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If you look at it from a cultural perspective, many African American boys/men in extremely dangerous and poor areas use marijuana as a way to NOT develop mental issues. Considering how little mental help or even how little routine healthcare these men/boys receive, it makes sense to find SOMETHING to cope. Dependence on alcohol has clear bad-examples of the "wino", or street drunk. Same with the use of crack cocaine (the "crack" head/ the "fiend"). So many black men smoke lots of marijuana, but don't drink and don't do any other drugs.

Also, the environments they need to navigate requires understanding tattoos, colors, signs and tons of other subtle social cues in order to not become a target or deemed to be weak. There may be an under-reporting of instances of schizophrenia, but on a whole these brothers aren't showing signs of schizophrenia due to over use of marijuana.

And really, our current laws are just used to arrest someone, who might be an overall good person, besides the social stigma of "weed smoker". I really do beg anyone who is conservative on this issue due to the POSSIBILITY of someone developing schizophrenia, to maybe consider this as magnitudes less harmful than the use of marijuana policy to target black men; specifically black boys; and putting them in jail and ruining their future. You have to understand the environments they are coming from; so just saying "stay off the dope" is very callous and uninformed. Your life experience isn't the template for everyone.

I know this is a touchy topic on HN, but I really do hope we are able to open our circle of trust to people we wouldn't normally think about.


Don't use the meeting as a forum to emote. We all make mistakes, we don't need a 5 minute monologue to explain it. We all hate meetings, we don't need to spend time on the actual meeting complaining about it. Have your information ready to go. Know how to use the mute button and be ready to respond right away. So much time is wasted by "I couldn't find the mute button" or whatever. Don't be passive aggressive. Just answer the question. If you don't know, say you will get back right after the meeting. If you aren't proficient at JIRA, make the ticket AFTER the meeting. This applies to all technology. If you can't do it in under 15 seconds, write it down and do it right later. Stop holding the meeting hostage cause you have to do your process, your way, in your time. "Hold on let me add it to my calender". No, write it down and do it after the meeting. Unless this is an actual deployment or something, don't waste time going through all the technical details; unless everyone on the call is very technical. Make the conversation accessible to all members of the call; or else they shouldn't be on the call. I can go on...


I think the issue is where you draw the line between inputs and outputs. If you are judging being in the advanced class the outcome; then you are right to look at biological and social/cultural differences. But when you look at the wealth prospects of these kids beyond 5th and 6th grade, you see that an African-American with a college education has as much wealth as a "white" high school dropout. There has to be more going on here than just biologies and bell-curves.

You also have to ask, statistically, who is educating the children? Mainly white women. Who does the worst in school? Black boys. The 2 groups with the least amount of things in common. Being able to effectively communicate with someone who doesn't come from your culture seems to be important when it comes to education, right? You click on the article and you are looking at a big picture of a white lady. I didn't have a single male teacher (besides for gym) until my sophomore year (I think AP Trigonometry?). At the very least, we need a 50/50 mix of male and female teachers.

Trust me, though. I don't agree with them getting rid of gifted programs. I don't think you can deal with racism with feel good platitudes and policies. The issue is the wealth gap; that's it. If African-Americans had similar wealth prospects as other groups besides latinos, most of these issues would disappear. African Americans built the country and weren't paid for any of it. We are talking about a group who has been financially shackled for hundreds of years via federal laws; and now we are living in a hyper-capitalistic society. How can you "move out" the hood without money? Heck, can blacks from the hood even get jobs picking fruit on farms like "illegal" workers. Fighting racism against blacks is about a debt that is owed and has never been paid; not about reliving Jim Crow or throwing racists in jail or making white people feel bad about themselves. You can't legislate a man's heart (1st amendment and all).


You are mostly making my point. My second point was classism, which was saying precisely what you are saying.

I was replying to someone who was arguing that everything was solely racism. That doesn't make sense to me. In fact, you argue that white women have not been doing a fair job teaching black men. But why are Asian americans excelling in school then? I don't think it's just racism to blame.

> Fighting racism against blacks is about a debt that is owed and has never been paid

And that's one bad argument. Reparations? Look, I'm from India and india was for a long time ruled by the british, and an even longer time ruled by muslim rulers who became the elite in india. So, if one tells me that britain needs to return the stolen 45 trillion (yup somebody estimated this bullshit number), or that muslims need to pay reparations, I'm pretty sure they would be called racist nationalists.

The law should only make sure that the people right now have equal opportunities for them, regardless of their history, skin color, ethnicity, and even wealth. Everything else is a illiberal idea that can only make things worse


India has a caste system. That's more comparable to African American and White American relations than the British rule of Indian. No one is asking Britain for anything. When your own country has put in you in a caste system; then all of a sudden end the caste system via the law; but don't do anything to fix the damage done; that's a problem.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/pages/article/indias-unto...

