Will You Enjoy This Post Before You’ve Read It?

One of the online communities I'm in is engaged in the discussion of the difference between preference for the familiar and prejudice. Instinctively, we recognise there is a difference but where it lies can be much harder to pin down. For me, the starting point is pre-emptive denigration. We all have preferences, both general and …

I Discovered They Were a Gilman

It is easy to say that the debate on whether one can separate Lovecraft's work from his beliefs will never be resolved. However, I think the underlying question is still worth asking: because deciding whether or not to read a dead author's work isn't the only judgement we make in life. Synchronicity summoned up the …

Against the Love of It

In response to last week's post about tearing down statues, Misha Burnett pointed out that positive discrimination denies white males jobs, grants, and other things they are qualified for. And I agree totally with his unstated assumption that it isn't fair to punish white males for the actions of their ancestors, in the same way …

Life Through a Pain of Glass

History shows us over and over that atrocity doesn't come solely from a single malevolent entity, unregenerate in their inhumanity, but also from ordinary people making imperfect choices in the face of an imperfect world. And so perhaps the path to a less imperfect world is to accept that those who oppose what we think …

Why Does Anything Matter?

I started planning a post on the subject of 'cool' or 'real' girls, and who has the (or at least a) valid definition. However, my boundaries and theses kept moving until in the end, I realised I was asking the wrong question. Instead, my question (and that of others) might better be: why does it …

Among Decent Folk

*Gling* Jake turned, shoulders tense. “Morning, Jacob.” Sheriff Marcus strode into the shop, fragments of eggshell crunching beneath his boots. “Thank God you’re here. We’ve been...” Jake waved an arm at ‘Blasphemer’ scrawled across the window. Marcus sighed, then held out a letter. “Council’s withdrawn your business license.” “What! But I’m the—” “Listen. Maybe it’s …

No Person’s Land

Do black lives matter? Of course they do. But my reaction to the movement of the same name is less definite. Because the movement is less definite. My experiences while living in an area of Bristol with a strong African and Asian presence left me, as someone who doesn't speak an non-European languages and presents …

Turn-About Isn’t Fair Play

Someone pointed me at this video as a great demonstration that minorities can't be racist. Unsurprisingly, I find it instead supports a middle ground: minorities can be racist, but have fewer opportunities both to be unregenerately prejudiced and to be prejudiced at all. https://youtu.be/dw_mRaIHb-M Rahman's satire of Western history is both accurate and amusing; and …

Uncanny Cliffs

This morning, the rather skilled Loren Eaton poked me about Manchester's Beetham Tower. His post is embedded below, and my thoughts follow. Cities are creatures of stone, speaking in noise, shape, and colour, as humans speak in noise, shape, and colour. Just as we might have feelings about a person because of their accent, their …

First Is All That Matters?

The tendency to leap to the worst conclusions revealed in this talk almost made me abandon Twitter altogether: If the lede reads like verbose click-bait, that is because it is; despite my hope it wouldn't. I attempted to create a tweet that both expresses my thoughts and had space for a link to the video; …