This is a genuine question based on my desire to get a better understanding of our current progressive culture. I am not passing judgement and I hope you can answer honestly. Did you ask this question with the term 'cultural appropriation' in mind? Does this sweater make you uncomfortable and if so why?

My question was also genuine. I was curious. Its not a common thing to wear.

Ouch. This comment backfired quite badly. Turns out the person being replied to is Korean, the commenter is likely not, and in addition this is how the authors wrote their names themselves.

Yet I do not wish this comment to be snarky. I’m interested in the broader perspective (and I apologize in advance to the parent for using this as an hook). The comment seems common of the present era in which polarization (leading to prejudice against anyone we believe is outside our in-group), and short attention span (leading to drive by/poorly researched comments), combine to low empathy among us. And just to be clear, I’m not putting myself above this, on a bad day this kind of comment could have come from me.

Am I right and things were better on the past on the empathy axis? Or am I exaggerating and getting old?

Just like I want to believe LK99 is RTAPS, I want to believe that you are correct.

But just like with LK99, this might be wishful thinking from me. I am also getting old.

You never write cjk names with firstname first, always surname first. Japanese usually complain, the others just shake their heads silently about the silly westerners.

When the original author writes his/her name american style he/she moved to america, but then he/she changed his firstname also. In this case some citations may started out wrong, as journalists have no idea how to write foreign names, scientists and experts usually do.

the commenter knows how write foreign names, even if some author succumbed to western stupidity.

Seeing mistakes about Korean names in the media is very common. It's a lost cause at this point

That's not the issue, though, the issue is staunchly defending something on behalf of some other group. It's noble, but it sometimes backfires because the group itself doesn't even care that much about the thing being defended.

It reminds me of the time that I got reprimanded at work for saying I'll "wear a rainbow scarf" together with a gay coworker and friend, when the coworker didn't even see what could be offensive in the statement.

What is offensive about wearing a rainbow scarf?

If I remember correctly (it's been a few years), it's because I'm not gay.

I think we're sort of climbing out of a local maximum of entropy. It's gotten better in some ways and worse at others. It'll take some time for everything to settle out.

Life is not a zero sum game. Clearly Elon and Gwynne work very well together and Gwynne is a very talented operator. Both talents are essential but I do believe Elon’s talent would be harder to replace.

As others mentioned the hit pieces will come anyway. The success that SpaceX has had so far very clearly shows that aiming high and embracing failure is the best way to develop rockets.

No such thing as bad publicity, I take it?

I would not go as far as that. But pushing boundaries means you will be misunderstood, at least some of the time. It’s par for the course.

Fair point, indeed.

How sad and tired that you have to keep dragging up this old story. I’m not going to go in the merits but may I suggest it’s time for forgiveness and reconciliation?

> I'm so tired of the constant battle to make very simple, innocent ideas political.

You may be tired, and I may get downvoted, but this is oversimplifying the problem so much that the message itself seems political. First, identifying pronouns is not really opt-in. There is significant peer pressure, and once you're the lone holdout, it's very hard to keep yourself pronoun-less without becoming a social outcast and targeted as a bigot.

I am 100% behind equal rights for trans people, and will call anyone by their preferred pronoun (he or she, on the fence on they, and would probably not go into the neo-pronouns). That said, my wish is that the default mode to address someone is based on observed external sex characteristics, and where people whose external sex characteristics match their traditional pronouns do not communicate their pronouns. My reasons are that at a young age, kids are extremely easy to influence, and I have a strong feeling that many kids identify as another sex to mask other underlying issues. For similar contrarian perspective see the book Irreversible Damage and also Blair White's youtube channel.

> People weren't purchasing Pelotons with $600 stimulus checks.

Anecdotally, they totally were. In my immediate friends group, families that were eligible for stimulus (making around $120K/yr) spent it on luxury items including photo cameras and as a downpayment for new cars. I don't know anyone who bought a peloton but extrapolating what I saw in my circle, it's totally believable.

At one of the hyperscalers myself. We are actively merging components for performance. We will keep internal modular boundaries where we can and there will be some small number of abstraction violations for performance.