50 WORDS

Mean, Medium, and Mode — in Moderation

Thrifty Words… Fifty Word Challenge #39: Moderation

Fred Ermlich
The Bad Influence
Published in
2 min readMay 28, 2021

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A Moderately Adequate Image by Author — [honestly — I did a little research and suddenly wrote the script and it was 50 WORDS!]

Don’t worry — I don’t even know what my title means.

I suppose it’s a gut feeling — if Medium is in the middle and that implies moderation then moderation is the mode.

Don’t you hate statistics?

Well, see, Medium is American and that’s an extreme, neither a mean nor a mode.

Lagom är bäst. It means, literally, “The right amount is best”, and is also translated as “Enough is as good as a feast”, or as “There is virtue in moderation.” (Wikipedia, linked at “Lagom.”)

I hope that clears things up.

This is one of my silliest submissions. What happened was the usual: I looked up the word “moderation,” then also looked up “moderately” in case it gave me any ideas. Then I went wacky and my article was inspired by this:

Then I went wild with this one:

Maybe if Medium treated me better I’d write more seriously.
Nah…

Ooh, that thought chills me to the core. Serious writing implies some moderation. But I don’t find Medium writers to be the least bit moderate. Especially those who write and edit at The Bad Influence.

Let’s take a look. Yeah, here’s one I really liked, and it’s also shocking:

Here’s an article on a topic I didn’t have the wit or courage to tackle. It has some interesting links within, including a link to a writer who did manage to write about Racism in Feminism:

And here’s the instigator’s article that led to my silly article:

This was fun. I hope you enjoyed reading — either my writing or from one of those links.
…FRED

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Fred Ermlich
The Bad Influence

Living in rural Panamá — non-extractive, non-capitalistic. Expat USA. Scientist, writer, researcher, teacher. STEM mentor +languages. Gargoylplex@protonmail.com