Thoughtpieces Index

Thoughtpieces have been around since 2012, and now there are finally enough of them that it is worth having an index of them all in one place. Hover over the links for a brief description of the thoughtpiece topic. Where the thoughtpiece has become the seed of a related work on the Moonspeaker, a link is provided in the sidebar. Overall, I have to admit that some of the older ones that struck me as especially weak on first writing have turned out to have stood the test of time rather well in spite of themselves, although I would still not count them as among the best pieces since they are really too flimsy to be worth rewriting.

B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y

A-G

• Abused Verb "Identify", The
• Academic Freedom, Maybe
• Acclamation
• Actually, Lesbians Do Look Different
• Adult Infantilization
• Adventures in Trisquel and MATE
• Adults Can Do Better Than a 5 Year Old's Version of "Fair"
• Advertising Can't be Neutral
• Against Guilt
• Against Monarchy
• Against Utopia
• Aggressive Decorations
• Agnotology
• Ah, That's Where That is From
• AI Conundrum, The
• Alice's Adventures Underground at the British Library Online
• AI Trouble
• Analogue Mimesis
• Androgyny
• Anonymity is Not the Problem
• Anonymity Redux
• Another Attempt at a Little English History
• Another Perspective on Gun Ownership
• Another Untimely Post
• Anti-Intellectualism
• Archaeological Blocks
• Are Museums Amusing?
• Aristotle Isn't Nearly Far Enough Away
• Arithmetical Puzzles
• Art Trouble
• Artificial Archaeological Artifacts
• Asking the Wrong Question
• Asocial Amplifiers
• Assessment of SeaMonkey, An
• At Least One Serious Markdown Use
• Atomization and Its Discontents
• Attending to Consent
• Attention Debt
• Audience Markers
• Author, Author
• Automation and Online Classes

B

• Background Graphics
• Bad Conscience
• BBEdit and Website Managing
• Bittersweet Joys of Fanfic, The
• Bonus Thoughtpiece
• Book Burning/Destruction is a Bad Sign
• Brilliant Notes on Oppression
• Browser Troubles
• Bureaucracy, On
• But is it Legal?
• But, Is It Tech?
• But We Need You!

C

• Censorship Is A Lot of Things, But Not This
• Change of Perspective
• Check the Receipts
• Checking What "Puritanism" Actually Is
• Clarifying Video , A
• Class is a Social Relationship
• Clean Slate, A
• Clever But Useless
• Closed Workspaces
• Cloud Remains Troubling, The
• Colonization of Imagination, The
• Compelling Attention
• Complaint About Exclusion That Should Always Be Ignored, A
• Consider the Source
• Considerations of Silence
• Considering "The Left"
• Conspiracy Theorizing
• Consuming Information
• Contradictory Justice
• Corporate Censorship
• Corporate "Pride"
• Counterculture and Its Discontents
• Cri de Coeur: WTF, Firefox?, A
• Critical Concerns
• Cultural Appropriation is Theft Folks
• Culture of Oversharing, A
• Curious Cloud, The
• Cyberethics

D

• Deskilling is Relative
• Desperation Tactics
• Destroy the Business Schools
• Deviant Biography
• Difference is Not Inherently a Hierarchy
• Disagreeing Agreeably
• Dishonest Passive Voice, The
• Dishonest Usage and "Whiteness"
• Division of Labour in Extensio
• Documentation Woes
• Don't be Such a Neanderthal?
• Don't Give Me That "No Jurisdiction" Shit
• Don't Read That!
• Dubious Wonders of VR and CGI, The

E

• Echolocation in an Echo Chamber
• Electric Scooters
• Empty Culture? An Identity Defined Only By What It Isn't?, An
• Essential "Service"
• "Ethical Advertising" is an Oxymoron Under Capitalism
• Ethnogenesis and Its Discontents
• Eugenics Ideas Persists Like a Bad Rash
• Euro Sign, A
• "Europe" is Not a Continent
• Ever Underestimated Card Catalogue, The
• Evidence of a Zombie Genre: Space Westerns
• Excursion To Salted Beef, An
• Existential Questions
• Exploiters' Tactics

