10-01-2025, 06:47 AM
Speaking for myself, I do write (poetry) on contemporary topics, but I'm a bit on the old/conservative side and it's seldom appreciated here unless I really spill my guts in it. (This is the fallacy of authenticity where only feelz substantiate truth.)
There's a certain "market" for nonsense and near-nonsense - it's diverting, and everyone needs that.
Back to contemporary issues (and history, of which they are, of course, a part, we just don't know it yet) - my issue is not with social media but with The Frame, as I've called it, the band of ads that surrounds for-profit (or not-for-profit-but-here-are-our-beloved-sponsors-and-their-wares) content. Notice how your flat-screen keeps getting bigger but the content in the middle doesn't? The other form of The Frame is what's also called the Overton Window - what's allowed to be said and shown versus filtered as beyond the pale. For example, it was formerly as forbidden to question "trans" formulas as it is (still) to question doctrinaire feminism or, shall we say, gayety. To be prickly and touchy all at once: grumpy, aggressive hedgehogs, and not even cute.
This site, it will be noted, is without the advertising frame. And - for the most part - the Overton frame as well. It does have rules, but they're minimal and mostly just good sense. Labors of love can be like that.
Envy aside, we also evade the publish-or-perish problem which increasingly bedevils science. Where citations=truth, Gresham's Law reigns; AI and LLMs maximize the worst. A subject that deserves a (good) hand-crafted poem.
There's a certain "market" for nonsense and near-nonsense - it's diverting, and everyone needs that.
Back to contemporary issues (and history, of which they are, of course, a part, we just don't know it yet) - my issue is not with social media but with The Frame, as I've called it, the band of ads that surrounds for-profit (or not-for-profit-but-here-are-our-beloved-sponsors-and-their-wares) content. Notice how your flat-screen keeps getting bigger but the content in the middle doesn't? The other form of The Frame is what's also called the Overton Window - what's allowed to be said and shown versus filtered as beyond the pale. For example, it was formerly as forbidden to question "trans" formulas as it is (still) to question doctrinaire feminism or, shall we say, gayety. To be prickly and touchy all at once: grumpy, aggressive hedgehogs, and not even cute.
This site, it will be noted, is without the advertising frame. And - for the most part - the Overton frame as well. It does have rules, but they're minimal and mostly just good sense. Labors of love can be like that.
Envy aside, we also evade the publish-or-perish problem which increasingly bedevils science. Where citations=truth, Gresham's Law reigns; AI and LLMs maximize the worst. A subject that deserves a (good) hand-crafted poem.
Non-practicing atheist