Black Myth: Wukong Devs Refused To Work with Sweet Baby Inc. - "Sweet Baby Inc. has become a huge presence in the gaming industry. They influenced the development of many current and upcoming games... It is also interesting to note that Sweet Baby Inc. is more influential in the West. Games from Asian regions typically aren’t influenced by them, though there are exceptions, like the Silent Hill 2 Remake. Nonetheless, this won’t impact Black Myth Wukong in any meaningful way. One might even expect the game to be better because of Game Science’s refusal. While diversity and representation in games are not wrong, forced inclusivity seems like an unwise move. It makes even less sense for a game like Black Myth Wukong, which is based on existing source material. Sweet Baby Inc. is also known for not caring much about its projects. Therefore, Game Science likely made a wise decision. Many have even argued that Sweet Baby Inc. has no place in gaming."
Pirat_Nation 🔴 on X - ">Chinese media: 'Black Myth: Wukong' refused to be extorted $7 million by SweetBaby.
English: The reason why the team behind "Black Myth: Wukong" has been subjected to persistent sexist attacks and slander since their first promotional video is because they have consistently refused political correctness guidance and rejected the extortionate guidance fees of millions of dollars demanded by these political correctness teams. Actually, such teams are quite common in Europe and America. They interfere with works like "Assassin's Creed" "Dying Light 2 Stay Human" and "God of War" by pushing for politically correct female protagonists. These changes are the direct result of the interference and guidance of such teams. Game science teams refuse to communicate with these groups and reject their interference. Most importantly, they refuse to pay the exorbitant $7 million in guidance fees. This is the direct reason why they are being attacked and slandered. Some justifications are based on the team's lack of diversity or representation, which doesn't align with the political correctness standards. A typical example is an article by a major IGN writer criticizing "Hogwarts Legacy" and refusing to evaluate or promote it due to its alleged lack of political correctness."
Square Enix Shareholder Presses Company President On Relationship With Sweet Baby Inc., Receives Non-Answer In Return - "“I would like to refrain from making specific comments about individual clients,” said Kiryu, per @Michsuzu. “As we shift from quantity to quality, providing content that is enjoyable and safe for our customers is also part of what makes a product fun. We will do our best as creators.”... While “safe” could mean a game that is a ‘safe bet’ for investors, in this context it seems far more likely it means a game that does not offend any sociopolitical sensibilities. Safe games are partly the reason Sweet Baby Inc.- and Square Enix efforts at DEI – have been so loathed. Rather than simply avoid offense surrounding a given subject, DEI demands that said subject instead be presented as particularly special, often unrealistically so. Combine this sentiment with poor writing, and what usually results is characters and stories that feel like a soapbox, rather than entertainment. And when the gameplay also turns out to be bad, as seen in the Sweet Baby Inc.-influenced Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it can be hard not to imagine that the money and time spent by studios on the consultation studio’s efforts would have been better spent on improving the quality of their actual products. Sadly, as players know, Square Enix has made a concerted effort in recent years to sand the edges off their various titles in order to boost their sales among Western audiences, the results have which include the censoring of Tifa Lockheart’s outfit in Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth, the addition of non-binary gender options to Harvestella, and the softening of slavery-related dialogue in Final Fantasy XVI. Nonetheless, there are signs Square Enix isn’t entirely beholden to DEI. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth featured beachwear for Tifa and Aerith while joking about the male characters understandable reactions, and Mana Series Producer Masaru Oyamada in an April interview made clear his belief that it’s “best to deliver [a] game based on the developers’ creative vision.”"
Why do so many adverts here have a black woman with a shaved head? : r/AskUK - "Am i the only one noticing this? I'm not trying to discriminate or anything, but i've never seen a black woman with a shaved head in real life, yet I keep seeing them in adverts..."
