Lore Olympus and Slut Shaming
Mar. 20th, 2021 09:30 pmI'm getting increasingly Not Okay with how Lore Olympus is handling Minthe.
( Lore Olympus Spoilers )
( Lore Olympus Spoilers )
Google Certifications
Mar. 14th, 2021 05:11 pmAre these Google certifications worth anything? The advertising algorithms seem to think I would be interested in. There are circumstances under which I might be (good job, ad algorithms!) if they are worth anything. (We'll see how the python self-study shakes out first.)
Culture Warlords
Mar. 9th, 2021 11:55 amThis is another one that I'll probably post a proper review of when I finish it, but so far--- which is not very far, honestly-- my principal reaction is "You... realize that going and staring at alt-right chatrooms where they're talking about how they want to rape you, not just people in your marginalized groups (which is bad enough) but you, specifically, is a form of self-harm, right? This is a thing you are aware of?"
Because I'm getting the strong sense she's not, in fact, aware of that; the genesis of this book seems to have been deliberately seeking out alt-right spaces and lurking in them reading all the awful stuff without taking mental health breaks. She even talks in the introduction about how incandescent rage is basically the only emotion she's been having for months. (Yes, this is infuriating! It is worth being infuriated about! But the way she's talking about it makes me just sort of shudder and go "This cannot possibly be healthy.")
Because I'm getting the strong sense she's not, in fact, aware of that; the genesis of this book seems to have been deliberately seeking out alt-right spaces and lurking in them reading all the awful stuff without taking mental health breaks. She even talks in the introduction about how incandescent rage is basically the only emotion she's been having for months. (Yes, this is infuriating! It is worth being infuriated about! But the way she's talking about it makes me just sort of shudder and go "This cannot possibly be healthy.")
Bitcoin is Now a Thing
Mar. 7th, 2021 10:58 pmI'm not sure if this is new or if I just didn't notice it last year, but the tax software now includes a question about whether I've traded cryptocurrency in the last year.
(I have not. But I have been somewhat worriedly staring at the news of Wall Street investment places getting into bitcoin; that is not going to help with the "this is a ridiculous speculative thing and the sooner the bubble bursts the better off we'll all be" aspect of it.)
(I have not. But I have been somewhat worriedly staring at the news of Wall Street investment places getting into bitcoin; that is not going to help with the "this is a ridiculous speculative thing and the sooner the bubble bursts the better off we'll all be" aspect of it.)
Further Readings of Trauma and Recovery
Feb. 20th, 2021 10:25 pmThe copy of Trauma and Recovery I have is my mother's copy. She was apparently the sort of person who did a lot of marking up her professional reading, as it's covered in highlighter and some marginal notes. Usually the marginal notes are just summations of the text. Sometimes she makes extrapolations; very occasionally she'll ask a question.
And then there's this passage: "Folk wisdom recognizes that to forgive is divine. And even divine forgiveness, in most religious systems, is not unconditional. True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance, and restitution."
Beside this she has made a small vertical mark to indicate what the note is referring to, and then just written "No."
I'm just like "Your Catholic upbringing is showing."
(For all she ran away from it at the first opportunity-- including throwing a fit and refusing to let me be baptized like her mother wanted--she kept a lot of the outlooks, and did not seem to realize this about herself. I somehow managed to come out more like the Jewish side of the family than the Christian side; note that my current round of finding myself is heavily focused on connecting with my Judaism.)
And then there's this passage: "Folk wisdom recognizes that to forgive is divine. And even divine forgiveness, in most religious systems, is not unconditional. True forgiveness cannot be granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance, and restitution."
Beside this she has made a small vertical mark to indicate what the note is referring to, and then just written "No."
I'm just like "Your Catholic upbringing is showing."
(For all she ran away from it at the first opportunity-- including throwing a fit and refusing to let me be baptized like her mother wanted--she kept a lot of the outlooks, and did not seem to realize this about herself. I somehow managed to come out more like the Jewish side of the family than the Christian side; note that my current round of finding myself is heavily focused on connecting with my Judaism.)
