Category: Social Justice

Diversity goes to space (but can’t get back home)

by philg

“NASA Decides to Bring [$4.3 billion Boeing] Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew” (nasa.gov):

NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.

This isn’t unconditionally great news for the astronauts. From The Sky Below (book by an astronaut):

my multiple spaceflights and spacewalks mean the likelihood of spinal trouble is almost as inevitable as an overloaded, rickety Jenga tower toppling over into a ragged heap. In space, the spine straightens and the intervertebral discs swell when not being compressed by gravity,

(the author spent about 8 weeks total in space)

Let’s check in with Boeing…

Each member of our global team brings something uniquely valuable to Boeing, and we grow stronger when everyone has an opportunity to contribute. Boeing remains committed to creating a culture of inclusion that attracts and retains the world’s top talent, and inspires every teammate to do their best work and grow their careers.

It turns out, though, that not all members of the global team are equally valuable. Black team members are apparently more valuable than non-Black ones. Boeing’s “Aspirations and Progress” section sets out “Increase the Black representation rate in the U.S. by 20%.” as the number one goal to achieve by 2025. Lower down on the page: “Fair360, a world leader in using data to assess companies’ commitment to inclusion, ranked Boeing 9th out of more than 160 companies reviewed.”

The “2024 Boeing Sustainability & Social Impact Report”:

We value diverse perspectives and continue to see more women and U.S. racial and ethnic minorities represented at nearly every level of the company compared with a year ago.

The company’s “Allies spreading awareness” page:

Their stories are part of a series celebrating the perspectives and accomplishments from LGBTQIA+ employees and allies across Boeing.

When her oldest child, Asher, recently came out as non-binary and embraced they/them/their pronouns, the family’s main priority was to be supportive and learn as much as they could about gender identity.

Elizabeth also looked into health insurance benefits and was able to connect Asher with Boeing’s Gender Affirmation Team, which provided information and resources to help Asher and family navigate through the transition process.

For Maggie Duckworth, advocacy for the transgender community is also a key component of her life. … The software engineer met her partner more than 20 years ago at an anime convention. The two bonded over the animated art where gender fluid characters were commonly a part of storylines. Later, Maggie’s partner, Ryn, came out as non-binary and now uses the pronouns they/them/theirs. “For a long time they were struggling with defining who they were,” Maggie said. “Then Ryn realized that they were (gender) neutral and we both felt relieved because we had found a definition.”

“I want to be an example for women in aerospace”:

One of [Chantel’s] main objectives in this role is to increase the representation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers—a goal of personal significance.

If a person who identifies as a “woman” works at Boeing, one of the biggest tasks for which she is paid by Boeing shareholders is getting more “women” to go into STEM careers, regardless of whether those careers are at Boeing?

The most exciting part:

For the first time in her 8-year career, Chantel, a woman of color, reports to a director who is also a woman of color. Chantel believes she can support continued progress by ensuring other women in STEM see fulfilling career paths for themselves.

Her efforts help support our equity, diversity and inclusion commitment. In 2021, women’s representation at Boeing increased to 23.2% in the United States and 24.6% internationally. And representation for women of color at Boeing has increased at executive levels and throughout the company.

So the news isn’t all bad with Boeing. Diversity is up substantially year-over-year both right now and that was also true back in 2021.

The company’s most recent “feature stories” about the product:

Related:

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Social Justice at the Library: Farming While Black

by philg

The Jupiter branch of the Palm Beach County Public Library seems to have at least five copies of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land:

Keeping five copies on the shelf seems like an odd choice in a town where forty acres and a mule would, if available, cost more than $40 million. While my mother was in the Large Print section, I did a quick survey of the patrons and found just one who appeared to identify as “Black”.

(There’s a separate part of Palm Beach County just west of us called Jupiter Farms that isn’t part of the Town of Jupiter and a 40-acre farm there might be assembled for $10 million. Wikipedia says that roughly 1.2 percent of Jupiter Farms residents identify as Black. (The “white” population of Jupiter Farms fell between 2010 and 2020, according to the Census data in the Wikipedia page, while the overall population grew. Only a racist conspiracy theorist, however, would say that white people were being “replaced” in Jupiter Farms.))

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History lessons at the art museum

by philg

I touched on my visit to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Is Donald Trump worse than George Washington? but I’d like to share some additional history lessons from the signage. This is a government-funded institution, so the lessons are, presumably, official State of North Carolina versions.

