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Automated updates: 2021-06-07

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@ -22,13 +22,13 @@ So, let's talk a little about graduations.
## Background
This week, a Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith [swapped her speech <i class="fab fa-creative-commons-nc"></i>](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/02/dallas-high-school-valedictorian-scraps-approved-speech-speak-out-against-states) from whatever the school's administration approved, to speak out against anti-abortion laws.
This week, Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith [swapped her speech <i class="fab fa-creative-commons-nc"></i>](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/02/dallas-high-school-valedictorian-scraps-approved-speech-speak-out-against-states) from whatever the school's administration approved, to speak out against recent anti-abortion laws. And she did a spectacular job of it, too.
There has been plenty of discourse around this decision, most of which tries to elevate Smith to a hero for using her platform to speak her mind. I don't really buy that, because that's literally what that speech is for, and it's not like the school was going to revoke her diploma or send a graduate to detention. I *approve* of what she did, and think that she should take pride in the action, but I also want to be clear that she also didn't really risk anything. For comparison, how many graduating classes had dozens of people hand the principal a ball to no consequences? This is *less* disruptive of the ceremony.
In any case, the smarter take that I've seen is making the point to the young *men* graduating at the tops of their classes that you, too, have the option of speaking out on bills that harm your peers. You don't need to be a woman to speak out about anti-abortion bills. Likewise, you don't need to be Black to speak out against [voter suppression](https://www.voanews.com/episode/democrats-push-counter-state-level-voting-restrictions-4664696).
![Voter purity laws](/blog/assets/Vote-Purity-Laws-scaled.png "Voter purity laws")
![An elephant directing white votes to a ballot box and "colored" votes to a toilet](/blog/assets/Vote-Purity-Laws-scaled.png "Voter purity laws")
Given that June is Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈, it should also be said that you don't need to identify as part of any gender or sexual minority to speak out against [anti-transgender bills](https://theconversation.com/anti-transgender-bills-are-latest-version-of-conservatives-longtime-strategy-to-rally-their-base-158296) or anything similar.
@ -42,7 +42,9 @@ And then I realized that I have a bit to say about this, if only to explain that
## Obligatory Pop Culture Reference
Part of this is, of course---and please pardon me for bringing non-Free Culture fiction into this, but I think this topic warrants it---that we're coming up on another season finale of **The Handmaid's Tale**. And while opinions vary, something that I'm reminded of in nearly every episode where he appears is that the husband (Luke) is awful. He's the man who smugly takes pride in the fact that he tells people what an ally he has been. Yet in every scene in which he's presented with a choice, he either opts to do nothing or he tries to be the aggrieved party. He has never *listened* to anybody around him who wasn't a man.
Part of this is, of course---and please pardon me for bringing non-Free Culture fiction into this, but I think this topic warrants it---that we're coming up on another season finale of **The Handmaid's Tale**. And while opinions vary, something that I'm reminded of in nearly every episode where he appears is that the husband (Luke) is awful. He's the man who smugly takes pride in the fact that he tells people what an ally he has been. Yet in every scene in which he's presented with a choice, he either opts to do nothing or he tries to be the aggrieved party.
It always feels like his problem with Gilead is that he was inconvenienced by needing to move (and emigrate) and hasn't had sex with his wife. The part where millions of people have been enslaved and tortured doesn't seem to ever dawn on him, because he has never *listened* to anybody around him who wasn't a man.
Yes, consistent with my [ethical media kick]({% post_url 2020-08-02-ethmedia %}), I'm on the fence about continuing the show with every episode. It's exploitative. It's now basically jointly owned by Amazon (through MGM) and Disney (through Hulu), the biggest monopolies in the United States market. Elisabeth Moss is arguably problematic as a member of an explicitly fake church---members are free to practice what they please, but Hubbard's words are Hubbard's words---that has produced an astonishing number of bullies and dangerous pseudoscience. Those are all marks against the ethical case for watching it. But I watch it in hopes that the accounting algorithms will see the success and produce more (and *better*) shows that shine a spotlight on the issues of disadvantaged people, and I feel like that counts for something.
@ -50,35 +52,35 @@ That's everything I have to say about that, except maybe some comments on the se
## Let's Get Personal
However, the reference to my teenage years also wasn't an accident.
That out of the way, the reference to my teenage years wasn't an accident.
If you read the aforementioned mailing list, you may know that I've had the opportunity to stroll down something of an alternate-universe memory lane. It's not worth going into the details, but it should suffice to say that many old and intense memories have bubbled up. Most are surprisingly good, but there are also some regrets that I haven't given much thought to in decades. And while I don't think that writing about myself is generally useful to **Entropy Arbitrage**, there's one situation that may be instructive to someone.
So, let's set the stage as well as I can.
So, let's set the stage as well as I can, without identifying anyone or anyplace.
