Minor Thoughts from me to you

I write to White Christian America. Who are we? As we read the Palm Sunday, Passion Week and Easter narratives, who are we? Where do we fit in the story?

We default to thinking of ourselves as the Disciples. We are the heroes of the story. We are the ones who walk with Jesus, who treasure His words, who fear the Romans and the corrupt religious establishment. We are the persecuted and the ones discriminated against.

As I’ve listened more, I’ve heard the people of Black Christian America say, “Jesus is a Black man”. I didn’t understand what they meant. Jesus didn’t have black skin. He may have had darker skin than me (that’s not hard to do). He may have looked like a Middle Easterner. But he wasn’t black.

But this isn’t a statement about skin color. (Black Hebrew Israelites aside.) “Jesus is a Black man” is a statement about society, culture, and status. It’s about where Jesus fit in the context of His world and how He was viewed and what people thought of Him.

In the Roman Empire, Judea was a cultural and economic backwater. It was the home of malcontents, criminals, and rebels. It was trouble. Anyone who came from Judea started off at a disadvantage and had to work twice as hard for respect. Just ask Herod.

If Judea was a cultural backwater, Nazareth was the cultural backwater of Judea. Jesus came from the cultural backwater of a cultural backwater. No one outside of Judea respected Judeans and no one in Judea respected Nazarenes.

Jesus surrounded Himself with unsavory people. People who were illiterate and crude. People who made a living cheating others. People who made a living doing dirty, smelly jobs. People who were criminals.

Then He had the audacity to travel around telling everyone that they were doing life wrong, believing wrong, living wrong.

Let’s put Jesus into our context. He was a poor, Black man, from West Baltimore. He was tatted up, wore his hair in cornrows. He was friends with rappers, drug dealers, street prostitutes, and con men. He wasn’t just surrounded by them, he made them part of His inner circle. Have you seen The Wire, the men from the projects? That was Jesus.

Who are we? We are the White, well-to-do people who despise the inner cities. We consider them dirty, dangerous, unsavory, full of crime and moral degeneracy. Not only do we refuse to live there, we often refuse to travel there and fear the people who live there.

We certainly don’t want any of those street thugs telling us that we’re wrong about our mostly deeply held beliefs and need to make drastic changes. We don’t want to hear about our wrong view of history, our wrong views about poverty and money. We don’t want to hear that the nation we’ve created and love and defend is wrong, and that we are culpable for much of the suffering in our world. We don’t want to hear some Black man telling us that the way to paradise and eternal life is to give away all our wealth to the people like Him, and then follow Him.

We don’t want to hear it. Jesus is a Black man and we are White Christian America. We are the religious leaders. We are the High Priests. We are the Roman oppressors. And we’re not following Jesus, as his faithful disciples. We are the synagogue rulers and political leaders who are worried about the troublemaking, rabble rousers from the inner cities. We are the villains of the story.

Fellow White people! Lend me your ears! Mekka Okereke, a Google engineer and a bonafide Black man, has been incredibly generous with his time and has explained some of our history to us. Throughout the month of February, “Black History Month”, he took a timeout from Black history to talk about White American history instead. He posted threads almost every day, tackling one topic at a time.

These post threads are for White folks who don’t know their own history. White folks like me. I learned a lot from Mekka last month. I’ve collected all 22 threads and I’m making them easy to find for all of my pasty compatriots who missed them the first time around. Come and learn.

Here’s how Mekka kicked things off, on February 1.

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

You know the drill by now. I don't like talking about Black history. Americans know Black history. I want to talk about white American history. In other words, racism, and the erasure of both positive achievements of, and injustices suffered by, non-white people. That's what people don't know.

I'm not ready to talk about Black history. I want to talk about white US history.

Here we go.

February 1:

Try this: Ask your white US friends what the statue of liberty celebrates.

Now ask your Black friends. Or French folk of any color.

February 02

Q: "Why don't Black people build any generational wealth? Newer immigrant groups seem to be doing just fine? Must be a lazy and shiftless people!"

A: Because for most of US history, white folk have intentionally destroyed the wealthiest Black neighborhoods in the US and stolen all the wealth.

Greenwood. Allentown. Seneca Village. Rosewood. Freedmen's town.

February 03

Q: Why do Black people see racism in everything?

