Taboo Maintanence

I found an article on the BBC website about a practice known in the Netherlands as "duo-euthanasia." Put simply, it's when both members of a couple decide to end their lives together, because both meet the criteria for physician-assisted suicide.

After the title (Dying together: Why a happily married couple decided to stop living), there's a quick, 50-word, brief laying out some basic facts. And then, there's a warning:

Some people might find this article upsetting.

There's also another article, Boy, 13, shot dead by New York police had replica gun, authorities say. In that article is the following:

One officer then wrestled [Nyah Mway] to the floor. “During a ground struggle”, another officer fired a single shot that hit the teenager in the chest, the police chief said.

So, apparently,while one officer wrested with a teenaged suspect, another shot him. There is no warning message.

The story of Jan and Els is fairly straightforward, and presented as a human-interest piece. Jan was a retired cargo worker, in constant pain from back injuries. Els was a retired teacher and developing dementia. But it's not really a story about the couple. It's a story about the continuing debate over assisted suicide. There's no violence, no in-depth examination of the controversy surrounding the practice, no examination of trauma. Just the story of a couple in their seventies who decided that they were going to die on their own therms and together.

It was difficult to see what, other than the subject matter itself, that explained why "some people might find this article upsetting." Except for, perhaps, the warning itself. While Dr Theo Boer, professor of healthcare ethics at Protestant Theological University may worry that: "[T]he taboo on intentional killing - that’s eroding, and especially when it comes to duo-euthanasia." I don't expect to see a sudden drop in the human population due to assisted suicides anytime soon. Psychiatrist Dr Frank Koerselman, another Dutch critic of assisted suicide speaks of a person's lack of hope that things will improve as a contaminant that others can avoid. But I don't know that this is a useful way to think of it. Hope can be irrational, too.

As much as I understand the arguments that Doctors Boer and Koerselman make, I'm not sure that this is a problem in the way that they portray it. There seems to be a pervasive worry in some quarters that destigmatizing suicide will open the floodgates to all sort of problems, and completely undermine the ideal that every life is somehow objectively infinitely valuable.

I found nothing remotely upsetting in the story of Jan and Els, because there didn't need to be in order to tell it. Portraying it as a difficult story to read seems to do nothing other than reinforce a taboo that's unlikely to go anywhere soon.

Creaking

I didn't bother watching the debate between President Biden and Donald Trump the other day. I don't have enough faith in politicians to find listening to them worthwhile. Besides, it's the Congress that enacts laws, so that's where I consider it more important to place my attention. But the coverage of the event has been extensive, and fairly unanimous.

Now that people are convinced that President Biden has shown himself not to be up to the task of remaining in the Oval Office, the chatter about whether he should step aside ha started up again with renewed vigor. The problem is that it's four years too late. The Democratic Party believed its own "demography is destiny" hype, and I believe that it convinced them to take their eye off the ball. Convinced that the Republican Party was going to implode of its own volition, they stopped working to cultivate people who could carry their banner forward. I have nothing against Hillary Clinton, but she was a deeply unpopular person. Joe Biden only won in 2020 because Donald Trump's performance was poor when it counted, and obviously so.

Given that human beings grow old at the consistent rate of one year every year, the fact that President Biden would be 81 years old that this point was, basically, predictable. And he may have been the only person who could have defeated Donald Trump in 2020, but the grooming of replacements, and their introductions to the Democratic voter base should have started then, as well. If Joe Biden was going to be a "bridge President," the work should have started on preparing the opposite shore.

Donald Trump, for all that he was disinterested in the actual work of the Presidency, and tends to fuel, rather than smother, conflicts, was able to unify the Republican Party behind him by taking advantage of their shared disdain (hatred?) of Democrats. To a Republican, the difference between any given Democrat and a Socialist is purely a matter of semantics. Those Republicans closer to the political center may not like Donald Trump, but they don't see themselves as being in the crosshairs of his policies.

