tl;dr:

Adria Richards's statement quoted in TFA is self-serving, disingenuous, and contains some obviously false statements, but oh well, so what. Passing judgement on this incident is beneath me (I strive to one day act as I preach). Adria, and arguably dongle-joke-guy, made some mistakes, and the use of this incident to third parties like myself is to take a moment to contemplate how to avoid making similar mistakes.

-------------------

Some choice snippets from her statement:

"I have always tried to conduct myself in a way that builds bridges for everyone"

Almost no one can honestly claim this, and we've seen plenty of comments in the past weeks which, if true, show that Adria is no paragon of virtue, including a few from activist feminist women in tech who feel that Adria's high-profile unreasonable belligerence has repeatedly damaged the cause of equality. The claim seems likely to be a self-serving lie, although perhaps she believes it herself.

"the severest of consequences have manifested"

Seriously? You can't imagine any more-serious consequences for starting a fight with someone? Idiot.

"we can welcome newcomers, women and people of color"

Good job, focus on YOUR visible minority statuses. Way to build bridges for everyone.

"all of these issues have reasonable, and, I think, easily reached solutions"

That's fascinating optimism. Easily reached, eh. Seems so delusional to me that I think she's lying.

"conference spaces are workplaces!"

Well, yeah, some people are working at conferences, but some people are not. Public parks are someone's workplace too, and so are strip clubs. What's your point?

"I want to be an integral part of a diverse, core group of individuals"

Yeah, I bet she wants to be a core individual. Way to focus on your own ambitions.

"I want to be ... part of a ... group ... that comes together in a spirit of healing and openness"

This is... not consistent with much of her publicized behaviour. Is it?

-------------------

So, I don't give a rat's ass about Adria, Sendgrid, the guy who got fired, his company, whatever. And honestly I think most of HN shouldn't either. This is still a tempest in a teapot, ignore it. Passing judgement, a thing I love to spend time doing, is spectacularly unproductive most of the time, and often is damaging to your own mental flexibility (even aside from the time wasted).

And PyCon, which I do care about, seems to have had a proportionate level of response (deal with the incident reasonably and in line with policy, also update policy to clarify that public shaming isn't wanted either), and is getting on with more interesting things. So, the incident in question has taken care of itself.

The interesting part for all of us, I believe, is whether we can learn anything useful to ourselves. For myself, I can remind myself that throwing javelins is dangerous, because it can bite you, and building bridges is usually more effective. And though I'm personally not a huge fan of the wording of PyCon's conduct policy, that's fine, it's their con and I see the advantages, so for myself I can remind myself that reasonable people hold this position, and if I don't want to offend those people and start fights, I should take that into account.