throw-7462637

This is a genuine question based on my desire to get a better understanding of our current progressive culture. I am not passing judgement and I hope you can answer honestly. Did you ask this question with the term 'cultural appropriation' in mind? Does this sweater make you uncomfortable and if so why?

Ouch. This comment backfired quite badly. Turns out the person being replied to is Korean, the commenter is likely not, and in addition this is how the authors wrote their names themselves.

Yet I do not wish this comment to be snarky. I’m interested in the broader perspective (and I apologize in advance to the parent for using this as an hook). The comment seems common of the present era in which polarization (leading to prejudice against anyone we believe is outside our in-group), and short attention span (leading to drive by/poorly researched comments), combine to low empathy among us. And just to be clear, I’m not putting myself above this, on a bad day this kind of comment could have come from me.

Am I right and things were better on the past on the empathy axis? Or am I exaggerating and getting old?

I would not go as far as that. But pushing boundaries means you will be misunderstood, at least some of the time. It’s par for the course.

Life is not a zero sum game. Clearly Elon and Gwynne work very well together and Gwynne is a very talented operator. Both talents are essential but I do believe Elon’s talent would be harder to replace.

As others mentioned the hit pieces will come anyway. The success that SpaceX has had so far very clearly shows that aiming high and embracing failure is the best way to develop rockets.

How sad and tired that you have to keep dragging up this old story. I’m not going to go in the merits but may I suggest it’s time for forgiveness and reconciliation?

> I'm so tired of the constant battle to make very simple, innocent ideas political.

You may be tired, and I may get downvoted, but this is oversimplifying the problem so much that the message itself seems political. First, identifying pronouns is not really opt-in. There is significant peer pressure, and once you're the lone holdout, it's very hard to keep yourself pronoun-less without becoming a social outcast and targeted as a bigot.

I am 100% behind equal rights for trans people, and will call anyone by their preferred pronoun (he or she, on the fence on they, and would probably not go into the neo-pronouns). That said, my wish is that the default mode to address someone is based on observed external sex characteristics, and where people whose external sex characteristics match their traditional pronouns do not communicate their pronouns. My reasons are that at a young age, kids are extremely easy to influence, and I have a strong feeling that many kids identify as another sex to mask other underlying issues. For similar contrarian perspective see the book Irreversible Damage and also Blair White's youtube channel.

> People weren't purchasing Pelotons with $600 stimulus checks.

Anecdotally, they totally were. In my immediate friends group, families that were eligible for stimulus (making around $120K/yr) spent it on luxury items including photo cameras and as a downpayment for new cars. I don't know anyone who bought a peloton but extrapolating what I saw in my circle, it's totally believable.

At one of the hyperscalers myself. We are actively merging components for performance. We will keep internal modular boundaries where we can and there will be some small number of abstraction violations for performance.