A: A few years ago, European tech entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky asked some very good questions in good faith. He asked why San Francisco and Madrid were different in so many confusing and awful ways. I answered each of his questions. Please verify each and every answer with a skeptic's keen eye.

Here we go...

February 04

Do you know that in the US, a Black 11 year old is 10 times more likely to die by drowning, than a white child?

In a nation that ignores racism, folk believe that this is because Black folk "Don't swim well."🤦🏿‍♂️

It's 2023, and there are still folk that believe Black kids drown due to race, not racism.

February 05

Q: Why do so many Black folk call Abraham Lincoln a white supremacist? He freed the slaves! Why don't Black folk have pictures of Lincoln up in their house? Are they ungrateful?

A: Because Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist, and one of the worst kinds. He was an "I know Black folk aren't inferior, but hey man, it's an 'us or them' thing, and I choose us to be in the superior position."

February 06

The US loves soldiers and veterans! Virtuous! Service! 🇺🇲🦅

The US hates homeless people. Lazy! Dirty! Want a handout!

But... ~1 in every 20 US homeless folk is a Black or hispanic veteran. 🤷🏿‍♂️

In the USA, the phrase "support our troops!" is a euphemism that does mean military jingoism, but doesn't mean supporting all of our troops.

February 07

Q: Why are Black neighborhoods so often high crime neighborhoods? Must be a lawless people! Violent! Thieves! Predators!

A: There is no such thing as a "high crime neighborhood." The whole concept is entirely made up based on our notion of what we consider a crime.

You may be thinking:🤔 Wait... What?! Not true! A high crime neighborhood has more drug use and sales, theft, and even murder!

February 08

Q: Why do so many Black people refuse to sing the US national anthem? I'm sorry, but that seems unpatriotic to me. Plus, the Whitney Houston version is amazing! Why don't you like Whitney Houston? Whitney!

A: Because more Black folk know the true history of the anthem, and some can't get past the racism.

February 09

Q: Why do Black kids not do well in school? Is it because their dads are uninvolved and uncaring parents? Bill Cosby and Herschel Walker told me that, and they are good and wise men that we should listen to! It's Black dads' fault! Boo Black men!

A: No. Black kids only do poorly in school in extremely racist countries.

February 10

Q: Why are Black people in the US so much more likely to die in traffic accidents than white people? Are Black folk more likely to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs (DUI)? Is it street racing? Are y'all just bad drivers?

A: Hmm. I'm stumped! No one knows the answer to why this happens! Just kidding. It's racism. It's always racism.

February 11

Q: Why do Black folk commit more crime? I hear you on "wage theft should be a crime too" and all that... but if we look at convictions for murder, sexual assault, and drug possession, Black folk just commit way more crime! Those are facts!

A: Black folk are convicted more. Black folk are many times more likely to be wrongfully convicted. Because racism.

February 12

Q: Why are so many Black folk early adopters of tech like Uber and Amazon? Sometimes this willingness to try new tech early backfires on y'all, like the whole crypto scam. Tech companies don't always love you back. So... why so eager? Is it because of Deltron 3030 and André 3000? 🤔You're... you're going to say racism aren't you?

A: Yep! Racism. And go ahead and add Sears to that list of "technology" companies.

February 13

Q: Why don't Black folk like things like rodeos, country music, and cowboys! But why are so many Black folk Dallas Cowboys fans? Could we use the Dallas Cowboys to introduce Black people to country culture?

A: You might mean "re-introduce." 1 in 5 wild west cowboys was Black. Almost all of the original cowboys were Black.

(Texans all like "I know this one! I'm getting an "A" today! Finally! Our time!"🤣)

February 15

Q: Why do Black folk get so upset when people ask them if they live in this neighborhood? I saw a Black stranger in my building and I just asked him if he lived here and can I see 3 forms of government ID, and now I'm the racist? How? I voted for Obama! Twice! Why are Black folk so sensitive about this?

A: Racism. This is a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing. Seriously.

February 16

Q: Why do Black folk just assume that many supporters of Trump, Reagan, Nixon, etc are racist? That doesn't seem fair. Why do 90% of Black folk vote democrat? Why aren't more Black people "free thinkers?"

A: Racism. Black US folk know about the "Southern Strategy," and what Reagan, Nixon and their advisers said about us. They know the origins of the Alt-right. Many white US folk don't.

