I initially misread the graph. I thought each mark on the horizontal axis was one month. And there were three data points per month. That was wrong. Each mark is the first month of the quarter and each point is one month.

The only reason we can tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans now is because the Republicans finally changed into the demon they’ve always courted. The Dems are the same as they ever were. The Dems, more out of touch than ever, would produced the same legislation updated with some Obama era metrics. I don’t know who you think the Democrats are, but they aren’t different today.

The bill was co-authored and championed by Senator Ted Kennedy, a stalwark Democratic, and Representative George Miller (D-CA). It passed the Senate 91–8 and the House 381–41. Just because it was passed during the Bush administration doesn’t mean it was Republican initiative.

Many small government libertarians and conservatives hated the NCLB because they saw it as government overreaching.

Charter schools are legislately introduced in the Obama era bill, Race to the Top, along with common core standards being tied to funding. Common Core is the standards you were calling for.

Same image with readable axis labels.

Edit: Just to put it in perspective, that big spike is about 4 hours and 2 minutes of downtime for the month of May 2023. Sauce

Are you talking about the Metric Conversion Act of 1975? That passed.

Not at cruising altitude.

Gam gam survived the depression.

Fuel prices are really too high to turn on the A/C when flying.

Can’t wait till pilots try fuelmaxxing by coasting.

“In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested equipment from France that could be used to evaluate the metric system within the United States. Joseph Dombey returned from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey’s ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, or strictly (British) privateers in the Caribbean, he died in captivity on Montserrat.”

The US has been close several times. Most recently in the late 1980s. But it was an uphill battle by then. We had layers of government and mature private industry that had decades of work in the old system.

Before that, the US had essentially the same issue. Retooling in industry. The US was an early adopter of industrialization. The only other country with a similar position was Britain. They only adopted it in the 60s. Most importantly, it was industry led and a hybrid system retained for the general public. It’s funny to realize that many US agencies like the NIST.

The US was the first to adopt a decimal coin system which is part of metrificsrion. But because everyone does it, we don’t think about it. On the flip side, no one adopted the metric calendar and there’s never been an attempt to meaningfully move away from the mixed base time system.

I appreciate the candor regarding your own suspicions It helps clear the air. My request for a feminist framing wasn’t an intellectual ‘screening’ or a test of virtue. It was for a common language where we could talk about the actual mechanics of power.

Here is where we still diverge on the logic of restorative spaces:

1. Can we strategically use the exclusionary spaces?

You argue that exclusion is an ‘analgesic’ that leads to bad habits. If a space exists purely for catharsis, it risks becoming a ‘shrine to nature.’ It becomes therapy and not politics. A therapeutic intervention may be need to find kinship and language, but what you do with that determines if it is a political organization. Politics move beyond the therapeutic. Politics changes the state to make sure that these acts don’t violate others like you. A larger politics, the one I will always argue for, connects with other oppressed nodes.

However, you are viewing these groups through a therapeutic lens (identity) rather than an intersectional political lens (formation). From the XF manifesto:

The universal must be grasped as generic, which is to say, intersectional. Intersectionality is not the morcellation of collectives into a static fuzz of cross-referenced identities, but a political orientation that slices through every particular, refusing the crass pigeonholing of bodies.

In a political laboratory, ‘sterility’ is about controlling variables. When you say a group shouldn’t restrict access because an outsider might be an ‘invaluable ally,’ you are making an untested assumption. In the early phase of formation, an uncalibrated ‘ally’ often inadvertently forces the group to translate its internal strategic needs into the language of the dominant gaze just to be understood. That political terrain is not set for this act of translation.

This isn’t a new idea in our conversation, I previously said

“[Men’s only groups in the past] is radically different from a the support some women may get in a women’s conference or the strategy and tactics developed from shared seed experiences for the political project of over throwing patriarchy.”

And I still stand by this. During the transition from therapeutic space to political space, there’s a push and pull, a back and forth. You are developing new language that speaks to the oppressed group, providing some healing, but acting politically through developing tactical methods, strategic goals and, eventually when you open up to other nodes, language they can understand. The explicit exclusion is about fostering unfettered creative political engagement. Unsealing this to the public can cause the political goals to evaporate.

These exclusive groups may invite “outsiders” for very specific insights. But it’s invitation only for strategy and tactic building. It plants the seeds for node interfaces.

