Posts made by Kanye Qwest

@krmbm what about the Han dynasty?

@Ghost said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

" However, I know way too many military realism dorks that be like: "* Ennnhhhhh, I'm not racist but if this is supposed to be a military realism game it's weird that a Samuel L. Jackson PB is an officer.*"

i mean honestly this sounds like a personal problem and you should probably purge your friendslists.

@Jeshin said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

@Kanye-Qwest

So excluding trans/non-binary people would make the staff or owner bigoted because no pre-existing setting exists which could justify that decision?

Excluding groups based on the work of Tolkien does not make the staff or owner bigoted?

^ I think this is the basic question of where do you cross the line and where are you alright. It's not a defense of doing it just answering where the community thinks it's acceptable and where it's wrong.

That's not what I think. I think you should find better comparisons.

@Jeshin ok but there is no setting which would stop the people there from being trans/gay/nonbinary. Those comparisons do not work.

things i have RECENTLY become obsessed with during hyperfocus holes, to the point i have read and watched dozens of hours of content about them:

tiny homes
van life
arctic foxes
the history of Hollywood (did you know it was bought and named by racist prohibitionists who wanted a sober, white town?)
the neuroscience of sleep
misogyny and witchcraft and satanism
hikikomori

@Pandora said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

but sometimes the world-view of men who, wanting to believe men aren't as bad as they're made out to be, look to sources that pander to that outlook and wind up brainwashed by statistics that make it look like women are out to get them.

ALSO qft. It's hard because I get it, it SUCKS to admit you are/have been/benefit from The Asshole. And it falls to people who care about these otherwise decent humans to be like hey. YO. It's ok, but you're wrong.

@Pandora ugh that sucks. I am sure it's occurred to you, for you are not a dumb, but what about taking him aside and being like 'yo this bothers me becuase i celebrated with my daughter and it was about US, not about anyone else. You never know who you might be hurting when you are inflexible and rude/emphatic about your opinions, and this time you were hurting me, so be more thoughtful or at LEAST keep it out of your job"?

It sucks to be vulnerable, but it sounds like you care about him. Might be worth a try before you have to burn the bridge thorugh either a report or losing your whole damn temper.

@Pandora said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

I work in a predominantly male office, though the majority of the admin/reception team is female. There's a guy in my department, very sweet, very friendly, we're friends on Discord, play video games together, so I just want to make it clear he's not a total shithead all the time.

But.

He's got opinions that are not workplace-friendly for discussion. He likes to argue about equal opportunity, cite fringe research that proves men are discriminated against more than women, that men are abused just as much as women but it goes unreported so no one cares, and this past Sunday was Father's Day, and he went on a riff in the office about how single mothers should not be allowed to celebrate Father's Day because that's making the holiday about themselves and renders it meaningless. He corners the few women in our department to make these arguments - it's never the other guys he's talking to, as most of them are not silly enough to engage in this type of behavior. It grates on my nerves to see women who haven't researched these topics unable to refute his 'published statistics' floundering as they make perfectly reasonable emotion-based or anecdotal arguments that he waves off, and he dismisses these arguments with statements like 'I don't need to be married or a father to have an opinion on these topics' despite being a 30 year old virgin with a deep-seated seeming vendetta against the secretly abusive girlfriends and wives and celebratory single moms of the world. When I swoop in to rescue them from this bullshit is when our (male) team lead will finally break it up, because this colleague haranguing the women in the office is one-sided 'conversation' but when I refute his points it's now an 'argument' that needs to be broken up.

I'm kind of at the point of considering physical bodily harm the next time he starts speaking at work, but at the same time I'm hesitant to go to HR to file a grievance against someone I consider a friend.

I mean, is he really a friend? Legit question, I see a vast difference between friendly acquaintances you hang out with and friends. If you ended up the victim of sex discrimination, would he have your back? If not, he's not a friend and if a grievance isn't filed, someone needs to at least let it 'slip' to on eof the scarier men in the office that he needs a refresher course on what is and isn't appropriate to discuss at work.

i want a superhero game set in the One Punch Man world.

@Carex said in Where to play?:

@faraday said in Where to play?:

Even if you ignore the fact that "automotive" includes motorcycles by definition

No, it doesn't. You go to entirely different schools with different certifications and use entirely different parts. There are even different laws regarding cars and bikes.

Saying you have too many car shops so you can't open a bike shop is like saying you have too many plastic surgeons so no one can open a dentist office.

It's just dumb.

That's not dumb. Splitting a hair instead of just saying "oh ok, wasn't sure if this was included in the restricted concept umbrella. I'll work for someone else" is dumb.

It's really dumb.

@BlondeBot said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@Coin said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@BlondeBot said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@Coin said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@BlondeBot said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

That said, comparing a volunteer duty to an obligation is like comparing apples to baseballs. The hypothetical man in this instance has no actual obligations that would cause him to miss work or suffer dire consequences.

I think that's part of @Ganymede's point, though.

Then I don't understand the point of saying a person with no obligations has a career advantage over a person with outside-work obligations. Obviously they do. It has nothing to do with gender.

