871–880 of 1001 posts
Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
Serious question, and maybe this is ignorant because I do not have an academic background but: Are these people not just a vocal minority? And if so, who cares? It seems like the internet is always up in arms about woke-ism but I honestly don't notice much of it in my daily life. At work, sure there are rules and regulations, but they make sense. Treat people with respect is always my default stance. If I make an ass…
I clicked on the link thinking: "sigh, another woke propaganda campaign". "Brave", oh wow, and no alternatives either. "Geronimo", ok, I can kinda get behind that one: I mean, we don't want someone using "Gandalf" or "Gandhi" in similar vein, I suppose. "For god & country, gandhi, gandhi, gandhi" would be kinda weird (chuckled softly). "Guru" -- :O -- I have always felt we diminished the weight of this word in the we…
And then there are more examples of absolute stupidity than there are legitimate grievances. The policing of color references due to "perceived superiority" is ridiculous.
It is a net harm to make people think this way, especially when the penalties for getting it wrong are immediate apologies, lest you be run out of your profession.
There was an article yesterday in the New York Times where some people took issue with the naming of the James Webb Space Telescope because he headed NASA when there was a government-wide policy against homosexuals.
A well-credentialed and respected black man wrote an article saying "No, JW did not actively participate in purges of gay employees and in fact may have dragged the feet of NASA in any implementations of such policies" (I am paraphrasing). He also expressed frustration toward an unnamed scientist who “propagated unsubstantiated false information" regarding James Webb.
The rebuttal from said scientist, a self-proclaimed left wing activist and cosmologist? “The leader of a professional society and a senior scientist,” she wrote, is “going out of his way to justify historic homophobia” and “attack a junior queer Black woman professor.”
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For some people, they only have their perception of their own persecution to lean on. She didn't argue the merits. She makes anyone who disagrees with her out to be someone who abuses power dynamics, hates LGBT people, black people, women, and women in high professions.
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The point: Even if some of this makes sense in a lab setting, it is a net harm on the discourse, and those who would champion it wholeheartedly are the kinds of people who live their lives as perpetually persecuted, and are willing to ruin careers and lives if you do not consent to their total authority over language.
They apparently spider and scan their own websites for "harmful" language: I just find this wild. How and when did language itself become so dangerous to this degree? Along with most adults in my social circle, I care and think about my health, my family, my friends, my work, my dog, my environment, my community, etc. I could not give a flying fuck about language policing. Language isn't going to protect me on my bik…
We close the box by mercilessly mocking these ninnies and refusing to give money or influence to institutions that engage in this sort of chicanery. Don't send your kids to Stanford. Say whatever words you want.
I read though the suggestions. So "trigger warning" is now problematic and the proper alternative is "content note". And "Preferred pronouns" is hate speech, because you imply that pronouns are merely a preference, as if the person can choose their identity. Godspeed.
I actually like “content note.” I’m pretty unfazed by offensive content so I don’t need your spoiler alert to be called a warning.
Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
In Canada, the professional regulators who control whether you're allowed to to call yourself an engineer and whether your company is allowed to do engineering, are also making this kind of thing mandatory. They are considering it a part of workplace safety, akin to preventing oil spills and lethal accidents: an engineer's top priority, lest they lose their license.
Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
HN certainly has taken this seriously, which IMHO is disappointing. 1300+ comments on something that has hardly anything to do with technology. Really? To me, this is a dumb and actually kind of funny list, due to some ridiculous notions (e.g. "stand up meeting" is ablelist?) that seem poorly put together with zero thought for context. It's as if someone got an assignment to put this together and tried to really, rea…
And Stanford has a certain amount of cachet, or influence, or reach, or whatever, even into tech circles and tech companies. So this nonsense may be coming soon to the company you or I work at. So, yeah, we care. We take it seriously, because it impacts us.
> OCD Maybe they should ask actual OCD sufferers whether the term offends them when used to mean “detail oriented” because if they had asked me, a bona fide obsessive-compulsive patient, I would have responded with “meh.” My OCD has caused me untold misery, wrecked relationships, and made work difficult, but we all have a subtle sense about when people mean us harm or are just using a term as a shortcut. Almost never…
And your experience is reflective of all folks who have OCD? I can absolutely imagine someone being pretty upset by seeing how casually "oh I'm just OCD" gets tossed around. I'm queer, I would never presume to say that another queer person's challenges or trauma were the same as mine.
Others have called out some the silliness on this list, but honestly my biggest problem with it is that it's just so lazy , and often times flat out incorrect in its assumptions. - "Consider using 'devoted' instead of 'addicted.'" I'm sorry but you don't develop a physical devotion to heroin. It's an addiction. - They say the phrase "committed suicide" is problematic because it "trivializes the experiences of people…
They have, though not nearly as often as landlord. It was way more popular in the 19th century but it seems to be making a recent comeback. [0]
[0]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=landlady%2Clan...
What if the suggested replacement is problematic? The suggested replacement for 'manmade' is 'made by hand'. Surely 'made by hand' is ableist.