOT BE OPEN
Cooperative Video
2021/08/09
First posted here on Twitter.
I'm imagining an alternate world where Zoom was called "Co-Vid" and when they both became famous at the same time, the virus had to pick a different name
Things that I both understand and find pointless
2021/08/09
First posted here on Twitter.
- going on twitter, finding a random person you never heard of, who's expressing a bizarre opinion you've never heard of, and spreading that opinion all over Twitter to be analyzed
"let's expend energy and outrage and critical thinking skills on... explaining to this totally irrelevant person why his totally irrelevant opinion is wrong, and make hundreds of people see it who would otherwise have never seen this opinion expressed by anyone in their lives"
I CAN understand the appeal of it. It's FUN, in a twisted way. But it accomplishes nothing... except making something ultra-fringe look a little bit closer to mainstream
Now, if the fringe opinion is a weird variation ("indie authors are like scabs") on a common opinion ("indie authors are not as good")
... it can FEEL like you're fighting back against a common opinion that's a real threat to your way of life
But it's not. It's a straw man.
Maybe not exactly a straw man, because a straw man is an argument your opponent isn't actually making...
And on the internet, EVERY possible argument is being made by somebody. If you're vague enough about who your opponent is, you're immune to straw man accusations
But at a certain point, it becomes practically the same.
We live in a world where all the scarecrows are alive... but they're still made of straw. Beating one up still isn't impressive.
Clues
2021/08/09
First posted here on Twitter.
I was just thinking, last night, about alternate-universe murder mysteries and how they could be used as an analogy to explain how conspiracy theories develop
Basically I was thinking about the murder mystery movie Clue.
The movie based on Clue, the board game about solving a murder mystery.
Since it was based on a game, where the ending can be different each time, it had a kinda cool gimmick.
They filmed multiple endings, each with a different person turning out to be the murderer.
When you went to the theater you wouldn't know which ending you were gonna see
But the rest of the movie wasn't different. Only the endings.
So they had to come up with several different endings that ALL, in different ways, plausibly explained all the suspicious clues you saw in the movie
And I started thinking... what if the events of Clue were a real unsolved murder case? A case where most of the details were known to the public, but no verdict had been reached
Imagine all the theories people would come up with, discussing it online
Imagine you see a post online where some amateur detective analyzes ALL the clues used to convict, say, Ms Scarlet in the Ms. Scarlet ending. And interprets them the same way they were interpreted in that ending.
You'd probably become pretty convinced she was the killer.
Later, you might see another post, bringing up different clues and analyzing them in a way that suggests one of the other endings.
This might change your mind, or might not.
You might already be too invested in the ending you already believe
You might be swayed by the fact that most of your friends believe it was Ms. Scarlet.
Or maybe you heard that the person who posted the alternative possibility was a friend of Ms. Scarlet and had a motive to draw suspicion away from her, and that makes you not believe them
Basically, if you focus on the details (and interpretations) that support one particular conclusion... it can feel like that conclusion is THE ONLY ONE that follows, logically, naturally, OBVIOUSLY, from the known facts.
And once you get attached enough to that conclusion, you'll stop listening to any other. If you hear another idea that seems to make some sense, you'll start actively looking for reasons why it's flawed or the source is biased.
And if you look hard enough you'll find them.
Because every story, true or not, has details that can be construed as "too much of a coincidence" if you're looking for that
and every source, reliable or not, has features that could be construed as "biased" or "fallible"
I'm in favor of vaccines. I'm in favor of masks and social distancing. I'm angry at people whose distrust of these things is ruining everything for all of us.
And yet I can so clearly see how this distrust was built, over years of internet echo chambers
It's not that conspiracies don't happen.
It's not like the healthcare system doesn't hide things from us, and frequently act against our best interest.
A group of people can form an online echo chamber starting with just that true fact...
and go through months of discussion about all the ways they've seen evidence of these problems...
And eventually every healthcare-related thing they see will get interpreted as a sign of the untrustworthiness of the healthcare system
Just like if you've decided Ms. Scarlet is the killer, you'll go through all the clues interpreting them in that light
This is why I'm starting to despair of ever being able to change the minds of COVID deniers and anti-vaxxers.
They interpret every bit of evidence in the ways that support their conclusion.
And if they can't think of ways to do that, their online groups will provide them
I see the stories of people crying in remorse when their loved ones die.
I imagine them going back to their anti-vaxxer groups with the story
I imagine the group convincing them that OBVIOUSLY no one was really dying until the evil hospital put the tube in
And real life is infinitely messier than the plot of a mystery movie.
You don't know for certain if anything you hear is true.
Lots of the "clues" being analyzed are totally made-up, or are conjectures resulting from a certain interpretation of other clues
As soon as anything happens that could bring hope, the online groups conditioned to distrust everything will start finding ways to sabotage it, to kill the hope
And there are too many of them. Even enacting policies to force them to behave wouldn't work at this point. Too many.
I don't know the solution. I don't know if there is one.
I think things are going to get lots worse before they even begin to get better.
I do have hope that someday, things will be better. But I know many won't survive to see it.
Some further thoughts:
I know much of this thread (interpreting the facts in only one of many possible ways; looking for flaws in opinions that don't agree with one's own) can also apply to my own beliefs about COVID.
This is why empathy can be scary.
Because I think the people who distrust vaccines feel the same way about their opinions that I feel about mine.
And it'll be as hard to change them as it would be to change me.
Now, I have lots of reasons why I trust the vaccine more than the virus.
I got every recommended vaccine in my childhood. I'm happy with how I turned out.
The vast majority of scientific studies say getting a vaccine is generally better than not.
There have indeed been times when experimental treatments were unethically tested on vulnerable populations, with the goal (or accepted side effect) of harming them.
