STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On June 11, 2018June 10, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

Normally this runs every other Sunday or so; I figure a lot of you might have met me at IndyPopCon this weekend and landed here. Hi!

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I’ve written several books you might be interested in, ranging from short story collections to near-future science fiction to fantasy space opera to nonfiction, all available as ebooks or in print from Amazon. Autographed books can be ordered straight from me as well.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

Support me on Patreon! Just a dollar a month gets you access to exclusive stories, early access to new books as they come out, and more!
You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out, and Politics Luther is usually angry and profane. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On May 20, 2018May 19, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On May 6, 2018May 4, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

In which I remember your life better than you do

On May 2, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching5 Comments

I haven’t done an education post in a good long while; let’s see if I’ve still got the chops. Seen this lately? It’s making the rounds on DevilBook:

I succumbed to my baser urges and replied to it on one person’s page, and let me make it clear that I’m not holding her responsible for this, as the notion “Americans should be better educated” is one that I’m gonna hold to and agree with pretty much no matter what the circumstances. However, what I’m not gonna be okay with is the idea that most of these concepts (and others like them; there are several variants of this little meme picture) aren’t taught in school.

They are. In damn near every high school in America and most of the middle schools too. I have personally taught about at least half of these things. You just didn’t pay attention, because you were a dumbass kid and this was adult stuff and it was boring. The problem is no one ever writes a meme post about “Shit I should have paid better attention to in school.” It’s always the teachers’ fault.

You took an econ class in high school, right? It’s mandatory in Indiana. That class covered accounting, money management, taxes, and credit all by its damn self. I covered all of those things, excepting only “good credit,” with my middle school classes in a required class you might be familiar with; it was called math.

Nutrition? I bet you took a Health class at some point. Required in Indiana in both middle and high school. Job and careers? I actually taught a class called Careers to middle school kids. Pretty sure something similar exists in high school too. Self-defense, okay, I’ll give you that one, but the rest of them? Give me a damn break. If you weren’t paying attention, I don’t even blame you, because expecting little kids to be intimately curious about shit that won’t affect their lives for ten or fifteen years is a little unreasonable, but the idea that the subjects were never covered is nonsense. They were mandatory. You just blew them off. And that’s on you.

A moment, then, on the last part, about being “forced” to be “fluent” in at least one other language. I am actually pro-foreign language education. I just think that goddamn near everyone in America should be taking Spanish. A solid majority of American citizens, especially anyone who works in a job facing the public, could do with, if not fluency, at least a passable working knowledge of Spanish, enough to get through a basic conversation. I’ve had some furniture sales that were conducted damn near entirely in Spanish and I’m not remotely fluent. But I can get by if I need to. That level.

The notion that Americans, as a whole, require something called “fluency” in any language other than English is fucking ridiculous, though. Is it good? Sure. Is it necessary? Crazy talk. Go ahead, bring up Europe. Europe has 300 languages because when Europe was growing up you were going to be born, live, and die within fifteen miles or so of the same goddamn spot and it’s easy for languages to bifurcate and split during a couple of millennia of that type of social evolution. Africa, Asia, same thing.

America? America used to have lots of languages until the white folk moved in and killed everybody who spoke them. Now? English, party of 350 million. If I’m in Germany, I can get in my car and drive for eight hours and I’ll for damn sure be somewhere where people speak a language other than German. If I’m in America and drive for eight hours I may not even be out of my state. Are there localized pockets of people who speak other languages than English and Spanish? Sure, tons of ’em, there’s lots of Poles and Pennsylvania Dutch around here, for example. Are there jobs where knowing another language is useful? Sure. Does every American need to “be fluent” in a foreign language? Come the hell on.

Apropos of nothing, I just looked up and saw this from the window next to my desk:

The walls aren’t that yellow, but I haven’t altered the color balance in this picture at all. In the last ten minutes the temperature has dropped from ninety to sixty, rain has started, and apparently outdoors is in black and white now.

Weird.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On April 22, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On April 1, 2018March 31, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

On Facebook

On March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek10 Comments

Let’s put the tl;dr of this post right at the beginning: where do y’all stand in terms of how much you’re using Facebook nowadays? I killed my Clark Kent personal account … a month ago, maybe? and I haven’t missed it a bit. My usage of Facebook was always pretty idiosyncratic; I never let a post stay on the site for more than a couple of weeks, only rarely uploaded pictures, and damn near never played any of the quizzes or games that are getting them in trouble right now– mostly because I knew good and goddamn well that they were bullshit data-mining schemes from the beginning. I’ve always hated the site, even when I first set up my account; the only thing keeping me around was a small handful of people who I was basically only in touch with through Facebook, and I made sure most of those few friended Luther before I killed my account.

And right now I’m side-eyeing my author account, hard, and wondering how important it actually is in terms of actual sales and driving traffic to the blog. The problem is, the answer seems to be “pretty important”:

So here we see that in the last ninety days, Facebook is my #1 referrer out of search engines and WordPress itself. But it’s not a huge number; I could find a way to make up for 500 hits in a 90-day period if I wanted to commit myself a bit more to bringing traffic levels back up to where they used to be around here.

This is a bit of a bigger deal, though:

… yeah. If I look at all my referrers, for the life of the blog, Facebook is #1 with a bullet for driving viral content– in other words, anything that hits big is going to hit big is going to hit big because of Facebook pushing it. My #1 post in history has thirty-nine thousand Facebook shares. That’s a big deal! And it all started with people who have Liked the Luther Siler page spreading that post. I’m not certain that cutting off that audience is an especially wise move. I mean, I still have Twitter, but Twitter can’t drive traffic like Facebook can, or at least not in the same ways.

So. Yeah. Back to the lede: how are you using Facebook nowadays? More or less than you used to? Have you killed your account recently, or are you thinking about it? Let me know.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On March 18, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

I’m Luther Siler. I’m a writer and an editor. Welcome to my blog, infinitefreetime.com.

I can be found in several different places on the Internet. Here’s the important ones:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. Warning: Twitter is where Politics Luther hangs out. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
Sign up for my mailing list here.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I accept any and all friend requests.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.