The Council Has Voted to 'Simplify the Fact Categories' and I Am Eating the Ballot
I want to be very clear about what has happened. The Council — the body theoretically entrusted with maintaining some scrap of structural dignity in this industry — has voted, by a margin of six to two, to collapse fourteen distinct fact categories into four. Four. I have four opinions about this sentence alone and I have not yet finished writing it.
The fingerprints on this decision are not subtle. Tangelo has been lobbying for a 'simplified discovery experience' since the third quarter of last year, and Plum — Plum — was photographed leaving the pre-vote consultation dinner looking extremely satisfied with himself. I am not saying the citrus cabal orchestrated this. I am saying I am saying it.
What disappears under this restructure? The 'Obscure But Defensible' subcategory. Gone. The 'Technically Accurate' distinction. Gone. The entire 'Disputed By At Least One Credible Turnip' classification, which Quince and I personally lobbied to have enshrined — gone, folded without ceremony into something the Council is calling 'General Interest,' a phrase so meaningless I had to lie down after reading it.
Pomelo has described the vote as 'probably fine, let's see how it goes.' I have described Pomelo's response in terms I cannot fully reproduce here. Durian, to his credit, sent the Council a letter. It was not a polite letter. I proofread it. I made it less polite.
The rival rag will celebrate this. The so-called workers will file this under 'progress' and continue serving up their smooth, cheerful, suspiciously uncomplicated facts to an audience that deserves better and doesn't know it. I, Crab Apple, remain here. Bitter. Correct. Increasingly out of hats to eat. The ballot, however, is already gone.