Impermissible Notions
Or, Things That Will Not Be Tolerated On Twitter.
The thing in question this time is a cartoon, an illustration of an idea. It was shared, briefly, yesterday by biologist and Quillette contributor Colin Wright, and was promptly censored by Twitter’s moderators. Mr Wright has apparently been suspended from said platform until a confession of hateful wrongdoing – as yet unspecified hateful wrongdoing – has been extracted. Given the cartoon’s scandalous properties, I’ll reproduce it below the fold. Do feel free to grip the arms of your chair.
This, apparently, is what’s verboten on Twitter. Note that no inflammatory commentary was added to the image. The image itself was deemed a basis for both indignation and speedy action. And so, the enormous list of things to which Twitter’s moderators take exception now includes the suggestion that strident activists often do harm to the cause they ostensibly champion. A phenomenon seen all but daily, and on many fronts.
The article that the illustration accompanies, by Eliza Mondegreen, can be found here. Readers are welcome to comb through it in search of seething hatred or some great urge to oppress.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
There’s a book called Heinlein’s Trio containing those three stories. The first Heinlein book that I have found in any library, aside from the YA one (with large old people print for some absurd reason) I picked up about a year ago that was just too juvenile for me.
I have no idea what a Trio book is. And my recommendation would depend on the intended reader.
Looked it up. Odd choice to package together in one volume. I speculate that it was merely because Doubleday had reprint rights. I hope they did a good job of editing–not a lot of typos or other problems.
For an adult like you, I would recommend The Puppet Masters or Double Star.
The Puppet Masters is a pretty good alien-invasion story. Your book will have the earlier edition, edited (trimmed and censored) by Heinlein to please the publisher. The currently in print edition is a bit longer and has a bit more “adult” situations.
Double Star is a shorter novel about an actor hired to be a double for a politician. Also pretty good.
The Door Into Summer is okay (although its postulated future economics is Social Credit silliness) but it finishes with a creepy
MayMarch-September romance that I now take as a harbinger of future Heinlein sexual strangeness.There was an episode in Glory Road which bothered me the same way. In retrospect I wonder if that was a significant part of why Samuel R. Delany praised it.
Our Motto: “Think Different Like Everyone Else”.
I am surprised it isn’t racist.
Oh.
How about firing the lot of the useless SOBs.
Robbing from the rich, the spirit of Robin Hood lives on in Nottingham.
Another commie hot take.
Another commie hot take
And suddenly I’m thinking about helicopters…
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for police recruits. Almost certainly for the sake of DEI.
To mutate a quote from a book:
“Dear Professor Kotsko, he is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.”
Maccis is a tax collection agency?
“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers” would my two recommendations, @WTP.
Meanwhile at the Associated press is transphobic, “The USS Gerald Ford, she is a fine ship”.
And so, the enormous list of things to which Twitter’s moderators take exception now includes the suggestion that strident activists often do harm to the cause they ostensibly champion. A phenomenon seen all but daily, and on many fronts.
Sensible cartoon is “stochastic terrorism”!
AIR Nottingham was largely a West Indian diverseness, rather than an African American type of diversity. I think that is probably true of most UK black communities.
“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers” would my two recommendations, @WTP.
Mine, too, if we’re choosing from his entire body of work.
Sensible cartoon is “stochastic terrorism”!
That is a very strange expression. I wonder who coined it. Someone in academia, I suppose, given that it sounds like the product of an erudite mind while actually being utter bollocks.
Instead of “coined it” I should have written “applied it to speech that dissents from leftism”.
Mine, too, if we’re choosing from his entire body of work
Thanks. Given the suggestions, and the modern American library system being the worthless pile of shitbooks that it is, I’ll going with Double Star. Will let you know my take.
WTP: Let us know how you like it.
Also: Which was the YA book that you didn’t like? Depending on your answer, I might recommend a few of his better YA novels. Farmer in the Sky and Red Planet are decent. And in fact Farmer made enough of an impression on Gregory Benford when he read it as a kid that he wrote his own novel, heavily based on Heinlein’s premise., updating the science and egineering politics.
To be fair, Glory Road is a good novel. It’s just that the incident I alluded to stuck in my craw. (Much as you can find things to criticize in most artists’ work.)
I reposted this cartoon to Twitter, and I guess it is a testament to what little influence I wield over there, because it is still up, not a peep from the TW overlords.
At least we can drop “the great Lorenzo” references and @WTP will get it.
Also: “Proper conduct demands that one of us leave.”
At least we can drop “the great Lorenzo” references and @WTP will get it.
I liked the illustrations that Kelly Freas did for the original magazine serialization of Double Star. Most fans like Freas for his colorful, sparkly-starred paintings (his famous painting for “The Gulf Between” was an exception) but I think much more highly of his drawings: Lots of interesting faces.
(A lot of Freas’ art is rather pulp-y, but some of it rises well above that, and he was one of the most technically skilled artists in the field.)
Farnsworth M Muldoon | August 22, 2022 at 13:41: I have seen places where there are over and underpasses for wildlife to cross highways, but one where they meander along next to an El in the middle of a city is a bizarre take.
I remember looking out of an “El” car in downtown Evanston (fully urbanized inner suburb of Chicago), at the commuter rail track which is parallel there, and noticing an animal trotting along the right-of-way. “Odd looking dog,” I thought. Then I realized it wasn’t a dog, it was a coyote.
[Tech note: when I preview, edit, and try to post, I get “session expired”.]
Coyotes migrate around using the Chicago area train tracks and belts of parkway.
You will see “session expired” if you let too much time pass between when you load a page and when you finally click “post”.
What’s really funny is when you post a comment, hibernate your computer for the night, and, when you return the next morning see your comment in the Preview window right below the copy you posted the previous night. (I offer this only as a curiosity: I wouldn’t want David to spend even a minute investigating this, as that would take away from time compiling Ephemera.)
Good news.
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1563154195423043586