I have been banned and censored by TikTok, libeled by influencers in the publishing world with lies, dishonored and smeared when I won an award for my creative work, and have had armies of assholes delete all references to me and my work on Wikipedia. A major corporate media company even stole the name and the logo of a creative project I have put years of my life into.
And yet I keep returning like a stubborn phoenix.
Will there ever come a time in which I get a modicum of respect? Probably not. But at least I tell the truth and I live and create entirely on my own terms. And that's worth more than all the fame and influence in the world.
I'm sure there are many people, far smarter and more talented than I am, who are in the same boat. Try to throw the troublemakers and the misfits a bone now and then. I always do.
"It is time for people with a moral conscience to wield every ounce of #influence and #power they have towards #justice and to force this nation to be true to what it said on paper.""
"Bishop William Barber, decrying recent decisions by #farright Supreme Court justices and the complicity of political leaders who have "watched our #democracy being slowly chipped away.""
In a decade or so, most of the popular and debated theology books and Christian Bestsellers will be only available from second-hand bookshops and specialist libraries.
In a week or so, that viral tweet or popular toot will be all but forgotten.
But 408 years ago, a man called Nicolas Herman, was born in an unremarkable town to a peasant family. Much of his adult life revolved around doing dishes in a French monastery. As far as we know, he never wrote a single book, nor did he go on a promotional tour.
But he left a deep impact on people. So much so that, after his death, letters he has sent were collated into a book. This book, The Practice of The Presence of God, published under the name of Brother Lawrence, the name Nicolas took in the monastery, is still read today and still affects people, hundreds of years after he died.
One ordinary man's peace and desire to always be close to God affected generations after generations.
What does that mean to me?
I would rather chase what God says is meaningful than what the world rushes after. I'm probably not going to influence generations like Brother Lawrence but I can influence my family and I can seek the Kingdom first, just like he did, and just like Jesus told us too.
I am going to point out now that I've been running my own mailserver for 15+ years
And I can't send mail to people with Apple or Google accounts. Why? Well, I'm not a known corporate entity. They whitelist email to known large businesses, an unrecognized IP gets blocked directly.
So y'know, yeah. Globally recognized protocol, got all the SPF/DKIM/DMARC/etc, but when it comes down to it, once big business gets a majority of an open protocol? They will devour it
Part of the problem is Gmail's huge #influence. Like Lily Tomlin said, "We don't #care. We're the phone company, we don't have to.". So they don't give a damn if smaller domains have trouble delivering to Gmail #users. It's not like Gmail users have any way to actually inform Gmail that they're not getting their #mail.
And I'm sure it's just a #coincidence that the #problem just increases Gmail's business. People give up hosting, and #outsource their email to Gmail.
Basically a crowdsourced instance where memes are kept
But not just a pile of hopeful clip-art which mostly doesn’t apply anywhere specific, not just a collection of tired arbitrary animated gifs from the past 10 years or so
This would be a curated, dynamic and above all meaningful set of memes that reflect the zite-guys (oh those guys, the zite guys, they’re always on top of things, it’s as if they’re the spirit of the age)
technically, the animated gif is actually a good medium (scarred by the amount of prehistoric pixels animated gifs extant from the days of the last century)
Even the two-frame; three-frame; four-frame memes consisting of static images with burned-in text are valid stories
But we have other formats now, a simple two, three, or four step sequence of still images with dynamic overlaid SVG text and arrows and stuff could work as a new meme format (wrapped as SVG)
This could need and complement the MFM markup that Calckey promotes
But anyway, whatever the details, the idea that there’s a place to go to to refer to current memes and pull them from there would mean that individual instances don’t have to have the load to store the (by then) multiple copies of it as it spreads, it’s all canonical
The curated side of it could mean that that’s where the topicality, the currency, the finger on the button is – that’s where the pulse of the thinking of the fediverse is – that pile of memes in one place
Dangerous idea: it could also be curated in terms of thought direction, to weed out ‘poisonous’ or ‘bad’ thinking, to weed out unhelpful memes from the perspective of human potential or achievement or integrity, and promote good helpful (happy?) thinking to build on – ie weighted more to the positive than evil
From Today's Edition:
KellyAnne Conway sold her political consulting business to a firm affiliated with Leonard Leo when Conway was advising Trump on Supreme Court nominees. Why does this matter? Because Leonard Leo is the head of the #FederalistSociety and was lobbying Conway about @SupremeCourt Appointments while Conway was in turn lobbying Trump about those same appointments. In other words, the appearance that #money changed hands to #influence the selection of Supreme Court #justices is palpable. See Press Release of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin:
Statement On Report That Kellyanne Conway Sold Business To A Firm With Ties To Leonard Leo While Advocating For Fedsoc SCOTUS Nominees.
[News] Pro-China influence campaign pushed talking points across more than 50 websites (www.nbcnews.com)
Facebook said Tuesday it has identified a sprawling online propaganda effort: a pro-China campaign that had a presence on more than 50 websites....
The Global South is tired of the West's disrespect (asia.nikkei.com)
Relationship can be repaired with fulfillment of past promises and more sincerity
Copywriting Quickstart Guide (copywriting.com)
How to grow your business writing words that sell