And Lo, There Came A Great Bunching Of The Panties

“Everyone is allowed to share their opinion. I just hope he gets fired for it.”

Regarding the ongoing ‘Google memo’ saga, I thought I’d lift the following from yesterday’s comments:

To recap. A Google software developer with a PhD in biology writes a polite, conciliatory and politically centrist memo suggesting that there’s a leftist groupthink problem in the company that inhibits open discussion; that men and women on average have differing preferences and abilities, albeit with a large overlap, and so “diversity” policies might benefit from bearing that in mind; and that perhaps people should be treated as individuals rather than as mascots of allegedly oppressed identity groups.

This is immediately met with ludicrous and wilful mischaracterisation by “social justice” Twitter and the ‘progressive’ media, including deliberately deleting the memo’s links to supporting data; a general refusal to engage honestly with the author’s points, or in many cases even to read them; baseless accusations of every ‘ism’ going; personal doxxing; boasts of blacklisting; and demands that the author of the memo be fired for his heresy and never employed again. On grounds that his arguments are “violently offensive” and in need of being “silenced.” He is, you see, “committing violence” with his statistics. All of which rather proves the author’s point about leftist groupthink and its reliance on distortion, intimidation and outright hysteria.

The employee in question has of course now been fired. Readers who wish to be violently offended can read the memo here.

Update: 

Jordan Peterson interviews James Damore, author of the supposedly scandalous and “fascist” memo. Skip forward to 5’10:

“The thing that was disturbing to me about watching the response to you is that, so far as I can tell, there isn’t anything that you said… that violates the scientific literature as it currently stands.”

Update 2, via the comments: 

Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men — when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences — are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial.

Dr Debra Soh, here.

Update 3:

Allum Bokhari interviews a (pseudonymous) Google employee: 

Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance reviews for expressing a different opinion. These have been raised to the Senior VP level, with no action taken whatsoever… For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralising, but it is also dangerous.

Update 4:

The Quillette website, which published some strong support of Mr Damore’s memo, is currently experiencing a DDoS attack. A coincidence, no doubt.

Update 5:

When Black Lives Matter hysteria hit its peak, sometime in 2015, it became taboo to criticise identity politics, and later on, it became very dangerous to criticise any member of a minority group at all (even if the criticism had nothing to do with their identity).

Allum Bokhari talks with more (pseudonymous) Google employees.

Update 6:

A compendium of gender research by Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt at Heterodox Academy:

Damore is correct that there are “population level differences in distributions” of traits that are likely to be relevant for understanding gender gaps at Google. Even if we set aside all questions about the origins of these differences, the fact remains that there are gender differences in a variety of traits, and especially in interest/enjoyment (rather than ability) in the adult population from which Google and all other tech firms recruit.… Damore was drawing attention to empirical findings that seem to have been previously unknown or ignored at Google.

Unknown or ignored. By our self-imagined betters.

Update 7:

And for those with a taste for irony, here’s video of a talk by Michael Gurian, titled Leadership and the Sexes, given at Google HQ nine years ago. Curiously, the topic of psychological and neurological gender differences was, not too long ago, deemed suitable for discussion by Google management and employees, and indeed advantageous. During the talk, none of the ladies present seem particularly outraged, or oppressed, or in need of a fainting couch.

Update 8: 

A Primer On Statistics to Help Quell Your Outrage at the Google Memo.

Comments

[Rafi]

'Joel Becker, another alleged Google employee, said the manifesto cost him "at least two days of productivity and anger,"'

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/08/07/sjw-backlash-against-google-staffer-i-would-beat-the-sht-out-of-him/

These people need therapy.

[Nikw211]

The opening paragraphs of Damore's memo:

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.

Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber.

A calm and measured response - in two parts: Part one and Part two.

I feel a little disoriented.

[Theophrastus]

Is appointing a VP for Diversity a sign that Google is doomed? Like installing a fountain in a corporate HQ's atrium, promoting any HR function to board level often means a company is losing its focus.

[David]

Is appointing a VP for Diversity a sign that Google is doomed?

It does, I think, suggest a certain lack of focus.

