tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17784892167307946042024-02-06T21:13:31.221-08:00Daniel Keys MoranDaniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.comBlogger231125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-49847584725579100582021-05-02T19:48:00.001-07:002021-05-02T19:48:16.430-07:00Leaving Facebook<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">Once is
happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I encountered
Facebook’s moderators for the first time in approximately March of
2020.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I joined Facebook in
2007 – to catch up with @Angelina Greenwood, who was my first
friend here, and who I used to live with, back in another life.
(Still one of my favorite people in the world.)</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">In 13 years, I never
ran into a moderator. I was the same asshole from Day 1 – nearly
the same contempt for modern conservatism, though I grant you it got
worse during the Trump years. But the same habits of language, the
same tendency to type things like using a four-letter word to suggest
that the filibuster become an ex-filibuster and start pushing up
daisies.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">As though this were
completely normal language!</p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I got banned 30 days by
Facebook for that filibuster comment.</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">I got banned 12
hours by <b>Twitter</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> for that
– my first ban on that platform, but obviously the same
tripping-the-trigger moderation because stupid AI can’t –</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ah,
but no. It’s not stupid.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Three
times is enemy action.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
can guarantee you that telling someone that they should “kill their
engine,” in an auto thread, is not generating this response. No one
gets banned 30 days for typing that you should “kill a process”
in your server.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">No
one is this stupid. It’s true that Facebook has chased off quite a
lot of talented people – everyone of any moral quality has or
should have left this fascist platform. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
even among those lacking any moral backbone, there are programmers
competent to recognize that </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">calling
for </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">the filibuster to become
deceased is not a call to violence, and not even pearl clutching
Nazis could reasonably read it that way.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">They’re
*all* like that, all the moderation cautions and bans.</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Thomas
Clay got here before me – and Jim Wright before him. Whacked for
various periods because they’d said something the fascist
moderators on this fascist platform didn’t like.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Guys,
I gotta tell you, particularly where Clay is concerned, that I
assumed they’d done </span><b>something</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">
to deserve it.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
I didn’t for 13 years, and when I started getting hit with FB
moderation violations, my first assumption was, Jesus, these guys are
bad at this – but they’ll get better.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Well,
I was right about that. They did get better. They started finding
posts I’d made months ago, and flagging those. They found posts
with images *hosted* on the FB-owned Instagram, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">posts
with 50K+ shares on Instagram, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
flagged </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and banned over
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">those. They found posts
that mentioned the voting habits of white people – bounced me 30
days for that, on the night of the election.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I’ve
been banned 90 days since they received the shock to the system of
Joe Biden winning the election.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If
that win didn’t cause Zuckerberg stress, it should have: no one in our
party likes the guy. He lined up visibly with the Peter Theils of the
world, involved conservative publications in FB moderation – as
fact checkers, folks: took a political movement that has only two
tools left to it, white racism and the Big Lie – and made those
people FACT CHECKING MODERATORS on Facebook.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">You
can’t make this stuff up.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Thomas
Clay posts, now and again, the “Top 10 Shared Links” of the day
on Facebook. Here was today’s:<br />
<br />
Ben Shapiro</span></p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">CBS
Sports NBA</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">CBS
8 – San Diego News</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ben
Shapiro</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Fox
News</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ben
Shapiro</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ben
Shapiro</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ben
Shapiro</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Dan
Bongino</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ben
Shapiro</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">That’s
a normal day. (Today’s, when I happen to be typing this.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It’s
almost never a liberal publication – it happens, but it’s once in
a blue moon stuff. I’ve seen Rachel Maddow on the list. But today’s
list is typical: all conservative. It’s always all conservative.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Are
there liberal publications on Facebook? A bunch. Some of them quite
popular, among those of us who share things. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
algorithmically Facebook is hostile to them.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>F<span data-offset-key="76pt6-0-0"><span data-text="true">acebook reportedly choked traffic for left-leaning news sites including Mother Jones</span></span><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="5qa7l-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5qa7l-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5qa7l-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="5kdtu-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5kdtu-0-0"><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-reportedly-choked-traffic-mother-jones-zuckerberg"><span class="py34i1dx"><span data-offset-key="5kdtu-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-reportedly-choked-traffic-mother-jones-zuckerberg</span></span></span></a></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="2dnuo-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2dnuo-0-0"><span data-offset-key="2dnuo-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="fqrmm-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fqrmm-0-0"><span data-offset-key="fqrmm-0-0"><span data-text="true">Facebook repeatedly overruled fact checkers in favor of conservatives</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="5kbgs-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5kbgs-0-0"><span data-offset-key="5kbgs-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="167j7-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="167j7-0-0"><a href="https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to-protect-conservatives-220229959.html"><span class="py34i1dx"><span data-offset-key="167j7-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://www.engadget.com/facebook-overruled-fact-checkers-to-protect-conservatives-220229959.html</span></span></span></a></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="e7v3b-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="e7v3b-0-0"><span data-offset-key="e7v3b-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="asru-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="asru-0-0"><span data-offset-key="asru-0-0"><span data-text="true">Facebook quietly pressured its fact-checkers over climate and abortion posts</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="crm93-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="crm93-0-0"><span data-offset-key="crm93-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="fbc00" data-offset-key="ckmh5-0-0"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="ckmh5-0-0"><a href="https://flipboard.com/@FastCompany/facebook-is-quietly-pressuring-its-independent-fact-checkers-to-change-their-rul/a-1wK8Zxn1TUC768w9ljmAlg%3Aa%3A3199563-ed1b72184e%2Ffastcompany.com?format=amp"><span class="py34i1dx"><span data-offset-key="ckmh5-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://flipboard.com/@FastCompany/facebook-is-quietly-pressuring-its-independent-fact-checkers-to-change-their-rul/a-1wK8Zxn1TUC768w9ljmAlg%3Aa%3A3199563-ed1b72184e%2Ffastcompany.com?format=amp</span></span></span></a></div></div><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">American
News X, Thomas Clay’s publication with half a million followers, is
on the verge of being delisted by Facebook. Why? For posting *false
articles* … as determined by fact checkers employed by Facebook.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">There
are more like these – </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">this
shit </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">happens all the time.
*</span><b>Tucker Carlson*</b><span style="font-weight: normal;"> is
one of their fact checkers, via the Daily Caller, which he owns.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Picture
the response if Rachel Maddow were made a fact checker for Facebook?
Right? That’s what they’re doing for conservatives on this site.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">These
rotten sons of bitches whacked me on the day of the election. Not an
accident, and not unique to me – a bunch of other liberals in my
feed got whacked in the weeks following. They did their level best to
help out the fascist candidate </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Zuck
was </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">hoping for, yes they
did.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">People
are trying to be helpful when I say I’m out of here.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Don’t
use ‘white,’ use wypipo.” Or caucasion, or melanin-deficient.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Don’t
say X, say Y.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Don’t
post on very busy sites where there are lots of conservatives who
will gang report you in hopes of getting one of their fellow fascist
moderators involved.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Keep
a second account, set up in X, Y, Z fashion, so when they whack you
you’ll still be able to post.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Everyone
reading me knows what “badthink” is. This is what Facebook is
trying to breed, a ground where people PRE-CENSOR themselves. That’s
the end goal: not JUST to silence you, but to teach you to silence
yourselves, to not even </span><b>think</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">
the things they don’t want you thinking.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">“<span style="font-weight: normal;">Get
‘white people’ out of your mouths, you filthy liberals.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Don’t
tell me you haven’t walked around that phrase. Most of you have.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
have, and I’m white.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Facebook
is bad for America. Giving it time and attention was always a
mistake, looking back; but it’s far past mistake at this point. Any
money Facebook makes off of you will be used against you. Any
visibility Facebook gains from your time on its platform, will be
used against you.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">~~~~~</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
wasn’t always like this. For 13 years I quite liked this platform.
I’d wander over to Twitter occasionally, and spend stupid amounts
of time trying to get a complex idea across, and fail –</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
is <b>also</b> intentional, by the way. Twitter exists to foment outrage.
