So much to blog about and so little time. Jon Baliles, some of whose columns we republish on Bacon’s Rebellion, has been distracted by his duties as a board member of the Richmond Street Art Festival, so he has been unable to report on the latest inanity and insanity in River City. But the art in progress looks great, and the festival this Saturday at the Haxall Power Plant should be loads of fun. — JAB
Posted in Blogs and blog administration
Baconites and Rebels, I have disabled one of the two services that had been feeding ads to Bacon’s Rebellion. I have been receiving frequent complaints about glitches in the blog, and from my own observation, the ads were highly intrusive. The ads were bringing in a not-insignificant revenue stream, but not enough to justify the apparent loss in readership.
Just so you know… I do pay attention to reader feedback. Please let me know if Bacon’s Rebellion is a more enjoyable browsing experience now. Because if it’s NOT, I don’t want to be throwing money away, and I’ll put the ads back in.
— JAB
I’m leaving Wednesday on a much-needed vacation, in which my wife, traveling companions and I expect to do a lot of hiking with spectacular views such as this one. I’ll be gone about 10 days — without a laptop, unable to blog! (Is there a blogging-withdrawal antidote comparable to Oxycodone? Oh, maybe it’s spending time with friends and the great outdoors.) I will take a tablet, so I hope to keep up with email, but that’s about it. I’m counting on the BR crew to keep the blog lively in my absence. They’ve done it before, and I’m sure they’ll do just fine. Who knows — maybe they’ll do better! Everybody please behave while I’m gone! — JAB
by Dick Hall-Sizemore
Rather than engage an opponent in reasoned debate, Donald Trump has a habit of conjuring up a derogatory nickname for that person and attacking in that way.
One aspect that attracted me to Bacon’s Rebellion a little more three years ago was the civility of the discourse and the willingness to engage in reasoned discussion and debate. Absent was the almost ubiquitous name-calling that one found on Facebook and Twitter.
The subsequent resort to name-calling by some participants on this blog has been distressing. It began about midway through the Northam administration. I had hoped that when Northam left office, it would stop, but it has not.
It seems as if there is at least one instance every day. These are some of the epithets thrown around in just the last week or so:
C’mon guys! This is the sort of language one would expect to hear on an elementary school playground. Bacon’s Rebellion is bigger than that.
About two weeks ago, I installed, Ezoic, an ad-management software on Bacon’s Rebellion. I have gotten considerable feedback that readers were experiencing technical difficulties, both on the blog and in the Disqus comments. We have addressed some of the issues that readers were encountering, but not all. Preserving a positive reader experience is more important to me than generating a modest additional increment in advertising revenue, so I have turned off Ezoic.
If you have experienced problems on Bacon’s Rebellion, please let me know in the comments if they have been resolved or if you’re still having them. If I’m going to forego additional ad revenues, I’d like to know for certain that I’ve fixed the problems.
Thanks,
— JAB
The original meme posted on Bacon’s Rebellion and in Facebook.
by James A. Bacon
On Sunday I published a meme from The Bull Elephant blog that used two photos to contrast the environmental footprint of the Keystone Pipeline with that of a lithium mine for hybrid cars. The point, as any thinking person would immediately grasp, was to highlight the inconsistency of those who decried the environmental impact of the pipeline but ignored the impact of a lithium mine. It was a meme. Memes, by their nature, over-simplify arguments. I posted it not because it provided a fair-and-balanced exegesis of the issue, but because the juxtaposition of images reminded readers that one cannot consider the environmental impact of gas- and 0il pipelines without also considering the impact of their renewable alternatives, which require the large-scale mining of lithium, rare earth minerals, and other elements.
The next day I cross-posted the meme on the Bacon’s Rebellion Facebook page. When I checked that page today, I found that the image had been stripped away and replaced with the following notice: “False Information. The same information was checked in another post by independent fact checkers.” Continue reading
Posted in Blogs and blog administration, Media
What the h-e-double hockey sticks?
I have a dormant McAfee PC security app on my PC that I can’t seem to get rid of. It periodically butts into my business, notifying me of potential security issues. This morning the warning shown above popped onto my browser when I used it to call up Bacon’s Rebellion.
The warning reads: “We tested this page and blocked content that comes from potentially dangerous or suspicious sites. Allow this content only if you’re sure it comes from safe sites.”
Sorry, McAfee, I’m pretty sure Bacon’s Rebellion is a safe site. Continue reading
Many thanks to Dick Hall-Sizemore, Jim Sherlock and DJ Rippert for filling Bacon’s Rebellion with lively, informative content during my vacation absence. — JAB
Facebook face plant. On more than one occasion, I have complained on Bacon’s Rebellion that Facebook had blocked advertisements promoting the blog on the social media platform. I conflated the restrictions with the de-platforming experienced by other conservative outlets. I can now report that after a brain-numbing exercise, that Bacon’s Rebellion is now qualified to advertise. The hang-up was a restriction on anyone promoting “Social Issues, Elections or Politics.” To over-simplify, I had to prove that I was not a Russian bot. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you. The Facebook administrative interface for advertisers is labyrinthine in its complexity. I had to repeatedly call upon the Facebook help desk for assistance (which is not easy to find) as I waded step by step through the morass of links, unclear language and instructions that did not match up with what I was seeing on my screen. But those obstacles apply to everyone, not just conservatives. A special call out to “Mimi” for carrying me across the finish line. Here’s hoping Bacon’s Rebellion can grow big and influential enough to warrant a genuine de-platforming!
