As everyone knows by now I speak weekly to My Friend From Fifth Grade and on Monday she sneered at me for saying that Biden's is the worst Administration since John Adams' regarding our Constitutional liberties because of its assault on free speech, and she wanted to know what it was that I felt I couldn't say, and I told her I write emails with extreme care because so many common expressions and phrases contain words and concepts the Big Eared Bureaucrats would sweep for.
And she kept sneering of course. This is a big-city girl with several degrees and yet again I thank God I never bothered to become more credentialed than having a HS diploma.
I lost my mom to Newsom's lockdowns, partly. She had dementia, and her husband (who is not my father... do they call him stepfather when they were married long after I was up and out?) had kept her alive when she would not feed herself (or submit to being fed) by bringing her McDonald's milkshakes, into which he would mix Ensure supplements. It was not much nutrition, but it was the only thing she would eat.
I guess he was hoping to get past the pandemic and find some people who were more willing to help. No one seemed to think anything but COVID mattered for a few years there. No one would do anything to help but her husband, not even the care facility staff.
And then Newsom put that to a stop.
Clearly, the dementia was the real cause of death, and Newsom just hastened it. Others were less lucky.
Newsom knew, or should have known, that lockdowns are not only unacceptable morally, constitutionally, and legally, but they are also extremely deadly. He signed the death warrants of a lot of innocent people with his callousness.
Cutting off society's most vulnerable people from their jobs, their businesses, their friends, their therapists, their group sessions, their social activities, all the things they do instead of dwelling on their mental issues or on their desire to have a drink or a fix, cut them off from their 12 step sponsors, their golf, bowling, movies, their just hanging out with supportive friends, and in the more tyrannical states, even any attempts at catching up on the "honey do" list to pass the time (Whitmer famously demanded Wal-Mart close off the sections of the store that were not "essential")... you cut that stuff off all at once, add a heavy dollop of stress, leaving nothing but time, boredom, and constant fear porn in the media, and what do you think will happen?
Even normal people were reporting high levels of depression and suicidal ideation they had never had before during the lockdowns. What did these people think it would do to those already struggling with mental illness or addiction? It has been proven that the death rate rises and falls in correlation with the unemployment rate, as stress takes its toll, and him and people like him made most people unemployed, on purpose. This was all known well in advance of the pandemic, when broad scale "quarantines" were considered and rejected by epidemiologists for all of these reasons, along with mask orders. It was well understood they would only make things worse.
The lockdowns killed scores of people and saved none. They were completely ineffective at their stated goal, and were deadly in their own right, just like the deadly and nearly completely ineffective vaccines.
Masks, of course, were also completely ineffective, and they have inflicted great damage too, and not a small amount of "mask mouth" and bacterial respiratory illnesses, but a lot of the unseen damage falls on children who missed out on seeing facial expressions and how the mouth moves for various words during some incredibly important developmental years. It's a great time to train to be a speech-language pathologist, I would say; you are going to have a bumper crop of kids who need help as they get older.
And now, of course, Whitmer and Newsom, who both tried to outdo one another to see who could kill more of their own constituents, are names some Democrats are proposing as replacements for Biden, now that his dementia can no longer be hidden from the public.
the damage was 💯 intentional harm. These "policies" were not ineffective; they had exactly the intended, anticipated effect. This is what we need to fully process. These weren't mistakes.
I knew it from the moment they were announced that the lockdowns were some kind of criminal insanity. Naively, however, I assumed professional journalists would be reporting on all the sure-to-ensue horrors. LOL, it's mid-2024, professional journalists who deserve the name, I can count them on one hand.
No words can undo what it has done to you, her and so many others of us. I still feel the pin pricks in hands and feet but I am alive to tell you about it.
Even being the only Catholic in my entire family wasn't bad enough for them to shun me but not getting one or more of the jabs has cut me off from several of them completely. They refuse to ever speak to me again.
Good. You are well rid of such tyrants and I suggest that when you cross paths with them at funerals or weddings, you freeze them out in the most obvious manner.
Just remember religion means nothing. In my family I'm the only one not actively practising Catholicism and I was extremely shunned for not taking the quakcine. We were not invited for certain family gatherings during Christmas(!) because we were unquakcinated with my wife.
Dear SCA- I am so sorry you lost your friend to the vax— I have one friend from 9th grade and I cherish our phone calls (we are at opposite ends of the country). And since my family moved 11 times in 12 years, she is a blessing and a unique part of my life.
Thank you. She was in the UK and was an instrumental blessing that led eventually to my greatest treasure.
This is why I tolerate the not-infrequent lunacies of the other. People who know your whole history, who've met your now-gone parents, who knew your senior citizen brother when he was just an annoying little kid, you don't let them go easily.
You are NOT alone. Against my advice, I have lost friends to that Warp Speed Vaxx. mRNA should have been a disqualifier for that concoction. And there are things that should never be done at Warp Speed!
She was a fragile transplant patient. When the vaxxes were rolled out here, and over there, she asked if I was going to take it and I said "no." But I didn't say anything further. How could I possibly advise her, an intelligent woman who had always advocated vigorously for herself, what would be the right thing in the circumstances of those days and with her multiple health conditions?
Well, it blew up that transplanted kidney and then took three more years to kill her. Man, if I had means of retribution in my own hands there'd be a lot of people removed forthwith from the gene pool.
We seem to be kindred spirits and have lived parallel existences. All I could do was offer my opinion and let them decide. In this matter it is my opinion that trump failed, mRNAs have a long troubled history, it was his responsibility to investigate the matter. When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.
My friend was in the UK. Anyone thinking of praising the NHS in my presence, they better hold their tongues. I'd rather not spend my tarnishing years in prison.
There is so much anguish created in the world from this that it's just beyond any describing. And yet there is no mass uprising across all the Western world to take down every bureaucrat and enabler whose hands have been in this, one way or another.
Until common cause is made by people from every part of society because the can't avoid seeing what was done, there will be no justice obtained. It's on us now.
To be fair, had the FDA done its job correctly, warp speed would not have turned out as badly as it has.
The goal was to develop a safe, effective vaccine at warp speed, but we got something that was, at best, an unfinished product.
It is the fear of liability that makes big pharma avoid releasing dangerous products, but when the government gives them a liability shield and approves the product for distribution, why would they spend another dime finishing the product and making it actually safe and effective? If you can make the money now, and if you are completely shielded from lawsuits, why spend the money?
