Archive for Improving Society
Short version of this post: I recommend not using the “popcorn” system to have people in a meeting introduce themselves, because there are a variety of ways that that system can cause stress and upset to participants. Long version follows. Background A couple of times now, I’ve been in social-justice-related video calls with a bunch […]
Here are the organizations I’m donating to in 2021. Most of this list is repeated from 2020 (and earlier years), but since that last post I’ve removed a couple of organizations and added a couple of others. (In 2020, I apparently failed to add a couple of new organizations, so I’m marking those as new […]
Here’s a roundup of some responses to, and works that could be seen as being in dialogue with, Tom Godwin’s 1954 story “The Cold Equations.” (The original story is also available online.) The first five links below are nonfiction; the rest are fiction. I should note that I don’t really want to host yet another […]
“one does not simply walk away from Omelas” (—Frumiosa, in a comment at The Toast) There’ve been many many nonfiction articles about Omelas, but the pieces that I’m linking to here are all presented as fiction. “A House by the Sea,” by P. H. Lee What happens to the Omelas child when they get older? […]
More about Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader who was killed by Chicago police at age 21 in 1969. Starting with this 65-tweet thread (from 2020) about Hampton, and about ways in which we white Americans are often raised on lies about Black American history. Below are links to some of the pieces that that […]
The other day I saw a list of recommended Apple TV+ shows, and on the list was a show called Ted Lasso. It looked like something I would never have the slightest interest in, so I moved on. Short version of this post: I was wrong; it turns out to be a remarkable and lovely […]
Here are the organizations I’m donating to in 2020. Much of this is repeated from 2019 (and earlier years), but since that last post I’ve removed a couple of organizations and added a couple of others. The list is categorized for ease of scanning, though the categories are somewhat arbitrary in some places. Some items […]
Here are the organizations I’m donating to in 2019. (I used to post my list every year, but haven’t managed to post it since 2013.) Much of this is repeated from 2013 (and earlier years), but since that last post I’ve removed nine organizations and added thirty-five others. The list is categorized for ease of […]
I have some thoughts that I feel like are connected to each other, but they’re not quite cohering into an essay. So here are some not-quite-cohering thoughts. (Content warning for descriptions of various forms of exoticizing/Othering.) Mary Anne wrote an interesting post recently about (among other things) whether non–Sri Lankans are reading the Sri Lankan […]
Two years ago, the first time I attended an all-group meeting for the Cloud Documentation group at my day job, I noticed that people in the audience were asking questions that were largely inaudible to much of the rest of the audience, including me. (And completely inaudible to people who were attending the meeting remotely, […]
I understand why people who are giving talks or writing articles use phrases like these that assume a shared experience: We’ve all had the experience of … Everyone here knows … You’d be surprised at … But I’d like to recommend not doing that. Such phrases are very often inaccurate (twice yesterday, presenters said things […]
When I criticize someone in the past for having done something that I consider bad by my own modern standards, I often get pushback from friends who say things like: “He was just a man of his time. [Alternative phrasing: a product of his time.] You can’t/shouldn’t judge him by modern standards!” (I’m using he […]