For a while I thought I could supply good dating advice on here to counteract the booshit. I had a post I almost made that began: “My fellow autistic men, there are autistic women literally waiting to have freaky sex with you. Here’s how you find them.” Then I realized people don’t actually want that. They don’t want to go outside. They just want stuff that allows them to keep their anger fueled.

I am not saying I totally agree but I think she really does have a point

I have seen takes you people wouldn't believe. Bill Kristol on fire with AOC's talking point. I watched David Brooks' eye glitter remembering Bloody Sunday. All those moments will be lost in time, like Hanania's Mea Culpa. Time to cry.

This was like the worst kept secret in Washington. If you paid any attention at all to the scuttlebut in the past ten years, you knew - not suspected, knew - that Graham was gay and in the closet. I am not sure who didn’t know about this already that would even care.

It would be nice if this were true. But autism really could be completely maladaptive on its own and simply be downstream of something else that is strongly selected for, where one tolerable side effect of that selection is that X percent of individuals will have the traits we call autistic. Like allergies. Predisposition to allergies is strongly genetic. Allergies in and of themselves are an exaggerated and mistargeted immune response with no obvious evolutionary benefit. They can sometimes just kill you. But having strong immune responses per se is something that would be selected for, and for obvious reasons. And that selection for strong immune responses may be strong enough that it doesn’t really matter if some people overshoot by being allergy-prone. Autism could easily be like that. A surprising amount of stuff is. Evolution has no problem with a little human sacrifice in moderation and doesn’t really care whether anybody is happy.

How do Mormon missionaries maintain that specific kind of niceness when they deal with others? There’s this affect they seem to cultivate. A relentless pleasantness and an apparent immunity to irritation. Extremely high personal warmth and extremely low spontaneity. It feels peculiar to them. Do they go through training to do this? They must. It doesn’t even seem fake. Not the way “Minnesota nice” does. It reminds me more of the patience of a good psychotherapist. They’re genuinely being what they feel a duty to be.

Assault and Battery

This is “Charlie Brown had hoes” territory and nowhere even close to being true. The Christian transformation of Roman sexual ethics and the gradual decline of the Roman slaveholding system are two different things and the latter does not just follow from the former. Slavery persisted for centuries in Christian societies, including the Byzantine Empire and medieval Western Europe. The Roman slave economy was booming during the very period when Christianity became dominant. In the later Eastern Empire, slaveholding continued, even tho its economic importance shrank and owners' legal powers became more restricted. In Western Europe, the transition from Roman slavery to serfdom took centuries and slaves were a feature of Christian societies throughout the early Middle Ages. More to the point, people didn’t just stop boning slaves when told to. Sexual availability was still a major factor in the demand for female slaves in Christian medieval Europe. Sally McKee has a great book about this. In places where domestic slavery survived, female slaves' sexual availability influenced their market value. The resulting children of masters + slaves created social pressures that actually helped diminish demand for domestic slaves.

Normalize no longer saying “Normalize [X]”

Sir this is a Wendy’s

This is just a normal Christian belief. Normal Eastern Orthodox belief, normal Catholic belief, normal Episcopalian belief. And today it’s a normal Mormon belief as well. For example, in the United States, approximately 80% of Catholics accept human evolution, and only about 17% believe humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Creationism is a bunch of Protestant freaks upsetting the applecart for everybody else. Not saying there aren’t other Christians who think this way. (I had entirely too much experience of Eastern Orthodox creationists growing up.) But evolution only seems to pose a real theological problem for (some) Protestants.