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Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

elaineou.com

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Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#41
post #8

Makes me glad I live in New York and not Silicon Valley.

Honest question: How does New York compare on this spectrum? I had the impression that the political atmosphere there is very similar to California. I loved New York City when I visited, so I’m very curious to learn more about it from this perspective. If you don’t feel safe talking about it publicly, feel free to email me (you can track it down via my account). I wish I didn’t have to say that last sentence, but thi…

Not sure about California as a whole state, but NYC is liberal aside from Staten Island. And the rest of the state is red, aside from few cities.

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#42

I mentioned it in the @sama thread earlier... but we're also missing Brendan Eich being canned for his views on gay marriage

To be fair, he's also responsible for JavaScript.

I'm on the fence about this, especially given that it's my livelihood.

Sure, I worked through the bad old days of writing `document.getElementById()` by hand, Scriptaculous vs MooTools, mountainous files of jQuery, Backbone vs Angular, and CoffeeScript when it was cool, but I can't deny that things aren't so bad nowadays.

Maybe I'm just naive.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#43
post #8

Makes me glad I live in New York and not Silicon Valley.

Honest question: How does New York compare on this spectrum? I had the impression that the political atmosphere there is very similar to California. I loved New York City when I visited, so I’m very curious to learn more about it from this perspective. If you don’t feel safe talking about it publicly, feel free to email me (you can track it down via my account). I wish I didn’t have to say that last sentence, but thi…

In NYC, coming out as a Trump supporter is a cardinal sin that will lose you friends.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#44
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And knowingly exposing others to HIV is no longer a felony in California. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/1... While virtue-signalling about nomenclature is fun, this actually has a measurably horrible impact on public health.

Nice whataboutism.

"Valid examples of hypocrisy are whataboutism"

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#45

The cherry picking of this article is extreme. A company chooses to not employ someone based on a multiple page essay and this article takes a sentence and tries to make it look ridiculous.

Agreed, Damore's essay was a rambling, illogical mess. Only revered by weak minds who'd already been fooled by alt-right ideology. He deserved to be fired.

His conduct after his firing vindicated that decision too. The dullard even had his Twitter handle as "Fired For Truth", as if he'd written some incontrovertible work of brilliance, rather than the actual half-baked mess he spluttered up.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#46
post #29

> If San Francisco residents really believed that sea levels were rising, they’d have all sold their homes by now Anyone who says that is, frankly, unobservant. We have government bail outs for people who live in areas that frequently flood due to things that have nothing to do with climate change, such as normal rain and hurricanes. Many of these areas flood almost predictably, yet we keep providing government suppo…

[deleted]

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#49

For better or worse, popular society has become a lot better at detecting dog whistles. "Diversity of thought is more important than diversity of skin color" is one of those dog whistles. I don't find the discussion itself objectionable, but I also don't want to grant intellectual capital to anybody who is going to use a controversial topic in bad faith to control the discussion. I don't want to be used to legitimize…

I'd argue that popular society has an increasing false positive rate when detecting dogwhistles, and that the problem is exacerbated by increasingly partisan politics.

Re: Stuff You Can't Say in Silicon Valley

#50
post #24

If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that they were not allowed to say these things shortly after saying one or more of them ...

I think the greater concern are weaponized codes of conduct in an at-will employment environment. If you can’t say something without losing your job, you’re not free to say something. You can take every effort to respect someone else, not allow any of your behavior to be construed as harassment, and still be out the door because someone objects to or is offended by what you’ve said.

You’re always free to say it. What you’re talking about is being free of other people exercising their speech to denounce it.

Let’s be honest here. What these folks want is the ability to insult and attack people with impunity. That’s not what free speech is. It never was.

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