Links: 10/23/15

• I don’t know if I agree completely with Gladwell’s analysis of the epidemic of school shootings that we’re shrugging our collective shoulders at, but there is certainly some food for thought in this essay: “The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.”
• The more I hear about Teach for America, the happier I am that it wasn’t an option for me back in my day: “I have come to acknowledge and recognize color-blind racism and to see how it undergirds educational inequity. TFA, in my view, perpetuates, commits, and cultivates this kind of covert racism. TFA is a movement. It recruited, used, and grew my racism, leading me to uphold the dominant culture’s notion of who is ‘educated’ and to force the assimilation of my students into such beliefs — no excuses.”
• Funny, I got a variation on this yesterday: “You will think that you have stated the case simply and effectively, and everyone else will wonder why you were so Terrifyingly Angry.“
• I basically am consumed with heart-eyes for Hamilton which is astonishingly brilliant and if you haven’t listened to it yet why haven’t you? “These are all conversations we’re still having, and I think it’s a comfort to know that they’re just a part of the more perfect union we’re always working towards, or try to work towards, and that we’re always working on them. You know, we didn’t break the country; the country came with a limited warranty, like it was never perfect. It was never perfect, and there’s been no fall from grace. I find that heartening, honestly, that we’re still working on it.”
• Cookies or Sewing Kit? The Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookie Tin will never tell.
• This is an interesting take on Twitter; not sure I agree with everything in it, but as with the school shooting essay, some things to think about: “We have created an abusive society. We have normalized, regularized, and routinized abuse. We are abused at work, by the very rules, norms, and expectations of our jobs, at which we are merely “human resources”, to be utilized, allocated, depleted. We are abused at play, by industries that seek to prey on our innocence and literally “target” our human weaknessses. And now we are abused at arm’s length, through the lightwaves, by people we will never meet, for things we have barely even said.“
• Liz Bourke reviews Ancillary Mercy and says everything about it that I’d want to: “This is generous book, and a hopeful one. It doesn’t handwave away the problems of imperialism and colonisation, but neither does it close down the possibility for the future to be better than the past. The Imperial Radch trilogy, as a whole, strikes me as a work with a central thematic interest in what you do with what’s done to you—among other things. Identity. Volition. Constraint. Right action.”
• I found this politeness widget the other day and spent some time putting Very Rude Things into it. It was amusing.
• Alexis Hall on gatekeeping when it comes to criticizing books–and other media: “What is not okay is insisting that people, marginalised or otherwise, jump through an arbitrary hoop before you will consider what they say on its own merits.“

Finally. My dear friend Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and her family are going through an incredibly difficult time right now and could use some support. If you are so inclined, there’s a fundraiser.