Audio Only Version of Annie Kelly Interview *UNEDITED*
Added 2021-10-13 07:00:27 +0000 UTCSince a few people have asked for it here is an audio only version of the recent interview. Will post up audio and video versions for all future versions. Will be up with minor edits on Galaxy Brain Guru feed shortly.
Comments
Public *Intellectual* Health? Healthy Public Discourse? I just heard you two referred to as "the two professors of decoding the gurus" to make a fairly fine rhetorical point somewhere in the long-form pod-o-sphere -- so, it appears to be working ;).
Tom Allison
2021-10-18 06:21:30 +0000 UTCCan you link it Alex?
Pavan
2021-10-17 13:14:27 +0000 UTCHard to over-emphasize how helpful it is to have an audio-only option! Much gratitude.
Tom Allison
2021-10-17 10:34:09 +0000 UTCI must have misunderstood them on Conspirituality, then. Maybe it wasn't the dissertation they were talking about (although I haven't found my way to that, yet, either. I'll keep looking.)
Tom Allison
2021-10-16 16:33:17 +0000 UTCIt's an amazing Discord server (I made it).
Alex A
2021-10-16 03:27:45 +0000 UTC...and they're back.
Tom Allison
2021-10-15 20:48:16 +0000 UTCOK, I've calmed down a bit. I think what happened was likely that the keyword "QAnon" got used in one or both of my posts given the name of one of Dr. Kelly's podcasts (hmm, will this comment last?) and that Patreon is especially allergic to it. I am also pretty damned new in these parts and have since scrolled way back and seen that it is quite a useful space. I will learn to maybe save anything that is longer than a few sentences (and maybe post those in Reddit, anyway). I've still heard nothing from Patreon's customer service, but what the hell. I really like what you guys are producing and will just lurk for awhile ;).
Tom Allison
2021-10-15 16:05:06 +0000 UTCYes unfortunately I think the Reddit is probably better suited for that. Someone did make an unofficial discord server today too… though I can’t vouch for that!
Christopher Kavanagh
2021-10-15 10:24:52 +0000 UTCIf it’s a dissertation it should be publicly deposited unless it’s under an embargo. I’m sure she’d be happy to share.
Christopher Kavanagh
2021-10-15 10:22:05 +0000 UTCMy one warning to anyone following my travials would be to avoid the iPhone app for Patreon like the plague for any text creation. The whole site couldn’t care less about supporting discussion and only (inaccurately) appears to have customer support, but the app actively punishes discussion participants…
Tom Allison
2021-10-15 07:39:03 +0000 UTCSpent some time whinging about Patreon on Reddit and, yeah, they seem pretty pathetic when it comes to any functionality beyond subscription collection. Requests to customer support seem to get lost and never answered :(. It would be awfully nice to have a discussion around the topics raised and the project of DTG, in general, amongst supporters, but I guess it would have to happen elsewhere…
Tom Allison
2021-10-15 07:32:28 +0000 UTCI still hold out the hope that Patreon will restore my text to me, but I think it's time to create a few sock puppets and just engage in the wild (Reddit, Twitter) -- once I have licked my stolen-words wounds a bit. Does it violate any guidelines for you guys if I discuss Patreon pre-posted material in those channels? Might even push some subs ;).
Tom Allison
2021-10-14 14:46:50 +0000 UTCI hate to say it - and I will probably calm down -- I really want to engage with you guys, but this experience is really killing that motivation. I'll still listen, of course, but rrgh.
Tom Allison
2021-10-14 09:47:19 +0000 UTCNo response from Patreon -- are their profit margins so low that they can't provide a better service? This is my first time to sign up with their site, but it's been around forever right? Is it one guy in his garage and he's on vacation or something? I always thought it would be better... Are there alternatives? (I mean, shoot, when you go to the trouble to look up the problem in their help docs, and write to the email address they suggest there (HA - they have code that removes THEIR help email address from comments -- what is going on here?), doesn't it seem like they could at least have an auto-responder tell you your issue is being looked into? Nope, crickets...
Tom Allison
2021-10-14 09:36:38 +0000 UTCBy the way, did Dr. Kelly say anything about pending publishing deals for her dissertation? When might we get to read it - or excerpts from it? Or just a synopsis to whet the appetite a bit? (Was mentioned on Conspirituality pod appearance - good for another long walk ;).)
