Aid To Israel: The Romeo

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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On Writing: The Hook

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.

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I Don’t Care About Politics

“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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A Note On Gaza

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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Let’s Make Change Happen

Something I keep hearing, over and over: “My vote doesn’t matter!”

It’s either that or another similar message, like, They’re all bought and paid for anyway, or One person can’t change things, or even I’m too busy.

Nonsense! I’m writing today to tell you not only that change is possible, not only that you have the power to help, but exactly how you can do this.

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How To Succeed As A Writer: A Guide

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Dorothy Parker

To Begin With

I’ve been writing for over a decade, and I’ve been doing it full-time for nearly eight months. In all that time, I’ve earned a few thousand bucks — enough to complicate my income taxes, not enough to pay for my daily ramen and now weekly cup of coffee. If you hope to write for a living, either start off wealthy or be Stephen King.

But that’s not success.

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Gaza War Update

This is a simple account of what’s happening from as unbiased a perspective as we can manage. To see our biases, scroll to the bottom.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

Starting before dawn on 07 October 2023, militant forces led by Hamas invaded towns and villages in southern Israel, slaughtering civilians and abducting women, children, and foreigners as hostages. Paraglider troops deliberately targeted a music festival, at which location alone they killed, raped, and captured hundreds. They then returned to the Gaza Strip and celebrated it as a major victory.

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The Not Fake News Update, 06 October 2023

Welcome, welcome! Welcome one and all to the most recent of our Not Fake News Updates, if you’re keeping track of them as they go by. C’mon in, pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and get ready for some bits of news you might have missed while the 24-hour infotainment networks have been spewing distractions at you again.

Are you sitting comfortably? …Good. Then let’s begin!

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TwiX: The Experiment IV

(If you’re new to the Great TwiX Experiment, click here for Week 1.)

I’ve been on vacation for a couple of weeks, and these reports have lagged to the point where they’re no longer even close to weekly. I’d thought I could keep up with them easily, but life intervened, and I left my data behind at home.

So here instead we have an interim bulletin, complete with…
NEWS FLASH! Elon Musk now pays me to TwiX!

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