Bad Takes!
Feb. 16th, 2021 07:43 pmAnd the INEVITABLE bad follow-up take from the Baen Books thing: "There oughta be a law!"
Specifically, that maybe it's time to reconsider Safe Harbor laws and make companies legally liable for speech on their platforms.
This is what the DMCA does. I know of NO ONE who thinks that has worked out well, and malicious DMCA takedown notices are quite common. Do you really want to expand that to the entire internet?
Like, yes, Baen is absolutely being bad here. I am in favor of them losing customers and reputation over this, and for anyone making actionable speech to get gone after, particularly the death threats crowd.
But no, Baen should not be liable for the speech; there are way too many knock-on effects from that which we don't want. Ye Gods, people, think about all the ways a law can be weaponized against the most powerless groups you like and how you will build in systemic blocks that are not "But it's not meant to be applied that way!" before you start agitating for it.
(There's also the usual ranting about how we should expand hate speech laws, but I've been over why that's a bad idea here before; I don't need to do it again.)
Specifically, that maybe it's time to reconsider Safe Harbor laws and make companies legally liable for speech on their platforms.
This is what the DMCA does. I know of NO ONE who thinks that has worked out well, and malicious DMCA takedown notices are quite common. Do you really want to expand that to the entire internet?
Like, yes, Baen is absolutely being bad here. I am in favor of them losing customers and reputation over this, and for anyone making actionable speech to get gone after, particularly the death threats crowd.
But no, Baen should not be liable for the speech; there are way too many knock-on effects from that which we don't want. Ye Gods, people, think about all the ways a law can be weaponized against the most powerless groups you like and how you will build in systemic blocks that are not "But it's not meant to be applied that way!" before you start agitating for it.
(There's also the usual ranting about how we should expand hate speech laws, but I've been over why that's a bad idea here before; I don't need to do it again.)
Signal Boost: Baen Books Nazis
Feb. 15th, 2021 11:37 pmJason Sandford has published an investigative report on the people advocating for a second civil war on the Baen Books forums. Well-written, deeply horrifying, highly recommended.
Therapy History
Feb. 15th, 2021 09:49 pmI'm reading Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery, the book that first named complex PTSD and is still one of the seminal PTSD books. There are some interesting moments where, if you know what else was going in 1992, it becomes very obvious that she's trying to comment on both the satanic ritual abuse stuff and the memory wars without actually coming right out and commenting on either of them. She outright says at one point that therapists going "You have clearly suffered ritual abuse" based on a symptom list should not be doing that and implies that the "ritual abuse specialists" are practicing irresponsibly, but both of these are brief asides in a more detailed discussion about amnesia and recovered memory in PTSD. She also remonstrates the recovered-memory people a bit by pointing out that you really shouldn't need dramatics most of the time: talking about what the patient is currently feeling is usually enough to start memories surfacing on its own, and if after a lot of doing that there are still major memory gaps "judicious use of powerful techniques" may be warranted, and goes on to describe much calmer forms of hypnosis than the ones that got famous, with a heavy emphasis on leaving control in the hands of the patient. And I'm just looking at this like "Yeah, you were totally trying to be a voice of reason without actually saying that's what you were doing." (The book does show its age in this respect: while she's clear you shouldn't use anything on her last-resort list until the traditional approach has failed exhaustively, group therapy and hypnosis have fallen out of favor for that sort of thing these days and no one ethical is still using sodium amytal.)
