jariel

"We'll tell a higher-up why his new plan is stupid and that we're not very excited to waste our time on it"

There's a difference between 'what my instinct is' and 'thoughtful communication'.

It's possible in these kinds of situations that 'the plan is objectively dumb' and surely therefore someone might not be interested ... but I've seen more often than not people not really understand why something is initiated, what the objectives are etc. and just make narrow assumptions with belligerance, which they believe is 'being direct'. It's 'direct' in a way, in that it's a 'direct articulation of a narrow set of assumptions' - but that doesn't make it good or professional.

"This is dumb, I don't want to work on it" is surely direct, but it's also essentially an immature and unprofessional way of communicating.

More appropriately it would be: "I don't think this plan will achieve the understanding I have of the objectives for this, this and this reason, but here are some alterations that might work" - or "Technically, I don't think this will work because of this reason, but I don't understand what the non-technical objectives are so my feedback is limited to that scope" - or "I think these areas are more risky than implied, but these areas will work" or better "This won't work for these reasons, but fill us in on the strategic objectives and we can fill in the blanks with something that will, if we can".

I personally appreciate 'directness' a lot, but a lot of people misunderstand that to be 'what I think off the top of my head without trying to actually address the issue'.

And yest, there's way too much sensitivity around criticism going on. Legit criticism needs to be allowed. It's also really hard for some people to separate themselves form their critique or their work and so communications sometimes gets mangled on both sides.

I don't think it's so much 'nothing but the facts' but rather a little more effort to explain 'what it is'.

It's not that the site is 'marketing speak', it's just that it's a 3/10 on communications.

Even two sentences at the top would help.

I've spent a minute on it and I'm not sure what it is.

It's a way to make apps, but it doesn't have a front end? I don't even know what that means.

Oh, I understand all of that of course. I meant some kind of Unicode-specific debate over how it should all work and what the alternatives were.

Can someone comment with relevant experience about the fact that maybe emojis should not be part of unicode? And that we should literally just send tiny images as part of text?

This way, you know the host system is 100% going to represent what you want to say correctly, that the emoji will look right, and you don't need to worry the system will replace it, that it supports it etc..

And you can literally use 'any emoji' you want.

There is an infinite number of things we can put in emojis, why are we trying to standardize such things?

I wonder if someone has some insight as to the history around this?

This is lesson in media, PR, liars, spin, misrepresentation, attempts to explain, yada yada. There are hardly any good actors here: Signal for misrepresenting, the press for turning a blind eye, Facebook for collecting too information etc..

This is a really bad look for tech.

This kind of rhetoric I think might be at the root of the problem.

If you believe the company founders, in the face of being told they occupy their position 'due to privilege' is 'right about everything' then you're the problem.

Telling executives that they are 'denying racism exists' when they are actually only denying that it exists at the company is obviously straw manning.

If you're of the position that 'anyone who questions claims of racism is a white supremacist', then you're entitled to that position, but it's 'war language' that is driving a lot of irresponsible toxicity in the workplace.

Although colonialism played a role, 'it started' before that.

It's fair to at least 'talk about' the 'pyramid of hate' and maybe 'believe in it' so as to 'make a point'.

But I don't think it's ok to accuse regular, well-meaning employers of 'holding up systems of White Supremacy'.

It's also basically tone-deaf for an executive, facing a 'sensitive moment' to challenge claims of racism with 'reverse racism' - even if the executive might have a rhetorical point - it's just going to inflame the situation.

I think the execs should have basically 'not acted out of contempt', said some conciliatory things and moved on. Even if they had a legit point to make, they're supposed to be 'bigger than that'.

So I'm not sure if it's worthwhile to dig into the rhetoric, but rather, they should have just found a way past the issue.

Finally, it's a good example of how toxic this stuff can be.

"It has hints of "reverse racism" "

"That's closer to the camp of "white supremacist" or at the very least, a common defense used by white supremacist."

This kind of gaslighthing though.

"My opponent disagrees with me and is therefore a White Supremacist, or at least close to one!"

If one person says 'this org is racist because of white privilege' - it's possibly contentious, but not unreasonable to suggest that this statement is racist in and of itself.

Just because you might deny 'reverse racism' exists, doesn't mean that it's true, it's a denial, not a disagreement.

Also, indicating that 'this office is not a place of white supremacy' is not 'denying' someone else experience, or their position that 'racism exists'. It's an observation of the nature of the ostensible problem.

It's not 'wilfully ignorant' it's more like 'wilfully insensitive / disagreeable / inflammatory'

The exec. did not say that.

'White Supremacy' classically means men in Pointy White Hats.

The CRT people now use it to mean 'regular white people' because they, in their regular, day to day actions, uphold oppressive systems i.e. 'White Supremacy'.

The denial is usually of the later, not the former.

Many progressives are now using the denial of the later, to imply denial of the former, as a kind of bad faith rhetorical weapon, which I think is unfair.

That statement is not jarring.

Employees calling the organization 'White Supremacist' is the thing that should be 'jarring' or at least controversial. There are arguments to be made, sure, but the language is fairly extremist.