According to Steve Kirsch, some of the most common Big Pharma claims about the testing of vaccines in the U.S. (not just the covid shots) are suddenly being admitted to being nothing more than gaslighting.
She voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and I have voted for neither but any time I remark that even people we despise deserve the fair administration of justice she screams that I'm a Trumper, and anytime I remark on something that she herself has not read or heard about she accuses me of getting that info from the Dark Web.
It seems you echo one of my Favorites: I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
I had to do that --several years before all this stuff-- when composing an e-mail reply to a parent. Often took the draft to others for criticism. How much time did that take? I could use up a whole 40 minute prep period on one stupid e-mail. That of course is snowflakery, not censorship, but they are not un-related.
It isn't the degrees, it is her lack of common sense but I get what you are saying. I had the same sad problem with a friend who does not have degrees. We have been friends since kindergarten and I was 4 years-old, another was a Godparent to one of my children. They learn on FB for whom you voted and suddenly they slam the door in your face.
It is a matter of attaining some maturity which is not often done in life before having walked through a lot of broken shards and learning from the scars. There's quite a lot of antique babies around these days.
Between the fact that some people will never mature regardless of age and the other... that young people rarely understand that those older than they just might have some wisdom, it is scary and it is why we're staring WWIII in the face. At age 18, a sophomore in college, I saw Jimmy Carter's lack of maturity on a TV debate and I knew at once that I would never vote for him. I have never been a liberal and with all my faults, common sense came with the package at birth. It is why I am the family scapegoat, LOL!
I have been that which was appropriate for every stage of life and I am grateful to have survived long enough to have gotten smarter because it is entirely normal to be an idiot when young.
I am certainly not a conservative and I am a strong supporter of the ideals of the Western Enlightenment. It is just the tragedy of human life on earth that history is a cycle and there is no permanent holding onto moments of time of unique wisdom.
Man oh man that was my mother. "All food in this house is 'good' food". She was really skilled at couture. Cooking? less of an interest. But did not go to bugs.
Once upon a time, they did, and well, yes. E.g. my grandfather, HC 1908, HLaw 1911. FYI, Mother's family totally Harvard educated from then--her brothers, their children. My eldest brother had his heart set on it. 1960, placed on waiting list. Father 20 yrs later told me he had been relieved, did not think his son had the stuff to resist the ideological-shaping of Harvard.
That was Haavaad (William F. Buckley style). Today it's Harvard. The only way to resist the ideology is to resist the elitist urge. In your grandfather's day it meant "I received a top-notch education". Now it means "I'm smarter than everyone else".
We, in western Mass, pronounced the rhotic r. Always Harvard--even my grandmother, Boston-born. Ironically, grandparents lived at 131 Harvard St from 1912 to 1972.
Yup. Total agreement. As my husband says to me—Yes, you were Mount Holyoke— when it still meant something (52 years ago). I stopped wearing that skin suit 15-20 years ago. As he did with the Amherst suit.
As an Amherst grad (husband here writing) I do not have much good to say about it. It went woke a long time ago to be ahead of the fashion. Great facilities and great reputation, but all left, all the time. There was once an alternative student newspaper which I supported, maybe in the 90s, but when the leaders graduated it died. The alumni magazine is all fashionable left, all the time.
Blown away that she actually said that!! And believes that the government alone only knows best about what is considered harmful information to the citizens! Why on earth ever have the first amendment in the first place with that sort of thinking? What does she think happened with free speech years ago before the internet?? The government never shut down what the people were saying, they just had to work harder to win the arguments and if they couldn’t then they had to concede they were wrong. People found ways to speak their truths without the internet and they weren’t censored the way they are today. Her logic is so faulty I can’t believe she’s a Supreme Court justice!
The fact that we have a Supreme Court Justice who thinks that it's a problem that the first amendment "hamstrings the government" shows how far we have fallen.
In my opinion a lot of this can be traced back the anti bullying/ hate crime stuff that was pushed on us. Should it matter whether you committed a crime against someone because you don’t like their race or gender? A crime is a crime, enforce the laws equally and it won’t matter. The anti bullying stuff got totally out of control. We’ve created a generation of people that wilt when someone looks at them wrong. That generation is now gaining control of government, law enforcement, and are becoming business leaders and as a result we are being led by people that have no coping skills at all.
Someone countered with that the first amendment should be allowed unless someone is telling lies. Except who determines who is lying? Sometimes lies are pretty simple to suss out. If someone says the sky is purple and its blue...they are lying...unless they are wearing rose colored sunglasses. Then, to their perception, the sky is purple. This isn't an empirical truth, but a subjective one. And who am I to say "hey you can't be seeing a purple sky because the sky is obviously blue."
There are so many ironies. The pandemic saw a constant attack on misinformation by traffickers of misinformation. And they love to play the game of misinformation by association. There's this one guy on twitter, his whole m.o. is pseudoscience. He picks up ridiculous pseudoscience stories early and often every day. Stuff about crystal and energy healing. It leaks out of him early and often.
But that's not the objective of his threads...but rather to then slip in a story about how being skeptical of experimental injections is also pseudoscience. And there are plenty following him that drink the Koolaid.
In a contest between freedom of speech and the truth freedom of speech wins. No need to figure out who determines the truth. Respect for the individual demands that outcome.
The only thing worse than a lie, is a half truth...therin The Truth is lost...because half truths create a hall of reflective mirrors on both walls...creating a situation where the public can no longer distinguish between the truth and a lie.
Half-truths are the easiest way to eliminate history by eliminating reference. A compass without true north creates a situation where people think the map is the territory...the map given to them by the subjugators.
Wish I could claim it as an original thought, but it’s actually a tweak of a quote attributed to Adm. Hyman Rickover; “Half-truths are like half a brick – they can be thrown farther.”
I’ve been using the line for decades, but in a personal context. I’m a recovering alcoholic (36 years, so far). The bedrock of 12-step recovery is honesty, and for about 20 years I spent a LOT of time in meetings. You can imagine that in a room full of addicts and alcoholics, a group arguably among the best liars on the planet, there are diverse opinions on the subject(!). I truly don’t recall if I read the quote and adapted it, or heard it from someone else. Whichever, it stuck with me, and I’ve passed it on countless times, especially with my kids when they went through the “fibbing” stage.
Not if you ask syrians. According to them, the turks nicked kefteh from syrians.
I'm sure somewhere a kurd or a yezhidi or a soghdian is going "Uhm actually.."