"It’s not just that. It’s pretty much every advert with have black representation despite only making up only 4% of the population, yet by comparison despite making up 9.3% you’ll see far less Asian people"
"So why no Chinese and Indian people ? I never see them in ads"
"Because it's a result of BLM and not an attempt at anything more than easy virtue signalling unfortunately"
"Black ppl only make up 13.5% of London and they’re absolutely everywhere in Uk media/ads. South Asians make up significantly more of Londons population than that and they don’t get anywhere the same rep. The truth is western society (esp the more americanised ones) has HUGEEEE fetish for black people. Just look at how many black male/white female couplings there are in ads/media in the west."
"I like to play spot the Indian in adverts and tv. There are pretty much none. It feels weird when they are such a big part of the culture and are so numerous. It has certainly happened in the last few years"
"Since BLM especially there is a huge push for DEI and employees and agencies are actually rated on it. It has a big effect on industry awards as well."
"Plus there are quotas to meet. This is just ITV!"
"I personally like it when you have a black mother, white dad and asian child."
"I recall a study/survey that basically said black people really appreciated seeing themselves represented in advertising, whereas for other races it didn't move the needle."
"And the couples always have to be interracial, and the only time they're not it's a black couple. It's quite rare to see a standard white couple Once you notice you can't unsee it. (I'm not black or white, just for context)"
"Okay black British woman here to throw some ideas for what I think is happening here. First off, it's really not that common for black women in the UK to go totally bald but I would ask you to think about this situation as you would with any other type of marketing - the models usually aren't reflective of the average person. Marketing/advertising teams make casting choices based on industry trends and these don't always correlate with reality for any demographic. Think of it like asking "all the white women I seen on tv are blonde and skinny but why all the ones in my town are fatter and darker haired". Marketing isn't designed to be genuinely representative of the average person, it's there to sell products to whoever is most likely to buy them. If I'm to give a personal theory as to why they go for shaved hair, it's because black women's hair is so unbelievably political that sometimes it's easier to go for no hair and avoid the entire conversation altogether whilst also scoring 'representation points'. If a black woman on an ad has natural hair, people (mostly black people) will complain that it looks nappy and bad or will argue about the texture and style of the hair. If they use extensions or wigs others will complain that they arre too 'Eurocentric' and ashamed of their hair. The bald-headed cool model vibe is one that pretty much no one will argue against even though very few black women in the UK actually look like this (Skunk Anansie's Skin is hard carrying for the entire bald-headed team). Personally, I think the bald headed black woman vibe is made to appeal to progressive middle class white people over any other demographic (not to say it doesn't appeal to other groups). The products and services I see that specifically target the black demographic generally have an entirely different vibe."
Naturally, this got removed
Junk Science Week: Does sex really count in the operating room? - "her projections thus show that majority-female surgical teams would experience no post-operative complications and make no mistakes. If that’s true, it suggests the entire health-care sector ought to be purged of men immediately... There are, however, a few caveats to consider before we usher men out of the OR for good. Despite clamorous media attention, not all the available evidence backs a distaff advantage. A recent study from Japan, for example, found no difference between male and female surgeons. More importantly, it needs to be firmly established we are not comparing surgical apples to surgical oranges. As one of the JAMA Surgery studies acknowledges, “Patients treated by female surgeons were more likely to have undergone general, obstetric or gynecologic, or plastic surgeries, while those treated by male surgeons were more likely to have undergone cardia, neurosurgical, orthopedic or urologic procedures.” These differences are quite dramatic. Of 58,912 neurosurgeries in the study, 56,049 — or 95 per cent — were performed by men. The same holds for cardiothoracic procedures. A similar imbalance can be found in the BJS study. Surgical teams at hospitals with greater than 35 per cent female representation accounted for a mere 1.7 per cent of all cardiac operations in Ontario between 2009 and 2019. For neurosurgeries, it was 10.3 per cent. The riskiest operations — those involving brains and hearts, in particular — are overwhelmingly handled by men at hospitals with mostly male surgical teams. Every surgical procedure obviously entails some degree of risk, but a neurosurgeon is exposed to a far greater possibility of post-operative complications and higher overall costs in comparison with colleagues doing routine breast reductions. While the authors claim their calculations correct for surgical complexity, the implications here are so great that an expert second — and perhaps third — opinion seems warranted. Another problem with these studies, and perhaps the entire health-care system, is the extremely