--- /dev/null
+Title: Scattered Personal Reflections After a Tech Conference; Or, Smile More
+Date: 2020-01-01
+Category: commentary
+Tags: discourse, software industry, anecdotal
+Status: draft
+
+> _There's a heart that must be free
+> To fly
+> That burns with the need to know
+> The reason why
+> Why must we all conceal
+> What we think, how we feel?
+> Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide?_
+>
+> —"Reflection", from _Mulan_
+
+I took half a week of vacation from my dayjob recently to crash with a friend in another city and attend the conference associated with an open-source technology I've been pretty involved with lately! It was really fun and inspiring, getting to hear all the talks and putting faces to usernames! I thought I'd write a blog post about all the exciting technical things I learned.
+
+This is not that post. By cowardice and convention, this is someone else's story on someone else's blog, about "Taylor Saotome-Westlake" visiting his friend "Jerrica" in "San Francisco" to attend the conference about this software called "[Blerp](https://xkcd.com/1692/)-d9aa89fd".
+
+Again, the conference was great, and I had a lot of fun, but—I don't know. Some aspects of it induced me to feel a bit stressed and a little bit sad, even though that's entirely my own fault and entirely my own problem.
+
+<a href="/images/blerp-d9aa89fd_pronoun_stickers.jpg"><img src="/images/blerp-d9aa89fd_pronoun_stickers.jpg" width="300" style="float: right;"></a>
+
+It started with the pronoun stickers.
+
+[...]
+
+<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
+
+Curtis Yarvin
+Rod Vagg linked to Quillette
+Opal guy said trans people are delusional
+
+
+
+think I'm an asshole and are showing me the door https://xkcd.com/1357/
+
+
+the Uber driver who picked me up from the airport was named Omar and was from Mexico
+
+he did not know any nonbinary people