“Engagement.” Those short individual posts, each available for
individual response, guarantees that mobs of any given description
can descend on a </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">single
element of an argument, extract it, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">have
drama about it, and not only not deal with the qualifying clauses of
the argument, literally never see them.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If
I were designing a platform guaranteed to make people hate each
other, it would be Twitter.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Facebook
felt <b>sane</b> by comparison. You could make an argument that took ten
paragraphs, and even if someone <b>wanted</b> to respond point-by-point
(bad form, generally – you should rebut the main ideas in people’s
work or you’ll descend into unreadability pretty quickly) – even
if someone wanted to do that, the form made it difficult, and </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">it
was </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">obvious when it
happened.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Hell,
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">this awful platform </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">had
“Notes” until quite recently – very much a blog type post,
intended to do long form work with multiple images, inline citations
and so on. It’s not a surprise they killed them: it gave work too
much weight to be presented so precisely. Not in Facebook’s
interests, that.</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It
felt sane – hell, for my purposes, was sane. I liked being here. I
liked seeing my friends, who were mostly here. In the early days my
kids were here, before sane young adults decided that this wasn’t
for them – either because their parents were there, or because they
caught Facebook’s fascist tilt before the generations older than
them – either could be true. (The parents one certainly is.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
2007 Connor was five. Richard was eight, Bram eleven, Andrea fifteen,
Alex seventeen. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">They were
still literally kids, not just “my kids.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Today
they’re all adults, even the baby, who’s 19 and going off to
college in September. He was only home this long because </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">of
the pandemic: he was supposed to go to the dorms last year. He’s
eager to go.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I’m
not eager to have him go. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
had an interesting stretch –</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Andrea,
the geneticist, got a job in Los Angeles, at a considerable pay bump
over her previous job in Riverside. I’d just bought a truck, for
secret reasons, so I was available to drive to Riverside and pick up
her and her possessions. She moved in with us – we’re only a 3
bedroom, but the office, though small, has some privacy, so she moved
into that, and I moved a mountain of gear into our bedroom. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Andy
got a new job after about a month in Los Angeles – a $20K bump over
the L.A. job that was a bump over the Riverside job.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Big
cities are good for competent people, and it’s been good for Andy.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">She
moved out after about a month – found a room up toward UCLA,
renting with other “student age” people.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One
of the “student age” people was an apparently mentally ill
stalker, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">31 years of age</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
I won’t use his name, because I suspect he’s still looking for
Andrea – at various times he asked both Andrea and me what our last
names were. Only one reason for that, I can see.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One
night after Andy had been in the new place for a few weeks, the
stalker started knocking on her bedroom window – a sliding glass
door that let out onto the street.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">For
half an hour he knocked “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits” on her
window.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Toward
the end of that half an hour, I arrived.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">He
was hovering toward her back door, and I advanced on him. “Who are
you?”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">He
gave me his name. “I love your daughter.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
kept advancing on him, and he started backing up. It was cinematic:
he backed up into a bed frame down the walkway, fell onto it, fell
some more, kept scrambling to get away, fell some more, and finally
fell onto the ground, in about four distinct movements.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Andy
and one of her roommates, a </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">young
college-age girl in the room next to Andy’s, who could see this
through her window, applauded, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">so
that was nice.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
talked to him a few moments. The only thing that’s stuck with me
is: “Is it a crime to love too much?”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">… <span style="font-weight: normal;">I
should probably not display this much insight into twitches, but I’ve
known a number. He wasn’t that mentally ill – some, probably, but
mostly this was a game he’d learned to play, that got him the
results he wanted, attention and fear from attractive women. (And my
kid is cute.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
police came, they arrested him, the home owner got a restraining
order against him –</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">– <span style="font-weight: normal;">I
moved Andrea out that weekend. In my useful secret-reasons truck. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
everyone was back home again for a few weeks, and it was crowded.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">n
the short time since Andrea had first moved in with us, her brother
Richard, now 22, had gotten Yet Another Raise at my company. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">(Wholly
deserved – they like me there, but they may like Richard better.
He’s been there a year now and he’s completely nailed everything
they’ve thrown at him. And even with the raises he’s much cheaper
than I am.)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Richard
and Andrea put their heads together and </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">decided
they could afford an apartment together for $2,300 – rented a place
down the street, nice complex with a basketball court and swimming
pool, for that. Richard gave Andrea his old car (2015 Honda Fit) and
bought a much sexier 2015 BMW sedan with only 22K miles. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
the two of them moved out together.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The
old office has been cleared out. I moved it into Richard’s bedroom,
</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and abruptly, for the first
time since I married a woman with 3 kids in 1997, and then had two
more, and then raised a family of 5 kids & 7 people in Los
Angeles for 24 years – </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">for
the first time in 24 years, I have enough space to work without being
disturbed by others.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
had a 6 room bedroom in Sherman Oaks, right before my oldest went off
to Berkeley. It was necessary, to keep people from killing each
other.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Even
then, in that huge place, I didn’t have an office of my own; it was
out in the second living room, </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
children were a constant interruption. It was hard to get into a
fiction frame of mind, and it’s never gotten a lot easier, working
sometimes in my bedroom, sometimes in some nook in the house that’s
a little out of the way – but not since marrying Amy have I had an
office with a door.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Have
one now, though. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">It won’t
last long – Connor goes off to school in September, we won’t move
until after he’s gotten through his winter break – but when he
goes back to school in early </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">January,
we’re probably getting on the road, going off to go look for land
to build on.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The University of California, for a few years now, has required
parents of children getting in-state tuititon to remain in-state. The
gap between in-state and out of state is $30K, and they are *dying*
to say you’re out of state and charge you the extra.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Lot of many-hundreds-of-thousand dollar administrator salaries need
to be paid, these days.
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Not as many teachers.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So our initial plans to move out of state after Connor went to
college have been knifed, 2 more years, by the greedy scum running
the UC system in California. (Tools of the oligarchs? Why, yes.)
We’re looking at Crescent City, we’re looking at Lake Tahoe. If
we can wait two years, well, we’ll have the ability to buy and
build anywhere.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But we can’t leave California for more than six weeks in a calendar
year, or it’ll cost us another $30K.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Connor wants to be a mathematician. He needs that degree. So we do
business with the criminals, to get him that paper.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
But they <b>are</b> criminals, practically Zuckerbergian.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">My buddy Milda Devoe has an interview for her book about writing with children. Great review, great book. You should buy it if you're a writer with kids. (You should buy it anyway. You an 80 year old ex-longshoreman who never married? This is for you, I promise.)<br /></p><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">http://www.muthamagazine.com/2021/04/figuring-it-out-as-you-go-along-milda-de-voe-talks-to-domenica-ruta-about-books-and-babies/</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sold my first story forty years ago, right about this time of year.
