blsm.blog
Oh god, what the fuck is this?
OK. I am not particularly sure. I wrote a response on Twitter to some random person who was touting Landman, the Paramount show with Billy Bob Thornton, on the premise that the daughter and ex-wife in the show are hot. To which I replied something about how the scenes with those characters are basically the only parts of the show that can definitely be removed to make the show better. To which a friend of mine replied something about my take being correct and asking when the TV blog was coming. I am sure almost immediately I thought, "he's so right, I'm a genius, I need to start blogging." It stuck with me, though, for about a day or two, and I went back-and-forth on it, wondering what I would write about, wondering if anyone would care, wondering if I could actually stick to it, arguing with myself in the shower about who or what I would be doing it for, imagining what the site would even look like, etc. Where I ended up seemed to mostly be - at least to the question of why - about excitement. It excites me to talk about things that I like - or don't like for that matter - and it doesn't take much for me to have an opinion. People that know me can usually tell when this happens because I talk more quickly and get progressively louder; maybe that will come through on here. I'm sure you noticed, especially if you're one of the people that I am about to criticize, that I just wrote two senteces with what I used to call hyphens and now everyone is calling emdashes. Let's just quickly get it out of the way that I will use these all the time because they are effective and they make sense in my head when I write. It is not because I am using "AI" (AI) to write this, and nothing that is written on this site will ever be written by AI. Unless it's written by someone else and I don't realize it, but we'll get to the part where other people write later. I don't really want to get into my thoughts on AI, but it is incredibly annoying that there are a subset of people out there who will just accuse anyone of using ChatGPT and the like to write now. I saw a Tweet the other day that someone wrote in the most normal English I could imagine someone using, and someone replied to them accusing them of using AI to write their tweet. The replier shared a photo from a site into which they presumably entered the text, and it reported a sixty-something percent chance that the original Tweet was written with AI. Just stupid. I am not sure if this fits into one of the logical fallacies that people use during disagreements, but if not, we should create a new one. Argument by accusations of having used AI or some shit, but make it latin. It's not lost on me that the person making the accusation is inputting the text into some random tool that they don't understand or itself is probably using...........
Anyway, we got sidetracked. Which I will tend to do. I want the writing to represent how thoughts generally work in my head, but I will try to be reasonable here. I will make an effort to communicate in an effective manner, but not so much an effort that I won't let my thoughts wander or that I won't randomly change gears. I think we are on to the "what" now. The impetus for this comes from the story above about commentary on a TV show, but this is not going to be a blog about TV shows. At least not only. The things that I like that I consume and enjoy talking about are eating, drinking, cooking, tv, movies, and golf, so I am going to blog about eating, drinking, cooking, tv, movies, and golf. An incredibly unique list, there is no one like me. I might create a section for sports or random musings, we'll see. But this will mostly be about stuff that I talk about briefly in a chatbox before I feel like no one is reading anymore or at a bar or dinner before I feel like I am way over my credits for speaking time. Each of those sections will have an introductory article, somewhat like this one, that gives a general overview of my thoughts on the topic. I'll reiterate this in those places, but they will be a good place to refer back to when you are wondering why I seem to have the biases that I have. Relatedly...
Cussing is the sign of someone with a limited vocabulary.
My Dad - a professional jouranlist and writer to be fair - said this once during a discussion we were having about the use of swear words. He and I do not see eye to eye on this, but I admit that his vocabulary is better than mine. Hopefully he takes the time to write on here some day and you can see what a big vocabularly reads like. In most contexts, "you're fucking beautiful" just comes more naturally to me than some shit like "you're the fairest flower of any field." And the latter probably more natural to him. Honestly, there's probably an interesting web of correlations between your personality type, appearance, communication style, etc. and your power of persuasion. For another time. The long and short of it is that I cuss a fair bit, particularly when impassioned. Apologies in advance.
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Strong Opinons, Weakly Held
This was obviously not actually said by Mark Twain - who I am named after by the way - but somewhere along the way, we decided to just give him attribution for anything that someone ever found clever. So, there you go, Mark, another banger. I actually think the first time I came across the phrase was by a seemingly much lesser Mark, Marc Andreesen. I quite like the phrase, and I think it's important to this blog and how to consume what I write, but the guy just seems like a loser. Obviously, he's not the first person to have said it either, but it seemed dishonest not to attribute it to the person from which I had heard it. I don't even really know much about the guy, I have just seen some of his commentary that makes its way to people who don't actively consume it, and I find myself getting annoyed. My thoughts on him are a good reminder of the point of this section. I will be passionate about the things I write about, or at minimum, I will be passionate about what I think about them once I start thinking and writing about them. The way I talk and presumably the way I write will give off the impression that I am certain I am right, or it will be a bit harsher than my be fair. That just is what it is. But I am open to other perspectives, encourage them really, and don't care much to just have only my thoughts on these pages.
