> Also, an announcement: I’ll be doing a Twitter space with Christopher Brunet today, Saturday July 8th, at 8 pm, to help introduce Substack writers to new readers.
Jul 8, 2023·edited Jul 9, 2023Liked by John Carter
Beneath the black-misted canopies of the Right Wring's Writer's Swamp is probably the only place that "weird, deep, and unsettling" could ever be considered a compliment. And yet, so it is, and so I am honored. Thank you, Sir John.
On a side note: my "Rainbow Blight" series has by far seen the greatest readership exodus that The Cat Was Never Found has ever endured. I suspected going into it that the hunt for frogs and piggies would entail some blowback, and it seems that was the case.
To those of you who unsubscribed, you have my gratitude for putting up with me this long. I won't forget the encouragement you gave me along the way.
I read your part 4 of the Rainbow Bright-articles, and I really don't understand what anyone would find offensive in it. It is perfectly obvious that you separate personal from systemic-societal, f.e. specific sex-acts or preferences, there's no hatred or endorsement of violence, segregation or ostracisation, or any kind of fire&brimstone-sermonising (or any sermonising for that matter).
If anything, I'd characterise the text as being a long-form question about why do we believe truths/rights/et c relating to the issue as being capital-T true - which is /the/most important question one can ask oneself regarding any kind of idea, -ism or creed. I'm going to steal a phrase from a guy (age 83) who also does volunteer work at one of the local churches:
"If you don't challenge your faith/beliefs, how do you ever know you have any?"
(Swedish doesn't differentiate between faith/belief/guess/feel, we use the word "tro" for all things where you believe instead of know; "vet". "Jag tror det kommer att regna", "I think it's going to rain"- "Jag har en religiös tro", "I have a religious conviction", and so on - often confusing for non-swedes.)
If I was going to pick on something, it would be giving Ishtar a raw deal, lumping her in with the likes of Molok, and that's a) not really the point as you point out and b) assuming the mainly jewish claims about the worship of Molok are accurate and not ancient propaganda about a competing tribe/people. While nitpicking may be entertaining, it's beside the point here.
If anything, it is maddening and "saddening" on equal degrees to see the steady growth of information sources and topics being used as a kind of sorting mechanism between Goodthinkers and normal people, where normal nowadays is more or less a synonym for BadEvilWrongthinker.
Random tangential thought: to me Substack-articles and talks feel 100% like it used to be in bars. Does that make sense at all?
Jul 9, 2023·edited Jul 9, 2023Liked by John Carter
Thanks, Rikard.
But to be clear, it wasn't Part 4 that caused the mass exodus, but Part 3. I suspect it was almost exclusively my treatment of Seasame Street and the Muppets that triggered it.
So I read that one too, and am even more confused honestly. While you produce no proof (Honestly, it would be impossible to prove anyway so I'm in no way meaning it as blame or anything like that.) the reason and argument is sound and logical as such, meaning it can and should be addressed in the same manner, no by a hissy fit over having childhood avatars questioned.
I don't think there's a conscious conspiracy with clearly set and defined goals from the get-go, behind what you talk about. I'm more of the opinion that it is a golem run amok - it's original orders and premise for existence fulfilled, it now seeks further purpose to its existence and does so by continously expanding the deinitions of its original parameters:
If the homosexuals of the 1940s had as their goal not to be imprisoned, incarcerated in mental hospitals, lobotomised, subjected to water torture, ECT and other attempts to cure them and basically be awarded the same privileges as any one Joe Schmoe not being a violent criminal, their succesors needed to amp it up all the time, to stay relevant, current and in control, leading to the inescapable and inevitable logical progression from asking society to "please stop beating us up" to "you must be gay or else!".
You can see that progression in any succesful political movement: being "True to the Creed+1" comared to one's predecessors becomes the easiest way to show one is true believer and adherent. Compare it to christian cults of the 5th century and the catholic church of the 15th - the old ones were far more tolerant, open to debate and tried to convert others by being paragons, the 15th century version was "believe or we kill you, take your children and your land, and baptise your corpse anyway".
