The internet is a facinating medium for communication.

We seem to be suffering another flare up of the old racism/sexism/cultural appropriation/religious intolerance/general bigotry argument. Now, I know that it's dangerous for me to even mention that the battle is going on, because I'm guaranteed to be in the wrong, I am a white male after all, but I have to say that most of the people involved don't seem to be actually conversing with each other.

Conversing means information passing between the parties involved. In many cases people seem to be (or even directly say they are) responding, not to what been said, but instead to what other people have said in similar situations or to what the other party or parties have said previously. This is where the title of this post comes into things. Through the magic of the internet (read: archived time-stamped text) I can see the point where these "discussions" devolve from conversation into two people discussing similar (but not identical) topics with respondents that exist only in their own brains. I know, it's human nature. I do it too, I think up a better response to something after a conversation has finished and then try to use it the next time I'm in a situation that is "similar".

The thing is, the situation can't ever be exactly the same. If nothing else is different (ha!) the fact that the previous conversation occurred has to have some impact. So please, of you find yourself trapped in one of these go-rounds and the other person just doesn't seem to be listening, try to break the loop. And if that doesn't work? Stop responding. They aren't paying attention to what you are saying so it doesn't matter. Anything you type will be replaced or altered by their perception of you and just make the situation worse.

Your willingness to give up the point might contradict their perception of you enough for them to notice the discrepancy. Of course, the opposite is also true. Please periodically double check your perceptions of others as either you or they might have changed in the intervening time. You may still disagree about the same topic you did before, but at least you're unlikely to still be disagreeing in the very same words...

Last week I asked for some author suggestions

Before I got to looking them up I found that I had finally made it to the front of the request queue for Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age novels, so I read those first. Today I searched the catalog and shelves and turned up ... just two books by Jay lake and two by Tobias Buckell. Okay, they did have portions of both the Jane Lindskold series and the Sasha Miller/Andre Norton series, but in both cases the beginnings were among the missing. There were works by a Steve Perry, but I don't think it was same one. Everything they had was shared world stuff, Star Wars novels and the like, and from the descriptions (I know, I know, but it's all I had to go by) there wasn't a lick of creativity going into these. Ernest Hogan and Jack Campbell simply weren't there, although in one case the catalog indicated it should be.

Oh well, at least this puts me four books ahead of where I was, and I may at some point in the future be able to get my hands on a Patricia Briggs novel that isn't late in a series so that I can find out whether I even care about the long list of books that are lost, damaged, on hold, or simply missing.