In those cases the thing in question was not recommended to EVERYone, across all demographics
The government is neither competent enough nor... equal-opportunity-hateful enough... to conspire in this sort of way against the population in general
Those are the arguments that make sense to me
But someone in an anti-vax group will be constantly provided with counterarguments against all of these... which will be supported by carefully chosen facts, in such a way as to look totally plausible to the person reading or hearing them
With enough skillful wording, you can make any idea sound reasonable.
And the internet is FULL of fringe groups, each cooperatively brainstorming the most reasonable-sounding ways to express their ideas.
It's insidious and it's a mess
More about the browser
2021/8/16
Here are some details of how I'm struggling to find a way to fix some of the problems I see in ...well, the internet as I use it, and as I think many other people use it.
In an earlier post I floated the idea for a simple browser that would accomplish a few of the same goals as an RSS reader, in what I felt was a neater way.
This explanation here is in response to a message from someone who said it isn't a full solution to the problem... which is completely true, but I also feel like I didn't explain quite clearly enough what I feel the problem IS, in my last post.
So here we go.
Problems, as I see them:
- The biggest and most powerful websites get vastly more traffic than smaller sites. And it's VERY hard for a small site to increase its traffic.
I remember my first few years of college, 1999 to 2002, when I used to check up on all the sites I followed, one at a time. At the time, the biggest corporation-owned sites I followed were my Yahoo groups, and one by one I would open the page for each group and check and see if anything new had been posted. Then I'd check the personal Tripod or Angelfire or Geocities sites of all my friends, and see if they had any new webcomics or fanfiction or whatever. Livejournal, around 2003, was the first time I joined a site that showed me a feed of all the latest posts from everyone I followed. But even then, it showed me ALL of the posts, in the order they were posted, no algorithm choosing which ones to show or hide.
I miss that time. I miss it because little, independently owned websites could actually get traffic from real people. I still follow lots of independent creators, including lots of webcomic artists who have their own pages, and I WANT to visit their pages, seeing their work the way they intend it to be seen... maybe even giving them a bit of ad revenue.
I HATE that I'm too lazy to open thirty different websites one after another, and so I've been reduced to following only the ones who have a Twitter (and Twitter doesn't always show me their posts, because algorithm)... and the ones who have a RSS feed (and my RSS reader doesn't always show me their posts properly either). There's no substitute for visiting a unique page and seeing it the way the web designer made it.
Which is why the first idea that occurred to me was a browser that included a feature for flipping quickly through a long list of bookmarks.
- Search engines have some of the same flaws as social media sites.
So a while back, I tried to order food from Outback Steakhouse's website (I don't eat steak, but I'm pescatarian with a weakness for snow crab). I encountered a glitch in the site. I don't even remember what the glitch was, but it was frustrating enough for me to spend a very long time trying to Google whether other people had encountered it, and what could be done about it.
And what I found was even more frustrating. The ENTIRE first page of Google results were, in some way or another, pages on Outback Steakhouse's site, or ads for it, or articles about how great Outback Steakhouse is. And by the time I reached the second page, the hits were all useless, articles that barely mentioned Outback Steakhouse in passing while talking about something completely unrelated. This held true no matter what search terms I used, and where I put quotation marks.
I can't possibly believe that no one else in the nation had ever posted online about having a problem with the Outback website. And surely, an actual post about having a problem with the Outback website should be among the most "relevant" results when I search for "problem with Outback website" or some variation thereon.
I've noticed this is happening more and more, all the time, when I try to find things using a search engine. I saw Google evolve to get better and better at finding things over its first few years, but over the last several years it has felt as if it's declining.
And in my own experience this goes for other search engines too, including DuckDuckGo, which I've been told is more impartial than Google.
So I'm guessing has to do with search engine optimization, and which websites have the resources to optimize their pages in the most effective way.
Which is a thing I know just enough about to realize how much I don't know.
I've tried and failed to boost my own website's rankings using Yoast, a search engine optimization plugin for Wordpress. (Worst Optimizing Computer ever. Monarch knockoff.) It analyzed each of my posts and gave me good, bad or mediocre scores on how well-optimized they were, and advice on how to change the wording and formatting to make them more optimized.
I reformatted and reworded my posts until Yoast gave them perfect scores and they looked nothing like the way I actually write, and I still experienced zero real traffic increase. There had been maybe a few years, in the early days of having a website, long before Yoast, when my stats analyzer showed me real human websites that had linked to mine, and actual strings of search tags that real people had used to find my site. But for the past decade it's been nothing but spambots.
My browser idea wouldn't solve this. Sure, it could page through my list of bookmarks, but I'd still have to find things to add to that list, and search engines aren't going to give me the small-time artists, the hidden gems who don't have the resources to climb to the top of the ever-growing mountain of search results. Individual people who happen to be on my list already would have to step up and promote other artists every chance they get.
Some of them do already, by sharing their posts on Twitter. Which Twitter doesn't always show me. I miss independent websites.
- Twitter is addictive and makes me sad.
And so do Tumblr, and Facebook, and whatever social media sites I happen to be into at a given time. They're made to be addictive, and to keep me on the site without ever making me feel totally satisfied there.
You're absolutely right that when I try to quit social media by removing the app, I just go there in the browser anyway. (Which was part of my consideration in my idea for the new browser, and I'll explain my reasoning in a sec.)
- Because there are so few big, powerful social media sites, they result in people putting all their eggs in one basket.
Losing access to Twitter can devastate a person's whole life if they've built their career on their Twitter following. And in a company as huge as Twitter, you cannot expect account takedowns to be enacted fairly and consistently.
When your entire online presence relies on a few sites that are so big they could delete your account without even thinking about it, you are always going to be in danger.
Lots of people have tried to create alternatives to the current social media giants, by starting new social media sites that they think will be better in whatever way matters to them.
