As I reported in my last post, NewsBreak left a message on all stories previously published with a one-to-one ratio of distribution to view, saying that some errors needed attention if I want the stories to receive a greater distribution.
Easier said than done since things have changed since I first published the stories, including my approach to writing. At first, I was feeling irritated with having to go back to something I had written in the past and was thinking I would deal with it in short order so I could get back to my normal flow.
Now I am moving on from that attitude and seeing everything I have published on my profile holistically. Newsbreak changed the qualification for followers that count for monetization to registered Newsbreak users rather than qualified by the device used to follow a creator, That means that now a registered user can follow a creator through the creator’s profile link and the creator can promote following through the same link.
The profile displays all the stories that the creator writes. My stories follow several themes including the expanding wealth inequality and how we got here, decentralization and how to get back there, individuality, and nature.
This morning, I threw the Tarot cards. There were a lot of swords in my reading but also several major arcana. The swords indicated that I would be feeling strong negative feelings about something but the arcana predicted those feelings would not be significant to the ultimate resolution.
Later in the day, I went to the thrift store and picked up a music cd for 50 cents attracted by the picture of a nautilus shell on the cover. The cd is titled Liquid Mind IV, by Chuck Wild. I am listening to the cd for the first time now. The music is transformational, like waves of sound moving onshore in a changing tide. Either I put the music on at exactly the right moment or the music lifted me out of my irritated attitude and into an inspired mood. The music is reminiscent of the music in the movie 2001, A Space Oddessey but this music was recorded in 2000.
The largest change in local news since I first published the NB articles starting in June, is told in a story in the Boothbay Register, The Boothbay Register- Regional pipeline part of BRWD long-range water plan. The story is titled and framed as if about a long-range water plan, but I read the story as a smokescreen obfuscating the real headline. New information is revealed about the Boothbay water supply, by Jon Ziegra, Water District manager, who says “water may become scarce in the Boothbay region in a couple of decades”.
That’s news to me, and so instead of editing the old story, I published a new story titled Money flows like water on the Boothbay Peninsula until the water doesn't flow in which I broke down the facts of the long-range pipeline plan, as presented by Ziegra. The pipe plan seems like a pipe dream and diversion from the most important focal point, to inform the public about the status of our water supply and the reasons for it.
The next story I approached is a very long story about education, the proposed new fifty-million-dollar school, and systemic corruption codified into Maine law. Boothbay's Unfunded Fifty Million Dollar School & The LePage Administration's Industrial Partnerships is for the reader with a longer attention span. Corruption, in the form of advantages to special interests, is displayed in full view in the statutes but hidden in the details not expected to be read by anyone except lawyers.
I grew up in a business in a home in which we designed and made all the bodies and glazes ourselves, creating our own recipes in the process. The public sees the surface of the glaze but the maker understands the process, which goes down to molecular levels, which the eye cannot see but the mind must visualize and is systemic to everything within and without it, individual molecules interacting all at once to each other as they interact to the changes in the environment around them. When you learn how to make a glaze, you learn a process and a way of thinking about the world beyond obvious mechanics. That is why some consider ceramics to be an alchemist art. Relative to the education theme of my article- this is categorically alternative education and an example of what I propose should be the distinguishing paradigm of education on a peninsula consistent with the nature of a peninsula’s geographic characteristics, ideal for alternative cultural paradigms. Welcome to our world! It’s different from everywhere!
The process of creating and making glazes requires paying attention to details and systemic relationships, so when I encountered the big machine when I was looking for funding to finance the online transition for Andersen Design, it was only natural to apply the same process used in glaze making to understanding the external system in which I found myself embrangled.