And swedish meatballs are nothing like kefteh - we use 50/50 mix of pork and cow, raw eggs, cream, no spices but salt and pepper, maybe finelly chopped yellow onions in the mix, maybe some powdered dry bread. Certainly not the same spices and seasonings they use in MENA.
Plus it's served with mashed potatoes (always add fat milk or cream while mashing, plus a knob of butter) or rutabag mash, or some combination of root vegetables (I like to add carrots and turnips), and lingonberry jam, pickled cucumbers (thinly sliced and pickled in a water, acetous acid, salt, vinegar, sugar-mix), and preferably a cream sauce made from the run-off from the skillet and diced champignons (think you called them Portobello?) stirred into the sauce while heating it.
And who has the right to take away my right to believe something false?? If I want to believe the sky is purple, leave me alone to believe it. That’s my inalienable right to choose what I want to believe. Just because information that isn’t true “could” hurt others doesn’t mean you don’t get the freedom to speak the lie. Big Pharma are the kings of THAT and they didn’t get censored and they hurt a LOT of people. We didn’t try to censor them when they lied, we tried to argue with them so the truth would surface. It always does. That’s how free speech works. Let the arguments be spoken!
Certainly "the sky is purple" is a mistruth. So is "I Identify as a fire engine." This whole idea of "living our truth" is ridiculous. Sure my "truth" could be that I am an A list movie star who recently dated an a-list actress.. The reality is quite a bit different, and could you imagine the laughter if I demanded other people align with my "living truth." .
As someone in a country whose government will soon implement the most draconian, dystopian and totalitarian speech laws - it's for own good, fighting "hate" and all that - ever implemented in the English speaking world, I can only say: fight for the 1st with everything you've got. You have it, don't lose it.
Heck, today I received a slap down from Facebook for sharing your substack on congressional hearings with the NIH from MAY. Two months later I am told I once again violated community standards and was propagating "spam" and they are restricting my account AGAIN. Clearly the elites think free speech has gone too far. Yet I will soldier on. 😉
By the way guys--a CNN pollster called me today and it was my very great pleasure to tell her that Biden has always been a mediocre piece of shit (I said pardon me for saying because she was a nice young woman) and nasty young men don't become nice old ones, and that nobody currently running deserved my vote.
And then I gave her my sympathies for the rough job she was having to do and boy did she appreciate that word of kindness.
I suspect that future historians, if there ae any, are going to set the date we threw out the Constitution as somewhere around the turn of the 21st century.
Ironic that a guy with the last name of Wu is criticizing the 1st amendment. There is a place he can go where that pesky kind of thing won’t be a problem, he might even have family there.
I'd love to see some kind of thesis or definition of what the US 1st amendment being "in control" would mean.
Or "under control" for that matter, because then you (and us onlookers) would get to ask "Under the control of whom?", and associated questions.
I miss the days when we had greater freedom of speech than even the US. Back then, slander, state secrets, confidential information (like patient-doctor, or confessionals), falsely reporting someone for a crime, and trying to talk someone into committing a crime were pretty much all the limits we had on speech (no matter the medium).
Then, our jewish lobby (if you can call it that grand a title - some of the most vocal opponents to the law at the time were also swedish jews) and some feminists and some hard-core christian groups and the socialists all managed to lobby the first version of our "hate-speech"-law through parliament, and from there on it's been like riding a lubed-up toboggan on slick ice, downhill.
Just goes to prove for the bazillionth time, that consequences always trumps ideals, -isms, good will, and intentions.
Nowadays, it is perfectly legal for a palestinian to call for a new Holocaust, but a crime for a swedish jew to demand some answering a job-ad he's put up to be able to speak swedish.
(Perhaps) off topic ... Is it time for a Plan B for Substack?
This article uses examples of my own changing subscriber metrics to suggest that "something has changed" at Substack. I also illustrate that the "Covid contrarian" or "freedom" market is actually vast. Still, few Substack authors are able to make a living from their job of providing (vital) "real journalism."
There are these scary things out there called "rent" and "grocery bills."
It's just that people who want to write and get paid should also have practical skills like carpentry or auto repair to provide the bulk of their income.
Isn't writing just as much a skill as carpentry or auto repair? I would argue Gato runs a successful publication not because he shares ideas that are centuries old. But rather because he's a phenomenal writer and has an elegance in how he expresses those ideas.
Writing is an art-form in its own right, and as such you only get good at it by first producing a lot of crap.
As one of the seminal US cartoonists of the pre-code days is alleged to have said:
"Everyone's got 10 000 bad drawrings in'em, so get doodling so you can be rid of them and start producing something of value."
Not a direct quote. But it's the same with writing. Also, once's natural style or flow isn't necessary what anyone else likes to read, never mind stuff like genres or topics. For me, overly complex sentences (in my own language that is) makes anything I write so dry it may combust: good enough for governement work, but even I get bored reading my own texts.
As a Latinist, I love well-subordinated sentences--they make clear the logical progression of the thought, and thus make the thought accessible to reader/listener. But I don't love those of Cicero. Multum in parvo.
Speaking for myself, after a day of construction work (or flipping burgers at McDonald's), I'd be too tired to come home and start researching Substack articles, doing interviews and then writing the stories ... And then trying to market my Substack newsletter.
Would this be a "better life?" Say you work 40 hours at the construction site each week. Then you come home and work another 40 hours to pursue your real passion - writing or covering taboo subjects the mainstream press won't cover . (Trust me here. It took me 50 hours of work per week to get to where I can net $14,000/year from Substack writing.)
The trade-off is your wife wants to divorce you and your kids never see you.
They probably WOULD support you if they thought you could make $50,000 from this "side gig" ... but 99.9 percent of Substack authors cannot do this ... Thus, as good and important as Substack is, it's NOT a platform that can provide adequate or realistic financial incentives to embark on such a gruelling life path.
Because of this, I'm looking for other options/models that might help people like me. Also, if the public ends up getting a better selection of stories they otherwise would not have seen/read - at a lower cost than many are currently paying for Substack content - they'll benefit too.
That's my conclusion as well, SCA. I'm making some money (which is greatly appreciated), but in almost two years of long work weeks at Substack my income is less than someone who makes the federal minimum wage.
My bold or "contrarian" thought is this should NOT be the way the world works. There should be a "work-around" that helps authors - "professional" writers and "citizen journalists" - that allows these correspondents to make more money from their important articles ... and a new platform/model that would also be popular with readers (and save them money and hassle).
