Tag: hypocrisy

Man, fuck NCR

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In short: stuffy Fortune 500 company NCR settles agreement with neighboring longstanding mainstay gentlemen’s club The Cheetah, to remove their iconic rotating sign, presumably so it wasn’t so obvious that their fancy Midtown offices wasn’t practically right next to, a strip club

NCR is a company in which just hearing the name would probably elicit crickets from most people.  But NCR is also the company that makes products that all around the world, people have seen their products: card readers, ATM components, and all sorts of POS equipment.  Yeah, NCR is vastly responsible for the majority of that crap all across the globe.

They’re also a company that I have personally dealt with at a previous place I worked, and they were what I would describe as a problem child of a business to work with.  Nitpicky as all hell, demanding, inconsiderate of both time and resources, I spent many extra hours of my life working on their shit, and with each round of corrections, they demanded fresh hard copies of their training materials to review, no matter how small or inconsequential the changes were. 

No lie, I must’ve used at least two boxes of letter paper for just their training manuals alone, and that was just to develop them.  I can’t imagine how many trees had to die for these fucks to actually produce them after they were finalized and approved to send to the printer.

Frankly, I have no love lost for NCR.  I resent them as a company and I can’t help but twitch when I use a card somewhere and I catch a glimpse of their logo on the POS equipment that I have to use in order to finish a transaction.

But that was just how they affected me; and now they’re affecting the landscapes of our fair city, Atlanta?  By forcibly having removed, one of icons of the city, that was here long before they even had any consideration of coming into Atlanta?

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This wouldn’t fly the other way around

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Somehow this is okay: Detroit Lions cornerback proclaims “never saw a white guy” like Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey

Double standards are fun!  Imagine if the situation were reversed, and a white player were talking about a black player excelling at a role that black players weren’t necessarily known for playing.  Imagine if Eli Manning praised a black placekicker:

“Ah’ve never seen a black guy…” and then he would get his ass kicked by every black guy in the locker room before he could even finish the statement, because that’s just how things are in this day and age.  Or, he’d get the entire statement of praise out, and despite being phrase, Stephen A. Smith would absolutely blast him on The Ocho, calling him a racist, the Giants would suspend him, and the NFL would make him have to take sensitivity training.

The point is, even using the word “black” piques ears and interest like prairie dogs, regardless of what follows it, just in case it’s in reference to race, but applied the other way around, and it’s completely acceptable and okay.

I get that Darius Slay is really trying to praise Christian McCaffrey, but what does race have anything to do with it?  McCaffrey is an incredible running back regardless of if the color of his skin were white, black, green or Kree blue.  But nope, gotta get that white guy commentary in there, because black folks are allowed to do that.  And not just to white people, but all races, because society has been so whipped into feeling guilty for the treatment of blacks in history that they’re entirely given a free pass to make racist remarks without any repercussion.

I can’t wait for one of the numerous Korean placekickers in college and free agency gets singled out for being great kickers… for a Chinese guy.  If you think there’s vitriol in this post, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

When changing the terminology makes things acceptable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not long ago, my department at work sent out emails for people to sign up for the departmental Slack channel.  Prior to starting working here, I’d never even heard of Slack.  I figured out quickly that it was a chat client, but the most substantial use for it that I’d heard of it prior to receiving my own invitation to join was that people on campus had a specific channel that sent notifications if there were any free leftover food up for grabs anywhere on site.

I didn’t feel that a chat client was remotely conducive to work productivity, so I ignored the invitation and didn’t have any intention of signing up.  Frankly, in my career, I’d been admonished in the past and conditioned to think that chat clients were counterproductive in the workplace.  Seeing as how I like my job these days, I decided to not join in on something that I thought would be counterproductive, so I just let the invitation go ignored.

And then I got a follow-up email a few days later from management, that was sent directly to only the individuals who had not yet signed up for the departmental Slack channel, imploring them to do so.

This was my reaction to being told that I was supposed to join Slack.

Upon logging into the client, I started toggling around the work-sanctioned channels to see what all the fuss was all about.

I saw more gifs than I did human-written words.

I logged off Slack, and haven’t opened it since.  I do not feel at all that I’ve missed out in any capacity of essential information or anything pertinent for me to do my job.

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Awareness is pointless without action

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I read this interesting article that brought up the topic that if Atlanta’s Jesus Sidewalk AKA the BeltLine, continues to grow without much regulation, then it will effectively re-segregate the city, due to the aggressive gentrification that’s it’s bringing in spades as it churns merrily along.

The funny thing is that this isn’t the first nor will it be the last time articles like this emerge, but it is admittedly one of the more data-driven articles, as it links to a 60+ page case study about the effects and repercussions of the gentrification which is a pretty good read in its own right.

The harsh reality about all this information is that just about everyone paying attention knows this is going on, and no amount of awareness of the situation is going to change the fact that it is happening, will continue to happen, and be a potential reality, because in spite of all of the information, nothing is happening to stop it. 

