Author: cjtrowbridge
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Conversation with a Professor
This was in a lower division LGBT Studies class. We were discussing “Redefining Realness” by Janet Mock. Me: I really connected personally with the line “When I look back at my childhood, I often say I always knew I was a girl since the age of three or four, a time when I began cataloging…
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Coronavirus and The Environment
CJ Trowbridge Environmental Problems & Solutions 2020-05-20 Final Exam In preparing for this essay, I looked back for evidence on my early personal response to coronavirus. I recall that early on, it seemed like a repeat of SARS-CoV-03. Since then, we have learned that though SARS-CoV-19 is much less lethal and contagious, the response has…
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The fact that housing is almost always only being built by investors means it’s not possible to have affordable housing for everyone.
CJ Trowbridge 2020-05-12 USP GWAR Urban Studies GWAR Final The fact that housing is almost always only being built by investors means it’s not possible to have affordable housing for everyone. In this paper I will show that when real estate investors act in their own rational self-interest, they harm everyone else. I will show…
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Sexual orientation is not a “real fact” about people.
CJ Trowbridge 2020-05-14 Feminist Ethics Final Essay Sexual orientation is not a “real fact” about people. In “What is Sexual Orientation,” Robin Dembroff argues that neither of the two popular ideas about what sexual orientation is, holds up to scrutiny. The behavioral perspective tries to classify people based on what physical characteristics their partners have.…
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What’s Coming
Things are about to get a lot worse. Once numbers start to appear about how many businesses will never reopen, then we will fall off the cliff.
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Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
Alison Bechdel is a lesbian cartoonist who famously gave us the eponymous Bechdel Test. The Bechdel test, also known as the Bechdel–Wallace test, is a measure of the representation of women in fiction. It asks whether a work features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The…
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Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein
This book is very dense and very wonky. I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone. If you’re interested in power and politics, then this is a good book for you. The central thesis of the book is two-fold. Klein argues that polarization is different from sorting or categorization because of homophilies. If I know how you…
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Burning Chrome by William Gibson
This is easily one of my favorite books. This was my first time reading it, and I found that I had to take breaks to reflect, and often reread chapters before moving on. Very excellent work by Gibson. I can see the way his thoughts moved in the direction of Neuromancer towards the end and…
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Raised Bed Gardens and Water Distribution
Given the many weeks of isolation in quarantine, I decided to move home rather than continue to pay bay area prices to be in quarantine indefinitely. It was nice to spend time with family, and we decided to remodel the house to keep ourselves busy. My project was the new garden. I decided to build…
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Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
In the 1970s, Michel Foucault was working on something unrelated and discovered an important memoir. Herculine Barbin had lived a short and noteworthy life as an intersex and transgender person in the mid-1800s. Foucault translated and published the memoir. It spread far and wide and impacted many people around the world. Jeffrey Eugenides was one…