Basically, I'm brain-storming on better ways to get around the "gatekeepers of the news" and have important stories actually reach far more citizens.
More on this business idea to come in the future (If I'm not killed).
I was once a publisher of a weekly newspaper I started in my hometown. I can report that all of my employees and vendors got paid before me and, many months, I hardly paid myself anything. And I was working 90 hours a week doing every job that's done at a newspaper, including taking a paper route.
You should have at least 1,000 paid subscribers in my opinion. You've done all the right things. Your content is prolific and always interesting, varied and often original. But as I say in my article, nobody forced us to do what we are doing. We must enjoy it or think it's worthwhile or perhaps important work. So we keep-on-keeping on ... while we still can.
My advice to any aspiring Substack author would be: First have a rich spouse ... or a very big savings nest egg, impressive stock portfolio or a large pension.
"There should be a "work-around" that helps authors - "professional" writers and "citizen journalists" - that allows these correspondents to make more money from their important articles..."
Right. I stand by that statement. Should the only writers who get to make at least $53,000** year be "journalists" selected by some editor at a captured corporate news organization?
People with talent and something original or important to say should have the opportunity of publishing (selling) their stories without the approval of some woke, captured gatekeeper of the news.
That is, we do NOT have a genuine free market for "journalism content" in America or the world. We never have ... for a reason, as it turns out.
** Per my research, $53,000 is the average income for a "working journalist" employed by some captured media company. To make a living wage, you almost have to be employed by such a company ... but why is this? Could there be a better model? (I think I have one, which I'll outline at my Substack in coming months ... if I'm not kicked off Substack).
As everyone knows by now I speak weekly to My Friend From Fifth Grade and on Monday she sneered at me for saying that Biden's is the worst Administration since John Adams' regarding our Constitutional liberties because of its assault on free speech, and she wanted to know what it was that I felt I couldn't say, and I told her I write emails with extreme care because so many common expressions and phrases contain words and concepts the Big Eared Bureaucrats would sweep for.
And she kept sneering of course. This is a big-city girl with several degrees and yet again I thank God I never bothered to become more credentialed than having a HS diploma.
With friends like that who needs enemies?
The vax killed my friend of 51 years. I can't really afford to lose any more people I've known my entire life.
Sorry for your loss.
I lost my mom to Newsom's lockdowns, partly. She had dementia, and her husband (who is not my father... do they call him stepfather when they were married long after I was up and out?) had kept her alive when she would not feed herself (or submit to being fed) by bringing her McDonald's milkshakes, into which he would mix Ensure supplements. It was not much nutrition, but it was the only thing she would eat.
I guess he was hoping to get past the pandemic and find some people who were more willing to help. No one seemed to think anything but COVID mattered for a few years there. No one would do anything to help but her husband, not even the care facility staff.
And then Newsom put that to a stop.
Clearly, the dementia was the real cause of death, and Newsom just hastened it. Others were less lucky.
Newsom knew, or should have known, that lockdowns are not only unacceptable morally, constitutionally, and legally, but they are also extremely deadly. He signed the death warrants of a lot of innocent people with his callousness.
Cutting off society's most vulnerable people from their jobs, their businesses, their friends, their therapists, their group sessions, their social activities, all the things they do instead of dwelling on their mental issues or on their desire to have a drink or a fix, cut them off from their 12 step sponsors, their golf, bowling, movies, their just hanging out with supportive friends, and in the more tyrannical states, even any attempts at catching up on the "honey do" list to pass the time (Whitmer famously demanded Wal-Mart close off the sections of the store that were not "essential")... you cut that stuff off all at once, add a heavy dollop of stress, leaving nothing but time, boredom, and constant fear porn in the media, and what do you think will happen?
Even normal people were reporting high levels of depression and suicidal ideation they had never had before during the lockdowns. What did these people think it would do to those already struggling with mental illness or addiction? It has been proven that the death rate rises and falls in correlation with the unemployment rate, as stress takes its toll, and him and people like him made most people unemployed, on purpose. This was all known well in advance of the pandemic, when broad scale "quarantines" were considered and rejected by epidemiologists for all of these reasons, along with mask orders. It was well understood they would only make things worse.
The lockdowns killed scores of people and saved none. They were completely ineffective at their stated goal, and were deadly in their own right, just like the deadly and nearly completely ineffective vaccines.
Masks, of course, were also completely ineffective, and they have inflicted great damage too, and not a small amount of "mask mouth" and bacterial respiratory illnesses, but a lot of the unseen damage falls on children who missed out on seeing facial expressions and how the mouth moves for various words during some incredibly important developmental years. It's a great time to train to be a speech-language pathologist, I would say; you are going to have a bumper crop of kids who need help as they get older.
And now, of course, Whitmer and Newsom, who both tried to outdo one another to see who could kill more of their own constituents, are names some Democrats are proposing as replacements for Biden, now that his dementia can no longer be hidden from the public.
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the damage was 💯 intentional harm. These "policies" were not ineffective; they had exactly the intended, anticipated effect. This is what we need to fully process. These weren't mistakes.
agree totally
"Sorry to know this" is just not much of a comfort to offer but...
God's Big Tandoor in the Sky is never gonna run out of people needing kebabbing for eternity.
Now THERE'S a metaphor I can embrace.
Condolences on the loss of your mother.
I knew it from the moment they were announced that the lockdowns were some kind of criminal insanity. Naively, however, I assumed professional journalists would be reporting on all the sure-to-ensue horrors. LOL, it's mid-2024, professional journalists who deserve the name, I can count them on one hand.
No words can undo what it has done to you, her and so many others of us. I still feel the pin pricks in hands and feet but I am alive to tell you about it.
Even being the only Catholic in my entire family wasn't bad enough for them to shun me but not getting one or more of the jabs has cut me off from several of them completely. They refuse to ever speak to me again.
I have the same situation. So very sorry.
I have been very, very lucky that the people who love me and who have chosen otherwise than I have not found it a gulf between us.
But then, I'm such a unique character, you accept me for anything you might as well take the all.
Yes, you are lucky and its good that you realize that.
No one could pay my guardian angels enough for their lifelong labor. At least they got my eternal gratitude.
Good. You are well rid of such tyrants and I suggest that when you cross paths with them at funerals or weddings, you freeze them out in the most obvious manner.
I am Catholic and cannot do anything but forgive them. And pray that their minds and hearts open to the truth.
