Bryce Moore's Blog, page 80
September 22, 2020
Replacing RBG
A few comments today from me around the debate about replacing Justice Ginsburg. The process isn’t making either party look particularly wonderful, in my opinion. With the Garland nomination a little more than four years ago, it’s easy to find hypocritical statements from both sides. If the politicians really believed what they said they believed four years ago, then the Democrats would be pushing hard to make Trump nominate someone, and the Republicans would be clamoring for the process to happen after the election is over.
But of course that would never happen, because the reasons each side gave for why they were for or against the Garland nomination were just words they used to justify what they wanted to do. (As a side note, studies have shown that having any sort of an excuse for doing what you’re doing is often enough to convince people to let you do it. For example, people generally let you cut in line to make copies if you have fewer copies to make than they’re making, as long as you give some sort of reason. Bigger “favors” require more justification, but in the case of Supreme Court nominations, all the politicians are really doing is what they (and most of their supporters) want them to do anyway.)
And both sides have come up with reasons for why they’ve changed their mind about when Supreme Court nominees should or shouldn’t be considered. The Democrats say the Republicans set the precedent when they did it 4 years ago. The Republicans say all sorts of things, like “the precedent is that the Senate only votes on nominees from their own side in these cases.”
But really, what in the world did people expect would happen? Imagine a game 7 of a series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. Something happens that would make it so the Yankees win on a technicality, and the Red Sox say something to the effect of “If you were really a good baseball team, you’d win the right way, not on this technicality.” Are the Yankees really going to back off and say, “You’re right. Even though we won according to how the rules are written, we’re not going to choose to actually win right now. We’ll wait and try to do it the “real” way.” (Which of course brings up the question of what the “real” way is, if it’s not just using the rules of the game as written.)
In the case of Ginsburg’s replacement, both Democrats and Republicans aren’t there to play nice. They’re there to do what their parties want them to do. Being shocked and appalled that they actually do it is maybe a bit naïve. Trump doesn’t stop being President while we wait for the election to run, and he’ll still be President until January, no matter what. The current Senate doesn’t stop just because a new one will come in.
That said, the Republicans have been showing up to these political faceoffs packing heat, and the Democrats have been pretty much only been bringing their bare knuckles. I’m very concerned that the way this is playing out is only going to exacerbate the problem. Should the Democrats find themselves in a position where they control the House and the Senate and the Presidency, with all of Trump and the Republicans’ shenanigans in recent memory, does anyone really think they’re not going to turn around and start doing whatever they feel like doing? Eliminating the filibuster, adding seats to the Supreme Court, or who knows what else?
If and when that happens, I’m 100% sure the Republicans will holler and scream about how “unjust” it is, and how the Democrats really should follow the spirit of the law, rather than the letter. I wish this wasn’t happening over something as straightforward as a Supreme Court seat. When you look at the conservative/liberal leanings of the justices over the years, you’ll see they aren’t constant. They change. Ginsburg started off as pretty much neutral and ended up fairly liberal, for example. The media would have you think each justice swears an oath when they’re put in that they will always do their best to stay true to the political leanings of whomever appointed them. That’s just not reality.
My personal preference would be that the courts remain pretty balanced, with a variety of viewpoints on there to even things out. So I’m much more worried that this current process will end up breaking the system than I am about which particular judge ends up in the final seat.
I admire Justice Ginsburg for what she did and the example she set. I’m sorry she passed away, not just because she was an asset to the court and the country, but because the particular timing of it has created yet another thing to fight about. But as soon as it happened, I assumed the Republicans would push forward with it, and any Democrat who’s swearing that they wouldn’t do the exact same thing in the same circumstance would also no doubt have a bridge to sell you right after you believed them.
Maybe I’m just getting jaded . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 21, 2020
Leveling Up
I turn 42 today, which means (obviously) that I now know all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Tragically, I’ll forget them when I turn 43, but I suppose that’s the price of old age.
One of the things I’m reflecting on today is how I feel like I’ve grown personally over the years, and the importance of remember other people are going through the same process, although likely in a different order than you.
For example, last week I read an article about how bad plastics have really proven to be for our environment, and how unrealistic it is that recycling them is a longterm solution. This stuck with me, since I’d always just not bothered thinking about what happened to things I threw away. It crossed my mind that it had to go somewhere, but I had too many other things to worry about than to worry about every little thing I was getting rid of. But for some reason, this article clicked with me. It made me wonder what I could do to make things a bit better.
What am I going to do? Well, I started by looking at the things I buy consistently that come in plastic. The nice thing in my case is that since I’m such a creature of habit, it’s fairly easy to identify what I’m doing that might be changed, and then it’s just a matter of coming up with an approach that might lessen that impact. Denisa already does a great job of reducing a lot of our family’s waste, because this has been a much bigger issue to her than it was to me. (She leveled up in it long before I did.) But I still go through a fair bit of plastic packaging from peanut butter jars, milk jugs, and powdered peanut butter. Everything else I eat comes in paper or recyclable bags. (Bread. Bananas (no packaging at all!). Chocolate chips (bought in bulk). Oatmeal.) My daily vitamins do come in plastic, but it’s small, and I go through two containers a year. Nothing heavy. Peanut butter, however, I go through a fair bit of. (No judging my eating habits, please. I haven’t leveled that up yet.)
