Current US culture seems to consider how someone feels/perceives an action as a strong indicator that something wrong was done. (Eg: I didn't feel safe in that meeting, I felt uncomfortable by the remark, etc.)
Combine that with a touchy subject like Judaism and the Jewish history (the article linked also throws in mentions of Hitler to invoke some strong reactions) and viola
I don't think anyone necessarily jumps to the conclusion that "something wrong was done". But we have so many professional victims out there (just seems exhausting to have to stay so 'woke' about everything that might offend you) that I think everyone just picks their battles.
Oh, a Santa hat offends you? K, fine, no one really cares if a santa hat is there or not, get rid of it so they can shut up and start looking for something else to be offended by.
It deeply offends me that people who think they peddle "logic and rationality" can sum religions as "magical sky wizards" and summarily consider their role as detrimental, without understanding their social, cultural, historical, and evolutionary role and development.
Besides, if anyone's connecting the "red winter hat with a white puff" image with Jesus, Jews or anything of the sort instead of Coca Cola, their marketing department is not doing a good job.
I think we're past the point where it's easy to limit the scope of a message to a specific group, and any message that concerns personal life is just doomed to be an issue in some way.
Nassim Taleb seems to be about companies giving in to the most extreme groups, but I think there will be less and less clear cut cases where a decision can emcompass all groups. For instance for his take on Halal food, some people do choose to not eat Halal. They might be arguably more intolerant that any other group, but not in relevant numbers for any food company to care about them.
I don't think we're going far from the traditional marketing approach of defining a market and playing the trade-off games around each segment's inclinations. Religion and culture just got added to the mix.
I swear back in 2012 it was the norm/style to use 4 spaces in Rails...
Edit: Maybe it's PSR2? Or maybe it was one of the dev teams I worked for.. honestly I can't remember why I used that lol. I'm getting senile at 40, I swear.
...actually 4chan regularly runs things remarkably close with this. Sometimes they _accidentally_ turn a previously innocuous symbol into hate speech (see: "okay" gesture, welcome to 2019, where seeing someone making it makes you go and check if they're just not extremely online or actually a nazi), most of the time they just announce to the world they hang out on 4chan. The examples of less successful would be several spoof LGBT rights campaigns for, uh, unpleasant things.
Yeah, I'm still not convinced if this guy is for real. But that's besides the point - them caving in to this insane demand on the spot is incredible. What's next - a word filter so I can't type "sjw" in VSCode? Seriously rethinking my decision to switch to this. This screams instability.
Don't panic. They're sheltered developers in a megacorp, it's most likely it's the first time they've encountered a 4chan psyop (or whatever tf this is), if they'd hear the term "nazbol" they'd probably think it's something about sports. And honestly, consider how that would go if this is a 4chan psyop: next time someone on the team says or does something genuinely horrible and gets fired, they'll have a few hundred cloned accounts calling them hypocritical antisemites.
It may or may not be a troll, but that is irrelevant as to what makes this situation interesting: the fact that Microsoft caved in to such an incontrovertibly unreasonable request.
And it kinda seems to be blowing up. They removed a shitton of comments, closed several related issues and now new bugs are being made because of this. I can only hope there is massive resitence against this.
If I were this person I would invest my time fixing the HTTPS cert on my site[0], instead of focusing on the trivialities of commercial-backed festivities, passing them as religious offences.
I feel like this was really intended to be harmless (it's really not pushed into your face also), people need to be able to let things go.
edit: wait, multiple people is saying he's a troll, is that true?
Looks like MS fell for an individual troll. I think the real story is how companies, as risk averse as they are respond to such cases - I would probably weight the risks and do as MS in such cases.
I don't want decoration on my tools. On the other hand, I prefer tools where the personality of the maker to can still shine through. Today it's just a Santa's hat for which they can't take responsibility. And tomorrow?
This reminds me of Google so many years ago setting Father's Day reminder in people's Gmail.
At some scale, a product can't just be whimsical, or not in any cultural or personally touching way. Boring and impersonal becomes an important virtue.
There's no way this kind of fun initiative won't hit a nerve in some community or some group around the world, and if there's no logical backing behind it's just a PR hell.
I don't think they should have backed down, but I understand Microsoft not wanting confrontation or a storm. But if this person is so offended, I imagine that they are constantly and persistently offended while walking the streets, full of similar symbols and seasonal displays.
I'm a staunch atheist but I still appreciate a beautiful mosque, cathedral or fun display.
(And I do find the money that could have been spent on helping others that was used to build cathedrals and palaces to be obnoxious, it's not that I have to have complete respect to accept their existence).
This story frustrated me because it seems like a needless censorship, where it ultimately just stops managers from allowing easter eggs, which used to be such a wonderful part of much software.
Hahahahahaha probably Easter eggs is also going to offend. Ok I'll call them "Cody surprises":-p
Balanced thing would have been to add a config parameter to enable disable this stuff. Can't imagine a lawsuit from something that is user customizable. Some want Easter eggs and others don't.
Of course if your easter eggs slow performance via bug then insta-disable.
It can show up a non intrusive notification to inform you about turning it on/leaving it on vs turning it off just like the data collection notification popups.
But "Easter eggs" are even more religious so that phrase would need to be banned if we are banning everything some random person on the internet finds offensive. Even "holiday" is borderline because it implies a holy day which is also religious. If you give me a few minutes, I can think of a few reasons to ban "decorations" on religious grounds too. I'm an atheist so don't give a fuck if they are banned but I think that should indicate the absurdity of this situation and of even acknowledging the "issue." That's what the close issue is for.
