I work in a casual tech setting and I’m shocked by how much everyone swears. Should I say something? Imagine what it was like to be a Puritan in 1642. You’ve come to America. The landscape is crude and endless; the soundtrack, all hissing insects and howling wolves. “Everything about the place seemed godforsaken,” writes the natural historian Tim Flannery in his book The Eternal Frontier. That lawless emptiness is why you’re here—it means freedom.

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