As Instapundit says in the link above,

And note that one guy, by triggering internal SJW craziness, has done more PR harm to Google than has been done since its inception. It’s like an autoimmune disease.

A pathology, certainly.

[David]

I feel a little disoriented.

As I said in the previous thread, I suppose we can at least hope that the gross misrepresentation of his words and sentiment, the brazen ubiquity of it, may have opened a few eyes.

It’s possible, if often baffling, that some people can be surrounded by colleagues mouthing ‘progressive’ pieties and being ostentatiously right-on, and come to assume that the guff about “diversity” and “dialogue” and “inclusion” is sincere. As opposed to, say, camouflage. Though when people loudly and competitively signal their leftist pieties, I’ve found it best to assume that something quite unpleasant may be rumbling underneath. There very often is.

[David]

Within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men — when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences — are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that’s considered controversial.

Here.

[David]

The essay is vastly more thoughtful, linked to the science, and well-reasoned than nearly all of the comments [denouncing it].

From these responses to the hysteria.

[Turk Turkleton]

Scott Alexander:

A lot of people without connections to the tech industry don’t realize how bad it’s gotten. This is how bad. It would be pointless trying to do anything about this person in particular. This is the climate.

Silicon Valley was supposed to be better than this. It was supposed to be the life of the mind, where people who were interested in the mysteries of computation and cognition could get together and make the world better for everybody. Now it’s degenerated into this giant hatefest of everybody writing long screeds calling everyone else Nazis and demanding violence against them. Where if someone disagrees with the consensus, it’s just taken as a matter of course that we need to hunt them down, deny them of the cloak of anonymity, fire them, and blacklist them so they can never get a job again. Where the idea that we shouldn’t be a surveillance society where we carefully watch our coworkers for signs of sexism so we can report them to the authorities is exactly the sort of thing you get reported to the authorities if people see you saying.

[WTP]

Am I the only one who remembers this?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil

When I first heard of it, what 20 years ago or so, I rolled my eyes. I saw this day coming from way back then. Not that I forsaw that it would come in the firm of Wrong Think as well. More as a corporate quasi-monopoly. But Evil gotta do evil like bees gotta buzz.

[Martlark]

I'm not surprised he was fired. What can one expect for promoting a long 'public' screed criticising your employer in such a way that it would attract hordes with metaphorical pitchforks and burning torches? The tech industry has been burnt in the past by such diversions as the gamer gate nonsense. Anyone of note who seeks to involve their employer in similar palaver is just asking for trouble. It is not possible to have a reasoned debate on such a topic.

[WTP]

A lot of people without connections to the tech industry don’t realize how bad it’s gotten.

This is really nothing new. I saw roots of this problem in the mid 1990's. The time to nip this crap in the bud was years before the likes of Jane Elliott got traction. Hell, what that evil b***h was doing didn't raise much concern. The only place I ever heard her mentioned was here. Might even be what led me here. But nobody wanted to admit it was going on. Just something to laugh about. Keep your head down, don't speak up. Only if you're extremely unlucky will they even notice you.

I really have no sympathy for this guy. He even approches the subject by bowing down to it. I'm sure he's been a part of the culture himself to some degree. I admire his guts for speaking up now, but at this point my sympath bucket is empty.

[WTP]

Oh, and the swastika is making a comeback. I can't think of a more appropriate design. Assuming this isn't parody. How can you tell anymore?

http://m.jpost.com/Diaspora/US-T-shirt-company-sells-swastika-design-as-symbol-of-love-and-peace-501687

[Jeff Guinn]

Here is the perfect example of PC rearing its ugly, unshaven, hegemonic head.

No, not the kind of PC that substitutes words to avoid offense (colored people: offensive; people of color: enabling), but rather the selective elimination of certain topics from public discourse, enforced first by shaming, than ostracizing anyone who engages in wrong speak.

Thou shalt not question thy gods.

[Jeff Guinn]

Ask.com is my new default search engine.

[David]

the selective elimination of certain topics from public discourse,

That, as I believe the switched-on and groovy people say.

[Daniel Ream]

As I said in the previous thread, I suppose we can at least hope that the gross misrepresentation of his words and sentiment, the brazen ubiquity of it, may have opened a few eyes.

