Michael Lucas¹ @mwl@io.mwl.io

Just saw a post on my timeline where someone was asking people to stop posting political content on Mastodon. Thus, I will leave a reminder:

1. Politics = us making decisions about how we live in groups.

2. Refusing to engage in political discourse is equivalent to endorsing the status quo.

3. Staying out of politics because you believe it has no effect on you is a privilege. it also means you decided to forsake people in a situation less privileged than you.

my kid just called fog “ghost water” and now that's its new name

"Look. If you admire my nap so much, go have your own." #rats #petrats

“The three-judge 11th Circuit panel said Cannon lacked the authority to grant Trump's request…It also overturned Cannon's decision to bar investigators from accessing most of the records pending the review and threw out Trump's suit.”

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-reverses-appointment-special-master-trump-documents-probe-2022-12-01/

I think it's important to realize while Musk is setting fire to bird site and anything that remained of his reputation, the companies and people who work there are not HIM. #Tesla and #SpaceX in particular have done Good Things, and many talented and sincere people work there and are just trying to go on in spite of everything. It he destroys that good with his antics, that will be tragic.

@smallsees @j @mwl
Here you go!

My mailing lists now offer free ebooks. Just like real authors do!

I'm certain Colin will grump about me giving away a Tarsnap book, but he'll just have to suck it up.

https://mwl.io/archives/22423

So, a horse walks into a bar and orders a pint. The barkeep says, "You're in here pretty often lately. Do you think you might be an alcoholic?" The horse replies, "I don't think I am," and then vanishes from existence. You see, the joke is really about Descartes' famous quote, "I think; therefore, I am." but if I had explained this before the joke, I would've been putting Descartes before the horse.
...
I'll show myself out now.

Those of you who read my blog know how rarely I give five stars, but this book earned its rating. THE SECRETS OF CHARACTER by Matt Bird has everything you need to create heroes and heroines that readers will love. https://writingslices.wordpress.com/2022/12/01/the-secrets-of-character-by-matt-bird/

I wrote a bit about what Effective Altruism is most effective at: https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2022/12/01/is-neither-discuss/

I have sloughed off the millenia
and spiffed up my website. Please visit it and be appropriately awed.

https://writeonrighton.com

Still cannot understand how people could even remotely think that the super-rich would do anything even remotely for the good of "the people".

Allow me a couple of anecdotes.

I help a small independent English children's bookshop in Geneva which stocks over 10'000 titles and has prices which are often lower than Amazon's¹ plus you get a chance to actually look at the books first which, with children, is often a good idea.

Geneva is not known for being a poor area of the world, indeed it is packed with diplomats and associated staff enjoying tax-free salaries plus several large companies enjoying their reduced company tax. These are all people with serious amounts of disposable income.

What these people do is that they come to visit the bookshop, look and select the books, take pictures of the ISBN and then hunt for them online.

Not only, if you ask them where they shop even though they have more than enough money to shop in Swiss supermarkets they will always go across the border into France to buy anything and everything at discount stores.

And yet they drive ridiculous Porsche SUVs² which they change every year.

Bottom line is that the rich, and even more so the ultra-rich, don't remain rich by actually paying people doing real work to survive nor by actually spending the money they have (i.e. "trickle down economics" is absolute rubbish).

Just stop worshipping them, even if they started Tesla or SpaceX or Amazon. They are doing it to line their own wallets in gold not to benefit anyone else and have no qualms about doing whatever is necessary to achieve this goal.

__
¹ if you think that Amazon is still the cheapest way to get books as it was back in the '90s then think again: they have optimised their loss-leader strategy and, while the first book might be cheap, you can be assured that the others in a multi-book order are not.
² they are ridiculous because in a European city they are far too large, because they look like overweight Porsche cars and because nobody needs a SUV with outrageous horsepower.

I hate to have to write this, but this needs to be a PSA: #NaNoWriMo is promoting a scam in their "Winner Goodies."

Do NOT sign up for Inkitt.

Go ahead and search "Inkitt scam" for at least a dozen reasons why.

They are predatory, they will take your first-pub rights, and they will profit off of you while giving you less exposure than you would get posting your whole damn book on your own social media.

DO NOT DO IT.