Good article on how completely blinkered Robin DiAngelo is. I have a point of disagreement though. She isn't well meaning, she's a scam artist (thread) theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
In her diagnosis every company is incurably racist and the only fix is to pay her and her ilk big bucks to manage the problem in perpetuity. If that isn't a white person exploiting the problems of racism for their own self-enrichment I don't know what is
Not that Corporate America is purely an innocent victim here. She's brought in so companies can get their gold star claiming they're doing something about race and not have to do anything else theatlantic.com/international/…
Even worse, it seems likely that the sheer unpleasantness of her seminars is the point. Corporate overlords are making 'diversity training' as unpleasant as possible to punish those who asked for it and keep anybody from asking for more
People shouldn't have to put up with this. If you're subjected to these things and feel they result in a hostile environment (likely given that DiAngelo brags about making people cry) you should complain to HR that they're inappropriate nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opi…
Screaming 'Anyone who has a problem with me is racist' constantly doesn't make it true. These people are not the solution to racism, they're part of the problem, and they should be stopped.
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OpenAI's chatbot doesn't have much experience in the material world
Don't let OpenAI's chatbot take care of your pets
They seem to be updating it in real time so it gives better answers to specific questions than it did just a few hours ago but sometimes small variations can trip it up
Good morning everyone. Today's rant will be about analog audio and some truly maddening myths in that field (thread)
There's a persistent myth that as soon as any step in audio processing is digital the entire thing has been reduced to a lower digital quality and that's what you're stuck with. This is wrong.
The truth is that every step of processing, either analog or digital, reduces quality, and each specific process will have its own effects, but the limits of how little quality can be lost are much better when both the inputs and outputs are digital
There's a myth in the general public that Know Your Customer programs are important for banking. This is incorrect (thread)
KYC has nothing to do with bank auditing and solvency. It is a relatively recent program which is solely for helping law enforcement. To that end it is extremely expensive and ineffective
The thing which really keeps bank together is federal reserve auditing and FDIC insurance. You know, the things which keep them from turning into FTX. KYC didn't start until 1970. It makes up a significant amount of all banking costs with no benefit to bank customers whatsoever
Something which offends me about SBF is that he's a finance bro's notion of a charmingly autistic founder. He plays that role well because he's a finance bro himself (thread)
Here's the chart of SBF's corporate empire. Nobody sets up something like this without damn well knowing that they're up to something shady
Another obnoxious thing is his inability to tie his shoes supposedly being cute. An adult being incapable of tying their shoes is a red flag of someone who doesn't take pride in their work and can't be bothered to do much of anything for themselves
Someone who has not made major charitable contributions, either through money or deeds, can't claim to be an 'effective altruist' any more than they can claim to be a philanthropist
Someone who's starting out their career and plans to do it can claim that they aspire to be an effective altruist some day, or even have direct plans for it, and if they haven't yet made lots of money that's a reasonable claim
If someone had a plan of making lots of money and using it for charity in the end but their investments never panned out I'm even happy to give them the benefit of the doubt that they would have been very generous