Please help our nation move past the mass shootings and white nationalism. Please contact your legislators. Please.

Our country faces immense problems, and we’re only going to overcome them if we work together. We have to demand more of our leaders. We have to stop these senseless shootings, which seem to be a uniquely American phenomenon. We the people MUST stand up to corrupt politicians and the NRA, and demand common sense gun legislation that will put an end to the slaughter of innocent American citizens. Yes, we must insist on strict background checks and mental health evaluations. But the shooting today in El Paso was not a result of mental illness. The shooter’s manifesto was terrifyingly cold and racist, but most disturbingly, it was extremely measured, reasoned, and calculated. The shooter clearly was not suffering from mental illness.

We must go further than just demanding mental health evaluations. We must also end the sale of military grade weapons to civilians. We must also ban bump stocks and high capacity magazines. We must also criminalize and heavily punish the undocumented sale of firearms between individuals, close the gun show loophole, and demand national firearm registration and licensing systems. The notion that a good guy with a gun is the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun has been proven false time and time again. Nobody came to the rescue of the poor souls in El Paso, despite the fact that multiple shoppers were armed with weapons of their own during the shooting. More guns is not the answer.

We also have to put white nationalism firmly in the past where it belongs. Our President is capitalizing on racism and white nationalism for political gain, and the consequences are already deadly. It will only get worse. Everyone in this nation, but especially white people, have an obligation to stand up to racists and white nationalists, and constantly remind them that the flag they continue to pervert, the flag of the United States of America, stands for liberty and justice for ALL. We must not continue to tolerate their intolerance.

It’s not overselling it to say that everything our country was built on and everything we hold dear is at stake. Please call or write to your legislators. Please.

If you’re in North Carolina, use these links to contact Senator Burr and Senator Tillis. If you’re in NC-10, you can use this link to contact Rep. McHenry. If you’re somewhere else, use this tool to quickly find your representative and senators, and reach out to them.

UPDATE: 8/4/19, 10:34;

I am heartbroken to learn that another mass shooting occurred last night at a bar in Dayton, Ohio, where 9 were killed and 26 more were injured. Police say they were able to “neutralize the shooter in less than a minute.” Less than a minute, and he shot 36+ people. More guns is NOT the answer. Please contact your legislators and beg them to end this epidemic.

If you were afraid of Islamic terrorism after 9/11 but you aren’t afraid of white nationalist terrorism now, you’re a fool.

My color coded rankings (in rainbow order, with “poor” being red and “terrific” being blue) of each candidate’s performance in the second round debates.

The second round of debates was a little less exciting than the first, but there were a few good moments. As I said before the first round, they could’ve narrowed the field by half and had a much more productive debate.

The Candidates Who Should Really Stop Wasting Everyone’s Time:

John Delaney

Tim Ryan

Jay Inslee

Steve Bullock

Marianne Williamson

Michael Bennet

John Hickenlooper
 

The Candidates Who Have at Least Some Chance of Getting The Nomination:

O’Rourke: If he doesn’t want Trump to win, he needs to drop out and throw his support to a better candidate.

Yang: He actually managed to explain how his Freedom Dividend plan could possibly work, and he incorporated it into nearly every answer he gave.

Castro: Again, I think he gets a little more credit than he deserves, but he did have a couple of good answers.

Gillibrand: She still has a certain passion that a lot of the others lack and I quite like her attitude, but she just doesn’t seem to have enough support to get her to the Oval Office.

De Blasio: Again, had a few answers that impressed me, but I doubt he makes it too much further.

Klobuchar: Notably weaker performance than in the last debate. Surprisingly (and potentially devastatingly) forgettable.

Gabbard: Tulsi absolutely hammered Kamala Harris, and she did so with grace and strength. She had an incredible night, and she absolutely deserves to be the most googled candidate.

Candidates Who Aren’t Exactly Long Shots, But Definitely Aren’t Leading The Pack:

Booker: Cory Booker definitely stepped it up this time. He went toe to toe with Joe Biden and held his own. He’s not my favorite, and I think he’s a bit inexperienced, but he impressed me this time.

