Most rejected, and all institutions let the clock run out on the deal. Guess Kornbluth set a trend. Trump has expanded the compact to all colleges: we’ll see if anyone bites.

Interesting idea.

Firstly, you need to hold in your head the knowledge that you will probably–no, almost certainly–fail. You will need to hold that uncomfortableness in your heart and carry it with you always. Never to share, but always to hold. Ground yourself in the impossibilities of what you’ll attempt, lest your hubris lead you to ruin.

Secondly, you will need to hold firm and irrationally deep conviction. Unshakable. Unshatterable. Conviction that you will succeed. This is the conviction that you have to share, that you have to use to lead people along with you, that you have to embody fully and without reservation.

I think this is the first highly technical Topos Institute blog post where I walked away and felt like I understood everything I was meant to understand. Heck yeah.

When the research being promoted is about sex-differences, the soundbite/clickbait approach involves leading with some attention-grabbing statement about men and women that basically accords with most people’s preconceptions. The message is that Science has now confirmed the accuracy of a commonplace gender stereotype.

We have finally finished the Chinese release which we started 2 years ago. We look at all the work involved.

I have recently figured out two things that networking does, and I want to write up an explanation for my fellow autistics. I don’t think this is everything that networking does—my model of networking still has a lot of question marks in it—but I hope it’s helpful for everyone else who is like “but WHY is employment gated behind my ability to make small talk?”

Sometimes you have a problem, and you observe that other people don’t have this problem. The natural conclusion is that they have some kind of special skill or technique that they used to solve the problem. […] But, in reality, often people aren’t better than you at solving problems. They just never had the problem in the first place.

In the past decade or so, Disney/Pixar movies have undergone a really interesting change.

Unfortunately paywalled, but one nice idea in here:

Pronouns in email signatures are a good idea in any place where you email strangers from a different culture than yours or who are named things like Madison or Skyler, which is to say everywhere. Trans people are a tiny minority of the people whose lives are improved by pronouns in email signatures; most of the benefit goes to people who don’t want to spend twenty minutes googling whether “Prasanta” is a woman’s name. It is irritating to me that such a convenient practice has become associated with the culture war.

From a polyamorous person

Sometimes people say, “obviously, everyone would like to be polyamorous themselves and get to have sex with anyone they want, while their partners are all monogamous and only have sex with them. That way, you get sexual variety and don’t have to feel any jealousy.” I think this is completely false.

and there’s a lot of monogcycle accidents

A tempered wokeness. Pairs well with the Paul Bloom post so read the other day.

But many people who ask questions about trans people are just curious and have no intention of being offensive. And most cis people are as ignorant, and as reasonably ignorant, about trans people as I am about little people, hijabis, seasonal migrant laborers, or Eritrean American immigrants. All things equal, it is good if your response to someone sincerely asking “what does it mean to be nonbinary?” or “so you’re a man, but you got pregnant? How does that work?” or “do you think trans women should play in women’s sports?” is taking a deep breath and trying to explain as best you can.

I think the philosophy of “educate yourself” came from black folks; wondering if the author would believe that there are enough black people around in the US that one cannot be reasonably ignorant.

Part 2 of The Interfaces With Which We Think

over the years, meat-based dishes like jerk chicken and curry goat have become synonymous with Jamaica and a beloved part of its national menu. In more recent years, with global fast food chains serving fried chicken and burgers populating Jamaica’s cities, ital eating has been pushed further to the fringes. In spite of this, many Jamaicans still choose to shun animal products, deeming meat to have been introduced by imperial powers and with no place in a traditional Jamaican diet. For others, the negative health impacts of meat have prompted them them to turn back to Rastafari food preachings.

This is a very practical kind of veganism. Go black diaspora!

Like, ohmigosh, you really gotta work hard to meet people where they are and get them on your side.

Anyone who’s the target of punishment will see what is happening. They don’t want to feel anxious all the time, and they especially don’t want to feel anxious about doing what to them are normal, everyday things. If you try to change their behavior in this way, they will find you annoying and do their best to avoid you, so you can’t create so much conflict inside them. Imagine how much less effective this strategy is, compared to finding a method of convincing that people don’t avoid, or that they might even actively seek out.

I think it’s important to question the script, even if you decide that you like it. You should be able to explain why you like it. This process of questioning is a radical act. A radical, in its non-pejorative usage, is born when someone questions their life and worldview, decides that they want something else, and seeks out others who came to similar conclusions.