low share of female surgeons despite decades of effort to boost their representation. Women accounted for less than seven per cent of all surgeries in the BJS study and 13 per cent in the two JAMA Surgery studies. Given that women have been in the majority at Canadian medical schools since the 1990s, the paucity of female surgeons remains a mystery. The preferred CBC explanation involves systemic discrimination and unfair wage gaps. Yet ample anecdotal evidence suggests the biggest determinant is the freely made choices of female physicians themselves. Compared to other medical pursuits, surgical work is extremely time-consuming, arduous and stressful. When JAMA asked Mary Ann Hopkins, an attending general surgeon at the New York University Medical Center, why there aren’t more women surgeons, she said, “It’s probably because of the long hours and the family sacrifices that you have to make.” Evidence also points to a strong preference among female doctors for part-time work, which is typically incompatible with a surgical specialty. As for the notion that diverse teams always produce better results — and that there’s a sweet spot where these benefits are maximized — evidence suggests opposite or null effects are just as likely. A U.S. study on racial diversity within nursing teams, for example, found that bringing together divergent world views at work led to frequent breakdowns in cohesion. “Alternative realities encourage participants to attribute causation differently which … fuels team conflict and miscommunication,” the authors reported. In the business world, claims that adding women to corporate boards will improve the performance of publicly-traded companies was conclusively demolished by Wharton School of Business professor Katherine Klein. “There is no evidence available to suggest that the addition, or presence, of women on the board actually causes a change in company performance,” Klein wrote in 2017... If the striking gaps in complexity and risk between male and female surgeons have been properly accounted for, along with many other potentially confounding factors, then it’s conceivable there is a distinct and measurable benefit attributable to female surgeons — perhaps due to immutable, sex-based characteristics such as emotional intelligence, rule-following and communications skills. And then what? The research raises many uncomfortable questions no one seems to want to discuss. (Hallet declined multiple requests to respond.) If the data shows women make better surgeons, should an evidence-based policy seek to replace male surgeons with women? And if so, what should we make of the obvious reluctance among female physicians to become surgeons? Perhaps we are stuck with less-than-ideal men as surgeons because they’re the only ones prepared to do the job. And what should patients think of all this? Since most Canadians cannot choose their surgeon, is getting a male surgeon another lamentable example of the lack of choice embedded in Canada’s rigid and monopolistic public health-care system? Finally, if we accept the proposition that women make better surgeons for a variety of sex-determined factors, does this effect work both ways? It stands to reason there must be other occupations in which men have a similar advantage due to their inherent traits of risk-taking, independence, assertiveness, physical strength, STEM skills and so on. Jobs like air force pilot, movie director, firefighter and software designer. And if sex matters on the job, could race and ethnicity also affect occupational performance? Are we prepared to go wherever the data points us?"
Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Prior to 2003, how many points did University of Michigan admissions award applicants who had obtained perfect SAT scores? Answer: 12 points
And how many points did it give an applicant for merely being black? Answer: 20 points"
Left wingers still lie that DEI is about ensuring that everyone is on a level playing field by eliminating discrimination against minorities
[SocJus] Kyle Brink, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons, says in response to question about racial diversity in tabletop gaming, "in my viewpoint, honestly, guys like me can't leave soon enough for this hobby" : KotakuInAction - "By now everyone knows about WotC's recent attempt to kill the Open Game License, the major backlash that doing so provoked from other publishers and the general community, and WotC's eventual capitulation. Now, D&D Executive Producer Kyle Brink (who's only been with WotC for two years, and only been EP of D&D for eight months), who has put himself forward as the person speaking for WotC on this subject (for instance, he was the one under whose name the announcement of them abandoning their plans to scrap the original OGL was made) is going on an apology tour. And one of his first stops is the Youtube channel of a group called 3 Black Halflings. At approximately 46:57, he's asked about WotC's policies around hiring racially diverse individuals in "positions of power." As part of his (rather rambling) response, he touches on how "guys like me" (note: Brink is white) are "leaving the workforce," before saying (at 49:25) "in my viewpoint, honestly, guys like me can't leave soon enough for this hobby." My fucking god... When did gaming stop being for everyone? When did it get taken over by people who decided that being the wrong ethnicity inherently meant being against inclusivity, and so being inclusive meant kicking those people out? Because it breaks my heart to see the hobby I love being run by people like this."
