UPDATE 1: First stop, Twitchy, where the headline is "NPR: Women at Google were so upset over memo citing biological differences they skipped work" and there are snarky tweets like "Women at Google defy stereotype by getting super-emotional and calling in sick over a man saying something they don't like." And "Emotional women skipped work because they were triggered by a memo that suggested that women are generally more emotional." The snark practically writes itself, because NPR really did tweet: "A former Google software engineer says some women at the company skipped work today, upset by the leaked memo." One thing is obvious: The NPR cocoon is embarrassingly cozy if it didn't see what an easy straight line it was offering to people who support Dalmore and think he made some good points in his memo.
UPDATE 2: NPR's tweet linked to an NPR article titled "Google Reportedly Fires Employee Who Slammed Diversity Efforts." The relevant material is:
Another software engineer who used to work for Google, Kelly Ellis, says some women who still work at the company stayed home Monday because the memo made them "uncomfortable going back to work."I wonder how Kelly Ellis knows what women in her former workplace did and why they did it. Is Kelly Ellis involved in the prospective lawsuit discussed in the previous post? We're told "Ellis said she left Google in 2014 after she was sexually harassed." ("Ellis said" — we don't know what really happened and are not told about the litigation status of this claim.)
Why did NPR speak with Kelly Ellis and why did NPR not talk to any of the women whose actions and emotions it is portraying? If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Ellis said something that NPR believed fit very nicely into the story it wanted to tell, and it either didn't bother to check more deeply or it tried and couldn't find these women but still thought the idea was too good not to use. Again, NPR is in a cocoon if it didn't see how this fact/"fact" would be used by those who want to say there's no real problem of gender discrimination in the tech industry.
I'd like to see something more than Ellis's statement to support this notion that Google women stayed home because they were "uncomfortable," but I do just want to note that Ellis gave support for my hypothesis that Damore is a scapegoat. She said his memo wasn't that different from what she saw "being shared on internal message boards and other different internal forums" when she worked at Google (which was more than 3 years ago).
UPDATE 3: I can't find anything else, and until I do — help me out if you can — I'm going to answer my question in the post title: No. It's a myth, an urban legend. I'll just front-page something I said in the comments in response to Matthew Sablan:
In NPR's defense, they're quoting/paraphrasing an ex-Google employee. So, they didn't come up with the idea on their own, just reporting what a source told them.I said:
Why does that woman count as a source? NPR is responsible for accepting her as the sole source -- sole reported source -- of a fact about which she doesn't have first-hand knowledge. The source also has a pre-existing dispute with Google. Whether her claim of sexual harassment is true or not, she is hostile to Google and her interests are not even the same as the interests of the women whose actions and feelings she is purporting to know and express accurately.
The source bailed out of Google, so it might serve her interests to portray Google as a place other women will want to get away from, but those other women are still employed at Google, and they may not want to be seen that way. They may understand that staying out of work makes them look too emotional and safe-space-seeking.
You need to be skeptical about things that fit your template. Those who are accepting this report at face value and using it to support the idea that women really are emotional and ill-suited to a high-pressure workplace are engaging in the same kind of cocoonish behavior that we're seeing from NPR.
Posts
165 comments:
I didn't know NPR was right-wing media!
NPR is right-wing?
... Why does NPR tell us they updated the story at 11:30, but not what the update was? That's a journalistic pet peeve of mine.
"One thing is obvious: The NPR cocoon is embarrassingly cozy if it didn't see what an easy straight line it was offering to people who support Dalmore and think he made some good points in his memo."
-- In NPR's defense, they're quoting/paraphrasing an ex-Google employee. So, they didn't come up with the idea on their own, just reporting what a source told them.
The Freak Out
"In an over-the-top attempt to prove that irony in Silicon Valley is officially dead, Google just fired one of its top scientists for writing an internal memo that criticized the tech giant for becoming an “ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.” VICE obtained a copy of the the memo and published it on Monday evening.
Rather than being a screed against women or minorities, as the media and their progressive allies have proclaimed, the internal memo from former Google scientist James Damore — entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber” — encouraged Google employees to take account of their own biases as a means of reducing the so-called gender gap in tech employment. In fact, a major purpose of the memo was to brainstorm ideas about how to make Google a more friendly environment for women without resorting to explicit sex-based discrimination.
and
In his memo, Damore also called out Google for potentially illegal discriminatory activities in which the company regularly engaged.
“Stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or races,” Damore wrote. “These discriminatory practices are both unfair and divisive. Instead focus on some of the non-discriminatory practices I outlined.”
Again, it looks like Danmore was deleted for wrong-think.
Dalmore was trying to find ways to make Google more diverse without resorting to quotas.
Fire him! Women need quotas!
correction: "Damore "... ( Derwood!)
"Women at Google defy stereotype by getting super-emotional and calling in sick over a man saying something they don't like." And "Emotional women skipped work because they were triggered by a memo that suggested that women are generally more emotional." The snark practically writes itself
Why do you describe this as snark? It sounds like an exact description of what happened to me.
How would you describe what these women did, in the full knowledge of what the memo said? Why couldn't they see that their actions were simply proving the memo right?
If you've lost NPR....
When you get close to the truth, the progressive fascists will snuff you out.
There is an interview with the hater himself at Sailer's.
NPR has always been snob radio IMO: I'm sure they lack the self awareness to recognize the gaffe.
We'll be waiting a long time for update 2 given NPR washed the story. Truthiness!
Being upset is a technique more than a reaction.
No sex for you.
Given that the author has not appeared to be closed mouth about this whole affair... I wonder why so many news agencies seem to run reports without even commenting that they attempted to reach out to him for comment.
That's just bad journalism.
As I see it, the far-right media reaction is filled with inaccuracy and hysteria.
I often like Twitchy, but in this case Twitchy is largely misquoting NPR. The NPR report simply quoted a former Google executive, by name, who said that she understood that "some" female Google employees stayed home. Go from there, to parsing the various right-wing media accounts. (There are too many to list an analyze; Althouse chose Twitchy, which I think is a perfectly good representative choice on Althouse's part.)
This will of course be another case where the right jumps all over NPR. If inaccuracy and professionalism in news reporting, NPR is on a qualitatively different level, from an opinion-propagandist like Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh.
LOL Ann - You're doing it too. I want to stick and "L" or and "N" in his name.
Damore.
Pride makes you blind so that you discount/ignore your supposed inferiors. Highly intelligent people are especially vulnerable to this in that they believe that their authentically outstanding abilty to program naturally translates outside their realm of expertise. None are so blind as those who will not see.
I already know what Althouse is going to conclude about NPR: that NPR reported an accurate statement by one former Google female executive, but that it was a questionable editorial choice to have put that quote into a story and then into a tweet about the story. It was accurate, but of questionable importance and emphasis.
If that is Althouse's conclusion, I won't be able to muster much disagreement.