As for childish things: enjoying a thing and letting the thing define your life is indeed the terminus between being in control of one's self, and being enslaved by one's base urges. There is no problem in a grown man collecting Transformer-toys; there's a very great problem with a grown man making said toys the meaning of life. I'm sorry, I can't really put it into words better than that at the moment, I'm fishing for a difference in essence here, like the difference between enjoying a snifter of Loch Lomond once in a while, and downing a quart of Old Overholt for breakfast every day.
I remain baffled, and would offer this (which you touched upon referencing the various childrens' pioneer-groups of old - the Swedish Socialist-Democrat Wroker's Party still retains their child-cadre, the "Young Eagles") insight, quite common among europeans of any nation, especially eastern/northern, age 50 or older:
The State/Party controlled children's books, radio, films, camps, comics, books and leisure activities, in some cases to near 100%. Why would it be unreasonable to assume that some kind of loose network of activists working inside media/entertainment in the US would do the same? After all, look at what was produced during the 1940s, 1950s and up through the 1960s in the US re: Cold War and communism.
Sorry for being so wordy, but I'm more baffled now than before.
My hard drive has thousands of such images. It takes a bit of time to comb through them and make up my mind though. I need an AI to catalogue them for me....
I can't speak to John's experience, but curation in the information age is a blessing and a curse. It's like looking through the Library of Alexandria for a coffee-table book lol.
Okay, I kicked in for Morgthorak, but having been there/done that, I gotta say this. When you lose the job, you always think it's temporary. It isn't. You are better off to assume that you will be making less money. Cut expenses immediately. I have a prepper friend that was out of work for a year but had food storage to live on. Was able to pay her mortgage as a result. In this economy, prepare for hard times. When you have a job, stock up, pay off debt and live as cheaply as you can.
During the tech bust, some poor guy wrote online about trying to feed himself off the McDonalds menu because he didn't know how to cook. Don't be that guy. If there is a hard crash ahead, and there may be, you need things that will help you survive. You need the basics; food, shelter, heat for the winter. Owning a vehicle you can sleep in is nice. Having food on hand is nice. Spend your money on useful stuff and let your friends think you are crazy. We need you, all of you, and it's time to take the blinders off and change what you are doing.
Did you see that Whiskeys is helping me in the plea for help thread? I'm learning how to use crypto! It always confused me, I never had any idea how you did it. But we just sent some back and forth. It's an app called wallet of satoshi.
I still don't know what you do with the crypto once you have it, but I imagine you can trade it in or whatever. Very fascinating to learn about for me. I tried crypto long ago and got lost, I didn't even know how to buy it.
Great job on compiling this digest, and thanks for the shoutout! I'm still amazed that you are able not only to read all of this, but to write up a synopsis of everything. Maybe if you're looking for another side hustle, you can start teaching speed-reading classes to help the rest of us get to your level!
I don't know how you manage to do this at the level of quality that you do every week, John. But I'm glad you do.
And I'm glad you found something that resonated in my piece. When I pointed you to it, it honestly wasn't fishing for you to include me here---I genuinely thought you'd get it and had probably thought many of the same things.
Thank you as always John. I am in awe of what you manage to read, every week. I only manage to get my own posts up and haven’t managed to read much other stuff over the last month or two (the guilt, the guilt).
Trying to read everything is like trying to drink the ocean. Ah for the days of old when there were so few books it really was possible to read them all.
Happy I could join the growing club! "4th in the 25th" was a really fun collection to write and came out of all the right places for a day like Independence Day. Plus it encompasses a lot of the series, from the hot-rodding to the humorist veneer. Hope you all dig it.
I'm at a point in my life where every step forward yields my best work. In this series alone, I have stories that hit me on a personal level when writing them (the themes of family and fracturing psyches in "Children of the Neon Goddess" for instance), but stories like "Caught in the Crosshairs" that pull off genre shifts and end like a Hitchcock film are ones I am incredibly proud of. I'm not sure I'll be able to really answer the question until I'm 30 or so.
