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Back Issue #119

Dysphemisms…[are] one of the moralists’ chief weapons in transforming a fact of life into a “menace”, a statement into a “shocking revelation”, a thing they dislike into something “seedy” or discussion of a taboo subject into a “conspiracy”.  –  “Dysphemisms Galore

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Back Issue #118

I will never cease to be amazed at the inability of statists to recognize that the expansion of government will never stop until it is somehow forced to.   –  “The Auctioneer Effect

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Back Issue #117

Grotesquely-unjust government policies nearly always have to get worse before they get better.  –  “Banishment

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It’s always been difficult for me to ask for what I need, even from close friends; exactly why this should be the case in a person who has absolutely no problem speaking her mind in any other way is a conundrum I’ve never been able to adequately explain even to myself, much less anyone else.  But it’s something my friends have long noticed and lovingly chided me for, to very little avail.  Now, I’ve never had a problem asking for payment for services; the issue only arises when there’s no direct quid pro quo.  That’s why appeals for financial support from my readers are always difficult for me to write, and always seem awkward to my eyes when I read them.  So when several of y’all responded to last month’s “Inner Circle” by subscribing at my new $10 per week and $25 per week levels, it was both satisfying and validating on several levels.  The more obvious one is, of course, the economic dimension; things have been a bit tight since autumn, and with tax time coming up (much more painfully than usual thanks to a 50% increase in my property taxes) it was quite a relief for more to come in just in time, not to mention helping soothe my anxiety about the rest of the year.  But there’s another dimension, too; such a positive, concrete response to my request helps to quiet that part of my brain which generates formless, unidentifiable anxieties about asking, and thereby makes it less scary to do it again in the future.  So to my new subscribers, thank you for supporting me in two very important ways.  And to those who haven’t joined yet: won’t you please consider adding your contributions to the team of generous folks who make my work possible and my life just a little bit easier?

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Rabbit Hole

This blog has a lot more infrastructure than most people probably realize.  Over the past few years, it has become obvious to me that the majority of readers don’t understand how I create the subtitles in my news columns, so I’ve decided to provide a brief demonstration.  I think it’s obvious that the tags collect items of similar subject matter, but some of y’all may not realize that they also help organize specific themes within a topic.  Take, for example, this recent example from the “The Mob Rules” tag:

There have been quite a few examples of this tag since it began two years ago, so why #1311 specifically?  There weren’t any other examples of politicians encouraging lawsuits against schools which don’t discriminate against trans students, but the item in #1311 was about politicians using the same mechanism to try to prevent young people from getting information their parents don’t want them to have (which naturally includes LGBT teens):

That one in turn references #1307, which as you can see is a much more direct connection: busybody Utah politicians trying to control the internet using the current porn panic as an excuse:

#1303 was the report on the Louisiana law referenced above:

And #1231 was the article which first mentioned this terrible law when its sociopathic sponsor first introduced it:
This one brings us back to the original article which spawned the tag.  If you explore that tag, you’ll notice a couple of other subthreads; there’s even the beginning of a spur from this one:

As you can see, that one references the original Utah article, which in turn leads back to the Louisiana one; any future articles on similar laws will refer back to this one, while future laws encouraging anti-trans lawsuits will link to the one at the top of this column.  Clicking on a subtitle link will take you directly to the article it names; as you can see, it’s possible to follow a rabbit hole all the way back to its origin, and multiple rabbit holes can lead to the same origin point; it’s all interconnected in one big warren.  So if you find an article interesting, infuriating, or whatever, you can follow the thread of references back through similar articles, often for years, while marveling at the obsessive lengths and depths to which my librarian’s brain will go to impose order on chaos.

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Back Issue #116

If someone were to seriously argue that it was wrong to pay for food, and that the restaurant business was by its very nature exploitative and demeaning, we would dismiss him as a crank or a lunatic.  –  “Skin To Skin

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