Didn’t recognize many of the writers in it except Asimov, though
there was a young guy named @David Brin elsewhere in the pages.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I was 18. My Dad, who I hadn’t talked to in two years, cried when I
told him.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When the fan mail arrived, ~20 letters on paper, I was homeless and
living in a storage unit without plumbing, in the heat of a Pomona
summer.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Reading fan mail under those circumstances will cause you dissonance.</p><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibl27Ct1EJ6f-pFOEr8Uo0T1iEkCNhl2PcHNqEb-i2vRKyzlDLWrFQqxVE790_CXlPrvifpBDeKfGF51hrVpaTHcUqddyvw934sLF01xVqwMMZxmojuXA4h3YDAX6bmVnBD5Qa9BYo50s/s1593/E0M1OQKVIAUVOk8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1593" data-original-width="1047" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibl27Ct1EJ6f-pFOEr8Uo0T1iEkCNhl2PcHNqEb-i2vRKyzlDLWrFQqxVE790_CXlPrvifpBDeKfGF51hrVpaTHcUqddyvw934sLF01xVqwMMZxmojuXA4h3YDAX6bmVnBD5Qa9BYo50s/s320/E0M1OQKVIAUVOk8.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTiAalrkKNbjiw75RRw-WSKYHJUwOWNYJjgZ4ZcXiqX5w1OZ7LxieP2EO7emZZgiRISvz4EH34x-N6S0P7TRgn4UvqacMo5n6m2umcWPYYjKytu5Ii67gEo6GhKa02B2e66ziiP4DFODE/s1642/E0M1Oh3UYAIjteU.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1642" data-original-width="1079" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTiAalrkKNbjiw75RRw-WSKYHJUwOWNYJjgZ4ZcXiqX5w1OZ7LxieP2EO7emZZgiRISvz4EH34x-N6S0P7TRgn4UvqacMo5n6m2umcWPYYjKytu5Ii67gEo6GhKa02B2e66ziiP4DFODE/s320/E0M1Oh3UYAIjteU.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJsXT_Qy3LAEwLz_g4U0__H6xGVtFroefjmTIEHpNExs50NJMCop9VSl4BCWejyikdsl4dqAl8xC2qGCpD0AiO1kUMbSwZgFwyX0VZJVDFhd2Oj7jyMcws5IZFET9YgZbmEr45lbaNPY/s1582/E0M1OxKVoAAs6aD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1582" data-original-width="1079" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirJsXT_Qy3LAEwLz_g4U0__H6xGVtFroefjmTIEHpNExs50NJMCop9VSl4BCWejyikdsl4dqAl8xC2qGCpD0AiO1kUMbSwZgFwyX0VZJVDFhd2Oj7jyMcws5IZFET9YgZbmEr45lbaNPY/s320/E0M1OxKVoAAs6aD.jpg" /></a></div><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Jeff Bezos would send your children to work in coal mines if he
could.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Joe was only about my eighth choice – ahead of only Bernie, the
crystals lady, the Republican from Hawaii, and the billionaires.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Boy, was I wrong about him. Isn’t he doing great?</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think about 10% of white people would happily engage in genocide if
they could, to achieve their white ethnostate. At least half of white
people would sympathize or think it was sad but necessary for their
“way of life.”</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~<br />
</p><br />Facebook Stopped Employees From Reading An Internal Report About Its Role In The Insurrection. You Can Read It Here.<br /><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/full-facebook-stop-the-steal-internal-report">https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/full-facebook-stop-the-steal-internal-report</a></p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Leaning toward the Rockwood RLT2906RSD. I could live in that a couple
years.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I have to get rid of a *lot* of books to do so. That’s OK. Some
good deals on old backlog coming.</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<img alt="Full Specs for 2020 Forest River Rockwood Ultra Lite 2906RS RVs | RVUSA.com" class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" src="https://spec.dlrwebservice.com/sb-rv/floorplan/2020_ForestRiver_RockwoodUltraLite_2906RS.jpg" style="height: 292.5px; margin: 0px; width: 585px;" />
</p><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
~~~~~</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</p>
<p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You guys have been great. Thank you for all the love, all the “please
stay” messages, all the “I’ll miss you” posts.</p><p style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Back at you. But it’s time for me to go.</p>Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-90653827387255016392019-07-25T05:42:00.000-07:002019-07-25T05:42:21.725-07:00.CBR > .CBZ conversion in Calibre.OK, and now for something completely different....<br />
<br />
Buddy offered to sell me his comics library. About a thousand Marvel titles in cbr format. I turned him down because I only keep comics in cbz, and converting them from his format to mine, and managing it inside Calibre (which is what I use; don't tell me there are other tools, I know) ... looked like a massive pain in the butt. I googled and didn't come up with anything.<br />
<br />
Buddy gave me a couple days to think it over --<br />
<br />
Here's how you do it, maybe the next person to google "Calibre CBR > CBZ" will find this and save himself a couple hours.<br />
<br />
<br />
1. Open Calibre. (Honestly, if you don't use Calibre, this whole process probably isn't for you. I find this a very good tool for managing my epubs & comics, but I don't have a vast number of either.)<br />
<br />
2. In Calibre, install the "Embed Comics Metadata" plugin by Dick Loraine. It can be found here:<br />
<br />
https://github.com/dickloraine/EmbedComicMetadata<br />
<br />
3. In Calibre, open "Preferences" and choose "Change Calibre Behavior." Choose "Toolbars" and then "Main Toolbar." You'll see a screen with "Available Actions" on the left, and "Current Actions" on the right. In the "Available Actions" screen you'll see the "Embed Comics Metadata" plugin -- add it to the "Current Actions" side of the screen, and choose "Apply."<br />
<br />
4. Return to the main "Preferences" menu. In the bottom left, click on "Plugins." Click "Show only user installed plugins." Expand the "user interface action plugins" arrow. Double-click "Embed Comics Metadata." Make sure the following checkboxes are selected:<br />
<ul>
<li>Autoconvert cbr to cbz</li>
<li>Also convert rar and zip to cbz</li>
<li>Delete cbr after conversion.</li>
</ul>
Choose Apply.<br />
<br />"Autoconvert cbr to cbz" is an option, why don't you just use the plugin to do all of that?<br />
<br />
That's a <b>good</b> question. In my case it's because the plugin choked on about half of the cbr files I tried to feed it -- older, smaller files mostly. I don't know why. But it's OK, because Calibre will happily convert even the files the plugin won't convert to cbz ... but only to zip.<br />
<br />
So, 5 ...<br />
<br />5. Return to the "Preferences" menu. Under "conversion," select "Input Options." The first option is "Comic Input." Check the boxes for "Disable comic processing" and "Don't add links to pages...."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Choose Apply.<br />
<br />
Back up your library. Once again, back up your library. Right? <br />
<br />
6. Import your CBR files into Caliber, select them, and right click. Select "Convert Books | Bulk convert."<br />
<br />
In the upper right hand corner of the dialog box that appears, select "ZIP" from the dropdown. That's all you need to do. Choose "OK."<br />
<br />
7. Depending on how fast your computer is, Calibre will start converting your books -- all in one pass, and it uses a temp directory on your boot drive (unless you've configured things very specifically, and you know if you have.) So watch Drive C -- if you're low on space, and your comics are large, you may run out of space.<br />
<br />
8. Expand "Formats" in the left Nav bar. Expand the "Zip" format.<br />
<br />
9. Ctrl-A to select all the files in the Zip format.<br />
<br />
10. Right-click on the files and choose "Remove books | Remove files of a specific format from selected books." Under "Choose formats to delete," select CBR.<br />
<br />
11. Calibre will delete all the CBR formats. You'll be left with only ZIP formats. Ctrl-A to select them all.<br />
<br />
12. Now we use the Embed Comics Metadata, which should be in the upper right on your toolbar. Click on the down arrow and select "Only convert to cbz."<br />
<br />
13. Calibre will convert your zip formats to cbz. Now, if you've installed a comics reader (I recommend ComicRack for Windows) the cbz format file will popup inside ComicRack. One of the several advantages of the cbz format is that ComicRack and other apps (Comictagger, for example) will store metadata information directly within your .cbz file, and won't with .cbr.<br />
<br />
That's all there is. Good luck. I had about 50 cbr files to test this with; converted all of them within about six minutes once I figured out the workflow.Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-20635283148766796032019-06-30T14:19:00.002-07:002019-06-30T14:19:28.375-07:00<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message" id="js_jg">
I've
stopped doing much analytical writing. It's interesting
stuff, and I've learned a lot, and moved noticeably further left as a
result, but that's all personal stuff. We're in a time when the choices
are stark, and simple. If you're OK with the concentration camps, I
don't want to know you. If you think they're not concentration camps,
you're stupid or utterly dishonest.<br /><br /> <br />
I got a note from a bright
conservative earlier today -- I unfriended him a while back for making
light of the concentration camps.<br /><br />
(Digression: I unfriend people on FB a
lot. It's rarely really personal -- my social media use exists for my purposes,
not yours. If you take up too much of my time to no purpose that suits
me, I'll move you along. If you annoy me often enough. If I think you're
spreading information that does more harm than good. If you're
contentious and make me moderate. You may *think* that having lots of followers and FB
friends makes you happier, but the people I see with super busy feeds
spend so much time managing flareups in their feeds that I'm frequently
appalled. I'm busy and Zuck hasn't ever sent me my FB check, not once.)<br /><br />
Anyway, I unfriended this guy a while back, and told him why. He didn't
seem to take it too personally. Apparently he's still reading me; he
sent me a very perceptive note about Boomers. (He is one, of course; I'm
skeptical about the ability of conservatives, in general, to do *any*
social analysis that doesn't impact them personally: but like all of us,
they notice the stone in their own shoes.)<br />
Boomers, he said, are
not worse than the generations preceding them. In fact, they're
probably a little better. Less bigoted than the Greatest Generation, or
the Silents. More aware of the challenges facing them. *Far* more aware
of themselves *as* a generation, and prone to identifying as such -- God
knows that's true, I hit it harder and more frequently than I do when
analyzing white people, or men, or straight people, or any other cohort.
Conservatives as a group don't like group-based analysis: liberals love
it, until you get to generational analysis. (I suspect this has a *lot*
to do with the age of my feed, and the fact that the people most prone
to complaining about such analysis are very frequently not white, or
straight, or male, and are not accustomed to being lumped in with the
conduct of people with whom they individually have very little in
common. Speaking as a white cis male, welcome to *that* club.)<br /><br />
But my conservative acquaintance is broadly correct, I think. Boomers
failed at some of the most basic tasks before them. (And succeeded at
others: liberal boomers moved the social construct left. Gay rights, gay
marriage, racial intermarriage, a whole host of inter-personal stuff.)
