None of this is good

Ouch. I don't exactly know what sort of celestial alignment caused me to run across these essays more-or-less simultaneously.

Feel free to turn the page now.

Or maybe not?

I don't know. I don't know what to think.

If you're still here, then here we go: from distasteful to ugly to horrific, without much of a pause I'm afraid:

• The Political Education of Silicon Valley

  The founders they surveyed were less likely than even Democrats to embrace the core expression of the libertarian worldview—that government should provide military and police protection and otherwise leave people alone to enrich themselves. They expressed overwhelming support for higher taxes on the wealthy and for universal health care. But in other ways they deviated from progressive orthodoxy. They were far more likely to emphasize the positive impact of entrepreneurial activity than progressives and had dim views of government regulation and labor unions that were closer to that of your average Republican donor than Democratic partisan.

  If you plot those values on the matrix of conventional US politics, there appears to be a contradiction: The tech elite want an activist government, but they don’t want the government actively restricting them.

• Uber Is Not Serious About Changing Its Toxic Culture

  The open board-chair position was a prime opportunity to lead by example and to appoint someone who embodies the idea of strength through diversity and empathy. Instead, they appointed the former CEO of Northrop Grumman—a position that requires, more than anything else, the ability to be OK with making billions of dollars even as your products maim and kill hundreds of thousands of people around the world. That’s not the kind of skill Uber needs right now.

• In Oakland, Nia Wilson’s Death Could Never Feel “Random”

  Every killing has its own idiosyncratic story. But when a society fails to respond in any systematic way to a pattern of black death, compensatory mechanisms will emerge. There are trends at work that black communities can see and that white America refuses to recognize—painful, documented contexts whose awful contours are too familiar and well substantiated to dismiss as simple paranoia.

• This is what the life of an incel looks like

  Feminism and leftist political discourse had made all masculinity toxic, Joey said. “Ask a feminist what is one positive masculine trait? Any example of positive masculinity?” he said. “Traditionally it would be courage, honor. But no one wants to say that because they believe that implies that women can't be courageous or honorable.” He claimed media outlets like Vice are pushing “degeneracy” and demeaning masculinity. "You guys have males who look like me though, you know? You guys don't have masculine men, I don't think, on Vice.” As Joey pulled me further into the world of incels, it became clear this brand of misogyny was a circular expression of self-hatred: I am weak, like a woman. Women have made me weak.

• What Happened When I Tried Talking to Twitter Abusers

  Women – both online and off – are told that we are overreacting, that we brought this abuse upon ourselves, that we can just leave the platform or get a new job, that the threats aren’t real, and a litany of other arguments meant to cause us to question our own realities and experiences. Teach a woman that she can’t trust herself and she becomes infinitely easier to abuse. Those of us who do speak up are labeled difficult, humorless, shrill, caustic; not only are women mistreated, but a system is in place to ensure that they can’t call out that abuse without doing more damage to themselves.

It's bad. It's really bad. I'm not sure how it got this bad this fast, but boy is it bad.