Chambanacon 2021 Conlang Presentation

Thanks to all those who attended. I truly enjoy sharing my love of this with you. Download links for the slides and language sketch are below.

Lee

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Not Exactly a Resolution

I’ve been writing fiction off and on for over ::mumble:: ::mumble:: years – ever since i was in my twenties. I love to write – just not enough. Not enough to quit my day job, which, for the most part, I loved just as much. (I remember the day I realized I could get a job playing with computers. I mean, get paid and everything.) Still, I guess it’s really just a hobby for me.

And there isn’t really that much, given that I am the embodiment of re-re-re-writing.

But I thought I share some of it, so I’ve added it to the blog.

Merry Christmas.

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Professional Pride

I also do memes…

I suppose I should mention that Rocket Ride is one of my favorite filks. You should all buy Tom Smith’s albums

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Nevertheless, She Persists

I don’t usually watch political debates because I figure I can go to a candidate’s website and find out what they stand for. (If I can’t figure that out from the website, then my conclusion is that they don’t stand for anything.) However, it is useful to see how they present themselves – a kind of precursor to what we might have to listen to for the next four years (or more.)

So last night’s relative lack of substance coupled with a heaping dose of vitriol, really didn’t bother me. In fact, it gave me insight into how each candidate might fare against the onslaught of Trumpian rhetoric during the presidential campaign.

Let’s take a look at the candidates from the bottom up (so to speak.)

Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He was drawn and quartered by Senator Warren from the start and that poleaxed look never really went away. Questioned on Stop-and-Frisk, Mayor Bloomberg’s only defense seemed to be “well, everyone else does it!” He just couldn’t bring himself to admit to his mistake and apologize. (I’m sure Stop-and-Frisk plays well to the alt-right, but is that really what we want in a Democratic candidate?) Asked about the non-disclosure agreements that ended several lawsuits against him, he would not even say how many there were, never mind releasing those women to tell what happened. He insisted that they “signed voluntarily.” Either he doesn’t understand the power differential between a billionaire political figure and an employee or he understands it far too well and uses it to cover up his bad behavior. (Or crimes, we don’t know which.) When the questions turned to actual policy, Mayor Bloomberg’s answer amounted to “business will solve all our problems, trust me, I’m a billionaire!” That, and the delay in releasing his financial information, however, is sufficiently Trump-like that it should be making people think twice about another billionaire president. (Apparently those financial documents won’t be out until after Super Tuesday. Odd, that.) I thought, for a while, that he was being groomed by the DNC, but I can’t believe that even they are stupid enough to think President Trump won’t pound him into the ground. Somebody please get this clown off the stage.

Senator Amy Klobuchar. An almost complete lack of policy statements. Mayor Buttigieg seemed to take a perverse delight in taunting her with every bad thing anyone has ever said about her. (I’ll give him this much, he does his homework.) Senator Warren’s quip that Senator Klobuchar’s healthcare plan was “more like post-it note reading ‘insert plan here'”, seemed to strike home, though Senator Warren later came to her rescue when Senator Klobuchar was called to task for forgetting the name of the Mexican President in an interview. Senator Warren pointed out that “we’re all human and we sometimes forget things”. It was nice to see one woman come to the defense of another. Time after time, however, Senator Klobuchar seemed on the verge of tears. Personally, I would love to see a president that was able to cry in public – for a good reason, like sympathy for some great loss – but Senator Klobuchar’s chin-quivers were more like “Daddy, they’re being mean to me!” Yes, they were picking on her, but so will President Trump and it’s obvious she can’t handle that kind of pressure. President Trump would reduce her to tears in the first debate. Her only hope would be that President Trump refuses to debate her.