And the real issue is, you can't have a fair society if we have different castes of people. This is not about class; because if it were you would see different results in the wealths of even first generation immigrants to America compared to African Americans. People who have been in America for 200 years or more have as much wealth as people immigrate illegally. You forget, that people who are able to LEGALLY immigrate to America are people who have the money to do it. Even Africans (NOT African Americans) come to American with more money than African Americans. And Africans don't see themselves as "black". Another reason it's not about skin color, many people from India can be much darker than your average African American. We are talking about a specific group of people that has been caste on the bottom. This is about lineage.

People aren't living in the hoods because they statistically fall on the part of a bell curve that makes them dumber than most; which is why they can't succeed. You can't draw a direct line between IQ tests and how much money someone makes; so that point doesn't matter.

Also, I don't think it's about blaming white women or saying they are doing a "bad" job; especially when you see that many of the black boys are coming from single mother households. This starts to get into uncomfortable territory; but let's just say this isn't about putting the blame on "white people" or "women" or any particular group of people. This is about shame on the American Government for not finding the will to make this right. This is an investment into a large portion of untapped potential in America.

In terms of Asians being able to learn from white teachers; anecdotally many of the Asian Americans I grew up with were forced to learn English very well and were very respectable. Furthermore, they had parents that made sure they excelled in school. It wasn't about them being smarter; it was about them having a disciplined environment. I think cultural, specifically Chinese and Japanese cultures, fitting in is more favored. African American culture is based on attention and being unique. Not understanding the culture will make it hard to understand the person.

If you won't listen to me, listen to Christopher Hitchins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MNu2GNx-kQ

Finally, as a side note, I respect where you are from and all; but your country has literally very little rule of law. I'm not saying every single place, but we aren't going to use India as any measuring stick for democracy or restorative justice. Most people I know from India would concur. America has so many flaws, but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Having been to many countries, I love them all, but there is a reason the world is being "westernized"; for good or for bad. Cheers mate!


Your argument is all over the place, and it literally says that i said originally. That the differences are caused by a variety of reasons and not just racism.

For example, you started with saying that white women are racist for not teaching black men properly. But then changed it to say that it is cultural because black men are in single households. Said the same thing for asian americans, and pretend to say that i said that asian americans do better because they are genetically smarter. No i didn't mean that. The strictAsian american parent is a stereotype for a reason.

In the end, reparations are a bad and illiberal idea. I can probably never give any example of how it can go bad because you'll just dismiss it like you did.


Gamestop needs to focus on having tons of e-sports tournaments (with a buy in and/or membership fee). Create an esports league and have national/regional/local tournaments. Also they need to be live streaming on twitch from each location. As a rule, from corporate down to the local shop, they should be creating online content about video games. They should leverage their position with Microsoft to see if they can work with Game companies to get secrets/easter eggs in games and then be the streamers that are known for revealing game secrets. Make it about the gamer experience. Once the pandemic lifts, having physical locals can be a great strength if used well. Do e-sport lessons. Have retro nights. Do arcade pop ups. They need to focus on branding/cool factor. Be a safe space for YOUNG kids. There is tons of stuff they can try besides inventing some tech platform.


The best language is the one you can make money with or positively affect the world. Please grow up out of this old debate. You all sound like 3 year olds...


You can make money with COBOL. Does it make it the best language? Considering that you can make money with any other language as well?


You're comparing COBOL with a language that has namespaces, traits, closures, reflection and just gained a JIT compiler, named arguments, annotations and match expressions.

Exhibit A of your parent's point.


Seems more like a "DO SOMETHING" rant to me...


For me the the issue with upgrading is that when you buy a piece of hardware, specifically DJ gear (Serato), mixers/interfaces, etc; the latest and greatest often doesn't support it. Then you are hoping and wishing for the company to create drivers to support your expensive hardware on the latest Catalina OS upgrade. That's why when you see interviews with many musicians that have home studios, the computers aren't the newest. Once you have a stable situation that works, why change all the time?


Why don't we.... 1. Allow pharmacies to test for COVID (currently illegal in California) 2. Make COVID testing mandatory every 2 weeks via a statewide digital system (like jury duty). California could then partner will pharmacies to allow wider spread testing. We could even create jobs by hiring and training those who are unemployed to administer the actual tests. 3. Make it mandatory that every business/person use the statewide system to scan people to ensure they have been tested recently. That, combined with temperature checks at the door will serve to catch any issues quickly; as well as providing REAL TIME feed back to the state about possible infections and outbreaks

It seems to me that pandemics are the new normal. We aren't going to have a vaccine ready for every virus within 1-2 years; so it seems prudent for us to invest in a good system now with a virus that isn't as deadly.

What does everyone else think? I really would like to create a thread and have some of the best minds (yes that's you) work on a real solution. Let's plan it and build it!


Another link related to racial wealth gap: https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/wha...


It seems that it really doesn't matter what method you use; as long as you use it well...

See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voting-methods/


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