jayventura

Well, yes, you're excluded from discussing that oppression if you exclude matriarchy/patriarchy from parenting. As a society, we deem matriarchy/patriarchy in parenting as part of raising children.

The entire idea of patriarchy in civil rights is that white cis-het men believe they know what's best for everyone in society-- and this power is given to them by society through politics. That's precisely what these "social justice" movements are trying change, the power structure, and increase representation in politics and society at large. Would you argue that is it right for white cis-het men to "parent" other communities in the same way you parent your children?

Look up the concept of "natural slavery".

I'll give you a couple very extreme examples that you can hopefully find parallel in:

Do slave owners get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how slaves are oppressed?

Do white people who support Jim Crow laws get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how black people are oppressed?

Does a religious majority get a seat at the table when discussing whether or not and how a religious minority is oppressed?

The argument is: those that are not affected by the oppression discussed (who may even be doing the oppressing) simply cannot have an objective discussion on whether or not and how a community is being oppressed. How do you know what that oppression is and feels like to tell someone that they are not being oppressed? Therefore, where a white cis-het male's opinion is productive is only when discussing how they can help-- not when discussing whether or not that oppression exists.

In the same vein, I am male. My opinion is not productive when discussing whether or not and how women are oppressed. Consider this scenario: male politicians are deciding on laws that govern women's bodies; women say they are oppressed; men say no you're not oppressed. Do you see why men's opinion are not productive here? My opinion only matters when discussing how I can help women feel less oppressed.

At the end of the day, you have the freedom and right to discuss all you want. But ask yourself, is your discussion productive or destructive to someone else. Your arguments will never convince an oppressed community that they are not oppressed, that's gaslighting. It will only convince other unaffected people against them-- which is why it's destructive to discuss the existence of oppression when you are not the oppressed.

You have the right and freedom to disagree.

But at least ask yourself why you disagree and why you think someone is wrong about their oppression. And then apply that lens of thinking to another era, say Jim Crow, and how your lens of thinking can affect others.

Who decides whether or not evidence is based and sound?

During the slave era, white slave owners believed they were doing good for the black man. That this was their optimal role in society.

If you are not the oppressed, you cannot objectively be part of the discussion about whether or not and how the oppressed are being oppressed. It's quite simple. The only thing you can do is help. If you argue against their oppression, you are perpetuating the structural inequality.

Food for thought, something can be political without directly referencing domestic politics and political parties. Definition: "the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power."

Discussing structural inequality is inherently political because it is a discussion about power.

However, I disagree with parent. You cannot have a diverse workforce that numbers the thousands and expect there not to be a discussion about power structures and inequity. Imagine if you applied that lens of thinking to a company that employs both blacks and whites in the Jim Crow era-- who loses?

Where would we be today if people stayed silent about discrimination in the workplace and society at large (racial, gender, sexual orientation)? Silence is a privilege. Silence is what perpetuates power inequity.

Silence says to me: "My six figure paycheck is more important to me than having an opinion on something that is negatively impacting my colleague and their demographic."

Silence is something oppressed communities do not have the privilege of. Black people simply cannot be silent when they fear for their lives at every traffic stop. LGBTQ+ people cannot be silent when politicians are constantly trying to undermine their human rights in the name of religious freedom. Women cannot be silent when politicians do the same to their bodies, and the workplace constantly undermines their value.

This is literally that NULL license plate problem! I wonder how many other systems this bug may exist in.

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20676904)

> so any bio-accumulation of heavy metals or similar should be minimal

What is "minimal"? Bioaccumulation isn't a magic meter that says "everyting below this trophic level is safe to eat." It depends on the persistent toxin ( I choose the word toxin because bioaccumulation can occur for chemicals beyond heavy metals, like organochlorine pesticides ) that you're looking at, and what is the safe dose for humans.

E.g. let's say you have pesticide A and pesticide B. Cattle eat a certain amount of feed per day. At time of slaughter, pesticide A and B have a certain amount of concentration in fat tissue. It doesn't matter which has the highest concentration, it matters which is less safe to humans and at what concentration it harms us when it accumulates in our own tissues.

You'll see a similar thing in branding and advertising. For all the new yorkers on here, have you all seen the consumer brand ads on the subway? Almost every brand looks the same.

I'm imagining it has to do with the way designers work. They generally have stakeholders moodboard (basically creating a pinterest board with inspiration from different brands), and then they create a similar "feeling".

As humans, we're kind of evolved to recognize patterns, so when we start seeing the same branding art direction it stands out to us and we may try to conflate some deeper meaning to it. But in reality, it's just a few brands that share the same branding art direction probably because some execs liked the way it looked and felt and asked their designers to do something similar.

Unless the original author doesn't want to endure going to court over this for a settlement check but still wants to try to invoke change by telling the world (or at least all Google employees) her story.

Even if we aren't irrigating crops directly with seawater, we may have to engineer crops to thrive on high saline irrigation anyways, as there is seawater leeching into aquifers in many agricultural centers around the world, including coastal California. As sea levels rise, we should expect this to be a larger problem and plan for it.

"Socialize the costs, privatize the revenue."

Sounds like most industries actually, where externalities are passed on to society. E.g. resource extraction.

I work in the agtech space and the way we look at indoor farms are that for now they are only a solution for expensive speciality crops (leafy vegetables). There's a lot of value in improving the production of leafy greens near urban centers (where tech workers will pay $15 for a salad), and that's why all the VC money is pouring in.

But, indoor farming is not well suited for calorie-rich foods (think grains, corn, potatoes, etc). Many of those crops are not suited for hydroponics. They need soil and lots of sunlight. Corn roots grow down to almost 7 feet in the soil. Attempting to grow these crops out of soil and sunlight is incredibly inefficient and expensive.

In order for indoor farms to feed the majority of the world, we believe there needs to be more than one breakthrough than just the indoor farm system itself, including a breakthrough in the production of energy (enough to replace all the solar energy provided by the nuclear reactor in the sky that we use in agriculture today), a breakthrough in the production or collection of water that irrigates the millions of acres of land by rain clouds, and the biological breakthrough of high calorie foods that are adapted to grow hydroponically.

We also believe that the same money spent developing indoor farm systems is better spent developing better adapted crops and researching more efficient and sustainable agriculture practices.

What if Github was specifically optimizing for that end-goal though? It is hard to definite what productivity means unless you had inside knowledge of the goals of the business. Amazon took 14 years after their IPO to turn a profit, but that isn't to say that their employees were not productive. In the same vein, Github may have never turned a profit, but if that was not the goal, it's hard to say if their remote employees were not productive.

Interestingly, although 70% of New Yorkers felt positively about the Amazon HQ2, I wonder what that percentage looks like for the actual current inhabitants of LIC. For many of the folks I know who rent in Queens, they were very much against the HQ2 and fearful of how it may affect their ability to afford living in Queens. Additionally, many New Yorkers I know who are around my age were very much against HQ2 because we felt that it was already so incredibly hard to even think about owning property in NYC, and that this was just one more notch that would make us feel like the possibility was slipping away. Not everyone works in tech/finance/RE and enjoys the salaries in those industries. Another common fear was how will this affect the subway system?

For many of the people I know who were against HQ2, it wasn't about the tax relief. It was about the feeling that the most valuable corporation in the world was going to move a lot more money into the city, and make it a lot harder for folks not in the industry to live.

A lot of these concerns where not addressed. It was always about jobs, jobs, jobs. And if they were addressed, it was not communicated effectively.