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You Can Still Read NASA's Deleted "First Woman" Graphic Novels

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43 pointsrbanffy27 comments

This anti-DEI push is really ridiculous. If you want to elevate merit, go elevate merit. Find someone who is successful, uplift it. If they're a woman, or black, or gay, or whatever, they get to write their story because they have merit.

Instead we're in the "undoing work" environment that frankly reminds me of Soviet Russia or Maoist China.

Hopefully we can emerge from this in a sort of "Deng Xiaoping moment".

I think we don't have to continue to pretend it was ever about merit. If it was, the current government would not look like it does.

Somehow an anti-DEI push is "ridiculous", but the prior pro-DEI push isn't?

There are those who were successful without merit, achieved renown/success only because they were DEI tokens.

Therefore if they didn't deserve their 'achievements' by the merits in the first place, there's nothing wrong with taking their stories down once the political climates have changed (especially a climate that encourages truth and merits over the political advantage that got those DEI tokens in in the first place).

> There are those who were successful without merit, achieved renown/success only because they were DEI tokens

Can you cite some examples?

Kamala Harris

I don't think that you're genuine in your response.

> Therefore if they didn't deserve their 'achievements' by the merits in the first place, there's nothing wrong with taking their stories down once the political climates have changed (especially a climate that encourages truth and merits over the political advantage that got those DEI tokens in in the first place).

Who hasn't earned what? You tell me.

The majority of the current administration are people who were put into positions of power with no merit. I can say pretty much all of the Trump administration cabinet nominees have no experience in the positions they are in. They're receiving sycophantic rewards.

I'm arguing to reward merit genuinely and that undoing work is regressive. You respond with "what about" (and no evidence).

I don't think years of experience is a good measure of merit. If you believe they're worse at their jobs, you should demonstrate that in some other way.

> I don't think years of experience is a good measure of merit.

I didn't point out years, you did. Any relevant experience. Though, merit is effectively a function of years of experience baring extreme circumstances.

> If you believe they're worse at their jobs, you should demonstrate that in some other way.

While I do think that they are effectively worse at their jobs, you're asserting that I said something that I didn't. I said they in the positions without merit. Which they all are. Linda McMahon has no education experience. RFK has no health experience. Kash Patel has no law enforcement experience. Hegseth has no DOD experience.

You can't say meritless those guys (dei) bad, but meritless our guys (Maga) good with any sort of consistency. And that's assuming that all of the dei guys are meritless. I can point to many who were of merit, but not sychopants, thus removed.

>Any relevant experience

I think it comes down to how well you think the government functioned prior to Trump. If you believe that it was terrible, then having experience in the old system can be seen as a negative. Btw I don't think you're entirely wrong in your concerns. I dislike both DEI and RFK's ideas. Unfortunately the question still remains, how can we find the best people for the job? I think the medical industry is incredibly corrupt and at the same time don't believe Joe Rogan will find a solution to this problem. Imo, the only solution is to fix the existing institutions, but I'm not sure how that can be done.

> Hegseth has no DOD experience.

He was an Army officer that served in combat missions during the Global War on Terror, how is that not DOD experience?

He was a commissioned officer, he has no experience with the bureaucracy of DoD. There is a big difference.

Some would call that a strength if the goal is institutional reform from a very different viewpoint.

Hesgeth has plenty of experience being Drunk on Duty, yep.

> If you believe they're worse at their jobs, you should demonstrate that in some other way.

Signalgate. The initial occurrence, the lying after, the demonizing of the reporter, the dismissal of its importance.

Hegseth’s nepotism is another interesting example. Or that episode when he was drunk, standing on top of a table chanting “kill all Arabs”.

The list goes on and on. There was no single nomination that didn’t have a lot of reasons not to go through, but they went anyway.

In my view, the lying, demonization, and dismissal of importance were pretty typical for a government scandal. They all play out that way, as the guilty parties try for damage control.

The initial occurrence was spectacularly incompetent in a way that seems to me to be worse than normal.

Please provide sources

The two are incompatible. You're either hiring based on race, gender, sexual identity etc. or based on merit. Firing people who got hired because of racist and sexist DEI practices increases merit.

I don’t think you fully understand what DEI means and what organisations do to improve in that regard. For instance, masking name (sometimes a good proxy for race) and gender in candidate assessments is a DEI measure and increases representation of marginalised groups. Did you know telescope time for minorities improved when reviewers couldn’t see the name of the scientist in the proposal? That’s DEI.

DEI means to work in removing biases that limit access of minorities to opportunities. When it works, being a white male doesn’t get confused with merit, as it usually is. Lots of people think this is discrimination, because their group isn’t being hired as much as before when, in fact, it’s just the removal of discrimination against others.

That's maybe 1% of DEI. The other 99% is stuff like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33165844 and making characters in video games ugly

> and making characters in video games ugly.

In what way?

This is a good video on the topic https://youtu.be/F7-18qCOfJo You can skip the first 13:40.

OMG! How can we live with all this fat acceptance? And lesbians! This is soooo offensive I might cry.

Seriously...

I've never understood "fat acceptance". Is your view that having more fat people in the media will help other fat people fell better about themselves? I have sympathy for them and understand that for some people it can be very difficult to lose weight, but I don't see how "fat acceptance" is going to help them. Especially given that on some level they must know how others really feel about it. It's interesting to see how these types of initiatives always produce the opposite of what they claim to stand for.

> I don't see how "fat acceptance" is going to help them

Did it occur to you to ask them what they want?

> Especially given that on some level they must know how others really feel about it.

It's not healthy to assign your self-value based on other people's opinions.

> It's interesting to see how these types of initiatives always produce the opposite of what they claim to stand for.

[Citation Needed]

On a more serious note, mental health is a very serious issue with women who feel they need to be thin to be fiscally healthy or attractive to others. Girls should never go through this.

This is the reasoning of a young child. How do you even define merit? Nobody, except maybe high level athletes are hired on what can be considered merit alone. To do so, you would have to remove people from the process altogether. Those who hire new talent have to evaluate more than pure results. Maybe they have to chose between two people, one is a rockstar with the results to show for it, but not a team player and puts themself first. the other is solid and dependable, better at mentoring, but with more modest results. Its not a given who will be hired in this case.

Sure, there was never a perfect meritocracy. I believe we should move towards a more meritocratic society and hiring based on gender and race goes against that.

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