2. Nodes and Hinting Beyond Nodes

Opening up to another node is an explicit strategic decision that requires political coherence in language and in body. More than negotiation, you are inviting to coordinate shared political goals with other nodes, not individuals seeking validation from allies.

Addressing when you said: “If we are truly connecting these nodes, then there isn’t exclusion to begin with arguably.”

Nodes start unconnected to develop internal integrity. The exclusion is real, but temporary. Nodes need to develop trust with one another first. This is cold. Creating trust exists in a sea of uncertainty. But the goal is not to stop there. But there must exists since oppressions are try to oppress and exploit as individuals while preventing node formation. The coldness is for functional integrity. The exclusion exists, but the that is not the goal.

The eventual goal is not to live exclusively in the nodes as a node resident, but free from nodal labeling through a transformation of the system that oppressed individuals even before nodes existed. This ‘cold’ coordination is the only way to ensure that when we do connect, we are doing so as a cohesive political body capable of directed subsumption, rather than being swallowed whole by the very system we are trying to dismantle.

3. Clean Spaces Are Not Clean

No space is perfectly ‘clean’. We all bring internalized cultural norms with us. But the purpose of the exclusive space isn’t to ignore those internalized toxins, but to create a controlled environment where we can isolate and deconstruct them without the external pressure of the ‘out-group’ reinforcing them in real-time. We don’t resist these thoughts. We analyze where they come from to determine if they serve a political purpose or if they are just ‘memetic parasites’ that need to be purged.

4. The ‘Long Game’ of Subsumption

The goal is a directed subsumption. It is a deliberate construction of new procedures that ‘soften the shell’ of the current system and dismantle its defenses. It is done is near simultaneity with the isolation and deconstruction of internalized toxins from the dominant system. In the process of self release from the internalized system, the tendency to attack the system politically opens up. This is only the beginning of the subsumption process. We engineer the future through destroying the inhibitators. We get creative space to develop new modes while this is happening and imagine what these modes can be if they open with the fall of the oppressive structures.

If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we have to be willing to build the ‘barracks’ where those procedures are designed. This is not asking for a place to hide, this is so we can build the infrastructure of transition.

I need to address the structural failure of this conversation. For our dialogue to be productive, it must engage with the thesis presented.

I have presented a specific thesis on restorative spaces as a material necessity for movement-building. This has been consistently ignored or reframed as “exclusionary antagonism.” I understand that you reject this as it widens empathy gap between in-groups and out-groups. However, you never engage with the interior possibility for it result in healing for the oppressed in-group.

I asked a direct question regarding how political movements form in the absence of private, strategic meeting spaces. This was met with a response addressing how they grow and not how which is a refusal to engage with the history of labor and policy work that defines these movements.

I presented a clear statement, “This is only true if you fail” and your response seemed to interpret my statement as a rejection to the initial and not the subsequent. I have no doubt that this phenomena is real or scientifically supported. Rather, I was pointing out how empathy for the in-group is a analgesic to the pain of being an out-group.

Finally, and arguably the most perplexing, despite my forthright and honest comportment, there has been a persistent reticent to grant me good faith and continue to view me with suspicion. You are treating my request for feminist framing as a “trap” rather than a legitimate effort to ground the discussion and find common language. Both of these I stated at the time of the request.

So in a attempt to meet you with the language of Xenofeminism, I will, to the best of my ability relate my response in the verbiage of the text you provided. Since I am new to the school, please grant me a little grace as I fumble through it and keep in mind that I’m trying to meet you where you are while still honoring the lived experiences of an oppressed minority.

I suspect we are actually arguing about the mechanics of liberation rather than the goals. Xenofeminism (XF) is a project of rationalist engineering. If we treat social organization as a form of “technomaterialist” construction, then we must recognize that every effective tool requires specific environmental constraints to function.

My thesis of restorative spaces is the social wetware terrain in which control is wrenched from the hegemon. A laboratory requires a sterile environment to produce a pharmaceutical , an oppressed group requires a sterile social space to re-engineer the “memetic parasites” of patriarchy. It is the pre-production phase of a mesopolitical project.