People are constantly confusing the issue with 'politics'.

This is not about Trump or Obama, that's easily avoided, it's about Identity Politics, which cannot be avoided:

They are arguing over Identity Politics and definitions of privilege.

"“The fact that you can be a white male, and come to this meeting and call people racist and say ‘white supremacy doesn't exist’ when it's blatant at this company is white privilege,” the employee said. “The fact that he wasn’t corrected and was in fact thanked — it makes me sick.”"

The Executive basically stated he doesn't believe the organization or it's culture is rooted in 'White Supremacy' - echoing the aggressive language used nowadays in Critical Race Theory.

The Employee, I believe mischaracterized that statement as 'the denial that racism exists' - which is an unfair, but also pointed out the denial of 'White Priviledge' - which is a valid point to make if one actually believes that.

The argument is existentially problematic - some people believe that groups are not inherently racist, others believe that if there are White executives then the system is inherently racist, going so far as to use terms like 'White Supremacy'.

This 'debate' is raging everywhere right now - schools, public sector, private companies, NGOs etc.

It's hard to rectify because those who don't see systems as overtly or fundamentally racist are challenge by those who do, and those who do, are inclined to believe those that disagree with them are basically evil.

It's a low-grade cultural race war unfortunately, pitting regular people against other regular people, often over some very abstract things, like naming things 'blacklist/whitelist' instead of 'blocklist/playlist' etc..

Without effective retail finance, which is not possible without other things in place first, which are not possible without a baseline of functioning governance, there really is no 'organized' solution that's going to work.

You can't have well run banks without commercial law, you can't have commercial law without great schools, law schools, good legislators, a judiciary, acting in good faith and 'not corrupt'.

Without a systematic, organized solution, it might be worth teaching people skills and abilities that serve to create value without the overhead - for example, carpentry, masonry etc..

My grandfather and family built their own home, their own cottage, installed all of the plumbing themselves and this is in a 'modern nation' less than 100 years ago, and it was not uncommon.

However - they were highly skilled craftspeople, with knowledge and abilities passed down from generation to generation, information that made it 'across the Atlantic' from Europe into the new world without state organs, schools etc. to do so.

We have a hard time today grasping that, we kind of expect 'the government' to make the right trade schools, colleges and universities available for 'where all the knowledge is' but it was never really that way.

Without extra currency floating around to facilitate loans etc, then it's the labour of communities i.e. family, friends children. Amish and Mennonite communities are strong examples of this kind of behaviour, not that they are necessarily the perfect example, but you can see it in action.

There's so much focus on 'top down governance' approaches in these areas because it's the issue that our own governments can speak to in terms of money, grants, investment, and actors on the other side can sign agreements talk about plans etc..

But in reality it's probably worth sometimes looking at such systems as not very governed at all, and developing things that work very well on the local level.

"He told me today that attempting to link the list of customer names to potential genocide represented a case of “catastrophizing” — one that made it impossible for any good-faith discussions to follow. "

And there you have the unavoidable issue.

Some people believing that 'name mocking' is the 'core hate' upon which genocide is built, some people think that's a bridge to far.

I agree with the CEO that the intellectualized vitriol towards the list is just far too much.

It's hard for some people to grasp this, but if you allow rank and file to create councils that allow them to control the company, especially from inflated moral positions, then some of them will do that.

A lot of people I believe express their anger and frustration through aggressive moralization and this is another outlet for that.

There's a 100% chance that these movements attract bad faith actors and will cause problems, they have to be dealt with very carefully.

There's some wilful misattribution or straw-manning by the Guardian here.

'Hard work is an essential ingredient in success' is much more consistent with common beliefs, and it's more or less true.

Nobody is saying 'Just work hard and you will achieve the highest ranks of society'.

It's a 'lie' that anyone actually says that, hence the straw man.

The Guardian however, doesn't really want this to be true, and so like most ideological papers, they shift the goalposts of their supposed ideological opponents and misattribute the logic.

The flaw is right here:

"I have come to understand that the systems that underpin the top professions in Britain are set up to serve only a certain section of society: they’re readily identifiable by privileged backgrounds, particular schools and accents."

Yes, of course, British people, of all people know that.

They've known that for 1000 years.

But saying that 'the top corridors of power are hard to achieve' is a fundamentally different thing then (direct quote): “if you work hard you will get on”.

"If you work hard you will get on" is not "If you work hard you will achieve the top ranks of society".

Finally, there's a woeful lack of gratitude in the author's premise, that he, as an immigrant somehow deserves one of the most choice spots among 60 million residents 'because he worked hard'.

Ironically, as a 'extremely poor immigrant son of a single mother with 12 chilren and a person of colour' - the fact that he was able to receive considerably more and better education than his peers, and has had a very successful career and is a respected member of society actually demonstrates how relatively open, kind and tolerant the UK is at least overall.

He's almost a living, breathing contradiction of his own argument.

This misattribution is a daily, constant problem in the press (almost all of them) and it's a primary source of false information and social malaise.

The G has some great writers, I wish they would try harder.