Proof of vaccination. Two weeks ago I blogged about my less-than-satisfactory experience using the Virginia Department of Health’s online portal to obtain a certified proof of vaccination. I was required to submit an online request. Would VDH respond or would my request disappear into the ether? I promised to report back. A VDH employee did call me. I emailed scanned copies of my vaccination card, the data was duly entered into the VDH database, and I now possess a PDF certification. The system isn’t scam-proof, and if something can be scammed, you can be sure that someone will try to scam it. A clever person undoubtedly could forge a a digital certification. Therefore, it makes eminent sense that VDH is developing a QR-code system that connects directly from smart phone to VDH database without intervening digital documents. All in all, it was a positive encounter with the state bureaucracy.
— JAB
Last night I took down a post that published the text of a letter from a parent unhappy with the drift toward wokeness of a prestigious Atlanta, Ga., prep school. I did so at the request of the author’s ex-husband who was distraught at the potential impact on their children should the existence of the letter become common knowledge in the student body. Our nation’s culture wars are ugly enough as they are. I have no desire to inflict collateral damage on innocents. — JAB
I been blogging less and jabbering more this week. I don’t know if the world is better or worse off for it, but for those of you who subscribe to the theory that “there’s no such thing as too much bacon,” I offer the following for your listening/viewing pleasure.
Two Mikes podcast. Conversation with Michael Scheuer and Co. Mike about how Virginia has fallen into a pit of pure craziness, with a focus on the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute, the Northam administration’s public education policy, and social-justice indoctrination for Alexandria Little Leaguers.
Tidewater Libertarian Party zoomcast. I join in a zoomcast presentation on Critical Race Theory. The Heritage Institute’s Hans Spakovsky provides an overview of CRT’s origins and how it is playing out nationally, while I discuss how it is being implemented in Virginia under the guise of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.
–JAB
If you’re not subscribing to the Bacon’s Rebellion newsletter, The Blunderbuss, this is a taste of what you’re missing. The “What We’re Reading” feature links to must-read articles from outside Virginia that have caught the eye of our editors, Bob Rayner and Robin Beres. These are from today’s edition:
Thank God for Big Pharma
James B. Meigs/Commentary Magazine
New York Times Promotes a COVID Cult of Caution
Jacob Sullivan/Reason.com
A Crisis of Undiagnosed Cancers Is Emerging in Pandemic’s Second Year
Duaa Eldeib/Propublica
How AP Got Caught Lying (Again) About Israel and the Hamas Terrorists
Issues & Insights
Catch up on recent Bacon’s Rebellion stories and features you might have missed here.
Screen grab from Facebook ad administration page
Thanks to the financial support of our generous readers, Bacon’s Rebellion has begun promoting popular posts on Facebook with the goal of driving traffic to the website. Faceless Facebook minions review each ad before it can be published. Not surprisingly, any text with “COVID” appears to be automatically rejected, even when we’re not opining on the efficacy of official state and federal guidelines. More surprising was the recent rejection of an ad promoting a recent post, When “Words Are Violence,” Only One Side Gets to Speak, about free speech and expression at the University of Virginia.
At the risk of provoking Facebook, our most promising marketing vehicle, I am posting an image of the rejection notice, which appeared with no explanation. I feel fortunate that Facebook has not nixed any of posts on the Bacon’s Rebellion Facebook page — only the ads. I’m hoping that doesn’t change. We’ll see. The situation is fluid. Continue reading
By Peter Galuszka
I haven’t contributed much to BR lately since I am slammed with non-Virginia work. I did manage to help out on a Podcast about how the General Assembly has changed the state over the last two years as Democrats have gained power.
This Podcast is produced by WTJU, the University of Virginia radio station. I do a weekly talk show on state politics and economics and, on occasion, work on Podcasts.
Joining me is Sally Hudson, a delegate from the Charlottesville area. She is Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics. Sally studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford and is one of the youngest members of the General Assembly.
I hope you enjoy it.
Posted in Agriculture & forestry, Blogs and blog administration, Budgets, Business and Economy, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Economic development, Energy, Entrepreneurialism, Environment, Finance (government), General Assembly, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Individual liberties, Infrastructure, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations
In the hope of becoming a financially self-supporting publication one day, Bacon’s Rebellion has started placing ads on the blog. I don’t particularly like ads — particularly the click-baity ones — but I like begging readers for donations even less. Don’t get me wrong. I gratefully accept contributions from readers. If you feel moved to support the leading voice of conservative/libertarian commentary in Virginia, click on the yellow “Donate” button in the right-hand column. I just don’t want to pester readers like National Public Radio badgers its listeners.
As believers in free-market capitalism, we’d much prefer to live our values and build a viable business enterprise as opposed to becoming an institution that relies upon foundation grants and tax-free contributions. If you want to help us grow, consider advertising on the Bacon’s Rebellion blog or in The Blunderbuss newsletter.
We offer two types of ads: (1) graphic ads, such as the ones appearing in the right-hand column, and (2) sponsored content, such as commentary, white papers, or press releases, which appears in the main body of the blog or newsletter. Contact me at jabacon[at]baconsrebellion.com to discuss either option.
— JAB