So what am I going to do? I’m going to look into buy peanuts in bulk bags and then making my own peanut butter. My Blendtec should handle it, and then I can just make it in advance and store it in glass jars. And I can use peanuts in my shakes instead of peanut powder. More calories, but no plastic.
I’m not trying to thump my chest here and say “look at how awesome I am.” Mainly because I don’t think there’s anything awesome that I’m doing. It’s just a small thing that I can do, and so I’m going to try to do it. This comes on top of other decisions I’ve made to try to lessen my impact on the environment. We drive small cars (never bought a minivan), and one is a hybrid. I try to carpool when I can. I vote for people who will do their best to enact laws that will benefit the environment. I don’t eat much meat at all.
But that’s just one area of my life. I’ve also worked on leveling up other areas: my weight and my health, my sleeping habits, my reading habits, my patience, acceptance of other people, faith, family interactions, etc. There are so many different ways we can all become better people.
Of course, this leads to the question of what to do about people who don’t do the same things I do. For that, I try to remember I wasn’t always where I am now, and other people need to have the chance to grow at their own rate. Likewise, there are going to be areas where someone else is leveled up beyond me, and I would like to think they’d extend the same understanding to me.
When we begin to view other people as ignorant or stubborn or lacking because they don’t share our views, that’s a dangerous stance to be taking. I may really loathe our current President, and I may be very disappointed that the entire country doesn’t share that same sentiment, but I don’t think it’s true or helpful to begin assigning labels to those who continue to support Trump. “If you support Trump, you’re a racist” is no more helpful than someone saying “If you support Biden, then you’re a socialist.” (Though that contrast assumes “racist” and “socialist” are equally bad. But I’m not going to go there right now.)
I believe most people are trying to do the right thing, from their understanding. If we try to assume the best of others and their intentions, we have a much better chance of reaching compromises and making progress than we do if we assume the worst. Right now, it feels like too many of us are more concerned with trying to swell our ranks by making the people we disagree with look as villainous as possible. Look at the rhetoric on both sides. Trump would have you believe all of his opponents are planning on blowing up the entire country the moment they reach power. Many of his opponents want to label anyone who votes for Trump as a Nazi. This leaves people who find themselves in the middle feeling like they really don’t know which way to go. Do they vote for the anarchists or the dictator?
I’m not going to unfriend someone based on their politics. I believe there are many, many good people on both sides of the aisle. Yes, I have very clear opinions, and the choice this year seems obvious to me. But I realize it might not be that easy to others, depending on where they’re standing and what areas they’ve leveled up in. (No doubt to my opposites, I simply haven’t leveled up yet in the right categories, either.) There are good, sincere people on both sides who are earnestly trying to do their best. Let’s find each other and work together to make this world better.
Anyway. I don’t know what sort of a conclusion I can make beyond that. I will keep doing what I’ve tried to always do: be a better person, treat people with the kindness and understanding I’d like to be treated with, and do the best I can with the information I have, always trying to become better informed.
Happy Monday.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 18, 2020
Puppy Update: Mid-September
Well here we are: September 18th. Ferris Drooler is now just over 12 weeks old, and he’s been with us for a bit more than a month. How are we doing?
The first few weeks were rough as you’ll remember from the blog. We had issues with him barking and biting and peeing and pooping all over creation. None of this was really surprising to us. He’s a puppy, and we knew that came with the territory. However, there’s definitely a difference between knowing the theory of something and seeing that theory in practice.
Those first few weeks were quite stressful. There was just so many other things going on, and a couple of times I really wondered if we would be able to sustain puppydom for the long term. I’m a fan of animals, but this felt like too much. The worst was when he regressed from being clean in his cage every night to suddenly pooping it and refusing to sleep.
Since then, however, we’ve learned to adapt, and things are going very well with Mr. Drooler. What did we change?
We take him on walks now. Not extremely long walks (usually just 15 minutes or so), since we’ve read it can take puppies some time to work their way up to being able to handle longer distances. But walking with him gives him an outlet for his energy. (True, this means there’s another thing to teach him, as he constantly needs to be reminded that he is not a sled dog, and I am not a sled. He also has a penchant for acorns, and there’s only one spot on the walk where he can get his fix. He looks forward to that spot a great deal, and would happily stay there for an hour if we let him.We’ve got him on a regular eating routine. Food at 6am (we’re hoping to move that to 7am eventually), noon, and 6pm. This generally lines up with his sleeping routine, as well. We let him nap during the day, but after about 6pm, no more naps. Then he goes to bed at 8:30pm and wakes up (hopefully) at 6am. We’re working on that. The middle of the night poop walk has been eliminated. (Yay!)Tomas and Daniela handle Ferris detail in the mornings and at night. This lets Denisa and me sleep, and that’s hugely helpful in keeping me sane. I do feel guilty at times that I’m not doing more with the dog each night, but I know my limits, and I was already past them. Thankfully our kids are old enough and responsible enough that we can all tag team as necessary. (And it’s often necessary.)We have been working on training him consistently. Setting boundaries for what’s acceptable and what isn’t, and figuring out ways to communicate with him. (To make sure he understands us and we understand him.)
