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Is he actually racist, or are his moments of unclarity racist?

To determine that might require face-to-face contact and since he is a diagnosed schizophrenic, it might still be unclear.

Even if the racism only comes out during manic periods, it would be difficult to parse that in an online medium. Since very few of us are trained to deal with that sort of episode, it is probably best to avoid the issue entirely.

Why not just ask?

Terry's God is only as coherent as Terry's offerings of executable code on any given day, and He mediates all of Terry's social communication.

The best way to satisfy your vuriosity is to read his internal monologue stuff, which he documents religiously: http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Accts/TS/Wb2/Rants/TAD/TADRants.h...

there's no material difference for the purposes of fostering social spaces devoid of racism

Just about all Americans exhibit some racism, although most of it manifests itself in the form of less-obvious, but still insidious, biases and so on, rather than calling people the n-word on Hacker News.

i totally agree but i don't think it serves as any kind of counterpoint to excluding people who use the n-word from participating in discussions

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