Knowing the amount of stories I've written thus far and have yet to pen...I have two collections and a novella due out the end of the year from this series alone. You do the work, you get the results. ;)
Please, for the sake of sanity. Don't invite the twitterati's to substack. Some of them have already infiltrated and are spouting their Marxist bullshit.
I mean, why would we want the dregs of the internet to come over here?
Twitter is a cesspool, there is nothing redeeming about it, and the sooner it dies, the better.
It's pretty low, yes. I generally find that reads are about 1% of views from Twitter, although the subscription rate from those reads is higher, maybe 10% or so.
> Also, an announcement: I’ll be doing a Twitter space with Christopher Brunet today, Saturday July 8th, at 8 pm, to help introduce Substack writers to new readers.
Here is a link to the space! 8pm!
https://twitter.com/realChrisBrunet/status/1677742320089718785?s=20
do you ever cover the war and russia?
Tonight's was the first, and Chris set up the list. Want to be on the next?
oh yes, definitely.
Excellent.
The piece about the koalas is one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Wasn't it fantastic?
That’s so nice to hear, especially after all the hate mail I got from the Koalas.
That’s so nice to hear, especially after all the hate mail from the koalas.
Beneath the black-misted canopies of the Right Wring's Writer's Swamp is probably the only place that "weird, deep, and unsettling" could ever be considered a compliment. And yet, so it is, and so I am honored. Thank you, Sir John.
On a side note: my "Rainbow Blight" series has by far seen the greatest readership exodus that The Cat Was Never Found has ever endured. I suspected going into it that the hunt for frogs and piggies would entail some blowback, and it seems that was the case.
To those of you who unsubscribed, you have my gratitude for putting up with me this long. I won't forget the encouragement you gave me along the way.
Imagine being so attached to brightly colored muppets and Saturday morning cartoons that you unsub just because someone suggested they were demonic.
I actually can imagine that. Like I said, I saw this coming. But I still had to call 'em like I see 'em. Otherwise what's the point of all this?
This is one of the reasons I try to be at least a little bit uncouth. It chases off the readers who are easily startled.
I read your part 4 of the Rainbow Bright-articles, and I really don't understand what anyone would find offensive in it. It is perfectly obvious that you separate personal from systemic-societal, f.e. specific sex-acts or preferences, there's no hatred or endorsement of violence, segregation or ostracisation, or any kind of fire&brimstone-sermonising (or any sermonising for that matter).
If anything, I'd characterise the text as being a long-form question about why do we believe truths/rights/et c relating to the issue as being capital-T true - which is /the/most important question one can ask oneself regarding any kind of idea, -ism or creed. I'm going to steal a phrase from a guy (age 83) who also does volunteer work at one of the local churches:
"If you don't challenge your faith/beliefs, how do you ever know you have any?"
(Swedish doesn't differentiate between faith/belief/guess/feel, we use the word "tro" for all things where you believe instead of know; "vet". "Jag tror det kommer att regna", "I think it's going to rain"- "Jag har en religiös tro", "I have a religious conviction", and so on - often confusing for non-swedes.)
If I was going to pick on something, it would be giving Ishtar a raw deal, lumping her in with the likes of Molok, and that's a) not really the point as you point out and b) assuming the mainly jewish claims about the worship of Molok are accurate and not ancient propaganda about a competing tribe/people. While nitpicking may be entertaining, it's beside the point here.
If anything, it is maddening and "saddening" on equal degrees to see the steady growth of information sources and topics being used as a kind of sorting mechanism between Goodthinkers and normal people, where normal nowadays is more or less a synonym for BadEvilWrongthinker.
Random tangential thought: to me Substack-articles and talks feel 100% like it used to be in bars. Does that make sense at all?
Substack feels more like a cafe than a bar to me, but yes, I take your meaning and you are absolutely correct.
A cafe where you can order Absinthe.