The Progressive and Centrist constituencies of the Democratic Party, on the other hand, are at odds with one another. And to most Progressives I've met, the difference between any given non-Progressive, no matter what their party affiliation, and a Fascist is a moot point. Accordingly, a Centrist Democrat sees a direct threat to them from Progressive policy preferences, and Progressives see Centrists as enabling the same old injustices that have gone on for far too long. And so they are disunified. Simple fear of Trump, or of the consequences of his being President was never enough to bridge that. Hillary Clinton was exactly right when she said the Supreme Court was at stake in 2016. For all the good it did her.

Columnist George Will once noted that the United States doesn't prevent disasters, it simply reacts to them. Congress, like the population at large ignores problems until they are directly impacted by a crisis, and then they respond with panic, rather than thoughtfulness. There's been a lot of hysteria over the threat to Democracy that Donald Trump is supposed to pose, but very little mention of the fact that he's only in the position to be a threat because he has the backing of people who don't believe that the recent practice of American Democracy have lived up to the promises made on its behalf. People complain about the workings of American government, but only when those workings are problems for them; there is widespread dissatisfaction with the Electoral College system, but the party in power has never seen fit to change it.

American Democracy, in my mind, is not broken, any more than saw is broken because it can't be used to hammer nails. The United States is not, and has never been a unified polity. There has always been cost shifting, broken promises and simple theft. And that history has eroded the trust that people had in the system, even when it worked in their favor, because they understood that it could turned against them. And this is the result.

And so, four years too late, certain people on the American Left are calling for the resumption of a process that should have started at least four years ago, if not sooner; that of looking for candidates that can united the Democratic Party for something, and really make the case for Democratic leadership. We'll see if they can somehow make up for lost time.

Vocal Insight

It's fairly common to see posts on LinkedIn that concern themselves with character. Some of them offer heuristics for determining character, like this one:

"A person's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation."

Mark Twain

So, here's a question: Can a person's character be learned from the accuracy with which they attribute quotes?

Because (as I'm sure you've guessed), this is not a Mark Twain quote. Let's unpack this a bit.

It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament.

Henry Theodore Tuckerman: The Optimist, “Conversation” 1850

Samuel Clemens' wife, Olivia, is thought to have written the paraphrasing (using the language of the time) in her "commonplace book" as a teenager. And that's likely why this particular item became associated with him. As near as I can tell, it doesn't appear in any of Mr. Clemens' works - I was unable to find an attribution that came with a citation. The closest was one attribution with a date of 1907.

"Conversation" is an essay about the art of, well, conversation, and after the quote above, Mr. Tuckerman notes that whether someone is enthusiastic, dogmatic, subdued, acute, soulful or so on, can be determined by the words they use to describe the world around them. It's a fairly obvious point, when one thinks about it; it's common for people to understand the way a person speaks as indicative of not only their current mood, but their broader personality. People alter their speech patterns to convey a certain impression of themselves, even when the impression they're aiming for is authenticity; and they scrutinize the way others speak to look for clues for everything from past actions to future plans. Given that it's currently campaign season, examples of this abound.

Likewise, impressions are part of the goal of LinkedIn posts, or for that matter, a blog; for the writer to convey something about themselves through what they write, and what they write about. I don't know that I, personally, do a great job of that, being a rather... haphazard author. Although I'm sure that people have picked up on the fact that I can be a bit wordy at times.

Drafted

I haven't read Rolling Stone in a while, so I hopped over to see what was new. I read their long-form piece on James O'Keefe and the implosion of Project Veritas. It's interesting, but I really didn't think of it as being very newsworthy. I remember Mr. O'Keefe's time in the media spotlight, but was never really that interested in him. And, in the end, the story feels like a reminder of something that people already know.

Most conservative culture warriors no longer perceive the U.S. political divide as two factions that disagree with each other, but as a war between real Americans and godless communists working to destroy the country.

Of course they perceive it as a war. That's why they call themselves "culture warriors." What else does one expect? Just like the people who see the fight for social justice call themselves "Social Justice Warriors." The term may prompt eye-rolling in the greater society, but the ones I knew wore it with obvious pride. There's always something to go to war over in the modern United States, as more and more of what were once the ordinary disagreements between citizens (disagreements that one would expect in a nation whose main coastlines can be 2,500 miles apart) have come to be viewed as existential matters of Good versus Evil and/or life and death, sometimes literally.