Some days I hate being right.

[Lord T]

It isn't the only company that does this. I've just been through a similar process in my company because I said a few true words. Thankfully I wasn't fired but it was close. One SJW complains and it is putting the company in bad light.

As it is the US I think he should take them to a tribunal and sue. Maybe we should crowdfund it I'd be up for throwing something in the kitty.

[R. Sherman]

I'm not surprised he was fired. What can one expect for promoting a long 'public' screed...

I may be wrong, but I thought the memo was a private, internal memo which someone then released to the media. That is, the author never intended this to become a matter of public discussion. His mistake was believing in the internal good faith of his co-workers. If there is a lesson to be learned it is "You have no friends. Trust no one."

[Joan]

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book

I am a social justice warrior.

[Daniel Ream]

I would watch Google very carefully for the next little while.

Many, many years ago, a software company I worked for hired a new manager for my department. This manager was demonstrably not suited for a position at a small, fast-moving company that emphasized technical skill over social niceties. I don't know what she was told; I suspect some variant of "we need the engineers to be nicer". The problem was she approached this by throwing out many of the procedures and policies we'd implemented for weeding out the bike-shedding, antler-bashing, and similar problems that were interfering with getting the code debugged and into production, replacing them with kaffeeklatsches where we all sat around and talked about how we were doing.

One of the intermediate engineers took exception to this and was not shy about pointing out the decline in quality and our departmental metrics as a result of the changes. She fired him shortly thereafter for not being a "good fit" and "unprofessional".

What happened afterwards was instructive. All the developers in all the departments had the same reaction: Wait, you can get fired for doing your job properly now? and promptly went into full bore head-down job protection mode, doing exactly and only work they were instructed to do by official correspondence. Productivity cratered.

Eventually the VP demanded to know what was going on, and when informed of the problem fired the new manager less than four months after the "problem" engineer was let go, and promised the developers this was Not How We Do Things Around Here and This Was An Unfortunate Outlier. Productivity slowly began to creep back up, but the VP was cashiered later that year. The department's issues almost certainly contributed to that.

Google is a very large company with a firehose of ad cash and a largely self-sustaining infrastructure. Every competent engineer could down tools and the place would probably soldier on for a while. But I would bet on a precipitous decline in productivity as people go into Winston Smith mode, followed by a steady exodus of people who have just had their noses rubbed in what kind of company they work for.

[David]

Don’t know much biology

Google’s new “diversity” hustler, Danielle Brown, who so far as I can tell has no expertise in neuroscience or biology, denounced the memo supposedly on grounds that it “advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.” The exact nature of these alleged errors was, naturally, unspecified, and no factual correction was volunteered, which lends weight to the implication that the incorrectness wasn’t actual, but merely political.

[LastRedoubt]

As a reminder, Read the SJW attack survival guide, available free. It’s also worth it to read “SJWs always Lie”.

[Tim Newman]

I blame the parents. What the hell do we expect when infantile behaviour is encouraged from birth?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

It may just be me, but I am not seeing a whole lot of difference here.

BTW - way to go proving his point, Google.

[David]

way to go proving his point, Google.

Quite. As Mr Damore notes in the memo,

Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.

But apparently, leftist posturing trumps both facts and self-interest.

[R. Sherman]

The exact nature of these alleged errors was, naturally, unspecified, and no factual correction was volunteered. . .

I'm reminded of Theodore Dalrymple's quote about the purpose of communist propaganda: not to inform but to humiliate by forcing the hearer to accept and parrot patent untruths without complaint. So it is with Ms. Brown who doesn't wish to discuss the evidence in good faith, only to silence dissent and force compliance.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

...which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work...

I see. So if you are conservative you are needed to mop the floors because you can't do the brainthinky stuff. I am so glad these people are so unbiased.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

We like purges.

[David]

I see.

No, he’s using the term in its psychometric sense. I.e., a tendency to be diligent, punctilious, orderly or thorough. Not cutting corners. Rather important in IT. Nothing to do with IQ or mopping. :-)

[David in Michigan]

Okay, okay. But where is the incriminating document? I'm not from Missouri but show me anyway....you know, just for the hell of it. I like to form my own opinions. Perhaps I've missed the link?