But the overwhelming majority of these don't work out, for a couple reasons.
1. A social media site requires a community that uses it. It can't survive unless a large portion of the community on the old site migrates to the new one. And individual people aren't going to migrate unless enough of their friends do, because the whole point of social media is the people you follow. So they're trapped in a cycle: Individual people don't move because the group doesn't. And the group doesn't move because it's made of individual people who don't.
2. Even if a new social media site succeeds, it does what most well-intentioned businesses do if they make it big: it eventually becomes as bad as the ones it replaced. It starts viewing profit as its purpose, and doing whatever it takes to make money, however unethical. (So far, Discord hasn't done this, because instead of relying on ads they run a more sustainable business model where some users pay for extra features, and so far this is working out for them, which I'm grateful for. But Discord is divided into small servers, and it's hard to reach enough people at once to make any kind of difference.)
At this moment, I don't think it's possible to get any significant number of people off Twitter, Facebook, etc. and onto something better.
But the idea that occurred to me, with the "browser," was:
- As far as I know, all social media giants concentrate their algorithms on the feed, the page where you see the posts of EVERYONE you follow.
- But if you go to one person's page on a social media site-- like my Twitter or my Facebook or my Tumblr --you see pretty much every post that person has made.
This is a much better experience, because you see every post, in order, just the way the person meant for you to see them, without an algorithm picking and choosing them and injecting random stuff in between them.
I don't think I can give up Twitter completely. And if I want to be a successful author or artist I probably shouldn't give it up, because at the moment it's the only semi-likely chance of reaching enough people to get noticed.
But in those moments when I'm browsing Twitter just because I'm bored and want to see what the world's up to... I think I would have a much better experience if I looked at my friends' Twitter PAGES, individually, one at a time-- instead of looking at my FEED.
Just visit a Twitter page I follow... scroll through it until I get through all the posts I haven't seen before... then move on to the next friend's Twitter page.
But... like with the webcomics I follow... I am just simply not going to do that. Browsing Twitter is an act of laziness. Laziness is not gonna motivate me to open a hundred pages, individually, one at a time. Not even if it would be a better experience.
Hence the browser idea. When I run out of new posts on one page, I could just click the little "Next" button down at the bottom and go on to the next page in my list of bookmarks.
It would be exactly as easy, to my lazy-ass mind, as browsing Twitter the way I currently do.
But the best part is... besides people's Twitter pages and Facebook pages and Tumblr pages... I could add people's independent webcomic pages to my bookmark list too!
And people's random Wordpress blogs, and whatever other pages I liked. And visiting them ALL, one at a time, would be as easy as browsing goddamn Twitter.
Latest tweets of Wil Wheaton.
Next.
Xkcd dot com.
Next.
Latest Facebook posts of my cousin Sonja.
Next.
Dinosaurcomics dot com.
Next.
Latest tweets from the creator of Dinosaurcomics dot com.
Next.
Latest videos from Lindsay Ellis.
Next.
Latest Etsy results for "bird earrings."
Next.
Some Angelfire page from a friend who still posts fanfic there in the year of our lord 2021, but I still actually see it because I've got this Next button!
Next.
And once I got used to doing that... and if enough other people got used to doing that...
Then, hell, a fair number of us might actually be able to wean ourselves onto a more varied diet of lots of different independent sites, instead of being addicted to a few social media giants.
But... that's just if people were like me.
I don't have any idea if this would work the same way for a majority of people. Or what variation on the idea would be needed to make it work.
Echoes
2021/08/19
First posted here on Twitter.
I've seen some discussion of "echo chambers," in a context that suggests the term refers to "a group where all the people agree on something."
I feel like I need to talk about this.
In my understanding, an echo chamber is not just any group of people with shared beliefs.
It's a group that is structured in a way that causes the shared beliefs to *keep getting more extreme.*
This happens when:
-Every idea brought up in the group is expected to be an affirmation of the shared belief that brought them together.
-If an idea is presented as such, anyone who questions it will be punished.
For example:
The shared belief of the group might be something totally reasonable, like "the healthcare system has problems."
The group may start as a bunch of people sharing their experiences of being denied health care for lack of money, or facing racism and sexism from doctors.
Their cause is totally valid. Sharing these concerns doesn't make them an echo chamber.
But watch what happens if someone in that group shares an article and says "Look what this evil doctor did this week!"
Watch what happens if someone replies, "ok but that particular story probably didn't happen, according to Snopes."
or "I can imagine scenarios where a doctor making that choice might be understandable"
If they get shouted down, kicked out, and/or called a shill for the evil healthcare system? Then it may very well be an echo chamber.
(Now, that's not always easy to recognize. That example is still kinda fuzzy, and kinda subjective. )
(If you see someone get yelled at for saying "that story isn't true" or "that story isn't really so bad," there ARE cases where the anger against them is justified, and there are cases where it isn't justified.)
(And different people can disagree on whether it's justified or not. One example probably won't tell you. It's a pattern to watch for, and it's not always clear.)
In an echo chamber, people feel afraid that they must accept every expression of the group's beliefs, no matter how extreme, in order to be accepted by the group.
And every time someone brings up ANY idea and presents it as an example of, say, healthcare being bad, everyone has to agree with them or be exiled.
So everyone in the group has a strong incentive to come up with ways of defending the idea. And with enough people motivated to brainstorm supportive wording, any idea can be made to look reasonable.
Eventually EVERYthing that ANYone suggests as an example of Evil Healthcare is gonna get dressed up as such, with plenty of reasonable-sounding words. And the group's definition of Evil Healthcare expands to include more and more things.
Eventually these examples include vaccines... mask mandates... any medical study demonstrating anything.