Chuck - no word from you on how the leftwing media are treating the entire story?
It's the blonde leading the blonde.
Prude goeth before a fall.
Ann said: "Damore is a scapegoat"
Doesn't fit the hack press(D) narrative. But yes - I think that will become clear.
If, in fact, women stayed home from work because they were so upset about something somebody wrote in a memo, what does this suggest about their fitness for the job?
If this "screed" isn't that different, and the guy was afraid of litigation... I expect he saved a lot of similar screeds over the years to produce.
The Left thinks systemically: women are underrepresented in tech. The Right thinks individually: this woman in this tech job is not realizing her potential. I don't know how we as a society resolve these two mindsets, but the conflict between them is causing all kinds of trouble. Both groups want fairness, but their delivery methods are radically different.
Well, that's my attempt at peace, resolution, and womanly feelings of inclusion.
LOL Ann - You're doing it too. I want to stick and "L" or and "N" in his name.
Think of it as D'Amore, of love.
The most famous female Google executive, Marissa Mayer, late of Yahoo, is staying home after a zillion dollar parachute to get rid of her.
She once appeared on Armstrong and Getty touting Google search features and was going on and on, and A&G remarked, to break the boilerplate flow, that "Merissa Mayer nude" didn't come up with any results.
Well. An angry letter from Google followed that day. No fun at Google.
D-Amore! of course.
"In NPR's defense, they're quoting/paraphrasing an ex-Google employee. So, they didn't come up with the idea on their own, just reporting what a source told them."
Why does that woman count as a source? NPR is responsible for accepting her as the sole source -- sole reported source -- of a fact about which she doesn't have first-hand knowledge. The source also has a pre-existing dispute with Google. Whether her claim of sexual harassment is true or not, she is hostile to Google and her interests are not even the same as the interests of the women whose actions and feelings she is purporting to know and express accurately.
The source bailed out of Google, so it might serve her interests to portray Google as a place other women will want to get away from, but those other women are still employed at Google, and they may not want to be seen that way. They may understand that staying out of work makes them look to emotional and safe-space-seeking.
You need to be skeptical about things that fit your template. Those who are accepting this report at face value and using it to support the idea that women really are emotional and ill-suited to a high-pressure workplace are engaging in the same kind of cocoonish behavior that we're seeing from NPR.
AA, you're usually pretty objective, but this story seems to have "triggered" an emotional button.
Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...
Chuck - no word from you on how the leftwing media are treating the entire story?
I commented yesterday; I sided as strongly as I felt I could, based on what I knew, with Damore. I didn't say much of anything about "the left wing media" because Althouse didn't blog about it. What is your very best example of left-wing media excess in the story?
The bigger issue is the right to hypothesize, examine and articulate something outside of the leftwing progressive group-think stereotype. That left-wing stereotype is, namely - women and minorities are victims, and you cannot discuss women and minorities outside of the victimology paradigm.
Chuck - I've already linked to it above and in the thread below.
The real problem is that Google is just too big. I don't trust them to protect my privacy and, after seeing the hypocritical way they acted here, I would rather not do business with them. But what choice do I have?
Google and all these other monopolistic tech giants should be broken up. No corporation should be so powerful.
This little piggy stayed home. Because emotional stress shortens the telomeres and then you die.
Tank said...
There is an interview with the hater himself at Sailer's.
Except for the way "pride" was misused and abused to mean "homosexual", that "PrideAmsterdam" pic was damned funny.
"people who support Dalmore and think he made some good points in his memo."
Oh. Those people.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/no-the-google-manifesto-isnt-sexist-or-anti-diversity-its-science/article35903359/?service=amp
"LOL Ann - You're doing it too. I want to stick and "L" or and "N" in his name."
Thanks for pushing me to see the misspelling in the post title.
You have no idea how many times I have written it wrong and corrected it. I'm actually hypervigilant about the problem, but I'm still capable of missing one of the many miswritings. Basically, EVERY time I write it, I write it wrong.
I think it's the Scotch.
I heard it reported on CBS This Morning Not right-wing media Your characterization is not accurate
Althouse; the reason that NPR reached out to Kelly Ellis is not explained by NPR, and you are quite right to question Kelly Ellis' standing.
I think that the reason is quite clear, and public; Kelly Ellis is an anti-Google, feminist/victim/advocate. A writer, a Tweeter, and quite possibly a plaintiff.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/google-kelly-ellis?utm_term=.jgLVMxZdX#.wmd5WdzQX
I suspect that you may feel that what I have just written confirms all of your views. I won't argue with you.
I will maintain that Twtichy, et al, are emotionally overwrought about NPR. (And just look, for a great example, at the disgracefully inaccurate story pumped out by Milo and Bretibart recently, which you helped spread before I called it out in your comments pages.)
"NPR is right-wing?"
The uber-progs think that NPR stands for Nice, Polite Republicans.
Lots of work for the Women's Workplaec Issues committee at Google today.
I am looking for verification of this claim too. I am on a phone so I am somewhat hobbled. I have found this so far.
There is a lot of general information that women take more sick days.
Women are credited with trying harder to get to work sick as well and men are more often disciplined for skipping out in this particular study.
There is discrimination in the workplace. It just doesn't fit the narrative.
Did the traumatized Anita Hill ever stay home from work.
Ann -
As Tank pointed out above, there's an interview with Damore here: https://youtu.be/TN1vEfqHGro
I think he may answer your questions about how he distributed the memo starting at about 17:50
"Why does that woman count as a source?"
-- Source is being used in the broadest sense of the word. I assume they couldn't get any one at Google to go on record about whether or not women stayed home because Google's PR/media people, at least, realized how easy a lay up that would create for critics.
"UPDATE 3: [TO COME]"
No need to read it. I have on good authority what it will say....
"I already know what Althouse is going to conclude about NPR..."
"If that is Althouse's conclusion, I won't be able to muster much disagreement...."
"I suspect that you may feel that what I have just written confirms all of your views. I won't argue with you..."
I am Laslo.
A common thing when you're laid off or fired is a severance bonus paid contingent on your not bad-mouthing the company. What this guy is saying may not be bad-mouthing. He's just trying to he helpful.
Women were tougher back in Anita Hill's day.
I want everybody to know; very much unlike Fox, NPR has an Ombudsman who will answer your email (well, she answers a lot of my email anyway) and will print questions, complaints, etc, and publicly respond to criticism.
If anybody knows of a more editorially transparent news organization in the United States than NPR, I'd like to hear about it.
I understand NPR's left-wing bias; I am not denying it. I just operate on principles of accuracy same as what I'd insist upon with NPR.
Maybe all of the women stayed home because their child was sick and Day Care wouldn't take them.
I am Laslo.
The thing to understand about women, when they organize, is that they're comical.
This also is the guys' impression of management.
It's a general dismissal of those who don't understand guys' rules.
Laslo finds Occam's Razor.
