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Taylor Sloan Posts

Hillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book

Hillbilly Elegy Is A Terrible Book

Published by Taylor on July 17, 2024

I suspect the only thing J.D. Vance and I have in common are that we both grew up in working class families in steel mill towns in the midwest, and we both have grandparents who moved there from Eastern Kentucky after World War 2. That—along with the fact that I hadn’t brought another book to read on my flight home—was enough to convince me to buy his newly-published book Hillbilly Elegy at a magazine stand in the San Francisco Airport.

What I quickly realized after beginning the book was that he and I had a very different understanding of what led his family to leave Appalachia, why it is that so many people there are struggling to get by, and what the value of personal responsibility means in contrast to the issues Appalachians (and all working class people) face in this country.

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Serenity Gardens (A Short Story)

Serenity Gardens (A Short Story)

Published by Taylor on July 3, 2024
I’m working on new chapters of The Signal that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this short story I recently finished.

The song I’ll Follow You Into The Dark by the band Death Cab for Cutie was playing. It had come out when they were teenagers. It was their song. This was the last time they’d hear it together, if she was even really hearing it. He believed that she was, or hoped it at least. Melanie Stephenson was asleep, or unconscious really. Wes Stephenson—her husband of 39 years—knew that it was unconsciousness. Sleep was something you woke up from, and he knew that she would not wake up again. 

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Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 3 A brown tabby cat sitting on the ledge of a screen window on a back porch with the text: Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 3

Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 3

Published by Taylor on June 7, 2024

Interesting Things on The Internet:

On Reddit: A guide for healthcare workers on providing compassionate care to trans folks:

A Comprehensive Guide to Transgender Patients in EMS
byu/TallGeminiGirl inems

Other things I’m reading:

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Microsoft Recall Is A Very, Very Bad Idea Screenshot of Microsoft's "Recall" AI feature, showing a timeline of screenshot "snapshots" from a user's computer

Microsoft Recall Is A Very, Very Bad Idea

Published by Taylor on June 6, 2024

Microsoft’s new AI-powered ‘Recall’ feature saves frequent screenshots along with associated data for access by the Copilot+ AI assistant.

If you know anything about cybersecurity—and I mean literally anything—Recall seems like a really bad idea. The idea is to store hundreds of snapshots of your potentially sensitive computer activity, in order to allow Copilot to assist you in finding things you previously looked at. Essentially it’s browsing history, but for the entire scope of your computer use. Anything from your bank account password to sensitive health records will be saved, along with not-clearly-defined metadata about what you’re using.

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Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 2 a picture of a shorthair brown tabby laying on its side on a table and sleeping with overlaid text that says "Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 2"

Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Vol. 2

Published by Taylor on May 24, 2024

I saw a Tesla Cybertruck in Indianapolis for the first time this week.

They are just as gargantuan and ugly in real life as they are on the internet. True to form and expectation, this one had just cut someone off from getting into the turn lane.

My friend Lucas’s thought on them is this: “The perfect embodiment of the suburban pickup truck. Barely useful bed that’ll never get used for “tough work,” ugly as sin, mostly used to ferry rich guys and their children, high enough so you can’t see the pedestrians you’re killing. It’s like someone took an F-150 and turned all the dials to 11.”

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Untitled Weekly Newsletter – Volume 1 a picture of a shorthair brown tabby laying on its side on a bed and yawning with overlaid text that says "Untitled Weekly Newsletter Volume 1"
Campus Protests for Gaza and the Right Side of History "FREE GAZA" spray painted in capital letters on a sidewalk

Campus Protests for Gaza and the Right Side of History

Published by Taylor on May 1, 2024

I was born in 1989. Although I don’t really remember much about South African Apartheid, I remember when it fell.

My grandparents actually had a newspaper clipping from 1994 about the fall of the apartheid regime that was kept in the middle drawer of their computer desk. As Quakers, they were against apartheid, and as I became older and more capable of understanding the world around me, they taught me more about what apartheid was along with many of the other racist anti-human systems baked into the function of our world.

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Trustworthy Organizations in Gaza for Donations Ambulances carrying victims of Israeli strikes crowd the entrance to the emergency ward of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on October 15, 2023.

Trustworthy Organizations in Gaza for Donations

Published by Taylor on February 27, 2024

No one with a conscience should be able to see what is happening in Gaza and not want to help.

Of course, the only real solution according to the UN and virtually every human rights organization in the world is a permanent ceasefire under which Israel can no longer kill thousands of innocent civilians, lay waste to the civic and residential infrastructure of Gaza, and prevent aid from reaching those trapped there.

Until that happens, there are some organizations who are doing good work in Gaza to provide food, WASH, healthcare, housing, and search-and-rescue. Some have been there for decades, others have only come in since the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza in October.

I have tried to do as much research and due diligence as I can to vet these organizations and their operational philosophy, but I am not a perfect person. If you know of any substantial reason why any of these organizations might not be considered trustworthy, please contact me and I will consider removing it from the list. I will also add additional organizations periodically as I find them.

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34 Years: Life and Death and Love

34 Years: Life and Death and Love

Published by Taylor on November 15, 2023

Every year after my birthday, I like to write a short essay reflecting on my life in the last year: the experiences I’ve had, the interactions with people known and met, and what I’ve learned from all of it. This year I have decided to start sharing that essay publicly.

In 2023 I turned 34 years old. This has been a year of my life that could be described as having ups and downs, but that might be an understatement. It has been filled with moments of incredible happiness, uncertainty, sorrow, and bittersweet joy.

This February, I asked my girlfriend of 18 months to marry me, and she said yes. It wasn’t a surprise to either of us, but having the ring in my pocket and waiting for just the right time to ask made me about as nervous as anything in my adult life has. We began wedding planning that day, and I’m happy to say that in a few weeks, we’ll be husband and wife (and on our honeymoon).

Before that, in January, my grandmother had started treatment for stage four peritoneal cancer. We all knew that the prognosis wasn’t especially good, but we didn’t want to immediately dismiss any hope that it might work. After all, she had survived breast cancer when I was a kid.

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The Problem With [and Solution to] Twitter Charlton Heston as Moses holding up the Twitter and Mastodon logos.

The Problem With [and Solution to] Twitter

Published by Taylor on November 18, 2022


I’ve been on Twitter for 14 years now, which is strange to think about. In that time I’ve connected with dozens of real-life friends and acquaintances, followed and been followed by hundreds more people, stayed informed and entertained, and been a part of countless conversations.

I’m not going to talk in extraordinary detail about what’s happening at Twitter right now in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s takeover. Suffice to say… laying off half of the staff, making it possible for anyone to pretend to be a verified individual or public entity, and mandating a host of bizarre/extreme new workplace policies don’t bode well for the platform.

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