moderatecentrist

joined 1 week ago
[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 7 hours ago

All societies have morals right? In pretty much any country, if you say something that is considered bad in that country, people won't like you. That's not censorship, it's just morals. In many countries, racism is usually considered bad, so if you say something that seems racist, many people won't like you.

If DHH wanted to make a point about culture in London then it's possible to do that without tying it to ethnicity.

 

I enjoyed this bit:

"I love ChatGPT," the blond-mopped Brexiteer told Al Arabiya English earlier this week.

Famous for making stuff up and going on flights of fancy, Johnson served as prime minister from July 2019 until September 2022, when he was ousted after misleading colleagues over a scandal involving his government's deputy chief whip, the party disciplinarian. OpenAI's ChatGPT is also prone to making statements that turn out not to be entirely true.

Let’s not say that reverse racism is a real thing, because that’s an imaginary racist trope.

My view is that racism can happen to any ethnicity: black, brown, white, anybody. It depends on the situation. If a business run entirely by white people disallows entry to a black person because they're black, that's racist, but if the races were reversed (a business run entirely by black people disallows entry to a white person because they're white), I'd say that's also racist. In fact if I end up talking to a white person about racism I might deliberately give them an example of a situation where a white person could experience racial discrimination, because that might make them think "fair point, I would dislike it if someone was racist to me, so maybe racism is a bad thing".

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not a fascist or a troll, and if someone wants to read exactly what DHH wrote, then they can click on the link to his blog post, which is in my summary. I think it's good that you're quoting more of it to be honest, so people can see what he wrote, and they can decide for themselves what they think about it. I'm not trying to "whitewash" anything, I just wanted to give people an overview of the situation so they can draw their own conclusions, whether positive or negative.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Firstly because when he says London is "no longer full of native Brits" he links to a Wikipedia page about ethnic groups in London. So he seems to be talking about ethnicity. Secondly, he says that these "native Brits" are now "about a third" of London. Looking at the Wikipedia page he linked to, the stats show that white Brits were 37% of London according to the 2021 census, which is about a third. It seems to me that's probably what he's talking about.

If "native Brits" just meant people born in the UK, or people with a British passport, then those figures are higher: 59% and 77% of London respectively (that page says that "In 2021, more than 4 in 10 (40.6%) usual residents in London were non-UK born, and more than 1 in 5 (23.3%) had a non-UK passport").

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 13 points 1 day ago

I think DHH is talking about ethnicity specifically though, not culture. He said London is "no longer full of native Brits", and he describes "native Brits" as now forming "about a third" of London. White Brits were 37% of London at the 2021 census, so I think that's what he's talking about.

It's possible to express disagreement with a cultural practice without making it about ethnicity. E.g. someone might object to men and women being separated for religious prayer. They might believe that men and women should pray together. It's possible to make that point without making it about ethnicity.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm just interested to see what the other side of the argument might be. Sometimes you might very strongly disagree with other people's views, or even be disgusted by those views, but you might still want to find out what those views are.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 26 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Ethnicity and culture are different. A person can choose to adopt whatever culture they want regardless of their ethnicity. Also if you said something like "I don't want that particular ethnicity to move to my neighbourhood due to their culture" then I think that's probably racist. I think it's fine to object to certain cultural aspects as long as you don't tie it to ethnicity though. E.g. if you said "I object to a cultural practice of treating women worse than men" then I think that's okay.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 30 points 1 day ago (12 children)

He doesn't seem to be talking about culture. He didn't say something like "London has fewer pubs than it used to". Instead he seems to be referring specifically to ethnicity. His interest in London seems to be reduced because more non-white people now live in London.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (25 children)

Is it okay for DHH to express his unhappiness that London is no longer mostly White British? He said "I thought I might move there one day... Now, I wouldn't dream of it. London is no longer the city I was infatuated with in the late '90s and early 2000s. Chiefly because it's no longer full of native Brits."

Let's say a lot of white people move to a previously black area. This causes a prominent person to write a blog saying "I thought I might move there one day... Now, I wouldn't dream of it. It's no longer the place I was infatuated with. Chiefly because it's no longer full of black residents." That would be racist wouldn't it?

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

This is why I joined feddit.uk. If I want UK-centric stuff then I can look at "local" posts. If I want to see more stuff (including US stuff) then I can look at "all" posts.

