| Subject: Chat with Amber Joseph |
| From: Amber Joseph <amber.r.joseph@gmail.com> |
6:02 PM me: bad news
I'm a racist
http://www.theblogmocracy.com/2010/03/20/barrett-brown-another-progressive-bigot-and-racist/
6:04 PM Amber: I imagine this makes our continued association difficult
6:05 PM Wow, this is scathing.
me: yes, as it will take me a couple of months to write a comprehensive refutation of this particular piece
the last two paragraphs are key
6:06 PM Amber: There are some grammar problems here.
6:07 PM me: and Stalin smoked too much
Amber: Hahahahahaha.
You're obviously a racist against Hispanics.
6:08 PM me: no, no
it gets better
Amber: Except Hispanics don't really want ot be called HIspanics anymore.
*to
me: yeah, I deciphered your secret code there
but, yeah
6:09 PM People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Your house has just been smashed and your racism/bigotry has been exposed for all the world to see, Brown!
Amber: This argument actually just got really weird.
me: yes
yes it did
Amber: I was pretty sure the Spanish Conquest was, well, a conquest.
6:10 PM me: you must not have gotten to the end
or your would have forgotten about the Spaniards
Amber: You're clearly a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.
me: yes
6:11 PM now
Amber: No wonder I stopped reading blogs on a daily basis.
It is exhausting.
me: aside from the silliness of charging me with racism because I am of a certain race
6:12 PM it is particularly silly for this fellow to take credit for exposing me for it
insomuch as that others have probably noticed that I am white
and thus racist
additionally
they note that I wrongly accused an author named R.S. McCain of being racist
6:13 PM simply because he is "proud of his White Southern Heritage"
6:14 PM (which of course is not actually the case; I accused him of being racist for a great number of reasons, including his authoring of an article for a white supremacist website under a pen name he took from a famous Confederate theologian who is known exclusively for his defense of slavery)
6:15 PM so, with that in mind
I am attacked for accusing McCain of racism allegedly for nothing more than him being proud to be a white southerner
and then I am accused of racism for being a white person
6:16 PM and the guy writing this is whiyr
Amber: White?
me: uh, whiry is Gaelic for white
I speak Gaelic sometimes because
god damnit that's another type
TYPO FUCK
I'm done
yes, I meant white
6:17 PM Amber: :-o
me: anywho, how was your weekend?
Amber: Can we go back to why you speak Gaelic sometimes?
6:18 PM me: I was going to say that I speak Gaelic sometimes out of pride for my white Irish heritage, this being intended as a jokey riff on the southern white pride thing
because my typo sounded Gaelic
but then everything went wrong
and then those wrong things went wrong too
Amber: That was clever, though.
I appreciate the attempt.
me: it was clever in an alternate universe in which I am a competent typist, yes
6:20 PM Amber: Hahaha.
My weekend was all right.
I was sick for much of it.
I took off work today.
6:21 PM me: got one day out of it, then
after having lost two others
Amber: This is true.
How about yours?
6:22 PM me: was unusual, I had to take care of my friend, she was beaten up by this guy she's seeing
6:23 PM and this came a bit after the fifth anniversary of her best friend (with whom I had a brief romance) dying of an overdose while she was with her
so she was really upset altogether
6:24 PM spent the weekend at my place, she's okay now
or more okay
Amber: That's a lot.
me: Yeah, the whole thing is really rough
6:25 PM I took her to the park, watched some old cartoon series with her, etc.
I don't usually have tragic occurrences in my general environment so it was very atypical
nothing bad ever really happens to me
6:26 PM anyway, it puts things in perspective
also got some work done, recruited over a dozen people of varying skill sets for my conspiracy
non-bloggers, I mean
6:27 PM Amber: Can you talk a little bit about your conspiracy, or is it classified?
me: it's not classified
the fine thing about conspiracies is that the dynamics of thought and journalism are such that "serious" people do not believe even in their potential existence
6:28 PM so I can say anything and it won't matter
Amber: That's true.
I enjoy conspiracies.
me: did I tell you the basics already, about Project PM?
