Lately I feel like so many men in my life refuse to hear me. I am so tired of having things I say immediately – IMMEDIATELY – contradicted, without the other party even taking the time to consider and think through and ask questions about what I said. The arrogance and dismissiveness are astounding and…More
Category Archives: Politics
GOP vs. Democratic Party in a nutshell
As revealed by the recent power emergency in Texas: The GOP invents emergencies in order to gain power. The Democratic Party uses its power to provide relief to citizens in actual emergencies. The two parties are not the same.More
Cognitive load and the morning sweat sesh
My first “read” book of 2021 was Dan Ariely’s The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty. It’s awesome. And terrifying, if you are someone who is earnestly trying to strive for honesty and believes honesty to be a bedrock of the moral life. (I still question just how far to take the goodness of honesty, but I’ll…More
In-between thoughts: wtf
I don’t have a lot of coherent, non-ragey, non-heartbroken thoughts right now, especially while grunting and sweating through a progressive overload leg workout, because of THINGS. So here is some ramble. How are we supposed to keep going with normal life? There is a pandemic. Fully one of two of our political parties are fine…More
Review: Aspiration by Agnes Callard
I haven’t done a book review in a looooong time. Years. (I do consider my year-long project of reading and commenting on every chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology to be some kind of review, but NONE OF YOU ARE READING THOSE AND I AM TOTALLY NOT MIFFED BY THIS AT ALL.) This…More
Unlearning “whiteness as the norm”
As many white people in the US these past couple of weeks, I’ve been taking a hard, hard look at who I am, how I behave and let myself be influenced, and what aspects of white supremacy I currently enable through my ignorance or desire to stay comfortable. It’s not pretty. One of my biggest…More
We do what we have been rewarded to do
I was listening to a podcast that featured an addiction researcher, and he was talking about how addiction manifests in the brain. He highlighted our learning method, which is something that has not evolved significantly since our ape ancestors: Trigger > Behavior > Reward Most behavior programs, such as recovery or diets, apply a kind…More
The best things I read in summer 2019
This summer was weird and wonderful in its own ways. Kind of hard, but good?! I’m still processing some of it. I have some big decisions to make in my life that are scary because they feel final (though it doesn’t have to be final, but of course my brain immediately goes to most extreme…More
Changing policies, changing minds
There’s a tension between standing up for what is right, unapologetically and strongly, and the need to “meet people where they are” to have a productive dialogue and, frankly, to having the best chance to change their minds. The first works well for policy changes, the second better interpersonally. I don’t have much to say…More
Power addendum
I just read that a majority of white women in Alabama voted for Roy Moore. White Women Keep F*cking Us Over (Apologies for the language.) I want to think through this more before saying anything definitive, but I do have some initial thoughts. I agree that white women are a problematic group in the US,…More
