I received a call from a woman whom I will call a friend, for the purposes of this declaration. For the purposes of our mutual entertainment however, I consider her an adversary on the billiard table, and while I have a chance to occasionally beat her at eight-ball, she is too expert for me to beat her at nine-ball.
She mentioned a conversation in a nightclub in Dakar, in which Declan Butler and I were theorized to be the same person.
Whomever suggested this to my friend is inexpert. Butler is a journalist far beyond my capabilities, organization and focus, and this should be clear to anyone who has followed Butler’s body of work. While we seem to share a mutual view on many critical recent developments of science, and policy, we are not the same person. Attempts to bother, annoy, or needle Butler in accusations that he is me, takes Butler away from his critical and needed work. Please don’t get involved in this nonsense and please don’t degrade Butler’s fine work in comparison to my drunken rants.
And as a final edit, if the reader has devoted any effort to social justice in their daily work, he or she should also attempt to read up on contemporary activism in France. Under threat of poverty, loss of career, loss of family and loss of freedom, French anti-passport activists have taken the lead in this activism. With good fortune and a deep respect to the Chinese people and the Chinese government, we expect that many other countries will follow the lead of the people of France, to bring humility, social justice and mutual respect to the people of Hong Kong, Mainland China, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. To be clear, we believe that China is no worse an oppressor of its people than any other global power. But the People of China have now established the world’s primary global economic superpower, and as such, China should work to become a global example of human rights, mutual respect and social justice, not simply an also-ran. China, the USA, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand and Australia have an existential responsibility to learn from the anti-passport activists in France; A 100 meter sprint simply isn’t long enough to allow the rotational inertia of the flywheel to reach linear interaction with the medium, such as water or air. On the other hand, a 500 meter row is too long to allow for non-recovery of the athlete. So along with the people of France, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Mexico, Britain, Canada, Andorra, and the United States of America, Space Force 7 today officially endorses the continued lack of sanction for the Unsanctioned 250 meter race. And due to to this continued lack of sanctioning, for the Combined-Event U-250 for the Men’s Senior Heavyweight Division, my world record of 45.0 seconds still stands and remains undisputed.
What is it like to hold a world’s record in something as fucking awesome as the Unsanctioned 250? The reality is that no matter how bad your day is, no matter what urine-soaked concrete floor your find in your face, you simply need to remind yourself that you hold the Undisputed World’s Record, and that’s just the way it is. Does it get me laid? No. But when I find myself alone, sad, lost, broke, broken, I think of that day, that row, that moment. I actually wanted to fall off the erg, I knew by about 120 meters that something special unfolded. And I knew by 20 meters that I had one of the greatest rows of my career. And by 5 meters, time had slowed to the point where I had time to examine and treasure my seconds in fractions of a hundred. I thought of what a gift it was to be on the erg, rather than in a shell on the water, where my one perfect moment could receive the Concept II verification code. By 3 meters I had decided that any impending death from the Pain Sled would be an equitable trade for the finish line in front of me. By 2.9 meters I thought of my prayers, but I didn’t take the time to recite them. By 2.8 meters I thought of my teammates, of how much they had given to me, and how much I had taken from them. By 2.7 meters I had decided that should I survive, I would reward myself with a cigarette on the steps in front of the gym. By 2.6 meters my mind wandered, I thought of some obligation for my job that I had left unfinished. Time sped up, and then I lost control of my focus. Like all the other races I had run until that point, I had finally lost focus. And then time returned to its normal pace. The difference in this case was that I had kept focus until the final 2.6 meters, and that was enough for a world record. To this day, I know that had I kept focus to the other side of the finish line, that the current world record for the Men’s Senior Heavyweight Combined-Event Unsanctioned 250 would not have been 45.0 seconds, but rather 44.9 seconds.