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pogeys

Re:Why are tech people suddenly so into homeschooling? on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @12:10PM (#42700212)
> suddenly teaching about the Tulsa Race Massacre or how banks used to discriminate against minorities for lending is considered extremism and "woke".

No, these things were taught to me in school and I’ve never heard anyone consider historical facts like this to be CRT except people railing against conservatives (ironically demonstrating their own ignorance of what CRT is).

What’s problematic about CRT is its postmodern view that liberalism is inadequate (or worse) at eliminating racism; downplaying objectivity in favor of “lived experience” that can supposedly never be truly understood by white people; rejecting colorblindness out of hand; advocating segregation of minorities in the name of “safe spaces”; regularly and unscientifically trumpeting the existence and scope of unconscious bias; emphasizing intersectionality to the point of essentialism.

The famous Smithsonian “Assumptions of Whiteness” infographic (https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rationa...) is an example of these concepts infesting a mainstream cultural educational entity. There’s room to critique current racial discourse and advocate for changing models, but to state that the scientific method and “objective, rational linear thinking” are white values, implying that whites have a monopoly on science or that minorities are less capable at it, is obviously derived from critical theory, and is (I think unquestionably) horrifically racist. When there is any sign of these viewpoints seeping from higher academia into elementary schools, it’s perfectly natural for parents to become concerned.

Just two days ago there was a story about FinCEN requiring more information to be gathered and stored about the owners of LLCs, and the comment section had quite some discussion from people shocked that anyone would feel a need for privacy in home records. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39304312

How do we stop swatting? Maybe improved technical means for identifying false calls, maybe better judgment by law enforcement of what situations are dangerous, maybe stronger investigation and punishment of the callers.

But what can I do right now to keep me at lower risk of swatting? I can go the extreme privacy route, form shell corporations to own my assets without publicly associating them to my identity, and stripping out my info from as many data brokers as possible. That's hard, but it's doable for the upper middle class like many of us in tech.

I would love for it not to be necessary, and I'd love for these measures to be more accessible to people with less money than me. But I'm gonna keep taking these measures wherever I can.

Re:George Orwell Complete Works on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @01:32AM (#37565932)
> Orwell should not be treated like a saint who cannot be criticized.

Quite a strawman, since nobody here has suggested he should be treated like a saint.

On the other hand, your link practically portrays Orwell to be the devil himself (and Stalin to be Not So Bad, Really).

Re:RetroAchievements: Adding Achievements to Retro Games on Wednesday September 13, 2023 @01:39AM (#37492623)
Another bad style of achievements: RNG-heavy.

For instance, to get the “catch shiny Pokémon” achievements in Pokémon Crystal (https://retroachievements.org/game/11841), you have 1/8192 odds on encounter… for each Pokémon, and there are 213 of them.