Senator Scott Jensen Just Blocked Me On Twitter

Screenshot: Senator Scott Jensen Blocked Me On Twitter

I moved to Chaska a little over a year ago.

Today I decided to find my new state representatives online. My state House member is Joe Hoppe and my state Senator is Scott Jensen.

Both are Republicans. I’m not.

That’s fine.

I have plenty of Republican friends, even very conservative Republican friends with whom I can debate and disagree with agreeably. I enjoy my discussions with them because they challenge my beliefs as much as I challenge theirs. I am the richer for it; I better understand where they’re coming from as a result.

So, today I was hoping to learn more about the people who have been elected to represent me at the state capitol in our beautiful state.

First, I found Representative Joe Hoppe on Twitter, who seems like, pardon the pun, an ordinary Joe. Lots of retweeting. This one, I especially agree with:

Next, I found Senator Scott Jensen on Twitter and as I was scrolling through his feed, found this tweet:

Screenshot: Senator Scott Jensen Screwtape Letters Tweet - 01.21.2017

Since it was posted yesterday, January 21, the day of the massive Women’s Marches across the country, I naturally assumed he was referring to those very marches.

I was curious as to why he would call them “mean,” which I didn’t see in the coverage. I thought it was all about Americans asserting their constitutional rights.

I was going to reply to find out exactly what he meant by that but then noticed that someone else had already replied, so I clicked to investigate. As you can see from the above screenshot, that person was state Senator Danny Schoen, asking if he was referring to the Women’s March.

Senator Jensen responded to Senator Schoen by saying: “No, referring to those events where private property is damaged and security people are injured and personal rights are infringed,” which happened the day before, Inauguration Day.

So, naturally, I wanted to point out the obvious by saying it was weird, then, that he would make such a statement on the day of the Women’s March rather than the day before, when there was actually some property damage by protesters. I thought it was a pretty mild comment and gave him a chance to further clarify or respond.

Here’s the exchange:

Screenshot: Senator Scott Jensen Tweet Exchange

Missing from this exchange is one where I replied to Senator Jensen, accepting his explanation:
https://twitter.com/derickson/status/823254388852555777

You’ll also notice that I ended the exchange with a hope, as a constituent, for continued dialogue with the Senator:

To which he responded by blocking me (see the screenshot at the top of this post), blocking his colleague Senator Danny Schoen:

And blocking fellow Minnesotan Anthony Domanico, who had commented on the thread:

I thought my exchange with the Senator, while mildly challenging him, was respectful and I tried to demonstrate my openness to discussion. Which is why I was stunned to subsequently find he had blocked me from his Twitter account.

Needless to say, I am very disappointed in my State Senator’s decision to ignore the voice of one of his constituents.

The funny thing is, it’s not like I can’t follow his tweets anyway. All I had to do to get the screenshots of his tweets for this post was log out of my Twitter account and go back to his.

Rather than responding reasonably, Senator Scott’s act of retribution has prompted me to respond with this post. #SMH

Literary Video Games – My Brilliant Idea

My college writing professor used to say that the novel is dead. I didn’t really agree with him then and I don’t know that I agree with him now, but it is true that film and, now, video games, are the preferred media for enjoying long-form fiction.

Video Games As Literature

Film has clearly proved to be a superb medium for telling stories; the jury, however, is still out on video games. Role playing games such as and are the genre most suited to storytelling but I’d like to see a literary genre emerge that allows the player to explore much deeper issues and themes that have thus far escaped the video game industry.

In short, .

The Obstacles To Video Games As Literature

A primary obstacle to the development of such a genre is the video game’s absolute need for action. The player has to do something and the action always has to be compelling or entertaining if the video game is to be successful. That’s a big challenge. I think it will become easier as video games get more immersive, as the graphics become more photo realistic and once someone figures out how to apply virtual reality technology to video games.

I love first person shooters but more often than not, the story line, such as it is, is merely a pretense to kill. ‘s story was deep and well conceived but it was mere surface science fiction, it did not deal with any social, political, or psychological issues. And it’s story was told entirely through cut scenes.

The Call of Duty franchise’s story succeeds in large part on our understanding of World War II history and, in the case of , our understanding of current events.

The best most recent example of storytelling within a first person shooter that I can think of is , with its dystopian themes and its remarkable sense of place:

Even so, video games in general and first person shooters in particular have a long way to go before they reach the level of literature. I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but a recent visit from got me thinking about it again and the result is a brilliant idea for a first person shooter that would allow you to explore any number of literary themes.

My Brilliant Video Game Idea

My working title is The Short, Miserable Lives Of Fran McNeal.

