"April is the crunchiest month," John Scalzi wailed happily. My theory is that, just as hormones cause young people to be chronically crushed "in love," they cause middle-aged people to be chronically crunching for time...and basically, even as we wail, happy about it.
This week I crunched for time to finish a series of reviews of books publishers rejected for good and sufficient reasons, and the authors stubbornly chose to self-publish. While these books were more substantial and interesting than Book Funnel's frivolous fiction, they included things that just didn't work. I don't know...this 'zine sent me these books because somebody liked my reviews, then said they wouldn't be sending me any more because I tried too hard to be fair and encourage the writers of these badly flawed books. So what's the lesson to be learned? That when people pay well for series of reviews, what they have in mind are books nobody wants to review, because they're good enough in some ways that reviewers want to encourage the writers, but in other ways they're dreadful books?
Maybe. I think the essential thing to be learned here, though, is that even though "gig" jobs aren't as secure as "employment" jobs, "gig" jobs are better. If people pay for individual pieces of writing they can compare two or three reviews of one hard-to-review book and pick the one they like, rather than recruiting and then rejecting writers as writers. I'd rather get $5 for 500 words about a book I can only give a very mixed review, and work with the client on the final wording of the review, than get $50 on a stress-laden, pass-or-fail basis of "If we don't like your reviews of these unreviewable books as much as we liked your reviews of those other, easy-to-recommend books, we'll stop sending you e-books and never buy anything you write again!" I think the clients were probably having a bad day, but they've also chosen an unrealistic publishing plan. Treating writers as employees is bad for the writers and for the clients. Everyone has a different bookkeeping system these days and, like most writers, I try to accommodate as many as possible, but people really need to understand that writing is inherently "piece work." Why go through the drama of "We want to hire you...we want to fire you" when you can simply say "I like this one, I want to change something about that one, I don't like that other piece at all"?
And in the specific context of book reviews...How do you readers feel? When you've written something that expresses something you believe, but know that others don't believe or even accept, is it easier for you to receive criticism in the form of "The image of the main character killing his best friend as an act of love is unacceptable" or "I'm uncomfortable with the image of the main character killing his best friend as an act of love"? I'm willing to phrase that kind of thing whichever way a paying editor wants it, but I know why I wrote it as I did. For me, the shift into first person would make the criticism easier to take. Is this just a generational thing? Do older or younger people feel differently? Are some writers so hypersensitive about their brain-children that any criticism at all just hurts hurts HURTS?
Anyway, this month I'm reviewing e-books from the Kindle file, which contains a higher proportion of substantial, full-length books than the Book Funnel file, although copies of some of the same books have been sent to both. There will be some more reviews of romances, but the calendar is filling in with nonfiction and fictional presentations of facts, too.
Animals
Moths flying early in England:
Book News
Youall should know that a new collection of poems by Mary Oliver will be in stores this month, and Emily Dana Botrous is bringing out a new novel that's not set in the Blue Ridge Mountains. While I hope to review that one here, I'm really looking forward to reviews from Midwestern readers who can tell us whether Botrous portrays an Iowa town as brilliantly as she's done with fictional Claywood, Virginia.
Censorship
Both Europe and China need to have it made absolutely clear to them: If the Internet is going to survive, expensive as it is--much less become useful enough to repay its investors--it's going to have to be run by a very strict interpretation of the US Constitution that allows no reinterpretation of the concept of "freedom of the press." All people are equal (even if some people are more popular, and others can pay for more luxuries, than others). Civil servants can see, or block, content on the same terms anyone else can; people posting content must know whether their content is legitimately visible to one person or to the whole online world. No exceptions. No excuses. The default setting for social media posts is visible to the world, but if people are told a "chat" is private, spying on it without a warrant should be prosecuted as a crime. Government employees must be allowed to interfere with private citizens' use of the Internet only after convincing a magistrate, who is paid to be skeptical about these things, that interference not only "might" prevent a hypothetical crime but is in fact intended to prosecute an actual crime. None of this "But but but censorship might prevent a crime that would be heinous enough to justify censorship." No. Nothing doing. Censorship is evil in itself and must never be authorized without a warrant based in the prosecution of a crime that has actually been committed. If a national government can't agree to that, not only should that country be blocked from a viable Internet, but public information about that country should clearly state that it's blocked from the Internet because it is not a democracy and has demonstrated attempts to meddle undemocratically in the domestic policies of democratically elected, constitutional, representative governments.