They got steamrollered on taxation, on spending, on the ecology, on
voting rights, and on and on and on. On balance, and without commenting
on any individual Boomer, they failed more than they succeeded,
*particularly* on the things that, for the survival of future
generations, we had to succeed at.<br />
That's just the reality of what happened. But it may not be useful, to phrase it that way. Daniel Dvorkin made an argument a while back that generational cohorts were less
appropriate for analysis than other cohorts -- I disagreed and still do.
The phrasing in my head went:<br /><br />
Would women behave differently
than men if they had the power? I don't think so, based on child murder
rates. (They'd rape less: but I suspect that's biological, it's harder
to rape an unwilling man, though not impossible.)<br /><br />
Would POC have
behaved better than white people, in reversed circumstances? I doubt it,
if we do a real "Lion's Blood" flip-the-scenario thought experiment:
people are people. <br /><br />
Would LGBTQ people have behaved differently
than cis-straight people? That's a hard one to do a reversed scenario;
maybe. You'd end up with a different human race, in a world where LGBTQ
were the majority in power.<br /><br />
But you take the thought experiments
aside and what you're left with is the reality of the Now. Particularly
when talking with white cis men, I'm careful to frame things such that I
don't sound like I'm blaming all of them for the sins of most of them.
There's nothing special about white cis men -- on any axis. Not special
bad, not special good. Just a historical accident, leaving us with a
place where right conduct is harder for us than for other people,
because people like us are in positions of power, and going to excuse us
when they can. It'd take better people than most humans I've ever met
to resist that temptation, and certainly white cis men have failed at
it.<br /><br />
The main difference becomes this: Boomers are going away.
History will swallow us. White people aren't going away, men aren't, cis
people aren't. But the Boomers won't be here, in too much longer.
Blaming them for getting things wrong? Well, in this very moment, it's a
fair argument: a bunch of us are asking to become President of the
United States right now -- the last four Presidents we've had have been
Boomers.<br /><br />
But not too much longer. The Boomers are running out of
road, and people will forget us. In twenty years there won't be many of
us left. But the problems of oligarchy, climate change, racism,
misogyny, will all still be with us. And Gen Z will be giving Gen X shit
for everything they got wrong. It's probably fair, in one sense: seeing
what Silents and older Boomers got wrong is part of what informed my
political growth and worldview: parsing the errors and crimes of Gen-X
is going to be part of what informs Gen Z. At that level, this is
probably forever, and frankly healthy: all progress comes from seeing
the mistakes of the people who came before you. <br /><br />
I don't know
what Gen Z's children are going to throw at them. (I can guess, I'm an
SF writer.) But painful as whatever it is, is? Will count as progress,
probably. And if it doesn't, if climate change really does destroy the
world and most or all of the human race? Maybe our generation really
*will* be remembered. For a while.</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-49812154066150189912019-05-22T17:49:00.001-07:002019-05-22T17:49:08.595-07:00<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-testid="post_message" id="js_4wj">
I don't particularly identify as a white man. I'm just a regular guy.<br />
<br />
This, of course, is privilege. That I feel normal, and the world mostly
treats me that way? A privilege, denied to a lot of us -- the bigger
"us," the population of all people, let's clarify, because I'm going to
embrace my inner white guy in a bit, and use "us" to describe you and
me, buddy.<br />
<br />
Because the fact is, I am white and male. Didn't ask for it, but not embarrassed by it. It's luck of the draw, and I got lucky.<br />
<br />
The people most insistent about me identifying about a white man? Are
other white men, and intersectionalists who (being human themselves, and
fallible) damn well want me in the slot that they think will, in the
long run, do *them* the most amount of good. It's "white men über alles"
from the right, and "white men up against the wall" from the left --
though, again, a relatively small percentage of the left; most of the
left is decent, and of those who aren't, most of those are sane enough
to know that there's no scenario, today, where this society is getting
rid of white men.<br />
<br />
"...in the long run, do *them* the most amount of good."<br />
<br />
Self-dealing is built into us -- again, the broader "us." Humans. We
want to get our share. This is *healthy* -- this is why capitalism has
worked, when run well; it harnesses that desire to provide for ourselves
and our posterity and makes something useful of it.<br />
<br />
And it used
to work for us, white guy us, when the workforce was mostly white guys.
You look at the best time to be a worker in this country? It was the
post WWII era, when the country was 90% white. White men had no problem
with the idea that the government existed to help them out -- social
security, medicare, GI bill, strong unions, on and on. If you were a
white guy, the government was there for you.<br />
<br />
But that's just the
cost the oligarchs paid to win WWII. Once the Axis oligarchs had been
defeated, they turned their attentions to the next target -- workers.
White workers. Us, boys.<br />
<br />
And they hammered on that fault line.
They couldn't sell making white people harm themselves: white men are
tribal and like all tribal people, a little stupid outside their tribe.
"We won't hurt you: we'll hurt those *other* people." And for two
generations, going on three, this poison has infiltrated white men.
"Make things worse, and we'll be the last ones standing."<br />
<br />
We
won't be, of course. White working class people are dying younger. We're
the only ones. It's literally just us, *around the world.* Everyone
else is living longer. The poison they sold us, which we greedily gulped
down, is killing us. The oligarchs never *cared* about black people,
beyond the standard racism wired up in them; black people (and
Hispanics, and Asians) were just the wedge issue they used to take what
our parents and grandparents had from us. And they sold it to us, to our
very worst selves, the parts of us that couldn't wake up long enough to
notice that they were damn well boiling the frog -- and we were the
frog, not those "others."<br />
<br />
Bernie Sanders had a chance to be a
truly transformational figure. He certainly knows he's white; Bernie
supporters keep coming at me with "old Jewish man," he's a *minority,*
when I observe that he's an old white man: Bernie knows he is and,
inconveniently for you Berners, keeps opening his mouth on the subject:
"I come from the white working class," he's said more than once.<br />
<br />
And in the crash and bern of Bernieism, the only thing that really
saddens me is that Bernie had a unique chance to go right at the heart
of this, to say, in effect:<br />
<br />
"Yes. We're privileged, by being
white. We're privileged, by being men. And we're *dying* for it. That
privilege is worth twenty cents on the dollar, but the fight to hold
onto it has cost us fifty cents on every dollar. This is why the
generations before us did *so much better* ... they were willing to let
minorities get better as long as it meant they were getting better
themselves. They may not have liked it -- you're not more tribal than
they are, though you are more scared -- but for a brief time things were
getting better so fast that they could live with it.<br />
<br />
"What needs
to happen now is that we need to accurately identify what's wrong with
us. We need a policy that addresses *everyone's* issues -- yours too.
