Monday, August 7, 2023

Web Log 8.6.23

Censorship 

Yes. Congress actually needs to dare to oppose "anti-hatespeech legislation" and proclaim that they're pro-hatespeech--in the sense of letting haters out themselves so that others can keep an eye on them. And the corporations need to know up front...a censored web site is a dead web site. A censored Internet will be a dead Internet. If they want to use the Internet as a marketing tool, they're going to have to use it in a very respectful, very democratic manner. Because people put up with TV commercials because, and as long as, TV was free to use--and even then most people I know didn't buy a set. Put TV on a pay-per-month cable-network basis, and an amazing number of lifelong TV watchers suddenly notice that they have 500 channels and nothing on. Those people aren't going to pay for Internet connections if the Internet experience is remotely like television, either. 

We all have to wipe out of our head all this nonsense about "gatekeepers" of information. We have to remember that, yes, a glossy magazine always did make a different statement about the type of content it contained than a hand-typed leaflet did...and that some of us always were more inclined to trust, or at least less inclined to distrust, the leaflet. So we could have, as we've had for a long time, an Internet where some sites--like the official sites for CNN and MSNBC--presented exactly the same content the TV did, and occasionally some people clicked on them; and other sites--like the original Twitter, which was a good thing and should have been preserved by federal law before the first whines for censorship were heard--were free for anybody to say anything (and take responsibility for it), and people left those sites up in a tab all the time. We could maintain that status quo for as long as it takes the corporations to wrap their heads around the fact that nobody has ever trusted, much less wanted or needed, any "gatekeepers" other than their own. A censored Internet is going to lose money. Original Twitter just kept growing. Twitter-with-censorship lost money...and will lose more unless they bring back free speech, pay damages to people who've been censored, and take responsibility for making sure that even genuinely criminal "speech" is free to be traced and legally punished on Twitter forevermore.

Y'know, I saw a video last week where a pimple-voiced troll hiding behind his cell phone sneered at an older gentleman's saying he supported feminism. Sneered. Somewhere out there is a wormboy who thinks it's smart to suggest that, in this age and time, men might be considered more valuable than women. Can you imagine? Is that fact so "hurtful" that it needs to be hushed up so that this snotboy can possibly get a responsible job in which he might be able to use his position to harm women? Of course not! We want to know all about hater-baby. We want his sneers to go viral! We want every woman on Earth to know who he is, so that (1) any sexual activity in his future won't involve women, (2) any paid employment in his future will be solitary and anonymous work deep in a pit, (3) nobody will rent or sell him a house...By all means, woman-hating males need to out themselves before anybody provides them transgender surgery...or the lifesaving kind, either. So do racist haters. So do the enemies of humanity who want a global socialist government. 

We don't want more hatespeech in this world. We do want the hatespeech that exists in this world to be unfiltered...in order to reduce the amount of hate. 


Of course there are limits to everything. By now the news headlines are tending to confirm the claim that corrupt federal employees whined for censorship of Jack Dorsey's Twitter even more than the corrupt corporations did. Of course, if someone is saying "As an employee of the federal government I want to censor all speech in support of the party that might reduce funding to my department," that news certainly ought not to be censored. That's the kind of thing people need to know. But the federal government needs to be prepared for purges of employees who engage in such despicable, un-American activities. "He attempted to sneak cnesorship into the U.S. government" should be at least as much a bar to any future employment as "He embezzled money from the office." Considering that all federal employees, even clerks, swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution, one is as dishonest as the other.

Food (Yuck) 

Seriously? Seriosly. 



Pesticides 

Keep in mind that the EPA has been anything but cooperative, much less proactive, in recognizing claims of "pesticide harm": 


Poetry 

I laughed.


"Any man can be a father, but only some can be Dads."


Zazzle 

I remembered having designed a few "Save the Butterflies" blankets...yes! I was delighted, having given the memory of putting these pictures together time to fade, to see how pretty they are. Type "blanket save the butterflies" into the search bar on Zazzle to see them all. This is Tennessee's Zebra Swallowtail. There's a Tiger Swallowtail, a Monarch, and a Diana Fritillary blanket too. If you want one for your State, I'll do one. There is also the option of having these pictures printed, either on cuddly but shrinkprone fleece or on cotton, and quilted, if you want to pay for that. 


I don't know. While doing the research for this week's butterfly I saw where somebody had attempted to replicate the look of a rare butterfly in beadwork. Anything beaded can be knitted but I prefer to look at photos of butterflies the way God made them, rather than lame-brained human...Youall may feel differently. If you do, let me know. I think the fad for pictorial knitting with either yarn or beads is over, but it would certainly be possible to knit, or embroider, or bead-weave butterfly pictures. I can chart them and find colors, if anyone wants kits.

Meanwhile, because I like Zazzle's idea of paying designers to sell each other's designs, here's someone else's butterfly-motif blanket:


Shirt, mine, with the picture on the back:


Shirt, not mine, with the picture on the back: 

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