Buttigieg: Pete didn’t seem to have a great night this round. His answers were rather forgettable, and it didn’t help that he was having to compete with the moderators who wanted to focus on Sanders and Warren. I don’t think this debate was representative of his potential as a candidate.

Harris: Kamala Harris had a wild night. She threw a few punches but also sustained a few blows. Unfortunately for her, the most memorable parts of the night were when she was getting (deservedly) railroaded by Tulsi Gabbard.

Candidates Most Likely to Receive the Nomination:

Biden: He took a lot of hits from every direction, but he held up better than I would’ve liked. I think Crazy Uncle Joe needs to drop out ASAP, but if he continues to hold up to scrutiny like he did in the second debate, he’ll likely stick around for a while.

Sanders: Bernie did a lot better in this debate. I still don’t really love him, but he did better than I expected, and had quite a few shining moments. However, nothing he says will make him younger, and that’s one of the things I dislike the most about him. It’s time for a younger, more in touch President.

Warren: I think Warren’s performance this round was on par with her performance last time, which is to say, pretty damn strong. She’s got nerve, and she’s not afraid of stepping on toes to accomplish what she thinks is right.

My Current Top 3:

Buttigieg: I still really like Pete’s level headedness and I think he has solid policies. He didn’t really shine in this debate, but he didn’t have a ton of opportunities to do so; I think the moderators were more interested in pitting Bernie and Liz against each other. Hopefully he’ll really impress in the next debate.

Warren: She’s a top tier candidate, she’s got a ton of detailed policies, and she could absolutely wipe the floor with Trump in a debate.

Gabbard: I’m not a fool; I realize Tulsi Gabbard’s path to the White House is extremely narrow. That said, I love her attitude and her fearlessness, and I think she also has good policies. Plus, her background as a soldier and her focus on national security issues could help her gain traction with moderates and conservatives. As of right now, she’s my top pick, but she needs a little more help making it to the next debate. Check out her campaign site, and consider donating.

Nate Powell of Popula takes a deep look at the beginning stages and recent evolutions of some of the more common symptoms of the toxic masculinity that often accompanies southern white maleness, with an intriguing focus on the voluntary self-militarization of civilian men. A lot of people will feel targeted by his piece, but hopefully they’ll take the opportunity to ask themselves why they originally adopted some of the symbols to which they now cling.

Today is a magical day for Harry Potter fans: it is J.K. Rowling’s birthday, Harry Potter’s birthday, and the twelfth anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series.

Things have changed a lot since 2007, but one thing has not changed. The fans desperately want a comprehensive encyclopedia of Harry’s world. This eagerly anticipated addition to the Wizarding World has been promised and retracted more times than I care to remember, and waiting for it while seeing so many other new additions to the Harry Potter universe that nobody asked for (Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts) has been utterly exhausting. Pottermore was an interesting and appreciated way for JKR to offer fans more of the information that we crave, but it has never been the comprehensive volume we’ve been wanting for years. On the behalf of every Harry Potter fan, as well as the charities that would benefit from the promised donation of the resulting proceeds, please, finally, give us the encyclopedia.

I've waited twelve years, I'm not going to wait much longer.

—Sirius Black

The issue of digital privacy and security will always be a moving target, because no matter how many bugs are squashed or patches get pushed, bad actors and greedy corporations will continue to scope out vulnerabilities that they can use to exploit people. It is more important than ever to do what you can to protect yourself.

Lately, a lot of attention has been given to a big privacy issue that affects pretty much all email users. The problem lies in the use of something called surveillance pixels, a type of nonconsensual technology where someone who sends you an email can put something in the message that will provide them with a shocking amount of strikingly private information about the email recipient, including the dates, times, and locations for each time they open the sender’s email. This became a hot topic a couple weeks ago after a shady company called Superhuman was exposed for utilizing surveillance pixels to provide their users with access to this data for every email they send. Superhuman isn’t the only company to do this however, companies like MailChimp and other mass marketing email providers do it as well (though I believe its use for business purposes doesn’t negate the fact that it is still a breach of privacy and should be condemned just as strongly), but Superhuman does seem to be the first to make it so easily available to non-business users.