Am trying so very hard to do the same. Hope I can master it before my time is up here.
With you on that.
Just remember religion means nothing. In my family I'm the only one not actively practising Catholicism and I was extremely shunned for not taking the quakcine. We were not invited for certain family gatherings during Christmas(!) because we were unquakcinated with my wife.
Dear SCA- I am so sorry you lost your friend to the vax— I have one friend from 9th grade and I cherish our phone calls (we are at opposite ends of the country). And since my family moved 11 times in 12 years, she is a blessing and a unique part of my life.
Thank you. She was in the UK and was an instrumental blessing that led eventually to my greatest treasure.
This is why I tolerate the not-infrequent lunacies of the other. People who know your whole history, who've met your now-gone parents, who knew your senior citizen brother when he was just an annoying little kid, you don't let them go easily.
You are NOT alone. Against my advice, I have lost friends to that Warp Speed Vaxx. mRNA should have been a disqualifier for that concoction. And there are things that should never be done at Warp Speed!
She was a fragile transplant patient. When the vaxxes were rolled out here, and over there, she asked if I was going to take it and I said "no." But I didn't say anything further. How could I possibly advise her, an intelligent woman who had always advocated vigorously for herself, what would be the right thing in the circumstances of those days and with her multiple health conditions?
Well, it blew up that transplanted kidney and then took three more years to kill her. Man, if I had means of retribution in my own hands there'd be a lot of people removed forthwith from the gene pool.
We seem to be kindred spirits and have lived parallel existences. All I could do was offer my opinion and let them decide. In this matter it is my opinion that trump failed, mRNAs have a long troubled history, it was his responsibility to investigate the matter. When one is deprived of ones liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.
Thucydides
My friend was in the UK. Anyone thinking of praising the NHS in my presence, they better hold their tongues. I'd rather not spend my tarnishing years in prison.
I am so very sorry to hear this. No words can undo the harm that politicizing the useless vax has done.
There is so much anguish created in the world from this that it's just beyond any describing. And yet there is no mass uprising across all the Western world to take down every bureaucrat and enabler whose hands have been in this, one way or another.
Until common cause is made by people from every part of society because the can't avoid seeing what was done, there will be no justice obtained. It's on us now.
To be fair, had the FDA done its job correctly, warp speed would not have turned out as badly as it has.
The goal was to develop a safe, effective vaccine at warp speed, but we got something that was, at best, an unfinished product.
It is the fear of liability that makes big pharma avoid releasing dangerous products, but when the government gives them a liability shield and approves the product for distribution, why would they spend another dime finishing the product and making it actually safe and effective? If you can make the money now, and if you are completely shielded from lawsuits, why spend the money?
According to Steve Kirsch, some of the most common Big Pharma claims about the testing of vaccines in the U.S. (not just the covid shots) are suddenly being admitted to being nothing more than gaslighting.
https://kirschsubstack.com/cp/146513145
Agree. Sadly, we are punished for believing in the truth.
Maybe she can't help but sneer. Guillain–Barré syndrome is a known side-effect of the covid vaxx.
Maybe making sweeping assumptions about people based on their viewpoints is a fools' game.
so your friend from 5th grade is a Biden voter? or was she just sneering bc you were being a "meanie"?
Oh gosh, I have to keep my freaking mouth shut about everything now.
Hubbs and I are all about free speech with each other but that is just about where it ends. So many snowflakes and Karens etc
She voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020 and I have voted for neither but any time I remark that even people we despise deserve the fair administration of justice she screams that I'm a Trumper, and anytime I remark on something that she herself has not read or heard about she accuses me of getting that info from the Dark Web.
It seems you echo one of my Favorites: I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Thomas Jefferson
Oh heck. It's just a real taste for arguing.
Hubs and I in that boat with you. Bow or stern your preference?
good to know. At least we know it is not "our problem" haha
Seriously, visiting or relating to sensitive people gets tiresome.
they do not even enjoy kidding around.
I observed long years ago that a sense of humor seems always on back-order for the
'liberal" left
I had to do that --several years before all this stuff-- when composing an e-mail reply to a parent. Often took the draft to others for criticism. How much time did that take? I could use up a whole 40 minute prep period on one stupid e-mail. That of course is snowflakery, not censorship, but they are not un-related.
I amuse myself sometimes thinking of all the no-no words.
It isn't the degrees, it is her lack of common sense but I get what you are saying. I had the same sad problem with a friend who does not have degrees. We have been friends since kindergarten and I was 4 years-old, another was a Godparent to one of my children. They learn on FB for whom you voted and suddenly they slam the door in your face.
It is a matter of attaining some maturity which is not often done in life before having walked through a lot of broken shards and learning from the scars. There's quite a lot of antique babies around these days.
Between the fact that some people will never mature regardless of age and the other... that young people rarely understand that those older than they just might have some wisdom, it is scary and it is why we're staring WWIII in the face. At age 18, a sophomore in college, I saw Jimmy Carter's lack of maturity on a TV debate and I knew at once that I would never vote for him. I have never been a liberal and with all my faults, common sense came with the package at birth. It is why I am the family scapegoat, LOL!
I have been that which was appropriate for every stage of life and I am grateful to have survived long enough to have gotten smarter because it is entirely normal to be an idiot when young.
I am certainly not a conservative and I am a strong supporter of the ideals of the Western Enlightenment. It is just the tragedy of human life on earth that history is a cycle and there is no permanent holding onto moments of time of unique wisdom.
I so agree. Our wisdom goes-away when we do and history repeats itself.
Tim Wu looks like the castrated pug. The only thing out of control is tyrannical fascists destroying free speech.
free speech is all well and good, yuri, but i would ask you to please be a bit kinder to pugs.
Pugs have feelings too. They are significantly higher up the likability ladder than Wu
You have to admit that meme is hilarious tho
And scary too. I have a feeling that once the elite gain control, eugenics will make a comeback.
And worse...
I know, only kidding.
: )
But they are not cats, as our dear Gato would remind us.
I am both a dog and cat person. I get confused easily. : )
It would have been kindest to pugs to have never selected for such genetic traits. The poor little breathless things.
To Tim Wu, that is a compliment.
He's not with us, Doctor Wu.
He's really just a shadow
Of the man I once knew.
He's not with us.
He can't hear us.
- Don and Walt, sort of
I find Tim Wu to be quite handsome.
The pug is flattered, I’m sure.
De gustibus non est disputandum!
Quam mihi displicet!