Get you back to the time when you had sane health care, and safe jobs,
and weren't living hand to mouth and fearing eviction over a missed
paycheck. We can get you back to that time -- but only if we *also* lift
everyone else up with us. It can't just be for us; that's just the same
fight we've been *losing* for two generations. We have to fix sexual
harassment for women, and violence against LGBTQ people, and the
brutality of law enforcement and the justice system against black
people, and the literal kidnapping and running of child concentration
camps for brown skinned children. That's the tradeoff: you want to be
safe again? So do they. And we can get there together."<br />
<br />
Bernie's
never going to give this speech. It's a shame, too. Instead he virtue
signals, "I marched with MLK," and talks about "identity politics," as
if white guy -- even old Jewish white guy -- wasn't itself an identity.<br />
<br />
I used to write things like this and finish with, "We'll work our way
through this." But I don't know that we will, any more. The
concentration camps are up and running *now,* and we are running out of
time.</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-24649939513209850432019-05-07T12:14:00.001-07:002019-05-07T12:14:38.153-07:00Conversation with my son the other day. There's no doubt there's a
lot wrong with our society. And you can call it "partriarchy," and I
won't argue with the term. It's a toxic suite of conduct based on the
idea that superior strength makes for the right to do as you please, and
it's visible across every axis of our society, and in all societies
elsewhere in the world and throughout history.<br />
<br />
Almost all crimes physical committed by men and women are crimes of opportunity. "I wa<span class="text_exposed_show">s
too angry to control myself." Men and women both say this when they
abuse and murder children, which they do at about the same rates.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_show">
"But women are *around* children more" ... no. I disagree with the very
premise, that more time with children results in more violence; not my
experience. Abusers abuse when they have the opportunity, that's true;
but opportunity doesn't turn a non-abuser into an abuser. But in any
event custodial parents of both genders abuse and murder children at
about the same rates.<br />
<br />
You know what women don't do, though? They
don't often attack men and when they do, the size difference is usually
smaller than the average. In other words, they controlled themselves
when there was a physical risk to them.<br />
<br />
You know what men don't
do? They don't attack the Mike Tysons of the world. They control
themselves, when there's a physical risk to them.<br />
<br />
I used to think
that women were superior to men in a variety of ways, about the time
that I was volunteering at NOW. I've drifted back off that since -- I'm
pretty sure that men and women are about the same, after adjusting for
strength. (Much as I'm pretty sure that POC and white people are about
the same, after adjusting for social conditions.) The "testosterone
poison" defense is bullshit -- testosterone poisoning doesn't send men
to attack Mike Tyson; it just sends men to attack people they think they
can take. All of this, everywhere, comes down to what people think they
can get away with.<br />
<br />
You *still* have to educate your sons about
their own strength, about the reality that they'll face opportunity to
be violent that women and weaker men won't face. Strong good men aren't
the problem: but the good has to come first. Strength without a moral
compass is why the jails are so overwhelmingly filled with men:
opportunity crimes, punished.</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-68468436516020534802019-04-24T05:10:00.001-07:002019-04-24T05:10:59.452-07:00Write What You Think is True<span><div data-contents="true">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="bb0gu-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bb0gu-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bb0gu-0-0"><span data-text="true">Reading two books very slowly -- "Growing up Weightless," by John M Ford, and "The Fifth Season," by N K Jemisin. A chapter at a time, I've been busy recently, picked up two contracts when a month ago I had none.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="3a1c9-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="3a1c9-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="3a1c9-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="b9fq6-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="b9fq6-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="b9fq6-0-0"><span data-text="true">Two very different books. The Ford is a difficult read, interrupted by lengthy pauses -- it's told in pretty much real time, and it's on paper, which is hard for me to read since the eye went off. But I'm getting through it slowly. It is a remarkable work, though; Ken Burnside kept at me to read it for a decade or something, before I finally did. Thoughts later.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="8o4um-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8o4um-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8o4um-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="bdjdp-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bdjdp-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bdjdp-0-0"><span data-text="true">"Fifth Season" does, I expect, deserve the awards it's won. That's not a shot at the novel, my daughter and wife both raved about it, and they have good judgment even if I'm sometimes skeptical about the awards infrastructure in the arts (all arts, F/SF is not unusual in this regard.) It's merely an observation that, 6-7 chapters in, I'm starting to see the backbone of the story and yeah, it's epic, and of course it's very well executed.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="cc26a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="cc26a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="cc26a-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="fqedh-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fqedh-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fqedh-0-0"><span data-text="true">Hit a scene that a black lady a few years back hated so bad she stopped reading the novel -- the main black male character is routinely ridiculed and described as unattractive by his companion. (It's a dystopia -- while many of the characters are sympathetic, none of them so far are what you'd call likeable -- maybe the orphan orogene (witch) -- but maybe not even her.)</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="f8j4b-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f8j4b-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f8j4b-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="90ahe-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="90ahe-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="90ahe-0-0"><span data-text="true">Back when, not having seen the novel, I nodded sympathetically and kept my mouth shut, because I'm an old white guy, and there are subjects it's pointless to comment on. (I've told the story of the time I was at dinner with two black couples -- 25 years ago, about -- they asked me what I thought about black women dating white men because the black men they knew were unemployed -- and ground up by the justice system, I thought even then. I made the mistake of answering. Don't answer that question, fellow white men.)</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="2v1gp-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="2v1gp-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="2v1gp-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="f6dam-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f6dam-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f6dam-0-0"><span data-text="true">But it does expose the limits of where I'm willing to go at the artistic level. If a black woman can be mad at N K Jemisin for her description of one black man in a single novel out of how many she's written, there are no safe spots to stand. Take a deep breath, and write what you think to be true. Someone will be angry about it, if you're lucky enough to be noticed at all.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="4veir-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4veir-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4veir-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="f3ln9-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f3ln9-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f3ln9-0-0"><span data-text="true">~~~~~</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="blgh6-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="blgh6-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="blgh6-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ujrf" data-offset-key="aakoh-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="aakoh-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="aakoh-0-0"><span data-text="true">New chapters of AI War, Kozmic Blues, and Emerald Throne going to the Patreon early next week. The AI War chapter will be free to the public.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</span>Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-45357055511181634112019-04-03T16:28:00.003-07:002019-04-03T16:28:40.494-07:00<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_2by">
To post a comment on my blog ...<br /><br />
I have to click the "I'm not a robot button."<br /><br />
I have to pick the stairs in an image.<br /><br />
I have to find the traffic lights in an image.<br /><br />
I have to do that with a new image.<br /><br />
I have to do that with a new image.<br /><br />
I have to find the fire hydrants in a set of images. When I click them
they vanish and are replaced by more fire hydrants. I have to keep doing
this until there are none left. The last square fills with a fire
hydrant five times.<br /><br />
Google suggests I log in. I give it my account name and password.<br /><br />
It requests 2 form verification.<br /><br />
I go into the bedroom and get my phone, come back to my office and type in the number that's been sent.<br /><br />
Google posts my comment.<br /><br />
Thanks, Google! Keeping my blog secure and shit!</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-48434064842377400782019-04-02T14:48:00.002-07:002019-04-02T14:48:10.198-07:00<h2 style="text-align: center;">
The World's Greatest Living Science Fiction Writer</h2>
<div data-contents="true">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="4gt44-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4gt44-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="4gt44-0-0"><span data-text="true">Are all writers arrogant? I think it's possible there are some who aren't, but I'm not sure I've ever met any. The idea that I sit down and type a story up, something at least 50% of the human race has tried to do at some point; and then you give me money for it? That's me saying, "Yes, I <i>do</i> think I'm the fraction of a percent of storytellers who should be paid for it."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="fu5rc-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fu5rc-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fu5rc-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="6m4rv-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6m4rv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="6m4rv-0-0"><span data-text="true">There's a story Asimov told when he was writing "The Gods Themselves." He was getting older, hadn't written fiction in a <i>long</i> time -- told his editor he feared the field had passed him by.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="20nlu-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="20nlu-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="20nlu-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="835a9-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="835a9-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="835a9-0-0"><span data-text="true">"Isaac," she said, "when you write, you <i>are</i> the field."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="1kapr-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1kapr-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="1kapr-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="fom2v-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fom2v-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fom2v-0-0"><span data-text="true">It wasn't true, not even for Asimov. But it's a good attitude.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="82k7o-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="82k7o-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="82k7o-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="a9fmm-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="a9fmm-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="a9fmm-0-0"><span data-text="true">"World's Greatest Living Science Fiction Writer" -- I've had that compliment twice in recent years. (Once from </span></span><span class="_247o" data-offset-key="a9fmm-1-0" spellcheck="false" start="111"><span data-offset-key="a9fmm-1-0"><span data-text="true">Fred Lang</span></span></span><span data-offset-key="a9fmm-2-0"><span data-text="true">, another time from a guy on G+.) It's not true, though I'm willing to fight to the death over the observation that it might have been true <i>for them</i>.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="bhagi-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bhagi-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bhagi-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="d8gir-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d8gir-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d8gir-0-0"><span data-text="true">But you should <i>act</i> as if it's true. If you have any literary ambition at all, you should be working to write the very best of the sort of thing you do. I mean, I write space opera. Right now, the gold standard in this field is probably still Hyperion. Am I going to outwrite that? <i>Probably</i> not -- but I'm certainly going to try.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="k5u4-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="k5u4-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="k5u4-0-0"><br data-text="true" /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="9aoco" data-offset-key="9ag1r-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9ag1r-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9ag1r-0-0"><span data-text="true">The intentional fallacy is real. Just because you intend to do something, doesn't mean you did it, and particularly when you get into the upper reaches of any subject, the intentional fallacy gets stronger and stronger. But <i>without</i> intention? No one ever stumbled into excellence by accident.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-80384992153021011462019-03-27T00:17:00.002-07:002019-03-27T00:17:58.151-07:00Broke 100 pages on "Emerald Throne." I haven't written like this since before the kids were born. :-)Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-86564524451205454472019-03-27T00:11:00.003-07:002019-03-27T00:17:16.070-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Topaz AI Gigapixel, version 4.0. I've been watching this tech for a while -- it's finally reached the point where it's going to make some noise. There may never be a genuinely clean version of Bab5, from source -- but just looking at this, there's no real reason this won't at some point be able to produce upsized copies that are quite watchable. Ditto for Doctor Who.</div>