This supports something else I read recently that was talking about memory gaps and the recovery thereof having been largely uncontroversial within war-based PTSD treatment and only got controversial when people started talking about child-abuse based trauma, which there was much less opportunity for external corroboration, since most of the war memories had a lot of other people present and military reports documenting them. Though I think it also has something to do with that being when the dramatic and unreliable methods of memory retrieval started getting popular. (As an aside, I don't remember which Elizabeth Loftus book I read, but I've read one of them-- one of the later ones, since she talked about experiences she'd had since getting famous. She didn't prove repressed memories don't exist; she proved false memories are possible. That gets lost a lot in discussing her work. As does her resigning from APA suspiciously close to an ethics complaint being brought, almost like someone tipped her off there was about to be an investigation.)
I like studying the history of psychology, and this is a neat example of putting pieces together through context clues in a book about something else: this is how the contemporary people talked about it.
This supports something else I read recently that was talking about memory gaps and the recovery thereof having been largely uncontroversial within war-based PTSD treatment and only got controversial when people started talking about child-abuse based trauma, which there was much less opportunity for external corroboration, since most of the war memories had a lot of other people present and military reports documenting them. Though I think it also has something to do with that being when the dramatic and unreliable methods of memory retrieval started getting popular. (As an aside, I don't remember which Elizabeth Loftus book I read, but I've read one of them-- one of the later ones, since she talked about experiences she'd had since getting famous. She didn't prove repressed memories don't exist; she proved false memories are possible. That gets lost a lot in discussing her work. As does her resigning from APA suspiciously close to an ethics complaint being brought, almost like someone tipped her off there was about to be an investigation.)
I like studying the history of psychology, and this is a neat example of putting pieces together through context clues in a book about something else: this is how the contemporary people talked about it.
In Which We Learn to Code
Feb. 13th, 2021 10:54 pmEver have those days where you are absolutely certain you have somehow messed up the process despite getting something that produces the answer the book asks for?
I am learning about lists and loops in my Python book. Logically this specific exercise is clearly an extension of the whole "x = x + 1" conceptual problem which I had to get Mathfriend to explain to me in very small words but have a good handle on now.
You are given a list: xs = [12, 10, 32, 3, 66, 17, 42, 99, 20]
The assignment is to find the product of the list using a loop.
This works:
total = int(1)
for xs in [12, 10, 32, 3, 66, 17, 42, 99, 20]:
total = int(total * xs)
print(total)
It produces the desired result. If you omit setting total to 1 at the beginning it complains about total being undefined farther down, which I get. It depends on itself; it needs to start at something. And setting it to start at 1 doesn't mess with the end result. (The previous exercise was addition and it started at zero.)
I cannot shake the feeling I am getting some part of this wrong in some way, possibly in this being the wrong approach to it, but I can't figure out another possible one with the terms the book has described so far. Especially when the addition exercise did explicitly say "set it to zero to start." I just feel like a more elegant way to do it should exist.
(Also welcome to the posts where I complain about my coding lessons. Particularly in self-teaching I find it easier to actually sit down to do things if I'm writing up a Dreamwidth post about them, so you'll be getting some chronicling of my Adventures in Code coming up.)
I am learning about lists and loops in my Python book. Logically this specific exercise is clearly an extension of the whole "x = x + 1" conceptual problem which I had to get Mathfriend to explain to me in very small words but have a good handle on now.
You are given a list: xs = [12, 10, 32, 3, 66, 17, 42, 99, 20]
The assignment is to find the product of the list using a loop.
This works:
total = int(1)
for xs in [12, 10, 32, 3, 66, 17, 42, 99, 20]:
total = int(total * xs)
print(total)
It produces the desired result. If you omit setting total to 1 at the beginning it complains about total being undefined farther down, which I get. It depends on itself; it needs to start at something. And setting it to start at 1 doesn't mess with the end result. (The previous exercise was addition and it started at zero.)
I cannot shake the feeling I am getting some part of this wrong in some way, possibly in this being the wrong approach to it, but I can't figure out another possible one with the terms the book has described so far. Especially when the addition exercise did explicitly say "set it to zero to start." I just feel like a more elegant way to do it should exist.