Thankfully, it feels like we’re making a lot of progress, and that we’re getting closer to having a normal routine again. What’s still missing? We still have him confined to just two rooms of the house. The rest isn’t really puppy-proof. (Honestly, the office isn’t either, but it’s got junky carpet, so we’re letting him there supervised, working on training him for what’s acceptable in normal living areas of the house, as opposed to the kitchen.) Once he’s proven reliable there, we’ll spread out to other rooms. It would be lovely to get him comfortable up in the movie room, so we might be able to start watching some shows as a family again. I think that’s not too far off.
So now we’re at the point where having a dog is beginning to feel like it’s paying off. It’s lovely to see him get so excited to see people come home from work and school each day. Nice to sit with him and play or pet him (when he isn’t in one of his biting moods, that still happen.)
I think the worst part (so far) of having a puppy was that uncertainty. Doing something where we didn’t really know what to expect. In hindsight, it was just two or three weeks of really rough waters. You get through that, and everything starts to go easier. But when you’re in the middle of that rough water, you feel like it might not end, and that’s scary.
We might not be out of the rapids completely yet, but the waters are definitely getting much calmer. Hooray for that, and thank you all for the excellent advice and support you’ve given. Very much appreciated.
Have a nice weekend!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 17, 2020
The Art of the All Day Zoom
I’m in another eight hour Zoom meeting today (well, obviously not without breaks. When else would I be writing this but at lunch?). This is not my first all-day Zoom session. It’s not my second, or even my third. Over the last long pandemic era, I’ve been in many meetings that have lasted 4 or more hours. They’re not fun, but I’ve gotten to the point that I know how to handle them, more or less. And seeing as how Zoom seems to be a part of our life probably for the next ever (though the platform itself may change at some point), I thought it might be useful to offer a few helpful tips for maintaining your sanity during long Zoom meetings.
(Note: if I’m ever in a long Zoom meeting with *you*, of course, I don’t need to use any of these tactics. Meetings with you are nothing but pure bliss from start to finish. I’m talking about Zoom meetings with anyone other than you. That goes without saying, right? Right.)
Hydrate. This is part of a successful approach to pretty much anything. Yes, it’ll make you healthier, but it’ll also force you to take breaks from the Zoom meeting. All that hydration has to go somewhere, and you need to stand up and step away from the meeting now and then. You just can’t sit there for eight hours staring at a screen. Trust me. (And even when I don’t have to take a bathroom break, I will sometimes just turn off my camera and stand up. It really does help.)Eat! True, sometimes this means you have to turn off your camera for that as well (or risk being the butt of jokes about whether you brought enough for everyone), but food helps me focus again. One of the tragic side effects of the Zoom era is that the days of free food are over. In a typical all day meeting, there would be some juice and muffins to start the day, and then we’d have a lunch brought in, and there might even be some cookies in there somewhere in the afternoon to seal the deal. Now? It’s all up to you. I’m still on my limited diet, so I just look forward to my banana and my peanut butter sandwich. But I definitely look forward to them. If I weren’t on a diet, I would bring some other goodies to get me through the day. But I’d set specific times when I could eat them, because otherwise I’d eat them all within the first hour. Just saying.Exercise. Not going to lie, here: sometimes I turn off my camera and mic, and I jog in place in the middle of Zoom meetings. I mean, I need to exercise anyway, and that’s something I can easily do while I’m paying attention to what else is being said. It gets the heart rate up, and keeps me from succumbing to feeling overwhelmed by the hours of Zoom meetings that still lie ahead. True, sometimes this means you have to stop jogging, turn on your camera and mic, and risk explaining why you’re so flushed, but in those cases, just meet it head on. “I was exercising. Multitasking.” I mean, everyone else on the call has just been sitting there. You’re really flexing some “I’m a person who takes care of himself” muscles when you explain that.Keep a side chat going. It helps if you identify an ally in the meeting. Someone you can send snarky messages to in the middle of everything. BUT NOTE: DO NOT use Zoom to exchange these snarky missives. Zoom is like the Eye of Sauron. It keeps a log of all messages during the chat, even “private” ones, and then it sends those messages to the person who ran the meeting. So keep your side snark to Google Chat or Facebook. You’ll thank me later.If you’re really in trouble, and the meeting has turned into one of those terrible “You have to be here but it really doesn’t have anything relevant for you” affairs, then don’t forget you’ve got the internet at your fingertips. Sometimes you can check the news or your email or do some other business. But remember (WARNING!) if you wear glasses, those glasses will betray you. Cameras these days are pretty sharp. They’ll easily show the reflection of your monitor against your glasses, and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that what you’re looking at is something other than a Zoom screen. So be careful with this. Just saying.
