My blog’s 10-year anniversary

This month is my blog’s 10-year anniversary.

To celebrate, I’m going to reflect on the stories I’ve covered and discuss how my blog has changed over the past ten years.

 

Truth Matters

In September 2010, I published a fact check of a debate between two candidates running in the Kansas governor’s race, Sam Brownback (R) and Tom Holland (D).

During the debate, both Brownback and Holland lied about Brownback’s voting record in the U.S. Senate.

That was my first blog post.

My blog was initially named “Truth Matters” and its tagline was “Accuracy, Politics, and the Media". 

I created the blog during my first semester of college. I graduated from high school earlier that year.

The first phase of my blog was devoted primarily to fact checks of politicians and the news media, political commentary, and media analysis. I also covered the stories of political prisoners imprisoned by countries across the world.

In January 2013, I published a series on Julian Assange, the Editor-and-Chief of Wikileaks, who found himself at the center of a convoluted extradition battle involving several different countries.

In another series that month, I examined allegations by Thom Hartmann, a liberal talk radio host, who claimed Republican presidential candidates had committed foul play in five different elections.

 

National Security Stories

Later that year, I began covering the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, which I believed violated core American values by holding prisoners indefinitely, for years on end, without trial.

In 2014, I began writing profiles of individual prisoners that were then being held at Guantanamo, some of whom have been subsequently released. The profiles were based on U.S. military documents that contained information about the prisoners.

Some of those documents were released voluntarily by the U.S. government. Others were published by Wikileaks, against the U.S. government’s strong opposition.

The blog shifted toward almost exclusively covering National Security topics, with a heavy emphasis on Guantanamo.

In recognition of this shift, I changed my blog’s name to “National Security Stories”.

 

Additional topics

In late 2015 and early 2016, I published a series about various LGBT identities and examined the intricacies of sexual orientation and gender identity.

During that time, I added the tagline, “The world is a very complicated place”.

In 2018, I published a series about the debate over the procedures used by colleges and universities to investigate and punish students accused of committing sexual assault.

Later that year, I began an ongoing series about state and federal policies concerning whether non-binary Americans can obtain government-issued identity documents that accurately identify them as neither male nor female.

 

2020

This year, I wrote an editorial endorsing Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary.

I also wrote posts that recommended politicians for consideration as potential vice presidents. Even though none of them were chosen, those posts still allowed me to highlight the good work of many of my favorite relatively-unknown U.S. politicians.

I also began analyzing exemplary works of fiction across several types of media.

Specifically, I examined the movie “Knives Out”, the podcast “Hello from the Magic Tavern”, the book “The Fellowship of the Ring”,  and the video game, “Slime Rancher”.

My decision to branch out and analyze these fictional worlds was motivated in part by the alarming nature of the crises facing my country, the United States, this year.

The U.S. is facing a deadly pandemic, concerns about police violence against African Americans, intense debates concerning police reform and the legitimacy of local law enforcement agencies, a pandemic-induced recession, and one of the most consequential and divisive elections in U.S. history.

These struggles have motivated me to take refuge in more relaxing endeavors, and to share my thoughts about entertaining fictional stories with my readers.

If you want to listen to my thoughts on some of this year’s big political crises, I discussed many of them with my friends during recent debate podcasts and during a review of memes inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Meticulous Musings

My blog focused on National Security topics from late 2013 to early 2015. Since then, its focus has shifted significantly, and I have decided to change its name once again. 

I want a name that reflects the diversity of the types of content that I cover, that still leaves room for a possible return to a political focus, which would be far more likely if Biden wins this year’s presidential election.

After considering several potential names, I have chosen to rename my blog “Meticulous Musings”.

This name highlights the attention-to-detail I bring to the topics I cover, my passion for the things I care about, and the in-depth nature of my analysis.

The name nicely encompasses my interest in covering both the real world and fascinating fictional worlds, without placing either as my blog’s focus.

I also like the name because it contains an indirect reference to the muses of Greek mythology — nine goddesses of the arts and sciences.  

If you enjoy reading about my passions, you should return to my blog going forward. I have plenty of quality content in the works.

And my future musings will feature the same depth and attention-to-detail that has characterized my blog over the past ten years.

 

If you enjoyed this trip down memory lane, I encourage you to read a post I wrote on the first anniversary of my blog, and a post I wrote in Feb. 2016 that also looked back on my blog’s history.