(Also welcome to the posts where I complain about my coding lessons. Particularly in self-teaching I find it easier to actually sit down to do things if I'm writing up a Dreamwidth post about them, so you'll be getting some chronicling of my Adventures in Code coming up.)
Magnus Archives: FORESHADOWING
Feb. 11th, 2021 08:50 pmWELL LOOK WHAT CAME BACK!( Cut for Spoilers )
Meat, Part II
Feb. 8th, 2021 01:40 amI am now on a waiting list for meat!
The welcome email is very friendly and includes a lot of useful details, like that I am likely to get cuts of meat not seen in grocery stores, which to my mind is *good*. (Well, okay, as long as I can exclude specific organ meats if those are among the cuts-- I like liver fine but can't digest it, and other organs I don't really know what to do with but will be delighted to have once I can cook with Mathfriend and![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
benign_cremator again.)
They are hoping I can expect my first shipment in a couple of months but they are having some issues with COVID and their supply chains that's affecting their ability to onboard new people. So at some point in the future I shall have more variety in my meat choices, delivered to my doorstep.
MEAT!
The welcome email is very friendly and includes a lot of useful details, like that I am likely to get cuts of meat not seen in grocery stores, which to my mind is *good*. (Well, okay, as long as I can exclude specific organ meats if those are among the cuts-- I like liver fine but can't digest it, and other organs I don't really know what to do with but will be delighted to have once I can cook with Mathfriend and
benign_cremator again.)They are hoping I can expect my first shipment in a couple of months but they are having some issues with COVID and their supply chains that's affecting their ability to onboard new people. So at some point in the future I shall have more variety in my meat choices, delivered to my doorstep.
MEAT!
In Which I Joined a Podcast
Jan. 28th, 2021 02:04 pmApparently what hanging out in Magic-related Discord servers gets you is "Hey, what if we had a podcast?" invitations. So, look, I'm in a podcast!
https://www.mtgnexus.com/articles/1084-wnxs-episode-1
https://www.mtgnexus.com/articles/1084-wnxs-episode-1
Mystery Hunt Con Report
Jan. 18th, 2021 04:25 pmMostly I'm just beyond exhausted. Mystery Hunt is probably the most exhausting event I do every year even when we do it in person; I recall my first Mystery Hunt I was only physically there on Friday and afterwards I was more exhausted than after an entire Arisia. That's gotten a bit better with time and acclimation-- this was my third Mystery Hunt-- but Friday night still ended the same way it's ended the last two Mystery Hunts: Mathfriend gently suggesting that I'm not having fun anymore and would feel better after sleeping.
Mystery Hunt this year was really cool and had some incredibly high production values: they built us an entire MMO with a recreation of the MIT campus and had Hunt in that. According to wrap-up, they were planning that before the lockdowns started with the idea that they'd have a lot of "some team members need to be in the spot in the MMO and some need to be in the corresponding spot in physical reality," but once it became apparent that we couldn't have it in person, the virtual world took on more importance. They took the opportunity to do some neat things they'd never be able to do in physical reality, like designing a round around the Infinite Corridor being truly infinite and having some puzzle unlocks that were dependent on exploring the virtual world.
The story was also very cute and creative, centered on the experimental cosmology department at MIT opening a portal to a perpendicular universe and sending some stuff through, and then sending a professor through. Initially the problem is just "there are errors in the cross-universe communication device we need to fix," and then "we need to fix the portal so we can rescue Professor Yew," (with the MMO's conceit being that it's a projection device to let us safely project avatars of ourselves into the "Perpendicular Institute of the World") but eventually Professor Hemlock, one of the theoretical cosmologists from the other side, comes through into our universe to yell at everyone for scientific irresponsibility because if we don't get all matter back into its correct universe both universes will collapse; they're not meant to mix that way. And no one on our side even thought to ask whether dangerous side effects were possible.
(Professor Hemlock gets the best line in the whole thing: "I'm a theoretical cosmologist at the Perpendicular Institute of the World." "Oh! We're experimental cosmologists." "Yes, I noticed.")