But really, with those simple steps, you can make it through even the longest Zoom meeting. Speaking from experience. Though if you’re lucky, you won’t have many of those to deal with.
Now if you don’t mind, my lunch break is running out . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 16, 2020
To Sport or Not to Sport?
Last night, our local school board made the difficult decision to call off competitive sports this year. The Maine Principals Association had given a green light for sports to continue in some districts, depending on what each individual district felt was best, and so it shifted to a local decision.
Honestly, my reaction is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it seems to me that some sports (cross country being a prime example) surely could find a way to compete in a socially distant fashion. You’re outside, runners generally don’t clump together too much, and you could take steps to make that clumping even less frequent. Additionally, the case rate in my county (as I’ve noted multiple times before) is very low. We have 4 active cases today in the whole county. There has been 1 death. When you have colleges running entire football seasons in areas with much higher case rates, it’s easy to wonder why we couldn’t reach some sort of a compromise that would let competitive sports continue here. (Other districts in the area are moving forward with seasons, after all.)
On the other hand, I look at the potential “worst case scenario” outcomes on both sides of the argument. If you don’t have competitive sports, this might result in some very upset students and parents. Some students who are passionate about sports might grow less engaged in their schooling, and there could be some resulting depression or mental illness. (I’m trying to think as “worst case” as I can here.) On the other side of the coin, if you hold sports anyway, you might bring COVID into a community that has little evidence of it right now. It catches hold in the community, and multiple people die.
That might sound outlandish, but it’s 100% happening across the country now. The only difference between Maine and other states is that in Maine it’s easier to trace exactly where the COVID came from and what happens as a result of it. Case in point: the wedding in Millinocket that has since directly resulted in 176 COVID cases and 7 deaths. If that family had chosen to not have a public wedding, 7 people would still be alive today, and our case count would be at least 3.6% lower than it is right now. From one single event. I’m not sure who it was who got married (definitely safer for them not to be publicly known), but imagine making national headlines for the way your marriage ceremony ended up impacting your entire state.
With sports in Maine, you could potentially have something similar happen. And where in other states, COVID is rampant enough that you can’t be sure where a case came from and what it resulted in, you could see news stories in Maine about how a school that held sports ended up killing members of its community due to that decision.
Public workers are being forced to make calls that are beyond the level of responsibility they signed up for. A doctor might expect to have to make life or death decisions. A pastor or a superintendent? Not so much. Sure, any one of us might be thrust into an emergency situation where lives are on the line, but this is different than that. These are decisions you know about ahead of time, and where your judgement will be directly responsible for the outcomes. The preacher who married the couple in Millinocket has been unrepentant. It baffles me that someone could take that stance in light of what happened, but it is what it is. I don’t think a superintendent would have quite the same leeway.
I want my kids to have a great school experience. I want them to be able to be in school plays or go to school dances or perform in school music groups. But while we’re stuck with COVID (due to the gross negligence on the way the pandemic was handled in this country), this is the hand we’ve been dealt. I’m going to still try to do things to help my kids have fun, but it’s going to have to be different than it would have been if we’d handled this better. (Though that said, it appears other countries are having resurgences as well. Maybe their good actions just bought themselves a breather, not a solution. Time will tell. But a breather would have been lovely . . .)
Am I 100% happy with the school board’s decision? No. But there’s no decision they could have made that would have resulted in everyone being happy. They have to make the best they can with what they’ve been given, just like the rest of us. Maybe something will change in the future to make it possible to reevaluate the status quo. For now, we carry on.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 15, 2020
The Danger of Conspiracy Theories
I love the internet. There are so many awesome things out there, waiting for people to discover. It’s enabled us to do things we couldn’t do before. YouTube acts as one of the best teachers out there, always ready to show you a video on how to do just about anything, whether it’s changing a tire or brushing up on an art technique. When I need to do research for a novel, I can find just about anything I need from the comfort of my couch. It’s a fantastic resource.
But.
The internet is built on a few key principles that have led to some very damaging side effects. First of all, everything on the internet is created by people, and people generally don’t create things just for kicks. They want to be compensated for the time it took them to create whatever it is they have to offer. And I’m all for the idea in principle. I mean, here I am writing a blog each day, and at the end of each post I put out a call for people to support my writing by becoming a patreon. But there are three general ways people get paid back for what they put online:
They do it for free, hoping that the “exposure” will eventually turn into something more. (Note: this is usually temporary. People generally give up on doing things for free, because time is limited. If the thing you’re putting out there is gaining no views or no interest, you usually just stop putting it out there. If it’s gaining views and interest, you start wondering if you can’t somehow be recompensed for it through other means. Like Patreon. This is one of the main reasons so many personal blogs just end up dying.)They do it for a fee, meaning they either are employed to do it, they’re supported by others (like Patreon), or the return on that item is conveyed through other means. Maybe higher views gives them the standing they want to be able to turn that into something more than a side gig. (“Other means” is also a road that typically ends in transitioning to something else. Maybe the death the content.)They do it for the ad fees. YouTube lets you monetize your videos. You can stick ads from Google on your websites. The more clicks those ads get, the more money you receive.
