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Looks like there's holiday-design discourse this week: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-columbian-exchange . Speaking as a veteran holiday designer (http://petrovday.com/), in my eyes, Columbus Day has already passed into the ranks of deprecated holidays. Not so much because Christopher Columbus was a bad person (though he was by all accounts quite terrible), but rather because no one has actually designed a rationality-culture version of it, and I find broad-American-culture holidays to be boring and uncompetitive.
Looking at Scott's list figures who could be given holidays, I think Edison and Salk have promise, and I would be enthusiastic about a good reinvention of MLK day which was updated to the present day and had a good nuanced take on things.
But I really hate the idea of giving Henrietta Lacks a holiday. Not because cancer research isn't important. Not because I think giving a cell culture is insufficiently virtuous, compared to the research itself. Rather, I think Henrietta Lacks should not be honored because I hold a grudge against HeLa, the microorganism that descends from her cancer. It is most famous not for its positive contributions to cancer research, but for invading and ruining cancer research on other cell lines. I don't think this kind of Petri-dish-invasion imperialism should be celebrated!
This post is a container for my short-form writing. See this post for meta-level discussion about shortform.