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That was a truly bizarre segue. I wonder what emotions or thoughts he was hoping to inspire with that sentence.
by notreallyserio 5y ago
That was a truly bizarre segue. I wonder what emotions or thoughts he was hoping to inspire with that sentence.
- katbyte 5y ago
- flumpcakes 5y agoThat's an extremely unfriendly thing to jump to. There was nothing in the text to suggest that. I also noticed that every developer was from one gender and even commented to my partner at the time, at which point I remembered it was international women's day and perhaps this was Apple showing their support in an unvoiced/non-bombastic way. Does this make me a misogynist? For noticing something?
- dymk 5y agoAt minimum, it gives you a taste of what it feels like to be a woman in tech, and everybody around you is male.
- flumpcakes 5y agoI don't need a "taste". I have basic empathy for other human beings, regardless of gender.
- dymk 5y agoYou have sympathy for experiences you haven’t had. You have empathy for ones you have.
- flumpcakes 5y agoIf you cannot be empathetic without directly experiencing something yourself then I would argue you actually lack empathy. Sympathy is not empathy. I can be empathetic to people I have no sympathy for.
- csunbird 5y agoI haven't watched the event, although, I would notice the all female cast just like I would notice the all male cast. It is a simple anomaly to have every caster to be male or female.
- User23 5y agoI'm sure you're writing in good faith, but you may be interested to know that in internet slang "noticing" is a racist and possibly sexist dog-whistle[1]. [1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Noticing https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Noticing
- tomca32 5y agoInteresting. Could you suggest how to rewrite that comment and express that a person noticed something (in the literal sense of the word) without using a dog whistle?
- nanoservices 5y agoInterested to know this as well. I am not sure if pointing to a definition on Urban Dictionary with ~100 thumbs is enough to redefine a word let alone assume that the average person is using it as a dog whistle.
- dylan604 5y agoIt occurred to me that... I realized that... I became aware... That's without even looking for a thesaurus. Not that I'm supporting this alt-definition of noticing, but your question seemed pretty trivial to answer.
- tomca32 5y agoThanks, that does answer the question I wrote, however my point was that I'm very uncomfortable with this environment where any innocent word could be interpreted as a dog-whistle, and was curious if any "notice" synonyms are also considered dog-whistles.
- hajile 5y agoThen it's 5 seconds before all those are "bad words" too. Maybe it's better to assume that most people in the world aren't evil degenerates unless there's hard evidence to the contrary.
- fleddr 5y agoNo, not at all. Clearly, in recent years Apple's keynotes and adverts have been making a clear diversity statement, in particular an optical one, that is pretty much opposite to reality. They've taken it so far that in a way, they've swung to the other end of the extreme. Less diversity by emphasizing diversity too much, if that makes sense. Since discussing gender and skin color always gets people worked up, let me pick a less controversial one: wealth. When you check Apple's adverts and see the actors using their products, they're clearly living the Valley lifestyle. They're all young, fit, filthy rich, have fantastic work spaces and living rooms, carefully designed by fashionable architects, lead an inner city lifestyle where they hop on Ubers to go to Starbucks, you get the idea. ...none of which represents even a fraction of the actual customer base. The working class is not featured, rural people are not featured, other countries are not featured, which leads me to conclude that Apple's signaling is not diverse. It's fashion for the elite, with a vast distance to their actual users. Apple's products are desirable enough for it to not matter, but it's fine to spot it. It's hard to miss. Just don't misread it as anything but optics. Have a look at leaked tech memos to understand how Apple really thinks. They're predatory towards competitors. They'll do anything to dodge taxes and bypass consumer protection laws. They sabotage open standards. They rely on exploitation for their manufacturing. They make secret deals so that employees can't switch. They treat their store staff as garbage. Apple is a deeply unethical, predatory, neoconservative company. Yet if you feature lots of black women in your ads, you optically look progressive and good. Woke capitalism from the world center of hypocrisy: California.
- flumpcakes 5y ago> fashion for the elite I agree completely. I also believe that hackernews is the exact target audience for Apple products. People who can argue that $250,000 for a non-manual, 9-5 job is somehow not a good salary. Apple like to show people (all people from all backgrounds) as if they are normal or average rather than the hyper-elite that they are. If Apple had an advert with the average family in an average home it would probably be distressing to most people. I'm lucky enough to be in the top 20% of earners in my country and I am in my 30s, but I still would never be able to afford a house as depicted in Apple's advertising. Or have the budget to spend $5,000 on a computer for my work.
- katbyte 5y agothere is quite a difference between noticing something (and then correctly noting it is international women's day) and making a strange note of it in an article that is entirely about the CPU. It really doesn't have a place there.
- flumpcakes 5y ago> It really doesn't have a place there. Where is the correct place for this "strange note"? I think you are attaching some message to the author that wasn't there, labeling it as "strange". It was a conscious decision by Apple during a presentation that is ostensibly one long advert. The goal is for people to talk about their products and their brand and their "image". Goal achieved because here we are.
- throw-8462682 5y ago> Misogyny? What an extremely unkind thing to say. There was nothing in the GP to suggest this. In fact it’s entirely plausible that Apple decided to honor women’s day this way. You must have known that accusing people of misogyny can have a impact on their livelihood in today’s hyper PC world. That makes your comment even more unkind. I think you should apologize.