Through the discouragement of dissent and the encouragement of growing extremism, a reasonable group discussing problems with healthcare can become an anti-vax, science-denying group that automatically rejects anything recommended by any medical professional.
Now, these groups are fragile, because their rules of operation can be used against any member of the group, even the leaders.
If the sacred law of the group is "Believe All Accusations of Healthcare-Related Evil," and it's easy to expand the definition of that to include nearly anything...
Then people eventually realize that they can make such accusations against anyone in the group, for any reason, and the group will be forced to either abandon its laws or tear itself apart.
But by that time, the group has done its damage. The beliefs of people in the group have become extremist beyond repair, which will carry into their behavior in future groups, no matter what happens to this one.
Again, it's not always easy to recognize these patterns when they start.
But if you're constantly seeing thoughts expressed in ways so extreme that it's easy to imagine them being used against anyone, even the people the group is trying to protect....
Then it's worth being cautious.
Real
2021/08/23
First posted here on Twitter.
"is that real" is such a weird question to ask.
any physical object is real, it just might not be what you think it is. and I can't read your mind to know what you're assuming
likewise I can't read your mind to know if you're seeing something that's totally not real
"wow are your breasts real"
"yes dickhead of course they are"
"that's so cool! I've never met someone with that many breasts before!!"
"...wait, on second thought I'm pretty sure you're hallucinating"
Population
2021/10/10
First posted here on Twitter.
I try to stay out of debates about overpopulation, because everyone is arguing for and against what seem to me like the wrong arguments entirely.
To me, a few points seem especially important:
1. There are, in theory, enough space and resources on earth for everyone alive plus many more.
2. Until I see those in power make ANY real effort to GET those resources to people-- in a way that's efficient, sustainable, serves all who need it, and won't cause environmental damage in proportion to how many people it serves-- I'm still gonna be scared of more kids being born.
3. But on the current course, population is likely to stop growing and eventually decrease. Modern people often have access to birth control, and when people get to decide how many kids to have, they tend to choose a sustainable amount.
4. This is NOT A DISASTER. Populations regulate themselves, and if it goes down that does NOT mean extinction, it will likely plateau and eventually grow again.
5. And if you think it's a disaster, the only way to stop it would be to take away people's access to birth control and force them to have kids until it kills them, and THAT would be horrific.
6. I see more people advocating for THAT kind of horrific act than I see advocating for any of the horrific acts of genocide that are supposedly associated with claims of overpopulation.
What do I think "should" be done about population?
I think people should be allowed as much access to birth control, and as much access to child care, as they want... and people's personal choice to have or not have children should be respected.
I think parental choice tends to adapt the population to what the society can sustain.
I am hugely in favor of respecting that choice.
Meanwhile efforts should be focused on giving the current population as good a life as possible (which I think will probably also inherently involve changing the economy so that it's no longer dependent on population growth).
I don't have any idea HOW to get all that done. But it's a start, which is more than can be said for most of the arguments I've seen about population.
Geometry of Love
2021/10/10
First posted here on Twitter.
I graph my polycules in Three-Dimensional Romantic Geometry, which I invented in 2001, in a composition book, as an attempt to expand beyond the idea of "love triangles" and yet somehow did not, at the time, think to title that book "Non-Platonic Solids."
I remember I came up with theorems to calculate stuff like how many of the vertices can be heterosexual or monogamous in a given type of polygon, depending on how many of the lines are romantic... but I remember nothing about the theorems except that I was very unconfident in them. (On the page explaining my very long and complex steps in devising one theorem, I remember I added a note "it is probably wrong.")
This, by the way, was during college, when I had zero boyfriends or girlfriends of any kind, largely because doing this was my idea of fun.
Someone commented that it looks like everyone is a non-romantic relationship with themselves. After clarifying the "time = 3rd dimension" detail, I added, "I have speculated that my relationship with my past self is an unrequited non-romantic love line; she loved the person she expected me to become, but I kind of hate her guts."
Also, this drawing was from earlier in 2021 (and was from my perception of the arrangement, not necessarily how everyone else saw it) and things have changed somewhat since then... but yeah, It's Complicated barely begins to cover it.
There's also a mistake where I forgot to add a line between T and H (we're friends, honest, there's no two people in this house that have NO relationship, that would be weird) Someone remarked that they thought it meant we were enemies, and I replied, "gotta invent geometric notation for enemy! ...unrequited enemy?" and we eventually agreed on daggers (double dagger for mutually requited enmity).
Characters
2021/10/23
First posted here on Twitter.
"writing Chinese words in the Roman alphabet is only useful in European countries that use that alphabet"
"Well that's just, like.... Europe-pinyin, man"
Song Parody Masterpost
2021/10/23
First posted here on Twitter.
OKay! So, SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME to do a masterpost of all the parody songs I've tweeted.
Alternate Fantasy
2021/10/23
First posted here on Twitter and here on Tumblr.
so this post of mine was from 2017, when everyone I followed on Tumblr already hated J.K Rowling, but none of them could yet fathom the concept of hating Disney.
nice to see people finally coming to their senses, i guess
Imagine, for a moment, a world where J. K. Rowling is not just an enormously successful fantasy author, but so successful that she's the ONLY fantasy author on most people's radar. Like, in this world she is so synonymous with fantasy writing that most people refer to fantasy novels as "J. K. Rowling books" no matter who wrote them.
And imagine that she owns her own huge publishing company, which owns a bunch of others, and which buys the rights to any novel that becomes popular enough to be a serious competitor. And anything this company publishes, no matter how crappy, is automatically a bestseller, and it's all published under her name.
And, just like in the real world, this J. K. Rowling is incredibly ignorant about what her fans are going to find offensive and hurtful, and she's also incredibly stubborn and unwilling to admit when she's done something offensive and hurtful. Like, her response to criticism about casting Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts? And her response to criticism about her portrayal of Native American magic? Totally happened in this universe too.
