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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   37516 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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Once again, someone of Indian descent is on the cusp of power in the West (well Indian and black in this case). Are there any theories why, among Asians, Indians in the West so often end up in leadership positions (especially in the corporate world), and East Asians don't?

I can only imagine that whatever the sauce is, adding black genes to mix might quicken it.

Edit: Also, lol at Elon's lame attack on her on Twitter. They're afraid.

  • -30

So you’re not going to even tell us what Elon said, just boo outgroup it?

It's a video of Harris saying "I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her, and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit."

Various responses are saying that she's talking to blind people, as if that somehow makes it not weird.

It does make it not weird, everyone else at the table was saying similar things. I mean it’s still kind of performative but it’s not as if she just said that out of imbecility

That everyone else was doing it doesn't make it not weird either. Blind people don't need to know what colour suit you're wearing. When I listen to the radio or to a podcast I can't see the speakers either, and not once have I thought "gee I really wish this person would tell me their pronouns and what they're wearing".

Introduce yourself by name, fair enough. Everything else is unnecessary and if you're participating in some nutty subculture that likes to pretend that this nonsense is somehow supportive of disabled people, that itself is a reflection on you.

Funnily enough, the single blind colleague I have ever worked with, asked for people to tell him their sex and a color of something they were wearing as well as their name. He said this helped him build a mental model of who was where in a meeting room and keep track of who was saying what.

This was over 20 years ago mind you, but perhaps it does help some blind people enough to have become a request/norm.

Before video conferencing was a thing dialing in via phone into a remote meeting was always a pain because keeping track of who said what was a trial. Unlike in a podcast, you're expected to interact back after all.

This may not be as unhelpful as you think in other words.

... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

Was he one of the many (most?) legally blind people who still have some (ultra-blurry) color vision?

Or is it a sense of humor thing? "Hey, you know how there's this major qualia that I'll never get to experience? Could you bring it up in a way that will sound natural at first but will make you feel a little more confused and uncomfortable the longer you think about it?" That would actually be awesome.

I thought it had to do with that most blind people are not fully blind like you mention so they can sort of fuzzily perceive that there is a woman wearing blue

... why a color specifically? You'd think that type of clothing, hair style, distinguishing feature, or a half-dozen other things would be more relatable than color.

OK so then you can go back to the 2020/2021 Microsoft meetings where people built more detailed models of themselves and got made fun of for that.

Do I find it intolerably cringe and another way for narcissists to discuss themselves with the excuse of accessibility? Yes. But if I were in a meeting with someone blind I think this is all a reasonable accommodation, is the point.

Oh, it seems entirely reasonable to me, just a very specifically weird way to be reasonable, out of a lot of alternatives. As a choice pushed by narcissists it would make sense to me. But as a request specifically made by a blind person it's an interesting mystery.

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