Mea Culpa, When Somebody Writes Your Wrongs

Yesterday, [Unattributed](https://unattributed.cc/note-taking-and-personal-knowledge-management) posted a long response and dissection of my article [What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?](https://brennan.day/what-have-note-taking-pkms-accomplished-really/), analyzing the lack of intellectual rigour, nebulous wording, and poor research I did throughout.

I already added an update to the post in question, so I won't get into the weeds here. I tried my best to respond graciously and with appreciation towards the author of the response. The writing was critical, but it was also fair and written in good faith. That said, seeing a 3,500-word article about me on the top of [Bubbles.town](https://bubbles.town) yesterday certainly did give me anxiety—but that's par for the course. My chickens have come home to roost. I mean, if you're going to share your work with the world, then you need to expect the world to respond. And if you write something that's incorrect, well [that's the best way to get a reply on the Internet](https://xkcd.com/386/).

Jokes aside, I am grateful that the first longform criticism I've encountered against me was a good-faith argument against my intellectual rigour. For most it usually looks different, but I'll get to that.

I care deeply about good research and good writing, and I want to make sure people do trust that I put time and effort into my writing even though I am writing frequently and quickly. Out of the two hundred articles and half a million words on this blog, I would like to think this is the first where I let myself drift carelessly from my original intention, and ended up with flimsy arguments.

Of course, I understand that "one time" isn't a meaningful argument. You can spend years cultivating goodwill and trust and have it dissolve instantly by a careless action.

All of the above is a melodramatic way to talk about an article going over a plain text file editor, and the courses and books surrounding it, obviously. I am not a journalistic institution and the IndieWeb is kind.

But even still, there's something here I want to address.

## The Milkshake Duck

I guess I want to instead take this opportunity to talk about the [milkshake duck](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/milkshake_duck#English).

The term comes from a joke tweet posted in 2016 by Australian cartoonist Ben Ward ([@pixelatedboat](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/pixelated-boat)), who wrote:

The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! 5 seconds later We regret to inform you the duck is racist.

[Oxford Dictionaries noted the term](https://theconversation.com/when-we-needed-a-new-word-twitter-gave-us-milkshake-duck-90223) in its "On the Radar" column in mid-2017, and the New York Times covered it days