But, even though it's impossible to get her to apologize for her past mistakes, you CAN influence the quality and wokeness of her future projects, if enough people ask nicely enough, and give enough positive feedback on things she got right.
And, in this world, that's what people do. Everyone who wants better, more inclusive, diverse and respectful fantasy, they all focus on petitioning J.K. Rowling to write more of it. And every time she publishes something even a little better than her last stuff, there's tons of praise for it. Not because it's revolutionary compared to other authors, but because it's revolutionary for a J. K Rowling novel, and nobody ever thinks about other authors.
And, with enough encouragement and positive reinforcement, J. K. Rowling gradually learns. She finally starts producing books that actually ARE up to the general public's standards of inclusiveness and good representation. Maybe she even writes-- or hires someone to write-- a book that's actually near the high end of those standards. And everybody celebrates, and gushes about how great it is.
Now, maybe you're saying, "OK, but in the real world, people wouldn't put that much effort into changing her. In the real world she'd get a few chances, and then we'd give up on her. Sure, she's a big name author, so she'll always have fans, but the people who believe she needs improvement won't care enough to stick around that long. They'll move on to support other authors who are doing the right thing without having to be begged for it."
But in this imaginary world, J.K Rowling has cornered the market on fantasy so thoroughly that nobody thinks of this.
In this world, there are other authors, working hard, but they are getting utterly ignored, because J. K. Rowling has overshadowed them so completely that the best they can hope for is to get their books bought by her company and published under her name. Like, most of them aren't even trying to publish their stuff any other way, because it's not worth it.
And so the vicious cycle continues. J.K. Rowling books are practically the only ones that sell... so authors who can't get published by J.K. Rowling mostly give up trying... so it's hard to find any non-J.K.-Rowling authors to support... so J.K. Rowling books are practically the only ones that sell.
At some point you've gotta wonder if there's something Whorfian going on, like because her name is so synonymous with the genre, people think of all fantasy novels as "J. K. Rowling books," so people feel that a boycott of J.K Rowling books would be awful, because it would be a boycott of all fantasy novels. And in this world, it almost would be.
Anyway, this analogy illustrates how I feel about Disney.
Work
2021/11/07
First posted here on Twitter.
So every day there's a post about why people "don't want to work" now
and there's always something in the comments like "it's because the government is paying them to stay home"
and the replies to that comment are all, of course, obvious stuff like "the government's doing practically nothing like that" and "it's because they aren't paid enough/ they're sick/ they died / they ARE trying to get hired but can't"
and, like, ALL these things happen. there are LOTS of reasons people aren't currently working
and there are combinations of reasons too. which CAN include government unemployment/ eviction moratorium, but, i mean, putting the blame on that is just heartless
I mean I can 100% understand a reason like "I barely endured my job before the pandemic, for survival. Then my job got more miserable AND more likely to kill me. And it also became briefly possible to survive, barely, without a job. You BET I'll take as much of that as I can get"
So yeah, some people will go back to work when unemployment runs out, because otherwise they will die. But calling that the only reason, is... horrific
Object
2021/11/07
First posted here on Twitter.
object permanence is a privilege
objects aren't permanent. nothing is permanent.
if you've lived a life safe enough to think they are, you're lucky
as a child I had a phase of assuming things I can't see right now probably still exist.
was proven wrong, far too many times to persist in THAT delusion
now I don't even assume things I see right now are real
Sea Lions
2021/11/10
Bad-faith questions are so common that if you ever ask a good-faith question, honestly trying to understand someone else's position, you are accused of "sea-lioning"
Which is a reference to a comic in which a guy says "I hate sea lions" and a sea lion asks politely why, and the guy refuses to tell him, and the sea lion keeps asking why and eventually the guy is like "this is exactly why"
Which, if it has any parallel to real life, should logically be a metaphor for racism or something. (Even assuming a world with talking sea lions, they didn't choose to be sea lions, and being sea lions wouldn't automatically make them act a particular way.)
I mean I don't think it was MEANT as a racism metaphor, I think "sea lions" really were supposed to represent people who interrogate others in bad faith, while maintaining polite wording to make the other person look unreasonable.
But in real life discourse, people who act like that aren't usually defending themselves against someone who expresses hate for their race.
So I don't feel the analogy works that well.
And even the artist who made the comic has said that he'd rather see people apply a different one of his comics to online discourse -- the one where he suggests that any time someone does something you don't like, you give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming "they have an itchy butt."
Modesty
2021/11/13
First posted here on Twitter.
So the word "modest" can be used like "humble"
"Yeah that is my art, but it's really not so great"
"Oh don't be so modest! You're an awesome artist"
This meaning of "modest" is about not showing off. It's about downplaying the things that are good about you
And people act like the "not showing off your naked body" meaning of modesty is an obvious extension of that
But see, nearly everyone I know is insecure about their naked body! Almost everyone I know thinks they look BETTER with clothes on
So for most people, covering up their bodies is an attempt to make themselves look better, and is therefore the OPPOSITE of modesty
Now I'm not gonna make any judgments on that! I'm not saying that it's wrong or right to try and make yourself look either better or worse. It's your appearance, your choice.
But in relation to clothes, I think it would make more sense for "modesty" to refer to LESS clothing, not more.
something
2021/11/13
First posted here on Twitter.
first they came for everyone else
and i said something
then they came for me
because i said something
the end
Sale
2021/11/14
First posted here on Twitter.
OK, so I've realized I don't buy things on sale very often.
And I've realized it's for very irrational reasons.
Basically, my hindbrain has an idea that there's a "correct" amount for a company to charge for its products.
i.e. enough that the seller, and everyone involved in making, gets a fair payment - enough to fulfill their needs, but not enough to make them an Evil Rich Person.