I accept Damore's hypothesis, but I hope the women did not do that, and I wouldn't expect them to, but that extreme over-reaction is not necessary to prove his point, and if they did do that, then it certainly does prove it. If it turns out true, will the validity of Damore's essay be admitted By Althouse. I doubt it. More evidence will be needed. OK then. I refer to his essay in the full unedited version. The evidence there is enough to make his firing ugly, and if he is a scapegoat, it's not to shut up a sexist, but to protect a lie.
People are making decisions based on all this nonsense that is hurting Google. They offer a compelling platform upon which to build your business. And then I read about Google people openly discussing no-platforming.
Ok. I'll choose another platform.
I'll offer a suggestion to Google. The goal of hiring women, of having a nice workplace, to tone down the classic guy shop atmosphere is fine. You hired the wrong people to implement it, they should be fired before they destroy the organization.
If a little girl has dolls, one of them is always sick. The little girl is learning to stay home from work.
Another example of the ENTIRE media getting it wrong, for the sake of misleading people into an incorrect and simplistic assumption about the memo.
(via insty)
The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo
Many headlines labeled the document "anti-diversity," misleading readers about its actual contents.
I'll never be able to see "NPR" without thinking of Chuck.
Are we assuming Damore is cishet? Un-partnered?
He appears to be white, but he could be passing.
Daycare for sick dolls so little girls can go out and play.
Definitely the Scotch.
"I want everybody to know; very much unlike Fox, NPR has an Ombudsman who will answer your email (well, she answers a lot of my email anyway) and will print questions, complaints, etc, and publicly respond to criticism."
Do they actually learn from this criticism and implement some reporting and editorial changes? On-air retractions? On-air clarifications? Do they learn from mistakes and recognize and challenge the nature of their cocoon?
If not, then its taxpayer-funded window dressing.
From the article in the study I linked above:
"It found the average adult takes three and a half days off work a year because of illness - or 141 during their working life - with men taking 140 and women, 189."
Nothing like objective fact paired with:
"Men fared much worse when it came to their dedication in making it into work though."
This is based on a questionnaire that men were honest with and women all claiming they try super hard to get to work sick.
If you do a scientific study on gender differences you better damn well find that women are superior or else.
Maybe the memo hit Google's HR department at a bad time of month.
It could just be a mood thing.
Ralph L said...
I'll never be able to see "NPR" without thinking of Chuck.
Good. I hope you never forget what a disgracefully inaccurate, self-promoting hack job that was, by that disgusting freak Milo Yiannopoulos. His attack on "NPR" in that case (wherein NPR had zero editorial or production or broadcast role) ought to have been a source of humiliation for Milo for a long time.
I just don't think that it is possible to humiliate Milo anymore.
Bob Boyd said...
distributed the memo starting at about 17:50
16:00 or so is better - the inspiration was a "secretive" and "shaming" diversity struggle session and he wrote the essay on a 12 hour flight to China. He also showed it to people a month ago and nobody freaked out until recently.
So he didn't "shoot it out to a lot of people in an effort to suddenly force them to face up to the issue in his terms right now".
Thurber did a scientific study of women in "Is Sex Necessary."
Thurber's cartoon series "The War between Men and Women" is good, and inexplicably not used in sexual awareness-raising seminars.
And let's all be completely clear about this: Althouse is right now Fisking the NPR quote of Kelly Ellis in a way that Althouse refused to do, in the case of Milo Yiannopoulos' grossly false allegation that "NPR" spiked his interview with Colin McEnroe of WNPR-Connecticut Public Radio.
Feminism doesn't want a castrated man, it wants a castrated women. Now it's the law.
Is NPR not supposed to publish something that can be easily used by right-wing media? What if it's the truth?
Frankly it's disconcerting that you think NPR should consider "will this thing we believe to be true provide an easy straight line" for people who take a position on an issue? Should that be something NPR takes into consideration when publishing their stories?!
It's great to be skeptical of things the Media asserts. It's wonderful to point out that the people the Media uses for a given story have their own interests and reasons for making claims. That's always true, so it's certainly true here.
This ex-Google employee made a claim. NPR reported that claim. It's relevant to the story of the memo's alleged harm. The ex-Google employee's opinion is relevant to the story of the culture of Google generally.
This is a strange take on this issue, ma'am.
"...that disgusting freak Milo Yiannopoulos. His attack on "NPR"...blah, blah, blah"
When was the last time you stepped on a crack in the sidewalk?
Was it an accident or were you mad at Mom?
"If anybody knows of a more editorially transparent news organization in the United States than NPR, I'd like to hear about it.
It's not transparency that's missing. It's honesty and fairness. Transparency is everywhere. Everyone knows and can plainly see the bias of FOX, NPR, CNN, MSNMC, the NYT, and all the rest. It's glaring. The problem is what the reporting emphasizes and leaves out. If burglars keep breaking into your house through the back door, and your alarm system only warns you about the front door ad nauseam whether there is a break in or not, then you will not be served well by it. 90% of the press alarms are focused on just one door, and most of them lately have been false alarms with no attempt at adjusting those systems. An ombudsman who listens and changes nothing, is like that "security monitor" at the bank in that LIfelock commercial.
Well, if its not true - then its just one more lie being told about this event. Damore didn't write an "anti-diversity screed" either.
Strange how so many "journalists" are not reading the memo.
Althouse is saying she would not have stayed home.
But the movement needs victims. If nobody stays home, where's the harm.
It's not a man's narrative that women stayed home; it's the feminists' narrative.
Cui boner.
I started using another search engine yesterday as a plugin within the Chrome browser. A popup would occur with every search, telling me that my search was not normal, and did I want to change it back (to Google). Big brother still has a hold of the leash.
You know, it would be seriously awesome if we had some organizations or groups whose job it was to go out and investigate and report back to us the facts about events so that we would know what was actually going on.
As it is, we only have silly people who claim to be 'reporting back to us' but are really just participants in the cultural war, helping to shape information to ensure all listeners come to the correct conclusions about events and issues.
What a mess.
Contrast the memo with
what the Washington Post says
It's not a man's narrative that women stayed home; it's the feminists' narrative.
Sometimes a sick day is just a sick day.
You can bad-mouth men as a race and men don't care. They're used to it.
The important things are figure the math out and get the woman into bed.
If a disgruntled woman is the source, why would she want to make other women look hysterical?
But I do think it is a myth.
Or what CNN reports
"16:00 or so is better"
Agreed. The video is worth checking out because you can get a pretty good idea what kind of person Damore is.
I wonder if he voted for Hillary.
Women look hysterical.
The Left thinks systemically: women are underrepresented in tech.
No, that is not thinking systematically; that is thinking morally. A systematic statement would be, "The proportion of women in tech is less than their proportion in the general population (or in the workforce)."
"If a disgruntled woman is the source, why would she want to make other women look hysterical?"