Fortunately, there is a way you can protect yourself from this privacy violation, and you should. Most mail clients offer an option to disable automatic remote content or remote image loading. Adjusting this setting will prevent your device from downloading the surveillance pixels in these emails automatically so that senders won’t be able to use them to collect this data. If you have an iPhone or iPad and you use the Apple Mail app, go to the “Settings” app, tap “Mail,” and then toggle off the switch labeled “Load Remote Images.”

After learning of how companies use this technology to take advantage of users about a year ago, I decided to disable remote image loading on my own devices, and I’m glad I did. To be clear, there is a slight downside because this will prevent some other images in emails from loading, but it is easy to chose to load the images for any individual email with a single tap if you do want to see what was attached; just know that you could also be enabling a surveillance pixel in that email if you do chose to load the images. Overall though, this is definitely a setting you should adjust if you don’t want everyone who sends you email to be able to know exactly when, where, and how many times you open their messages.

This article titled My Mayor Pete Problem from The New Republic is fucking disgusting, and they were wrong to allow it to be published in the first place. People are saying that the best way to deal with it is by not acknowledging it, therefore limiting the number of people who read it, but I disagree. I think everyone should read it so they know what a gross human being this author is, and never make the mistake of giving any weight to his opinions.

The author, Dale Peck, is the type of gay who simultaneously bases his entire personality around his sexuality and also loathes himself for it. Based on this gross article, he probably hates himself more than every closeted frat guy in the SEC, combined. He seems to think that his sexuality gives him credibility to talk about others’, as if his own sexual attraction to men provides him with any meaningful insight into any other man’s character. He paints with a broad brush, and almost every aspect of his analysis is based on conjecture. He completely devalues Buttigieg’s military service and makes disgusting, homophobic assumptions about his specific sexual preferences; the whole piece was so offensively left that it seemed right-wing. It doesn’t get much slimier than this.

Funny enough, he begins the article with an anecdote describing how he has been unnecessarily hateful and cruel for the past 30 years. Gays like this are the absolute worst, and they’re the reason why so many men who are attracted to men want absolutely nothing to do with the “gay community”: it seems like the more involved in the gay community a man is, the more likely he is to be catty and dramatic, to be self-hating and self-aggrandizing, and to treat others with cruelty for the sake of his own entertainment and for a boost to his perpetually ebbing and flowing ego. Dale Peck may have a problem with Mayor Pete, but every self-respecting man who is attracted to men should have a problem with people like Dale Peck.

Five billion dollars is more than a slap on the wrist, even for Facebook. That’s a ton of money, and I’m glad the FTC has approved a serious fine and not just a measly couple million bucks, as I was afraid would be the case. However, this is not significant enough to change Facebook’s business model. At the least, Facebook needs to be punished so severely that they MUST change their business model in order to remain profitable (I want them to be fined out of existence, personally). Cases like this must continue to be brought against them, because they make the same privacy violations day after day. Legislation must be enacted that safeguards the American people from such egregious privacy violations in the future.

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I think the best way to fix the whole Facebook mess is to break up the company, throw Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg in prison, and throw away the key. They have been intentionally dishonest and immeasurably greedy. Maybe have a ceremonial Hunger Games with the rest of the company’s executives.

As far as the company’s stockpile of cash, I think it should be doled out evenly to everyone who ever had an account. Facebook has been deceitfully profiting off of our information, so I don’t think its going too far to suggest that we put a stop to this nonsense and try to compensate the citizens of the world for the data Facebook stole from them and weaponized.

As far as the actual platform, pull the plug and shut it down. Facebook makes people increasingly hostile and drives them further to the edges of the political spectrum. It upsets people, and it wastes their time. It’s a toxic wasteland of clickbait ads that serve no purpose other than to confuse, captivate, and enrage people, and it’s making “journalists” lazier by the day; we’re in dangerous territory where people on different sides of the aisle can rarely agree on facts and truth, and we need to address these issues sooner rather than later, or we’re going to lose all common understanding of truth as technology progresses and deep fake videos get more and more realistic. I know there are a lot of people whose small businesses rely on Facebook; not to be too harsh, but they should have done more work to understand the platform and the dangers of it before putting all of their digital eggs in that basket. If their businesses are providing legitimate value to consumers, they will find a way to continue doing business with them; hoorah, capitalism.

