Just a few more minutes of Pride and there won’t be any 2SLGBTQQIA+ holidays until Nonbinary Awareness Week begins in 13 days.
Here’s a typical celebration in our neighborhood: “Congratulations to Rice-Bound Britton”.
Separately, does it make sense to congratulate Bitton for choosing a $100,000/year school, even one that absurdly claims to be “ranked as a best value in higher education”? If Britton got into Rice she surely would have qualified for the Bright Futures scholarship, thus cutting University of Florida tuition to $0 from $6700/year. She probably would have qualified for the Benacquisto Scholarship, which also pays for housing, food, textbooks, fees, etc. Rice is ranked #17 by US News while University of Florida is ranked #30. Rice ranks higher, but is it $400,000 higher? ChatGPT, asked which school has the better climate: “For a typical August–May school year, I’d pick Gainesville, FL as the better climate overall, especially for kids and outdoor life. Houston has milder winters, but Gainesville has a more pleasant fall–spring stretch, cooler nights, less big-city heat-island effect, and a less flood-prone feel.” I personally love the art museums of Houston, but can’t remember seeing college kids in them. Air quality is, of course, much better in Gainesville since Floridians don’t spend all of their time and energy refining petroleum.
ChatGPT says that UF is stronger than Rice for undergraduates in some areas, including nuclear engineering (maybe now that we’ve surrendered to the Iranians they will send their future bomb developers to UF?), pre-vet, anything agricultural (AI-proof?), accounting, real estate/construction/development (AI-proof?), education, pre-health other than pre-med, materials engineering, etc. In a lot of engineering disciplines, our AI overlord says that the schools are close, but presumably Rice is less of a herd experience.
Britton’s choice to attend Rice will likely help Rice avoid the budget deficit that has now become part of the narrative at Syracuse. https://dailyorange.com/2026/06/su-missed-fall-2026-enrollment-targets-faces-budget-deficit/
Pride is now over. Whatsoever shall we do?
As noted in the original post, I’m preparing for Nonbinary Awareness Week!
(In reality, trying to work through a 100-item punchlist of household-related stuff. Our contractor hates me so much that he changed his phone number without telling me (but somehow messages sent the old number didn’t bounce). This is the guy to whom I paid 2X the contract price because he’d made a mistake in quoting it. https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2024/06/20/kid-perspectives-on-contracts/ (he now says he’ll show up on July 29))
Why would he hate you if you’re bankrolling him? Maybe he just doesn’t want to do it all….
Probably changed to a Google Voice number or something. When I encounter unpleasant situations that mandate a phone number, I give my Google Voice.
Looked at the calendar and surprised there are no LGBTQ+ holidays on or near that date. It is international tiger day, which is an animal that has not yet been co-opted by the copulation-having community (which, according to you, does not generally include people married over 30).
I may be taking a train or bus to Maskachusetts soon. Any advice?
While we were bitching about pride , masks , liberals our president made couple billion, fair and square . Go Capitalism and I am happy for him.
If he keeps that up every year for 500 years he will be as rich as Elon Musk is right now. https://philip.greenspun.com/envy/elon for the semi-real-time status.
Britton is clearly a boy’s name. It is a rare occasion that Phil misses an opportunity to shoehorn some he/her/they phrases into an otherwise unrelated post.
Thanks, Dylan. I had no idea! I thought it was some sort of variant of Brittany. ChatGPT says the split is 78% male/22% female (apparently ChatGPT is full of hate because no percentage is assigned to nonbinary babies named Britton). This is based on SSA data. I don’t know this family, though they live close to us, but I will try to find out. Based on behavior, manners, and activities, it seems like the girls in the neighborhood are more likely to attend elite colleges (we are, alas, not rich in the nonbinary as our Boston suburban neighborhood was).
I think 78/22 would definitely be an occasion for “he/she” here in Jupiter or “he/she/ze/they” in MA, CA, NY, etc. I’m sorry to have missed it 🙁