"Liberalism Won’t Tell Me What to Think?"
This is not a bug, but may still create genuine problems.
hpluckrose.com/p/liberalism-w…

In a recent excellent essay, Joseph Heath argues that to defend the liberalism that underlies our modern democracies, we need to ensure that people generally, but especially emerging adults, understand why it was historically necessary. I endorse this proposition wholeheartedly!

Where I disagree with Heath is on his assumption that liberalism can generally only be valued pragmatically as a ‘second-best arrangement’ or a compromise rather than as a set of principles and values that can be held as a primary goal for their own sake.

Reminder that Helen is not here, but she will take her account back for a week on Monday.

The time has come for me to write my definitive guide to proper tea-making.
hpluckrose.com/p/a-proper-cup…

Although I have explained the process many times and even created the above graphic, many people, mostly American, remain (deliberately?) confused on the subject.

Meanwhile, I regret to say, some Brits continue to make egregious errors in the process, thus bringing shame upon us all.

"How We Make Reasonable People Disappear."
How our cognitive biases create a world of political enemies and empower the illiberal.
hpluckrose.com/p/how-we-make-…

We then trigger our own threat responses and become more fearful and hostile towards them and more inclined to embrace the radically illiberal and irrational voices in our own groups who promise to protect us from them while also incentivising the opposing tribe to do the same.

In short, indulging the cognitive biases that make reasonable and ethical people disappear also helps create cultural conditions in which unreasonable and unethical people can take power

"Stop Being a Sanctimonious Arsehole to Fat People"
Three profoundly unhelpful attitudes to take to those addressing obesity.
hpluckrose.com/p/stop-being-a…

The Dietary Evangelists: those who believe their preferred nutritional theory or programme is perfectly suited to everyone and the only way to manage weight, want to tell you all about it and become particularly enraged by anyone successfully doing so with any other approach

The Fat Activists: those who treat the desire to lose weight as a political statement revealing a morally abhorrent fatphobia that amounts to hatred of fat people and even genocidal intent towards them.

I very much enjoyed this debate with Safwan Masri, Lera Boroditsky and David Shariatmadari. Safwan held that the stories we tell and the language we use to form them are primary in constructing our realities.
youtube.com/watch?v=j1kWho…

This essay will use these two pieces to try to untangle these concepts.

Because this piece is extremely long, I am offering a weekend Verbosity-Mitigation Half-Price Sale. Then you can listen to me going on at length!
hpluckrose.com/subscribe?coup…

(Reminder that Helen is not here and posts from her are being posted by a friend. She is much stronger and will be back in November)