But that sounds about right as far as the objectives of the BeltLine are concerned – beautify, gentrify, and then profit; repercussions of any failed promises of affordable housing or the guerilla eviction of existing residents can be suppressed and brushed under the rug later, preferably one that exists in the lobby or the ornate dining area of one of the expensive buildings built along it at a later date.

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Tarnishing my Astro hopes

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It’s no secret that I’m pulling for the Houston Astros in this year’s World Series.  After all, I predicted them to go all the way long before the season got started, and when it comes to sports fans, fewer things are more gratifying than being right, so it’s exciting to me that the team I called in December actually has a legitimate shot to fulfill my prediction.

But I have to say that even if the Astros pull off the victory, it’s going to be somewhat of a tainted victory, marred by naturally, some off-the-field shenanigans that the media has snowballed into a gargantuan deal that goes viral on social media and overshadows the event in which it took place, regardless of just how good of an event the actual event is turning out to be.

Because that’s what social media does, it ruins everything.

So the Astros’ first baseman, Yuliesky Gourriel AKA Yuli Gurriel to the hordes of people who don’t actually give a shit about baseball but have heard about this unfortunate story and want to be outraged by it anyway, was caught on camera making a supposed racist gesture towards the Dodgers’ pitcher Yu Darvish, whom everyone seems to be identifying as solely Japanese despite the fact that he’s actually half Iranian.

The thing is, I saw when this happened live, because I actually like baseball and was actually watching the game when the event occurred: Gurriel hits a home run off of Darvish, and then is back in the dugout.  Because FOX loves to pan cameras back to the person of the moment, they’re repeatedly panning back on Gurriel who is now back in the dugout, smiling and laughing with all of his present teammates, ecstatic at giving the Astros a lead on the Dodgers.  The offensive moment is all of 0.5 seconds, before Gurriel is back to quaffing his doofy bouffant hair.

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Racist double standards, #47

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SSDD: Ex-NBA player Kenyon Martin blasts current NBA player Jeremy Lin about having dreadlocks, accuses him of “wanting to be black,” Lin rebuts with kindness but also points out Martin’s Chinese character tattoos, owning him as if slavery still existed

Another day, another double standard where a black guy cries victim of ____, but has no hesitation of taking it out on Asian guys.  Honestly, there was a time where I kind of liked Kenyon Martin; I loved those Nets teams of the 2000s with Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson, and I totally pulled for them in the Finals against the Spurs where they lost in six.

Sure, there were always questions about his character, his propensity to whine and argue fouls and his perceived character based on the countless tattoos and questionable demeanor.  But he was still a really decent basketball player that was fun to watch, so I never had any problem with him, even when those Nets teams disbanded and he went off to Denver before I stopped giving any shits about the NBA in general.

But I guess I’m not surprised by him coming out on social media and blasting current-Net Jeremy Lin for having dreadlocks and accusing him of misappropriating black culture and “trying to be black.”  However, I did think of how stupid he sounded before I even read about Lin’s rebuttal, because one, he’s validating the oft-notion that black guys love to pull the race card when they feel that they’re being wronged, but have zero hesitations when it comes to putting down Asians themselves.  Two, dreadlocks do not solely belong to black culture, as I’m sure hippies of all races and colors, Jamaicans and any other Dutch or Latin cultures that utilize dreads would attest to.  And third, I astutely remember that Kenyon Martin has at least one prominent tattoo of Chinese characters, which by his logic would mean he’s misappropriating Chinese culture, thus making him a giant hypocrite.

Well, Kenyon Martin wasn’t in the NBA because of his brains; it just so happens unfortunately for him that the guy he was trading social media barbs with is also Harvard-educated on top of being on his former team.

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This is precisely why my trust in white people is fractured

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the vast majority of nerds that comprise of the vast majority of my social media circles, there was an individual that many of us knew/knew of identified as having been present in Charlottesville during the weekend of hell there.  This was confirmed by commentary made by them that stated as such, and that’s pretty much all that there needed to be known by the community before the witch hunt began and the shit started to fly.

Typically, my go-to move on social media is to unfollow people but not outright unfriend people, if I don’t like seeing what people post.  Whether they post too much for my liking, post opinions that I don’t want to see, flood my streams full of narcissism and/or selfies, or all of the above, among other reasons, I’ll usually unfollow first, but rarely unfriend.  I don’t want paranoid people eventually discovering that they’ve been unfriended and to have an uncomfortable conversation later down the line, and if it can be avoided, I’d rather avoid it.

But it’s not every day that you find out that someone you know personally, have allowed into your home, and allowed to pet and carry your dog, with smiles and seeming sincerity, marched in a rally and chanted discriminatory rhetoric with known white supremacists.

This is why my trust in white people has taken a critical hit, and why I can’t feel like I can ever let my guard down with them.  Even those that I’ve known for a while, apparently.

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