#deletefacebook

The United States Treasury has two requirements for putting someone’s image on U.S. currency:

1. The individual must have a well known place in American history.

2. The individual must be deceased.

Given that Taylor Swift has had one of the most successful musical careers ever, the first requirement has clearly been satisfied. In regards to the second requirement — we all know that she can’t come to the phone right now, and we all know why.

I believe this memorialization of the old Taylor is appropriate. I made this near the beginning of the reputation era, and I’m still quite proud of it.

I recently watched HBO’s new miniseries, Chernobyl, and it really exceeded my expectations. I know there were some historical inaccuracies as there are with any docudrama, but from my understanding, Chernobyl gets all the key events right, and most of the details as well (particularly with the costumes and set design). It also provided a good explanation of how the disaster actually happened, which was new, much appreciated information to me.

The acting was phenomenal—I particularly loved Emily Watson’s portrayal of her character. The scenes with firefighters on the night of the disaster and the following weeks, as well as the stories of the miners and the young men sent to Pripyat in the following months to do damage control were particularly gripping, and they really reinforce the humanity of the people who had to deal with this disaster—it really helps you to understand the Soviet people during the Cold War period as fellow human beings who care about and are motivated by the same things as us, rather than as mortal enemies.

The main theme of the series has to do with the importance of truth and the danger of lies, and there were some incredible quotes. My favorite:

With every lie we tell, we incur a debt to the truth.

Interestingly, HBO also produced an official podcast with episodes that corresponded with each episode of the show, where the show’s creator discusses the events of each installment; maybe I’m living under a rock, but no other show I’ve watched has done this to my knowledge, and I thought it was a great way to offer background information that otherwise wouldn’t have been provided.

I was very sad to hear that Apple has discontinued my favorite notebook.

When the 12” MacBook was first announced in March of 2015, it was largely overlooked because it was announced alongside the Apple Watch, which cast a huge shadow over this astonishingly tiny notebook. My original thoughts were that while the MacBook was beautiful, I didn’t know who would realistically buy it, given that it was more expensive than the MacBook Air and also less powerful. Because I was working for Apple and could get a significant discount, after a few months of vain longing for such a remarkably thin and light notebook, I convinced myself to try it, and if it was too underpowered, I could always return it. I did not return it—I loved it, and I became the biggest proponent of the MacBook in the whole store.

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The 12” MacBook was the first to feature the Force Touch Trackpad, which was a game changer as an input device, offering depth to the way you could interact with OS X. It was the first to feature the butterfly keyboard, and it didn’t suffer from the issues that would later devastate the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air when they adopted the second and third generation Butterly keyboards; in fact, I thought it was terrific—it offered larger, more stable keys that were evenly backlit and felt crisp. It also offered a Retina display, which was previously only available in the MacBook Pro. It was the first to make the switch to USB-C for charging, data transfer, connecting external displays, etc. To boot, it such a well designed thermal architecture with an effective enough heat sink that allowed it to operate without a fan, which meant it was the first notebook Apple had ever made that could run completely silently.

Getting into the nitty gritty, the MacBook cost $1,299, and the base model had a 1.1GHz Intel Core M processor (a point of concern for some customers, though mostly for those who didn’t know what to look for when buying a computer), 8gb of RAM, and 256gb of storage. In my mind, it was an obviously superior machine compared to the current MacBook Air, which at the time started at $999 for 4gb of RAM and 128gb of storage, with a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor, if my memory serves me. The MB had a slightly less powerful chip that was designed to power ultra-portable devices, but the RAM and storage were both double what the MBA offered. AND you got all the aforementioned benefits (better keyboard, better trackpad, better display, thinner and lighter form factor, and color choices) for only $300 more.