- katbyte 5y agoI was agreeing with the comment I replied to? that it was strange and out of place for a blog post that was entirely dedicated the tech/CPU to call out something that had nothing to do with it? (and it was a pretty obvious nod to international women's day)
- faeriechangling 5y agoVarying from the corporate norm of ensuring every single bit of promotional material you have correlates with a representative sample of the population sticks out like a sore thumb. I don’t know why people are feigning shock that people found it remarkable.
- katbyte 5y agothe presentation was on international women's day.
- faeriechangling 5y agoYup, that does seem to be the most likely reason they cast women for the presentation instead of men.
- nanoservices 5y agoClaiming misogyny at every turn shuts down discourse and actually hurts progress as people will just avoid all discussion even when it is legitimately misogyny.
- dragonwriter 5y agoAvoiding discussion just because misogyny is mentioned when misogyny is, in fact, at every turn is what actually hurts progress, as is avoiding mentioning misogyny because of people doing that. (But, of course, that's the motivation for the avoidance in the first place.)
- nanoservices 5y ago> Avoiding discussion just because misogyny is mentioned Its human nature, people will avoid it by not engaging if it just gets thrown around and used to berate without cause. > when misogyny is, in fact, at every turn Yes, it pervasive but not at every turn. Case in point, this thread. > as is avoiding mentioning misogyny because of people doing that. No one is saying to avoid it. Just saying that it is not helping when you indiscriminately label everything as misogyny.
- avazhi 5y agoThis sort of comment isn't helpful, and you should stick to Reddit. On a more personal level, you should query why your response to a question about why every single presenter was a woman (in the computer industry it's statistically impossible that it was a random assortment) is to accuse the questioner of being a misogynist. You're probably the same kind of person who would label a person who asks why blacks make up 14% of the population but commit 52% of the crime in the United States a racist. In neither case have you contributed anything, nor have you done anything to further the enquiries that are clearly being hinted at: Why did Apple think it was appropriate to have nothing but women presenting a keynote? Corporate virtue signalling? If blacks commit so much crime, why, and if they don't, why are the numbers inaccurate? But of course, labelling somebody as a misogynist or a racist takes 2 brain cells and 5 seconds. Do better.
- katbyte 5y agoIt was on international women's day, so there is no surprise why every dev was a women. What was strange is having a a weird out of place callout about it in a blogpost/article that was entirely dedicated to the tech/cpu.
- notreallyserio 5y ago> If blacks commit so much crime, why, and if they don't, why are the numbers inaccurate? We don't know this because the figures cited are biased towards successful convictions. If white folks are able to afford better, more competent lawyers, you can expect them to mount successful defenses. I've never, ever, seen anyone post the 13/50 stat without acknowledging this fact in their comments or replies. And I've seen it a lot.
- avazhi 5y agoObviously my use of this stat was to make a point apropos of the commenter I was replying to - but your response is exactly what I meant in the sense that, assuming we are both interested in talking/learning about the subject, there's a dialogue to be had. Calling me a racist would obviously do nothing except convince me that I must be right because namecalling in isolation is the ultimate white flag in internet discourse (well, so I say). At any rate - my response is that not only are blacks exponentially more likely to be convicted, but they are exponentially more likely to be arrested in the first place (talking about per capita population here). This obviously has nothing to do with lawyers, because it's data from the stage preceding the lawyers showing up. You'll probably respond by saying that in fact the system is rigged against blacks (cops are racists, you'll say), and maybe you'll point out how NYC's stop and frisk policy disproportionately targeted young black males (the same ones who are exponentially more likely to be both arrested and convicted in the first place). You'll point out correctly that my reasoning on this point is circular, and then I might bring up the stats from both before stop and frisk, during it, and then after it was no longer city policy, to suggest some causality. I might also draw the link between IQs and crime rates (the causality of which has been demonstrated across racial groups), and I'd point out how black adults are basically a full standard deviation below the average white or Asian American. I'd also probably point out that IQ isn't something that can be changed very quickly, whether by lawyers, or nutritionists, or water filters, and that there's nothing to suggest that the IQ gap is likely to improve very quickly (and that's assuming that it's the result of environmental and not genetic factors in the first place, which isn't clear). On that note I'd also probably bring up how intelligence and personality seem to be 70-90% genetic, and the problems that fact alone ostensibly presents. You might, again (and not incorrectly), point out how 'the system' has basically been fucking blacks for the past 200 years, and that it's therefore impossible to say with certainty what they would look like in an environment without such horrendous baggage, and I'd respond that notwithstanding it being true that they've been mistreated, enslaved, and in some US states subjected to what we'd today call genocide, it doesn't change the fact that they are (apparently) both dumber than non-blacks (on average) and, as the plausible result of being significantly less intelligent, much more likely to commit violent crimes. Where would we go from there?
- JKCalhoun 5y agoI'll give Gassée the benefit of the doubt. If you were ignorant of the fact that it was Women's Day (guilty here!) he might have thought it disingenuous to not mention it? At least in passing as he did. I'm glad Apple are showcasing the diversity of their workforce (I raised three daughters of my own, wish they would have shown an interest in programming, not really) but I worry that there is a danger of backlash for going too far.
- redox99 5y agoThe author detected an "anomaly" (see proof below) and pointed it out. I think it's pretty hostile to call such comments as bizarre, or question the author's intentions. It seems that around 90% of developers are men[1]. Therefore, using a binomial distribution, if 6 developers were picked at random, the chance that all of them would be women (or other non men gender) is 0.0001%. (Interestingly, there is a 53% chance that all 6 of would be men). The reason for such unlikely occurrence is that most likely, as the parent mentioned, Apple wanted to feature women developers for International Women's Day. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-develo...