Women who don't want children and ask for operations to prevent it face persistent resistance from doctors that presume everyone will ultimately regret not having children.

In 1983, after I had made the announcement of the plan to develop GNU, the announcement which started the free software movement, a woman I loved asked me to support her and the children we would have in a middle-class lifestyle. I said no, because I did not want that life, and because it would have meant abandoning GNU. That no implied great loneliness, but now I am proud of what I have achieved with my child-free life.

If I had said yes, I doubt I'd have achieved anything important, and I would have regretted every day the decision to give up trying.

I am sure some fraction of women who get sterilized later regret it, just as some women have children later regret it. That is true for every choice people make: always, some fraction regret their choice. But it's impossible to postpone all choices forever.

Two laptops were stolen from the Capitol during the insurrection.

Some of the wrecker's supporters are having conniptions watching the talk where he condemned them for the violence he urged them to commit.

I can understand that they feel whipsawed by the contradiction between the two things he said. What is interesting is that they cling to his earlier persistent incitement to violence and reject his later denunciation of it.

Long ago I read a book of anthropology describing the events in a small prophetic cult in the US (1950s) whose central prophecy specified a date. Naturally it failed to occur. Some of the participants rejected the cult after that, but others redefined the prophecy so it could happen at a later date. (If you know the book's title, please tell me.)

I expect that some of Trump's cultists will redefine the cult to shift it away from him, rather than reject it.

Senator Manchin, a Democrat whose views are similar to Republicans of 2015, will try to block giving Americans in general more immediate aid.

He's not alone. *Billionaire-Owned Media Look Out for Neediest by Demanding They Get No More Money.*

Manchin is probably right that some of that money will go to Americnas who did not lose income during 2020. But that is quibbling. Nearly all will go to Americans who are poor and need aid — wealthy people will not get any of this.

For most of Americans who receive the whole $2000, it won't be enough.

Manchin puts more weight on small chance of giving some low-income Americans a little more than was supposedly intended for them right now, than on the certainty of giving millions too little. These are cruel priorities.

Pompeo has ended limits that the US has put on contacts with Taiwanese officials to placate China.

I don't have an easy way of checking, but I expect that these limits were put in place decades ago, when China was not a world power and the US wanted China's support. Back then, it was arguably a wise concession to make. It isn't now.