Victory is sweet

Ever since the open-source rebranding in 1998, I’ve been telling people that “open source” should not be capitalized because it’s an engineering term of art, and that we would have achieved victory when the superiority of (uncapitalized) open source seeped into popular culture as a taken-for-granted background assumption. There’s a thriller writer named Brad Thor… Continue reading Victory is sweet

Preventing visceral racism

I’ve been writing about race and politics a lot recently. Now I’m going to reveal the reason: in the relatively recent past I had a very disturbing, novel, and unwelcome educational experience. For the first time in the fifty-five years of my life I found out what it was like to feel racist, from the… Continue reading Preventing visceral racism

After such knowledge…

I have read very little in the last few decades that is as shocking to me as this: Essay by a teacher in a black high school. My first reaction was that I wanted to believe it was a bigot’s fabrication. I’d still like to believe that, but it was reposted by a black man… Continue reading After such knowledge…