Restorative spaces are the necessary pre-production phase of the mesopolitical. They are the modular laboratories where we develop the new language for sexual politics that XF calls for. You cannot bootstrap a new world into existence while still using the corrupted operating system of the dominant gaze. This is the site where we experiment with different modes of ‘directed subsumption’. It is the protected environment where we develop the very procedures intended to seep into the shell of the patriarchy and dismantle its defenses from the inside out.

It is the site of “multiple political bodies”. It’s not a site available just for women. But also for men to do the same. It is a site for BIPOC, for asexuals, for trans and for neurodivergent people. If “a hundred sexes should bloom” , we must allow for a hundred different social affordances. Just as a neurodiverse person might need a specific sensory environment to thrive, women and the marginalized groups you mentioned require specific restorative environments to build the unselfish solidarity necessary for the long game of history.

Universal solidarity is not a spontaneous event, but a synthetic construction that must be meticulously engineered across distinct sites of struggle over large time scales. Solidarity must be engineered between these distinct sites of restorative labor. Moving toward a true mesopolitical scale requires us to treat these individual ‘laboratories’ as modular nodes in a larger network. We do not build a universalist project by flattening our specific needs into a vague, horizontal mass, but by establishing robust protocols of transit between our specialized spaces, both externally and internally. This coordination is the necessary ‘boot-strapping’ phase—linking our local ‘social affordances’ into a cohesive, technomaterialist front capable of challenging the hegemon.

I am not arguing for a “shrine to nature”. I am arguing for the freedom to engineer the social conditions of our own healing. If we are to engineer a future beyond the binary, we must first defend the right to construct the specialized environments where that future is actually being built.

At least according to an anarchist like Graeber, the state is just a way to take power out of the hands of the people and put it into the hands of the few. It’s a way to ensure that only certain people have the right to speak, and that the state has the exclusive right to use violence. Calling the Athenian state the ‘origin’ of democracy is just a way to ignore the thousands of years humans spent successfully governing themselves without a specialized class of rulers.

I see no comments acknowledging or even a vague awareness of what the Grape Academy is. It’s important to the comment.

I’m going to skip the meta-conversation and tactic you used. I don’t think they clarify or further the discussion about why women would want a conference without men.

Regarding natalism, I skipped it not because it was emotional, but it was tangential and unclear in how it was related to the specific topic. Again, I have nothing against emotions playing into one’s politics.

Segregation foments adversarial attitudes. Even with trivial or made up differences. It widens the empathy gap, creates perceived out-group homogeneity, and a sense of moral superiority.

This is only true if you fail to understand the internal needs of the segregated group. In this case, it is to regain power in themselves and through connection to others who get it. This subverts any empathy gap that could happen. When a cancer survivor group meets, I don’t ever know what it was like having had cancer. But I can provide an empathetic space to understand that:

1. I don’t get it
2. It serves some of them in healing

If the only result you care about is how it effects out-groups, then you misunderstand how healing and political movements are created at the earliest stages. How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?

Not a hard rule though, and to say there is no power in a woman’s only group that couldn’t further disenfranchise a dis-empowered non-woman would be disingenuous.

Women are historically oppressed minorities. Patriarchal systems caused their oppression. Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?

“Over throwing patriarchy” is a vague goal at best though. What does that actually entail?

Much of this particulars are covered in the long history of feminism. Recounting it all would take several books. Staying with in the confines of one or strain will help guide the discussion. What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement? That will dissipate the vagueness. There may not be one single definition, but the contours for disagreement move from a blob to specific corners of concern. I’m asking for these because if you view these goals as ‘religious,’ it suggests you are unfamiliar with the specific, material policy work and labor history that defines the movement. There is nothing inherently wrong with not being familiar with the field in specificity.

So in sum, I’d like to hear:

• How do you think political movements are formed if not in small groups meeting privately?
• Who are the dis-empowered non-woman that are being disenfranchised?
• What feminist literature have you read? Who are your guiding lights in the movement?

Thanks. Just as surprising is the lack of empathy that would imagine why someone might need that space. I wonder if it’s been all in vain.

you think you’d show me I’m right to view exclusionary spaces with some level of suspicion and disdain.

I didn’t address this directly because you didn’t do the work to show you were actually interested in the conversation. That’s why didn’t have the right to be there. This response is more serious and worth giving you my attention and energy. Had you provided the context and thinking you provided in this response in the first response, I would have considered answering especially if you were able to support it’s relevancy.