Also cute: while the final runaround took place in game, there were also a couple of the organizers running masked around the deserted MIT campus streaming the equivalent runaround in the real world.
As usual my part in it was mostly the corraling of the non-puzzle puzzles-- there are always one or two that are like "Go make a thing." This year I baked sugar cookies in the shape of the team emoji and sent a picture in, and made sure the pictures of team members eating and drinking (as a subtle hint to not get so involved in puzzling you forget to eat) got sent in. Also one of the items on the obligatory scavenger hunt puzzle was "library stacks," which was right up my alley. (With a pun, not with going into a library.) But I also got to contribute somewhat to the *actual* puzzles this year. Not a huge amount, but I made real, measurable contributions to our progress. Which I think is a first. (I was also intensely delighted when the aftermath of baking the cookies was a Zoom call with HQ. I got my very own mini-interaction!)
We were able to order physical puzzles (as "conference swag", since we were all there for an experimental cosmology conference) ahead of time, although the one I ordered was sufficiently complex that we did not solve it and after solutions were posted I was staring at the solution and I *still* don't get it. I'm going to try again tomorrow with more brain. (I am getting the sense that my weekly call with Mathfriend is going to be *entirely* occupied by post-gaming Mystery Hunt this week.) I am regretful about not ordering the water bottle puzzle because then I would have a Mystery Hunt water bottle.
We were among only twelve teams to finish the entire hunt, but closer to the bottom than the top timewise-- which is *fine*, because the winner has to run next year's, and running Mystery Hunt is a huge undertaking. (As our team leader put it: "we finished comfortably out of contention.") Winner seems to move back and forth between the same few teams each year. We often finish, because we want to see the entire hunt. We are actually one of the larger teams-- certainly larger than some of the ones known for winning-- but we're very casual about it, and heavy attention to efficiency counts for a lot with winning.
(Dinner tonight was delivery food. I in no way have the spoons to think about cooking. Fortunately I was bright enough to take tomorrow off...)
Mystery Hunt this year was really cool and had some incredibly high production values: they built us an entire MMO with a recreation of the MIT campus and had Hunt in that. According to wrap-up, they were planning that before the lockdowns started with the idea that they'd have a lot of "some team members need to be in the spot in the MMO and some need to be in the corresponding spot in physical reality," but once it became apparent that we couldn't have it in person, the virtual world took on more importance. They took the opportunity to do some neat things they'd never be able to do in physical reality, like designing a round around the Infinite Corridor being truly infinite and having some puzzle unlocks that were dependent on exploring the virtual world.
The story was also very cute and creative, centered on the experimental cosmology department at MIT opening a portal to a perpendicular universe and sending some stuff through, and then sending a professor through. Initially the problem is just "there are errors in the cross-universe communication device we need to fix," and then "we need to fix the portal so we can rescue Professor Yew," (with the MMO's conceit being that it's a projection device to let us safely project avatars of ourselves into the "Perpendicular Institute of the World") but eventually Professor Hemlock, one of the theoretical cosmologists from the other side, comes through into our universe to yell at everyone for scientific irresponsibility because if we don't get all matter back into its correct universe both universes will collapse; they're not meant to mix that way. And no one on our side even thought to ask whether dangerous side effects were possible.
(Professor Hemlock gets the best line in the whole thing: "I'm a theoretical cosmologist at the Perpendicular Institute of the World." "Oh! We're experimental cosmologists." "Yes, I noticed.")
Also cute: while the final runaround took place in game, there were also a couple of the organizers running masked around the deserted MIT campus streaming the equivalent runaround in the real world.