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You may have to click through to compare quality on the images. For some reason the Bab 5 images came through split, but in each case the source is the first image, the upsized the second.</div>
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Source</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbdW_JOQa87udCljr10zQ1d1rPgCcxfeEEj3NHAk8dii4YTKoiz-W688cWVqgDS3z26fR-tNmQa2ExiPpPUESY7tkqvn9AxbjqEcHcmf8ncxTGGzxUQxuGhdC1Cy79mPFCSAefwkM7A8/s1600/Babylon+5+0209+1995-02-01+The+Coming+of+Shadows.avi_snapshot_01.49_%255B2019.03.26_23.50.19%255D.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="720" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNbdW_JOQa87udCljr10zQ1d1rPgCcxfeEEj3NHAk8dii4YTKoiz-W688cWVqgDS3z26fR-tNmQa2ExiPpPUESY7tkqvn9AxbjqEcHcmf8ncxTGGzxUQxuGhdC1Cy79mPFCSAefwkM7A8/s400/Babylon+5+0209+1995-02-01+The+Coming+of+Shadows.avi_snapshot_01.49_%255B2019.03.26_23.50.19%255D.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Upsize</div>
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Upsize</div>
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Upsize</div>
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<br />Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-18442545837115663912019-03-12T14:59:00.002-07:002019-03-12T14:59:50.968-07:00<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLU4iE2kF7kwJ0Ln2gvXCfhBW_AMNjedxaU7OMCEhWaCwKRS_R-1NC98ifF-HhAPnJx3aA5o_z9OwAKzz9fRsneKjXwxoWvLpUHDUFjYU0nXxPnFcPSm-QzIVKh473X9MtqKwyFAPIc14/s1600/Social+Justice.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1226" data-original-width="1600" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLU4iE2kF7kwJ0Ln2gvXCfhBW_AMNjedxaU7OMCEhWaCwKRS_R-1NC98ifF-HhAPnJx3aA5o_z9OwAKzz9fRsneKjXwxoWvLpUHDUFjYU0nXxPnFcPSm-QzIVKh473X9MtqKwyFAPIc14/s320/Social+Justice.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true"><br /><br />I think we reached a tipping point a few years ago. For most of Hollywood history, the movies that attracted first rate talent, the very best that was available, had white people, almost always men, for heroes. There were exceptions -- there were always exceptions -- but as a pretty good marker, look at the AFI Top 100 movies of all time, which was put together in 1998: </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">1. CITIZEN KANE (1941) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">2. CASABLANCA (1942) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">3. THE GODFATHER (1972) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">4. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">5. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">6. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">7. THE GRADUATE (1967) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">8. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">9. SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">10. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (1952) </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-0"><span data-text="true">Eight movies about with unambiguous white male leads, two about white women. Only two, even had black characters in any noticeable role, unless my memory fails me: Hattie McDaniel and Dooley Wilson. Hattie McDaniel, of course, won an Academy Award -- first African American to win one, first black person to </span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">attend </span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-2"><span data-text="true">the Academy Awards except as a servant. Dooley didn’t win any awards -- </span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Casablanca</span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-4"><span data-text="true"> was a B movie, in conception, and while it was immensely popular, and won Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, only Bogie and Claude Raines were nominated, and neither won. But black people really liked Dooley’s character; like Uhura, twenty-five years later, </span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-5" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">any </span></span><span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-6"><span data-text="true">representation was better than none.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="91n8p-0-6"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
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<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="btb34-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="btb34-0-0"><span data-text="true">But what passed for representation then, before and during WWII, was a little embarrassing to a lot of black people years later. (Uhura, too -- I’ve seen black Trek fans say quietly that they wished she hadn’t been in </span></span><span data-offset-key="btb34-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Star Trek</span></span><span data-offset-key="btb34-0-2"><span data-text="true"> at all, rather than being portrayed as she was. Contrast that with MLK’s plea to Uhura to stay on Star Trek ... because any representation was better than none. (“Do you understand that this is the only show that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to stay up and watch?”)</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="btb34-0-2"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
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<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fmcte-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-0"><span data-text="true">So things change. Progress is sometimes embarrassing. As great as </span></span><span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Black Panther</span></span><span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-2"><span data-text="true"> was -- and it’s the best of the movies I’m going to list in a bit -- feminists had some legitimate complaints about it. </span></span><span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel</span></span><span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-4"><span data-text="true">, this weekend, annoyed or angered a number of male POC in my feed, because Nick Fury was treated as comic relief. (“Minstrel,” one fellow sneered.)</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="fmcte-0-4"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5lf07-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-0" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Supergirl</span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-1"><span data-text="true"> bombed. You probably don’t even remember </span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-2" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Red Sonja</span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-3"><span data-text="true">, and anyway Schwarzenegger got top billing. </span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-4" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Catwoman</span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-5"><span data-text="true"> bombed. </span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-6" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Elektra</span></span><span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-7"><span data-text="true"> bombed. Those movies were so bad and performed so badly that Hollywood, quite sensibly, didn’t make any more of them for decades ...</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5lf07-0-7"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="98er9-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="98er9-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="98er9-0-0"><span data-text="true">What? You object to that read? Why, just because over the same time period the list of amazingly bad male-led superhero movies was (at least) five times as long?</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="98er9-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="bo20a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="bo20a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-0"><span data-text="true">Hollywood is risk averse. The rare occasions someone brave comes along, and actually advances the state of the art -- I’ll limit myself to geek movies here -- you get </span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Star Wars</span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-2"><span data-text="true">, </span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Superman</span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-4"><span data-text="true">, </span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-5" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">X-Men</span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-6"><span data-text="true">, the </span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-7" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Matrix</span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-8"><span data-text="true"> -- all of them at least somewhat surprised the studios making them. (Someone should have noticed </span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-9" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Blade</span></span><span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-10"><span data-text="true">’s performance -- but they didn’t.) Probably the first big cape movie that the studios were wholly behind, that they were confident in, was the 2002 Spider-Man. And since then the floodgates have been opened ... for male heroes of a particular skin tone.</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="bo20a-0-10"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5o2ip-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="5o2ip-0-0"><span data-text="true">So the last few years have been instructive, no? This is a list of movies the Usual Suspects predicted, and surely wanted, to do badly, in the last 3-1/2 years:</span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="5o2ip-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">The Force Awakens 12/18/2015 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">Rogue One 12/16/2016 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">Wonder Woman 6/2/2017 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">The Last Jedi 12/15/2017 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">Black Panther 2/6/2018 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">Crazy Rich Asians 8/15/2018 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel 3/8/2019 </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true">These made, respectively:</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="d1cc1-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$2.06 billion (FA) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$1.06 billion (R1) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$821 million (WW) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$1.3 billion (LJ) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$1.35 billion (BP) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$238 million (CRA) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">$490 million (CM) </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel was the 7th best opening of all time -- not of just superhero movies: of all movies. It’s going to break a billion dollars without a doubt.
Crazy Rich Asians is notably the only real “breakout” hit in this crowd. Everything else was damn well expected to make money, and was budgeted like it. But they spent only $30 million on CRA.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="8qf0a-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="12kbv-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="12kbv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="12kbv-0-0"><span data-text="true">But they point is Hollywood </span></span><span data-offset-key="12kbv-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">did</span></span><span data-offset-key="12kbv-0-2"><span data-text="true"> spend money on these movies. Did acquire the absolute top flight talent to produce them. And the audiences were there for it. Hungry for it. Collectively they made over seven billion dollars. </span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="12kbv-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="12kbv-0-2"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="50a92-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="50a92-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="50a92-0-0"><span data-text="true">I won’t talk about the MRAs much. They are what they are. They’re choking today: good. Moving on.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="50a92-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="50a92-0-0"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="c9c18-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c9c18-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-0"><span data-text="true">But there were POC men who didn’t like </span></span><span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel</span></span><span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-2"><span data-text="true">, and feminists who didn’t like </span></span><span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Black Panther</span></span><span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-4"><span data-text="true">. And outraged feminists who were pissed at the POC men, and outraged POC men who were pissed at the feminists. And the truth is, none of that’s going away any time soon; everyone has their own perspectives and their own interests in how to tell a particular story. And you can’t have representation in a single movie; the problem with Black Widow’s “can’t have children” storyline wasn’t that it focused on her as a woman in ways that some women didn’t like: the problem was that there were so few roles for female superheroes that the weight of any one of them -- remember Uhura -- exceeded what a given individual role was normally capable of carrying.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c9c18-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="c9c18-0-4"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="al5kk-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="al5kk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-0"><span data-text="true">But here’s what </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">is</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-2"><span data-text="true"> going away. The people who make these movies are smart, in the aggregate, and over time, they do adjust to the marketplace. Somewhere out there people in a quiet room ran the numbers for </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Black Panther</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-4"><span data-text="true">, and said, “We could have done better with feminists.” And those people did the same for </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-5" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-6"><span data-text="true">, and said, “Well, we pissed off black men.” (And I guarantee you they understand how they screwed up with black people on </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-7" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Infinity War</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-8"><span data-text="true">.)
