I’d love a return to pre-Digg exodus Reddit, or slashdot in its heyday. Hacker news scratched that itch for a while, some instances here seem close if not quite the same.

Lots more “check out this thing I made!”

Most states do require some comparative religion in high school history. I’ve taught it.

Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Abrahamic faiths were in the curriculum. What was really fascinating was having a high schooler that had no idea what Christianity was. I live in the Bible Belt!

But yeah, understanding things like the Five Pillars of Islam humanizes Muslims. Understanding why a classmate isn’t eating all day, knowing that Muslims are required to donate some to charity if they can…

I think even some of the quasi Christian groups should be covered, but that’s a lot dicier. I don’t know if JW kids’ parents would want them to learn about the Great Disappointment, or Mormon families would approve of discussing Jo Smith’s child brides… (much less that official Mormon theology was that Native Americans would turn white if converted, or the best outcome for black folks was being a servant in the afterlife)

The current administration is certainly forgetting those folks.

Knowledge based fields were historically a “safe space” for queer and disabled people. If you are just super fucking smart and could be a wizard in a programming language, or were a genius physicist, you could get to the point where you were too valuable to fire for being trans or disabled. I may be trans and an unperson in the place I live, but I can do calculus, and there’s no way they can take that away from me.

There’s an attack on knowledge itself going on right now. A desire by the rich to control information. They want to force us into an unreality where skill and knowledge are meaningless. This hurts people who are socially marginalized, because it takes away one of our few paths for economic survival.

It goes with the attacks on DEI. What they want is a tool that can replace the need for talent, so that they can select who gets to have jobs. They want all jobs to be Graeber’s “bullshit jobs” so that skill is meaningless and they can allot them out to the people they think “deserve” them.