511–520 of 528 posts
This wasn't the first incident of questionable behaviour in conferences. There had been sexist comments, talks and general lude behaviour prior to this.
I think she saw the opportunity and forced the situation to fit the narrative (it wasn't even a sexist comment) but it quickly got out of hand and resulted in them both suffering severely.
What astounds me is that all this fuss was made over a silly dongle joke. If the guy had been overheard quietly telling his friend a joke like, say, The Aristocrats, then I could understand someone getting seriously offended. You don't tell a joke like that where there is even a small chance unintended people will here it. But a lame joke based on "dongle" sounding like a dirty word? That's a joke that could be told…
Why on earth would someone get offended over an animated kids film about cats?
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Thank you for your reply. We agree on so much. However, I'd like to point out that the middle ground is not always the best way. Sometimes, the other side is flat oiut wrong. Reminds me of the wikipedia article about a wwe wrestler where editors found two conflicting numbers for height so someone had the great idea to average them out. > You can't expect the other party to be the only one to agree with everything you…
> However, I'd like to point out that the middle ground is not always the best way. That would ring true if the persons asking for a middle ground weren't expressing severe concerns of distress, and the point you defend was somehow meaningful and essential. When the side you defend is "I want to tell dirty jokes in public" and the other is going "I am reminded of rape threats because we have proof that people in simi…
I absolutely agree with this point. I'd just replace the last sentence with please don't put up private conversations of people with photographs and identifying information on Twitter or another public forum for everyone to see.
The world is replete with examples of why you should never use your real name with your online identity in any way (although in this case, the guy's employer found out over a photograph; which is even more troubling.) If there's anyone worse than Adria in this story, it's both Hank's and Adria's former employers. You don't destroy a person's life over a comment or a blackmail threat. But as they say, if corporations…
I'm pretty conflicted about this whole thing, and was back then, too. I try to be supportive of anybody, and generally go out of my way to be inclusive. I also make really stupid, juvenile jokes, although I am audience-aware. In this case, his audience was the guy he was sitting next to, and there was nothing overtly threatening in the joke. In fact, if anything, it'd indicate he was gay and not at all interested in…
Thank you for posting this article, I was trying to track it down for the thread. This encounter was so widely reported that it's almost difficult to discuss it honestly and openly and without taking sides. I feel like that, in and of itself, is the tragedy for the community.
I think she handled it wrong, in the same way she's apparently handled similar situations wrong. Lashing out is almost never the best response, a simple "wtf" would almost certainly have ended there on the spot, and a constructive public discussion could have ensued.
Meh. It's awful. He shouldn't have been fired and vilified. She shouldn't have received rape and death threats (wth?!). Two lives in (at least temporary) upheaval when simple communication could have sufficed.
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Hm, you/they think the interviewer intentionally made Richards look as bad as they could, or something? I don't really know. The article you link to is worth reading -- it's critiquing a different article by Ronson in the NYTimes Magazine, not the OP by the the same author in Esquire. Obviously he used the same research for both though, and the critique might apply to both. The NYTimes one indeed reduced Richards to…
"and it's even more fucked up that Richards got fired" I'm not as sure. The article posted a somewhat misleading explanation, that it was capitulation to stop DDoS attacks and other harassment of SendGrid. But it wasn't mentioned that Adria used and name-dropped SendGrid and her "power" there to vocalize the issue, and that wasn't something SendGrid authorized or employed her to do.
Yeah, this kind of argument you are making on the internet is indeed an example of how many people were piling on to somehow blame her for... following the conference's policy on such things, basically.
This is a boring debate, but it is, yes, super fucked up how Richards has been treated, and she has been treated much worse than 'Hank', who was also treated poorly and unfairly.
She's clearly a hateful person without any kind of empathy stretching beyond that of her womens' struggle in tech. There should be no place in tech for people who just can't relent. I don't know if the comments in this article are cherry picked wildly, but even so, even suggesting that this Hank guy is to blame for her getting fired, when clearly it was her own behaviour.