Weird. We keep being told that diversity is not about getting rid of white people
Meme - David Austin Walsh: "I mean, I applied to something like 40 jobs this year-all but four of them were AfAm positions, and/or race/ethnicity positions, and despite my work explicitly being about white supremacy I stand no chance of being hired for those positions."
David Austin Walsh: "I just published an academic book that is getting plaudits. I've written numerous peer-reviewed articles for the @nytimes! I'm a talented teacher and my classees have been very popular at every university I've taught at. Hell, I had a kid here at Yale try to enroll in my class this past semester because he heard through word of mouth that my class at UVA was really good! But I'm 35 years old, I'm 4+ years post-PhD, and -- quite frankly -- I'm also a white dude. Combine those factors together and I'm for all intents and purposes unemployable as a 20th-century American historian."
Guess he wasn't serious about dismantling white supremacy but stepping aside and letting black people take his job
RACE NARRATIVE BACKFIRE: DEI “expert on white supremacy” complains that nobody will hire him because he’s white - "An almost contrived-seeming DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) encounter took place on the X platform this week between a fair-skinned "expert on white supremacy" and the "far right" in desperate need of a job, and a presumably person-of-color (POC) female who currently holds a high-level, tenure-track position at Yale University. A white-looking guy named David Austin Walsh who has written entire books about how bad he thinks white people are started complaining on social media about how none of the 40-something jobs he says he has applied for so far this year are willing to hire him because his skin is not dark or ethnic enough. "I mean, I applied to something like 40 jobs this year – all but four of them were AfAm and / or race / ethnicity positions, and despite my work explicitly being about white supremacy I stand no chance of being hired for those positions," Walsh tweeted. The anti-white crusader was met with harsh POC backlash, including from a "Science & Technology" account that mocked Walsh for thinking that his reward in life would be a cushy sinecure. Another user chimed in following a discourse that Walsh had with the Yalie who sarcastically and pridefully mocked his expectations while seemingly laughing the entire time about the irony of the conversation. "Academic who researches the right realizes he can't get a job because he's a white male," another X user wrote in jest about the exchange. "He complains, gets laughed at by a woman at Yale. He accuses her of 'punching down' at him, thinking lack of employment makes up for his race and sex. Talk about a teachable moment.""
Richard Hanania on X - "When I was at UCLA, I had a political science professor who was near retirement and told us he was a "refugee" from the history department. He studied the Cold War, and there was no interest in that in history departments anymore because every research agenda had to revolve"
@ijbailey on X - "It’s “plausible” that a young white dude can’t get a job but young POC and women can? On what planet?"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "This one, man. The open denial of the fact that affirmative action affects hiring and/or admissions IN ACADEMIA - which I see constantly - is simply bizarre. At least for grad school, law school, med school, and post-docs, we literally just know how candidates of different races with the same quals do. These below are four fairly representative graphics - more focused on admissions than hiring, but illustrating the issue across different major collegiate systems and looking not only at undergraduates but at young professionals who are working but enrolled. Faculty hiring often follows similar trajectories. Damned odd to simply - and sincerely, so far as I can tell - to just respond to this by yelling "Not so!""