February 17

Q: Why is it OK for Black folk to like the Black Panthers, but white folk can't like the klan? Black supremacy is just as bad as white supremacy! Why the double standard?

A: Black folk know white US history, so they know that the Black Panthers were not Black supremacists.

(At this point, half of the Black folk reading this just involuntarily said "COINTELPRO!" out loud).

February 18

Q: Why does it seem like so much of the anti-Asian hate that I see on TV and in newspapers is done by Black people? It seems like Asian folk should be legitimately afraid of Black people! Why does it seem that way?

A: Racism. Most Asian hate attacks are done by white folk. Asian folk are significantly safer from Asian hate, when they are around Black folk.🙂🙃

Newspapers lied on us.

February 19

Q: Why is so much Black music about violence and misogyny? I'm not racist, but I think Black culture is just more violent. Why does it seem that way?

A: Racism. Rap, trap, and drill, are only the most popular genres of Black music listened to by white people. The most popular among Black folk is R&B, almost 2X as popular. Violent rap is mostly for y'all.🤷🏿‍♂️

https://www.statista.com/statistics/945163/leading-music-genres-african-american/

February 20

Q: Why were Black folk so happy when OJ was acquitted? To be honest, it feels disgusting. Why does it seem like you're happy he got away with murderer?

A: Racism. Black folk did not like OJ that much. In fact, many Black people think he did it. Black folk didn't "celebrate OJ." Black folk celebrated the hope that a brutally unjust, evil, and racist system, could be defeated at all.

February 21

Q: Enough about racism for a second. Take a break! I'm worried about gender issues in the US too. For example, why is the gender pay gap in the US so large? It's one of the worst in the OECD!

A: You know why. Racism! In the US, the pay gap between white men and white women, is smaller than the pay gap between white women and Black and Latinx women.

Earnings and wages - Gender wage gap - OECD Data

February 23

Q: Not everything is racism! E.g. Black folk die young because of high BMI from their bad diets! That's on y'all! Don't hate on Lululemon leggings or khaki pants! Hate yourself! We're only trying to help you! How is this racism?

A: Black people in the UK have higher BMI than white people, and live longer than white people.🙂🙃

BMI is racist, and used to justify racism.

February 25

Q: Why does it seem like Black folk don't contribute much to society or science or history? Most inventions are from Europeans? Why does it seem this way? Don't cancel me!

A: Racism. The lie of white supremacy requires that we pretend that white men are the only people that ever invented anything or contributed to society.

Here is some wisdom from Karen Swallow Prior. I’ve always been worried about having good friendships with women, while married. Worried that the friendship would be a form of cheating on my wife or that it would be the first step on an inevitable road to adultery. Hearing this 20 years ago would have spared me a lot of fear and uncertainty

The modern companionate model of marriage so emphasizes friendship that when a spouse inevitably fails to fulfill all of our friendship needs, and we seek fulfillment of those needs elsewhere, the resulting friendships are conflated with sexual relationship.

In other words, perhaps because we have overlapped marriage with friendship so much, we don’t know how to have opposite-sex friendships that aren’t inherently sexual. A spouse ought to be a friend, to be sure. But “friend” — even “best friend” — is a demotion from “husband” or “wife.”

Wide, varied friendships of varying depths and lifespans are healthy and good — and biblical. I have book friends, movie friends, theology friends, author friends, news junkie friends, funny meme sharing friends, childhood friends, social media friends, dog friends, “Wordle” friends and work friends, to name a few.

Some of these friends are men. Some are women. None of my friends share all of these interests. My husband shares some but not all of these interests.

For me, this is another example of “your brain on evangelicalism”. I’ve been so indoctrinated into thinking of women as dangers and temptresses, that I haven’t been able to think of them as “people” with whom I could share a friendship built around a handful of common interests. Even though I would have sworn that I treated both genders equally, I didn’t. The indoctrination was lurking in the background, affecting how I thought, worried, and acted.

∞

One of the joys of living in southern Arizona is getting to see the saguaro cacti. I can see them all around town and there are large “forests” of them in the Sonoran Desert.

I recently saw this Kingfisher & Wombat tweet thread from Sat, February 22, 2020 at 05:34 PM about the saguaro. It's worth your time.

So following my retweet of the saguaros being cut down, it occurs to me that the extraordinary nature of the saguaro may not be common knowledge. Therefore, let us talk about this marvelous vegetative creature.