Thirty years from now, it’s going to be popularly understood that Black Panther and Captain Marvel, though very well made movies, are “problematic” upon certain axes. That they were the best we could do, at the time, well, those old folks didn’t understand things the way we do today. By then there’ll have been </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-9" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">individual </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-10"><span data-text="true">movies with women, Asians, black people, white people, Hispanics, LGTBQ people, disabled people, all tied to urgent, driving narratives, without preachiness, just </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-11" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">there,</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-12"><span data-text="true"> in the flow of the work. And people will look back at </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-13" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Black Panther</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-14"><span data-text="true">, at </span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-15" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Captain Marvel</span></span><span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-16"><span data-text="true">, and wish that they didn’t have quite so many obvious flaws.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="al5kk-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="al5kk-0-16"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="_2cuy _3dgx" data-block="true" data-editor="2cn51" data-offset-key="f4oub-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f4oub-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-0"><span data-text="true">And movies like </span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-1" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Casablanca,</span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-2"><span data-text="true"> and </span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-3" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Gone With the Wind</span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-4"><span data-text="true">, and shows like the first </span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-5" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Star Trek</span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-6"><span data-text="true">, will be looked upon as the primitive artifacts of a people nearly as uncivilized as the ancient Romans, and their games in the Coliseum.
We’re getting better, and it’s not always fun to remember how it happened. But how we got better is important to remember, or women like Nichelle Nichols, who sacrificed an opportunity to go to Broadway to remain on </span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-7" style="font-style: italic;"><span data-text="true">Star Trek</span></span><span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-8"><span data-text="true">, get forgotten. And nobody wants to forget Nichelle.</span></span></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f4oub-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-8"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-8"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="f4oub-0-8"><span data-text="true"> </span></span></div>
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Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-87002534624694456792019-03-05T12:48:00.006-08:002019-03-05T12:48:54.438-08:00I'm a fifth or sixth of the way through "Emerald Throne," depending on whether the book ends up 100K or 125K words -- it'll be somewhere in that range, best I can guess.<br /><br />It's an odd feeling. I haven't written like this in so long it's hard to remember.Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-37763706463855456962019-02-04T14:37:00.002-08:002019-02-04T14:37:12.423-08:00<div data-contents="true">
<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="ftt3f" data-offset-key="9kpbt-0-0">
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="9kpbt-0-0">
<span data-offset-key="9kpbt-0-0"><span data-text="true">First audio piece for Patreon. It's the only completely surviving file from my NPR days, around 2000. Accessible to everyone.</span></span></div>
</div>
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<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="d86q0-0-0">
<a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/road-goes-24469750"><span data-offset-key="d86q0-0-0"><span data-text="true">https://www.patreon.com/posts/road-goes-24469750</span></span></a></div>
</div>
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Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-38650239699466699482019-01-23T00:38:00.002-08:002019-01-23T00:38:16.915-08:00<div class="_5pbx userContent _3ds9 _3576" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" id="js_1xy">
The
brain is surprisingly plastic. I've written more between November 1 and
today than in any comparable period since "Last Dancer" was published,
and that was 26 years ago.<br />
<br />
Every time I've sat down in front of
the computer, it's come more easily. Skills and ways of thinking I
haven't used in decades are abruptly peeking around the corner and
wanting to know if they can come back out.<br />
<br />
I'm not the writer I
was, as a purely machine-level skillset, back then. I know more than I
did, I'm a different person to a remarkable degree, but the little story
engine in my head isn't back to what it was. Maybe it never will be.
But I no longer doubt it's possible to get most of the way there.</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-14068025059438945252019-01-17T12:38:00.003-08:002019-01-17T12:40:35.957-08:00<br />
A couple new pieces up at the Patreon, both free to the general public.<br />
<br />
A post on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/toxic-24047704">toxic masculinity</a>.<br />
<br />
The first chapter of <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/emerald-throne-23913499">Time Wars: The Emerald Throne</a>, which is about Camber Tremodian.<br />
<br />
<br />Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-23163024766119431992018-12-24T06:48:00.001-08:002018-12-24T06:48:18.212-08:00<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Merry Christmas to those who observe, and Happy Holidays to all.</div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-10091189532492298582018-12-24T06:45:00.001-08:002018-12-24T06:45:52.548-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGxVyr8nZ3Z77iiLDmNLjYafStyamA7lSy4lTt3PaIo-WCvW5ghW9IZxW64yCl18PCxdfU9FHhIhyfrniRRhJNxX4V9CUwYx_73Ngxb7v-1C_3RwPLaGDPSy-NH35GHhI9yOm36kVsqs/s1600/Tales+of+the+Continuing+Time+And+Other+Stories+-+Daniel+Keys+Moran.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1077" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlGxVyr8nZ3Z77iiLDmNLjYafStyamA7lSy4lTt3PaIo-WCvW5ghW9IZxW64yCl18PCxdfU9FHhIhyfrniRRhJNxX4V9CUwYx_73Ngxb7v-1C_3RwPLaGDPSy-NH35GHhI9yOm36kVsqs/s320/Tales+of+the+Continuing+Time+And+Other+Stories+-+Daniel+Keys+Moran.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
Available on Amazon, the first new book from Daniel Keys Moran in seven
years, "Tales" contains six unpublished Continuing Time stories, and
twelve stories scattered around parts of the Great Wheel.<br /><br />Tales of the Continuing Time<br />The
Shepherds 2049; Leftbehind 2485 - 2489; The Shivering Bastard at Devnet
2676; A Son Enters, Stage Right 2681; Smile and Give Me a Kiss 2821 -
2873; Platformer 3021 - 3022<br /><br />Other Stories<br />Realtime; The Gray
Maelstrom; Given the Game; Strings; Play Date; Sideways; What Is And Is
Not True; Uncle Jack; Old Man; A Conversation in the Kitchen With Her
Father; Hell, Next Five Exits; All Possible Worlds<br /><br /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MD64368/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1545662078&sr=8-5&keywords=tales+of+the+continuing+time">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MD64368/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1545662078&sr=8-5&keywords=tales+of+the+continuing+time</a><br /><br /><br /><br />Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-46800079573297442532018-12-22T19:06:00.003-08:002018-12-22T19:06:43.962-08:00Those of you waiting on Amazon "Tales," it might go a little earlier. I
didn't figure I'd have a spare day before the end of the year, but I'm
open tomorrow. I need to put up "Armageddon Blues"
as well -- I thought it was up there, but it never was. I'll also
update all the other mobi files, the new versions are better, so if you
bought through Amazon, you should be able to update your files yourself.Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-69297531304358207852018-12-18T18:06:00.001-08:002018-12-18T18:09:35.417-08:00"Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories" is available for order. Ordering instructions are below.<br />
<br />
The
book contains six unpublished Continuing Time stories, and twelve
stories scattered around parts of the Great Wheel. Many of them are
semi-related -- Georges Mordreaux, from "The Armageddon Blues," appears
in two of the non-Continuing Time stories.<br />
<br />
Tales of the Continuing Time<br />
The
Shepherds 2049; Leftbehind 2485 - 2489; The Shivering Bastard at Devnet
2676; A Son Enters, Stage Right 2681; Smile and Give Me a Kiss 2821 -
2873; Platformer 3021 - 3022<br />
<br />
Other Stories<br />
Realtime; The Gray
Maelstrom; Given the Game; Strings; Play Date; Sideways; What Is And Is
Not True; Uncle Jack; Old Man; A Conversation in the Kitchen With Her
Father; Hell, Next Five Exits; All Possible Worlds<br />
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<span class=" UFICommentActorAndBody"><span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="UFICommentBody _1n4g">Here's the simple version of this: send $8.99 to danmoran909@outlook.com, via Paypal. We'll ship you a
copy of The Tales of the Continuing Time And Other Stories, in EPUB
(Apple), AZW3 (Kindle), HTML, and PDF format, using the email you used
at Paypal.<br /><br />Here's the slightly longer version.<br /><br />We
updated the ebook versions of all the epubs. They're cleaner and look
better on most devices than previous versions. (A couple of the earliest
didn't even have tables of contents.)<br /><br />If you want
