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Sacred Cow Chips

Category Archives: Blogging

Taking Inspiration From Morons

28 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by pnoetx in Blogging, Social Media

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Biden Administration, Big Tech, Blogging, Do-Somethingism, Facebook, Libertarianism, Sacred Cow Chips, Sacred Cows, Woke

I just quit Facebook for good, and it’s about time! Over the years my posts there became focused on links to my blog, SacredCowChips. In fact, I started the blog as a vehicle for longish-form refutation of nitwitted ideas to which I was regularly exposed on Facebook. Of course, nitwitted ideas are all too common in economic and political discourse, so there is always a deep vein of blog-worthy material. Facebook has no monopoly on that! More recently, COVID became a primary vehicle for foolish policy and commentary, which gave me plenty to write about.

What strikes me now is how much inspiration I drew from the purveyors of nonsense on Facebook. And when I say “inspired”, I mean it excited me to write posts that I knew would drop their jaws. Again, there are infinite sources of wrongheaded thinking and non-thinking acceptance of “woke” BS outside my circle of former Facebook friends. Still, I wonder whether posting my articles there gave me an extra thrill because I knew those people and could stick it right under their noses.

I’d say my hope was to persuade except I couldn’t help giving in to my disdain for “sacred cows.” Those aren’t really confined to one side of the political aisle, either. I’ll find a way to piss off everyone eventually. People of all stripes take pieces of received wisdom without subjecting them to logical scrutiny, and they don’t like to be told they’re wrong. I’m sure that led certain “friends” to “unfollow” me on Facebook. There’s no way of knowing, but it really didn’t bother me. What bothered me a little was when friends who agreed with me were too chickenshit to “like” a post. I know some had business interests to protect and couldn’t afford to alienate the crowd, but some people are more daring in that regard, to which I must accord some respect.

I now find myself on several platforms dominated by folks more amenable to my largely libertarian point of view. But I feel much more as if I’m “singing to the choir”. Also, I’m concerned that articles might get lost amid a sea of posts appealing to similar “mood affiliations”.

Here’s another concern: since I posted “On Leaving Facebook”, in which I was highly critical of the tech giants, my readership has plunged. Granted, I haven’t posted in six days due to travel and reorienting my social media connections. Nevertheless, I find the downturn in views and visitors to my blog highly coincidental and suspicious.

Even after all that, however, I’m still eager to continue writing about issues that are important to me. As part of that, I’ll find plenty of inspiration in the dumb reports of woke journalists, pundits, and politicos. And after all, the Biden Administration and Congress are full of busybodies who are so set on “doing something” that they will propose all sorts of moronic public policies. No, inspiration won’t be a problem!

Keeping My Resolution Starts With the Bee

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by pnoetx in Blogging, Fake News, Uncategorized

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Alternative Facts, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Facebook, Fact Checkers, Fake News, Google, Inaugural Crowds, Kellyanne Conway, Relativism, Resolutions, Selective News, The Babylon Bee

I’m too lazy to check the archives right now, but I’m sure I’ve said this once before: I resolve to mix in more brief posts in the new year. My blogging hours (sometimes minutes) are limited on a day-to-day basis, so it’s taking too many days to wrap-up posts. My son says I should break them into parts. Maybe, but that won’t reduce the time I spend on a given topic.

Another motive for my resolution: I see so many items I’d like to share here, but I put them off in order to get back to a draft. I have to go where the whiffs of inspiration take me in a given session. But then… I either forget the short items or something else comes along to excite my long-windedness.

So, here is my first “short-form” blog share of 2020, from the Babylon Bee in early 2017:  

“Culture In Which All Truth Is Relative Suddenly Concerned About Fake News”

The piece reminded me of when poor Kellyanne Conway was castigated by the Left for using the expression “alternative facts” in reference to attendance at Trump’s inauguration. She’ll be fine, of course, but the photo comparison favored by the Left used an early pre-ceremony photo for Trump in 2017 and a peak-crowd photo for Obama in 2009. The Obama crowd was almost certainly larger than the real Trump crowd, but the whole thing was sort of a big “so what?”, especially given the well known political leanings of the local population.