As usual my part in it was mostly the corraling of the non-puzzle puzzles-- there are always one or two that are like "Go make a thing." This year I baked sugar cookies in the shape of the team emoji and sent a picture in, and made sure the pictures of team members eating and drinking (as a subtle hint to not get so involved in puzzling you forget to eat) got sent in. Also one of the items on the obligatory scavenger hunt puzzle was "library stacks," which was right up my alley. (With a pun, not with going into a library.) But I also got to contribute somewhat to the *actual* puzzles this year. Not a huge amount, but I made real, measurable contributions to our progress. Which I think is a first. (I was also intensely delighted when the aftermath of baking the cookies was a Zoom call with HQ. I got my very own mini-interaction!)
We were able to order physical puzzles (as "conference swag", since we were all there for an experimental cosmology conference) ahead of time, although the one I ordered was sufficiently complex that we did not solve it and after solutions were posted I was staring at the solution and I *still* don't get it. I'm going to try again tomorrow with more brain. (I am getting the sense that my weekly call with Mathfriend is going to be *entirely* occupied by post-gaming Mystery Hunt this week.) I am regretful about not ordering the water bottle puzzle because then I would have a Mystery Hunt water bottle.
We were among only twelve teams to finish the entire hunt, but closer to the bottom than the top timewise-- which is *fine*, because the winner has to run next year's, and running Mystery Hunt is a huge undertaking. (As our team leader put it: "we finished comfortably out of contention.") Winner seems to move back and forth between the same few teams each year. We often finish, because we want to see the entire hunt. We are actually one of the larger teams-- certainly larger than some of the ones known for winning-- but we're very casual about it, and heavy attention to efficiency counts for a lot with winning.
(Dinner tonight was delivery food. I in no way have the spoons to think about cooking. Fortunately I was bright enough to take tomorrow off...)
Existential Terror
Jan. 6th, 2021 09:50 pmI am, apparently, someone who copes with existential terror by writing villanelles. (It is surprisingly helpful. Villanelles are so complicated that fighting through it is a good distraction .)
Watchful waiting has a cost
Meet peril’s ambush unaware
This is how the war is lost.
Stay your course, let fear exhaust
Claim it’s delusion to prepare
Watchful waiting has a cost.
Thoughts and prayers with blood embossed
Empty words meant not to scare
This is how the war is lost.
Illicit power is not crossed
Deny, avoid, ignore, beware
Watchful waiting has a cost.
Blood-fed petals will be tossed
Maintain denial if you dare
This is how the war is lost.
Peace shall fade in killing frost
With enmity beyond compare
Watchful waiting has a cost.
This is how the war is lost.
Watchful waiting has a cost
Meet peril’s ambush unaware
This is how the war is lost.
Stay your course, let fear exhaust
Claim it’s delusion to prepare
Watchful waiting has a cost.
Thoughts and prayers with blood embossed
Empty words meant not to scare
This is how the war is lost.
Illicit power is not crossed
Deny, avoid, ignore, beware
Watchful waiting has a cost.
Blood-fed petals will be tossed
Maintain denial if you dare
This is how the war is lost.
Peace shall fade in killing frost
With enmity beyond compare
Watchful waiting has a cost.
This is how the war is lost.
Anatomy of a Meat Share
Jan. 5th, 2021 06:03 pmI require a certain amount of meat in my diet to function, both because if I'm not eating enough red meat I start getting sick (and it does *have* to be beef or buffalo or goat or similar; I've tested it) and because there are so many other things I can't eat that it needs to form part of the thing I can.
I would rather do the meat from local farms; I've established recently that meat not from local farms doesn't taste good.
Walden Local will sell me, for $50 every other month, 5 pounds of meat every other month-- I think at least a pound of that is ground meat and the rest is assorted other things which I would be much less willing to consider had I not discovered the magic of crock pots. (Also it arrives frozen so I do have time to figure out how to cook anything weird.) And I'd need to either check off the "no sausage" box or find a way to query whether their sausage routinely contains fruits or mushrooms.