"You'll eat everything on your plate!"
Man oh man that was my mother. "All food in this house is 'good' food". She was really skilled at couture. Cooking? less of an interest. But did not go to bugs.
"Cooking? less of an interest."
Mine is British, still a Green Card Holder, and we were schooled in many of the finer classy things.
But I started figuring out how to cook for myself early on because, well, British.
"My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."
- Ketanji Brown Jackson, actual in real-life Harvard-educated Juris Doctor and Supreme Court Justice
So, like, gracias EGM for all you do.
And MY biggest concern is that a person capable of uttering that sentence can "serve" as a "Supreme Court Justice".
This should disturb all of us way more than it does.
Oh, I was fairly disturbed prior to hearing that, and am now well onto my way to something decisively more flamboyant.
I hear ya. I'm just about at Phase 3.
And they're not going to like Phase 3.
Can I ask to be informed of Phase 3 initiation?
I'm not concerned about anything , except the potential of not adding in my contribution.
Subcontractor during Phase 3.2. Perhaps?
Or as I'm taking to think if it: 'She goes Full Kali-ma on their asses'
And if THAT doesn't terrify them ...
Oh, my friend, I'll be in touch.
I can't imagine rolling out Phase 3 without your support.
AMEN
Horrified but not shocked when I heard.
Harvard-educated. Mmm, I think we've found the source of the problem. They don't learn ya nuttin at Harvard.
Once upon a time, they did, and well, yes. E.g. my grandfather, HC 1908, HLaw 1911. FYI, Mother's family totally Harvard educated from then--her brothers, their children. My eldest brother had his heart set on it. 1960, placed on waiting list. Father 20 yrs later told me he had been relieved, did not think his son had the stuff to resist the ideological-shaping of Harvard.
That was Haavaad (William F. Buckley style). Today it's Harvard. The only way to resist the ideology is to resist the elitist urge. In your grandfather's day it meant "I received a top-notch education". Now it means "I'm smarter than everyone else".
We, in western Mass, pronounced the rhotic r. Always Harvard--even my grandmother, Boston-born. Ironically, grandparents lived at 131 Harvard St from 1912 to 1972.
IowaHawk explains this quite succinctly.
https://x.com/iowahawkblog/status/664089892599631872?lang=en
Yup. Total agreement. As my husband says to me—Yes, you were Mount Holyoke— when it still meant something (52 years ago). I stopped wearing that skin suit 15-20 years ago. As he did with the Amherst suit.
Oh wow... Me, Mrs. Pi, and Stepson are heading to Amherst Sunday, totally swear, for a Monday college tour.
Mama likes this one going in. I hope it's not too far past its Best By date.
As an Amherst grad (husband here writing) I do not have much good to say about it. It went woke a long time ago to be ahead of the fashion. Great facilities and great reputation, but all left, all the time. There was once an alternative student newspaper which I supported, maybe in the 90s, but when the leaders graduated it died. The alumni magazine is all fashionable left, all the time.
Oh gosh, any school in Massachusetts, east or west is indoctrination central. UMass alum here. Run, don't walk.
There does seem to be a pattern of late.
I need to save that somewhere because it does need to be used against them on repeat.
Memes are like Love. The more you share them, the more you have to give!
Saved! My favorite part is “actual in real-life” 🤣 The more mockery the better!
☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️
Yes...yes it does.
Here - jump to 10 second mark: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5110722/user-clip-ketanji-brown-jackson-concerned-amendment-hamstringing-government
Blown away that she actually said that!! And believes that the government alone only knows best about what is considered harmful information to the citizens! Why on earth ever have the first amendment in the first place with that sort of thinking? What does she think happened with free speech years ago before the internet?? The government never shut down what the people were saying, they just had to work harder to win the arguments and if they couldn’t then they had to concede they were wrong. People found ways to speak their truths without the internet and they weren’t censored the way they are today. Her logic is so faulty I can’t believe she’s a Supreme Court justice!
...
...
.....
WHAT
The fact that we have a Supreme Court Justice who thinks that it's a problem that the first amendment "hamstrings the government" shows how far we have fallen.
Exactly
In my opinion a lot of this can be traced back the anti bullying/ hate crime stuff that was pushed on us. Should it matter whether you committed a crime against someone because you don’t like their race or gender? A crime is a crime, enforce the laws equally and it won’t matter. The anti bullying stuff got totally out of control. We’ve created a generation of people that wilt when someone looks at them wrong. That generation is now gaining control of government, law enforcement, and are becoming business leaders and as a result we are being led by people that have no coping skills at all.
I always say that I will let somebody ban hate speech if they let me decide what it is. Some of them even get the point.
Perfect solution, maybe then they will figure out the pendulum swings both ways.
The people who pushed the anti bullying thing the hardest have turned into the worst bullies imaginable.
Someone countered with that the first amendment should be allowed unless someone is telling lies. Except who determines who is lying? Sometimes lies are pretty simple to suss out. If someone says the sky is purple and its blue...they are lying...unless they are wearing rose colored sunglasses. Then, to their perception, the sky is purple. This isn't an empirical truth, but a subjective one. And who am I to say "hey you can't be seeing a purple sky because the sky is obviously blue."
There are so many ironies. The pandemic saw a constant attack on misinformation by traffickers of misinformation. And they love to play the game of misinformation by association. There's this one guy on twitter, his whole m.o. is pseudoscience. He picks up ridiculous pseudoscience stories early and often every day. Stuff about crystal and energy healing. It leaks out of him early and often.
But that's not the objective of his threads...but rather to then slip in a story about how being skeptical of experimental injections is also pseudoscience. And there are plenty following him that drink the Koolaid.
it's a perfect pretext to push ideology by inversion.
we must protect truth!
but truth cannot be known until full, free, and frank debates have occurred.
so the obvious choice is to claim "special knowledge" of what is true and back it with credential or position, not argument.
the whole thing is a claim to know the results of the debate without having it and to thereby avoid it so it cannot depute you.
In a contest between freedom of speech and the truth freedom of speech wins. No need to figure out who determines the truth. Respect for the individual demands that outcome.
I think it's more nuanced.
The only thing worse than a lie, is a half truth...therin The Truth is lost...because half truths create a hall of reflective mirrors on both walls...creating a situation where the public can no longer distinguish between the truth and a lie.
Half-truths are the easiest way to eliminate history by eliminating reference. A compass without true north creates a situation where people think the map is the territory...the map given to them by the subjugators.
