Eric Hamell
10:46 am: Spring has sprung, and so did I this morning at the usual time (6:45). While waiting for my breakfast I read the ten pages needed to keep me on target to finish Dune before it’s due to be returned to the library. Then I stored the breakfast in a plastic container to eat at noon, since I’m practicing intermittent fasting. My doctor suggested this a couple years ago since I was a little overweight and borderline prediabetic. Within a few months my weight and metabolism were both where they should be, but I’ve decided to maintain the habit until and unless there’s some reason to discontinue it.
Then I walked from where I’m staying in the Eraserhood to Van Pelt Library on Penn’s campus. This is another habit that aids my overall health, as well as helping keep the arthritis in my knees in check.
My first order of business, after getting this initial diary entry down, will be to create a new Meetup account. When I tried to log in yesterday, the screen said my account had been suspended. As usual with Big Tech censorship, it didn’t tell me what specifically I was supposed to have done to cause this to happen, and possibly no human made the decision. I’m pretty sure I know who instigated it, however. A couple weeks ago I learned I’d been removed from two groups run by the same person. I hadn’t done anything rude, malicious, or vulgar, nor had I uploaded anything NSFW. Yet evidently, despite having words suggesting open-mindedness like skeptic and agnostic in his groups’ names, this organizer simply regards some social views as being beyond the pale, including mine. He claimed that none of the other people in his groups would be interested in entertaining them, and perhaps he’s in a position to know this. But it’s pretty obvious that this suspension is also a consequence of his action – which means that he’s presuming to know that no one in the region could possibly be interested in them either, which is of course ridiculous. He is in effect acting like a cult leader, trying to prevent people from being exposed to any information or perspective that could challenge his preferred doctrine. (In the cultic studies field this is termed milieu control; it’s part of Robert Lifton’s eight-point description of ideological totalism.)
I’m sure I’ll find a work-around for this obstacle. I’m no longer interested in that person’s groups, but I’m in a couple others – a men’s discussion group and a one for romance readers that’s just getting started – that will still want me to be involved. Fortunately I know when they’re meeting next, so I’ll just show up and explain the situation and something can be worked out. For the benefit of these people who already know me, I can tell them I’m re-registering under a different name. There could be other ways of staying in the loop too of course, but it’s preferable for everyone to be connected via the same platform. So, to borrow a metaphor from Omegakitten, a youth liberation advocate in Austria with whom I’ve been mutuals for a couple years, I’ll just make like the Hydra and grow a new head to replace the one that’s been cut off. As she likes to say: Hail Hydra!
8:48 pm: I’ve confirmed that a spare email address I had is still valid, although it was at risk of being deleted soon if I hadn’t logged in. Now I’ve created a new Meetup account linked to it. But I won’t use it to join my two groups until I’ve had the chance to explain the situation to them in person.
Meanwhile, I’ve written a review of the book That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic by Steve Cohen, recommended to me not long ago by my friend Nancy Lebovitz, and posted it to my blog Gondwanaland.
While having my meals today, I read a portion of Metro and watched a number of videos, most related to news and politics but also one by an autistic vlogger. I was diagnosed in 2019.
Eric Hamell is a lifelong science nerd and political activist, and has been radical from the age of eight, thanks to being raised by Old Left parents with hippy friends. He's been involved in science fiction fandom, rationalism, and various other sorts of subcultures and has a Blogspot blog called Gondwanaland. On many platforms he has the username stripey7, which comes from a zebra he made up at around that age when his mother told him she'd run out of bedtime stories and could only tell him more if he gave her a character for them to be about. While always engaged with a variety of issues, in the recent past he's been focused on participating in a global team of online activists combating sexual bigotry and misinformation on social media. He was one of the first to join it after it was launched in early January 2022.
