How Facebook ate my blog and what I'm going to do about it

Facebook ate my blog

I don't blog here as much as I used to. I blame Facebook.

Why? It's easier to whip up a quick-and-dirty witty comment there than a reasoned and thoughtful post, here.  A lower bar to hit. I don't have to be as detailed, as nuanced. Full sentences not required. No one cares about my typos.

I appreciate responses. Far more likely to get them on the old FB feed.

Maybe even generate some back and forth. More like casual conversation between humans rather than a high-school essay. Gathering around the water hole.

Can you believe what the giraffes are on about?

The elephants are sure making noise tonight. Not much signal, though.

What, again? Will these idiot birds ever learn how things really work?


And then there's micro-reward of the LIKE. A touch of sweet dopamine. Food for the social animal, even the most anti-social among us.

I tell myself I'm not happy about all this. That my blog needs me. That I'm not going to take it any more. Going to do something about it.

So I write this post.

But if I want a response I'd better mention it there. Even if the theme of Facebook distracting humans from the more important things in life (like blogging?) is well past its sell-by date, someone there will agree with my sentiments.

Oh yes, they will.

Just watch my feed and see.

Me, mine. Us, them.

I'm at Gasworks, standing atop The Mound (I'm sure it has a real name and that's not it). My companion says, "See that building there, the Columbia Tower? It's the tallest building on the West Coast."

"Huh," I say.

"Yeah, he says. "Taller than anything in SF, San Diego, or even LA."

"Huh," I say. And then an unexpected thing happens: I feel a flash of pride. As if this fact in some way reflects upon me personally, as a denizen of Seattle. As if I had anything to do with it.  Which I didn't.

And yet, there it is, the strange little beast, pinging up inside me, poking a little thumb toward its puffed up little chest, wiggling its hips and squeaking: "Yeah, uh huh, we did that! Us! Not them! Fist-bump!"

This, I gather pensively, staring at the tall building, must be what sports fans feel when their teams win: a sort of senseless, tribal delight that has absolutely no connection to anything they have personally accomplished.

We. Us.

Can't argue with how it feels: powerful, compelling, insidious, pervasive -- tribalism. Wikipedia says: "People have postulated that the human brain is hard-wired towards tribalism due to its evolutionary advantages".

Evolutionary advantages. We win.

Fist-bump.

Am I famous yet?

Context is everything. Check out the implications of this quote from the bbc's tech news:

"Intel's Tomorrow Project draws on the work of writers such as Corey Doctorow, Sonia Orin Lyris and Charles Walbridge to create visions for the future that can inspire the public, and act as goals for engineers."

Feelin' smug over here. Just a tad. Yeah.

(Okay, for those of you who have replied to me with "huh?" about this, I'll explain. Doctorow is a big name in SF&F and future tech and the co-editor of Boing Boing. He's famous, he's a fine writer, and to be listed after him in this BBC article says a lot about my name recognition value and makes me feel all yummy.  Now, it might be a mistake -- maybe they just like my name (I do) -- but let's assume the best.)


As for the anthology itself, the pdf is still available  here, and still free.

The Myth of Self-Defense

I'm pissed again. This is why I don't attend martial arts classes any more, why my answer to "what martial arts have you done?" is "oh, this and that."

Because most martial arts talk is posturing and pretense and ego, not much to do with effective self-defense. Which I do care about.

I'm not going off on a rant how most martial arts practices have little or nothing to do with self-defense, or how most MA teachers haven't a clue how little they know about what they think they're teaching. Heck, I'm barely going to touch on how much worse than useless most "women's self-defense" training is. All that would take a book. This one is a good start.


But I will say this: if someone you care about really needs self-defense, give them a few critical basics:

1. No matter how much experience they say they have, your teacher can be oh-so wrong. They don't know what you know about your body, your mind, or your self defense situation. And gosh, if they aren't listening to you, they know even less.

2. Anyone who won't talk to you about why they teach specific moves, who can't answer "but why not just walk away?", does not know what they are doing.

3. Belts don't matter. Martial arts lineages don't matter. The name of the school doesn't matter. All those weapons on the wall? The big, lovely Japanese kanji? Irrelevant. Absolutely irrelevant.

4. You don't need lots of fancy moves. More techniques isn't the answer. You need one move -- just one -- that works. Okay, maybe two. Listen: if it's hard to do when you're calm, on flat ground, in a well-lit room, how hard will it be to do in the rain, on slippery pavement in the dark? Those moves should be simple.

If you want a good teacher, find someone who doesn't need to convince you that they're a good teacher. Find someone who teaches out of their garage. Find someone who, when you learn a bunch of moves, won't give you a belt.

And to the guy who tried to teach me women's self-defense tonight, who is probably nearly as annoyed as I am by the experience, who thinks pain and damage are the same thing, who told me that if I raise my arm over my head I'll be taller than my attacker:

I hope you find out how how little you know before you teach this stuff to any other woman who might actually need to use it. But I bet you won't.

We don't really live in a very violent place or time. Most of the women who learn these "self-defense" practices will never need them. I console myself with that.

And yet, somehow, I'm still pissed.

Quoting Me

So I'm surfing the google sea, there looking for things I've written but forgotten about, and I come across this lovely quote from the webpage of an old acquaintance that I swear I don't remember writing, but does sound surprisingly like me, and what do you know, it's not bad:

Basic Flying Rules: Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees, and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

Sounds like me, all right.

And this one, thoughtfully collected for me by someone I simply don't remember:

Dedication is not measured in suffering-units.

Which sounds very much like me. Flying, suffering - am I an expert on these things because I'm quotable? Sure, why not.