-- Her quote doesn't make them look hysterical; she makes them uncomfortable. The point being that she is trying to show that Google has an anti-woman *culture*, which if true would strengthen her claim of being sexually harassed (and, the more important point, that it appears she feels Google did nothing about that.)
She probably didn't mean for it to sound the way it is being interpreted.
WaPO - embarrassing disgrace.
CNN - LOL typical. CNN - the Clinton supporting liar network. They lie.
I guess I'll whine a bit:
Sometimes we're supposed to heavily discount what people allege in a lawsuit because obviously they're an interested party. Sometimes we're supposed to take the position "if allegations in a lawsuit are true" and then reach some conclusion. Stories highlighted here are based on unverified assertions all the time! In this case that's a problem, though.
This all falls under cruel neutrality, I guess. NPR reported an assertion made by someone and not, apparently, independently verified by NPR. They reported it as an assertion. That happens all the time. What is so objectionable about this time? It lines up with a common attack and/or prejudice held be people on the right (that SJWs and/or women are weak, etc). Sometimes the truth matches someone's prejudice! Is NPR supposed to suppress that truth if it might make some jerks smile?! I guess there should be different standards for different types of things published: if it wont' support prejudices of people we dislike then it's ok to use our regular standards, but if it'd make things easy for those jerks we dislike then we should require extra scrutiny and proof before publishing. In the name of fairness, understand.
NPR ran a story this morning (on Morning Edition, I think) about the 3 year anniversary of the shooting of Mike Brown in St. Louis and all the demonstrations, etc, that came after that. They talked exclusively to pro-demonstration people (a few of whom are now running organizations) and talked about police misconduct, problems of racism, etc. At no point during the story did they mention that the officer who shot Brown was found to have acted properly/not to have broken any laws by 2 separate investigations (including by the FBI). That fact was entirely omitted. That, to me, is a good example of NPR (and the Media generally) letting their bias cause them to cover an issue poorly. Your example, where they use an assertion that's relevant to the topic and correctly identify it as an assertion from a known source, does not seem like a problem.
Possibly I'm missing something here.
Why does that woman count as a source?
Why didn't they just make her "an anonymous source, who was not authorized to speak on behalf of Google", as is the custom of the time?
It was an internal memo. I wonder who Lena Dunham'ed him?
NPR ran a story this morning (on Morning Edition, I think) about the 3 year anniversary of the shooting of Mike Brown in St. Louis and all the demonstrations, etc, that came after that. They talked exclusively to pro-demonstration people (a few of whom are now running organizations) and talked about police misconduct, problems of racism, etc. At no point during the story did they mention that the officer who shot Brown was found to have acted properly/not to have broken any laws by 2 separate investigations (including by the FBI). That fact was entirely omitted. That, to me, is a good example of NPR (and the Media generally) letting their bias cause them to cover an issue poorly. Your example, where they use an assertion that's relevant to the topic and correctly identify it as an assertion from a known source, does not seem like a problem.
Possibly I'm missing something here.
I don't think that you are missing anything here. And I agree with you. I heard that story on Morning Edition just as you did, with the same reaction.
a male engineer at the company who argued that women are not biologically fit for tech roles
I'm inclined to think that the journalist who wrote this is emotional and upset, and that is why she did not read the memo.
One could argue, of course, that she is being strategic and manipulative. She knows her sub-headline is dishonest. But she's engaging in partisan politics and the dishonesty is intentional.
Nonetheless, I am inclined to think the journalist who wrote this is emotional and upset.
Note also that the media likes to upset people. It may make good business sense for CNN to have tech writers who are not calm or nerdy, but instead are emotional with big ups and downs. When there is new technology she is very excited! And when she finds an opinion she dislikes she wants to destroy the Nazi. It may make good business sense for her to be this way, at least in the short term. Of course in the long term CNN becomes a joke because it's journalism is so untrustworthy and fact-free.
How exactly does a woman go about feeling uncomfortable.
I picture myself at my desk at work doing the usual work stuff and can't see how it fits in, but I'm a guy.
Blackbeard: The real problem is that Google is just too big. I don't trust them to protect my privacy and, after seeing the hypocritical way they acted here, I would rather not do business with them. But what choice do I have?
Google and all these other monopolistic tech giants should be broken up. No corporation should be so powerful.
Now that's really a much more interesting issue. We need to have a national conversation about anti-trust.
I'd like to be able to buy a phone from engineers without the social-engineer add-ons, thank you very much.
So either the story is accurate and several shrinking violets have opened Google up to greater mockery, or this is another example of fake news from the left-wing media. Either conclusion works for me. Winning.
Maybe women require foreplay and work before they settle in. Only an analogy.
Guys start right up.
Ann Althouse said...You need to be skeptical about things that fit your template. Those who are accepting this report at face value and using it to support the idea that women really are emotional and ill-suited to a high-pressure workplace are engaging in the same kind of cocoonish behavior that we're seeing from NPR.
It's either true or it's not. NPR accepted her as the source. Maybe NPR was wrong to do so...but unless you're saying that you have reason to think NPR didn't use their customary journalistic checks/verifications in this case I don't know why we should be any MORE skeptical of this story than we should be of EVERY NPR story. Of course we should be skeptical about every Media story!
In the post just below this one the headline is "More than 60 current and former Google employees are considering bringing a class-action lawsuit..." OK. Are you skeptical about that number? Who verified that number? What's the source for the number? As far as I can tell the source is attorney Finberg, and it's obviously in that attorney's interest to make the claimed number as large as possible. I'm not even sure if the quotes of the "women's stories" came to the reporter directly or through attorney Finberg, and at any rate it sounds like exactly 2 women went on record. The claim is "more than 60" and from the story it sounds like 2 were quoted. That's quite a discrepancy!
Are you skeptical of the claimed number? Seems like you should be if your standard is "be skeptical of claims sourced to a single person esp. if that person has a large interest in the claim." But your post doesn't mention any such skepticism. NPR's reporting of an assertion is a problem, but the Guardian's reporting of an assertion apparently isn't. Why?
Slightly-related question: have you read the Google memo yet, Professor?
"Note also that the media likes to upset people."
-- No, no, no. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable and all that jazz.
The usual women moves make sense with one woman and one man, but are comical when directed by lots of women collectively to lots of men collectively.
That's how feminism winds up a joke. It's familiar sensible stuff moved to a ridiculous context.
Possibly I'm missing something here.
The nice liaison who answers Chuck's countless e-mails would be swamped if they started including inconvenient facts in the morning newscast.
It's not news, it's the morning affirmation.
I'm inclined to think that the journalist who wrote this is emotional and upset, and that is why she did not read the memo.
If this is true, then she's allowing her feeling to keep her from Doing Her Job. She is therefore useless in her job.
Let's cut to the chase shall we?