Both Left and Right have been selectively reporting and distorting news (and editing photos) for a long time, the rise of so-called “fact checkers” notwithstanding. Alternative “facts” indeed! But our leftist friends are constant champions of relativism, often to the point of kookiness, while blissfully unaware that their “truths” and “facts” are severely shaded.

This was supposed to be short! Gah! More fake news! With that, here are some choice quotes from the Bee:

“One Oregon man, who rejects the idea that humanity can even be sure the universe exists in any meaningful sense, was nonetheless disturbed by the idea that websites could publish completely false information, for anyone in the world to read. …

Tech conglomerates such as Facebook and Google have vowed to meet the trend head-on, assuring the public that they are taking bold steps to filter out any news that contradicts the version of truth that they decide is acceptable.”

Read This Post a Little Later

11 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by pnoetx in Blogging

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Blogging, Editing, Typos, Wordpress

editing-humor

I love blogging, but invariably I find a few typos and readability issues when I publish a new post. It drives me crazy! I try to fix them as soon as possible, but it’s often difficult to get to it immediately. That was a problem last night. It was late when I posted and I had to hit the sack. This morning, to my horror, I found several such issues, and a number of readers had already clicked through from a link in social media.

Worse yet, when I pulled-up the edit screen, I was prompted to choose a “saved version of the file,” a pop-up prompt that I see occasionally. I was a little foggy then, and I’m a little foggy now as to the sequence of events, but somehow the media file I added last night at the top of the post  — the cartoon — was not in the “saved version”. I did not notice. That was unfortunate because I referenced the cartoon explicitly in the text. I made several edits and other additions, then unsuspectingly clicked “Update.” A friend emailed this afternoon to inform me that there was NO CARTOON in the post!

The missing cartoon was probably a consequence of editing drafts on both a laptop and a phone, depending on my location. I’ve long been aware of the potential this creates for version control problems, but I’m unlikely to end the practice. I just have to be more careful. Sure!

I always reread my posts multiple times before clicking “publish”, but it helps to get away from the draft for a while. One quirk I have is that it seems much easier to spot problems when a post is in the final format, as opposed to viewing it the editing screen in WordPress. There is a “Preview” option, which shows the post in the final format. For some reason, however, I seldom avail myself of that capability. I think it’s because I’m always too eager to get my posts out there, to be timely, yet so often I lament typos, mangled sentences, discontinuities, and omissions of pertinent thoughts that I’d intended to cover.

Occasionally, following one or two of these episodes, I have gone so far as to offer a veiled repentance on the link to a post in social media. Something like: “Fixed typos and improved readability”. I assume the readers will know I messed up, and I want them to know that I know it. I also have imagined giving my contacts a disclaimer at the time of initial posting: “You might want to wait a few hours before you read this, or check back in the morning…  I need a chance to review.” But of course I won’t ever do that. Except right now!

I must start using the preview option. I’ll start with this very post, tonight, but I will still review it in the morning and I’ll probably change something. Then I’ll hope there no typos within my new fixes! It happens. I’m not sure I can check my eagerness to post, so this post is a meta-repentance for my past and future blogging blemishes. So sorry! I’ll let this post serve as my umbrella disclaimer. I might not find every glitch, but I’ll try. If it’s within a day of the original posting, check back later for an improved experience.

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TLCCholesterol

The Cholesterol Blog

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

CBS St. Louis

News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and St. Louis' Top Spots

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

Public Secrets

A 93% peaceful blog

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together

PERSPECTIVE FROM AN AGING SENIOR CITIZEN

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

Scattered Showers and Quicksand

Musings on science, investing, finance, economics, politics, and probably fly fishing.

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