We must never allow anyone to forget the lesson of the Censorship Riot of January 6, 2021: Censorship has actually made direct contributions to violent crime. We should consider correcting anyone who babbles about that event as "the insurrection": "You mean the Censorship Riot?" Make that the official name of the event. Brand it into people's memories. Allowing people to confess to criminal intentions has been shown to prevent crime, specifically on social media, specifically on Facebook...and censorship has contributed to a riot in which human lives were lost. Censorship can kill people.
Empathy Meme
Found at Golch Central and shared for real-world friends and e-friends...you know who you are. M., J., V., F, L., H., all who are watching the green grass and flowers of springtime on fresh graves...this web site endeavors to comply with the instruction below:
Funny
It's been a few months since I've posted a link to Tom Cox's blog or Substack. Since that time this web site has acquired some new readers, not all of them even in Singapore. Here, for the sincere and well-behaved readers from Book Funnel, is a sample from a very witty, multitalented British author who deserves to be better known in the US.
Local
Does anyone seriously believe that Sasquatch, the legendary giant apes of the Pacific Coast, still exist somewhere in the coastal forest? Does anyone seriously believe that they exist...here? Local lurkers undoubtedly know that a statue paying tribute to Sasquatch stories as attracting tourists has been placed on the High Knob trail to Benge's Rock.
And like all good conservative Virginians I have said "Bah!", for as we all know, the attraction of Benge's Rock is the actual historical event of a duel in which Hobbs, the virtuous Gate City man (or at least his family live in and near what became Gate City), killed Benge, the serial murderer, terrorist, and Scotch-Shawnee crossbreed whose misidentification as Cherokee, based on his mother's employment as a domestic servant in a Cherokee family, provided the excuse for the war Europeans and Easterners wanted to declare on the Cherokee Nation. Benge was a vicious little red-haired son-of-a-bachelor who needed killing so the big, updated, US flag over Benge's Rock is an attraction commemorating an event worth celebrating. Well, actually, hiking up the trail to the rock is a feat worth celebrating, and gives us some sense of the fortitude both Hobbs and Benge displayed, and also gives us a reliable indicator of our cardiovascular condition, but being Virginians we prefer to talk about the history while using the climb to assess our need for private conversations with doctors. Why would anyone want to import a Pacific Coast urban legend when we have that?
Because, although Benge's terror campaign (into which he recruited some followers who really were Cherokee) was the big historical event in the Point of Virginia in the eighteenth century, twenty-first century tourists don't seem to find it all that interesting. Aside from their having been educated to think that serial murderers might have some sort of reasons for what they did, twenty-first century tourists seem just to think that the eighteenth century was a long time ago. Whereas a chance to see "Bigfoot" now is, to them, interesting. And now, if they climb the High Knob, it's absolutely guaranteed that they'll see a giant ape...statue, anyway. There may or may not be any other kind.
As regular readers of this web site know, regular readers of Priscilla Bird's Blogspot, HowToMeowInYiddish, have been having a wonderful time reading PBird's very avant-garde, free-form, speculative fiction, which sometimes features Sasquatch (and the blog always features beautiful Pacific Northwest and Western landscape photos). As research for the fiction, PBird follows David Paulides' "Missing 411" video series, which discusses the facts behind legends both about real people who disappeared in the woods and about animals that may or may not have been seen--or heard, or the source of rocks thrown at people--in the woods, all across North America.