NPR Story = Fake Newz
The Right-o-Sphere picked up on this because it was a perfect, hi-lararious, fit with negative stereotypes about women, which the rest of the Fake-Newz-Industrial-Complex is claiming the memo included, though it did not.
Credit to Conor Freisdorf who takes his colleagues
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/the-most-common-error-in-coverage-of-the-google-memo/536181/ to task on this
Althouse has found some fake news. Nice work. Skepticism works almost every time it's tried!
I think women are generally emotional and not suited for SOME high-pressure work, though in all cases, there are exceptions. Totally believable to me that women of the type that marched with the vagina hats would use the "triggered" or "uncomfortable" excuse not to go to work after such a memo was circulated.
I also believe that in these times, there are a few men who would also put on their vagina hats and stay home. Triggered.
What nonsense. I don't even think it is worth investigating. This kind of ultimately self-destructive behavior to diverse views will eventually flame out. Self-immolate.
I am no journalist but I sometimes try to make sense of what they produce. Here, I am nonplussed by the layers of vagueness between whatever "really" happened and the NPR report. Hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay; but some of that is inherent. The real defect is the lack of specifics. The woman on whom NPR relied: did she give names and numbers? From whom did she get them: the women who said to her, "My name is Jane Doe, I work at Google, I read the Damore memo and it so upset me that I called in sick: here is my email to HR." Even one such affidavit-worthy data point would be gold. The tone of the remarks by NPR is that several/many did thus: but HOW many? They can be counted, you know, and the fact that we are not told this is IMHO a reason to question the whole business.
Personally I regret that: the irony here is magnificent.
To me it seems that women, just like men will use any excuse available to avoid going to work on any given day.
It's just that men aren't allowed the option malfunctioning emotions. We have to rely on more concrete excuses, like "I had to replace the hot water heater"
"This kind of ultimately self-destructive behavior to diverse views will eventually flame out. Self-immolate."
-- Or you'll get masked mobs beating counter-protesters. There's a range of options!
Ann Althouse said...If I had to guess, I'd say it's because Ellis said something that NPR believed fit very nicely into the story it wanted to tell, and it either didn't bother to check more deeply or it tried and couldn't find these women but still thought the idea was too good not to use.
Ok, that's one guess.
Here's another: NPR got the names (from Ellis) of a few women who stayed home, contacted those women, verified that they stayed out, but the women insisted on anonymity and wouldn't allow themselves to be quoted characterizing the exact reason they didn't go in to work. Maybe one said "It just seemed like a good day to stay away" and another said "with things as crazy as they were I decided to take the day off" and both insisted their comments were off the record and not for attribution. The women, naturally, did not want their action to paint them in a bad light. NPR thereby gained support for Ellis' assertion but couldn't get anything on the record to confirm her characterization of the reason for those women staying home so NPR decided to leave it only as an assertion from Ellis.
Seems like there is exactly as much supporting evidence for that guess as for yours. Do you think yours is more likely? Why?
There's the vagina hat lie too. They were pussy hats, resembling cats' ears, so as to avoid bad language.
A vagina hat would look like a garrison cap.
Fair enough questions.
As a woman in tech, I find all of this discussion of women staying home silly. I don't believe it would be a natural reaction for this set of people to something like this memo. These women chose to be in the profession and presumably have had far more and varied stressful episodes than this. By the way, so have the men. Competition in technology is fierce and challenging. For those who are achieving their life's goals, this memo would be a blip.
Would this really be the first time any of these ideas have been discussed amongst them, such that they need to bail on a day's work? I certainly wouldn't and can't imagine my female peers at work would either, though I obviously do not know them all personally. In fact, I'd want to be at work to talk about and test Damore's ideas for relevance to our teams development....
Another software engineer who used to work for Google, Kelly Ellis, says some women who still work at the company stayed home Monday because the memo made them "uncomfortable going back to work."
I don't understand how someone could get hired at a place like Google without understanding basic statistics. The Damore essay is all about whether men and women have the same predisposition towards certain modes of thinking -- essentially, whether their normal distributions for particular salient traits are identical. They're, ah, not, regardless of whether the ultimate cause is cultural or biological. I think this is well known. But the fact that on a population basis, the mean and distribution of particular traits differ between men and women doesn't say anything about the fitness of any particular person at Google -- with the kind of money Google has, they all ought to be way out on the extreme right end of any normal distribution anyway. What it does affect is the size of the pools from which Google can recruit, particularly as you get further and further out on the extreme end of those distributions. And that in turn affects whether faddish "diversity" initiatives will ever actually achieve the kind of statistical parity they are looking for, or whether they're just throwing good money away ineffectually.
I can completely understand a lawyer, or a journalist, or some other humanities-type person failing to grasp this -- it is counterintuitive, and it's easier for people who have difficulty with logical abstraction to latch onto the false premise that biological difference must mean complete disjunction (like secondary sexual characteristics), and therefore that Damore must really have been saying that no women are qualified to work at Google.
But Google is full of people with advanced technical degrees.
There's another angle to this "discrimination in tech" story that's left entirely out of the narrative, even though I've come across several reporters noting the marked decline since the '80s in the proportion of women in IT.
Of course, this decline is vaguely explained as "hardening of institutional sexism, old boys' club, blah blah". Never mentioned is the fact the the decline coincides with the ramping up of the H1-B program, which brought in (almost entirely male) foreign workers to replace the natives. (I certainly recall, back in the day, a lot of women complaining about the obnoxious sexism of some of these guys. And of course, their being denounced for "racism" by the usual suspects.)
The media/academic narrative now, of course, is that there is an ever-more entrenched cabal of "frat boys" that is responsible for the decline, and for keeping talented women and POCs down now - pay no attention to the heavy representation of Asians in tech. (A fact the media has tried, not very successfully, to skirt around.) Nowadays, of course, all the "POC" guys seem to be über feminists, in solidarity against the real villains - the white frat boy wreckers who are poisoning the workplace environment. And will continue to do so, I guess, until their last undercover agent of subversion is smoked out and hanged.
Also, I read the twitter feeds of several current women who work at Google, and they stated that the memo made them feel physically unsafe at work.
Unsafe = At imminent risk of hearing an unfamiliar opinion.
Thanks Ann - you and your academic colleagues created these moron-monsters.
The women, and some men, stayed home in solidarity with Damore. Everybody here in the valley knows it. NPR is lying.
Breezy said...As a woman in tech, I find all of this discussion of women staying home silly. I don't believe it would be a natural reaction for this set of people to something like this memo.
That's fair, but let's talk about "natural reactions." Would this dude getting fired for posting this to an internal discussion board be a natural reaction by the company? Would people calling for the identification and firing of anyone who agreed with or didn't sufficiently denounce the memo be a natural reaction?
'cause, I mean, all of that seems pretty unnatural to me, but all of that happened. So we may need to update our priors as to what's "natural."
