Conspirasissy

An awful lot of voices are raised in alarm these days, and that makes sense to me. There are wars, earthquakes, plagues, famine, and economic tough times, and they’re all stacking up a price that society will need to pay sooner rather than later. Our debt to our future keeps growing, and when it finally comes due, the day of reckoning will be painful indeed.

But that’s not people are alarmed about, curiously enough.

Judging by news coverage and the comments, there are two primary schools of thought about the recent train derailment in Ohio: first, that the government is concealing an orchestrated campaign of sabotage against our national infrastructure, and second, that the Powers That Be are using disasters and balloon alerts in order to distract us from the fact that we’re deploying combat troops in Somalia and hundreds of “military advisors” in Ukraine. Apparently, either we’re under attack from a powerful enemy or we’re about to invade somewhere in order to swing the next election.

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The Not Fake News Update, 20 February 2023

There was a massive earthquake on the Turkey-Syria Border, a huge rail spill in Ohio, and Russia is still invading Ukraine (or vice-versa, to hear Russia tell it). It’s a busy time in the news, and as is usual, if we pay too much attention to the top headlines we’re naturally going to miss a lot that’s going on outside of the immediate spotlight.

Enter the Update: Your source for news every couple of weeks, whether there’s anything to talk about or not!

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The Answer Is “Never”

Every time we have one of these highly-publicized mass-shooting events, or Heaven forfend another rampage killing, there’s always a sententious opinion piece on every news outlet asking “When will it end?”

And yes, the answer is “Never”. In Australia, a single event was enough to inspire the whole country to turn in their guns; New Zealand was similar. In the United States, we’ve had a dozen major shooting rampages, including in elementary schools, and public opinion is fiercely divided. It’s not too much of a stretch to conclude from this that the inevitable continued shootings will convince only scattered individuals while inspiring others to resist what they would term “government overreach”.

So let’s stop asking that particular question and move on to something a bit more proactive.

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Why Is Our Country Screwed Up?

Excerpts from the radio news:
…shooting of a jogger early this morning on a secluded beach in an apparently random attack…
…rioting following services which were held in memory of a man who died in police custody…
…who were apparently planning to fly to Syria and join the army of the Islamic State…
…make an arrest in killing of six, including baby…

Some things that happen are so terrible that you have to ask yourself, not just “Why?”, but “How could a human being even do that?” The statistics on violent crime in this country show a steady decline, but on the other hand, at any given point in time, nearly 3% of the adult population is either in jail, in prison, or under some form of correctional control (probation or parole). Because of the gender gap in prosecution and sentencing, that works out to one in eighteen adult males.

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Ghost Guns And Gun Control

Once again the world has changed on us, and policy, as usual, remains several steps behind.

One solid move made by the Biden Administration has been the recognition of gun kit manufacture as a loophole in crime weapons laws and its subsequent closure. Companies like Polymer80 have been selling build-it-yourself kits without serial number stamping or tracking; i.e. ghost guns* — and doing so legally. Several thousand Polymer80 kit guns have been identified as crime guns. It’s only recently that the rule to treat kits like these as legal pistols has gone through, and even then there are ways around it — such as the 3D printing of homemade, rather than factory-produced, ghost guns.

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The Not Fake News Update, 31 January 2023

Twitter Files releases are continuing, and as ever have gained neither traction nor even mention on major media outlets. Instead, headlines remain focused on the non-movement of battle lines in Ukraine, anticipation of yet another Trump investigation, shadowy and ill-defined power moves among party leadership in advance of next year’s presidential elections, and a few dozen people gathering in cities across the country to protest yet another brutal police killing of an unarmed suspect.

It’s quite curious: In the only newsworthy item on this list, the media focuses on what’s not happening rather than what is. One might almost suspect a pattern, if one weren’t already sufficiently well-acquainted with standard practices to actually know that such patterns are very real. Which brings us to our topic — a list of things that have been happening while the news has been reporting on other stuff.

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Abrams To Ukraine: Pros and Cons

(photo courtesy defense.gov)

There are general arguments with respect to whether the United States ought to be supplying Ukraine with weapons of war during their present conflict with Russia. Moral purists will even argue, and not without justification, that a proverbially free democracy like the U.S.A. should not be in the business of weapons supply at all, even with close allies. Libertarians say that it’s unreasonable to engage in any overseas warfare whatsoever for any reason but self defense. Finally, there are specific objections to permitting the Abrams to be deployed on any modern battlefield where the vital interests of the United States are not at issue.

Much of this can be simplified to the single question: Does the United States have any reason at all for involvement with the Ukraine war?

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How To Get Published: Use A System

In an earlier article, I supplied a list of publications to which a prospective writer of short genre fiction might submit their work. While that’s an invaluable resource, by itself it won’t get you far. In fact…

…but before I get started, let me give you some excellent second-hand advice:

“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
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Where To Submit

As a writer of genre fiction, I’m often asked advice on where best to submit work. The following list has been cobbled together using information posted on the websites for the several magazines. Special thanks are due to Austin Hackney of writingcooperative.com for providing the initial inspiration, as well as a few tips I would have missed otherwise.

The following list begins with sci-fi and fantasy, has a block of flash-only, horror and New Weird, two mystery mags, and closes with kids and literary publications. NO NEWS OR OP-ED PUBLICATIONS ARE INCLUDED. Only those publications that pay in cash rather than prestige made the list, since prestige contains zero nutritional value.

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What is it to be “Woke”?

Not long ago, I read a piece in Forbes advising white people to stop using the word “woke”, since to do so is an act of cultural appropriation. I could hardly have been more amazed. To think that a concept espoused by Diogenes and Socrates, the Golden Dawn, and the whole school of the Stoics could become the sole property of members of the unwilling African diaspora beggars belief. And yet, the writer, evidently well-educated, seemed completely sincere.

And so the question naturally arises: What is it to be “Woke”?

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