[Jamie MacMaster]

The real problem can be framed as a question:

In this Country, what chunk of the 64 percent of the electorate that voted Liberal, NDP, or Green do you suppose would support this firing?

[David]

Perhaps I’ve missed the link?

The link you missed.

[David]

We like purges.

And Ms Joy (oh irony) is challenging gender stereotypes by… being an utter bitch.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Because in all of history only women have been weavers, tailors, or bakers.

These people have no grasp of reality.

[billdehaan]

Is appointing a VP for Diversity a sign that Google is doomed?

The fact that Google is doing everything they can to prevent diversity of thought and opinion is what will hurt them. Have a VP for it is just a symptom.

As a general rule, whenever a company changes its' focus from its' products/services and its' customers to a social cause, that company then becomes more concerned with activism than commerce.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having a cause, it's the degree to which the company focuses on it that matters.

A Canadian coffee company here (Tim Hortons) sponsors all sorts of events for disabled and underprivileged kids, and more power to them. You see donation boxes for loose change in the coffee shops, and there are always the "Tim Hortons will donate X% of the profits from this beverage towards funding the new rec center" signs, that sort of thing. But they don't stop being a coffee company, and they don't have a director-level position for disabled children.

[David in Michigan]

Perhaps I've missed the link.......

Thank you. It all makes sense now.

[R. Sherman]

There's nothing inherently wrong with having a cause, it's the degree to which the company focuses on it that matters.

Given its size, Google can absorb the adverse effects of some of these decisions as a cost of doing business. . .for awhile. The loss of one competent employee who had the company's best interests in mind is no great loss. The question is, how many others similarly situated are now hunkering down while at the same time preparing their escape? How many qualified applicants will think twice about working in such an environment? How many innovations will be lost to other upstarts or simply die on the vine because of fear of upsetting the SJW powers that be? We can't know in advance, but history indicates the once the tipping point is reached, things can go to shit very quickly. See, e.g. AOL, Twitter, and others.

[Spiny Norman]

Google has been the internet Stasi for a long time. Because of their obnoxious, omnipotent, omnipresent spying, I have avoided anything even remotely related to Google for years. No Google searches, no Chrome, no Gmail. None of it. Fuck them. When they go bankrupt, and they will eventually, I will be smiling from ear to ear.

[Kevin]

Better headline: "I sense a great rustling of the Jimmies".

[David]

“I sense a great rustling of the Jimmies”

Ah, but bunching of the panties seemed more… patriarchal.

[Darleen]

committing violence

WTF ... I read through some of that guy's J'Accuse tweets ... I'm a supervisor for 9 years in county government. Mandated by CA law to take a "harassment" class every two years, the UNREASONABLE perception of person A's speech is not only NOT cause for immediate firing, but doesn't even rise to the level of a memo of concern.

[Ian]

I first recall hearing the term "politically correct" about 27 years ago on Radio 4. The discussion was a kind of introduction to the topic, talking about how terms like "vertically challenged" should replace terms like "midget". It was half-approving and half-ridiculing the use of these terms. Then in just one generation this happens: a very well-written, thoughtful and insightful document demonstrating (apparently) an almost impeccable understanding of the science of psychology and opposing race- and gender-discrimination in the workplace leads to a mob gathering to humiliate and threaten violence against the author, and a near-instant sacking from a supposedly ideas-orientated company.

Fortunately, it seems from a reading of the CNBC article linked-to above that legal remedies are available, though of course the ACLU won't be offering to litigate it for him pro bono, since they've become corrupted like seemingly all the institutions. Nevertheless I look forward to seeing how things develop, and wish the guy well, since I think that perhaps the best way to fight back against these incivilities is to invoke the laws against race- and gender-discrimination that these SJWs openly and routinely flout. It's amazing they've gotten away with it for so long, but it's good to see some pushback in the US, in particular against race quotas at universities -- if that succeeds there may be a flurry of litigation in the private sector.