F

• Fading Newspapers
• "Fake News" is Not a Useful Term
• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting is an Important Goal
• Familiar Stranger, A
• Fed Up to the Back Teeth
• Feminism as Ecosystem
• Filling the Bit Bucket
• Fine Then, What About Postmodernism?
• First Model Blues
• Five United Pacific Tribes Vindicated After 20 Years
• Follow up to Venus Not on a Half Shell
• Food For Thought: It Wasn't Enough
• Footnotes and Endnotes
• Forced Teaming
• Fourth Wallisms
• Foyson is Already Missing, The
• Freedom From Versus Freedom To
• Funny, That
• Funny Things That Remind You Of Eyes
• Funny Way to Talk About a Person, A
• Future of Housework, The

G

• Garbage In Means Garbage Out
• Geeksploitation
• General Purposeness
• Generative Music and Anti-Advertising
• Getting Kids – Or Anybody Really – to Read
• Giving Up Key Words is Always a Mistake
• Good, the Bad, and the Not Sure, The
• Great Title, Troubled Execution
• Greatly Exaggerated
• Greedy Savers?
• Grey Lit

H-O

• Handwriting, On
• Hard to Soft SciFi
• Have Your Straw Feminist, and Burn Her Too!
• Helping Students Hand and Foot
• Hijacking a Faithful Habit
• Historical Crowdfunding
• History and Fiction
• Humane Interface, The

I

• "I Know, Fridge the Planet!"
• I've Got A Bridge to Sell You...
• Ideas That Hold Us Back
• Identity Politics Are Bullshit
• Idle Worship
• If a Non-White Person Experiences Something But No White Person Was There, Did It Happen?
• If You Try to Discuss OSes, Then You Will Be in a Flamewar
• Ignoble Prizes
• Illiteracy is Not a Synonym for Ignorance
• Illustrations We Don't See, The
• Important Rhetorical Summary, An
• In Lieu of Search Engines
• In That Case, You'd Be Seriously Lost
• "In the Penal Colony"
• Including Surprises, Part One
• Including Surprises, Part Two
• Increasing Job Precarity and Hiding the Bots
• Indenture Versus Birth
• Indicators of an Untrustworthy Person, Part One
• Indigenous Futurism
• Inescapable Orwell, The
• Information Architecture and Its Discontents
• Intemperate Views on Temperance
• Interesting Coincidence, An
• Interface Hell
• International Women's Day
• Irreconcilable
• Is Analogue the New Luxury?
• Is It Necessary?
• Is Javascript the Issue?
• It's Really Too Bad
• It Takes Time to Learn a System
• It's Too Bad There's No Connection

J

• Javascript Is a Big Problem
• Joys of Rereading, The

L

• L'État, C'est Nous
• Lack of Knowledge Is Not Objectivity
• Language of the Land, The
• Language Prescription Foibles
• Let's Get Critical
• Let's Talk About "Liberalism"
• Libraries Are Absolutely Necessary
• Like A Lumber-Room
• Literary Questions
• Little English History , A
• Little More of the RSS Saga, A

M

• Map Is Not the Territory, The
• Markdown Reflections
• Marketing by Obfuscation of a Pre-Existing Technique
• Martians Have Come to the Prairies, The
• Master's Tools, The
• Maybe A Different Sort of Web
• Meditation on Software and Change, A
• Messaging Fail
• Microsoft's Approval is Stigma, Not Reassurance
• Military Projection
• Millennial Blues?, The
• Misconceptions About Women's Suffrage
• Misconstruing De Beauvoir
• Mixed Bag
• More Modernity
• More Mystifications of Capitalism
• More on the New Medievalism
• More Reasons to Reject the Modern
• Moreau's Island
• Most Dangerous People, The
• Musical Changes
• Must Be Nice

N

• Narratives and Appearances
• Natural Semantic Metalanguage
• Necessary Protests
• Need to Know
• New Landed Property, The
• New Medievalism, The
• Nineteenth Century Blahs, The
• No, Cryptocurrencies Should Not Be Saved
• No Don't Call the Damned Cops
• No Recruiting
• "No, Seriously, You're a Duck"
• No, Those Things Were Not "Natural and to be Expected"
• No, We'll Take Care of Our Culture, Thanks
• Not a New Problem
• No, Not All "White Middle Class"
• Not an Explanation
• Not Children, Not Even Metaphorically
• Not So Ineffective Words
• Not So Ineffective Words, Again
• Novel Fictions