Some class event sends a large number of---if I remember correctly---eighth-graders to meet up at one of the further sports fields on campus. Getting to this field requires crossing a stream, a bridge creating a kind of bottleneck that encourages the little splinter groups of us to converge. My group, a couple of friends and a bunch of students that I didn't know well, banters about the most [convoluted titles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land_of_the_Lounge_Lizards "the winner") that we had seen for media. One of the (at the time) girls tells dirty jokes that are more akin to shaggy dog stories than actual jokes, and so didn't get much of a reaction.
Some class event sends a large number of---if I remember correctly---eighth-graders to meet up at one of the further sports fields on campus. Getting to this field requires crossing a stream, a bridge creating a kind of bottleneck that encourages the little splinter groups of us to converge. My group, a couple of friends and a bunch of students that I didn't know well, banters about the most [convoluted titles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land_of_the_Lounge_Lizards "the winner") that we had seen for media. One of the girls (at the time; presumably, she's now a woman) tells dirty jokes that are more akin to shaggy dog stories than actual jokes, and so didn't get much of a reaction.
![Wildly inaccurate, but pretty](/blog/assets/tree-water-nature-forest-waterfall-wilderness-1279856-pxhere.com.png "Wildly inaccurate, but pretty")
![Bridge over a river](/blog/assets/tree-water-nature-forest-waterfall-wilderness-1279856-pxhere.com.png "Wildly inaccurate, but pretty")
As we reach the bridge, we ignore one of the other groups, all boys, as they drop to the banks of the stream. There's nothing eye-catching about giggling teenage boys messing around with mud, after all. As we cross the bridge, though, there's a yelp below, because dirt was kicked into somebody's eye. The group of boys *actually* hid under the bridge to try to look up the skirt of one of the girls.
As we reach the bridge, we ignore one of the other groups, all boys, as they drop to the banks of the stream. There's nothing eye-catching about giggling teenage boys messing around with mud, after all, and yes, I realize that makes it sound like this happened in the 1840s. As we cross the bridge, though, there's a yelp below, because dirt was kicked into somebody's eye. The group of boys *actually* hid under the bridge to try to look up one of the girls' skirts.
I want to make an important point, here, that---while I don't want to "kink-shame"---there's nothing arousing about anybody's underwear. An obnoxious move like that is about trying to assert power by transgressing a woman's boundaries without consent. Today, we'd (rightly) call it sexual harassment, but the central conceit is really that the girl (or woman, in cases where she's older) is being told that her privacy and her preferences don't matter. It's unacceptable. It *was* unacceptable, and I knew that, even though language hadn't quite caught up to the idea, especially for teenagers.
I want to make an important point, here, that---while I don't want to "kink-shame"---there's nothing arousing about anybody's underwear. An obnoxious move like this is entirely about trying to assert power by transgressing a woman's boundaries without consent. Today, we'd (rightly) call it sexual harassment, but the central conceit is really that the girl (or woman, in cases where she's older) is being told that her privacy and her preferences don't matter. It's unacceptable. It *was* unacceptable, and I knew that, even though language hadn't quite caught up to the idea, especially for teenagers.
Yet, I froze. I had something to say about *everything*, but managed to lose the ability to intercede, in a critical moment.
That was a pretty big mistake. The correct response---which wouldn't have hurt me at all, and might have either changed someone's mind or convinced someone else to act with me---would have been to just tell the boys that they were acting inappropriately, and just direct their attention long enough for the girl to cross the bridge. Instead, I watched her try to laugh it off until they got bored. I should have made sure that she was OK and listened to anything she might need to say, but left that to her friends. I should probably have talked to my friends about the incident, but this is the first time that I've mentioned it to anybody else. Failing all of that, I should have apologized to the girl...and still have that obligation, if I ever run across the woman she has become, assuming that she remembers the incident or me at all.
That was a pretty big mistake. The correct response---which wouldn't have hurt me at all, and might have either changed someone's mind or convinced someone else to act with me---would have been to bluntly tell the boys that they were acting inappropriately, and just direct their attention long enough for the girl to cross the bridge. Instead, I watched the girl try to laugh it off until they got bored and moved on. I should have made sure that she was OK and listened to anything she might need to say, but left that to her friends. I should probably have talked to my friends about the incident, but this is the first time that I've mentioned it to anybody else. Failing all of that, I should have apologized to the girl...and still have that obligation, if I ever run across the woman she has become, assuming that she remembers the incident or me at all.
I don't say any of that to unburden myself or work through any emotions; I've come to terms with that failure. Rather, I tell this story to illustrate the point of the post. You can *claim* to be an ally all you like---I certainly would have jumped to identify myself that way, had the term been in use in that context, at the time---but it's an empty statement. What makes someone an ally is actually putting in the work. All that matters is what you actually do to help change the culture for the better. An ally would have done something useful.
