Every school/mass shooting in the US brings about a flood of social media posts calling for gun control. And those, in turn, are followed by an entire deluge of responses which attempt to show that mass shootings are not caused by "people who shoot guns", but anything and everything else they hate. Here are some of my responses to the responses... ...
I think the way to deal with most societal problems is personal responsibility. If you just keep yelling "personal responsibility!" at people, you will never have to look for or understand the causes and solutions for problems that you've never had to face, and that makes the world a whole lot simpler to understand. ...
First, a disclaimer: I'm not a white guy trying to "explain racism" to the general public; I'm a white guy trying to explain racism to people like me, or at least people like I used to be: on-paper extremely anti-racist, but… missing some key facts. I know many people like that. I went to highschool with them. I was one of them. I still see them on Facebook. Some are in my family. (If you are not in one of these groups, this is not for you. Yeah, it's much too simplified and maybe a little inaccurate, but that's on purpose.) ...
He's still there, right now. Lurking, somewhere, just out of sight. His oversized sniper rifle pointed in my direction, waiting to fire. ...
Back in the early 90s my dad brought home some "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do) pamphlets to put around the house. Even though I was still a Christian at the time, I thought it was a bit silly. It all seemed to be focused on things like whether someone said a swear word or showed a bra on TV, and I thought probably Jesus had better things to worry about. In the years after, I slowly lost my religion… and I still thought it was kinda silly and insincere: it seemed like Jesus and religion were only ever brought up to say sex was bad, justify hating gay people (I'm sorry, "hating the sin") or why abortion was always wrong. Not much else. So I just left it there in the past with everything else. ...
Talking about personal mental health issues is rarely a pleasant thing to do. Whether you talk about depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, or any other non-visible condition, you'll inevitably run into comments telling you it's not unusual, and "everyboy feels that way from time to time". Bonus points if they give well-meaning but unhelpful advice. Extra bonus points if they give condescending unhelpful advice. "Have you tried not feeling that way?" At which point I guess I'm supposed to slap my forehead and wonder aloud why I had never thought of that. ...
I often recommend F-Droid to my Android-using friends. F-Droid is an alternative app store which contains only Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It's great because the apps are almost all not evil. Did you know that a flashlight app doesn't need access to your contacts, location, and pictures? Did you know that every app doesn't need to serve you ads? ...
You see it every year: when Pride month/day/parade comes around, some (presumably straight) people will ask loudly "Why is there no straight pride day?!" ...
