Announcement to Bob: Hi Bob. This isn't an attack of any sort. Nor is it about your work. It's about a wider issue that I felt you heavily implied between the lines of several messages.
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Quoting from several threads -- please excuse that:
Bob wrote:It's all over my website, but I have a BA Linguistics from Michigan State University from 2009. I actually got this *degree in science* instead of a BS in petroleum engineering. And I've helped so many people all around the world as a result, even outside of what I've done over facebook on the 3 large facebook groups I run.
Bob wrote:I also do facebook and zompist bboard posts about it and reach a lot of people that science is crucial …
I study so many languages, there are actually very reasonable limits to the amount of time I can waste on people who don't appreciate what I've done. And what I do to promote science and education and children's education, worldwide.
In the Third World, most people die before 30, like in rural areas. But some of them get online and the ones that do get online, they interact with the ones that don't. So I have my facebook groups for people like that, and then also for everyone. People understand to varying degrees.
Especially difficult is when people don't carefully read what I've put online and then say all sorts of lies about it. But this happens all the time on large facebook groups and usually I just block people like that because it's obvious they're either not scholars or they're lazy schmucks who think nothing of boorishly trampling on my scholarship.
All this I suffer from First World people, while they fill their faces with food and cast darts at their televisions, counting their decades of "merriment" on both hands, all fingers intact most of the time, so that I can reach the Third World people and get some wisdom out of them to live a happier life, maybe share some of my expensive and painful education and hard side work researching and what else.
[[ I went back through later to edit this section. It's so true! I'll just leave it. ]]
There was another quote, which has now been deleted, in which Bob used the term 'racism'/'racist' to characterise, if I read and remember it correctly, some of the criticism against his work.Bob wrote:Zompist Bboard is a blast from the past in a lot of ways: The bizaare anonymous names, the delightful anonymous personalities. Can't you folks give me more welcome when I visit "the old ivory tower" ?
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I don't know what comment to offer, but especially at the present time, I thought it important to gather these comments and throw out an open question: does anyone feel that their conlanging has been held back by factors such as global wealth inequality or institutional racism? If so, it may be prudent to gather such perspectives for everyone's collective awareness.