Thanks, Rikard.
But to be clear, it wasn't Part 4 that caused the mass exodus, but Part 3. I suspect it was almost exclusively my treatment of Seasame Street and the Muppets that triggered it.
So I read that one too, and am even more confused honestly. While you produce no proof (Honestly, it would be impossible to prove anyway so I'm in no way meaning it as blame or anything like that.) the reason and argument is sound and logical as such, meaning it can and should be addressed in the same manner, no by a hissy fit over having childhood avatars questioned.
I don't think there's a conscious conspiracy with clearly set and defined goals from the get-go, behind what you talk about. I'm more of the opinion that it is a golem run amok - it's original orders and premise for existence fulfilled, it now seeks further purpose to its existence and does so by continously expanding the deinitions of its original parameters:
If the homosexuals of the 1940s had as their goal not to be imprisoned, incarcerated in mental hospitals, lobotomised, subjected to water torture, ECT and other attempts to cure them and basically be awarded the same privileges as any one Joe Schmoe not being a violent criminal, their succesors needed to amp it up all the time, to stay relevant, current and in control, leading to the inescapable and inevitable logical progression from asking society to "please stop beating us up" to "you must be gay or else!".
You can see that progression in any succesful political movement: being "True to the Creed+1" comared to one's predecessors becomes the easiest way to show one is true believer and adherent. Compare it to christian cults of the 5th century and the catholic church of the 15th - the old ones were far more tolerant, open to debate and tried to convert others by being paragons, the 15th century version was "believe or we kill you, take your children and your land, and baptise your corpse anyway".
As for childish things: enjoying a thing and letting the thing define your life is indeed the terminus between being in control of one's self, and being enslaved by one's base urges. There is no problem in a grown man collecting Transformer-toys; there's a very great problem with a grown man making said toys the meaning of life. I'm sorry, I can't really put it into words better than that at the moment, I'm fishing for a difference in essence here, like the difference between enjoying a snifter of Loch Lomond once in a while, and downing a quart of Old Overholt for breakfast every day.
I remain baffled, and would offer this (which you touched upon referencing the various childrens' pioneer-groups of old - the Swedish Socialist-Democrat Wroker's Party still retains their child-cadre, the "Young Eagles") insight, quite common among europeans of any nation, especially eastern/northern, age 50 or older:
The State/Party controlled children's books, radio, films, camps, comics, books and leisure activities, in some cases to near 100%. Why would it be unreasonable to assume that some kind of loose network of activists working inside media/entertainment in the US would do the same? After all, look at what was produced during the 1940s, 1950s and up through the 1960s in the US re: Cold War and communism.
Sorry for being so wordy, but I'm more baffled now than before.
Short comment to (a) thank you for the link and (b) compliment you on the art you include in each of these posts.
Must take hours to find - either that or you have a secret stash somewhere.
My hard drive has thousands of such images. It takes a bit of time to comb through them and make up my mind though. I need an AI to catalogue them for me....
"Secret stash" theory confirmed!
I can't speak to John's experience, but curation in the information age is a blessing and a curse. It's like looking through the Library of Alexandria for a coffee-table book lol.
Exactly this.
Okay, I kicked in for Morgthorak, but having been there/done that, I gotta say this. When you lose the job, you always think it's temporary. It isn't. You are better off to assume that you will be making less money. Cut expenses immediately. I have a prepper friend that was out of work for a year but had food storage to live on. Was able to pay her mortgage as a result. In this economy, prepare for hard times. When you have a job, stock up, pay off debt and live as cheaply as you can.
During the tech bust, some poor guy wrote online about trying to feed himself off the McDonalds menu because he didn't know how to cook. Don't be that guy. If there is a hard crash ahead, and there may be, you need things that will help you survive. You need the basics; food, shelter, heat for the winter. Owning a vehicle you can sleep in is nice. Having food on hand is nice. Spend your money on useful stuff and let your friends think you are crazy. We need you, all of you, and it's time to take the blinders off and change what you are doing.