Despite these seemingly obvious advantages, it was still a difficult sell (not that I made commission or was expected to meet any sort of sales quotas). It was particularly hard to convince the demographic to which it was best suited: college students. Most college students have a few basic needs from their laptops that the MB was beautifully equipped to handle: the new form factor facilitated extreme portability, the new keyboard provided a more stable typing experience that resulted in less typos in papers and reports, the Force Touch Trackpad with lookup feature made defining unknown words and previewing links a one click process, and the Retina display made reading and watching Netflix a much more pleasurable experience with significantly higher quality and therefore less eye strain. Unfortunately thought, many 18 year olds buying their first Mac had heard that the MBA was the way to go because it was cheaper and had more name recognition than the plain sounding MacBook, so they weren’t keen on spending an extra $300 for a machine with a smaller display. They often didn’t understand that the difference between a standard display and a Retina display meant that the MB actually had far more pixels that the MBA, and that the display could be scaled to replicate a much larger screen if necessary. The way they saw it, they hadn’t used a Force Touch Trackpad or the new keyboard before, and they had been getting along okay without them. They didn’t really understand the significance of what all the tech spec numbers meant, and parents usually only really cared about one number: the price. The fact that the MB had far smaller bezels and looked tiny next to the MBA also hurt its case by making it feel too little, even though the screen size was only one inch smaller and the increase in portability should have been a blessing to college students or business travelers. I still believe there was a bit of vanity involved in the decision making process for most people who decided against the MB—it was the first modern Mac notebook that didn’t have an illuminated Apple logo, and for young men in particular, they often didn’t like the idea of having a laptop that seemed small (despite the fact that the keys and trackpad were actually larger than on any other model).

Customers were also surprisingly unwilling to invest in a $19 USB-A to USB-C adapter, when they could just take the older MBA that already had their precious USB-A ports, despite the fact that when I asked them how they usually stored and transferred files, most were already using iCloud or Google Drive, which pretty much knocks out the need for USB-A ports for flash drives, only leaving the issue of how they would charge their phones, which I admittedly didn’t have a great solution for without purchasing an adapter or a USB-C to lightning cable. But still, what’s $19 when you’re already spending $1,000+?

All that said, I concede that the MB was not right for everyone, and I would tell customers that if I thought they would be better off with a different model. For example, l didn’t hype up the MB when talking to people who needed more processing power for something like photo editing or gaming. But generally, anyone who would have been okay with the MBA would have been great with the MB. For example, if you were just typing papers, watching Netflix, checking email, or browsing the web, I would steer you towards the MB every time.

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I absolutely loved my MacBook, and I’m sad that Apple never gave it the promotional attention it deserved to help customers understand what a fantastic little machine it really was. It was simply ahead of its time.

To be sure, there was a certain amount of situational homosexuality that occurred among the all-male crews of buccaneer ships back in the golden age of piracy, much like there is in modern-day prisons and professional wrestling organizations. But it's not as though those super grizzled, hyper-masculine throat-slitting machines engaged in same-sex coupling, right? It's a fiercely divisive subject even today, so 400 years ago it must have been absolute insanity to even suggest two men getting married, much less two pirates.

On the contrary, some historians claim that the original "Pirates of the Caribbean" (pirate crews who docked, traded, and intermittently lived in port towns in the West Indies during the 17th century) had entire communities where homosexual couples were considered perfectly acceptable.

You see, pirates had a form of civil partnership called matelotage, a marriage-like institution wherein two male pirates shared all of their ... OK, we need to think of another word for "booty" here -- let's go with "loot." Additionally, each would name the other as his sole inheritor. While this makes a good I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry kind of economic sense, in as much as it was essentially the only kind of financial security a pirate could hope for, some commentators argue that these relationships were also romantic in nature, possibly because matelots could routinely be observed having sex with each other.

Dudes have always been boning each other, but this is fascinating and definitely more progressive than I would have expected for 14th century seafarers. These arrangements between matelots makes you consider the origins of the stereotypically pirate-y word “matey.”

This clip should be a source of shame for every true patriot in the United States. The fact that any U.S. President knows so little about our history is absolutely devastating to me as a someone who graduated with a History major and an American Studies minor.