Paulides isn't local, doesn't sound local, doesn't often discuss local history (and, when he discussed a Gate City story, overlooked what my elders and I see as the obvious explanation), and doesn't often visit this part of the world. But he seems to be a nice guy, he always signs off with a statement in favor of niceness and kindness, he seems more concerned about the people who miss the Missing Persons than about merely thrilling teenagers with scary stories, and he's planning to visit Gatlinburg this spring.
I'm mentioning Paulides here partly because he and his fans are concerned about whether his You Tube channel is getting censorship, sabotage by rival Sasq-watchers, or ordinary Googlitches. His channel is popular. The blogs and fora on which people repost his videos are popular. Disqus and some other Google sites simply run into glitches when a site is too popular--when hundreds of views and comments clutter the web page. So is that why some of Paulides' many followers are being dumped by the system, or not receiving notifications of his posts? I think so. I doubt that You Tube is trying to censor Paulides, unless someone is deliberately pushing people who've listened to some of his posts but are not his followers into a virtual ghetto, because You Tube almost always displays links to his videos in its suggestions for me.
Nothing in Paulides' videos that I've ever heard needed to be censored. I think he identifies as a conservative, but his videos stick to his niche, which is fun facts in his category of history, and don't go into politics. All the deviations from his topic I've heard were about the benefits of niceness, the benefits of commonsense safety plans when hiking, and the cuteness of his dog. Then again I don't think anything I posted on Twitter needed to be censored, either.
Want to meet the man? Want to meet "Sasquatch could be moving east" tourist-bait followers?
Music
Another post about visiting graves as a spring custom...with a pretty picture and instrumental tune to match.
Politics (Election 2024)
I didn't actually watch this. The headline is what I wanted to share. Yes, the idea of Trump developing the Christian virtue of humility was strictly an April Fool joke...
Technology
The current excuse for the Unsatisfactory Toshiba's throwing fits is Microsoft Edge. I used to use Edge for some things; there are sites that run best in it. I stopped using Edge because the computer kept reporting Edge as the origin of unwanted input that was sabotaging Chrome and Firefox, in which other sites run better. For a few weeks just unplugging Edge made everything else sooo much better. Now Microsoft keeps trying to reconnect Edge. I keep having to go into the Task Manager and disconnect efforts to revive a browser that I shut down for a reason.
Attention techies: If computers are going to be more than toys for the overprivileged, you must restore respect for the sovereignty of the Computer Owner. The primary task of all web sites must be to avoid interfering with any computer's efficient response to its Owner's commands. No pops. No bounces. No redirects. No retries. No run-around. No "updates." No "But how are people going to know how fantastic this gadget is if we don't shove it onto their computers, without their permission, and then, if they ever use it, start trying to put it on a monthly subscription plan." The Owner's computer is what it is. You must deal with that.
If you want computers to repeat any kind of messages about the environment, pollution, toxic waste, "climate change," or anything else that a responsible adult of good will would ever pay any attention to, you need to stop thinking of computers as things people want to replace every year. In fact you want to start restoring computers people threw away in 1980, allowing no component to be waste. Understand that the last computer anyone bought is, at least until "The Economy" has completely corrected not only the COVID panic disaster but the slow down-trend we've seen since the 1990s, the last computer person should ever buy. It's not a marketing success if one person buys two computers in a lifetime, it's a construction and/or service failure. People who take environmental concerns seriously feel a bit ashamed of using computers, if we do, and efforts to sell more devices through obsolescence only aggravate the embarrassment we feel about using one at all.
Environmental responsibility means that most people should never need anything that connects to the Internet in their homes. Computers are least harmful when most of them are located in public computer centers, which should not be crowded into libraries but should be separate, privately owned businesses. Only people who are using computers to earn money, which by definition means people who cannot be asked to use computers to spend money so just put that out of your minds, should actually buy computers. Whether computers are shared by only one or two households or by whole neighborhoods, tech companies should maintain the same devices for the lifetime of the Internet.
