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James Damore: the celebrity years

Aug 9th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

Ah, of course he did. James Damore turned down interview requests from professional journalists and instead shared his wisdom with two right-wing anti-feminist YouTubers, Stefan Molyneux and Jordan Peterson.

The videos posted Tuesday, which quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views, come as Damore has threatened to take legal action against Google over his termination, making him an overnight celebrity amongst the “alt-right” and other conservatives in Silicon Valley.

The podcasters provided a sympathetic audience for Damore, who also argued that Google is intolerant of rightwing viewpoints and that companies discriminate against white men with diversity and inclusion initiatives. (Google remains overwhelmingly white and male, with women occupying just 20% of the technical workforce and African Americans

… Read the rest

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Prejudice masquerading as fact

Aug 9th, 2017 4:44 pm | By

Angela Saini, author of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, on that memo.

A portion of his argument is indeed based on published science. In particular, there is a school of neuroscience that tries to popularise the notion that male and female brains are distinct. It claims that female brains are typically hardwired for empathy, while male brains are built to analyse systems, such as computers and cars. This all hinges on the idea that autism represents an extreme form of the male brain, caused by exposure to higher than usual testosterone levels in the womb. Yet recent experiments have repeatedly failed to find a direct link between foetal testosterone levels alone and autism.

Indeed, psychological studies

… Read the rest

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Less concerned with oxidization

Aug 9th, 2017 4:16 pm | By

Ben Kronengold at McSweeney’s:

I, a manufacturing robot at Google Factory C4.7, value diversity and inclusion. I also do not deny that machines are sometimes given preference to humans in the workplace. All I’m suggesting in this document is that humans’ underrepresentation in tech is not due to discrimination. Rather, it is a result of biological differences. Specifically, humans have a biology.

Humans and robots are different, and that’s not socially constructed, it’s the real deal.

Humans, on average are:

  • More concerned with relationships
  • Less concerned with oxidization
  • More likely to “pee”

Humans are also far more likely to “literally cannot right now.”

Robots never cannot right now.

Suggestions

I hope it’s clear that I’m not saying that diversity

… Read the rest

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Morning and afternoon

Aug 9th, 2017 11:45 am | By

Dear god.

Trump gets a Big Special Treat twice a day, prepared for him by his handlers.

Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m. Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.

These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives. Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls),

… Read the rest

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Entirely improvised

Aug 9th, 2017 11:24 am | By

So Trump’s idiot outburst at North Korea wasn’t even planned. It was his very own Awesome Idea on the spur of the moment.

President Trump delivered his “fire and fury” threat to North Korea on Tuesday with arms folded, jaw set and eyes flitting on what appeared to be a single page of talking points set before him on the conference table at his New Jersey golf resort.

The piece of paper, as it turned out, was a fact sheet on the opioid crisis he had come to talk about, and his ominous warning to Pyongyang was entirely improvised, according to several people with direct knowledge of what unfolded. In discussions with advisers beforehand, he had not run the specific

… Read the rest

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Sleep well

Aug 9th, 2017 10:26 am | By

Will Trump’s idiot bombast get us all killed? Who knows.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson played down the threat. “I think Americans should sleep well at night, have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the last few days,” he said.

Oh well, if Rex Tillerson says it, there’s nothing to worry about.

Kidding.

Mr. Trump’s stark comments went well beyond the firm but measured language typically preferred by American presidents in confronting North Korea, and indeed seemed almost to echo the bellicose words used by Mr. Kim. Whether that message was mainly a bluff or an authentic expression of intent, it instantly scrambled the diplomatic equation in one of the world’s most perilous regions.

… Read the rest

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A certain strand of Rational Internet Thinker

Aug 9th, 2017 9:56 am | By

Helen Lewis has more sympathy than I do for the fired James Damore.

But the conversation around this is heading in such an unproductive direction (do women suck at maths?) that I can’t resist wading in.

I agree with the writer that these issues are hard to talk about, but that pushback comes from both directions. Look at the crap Mary Beard is wading through for trying to inject some facts into a discussion about the racial composition of Roman Britain. Nicholas Nassim Taleb keeps honking about “diversity genes” and refusing to listen to evidence that contradicts him. But in his mind, he’s Mr Science – sorry, Professor Science – and she’s Madam Arts-Subject.

