A retraction

I am publicly retracting and apologizing for a blog post I published on my blog A Trivial Knot in March of 2020. That post is “Trump’s Atrocious Trolley Tradeoff“. The essay contained a political discussion of the pandemic, and speculation on possible outcomes, and most regrettably, a comparison to the number of deaths in the Holocaust. This problem with this was pointed out by my (now former) coblogger and friend Sara, whom I treated rudely. Afterwards, Sara chose to disassociate herself with The Asexual Agenda, and the local ace meetup group.

The reason this has been much delayed is that Sara asked me not to explain why she left. However, I could have still retracted the essay without mentioning her. In any case, Sara has finally come forward to explain the problem.

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FtB fundraiser

You might have noticed the logo on the sidebar for FtB’s Carnival of Curiosity, a fundraising event.  (Some ad blockers may remove it.)  This is a livestream event to occur next weekend, from September 25-27.  FtB has been in debt for a while now because we owe legal fees for fighting off a SLAPP lawsuit–successfully, I might add.  Please consider contributing to keep this network running!

Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to participate in the fundraiser, but I will make a contribution of my own.

In meta news

In case you missed it, PZ Myers launched a FTB Discord server.  As part of that, several blogs started dedicated channels, and I started one as well.  My channel’s currently quiet, which suits me fine, but if chatrooms are a format that appeals to you, then you’re invited to join.

I’d also like to mention that last week I touched up my banner so it’s less blurry, and added a favicon.  Not sure how many people knew this, but there is a puzzle embedded in the banner, which I personally designed and am quite attached to.

FTB is back up

FTB was down for most of yesterday, and Matthew Herron explains why.  Short version: technical difficulties.

Anyway, for people who follow me using RSS, you should know that the RSS feed might behave a bit strangely.  On my RSS reader, the post I had scheduled yesterday about origami spirals doesn’t show up.  Some of the recent Pharyngula posts don’t show up either.  Maybe it will sort itself out later, but in the mean time I wanted to give a heads up.

OrbitCon schedule

The OrbitCon schedule is now online.  You might say, “Yeah yeah, another conference I can’t attend.”  But you can attend this one!  It’s held online!  This weekend!

I’ll be in a panel called “Ace/Aro Atheists“, held at 2:30 CDT Saturday, with Sennkestra and Emily Karp.  Come join us!

“Aro” is short for aromantic, and “ace” is short for asexual (usually denoting the asexual spectrum).  Yeah, last time I did one of these panels, somehow all the panelists were in romantic relationships.  But this time all the panelists are aromantic-spectrum.  That includes me–I’m both aro-spec and also in a relationship, funny that.

Any ace panelists?

A few years ago, I organized a panel called Asexual Spectrum Atheists for FTBCon, an online conference. It was great success, and we were praised as “the nightmarish collision of FTB and tumblr!” OrbitCon is the spiritual successor of FtBCon, held on April 13-15. If I organized a similar panel, would anyone be interested in either watching, or being a panelist?

Ideally, the panel would have a variety of viewpoints, including ace/aro atheists/freethinkers who have never been involved in atheist communities, people who used to be involved but left, and people who are involved currently. Probably most of the time spent won’t be about atheism at all.  OrbitCon will provide tools and information if you wish to conceal your identity.

I’m ambivalent about organizing this, because I’ve been doing this for so long and it would be nice to have fresher faces.  Depending on the level of interest we can figure something out.

You may also e-mail me at skepticsplay at gmail dot com.

One last conference

This week I will be at the APS March Meeting, the largest physics conference in the world (?).  Although I am no longer working as a physicist, I have a presentation about the work I did just before leaving.

Will I blog about it?  Eh, I didn’t always blog about it in previous years.  But my experience may be a little different this time because I can focus on talks that interest me, instead of the ones that are relevant to my work.  Anyone want to suggest something from among the 800+ sessions?