And in a society in which neutrality is viewed as either a craven capitulation to the unjust side of the argument at best and a cynical refusal to acknowledge one's support for deliberate wrongdoing at worst, it's seemingly become fashionable to fight over which side the people who emphatically are not fighting are fighting for. Which is how it goes, I suppose, when the fighting itself becomes the point.

Because if the only acceptable course of action when confronted by evil forces bent on destruction is to fight, fighting can become less about actual prosecuting the conflict and take on an air of virtue signalling, where it's important to be seen to be fighting, and for the right side. And what was really James O'Keefe's genius; he understood that it didn't matter if he were actually gathering evidence of deliberate wrongdoing, hypocrisy and malfeasance. As long as he was affirming what his audience understood to be true, the fact that he needed to resort to duplicity and entrapment to do so simply showed that he was fighting, and the need to continue to do so.

Tricolor With Red

I would have called this "Flagged" but I've already given at least three posts that title.

A series of Palestinian flags, arrayed along a bridge over I-405 in Bothell, Washington. I don't know that it counts as a "protest" per se... it seemed to be more of an opportunity for people to show either support or disdain for the Palestinian cause.
 

Interested

There is a lot of "conventional wisdom on LinkedIn. The sort of thing that affirms people's preexisting understanding of the world around them, and is seen as valuable mainly because the person who posted it has some combination of fame and wealth. Consider the following, posted by Ray Dalio:

In other words, be wary of the fact that people's self-interest, combined with a drive for efficiency, can lead to deceit, and understand how to best safeguard one's own interests.

People do things for us, including operating in our interests, because they perceive it to be in their interests to do so. I've known a lot of people who have loved their jobs; but none enough that they would do them for free. And those people who do work without being paid either expect other benefits to themselves (even if it's only "exposure," or feeling good for contributing), or don't have any other viable options. But this is nothing new, it's been part of economic thought for the past 250 years.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."

Adam Smith "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" 1776

Likewise, "For example, most people will operate in a way that maximizes the amount of money they will get and that minimizes the amount of work they have to do to get it," is also generally understood, because in many circumstances, it's what's termed as "efficiency." Just swap out "money" for "food" and one has the direct reasons for the advances in agricultural technology that have allowed the world to support some 8.11 billion people. And the Walmart slogan of "Save Money. Live Better," can easily be rendered as "maximizing the standard of living that people will attain and minimizing the amount of money they have to spend (and thus work they have to do) to attain it."

And of course these factors drive perverse incentives. Back when Fry's Electronics was still around, looking for assistance with assorted computer accessories could be a hassle. Stop in front of an expensive big-screen television, however, and obsequiously helpful salespeople would materialize from thin air seeking the commission on the purchase, even if they added no value to the shopping experience. But there is no field of human endeavor that is free from perverse incentives. Accordingly, there are people who will look for them, and seek to use them to their advantage. So the best thing may simply to be aware when one is creating perverse incentives oneself (and sometimes, it can't be helped), and then being vigilant.

There is no field of human endeavor that is free from perverse incentives. Accordingly, there are people who will look for them, and seek to use them to their advantage. So the best thing may simply to be aware when one is creating perverse incentives oneself (sometimes, it can't be helped), and then being vigilant, rather than implying that this basic fact of human nature stems from dishonest impulses.

Cheesy

This is an advertisement for an outfit called Job Leads. They've done a big ad purchase on LinkedIn, and their main pitch is access to "the hidden job market," which is supposedly made up of roles that employers are looking to fill, but for some reason are not advertising.

Now, some jobs are not advertised because they aren't actually being made open to the public at large. While some outfits will do what they call "compliance posting" for various reasons, many of these roles already have someone lined up for them, which is why they aren't being advertised broadly.

Job Leads, however, is implying that the majority of jobs out there aren't advertised, but are nevertheless open to members of the public who apply and "headhunters" know about them, and can connect you. Provided, of course, that one pays the Job Leads membership fees.

But the 80% figure is one of those numbers that seems to appeal to people's subjective experience of the modern job market, even though there's no real evidence for it. The ads, of course, give no source for the number. The best that I've been able to find is that it dates back to the 1990s, when the majority of job postings were in print, and companies needed to pay to get them out there. That was a long time ago.