Vice President Joe Biden. In a close tie for next-to-the-bottom we have Vice President Biden, who spent a big part of the debate looking like he did “too much LDS at Berkley.” A few points of policy towards the end, but his refrain was pretty much, “when Obama and I…”. Yes, he was Vice President and that should count for something, but President Obama isn’t going to be there to hold his hand any more. President Obama is a lightning rod for the alt-right and Vice President Biden constantly harping on that connection will just make things worse. His willingness to compromise with the Senator “Moscow Mitch” McConnell isn’t going to save him either. The disruption by immigration activists at the end of the debate tells me that he isn’t likely to get much support from the Latinx/Chicanx community either, although he may ride President Obama’s legacy and garner significant black voter support. In the end, however, he is as uninspiring as Bloomberg and Klobuchar.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg. What can I say? He cosplays a good president. A smoothie. Definitely a smoothie. Well spoken, handsome and probably one of the best research staffs ever, judging by his performance. It is possible, just barely, but possible, that, with a good set of advisors around him, Mayor Buttigieg might make a decent president. However, since those advisors would more than likely be neo-liberal DNC plants, I’m not holding my breath waiting for him to bring any serious improvements in this country – at least not in terms of putting a leash on big business. Better than President Trump and definitely the first one I could vote for in November without hurling. His quip that Democrats “shouldn’t have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out”, aimed at Senator Sanders and Mayor Bloomberg, was clever, but may bite him later, since it left Senator Warren standing proud of those two. I doubt very much if Senator Sanders wants to ‘burn it all down’ (although I do think that Mayor Bloomberg believes he can buy the election) but the issue here is what scares people who aren’t willing or able to read policy statements and see through the accusation. It’s possible Mayor Buttigieg is being disingenuous, but it’s also possible that he thinks hyperbole is a winning tactic. Sadly, it might be.

Senator Bernie Sanders. Mixed feelings here. I like most of what Senator Sanders offers, but he does come across as the angry revolutionary. Not a bad thing, necessarily, there’s plenty to be angry about, but it feeds right into Mayor Buttigieg’s “burn it all down” quip. And that little sound bite will go straight into the Republican propaganda machine. Senator Sanders would be hearing that line everywhere he goes from the convention until the election. I’m not convinced that the word ‘socialism’ scares as many people as the pundits make out, so it might not play as well as the Republicans think. Senator Sanders certainly speaks with conviction and can obviously fire people up, but that quote may scare some moderates clean out of the Democratic camp, let alone swing voters in the more conservative states. I’m not generally a fan of electability as a selection criteria, but it may have a place here. Yes, he’s ahead in the polls, but the Republicans would like nothing better than to face someone they could so easily play the ‘socialist’ card against. I won’t rule out efforts on their part to boost Sanders. Like I said, mixed feelings – I’d happily vote for him in November, but I’m not convinced he can win.

Elizabeth Warren. I was quite dismayed by her performance in my home state (New Hampshire) and it was a joy to see her fired up again. From her instant dismemberment of Bloomberg (and billionaires in general), her insistence on putting a leash on big business, to her constant reminders that a lot of voters aren’t white (and might just have different issues), she was on her game last night. Like Sanders, she is angry, but it comes out quieter, with a hard edge that tells us she serious about righting what’s wrong with this country and, by the way, ‘she has a plan for that.’ It is this, more than anything else, that sets her apart from the others: her preparation, her attention to the details of defining policy, her willingness to think things through and, if necessary, to re-think things. While she defended Klobuchar’s momentary memory lapse, she added that criticism should be leveled at policies, not people. “Look, you want to ask about whether or not you understand trade policy with Mexico? Have at it. If you get it wrong, you ought to be held accountable. You want to ask about autonomy, you ought to be held accountable. You want to ask about a thousand different issues and you get it wrong, you ought to be held accountable,” she said. This focus on having a coherent policy came through loud and clear, even in a debate that was, for the most part, devoid of particulars. I really do believe that, given the chance, she could have Trump on the ropes by election day. My first choice, God willing.

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Meet me in the middle, said the unjust man.

Meet me in the middle, said the unjust man.
I took a step toward him. He took a step back.
Meet me in the middle, said the unjust man.

A.R. Moxon (@JuliusGoat)

When I first saw this on FB, I thought it a clever way of phrasing what unilateral compromise does – it favors the unjust. It favors those who, in fact, never intended to change their stance. But then, I realized, that there was a bit more to it than those three lines. So, I played with it:

Meet me in the middle, said the unjust man.
I took a step toward him. He took a step back.
Meet me in the middle, said the unjust man.
I took a step toward him. He took a step back.
And when I’d taken enough steps, the people said,
See! There’s no difference between them!
And I realized that they were right,
though he looked as far away as ever.