🇨🇦halogen on X - "You begin to suspect that the "racial politeness" rule about denying the practical existence of affirmative action has actually fooled some particularly incurious people into thinking that affirmative action genuinely has no real-world effects somehow."
aahzmandius_of_perv on X - "They wouldn't get so crazed, like angry to the point where they seem to wish that violence was an option, if they didn't didn't know the truth. They just really hate having it made blatant."
Thread by @feelsdesperate on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "As an undergrad I took a ‘race, class, and gender’ history seminar led by a white Ivy-PhD postdoc who would give me a dirty look on the rare occasion I’d venture a milquetoast centrist opinion. I went to her office hours at the end of the semester to pick something… …up and asked her what she was doing next year. She remarked bitterly that she didn’t know and that, ‘they only want to hire people who are black,’ for the tenure track jobs. As best I can tell this sort of person imagines themselves to be… …a ‘member of the Party’ and thus deserving of special privileges and immunity from the predictable consequences of their politics. If that doesn’t end up happening and they’re fed into the grinder like everyone else it’s a huge shock and they’re outraged and bereft."
Finnegans Take on X - "Here's what I don't get: Reading through this thread, everything being described seems to be pretty much exactly what progressives have always said they wanted. So why are so many offended when you point out that they achieved their goals? Shouldn't they be celebrating?"
Meme - Noah Smith: "Oh dear lord. The same guy took a practice LSAT and bombed it, and blamed it on the questions being "right-wing""
DavidAstinWalsh David 2022-RELATED PUN Walsh: "Welp, just took a practice LSAT and it looks like law school is out. It is pretty bonkers how right-wing some of these questions are, though."
Thread by @JohnDSailer on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Do universities discriminate against white candidates? Yes. Especially when hiring professors focused on identity/social justice. These positions give universities plausible deniability for race-based hiring, which is common in academia. I have receipts. 🧵
It’s worth remembering the academic job market’s total saturation in positions focused on race, identity, and social justice. Things like "indigenous Siberian studies" and classics with a focus on "race, racism, and Greek & Roman studies." This has entirely skewed certain disciplines. A grad student looking at a field like, say, German studies will be able to put two and two together. There are hardly any jobs out there, and the jobs that are out there tend to fit a specific theme. If you’re a historian, well...
A grad student in the shoes of David Austin Walsh might think they have the right formula: even if you’re a white guy, just specialize in the right things, then you'll have at least a shot. That is verifiably incorrect. Universities very explicitly say these race/identity/social justice jobs exist to target specific groups. They get very close to openly declaring their intention to discriminate in the hiring process. I've repeatedly found search committees openly admit to using racial preferences.
Ohio State sought a professor of French studies with a "specialization in Black France." The search committee stated that hiring a “visible minority” was a key priority—so they only invited black candidates for on campus interviews. The University of Washington conducted a search for a professor focused on diversity. A white woman was the search committee's first choice. A diversity committee member objected on the grounds of race. They then re-ranked the candidates. Here's the University of Washington diversity advisory committee member noting that it's "optically-speaking" a bad look that the offer to go to a white woman.
This is the goal of "cluster hiring," hiring multiple candidates at once w/ a focus on DEI, increasingly popular in academia. In the sciences, that means heavily weighing DEI statements. But in the humanities, it commonly involves hiring w/ a race/identity/social justice focus. A professor friend recently told me that everyone in his university system acts like cluster hiring is just a legal form of racial quotas. But again, we don't have to rely on rumors. Administrators have literally said that's exactly what they're doing.
We have the worst of both worlds. Our universities contort entire academic disciplines, narrowly focusing on social justice, applying de facto ideological weed-out tools like diversity statements—all for the sake of achieving (or masking) racial preferences."
I still see left wingers deny that white men are discriminated against in hiring. Either that or they mock them for not being good enough
John Sailer on X - "An article on DEI cluster hiring quotes one university dean, who describes the process in detail. Her response to the charge that she was hiring based on race: "I absolutely am!""