So here’s my idea:

You begin the game being pursued by some shadowy government agency that is out to get you. A long, elaborate adventure ensues during which you need to evade your persecutors while engaging other characters you meet along they way, evaluating their trustworthiness, and obtaining help from them in your efforts to escape.

Eventually, however, you will be cornered and required to kill or be killed. By killing your antagonist, you obtain the ability to become other characters in the game. With that ability you are able to see your character from the perspective of other characters and it begins to dawn on you that your character is a paranoid schizophrenic. With multiple personalities.

A power struggle ensues between your personalities; you get to play as each personality. That power struggle maintains the paranoia of the game and becomes the rationale for the game. The object is to conquer each personality by killing it.

Upon killing that personality, you absorb the characteristics of that personality and therefore obtain or become stronger for the characteristics that were unique to that personality. So, for example, if one of the personalities could speak French, was extremely witty and charming, and was an expert driver, by killing that personality, you would gain those characteristics: You would be able to speak and understand French, your charm would make you more persuasive and give you the ability to make friends with ease, and your driving skills would improve significantly.

The game then would also have a strategic aspect to it. If, for example, you wanted to take down personality X, you may first need to kill personalities Y and Z in order to obtain the skills and/or characteristics you would need to kill X.

Through each personality, you can explore a separate literary theme and the game would conclude in any variety of ways, depending upon which character you ended up becoming.

Now I just need to learn how to write video game scripts!

I’m On Google StreetView!

but hadn’t notice until The Vet pointed it out, that we’re on StreetView. You can’t explicitly identify us, but but you can definitely see the crew we play with every Saturday of the year on StreetView.

If you look straight ahead, across the other side of the parking lot, between the cars you can see some people seated on the ground under the shade of the trees. That me and my crew resting in between football games. Amazing!

e-strategyblog.com – Internet Marketing Posts 3/13 – 3/24

Here are some recent posts from my :

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Links for February 28, 2006 – Blogs, Podcasting, Online Presentations, Car Community, Personalized Search Engines, The Long Tail

  • – An online PowerPoint-style presentation application.
  • – Free, ad-supported podcast service. You don’t need hardware, hosting, or even expertise.
  • – Edmunds.com’s social networking site for auto enthusiasts
  • – A swicki is new kind of search engine that allows anyone to create deep, focused searches on topics you care about. Unlike other search engines, you and your community have total control over the results and it uses the wisdom of crowds to improve search
  • – Essential article on the economics of digital distribution.

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Get This Blog Emailed To You!

RSS Blog & News Readers

I have yet to find an news reader that works to my liking. In case you don’t know, news readers are a piece of software or a web site that works sorta like an email program, except for blogs. Every time there is a new post at a blog you’ve subscribed to, you get a notification in your news reader. The RSS part is an acronym that stands for Really Simple Syndication, the technological protocol upon which blogs are based.

Since I track quite a few blogs, I’ve tried many news readers yet I’ve tried in vain to find one that I really like. I’ve tried software based ones like , , and a disasterous experiment with . I’ve tried web-based readers like and the but nothing has really worked that well.

FeedReader, for example, worked well enough at delivering blog posts as they came in, but I didn’t want another software program that was running all the time and when I’d close it, it was like out-of-sight-out-of-mind and so I’d forget about it. Plus, when it was running, I didn’t like the little pop-up messages that appeared from my systray whenever a new post came in; it’s already annoying  enough that does that whenever a buddy logs on or off. I don’t need more annoyance in my life.

The problem with web-based readers is that they pretty much defeat the purpose of RSS as a content delivery platform: You still need to remember to go to a web site to check your blogs, even if they are conveniently located in one place. Again, out-of-sight-out-of-mind.

But I think now I’ve found a service that does exactly what I need a blog reader to do: Send me an email when my blogs are updated. That’s what does. It’s a free service that allows you to subscribe to any content that provides and RSS or feed (you know, those little orange buttons you often see on web sites) and it will email you a notification when your subscriptios have been updated.

It’s as easy as copying a feed and submitting it to your FeedBlitz account.

I’ve set up a couple of accounts. I’ve got one for Twins and Vikings stories, so every morning I get an email with a link to and descriptions of all the new posts for the site’s I’ve subscribed to.

It’s awfully slick. So slick, in fact, that I’ve set up a subscribe box for this blog so you can get my posts emailed to you. If I skip a day, you won’t have to bother visiting. Look at the upper right-hand side of this blog and you’ll see the subscribe box directly beneath the Blog Tools heading. Just enter your email address, click Subscribe Me, and FeedBlitz will walk you through the rest.

Enjoy!

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