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Nobody knows what socialism means. Perhaps a better way to say this is that everyone who says “socialism” means something different. The worst person to ask about what socialism is is a Republican, who doesn’t know what socialism means, and will tell you that everything is socialism. The second worst person to ask is a leftist college professor, who knows exactly what socialism means, and will tell you that nothing qualifies as real socialism. Somewhere between these poles lies the elusive Practical Definition of Socialism, which nobody ever stops long enough to lay out before launching into their various tirades.

— Hamilton Nolan www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/new-yor…

New York Socialist City. Where taking care of everyone is common sense. “… what socialism really means in the context of US politics is public services for the public good. Using government to socialize the things that can help everyone, rather than allowing the private market to run everything in a way that preys on the public for private gain. As a practical matter, this is what most people trying to Do Socialism in American politics are trying to do. Full state control of the economy is not and has never been on the table.” www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/new-yor…

In retrospect it is obvious that drinking 48 ounces of cappuccino and Coke Zero in the two hours prior to my taking a window seat on a full three hour flight was not conducive to my comfort and would not endear me to the two other people seated in my row.

Balderdash

Like many people, I swear a lot, and I’m even a little proud of it. But I have resolved to reduce swearing to special occasions after reading this article in The New York Times: “Why Does Everybody Swear All The Time Now?". And that’s even though I disagree with the conclusions of the article.

Swearing has become meaningless noise, like saying “um” or “like.” It’s just something people say to convey unearned edginess or rebelliousness. Dropping “F” bombs doesn’t make me cowboy, it just makes me like millions of other people who also swear a lot.

As a writer, I am aware of economy of language and too often swearing serves no purpose. Save it for times when it really matters.

As for the Times article: It starts out well enough. Mark Edmundson, a professor at the University of Virginia, talks about the previous rules of decorum for when swearing was appropriate. “These days, curse words fill the air like angry drones – an ambient buzzing of bitter, nasty words,” he says, which is a nice turn of phrase. Also, this: “A sprinkle of salt gives your dinner savor; a handful kills it.”

But here’s the part where I disagree:

When you curse compulsively you produce a view of the world that’s smaller and meaner.

…

Omnipresent cursing, the programmatic reduction of nearly everything, pollutes our worldview. It makes it harder to see what is true and good and beautiful. We become blind to instances of courage and compassion. Our world shrinks. And we shrink along with it.

On the other hand, the willingness to use decent words suggests a decent heart and mind.

To that I say: Bulls—

I mean, nonsense.

I don’t think swearing makes us meaner people. Plenty of great people swear a lot, and plenty of awful people refrain from profanity. But swearing has become noise, and I’m aware it makes some people uncomfortable, so I’m just going to dial it back and save it for rare occasions.

Yesterday I unplugged as much as I could from social media and national political news, to the extent that’s possible for someone like me. I felt pretty good about that so I think I’ll see if I can do the same today.

Alas, my idea of “unplugging” looks like a normal person’s “fanatically online.”

I am trying to at least partly unplug from the national political news today.

Micro.blog, the service I use to host mitchw.blog does not support likes and reblogs. Micro.blog proprietor Manton Reece @manton decided deliberately to not support likes or reblogs, because he sees those as contributing to social media toxicity.

I fundamentally disagreed with Manton when I started on Micro.blog, but I have come around to his view about “likes.” They’re just noise. I try to avoid looking at them on my posts. I do still sometimes click a like on other people’s posts. Other people seem to like “likes,” so why not?

But I still think reblogs are great. They are a primary means of sharing content on Mastodon, BlueSky and especially Tumblr. I don’t mind that I can’t publish reblogs on Micro.blog — linking, cutting-and-pasting and screenshots are fine. But the fact that Micro.blog won’t show me boosts on Mastodon keeps me from shutting down my Mastodon account and just relying on Micro.blog as my presence in the fediverse.

This blog is a dog's breakfast

Dogs start the day with a spoonful of Alpo or some other canned meat on top of a heap of patented, vitaminized kibble. In no time the meal is gobbled down and the dish licked clean and, like as not, poked noisily about the kitchen like a hockey puck, amid waggings. But I can recall another era, when every dog took a quick first look into his dish, to see what was in there. It was different each morning, but might contain a last chunk of pot roast or ham hock, plus gravy, from the previous night’s dinner table, a scraping of scrambled eggs, a slice or two of stale bread, leftover lima beans or spinach, a fresh but limp carrot, a splash of milk, and a half-bitten doughnut. It went down just as fast and probably did no harm, but what I’m getting at here is the old phrase “a dog’s breakfast,” because that’s what this book is. A mélange, a grab bag, a plate of hors d’oeuvres, a teenager’s closet, a bit of everything. A dog’s breakfast.

— Roger Angell, “This Old Man: All in Pieces.”