Colleges Look to Cluster Hires Amid Diversity Hostilities | Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
Meme - Richard Hanania @RichardHanania: "Finding a case of minority preference in academia is like finding a case of a slave being treated better than an individual white man. Imagine going on the job market and having the realization that these are the people you’re going to have to grovel to in order to make it."
@ijbailey @ijbailey: "It's "plausible" that a young white dude can't get a job but young POC and women can? On what planet?"
Matthew Yglesias @mattysgl...: "He's incredibly annoying but I think the hypothesis is plausible"
EyeOnStalk @EyeOnStalk: "I think it is in this highly specific case. There aren't that many jobs in history departments and what he's saying is of the 40 he interviewed for, most are in minority studies fields and admins want to hire minorities. You can't conceive of an individual case?"
@ijbailey: "I'm sure I can find "an individual case" of a black slave being treated better than an individual white man during the height of race- based chattel slavery, too, if I look hard enough."
Thread by @matthewgburgess on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In light of the recent discussion on here about academic affirmative action in faculty hiring (re: David Austin Walsh), it's time to move on from the question of "is it happening" (it is) and talk about "is it right/legal/etc." For example, in Nov. 2022, I asked our Dean at a faculty senate meeting what fraction of hires in the last 2-3 years were from FDAP (i.e. the Faculty Diversity Action Plan, our DEI hiring program, which has since been rebranded). His answer: over 90%. From the public minutes: The new program, whose intent is somewhat better masked, is called Critical Needs Hires. Interestingly, the public Nov. 15 faculty senate minutes seem to have been since removed from the website:
Exhibit B: In Canada, unlike the US, this stuff is clearly legal, so it is often done explicitly. I had noticed that since 2020 most Canada Research Chair positions advertised race and gender restrictions in who could apply. This year, I was curious and decided to track. From July 1 to Dec 31, I found 71 CRC searches. 39 of these (55%) explicitly barred straight white men (and often other groups too) from applying.
Exhibit C, from Bloomberg (not academia, but similar dynamic):
As @mattyglesias pointed out, universities are trying to solve (or avoid acknowledging) a simple math problem. Aging faculty + slow turnover = slow diversification. E.g. suppose you had 40 faculty in a unit that got to hire ever 3 years, and currently had 25 white guys. If you set a goal of only having 15 white guys (most would say not that ambitious), it would still take 30 years with a policy of no white-male hires and only WM retirees. IME, admins aren't willing to face that problem & say to activist students that it will take a really long time, or admit they are putting a thumb on the scale, or that putting a thumb on the scale (in the US) might be illegal. So ppl twist themselves in knots of dissonance.
BTW, I've hesitated for a long time before posting those minutes above. I <3 CU and don't think CU is unusual in what has been going on, and so I didn't and don't want CU to be unfairly singled out. (I also tried to raise this for years through proper internal channels.) I have seen this at every school I've been at over the past 10 years. I was told in 3/7 faculty interviews in 2017-2018 that my demographics were disqualifying for at least some SC members. But I'm sharing now it because it's annoying that we're still stuck on the "is it real?" conversation when we should be having the "is it right? Is it legal?" conversation. My personal answers would be "no" and "I'm not a lawyer but I'd guess no (Title VI & VII)", but there are reasonable arguments to be made on both sides. IME those denying it's real most loudly on X also argue vociferously for it behind the scenes. Make your case publicly!
The other reason I am sharing this now is that, as a mentor to WM trainees, I am tired of the gaslighting. There isn't a single faculty member at a major college that hasn't seen this/been aware of this, especially since 2020. If it's right, defend it. If it's not, stop. BTW, someone (HT @rwlesq) alerted me to the fact that the Bloomberg study has been criticized for its methodology. (The rest of the thread stands though.)"
Of course, left wingers still deny there's discrimination against white men
The fact that the people denying it the loudest on Twitter are pushing it the most is the clearest example of left wingers lying about this