Stories! Short and bittersweet

The Placeholder by Patricia Russo. A brief story about sources of support.

Shit Cassandra Saw That She Didn’t Tell the Trojans Because at that Point Fuck Them Anyway by Gwen E. Kirby. This is short and perfect.

Links: isms and interactions

The Asshole Filter, by siderea, via liv. This was written 9 years ago, and still rings very true. "An asshole filter happens when you publicly promulgate a straitened contact boundary and then don't enforce it; or worse, reward the people who transgress it."

Also from liv, in comments, When “Life Hacking” Is Really White Privilege by Jen Dziura.

Just add “if you’re white” or “because I’m white” to each generalization or anecdote in the article.

For instance:
“I find when you act confused but polite then people want to help if you’re white. There was a line behind me. I wasn’t fighting or angry. So there was no reason for anyone to get angry at me, because I’m white.”

The Moral Implications of Being a Moderately Successful Computer Scientist and a Woman by Irene Zhang.

Kate defines misogyny as the enforcement branch of the patriarchy. While sexism is a set of beliefs, misogyny is a set of actions. As such, it is much more damaging to women. Worse, misogyny enforces a patriarchical worldview that the majority of the world holds as the morally correct one.

Integrity, not reliability by Mel Chua, via Sumana Harihareswara, brainwane, in remembrance after Mel's death.

In engineering (especially with software system), we work with subsystems and components that are inherently unreliable. We have ways to hook them together to make the system as a whole okay, even with the component-level unreliability. Backups, notifications, and so forth. How can I be part of a larger system that’s reliable, even if components of myself are unpredictable?