Contest entry, rejected
Imprisoned in ant-farm condos, the wild is walled away. Trees march between us in nice even rows. Aliens descend weekly to lop the heads off all our dandelions, speaking lovely liquid Português. We cannot have flowers or paint our doors red. I bet the aliens can.
Gates constrain us, curbing channels us, our parking spaces are assigned. Separated by common landings, we nod politely, never speaking. Nightly garbage walks are furtive lest, caught unawares, we meet.
(more…)
Let me preface this by saying: I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m not.
I’m relatively new to Crypto, though not to computers, currency, the collectibles market, or economics. I’ve understood basic blockchain theory for years, and simply opted to not participate. True wealth, after all, is independent of which coin one uses.
(more…) A friend of mine took me aside not long ago. ”John, I’m worried,” he said.
He proceeded to point out several things that I myself am compelled to acknowledge are classic warning signs. After the success of my experiment, I’ve subscribed long-term to the controversial Blue Check over at Twi… X… at TwiX. I’ve since posted a link for DogeCoin tips in my bio. I’ve now got a crypto wallet and I’ve begun speculating at RobinHood.
“Are you still even a writer?” he asked me.
(more…)
Early this morning, all six primary voters in Dixville Notch voted for Nikki Haley.
Yes, today is the New Hampshire primary, and it’s gonna be a strange one. For one thing, the current frontrunner and sitting president isn’t even on the ballot, thanks to the DNC picking a fight with the state over its “first in the nation” law. For another, it’s open to everyone, even if they’re not registered party members. It’ll be tough to call.
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EDITORIAL
Dates have different meanings to different people. The sixth of January 2024 is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Earl Scruggs, the man who reinvented the banjo and, with help from his musical friends, created modern bluegrass music.
But most of us are, perhaps strangely, more concerned with the riot at the Capitol in 2021, an event that actually changed nothing whatsoever. In a hundred years, any importance we now attach to it will be considered inexplicable. Much sooner, a generation will graduate from college that neither remembers it nor cares.
But was it important? What’s the actual truth of the matter?
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Lots of people disapprove of sending military aid to Israel, and there are a million different reasons. Some support Hamas, believe it or not. Others are anti-Hamas and pro-Palestine; they want to avoid civilian deaths, and who can blame them? And then there are a few who just don’t want to spend the money — and, again, that makes sense.
For those who just want to slaughter Jews, I have nothing for you. You’re a waste of human flesh and I sincerely hope bad things happen to you for the rest of your hopefully brief life.
For everyone else, I have a story.
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Once you’ve finished your story’s first draft, your job is to go back and throw away most of what you’ve written. If you’re lucky (or very good), you won’t need to discard quite so much. Some very few extremely gifted authors could begin at the beginning, write until the end, and then do only a very little polishing.
I am not one of these people, and neither are you.
(more…)“People these days are either completely apathetic or they’re so full of rage that they can’t think!”
You say this like it’s a bad thing. If you make people think, that’s uncomfortable. When you ask questions, you make them reconsider their hard-won certainties. Which in academia or politics is a good thing.
In life, it’s not.
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EDITORIAL
The amount of propaganda being spread in this war is appalling. That people choose to believe it without confirmation just because it happens to agree with their own biases… arguably that’s worse.
There exists an anti-American propaganda account on TwiX today that generates millions of hits by celebrating military atrocities committed by Russia, acts of terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah, and civilian casualties of war. On it, corpse porn is reposted every fifteen minutes in order to generate profitable ad-share, subscriptions, and donations. It is too big to be toppled by the Community Notes mechanism.
Mind you, it’s unreasonable to blame the platform. Virtually every other social media organization permits the same thing in the name of free speech.
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(If you’re new to the Great TwiX Experiment, click here for Week 1.)
Yes, it’s closing rapidly on the fifth of November. No, the title isn’t a “V For Vendetta” reference. Woulda been cool if it was, though.
Right, so: Where were we?
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The Not Fake News 
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