#drafts clearout

Olivia Breckenridge (Arden)

Paige Duplass (The Silt Verses)

Anne (Woe.begone)

Trans men characters in podcasts:

Brother Faulkner (The Silt Verses)

Brian Jeeter (The Strange Case of Starship Iris)

Michele (Moonbase Theta, Out)

Quil, iirc (This Planet Needs a Name)

Non-binary characters in podcasts:

Adjudicator Shrue, Vaughn, Gage, and Sibling Rane (The Silt Verses)

R. J. McCabe and Krejjh* (The Strange Case of Starship Iris)

Cal* (Microcosmos)

The Traveller and Óli* (Travelling Light)

Medusa (Khôra)

Ashwini Ray (Moonbase Theta, Out)

Because the way I was taught it, the Trolley Problem isn't a one-and-done thing in isolation - its classic form is there to set up the variations and test where your values change.

The classic form is: a runaway trolley is careening down the tracks. The brakes are broken, it can't be stopped. In its path, five people are tied to the tracks, and if it's left to its own devices, the trolley will run over them and kill them. BUT you have the option to pull a lever and send the trolley down a different track. On that track, one person is tied to the tracks. As it stands Right Now, if you do nothing, the five people will die, and the one person will live. But you can pull the lever and switch the trolley's track so that the one person will die, and the five will live. The trolley is approaching and you don't have time to untie anyone from the tracks. Would you pull the lever?

In its base form, the question is fairly simple, and it's about if the capacity to intervene makes you morally obligated to intervene, and if doing nothing and letting more people die is better or worse than personally intervening to make it so that fewer people die, but one person will die who without your intervention would otherwise have lived.

But that's even one iteration of the problem, because most people say yes - saving five people and sacrificing one is, overall, better than saving one person and sacrificing five.

And the real value of the Trolley Problem comes after you've said, yes, I'd pull the lever.

You've established that you believe intervening to save five people even if that means sacrificing one person is the more morally correct option. Then the question-asker hits you with,

... what if the five people were strangers, and the one person was your mom/your spouse/your sister/your best friend? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were adults, and the one was a child? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were convicted felons, and the one was not? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if the five people were disabled, and the one person was an Olympic athlete? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of one person, it was four people? Would you pull the lever then?

... what if instead of five people, it was a critically endangered bird, whose death might doom its species to extinction? Would you pull the lever then?

The one that sticks in my head is, let's go back to the baseline version - a trolley is careening out of control towards five people, and you can intervene to shift it to the track where it will kill one person. Did you say yes to that?

Now imagine there are five terminally ill people who need a heart transplant, a liver transplant, a lung transplant, and two kidney transplants, or they'll die. Meanwhile, there is a perfectly healthy adult in front of you with fully functional organs that are a perfect match for these five people. Would you kill that healthy adult and distribute their organs to the five sick people, saving their lives?

If you said no to that, but yes to pulling the trolley lever... why? The logic is the same: kill one person who would otherwise have lived, in order to save five people who would otherwise have died. But it feels different, doesn't it? Why?

That's what the Trolley Problem is for. It's a deliberately contrived ethical thought experiment to draw out our values, our feelings, and how we apply our values about people's lives when we make decisions - and maybe make us face the realization that we have some gut feelings about the value of some lives over others, and make us ask ourselves why we feel that way.

It's applied to hospital triage situations about who to treat first, and to decisions when programming self-driving cars in a crash scenario of whether to prioritize the safety of a pedestrian or the driver.

And it exists so that once you realize the way you're thinking about this, you then have to turn the question to the trade-offs we actually make in society.

... what if instead of five people, it was seven million people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was The Economy?

... what if instead of five people, it was 7,500 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it's letting car companies do what they want forever?

... what if instead of five people, it was 1,000 people, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was police budgets and police immunity?

... what if instead of five people, it was a ground invasion of Japan, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was 140,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

... what if instead of five people, it was 251 hostages, and on the other track, instead of one person, it was the entire population of Gaza?

“Jack of all trades” is the original phrase. “Master of none” is a snarky comeback. “But oftentimes better than master of one” is a snarky comeback to THAT.

“Curiosity killed the cat” has an interesting history: centuries ago, the phrase was “care kills the cat,” where “care” means worry or fretting. Anxiety is a killer. “Care” became “curiosity” sometime in the 1800s, and “but satisfaction brought it back” seems to have sprung up very soon after that version became popular. People started making that snarky rejoinder within like 10 or 20 years. It’s not “the original,” but it grew up almost in tandem with the original.

There are a lot of reasons to have a suite of go-to gluten-free recipes. If you or your partner can't eat gluten, if you are going to a potluck/dinner party and want to make sure everyone there can eat Something, if you are on an archaeological project for 3 weeks sharing a house with a rotating cast of 3-5 other people with various dietary restrictions... you want to make sure you know how to make things that everyone can eat that aren't just Salad.

I make a lot of these for myself regularly or For Special Occasions and can vouch for all of them, they're Real Good

Appetizers

Socca (chickpea-flour flatbread)

Vegetarian

Vegan

Dairy-free

Avocado Deviled Eggs

Vegetarian

Dairy-free

Baked Pears with Goat Cheese, Bacon, and Honey

You can remove any of those things but together they are so good

Lunches

Quesadillas on Corn Tortillas

Optionally Vegetarian

Easy, fast, filling, infinitely customizable. All you really need is butter, a tortilla, and cheese; optionally you can include spices like cumin/chili/paprika/pepper, beans, pulled pork, pulled chicken, beef cubes, hatch chiles, green onion… the quesadilla is your oyster.

Shakshouka (Mediterranean poached eggs in tomato sauce)

Vegetarian

Optionally dairy-free

More of a fancy brunch than a lunch, really. Officially it's a breakfast food but who has time to make it for breakfast.

Soups

Butternut Squash Soup

Vegetarian

Vegan

Dairy-free

I made it with these minor alterations (roast the squash first, it brings out the flavor). If you don't want to go through the time it takes to build up vegetable ends, and you can't find certified gluten-free vegetable stock, using water is okay.

Creamy Roasted Mushroom and Brie Soup

Vegetarian

The recipe calls for flour as a thickening agent; you can use gluten-free cornstarch or rice flour, or just omit it entirely, it’s fine.

Dinners

Black Bean and Sweet Potato Enchiladas

Vegetarian

Mchicha (African tomato-peanut-spinach curry)

Vegetarian

Optionally vegan and dairy-free but it's a little harder

Faux Madras Lentils

Vegetarian

Again, if you can't find certified gluten-free stock or broth, replacing it with water is okay. This is full of flavor already.

Fall Dal (Apple Squash Lentils)

Vegetarian

Vegan

Dairy-free

Deserts

Peanut Butter Cookies

The three ingredient peanut butter/sugar/egg classic

Almond-Cornmeal Citrus Cake