But then I read on, and I found myself having a lot of empathy for her, and for Hank (although what happened to him, as bad as it was was way less intense and scary than what happened to her). I thought they both made (forgivable) mistakes. Their respective employers meted out not very compassionate punishments, those companies come off badly in the article. The public statements by one of the CEO's sounds particularly lame and insincere. More human error. The cascade of errors continues into an avalanche. "The Mob"(i.e. the public) really comes off bad in this story.
I don't think human error leading to more human errors and bad outcomes itself is groundbreaking news. It's more the runaway (not so) positive feedback loop that amplifies errors of (bad) judgement and gut level emotions. We evolved in a context where we only had to contend with unintentionally pissing off maybe a few dozens or hundreds of people with our mistakes. Now millions of people can be infuriated/whipped up into a cyber lynch mob overnight, and even then it's still only a tiny fraction of humanity's collective attention.
Maybe sites like Twitter and Facebook should think about whether or not they have a responsibility to the victims of Mob crucifixion. Even (especially?) the unsympathetic ones, who arguably may have made their own bed and set fire to it. Some kind of circuit breaker when burning crosses start popping up. Cyber public defenders. "Chill out" buttons.
The story made me really feel for Adria. It didn't hide the fact that she saw things in a very harsh, b&w way. Her letter to her father may have been a blatant attempt to emotionally manipulate the writer and the audience. But it works, even if so. What kind of hurt would make it necessary to resort to that? I feel her humanity. She deserves a shot of redemption.
Great article. The other stories are terrific as well, but maybe this one is more of a Puzzlebox.
FWIW I sympathise with Adria - she seems like the perfect geek (takes no bullcrap, sticks to her guns, overly logical analysis of social situations to the detriment of all); describes me some of the time, and the constant state of some of the people in the teams I have managed over the years; and yet I never once thought of firing any one of them, Shame PyCon and the respective weren't able to deal with this in a bet…
> overly logical analysis of social situations to the detriment of all Where do you see that in any of this? It seems to me to be a classic example of what happens when you don't think things through.
IMHO geeks (including me) are terrible at dealing with social situations and even worse at accepting when we are wrong when the only thing pointing to our "wrongness" is what other people think.
Of course you could also be 100% spot-on and I'm being overly sympathetic to someone who doesn't deserve it. I hope I'm not.
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> We're talking morality as perceived by others and the very real consequences that can flow from remaining consistent in one's moral perspective, while the rest of the community's view shifts I understand what you're saying, and I would certainly be outraged if Mozilla fired a CEO for supporting equal rights. The problem is you seem to view everything as relative shades of gray worthy of equal merit. This is patentl…
I'm going to let PG do the legwork for me here: >I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places, and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're mistaken about. Again, from his essay on taboos. [1] Most everything you've cited as an objective…
Again, it doesn't matter what the popular opinion was on this. PG stops at murder. I stop at looking at other human beings as inferior life forms based on immutable traits.
I am supremely confident that in 60 years, my specific views won't be viewed as bigoted by future generations.
> Are we just supposed to believe that everyone that lived south of the Mason-Dixon line was naturally insipid, evil, and amoral?
Everyone that lived south of the Mason-Dixon and believed that black people were property? Which would be a majority, but certainly not every single person in the south then? Yes. Yes they were.
> which usually hinge on the belief that the enslaved group is naturally inferior and couldn't survive without the master group
Black people seemed to be subsisting just fine in Africa before being dragged over here on slave ships.
> you never know when infertility will reverse itself if the couple is otherwise healthy and under 40
So you support banning marriage after the age of 40 then, got it.
> Post-menopausal women or other permanently sterile heterosexual partners are OK because they are examples that reinforce the need for permanent heterosexual coupling and family structure, even if they are unable to produce children on their own
... or not.
What an unbelievable load of horse shit you are spewing. I can't honestly believe you typed that with a straight face.
If you're going to be this fatuous, then I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your post.
But just so you don't claim this is an ad hominem attack: the APA (and most every other unbiased organization that have studied this issue in depth) disagrees with your bigoted narrative: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/10/adopted-children.aspx
It doesn't matter anyway, you've already lost on this issue. The USSC is going to reverse the last 17 states holding out this summer. You can go pout about it with the anti-miscegenation crowd.