THANKS JOHN!!!!!!
It was my pleasure, my friend.
Did you see that Whiskeys is helping me in the plea for help thread? I'm learning how to use crypto! It always confused me, I never had any idea how you did it. But we just sent some back and forth. It's an app called wallet of satoshi.
I still don't know what you do with the crypto once you have it, but I imagine you can trade it in or whatever. Very fascinating to learn about for me. I tried crypto long ago and got lost, I didn't even know how to buy it.
Great job on compiling this digest, and thanks for the shoutout! I'm still amazed that you are able not only to read all of this, but to write up a synopsis of everything. Maybe if you're looking for another side hustle, you can start teaching speed-reading classes to help the rest of us get to your level!
I don't even think I read that quickly tbh
It's probably that the Martian air makes the brain work quicker or something.
I don't know how you manage to do this at the level of quality that you do every week, John. But I'm glad you do.
And I'm glad you found something that resonated in my piece. When I pointed you to it, it honestly wasn't fishing for you to include me here---I genuinely thought you'd get it and had probably thought many of the same things.
Thanks man.
Oh, I get it, and have had many thoughts along just those lines. I need to address this myself at some point.
My favorite bay area poet is writing contra AI: http://richardloranger.com/ai-yai-yai/
Thanks for the great links, John!!!
Interesting links. The RCT one by Briggs seemed like some hardcore nonsense. It reminds me that reasons can be used to argue for anything.
You'll have to take that one up with Briggs.
Yes, I just did. Eyewash is also ready for incoming rhetorical sand.
Thanks for shouting out Pulp, Pipe, and Poetry. We're hoping to make something truly unique!
I'm really liking it so far.
Thanks for the shoutout, honored to be included here! Gonna take me awhile to read through these, but that's the furthest thing from a complaint, lol
Thank you as always John. I am in awe of what you manage to read, every week. I only manage to get my own posts up and haven’t managed to read much other stuff over the last month or two (the guilt, the guilt).
Trying to read everything is like trying to drink the ocean. Ah for the days of old when there were so few books it really was possible to read them all.
Much easier to be a polymath, back then.
It really was.
Happy I could join the growing club! "4th in the 25th" was a really fun collection to write and came out of all the right places for a day like Independence Day. Plus it encompasses a lot of the series, from the hot-rodding to the humorist veneer. Hope you all dig it.
Your output is truly impressive. Do you have a particular story you think is your absolute best?
I'm at a point in my life where every step forward yields my best work. In this series alone, I have stories that hit me on a personal level when writing them (the themes of family and fracturing psyches in "Children of the Neon Goddess" for instance), but stories like "Caught in the Crosshairs" that pull off genre shifts and end like a Hitchcock film are ones I am incredibly proud of. I'm not sure I'll be able to really answer the question until I'm 30 or so.
Care to leave links to those stories here, in case some readers might be interested?
Sure thing!
Children of the Neon Goddess: https://365infantry.substack.com/p/iii-children-of-the-neon-goddess
Caught in the Crosshairs: https://365infantry.substack.com/p/v-caught-in-the-crosshairs
I also collected & edited all of last year's stories into an omnibus, so you can find a refined version of "Children" in there: https://a.co/d/glrPQNP
Excellent.
Knowing the amount of stories I've written thus far and have yet to pen...I have two collections and a novella due out the end of the year from this series alone. You do the work, you get the results. ;)
Please, for the sake of sanity. Don't invite the twitterati's to substack. Some of them have already infiltrated and are spouting their Marxist bullshit.
I mean, why would we want the dregs of the internet to come over here?
Twitter is a cesspool, there is nothing redeeming about it, and the sooner it dies, the better.
they also dont know how to read.
theres like no conversion from tweets to essays.
No, for instance:
https://wiki.chadnet.org/academia-is-stupid
Legendary euggypius thread.
It's pretty low, yes. I generally find that reads are about 1% of views from Twitter, although the subscription rate from those reads is higher, maybe 10% or so.