There's no commitment involved, so I suppose there's no harm in trying it--- especially if I also invest in small tupperwares so leftover roast can be frozen in portion size-- but I'm still mentally going "That is... actually a *lot* of meat..." (On the other hand, I suspect this would actually bring my food costs *down*, since it would have the effect of me buying less by way of snack foods and insta-foods and more of my meals being "wrap leftover meat in tortilla; have done with it." Especially if I got enough tupperware to go back to "make hand pies, freeze" as a viable survival tactic.)
I would rather do the meat from local farms; I've established recently that meat not from local farms doesn't taste good.
Walden Local will sell me, for $50 every other month, 5 pounds of meat every other month-- I think at least a pound of that is ground meat and the rest is assorted other things which I would be much less willing to consider had I not discovered the magic of crock pots. (Also it arrives frozen so I do have time to figure out how to cook anything weird.) And I'd need to either check off the "no sausage" box or find a way to query whether their sausage routinely contains fruits or mushrooms.
There's no commitment involved, so I suppose there's no harm in trying it--- especially if I also invest in small tupperwares so leftover roast can be frozen in portion size-- but I'm still mentally going "That is... actually a *lot* of meat..." (On the other hand, I suspect this would actually bring my food costs *down*, since it would have the effect of me buying less by way of snack foods and insta-foods and more of my meals being "wrap leftover meat in tortilla; have done with it." Especially if I got enough tupperware to go back to "make hand pies, freeze" as a viable survival tactic.)
Book Review: Waking Up White
Jan. 1st, 2021 02:13 pmWhy could this not have been the popular anti-racism book, if what we're looking for is "white woman talks about the process of becoming an ally?"
The book in question is Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving. I think I would only use it as a first introductory book with white people who have themselves had privileged enough lives that the mention of a country club doesn't cause some kind of instinctive disdain, because the first part of the book is her journey of coming to racial awakening and that starts with a very privileged childhood. I don't think it will land the same way for anyone who grew up poor. She does discuss race-versus-class a bit at the beginning, but I do think people who didn't grow up with money are going to have a ready excuse to be dismissive.
However, for people who did grow up with the kind of privilege she describes, the book is potentially incredibly valuable. There no heavy academic theory in this, and no intense performativity. Instead, she starts with an explanation of her own childhood and how she was encouraged to brush anything even vaguely unpleasant under the rug, and mistakes she made with her early zeal to "help the less fortunate" and the resultant seeing herself as savior/rescuer. Then she was late registering for classes during her master's degree and the only thing that had spots was the racial justice class... and it appears to have been a very good racial justice class, one aware of the effect it was having on the participants. But she's also very clear that having been woken up wasn't the end; it was the beginning-- she goes on to describe a lot of learning experiences she had later, including some truly cringe-inducing mistakes.
From there, she goes to broader questions of "what immediate behavioral changes can you make," with sections for both inner work (reflection and changing your thought process) and outer work (start thinking about ways you can contribute positively to changing society). She still keeps it focused, though-- broad patterns are discussed, but they're discussed in layman's terms and illustrated with anecdotes from her life.
The chapters are short, and each one a question to answer at the end, or a couple of related questions. It took me so long to get through it in part because I was writing my answers down and some of them required time to think about.
At the end, there's a section called "Tell Me What To Do," which includes further reading, ways to engage with the people of color around you, ways to evaluate whether the anti-racism you've found is helping or further perpetuating the problem, and places to donate to.
(Some of you might remember my scathing review of White Fragility back in July, and I haven't been able to stop myself mentally comparing them as I read, since they're both introductions to racism written by privileged white women. To my mind the biggest difference between the two books is the focus: DiAngelo wants to make sure you feel bad-- and indeed seems to consider making you feel bad to be the entire point of the exercise-- while Irving wants to make sure you're equipped to help, and I know which one I think is more useful to enacting long-term change. But Irving also wants to make sure you can understand what she's saying; she's well-educated but she's not actually an academic, and it shows-- she's careful to use clear, plain language throughout.)
So this one is highly recommended! It's practical, it's focused, and it acknowledges that everyone will make mistakes but also that those mistakes aren't the end of the world if you learn from them.
