- Oct 2022
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www.npr.org www.npr.org
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Perhaps in addition to reparations, we should be taking a closer look at poverty in general. We need to raise up the poorest among us. This will ease the political issue of whites who feel like they're being (unfairly) left behind. It should be a multi-racial effort.
We need to have a second Resonstruction.
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- Dec 2021
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learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com
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After all, imagine we framed the problem differently, the way itmight have been fifty or 100 years ago: as the concentration ofcapital, or oligopoly, or class power. Compared to any of these, aword like ‘inequality’ sounds like it’s practically designed toencourage half-measures and compromise. It’s possible to imagineoverthrowing capitalism or breaking the power of the state, but it’snot clear what eliminating inequality would even mean. (Which kindof inequality? Wealth? Opportunity? Exactly how equal would peoplehave to be in order for us to be able to say we’ve ‘eliminatedinequality’?) The term ‘inequality’ is a way of framing social problemsappropriate to an age of technocratic reformers, who assume fromthe outset that no real vision of social transformation is even on thetable.
A major problem with fighting to "level the playing field" and removing "inequality" is that it doesn't have a concrete feel. What exactly would it mean to eliminate inequality? What measures would one implement? To fix such a problem the issue needs to be better defined. How can the issue be better framed so that it could be fought for or against?
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- Nov 2021
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www.latimes.com www.latimes.com
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Skimmed opening paragraphs in physical newspaper. Want to revisit. This sounds like the sort of "pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps" that actually works.
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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Nuance and ambiguity are essential to good fiction. They are also essential to the rule of law: We have courts, juries, judges, and witnesses precisely so that the state can learn whether a crime has been committed before it administers punishment. We have a presumption of innocence for the accused. We have a right to self-defense. We have a statute of limitations.
Great quote by itself.
How useful is the statute of limitations in cases like slavery in America? It goes against a broader law of humanity, but by pretending there was a statue of limitations for going against it, we have only helped to institutionalize racism in American society. The massive lack of a level playing field makes it all the harder for the marginalized to have the same freedoms as everyone else.
Perhaps this is why the idea of reparations is so powerful for so many. It removes the statue of limitations and may make it possible to allow us to actually level the playing field.
Related:
Luke 12:48 states, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." Is this simply a statement for justifying greater taxes for the massively wealth?
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mailchi.mp mailchi.mp
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I created a social justice metaphor library to help explain concepts like why you can't just create a "level playing field" without acknowledging the economic impacts of history (see, even saying it like that is complicated).
I love that Dave has started a list of these useful social justice metaphors.
I got side tracked by the idea this morning and submitted a handful I could think of off the top of my head.
- Baseball fence
- Parable of the Polygons
- Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
I'm curious if there are any useful ones in the neurodiversity space? I feel like I need more of these myself.
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- Mar 2021
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www.sitepoint.com www.sitepoint.com
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JavaScript needs to fly from its comfy nest, and learn to survive on its own, on equal terms with other languages and run-times. It’s time to grow up, kid.
Tags
- JavaScript: as a process VM
- neutral/unbiased/agnostic
- programming languages: choosing the best language for the job
- separation of concerns
- good idea
- avoid giving partiality/advantage/bias to any specific option
- neutral ground
- level playing field
- competition in open-source software
Annotators
URL
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