I don't say any of that to unburden myself or work through any emotions; I've come to terms with that failure. Rather, I tell this story to illustrate the point of the post. You can *claim* to be an ally all you like---I certainly would have jumped to identify myself that way, had the term been in use in that context, at the time---but it's a hollow statement. What makes someone an ally is actually putting in the work. All that matters is what you actually do to help change the culture for the better. An ally would have done something useful, or at least tried.
### That's Not All...
Of course, I could tell other stories where I come off even worse. I spent an unfortunate time burrowing down what turned out to be the right-wing rabbit hole. I've been convinced that law and governance were bad, that white men were under attack, and so forth. But I'll tell you that I *never* would have considered myself to be racist, sexist, homophobic, or sunk into dumb conspiracy theories. No, I was convinced that I was objective. Again, if you had asked if I was "an ally," of *course* I would have said yes, I want what's best for people. But if you asked me whether I thought that a restaurant should be able to kick out a customer or fire an employee for being a woman, Black, or gay, I probably also would have, and I would have invented a bogus reason why that's "best" for everyone.
You can even see remnants of that referenced at the top of this post, where I talk about my change in thinking about pronouns. I took the time to announce to the world that I refused to take a simple step that transgender communities recommend, because...what, I knew better than them? If you read that post, as I did, you see a special kind of ugliness that I'm avoiding it, because I don't want to seem "thin-skinned" like the people who are complaining...about getting attacked for their identities. I all but say that I don't want to think about my own gender. It's not a great look.
I was lucky to start getting out of that phase---"start," because we can and should always try to do better---before it took over one of the political parties. Largely, it was because I heard the same words that I was saying coming out of the mouths of other people, and could actually hear what I sounded like. And I'm thankful to my friends who were willing to correct me on minor points, giving me space to rethink.
I was lucky to start getting out of that phase, before it took over one of the political parties. Largely, it was because I heard the same words that I was saying coming out of the mouths of other people, and could actually hear what I sounded like. And I'm thankful to my friends who were willing to correct me on minor points, giving me space to rethink.
You can see remnants of that period referenced at the top of this very post, though, where I talk about my change in thinking about pronouns. I actually took the time to announce to my readers that I refused to take a simple step that transgender communities recommend, because...what, I knew better than them how to help them? If you read that post now, as I did, you see a special kind of ugliness in I'm avoiding accepting the idea, hinting that I don't want to seem "thin-skinned" like "those people" who are complaining...about getting attacked for their identities. I all but say that I don't want to think about my own gender. It's not a great look.
I won't tell those other stories here, but they all have the same summary: I told myself what a great person I was, without actually doing or saying anything that might make that true or even *seem* true. And later, I realized that I had been a creep and wish that somebody had called me out. The main difference is that I kept most of that to myself, so people weren't subjected to trauma as I ignored them.
I won't tell those other stories here, but they all have the same summary as the story above: I told myself what a great person I was, without actually doing or saying anything that might make that true or even *seem* true. And later, I realized that I had been a creep and wished that somebody had called me out. The main difference is that I kept most of that to myself, so people weren't subjected to trauma as I ignored them. Probably the most vocal that I got was to praise the [Tea Party protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_protests) for at least politically engaging people, and that obviously hasn't turned out well.
## The Call to Adventure

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@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
---
layout: post
title: Developer Journal, Ludi Piscatorii
date: 2021-06-07 07:11:23-0400
categories:
tags: [programming, project, devjournal]
summary: Progress on assorted projects
thumbnail: /blog/assets/PonteSantAngeloRom.png
offset: -42%
---
We don't have *great* holidays, today, so the most interesting is [*Ludi Piscatorii*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludi_Piscatorii), a Roman celebration of the [Tiber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiber). It's a weird---and stereotypically pagan---celebration, where fishermen simply sacrificed the day's catch to the gods. So, it's a day to *not* eat fish, I guess.
![The Tiber River](/blog/assets/PonteSantAngeloRom.png "The Tiber River")
So many fascists want their government to be the next Roman Empire, and I have to assume that the rest of the world does realize that the only thing that made them aspirational was the lack of a nearby competitor. The reality is that there were, you know, fish holidays.
Anyway...
## Side-Story: Grammatical Emoji?
Some readers might appreciate a peculiar issue that I ran into, which isn't technically *my* development work, but does relate to the blog.
As I've probably mentioned, after a few months posting, I decided to add a morning check on the spelling, grammar, and style for the day's blog post. I use [Proselint](http://proselint.com/) for the bigger issues and [LanguageTool](https://languagetool.org/) for the small pieces. You could probably pinpoint the change, because I probably suddenly started deleting the word "very" and stopped hyphenating adverb-noun pairs, among other things like no longer being subject to typos from a lousy laptop keyboard. I keep meaning to go back to polish early posts, but haven't had the time, except when a post sees extra traffic...but that's an unrelated story, and I shouldn't digress during the digression.