Goebbels knew this.
Half truths are like half bricks. You can throw them twice as far.
Dude. That is fucking brilliant
AGREED, fecking brilliant
Wish I could claim it as an original thought, but it’s actually a tweak of a quote attributed to Adm. Hyman Rickover; “Half-truths are like half a brick – they can be thrown farther.”
I’ve been using the line for decades, but in a personal context. I’m a recovering alcoholic (36 years, so far). The bedrock of 12-step recovery is honesty, and for about 20 years I spent a LOT of time in meetings. You can imagine that in a room full of addicts and alcoholics, a group arguably among the best liars on the planet, there are diverse opinions on the subject(!). I truly don’t recall if I read the quote and adapted it, or heard it from someone else. Whichever, it stuck with me, and I’ve passed it on countless times, especially with my kids when they went through the “fibbing” stage.
Congratulations on overcoming the addiction. Sadly I had a father and several family members who died from drinking themselves to death.
"half bricks"
Dag. I can't wait to silp that phrase into conversation.
Brilliant
A is A
Free speech is free speech. You have to take it, even if it hurts.
But it's worth every cent!
Plus: until it's been uttered, how do you the utterance is a lie?
To bar lies, not just punish liars*, you'd need pre-speech censorship.
*And virtually all married men'd go to prison under the new law:
"Does this dress make my rear look big?"
What's a man to do? Answer it Al Bundy-style?
"No honey. It's not the dress' fault."
"Nope, your ass makes your ass look big".
-- Does this dress make me look fat?
-- No, it's the fat that makes you look fat.
Lolol
The very asking answers the question, in my own personal female experience.
Minority Report. PKD had the best ideas. Prescient
Obligatory: https://youtu.be/nFuSidBaf7k?si=RteLW2EqlXBxUobI
Well, I just have to reply! (And how come that song hasn't been banned by the feminist furies?)
In swedish, but the gist of the lyrics is:
"I want a babe with some meat on her bones and big boobs I can grab when thunder rolls accross the skies"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px1vMibYXeI
So Swedish Meatball... I think I get it now.
Except they are really Turkish koftes.
Not if you ask syrians. According to them, the turks nicked kefteh from syrians.
I'm sure somewhere a kurd or a yezhidi or a soghdian is going "Uhm actually.."
And swedish meatballs are nothing like kefteh - we use 50/50 mix of pork and cow, raw eggs, cream, no spices but salt and pepper, maybe finelly chopped yellow onions in the mix, maybe some powdered dry bread. Certainly not the same spices and seasonings they use in MENA.
Plus it's served with mashed potatoes (always add fat milk or cream while mashing, plus a knob of butter) or rutabag mash, or some combination of root vegetables (I like to add carrots and turnips), and lingonberry jam, pickled cucumbers (thinly sliced and pickled in a water, acetous acid, salt, vinegar, sugar-mix), and preferably a cream sauce made from the run-off from the skillet and diced champignons (think you called them Portobello?) stirred into the sauce while heating it.
Great. Now I'm hungry.
🤔
And who has the right to take away my right to believe something false?? If I want to believe the sky is purple, leave me alone to believe it. That’s my inalienable right to choose what I want to believe. Just because information that isn’t true “could” hurt others doesn’t mean you don’t get the freedom to speak the lie. Big Pharma are the kings of THAT and they didn’t get censored and they hurt a LOT of people. We didn’t try to censor them when they lied, we tried to argue with them so the truth would surface. It always does. That’s how free speech works. Let the arguments be spoken!
"This isn't an empirical truth, but a subjective one."
"Truth is singular. Its variations are mistruths."
- Sonmi 451
Certainly "the sky is purple" is a mistruth. So is "I Identify as a fire engine." This whole idea of "living our truth" is ridiculous. Sure my "truth" could be that I am an A list movie star who recently dated an a-list actress.. The reality is quite a bit different, and could you imagine the laughter if I demanded other people align with my "living truth." .
As someone in a country whose government will soon implement the most draconian, dystopian and totalitarian speech laws - it's for own good, fighting "hate" and all that - ever implemented in the English speaking world, I can only say: fight for the 1st with everything you've got. You have it, don't lose it.
That would be Double Plus Ungood.
Heck, today I received a slap down from Facebook for sharing your substack on congressional hearings with the NIH from MAY. Two months later I am told I once again violated community standards and was propagating "spam" and they are restricting my account AGAIN. Clearly the elites think free speech has gone too far. Yet I will soldier on. 😉
Then I guess it's time - Meet me behind the drive-thru at the Burger King on York Road in Hunt Valley, Sunday 7/14 at 3:07am.
Shoot me your t-shirt size so I have time to get that printed up. I'll bring that and show you the secret handshake. The tattoo's optional.
I'll be dressed in this outfit: https://tinyurl.com/4x4djs6x
And Welcome!
abandon the ships of the intelligence complex, people.
By the way guys--a CNN pollster called me today and it was my very great pleasure to tell her that Biden has always been a mediocre piece of shit (I said pardon me for saying because she was a nice young woman) and nasty young men don't become nice old ones, and that nobody currently running deserved my vote.
And then I gave her my sympathies for the rough job she was having to do and boy did she appreciate that word of kindness.
I think there's a typo there- it should be Tim Woo Woo.
Send him over to Clif High.
Tim Wu is an idiot (free speech). The first amendment is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Without the 1st amendment, there are no others. Well...we are a hop, skip and a small jump from being de-constitutionalized.
I suspect that future historians, if there ae any, are going to set the date we threw out the Constitution as somewhere around the turn of the 21st century.
The only "Constitution" that can never be abridged and means anything is the one from God called The Ten Commandments.
Ironic that a guy with the last name of Wu is criticizing the 1st amendment. There is a place he can go where that pesky kind of thing won’t be a problem, he might even have family there.
lol, like
I'd love to see some kind of thesis or definition of what the US 1st amendment being "in control" would mean.
Or "under control" for that matter, because then you (and us onlookers) would get to ask "Under the control of whom?", and associated questions.
I miss the days when we had greater freedom of speech than even the US. Back then, slander, state secrets, confidential information (like patient-doctor, or confessionals), falsely reporting someone for a crime, and trying to talk someone into committing a crime were pretty much all the limits we had on speech (no matter the medium).
Then, our jewish lobby (if you can call it that grand a title - some of the most vocal opponents to the law at the time were also swedish jews) and some feminists and some hard-core christian groups and the socialists all managed to lobby the first version of our "hate-speech"-law through parliament, and from there on it's been like riding a lubed-up toboggan on slick ice, downhill.
