Winston Churchill and Stalin had a lot of messages to each other that I had never learned about before. It’s interesting.
As told by that weird marxists.org site:
Captioning has been helping humans understand each other since 1944.
No pressure, captioners & CART providers.
(To the extent they differentiate in a modern context.)
Let’s not mention interpreters…. 😜
P.S. (Gets ranty.)
My TikTok recently hit the 1,000-follower minimum for LIVE sessions. Not too sure if I’ll use it, but it might be an interesting way to put attention on our interests.
If there are any fence people watching, it’s time to join the winning team.
I draw some inspiration from a Doctor Who episode I’ve written about before called Heaven Sent. Spoilers. The Doctor is forced into a position where a dark and ominous figure chases him slowly and without relent. If it touches him, he’ll die. It’s kind of like that hypothetical scenario sometimes posted to social media, “would you take $x million dollars if a snail that could not be killed would chase you and if it touched you, you die?”
He gets to a point where his exit is blocked by a wall of diamond, or crystal, or whatever. It’s a solid wall he has no hope of breaking, but he starts punching it, having wired up a way to revive himself each time he is killed by the ominous figure that catches up with him at the rock wall. He does this for billions of years, eventually managing his way through the wall and to freedom, destroying his grim-reaper-like stalker.
The Doctor says “you might think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”
But I think it’s time to reveal something about my writing. It’s not a love of stenography or court reporting that keeps me going. I think perhaps it was once. But that was a long time ago. I think longtime fans will know where I’m headed with this.
It’s my sense of esprit de corps with the people of this profession and those that do what I do that drives me. I’ve spent a long time writing about this stuff, I know that they’re moving to privatize the public sector jobs. I know the law was broken to do it. And I know this all really impacts people’s lives. The dark ominous figure following me? Rejection. But I’ve had correspondence with people who’ve had work withheld from them, had clients stolen, people who have really suffered under the current market conditions. In fact, there’s one sufferer out there, though not a traditional reporter, that had to go into landscaping. The people I write for are the voiceless victims of the systems we operate in.
One thing I’ve always been misunderstood on is my view about change. People think I’m fighting for everything to stay the same forever. No. Change is coming whether we like it or not. As time rolls on circumstances change and the world itself changes. For example, it’s a fact that there’s more energy in our atmosphere every year. You don’t think that has effects the majority of us can’t fathom? You don’t think that impacts the rise in the cost of living (think air conditioning and electricity prices)? You don’t think those cost of living increases impact the people on the lower rungs of income in this profession? You don’t think losing those people hurts us? Have you ever tried to climb a ladder missing its lower rungs?
So if change is going to happen, we have two real choices, lead the way or be led. And your leaders, the multimillion dollar corporations that represent a huge portion of the revenue in this field and the national association that eats millions of dollars every year but can’t seem to stand up to fraudulent shell nonprofits like a good blog can, are working against you, if not through directly detrimental action, then through inaction that sometimes feels calculated to produce the least effective outcome for the working reporter. We know people will hurt other people if their leaders tell them to. We also know the illusory truth effect. Bombarded with the same message over and over, we come to believe it.
Those leaders did this to you. “Realtime is the future”, “good reporters will always have work”, “we have lots of work for you”, “you are special”, “you are irreplaceable”, “be careful what you post, agencies monitor this group”, “what can we do? There’s an unprecedented shortage.”
Many of us have been conditioned to believe that if we are realtime, we will always have a job. This is false, and corporations have moved into calling digital realtime, which will eventually devalue the skill — mathematical and economic fact. As close to predictable as possible. Yet many of you don’t believe it.
Many of us have been conditioned to believe that if someone is lower income on the reporting scale, they are bad. “I have work, so my skills must be good, so your skills must be bad.” This damages our esprit de corps and makes us less likely to work together to solve problems. It also silences those who are struggling, because they internalize that the problem is them and that they are bad.
Many of us have been conditioned to view companies through a lens of benevolence or fear. This makes us less likely to act when our interests conflict with those companies.
Many of us have been conditioned to believe we are genuinely irreplaceable. Again, this makes us less likely to band together to solve problems or even admit that there are problems.
Some of this is, as best I can tell, the direct result of actions from our leaders. Some of it involves groupthink truisms we told ourselves. The end result is the same. We are conditioned to do nothing while the people who are motivated to lead change for financial gain siphon the money out of our pockets and into theirs. This is being done through political, social, and sometimes illegal means that is difficult to identify and address.
Conditioned to do nothing while you’re being robbed.
But the human mind is capable of seeing through propaganda and undoing conditioning.
And I believe in the power of people that read this.
I believe that the little bird that sharpens its beak on the mountain wants it more than the mountain itself.
I believe the other little birds are joining.
I believe, with your help, the mountain can be whittled away in record time.
And at that moment, the first second of eternity will have passed.