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Reading is passive. Reaction is constrained. Response requires work.
I suppose I have already violated something I said in the opening statement, but I am not considering this to be written by AI because I am not taking credit for writing it. I only sort-of kind-of know how to build a website, and I certainly don't know how to build the idea for a blog that I had in my head, so I enlisted ChatGPT - and some of its relatives - for that. In that process, I had to describe the goals and concepts behind the blog, and they spit this out somewhere along the way. I thought they kind of cooked here, given that my idea for the site is to allow response. I didn't really just want to write random shit on a simple website or join one of those other blogging sites, and I felt like if I posted the links to articles on Twitter or Instagram or whatever, people would just respond in those places, and I don't really use those things like that. I certainly don't want to at least. Comment sections at the bottom of articles or blogs seem to never get read, or maybe just something about them being "down there" makes them seem less important, or maybe I just have a hatred for that type of comment because I grew up reading articles where the only comments "down there" were the ones written by people who felt strongly in either direction to the point of those sections becoming total lunacy. Either way, I don't like the idea of the traditional comment section.
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I have decided on three emojis that can be used on any selection of text to which a reader wants to react. I thought about more, but three is plenty. We don't need 20 different ways to convey people's most basic reactions. You can see those if you highlight text. Enjoy.
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You can also comment, but those will have minimum and maximum character or word limits. I haven't really decided on what those minimums and maximums are, but we will start somewhere and end up somewhere. The comments are for thoughts with more depth than the emojis allow but not so much depth that they take up the entire margin. You can sort of see where we are going with this now.
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The last response mode is basically an article or blog. You can take any section of any piece and write your own piece. Doesn't have to necessarily disagree. Doesn't necessarily have to agree. But try to actually keep it about the selection to which you have chosen to 'respond.' Or just respond to the whole thing, that's fine, too. My grand idea is to have a tree-like structure on some page where you can see articles and responses and responses to responses and so own, if anyone decides to actually write shit on here.
As you can probably guess, everything but the emojis will be moderated, and for that, I have enlisted myself. I don't think I want this thing to become like substack or whatever where any of the 10 people who end up reading it can write whenever they feel. I want there to be guest pieces for any section that anyone cares to write about, and I want people to take time to write meaningful responses to articles if they are passionate enough to do so, but there is a ratio of me:others that I want to maintain for the time being. We'll cross that bridge if it ever gets built.
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Rules are what separate us from the animals.
RULE #1: If you are going to write something, demonstrate a basic command of the English language.
This rule is probably just for me to get something off my chest. I'll make some mistakes occasionally, and not everything I write will be grammatically correct according to whatever the standard for that is currently. But if you are going to comment or write, at least try. I didn't much like English as a school subject growing up because I thought the grading was bullshit. It was one of the few classes where the teacher could just give you a grade based on how much they liked you and rationalize it in any way that they desired (looking at you, Ms. Hagberg-Cohen). This kid shows up to class with chocolate milk and beef jerky every day, so I am just going to write shit like 'passive voice' in the margins and ding him points. English as a school subject pretends to have rules but loosens them enough that they turn out not to be rules at all. As a language, though, we are losing the plot, and we have seemed to move toward a world where "you know what I meant" is actually an acceptable argument. I hate that phrase. What you meant might not be clear because it took me 3 times to read it before realizing what the(ir|y're|re) or you(r|'re) you meant. The middle ground here is vast, just try.
RULE #2: Treat the reaction and response mechanisms for what they are.
I don't really know what this is, but I mostly just want to write things, and if other people feel the urge to react, reply, or respond, even better. I thought it fun to make the site my own, and the ideas for it came to me as I began considering it, but I don't care to build a site that protects against people abusing the emoji / comment / response stuff by being technically savvy or by abusing what limited restrictions will be in place. Just be reasonable.
RULE #3: RULE #3
If you know, you know, as they say. This one is involuntary; I am not worried about anyone fucking it up.
RULE #4 : Rules are subject to change.
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You are saying a lot of profound things, but I am not convinced you actually believe them
I think about her saying that a lot. I am not sure why I included it here, but I needed a quote after the rules section before finishing this thing off, and this one seemed like it must be relevant to how I communicate. This whole intro feels somewhat lame, but I needed somewhere to ground my thoughts and explain what the hell this might be. Check out the sections for more interesting content.