This is why I think that the DNC is wrong in pushing for a moderate – the distinction between the parties gets lost. Oh, there’s no doubt that any Democrat would be better than Trump (and I will vote that way) but with the Democrats having compromised, over and over again, it is too easy for people to say that there is no difference between the parties any more and, thus, no real choice to be made. Might as will just flip a coin.

I don’t believe you’re ever going to change the minds of the Trumpistas – the hard core ones, anyway – and there are always going to be people for whom the word socialism is a perjorative. These people aren’t making choices or, if they are, they are choosing a fascist – a racist, sexist, homophobic asshole – because they want to live in that kind of world. Frankly, though, I don’t think there are really that many people who are that far gone.

And there are, to be sure, neo-liberals – those people who don’t want to rein in big business (because that might hurt their portfolios) but want to salve their conscience with a little social justice. They think the DNC is doing just fine and, frankly, I don’t think they really care if the Democrats lose in November.

No, the people for whom differences matter are those who are willing to think. Who vacilate (or might once have) between liberal and conservative. If they can’t see any difference between the two sides then their vote becomes a crapshoot. How are they feeling that particular election day? What was the last political message they heard that resonated with them?

Some may think that such ‘swing voters’ don’t exist, that there are simply people that sit out some elections, throwing the balance of power one way or another. But why would they do that unless they think their votes don’t matter? And (at least of late) they almost always think that way because they can’t see any difference between the two sides. (Even if it exists. Sometimes subtleties get lost.)

But in the end, does it really matter? The problem comes down to who shows up and which side to the pull the lever for. Whether they flip a coin or stay at home, it’s still for the same reason – they can’t see enough of a difference. If the Democrats want to win in November, they have to show the voters that their choice matters – whether it’s who they vote for or whether or not they stay home – and a moderate won’t cut it.

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Radio GOP

Riffing off Napoleon’s notion of the “press as the seventh great power.” Joseph Goebbels gave a speech at a radio exhibition (18 August 1933) in which he named “Radio as the Eighth Great Power”.

“It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio….It is no exaggeration to say that the German revolution, at least in the form it took, would have been impossible without the airplane and the radio. …[Radio] reached the entire nation, regardless of class, standing, or religion. That was primarily the result of the tight centralization, the strong reporting, and the up-to-date nature of the German radio….Above all it is necessary to clearly centralize all radio activities, to place spiritual tasks ahead of technical ones,…to provide a clear worldview.”

Substitute “internet” for “radio” and see how that sounds. The Nazis subsidized the manufacture and distribution of millions of radio sets and by the start of WWII, over 70% of German households had radios. Deliberately short range, radios, mind you because they didn’t want people picking up those ‘other’ countries broadcasts that might contradict what Hitler and company were saying.

The analogy isn’t perfect, we (in the United States, at least) can still visit websites from elsewhere and the Trumpistas don’t control everything here, but with Russian trolls and GOP disinformation propogating like mutant Kudzu, the opposing messages are getting swamped or, at least, muddied. Give them four more years and we may well wind up walled off from the rest of the world and faced only with right-wing propaganda.

Sure, Fox News is a giant propaganda organ, but it’s easy enough to see the Fox logo and disregard the content. One can see Trump’s mouth moving and know that lies are coming out of it. It’s harder when the comments on a website are names unknown to you, or from some friend-of-a-friend on your Facebook feed. Sure, you can spot the obvious lunatics, but too often it’s someone (or something) gaslighting us into doubting ourselves, our neighbors, and what’s happening in this country.

In Nazi Germany, many people reacted, at least in the privacy of their own homes, by turning off the radio, but few of us are inclined to abandon the internet. And, if we do, how isolated do we become? How effective an opposition can we be without the connections we have with those who share our values? And yet, if we cannot trust our primary means of communication, aren’t we already isolated?

All of this is fixable, of course. It starts with putting a leash on the big social media firms, restoring Net Neutrality, and getting serious about tracking down – and shutting down – the bot farms that are the psycho-social tools of voter manipulation. None of this, however, will happen until, and unless, we elect someone ready to fight the corporate entities currently in control of the internet and restore its credibility.