O

• Obfuscated Code
• Obligatory Net Neutrality Piece, An
• Oddly Appropriate Signage
• Ode to the Old Mac
• Of Bog People and Early Archaeologists
• Of Unknown Function, Not No Function
• Okay What is the Political Left Again?
• On Experts
• On Obstreperous Signage
• On Genre Fiction
• On the Question of Tears
• On the Trouble With the Web, Part One
• On the Trouble With the Web, Part Two
• On the Trouble With the Web, Part Three
• On What White Women Are Anyway
• On What's Right With the Web, Part One
• On What's Right With the Web, Part Two
• On What's Right With the Web, Part Three
• Oppressed People Aren't Here to Make Their Oppressors Feel Better
• Origins and Perambulations of the Cummerbund, The
• Ostensibly Open Data
• Out? Out? We've Never Been In
• Outrageous Origins of the Invention of Modern "Just War", The

P-S

• Paper Ballots
• Paper Keeps Going
• Parades Versus Marches
• Peace is Practical Work
• Perceived Lawlessness
• Perverse Incentives
• Pessimism as Rationalization
• Place of Entertainment, The
• Pipelines Versus Trains? The Answer Is Not Obvious
• Platonic Allegory, A
• Pleasure Machine, The
• Poetic Musings
• Poetry Is Not a Luxury
• Political Hanging Over
• Politicians and Fundraising
• Pondering Identity and Identification
• "Population," a Real Red Herring
• Possibility Theorem, A
• Posturing on Critical Race Theory
• Power and Helplessness in the Malestream
• Precedent
• Presentism Ad Absurdum
• Press Makings
• Privacy Economy, The
• Private, Singular
• Privilege Check
• Problematic Food
• Problematic Pie, The
• Professional Appearances aka No Coloureds and No Ethnics
• Programmers, Have You Considered What Your Error Messages Say About You?
• Psychoanalytical Puzzles
• Puzzling Over Authenticity

Q

• Queer Intimations
• Question of Efficiency, The
• Question of Expiation, The
• Qui Bono From Robot Armies?
• Quick Dip Into Middle English, A
• Quixotic Columns

R

• Realities of Puberty Include...
• Reality of Fiction, The
• Reappraising Certain Biblical Notions
• Reconstructive Problem, A
• Redbaiting
• Reducing the Centrality of Sex-Role Stereotypes
• Reducing the Commercial Web
• Reflections on Firmspace
• Reflections on Historical Materialism
• Reflections on "Mary Sue"
• Reflections on Writing and Reading
• Refuse the Bait
• Refusing "Modern"
• Refusing the Land
• Refusing Thought
• Resistance to Oppression is Perennial
• Respect Readers, Take Yourself Seriously
• Respecting "Tradition," Eh?
• Revelations of White Complaint, The
• Revisiting Cultural Appropriation
• Rhetoric Versus Writing
• Right Tool For the Right Job
• Role of Student Lecture Notes, The

S

• Saint-Simon's Here-topia
• Sales Numbers
• Sanctuary or Troy Cycle?
• Scapegoating is a Not a Good Idea
• Scifi Cryptoracism
• Science-type Thoughts
• Scientism in the Humanities
• Search Engine Independence
• Search Engine Repair
• Search Patterns
• Security Updates Required
• Seeking Followers is a Big Part of the Problem
• Separatism, Segregation, and Exclusion
• Since When is Listening "Passive"?
• Sloppy Origins
• Smiley History, A
• "So They Stopped Just East of Something Awful..."
• So, You'd Like to Reinstall An Old iOS App
• Some Clarity About "Political Correctness"
• Some Meanings of Invisible Economics
• Some Thoughts On Editing
• Some Thoughts on Verbal Literature and Orature
• Something Is Not Right Here
• Spatial Confusion
• Speech Bubbling
• Spelling For Fun and Profit
• Sprinkle a Little Technology On It
• Star Wars Redux? Er, Reflux?
• Statistics, Damned Statistics, and Random Numbers
• Stories That Don't Make Sense, Example No. 7 532 246
• Strange Motivations
• Strange Obsessions
• Strange Omnipresence of the Dark Haired, Green-Eyed Woman, The
• Strategic Emissions Cuts
• Struggling To Define Dangerous Speech
• Superhero Secret Identities
• Supposed Civilization
• Supposed Season of the Introverts
• Supposed Single Issue
• Sure RFID Tags Are Convenient
• "Surplus" People
• System Updates