"NPR ran a story this morning (on Morning Edition, I think) about the 3 year anniversary of the shooting of Mike Brown in St. Louis and all the demonstrations, etc, that came after that. They talked exclusively to pro-demonstration people (a few of whom are now running organizations) and talked about police misconduct, problems of racism, etc. At no point during the story did they mention that the officer who shot Brown was found to have acted properly/not to have broken any laws by 2 separate investigations (including by the FBI). That fact was entirely omitted. That, to me, is a good example of NPR (and the Media generally) letting their bias cause them to cover an issue poorly. Your example, where they use an assertion that's relevant to the topic and correctly identify it as an assertion from a known source, does not seem like a problem."
Perhaps Chuck will take this up with the NPR Ombudsman and get a nice response that won't change a thing about how NPR constructs and presents its narratives.
Of course, this decline is vaguely explained as "hardening of institutional sexism, old boys' club, blah blah". Never mentioned is the fact the the decline coincides with the ramping up of the H1-B program, which brought in (almost entirely male) foreign workers to replace the natives. (I certainly recall, back in the day, a lot of women complaining about the obnoxious sexism of some of these guys. And of course, their being denounced for "racism" by the usual suspects.)
Great comment!
"Of course, this decline is vaguely explained as "hardening of institutional sexism, old boys' club, blah blah". Never mentioned is the fact the the decline coincides with the ramping up of the H1-B program, which brought in (almost entirely male) foreign workers to replace the natives. (I certainly recall, back in the day, a lot of women complaining about the obnoxious sexism of some of these guys. And of course, their being denounced for "racism" by the usual suspects.)
Great comment!"
That is indeed a great comment. I was a resident assistant of the international student floor back in the day and then I spent a year amongst middle eastern locals during my year-long all-expense-paid-by-the-Army vacation. There are lots of cultures in the world that really don't respect women and most people here really don't understand just how much.
Good article in the Atlantic about the bad journalism about the memo.
The comment about the effect of visa hires is IMHO important. The tech universe evolves quickly and the demographics of its labor force are fluid. All the rhetoric about fairness and equality (and the appeal to historical data to guide the discussion and set policy) is, excuse me, well-intentioned bullshit to a fair degree. We have no stable picture and we cannot really say much about what kind of talent the market will demand and will discover/attract. The concept of D&I assumes a stable set of players with fixed characteristics and proportions, so that the bureaucrats can count by sex, color, gender yearnings, etc, and produce "fairness."
From my distant perspective, Google and similar operations represent a Gold Rush where anybody who can fog a mirror has a chance, and anybody who can solve these very objective technical challenges can name set own price. But somehow the D&I brigade has dominated the policy debate. Why? I mean, apart from its natural parasitic flourishing in a virtue-signalers' paradise?
Feelings are more important than reason, and feelings can't be dismissed just because you don't agree with them. You're a fool if you ignore how something makes people feel or the role feelings play in decision-making.
Professor Althouse taught me that.
So, ok--this Ellis woman says women stayed home because they felt uncomfortable. Maybe Ellis felt that's how the women felt, I dunno. In either case, though, who are you to question those feelings?! NPR reported some hearsay about some (alleged) women's (alleged) feelings. Surely Ellis feels like she's telling the truth! Surely the NPR reporter feels like they're accurately conveying the truth of the situation.
Why are we questioning these feelings? How dare you people not take the alleged feelings of discomfort seriously! Even if feelings don't make any logical sense, to you, you're required to respect them since they reflect the "personal truth" of a human being. An alleged human being, anyway.
If a woman feels uncomfortable or unsafe in the workplace due to the presence of a person who expresses an opinion or belief that woman dislikes then the person expressing the wrongthink must be fired. It'd be creating a hostile work environment to allow such a person to remain employed. That's, you know, the law.
Nice caring smart centrist people gave us that law and woe unto you if you defy it.
"But somehow the D&I brigade has dominated the policy debate. Why? I mean, apart from its natural parasitic flourishing in a virtue-signalers' paradise?"
After decades of training and ample funding during the previous eight years, the D&I brigade is now a highly mobile force that can be airdropped into any situation anywhere and at anytime. It is probably the most effective brigade in the whole SJW army.
I don't understand how someone could get hired at a place like Google without understanding basic statistics.
[...]
I can completely understand a lawyer, or a journalist, or some other humanities-type person failing to grasp this -- it is counterintuitive, and it's easier for people who have difficulty with logical abstraction to latch onto the false premise that biological difference must mean complete disjunction (like secondary sexual characteristics), and therefore that Damore must really have been saying that no women are qualified to work at Google.
But Google is full of people with advanced technical degrees.
This mystery has been hurting my head for years now. Really, really sharp people who would never evince such obtuseness over statistical inferences from data regarding some "neutral" subject.
But in this case I don't think everybody from Google saying stupid stuff right now actually believes it. Silicon Valley has been on a collision course with the diversity-crats and shake-down specialists for a while now. I, for one, am finding the first episode of this season's "contradictions inherent in the system" series very entertaining, and am looking forward to further viewing pleasure as the series unfolds.
Balfegor says..I can completely understand a lawyer, or a journalist, or some other humanities-type person failing to grasp this -- it is counterintuitive, and it's easier for people who have difficulty with logical abstraction to latch onto the false premise that biological difference must mean complete disjunction (like secondary sexual characteristics), and therefore that Damore must really have been saying that no women are qualified to work at Google.
But Google is full of people with advanced technical degrees.
The memo states that there is a ton of overlap. The memo includes a chart of the two distributions showing there's a ton of overlap. The point that the discussion was not on any individual member but on population differences--and that the trait distribution of those populations include mostly overlaps--is referenced several times, including at the conclusion.
There's not really a way to read the thing fairly and conclude otherwise. What's being repeated is either the result of ignorance (not having read it and relying on an incorrect summary) or malice.
One of the saddest parts is how earnest and pro-PC the whole memo sounds--the characterization of this as some right-wing MRA-type screed is just laughable. The guy seemed to genuinely think that by approaching the topic in careful, fair, pro-SJW/diversity-as-a-valid-goal way he could reach these people. He...was wrong.
Lifelong Republican Cuck refuses to hear any criticism of his beloved state run media organ, film at 11.
For the person who asked if I read the memo:
1. Why not click on the Damore tag and see the other posts I've written? I have never misstated the contents of the memo and am scrupulously trying to be fair to Damore and to other people involved in the story.
2. Yes, I did. It's a ludicrous mixture of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness to the party line and amateurish efforts at summing up the differences between the sexes. I'm entirely aware that he states and restates that stereotypes shouldn't be used against the individual but may explain the lack of 50/50 gender balance in various jobs and promotions.
" Yes, I did. It's a ludicrous mixture of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness to the party line and amateurish efforts at summing up the differences between the sexes"
I'd agree with the first bit - Damore clearly tries to soften the memo by mouthing the diversity catechism. The second part is unfair - he's trying to limit the stats-jargon and avoid giving unnecessary offense.