There is no magic path through the maze of job seeking that opens up to those willing to pay for connections. The hidden job market, such as it is, has always been about one's network, the degree to which those people who have worked with one before are willing to advocate on one's behalf. Usually, free of charge.

Small World

A marker drawing on a finial above a bridge railing. I always admire these occasional pieces of informal artwork.

Anti-Blue

While Washington State is considered "Blue" in American politics, it's not a consistent shade over its entire area, like every state. Where I live, however, is pretty solidly Democratic, and that means that running against whomever the Democratic candidate is requires a certain level of creativity.

When I first saw these signs, my very first thought was, "Yeah, this guy's a Republican." Republican candidates going with bold blue color schemes for their signs is pretty common around here. But I wanted to get a closer look, so I got up close, and I noticed that there is no party affiliation noted on the signs, on either side. And there's no attribution or "paid for by:" messaging on them, either.

Matthew Heines, it turns out, has listed his party preference as "Trump Republican Party." No wonder it's not noted on the signs. Donald Trump is something less than popular in the part of the state. Of course, if Mr. Heines' party preference holds, it will be in his listing in the Voter's Pamphlets for the upcoming open primary, but most people don't bother to read those. It will also. however be on the ballot. Which will make it an interesting look into how much support Mr. Trump manages to retain in this area, as well as how much Republican voters are willing to vote for a candidate on the basis of openly affiliating himself with Mr. Trump. Regardless of which Republican candidate makes it to the general election, they're going to lose (partisanship makes these sorts of predictions about as controversial as "water is wet"), so there may be a chance for some expressive voting here.

Shanked

A lot has been made of the idea that Donald Trump is "a threat to democracy." Personally, I don't consider Mr. Trump to be the problem. I chalk it up to a rather childish view of democracy that only wants votes where one is sure that they'll win. And while this sort of thinking isn't limited to Trumpists, it's gained a fair amount of traction there.

Normally, when I talk about things that I've cone across on LinkedIn, I don't link directly to them, because the actual post is tangential to whatever point I'm attempting to make. But this time, it's central to the point, so here is a post from Donald Trump Jr. promoting a worn and misattributed quote.

The word "lunch" didn't enter English in it's current form until the Industrial Revolution, not the American Revolution.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the politics of grievance that Donald Trump Sr. is so well-known for. This portrays supporters of the former President as an embattled minority, who are being preyed upon by the rest of the American electorate, and therefore justified in taking up arms to enforce their minority position. (Note that in the earliest known variation on this quote, from the 1990s, no mention of guns is made.) Granted it's not an overt call to political violence in the face of an election loss. But it sure looks like one from here.

The second thing that stood out for me was simply the fact that Donald Jr. posted this in the first place. Why rail against the majoritarian aspects of Democracy if one thinks that they're going to win the upcoming election? This may be the first sign of a lack of confidence that Mr. Trump can regain the White House. Because this isn't a warning against a subversion of democratic processes; it's rallying people for a potential loss.

The original sentiment, as I understand it, was that: "Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner." In other words, it should be something more than a means for one interest group to enrich itself at the expense of another. But in about 30 years, that idea has been lost, if for no other reason than so much of American history is differing groups looking to prey upon one another. Donald Jr. is simply playing into that here.

Twisted

On the off chance that anyone had forgotten that LinkedIn was also a social media site, articles popped up in my feed about the thimble thunderstorm who is Lilly Gaddis. Ms. Gaddis styles herself a "Trad Wife."

A “trad wife” is short for “traditional wife” — someone who believes in the outdated notion that a woman’s role is in the home, cooking, cleaning and caring for children.

Long story short, she made a cooking video on TikTok that was deliberately provocative, and her employer took the bait, firing her. Some of her comments:

• You are getting the opinion from some dumb whores and immigrants fresh off the boat looking for a green card. Yes, they are probably gold diggers, but that is the exception — I am the rule.
• Everyone I know that is married right now is married to broke-ass nigger, and they don’t care. We don’t give a fuck about money.

She then went to X.com and noted that her video "seems to have upset members of a certain community." While one would think that this community was her employer's Human Resources department, considering that the company describes itself as "African-American female and immigrant-owned," she had other people in mind.