There’s a fairytale quality to the origin of this cactus. They sound more like how you make a unicorn or a cockatrice than a plant. “Born from an egg laid by a rooster under the Dog Star and incubated by a serpent.” “Sprung from the drops of blood from a martyred saint.”

Well, the saguaro fruit must be eaten by a coyote or a cactus wren and deposited in the shade of an ironwood to nurse. No, really.

Mesquite or palo verde will also work, but the cactus requires a nurse tree. The seeds can be eaten by a coyote, but a dove or a quail will digest them instead of passing them whole.

In the event the proper animal ate them and pooped in the proper nurse tree, it will take a decade for the saguaro to grow more than two inches tall.

Between 50-100 years, the first arm appears. It will likely flower before this, in its thirties. The flowers must be pollinated, probably by bats.

By this point, it will have outlived its nurse (and probably outcompeted it.) Those cactus with dozens of arms? OLD.

The cactus is not considered an adult until it is over a hundred years old. It can live to be two hundred, with luck.

To get away from the cold facts for a minute...saguaros, if you live around them, are, uh...Not just plants. There’s stuff going on there. People stuff. Saguaros have souls.

I realize I romanticize plants all the time, so you can feel free to dismiss this as my usual bullshit, but saguaros are...yeah. Okay, you ever met a tree that you thought was big and old and maybe like a person? The whole species is like that. Saguaros are special.

Giant redwoods are a little too obviously gods, any fool can see it, but saguaros are something else.

Anyway. It is worth noting that even if you dismiss my half-baked garden faith, saguaros are the pinnacle of a web of ecosystem arrangements. Three other species, minimum, are required to make a saguaro. Wren, ironwood, bat. Or coyote, mesquite, hummingbird. But three minimum.

This is why they’re so ultimately fragile. They rely on the others to even exist. They are a group effort! But they do repay it. Dozens of species live in them, on them, and by them.

Woodpeckers dig holes, elf owls live in the holes, hawks nest on top, everybody eats the fruit.

They are the nexus of the web. They’re special. Natives in the area have very respectful terms for them, though I do not know enough to give you any details. They’re one of the great goods of the world,and cutting them down is a cruel thing.

That’s all.

Well, no, one more thing. I joke sometimes that when I die, the primary witnesses for the defense will be all the turtles I helped across the road. I’m pretty sure if a saguaro spoke up for someone, they’d halt the proceedings and send you on your way at once.

And hey—we get down on humanity sometimes, we really do, and that border wall is an abomination, but the people of Arizona made laws to protect saguaros. Imperfect, flawed, but by god, they recognized and they’re trying. Credit where due.

Thanks to Craig Pittman, at the Tampa Bay Times, for this very Florida story.

Florida’s best-known industries include citrus, seafood and selling tacky souvenirs to tourists. But there’s one booming Florida industry that hardly ever gets a mention from the Chamber of Commerce folks.

Mermaids.

All over the state there are now scores of women — and a few men — who regularly pull on prosthetic tails and pretend to be those mythical creatures made popular by Hans Christian Anderson and Walt Disney. Some do it for fun, but quite a few are diving into it as a business, charging by the hour to appear at everything from birthday parties to political events.

"This mermaid industry has just skyrocketed. It’s crazy," said Eric Ducharme, aka "the Mertailor," whose Crystal River-based business is making high-quality tails. "I don’t know if it’s a fad, or if it’s here to stay."

To judge how crazy the mermaid business is right now, consider this: Ducharme. a Lecanto native, sells his custom-designed tails for up to $5,000 each. He’s working on 80 of them right now, each designed to match the customers’ personal measurements.

∞

Almost 13 years ago, I signed up for a shared hosting account on a little web host called TextDrive. I didn't know it then, but that was my introduction to a community that I'm still a part of today.

TextDrive was founded by Dean Allen, a man with a love for writing and for the ability of typesetting to make writing pop off of the screen. I wasn't a Dean Allen fan — I didn't come to TextDrive because of Dean. I came because TextDrive looked like a good hosting company for people who loved technology, and who loved to tinker on the web.

TextDrive was that. Of all of the hosting companies that I've used over the past 20 years, TextDrive was the best. Dean and Jason gave us a remarkable amount of freedom on their servers, while sparing us from the challenges of being administrators of our own systems. They were personable, with a seemingly endless supply of patience for our requests and the ways that we found to crash their servers.