According to that irrational part of my brain, the regular price and the sale price cannot BOTH be this "correct" price.
So if I see a temporary discount, that part of my brain decides there are 2 possibilities:
1. the seller can't afford to sell at this low price. It's a desperate attempt to get new customers who may buy again. If it doesn't bring later purchases at regular price, the seller takes damage.
In this case I won't buy on sale - it would harm a struggling business.
2. the seller actually COULD afford to sell at this low price all the time, and is artificially inflating prices most of the time.
In this case I don't want to buy from this company at all - they are dishonest.
Again, this is all a subconscious reaction that forms in a very irrational part of my brain.
And of course, even that irrational brain part has no idea which of those 2 options is "true." But it knows that in either case, it doesn't want to buy.
Of course, the more rational parts of my brain know that:
1. for any product there is a range of prices that I could consider fair, and this range could include both the regular price and the sale price
2. it's very unlikely an independent business would charge enough to become Evil Rich People
3. if the sale price is low enough to be a risk for the sellers, they're adults who chose to take that risk... and it doesn't help them to NOT buy their sale-priced stuff
And here's where it gets even weirder.
This irrational thought process does affect my buying. But not THAT much.
I DO still buy stuff on sale, sometimes.
It affects my SELLING, a lot more.
I feel icky running a sale for any products I sell -- because I assume potential buyers will have the same thought processes that my Irrational Brain has.
The thought processes that... don't actually affect my buying that much.
So. I'm trying to fight my irrational impulses.
I'm gonna run a Small Business Saturday sale on the Etsy store.
We'll see how it goes.
earn my undie-ing love
2021/11/15
First posted here on Twitter.
hey, anyone who designs patterned clothes:
make this into underpants for me
i am serious
the design is free for you to steal and perfect in your own way, as long as you make UNDERPANTS of this fabric
I want my underpants to make people WONDER:
am I covering them with phallic architecture to hint at the wonders underneath??
or am i just making a joke about "I see London, I see France"??
Animals
2021/11/19
First posted here on Twitter.
I love the part of the Book of Genesis where God decides the man shouldn't be alone, and makes ALL THE ANIMALS in an attempt to create the man's ideal companion.
I love the idea that every animal on earth, at some point, was God's idea of "maybe Adam and this thing will get along great!"
Every. One.
Giraffes.
Centipedes.
Crocodiles.
Parasitic worms.
Deep-sea fish.
Parasitic worms that only prey on deep-sea fish.
Every one of these is a Potential Man's Best Friend that God thought of BEFORE he thought of Eve
Imagining Adam just sitting there impatiently while God runs 300,000 different species of beetles by him
"hey! You like this one? The antennae are a lil bit different!"
you hear a lot about the god of the Old Testament being cruel and wrathful
but honestly, he starts out as this adorably clueless, hyperfocused hardworking nerd who really wants his pet human to be happy but has ZERO IDEA how
(I mean I'm not denying the wrathfulness that does pop up throughout the rest of the Bible.)
(I'm just saying if I went to the trouble of inventing the Potoo Bird for a guy and he Didn't Even Appreciate It, that could be my villain origin story too.)
Of course I don't literally believe in any of this. The closest thing to "gods" that I believe in are the various laws of nature-- of physics, mathematics, logic, cause and effect-- that grew the world into what it is today.
BUT if I were to be non-literal, and personify this mixture of natural forces into a supernatural being-- it'd be one who's just making stuff up as it goes.
Just trying things out... not with any end goal, really... just what you might call a general preference for life and happiness-- at least, it tries stuff until it finds what keeps its creations alive and happy, and then does more of that. Generally.
It's not perfect at this! Or even close! Sometimes it screws up cataclysmically!
Maybe it's impossible to do what it's doing without screwing up cataclysmically!
But it's trying! It's trying so many things!
And to be fair-- what it's managed to make so far has turned out pretty amazing, considering it's made mostly through lots of random trying!
And I for one am a fan of all the trying.
300,000 kinds of beetles is a fun thing to have in the world.
Go, nerd god.
A Man
2021/11/26
First posted here on Facebook.
Plato: "man is a featherless biped"
Diogenes, bringing chicken dinner: "behold! a man!"
Oedipus: "I've got one bad leg, guess that means I'm only half man"
Sphinx: "eddie we've been over this. man is only a biped at noon"
Sheep's Clothing
2021/12/09
First posted here on Twitter.
He was a wolf among sheep.
And not hunting in stealth among them, as befitted a proper wolf, but... choosing to live as one of them.
Graze on pasture. Allow his wolf pelt shorn like wool.
His former pack rustled with whispers.
He'd been a leader amongst the wolves!
Give that up, to rule only sheep?
Was it the greater gulf of power over his subordinates?
Power worth giving up venison for grass?
Why abandon the throne of an alpha wolf...
to become a mere Wolf-Ram Alpha?
Moray
2021/12/09
First posted here on Twitter.
I have a terrible confession.
You know that series of "that's a moray" verses that have been swimming like eels around the internet?
"When the eel has a maw, with a pharyngeal jaw..."
"When it swims on a reef, and has two sets of teef..."
I don't actually like them that much.
"but Erika how can you not like them? you like puns so much!"
Sure, ask me that. Then go ask Gordon Ramsay how he can like food so much and still not like eating Cheez Wiz out of a can. (That's how you will hear all the things I might've felt like saying to you and didn't because I'm From Minnesota.)
Thing is... It's only one pun? A very simple one, reused a whole lot of times? Puns are jokes. Jokes get old.
And this one is... at least half a decade old. At LEAST. I know it was floating around Tumblr in the mid-2010's.
And that's just its current version! It has absolutely been around since the 90's, at the latest, though with less clever rhymes. And I know that because I independently came up with it in the 90's as a 12-year-old, and that is not anywhere near bragging because I'm not even proud of it, the joke's so OBVIOUS.