On this point, I was once employed by Customs & Excise (as it then was) in their recruitment department, and was tasked with making sure a bunch of non-white people got interviews even though they weren't qualified for the job, just for their "diversity" quotas. This is effectively race discrimination, yet this sort of thing has never been seriously challenged as it should have been. I hope that attitudes are changing.

[jabrwok]

Everyone is allowed to share their opinion.

I'm guessing the "their" should be read as referring to Cultural Marxists. The CMs are a group after all, and "their" is the third-person plural pronoun.

Everyone is allowed to share Cultural Marxism's opinion.

I generally substitute "he" (or equivalent) when reading "they" if the latter is used as a singular pronoun. I'll probably start substituting "Cultural Marxist(s)" henceforth.

And I don't care if various historical writers used "they" as a singular. I doubt that those writers were trying to erase sex differences by intentionally avoiding the use of the masculine/neuter pronoun (funny how using the same pronoun for both men and generic humans is supposed to be sexist towards *women*, who have their own, privileged, pronoun [the wymyn-folk need to check their privilege methinks]).

On a somewhat tangential note, can anyone recommend a non-Leftist e-mail provider and tell me how to transfer my e-mail archive from gmail to that provider? Alternately, how do I set up my own, personal, e-mail server and personal domain?

[Darleen]

Oh... btw ... besides universities making segregation great again, how long before the voluntary becomes the mandatory?

The Mao-lings are ascendant.

[David]

The Mao-lings are ascendant.

I did, though, chuckle at “seasoned food.” I’m a Brit, after all.

[Kevin]

I suppose it does work...

Conan, what is best in life? To troll your enemies,to see them butthurt before you, and to hear the rustling of their jimmies

What is best in life? To enforce perfect conformity, to purge the wrong thinkers, and to calm our tits.

[Kevin]

The first one is easy; Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the barbarian. For the second one, what picture? Trigglypuff? Pajama boy? Laurie Penny? There are too many choices...

[Pogonip]

Sounds like Google employees could use a union.

[David]

Allum Bokhari interviews a (pseudonymous) Google employee:

Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance reviews for expressing a different opinion. These have been raised to the Senior VP level, with no action taken whatsoever.

A lot of social justice activists essentially spend all day fighting the culture war, and get nothing done. The company has made it a point to hire more people like this. The diversity gospel has been woven into nearly everything the company does, to the point where senior leaders focus on diversity first and technology second. The companywide “Google Insider” emails used to talk about cool new tech, but now they’re entirely about social justice initiatives. Likewise, the weekly all-hands “TGIF” meetings used to focus on tech, but now they’re split about 50/50 between tech and identity politics signalling.

For conservative employees, this is obviously demoralising, but it is also dangerous. Several have been driven out of the company or fired outright for sharing a dissenting view. Others have had their promotions denied or suffered other forms of deniable retaliation. Most of us just keep our heads down because we can’t afford to lose our jobs.

Because, being lefties, they care so very much.

[Ian]

On a somewhat tangential note, can anyone recommend a non-Leftist e-mail provider and tell me how to transfer my e-mail archive from gmail to that provider? Alternately, how do I set up my own, personal, e-mail server and personal domain?

I'm something of a techie and used to run my own mailserver, so at the risk of provoking David's ire by going off-topic I can suggest a couple of things.

Firstly, though, if you're not technically-minded (and even if you are) then I really wouldn't recommend you try to run your own mailserver. There are all sorts of problems associated with personal mailservers, which boil down to (a) they're fiddly to implement and can be a pain to maintain, (b) you will not get the same level of security as you do using Google (this is my personal opinion, though it's definitely arguable in some respects), and (c) you will find that a lot of the mail you send will get marked as spam by receiving MTAs (Mail Transfer Agents -- sorry, I will be using acronyms).

To give an example of point (c), I used to correspond a lot with a Conservative MP and was once extremely rude about David Cameron in an email. This got auto-flagged by Symantec who do all the parliamentary IT stuff, and it took me weeks to go through their formal procedures to get my mailserver whitelisted. And this is by no means an isolated example. Even if you do all the right things (SPF, DKIM, valid SSL certificates) and even if you follow the receiving MTAs guidance to the letter (when they publish such information) and even if your mailserver is not on any of the anti-spam blacklists, you will still get some mail marked as spam (apparently at random), or will simply be blacklisted for no apparent reason. This seems entirely to do with IP address "reputation" which is totally opaque to the sending MTA. You will see a lot of 5xx SMTP error codes. I came to the conclusion that some companies do this just to get people to use their systems, though of course I can't prove it.