We learn that rich people love to laugh at peasants:

The Dutch were bad in general:

One Dutch guy was especially bad, being responsible for “Dutch expansion, exploitation, and violence” and giving Dutch people ships was bad because they used them for “violent establishment of foreign colonies”:

The English were bad settler-colonialists in North America (see previous post regarding a wall-sign biography of George Washington) and the Bostonians were especially bad, e.g., Sir William Pepperrell who was “the sole heir to a well-known merchant and enslaver in Massachusetts”:

The bird nerd is bad:

If you think that racism 200 years ago isn’t relevant, note that the National Audubon Society continues to support the party of slavery, with more than 98 percent of its political contributions going to Democrats (opensecrets.org; I think this might measure the contributions of executives and officers since a nonprofit org itself shouldn’t be donating to any political candidates).

Unlike Audubon, the museum bravely takes a stand against slavery (“deplorable”!) and “systemic racism”:

Has all of human civilization been exploitation and violence? No. Elites and peasants lived in harmony in pre-Columbian America. They danced and made music together at “communal feasts” where “diverse parts of society coexisted, sharing food and drink.”

What kind of “food and drink” was shared? From the History Channel:

When the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and his men arrived in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in 1521, they described witnessing a grisly ceremony. Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor.

Andrés de Tapia, a conquistador, described two rounded towers flanking the Templo Mayor made entirely of human skulls, and between them, a towering wooden rack displaying thousands more skulls with bored holes on either side to allow the skulls to slide onto the wooden poles.

Reading these accounts hundreds of years later, many historians dismissed the 16th-century reports as wildly exaggerated propaganda meant to justify the murder of Aztec emperor Moctezuma, the ruthless destruction of Tenochtitlán and the enslavement of its people. But in 2015 and 2018, archeologists working at the Templo Mayor excavation site in Mexico City discovered proof of widespread human sacrifice among the Aztecs—none other than the very skull towers and skull racks that conquistadors had described in their accounts.

While it’s true that the Spanish undoubtedly inflated their figures—Spanish historian Fray Diego de Durán reported that 80,400 men, women and children were sacrificed for the inauguration of the Templo Mayor under a previous Aztec emperor—evidence is mounting that the gruesome scenes illustrated in Spanish texts, and preserved in temple murals and stone carvings, are true.

In addition to slicing out the hearts of victims and spilling their blood on the temple altar, it’s believed that the Aztecs also practiced a form of ritual cannibalism. The victim’s bodies, after being relieved of their heads, were likely gifted to noblemen and other distinguished community members. Sixteenth-century illustrations depict body parts being cooked in large pots and archeologists have identified telltale butcher marks on the bones of human remains in Aztec sites around Mexico City.

Maybe show up for the concert, but don’t stay for dinner?

The state-funded museum provided some follow-up reading in the gift shop:

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Why wasn’t diversity Intel’s strength?

by philg

On the cusp of the release of Intel’s Arrow Lake CPUs, which contain some sort of feeble “AI processor” that might boost performance by 1 percent for anyone who has a graphics card plugged into his/her/zir/their desktop PC, the company will have to fire 15 percent of its workers due to a failure to make as much money as a receptionist in an NVIDIA branch office. Even a $20 billion gift from Joe Biden (March 2024) didn’t help.

How could this have happened to a company with diverse employees and diverse suppliers? Exhibit A:

They promise to discriminate against Asian male and white male suppliers for $1 billion. Intel spent “$300M to support a goal of reaching full workforce representation of women and underrepresented minorities in our U.S. workforce by 2020” (that’s $300 million that shareholders won’t now see, apparently).

Exhibit B:

(The person wearing the Pride shirt is next to the person in Islamic attire. Is this a Queers for Palestine situation?)

Intel says “Diversity, equity, and inclusion have long been Intel’s core values and are instrumental to driving innovation and delivering strong business growth.”

If diversity drives innovation and “strong business growth,” why is Intel being left in the dust by NVIDIA, TSMC, AMD, et al.? Does TSMC have more diversity in Hsinchu than Intel can find here in the U.S.? Is diversity not a strength for Intel or not a strength for a tech company or not a strength for any company?

If Intel’s diverse employees don’t concern themselves with making money every day for the shareholders, what have the employees been focused on? The official state religion:

A long-term perspective:

(Can this be correctly adjusted for splits? Yahoo! Finance says that it is.)