I would be quite surprised if any fewer than HALF of 12-year-olds in the 90's came up with that joke independently. When you're an American kid in the 90's, by the time you first hear the song "That's Amore" you have probably heard of moray eels and you probably haven't learned Italian, so THAT IS WHERE YOUR MIND GOES. It's THE obvious pun.
I am sorry, friends. I am sorry that when you sing every verse of That's A Moray to me, expecting a big laugh, you get only a half-hearted chuckle that doesn't sound real. I am sorry I can't make it real. I'm so sorry. But I still smile, because I love you. Amore. Please let it be enough.
And if you wanna go and take a dive with me,
see an eel in a hole in the deep sea...
(but why is the eel this way?)
(hey. Must be a moray.)
Asking
2021/12/11
First posted here on Twitter.
Some mostly-unspoken rules I learned as I grew up.
(I don't know if these are general Minnesota rules, or specific to my own experience, but they explain part of why I'm such an anxious wreck sometimes)
1.
If you need something, you gently hint at what you need, and hope someone voluntarily offers it.
You do not ask for things outright, unless you are truly desperate.
(Why not?)
Because
2.
Asking for something outright would violate other people's boundaries and consent.
(Why is that?)
Because
3.
If you ask people outright for something, you are putting them in a position where they don't feel safe saying "no."
(Why don't they feel safe saying no?)
Because
4.
Someone who asks for things outright is a person who's beyond the point of caring about your consent and your boundaries.
This is a truly desperate person, and you don't want to find out what they might do if you said "no."
(Why do we think that about them?)
Because
(circle back to rule 1)
I don't remember ever being taught these rules. But I lived them, on both sides of the equation, so many times that they feel like self-evident facts of life to me.
I don't know how to describe the strength of the inhibitions that tell me
1. I cannot ask for things outright. It would be abusive.
2. I cannot say no to someone who asks me for something outright. It would cause them to abuse me.
I'm not saying I never do either of these things. But I give IMMENSE thought and consideration to finding the gentlest and most unthreatening way to do them.
And I often go to lengths most people would consider extreme, to avoid having to face either of those choices.
It's not even that I believe what the inhibitions say.
Rationally, I KNOW that if I deny the coworker who asks me to get the phone when I'm clearly still doing the documentation for the last phone call I took, she won't physically attack me.
Nor will she say anything mean to me. She'll probably say nothing at all.
But just to IMAGINE that she's thinking anything bad, during those moments-- anger, or hurt, or any discomfort that I caused-- is... unbearable.
It's not that I can't handle the idea of someone thinking negative thoughts about me! I mean, I often assume by default that that's happening, even if I can't think of anything bad I did!
But I still have SUCH powerful instincts telling me I CANNOT deliberately choose any action that would have that outcome.
And this is like trying to follow Asimov's First Law. Do no harm. Cause no harm through inaction. Except, in a busy workplace, practically every choice is between different things that will ALL cause harm.
This harm may be offending a coworker (if I say no to her), or missing some work I'm supposed to get done (if I drop everything to obey her), or annoying a customer (if I try to avoid the problem by keeping them on the phone the whole time I do the documentation for their call).
Depending on the specific scenario, the choice that will cause the least harm may not always be the same one, and I am STRUGGLING to get a feel for it.
So I am HAVING to confront these inhibitions, to some degree, and learn to be okay with breaking my personal rules sometimes because I don't have options that will not break them. It's a minefield, because I do not always get it right.
And it's not like everyone around me agrees, either. I've had one coworker urge me to be more aggressive and assertive, in the same day that another coworker accused me of screaming at her (both were in response to what I think was the same slightly-panicked voice from me).
But this is still the best job I have ever had. I'm finding new things I'm capable of, but I haven't been pushed to my limits.
I take breaks, and I don't work overtime. I shouldn't have to thank my lucky stars for a workplace that passes that low bar, but honestly it IS nice.
I'm just a mess. Because I've been raised to care about the effects my choices have on other people, even the tiniest effects. And you can't. You can't care that much and not be a mess.
Marriage thoughts
2021/12/17
First posted here on Twitter.
It's strange how often you read about historical couples
and "she never remarried after he died"
gets interpreted as "he was her irreplaceable one true love"
when it could just as easily mean
"their marriage convinced her that marriage in general was a mistake"
It begins
2021/12/17
The new edition of Kea's Flight is out.
And here's the complicated, messy deal with... the rest of the trilogy. The two sequels that complete the story: Kea's Landing, and Kea's Migration.
I know I've been saying, for literally years, that this trilogy was in the final editing stages... just waiting for feedback from a few proofreaders... just looking for the right cover artist... just trying to come to an agreement on such-and-such with my partner.
And I've realized there's not going to be a time when it's perfect.
I have gotten a fair amount of feedback on earlier drafts on the final two books. (Mostly good! And the criticism mostly very helpful!)
I'm happy with the current final draft. But I'd feel a lot happier if I had more feedback on this draft specifically. My own view is, by nature, severely limited by my own experiences. If it looks good to me, that doesn't mean others won't see things I should change.
I try to be open to changing my mind about what's good in a story, based on input from others from different walks of life. (If we've learned anything, it's that refusing to be open in that way is devastatingly harmful to both authors and their readers!)
But... it's been a rough past few years, and the people I've asked for final feedback, varying amounts of time ago, are still understandably busy with other things.
I've spent the past several months struggling. One side of me is yelling "it's been ten years! I'm not getting any younger! I don't even care how well it does, I just want it out there! We HAVE TO publish now!"
While the other side timidly objects, "but there are still people trying to beta for us... we gotta wait for them... we can't push them to hurry up, that would be super abusive..."
