Mad Poet Files

Open Letter to YouTube

I sent this to YouTube this morning via their Feedback feature: To whom it may concern, Over the course of the last few months, I have become increasingly concerned regarding certain editorial and business decisions that have been made by YouTube and its parent company. More and more, it seems

culture

Who Gets Your Attention?

Once someone tells you that they hate you, you don't give them money or support their work. You don't owe them that. When someone indicates that they think you're evil, you don't have to listen to their podcasts or watch their YouTube videos or support their Kickstarters or Patreons.

culture

The Safest Hands...

If your measure of evil says a mild-mannered Canadian psychologist who's studied fascism and speaks out against it regularly IS EQUIVALENT TO an ACTUAL Nazi, then one might suggest that your yardstick is off. Just a titch.

Getting Started

The Tweakening

So, a few weeks ago, in an earlier post, I mentioned how this is running on a self-hosted machine.... If you're curious, here's how it's currently set up.

culture

Head Canons

What, to me, was Star Wars?

culture

Watch Your Head

[A] culture that no longer values free speech as a cultural value will eventually lose sight of the reasons why speech is protected, and will inevitably then take steps to curtail and restrict speech.

Pressure and Interest

So a few days ago, I talked about that hideous pressure - the pressure that you release a little bit of when you get angry about something you've read online, and then you release a bit of your anger someplace else, and it gets you just a little bit of

That Hideous Pressure

One of the columnists I used to read quite a bit related a story about how he got into the business of column writing, and got the advice of someone who had been doing that for years. "How can I write a column twice a week?" was the question. How

culture

Engaging Writing

...When you’re writing, you always have at least an audience of one. And if you pay attention and let that person have a say, they are very good at calling you on your BS....

Social Media

Social (Media) Distancing

It's been about six weeks since I put up a post on Facebook that I was going to drastically reduce my participation on that site. And it's going pretty well. I hardly have the shakes any more. I should probably check my blood pressure, I'm sure that's gone down. I

Purpose

What's up with the new digs?

I have been growing increasingly alarmed at the direction of the country. I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of people have decided to give up talking to each other and trying to reach a consensus, and instead have elected to demonize people who disagree with them and

Hello World!

I should put some lorum ipsum text here, get really old school with it. This is a blank slate, a new place, because I'm out of practice, and it's time to get back on the stick.