• Thanks black community for helping to launch my new career in conservative media! You all played your role well like the puppets you are.

And this was really the point. Provoking an outraged response so that she could show her Trumpist, "non-Woke" bona-fides. And to a degree she's right. She provoked a response, knowing both that it would come, and roughly what it would be. But she's also banking on conservative media being puppets; people who will accept her and elevate her simply for her ability to "own the libs." People who will accept her simply for claiming that setting out to offend people is somehow standing up for some central American freedom. But that doesn't take much skill. In a nation of more than three-hundred million people, being provocative is sure to make someone made. Especially when the nation is at a point where going out of one's way to avoid provocation manages to make someone mad.

But maybe it doesn't require skill. Maybe the provocation works because American conservatism would rather be openly manipulated than appear to be sympathetic to people they perceive as the enemy.

In any event, I know people like Ms. Gaddis. I went to high school with a number of them. And they weren't genuine racists. They were people who felt empowered by their ability to weaponize the fact that they didn't care about what others thought of them; and felt that those others couldn't afford not to care what they thought. The sort of people who provoked, then escalated, and kept going until they received a response, and then cast themselves as victims, often successfully.

What makes this work is the Catch-22 that it creates. Both responding and failing to respond are poor choices, simply for very different (and often opposing) reasons. There is no winning move; not even refusing to play.

Malevolence

Pew Research Center recently came out with a new report, titled: Most Black Americans Believe Racial Conspiracy Theories About U.S. Institutions. It's a survey that questioned "4,736 U.S. adults who identify as Black and non-Hispanic, multiracial Black and non-Hispanic, or Black and Hispanic," about whether they had heard of what Pew refers to as "racial conspiracy theories" concerning certain institutions within the United States, and if they had, whether they believed them.

The report starts out going into responses about the people's experiences of racism, and the negative effects thereof, such as being angry, frightened, anxious, pessimistic and depressed. And anger was the overwhelming emotion; some three quarters of those surveyed who said that they had experienced racial discrimination, either regularly or from time to time, reported feeling angry about it. In all, about 57% percent of respondents reported anger at what they perceive as unjust and unfair treatment. Similarly, three quarters of the people surveyed professed a belief that they had to work "more than everyone else" to attain success in the United States. Given this, it's little wonder that majorities of respondents believed that all seven racial conspiracy theories that Pew asked about either "Happened in the past and still happens today," or perhaps worse, "Did not happen in the past but happens today."

Interestingly, standard ideological fault lines are evident in Pew's data. While 66% of Black people surveyed who leaned Democratic or were Democrats reported a belief that "the economic system was designed to hold Black people back a great deal or fair amount, only 52% of those who leaned or were Republicans reported the same. But when it comes to the belief that "the government promoting birth control and/or abortion in order to keep the Black population small is something that happens today," 63% of Republicans and Republican leaners profess belief, as opposed to only 49% of Democrats and Democratic leaners. Partisans are most unified in the belief that the news media was designed to hold Black people back, with 52% of Democrats and Democratic leaners and 53% of Republicans and Republican leaners professing belief.

Overall, it paints a picture of a demographic that feels that the deck has been rather intentionally stacked against them. And this reminded me of something that Glenn Loury had noted in his Freakonomics interview:

If we start out with racial disparities that are not a reflection of fundamental differences between the populations, but that are rather an artifact of the self-fulfilling negative beliefs that employers might have about a population, that employers think the Black kids are on the whole not going to work out if you employ them, and hence are requiring exceptional additional evidence before they’re willing to take a chance on a Black kid and hire him. The Black kids, knowing that it’s going to be difficult for them to get hired, when they consider whether or not to make the investment to improve their skills, decide it’s not worth it because the chances of them getting hired are not so great. And so they don’t make the investment. That could be an equilibrium. The Black kids don’t make the investment because the employers are unwilling to hire them. The employer is unwilling to hire them because the Black kids aren’t making the investment.