The person who can show up more often, when asked, on short notice has the advantage.

Gany was using that comparison to showcase the sexist way men are excused for their extracurricular volunteering and women are blamed for their extracurricular obligations. It's right there:

***There is more definitely an employer bias against people's outside commitments, and I believe they are highly sexist. ***

I have never heard of 'Sorry, I'm not coming in today because I'm volunteering.' being an acceptable excuse to miss work in any vocation, for any gender.

I get 40 hours a year of paid time to do volunteer work! But. That's generally arranged ahead of time like vacation.

@Ganymede yeah and he also entirely neglected to acknowledge or mention the mountains of bias that have absolutely, 100% resulted in these types of jobs being almost entirely staffed by men, so let's not act like that omission means nothing.

No one was like "get thee behind me, devil". He was asked to examine his input and the thought behind it.

@Ghost I mean you weren't adding anything but more of the nonsense causing the issue so

For me it's the implicit presupposition that all the (probably largely white) men hired into these jobs were "the best candidate". That none of them were hired BECAUSE of bias, or politics.

Malice aforethought or no, that's a serious problem, and it takes some examination. Jumping in with "hire the BEST candidate, not based on politics" is about equivalent to "ALL lives matter" in that it is only brought up when the status quo is being questioned. No one is going after companies with huge gender imbalances and asking them to justify every man they've hired.

It's 2019, and this is canceled. Thanks for listening to my Ted talk.

@Ghost said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@Arkandel I've been in my current IT Ops group for over 7 years now, and here is my advice:

Build a team who can do the job.

What you're in is a Catch-22 with your politics. At the end of the day, IT is about skills and experience. It's a Catch-22 because if you take a female candidate who isn't as skilled as another male candidate, your team will suffer. If you give a woman a bump out of bias, then you're not hiring her solely for her skills, which isn't right either. At the end of the day, all you can do is build your team with the best people you can get, and if that ends up being a diverse team? Great. If not? It was the applications you had available at the time.

You will know, deep inside, if you hired the wrong candidate for the wrong reasons. It may work out, it may not, but you'll always feel it in your gut.

I work with a fairly diverse culture. Plenty of men and women, and many from China, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, Russia, and Canada. I can tell you that not a one would be alright with having gotten a sort of socio-political bump over their skill set to support their gender/culture/religious tropes.

A good IT boss looks for skills and chemistry. Be a good boss, put together your elite squad, and then whatever mix of cultures and genders you end up with, be supportive of them. Also, whatever you do, never mention their diversity as a deciding factor in the interviews. They'll love you for being excited about their brains.

@Sparks yeah it's not great at my company either, but we have teams of people working on it, on recruiting undergrads and partnering with STEM facilitation community programs for the future, which I love. We had a Black Girls Code workshop here recently.

@Arkandel said in Accounting for gender imbalances:

@Caryatid Do you think the gender imbalance is something that ought to be addressed in the interview?

For instance does a question such as "we're currently a team consisted only of men, how do you feel about that?" sound like we're preparing to listen for feedback and keep things professional, safe and constructive or signal we might be shedding too much of a spotlight on gender right out of the gate?

yeah absolutely don't ask that kind of thing. For reasons people have noted.

But also..what is wrong with your company, that you've never had a woman on this team, ever? Maybe you should hire all the women. Start making a dent in that problem.

@Caryatid this is all good too. Don't make your first woman hire all about how she's your first woman hired. Examine the culture and what needs to be changed or reinforced to make it appropriate for ANY worker who might come in, and don't put the onus on the 'diversity hire' to point those things out, or sign off on things.

Honestly, I do not think there are different standards for what is work appropriate for men, women, or other. Keep it professional and let all your employees do their jobs.

Oh hi, I am a woman working on a tech engineering team. I am the only woman on our vertical, though on the entire team we have two. Out of about 40 employees.

The most important thing to have in this position is a support system. Management or supervisors for this team must be receptive to feedback. Not only must they be receptive, they SHOULD be willing to be point person on it. Let me example.

Most of the people on my broad team are pretty great. I mean, we are busy, we are stressed, we are not by and large people with extensive backgrounds in customer interfacing or social skills (except me!). There is some bro-ery, absolutely. It comes with a certain level of relaxed expectations as far as 'strictly professional' behavior goes. People on our support engineering staff blow off steam. They throw nerf darts at each other, we meme in team chat, we faff around on the internet when we aren't engaged and busy. This is mostly fine. Sometimes, it crosses a line that makes me unhappy or uncomfortable. I have been very lucky that my management staff has always seen it and stopped it before I even have to say anything, and that is what makes me feel comfortable here.

I wryly observe I am the only woman in meetings of 20+. My teammates might joke that they have to be nice to the resident woman, but there's good rapport and well-set expectations so it's all in good fun. They are also mostly terrified of me, that probably helps.

But really. Proactive and aware management is the key, imo. Don't focus on what might 'offend' a delicate lady. Focus on what is or is not appropriate in a work environment, and enforce it.