TrevorAustin (u/TrevorAustin)

TrevorAustin commented on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes harvard.edu/president/new... · Posted by u/impish9208

guywithahat · 5 months ago

This sounds very similar to all the DEI stuff which they didn't have an issue with before. Forcing them to not be aggressively hostile towards Republicans does not seem like an unreasonable ask.

I had to take critical race theory classes for my grad school program, I'm sure they can find a Christian to make a powerpoint on avoiding hate towards Christians.

This is all stuff which has been happening in reverse for decades. The real solution is for schools to find a funding route other than government, but until then these shinanigans have been happening for decades and this isn't suddenly "insane".

TrevorAustin · 5 months ago

I don’t care at all. For what it’s worth, yes, Harvard and other elite universities should be more welcoming to conservatives. But turning to the federal government to enforce “viewpoint diversity” is just an obviously bad idea.

I don’t want the government deciding what viewpoints need representation. And again, if you think about beyond the immediate case you may have a personal emotional investment in, I don’t think you do either.

I don’t want a future administration trying to enforce “viewpoint diversity” on oil and gas companies, investment banks, or rural family farms either, regardless of what federal contracts or subsidies they have. Exxon, Goldman Sachs, or an Iowa hog farm would be insane to submit to that.

Also, a mask ban enforced by suspension is just plain stupid. That’s not even viewpoint diversity, it’s just partisan chum, and it gives away the game on whether this exercise is in good faith.

TrevorAustin commented on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes harvard.edu/president/new... · Posted by u/impish9208

guywithahat · 5 months ago

> the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith

And their demands are so insane you couldn't name one. I've gone through it and it all seems incredibly reasonable

https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/...

TrevorAustin · 5 months ago

> Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity.

Insane

> Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.

Insane

> reducing the power held by faculty (whether tenured or untenured) and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship

Is even insane if you think about it for two seconds; nobody wants the government deciding what counts as activism and what counts as "real" scholarship. A good heuristic: do any of the proponents want a Bernie Sanders or AOC wielding this authority?

TrevorAustin commented on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes harvard.edu/president/new... · Posted by u/impish9208

TrevorAustin · 5 months ago

A demand letter that said only "Harvard may not use race, gender, or national origin as criteria for admissions and hiring" would be a lot more defensible, and much harder to oppose.

But the government's list of demands includes all kinds of stuff that would be mildly insane even if offered in good faith. And we have seen enough already that any independent organization would be very irresponsible to assume good faith.

I would go so far as to say that any institution trying to make decisions based solely on merit is required to resist this kind of pressure very forcefully. There are many examples of the administration using "DEI" as a buzzword when firing meritorious women and minorities, all the while promoting totally meritless white men.

-JD '08

TrevorAustin commented on Typeset: An HTML pre-processor for web typography typeset.lllllllllllllllll... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

abyssin · 10 months ago

I was a hardcore book reader in the first part of my life, and reading on the web keeps hurting my eyes. Every typography mistake triggers me the same way a grammar one does. I'd love to have such a tool to fix typography on the fly for every webpage, including in French.

TrevorAustin · 10 months ago

I tell my web development students that typography is Lovecraftian cursed knowledge. You can't delve too deep, or it will drive you mad.

TrevorAustin commented on YOLO-Driven Development Manifesto andersoncardoso.github.io... · Posted by u/apierre_cardoso

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

Reminds me of http://programming-motherfucker.com/, but which is maybe 20-30% parody instead of this 80+%.

TrevorAustin commented on Getting a job at Apple without going to college or doing LeetCode aheze.substack.com/p/gett... · Posted by u/aheze

Eddygandr · 2 years ago

Didn't the guy who made Homebrew fail his interview at Google because he couldn't invert a binary tree? That's a guy who has built a popular product in the wild and can clearly code but failed because of the leetcode barrier at all IC levels.

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

To be fair, Homebrew is great product design, but actually pretty janky software engineering. Anyone who's had it wreck their PATH a couple of times isn't going to be an automatic yes vote on a technical screen.

TrevorAustin commented on Show HN: Obl.ong, Free, quality domains for all obl.ong... · Posted by u/reesericci

Brendinooo · 2 years ago

Oh, interesting.

https://thenew.org/org-people/about-pir/policies/ngo-and-ong...

>The mission and purpose of the .NGO and .ONG top level domain (“TLDs”) is to serve the global Non-Governmental Organization (“NGO”) Community by supplying it with exclusive TLDs that will offer NGOs and associations of NGOs differentiated and verified online identities.

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

And here Oblong itself is the NGO, so mysubdomain.obl.ong isn't that crazy.

"Oblong" is kind of an awkward word though. Anyone want to set up a fork at .bi.ngo?

Dang, now I'm going to be thinking of .ngo and .ong domains all day...

TrevorAustin commented on Southern accents could cost job seekers a 20% wage penalty, study finds foxbusiness.com/economy/s... · Posted by u/mikece

akiselev · 2 years ago

That sounds more likely, especially given the stats later in the article:

> Another recent study found that 38% of job seekers admitted to "softening" their regional accents during interviews because of negative stereotypes.

> This study by the Writing Tips Institute found that applicants with a Southern accent were the fourth most likely to change their voice. People from Western New England, South Midland and New Jersey were the most likely to alter their accents.

It just sounds like people with Southern accents and their guidance counselors haven't figured it out yet.

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

It sounds like this isn't a Southern phenomenon at all, and is just framed that way to rile up the Fox Business audience.

Having a strong regional accent, or more accurately, being unable to turn off your strong regional accent, is just a class marker.

TrevorAustin commented on Southern accents could cost job seekers a 20% wage penalty, study finds foxbusiness.com/economy/s... · Posted by u/mikece

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

The article says that the wage penalty applies to people with "strong regional accents," and that Southern is the fourth most likely accent for job seekers to try to suppress, with New Jersey being #1. Framing this as specifically Southern inverts the actual finding, and is just culture war chum.

TrevorAustin commented on Southern accents could cost job seekers a 20% wage penalty, study finds foxbusiness.com/economy/s... · Posted by u/mikece

zerbinxx · 2 years ago

For a lot of Americans, unfortunately, the biggest exposure one gets to Southern Accents is from the fake, “dumb on purpose” caricature that defines country music stars and Larry The Cable Guy. I’m from Montana, and know several born-and-raised Montanans (and Oregonians, Washingtonians, even Californians) with completely inexplicable drawls (people decidedly not sharing any familial or otherwise relationship with the South) that lapse in and out of perceptibility based on circumstance.

It wasn’t until I had a research advisor who was verifiably not a dullard that I even had an option to consider anything to the contrary of the base American conception that a Southern accents indicates stupidity, laziness, pig-headedness, etc.

The death of the region accent really is a crying shame. Glad my folks still have their hokey Saskatchewanesque lilt.

TrevorAustin · 2 years ago

Ironically Larry the Cable Guy's accent is itself affected: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_the_Cable_Guy#Stand-up_c...