Awesome, that's really good to hear! Happy user here - I was recently on the lookout for a simple hosted blogging platform for a personal project, and write.as fit the bill perfectly.
Will PRs for WriteFreely generally make it into Write.as?
Yep! This is the core software behind it all, so bug fixes and new features will make it into Write.as too. It's also kept up-to-date with changes as soon as they're finished, so you'll see everything live there first.
Is that after they left beta? I noticed quite a few outages, but that was while they still had the big beta disclaimer on things. I've not had any trouble since.
I once played a Mulatu Astatke album on a friend's Spotify account during a social gathering at his house, and he complained his discover weekly playlist was mostly African music for the next couple of months.
The discover weekly algorithm seems to latch on to outliers, I guess.
It’s not well-known in Western Europe, but a lot of what look like racist undertones in the Balkan/Eastern European area, are deep-seated cultural artefacts from centuries of continuous and bloody war with Ottoman invaders.
Original Bulgar tribes were Turkic not slavic, migrated from Asia, through north of black sea. I did not say all current Bulgarian population is descendants of them.
When you live in a country with actual history (as opposed to rural Iowa where nothing ever threatened it), it's not racism.
You don't start because you believe the neighbors are somehow inferior, you start because you know that you have dangerous differences, or that they occupy some parts of you country that should be freed, or because they are in the offensive every now and then and so on.
Words have a meaning. Not all situations where a group is cautious or even hates another are racism. The same way blacks in the US being cautious of whites is not racism -- they do have a long history of suffering in their hands that justifies that as the prudent behavior.
That's the critical point about racism that no one seems to mention though. Every racist person is racist ultimately because of fear. Regardless of how justified their fear is, they hate because they are consumed by fear and mistrust of the other, which is a natural human reaction. We may not empathize with their fear but to them it is very real.
When you understand racism in this context it becomes clear that the narrative of people being racist because they are hateful is far too shallow. It goes much deeper than that.
>That's the critical point about racism that no one seems to mention though. Every racist person is racist ultimately because of fear.
The thing is, fear can be totally rational and even justified and not your fault. In which case, it's not racism.
E.g. a black in the 30's south fearing of whites (for lynching, beating up, etc) is justified.
But a white feeling superior, and believing those blacks are animals, to be kept in their place, etc, that was actual racism.
[Added] If fact actual racism, from the first land grabs in Americas, to the development of official theories of "race" back in the 18th and 19th centuries (Gobineau, Galton and so on IIRC), is strongly tied to power grab -- painting the other as inferior to morally justify taking other their land and enslaving them. Racism was used as a tool to justify European colonialism, US slavery, Japanese conquests, etc.
Racism without having the upper hand, is hardly racism.
You don't have to have the upper hand to be racist, and you don't have to be voluntarily racist, and you don't have to be at fault to be racist. Blacks in the 1930s making generalizations about whites is still racism, regardless of how justified or disadvantaged they may be.
I know this means that there's an uncomfortable category, a shade of gray that is "justified racism" and there are situations where not being racist might mean you're putting yourself at risk by trusting someone (e.g. your historical violent white man example) that due to historical circumstances has the "upper hand" and might use it to cause you harm, and these aren't very comfortable or popular ideas, but ... too bad?
When you can wrestle with the idea that racism can possibly be justified or a useful heuristic, you can possibly relate to the people who are racist, understand their fears and mistrust, and possibly bridge a gap to where you can explain to them that they don't have much to fear from the other.
But the rational fear they once had is no longer justified. The judge on that TV show has no reason to be weary of the contestant's husband at all, it's completely irrational. And anyone that looks at that situation and says, "actually, history shows he's justified in his xenophobia" is making the same irrational mistake.
>But the rational fear they once had is no longer justified.
That's not how it works in those places though. The neighbor countries can (and historically have) turn around and attack the other neighbors again and again, and there are tension and provocations and such even after periods of relative peace.
And you can't tell someone who lost their loved ones due to this or that incident involving some people, that it's now all "water under the bridge". Healing from such things takes many decades, and even generations to actually heal.
If X murdered your father, you didn't want any relation with them, even decades later, even if there wasn't anything else to fear from them. And you probably wouldn't be best buddies with their relatives in general either. Now, imagine that in a more widespread way, where whole countries were under attack, with perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions dying, and you having multiple people you mourn from that time.
We might be "very often ruled by emotion" but there's also an objective reality out there. A black guy flirting with a white woman in the 20's Alabama would indeed find themselves hanging from a tree -- whether they were "objective" or not.
If that was true, it could happen towards any group and at all times, but it usually happens to specific groups in specific scenarios.
The anger and outrage helped keep blacks down, and thus their wages down, and keeping them for asking for more and competing with whites. Just like before the civil war it helped justify their being kept as slaves, and thus function as profit centers.
It's often the case that majority groups feel threatened by minority groups, or that the majority is jealous of a relatively more successful minority. Or that a minority group feels resentment for bad treatment.
These are all conditions that cause racial tension to flare. It's actually quite predictable, which reminds us that the spread of racism is like a social disease and should be treated as such.
coldtea was pointing out an example where racism is not irrational, but very rational indeed. It is statistically valid for black people in the US to be afraid of white people in certain situations.
I tend to agree that history is important to consider in such situations, but only if you apply this concept equally instead of picking and choosing when and on whom to apply it. Otherwise, it's nothing more than hypocrisy.
A thought experiment: would you react the same way if the original example was of an Egyptian singer being interviewed on an Egyptian channel and revealing that he/she was married to an Israeli?
On the contrary, I think we should apply it selectively, and chose when and on whom to apply it.
For history is important to consider but not all historical situations are alike.
We could justify a reaction from whatever side, if they had equally suffered from the other side.
