DVS Press

Money – Align Your Priorities for Creative Output, part 3

rpmfidel January 17, 2020 January 17, 2020Non-fiction, Writing 0

Picking it up from yesterday: Let’s take a look at some of these life obligations and what they mean for somebody who has a desire for high creative output. 1. Money Personal finances, for most people, are something that can only be ignored at perilous risk. We live in a world where we cannot provide for all of our needs, so we must earn money to pay for most of what we consume. Even a stay-at-home parent has to carefully manage a budget to ensure the needs of the family are met, even if the duty of earning the income…

Obligations and Focus – Align Your Priorities for Creative Output, part 2

rpmfidel January 15, 2020 January 17, 2020Non-fiction, Writing 1

Picking it up from yesterday: Obligations and Focus When it comes to ordering your priorities for creative output, or even just life in general, I find it helpful to consider what things are obligatory, or unavoidable if you want to maintain your health, sanity, happiness, and integrity. These obligations will change according to where you are in life. For most people they break down into: Money Family Health Creativity and Purposeful activities Leisure and Hobbies Social time Life/household Maintenance You can’t really avoid any of these totally. You have to have money to live. You have to take out the…

The Attention Economy and Alternative Publishing

rpmfidel January 15, 2020 January 15, 2020Non-fiction, politics, Writing 0

Great thread here to spark this article: I sell my books a variety of ways – Amazon, all other alternative direct sales, and through patronage on subscribestar. The problem with building alternative platforms or alternative methods of artist support is not, and has never been, the difficulty of actually programming or organizing such a venture. The problem has always been attention. Building alternatives to Amazon to sell your books is largely putting the cart before the horse. In fact, it is more like building a cart while the horse is still being trained in Arabia. Also, there are dozens of…

Setting a trap for bike thieves

rpmfidel January 14, 2020 January 14, 2020Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics, Uncategorized 0

Is this wrong? https://ktla.com/2020/01/09/2-men-accused-of-luring-thieves-with-unattended-bikes-then-beating-them-with-baseball-bats-and-posting-attacks-on-youtube/amp/?__twitter_impression=true Serious question – this is basically what the police due with “sting operations” and “honeypots,” so how is it different when it is done by private individuals? If you have a right to protect your property with force, does that right extend to defending it when you have set up the violation of your property rights as a temptation to wrongdoers? It seems to be this crime is operating in the nebulous world of “intents” – those favorite devices of the slave morality. Had these people just left a bike in front of their house (which…

All it Takes is One Complaint

rpmfidel January 14, 2020 January 14, 2020Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 2

Apparently, for Mailchimp to cancel your account. I’ve used Mailchimp for years, and stuck with them through the degradation of their interface, to the point where the site is barely usable, but that’s probably going to have to change now. It’s not that the complaint was libelous; it is – Stefan is an anarchist, not a “nationalist” or a “white nationalist” (something which is a contradiction in terms). It’s that the company will cancel your account immediately after a single false accusation of wrongthink. This response was so quick and the accusation so ridiculous that it makes me think that…

Align Your Priorities for Creative Output

rpmfidel January 14, 2020 January 14, 2020Non-fiction, Writing 1

Life is full of demands. Life is full of obligations. Life is full of temptations. Life is often too full of things that each of us wishes to do, and the time during the day is too short to get it all done. The speed of modern life doesn’t help, and it is all too easy to find oneself caught up in the cacophony of urban activity and feel completely drained every day. This is the reality of limited time and unlimited wants. When it comes to figuring out how all of it goes together, I have found that priorities…

10 Ways to Make Your Protagonist Likable

rpmfidel January 13, 2020 January 14, 2020Non-fiction, Writing 0

I’ve cautioned in the past regarding making a protagonist in a story a “Mary Sue” type of character. In short, you don’t want to make a character that lives out your own power fantasies and to whom the plot offers little resistance to the character’s overwhelming power. It’s good to avoid characters like this, but sometimes writers tend to go too far in the opposite direction, creating wimpy, base, or unlikeable characters that the audience doesn’t really care about. In order to avoid having a character feel too super-powered, they instead make them weak or detestable. This is not wise;…

Stylization and Aesthetics

rpmfidel January 11, 2020 January 11, 2020Analysis, Art, Non-fiction 0

Rob Liefeld sells comics. His detractors are often at a loss to explain why, and while Rob is one of the most lambasted artists in comics, he continues to be successful. I got this impressive cover off of an extensive article dedicated to bashing Rob. Rob sells comics because he sells style. His images are not intended to be realistic, but grotesque. They stand out and make you pay attention. The heroes are bigger. The guns are bigger. The swords are swordier. It’s something other artists could learn from. At the same time, though, the complaint regarding technical issues is…

Cultural and Political Inertia

rpmfidel January 10, 2020 January 10, 2020Economics, History, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 0

Most of you know what inertia is – Objects in motion tend to stay in motion; objects at rest tend to stay at rest. The biggest effort is the first inch you roll a boulder. Then everything gets easier; then it keeps going on its own. Once that boulder is rolling, don’t get in its way. The same thing happens in politics and culture. It’s difficult to enact changes, but once the revolution happens, it’s hard to slow down. Everything that is taken for granted can go out the window. You can see this with the transformations that happened in…

Judging things by their outcomes

rpmfidel January 9, 2020 January 9, 2020Economics, Education, Ethics, Non-fiction, Philosophy, politics 3

This post is beyond the contest between consequentialism and deontology, before anyone starts firing up his philosophy brain. I notice in our society there is a profound resistance to judging actual outcomes, whether it is a public program, government service, educational process, or even a workout routine. The tendency is to try to judge either the process for its own sake or to judge the intended outcomes of the process. A workout program seems fun at the gym – it’s a great program! But… did you gain strength and muscle, cut fat, or increase your athletic capacity? We can’t abandon…