So anyway, assuming you still want to run your own mailserver, first rent a Linux VPS (ideally a KVM one). I'd recommend using Debian for this, but you can use any distro really, and install it from an image which the hosting company will provide. After installation, update the distro, set up a firewall, secure access via SSH (there are articles on all this) and maybe do other security-minded stuff . Then buy a domain and point the MX DNS entries (and also the A entry, some crappy mailservers rely on that) to the IP address you'll be given by your hosting company. Also set up an SPF record as per the instructions you'll find online. (You can also set up DKIM but that can be tricky, I can explain this separately if you wish. I used zdkimfilter.) You'll also need to buy an SSL certificate. These used to be available for free and maybe still are, but make sure the CA is properly trusted by other MTAs, the Israeli company I used for this got bumped off the root certificates list not long ago. Then I'd recommend using Courier for your MTA, installable via your particular distro's repositories. There are reasonably good instructions for this online but they're not perfect, so if you're still keen after reading all this shizzle then I can give detailed instructions.

To transfer all your Gmail mails over to your new mailserver (assuming you'll be using IMAP) then run Thunderbird and log in via that to Gmail, and get it to download all messages (not just the headers). Then you can either:
(a) Use the Import/Export Tools extension to export all that to disk. scp that to your Linux box and unpack it in the /home/vmail/<user> directory that you'll have set up, although note that Gmail's directory structure is non-standard so you'll have to adjust to fit.
or
(b) Log in to your new mailserver in Thunderbird and just drag and drop all your emails into the folders of that IMAP account. This would probably take a long time!

Then you should probably set up apticron or similar to notify you of software updates on your mailserver and log in every time you get a relevant security update in order to update the OS.

Or you could just keep using Google.

[Sam Duncan]

“Ask.com is my new default search engine.”

I've been using DuckDuckGo since its first couple of months, and I've never had any complaints. It does use Google as one of its backends, but it aggregates results from a number of engines. GMail always seemed like a bad idea to me. And Chrome just sucks anyway. (No, really, it does. Firefox sucks even harder right now, but there are plenty of other browsers. Brendan Eich's Brave, for example.)

What to do about Android is trickier. I use F-Droid for 99% of my apps, but there's still that 1% that it doesn't have, and decoupling the system from Google entirely is tricky without a rooted phone. (And nobody say “Apple”. They're even worse.)

“... I would bet on a precipitous decline in productivity as people go into Winston Smith mode, followed by a steady exodus of people who have just had their noses rubbed in what kind of company they work for.”

When you consider that at least a third of the comments on the article were supportive, it's hard to disagree.

“I'm reminded of Theodore Dalrymple's quote about the purpose of communist propaganda: not to inform but to humiliate by forcing the hearer to accept and parrot patent untruths without complaint.”

Or the (possibly apocryphal) Orwell quote, “True propaganda does not seek to persuade. It seeks to create a climate of thought in which dissent is seen as something akin to madness”. “Orwellian” is an overused word but, whether he actually said that or not, he'd certainly have recognised what's going on right now.

“There's nothing inherently wrong with having a cause, it's the degree to which the company focuses on it that matters.”

As Glenn Reynolds put it, “You can make diversity your top priority, or you can make profitability your top priority, or you can make technical excellence your top priority. But you can only have one top priority.”

[David]

at the risk of provoking David's ire by going off-topic

You’re in luck. I’m busy preparing chicken.

[Ian]

I’m busy preparing chicken.

The correct term is that you're culturally appropriating chicken.

[Alice]

Italics overflow!

[Sam]

Everybody panic!

[Blue State Prisoner]

Note the fantastically Orwellian job title of the apparatchik who just got this guy fired: "Diversity, Integrity and Governance". How anyone could resolve the tension between "diversity" and "integrity" in 2017 is beyond my poor powers of understanding.