We kind of want these … Read the rest

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He used a Google mailing list

Aug 8th, 2017 5:03 pm | By

Business Insider says nah, James Damore isn’t the new free speech hero the world has been looking for.

James Damore, the Google employee fired Monday for publishing a 10-page anti-diversity manifesto, almost certainly has not had his First Amendment free-speech rights infringed. If he sues Google — which Reuters reports he is considering — he will lose, unless he can find a court willing to create a new free-speech right for American workers.

Tuesday morning, the alt-right corners of the internet are rallying to Damore’s cause. He is a shining example of how the left bans certain conservative ideas and punishes people for trying to discuss them openly, they say. It is outrageous that someone can lose his

… Read the rest

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Aw, he’s shy

Aug 8th, 2017 4:26 pm | By

Trump is trying to get a nuclear war going, but meanwhile it’s interesting to learn that he’s been sending little mash notes to Mueller.

President Trump has publicly called the widening federal investigation into Russia’s election meddling a “witch hunt.” But through his lawyer, Trump has sent private messages of “appreciation” to special counsel Robert Mueller.

“He appreciates what Bob Mueller is doing,” Trump’s chief counsel John Dowd told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday. “He asked me to share that with him and that’s what I’ve done.”

Trump’s legal team has been in contact with Mueller’s office, and Dowd says he has passed along the president’s messages expressing “appreciation and greetings’’ to the special counsel.

“The president has

… Read the rest

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Guest post: Damore v Google

Aug 8th, 2017 11:57 am | By

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on A culture of openness.

First, it’s definitely not a First Amendment issue, for reasons I think have been well-discussed, i.e. the 1st Amendment applies only to “state action,” and Google is a private employer.

There is, however, a federal statute — the National Labor Relations Act — which is the labor law issue A Masked Avenger references @3. Although people generally think of the NLRA as having to do with unions, and specifically protecting speech related to union organization, it is in fact broader than that. Here is a good explanation:

Section 7 of the NLRA grants the following protected right to all private-sector, non-supervisory employees:

“…to engage in… concerted activities for

… Read the rest

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Meanwhile Google pays women less than men across the board

Aug 8th, 2017 11:39 am | By

On the one hand, shock-horror, Google has fired that nice James Damore simply for expressing his opinion, no one should ever be fired just for expressing an opinion.

On the other hand, just a couple of weeks ago the Labor Department was saying Google’s confidentiality policy was making it difficult to gather information on their demographics.

So is Google political correctness run amok or is it self-protective capitalism as usual?

The US Department of Labor has raised concerns that Google’s strict confidentiality agreements have discouraged employees from speaking to the government about discrimination as part of a high-profile wage inequality investigation.

Following a judge’s ruling that Google must hand over salary records and employee contact information to federal regulators

… Read the rest

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Trump boosts Fox’s report on what spy satellites have seen

Aug 8th, 2017 10:43 am | By

Trump is fine with Fox and Friends sharing classified information, and by “classified information” I mean classified information about North Korea’s missile activity.

President Trump on Tuesday used Twitter to amplify a Fox News report, based on anonymous sources, that U.S. spy satellites had detected North Korea loading two cruise missiles on a patrol boat on the country’s coast in recent days.

Without adding any comment of his own, Trump, who regularly decries leaks to the media, retweeted to his more than 35 million followers a link to the day-old story, which was featured Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends,” a program on the Fox News network.

Erm…doesn’t that seem like the kind of classified information that you really … Read the rest

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One door closes, another opens

Aug 8th, 2017 10:20 am | By

Of course he has.

Julian Assange has offered the Google employee who was fired for writing an anti-diversity memo a job at Wikileaks.

Assange, who is currently in the Ecuadorian embassy, tweeted multiple times in support of James Damore, the engineer who wrote the memo which went viral.

He said: “Censorship is for losers. @WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore.

“Women & men deserve respect. That includes not firing them for politely expressing ideas but rather arguing back.”

Deffo. If somebody writes a “polite” ten page memo saying black people are just too different from white people to work at Google, that’s Respect.