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The whole “Salute to America” thing was just another instance of state sponsored nationalism; Trump knows that such displays do a terrific job of riling up his base. It really pisses me off that he so callously parades our military around as a political tool, and I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t upset by his disrespect for our service members. But then again, a lot of what Republicans support these days confuses me—in what universe would a draft dodging billionaire who has publicly credited Russian interference for his being elected become the favorite of a once patriotic party that cherished honest workers and veterans?

The debates sure proved to be interesting. I stand by my original post saying that they could’ve easily narrowed it down by half, but I’ll concede that doing it over two nights gave more of the serious contenders more chances to speak. The ten I would’ve cut before the debate are, for the most part, the same ten I’d cut after watching them, though I’m ready to make even more cuts now. Two days ago I’d have said they should’ve gone ahead and gotten rid of Delaney, Ryan, Inslee, Swalwell, Williamson, Bennett, Hickenlooper, Castro, Gillibrand, and Klobuchar. My post-debate thoughts on each candidate are as follows.
 

First up, the Nobodies:

Delaney: Sir, this is a Wendy’s. For real though, he seems like a lunatic, who even invited him?

Ryan: This dumbass is really arguing FOR endless war. Bye.

Inslee: You’re here for your grandkids? Cool. You’re too old.

Swalwell: I have nothing to say other than he was extraordinarily unmemorable.

Williamson: The closing remarks about love were interesting but she also seemed a little out of it.

Bennet: Again, very unmemorable.

Hickenlooper: Funny name.
 

Next, the Maybe Potential Contenders who should’ve just quit while they were ahead:

O’Rourke: The Spanish thing was cringeworthy, but he managed to dodge questions in two languages, so I guess that’s cool. Why were we considering him in the first place, given that he couldn’t even beat one of the most despised senators in the country?

Booker: The Spanish thing was even more cringeworthy this time, and somehow the whitest thing I’ve ever seen (which is notable, given that Cory Booker is a black man who was speaking Spanish). He somehow had the most speaking time yet said nothing of substance.

Yang: If people take him seriously, it’s only because he offered them $1k a month for free (and apparently thinks that’s gonna solve climate change or anything else).

Castro: People are giving him more credit than I think he deserves. He did well coming out against Beto, but aside from that and his “Adios Trump” line, he just seemed to be taking angry swipes for no reason.

Biden: Crazy Uncle Joe has GOT to go. He went toe to toe with Kamala Harris to defend an inarguably racist position.

Sanders: I believe Bernie is turning 143 this year, and he is happy to croak to you about how he’s held the exact same political beliefs for 141 of those years.

Better than expected: 

Gillibrand: She really went all in with a passion a lot of other candidates simply lacked, especially in regards to reproductive health.

De Blasio: He wasn’t terribly exciting, but he did have a few answers that impressed me.

Klobuchar: Also had some solid answers, and seemed more genuine than a lot of the others. Her debate performance definitely made her seem like more of a contender than her cringy Twitter videos.

Gabbard: I was originally rooting for Tulsi, but my interest in her had waned a bit. The debate revived that interest; I thought she seemed dedicated and presidential, and she really held Tim Ryan to task on the endless war-front.

Top 3:

Warren: I think Elizabeth Warren conducted herself well. She wasn’t too ambitious and she’s a little older than I’d prefer, but her policy positions are very thorough. Her debate performance wasn’t out of this world, but it was enough to cement her place as a top contender.

Harris: I was mildly interested in Kamala a few months ago, but the debate showed that she’s ready to play hard ball.

Buttigieg: Mayor Pete is my favorite, and he has been since I learned who he was a few months ago. He is calm, but confident. He takes responsibility for his mistakes and shows that he can learn from them. He calls out hypocrisy, and he talks to the people. I believe he is the best candidate for 2020, and I would encourage you to donate to his campaign. 

Oh man, what a headline. I won’t pretend this doesn’t have me just a little bit concerned for Apple’s long term success. This is the end of an era. 

