Argument Clinic: Just Joking

Saying something nasty and following it with “I’m just joking” is a form of verbal abuse that’s passive-aggressive. I.e: it’s semi-concealed aggression, intended to give the target pause as to whether or not they can successfully counter-attack.

Is this the right room for an argument?

Is this the right room for an argument?

It’s a technique that can be employed in a strategy of verbal abuse but succeeds if it’s fairly consistent, and only then against unsophisticated targets.

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Left Handedness

August 13 is International Left Handers’ Day and Rhiannon poked a corner of the Hive Mind and asked if it’d consider taking a look at handedness as a social justice issue. They’re doing a series of postings on the topic, which you should check out.

I lived for 13 years with a left handed person, and I recall it occasionally was a problem, but I admit I never thought about it much. I remember mostly complaints about privilege-alertfinding decent scissors – stuff like that, so I replied to Rhiannon: “I’ve mostly worked in the software industry and I’d always thought that computing wasn’t so bad…

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