them and you purchased them previously, say so. We'll go on the honor
system here -- I promised people who bought off <a class="" data-lynx-mode="hover" dir="ltr" href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffsand.com%2F%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1k1OLamZs_F2K9VYkopSyQHxfMNEkWF1StPVh3q8Dz6xBz8Kcx1SbKtbk&h=AT1BxwFkKWfN3EnU11P663nOZq5t_bZV3fnfcfW-VxLWEtxiaQBJasZARnSC_hqR0EtDAagiyJL-wlU-gwbICgfLDzV3_BKJ9D3JdFCFIS6a7-81P17PHd52Ys1kVHUBPQ" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">fsand.com</a> that they'd get upgraded versions forever. You're that person? Tell me which of these you want, in the message field at Paypal.<br /><br />If
you want them and you haven't purchased them previously, add up
whatever books you want -- these are the Amazon prices, I'm not allowed
to sell them more cheaply.<br /><br />The Armageddon Blues $0 or $5.99.<br />A Freeway In My Back Yard $0 or $6.99.<br />Terminal Freedom $0 or $5.99.<br /><br />Emerald Eyes $0 or $2.99.<br />The Long Run $0 or $5.99.<br />The Last Dancer $0 or $5.99.<br />The A.I. War $0 or $7.99.<br /><br />I'm not checking up on anyone. Tell me what you want, pay what's right, and the books will ship today and tomorrow.<br /><br />Not
ready for "Tales" but would still like the updated copies I promised
you back in the dawn of the internet? Send me a message here with the
books you'd like. I'll send them to you.</span></span></span></div>
Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-59399536799409380742018-12-13T04:45:00.001-08:002018-12-13T04:45:18.843-08:00Coming soon.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioRk1OuebeLajSTb-jifqvW9yMmPxQ-mwdunG03kxy8gBcV0s8erhZWCjEtnEAZGXcee_T-KeQJHifg0KZt9O3EDN9DUm4mH5uyJiLtqcOurMPgZSi8gwaw86KAOzybKqz2fiXLjD5Ezw/s1600/Cover+Angel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1078" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioRk1OuebeLajSTb-jifqvW9yMmPxQ-mwdunG03kxy8gBcV0s8erhZWCjEtnEAZGXcee_T-KeQJHifg0KZt9O3EDN9DUm4mH5uyJiLtqcOurMPgZSi8gwaw86KAOzybKqz2fiXLjD5Ezw/s320/Cover+Angel.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<br />Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-59069579332336995942018-11-18T14:55:00.002-08:002018-11-18T14:55:57.758-08:00I suppose I'm glad I kept this blog, despite not posting to it for 7 years. G+ is going, FB is a bloody mess. I'll start posting some longer-form material here again, I think.Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-49837553097800647132011-10-30T21:50:00.000-07:002011-10-30T21:50:12.154-07:00Spoilers circle on G+I'm going to post ongoing bits of things I'm working on on G+ -- no massive spoilers, but if you're interested in reading them, +1 or otherwise respond on <a href="https://plus.google.com/107286020910913706370/posts/RLo7EgiHF38">this post</a> and I'll add you to the list.Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-73137362026238381912011-09-13T16:03:00.001-07:002011-09-13T16:03:24.631-07:00On Art<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">You can’t define art.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">You can’t define storytelling.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">You can’t define writing except in the most trivial and reductionist way: “words strung together.”</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">There are no rules. We tell young writers there are rules, because it helps limit the size of the problem they’re wrestling with, but really there are not. There’s technique, and that’s helpful and important: a command of technique is the difference between hit and miss and the ability to reliably produce competent work. But techniques are not rules.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">There are no rules of writing I’ve ever seen that do not have exceptions – and let’s not waste our time with “the exception that proves the rule,” since this is merely a phrase misused by people who don’t understand it – it merely meant, in its original use, that the rule had been proven false.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Rules that have exceptions are guidelines, not rules. Orwell’s five rules famously contain a sixth that effectively says, “Except when the rule makes no goddamn sense for what you’re trying to do.” Elmore Leonard has ten rules that should be required reading for young writers – but which some great writers violate repeatedly to good effect. (Leonard, being a great writer, is as aware as Orwell that his rules are merely guidelines: his essay on his rules of writing finishes with an example of Steinbeck breaking these rules to good effect.)</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Some rules I’ve had thrown at me over the years – once by Damon Knight, who said I’d convinced him, when we were done:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">“A story must not be boring.” Says you. I’ve been bored by lots of stories.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">OK, how about: “A story must not be <em>intentionally</em> boring?” Well, <em>Waiting for Godot</em> certainly appears to be.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">“A story is a person with a problem.” It can be. But not always: sometimes a story is about something unambiguously good happening to a person.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Maybe even just: “A story must be about a person?” No? One of my favorite pieces of my own writing is a story about a tree, <em>On Sequoia Time</em>.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">*</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Stories are just a subset of all the kinds of art out there.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Recently a screenwriter I otherwise respect argued that the television show <em>Dexter</em>, far from being one of the best things on television, wasn’t even art: it was pornography, an exercise in pandering to the base instincts of its audience.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">I am not writing to defend or even to praise <em>Dexter</em>. I don’t care if you like it, if you think it’s bad trash or good trash or simply brilliant. (I’ll go with “simply brilliant.”) Practically nobody likes George A. Romero’s <em>Knightriders</em> as well as I do, and that’s fine; I’m long past requiring external validation for my tastes, and I still watch <em>Knightriders</em> every year around my birthday, regardless of the opinions of others. (It is one of the best independent American movies ever made, by the way, despite being too long and having a few lapses of tone here and there.)</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">But the bright line used to consign <em>Dexter</em> to “porn” was this: that art must challenge us (and that<em>Dexter</em> did not, in this writer’s opinion.) That it must take our expectations and confound them, must make us reconsider what we know or believe to be true –</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">– and absolutely: this is one of the real functions of art, a vital and important function. But it’s not the most important function and it’s not the place where we divide work into “art” on one side and “porn” on another. Art, to borrow a terrible cliché (and Orwell would tell me not to do this) … is an elephant. We <em>see</em> the parts of it that we respond to, we become aware of art because it moves us. The parts that we don’t respond to are <em>not</em> art … for our purposes: but they may be art for the purposes of our neighbors, who are of different ages and genders and backgrounds, who have different life experiences and skills and lovers and friends and family.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Should art challenge us? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Should it uplift us? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Warn us? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Scare us? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Teach us new things? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Reinforce what we know to be true? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Entertain us? <em>Hell</em> yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Connect us to one another? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Let us see through someone else’s eyes? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Remind us of our common humanity? Yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Remind us of the ways in which we’re unusual, or even unique?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">… yes.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Art is <em>whatever you experience as art</em>: all that’s required is that some person or persons, in an intentional act, created something that, when you encountered it, caused an emotional or even spiritual reaction in you.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">… and there are no rules. There’s technique, and mastery of technique is one of the differences between mediocre and good artists; though probably it is not as important as conviction.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">There is a language of art that we’ve learned and taught to one another, and that language changes by art form and by time and by culture and by person. But there are no rules, none, not a one: just people traveling down their personal roads: and for all of us, wherever we are this year, the horizon is the same distance away.</p></span>Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-39897074138548874072011-08-04T09:00:00.000-07:002011-08-04T09:01:44.510-07:00Programming PeopleThe speech I gave at Singularity University yesterday morning.<div><br /></div><div>I wish G+ did friendlier URLs....</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://plus.google.com/107286020910913706370/posts/3tkCqaStaEf">https://plus.google.com/107286020910913706370/posts/3tkCqaStaEf</a><br /><div><br /></div></div>Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1778489216730794604.post-24534703992480507972011-07-23T19:00:00.000-07:002011-07-23T19:04:05.328-07:00DanielKeysMoran.comPretty much what you think -- a redirect to my G+ page.<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.danielkeysmoran.com">danielkeysmoran.com</a></div>Daniel Keys Moranhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12992599044462413412noreply@blogger.com0