The book in question is Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving. I think I would only use it as a first introductory book with white people who have themselves had privileged enough lives that the mention of a country club doesn't cause some kind of instinctive disdain, because the first part of the book is her journey of coming to racial awakening and that starts with a very privileged childhood. I don't think it will land the same way for anyone who grew up poor. She does discuss race-versus-class a bit at the beginning, but I do think people who didn't grow up with money are going to have a ready excuse to be dismissive.
However, for people who did grow up with the kind of privilege she describes, the book is potentially incredibly valuable. There no heavy academic theory in this, and no intense performativity. Instead, she starts with an explanation of her own childhood and how she was encouraged to brush anything even vaguely unpleasant under the rug, and mistakes she made with her early zeal to "help the less fortunate" and the resultant seeing herself as savior/rescuer. Then she was late registering for classes during her master's degree and the only thing that had spots was the racial justice class... and it appears to have been a very good racial justice class, one aware of the effect it was having on the participants. But she's also very clear that having been woken up wasn't the end; it was the beginning-- she goes on to describe a lot of learning experiences she had later, including some truly cringe-inducing mistakes.
From there, she goes to broader questions of "what immediate behavioral changes can you make," with sections for both inner work (reflection and changing your thought process) and outer work (start thinking about ways you can contribute positively to changing society). She still keeps it focused, though-- broad patterns are discussed, but they're discussed in layman's terms and illustrated with anecdotes from her life.
The chapters are short, and each one a question to answer at the end, or a couple of related questions. It took me so long to get through it in part because I was writing my answers down and some of them required time to think about.
At the end, there's a section called "Tell Me What To Do," which includes further reading, ways to engage with the people of color around you, ways to evaluate whether the anti-racism you've found is helping or further perpetuating the problem, and places to donate to.
(Some of you might remember my scathing review of White Fragility back in July, and I haven't been able to stop myself mentally comparing them as I read, since they're both introductions to racism written by privileged white women. To my mind the biggest difference between the two books is the focus: DiAngelo wants to make sure you feel bad-- and indeed seems to consider making you feel bad to be the entire point of the exercise-- while Irving wants to make sure you're equipped to help, and I know which one I think is more useful to enacting long-term change. But Irving also wants to make sure you can understand what she's saying; she's well-educated but she's not actually an academic, and it shows-- she's careful to use clear, plain language throughout.)
So this one is highly recommended! It's practical, it's focused, and it acknowledges that everyone will make mistakes but also that those mistakes aren't the end of the world if you learn from them.
Important Guidelines
Dec. 28th, 2020 07:19 pmFound in submission guidelines: "Please make sure your submission is actually attached to your email."
Which is a good and important reminder-- Google has stopped me a couple of times with "you wrote attached in your email; do you want to attach something?" when I've forgotten this myself-- I'm just amused at how often this apparently happens.
I was similarly amused a while back when I encountered a list of "topics we don't want to see" which included "stories in which global warming is caused by a magical creature." That definitely sounds like it would be hard to do well-- I'm certainly not going to try-- but I'm also slightly boggled by the number of stories they must have gotten on that subject to decide it was necessary to say up front "please don't do that." I don't think I've ever thought "Yes, I want to write a story where global warming is all the magical creatures' fault."
Which is a good and important reminder-- Google has stopped me a couple of times with "you wrote attached in your email; do you want to attach something?" when I've forgotten this myself-- I'm just amused at how often this apparently happens.
I was similarly amused a while back when I encountered a list of "topics we don't want to see" which included "stories in which global warming is caused by a magical creature." That definitely sounds like it would be hard to do well-- I'm certainly not going to try-- but I'm also slightly boggled by the number of stories they must have gotten on that subject to decide it was necessary to say up front "please don't do that." I don't think I've ever thought "Yes, I want to write a story where global warming is all the magical creatures' fault."