I had ads on my site about ten years ago, but I finally made the decision to do away with them, because I found myself writing articles for the purpose of getting more clicks. Sort of like a rat in a lab experiment. Press this button and get a treat. You do that enough, and all you start thinking about is how many treats you can get.
The majority of what we consume online these days is supported by ads. If you are reading something for free, it’s usually free because someone else is paying for it, or because the content creator is making money off your clicks. (Sorry for the cynicism. There are definitely exceptions to the rule, but they are generally rare.)
Speaking as someone who’s blogged daily for more than a decade, I can say from experience that the road to more clicks comes through creating content that resonates with people, for good or bad. You get more views by voicing strong opinions. Ideas that either make people want to throttle you or sing your praises. In my opinion, this is why news organizations have drifted more and more toward inflammatory opinion pieces instead of just presenting the news.
And that’s bad enough, but one of the more extreme results of this is the rise of a plethora of conspiracy theories, from flat-earthers to QAnon to Holocaust deniers. On the surface, it might seem trivial. If people want to believe the earth is flat despite scads of evidence to the contrary, fine. Idiots have to idiot, right? Except it’s not just people being bone heads. In an article just published by Time, the reporter found that
In more than seven dozen interviews conducted in Wisconsin in early September, from the suburbs around Milwaukee to the scarred streets of Kenosha in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting, about 1 in 5 voters volunteered ideas that veered into the realm of conspiracy theory, ranging from QAnon to the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax.
Conspiracy theories don’t just stay harmless ideas on the fringes of the internet. They inspire people to take very real actions. To avoid vaccinations. To vote for or against different people. To wear a mask or not wear a mask. And if you want to believe the earth is flat, chances are you’re not going to hurt me by that belief, but if you start voting people into office who also believe the earth is flat, and those people begin to enact governmental policies around that concept, then we’re playing a whole different ball game.
Why do people believe conspiracy theories? I think it’s because we like to feel like we’re in the know. That the “truth” is out there, and that if you just put in the time to piece together all the different proofs, you too can become enlightened. And of course, the internet is right there waiting to help you find all the pieces of the puzzle. Better yet, there are people who have already found all the pieces and are ready to present it to you, all tied up with a bow.
Conspiracy theorists are resistant to arguments that go against the theory they’ve invested in. For one thing, the theory comes prepackaged with the concept of “people will try to convince you this is wrong, but they’re just deluded.” So as soon as you try to tell those people why what they’re believing is off base, they’re already immune to your arguments. “You’re just one of the other sheeple,” they’ll say. “Wake up!” For another, the more invested people become in an idea or cause, the more important that cause being right becomes to them. If you’ve very publicly stated your belief, you become that much more invested in doubling down on it, for the simple reason that people don’t like to admit they were wrong.
And conspiracy theories let people make more sense of a world that sometimes just feels like it’s lost its grounding. Change happens so quickly. Demographics are switching. Global pandemics are raging. Governments are using hush campaigns to undercut other governments. And now forest fires? Surely there’s a reason for all of this. It doesn’t just happen by accident, right?
From that simple desire to have meaning restored, people head down the path that (for some) ultimately leads them to think Hollywood, the media, and Democrats are holding on to power so that they can continue a global child sex trafficking operation. An operation only Donald Trump can save the world from.
As I said, there are plenty of “sources” out there that will help prove these theories. The rabbit hole that leads to this sort of searching can often start out innocently enough.
Hear about real world examples of sex-trafficking rings, like Epstein.Read about the horrifying statistics around child molestation.Read about how Netflix just released a new movie centered on 11 year old girls twerking for money.Hear the media decry the outrage around that movie.Wonder what else the media isn’t telling youTurn to Google
From there QAnon is waiting with its slew of articles and videos that all claim to tell you what’s really going on. (And never mind that “what’s really going on” is that Netflix made a really poor choice of marketing materials, and this Cuties outrage has grown far beyond what the film really seems to warrant.)
(What am I basing this on? A few things. For one, it premiered at Sundance back in January, winning the World Cinema Directing Award but not really making much of an impact beyond that. See this review, for an example. It’s particularly interesting to note the statement: “the film establishes its critical view of a culture that steers impressionable young girls toward the hypersexualization of their bodies.” I have not watched the movie, but I can certainly relate to the concept that society is hypersexualizing young girls, and all I have to do to support that assertion is point to the scores of dance pictures and dance outfits taken at yearly dance recitals every. single. year. And indeed, the articles I read about the film (the ones that aren’t rabidly denouncing it as evil incarnate) seem to fall in line with this. And then there’s the fact that this pedophile argument falls right in line with pre-existing far right furor, and it all just doesn’t pass the sniff test for me. It wouldn’t be the first time a film made to critique something becomes accused of promoting the very thing it’s critiquing.)
But again, how do you combat this line of argument? You could suggest people actually watch the movie, but if you do that, then you’re accused of trying to promote child pornography. You could watch the movie yourself, but you get the same accusation. I don’t think there’s a way out of this except to clamor for people to cancel Netflix. Otherwise, you’re clearly just another person enabling pedophiles.
