3 ms·
Obligatory story beginning in 1963, where computer scientist Les Earnest explains why he always entered "mongrel" when questioned about his race: http://web.st
by cuspycode 5y ago
Obligatory story beginning in 1963, where computer scientist Les Earnest explains why he always entered "mongrel" when questioned about his race:
http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
- epivosism 5y agoThis is pretty good, thanks. TLDR: institutional adventures from a national security employee challenging the requirement to declare their race. This reminds me of "Seeing like a State" by James C Scott: attempts to simplify the world to allow generalizations about it always lose valuable detail.
- pyuser583 5y agoLol … I like the part about the Caucuses being in the USSR, so being Caucasian meant being Soviet. I once told a friend from west India to put “Aryan” down for race, but then stopped him and apologized after I realized that was mean-funny, not funny-funny. I was really an asshole in my 20s.
- jimmygrapes 5y agoKinda unrelated but Les is one of my favorite people to use as an example of how "websites" used to be. His writing is fun and honest, and some of his ideas were imo groundbreaking (and many are floating about waiting to be rediscovered).