Is it possible the female source was being sarcastic? Most of the female engineers and managers I know would have been so.
A man fence-straddles. Gets hurt.
Ann Althouse said... It's a ludicrous mixture of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness to the party line and amateurish efforts at summing up the differences between the sexes.
There are no differences between the sexes. You're not allowed to believe there are or could be. If you do believe there are or could be and that those differences might have a measurable effect on some metric or outcome you will lose your job. Ask Lawerence Summers. Darmore should have known--probably he thought it'd be ok since he was just talking to fellow nice smart people.
Your characterization of his effort as "amateurish" is therefore doubly unkind: he is a relative amateur (in that field) and was speaking to a non-technical audience (amateurs) so it's likely the tone was purposefully chosen, AND since there are no differences between the sexes there can be no non-amateurish arguments that there are. No professionals can argue that there are difference since we all know there aren't any, so any argument that there are or could be any such differences must be amateurish.
Men and women are exactly the same. Also, simultaneously, women are in many ways better.
We all feel it so it must be true.
Prof A: "...[Damore's memo is] a ludicrous mixture of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness to the party line and amateurish efforts at summing up the differences between the sexes...". Indeed that's my take as well. But it is IMHO not only a suicide note but a key move by a very good chess player to set up a fatal fork. Either Google defended his right to voice such stuff, and suffer the mindless fury of legions of SJWs; or it had to shut him down and fire his hateful white male a** and thereby trigger this even greater firestorm of criticism and, I am pretty sure, litigation. This guy knew how to design computer models that represented a kind of "life" that evolved. He could pretty easily code for a lawsuit that would likely produce a fat payoff.
Ann Althouse said...A man fence-straddles. Gets hurt
You just assumed his gender!
Also let's not pretend it was the straddling that got him hurt: it was entirely the fact that he didn't stay completely on the correct side of the fence. If he had taken a strong "no sex differences" position he would have been fine. He dared to take even a weak "some sex differences" position and was fired.
Owen said...But it is IMHO not only a suicide note but a key move by a very good chess player to set up a fatal fork. Either Google defended his right to voice such stuff, and suffer the mindless fury of legions of SJWs; or it had to shut him down and fire his hateful white male a** and thereby trigger this even greater firestorm of criticism and, I am pretty sure, litigation. This guy knew how to design computer models that represented a kind of "life" that evolved. He could pretty easily code for a lawsuit that would likely produce a fat payoff.
That's the hopeful, generous interpretation. That's what I was thinking yesterday after reading about the guy...but I'm not sure now.
Honestly I would have expected Google to quietly pressure him to resign (with a payout and strong NDA) and then do a bunch of PR work to calm the storm. Even if they were going to fire him I would have expected it to take a little while to reach that decision.
They fired him fast, though!
But I dunno. I hope this was part of his plan, and the pre-existing NLRB complaint could be evidence of that...but I dunno.
It's not productive to argue with religious dogma. Feminism of this kind is religious fundamentalism and will brook no dissent.
Views I dislike or find insulting are hateful.
Hateful speech harms me and is in a category of expression that should have no protection: hate speech.
Because hate speech causes harm to individuals and to groups it is a form of violence.
Violence cannot be tolerated in the workplace and must be punished, by law if necessary.
Violence against others, especially against protected groups, is illegal.
Views I dislike are therefore violence against me and could justifiably be punished by law.
We started by not being able to dismiss people's hurt feelings and we've ended up here.
Think that's hyperbolic? The people cheering this guy's firing don't. They're not satisfied with just that, though. Here's prominent tech lady Erica Joy Baker's tweet responding to the news that the dude got fired:
"Good job @sundarpichai!! [Alphabet CEO]
Now what about all the employees who said they agreed with the sexist stereotypes?"
See? Why haven't they been fired, or at least re-educated, yet?
Why haven't the sinners been punished? They agreed, they sinned in their hearts; they must be punished!
A man fence-straddles. Gets hurt.
Fuck him, he's just a splooge stooge.
What matters is that some women had their feelings hurt and felt bad. Somebody had to be punished.
Yes, I did. It's a ludicrous mixture of mealy-mouthed obsequiousness to the party line
What party are you referring to?
an NPR article titled "Google Reportedly Fires Employee Who Slammed Diversity Efforts."
--
"slammed" is pretty strong language for NPR.
"Why does that woman count as a source? NPR is responsible for accepting her as the sole source -- sole reported source -- of a fact about which she doesn't have first-hand knowledge."
I certainly agree we should be skeptical of sources.
But we live in a time where the WaPo or NYT run the most fabulous, and later dis-proven bilge about the current POTUS based on anonymous sources.
Skeptical? Sure, but.... NPR gives a name. The person has a relatively recent connection to Google and, likely, still has contacts within the company. As others noted, there are supporting tweets.
Compared with what is published daily, this stands as a beacon of journalistic excellence.
Ultimately, of course, the guy deserved to be fired.
He left his ideas and opinions lying around there in a place where they could be found and used--where they could be used to impregnate the outrage-wombs of millions of angry women. Some of those women didn't even want to think about it--didn't want to know that that opinion existed--so he basically mind-raped them.
This guy's the ultimate splooge stooge. He should have known better than to go shooting his stuff out there for anyone to use! Sure he thought it was a safe environment with consenting, responsible, trustworthy partners, but that was his mistake and he must bear the cost of it.
Hoodlum Doodlum: yes in your reading that hate speech = violence. The theorem here is: What Progs don't like to hear is hate speech, and that creates fear, and fear implies violence, so hate speech is violence or the threat of violence (even if the violence comes from the Progs, "driven to madness by these bad ideas"). And violence is wrong, so throw that speaker in jail, or into the darkness, or supply a Lubyanka Breakfast.
The converse is, for Progs acts are expressive, and their violence and vandalism are protected under the First Amendment. The spirit of righteous indignation speaks through them. When they bash in your skull with their bike-lock at the Grievance March, just accept it as History being enacted.
A man fence-straddles. Gets hurt.
Yeah..I'm sure if he had taken a much more oppositional position instead of trying to placate feminists and SJWers he would have been better off.
Prof A: "A man fence-straddles, gets hurt." Oh, that is so cold.
HoodlumDoodlum: AND since there are no differences between the sexes there can be no non-amateurish arguments that there are. No professionals can argue that there are difference since we all know there aren't any, so any argument that there are or could be any such differences must be amateurish.
I had the same (unfair?) take on Althouse's use of "amateurish".
It may have struck me that way because, at this point in my life, I have read thousands of similarly phrased dismissals of perfectly reasonable statements. "It lacks nuance". "It's a caricature of sex differences." "Yes, but, he has no credentials in this field..." (See also: motte-and-bailey.)
I would ask if there are no appreciable differences between men and women...why is having a sexually diverse workforce needed or desired?
damikesc: "...if there are no appreciable differences...". Stop trying to color outside the lines. Only haters do that!