Let's all remember that the organization that just did this is also the now the world's de facto librarian. I wonder who sits on the committee that will determine ease of access to various parts of the library and what thought process they will bring to bear on the problem?

[Ian]

sorry!

[David]

Ahem.

[David]

Everybody gather round and point at Ian.

[jabrwok]

Or you could just keep using Google.

...well, looks like I won't be setting up my own server at least.

I *will* explore other e-mail options though. Bad enough YouTube was bought by the beast, but insofar as I can distance myself from the GoogleBorg, I'd like to do so.

I downloaded Brave once, but haven't tried using it much. I'll give it another look-see this week.

Thanks.

P.S. Preview is showing me all my stuff in italics, but I think that's Ian's fault.

[jabrwok]

Ah, looks like it was fixed before I posted my previous comment.

[R. Sherman]

@jabrwok

I've been using Brave for awhile now, and it seems to work fine. It took a day or so to get used to its interface, but generally, I like it.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

What to do about Android is trickier.

Flip phone, Blackberry Classic, root the phone and install a custom ROM. It really isn't that hard, except in the US&A where the big carriers make accessing the bootloader more of a challenge.

[jabrwok]

@ R.Sherman. I'll definitely give it a try. Thanks.

[prm]

Regarding email, I'm in the s l o w process of disengaging from google. For email I'm trying protonmail, which is free encrypted email.

As the SJW convergence becomes more apparent, I'm removing myself from what I can as I see the censorship and intolerance. So I've deleted Twitter, Facebook and Airbnb accounts, stopped using Patreon. And I'm moving over to Gab (which thankfully has moved on a little from all the (((cabal of overlords))) tedium it had at the start), Minds etc.

As people like Vox Day have mentioned, the only real alternative generally is to create, er, alternatives. You can't really beat Google, MSM etc. But you can go around them, and make them less and less relevant, as we're seeing with alt-media.

One of the delights of being engaged with the counter-culture is the broad array of opinions, whether people define as alt-right, alt-light, liberal, left, whatever. So someone like Dave Rubin can have a conversation with people from all parts of the spectrum, because whether you are Rubin, Cernovich, Adams, Day, Harris, Shapiro, Weinstein, Milo, Green, Nawaz, all can agree on the fundamentals of freedom of speech and freedom of association. And that you’re not a Nazi homophobe if you disagree with people.

That's the divide I'm seeing, between the censorious, Maoling, Soviet cult of SJW truethink and the free exchange of ideas. Where people can make mistakes and change their minds and agree to differ. Remember that?

[Bemused]

I don't use Google but if I did this episode would be enough for me to change. I hope the real victim here gets his life back soon.

[Pogonip]

The SJWs at Google don't seem to like anybody!

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/08/goog-a08.html

[MC]

If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem.

How charmingly naïve these IT types are.

There is no solving the problem; either a new problem will emerge or the solution will be declared invalid. Too many people gain too much power and simple vicarious pleasure from 'the problem'.

They're not going to give up all that lovely scolding.

[David]

If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll shake the spam filter.

[Dyspeptic Curmudgeon]

@ jabrwok
"...well, looks like I won't be setting up my own server at least.

I *will* explore other e-mail options though."

The easiest route is to buy your own domain, and have it hosted at a local ISP. I use a now 30 year old ISP to host my domain, and email costs me $60 a year for 5 (or so) email addresses. I use Thunderbird as an email client. If necessary, all I would need to do to move, would be to sign up elsewhere, and have the DNS changed accordingly. An analogy would be, porting your cell-phone to a new supplier: your number stays the same, but the back end is different.

[pst314]

I don't know how to post an image, so here is a link to the new Google logo:
https://twitter.com/MrMaitra/status/894807621110247424

[Spiny Norman]

Iowahawk has made a shrewd, sarcastic observation:

I think Evergreen State is a great business model for a tech company

https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/894947414498570240

[David]

Heh. Quite.

[David]

One of the basic points that so many ‘progressive’ journalists and commenters are struggling to comprehend.

[David]

Well, I say they’re struggling. I see little evidence of effort.

[David]

The women too “upset” to go into work over a science and evidence-backed note are indeed playing into the worst gender stereotypes of all — the overly-emotional and irrational woman.