That means you need to stop scrambling for "innovation." When the itchy little boys in the office think of a new widget that's likely to change the way people relate to their devices, they need to be shut into dimly lighted rooms with pencils and yellow pads, and required to write "My job is to maintain the services Computer Owners are using" five thousand times. Yesterday Google interrupted what I was doing to show me a new stupid doodle on the browser bar. Do not allow this. The polite way to test a new widget, making sure it in no way interferes with the efficient, transparent, unvarying operation of a computer that does not belong to young Cleverstick, is to display it at your site and wait for people to try it there and decide whether they want to add it to their sites. Also, the way to label buttons is to replace all the stupid doodles with words, which helps people learn the appropriate language/
"Continually updating the security codes for devices connected to the Internet" is all very well, provided that those updates never affect devices people are using. If the Internet is going to be part of the way people do business, any delay in the efficient execution of Computer Owners' commands needs to be recognized as theft. Tech services must not be allowed an eye-blink of delay between the Owner's typing "t" and the "t" appearing in the proper place on the screen. Any delay in a computer's response needs to be reported to the FCC, and the offending site needs to be blocked from making sales or receiving payments, though held responsible for providing continuing services, until the victim of the delay has received compensation for this theft of computer time.
Last week someone offered to pay me to download an app that didn't work and had to be uninstalled. And why did it not work? Because of course one of the first things sensible people do when we set up a computer is to find and disable any "camera" apps that could be exploited by apps, such as this one turned out to be, that attempt to give someone else a view of the person operating the computer. If computers are used in places that are not hermetically sealed and maintained with a constant temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity of 20 percent, they are going to be used by people who may be wearing only shorts, or nothing at all. They must be made unable to show any pathological snoopers which. The app was programmed to exploit a camera program on my computer, so of course it didn't work. The company offering payment to people who downloaded the app didn't say that the app could be used to take pictures of people. We need a federal law about this. Women, especially, if we like computers at all, like the way they force people with whom we converse to pay attention to our words rather than staring at us, so the price for a camera app is not going to start at anything like ten dollars a week. It needs to include the price of 24/7 security for the lifetime of the Internet, theft insurance for everything we own, and a cash allowance of, say, five thousand a month, sufficient to maintain a room and wardrobe in "Rich Kids of Instagram" style. And proof that the app completely pixellates anything that could be a face or body shape...the eyeballers get to see the colors and stitch details of stylish clothes in the stylish chair, but no clear outlines of a person wearing them. Any idea a person could get of the size, age, race, sex, medical condition, etc., of a Computer Owner needs to be a falsified idea. Any camera app I consent to use needs to be set up to show my face and hands looking like my avatar, the cat picture.
Of course, all this updating and downloading puts a drain on computers' memory...and that needs to be addressed by federal law. Digital memory needs to be contained on physical devices that belong to the Computer Owners, and those devices need to be built to last their lifetime. A receipt for the purchase of e.g. a Toshiba computer should guarantee the bearer a working Toshiba computer. Forever. Not a replacement computer, either. A few parts may be replaceable (I tend to go through keyboards) but the same computer, with the same serial number and a record of everything it's done since 1989 or whenever, should be maintained for a minimum of 100 years. I now see e-friends' photos of their offices (and pets) with a half-dozen computers set up side by side. I've accumulated so many devices, each with its own assets and liabilities, I've caught myself thinking of ways to fit two desktop and two laptop computers on my desk...This madness needs to stop. If tech companies want to maintain "Energy Star" ratings and display "environmentally conscious" messages, the messages need to begin with "One computer is all anyone will ever need."
Suggestion for this week: When you see anything about "Earth Day," "going Green," "Energy Stars," electric cars, etc/, online, post a comment about its being hypocritical for tech companies to make Green noises until they're marketing "One Computer Per Century, 1980-2080."
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