T-Z

• Talking About Higher Education
• Tea is the Best Medicine
• Tearable Puns
• Terrorism is What That Is
• Technical Longevity Versus Shininess
• That's What Heroic Medicine Is
• There are No Oppression Olympics
• There is No Such Thing As a Benign Dictatorship
• There is No Such Thing as Free Hosting
• There is No Marketplace of Ideas
• There is Such a Thing As Too Perfect
• There's Surrealism, and Then There's Grammar
• They Obviously Don't Mean It
• This is Not About Banks
• Thoughts Provoked by Andreadis' Essay Persistent Neoteny
• Thoughts on Computer Vulnerability Reports
• Thoughts on Liberation Theology
• Tiniest Violin is Playing, The
• Tinkerbell Complex, The
• Too Effective Words?
• Touchscreen Troubles
• Traditional Hand Me Downs
• Trials and Tribulations of – Email?, The
• Tribe Called Wannabe, The
• Trouble With "Born This Way" Arguments, The
• Trouble With The Hobbit, The
• Trouble With Tourism, The
• Troubled Mixtures
• Troubles With "Cis"
• Troubling Monopoly
• Typical Accusation, A

U

• Uncomfortable Echoes
• Uncomfortable Neighbours
• Undeserved Praise
• Unexpected Trivia Question Answers
• Unfortunate Career of "Nice", The
• Unfortunately, Wifi is Awful
• Unnatural City, The
• Unseasonable Piece, An
• Unsettled
• Unsurprising Worm in the Apple, An
• Unsurprisingly, Taylorism is Nonsense
• Unusual Second Hand Finds
• Updated Thoughts on Advertising

V

• Venus Not On A Half Shell
• Verbal Self-Defence is a Thing
• Versioning and Document Encoding
• Very Small Slice, A
• Victorians Were Not Prudes, The
• Visible Intersectionality?
• Visible Invisible?
• Voice Control Absurdities
• Volunteer Challenges

W

• Wait a Minute...
• Wait, How Does That Work?
• Walk This Way
• Watch Out for the Noblesse Oblige
• Watch Out for The Poison Pill
• We Are Not Yours
• We Are Not Yours, Redux
• "We Don't Care, We Don't Have To, We're the Phone Company"
• We Have "Smart" and Even "Self-Driving" Vehicles Already
• Web Garbage Really is Hazardous
• Web Forgets What It Should Remember, and Remembers What It Should Forget, The
• Website Optimization Follies
• Websites For Everyone
• What Do You Mean "We"?
• What Idiot Decided it was Time to Reintroduce SCSI Voodoo But Worse?
• What if There is Nowhere Else to Go?
• What Is A Vacation Anyway?
• What Is It About Authenticity Anyway?
• What Is It About Us That You Don't Like?
• What is "The West", Anyway?
• What is This Supposed "Inflation Risk"?
• When the Old Outcompetes the New
• White Lab Coats?
• Whiteness of Real Being, The
• Who Needs a Deck?
• Who Rents Gets No Respect
• Who Said Bookstores Were Boring?
• Who Speaks in Public?
• Who Thoughts
• Whose Convenience?
• "Why Don't You Let Us Enjoy This First?"
• Wikipedia and Criticism
• Wire Recording
• Woman Identified Woman
• Women and History
• Writing and Editing
• Writing and Plotting

Y

• Yes, A Sports Logo Can Be Racist
• Yes, the Apocalypse is Now
• Yes, the World is Burning
• Yet Another Online Enclosure Attempt
• You Can't Have It Both Ways
• You Can't Have It Both Ways, Redux
• "You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think it Means What You Think it Means."
• You Will Be Assimilated