Amber: No.
me: Ostensibly it is a media reform effort
6:29 PM centered around a network I have designed to facilitate the flow of information between the more competent bloggers and between the more competent bloggers and potential audiences
6:30 PM with the network itself facilitated by way of software that's being developed for the purpose by a friend of mine who's a brilliant information technology programmer
I'm e-mailing a summary of the network now
one sec
6:32 PM okay, I just sent the summary and a paragraph-long pitch that I use for recruiting bloggers and other parties
read it later
anyway
I've recruited a handful of prominent bloggers already
6:33 PM including a couple of the most widely-read contributors at True/Slant, for which I also write
6:34 PM then I approached the execs of True/Slant and pointed out that it was now in their interest to assist in the project
partly because I have influence over some of their key people and could easily recruit more
6:35 PM partly because the final product would potentially compete with them
and partly because they would have the opportunity of benefiting from the project
6:36 PM and they're excited about the idea anyway as it solves certain problems inherent to news aggregation, info distribution in general, and social networking
and, more importantly overall but perhaps of less relevance to them as a for-profit entity
6:37 PM it has great potential to have a positive impact on a number of aspects of American society insomuch as that information flow is fundamental to all human activity
now I'm integrating pretty much all of my other work into the project as well
6:38 PM using my new column for Skeptical Inquirer to promote it and recruit more people, for instance
Amber: This sounds like a big undertaking.
6:39 PM me: and picking the people I'll be hatcheting for The New York Observer based on who does the most harm to the nation by way of negligence or intellectual dishonesty
6:40 PM for instance, my first piece for them will be on Michael Wolff, who writes for the same Vanity Fair politics blog I do and who is basically one of these people who confuses shallowness for sophistication when it comes to political commentary
(as in, he writes about inside baseball maneuvering instead of actual policy effects when writing on politics)
he is also a partner and spokesperson for Newser
6:41 PM which is a news aggregator that cam out a couple of years ago, capitalized to the tune of millions of dollars
and which brings nothing to the table in terms of quality or ingenuity
so by attacking him and Newser in the Observer
6:42 PM I'll not only damage him and Newser to some perhaps small degree, but also potentially prompt him to respond in some way
which will in turn bring more attention to Project PM
anyway
long story short
media reform is the short-term goal of this
6:43 PM the covert, long-term goal is to assemble a large array of honest and capable people with a collectively huge following
6:44 PM within a network that will itself be the best existing method of corroboration and communication
eventually, they will realize for themselves that they have an ethical imperative to act further, beyond mere journalism
6:45 PM (or at any rate, another, similar entity to mine will collectively realize this, but this entity will prompt the creation of others even better than mine)
6:46 PM as it has not been feasible before the internet to assemble such a group of the best individuals while excluding mediocre or even malicious ones
and they'll realize that there is little stopping them from doing more
6:47 PM and, in fact, no ethical reasoning by which they should refrain from doing more
so, for instance
at some point later in this century
6:48 PM it would be viable for such a network to coordinate in an effort to overthrow a dictatorship such as that of Iran
or facilitate the election of an actually good senator or representative in a particular democracy and to do more effectively than would the average campaign consultant or party machine
6:49 PM and so on
basically, there is no good reason anymore for humanity to exist under the purview of various nation-states
as such things developed under entirely different circumstances than exist today
6:50 PM and are clearly not capable of obtaining anything close to optimal talent
6:51 PM and, in fact, have consistently acted in such a way as oppress and kill off great numbers of people simply out of flawed reasoning or incompetece
(it is unfortunate that I misspelled "incompetence," of all words)
so, that is the conspiracy
sorry you asked, eh?
6:52 PM Amber: No.
Well.
It was a lot, you just said.
I digested some of it.
Some of it I skmmed.
*skimmed
6:53 PM :-)
me: at any rate, it is not ambitious
because it is self-perpetuating
akin to writing a note that lays out a plan that is sufficient to convince people to dedicate themselves to it
and ending with instructions to copy the note and pass it on
6:54 PM which is to say that it does not require me after a certain point that is approaching soon
so, again
it is not a large undertaking at all
6:55 PM and the overt components, like media reform, are easily accomplished, so even if it doesn't accomplish much in the way of its long-term goals
it will certainly have some positive effect insomuch as that it will increase the influence a bit of certain people I have identified as being worthy of more influence than they have
6:56 PM while also reducing the influence of certain people I've identified as not deserving it
and the people I've selected will bring in additional people, who will bring in more, etc
so, no matter what
it will work to some extent
it's just a matter of how much
6:57 PM Amber: You're a verbose individual.
:-)
me: yep
6:58 PM LOL GET IT
6:59 PM because, you see, "yep" is a short term and as a sentence fragment is relatively short
I also like to make unnecessary explanations of jokes
anyway, I should get back to work
take it easy
7:00 PM Amber: You too.