Sigh. This post is getting derailed. Let me get back on track.
The bottom line is that the gateways to these conspiracy theories are much more reasonable than the destinations they end up leading to. But getting out of the conspiracy theory is much harder than getting in.
How do you avoid them? Always question your sources. If it’s something written on a fringe site, what are the qualifications of the author? Why does the fringe site exist? Where does it get its money? One of the sad side effects of the internet is that quality information costs money, but crappy information is free or ad-based. (Written by the man who’s providing free commentary.) And because those free or ad-based sources get money based on clicks, it’s in their interest to accuse the subscription sources of being biased or wrong.
But I think a main reason so many of these conspiracy theories are taking stronger and stronger root in society is that they’re being used as a continued way to convince people to support certain candidates or campaigns. This isn’t really up for debate. Trump retweets articles and supporters of these QAnon conspiracies. He parrots back some of them on the campaign trail. (And when you’re no longer able to make a reasoned argument for why you should be reelected, but instead need to resort to people believing you’re the only person saving the world from child-eating monsters? Maybe you should reevaluate your campaign platform.)
But it’s not just people on the right falling for them. People on the left buy into them too. Bush planned 9/11 was a popular one back in the day. The flurry of reports of the Robert Mueller was “really going to do” was another, and some of the claims around Trump get very outlandish, to say the least. (He’s either an idiot or a mastermind, depending on the theory. Sometimes both. That doesn’t add up.) If you think only “other people” fall for conspiracy theories, you’re not helping things.
(Of course, the world being what it is, there are some who would have you believe some actual world events are nothing more than conspiracy theories. Climate change, for example. But I don’t have time to go there today.)
Anyway. That’s all I’ve got for you on that for now. I’m out of time as it is. I’m just hoping we can, as a people, be a little more questioning of information. Not all sources are created equal. Be extra careful when you start buying into an argument that “everyone wants you to ignore.” I’ll leave it at that for now.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 14, 2020
Success through Failure
Denisa is teaching a class this semester for first year students, all about how to succeed in college. Today, she’s asked me to come speak to her class all about failure. “I was the first person to come to mind, huh?” I asked her. She gracefully dodged the question.
In all honesty, however, I do know a lot about failure, and I’m looking forward to talking to her class about it. Failure and success are completely interlinked, in my book. You almost never have success without failure first, and even once you have success, you will inevitably also have failure. It brings to mind the famous Michael Jordan quote:
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
The thing is, I didn’t always know nearly as much about failure as I do now. When I was going through high school, the times I really failed at something were few and far between, at least on a stage where it mattered. I applied to only one college, and I was accepted and given a full ride scholarship. I was the valedictorian. I missed out on a few auditions, which I looked at as failures back then, but for the most part I breezed by everything without too much effort.
My first real failure was when I applied to PhD programs in English. I thought I’d done everything I needed to be accepted. I felt confident. I was going to be an English professor. No doubt. And then I was turned down by all of them, one after another. That was pretty jarring. Suddenly I found myself in a new landscape. I didn’t have a backup plan, and I had to really scramble to figure out what I was going to do with my life.
Thankfully, things worked out. I bounced back from that failure, pivoted toward library science instead of English, and I’ve been very happy with that change. (So much so that I really feel like those rejections were for the best.) But ever since that huge failure, I’ve always been working on having backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans. I never want to be caught in that situation again, where I’m so flat footed, and I’m left staring at my life wondering what in the world I should do next. (And even with all those backup plans, I realize sometimes I’m still going to be stumped by life. Thanks for the reminder, COVID.)
The same holds true with my writing. I finished my first book back in . . . 2001? 2002? Something like that. And when I was done with it, I kept revising and revising. Polishing. I wanted that first book to succeed, because I’d worked so hard on it. Finally, my creative writing professor (Louise Plummer) told me I had to start on a second book. “The first one’s done. Move on.”
Of course, now I’ve written 18 novels. Two of them have been published professionally, one self-published, and another one is set to come out next summer. If I’d always stuck to that first book, insisting it had to become a success, I never would have gotten to any of the others. Some of the books have done well, and some not nearly so well. But I’ve learned from all of them, and the successes have been built on the failures. I keep trying new things with my writing.
(I suppose in many ways I could trace some of that back to another failure that slipped my mind until now. My eighth grade English teacher didn’t want to recommend me for honors English in ninth grade. The reason? “I don’t think you’re a good enough writer.” I had to push through his resistance and enter Honors anyway.)
Anyway. It should be an interesting discussion. Would it have helped me to hear it back during my freshman year of college? I don’t know. Some things have to be learned on your own, I suppose. Maybe someone tried to teach me those lessons back then, and they just sailed over my head. Wouldn’t be the first time . . .
But hey: I got there eventually. Success through failure!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 11, 2020
Revision Complete!