But I found more than just a good web host. I found a community of the like minded. We all liked to tinker and to write. Some linked to tinker so much that they became members of TextDrive's support staff. The TextDrive forums were our shared campfire. (I mostly sat in the shadows). When TextDrive was absorbed into Joyent, we moved together to the Joyent forums. And when Joyent stopped offering shared hosting, we stayed in touch through Twitter and Slack. The community feels special because we each have different backgrounds, careers, and interests. We have different levels of technical skill. On the surface, it sometimes seems that we have little in common. But we're still united by that shared interest in writing and in tinkering.

Last week, I learned that Dean Allen had died. I feel his loss less keenly than others in the community only because I knew him less well than they did. But I mourn the loss of him nonetheless, because of what he did to attract so many like minded individuals. I've been shaped by that community in various ways and wouldn't be quite who I am today without them and without him.

Joel, a member of our TextDrive community, wrote some thoughts on Dean's passing, Retooling. I was struck by his thoughts and his Twitter summary of them.

• For God’s sake, stay in touch
• A good way to stay in touch is to keep blogging
• Be your whole self online
• Make the whole soup from scratch

I was especially struck by Joel's third point.

One thing about blogging, as opposed to clipping words into a stream of status updates, is that it gives you room to be your political self (say) without collapsing the rest of you out of sight. Dean’s politics were pretty clear to anyone who read him, and he was no stranger to the polemic, but he let himself be more than his politics, to such an extent that people who disagreed with his politics (including myself at the time) were happy to congregate together around him.

Maybe when we each have our own spaces to think and express ourselves, and when we Stay In Touch mainly by checking in on each other’s spaces, we do better at thinking together.

Politics (e.g.) are important. But, thanks in part to my experience with Dean and people at TextDrive, I can see that being inclusive, allowing ourselves to be and see more than our politics, happens to be good for our politics. The fact that they took this approach, and looked past my freshman twerpisms, was helpful for me at the time, and a factor in several changes-of-mind down the road.

I'm not good at being my whole self online. I'm an introvert. I'm very, very comfortable with my introvertedness. I'm not lonely. I'm perfectly content to spend an evening (or 10) with the quiet comfort of my own thoughts. That leads me to spend a lot of time having internal dialogs, forgetting that no one else can hear my constant conversation. And then I realize that's been two months since I posted anything, anything at all, on my blog and longer still since I publicly wrote anything of true meaning.

Joel's thoughts challenged me to make public interaction a priority. Post something, even if it's just a link to something that I found interesting. Post everything, even if it's political and might annoy people. Post about who I am — my whole self — my love for books, my nascent interest in comic books and console games, the boardgames that I'm enoying, the frustrations and joys of parenting, my complaints about American Christianity, everything.

I'm not sure how successful I'll be. It's a struggle to take the constant stream of thoughts in my head and focus on one long enough to freeze it and put it online. But I think it's worth doing. Community is important and I can only be a part of an online community if I'm willing to be heard.

What a great story.

The contest between Beethoven and Steibelt

As the challenger, Steibelt was to play first. He walked to the piano, tossing a piece of his own music on the side, and played. Steibelt was renowned for conjuring up a "storm" on the piano, and this he did to great effect, the "thunder" growling in the bass.

He rose to great applause, and all eyes turned to Beethoven, who took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and reluctantly - to the collective relief of everyone present - trudged to the piano.

Beethoven's turn to play

When he got there he picked up the piece of music Steibelt had tossed on the side, looked at it, showed it the audience ..... and turned it upside down!

He sat at the piano and played the four notes in the opening bar of Steibelt's music. He began to vary them, embellish them ..... improvise on them.

He played on, imitated a Steibelt "storm", unpicked Steibelt's playing and put it together again, parodied it and mocked it.

Steibelt makes a dramatic exit…

Steibelt, realising he was not only being comprehensively outplayed but humiliated, strode out of the room. Prince Lobkowitz hurried after him, returning a few moments later to say Steibelt had said he would never again set foot in Vienna as long as Beethoven lived there.

Beethoven lived in Vienna for the rest of his life, and Steibelt kept his promise - he never returned.