Tom Allison
2021-10-13 17:47:37 +0000 UTCNo edit from our side! This aspect of Patreon's platform feels very limited!
Christopher Kavanagh
2021-10-13 11:47:07 +0000 UTCUm, did my super long, quite sincere and impossible to reproduce comments get removed on purpose? Gawd, I hope you guys have some sort of "undo", here.... If I somehow hit some delete function, I certainly didn't mean to (I was editing one of the comments)-- but that doesn't seem possible, since there were two seperate comments. Oh well, will check back later today to see if the comments magically reappear? Very odd... Did I inadvertently do something wrong? (**OK, read through the Patreon help documentation and contacted their admins -- we'll see. Wonder how I triggered the algorithm?)
Tom Allison
2021-10-13 11:17:49 +0000 UTC(These comment text boxes' functionality is awfully limited -- I take it that's Patreon's fault?) Anyway, on to the notes: 1) Content Annie Kelly has produced elsewhere (this pod was my introduction to her) -- it's really super unclear -- are these all podcasts? Is there a book in there? There is something about history of vaccines, something about QAnon, and something about anti-feminists -- but which is what and what is being referred to gets confusing more than once. It would really help if you would frame this bit in the introduction (not just the text -- after all, "nobody reads" is the first rule of good digital communication ;)). 2) The smallpox story is confusing on several fronts -- here's what I think I understood: in 1890 the British govt developed a smallpox vaccine and forced it on the population with threat of fines and jail for the poor, leading to a generation (at least) of anti-vax sentiment (plus a lot of place names and historical incidents that only a Brit or a Brit-adjacent person would follow) THEN *100 years later*, in the 1980's, Western governments finally got around to sharing this vaccine with poorer African nations and the Ruskies tried to muck that up by claiming the vaccine would give you AIDS, PLUS the Brits (again) were utterly stupid and arrogant (not the only time this trope repeats itself in history, I have noticed) and instead of introducing the vaccine in a comprehensible way to cultures that had their own concepts of substances to treat illnesses that would have supported it, they just tried to shove it down everybody's throat (or, jab it in their arms) and thus only helped lay the groundwork for easy conspiracy theories and vaccine resistance to take root. Did I get that? 1890's and 1980's? Not sure how to add a little framing to make this clearer -- I think the dates only get mentioned once in the conversation - and the picture I derived of what was being said may be wrong -- I haven't run around the Internet yet to look at the history or Annie Kelly's other work. Just thought some naive feedback might be helpful. Really loving the stuff you all are pulling together, here. I don't know if the "doing the lord's work" discussion will see the light of the final cut, but it does raise a very real subject about what this is all about aside from darkside pop culture fascination - but also a tough conversation to have in the open, somehow. More power to you all. You have raised the issue of a lot of this being "just like it always was and always will be" amongst our species -- it would be interesting to see some more work on the value of pointing out the snake oil salespeople -- and does the megaphone of the Internets potentially make this round of guru-ism and conspiracy theorizing less same-old, same-old? OR is there a theory of grand human conflict (say WWI, for example, to avoid overheating the topic too fast) that says it gets started in the trenches of pop culture with these sorts of gurus and their followings and eventually spills out on the bloody world stage? Maybe a culture where some of us play the more-or-less thankless whackamole job of debunking these folks and their theories at an early stage could be seen to protect against the larger disruptions? Sort of a Public *Mental* Health function -- with all the quite obvious attendant glory we have seen for Public Health workers, in general, of late?
Tom Allison
2021-10-13 10:36:19 +0000 UTCI have some notes when it comes to editing this, but, first, damn! Just really filled with gems :). Absolutely loved the discussion around *real*/actual/documented historical conspiracies, damned good historical reasons for vaccine hesitancy, anti-feminism bleeding/blending into Christian fundamentalism, and did slave owners really remove Exodus from the copies of the bibles they gave the slaves? (Snopes here I come). Many more gems to be mined/discussed further.
Tom Allison
2021-10-13 10:09:09 +0000 UTCNice work.
Grammaticus Gore
2021-10-13 09:57:42 +0000 UTC