In any case, [yesterday's post]({% post_url 2021-06-06-do-work %}) on the difference between claiming to be an ally and actually *being* an ally includes the rainbow flag emoji (🏳️‍🌈) when I mention Pride Month in passing. It seems that LanguageTool didn't appreciate that, because it claimed a spelling error and suggested the following as possible corrections.
* ☀️
* ♂️
* ♻️
* ⚠️
* ✏️
* ✔️
* ❤️
* ➡️
I don't want to suspect anybody on the project of malicious intent, and I can't find anywhere in the code that could suggest that this might be intentional. However, I think that it's safe to say that "rather than a symbol of the LGBT community, did you mean garbage or to warn people about something, instead?" is terrible optics. It's especially bad, given that I can't remember seeing a case where the tool has complained about any other emoji.
I have some theories about what's happening---the emoji is actually four separate emojis, which could look different---but I'm definitely going to file a bug report, because someone who identifies as a gender or sexual minority is eventually going to feel that the team would rather they not use the tool. I'll wait until just after I post this, because I want to see if it's a reproducible problem with the flag in parentheses, separate from the sentence.
## Miniboost
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the default appearance of [**Miniboost**](https://github.com/jcolag/Miniboost) now uses colors from the [Solarized](https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized/) color scheme. It seemed like the best choice, since the scheme was actually designed with some mathematical rigor and the files---which I don't actually use, but can certainly learn from---have been released under the MIT license.
While I was messing around with that, I also split the color of the in-editor text from the color of the user interface text, because I've found some cases---especially in darker environments---where it's easy to confuse the boundaries.
Because it annoyed me at the right time, I also finally fixed the issue that HTML entities in a note title would show as the raw text, `Q &amp; A` instead of `Q & A`, for a simple example.
There were also libraries to update, so I took care of the remainder for **Miniboost**. Lesson: Don't let them pile up.
This project just won't die, but I guess the frequency that I use it inevitably means that ideas and bugs are going to show up.
## Fýlakas Onomáton
A couple more libraries were updated here, too.
## GitHub Profile
The commit technically belongs to this week instead of last week, because the automated cycle doesn't trigger until after midnight, but for the people interested in this sort of thing, here are the changes to [my GitHub profile <i class="fab fa-github"></i>](https://github.com/jcolag).
* I touched up the text to be more coherent.
* I added visualizations for [interaction streaks](https://github-readme-streak-stats.herokuapp.com/demo/), [language usage](https://github.com/anuraghazra/github-readme-stats), general statistics (same repository), some [silly trophies](https://github.com/ryo-ma/github-profile-trophy), and a [view counter](https://github.com/antonkomarev/github-profile-views-counter).
* These are for my own tracking purposes, but if someone wants to get excited about my being a "super repo creator," I guess that's fine.
* Amusingly, my most used language is...*Java*. Only two of my repositories have any Java in them. [**ComicScanner**](https://github.com/jcolag/ComicScanner) is a mostly empty project that was going to be an applet (remember those?) to track versions of comic files---abandoned when the community seemed to stop caring about it---and [**Bì Shēng**](https://github.com/jcolag/bisheng) was going to be a sample [Cordova](https://cordova.apache.org/) mobile app that I intended as a bloggable project to illustrate how to attack a project in a new environment. I guess they must both have a large amount of generated boilerplate code, so I decided to exclude those projects from the list, and those numbers make more sense.
* I threw in a link to my [Buy Me a Coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/jcolag) page. I hadn't planned on promoting the link or looking for donations, but I'd also be lying if I said that the thought of my weird little projects paying some of my bills wasn't appealing.
The result is probably more cluttered, and the images are certainly less accessible, but I found GitHub's tracking of commit streaks somewhat motivating, back when it was available. The other graphs might be handy, at some point, though the view count---crass as it is---is mostly just to satisfy my own curiosity. I assume that it'll go away, after a week or so of realizing that nobody visits my GitHub profile.
## Next
As much as I'd like to finally finish [**Fýlakas Onomáton**](https://github.com/jcolag/fylakas-onomaton/), I think it's probably a better idea to add an extra commit to my "budget" and clear out as many library updates that'll fit. Those really should never fall too far behind, and the oldest is two months old, which is unacceptable.
That should also give me time to move forward on my "secret"---unless you read the [Entropy Arbitrage newsletter](https://entropy-arbitrage.mailchimpsites.com/) or figured it out from Sunday posts---project that probably won't be Free Software at launch.
* * *
**Credits**: The header image is [The Ponte Sant'Angelo with a view of St. Peter's Square and St. Peter's Basilica](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PonteSantAngeloRom.jpg), made available under the terms of the [Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en) license.