I won’t be addressing the anti-natalist because I don’t see how it’s connected and it seems like it’s emotionally charged for you. Emotionally charged politics are important, but only if they are connected to the topic and if I judge that I have any relevant position to make any intervention. So I won’t be sounding off on that.

That leaves the first point where you started in your first comment “Men do the same.” and gave your thinking in this last comment. On the face of it, an out group is not an adversary. If I attend a cancer survivor’s group and people who never had cancer show up, it changes things. People who never had cancer are not my adversaries. My goal isn’t to fight those people. I want to connect with others through a shared experience.

Men’s only groups in the past was often a place where real decisions for power and profit were made. This is radically different from a the support some women may get in a women’s conference or the strategy and tactics developed from shared seed experiences for the political project of over throwing patriarchy.

First, a conference is a private space, not a public space. It is invitational to a private event. The non-invitation of a group of individuals without exclusion is functional a non-point to me. It’s performative at best. “We didn’t technically not invite flat earthers to the astrophysics conference, we just didn’t extend an invitation to any individuals who also happen to be flat earthers.” Its a distinction without a difference.

Events like a conference can have multiple purposes including highlighting under represented views. The function is what determines the allowed group. If it’s coalition building, then men would be invited. If it’s to highlight women’s voices and foster bonding, then it will exclude men. By explicitly excluding the class of men, it signals an invitation to sharing. People prep for this before hand and know it’s a place they can share openly. See the four points I listed in my initial comment.

“By excluding a generalized group, it discriminates through stereotype”

Absolutely does not. There’s nothing about the oppression of women that a man’s voices can lend that speaks from first hand experience. Acknowledging men are not women is not stereotyping. Its definitional.

No one’s claiming amorality. The morality being used by the powerful to undermine the solidarity building of women or other oppressed groups is not the one that needs centering. The morality that puts healing through community and connection comes before opening to others. There’s a morality that allows the voiceless to find their voice.

The powerful are different because they have power. As a class, they will do anything they need to do to hold on to that power. As individuals, sure… same. As a class, different. This is not inherent inequality, its historical and class based.

The best point you have, though surprisingly, failing to actually answer my question is the note of creating a mass movement. I asked for a "single instance where the dominant group stopped their exclusion because they lost the ‘transitive legitimacy’.

The opening of the doors was after long sessions of small groups agitating to make a difference. Guess how many men were allowed to attend CWLU’s Liberation School for Women? The Quaker Bright Circles would meet and practice their religion together and affirm their dignity as women first. Then they bought to other Quaker. Before a mass movement comes the long arduous act of developing solidarity.

No fort has been taken by dropping your rifles.

Change comes from the oppressed organizing in their own spaces and not by holding the moral high ground.

The powerful will do whatever they need regardless of the moral high ground or not. They haven been using exclusion for centuries to maintain their position. They don’t need my ‘permission’ or a ‘logical precedent’ to gatekeep. They have the systemic power to do it regardless.

They manufacture legitimacy for themselves using ‘tradition,’ ‘efficiency,’ or ‘safety’ to mask their gatekeeping. They don’t borrow legitimacy from the marginalized. Throughout history, the dominant group has never waited for a logical ‘green light’ from the oppressed to justify exclusion. And they won’t give up power because we have the moral high ground.

If we ‘disarm’ and stop creating restorative spaces, we lose a vital tool for survival, while the powerful lose absolutely nothing. Abandoning a functional tool for restoration (like a support group or a focused conference) because a bad actor might mislabel their own dominance as ‘restoration.’ That’s like saying we shouldn’t use a scalpel to save a life because a murderer might use one to take one. The intent and the material outcome are what define the action, not the fact that a blade was used.

They will continue to exclude because they can, with or without a consistent moral philosophy. You are prioritizing the ‘purity’ of a logical rule over the material survival of a group.

Can you name a single historical instance where a dominant group stopped a practice of exclusion because they realized they no longer had the ‘transitive legitimacy’ to continue it?

Being able to tell the difference between people who have historically been exploited and oppressed and those powerful people feigning it is an easy task. Rascists do it. White supremicists do it. It is no reason to abandon the tools of restoration for the oppressed. It’s not the only one, but it is one.

If your issue is that it rhymes, then I think you’re missing how the powerful use this to oppress and exploit people. When minorities do it, it is done to regain power and dignity from being oppressed and exploited.