Twenty-nine

One of the things that’s bothered the hell out of me the last couple of days is this video that the tech giants kind of at the same time banned.

Almost as if talking points were being sent to my reflexively anti-Trump connections in the cesspool that is Facebook posted something about how one of the speakers is some sort of witch doctor.

As I suspected, there’s stories like this peppered across the Intertubes.

Okay, this woman maybe isn’t on the level. Understood. But she’s got a right to say crazy shit, and people have the right to repeat her crazy shit.

You do the fact-check after you see the incorrect information. You don’t go and remove the crazy shit to protect viewers.

That’s not your job. You don’t get legal protections against liability for the crazy shit people post.

You don’t act as if it never was said because you think it was wrong.

Should every corporate media post about the fucking Steele Dossier be forever banned because it’s now becoming very clear that it even the FBI thought it was bullshit?

No.

It’s the corporate media outlet’s responsibility to fix things after it’s been discredited.

How would people feel if CloudFlare just decided that MSNBC publishes incorrect stuff?

No.

I understand the loathsome Josh Hawley’s urge to repeal §230 of the Communications Decency Act.

I’m not saying I agree with that urge, but I understand it.

Freedom means having to face bad things from time to time.

And this is where I’d say that I’m a horrible person for being in favor of freedom of speech.

Whatever.

From the cobweb-laced archives, not long after I was diagnosed with MS…


07/29/2009 – 7/29/2009

Oh, and I forgot part of what I was going to write about the difference between now and then…..

I still feel numb in some ways, but think I appreciate emotion more than I did then. Perhaps some of it is melodrama, but I think sometimes that’s okay. I never would have said that ten years ago. I admired stoicism, then when I achieved it, I was utterly unsatisfied. How the fuck did I not cry when I left radio? I came really damn close, then it went away. I didn’t cry at either of my grandmothers’ funerals. I didn’t cry on 9/11. I didn’t cry over being dumped.

I was just there. Sighing. Smoking. Just existing.

It’s a lot different now, and while I still am not fully on the roller coaster, there are more ups and downs. I do credit the love of my life for some of it. I smile and laugh more now. I have cried. I look at kids with wonderment; while I’m still not sure that I want any of my own, I’m less opposed to it now. I try to remember the ups and downs of being a kid, and miss the pure joy kids experience. May never find it again, but maybe I can take part in someone else’s? Maybe my young future wife’s? Maybe our kids if we have them?


I had no idea what was going to happen, how bad things would get.

But I’m still the same. (And I’m not much of a fan of his, but that song is incredible. It doesn’t have a chorus!)