As someone who vehemently despises a colleague named cody, I'm remarkably offended you'd dare to associate the wonderful surprise of an unexpected event with such a devious and foul colleague of mine.
I totally agree, I'm agnostic, I don't believe in deity but not sure we go into total oblivion after death, afterlife can exist without a God in charge of it.
Wife's religious and we have two little ones, I try to focus more on Santa, and still love me some old school Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer and A charlie brown christmas special.
People need to stop with being offended just to 'make a point'. I doubt that he's really as offended as a swastika. I mean there's a major difference between Santa and Nazi's. He's basically a commercialized cartoon character more than a relgious symbol.
I understand being annoyed by religious symbols, but "it's almost as offensive as a swastika"... that's just immensely callous. Especially from a Jewish perspective.
I’m not a huge fan of Christmas. I say ‘happy holidays’ to try and be more inclusive. I’m atheist and use it as a time to spend time with family and friends.
I’m 100% with you.
Santa is not a religious figure any more, if ever. Is Thor a religious figure?
So the objection is against a symbol that is vaguely related to a festival that ties together an enormous number of various otherwise unrelated celebrations (that all happen at or around the winter solstice). The main objection to most of them being that they aren't Jewish (conveniently ignoring the Jewish festival of Hanukkah that occurs at around the same time).
Curiously the article linked that feebly attempts to tie this all together in a coherent narrative fails to mention how the red hat is related to Christmas.
The linked article starts by presenting Saturnalia as a murderous celebration of human sacrifices, for which there is no evidence at all, so it makes me doubt the historical accuracy of the whole piece.
Ya, I browsed through the article and zeroed in on Christmas caroling being related to drunken people running nude through the streets and singing. Was hoping for a fun little anecdote next time someone brought up going Christmas caroling.
But turns out that all seems to be bunk. Caroling seems to be related to the early practice of going door to door as peasants singing and asking for food/gifts from feudal lords... "... so bring us some figgy pudding, and bring it right here."
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 350 ms ] threadCombine that with a touchy subject like Judaism and the Jewish history (the article linked also throws in mentions of Hitler to invoke some strong reactions) and viola
Oh, a Santa hat offends you? K, fine, no one really cares if a santa hat is there or not, get rid of it so they can shut up and start looking for something else to be offended by.
Plus I would argue that Father Christmas is a cthonic deity.
Anyway, this Hindu would like to wish all HNers who celebrate (however you celebrate) a merry Christmas.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Besides, if anyone's connecting the "red winter hat with a white puff" image with Jesus, Jews or anything of the sort instead of Coca Cola, their marketing department is not doing a good job.
Nassim Taleb seems to be about companies giving in to the most extreme groups, but I think there will be less and less clear cut cases where a decision can emcompass all groups. For instance for his take on Halal food, some people do choose to not eat Halal. They might be arguably more intolerant that any other group, but not in relevant numbers for any food company to care about them.
I don't think we're going far from the traditional marketing approach of defining a market and playing the trade-off games around each segment's inclinations. Religion and culture just got added to the mix.
Is this really the type of person we should be taking demands from?!
Edit: Maybe it's PSR2? Or maybe it was one of the dev teams I worked for.. honestly I can't remember why I used that lol. I'm getting senile at 40, I swear.
He deserves nobel peace prize.
wow.
If 4chan were to make an image about a fictional interaction like this, people would call it exaggerated.
edit: this has to be a troll. I cannot believe someone would actually write like that
Any word that is even slightly offensive anywhere in the world should be reported
It didn't take long for /g/ to take the person's avatar and put a Santa hat on it.
[0](https://www.servicelayer.no/)
Would seem to balance between sensitivities and cultural appreciation of different people, but I guess it is easier to just remove it.
What a clown world we live in!
Jeez, the entitlement.
> To me this is almost equally offensive as a swastika.
and the stupidity.
At some scale, a product can't just be whimsical, or not in any cultural or personally touching way. Boring and impersonal becomes an important virtue.
There's no way this kind of fun initiative won't hit a nerve in some community or some group around the world, and if there's no logical backing behind it's just a PR hell.
I'm a staunch atheist but I still appreciate a beautiful mosque, cathedral or fun display.
(And I do find the money that could have been spent on helping others that was used to build cathedrals and palaces to be obnoxious, it's not that I have to have complete respect to accept their existence).
This story frustrated me because it seems like a needless censorship, where it ultimately just stops managers from allowing easter eggs, which used to be such a wonderful part of much software.
Hahahahahaha probably Easter eggs is also going to offend. Ok I'll call them "Cody surprises":-p
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/405783/why-does-man...
Of course if your easter eggs slow performance via bug then insta-disable.
Wife's religious and we have two little ones, I try to focus more on Santa, and still love me some old school Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer and A charlie brown christmas special.
People need to stop with being offended just to 'make a point'. I doubt that he's really as offended as a swastika. I mean there's a major difference between Santa and Nazi's. He's basically a commercialized cartoon character more than a relgious symbol.
I’m 100% with you.
Santa is not a religious figure any more, if ever. Is Thor a religious figure?
This guy is a troll or just a ridiculous person.
Curiously the article linked that feebly attempts to tie this all together in a coherent narrative fails to mention how the red hat is related to Christmas.
But turns out that all seems to be bunk. Caroling seems to be related to the early practice of going door to door as peasants singing and asking for food/gifts from feudal lords... "... so bring us some figgy pudding, and bring it right here."