Yesterday I finished the sixth draft of THE PERFECT PLACE TO DIE. There was much rejoicing. It wasn’t a huge revision in the grand scheme of things, but it came at a very difficult time. Between the kids’ school starting back up, the university getting in gear again, the puppy, and general anxiety, it’s a tough time to force yourself to get creative. But I did, and I’m happy with how it turned out. (Now here’s hoping my editor is also happy . . .)
Of course, I also realize that when I say “wasn’t a huge revision,” it might mean different things to me than it means to you. For me, a revision is something much more than checking for spelling errors and internal consistencies in the book. (Such as, “Does a character’s description remain constant?”) No, an actual revision is going through making real changes to the text itself.
For this revision, there were a number of things I set out to tackle. First, my editor had read through the whole manuscript and had some great suggestions about what needed to happen. The first third of the book dragged too much, so it needed to be slimmed down. (I cut it by almost a fifth.) The climax was over too abruptly. (I extended it by about 40%.) Some of the characters didn’t appear often enough. Some areas needed more tension. In all, I probably trimmed about 7,500 words (out of 75,000) and added back in around the same amount I cut. (The final length did drop by a few hundred words.)
Once I’d read her suggestions, I read through the book myself again, looking for ideas on how to execute her suggested edits, as well as checking for things that still didn’t sit right with me. It’s always super helpful to be reading with a purpose. I get to the point on a book that I can’t take it any farther on my own. I’ve made it as good as I can without feedback. Once I have feedback, I can almost always see what I was missing before.
(It reminds me in many ways of the days when I was still searching for an agent. I’d send off a manuscript, confident it was perfect. I’d get back feedback and suddenly see all its flaws. This isn’t to say that a book always has those flaws. Sometimes I’m trying to do something that appeals to some people and not to others. You can’t just give up on your vision because someone doesn’t think it’s great. Sometimes you need to stick to your guns. A lot of the trick is knowing when to do that.)
Anyway. Glad to have the revision done and be that much closer to sharing it with you all!
And in other good news, Ferris didn’t just keep his cage poop free last night, he went to bed at 10 and didn’t get up until we got him at 6am. That’s a huge win in my book. If we can keep that up, things are looking rosy!
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 10, 2020
And the Poop Just Keeps on Coming
I realize that this title could appear to refer to any number of things at this moment in time. What’s Bryce blogging about today? Could it be the Trump tapes? The wildfires in the west? The Corona crisis? What does he mean when he says “poop”?
I mean poop, folks. As in puppy poop. Which believe me, is a much more immediate problem in my life at the moment.
We thought we had Ferris down at this point. He would let us know when he needed to be let out. We’d take him out, he did his business, and we’d bring him in. At night, we’d take him out one last time, then take him out again once in the middle of the night, and we’d be good to go.
Reader, we were most definitely not “good to go.”
These days, Ferris likes to go to sleep about 8 o’clock each night. It’s a long, tiring slog, biting your family and generally demanding attention for every moment you’re awake. I can relate to his feeling. So he passes out somewhere underneath the table or a chair, oblivious to the world. Last night, Tomas woke him up and dragged him out at 10pm for a last chance at voiding the bowels. Ferris was Not a Fan of the idea. He refused to do anything, so Tomas took him inside to put him into his cage.
As near as we can figure, that was when Ferris decided sleeping was no longer an option. He’d had a nap, and it was time to play. Commence the barking and yapping! Tomas, as instructed, left him in his cage and went to bed. When Denisa got up at 2:30 for the nightly walking of the dog, she discovered a dog that had become encased in a coating of poop. (We think he probably pooped the cage in the middle of all his barking protest at 10pm.) So she took him out, cleaned him off in the bath, cleaned out his cage, and took him outside, where he proceeded to sit down and do nothing. “Poop? What poop? No need to poop, ma’am. It’s the middle of the night. What sort of an animal do you think I am?”
So she did what any right thinking woman would do: she brought Ferris back to his cage. But this was no longer a sleepy Ferris. This was a freshly bathed Ferris, ready for action (as long as it didn’t involve pooping outside). He began barking and protesting again, but Denisa was (naturally) exhausted, and went back to bed.
When Daniela got up at 5:45am to take Ferris out, she discovered (spoiler!) a dog that had become encased in a coating of poop. (Once again, most likely deposited during all his barking protests at 3am.) So she took him out, cleaned him off in the bath, cleaned out his cage, and took him outside, where he proceeded to sit down and do nothing. “Poop? What poop? No need to poop, ma’am. It’s the stupid o’clock in the morning. What sort of an animal do you think I am?”
This is, naturally, more than a little discouraging. The kids are back in school, work is back in full swing, and right when we need all hands ready for battle, the puppy’s stuck on the poop deck.
We have, of course, come up with a new strategy. Tonight, the plan is for Ferris to go to sleep in his cage at 8pm, and for us to leave him there until he wakes up and begins to whine. (Yes, we’re resorting to a baby monitor, the very same technique I marveled that my brother would resort to with his puppy, just a few short weeks ago.) If he wakes up because he has to poop, then (call me crazy) maybe he’ll actually poop when he’s taken outside right away, and then he’ll (theoretically) not be so ready for partying right afterward, because he won’t have taken a bath. (You wake me up at 3am and put me in the shower, and I’m going to be pretty wide awake when I try to go back to bed as well.) This continues to rest on the assumption that Ferris would prefer not to be encased in a coating of poop. I recognize he might have developed a taste for it at this point. If that’s the case . . . we’ll figure something else out.