Just goes to prove for the bazillionth time, that consequences always trumps ideals, -isms, good will, and intentions.
Nowadays, it is perfectly legal for a palestinian to call for a new Holocaust, but a crime for a swedish jew to demand some answering a job-ad he's put up to be able to speak swedish.
Careful what you wish for, eh.
(Perhaps) off topic ... Is it time for a Plan B for Substack?
This article uses examples of my own changing subscriber metrics to suggest that "something has changed" at Substack. I also illustrate that the "Covid contrarian" or "freedom" market is actually vast. Still, few Substack authors are able to make a living from their job of providing (vital) "real journalism."
https://billricejr.substack.com/p/is-it-time-for-a-plan-b-for-substack
I hate to tell you but it's a real crowded field and no one anywhere should ever expect to make a living from writing. It's just sheer luck to do so.
Take a look at any NYT best-seller list. Drivel makes people multi-millionaires. Quality work not so much.
If you write or talk, you express yourself => autopoiesis.
If someone wants to get money for his thoughts, theories or arguments, he/she is a thinkstitute.
Free men share free ideas. They are free (of repression) and free (of a price)
There are these scary things out there called "rent" and "grocery bills."
It's just that people who want to write and get paid should also have practical skills like carpentry or auto repair to provide the bulk of their income.
Isn't writing just as much a skill as carpentry or auto repair? I would argue Gato runs a successful publication not because he shares ideas that are centuries old. But rather because he's a phenomenal writer and has an elegance in how he expresses those ideas.
Writing is an art-form in its own right, and as such you only get good at it by first producing a lot of crap.
As one of the seminal US cartoonists of the pre-code days is alleged to have said:
"Everyone's got 10 000 bad drawrings in'em, so get doodling so you can be rid of them and start producing something of value."
Not a direct quote. But it's the same with writing. Also, once's natural style or flow isn't necessary what anyone else likes to read, never mind stuff like genres or topics. For me, overly complex sentences (in my own language that is) makes anything I write so dry it may combust: good enough for governement work, but even I get bored reading my own texts.
As a Latinist, I love well-subordinated sentences--they make clear the logical progression of the thought, and thus make the thought accessible to reader/listener. But I don't love those of Cicero. Multum in parvo.
And he's lucky he ain't starving nevertheless.
Indeed. As is any carpenter or mechanic selling work that can be learned in a YouTube video
Speaking for myself, after a day of construction work (or flipping burgers at McDonald's), I'd be too tired to come home and start researching Substack articles, doing interviews and then writing the stories ... And then trying to market my Substack newsletter.
Plus, my wife and kids would never see me.
Yeah. Making a better life for your self is hard.
Would this be a "better life?" Say you work 40 hours at the construction site each week. Then you come home and work another 40 hours to pursue your real passion - writing or covering taboo subjects the mainstream press won't cover . (Trust me here. It took me 50 hours of work per week to get to where I can net $14,000/year from Substack writing.)
The trade-off is your wife wants to divorce you and your kids never see you.
They probably WOULD support you if they thought you could make $50,000 from this "side gig" ... but 99.9 percent of Substack authors cannot do this ... Thus, as good and important as Substack is, it's NOT a platform that can provide adequate or realistic financial incentives to embark on such a gruelling life path.
Because of this, I'm looking for other options/models that might help people like me. Also, if the public ends up getting a better selection of stories they otherwise would not have seen/read - at a lower cost than many are currently paying for Substack content - they'll benefit too.
That sounds good, but "free men" also have to pay the light bill, car payments, mortgage, etc.
We crossed in the interwebs!
Um... Feeding your family has to fit in here somewhere.
That's my conclusion as well, SCA. I'm making some money (which is greatly appreciated), but in almost two years of long work weeks at Substack my income is less than someone who makes the federal minimum wage.
My bold or "contrarian" thought is this should NOT be the way the world works. There should be a "work-around" that helps authors - "professional" writers and "citizen journalists" - that allows these correspondents to make more money from their important articles ... and a new platform/model that would also be popular with readers (and save them money and hassle).
Basically, I'm brain-storming on better ways to get around the "gatekeepers of the news" and have important stories actually reach far more citizens.
More on this business idea to come in the future (If I'm not killed).
Imagine if government had the ability to shut down your 'Stack because you're making less than min. wage........
(But to be fair, many weeks as a business owner I made less than min. wage, too. The employees and the bills come first, you get what's left.)
I owned a business and I made less than my employees. And worked longer hours. That's just the way it is sometimes.
I was once a publisher of a weekly newspaper I started in my hometown. I can report that all of my employees and vendors got paid before me and, many months, I hardly paid myself anything. And I was working 90 hours a week doing every job that's done at a newspaper, including taking a paper route.
Yep. Although it turns out that 'training' was perfect, because now I live like a minimalist (which actually allows me to live on my 'Stack subs).
You should have at least 1,000 paid subscribers in my opinion. You've done all the right things. Your content is prolific and always interesting, varied and often original. But as I say in my article, nobody forced us to do what we are doing. We must enjoy it or think it's worthwhile or perhaps important work. So we keep-on-keeping on ... while we still can.
My advice to any aspiring Substack author would be: First have a rich spouse ... or a very big savings nest egg, impressive stock portfolio or a large pension.
No one has a right to earn a living from their "important articles." You want a Board of Assay to determine what "important" is?
The "market" would decide what articles were/are important ... not some editor at the NY Times.
The market? Here's your words, Bill:
"There should be a "work-around" that helps authors - "professional" writers and "citizen journalists" - that allows these correspondents to make more money from their important articles..."
Right. I stand by that statement. Should the only writers who get to make at least $53,000** year be "journalists" selected by some editor at a captured corporate news organization?
People with talent and something original or important to say should have the opportunity of publishing (selling) their stories without the approval of some woke, captured gatekeeper of the news.
That is, we do NOT have a genuine free market for "journalism content" in America or the world. We never have ... for a reason, as it turns out.
** Per my research, $53,000 is the average income for a "working journalist" employed by some captured media company. To make a living wage, you almost have to be employed by such a company ... but why is this? Could there be a better model? (I think I have one, which I'll outline at my Substack in coming months ... if I'm not kicked off Substack).
some wolves ended up way worse than others!
This one sure has it hard: https://tinyurl.com/5n82meaw