∞

Carrie Lukas, writing at Acculturated, presents her argument against man caves. She thinks they're a symptom of men who are self-focused children in men's bodies, using their isolation to avoid their responsibilities.

At the basest level, she argues that man caves represent a withdrawal from the shared spaces of the family into an exclusive space for self.

the man cave by its very name announces that it is for me. Whatever happens in the room is merely an artifact of my desires and my personality.

The implication is that the rest of the house—the joint bedroom and the nice kitchen and the kids’ messy quarters and the other TV room—cannot adequately serve me and my precious individuality. (Women, apparently, are not such fragile snowflakes that they need their own room to express themselves. After all, she has the kitchen, right?)

She implies that the entire house is a shared space, reflecting the entire family, and that men aren't satisfied with that. I disagree.

I argue that the entire house is an expression of the woman's aesthetic and interests. The woman puts her mark on the entire house, leaving the man no space to express his own aesthetic and interests. Far from the woman having just the kitchen as her space, you can see her influence throughout the house, including the other TV room, the kids' rooms, and the shared bedroom.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself a few questions. Who chose the color scheme in each of the rooms? Who chose the furniture? Who chose the fittings for the bathrooms and kitchen? Who selected the artwork for the walls? Who decided what is—and isn't—appropriate for each room?

More importantly, who holds the veto over design decisions? Does a man's "I don't think like that" carry the day or is it just an ignorant opinion to be ignored? Conversely, does a man get his choices in spite of the woman's "I don't like that" or does her dislike carry the day?

In my experience, each room of a house expresses the woman's personality and sense of style. Men retreat to man caves because that's the only way they can express their own personalities and see a tangible sign of their own presence in the family.

Asks the Wall Street Journal. But it seems like they may have buried the most important part about the supposedly surprising survey.

“The preference for the suburbs suggests that future demand will be in the form of single-family homes rather than condominiums more prevalent in cities,” said David Berson, chief economist with Nationwide Insurance Co. “That’s also good news for future suburban single-family sellers, many of whom are baby boomers.”

The survey results, though, could be skewed because they included only millennials who first answered that they bought a home within the past three years or intended to do so in the next three years. That excluded young people who intend to rent for many more years, which is a large and growing group, in part because of hefty student debt and the tight mortgage-lending standards of recent years.

∞

I endorse Brett Trepstra's suggestion.

I would like to take this opportunity to call for a cease-fire on the card guilt thing. You’re totally allowed to use that space in the closet that will be left open when you finally throw out that box of cardboard pieces bought at stores and hastily “personalized” by someone who doesn’t remember giving you the card at this point.

∞

When I was young, before junior high, I strongly believed that women were the weaker sex and that it was up to men to protect them. I believed that women shouldn't fight in the military, that they probably shouldn't engage in the hurly-burly of the working world, and that men should take on all of the physically demanding work leaving women the easier, less physically demanding work.

Through the loving, persistent efforts of a Sunday School teacher and many female friends, I became accustomed to the idea that women were just as hardy as men, just as able to take on any task, just as able to bear any burden, and just as able to engage the world. For the past 15–20 years, I've heard that women are equal to men in any area that they care to be involved in and that men shouldn't treat them any differently from how men treat other men. I thought that being a feminist meant believing that there were few, if any, differences between the genders.

Over the past 2 years, I've run into a different brand of feminists. They tell me that women are horribly discriminated against. They tell me that men are predatory beasts who prey upon women and that it's up to men to protect women from these predators. They tell me that women want to be computer engineers, software designers, scientists, and mathematicians but that the culture in these fields is too toxic for women to endure. They tell me that these fields need to be cleaned up and sanitized before women can feel safe enough to work there.

Now I don't know what to think. Are women strong and resilient like men? Are they hardy, able to live in unpleasant conditions, to clear a space for themselves, and to blaze a trail? Or are they hothouse flowers who need a carefully controlled environment before they can live and thrive? Are women as I was taught: strong, confident, able to defend themselves? Or are women as I first believed: a weaker sex that needs to be protected by the strong sex?

Here's a perfect example of my dilemma. An anonymous women provided this advice on software development: Engaging With Hateful People in Your Community Lends Legitimacy to Their Presence. She's writing in the context of a software development project that takes feedback and contributions from the general public. The words are hers. Any extra emphasis comes from me.

What’s the right way to deal with male supremacists and similar hate groups showing up?