Today’s word is irony.

[jabrwok]

pst314's image: (instructions for relevant tag available at https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_img.asp

Sorry about the size

[David]

Link fixed, image resized.

[jabrwok]

struggling to comprehend

They should look up the distribution curves of IQ or Cognitive Ability comparisons based on race or sex. They'll find that they're far less innocuous than they generic "trait" curve linked above.

[jabrwok]

image resized.

Thanks David. I tried putting in the 'height' and 'weight' parameters, but they didn't seem to have any effect. What's your secret?

[David]

What’s your secret?

Copying the image to my own library and resizing the copy.

Yes, it’s a faff.

[jabrwok]

'width'. I don't think HTML has a 'weight' attribute:-P.

[pst314]

A directory of Google offices should be titled "The Google Archipelago"

Coming soon: One Day in the Life of Ivan Daprogrammer.

[David]

I don’t think HTML has a ‘weight’ attribute

Try drinking. That might help.

[Jen]

The women too “upset” to go into work over a science and evidence-backed note are indeed playing into the worst gender stereotypes of all — the overly-emotional and irrational woman.

That. :-)

[David]

That.

The fainting ladies are so ‘woke’ they didn’t get the irony.

[Ian]

The easiest route is to buy your own domain, and have it hosted at a local ISP.

I'd like to second this. If you own your own domain, you're no longer in thrall to a particular company. And using an ISP to do the mailserver stuff is probably the simplest solution.

[jabrwok]

re: own domain and ISP for "mailserver stuff", does anyone have a link to a good how-to, step-by-step tutorial on how to manage all that? I know just enough to realize how little I actually know about these things.

[Ian]

It's actually quite straightforward. Basically, you just tick a box when you buy the domain to tell them to host mail for you, or otherwise the company will tell you what you have to do to set that up. There will then be instructions on how to log in to the mailserver. It all depends on the company you choose, but just look at their online help before you buy. I'm happy to recommend names.co.uk as a fairly user-friendly company though I don't use their email service.

[David]

Relevant thread.

[jabrwok]

It's actually quite straightforward.

Thanks Ian.

[Ian]

You're welcome.

[WTP]

Sigh...When you're OCD, some things you just gotta do yourself....OK, a lotta things...not that it bothers anyone else...can't wait any longer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Flr-hQHcY

[David]

Captures the general tone, I think.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

A classic.

[[+]]

"So, if the sexes and races don't differ at all, and if psychological interchangeability is true, then there's no practical business case for diversity. On the other hand, if demographic diversity gives a company any competitive advantages, it must be because there are important sex differences and race differences in how human minds work and interact."

https://archive.is/VlNfl

[Lab Rat]

If there is no difference between men and women, then what the fark are "trans"-people trying to do? How can they "feel" like they are in the wrong body if there is no difference to "feel"?

It pisses me off to no end - as a woman, as a scientist, as a scientist who has studied biology and chemistry extensively - that biological facts are now being dismissed (and worse) as sexist stereotypes.

And these no-account stupid cows like that twitter twat want everyone who doesn't toe the SJW line to be fired.

I guess Teh Science is only infallible when it's about teh Global Warming...er I mean Anthropogenic Climate Change, but biological science can go screw itself.

I need a drink.

[Farnsworth M. Muldoon]

A good take on the whole mess. Google CEO Mansplains That He Eliminated Diverse Thought … To Protect Defenseless Women.

What women like me hear from Google:

Women are such precious, emotional, delicate creatures, damsels in distress really, that we wilt and swoon in the face of any commentary that suggests we are not capable in the tech world.

The big, benevolent Google has cast itself as our hero, defending inherently weak women and firing some man no one has ever heard of because he expressed . . . thoughts!

[MikeG81]

"The SJWs at Google don't seem to like anybody!"

I can't believe I clicked that link.

[PiperPaul]

I discovered today that there is such a thing as a "Leftist Heap" in programming.

"In contrast to a binary heap, a leftist tree attempts to be very unbalanced. In addition to the heap property, leftist trees are maintained so the right descendant of each node has the lower s-value."

That is all.