And in a lot of ways, this is the tragedy of the whole thing. Part of it comes from the lack of proportional participation in business (even though this is not party of Loury's critique); if there were more Black employers, it would be easier for young Black people to find jobs where employing them wasn't seen as "taking a chance." But part if it the equilibrium brought about by Black people responding to the lack of return on investing in themselves by not making what they understand to be an exceptional investment. Once might conclude that it's a damaging response, but it's difficult to make the case that it's an irrational one.

Even if some of the concerns that drive it do seem irrational, or at least overly broad. Part of the general definition of a "conspiracy theory" is the idea that powerful and malevolent groups or institutions are colluding in secret to bring about damaging events or situations. The survey questions that Pew asked respondents referred to groups such as "big business," "medical researchers," "the police" and "the government." These, viewed as a whole are large, monolithic and sometimes omnipresent entities. And this is a viewpoint that can be wearing, because it makes the issue inescapable. If one's local police have a tendency to mistreat people, a move to a new town might help. But if "the police" nationwide are plotting, where does one go?

Listen Up

Is this anyone's idea of effective marketing?

When I first saw this, I supposed that I'd happened upon the world's most sinful dog adoption event. But it turned out that there was also a Pride exhibition going on in the building that day.

There were churches in attendance with booths set up, at least a couple, and nary a mention of fire and/or brimstone between them. It was only these guys outside who seemed to have a bone to pick. I don't know what it is about this particular convention center that draws in the local Evangelical crowd, but it seems that every time I go there, or go by there, there is some obvious proselytizing going on, even if it's only leaving cards and leaflets all over the place.

What these two, standing out in what was a fairly warm day for the local area with their sign and bullhorn, were hoping to accomplish was unclear to me. The churches that had registered to set up inside seemed to be a more welcoming bunch. So I can't rule out that being unwelcoming is, in fact, the point of displays like this; a loud and visible reminder to everyone in the area (let alone the people attending the Pride event) that these guys though of themselves as quite literally holier-than-thou. Because, let's face it, no one was going to sign up for these guys' church on the basis of what they were doing. You couldn't even see what church they belonged to, if they displayed it at all (that may have been what the small picture frame on the ground near the many holding the sign was for). They certainly didn't have any visible literature to give anyone.

So all they seemed to be doing was telegraphing their opposition to queerness. Which, okay; but I'm pretty sure that anyone who's the least bit aware of religious conservatism in the United States is well aware of that opposition. That's not something that needs to be constantly shouted from the street corners. Unless the shouting is the point of it all.

Covered

This has the whiff a bad idea from the start. Canadian author Sam Forster decided that he'd "go undercover" as it were, and using dark makeup and a wig, traveled some parts of the United States to get a look for himself of the experience of being a Black person. If the online responses to the announcement of his book about the project, Seven Shoulders: Taxonomizing Racism in Modern America, are anything to go by, the Black American community was not amused.

Mainly because they were too busy being offended by a action that, while probably ill-advised, doesn't appear to have been intended to be malicious in any way.

I understand the assertion that if Mr. Forster wanted to write a book about race relation in the United States, he could have spoken to some number of Black people and simply told their stories. But I don't understand that to have been the entire goal. He wanted to understand for himself, first hand, what being Black in America is like. But the problem with that is the unspoken presumption that there's a something that it's like to be Black in America, rather than a few million individual somethings. But that's an error that a lot of people make... after all, it's not like "Whiteness" is understood to be experienced differently by every individual, because it's simply a thing that's out there.

But, and I may alone in this, I applaud him for giving a shot. Whether he went about it in the right way or not, he wanted to understand enough that he took it upon himself to do something that took a great deal of time and effort, and may have even jeopardized his career. That's very much more than can be said for a lot of people. Then again, Mr. Forster is Canadian, so that may have something to do with in. I've long suspected that the way we talk about, and deal with, race in the United States is an active impediment to the progress that people say they want.

Whether his book will do as he hopes, and break through to some people who don't find the writing of Black journalists and academics compelling, I don't know. I doubt that it will. After all, people who actively have something against Black people tend to also dislike White people they perceive as siding with them. But at least he managed to gain some attention for yet another book about race in America.

I'd like to learn more about the book, but the news coverage is more or less exclusively about the negative reaction of "Black Twitter" to the whole project. Outrage for the outrage cycle. I don't know if I'm going to take the time to read it for myself, given that I already understand what it's like to be me in the modern United States. But I suspect it might be a worthwhile takealong the next time I need to travel somewhere; or maybe an audio version would be a good way to spend some time.

