For the past few days, I have not been able to sit still, so I have failed to make any progress on my most recent project. Nonetheless, I have not been idle.
I have two blogs, and I use them for different purposes. For a while, I thought about starting a third, but that's not going to happen any time soon. Here on Hive, as you may have noticed, I share mostly art, occasionally interrupted by some photography or technical stuff (speaking of the latter, I intend to resume work on designing my boiler during the break between archery hunting season and rifle season). I rarely discuss any intellectually lofty concepts here, much less anything as controversial as politics (though that's usually a very smooth-brained subject). Some of my followers are aware that I'm not exactly... apolitical. I'd like to be apolitical, but in an age when everything in the western world has become a political issue, remaining detached from the subject is damn near impossible (and you wonder why I want to move back to Russia). Even my fictional world, which is meant in NO WAY to be a commentary on contemporary politics, can't be entirely divorced from current events, since I took great inspiration from history, and history is now repeating itself.
So, where am I going with this, and why am I posting this in the Free Speech community? The answer is simple: this is an invitation. If you are interested in where I stand on certain issues, I write editorials on my WordPress blog. I have a lot to say in them, much more than I'm comfortable sharing in a comment (the average length of an editorial is approximately 1500 words, and my most recent one was exactly 2000 words). Furthermore, WordPress blogs, especially political ones, are usually insufferable echo chambers, and I'd like to change that. There is one in particular that I would very much like to resume commenting on, but not if I am the only dissenting voice, as it gets tiring having to refute dozens of flawed arguments at a time, and I have better things to do than play the intellectual equivalent of whack-a-mole. @jacobtothe, @lucylin, @fiberfrau and @thepholosopher, I'm sure you four would have a lot of fun there, just be sure to tell the colonel "that traitorous ex-Soviet Karel Janáček sends his regards." Also, watch out for an especially vitriolic yet cowardly Trotskiist named greglaxer, as well as a word-salad spinner named Frank who goes by the handle "realdemocracyinireland." Oh, I almost forgot, @frot, you may want to join in as well, since the colonel is a huge simp for Bojack Ardern. This could be a lot of fun, and even if you think that WordPress is a waste of time, look at it this way: maybe you can get more people to join Hive.
By the way, if you are having a discussion with someone here on Hive and you share a link to one of my editorials, please don't forget to mention (@) me. The reason for that is I want to know if WordPress analytics record referrals from Hive; I don't think they do.
И последнее, моим русским подписчикам - на случай, если я пробудил в вас интерес, подавляющее большинство моих постов на WordPress только на английском языке. К сожалению, хотя русский формально мой родной язык, учитывая мои обстоятельства, мой уровень владения английским языком намного выше, так что мне удобнее использовать его для написания на высокие интеллектуальные темы. Если вас интересует конкретная тема, я найду соответствующую статью и переведу её, хотя это может занять некоторое время. В WordPress встроен виджет Google translate, но, как вы, возможно, знаете, Google translate не слишком хорошо работает с русским языком, поэтому он имеет тенденцию уничтожать мои статьи.