I don’t have a clear answer. What I care most about is that community members are protected.

Here’s my suggestion #1: Don’t engage. It’s better to instantly block that person from the repo and delete their comments.

…

GitHub’s weaknesses make it not very safe for women and minorities, so if you want those voices heard, avoid the GitHub issue tracker.

By the way: Similar things apply when male supremacists send you reasonable-looking pull requests.

I noticed that this gr.amergr.ate person had sent a small PR to a [my-project] plugin, and the plugin maintainer merged it.

This made me super uncomfortable, and I hope I don’t have to interact with that maintainer, because I really don’t trust their judgment.

When you get a PR from an author whose very name spells hate, then even if the diff looks reasonable, don’t merge it.

This women is arguing that the best way to get women involved in software development is for other people to carefully police the software project, instantly banning commenters and contributors just on the basis of their usernames.

She's not arguing that these contributors have demonstrated harmful behavior and need to be banned on that basis. She's not arguing that these individuals have personally done anything that's even threatening. She's arguing that usernames that represent a community that she doesn't like are themselves a threat and that anyone with such a username should be immediately banned from the software project. Without this, she won't feel safe enough to contribute to the project.

To my ears, this represents a view of women as hothouse flowers that need protection. This isn't something that a strong, confident, assertive, girl power, "hear me roar" woman would write. This is something written by a woman who always needs a fainting couch nearby, a shrinking violet who can't survive in the harsh, uncontrolled environment of the real world.

I'm willing and ready to treat women however they want to be treated. Just, please, make up your minds. Should I censor your mail, only passing along what's safe for you to read? Should I carefully pre-screen your online communities before letting you engage? Should I create special woman-safe zones, carefully monitoring language and behavior for anything indelicate or offensive? Or should I stand back and let you engage the world as equals, trusting that you're strong enough to face whatever comes your way, that you're up to the challenge of engaging the world without a male chaperone?

Maria Popova, at brain pickings, has this fascinating look at the history of why we say "please" and "thank you".

In English, “thank you” derives from “think,” it originally meant, “I will remember what you did for me” — which is usually not true either — but in other languages (the Portuguese obrigado is a good example) the standard term follows the form of the English “much obliged” — it actually does means “I am in your debt.” The French merci is even more graphic: it derives from “mercy,” as in begging for mercy; by saying it you are symbolically placing yourself in your benefactor”s power — since a debtor is, after all, a criminal. Saying “you’re welcome,” or “it’s nothing” (French de rien, Spanish de nada) — the latter has at least the advantage of often being literally true — is a way of reassuring the one to whom one has passed the salt that you are not actually inscribing a debit in your imaginary moral account book. So is saying “my pleasure” — you are saying, “No, actually, it’s a credit, not a debit — you did me a favor because in asking me to pass the salt, you gave me the opportunity to do something I found rewarding in itself!” …

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Arnold Kling, at his askblog.

What these young people say is top-of-mind is that they really, really, don’t want to go through divorce. Compared to my generation, they seem to regard marriage as belonging to a later stage in life. My line is that for our generation, getting married was like starting a new business–a moment of promise and hope. Today, it’s like going IPO–a moment of affirmation and triumph.

I love this line. I'd classify myself and my wife as belonging to Kling's generation. But I've known friends that I'd classify as belonging to the current generation. This line nails the differences in attitudes that I've seen.

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Megan McArdle, at The Daily Beast:

But as a general rule, you should err on the side of marrying early. By which I mean not that you should marry whoever happens to be around when you turn 22, but that you should be willing to recognize, at the age of 22, that you've found someone you want to marry. Right now, most Princeton students don't think that way. They think there's something weird about committing at 22. And if they try to commit, their friends and parents will warn them off.

I got married at age 22 and it changed my life forever, for the better. As a bonus, we'll have all four of our kids by the time I'm 30 and I'll be able to raise them while I'm still young and relatively energetic. I think getting married at a young age is a wonderful idea.

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The Harringtons' three preteen granddaughters will have their own room with custom bunks that have built-in cubbies to hold electronics, plus a modern-style bathroom fully stocked with a rainbow of nail polish. The two grandsons will sleep in a separate room with ladders that lead to lofted beds and a large table for building model airplanes or playing with blocks. Downstairs, they'll have five swivel bar stools behind their own breakfast counter. "We thought of whatever we could to draw them there," says Ms. Harrington, 70, a retired elementary schoolteacher.