Wish us luck. We will, most assuredly, need it.
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
September 9, 2020
On Willful Ignorance
More and more, I’m seeing people who object to the idea that perhaps racism is still a problem America is actively dealing with. I’ll illustrate this with a case in point: up in Bangor a few months ago, five Black students at the high school came forward to attest to the fact that they had experienced racists attacks during their time at school. Specific instances, like being called the n-word in the middle of basketball games, or having other students defend white supremacy and slavery in the middle of class. (Mind you, folks: this is in Maine. You don’t get more north than this without a whole lot of Canada.)
It was upsetting to hear of those experiences, and disappointing to think it’s happening here in Maine, but not really surprising or unexpected. (We just had a BLM protest canceled in Portland due to death threats against the organizers, after all.) There have been many other instances of racism I’ve seen reported in the media, from slurs to outright attacks. But I hoped that with all the attention and newfound support for ending racism, this trend would diminish in Maine.
Cue today, where a student and his parents got upset that a teacher in the high school was addressing privilege and bias head on. The student filmed some of the teacher’s lesson:
In the shared video clip, the teacher talked to students about how race and gender shape their identities and their treatment in society. As a white woman, the teacher explained, she does not face racial discrimination but has faced sexism.
“The fact that my race is white is part of my privileged identity,” she said. “Race is not something that gets in the way of me getting a job or puts me in danger, whereas my gender being female is something I have to think about and might be one of my more targeted identities.”
They then took that clip and shared it online in pro-Trump Facebook groups, and suddenly you had people clamoring for that teacher to be fired.
I’m baffled that people would object to this line of reasoning in the first place, though (again) I suppose I shouldn’t be. There have been times in the past that I have written about seeing prejudice or sexism at work first hand, only to have people show up in the comments section claiming that they’ve never experienced anything like that, and so they doubt that it could be true. (In my case, it was talking about sexism among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I’d seen it. I’d talked to plenty of people who had experienced it. Yet there were multiple women who came forward after I wrote the post to say that they had never seen any sexism in the church, and to call my statements into question because of that.)
There just seems to be a lack of imagination for some people. An apparent inability to be able to think for a moment that their small slice of life experience might not be 100% applicable to the experiences everyone else is going through. In many ways, I try to think of it like when I learn a new word. I could have sworn I’d never heard that word before I learned the definition, but as soon as I know the definition, I start hearing the word in conversations all over the place. It’s not some big conspiracy. I just leveled up my vocabulary, and so I was suddenly capable of understanding more than I was before.
Though it’s not just that. I think the very idea that racism and sexism (or other isms) are present in our society is threatening to some people. Because we like to think of ourselves as good people. If our society still has flaws, that might lead to the conclusion that we have flaws and that we are not as good of people as we would like to think. Even worse, it might mean we need to change what we’re doing, and change is hard.
I don’t hold ignorance against people. I don’t think it’s fair. If someone truly doesn’t know about something, then it’s unjust to judge them for that hole in their knowledge. However, what I’m seeing more and more is willful ignorance. When a person decides to ignore facts or other people’s experiences, or dismiss them as invalid because they contrast with their own experiences, then they stop simply being ignorant and move into more dangerous territory. Once you’ve embraced willful ignorance as a way to deal with problems, it becomes easier to turn to it time and time again to solve other difficulties. Worse yet, you begin to doubt any evidence that goes against what you’re already inclined to believe, until you get to the point that anything that contradicts your worldview can be dismissed without even looking twice at it. At that point, I’m not sure you can be defined as willfully ignorant anymore, because you’ve stopped even looking at anything that might put your ignorance in danger. Let’s call this “stubborn ignorance.”
So what do we do about the stubborn ignorant? Or worse yet, those people who have learned the trappings of this conflict and try to use those trappings to justify their continued ignorance (or at least their continued actions)? For example, once someone knows the term “gaslighting,” they can use it to justify just about anything. If I have never seen (or at least acknowledged) racism at work in my country, I can accuse anyone who says it’s present of gaslighting. “My country isn’t racist. You’re trying to get me to believe something that doesn’t exist. Stop gaslighting me!” And then the argument moves away from anything remotely threatening to the core of a person’s actions or beliefs, centering instead on just what “gaslighting” means and who is or isn’t doing it.
I’m not sure what else to add to this. The points are probably lost on those who might benefit from them the most. But of course, I believe Americans live in two seemingly contrasting realities at this point. It’s like a sports rivalry, where anything the other team does or says is automatically wrong, except played out in real life, where actual lives are at stake. I can see there’s a problem. Others can see there’s a problem. But the people we need to actually see a problem refuse to acknowledge such a problem exists. As if we needed one more thing to be depressed about . . .
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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.
If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.
