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GitHub, fuck your name change

mooseyanon.medium.com

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#431

> Out of curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older than me, if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not once in his life. I had a similar conversation when a black colleague was late for work, having been stopped and searched by the police in London. The other 10 (white) developers were all shocked, but he said it as casually as someone might report they'd missed the train, or had a puncture on…

I've seen similar happen in London - black people stopped and seeming to be harassed by police for no obvious reason. But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend. She is black; I am white. She was told to get out of the car and required to present various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork, holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, makin…

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Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#432

> Black representation in tech is truly abysmal. I guess the author is talking about a Western country? There are plenty of countries where another color is dominant across all sectors (not just tech). For example, brown in Asian countries, black in African countries. I don't hear any complaints about that. If the OP is saying that people of minority race are discriminated, that is a different and valid point. But bl…

He is in the UK. He says "Take the company I work for as an example, there are about 7 black people in the whole company, a company of 250+ people." The UK is 3% black. 7/250 is equal to 0.03. So you are totally correct. This is not "abysmal" representation, it is the expected representation. For now, Europe is inhabited by over 90% Native Europeans which are white.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#433
post #424

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…

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Its actually not a statement about what I personally do, it gives context to why black Americans and other minorities would and have, at the surprising surprise to seemingly everyone.

The “right” simply does other things and a core part of that is rejecting virtue signaling even if that results in apathy that perpetuates adversity.

People are willing to choose the right, in absence of other choices, partially because it more honestly matches the last 250 years of apathy by all administrations. Where its clear there is a kind of vapid reckoning occurring in the left that simply assumes their minority constituents are all struggling victims that cant possibly be interested in any nuanced platform. And there’s just other things that Americans can be interested in like certain trade deals or certain people confirmed into government positions or something completely irrelevant. Your own snarky comment really suggests only some people have the privilege of playing the game of America. Within America, people on the left have trouble believing minorities could have any interest in that, as in the Democratic Party doesn’t factor it in at all, while their ranks are filled with posers who are willing to weaponize their understanding of race at a moment’s notice, no different than a self-proclaimed supremacist.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#434

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…

> signaling instead of meaningful action. Oh this is a good short summary of the era

yes! let me tweet this and post it on FB...

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#435

> Out of curiosity I asked my manager, who is like 20 yrs older than me, if he had ever been stopped and searched, he said not once in his life. I had a similar conversation when a black colleague was late for work, having been stopped and searched by the police in London. The other 10 (white) developers were all shocked, but he said it as casually as someone might report they'd missed the train, or had a puncture on…

I've seen similar happen in London - black people stopped and seeming to be harassed by police for no obvious reason. But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend. She is black; I am white. She was told to get out of the car and required to present various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork, holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, makin…

For what it's worth, I'm white and this happened to me countless times because I had a french licence plate that wasn't from around the border.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#436
post #421
post #237

> “Meritocracy!”, I hear you cry. “They pick from the most talented students. The ones that worked the hardest to get into the most elite schools. The black students should have just worked harder” Crazy idea: if companies that do virtue signaling on inclusivity were paying their taxes, decent schools could be funded and we would not have so many of those issues. But instead, those companies are actively lobbying to…

I don't think companies paying their taxes - in the USA at least - would help much on the education side of things, because much of the USA has a stunningly bad system of using property taxes to pay for schools. So schools in rich areas get more money than schools in poor areas. Charging companies taxes and simultaneously reforming how schools are funded could work? I imagine changing the funding mechanism would be e…

Only about half of the funding comes from local sources.

> On average, 8% of revenues are federal, 47% from the state, and 45% locally sourced.

And this varies widely from state to state.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#437

Eliminating the usage of words with offensive connotations from the English language is double plus good. edit: Downvotes and the wording of some responses make me concerned that some folks may be unaware of the reference. Doubleplusgood is a newspeak word used in the book 1984. Newspeak is a language that is used to eliminate the ability for people to express unapproved thoughts because there are no words with which…

Everything changes, language changes, but I wonder if erasing negative words might make us forget their meaning and repeat the history behind them.

I get the feeling sometimes that language is unstable in the absence of outside forcing.

Stupid, moron, retard. People start using them as a pejorative and so a new neutral term is required.

Lavatory, toilet, water closet, bathroom. People don't like talking about poo so they keep using euphemisms to describe the room where it happens. This one is a favourite of mine as some people find 'toilet' distasteful despite it being the furtherest from the actual action taking place.

Very, literally. Not sure where this one is headed, but if it's happened at least twice, it'll shift again some time.

Are we doomed to keep shifting language to keep up taboos and keep the meaning of words which naturally will shift?

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#438
post #412
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…

Off-topic, but I really enjoy products whose packaging I can dispose of well because it's all paper and/or metal. I buy Celestial Seasonings tea because there's no foil, and I can compost the tea bags. But there are still plenty of products that I only find in plastic, like frozen fish. I mainly shop at Wal-Mart because I'm poor. Does anyone have any tips for someone on a low budget?

It doesn’t matter where you shop, plastic and food are constantly used together.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#439
Why do people call themselves Black in a first place? Neither calling someone White or Black is accurate - perhaps why we have: Brown? Calling someone Yellow, I think, is still considered offensive though.

Indicating your belonging by color confuses. Color is such a crude indicator as it groups individual certain way, whether one wants it or not.

Overall, color coding, or grouping people by how well their skin is absorbing light, removes part of personal autonomy.

Re: GitHub, fuck your name change

#440

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…

"left" indeed -- I have been a pretty radical socialist since I was 16. (Well, at least on paper, I haven't been done activist work for years) ... And I don't recognize myself in this "left" that people keep talking about. I think it's hilarious to call CNN "left" or think that anybody in GitHub leadership is "left" for relabeling git branches. Plz. It's just a proposterous strange (and uniquely American) partitioning of the world.

If you define "left" as anything "not far right" then, yeah, ok, of course it's going to include a bunch of liberals who are not interested in any real structural change in the political-economic system and so are obsessed instead with changing how people speak.

So I just don't use the word anymore if I can. I'm not "left wing", I'm a socialist... Unfortunately "socialist" also seems to mean something weird to many Americans, too. (That anybody could with a straight face call Obama or Biden socialist just boggles my mind...)

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