This is a pretty good article. I have a few qualms with it (like how the second half is completely irrelevant to the first half and the title) but overall I think it’s well informed. The second half provides some good insight on the Trump Administration and recent world events, but it’s pretty long already so if I were you I’d stop reading when you get to the subtitle “The Trump Code.”

However, the first half is terrific; it provides a great analysis of the the massive progress that our society has made in the past decade in regards to LGB rights and trans rights, as well as some great ideas about how we can continue to make progress without victimizing ourselves.

There has never been a better time or place in the history of the world to be gay than in 2019 and in the West.

I think it’s worth repeating that — especially in front of the younger generation — because it gives us critical perspective on where we are now and where we are headed. If you glance at media aimed at gays, lesbians, and transgender people, you might imagine we are living in a state of siege. Gay students arriving in college in 2019 will be told instantly that they are oppressed in countless ways, and trans students will be told that they can be oppressed by gay people, as well. Check out the website for the biggest gay lobbying group, the Human Rights Campaign, and you will find that gays and lesbians and transgender people “have been under constant attack” since Trump became president.

… look at what remains: marriage equality, even in Alabama; corporate America competing to brand itself as pro-gay (sometimes to an excruciating degree); full integration of gay service members; a lesbian mayor of Chicago and, in Corey Johnson, a future gay mayor of New York; a married gay man among the main contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination; a cornucopia of media-affirming gay and trans equality; openly gay and lesbian figures in almost every sphere of American life; a preventative pill for HIV and a pill to all but eradicate it from the living; and explicit legal protection from discrimination for half of the gay people in the country.

It is, I know, sometimes hard to take “yes” for an answer. It is also prudent, given human history, to be vigilant in defending the gains. But this level of openness and equality was unimaginable only a decade ago. Compared with the 1950s, when “sodomy” was illegal in every state, when the government hounded gay men and women in public service out of their jobs and demonized them as inherently treasonous, when gay people were barred from entering the country, and when psychiatrists believed them to be mentally ill, this is close to utopia. Compared with the 1980s and early 1990s, when gay men found themselves circling the drain of their own extinction, and witnessed horrors and pain and stigma as never before, this is incredible. Compared with the 1880s, or 1780s, when gay people were assumed to be merely deviant straights and were subject to execution under the law, it is an entirely different universe.

People my age really don’t realize how good they’ve got it.

Because gay men and women are almost always brought up by straight parents, this history is hard to pass on. And so perspectives can be warped. Those whose livelihoods are built on defending victims have an interest in sustaining a victim paradigm for gay America, in which they are the saviors. And victim narratives are comfortable. They allow us to avoid responsibility for our own problems, while transferring it to others. They evoke cheap but satisfying empathy. They seem to cast us as somehow noble for being “oppressed.” They actually provide status among today’s elites — and can help you advance your own career solely on the basis of your orientation if you want to go to college or get a job at a major corporation.

I think it’s time to shuck off this narrative, because it is a crude simplification of the gay experience, because it is profoundly out of date, and because it focuses us on other people we cannot always change while ignoring things closer to home that we can. What we need now, I think, is a narrative more productive and constructive, less about the harm the world can do to us, and more about the good we can give back to the world.

For many, I hope, that will mean just getting on with our lives, without our sexual orientation getting in the way. It’s the sanest approach to being gay, seeing it as an integral but by no means exhaustive way of being human. It will mean earning a living, raising kids in some cases, pursuing careers, sustaining marriages, and everything every straight person does without thinking twice about it. Being gay is not a political act; it is about deeper things than politics: love, above all, but sex and relationships as well.

My own view is that a gay politics was necessary only so that we could eventually get beyond politics, and live as our straight brothers and sisters do, with our sexual orientation being a nonissue in our wider lives. We seek, in this sense, a kind of irrelevance for our sexual orientation — a world in which the hetero and homo categories define none of us, straight or gay, and the category of human includes us all.

I love this part. The best way to normalize something is to act like it’s already normal, rather than drawing unnecessary attention to differences that shouldn’t define you — it’s the societal equivalent of fake it ‘til you make it, and this is exactly why I’m trying to avoid labeling myself as “gay.” Differentiating and victimizing ourselves has gotten us as far as it’s going to; the next step for gay pride is to look at how we can contribute to society, rather than asking what society can do for us.

