Bullet Points  

My heart goes out to the victims of violence. Without self-delusion, I’m no good at writing about tragedies like last week’s horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. I’m tempted to hide within a comforting post about the much more gentle evil that is the new Instagram TOS.

So I’m grateful to Jason Kottke, and others who haven’t lost the thread. Kottke in particular. While he has expressed a bit of weariness at times over the last few years, he has been giving a master class in blogging since Friday.

We need to keep talking about Newtown and gun safety more generally if we hope to affect issue evolution through an energized electorate. It’s not enough that we were shocked. Collectively, we have to study what we know, go out and research new things, share our findings, and discuss what we’ve learned. Kottke is reminding us how blogging can foster a conversation like that, cutting through the din of other people’s social media platforms with depth focussed on a vital arc.

Let’s try not to give up on this conversation.