I was surprised when Boothbay's Unfunded Fifty Million Dollar School & The LePage Administration's Industrial Partnerships was accepted for publication minutes after fixing the errors, but afterward, it continued to be distributed on a one-to-one basis for a very long time. Since there is no direct human contact, the interaction between the creator and the computerized events on the dashboard is like a language that one has to learn and decipher. After a while, I went over Boothbay's Unfunded Fifty Million Dollar School & The LePage Administration's Industrial Partnerships again and made a few changes, and republished it, using Augusta as the location, and it remained “Under Review” for many more hours. By the time it had been distributed one-to-one eighty-six times I thought I would probably have to edit it again before it would receive public distribution but then the distribution numbers started to increase independently of the views.
The distribution numbers rose to 90, four more than the views of 86, and the next morning they remained the same. This is still not public distribution. Now it is increasing again on a one-to-one basis. Oddly, even though it is a very small number, there is a location listed in analytics that states that last week 100% are from Portland-Auburn, Maine. I wonder if the next weekly reading will include Augusta, and I wonder if any of it is true, and why location data would even exist for such a small number. If I decide to edit it again I will change the location again. Currently, Boothbay's Unfunded Fifty Million Dollar School & The LePage Administration's Industrial Partnerships is published on my profile but I do not think it is getting publicly distributed. The message I get from that is Newsbreak will publish it but I am responsible for distribution. Cool!
None of the changes that I made had anything to do with information that needs to be verified. The story had already been distributed 69 times before I republished it with edits, so the verifiable information had already been seen many times over, My story is what Wikipedia disqualifies as “original research”- not validated by previous research- just direct source research. In ceramics, it would be the difference between an original glaze that the designer creates himself as is the Andersen Design tradition, and using commercial glazes, bodies, and colors. Creating everything from scratch is a philosophy of life - and of education.
I think it is quite possible that before Boothbay's Unfunded Fifty Million Dollar School & The LePage Administration's Industrial Partnerships is published publicly, I will edit it again to make it more ready for prime time, but in the meantime, it is being specifically distributed to a lot of readers of mysterious identities, and the only communication is with the machine and the algorithm, kind of like talking to the Wizard of Oz. There is an odd sort of freedom as the only response is decipherable as “edit it again” and I get to decide what that means and so I am the ultimate editor.
I can and will keep working on the presentation to make it different, or better, or more prime time, but I think the low distribution is about the content, which is about a conspiracy theory. People use the word “conspiracy theory” as if to mean something that has no basis in reality, as if to say there could never ever be real conspiracy theories at work in the world, requiring a massive suspension of disbelief to accept as true. We live in a world that is exactly what you see is what you get. Do you believe that to be true?
The conspiracy I present is grounded in fact. For example- it is a fact, written into the Maine Statutes, that in §5217-D. Credit for educational opportunity, two different identifiers are used for the same function, one is “a tax less than zero” and the other is “refundable tax credit” which are the same thing since a refundable tax credit means that if no taxes are owed the public owes the holder the value of the credit. However the part begins by saying the tax cannot be less than zero, but if one keeps on reading the same section, at the very last it says the tax is a refundable tax credit. I often say that refundable tax credits should be called a reversible tax credit- reversing the roles of taxation. These tax credits are applied to general social benefits as well as corporate welfare. In the section I was talking about it amounts to transferring the cost of workforce training from the company or the trainee, who are both beneficiaries of the training, to the general public who sees no direct benefit. These are the mechanics of how the wealth divide grows, and that is just one small example in a much larger event. Read More About It Here- and if you believe that stories like this one should be more mainstream, please register for NewsBreak and follow me.
Now that I have discovered that I can edit a story and then change its location, I am doing that for several other stories.
I updated Deconstructing Workforce Housing in The Martha's Vineyard Model Used by Boothbay Region Housing Trust with new information and changed the location to Boston since much of the story is about Marthas Vineyard. The stats on this story before the change are listed as below:
68.6% Portland-Auburn, ME
23.5%Boston, MA-Manchester, NH
1.9%Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD)
5.8%Others
So I will see if that ratio changes next week.
In the meantime, I am fine with where things are at. Newsbreak is publishing my stories and I have to build my own following, grassroots style. Please register on Newsbreak, and then Follow me here!