In fact for even more Respect maybe Google should … Read the rest

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A culture of openness

Aug 8th, 2017 10:00 am | By

Google did fire Mr Memo.

In a companywide email, Google’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said portions of the memo had violated the company’s code of conduct and crossed the line “by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

The memo put the company in a bind. On one hand, Google has long promoted a culture of openness, with employees allowed to question senior executives and even mock its strategy in internal forums. However, Google, like many other technology firms, is dealing with criticism that it has not done enough to hire and promote women and minorities.

Of course, questioning senior executives is one thing and announcing that women are inherently, as a matter of “biology,” not good enough to … Read the rest

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 8 comments


A pervasive attitude

Aug 7th, 2017 4:49 pm | By

To many people in tech, Mr Memo’s memo is no surprise at all.

Others were less surprised to hear what they called a pervasive attitude in an industry long dominated by men. The manifesto “is the Silicon Valley mindset in many ways,” said Vivek Wadhwa, a distinguished fellow at Carnegie Mellon University college of engineering and a frequent critic of the tech sector’s lack of diversity. “You could take this to a lot of people and you would hear: ‘Yup, we agree with this.’ People used to say things like this fearlessly.”

…

The manifesto claims that men have a higher drive for status, that women might not like coding because they have more interest than men in “people

… Read the rest

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Staying true to himself

Aug 7th, 2017 3:32 pm | By

Joan Vennochi at the Boston Globe points out that Trump has a considerable nerve sneering at Richard Blumenthal when he himself successfully avoided the draft altogether.

Just about a year ago, Donald Trump — the presidential candidate who received a draft deferment for bone spurs and called avoiding sexually transmitted diseases his “personal Vietnam” — mocked Gold Star parents who questioned what he knew about sacrifice.

So it’s no surprise that as president, Trump would feel free to attack Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut for misrepresenting his military record. Compared with attacking the parents of an army captain killed in Iraq, that barely registers as outrageous.

It still registers as pretty dang outrageous though. This is 1) a grown man … Read the rest

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The patient is feverish and agitated

Aug 7th, 2017 11:36 am | By

Tweeter Donald is being especially disgusting today.

… Read the rest

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Trump’s hiring practices

Aug 7th, 2017 11:15 am | By

Trump says “JOBS JOBS JOBS.” Trump says “Hire American.” Trump says we gotta stop letting all these foreigners in, especially the ones seeking low-skill jobs. Trump says Make America Great Again.

Trump seeks to hire workers for Mar-a-Lago.

President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club needs to hire 35 waiters for this winter’s social season in Palm Beach, Fla.

Late last month, the club placed an ad on page C8 of the Palm Beach Post, crammed full of tiny print laying out the job experience requirements in classified ad shorthand. “3 mos recent & verifiable exp in fine dining/country club,” the ad said. “No tips.”

The ad gave no email address or phone number. “Apply by fax,” it said. The ad also

… Read the rest

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Thanks Nicole!

Aug 7th, 2017 10:43 am | By

So Trump thanked a bot.

Over the weekend, President Trump RT’d a shout-out of praise from a woman on Twitter named Nicole Mincey.

Around the same time, I noticed that Mincey’s tweets had been showing up high in Trump’s twitter threads. And as I mentioned in this tweet from Saturday evening, while I wasn’t sure whatever details there were about her, the accounts had all the tell-tale signs of a grift, most notably because of the stylized personal presentation and the focus on a Trump store where this woman – probably better to call her a “persona” – sold all manner of low-tier Trump shirts, hats, hoodies, etc.

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Cambridge Classics Faculty speaks

Aug 7th, 2017 10:15 am | By

A Faculty statement concerning ethnic diversity in Roman Britain:

Roman Britain has long been an important part of the teaching and research in the Faculty of Classics. The question of ethnic diversity in the province has been getting unusual amounts of attention recently. Professor Mary Beard has been at the centre of some of this attention. In the Faculty we welcome and encourage public interest in, and reasoned debate about, the ancient world, such as Professor Beard has always sought to encourage. The evidence is in fact overwhelming that Roman Britain was indeed a multi-ethnic society. This was not, of course, evenly spread through the province, and it would have been infinitely more noticeable — it can be assumed

… Read the rest

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