Responding Just In Time - Or Just Not At All

I have a habit...one might call it a penchant...for responding in various forums in a manner that has been falsely described as necro-ing and ghosting.

Essentially, if I read something a few days (and sometimes longer) after something is posted, and if I see something worth putting in my two cents, then my response will neccesarily appear a few days (and sometimes longer) after the item was initially being bandied about.  The inappropriate allegation is that I am necro-ing the topic in that I am creating interest in something long after it is "dead".

Alternatively, I might be in the middle of a conversation and decide not to respond to my interlocutors' rejoinders.  The cool kids call this "ghosting".

I offer the following for the few that complain about such things.

- It's usually a good idea to let ideas rest for a moment before responding.  There are times where giving myself some additional time to think about something either leads to a better response or sometimes see that all that needs to be said has been said.

- When responding to a conversation, there are times when it becomes clear that the discussion is going south pretty quickly.  It is headed into an area where name-calling is the least of the bad outcomes.  When I see the trainwreck coming, I try to step away from the tracks.

- There are people that are not worth engaging with for various reasons.  Sometimes they clearly aren't open to anything that might modify their perspective.  Sometimes their Overton window is broken.  There are other reasons.  It generally takes quite a few interactions before I decided not to respond to an individual.  And I generally will try again with the same individual on another topic at some point down the road.  It takes a lot of effort on their part for me to plonk someone.

- I have other tasks to accomplish in my life.  I work 40+ hours a week at a job.  I enjoy the company of my beloved bride.  And our kids.  And our grandchildren.  I make quilts.  I read quite a bit.  I help care for my elderly family members.  Life is full and life is good (mostly).

- Sometimes life isn't good.  I had to spend a couple hours helping a family member clear some downed trees that had fallen on their house recently.  I also spent a couple hours retrieving someone that had literally lost their way while driving home.  Getting old sucks.

At the end of the day, I comment and correspond when I have the interest, something useful to add, an interesting interlocutor, and the time.  In this, I have deep sympathy for George R.R. Martin.  Unless someone is paying my bills, they have no right to demand that I respond on their schedule.  Even then, I still have a choice and my interlocutor's desires are not determinative of that decision.  It is, at the very least, rude of someone to behave otherwise.

Rules For Life - Mr. Marvez Edition

Monique Marvez is a comedian.  For a time she had a weekend show on KFI out of Los Angeles that was distributed on the iHeart radio/streaming network.  I picked up the show as a podcast and was routinely impressed by her ability to switch between humor and commentary at a moment's notice and never really undermine her topic.

In fact, I think it made her perspective more persuasive.

She had a number of "rules for life" that she repeated quite frequently.  I started making a list.  And then her show left KFI and went out into podcast-land where the tone and presentation all changed.  

I still listen from time to time, but the radio show was really a better format for her.

Her abbreviated "rules for life" are:

1. You don't have to tell the fat kid that they are fat.  They know.
2. When the village idiot gives you their best ball of string, you take it and you say "thank you".
3. If you are the intellectual superior in any relationship, it is your obligation to see that it goes well.

And then there are the supplementals:

• Retail is detail.  
• You are always selling something, even if it's only yourself.

Sound advice.

An Offer Of Violence

The coarsening of our culture continues apace.  That includes within the SF/F genre.  

A little while back there were legitimate questions raised about a conservative-leaning author making a thinly (very thinly it turned out) veiled reference to tossing communists out of helicopters.  It raised a stink.

Seriously, I think we should do the media next. Put the fear of Americans into them.

Saint Augusto bless us.

Anyone has helicopters?

To be clear, it should raise a stink.  I had initially pushed back a bit in part because I was unfamiliar with the reference to Pinochet's army tossing communists out of helicopters.  I remain steadfastly opposed to patent threats of violence.

Parenthetically, I'm also opposed to the tactic of miscategorizing dissenting speech as "violence".

The latest example of casually threatening speech come courtesy of Steve Davidson.  Mr. Davidson is an editor of the Amazing Stories Anthology series and is significantly involved* with the company that owns the trademark to "Amazing Stories".

Via his Facebook page, Mr. Davidson offered the following bit of authoritarianism.

sorry, but I have to say it, even if I get banned because of it:

Yesterday, member's of the Idiots Party - also known as Republicans" conducted a mass march protest through the Capitol to register their displeasure with the new mask mandate.

That action, by "elected leaders" makes me start to believe that that "Eugenics" thing Hitler was promoting might not be an entirely bad idea...maybe its even a good idea that's been tainted by bad history.

Hardly anyone would object to isolating someone with, say, smallpox, and apparently, a fair number of people in this country are infected with mental smallpox.  We ought to have the means to protect ourselves from them - and the sooner we get rid of them and stop them from indiscriminately breeding all over the place, the better off we'll be.

Yeah, sure, some innocents will get sweapt up in the purge, some will not actualy deserve that fate but, you know what they say about making omelets - cracking a few eggs is mandatory.

Eugenics, exposure on a hillside (presuming we've not exterminated the local wolf population), putting them on an ice floe, summary execution - these are all becoming more and more reasonable solutions, the deeper down this rabbit hole we go.

A veil that thin on a model would move the photographs from a fashion magazine into Playboy territory pretty quickly.  Opining that Hitler might have had a good idea is never a good look.  Or at least, it shouldn't be.  

Comments wandered into approval of using flamethrowers and other bits of nastiness.

Given the modern cultural penchant for black-holing gross behavior, I offer the screenshots, below.  

Unabashedly offering violence to people due to differences of political opinion ought to be something that earns widespread concern and rebuke.

Make no mistake.  This is about a difference of political opinion.  Should the state be authorized to send rough, armed men to your door, hold you down, and inject something into your body; in particular an experimental vaccine?  I think not.

Mr. Davidson's commentary reflects a mindset that is inappropriate for governing a free people.  At the very least, someone ought to offer him tea.

Paraphrasing Mrs. Hoyt, one hundred million eggs and still no omelet.

For some perspective, I have taken the Pfizer vaccine.  The net risk made it a no-brainer for me.  I respect that other people have different risk levels that may cause them to make a different decision.  I also made cloth masks for myself, my family, and several healthcare companies early on in the pandemic.  I now have N95 masks for those rare occasions where such a thing is warranted.  I am much less inclined to go to a cloth mask as our knowledge about the efficacy of them has been evolving; regrettably downward.

And no.  I don't trust the CDC nor the FDA further than I can throw them.

A modest postscript.  Mr. Davidson bought a 30-day restriction from Facebook for the post documented above.  I found the post above well after he became aware of that restriction.  At some point in the last 24 hours, he has either deleted that post or restricted access to something less than "general public".  If he decided to delete it, then he has made the world a slightly better place.

*I looked.  I couldn't find a clear definition of the relationship.  So...vague on purpose!