This is just one reason why this election matters. It is not just a matter of defeating Trump (and, preferably, the GOP as a whole) but of electing people who will restore our ability to communciate honestly, without the crippling fog of psychological warfare. A moderate, certainly not some neo-liberal corporate lapdog, will not be up to the task.

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Welcome To The Surveillance State

OK, new Facebook rule: compose your posts in an offline editor and then copy-paste to Facebook and post.

Apparently, Facebook monitors what you type even before you post. A study on “self censorship” (i.e., how you change a post before actually posting it) was recently presented at a conference (1).  The only way the data for this study could have been acquired is if Facebook is monitoring what you type while you’re typing it.  (About that little pop-up that says “a friend is writing a comment”, yeah…)

I think we all do this – type something and then think better of it. Some of the original wording in my posts (especially political ones) is, let us say,  NSFW. But more than that, suppose you start a post critical of, say, Ajit Pai and the FCC. Facebook knows even if you don’t post it. Which means, basically, so does the NSA, the cops and any corporation willing to pay for the data.

How is that? Peter Theil runs a company called Palantir. What is this, you ask? Well, did you watch (or read) “Minority Report”?

“Palantir watches everything you do and predicts what you will do next in order to stop it. As of 2013, its client list included the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Centre for Disease Control, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, Special Operations Command, West Point and the IRS. Up to 50% of its business is with the public sector. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm, was an early investor.”

Oddly enough, Peter Theil is a major investor in Facebook – figure the odds Palantir doesn’t have access to this data. About Palantir’s founders:

“Their intention was to create a company that took Big Data somewhere no one else dared to go.”

They are taking it someplace it shouldn’t go. I sympathize with those agencies tasked with protecting us, but given a government that is increasingly authoritarian, I fear for the future of freedom.


  1. The Association for the Advancement  of Artificial Intelligence’s Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

(Edited with Byword…)

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McCarthy’s Legacy

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

Edward R. Murrow

Lately, I have been thinking that we need reporters with courage.  If ‘truth’ becomes whatever Donald Trump tweets, then any attempt at logical criticism fails.   Edward R. Murrow has always been a kind of hero to me, something I no doubt inherited from my parents.  I remember bits and pieces of the McCarthy years.  I remember my parents getting talked into going to a John Birch Society meeting and coming out shaking their heads.  They were quiet for days afterward.  I can only imagine the kind of courage it must have taken for Murrow to air that show at the height of McCarthy’s power.

But McCarthy’s legacy also includes Murrow’s courage.

John Avlon, of The Daily Beast, has an excellent article out called “Our Murrow Moment”.  In it he says:

But rather than viewing the prospect of covering a Trump administration with exhaustion, we should feel invigorated. Because when this time is done, we will look back on it as the best and most important time to be a journalist – not because it was easy, but because it was hard and our sense of mission was clear: to respect the office of the President while holding the person in power accountable against a standard of enduring American values.

I hope that we can do this.  I hope we find the courage.  Murrow himself said it:

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Substitute ‘President Trump’ for ‘Senator McCarthy’ and that quote is entirely apt sixty odd years later.  But also appropriate, I think, was something else in his closing paragraphs:

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully…

Trump is riding high on the desperation of people with no jobs and no hope.  On the fear and anger of those who see their privilege being eroded as the world tries to move toward something more egalitarian.  We need reporters willing to speak truth to power.  We need to expose the fact that he is handing this country over to corporations that will strip-mine the economy and leave all but a few living in its ruins.  We need to make it clear that we will not willingly tolerate the loss of our freedom.

Fear and false hope are Trump’s weapons.  Lies and half-truths are his tools.  These can only be fought if we have the courage to speak up.

Good night, and good luck, indeed.

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Save Your History

They say that “the winners write history”.  I think it’s less that they write history and more that they have the power to erase those parts that don’t fit into their worldview.  Donald Trump’s recent attempt to purge people who believe in climate change from government agencies is likely just the beginning.  Scientists across the world are desperately trying to save US climate data on private servers for fear that Trump could order it all destroyed.

And he could do it.

How long before we have more direct censorship?  God help us, something like the Sedition Act could make it literally illegal to criticize the government.  Even without something so draconian, “loosening up” the libel laws (something Trump has threatened to do) would be sufficient to see to it that those with money and power have the means to attack those who criticize them.  Controlling access to the media, punishing those who speak truth to power, this is the way the truth of the next four years will be lost.