In any event, I do think that it would be a good thing for the book to find an audience, if for no other reason than it's going to be a different perspective on something that I think any number of people believe that they already know everything there is to know about.

Equally

Not the first thing that I think of for LGBT+ progress, but okay...

Every June now, like clockwork, someone posts this sentiment. And I've always been curious as to what end; is the point really to trade discomfort for discomfort? I've always been suspicious of people who make it a point to wish negative things on other people, regardless of their motives. Mainly because the world is a bad enough place as it is, and adding to that makes nothing better.

But maybe I shouldn't say that, because I think that there are people who take a certain amount of pleasure in the pain of those they understand to be their enemies. And I would venture for those people, knowing that being celebrated hurts other people does make their life better. And that's what matters to them. After all, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (and everyone else who identifies as queer) aren't really any different than anyone else. Why should they be above being jackasses to their fellow people any more than anyone else is?

And I suppose that's what bothers me about it. This invocation of Pride Month to take note of the negative aspect of equality; to remind everyone that queer people can be the asshole just like straight people can. Or, perhaps more accurately, that as a species, humans are assholes. And nothing really gets in the way of that. Not safety and security, histories of oppression, or time spent calling out people for being assholes.
 

Labor Saving

If I'm understanding the chain of events correctly, this was posted to X, then picked up by a magazine called Edge, where someone photographed it, and then it was posted to LinkedIn.

I understand the sentiment expressed in this posting. But it illustrates one of the pitfalls of the current debate around generative automated systems (I've stopped calling them "A.I." They're not intelligent, and are a long way from being so.)

And that pitfall can be expressed as a question: Why are people who perform paid domestic labor more worthy of having their livelihoods automated away than knowledge workers? Because another good way to have more time to do art and writing is to pay someone else to do laundry and dishes.

If the general perspective on "AI" is that it should treat some groups of people as valuable, and others as expendable, then each group's fighting for its self-interest will ensure that everyone loses.

The widespread anxiety about increasing automation is the sense that it's being driven because people begrudge each other their salaries (often due to a sense of their own poverty), rather than there being more productive work than the current available labor force can manage. It's more or less a given that many investors in companies begrudge the money that is paid out in salaries, and the moment that an automated system becomes "good enough" to do passable work at lower cost, the layoffs will begin.

And so a fight in which what people are fighting for is to have their jobs preserved while others are cut, so that they can access services more cheaply will simply end in more people being laid off. Because once it's profitable to have automation do laundry, dishes, art and writing, there will be plenty of time for other chores, given the number of people who won't have to take a break to work a job.

Everyone For Themselves

The idea of Americans as individualistic is somewhere between stereotype and cliché. The United States is well known for prizing a rugged self-sufficiency dating back to when most of country was frontier land, and a settler's nearest neighbors may have been miles away. While there are still parts of the country where the next house is over the horizon, the idea of the open frontier is viewed as a relic of a past long-gone. But the virtuousness of individualism persists, and I've started to wonder why.

There's a phrase that I've come to associate with a certain Conservative mindset of the past few years: "No-one is coming to save us." And as I've encountered it more and more, my understanding of the ethic of self-sufficiency started to change. American culture isn't as much individualistic as it is isolating. If one views the broader society as being some combination of indifferent and unreliable, then being ready, willing and able to do everything for oneself starts to make quite a bit of sense. And if other people won't or can't come to one's assistance in a time of need, why spend the time and effort needed to be ready to assist them?

The lack of social trust that is so evident in the United States started to have a broader reason than simple disunity; the idea that large parts of American society had been set up to operate well in circumstances where social trust was, for whatever reason, lacking. And once the system had been shown to operate reasonably well without that trust, the general lack of need for it inhibited its growth. (After all, the United States has managed to do quite a bit without ever needing to be broadly unified.)

While I think that smaller groups feel the lack of social cohesion more acutely than larger groups, I think that everyone feels it to some degree or another. But the society as a whole doesn't feel it strongly enough to perceive it as a problem that needs fixing.