History is painful, and we might say "but she's just married to an X citizen, what's the harm", but the other's that got offended might have visions of their family or friends or themselves being killed, or treated badly because of being non X. It might not have been that particular X citizen that did those offenses, but they didn't see other X citizens rushing to their rescue either -- on the contrary, they might have seen a lot of them cheering for it. (And I'm sure the same would hold if an Israeli woman was revealing in a Israeli channel that she was married to an Egyptian -- and it could still be justified and understood under their experiences).
I have to agree. This sort of hatred kind of made sense 150 years ago when it was part of a liberation struggle, but it's just plain racism at the moment. People should be better than this.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Bulgarian who's lived in the UK for the past decade. Most Bulgarians who have lived in Bulgaria their whole lives would probably disagree with me.)
Yeah, I had most of my family killed in Holocaust and I still think that if a Jewish person would be hating on a random German person (like what happened to German colony in Haifa right about this time) is still racism.
We're so hardly conditioned to believe that "racism is wrong" that when we see instances of racism that actually make sense, we instinctively want to name it something else.
>We're so hardly conditioned to believe that "racism is wrong" that when we see instances of racism that actually make sense, we instinctively want to name it something else.
Part of it is that.
Another part is that we conflate any collective tension or precaution or generalization to "hating".
You might not hate blacks, but you still wont want to walk alone in 3AM in downtown L.A. Even if 99% of the people you meet there are great with you, it only takes 1-2 persons to attack or rob you to make the precaution (and thus the generalization) perfectly rational. That doesn't make you a racist, just a person aware of crime statistics.
Few, if anyone, can just say, "I'll just visit downtown L.A. at 3 AM without a care in my mind, and judge people I meet there on an individual basis". And even the few that do that, if they end having it bad, they rarely keep to the same ideal.
No, it's a pragmatic use. When you're persecuted, burned in furnaces, kept in concentration camps, gassed, etc -- and the rest of the population don't lift a finger about it, if not cheering, then you don't sit to ponder whether 100% of the German population does that to you, or it's just 70%, or maybe "merely" 30%.
>Do you allow non-Jewish Americans to resent Jews for their dramatic over-representation in positions of power, influence, and information gate-keeping (e.g. journalism, entertainment media, the Supreme Court, Congress, academia, the Federal Reserve)?
They sure are allowed to suspect people of the same roots helping out each other -- as opposed to a meritocracy. But even so, that's nowhere even remotely close to what the Jews themselves suffered, it's so lighter an offense that it's not even in question.
Besides, it's not what you "allow" or not "allow". It's what people will do anyway.
>Do you allow non-Black Americans to resent blacks for their disproportionate violence and anti-social behavior; for their dramatic over-representation in entertainment media; and for the astronomical net tax burden they foist upon everyone else (just over $10,000 per black American per year)?
Allowing it or not, they do. And if one statistically lives in areas where e.g. blacks are predominantly doing crimes, or they have suffered (like a friend who was shot in Atlanta mowing his lawn, because some dude had to get "initiated"), they also get to be fearful and even resentful. It's pragmatic, and it includes the whole group (and not just the bad apples in it) for plain statistical reasons. You can never know exactly all the actual bad apples (it's not like someone will hand you a list in advance) to avoid. But you learn to be more careful when around group A or B in certain situations or surroundings, for purely statistical reasons.
That's not the same as racism -- just a generalization. Heck, you can consider blacks perfectly equal, and capable of anything any white can do, and persecuted unjustly by the police, and redlined, and so on, and still not want to walk alone through central Los Angeles at 3:00 AM.
Southern slave owners, on the other hand, were racist without any provocation -- if anything, they DID the provocation by abducting and enslaving people, and they still considered them inferior.
(Not sure about the $10K per black/year amount. Even if true, it could be a drop in the bucket compared to state owned recuperations for past deeds such as, I dunno, the whole slavery thing. Continuity of state and all --
countries still pay for what they did in wars decades and centuries ago).
>When you abuse the word "they", it's going to be abused back at you.
>
No, it's a pragmatic use. When you're persecuted, burned in furnaces, kept in concentration camps, gassed, etc -- and the rest of the population don't lift a finger about it, if not cheering, then you don't sit to ponder whether 100% of the German population does that to you, or it's just 70%, or maybe "merely" 30%.
Hey, just curious - if you'd change this historical example to a situation where persecuted people were able to actively organize and defend themselves from being killed (organize a self-defense force, then an army, build a wall around, etc), but overall population around them would still want to do it and cheer when it happens, would you call this racism? Because this example is not hypothetical and is routinely called "racism" and "evil" in mainstream western culture.
Indeed, they are. The same should be said against those who look down upon Caucasian Europeans because people from Europe bought slaves from Arab traders and took them to the Americas, about British ex-prisoners who took land from the Aboriginals, about Europeans who took land from native American tribes, about... well, you get the gist. What happened in historical times is just that, history. The inhabitants of modern Turkey carry no guilt for the atrocities of the Ottoman empire, just like modern-day Japanese (except for surviving war criminals) are not to blame for the misdeeds of the Japanese empire, nor are current Europeans the same as those who traded in slaves or established colonies in Africa. It is good to have this sorted out so people can get on building functional societies based on the here and now, not on old feuds and historical misdeeds.
Agreed - kind of - since even in Carcassonne (Original and South Seas edition) there are opportunities to 'steal' someone else's farming/fishing territory, which inevitably prompts my wife to call me a "meanie". But I still concur with the overall principle, that opportunities for attack/conflict in these games tend to be indirect and somewhat secondary.
The game simulates the rise and fall of civilisations, and a key part of the game is knowing when to call it quits with your current civilization and start playing with a new one. You skip a turn whenever you do that, so you can easily shoot yourself in the foot if your timing is off.