Unreal. Growing up, I was super excited just by the fact that Grandma and Grandpa could visit us for a week. They lived 12 hours away and we only saw them once a year. Having them visit was more exciting than any custom room could have been.

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A brilliant idea for a giant McDonalds restaurant that incorporates all of McDonalds international menus. I would visit this.

The central attraction of the ground floor level is a huge mega-menu that lists every item from every McDonald's in the world, because this McDonald's serves ALL of them. There would probably have to be touch screen gadgets to help you navigate the menu. There would have to be whole screens just dedicated to the soda possibilities. A concierge would offer suggestions. Celebrities on the iPad menus would have their own "meals" combining favorites from home ("Manu Ginóbili says 'Try the medialunas!'") with different stuff for a unique combination ONLY available at McWorld. You could get the India-specific Chicken Mexican Wrap (“A traditional Mexican soft flat bread that envelops crispy golden brown chicken encrusted with a Mexican Cajun coating, and a salad mix of iceberg lettuce, carrot, red cabbage and celery, served with eggless mayonnaise, tangy Mexican Salsa sauce and cheddar cheese.” Wherever possible, the menu items' descriptions should reflect local English style). Maybe a bowl of Malaysian McDonald's Chicken Porridge or The McArabia Grilled Kofta, available in Pakistan and parts of the Middle East.

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It's been nearly six years since I first read this brief essay, by Marko Kloos. It had a powerful impact on me and the central point has stuck with me ever since. Carrying a gun is not an uncivilized act. It is the ultimate civilizing act.

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

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Abdulateef AL-Mulhim writes in the ArabNews (of Saudi Arabia), about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.

These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.

This certainly matches up with what Michael Totten sees (and reports) every time he visits the Middle East. If the Arabs stopped blaming Israel for everything, they might be able to make a start on making a better life.

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Interesting. Especially since I've been considering a Route 66 road trip, for sometime in the next 3 years.

The last section of the fabled U.S. route from Chicago to Santa Monica, California, was dropped as a federal highway in 1984. But its hold on travelers' imaginations has revived motels, diners, souvenir shops, gas stations and other buildings along the old route.

The enduring fascination, along with some federal grants, has helped Route 66 thrive, even as people old enough to remember its heyday die off.

"People are looking to see the real America, not Walt Disney's version," said Ron Hart, director and founder of the Route 66 Chamber of Commerce in Carthage, Missouri.

A Rutgers University study released in March estimated that people spend $132 million annually along old Route 66, which crosses eight states and is marked in some places by ceremonial signs.

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Heather Mac Donald takes on the ridiculous idea that you can be "too poor to marry". I'm pretty sure that this take also works for the equally ridiculous idea that "we can't get married until older and more established".

The most idiotic reason that single mothers give for not marrying is: “I’m too poor to get married!” Evidently these women believe they’re not too poor to educate, house, feed, clothe, and provide a stable home and an enriching moral and cultural environment for a child on their own. The “I’m too poor” defense, documented by researchers such as Kathryn Edin, refers not simply to the cost of a wedding (which of course is avoidable through a City Hall ceremony), but to the day-to-day institution of marriage itself.

...Well, yes, “well-educated Americans” can offer “more” financial support to their spouses than less affluent Americans. But a married spouse at whatever income level is almost always going to improve the economy of a household over a lifetime, whether that spouse is adding the proceeds of a minimum-wage job or the inestimable value of being a stay-at-home parent while the other one works. But the notion that being a married parent requires more financial resources than being a single one is wrong not just as a matter of economic arithmetic but, more importantly, in terms of what married biological parents bring to their child — not money, but a 24/7 partnership in the extraordinarily difficult task of child-rearing. Household wealth is the least important reason to form a two-parent family; the idea that raising children as a single mother is on average in any sense easier than doing so as a couple, even in the stormiest of marital relationships, is absurd, and ignores the enormous strains of being both the sole bread-winner (or even welfare-collector) and the sole source of authority for your child. A second parent in the home provides back-up support in discipline when the other is at the breaking point, and a doubling of the emotional, intellectual, and moral resources that a child can draw on. You don’t need to be wealthy to offer that complementarity; poor married parents have raised stable, successful children for millennia.

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