Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

I believe the Stanford guide was meant for more than just official correspondence. It's purpose is exactly as stated: the elimination of harmful language (from their viewpoint and judgement).

First of all, I would never use terms like "balls to the wall", "guru", or "stupid" in any of my policy documents or presentations to senior management. In place of those specific words, I would use "full effort", "SME", and "unwise" respectively. Jargon or colloquialisms are not appropriate in such writing.

However in meetings with staff and engineers, I (as well as many others) have used the following terms with impunity:

Guru, tarball, user, black hat, white paper, grandfathered, red team*, white list, killed it, normal person, user, low man on the totem pole, spaz, crazy, OCD, scrummaster, and asshole.

On occasion, I will do so in footnotes. So yes, given how sensitive some people are today. See note at end of post.

There is a difference between exercising good judgement and blindly following the insane, I mean extreme minority of 0.001%,

Stanford decided to cancel this list because of public ridicule. I applaud efforts at inclusion including affirmative action which many other Asians do not. The point is there are decent efforts, even efforts that push things a bit, and then there is stuff that has totally gone off the deep end making otherwise good people feel that they are walking on eggshells. Heck, now I'm wondering if "go off on the deep end" is somehow harmful to a group?

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P.S. One the tenants of Buddhism is that you are going to be an asshole to somebody no matter what. No one, well no well meaning person wants to be an asshole, but this can never be avoided. The most holy person in the world is gonna be an asshole to somebody.

*Like capture the flag or cybersecurity exercises, red team and blue team. Red team on offense, blue team on defense. Red team does not refer to indigenous peoples. Maybe we should instead call the offensive team the white team and the defensive team the brown team? After all, this seems acceptable.

 

Doesn't matter. Stanford killed it because realized they would be a laughing stock because of many of the legitimate issues that have been pointed out.

A technical writing, professional writing, or advanced English class in at a proper college or university (Trump University is not one of them) would have taken care of 99% of it. No need to come up with a naughty words and phrase list. This is just virtue signalling.

I highly doubt anyone at Stanford IT publishing a website or writing a manual is going to use words like half-breed, Indian-giver, jewed, Geronimo, Karen, ghetto, etc. In fact, I've never seen these words used in technical documentation ever. Or if I did, there was probably something wrong with the writer, who would eventually get fired for stupidity, I mean uncoolness. What's next? Wasian? (My kids refer to themselves as Wasian).

I'll see stuff like guru, red team, blacklist, scrummaster in my company documentation all the time. Trust me, no one has imagery of native peoples, black people, and slave masters when these words are used. (Although scrummaster makes me think of scrotum). With respect to guru, it's totally fine to use guru to mean SME. I lived close to an ashram and studied under a real Buddhist guru for years. The use of guru for an SME does not "casually negate its original value". In fact, I think the word guru is perfect because an SME is someone we should ask as many questions as possible and learn from, while being respectful of their time. I'd even argue that we use guru instead of SME! (Mainly because most "SMEs" these days are self-proclaimed LinkedIn fucktards loaded with XYZ certifications who often use words like "transformational").

The problem with people having a problem with "guru" to mean SME is this: orientalism. Oooh, it's mystical! The thing with authentic religious practice is that it isn't mystical. It's very grounded and f'ing hard. The process to becoming a guru at an IT specialty or religious tradition (or even bodybuilding) is the same. This is what modern self help books never say - again, because of orientalism.

P.S. The Stanford list forgot "welsh", e.g. He welshed on his loan. Def: a white person who reneged on or retracted an earlier promise.

P.S.S.

My point: the people who wrote the Stanford EHLI are assholes to me and I am an asshole to them. Now let's figure out how to get along.

 

Oh the irony! That the group of people who have appointed themselves the guardians of non-harm toward other less represented people, subscribe to orientalism.

CO-WORKER: Ask Marv, he's the SIEM guru around here.

GUARDIAN: How dare you negate the original value of the word guru! Please refer to Marv as an SME or subject matter expert.

MARV: <punches Guardian in the face>

Indeed. My mom is a Karen. Kids and I kind of slowly walk away and pretend we don't know her at times in public.

...

Ding ding ding! Someone noticed. The fact that "white" was stipulated as condition for the definition of "Karen" illustrates the bias of the authors. The authors probably aren't even aware that their document reeks of absolulist self righteousness. I've noticed this tendency to be stronger in Western society, particularly American, I mean United-States-ian.

The reason I know is because I've been here before when I was much younger at university participating in Asian student organizations. What eventually got to me was the bubble mentality that tried to get us to think that we were disadvantaged somehow because of the yellow color of our skin. At a certain point, I simply stood up and said: What the f**k are you guys talking about. All of us are in top 40 universities. All us are in serious majors, not indian basket weaving (that would be indigenous studies). We aren't super rich, but our parents obviously had money to send us here. Sure we may be unrepresented in politics, upper management, and certain sectors (this was back then); but we most certainly are not disadvantaged in any way! I got up and left, and never looked back.

I do wonder a few things about the authors:

• Have they actually done real IT work?
• Participated in red team / blue team cyber security exercises
• Been inside the cockpit of a plane (to better understand "balls to the wall"). Sorry, is there a less harmful word for cock pit?
• Participated in the consecration a stupa under the direction of a guru where rainbows appeared in the sky
• Entered whitelists or blacklists into firewall policies
• Dealt with a gray hat hacker who was trying to extort the company for their "discoveries"
• Acted as a scrum master for an Agile team
• Used the GIMP image editor on a Linux system
• Submitted a change control request form
• Were actually immigrants into the USA

The fact is, none of these terms are harmful. However, if people want to look for ways to be offended, they always will if they look hard enough.