bob_roberts

The author's main complaint is that the ACLU has prioritized "immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, and racial justice." But the opposition to these issues (aka the Republican party) is rolling in dark money. The forces against social progress are doing just fine without the ACLU.

I prefer going to the office at least a few days a week, because (a) I like to socialize with other humans, and (b) I want to get out of my "home office", aka corner of the living room. I work with a distributed team, so I definitely don't go in to collaborate. In fact, on days with a lot of meetings, I'm more likely to work from home.

> These are simply numbers that we have collectively settled > upon.

Many a Utopian project began with a premise like this. You can say the same thing about spelling or the calendar, both of which "logically" need reforming.

Netflix does this annoying thing where "Continue watching", "My list", "Trending now", and "Watch it again" appear in randomly different orders each time you log in. It would be like if Word randomly put the File menu on the right sometimes.

fwiw, I found it relevant. It's obviously not _exactly_ the same thing, but "sending an HTTP GET request to a URL" is similar to "viewing HTML source" in that both are totally normally things to expect from a user, so it's hard to see how either could count as "hacking".

For a cloud-based app, that might literally just be at the application gateway. Beyond that, everything could be whatever protocol.

> traditional pronouns

Nobody is banning traditional pronouns.

Item two entries down from this one:

Sicily hits 48.8°C, the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe

(I know there's some question about that reading, but the previous record is 48°)

> This is just a consequence of feminization of society.

I'd say you're using misogyny to justify what sounds like very typical toxic masculinity.

> Why should someone "come out" as anything?

Because the choice is either to hide important aspects of yourself, or else come out, whether that's explicitly by saying something, or implicitly by your actions.

In my case, if I didn't explicitly come out as nonbinary / trans, the change in my wardrobe and appearance was going to "out" myself regardless. It seemed healthier and emotionally safer to be upfront about it with the people I know.

In your example, a person doesn't have to "come out" as heterosexual, they can just introduce their spouse, or mention who they are dating. Maybe in an ideal world that would be the case for everyone, but it's not today.

> Such a small percentage of the population

That's not a good argument for the left to stop defending trans people's rights.

You shouldn't assume that nonbinary and trans people "choose" their identity. They might choose to acknowledge it, to themselves or to others. At least, that's been my experience. It was a realization, not a choice.

I don't know if the connection is that direct or causal, but I'm NB and went through a punk/goth phase in high school, and part of the appeal was that it's an "acceptable" way to be gender non-conforming. (At least within that particular subculture.)

Having a name for something can be powerful.

Technical writer here. I avoid saying something is "simple," because whether it's simple is subjective and is relative to the reader's background knowledge. So at best it's unhelpful, and at worst it can be insulting.

If you're stuck on a task, the last thing you want to hear is that it's really simple.

On the other hand, I would write that X is a simpler approach than Y, if I was comparing two possible approaches.

> then it isn't making things substantially worse

At least in the United States, any encounter with law enforcement can potentially end in violence, so anything that makes it easier to get a questionable warrant will make things worse.

My kid went thought a phase of really liking "Brown Bear, Brown Bear." Probably about the same age. And I think you're right -- it's the anticipation of seeing what the next animal / color combination will be.

Another one in a similar vein, which my kid liked, was "Here Are My Hands"

I love that part, and also "goodnight nobody" - the book starts out being very concrete (saying good night to all the things in the room) then expands out to encompass everything and nothing. It feels at once poetic and childlike.

> Trans peoples existence certainly has been politicized

To expand on this - If a trans person has a coworker who consistent and deliberately mis-genders them, there's no way for the person to have a discussion about it that's not political.

> They're not necessarily ethnic

The first list you posted has a bunch of "funny" East Asian names. That stuff was racist in "Sixteen Candles," there's no excuse for it in a modern workplace.

True - but arguably Trump was too slow to invoke it and it wasn't broad enough. And states had to bid against each other to get PPE, only to have the Feds then seize confiscate some of them.

My main point was we should have had a coordinated response. Framing it as "leaders decided to indefinitely maintain crippling restrictions" is misleading. Lockdowns were necessary at the local level because there wasn't a coherent strategy at the national level. (Again, speaking only of the U.S.)

> our leaders

In the United States at least, that's a bit of a cop out. Lockdowns were applied at the local level and were originally meant to buy time and prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. The Federal government could have then stepped in with mass manufacturing of masks and wide-scale testing. But Trump was reluctant to use the Defense Production Act, and Jared Kushner was put in charge of coordinating PPE supplies, and we saw how that worked out.