Update: Intel lost 26 percent of its value by the end of the day, falling to $21.48 per share. That results in a price/earnings ratio of 22.5, a bit lower than the average for the S&P 500. Intel is a huge bargain compared to AMD, which has a P/E ratio of 160! Maybe it is time to buy Intel?

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Housing is a human right, but California’s homeless will soon lose their tents

by philg

Exactly one year ago, I proposed an Oshkosh to San Francisco Tent Truck that would help those experiencing homelessness in a state where everyone with political power agrees that housing is a human right.

This year, Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order encouraging California cities to clear homeless encampments. It is unclear where unhoused Californians will go. The order merely suggests “Contacting of service providers to request outreach services for persons experiencing homelessness at the encampment.” That’s not a guarantee of shelter, certainly. CNN:

Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the parent organization of the Housing is a Human Right initiative, accused Newsom of “criminalizing poverty” and “doubling down on failed policies.”

“Governor Newsom, where do you expect people to go? This is a shameful moment in California history,” Weinstein said in a statement Thursday.

Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness in San Francisco, called Newsom’s executive order “a punch in the gut.”

She said there are already thousands of people on a waitlist for housing, and all shelter beds in San Francisco are already full. Roughly 8,000 people are homeless every night in the city, which has 3,300 occupied shelter beds, Friedenbach told CNN.

The actual order:

Some Oshkosh tenting action…

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John Deere promises to continue discriminating by skin color and gender ID

by philg

Here’s a post that is being celebrated by Deplorables as evidence that Social Justice is under pressure in Corporate America:

If you read to the bottom however, the company promises to “continue to track and advance the diversity of our organization”. Isn’t that a promise to continue discriminating by skin color and gender ID? If they don’t discriminate how are they going to “advance” diversity?

Here’s another story where you need to read beyond the headline… “Microsoft laid off a DEI team, and its lead wrote an internal email blasting how DEI is ‘no longer business critical'” (Business Insider). In fact, the article body quotes Microsoft saying the opposite:

“Our D&I commitments remain unchanged,” a Microsoft spokesperson, Jeff Jones, said in a statement. “Our focus on diversity and inclusion is unwavering and we are holding firm on our expectations, prioritizing accountability, and continuing to focus on this work.”

In case the above tweet is memory-holed:

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Will American college students give up alcohol, pet dogs, and skimpy clothing in order to welcome Gazans?

by philg

One common demand from the encamped righteous has been that colleges bring in more students from “Palestine” (example in Oregon; state-sponsored NPR gives us an example from New Jersey). If we look at photos from Gaza, however, we don’t see people who dress and act like American college students. Nobody is drinking alcohol. Nobody has a pet dog (“Islam forbids Muslims to keep dogs,”). Females don’t go out without being well covered in hijab and long dress (to do otherwise would be to dress like a prostitute (BBC)). Here’s an example from UNRWA (they provided 3 million medical consultations to 2.3 million Gazans during 6 months of war, which means that it is easier to get in to see a doctor in Gaza during wartime than in the U.S. during peacetime):

Lets have a look at the encampments. Here’s one at the University of Coimbra, founded in 1290:

There were about 10 protesters (out of 25,000 students total at Portugal’s oldest university) and at least two of them had pet dogs. In the photo above, a dog is not only kept as a pet, contrary to Islam, but is allowed to walk on the sacred Palestinian flag.

Here’s the encampment at Brown:

Instead of hijabs, students who appear to identify as “female” are wearing halter tops, showing cleavage, etc.

How are students from Gaza supposed to feel welcome in this debauched environment? Shouldn’t the pro-Hamas college students demand that administrations ban alcohol (including for those over 21, e.g., at faculty and alumni events), ban immodest dress, and ban dogs from their campuses?

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Why isn’t everyone celebrating Marine Le Pen’s victory in France?

by philg

The United Nations assures us that “We need more women leaders to sustain peace and development”:

The evidence is clear: wherever women take part in a peace process, peace lasts longer. In fact, a peace agreement, which includes women, is 35 per cent more likely to last at least 15 years. And without the solid foundation of peace, development is doomed to be unstable and unsustainable.

A recent Secretary-General’s report to the Security Council called women leadership and participation in peacebuilding a “prerequisite for the fulfillment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” In other words, without women’s participation, we will not achieve lasting peace; and without the stability of peace, we will not achieve sustainable development.