Gahrie said...
Yeah..I'm sure if he had taken a much more oppositional position instead of trying to placate feminists and SJWers he would have been better off.
Ludicrous statement, Gahrie; really an amateurish attempt at trolling.
I find the whole thing humorous. But not really that bad. Google can afford to squander billions playing the diversity game. By paying women the same as men even if they aren't otherwise as valuable to the company as men. Sure, they are still somewhat innovative, but not really on a per dollar sales basis. Far from it. But they aren't the only ones there. Apple has essentially given up innovation in order to show itself properly progressive by hiring and retaining a CEO whose primary advantage to the company is his sexual orientation - he certainly isn't capable of innovating. But a company sitting on a couple hundred billion dollar cash hoard doesn't need to innovate. My biggest worry is not that these mega-tech companies spend billions virtue signaling, but in their inability to continue innovating, they seem to routinely destroy much of the innovation around them, often by buying it up, then grossly mismanaging their purchases.
I found the comment about Google's Chrome questioning users switching search engines away from the company's flagship search engine product interesting. This, by a company with Google's market presence, is monopolization, potentially illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act. But making this even, maybe, more egregious - it is almost identical to how Microsoft got in antitrust trouble. When Windows (up through Win 98) ran on top of DOS, they put code in Windows (I think both 95 and 98. - definitely 98) that generated a warning message when it discovered itself running on top of DR-DOS, instead of their own DOS. Actual code discovered by the DoJ's expert who had access to their code base. This is, maybe, even more egregious on the part of Google, because they are "tying" to their flagship product, instead of Microsoft's soon to be obsolete DOS (Win NT was a complete new code base, written from the ground up not to need DOS, and was introduced with the 98 GUI as NT 4 shortly after Win 98).
Google and the rest of the high tech mega-corporations might have had a bit more leeway under a Crooked Hillary Administration, given how they supported her. But they chose poorly. Trump won, and I expect that we shall see renewed antitrust scrutiny of companies like Google, once the DoJ political offices are fully filled. And maybe a bit of scrutiny about this sort of thing - the firing of employees for wrongthink.
The Michael Brown thing is one of the big reasons that I quit listening to NPR years ago. Brown was an overgrown thug, who had physically assaulted the officer, and attempted to grab his gun away from him, which moved it from aggrivated assault on a police officer to attempted murder. And then, shortly thereafter, after the officer had exited his vehicle, to again attack him. The officer, in self defense, first shot Brown in the arm. When Brown shook that off, and started attacking again, he was shot in the torso. When he shook that off, and started again, he was shot twice in the head, which killed him. During the whole attack, the officer continued to back up, trying to maintain the distance between them. Where was the police overreaction there? There wasn't any. A violent thug who had committed aggrivated assault and attempted murder on, and in the presence of, the officer, was attempting to attack him again.
Bruce, I didn't have any trouble making duckduckgo my search engine after I logged into Chrome. Without doing that, it reset back to google.
Bruce Hayden: "...My biggest worry is not that these mega-tech companies spend billions virtue signaling, but in their inability to continue innovating, they seem to routinely destroy much of the innovation around them, often by buying it up, then grossly mismanaging their purchases."
A fool and his money are soon parted.
And those who come into sudden and almost-inexplicable wealth of inconceivable magnitude are --even the most canny of us-- very likely to be foolish. Big corporations are log-jammed with incredibly smart courtiers crowding around the emperor's bedside. It is very easy to burn your way through 10 or 20 billion of shareholder value chasing your Big Strategic Concept.
But not to worry, your exit is gold-plated.
Miss Ellis has a twitter feed. Seems like she would be a pleasure to work with. Since we can psychoanalyze now I'm going to guess that Daddy didn't love her as much as he should have.
She's hot though. That makes up for a lot of things.
Unfortunately I can't link to the unlinkable Oxford English Dictionary, but you can find a picture of Kathy in the Urban Dictionary under the word "bitch."
On her LinkedIn account she lists one of her skills as "patriarchy smashing."
I'd still smash it.
HoodlumDoodlum said...
Ludicrous statement, Gahrie; really an amateurish attempt at trolling.
He was being properly sarcastic about Althouse's dumb statement.
Kelly, not Kathy. Obviously Daddy wanted a boy.
The point isn't that NPR shouldn't report things that could benefit a particular political POV, but that their heads are so far up their echo chamber that they couldn't see that they were inadvertently subverting their own agenda.
Re: Bruce Hayden:
Apple has essentially given up innovation in order to show itself properly progressive by hiring and retaining a CEO whose primary advantage to the company is his sexual orientation - he certainly isn't capable of innovating.
I don't think this is really fair to Tim Cook -- there are very few people who have Steve Jobs' combination of technological vision and sheer horribleness that made Apple what it was after he took it back from the highly credentialed professional managers who spent the 90's cratering Apple into the ground. If Jobs hadn't been the founder and widely renowned as a genius, I don't think his subordinates would have put up with him (they'd have complained about him constantly to HR until he was kicked out). I don't think there's any manager who would have been able to step into his shoes and push the company to innovate in the way that he did.
I might agree about Tim Cook and Steve Jobs. Their problem is that a lot of their success was built on Jobs' talent for industrial design. It was that horribleness, that uncompromising vision, that was able to separate the company from the rest of the pack. Twice. Without that, they are a higher priced me-too competitor. They have never been all that innovative, outside his industrial design.
My problem with Cook is that he seems to have no vision whatsoever, and is running a company that was built almost entirely on vision. And because of that, is slowly seeming to run the company into the ground. And that other companies in their position would have replaced him already, but can't here because he is part of a protected class, in a community where that has seemingly become more important than executing, and Apple has the breathing room to do this because of their mountain of cash. Each to their own here.
Apple has essentially given up innovation in order to show itself properly progressive by hiring and retaining a CEO whose primary advantage to the company is his sexual orientation - - - -
While maintaining sales outlets in countries that would toss him from a tower.
While quoting anyone, real or imagined, the media can shake off all culpability.
Also, NPR people are pretty dense in the head.
There was a small report on NASCAR cars spinning and flipping over. They were discussing the 'mystery' of when the car span and started going backwards it would often flip over; they were talking about needing more research into this phenomenon. I really thought it must be an SNL skit.
What's infuriating is the way NPR talks in that 'factual', calm, way which simply makes things believable. That's why they can tell bald faced lies and people believe it. Like prefixing any statement with 'as a matter of fact...'.
Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki has noted that she is sure the biases against women in her workplace have limited her opportunities; this real-world problem has hurt her in the past, and: "So when I saw the memo that circulated last week, I once again felt that pain, and empathized with the pain it must have caused others."
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/google-diversity-memo-wojcicki/
She doesn't say she has taken any days off work because of emotional pain--and her career would suggest she has had great success in overcoming adversity.
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