 

Here's my attempt to explain the situation in a brief way. DHH, the creator of Ruby on Rails, wrote some things which are considered racist by some people. This caused a prominent Ruby programmer to withdraw his large sponsorship of Ruby Central, a non-profit which organises Ruby conferences, because DHH spoke at one of their conferences. Therefore Ruby Central ended up very dependent on Shopify, a large company, for funding. One theory (mentioned in the article) is that Shopify (where DHH is a board member) then pressured Ruby Central to perform a "hostile takeover" of the RubyGems GitHub organisation, where they revoked the maintainer privileges of long-time contributors. What is RubyGems? It's a website which is the de facto standard source for "gems", which are Ruby packages. I guess this is equivalent to NPM in the Node/JavaScript world.

If you want to know the potentially racist stuff said by DHH, he essentially seemed to be unhappy that London is "no longer full of native Brits". He says "native Brits" now make up "about a third" of London. So by "native Brits" he seems to mean the White British ethnic group, because they made up 37% of London in the 2021 census.

The Ruby programmer who withdrew his sponsorship of Ruby Central (allegedly worth $250,000 according to the article) said this: "I rescinded a six-figure grant because the org invited DHH, a white supremacist, to speak. We cannot tolerate hateful people as leaders in our communities."

The "hostile takeover" of RubyGems has led some Ruby programmers to create an alternative to the RubyGems website. This alternative is gem.coop. Also there is an open letter signed by influential Ruby programmers which calls for Ruby on Rails to be forked so that DHH no longer has an association with it.

The article that this post links to is an update to the situation: Ruby Central is now taking steps to try and cool the controversy.

Thoughts on this?

Edit: fixed typo.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

the British are brainless

I don't think it makes sense to make judgements about the intelligence of everyone in a country based on an action done by some people in that country.

[–] moderatecentrist@feddit.uk 1 points 2 days ago

Maybe the UK needs politicians like they're starting to get in the USA. If you don't know this guy pictured, he's running to be mayor of New York. His campaign is all about making necessities more affordable (rent, food, transport), and his poll numbers are pretty good.

A photo of Zohran Mamdani, candidate for mayor of New York. He is standing at a podium which has a sign on the front with his first name in capital letters. There are spectators. Behind Zohran is a sign which says "afford to live & afford to dream".

 

He has said:

I take no position per se on Brexit... But, I quite often get asked a second question: what's the impact on economic growth?

And the answer is that for the foreseeable future it is negative.

Thoughts on this?

 

Thoughts?

 

Some people in Birmingham are putting up anti-racism posters to express opposition to hate incidents. Also of course there have been the flags going up on lamp posts which the article says have "caused fear and anxiety".

Thoughts?

Six neighbours (three men and three women) standing on a pavement in their neighbourhood. The woman in the middle of the photo is holding a sign which says "Brummies united against racism & hate crime", with three hashtags underneath: "#brumunited", "#fightracism", and "#noplaceforhate".

 

This Hamas official has said a couple of interesting things:

  1. He doesn't want Sir Tony Blair (former UK prime minister) involved in the governance of Gaza, despite Trump's plan for the region proposing this.
  2. Hamas doesn't plan to disarm, unless they are giving their weapons to a future Palestinian army.

Quote about the first point:

"When it comes to Tony Blair, unfortunately, we Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe others around the world have bad memories of him... We can still remember his role in killing, causing thousands or millions of deaths to innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq... We can still remember him very well after destroying Iraq and Afghanistan."

Quote about the second point:

Dr Naim said Hamas would not completely disarm and that weapons would only be handed over to the Palestinian state, with fighters integrated into the Palestinian National Army... "No one has the right to deny us the right to resist the occupation of armies," he said.

Thoughts on this?

 

Zarah sounds similar to Zack Polanski, the Greens leader, with her messaging:

“The truth is, Reform is just another wing of the political establishment,” she said. “Funded by billionaires and aristocrats, fronted by a millionaire stockbroker, an ex-public school boy, Nigel Farage. He is peddling racism to distract us from the real agenda: more privatisation, more deregulation, more handouts for the rich, more cuts for everyone else.”

 

In a post on X, the committee says it has awarded Maria Corina Machado the Nobel Peace Prize "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy".

I expect Donald Trump will write an angry social media post about this, claiming that he should have won.

 

Is this guy right? Should Brexit be reversed?

The article links to some interesting YouGov statistics about current British opinion on Brexit. For example, a majority of Brits support rejoining the EU:

A chart showing some statistics regarding British opinion towards the EU. For example, 36% of Brits apparently "strongly support" rejoining the EU, 20% somewhat support rejoining the EU, 10% don't know if they support rejoining the EU, 10% somewhat oppose rejoining the EU, and 24% strongly oppose rejoining the EU. The rest of the stats in this image can be seen on YouGov's website, in an article posted on June 19th, 2025.

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