So, I got an email recently from someone thanking me for having pointed out that it's okay to PayPal a dollar, because that's usually what they have and they'd always thought of pledging/tipping a dollar on social media as rude, like tipping a waiter a penny.

It really isn't.

Some people have the impression that with transaction fees a dollar isn't "worth it", and might even effectively cost the person who receives it money. Also not the case.

The difference between a digital performance or service, like I provide on Twitter dot com, and the labor done by a waiter or bartender or driver, is that they're doing the job each time for each and every person who receives it. I do the same job for everybody who receives it.

It's worth it for me in the sense of being a sustainable way to spend my time if the money I bring in, in aggregate, is enough make it worth it. That works out the same if it's one generous patron dropping a ton of money at once or a crowd of appreciative audience members with $1

And in fact, in terms of long-term sustainability and independence, it's better to have lots of small patronage than a few high rollers.

LRT: One of the problems with Twitter moderation - and I'm not suggesting this is an innocent cause that is accidentally enabling abuse, but rather that it's a feature, from their point of view - is that the reporting categories available for us do not match up to the rules.

Now, Twitter's actual policy is that wishes or hopes for death or harm are the same as threats. That policy has been in place for years. But there's no report category for hoping someone dies. You can only report it as a threat.

Which gives the moderator, who doesn't spend long on any individual tweet, mental leeway to go, "Well, there's no threat here." and hit the button for "no violation found".

They have a rule that says persistent misgendering or other dehumanizing language is not tolerated, but again - there is no reporting category for that. We have to report it as hate against a group.

So again, the moderator looks at that tweet, briefly in isolation, and sees what, without context, might look neutral or matter of fact. A series of tweets referring to somebody consistently by the same set of pronouns or a statement that somebody is a man or woman.

So let me tell you another reason we need to not back down, not sit down, not be quiet: coward that he is, Donald Trump is at his most dangerous when he feels like he's on top of the world.

The horse race headlines are saying that Donald Trump had his best day as president, and I'm sure he felt it. He just came through a knock-down, drag-out fight and won a battle that people had been telling him to drop for weeks, so right now no one can tell him anything.

If he gets it in his head that maybe he should fire Rosenstein? No one's going to be able to talk him out of it. He might even do it just to extend the high, or see how far he can take it.

When he's afraid and uncertain he'll lash out and that can be dangerous, but his insecurity causes him to both seek approval and fear traps in that state. But when he's invincible, he will indulge his worst impulses freely.

The same people who have been telling him not to mess with the investigation until after the midterms were among those telling him it would be so much easier to just replace Kavanaugh with someone less contentious. And what did they know? Nothing, he thinks. So why listen?