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Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

economist.com

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Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#991

Post by fapjacks »

j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #950
fapjacks wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in the age of the lie. It's impossible to take anything at face value, because it seems like every organization we interact with is just lying to us all at every opportunity.

Actually, we live in the age of one group of people constantly lying, and convincing everyone else that everyone lies. Soviet-style propaganda - making everyone believe that the truth cannot be known, everything is possible and everyone lies. (I am talking about intentional, informed, strategic lies, I am not talking about people that just don't know better etc.)

While I agree with your assertion in the general case, I think the response from other factions is that they, too, must lie in order to compete, leading to much more systemic, intentional, strategic lies.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#992

Post by account42 »

lebuffon wrote: post #834
mattnewton wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think everyone interpreted “Simpsons yellow” as race-less. Certainly the show didn’t - On the show, Homer identifies as a white male IIRC, and some characters (like Apu) are not yellow. You have to pick some skin tone for the default; just floating features would be off putting. Believing that the pan-white default of “simpsons yellow” is raceless because you feel represented in it excludes that others might…

Observation IMHO This: :-) is an emoji. These new-fangled things on our phones are tiny pictures. As pictures they communicate differently than ascii characters because they are a different medium. But that horse has left the barn... ;-)

> IMHO This: :-) is an emoji.

No, that's an emoticon. Now get off my lawn.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#993

Post by account42 »

whoooooo123 wrote: post #666
smegger001 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the one that gets me is adding race to emoji. they all used to be 'Simpsons yellow', a skin tone not found in any ethnic or racial group, and as such not representing or excluding any group but now we have black white and other various skin tones for our happy-faces. WHY? Does black happy face mean something different than white happy face isn't happiness universal? why bring race into something that was simply meant…

Am I misremembering? I coulda sworn that originally the 'white' (realistic, non-yellow) emojis were the only option, and the "neutral" yellow tone was added at the same time as the more diverse set of realistic skin tones. I'm certain that's how it was in Slack, for example - I remember discussing it with people at the time. Was I hallucinating?

I think if you are using Slack as an example of how emojis or emoticons were rendered "originally" then you are off by at least a decade. Maybe there were some platfroms/applications that used caucasian skin tones in their emojis, but that was definitely not the rule.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#994

Post by account42 »

jmull wrote: post #281
dimgl wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is angry. That's the point. The point is that no one should care about race, but everyone all of the sudden is.

The post that was being replied to sounds worked up about it to me. "the one that gets me...", "WHY?"

Reads more like confusion rather than anger to me.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#995

Post by account42 »

JamisonM wrote: post #469
smegger001 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fine make them cyan then and my point would still stand

But your point doesn't stand because they aren't cyan!

They were often adjusted to match the theme, so in some places they were cyan.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#996

Post by account42 »

crooked-v wrote: post #178
tomp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Yellow was race-neutral - nobody's skin color. Then the race-ist emojis started... and discrimination sky-rocketed (e.g. there's still no ginger emojis!).

Yellow is more neutral than specific light-to-tan skin tones, but it's certainly not neutral in regards to everyone. Or, to put it another way - if the default for all emoji was a dark magenta skin tone, would you consider that "race-neutral"?

Yes, dark magenta would be fine. But must importantly, there was no race associated to the Unicode code points before and rendering was entirely up to the font choice. Now there is a defined skin color.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#997

Post by banannaise »

permo-w wrote: post #940
jrsj wrote: post #231

My problem with politics at work isn’t so much that it’s politics but more that it’s always idiotic performative horseshit. Like please stop pretending you want to “help” a group of people who disproportionately hold the jobs you are automating out of existence etc. More often than not it has more to do with a small number of individuals trying to get more power for themselves than a genuine desire to help anyone.

this kind of captures my problem with the current progressive politics. It’s all about signalling that you’re in a support of all manner of identities, unless that identity is working class, or unemployed It’s extremely convenient for the neo-liberal elite. They get to sit back and continually rip us all off economically, while the generation that would normally be fighting it is busy fighting an invisible “instituti…

There are a lot of racial justice advocates who agree with you pretty much entirely. Racial justice is economic justice, and economic justice has very little to do with who has what jobs.

Class reductionism and race reductionism are both enemies of progress; we have to understand the intersection of such things if we're going to get anywhere.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#998

Post by alentist »

permo-w wrote: post #938
betwixthewires wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this experiment has obviously failed and this attempt to create a less toxic work environment through activism has resulted in a thinly veiled attempt to create a more toxic work environment for those who do not want to conform to neo-marxist orthodoxy.

>neo-marxist orthodoxy This is one my main gripes with conservatives right now. You go to any of the places you congregate and alongside the more reasonable scepticism towards woke culture, there’s this constant talk of the rise of “neo-marxism” I have seen zero evidence for this. None Besides very basic issues like minimum wage, on the whole, the new left does not care about economics. There’s the occasional “bad ca…

"Woke" ideology is indeed the spawn of Marxism, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Marxism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Left

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_ins...

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors (on the news recently for her luxury-home purchasing spree) openly describes herself as a trained Marxist. The other BLM co-founder, Opal Tometi, is chummy with the Maduro regime in my home country.

Compare BLM's comments on family structure to Engels' The Origin of the Family and the connection cannot be more obvious.

Re: Woke at Work: Why tech firms are trying to run away from politics and failing

#999

Post by CRConrad »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #547
eloff wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss Christopher Hitchens' way with words. He truly had a talent for expressing himself richly and convincingly. The ultimate irony is he deconverted me from the religion of my childhood posthumously because I saw the news of his death and then googled him. Which lead to a fascinating summer of YouTube videos of debates and conversations.

Agreed. I've listened to and enjoyed several of his debates (as a Christian, no less) and mourn the loss of him. He was a formidable and worthy opponent on the debate stage, and by all accounts one of the most kind, thoughtful, personable, and affable people off the stage.

The only problem with his prodigious ability was that it seems to have given his poor little brother a massive inferiority complex.
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