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GitHub, fuck your name change

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#391

Post by globular-toast »

himinlomax wrote: post #180
qwerty456127 wrote: post #11

I would agree "slave" seems a weird choice of a word but I can see nothing wrong in "master". Not a single moment in my life I thought about slavery when hearing/seeing the word "master". Should we also rename master degrees perhaps?

Note how master is not even the main term used to describe people who had slaves. The term typically used is owner, as in "so and so was a slaveowner." A Marxist would chuckle at the notion that Microsoft would be removing the word "owner" for being offensive.

The word "master" when applied to slavery is itself a euphemism for owner, which is the truly abhorrent type of interpersonal relationship.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#392

Post by intricatedetail »

schwartzworld wrote: post #365

Late to the party, but I have a relevant story: My last job did a bunch of faux diversity tactics starting around the same time this happened at google. Part of it was starting "support" groups for different groupings, for example one for Asian employees or another for LGBTQ. This is good. However, I had to work weirdly hard to also have one for us Jewish employees. Weirdly hard when you consider all that had to be d…

It's all about ticking boxes and patting themselves on the back. I had similar situation, but very little people wanted to participate as they didn't want to be pigeonholed. They wanted to be treated like everyone else.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#393

Post by anatoly »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #196

As a white person, the difference this change will make to my life is so negligible that if it makes one PoC feel more included then it's fine by me. I totally take on board the point that a lot of man hours have been consumed debating how and when to execute this change. Possibly to the exclusion of doing something potentially more meaningful. However, the glee with which the authors opinion is accepted as the opini…

You're fine with the change because of one hypothetical PoC you imagine who likes it, but you resent that others are not fine with the change and feel supported by one real PoC who dislikes it.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#394

Post by bb101 »

newswasboring wrote: post #360

> We’re going to change the branch name because it could be seen as offensive but we’re still going to sell police facial recognition software that is biased against black people and women. Facial recognition software that misidentifies black people as gorillas. Facial recognition software that was used to identify unmasked BLM protesters. We’re going to change the branch name to be more inclusive of minorities but w…

Microsoft was the talking point in a couple of the articles, and they also own Github. The rest, could be considered under the tech giants umbrella -- so I'd say the links are topical and relevant.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#396

Post by AdrianB1 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #155
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

Aren't you worried that by applying political labels like 'left' (or equally often seen in the US context: 'liberal') for something that does not really represent that political ideology, you are at risk of further polarizing such debates? This specific instance seems like an overreaction of some in both corporate and social media culture. One poster already pointed out that this is likely more about corporate fear o…

Calling welfare or regulation "basic goals" is misleading: the first is not basic as there is no right to welfare, but forcing others to support welfare while regulation is not a purpose by itself, it is a means to achieve specific goals.

Seeding wrong ideas in what seems to be a neutral context is not nice™.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#397

Post by edbob »

benrbray wrote: post #126
vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

In all fairness, this sort of silly business is more representative of the "Twitter left", comprised of cogs in a perpetual rage-inducing machine, than it is of "leftists" whose main objective is to address the limitations of capitalism, at varying degrees of willingness to work within the system vs burn it down. Of course, our media is run by billionaires so they capitalize on the identity politics to divide everyon…

I'm not a leftist at all, but I'd also love to be rolling out UBI.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#398

Post by estaseuropano »

vmception wrote: post #47

I’m a black American and agree with everything that this person in London wrote. It is also a common criticism of the American “left”, and is entirely accurate. For everyone perplexed about black Americans and other people of color walking away from the left, its because you/they don't see us as equals that can be bothered by the exact same things that other Americans can be bothered by: being told what to think, wat…

I think important to distinguish between the radicals and the reasonable people. I would consider myself left but find this change ridiculous. Similar to e.g. how the American concern around blackface is pushed around the world and has madethe dutch Zwarte Piet or German equivalents 'offensive' (even as they probably relate to charcoal burners ('Köhler') [1]).

You equate the few radicals that see some issue there with all 'on the left' which is presumably 50% of any population.

Similar to veganism: the joke is that vegans are all very vocal about being vegan. But reality is that you simply don't notice all the ones that aren't vocal about it and silently love their lives or focus on other issues. Its just an issue of availability bias [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal_burner

2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#399

Post by [deleted] »

rvanlaar wrote: post #326
enriquto wrote: post #77

I'm a bit late to the game, but I don't understand what this fuss is all about, from a technical point of view. I just created a git repo this morning and the default branch was named "master" (using the git command line). Then I pushed it to github to make it visible, as I have done several times before. The command line instructions at the "new repository" interface on github suggest changing the branch name to mai…

Haven't you thought about how trunk is offensive to people who have been kidnapped?

[deleted]

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#400

Post by tda »

globular-toast wrote: post #382
tda wrote: post #12

Though I initially sympathized with the name change from master to main (cause I don't care what it is called), I am now more of the opinion that this kind of window-dressing might actually be harmful as it distracts from addressing the root cause. It is a bit complicated as the name change in itself is not bad, but given the context, and that it distracts from addressing real issues it actually is. Same thing with p…

> For the record, I do recycle plastic. You don't. Nobody does. The plastic you "recycle" gets turned into lower grade plastic and so on until it gets landfilled. For plastic, the only way is down. Steel, aluminium and glass are examples of materials that are recyclable.

You are correct, let me rephrase that:

I separate plastic so it can be either burnt together with my other trash, or shipped to Turkey where god knows what environmental crime is committed with it. An extremely small percentage might be melted into some low grade park bench. Absolutely zero plastic will be turned into high quality plastic pellets for industrial as a substitute for new plastic. It does not make me feel good, but not doing it makes me feel worse.

I just voted today for real change. Voting matters, plastic "recycling" doesn't*

* if you live in a place where you have meaningfully different options, not just two flavors of the same

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