And... I don't think there's an answer I can fully feel Good about.
But I think I can live with.... well, let's call it opening the book up to a wider pool of beta readers, before I launch any Final, Settled Version.
Anyway, that's where I was in the thought process... when Smashwords popped up in my email notifying me that the December sale is coming up, and asking if I'd like to enroll my books in it.
Yes. Sure. Why not!
All my Smashwords ebooks will be available for download free, from December 17 through Jan 1.
This includes the whole trilogy, as it stands right now.
(Until December 17, and after Jan 1, the regular ebook price is 4.99 on Smashwords.)
And I'm asking you, as nicely as I can...
If you read these free copies of the Kea series and have thoughts about it, complimentary or constructively critical... I'd be ever so thankful if you send me those thoughts!
As always, I'm humanalien at gmail dot com.
I'm planning for the trilogy to have a relaunch later, with better covers and every improvement I can devise.
If any of the input I get on this run can help make it a better story in any way, I'll do my best to put that into effect.
I don't expect all the input I get to agree. I can't make everyone happy with how I end up using it. But I will try.
So here's what you can expect to see right away:
1. A new edition of Kea's Flight.
Very little of the actual content has changed from the original publication in 2011. Most of you liked it, so I decided not to mess with success.
Some upgrades, though. New cover. Chapter titles added, and chapter breaks shifted somewhat. Extras at the end, including diagrams of the Flying Dustbin, a guide to the Chess Language, and previews of several other projects.
(Features a dystopia caused by breakdown of reproductive rights, a ship carrying unwanted embryos into space, a neurodivergent found-family, a secret language, an ace lesbian romance, and an autistic heroine who saves the day with the power of friendship and linguistics skill.)
2. The sequel, Kea's Landing. What if they reach a planet and someone's already there? Also, what if Kea and her group weren't the only secret resistance on the Flying Dustbin in the days of BG rule? Two adventures: life on a new planet, and a mystery about the ship's past.
(Features a disabled trans rebellion leader, a socialist transhumanist not-quite-utopia, lots of fiction-within-fiction, lots of backstory about the Flying Dustbin, some scary ableist villains, and a gazillion times more Nature and Food and Pretty Things than the first novel!)
3. The final book, Kea's Migration. Actually this and the second were all going to be one book, originally. But it was over a thousand pages long and I had to split it. Luckily there was a good stopping point about halfway through.
(Just after Kea settles in with a nice dinner in the Bird Room of Ferudy's Pet Cafe... and just before the Attack of the Bug Trees from Arna.)
In this book Kea has to sneak into a hostile city where nearly everything is alive, and a lot of it wants to kill her. She's about to get a strenuous test of her talent at taking down a dictatorship while staying hidden in plain sight inside it.
(Features ace lesbian detectives, a conspiracy exposed through autistic hypersensitivity, a badass parrot sidekick, lots of stimming, more stories-within-stories, and more adventures for the trans heroine of Book Two, leading to what I hope is a super-satisfying conclusion.)
Content warnings are in the backs of the books, and on this page .
(Kea's Flight was published as a co-authored work, but my partner has backed off from the project for now. She's busy with things of her own, like her transition, and realizing she considers herself more of a proofreader and brainstorming partner than a co-author of my work.)
(She's an author in her own right, and has lots of her own projects going on in various parts of the internet, but is no longer active on any of the social media accounts with her old name.)
For Some Reason
2021/12/28
First posted here on Twitter.
Of all the dystopias coming true lately, my bingo card did not include " the TOS episode where enemies wage war through computers and get each other's civilians to voluntarily walk to their deaths"
(As with everything in real life it's more complicated than in Star Trek; the process of getting civilians to voluntarily die involves a lot of online misinformation and so on, but.... still.)
(War waged through computers is NOT pretty, and the episode even got it wrong, with the implication that "at least it does not destroy our cultures"... sure feels like the culture is in shambles, Gene)
(Although the episode probably was meant to portray the cultures on that planet as having been badly damaged by the system, and the leaders' argument as being ironically flawed)
Heart
2021/12/30
Years ago, I knew a guy whose father had a heart attack.
The father didn't die, but he easily could have. The son told me the whole story in increasing frustration: all the progressively worse symptoms that his dad ignored before finally calling for help.
He was so angry at his dad.
"Why would he do that? How could he think he didn't need to go to the hospital? What was he THINKING??"
I did not know what his dad had been thinking. And I still don't, years later.
But now I have an idea of what I might have been thinking, if I were in the dad's situation.
It goes more-or-less like this:
"That feels bad. Very bad. There is definitely something wrong.
Maybe a heart attack? I think this is how heart attacks can be.
Anyway it feels like something at least that bad."
"I should probably call an ambulance.
But then... ambulances cost thousands of dollars.
And when I get to the hospital they'll do stuff that costs thousands more."
"And it might be all for nothing. It MIGHT not even be something dangerous.
And if it is, I might not survive even if I do go.
Or I might not be able to work again for a long time.
Or maybe ever."
"I might never make back the money this costs our family.
I might just have medical care that costs more and more money for the rest of my life.
I could bankrupt my family forever."
"But on the other hand, if it's something deadly and I just stay here... then it's all over today. Cost of a funeral, family gets whatever I have in life insurance, they're fine.
I've had a good run. Better to go now before things get worse."
"Oh I still feel awful. This isn't going as quick as I thought.
Is death by heart attack always this slow? Movies lied to me."
"Shit this is just going on and on and on.
Is this even a heart attack?
Or any of the things I thought it could be?"
"What's this new symptom? Holy crap.
This is just gonna continue until I do something, isn't it.
Fine. FINE. I'll call an ambulance before my family comes home and SEES me like this."
....that's how I imagine it going.
....and it's all much more relatable than I'd like.
More