The Mashable author whose article I wrote about earlier this month, Jack Morse, is back with yet another terrible piece highlighting his inept understanding of digital privacy and security. You do NOT need to cover your phone’s front facing camera (at least not if you have an iPhone, which you probably do if you care about decent selfies in the first place). The only decent reason he gives for suggesting you do this is the FaceTime bug from earlier this year, which was patched in just a few days and extremely obvious when it happened to you; it was definitely a cause for concern, but not a reason to carve up a post-it note with an X-Acto knife to make yourself a selfie cam cover as he ludicrously suggests. Seems like Jack Morse has a habit of shameless fear mongering to drive clicks, which is NOT how we’re going to make the digital world safe for consumers again.

The parallels between Nazi Germany and the United States are growing stronger by the day.

Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler both:

• capitalized on decades worth of escalating feelings of white supremacy and perverse nationalism to get elected

• sought to remove a particular race of people from their nations

• attempted to censor/discredit press coverage that negatively portrayed their administrations

• declared national emergencies as a way to circumvent legal systems

• established detention facilities for people they wished to expel

• allowed for horrendous living conditions in those detention facilities

• escalated to using physical force to quell peaceful protestors

• attacked the press and allowed law enforcement agents to use physical force against them

• utilized secret police forces

• deployed chemical agents against their citizens

• intended to skirt the electoral process and install themselves as permanent leaders

• had specific days that kicked off their extreme persecution of the groups they sough to expel from their nations

• used war as a political tool

• utilized downward pointing red triangles as a symbol to identify political opponents

Americans have got to wake up. Donald Trump needs to be removed from office, and the Republican Party (as well as the Democratic Party) needs to be dismantled.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

UPDATED: 06/18/20, 14:17

 This is exciting. I love the Hunger Games—stories that have the ability to make you think critically about the world are the best kind. I’d been thinking recently that I wanted a reason to get excited about the Hunger Games again, so this is perfect. Hopefully they can produce a spinoff a bit more gracefully than the Harry Potter franchise was able to do (despite multiple attempts).

Source 

Grayson Fritts absolutely deserves to be fired. By citing fears of free-speech lawsuits as their reason for offering him an early buyout instead of terminating his employment, the Knox County Sheriff’s Department is demonstrating how spineless they are, they’re demonstrating their disregard for gay Knoxvillians, and they’re demonstrating a lack of understanding of how free speech actually works. 

Grayson Fritts is a Knox County Sheriff’s Department detective who is currently on administrative leave for shooting an unarmed shoplifter in the neck as they ran away. He also happens to be a fire and brimstone, bible thumping lunatic who apparently pastors a church. Recently, a video surfaced of Fritts “evangelizing” to his “congregation” in a venue that looks like it very well could have been a poorly renovated DMV office. During the five minutes of his recorded tirade, he refers to gay people as “animals,” “sodomites,” and “freaks.” He also declares multiple times that gay people should be executed for their “transgressions,” and that police officers have a commitment to carry out those “sentences.” His absurd “sermon” has garnered national attention, having been picked up by publications such as USA Today and The Washington Post.

Grayson Fritts is obviously way out of line here, and so is the KCSD. Inciting violence and hate speech are not types of speech that are protected by the first amendment, and calling for the extermination of a minority group undeniably fits those categories. Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler needs to do his due diligence in protecting the community he serves, rather than protecting the homophobic officers that serve him. 

Grayson Fritts also called out Taylor Swift for her outspoken support of the Equality Act. Criticizing my girl is enough to make me want to choke anybody, but this desperately closeted faggot clearly offers plenty of other reasons as well.  

Grayson Fritts is a disgusting human being; hopefully he soon suffers a stress induced heart attack behind his Office Depot lectern. There’s no guarantee that will happen, so if you’d like to contact the Knox County Sheriff’s Office to advocate for Fritts’s termination without compensation, you can call them at (865) 215-2444, or you can submit this contact form.