351–360 of 613 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What would you suggest you do when you have been behaving incorrectly? You can’t change the past.
That's an odd strawman. I... wouldn't behave incorrectly in the first place. It's not a difficult concept to understand for most people I hope, especially with sexual harassment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the story, it seems pretty clear that he went a little overboard with his self-loathing apology. Hence my comment.
The apology was posted in the context of people accusing him of specific misconduct, which allegations he does not seem to have rebutted at the time. You can be charitable and describe the apology as "self-loathing", but his clients can also take the reasonable interpretation that he's admitting culpabilty. Happy to have someone else dig into the Twitter threads of the time and refute me on this!
We could do with the inverse, too. One person could sue for small-ish claims hundreds of harassers. You called me a rapist on social media together with a mob of idiots? Good, that's libel for you and for the other thousand who did. It's going to cost you 10 grands and a reprimand- not enough for a single court case maybe, but put them together and they can be worth it :)
Earlier this year when Richard Stallman was re-instated to the Board of the FSF, there were a lot of tweets expressing dismay. To one of them, I replied that I personally don't think he has done anything wrong at all - and linked to a well-known article by a woman who defended him better than me. While I found some support among a few people, the amount of hate I received shook me a bit. People started adding me to l…
Good for you for doing the right thing. Let me ask you - did you feel like the hate thrown at you on Twitter was completely organic? Was there anything that made you question the motives of the involved Twits? I ask because the whole smear job vs Stallman felt quite manufactured to me; from the initial Vice article horrifically misquoting him, to the weirdly rabid hate towards anyone defending him on forums like this…
Likewise if you are publishing to Vice or some other moderately popular publication, you're directly motivated to stir up drama both for clickbait and as a form of a personal power trip against those you don't like for whatever reason.
The main issue is that our internet culture is extremely primitive. We're basically animals online, most of us. And it's very easy to spur a stampede and destroy someone, whether intentionally or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never groped anyone.
Hey man - be careful reading stuff alright? Probably best to just take a breather from reading stuff about yourself, it can't feel good. Humans weren't designed to be yelled at by more people than you can fit in a room.
These depressed people use "consequences" as a brief hit of superiority, allowing them to escape the reality of their own failed lives.
...and as quickly as it picks them up, it is gone again, and they then need to search for that next dose of "justice".
Complexity, self-reflection, nuance, are all distractions from what is an emotional addiction.
And like any addiction, you cannot satiate it by giving it more of what it craves. Apologies attract more of them, and they go back to hit the apologizer for more "consequences", like trying to get the last little hit, even if they can see there's nothing left.
Don't engage these people. They are worthless.
I recently gave a test lecture about a topic in statistics, where I showed a meme that a statistics professor I follow shared on her Twitter feed [1]. I thought it would be safe to include as it didn't get any negative reactions on Twitter and was already being used by a professor in her university class in the US. After the talk I immediately got called out by the women's representative on the hiring commission, who…
Still, I'm a woman and I see absolutely nothing wrong with using that meme in that context. The teacher who shared that meme, who is also a woman, also saw nothing wrong. The student who created the meme, who is also a woman, also saw nothing wrong.
It's an amusing and memorable way to teach a concept, which is great.
I wonder if the "women's representative" on the hiring committee just felt like she had to find something to say to justify her presence there.
Did you give a source citation on that meme? It's not guaranteed, but I do wonder if you would have been left alone if it had been readily apparent that this meme was created and shared by women scholars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>When I interact with people, I don't see race/color/age/sex. No offense but this is such a silly thing to say. EVERYONE sees race/age/sex. Most people also change how they interact with others based on their age/sex and that's perfectly fine (if you're basing it on race that's an issue unless you're literally in a foreign country with a different culture). I don't talk to a 2 year old girl in the same tone of voice…
> No offense but this is such a silly thing to say. EVERYONE sees race/age/sex. I strongly disagree here. When I'm reviewing code, I look at the code. It could be written by ANYONE. I don't ever think "this woman" or "this " when reviewing code! > "I like those earrings, they look great" - no problem. > "Hey I really like the way that shirt fits your body" - problem You don't see how it can be easy to accidentally st…
But that's not what you said. And it's not really the point either way, because we're talking about providing feedback on the code, which was written by a person with an age and a race and a gender. And when you sit down with that person to provide feedback, you see their race, age, and gender. Saying you don't is just silly.
>You don't see how it can be easy to accidentally state the latter?
I really don't.
>I think your main POV here is that if your heart is in the right place then everything will be fine. I just hard disagree with that.
I don't think and didn't state that at all and would never give anyone such absurd advice. I could go on with more examples for you:
I really like those shoes. - perfectly fine
Those shoes make your legs look great. - don't do this
That skirt is cute. - Yes
That skirt makes your butt look amazing - don't do this
I honestly can't tell if you created the throwaway for entertainment or having a real conversation but at this point I'm leaning towards the former because I genuinely don't believe you're confused about how to make an appropriate vs. inappropriate comment to a coworker. It doesn't really matter if they're male or female, if you tell someone that an outfit makes their body look X - you're probably going to get in trouble unless you happen to be good friends outside of work.
>No, I treat them both equally but I avoid expressing any opinion whatsoever becomes I'm worried about being perceived otherwise.
It doesn't really matter how you're perceived. If you document your reviews, and you do it fairly, the work will speak for itself. It has nothing to do with male vs. female. I've done this for decades, someone will inevitably accuse you of a bias, and you refer back to your documentation, notes, and the original work. They can mis-read all they want, the only thing HR cares about is a defensible position for your feedback.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad we've found the first person in life who has never made a mistake! What a shining example you are.
I have never been a sexual predator and will commit to never being one in the future. This is something I would wager the vast, vast majority of the public can commit to too. This is not something weird or out of the ordinary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, IIRC the Medium post that made the situation go viral beyond MIT was written by a student that just compiled other peoples' stories about Stallman, not based on any of her own experiences. Personally I can't imagine initiating calls for someone's head without first hand knowledge, but I don't think she had any hidden incentive to make the post. My guess is she had her own negative experiences with someone else i…
Perhaps you are being too charitable in assuming that the student was calling for Stallman’s head out of past trauma. It could be that the calling for his head was a performative act for her own benefit, boosting her in the eyes of others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incidentally, I deleted my Twitter today. 4600 followers in hell, which is quite a lot for a Czech language community (10 million speakers only), but I can no longer tolerate the toxicity. Yes, journalists are overrepresented there and yes, their journalism often degenerates into "we are covering what happened on Twitter". But the worst offenders in terms of toxicity aren't journos. They are ... well, tormented human…
Journos are the new clerics. The western moral compass
https://cpj.org/2020/12/in-2020-u-s-journalists-faced-unprec...