Julie R. Neidlinger

I really ought to write a Curmudgeon Guide about what to expect when you're commenting online. More than a few blog posts I've written have been about persnickety and humorous online disagreement, and I always find it fascinating how you can predict the responses. You'll find some sort of parry-riposte involving these phases:
Grammar police/semanticsAttack the messengerDiscredit the messengerDox the messengerEtc. Yada Blah MehYou're an emotional femaleYou stupid b***h if I ever met you in person I'd ______. That's a basic summary. Anyway, a recent post of local interest created some dustups online, and I found the responses intriguing.

These are the particulars for this instance, but they tend to follow the usual patterns of response.

"What's your vested interest?"
When you get asked that question late in the conversation game after several verbal hands have been laid out on the table by a fairly certain fake Facebook account, you can rest assured …

In 1991, my brother Jerry, who was working as an electrical engineer at the time, bought my family a Gateway computer, a top-of-the-line 386 powerhouse, with a laser printer. We weren't a family who had a super fancy house, new clothes, or stuff like that, so getting a computer was an incredible experience.

You have to understand the personal computing timeline, and how uncommon it was to have a computer at home. Most of us were exposed to the old Apple computers at school, the one where you had to have a boot disk, with monitors attached to the keyboards.

I believe we were one of the first in the area to have a computer in our home, and it was a very nice one. I was super excited to tell my shop teacher ("Industrial Arts") the next day because he was the computer guy at school. I told him about the computer, its specs, the software my brother had bought to go with it, and things I'd already learned.
I spent hours muddling around with the computer, learning what I co…

//You can read various updates at the bottom of the post. There is also a related post on some of the online behavior stemming from this here.//

A story broke on the local Minuteman Blog regarding one of the candidates for Burleigh County Sheriff. The race is between Nolan Canright and Kelly Leben. Leben is likely the "favored" candidate (and received more votes in the June primary) because he has been with the BCS office for many years.

According to several sworn police reports and subsequent medical records, Leben used a potentially damaging choke-hold on his nephew who asked him to stop, as did other family members. One of the statements was by a former County Sheriff (i.e. law enforcement officer). Surely they understood the severity of making false statements to law enforcement.

The young man was taken to the hospital. The result of all of this was a neck/spine injury that ultimately kept him from joining the Marines, which had been a dream of his.

The family didn't…

A friend of mine gets BattlBox (I think it used to be called Battle Box, but the name change is sort of explained in a minute), a monthly subscription service that sends out various themed boxes for preppers. It's full of cool stuff like survival gear, knives, stuff for guns, books, water purification, fire starting tools -- all your basics.

But Facebook.

That great beast of loathsome censorship and and fastidious promoter of Orwellian language, despiser of all things conservative and Christian, cousin of Twitter--which is like a fire hose of raw sewage and politically correct censorship--ever pursuant of the lowest common denominator and group think, devious collector of personal data.

BattlBox had to make changes because of Facebook, according to an email my friend received.



At the end of the email was a promotion code that could be used to get discounts on purchasing from BattleBox. I'm not going to give it to you because it was sent to their subscribers. Suffice it to say,…

My collection of books warning about the dangers of the internet grows. From Lanier to Stoll to Carr and more, I'm a choir being preached to.

Some random rules and guidelines I've assembled and mostly sorta tried to follow:
Dump Twitter. I left Twitter in January, because it's a sewer full stop. Get out now, while you can, before the turds hit you in the face. It inspires the worst behavior, both in response and in thinking you should opine on everything. There is no better place for a witty retort to be misconstrued and cost you your job or whatever else.Reduce Facebook. If you can dump Facebook, great. If you're like me and have to have an account for work page management and to connect with family, reduce use. No Facebook on my mobile devices. I only check it at my desktop.Time Limit Entanglements. Embroil yourself in an online battle for no more than one day only. Let's be honest: no one is changing anyone's mind. The internet is where we dig trenches and lo…

A few years back there was a kind of meme where people would take a photo of a stack of books and the whole of all the titles, themes, or author's names would be its own message.

I never really participated in that, but I do laugh frequently when I go to the local bookstore and see how books are arranged on the shelves. Whether on purpose or by accident, more than once the arrangement is fortuitous.

Sometimes it's not even the arrangement that matters. Sometimes the title of the book is enough, such as this one on having less and not shopping, available for you to buy while shopping.



My Instagram feed, known as one of the most boring in the world (I'm guessing), is often filled with artless filter-free photos of books. Usually it's what I'm reading next, but sometimes I'm in a bookstore and can't help myself.



Some are simply uplifting.



Sometimes I see a juxtaposition of intriguing titles that, while I can't put my finger on it, seems to have something …