So save your history.

History goes in cycles and eventually this madness will be over.  Maybe in four years.  Maybe four decades.  Regimes change, but if we don’t want the Trumps of this world to determine what is said about the next few years/decades, then we have to have the truth squirreled away.  Speak out if you can, but keep a journal.  Fill it with accounts of what happened, and what didn’t.  Fill it with pictures of things you saw, but couldn’t speak up about.  Fill it with whatever crosses your mind about living under the Trump administration.

One day it will have to bring those truths to light again.

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Mirror, Mirror…

So, it occurs to me, lying awake at 5 AM, that this election isn’t really about policy.  It’s not about our taxes or our guns or religious freedom.  These things, as always, will be decided in the Senate, and in Congress, with the Supreme Court keeping a watchful eye on things.  No, this election is a giant mirror reflecting who and what we are as a country and most of us are very unhappy with what we’re seeing.

Think of it on a personal level.  “Learning experiences” suck.  We all know this.  Being confronted with things we’ve said and done that have hurt others.  Discovering that we have been blithely talking out our ass about things that, to someone else, are intensely meaningful.  Realizing precisely what we have tolerated in this world because it didn’t affect us.  These are the kinds of things that tend to shake our opinion of ourselves.  And that can be both painful and frightening.

So we have a decision to make.  A kind of emotional fight-or-flight response ensues.  Do we shove it back down and pretend whenever saw it, or do we face it and try to change?  The proper answer – the adult answer – is to face the problem and deal with it.  This does not guarantee that we will make the right decision.  It certainly does not insure that there will be no pain to deal with.  It does, however, allow for the possibility of becoming a better person.

Then there’s the election.  I can think of few people more vile than Donald Trump.  He is telling this country that it’s OK to be racist.  That women are here to be grabbed and used.  That it’s OK to be greedy – to think only of oneself and not of the country as a whole.  He somehow manages to embody everything that is wrong with this country.  Even more frightening is that he has managed to convince great whacking gobs of people that this is what makes our country ‘great’ and that we need more of it.  He is ignorant and proud of it.  He has no moral compass and is proud of that as well.

And there are people all across the country who are shouting, “Yeah, man, preach that shit!”

Then there’s Hillary Clinton.  Hardly a perfect person, but she’s talking about leveling the playing field so that everyone, regardless of race, religion or gender has an equal shot.  She’s talking about taking back some of the money that the rich have strip-mined from this country and putting it to work rebuilding the infrastructure that the Republicans have let fall into ruin.  She’s talking about making our children smarter and healthier.  She wants to make sure that illness or the loss of a job doesn’t strip people of everything they’ve spent a lifetime building.  She wants all those things that make that level playing field possible.

And there are people all across the country who are shouting, “But the emails!  Benghazi!”

And what I keep hearing is, “But, but, she’s a girrrllll!

Women have always been called the conscience of the human race.  It has always been their job to make peace in the family, to make sure things were handled fairly.  And all that was just fine as long as they didn’t have any real power.  As long as it was confined to the home and men had, ultimately, the final say.

Now we have a woman running for president.  Now we have a woman talking about bringing that sense of fairness to our country as a whole.  Now it will be a woman who could have, if not the final say, then at least a Bully Pulpit from which to talk about fairness and concern for others.

And that scares a lot of people.  People who’ve had it too good for too long.  People who’ve gotten rich at others expense.  People who thought they could shove their religion down other people’s throats.  People who’ve felt justified in bullying others because they were of a different race, or religion, or sex.

Like I said, this election is a mirror.

We can look into it and deal with what we see – at least try to do better.  Try to think of others as just as deserving of a decent life as we are.

Or we can run away with our fingers in our ears going “la-la-la-la.”  We can pretend that we’re “voting our conscience” or that “there’s really no difference between the candidates.”

But the truth is much simpler.  There are really only two viable choices in this election: Trump and Clinton.  One of them will become president.  Choosing Clinton means being prepared to do the hard work of ‘“personal growth” at the national level.  Choosing Trump means running away and ignoring the pain of others.

Any other choice is an abdication of responsibility for what is probably the most significant decision this country has faced in its entire history.

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