"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Today's Must-Read: Book Burning in the Digital Age

David Mixner has a sobering post at Towleroad this morning, on the "house cleaning" of government computers:

Recently over dinner with some friends, I brought up ‘Trump’s Book Burners’.

A friend responded that he hadn’t seen any evidence of book burning taking place in a systematic way by the Trump administration.

If you are looking for a 1930s Nazi type of public book burning, he is right. However, in today’s world, book burning doesn’t happen by pulling literature out of libraries and setting it afire.

Today, book burning is carried out by simply hitting the delete button.

Over the last year, the Trump administration has destroyed decades of research and data by hitting the delete button in almost every department and agency in the federal government. This administration is eliminating entire groups of people from past and future research as if they no longer exist.

He goes on to detail some of the research and other information that has vanished from government websites -- at least, the things we know about, like not allowing the use of the term "climate change".

As I noted, it's sobering, and I'll be it's just the tip of the iceberg.

But when you elect an Il Duce wannabe to the White House, this is what you get.

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