Put forward by the Resolution 1325, the idea that women should be given greater access to leadership roles in peace and security is closely aligned with the aim of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5, on gender equality and women empowerment.

The Science confirms this theory across all domains. “Women leaders make work better. Here’s the science behind how to promote them” (American Psychological Association):

When more women are empowered to lead, everyone benefits. Decades of studies show women leaders help increase productivity, enhance collaboration, inspire organizational dedication, and improve fairness.

Why would any company or country ever select a non-woman as a leader? McKinsey says that diversity leads to huge profits (NVIDIA’s GPU development lab is a rich tapestry of Black and Latinx engineers in a wide array of gender IDs?). Note that, predictably, two white males say that McKinsey’s work in this area is just as beneficial to society as McKinsey’s work with Enron and the opioid pill vendors. “McKinsey’s Diversity Matters/Delivers/Wins Results Revisited”:

Combined with the erroneous reverse-causality nature of McKinsey’s tests, our inability to quasi-replicate their results suggests that despite the imprimatur given to McKinsey’s studies, they should not be relied on to support the view that US publicly traded firms can expect to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives.

More from the United Nations, this time a complaint that only 26 of the world’s countries have implemented McKinsey’s recommendations and selected female heads of state:

Given all of the above, shouldn’t we expect celebratory and congratulatory tweets from the United Nations, UN Women, McKinsey, et al. following Marine Le Pen’s recent electoral victory in France, the world’s 7th largest country by GDP (while working 32 hours/week and taking 8 weeks of vacation per year!)? Instead, the Guardian describes female leadership in France as “unthinkable”. The Washington Post says “Marine Le Pen is now part of France’s mainstream. That should scare us all.”

Separately, no discussion of France is complete without this poster:

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Celebrating Juneteenth here in Portugal

by philg

Portugal so far has been short on what Americans would consider Social Justice. We witnessed one pro-Hamas march on a Lisbon synagogue and the number of participants (about 50) was a tiny percentage of the Lisbon metro area population (nearly 3 million). The pro-Hamas encampment at the University of Coimbra was also poorly attended (and they let a dog walk on the sacred Palestinian flag; see future post). Our almost-9-year-old’s sharp eyes spotted a single rainbow flag, rather faded, above a bar in Lisbon (i.e., that’s one rainbow flag in a 10-day period). At Portugal dos Pequenitos, a theme park of miniature houses and architectural monuments designed to delight children, the Portuguese “voyages of discovery” are presented as great achievements, not as pernicious precursors to slavery and colonization:

Does all of the above mean that I am not participating in Juneteenth? Au contraire, as they say in Lisbon! Today I tried to return a phone call from John Hancock regarding my 90-year-old mom’s insurance. I turned on my Xfinity Mobile SIM ($10 per day of usage, with a meagre 0.5 GB data allotment that one will blow through in less than a day of using Google Maps, uploading a few photos, etc.) and called John Hancock. I spent about 15 minutes dealing with their automated system before an attempt was made to connect me with a human. My reward was a recording: “Our offices are closed today in observance of Juneteenth” (this became a new paid day off for government workers in 2021; see “Biden Signs Law Making Juneteenth a Federal Holiday” (NYT)).

Readers: How did you observe Juneteenth? Were you obstructed in any of your attempts to be productive?

Here’s Joe Biden crediting Black Americans as having “led the march from slavery to freedom”, but weren’t the relevant marches for Juneteenth led by Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman? Is he saying that Grant and Sherman identified as “Black”?

Related:

A video of the “Free Palestine” march on the synagogue in Lisbon that was around the corner from our hotel:

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Only rich young people are caring

by philg

Which young Americans care enough about their fellow humans (or at least those oppressed by Jews) to camp out in support of Hamas? The rich. From “Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” (Washington Monthly):

Using data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium and news reports of encampments, we matched information on every institution of higher education that has had pro-Palestinian protest activity (starting when the war broke out in October until early May) to the colleges in our 2023 college rankings. Of the 1,421 public and private nonprofit colleges that we ranked, 318 have had protests and 123 have had encampments.

By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.

Whatever the cause, the pattern is clear: Pro-Palestinian protests are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon.

A couple of charts from the article:

(Why would it be accurate to characterize these as “pro-Hamas” protests? See Talking with a pro-Hamas college student for how the expectation among the protesters is that their success will enable Hamas to rule Gaza for the foreseeable future.)

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