National Science Foundation (NSF) had offered $1.5 million to address structural vulnerabilities in Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI), but the Foundation quickly became dispirited with the terms of the grant it would have to follow.
“These terms included affirming the statement that we ‘do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws,’” Crary noted. “This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole.”
Hey look someone with integrity, morals, principles and balls. Sadly all four of those seem to be highly endangered traits.
One of our geology grants got hit for mentioning mineral inclusion. Total clown show.
Rocks are woke now.
Yeah, since rocks went all woke and stuff, they have really been rolling down hill…
My sediments exactly
Their metamorphosis has been a heavy topic to follow.
Gneiss!
Aww schist, here we go again!
Unironically yes ❤️
One of my recent software projects has an “ignore” list feature, but I guess I have to update the terminology to “include/exclude” if that means chuds will stay away.
Ooh I know what I’m using as variable names this week
Honestly this is magnificent. 🤡
for real? Mentioning the wrong (key-) word gets you cancelled like this?
We now get to experience what it would have been like if the Nazis had a negative IQ. Which is impressive to say, because some of them were totally deranged.
All they’re doing here is ensuring that all of the really intelligent people leave and go live somewhere else.
I’m deeply proud of Python for standing by its community and making the right decision.
How is it legal to basically say “We’ll give you some money if you promise to keep the blacks out of your organisation”
You frame it as “don’t discriminate based on skin color, as in don’t hire a black person because they’re black” while not saying any more of the quiet part out loud.
In a perfect world where nobody doing the hiring was ever even a little subconsciously racist, that would be perfectly reasonable, yeah.
Though that said we end up with a lot of nuance in the real world. Let’s say there’s a traditionally marginalised, opposed racial group. Let’s say times have changed somewhat and people suddenly accept them.
Well, the generational and cultural weight is still going to have a lasting effect even if times have changed, and it may be more difficult for people from that group to afford a good education, good job, good home, etc.
The point being that even if we all stopped being racist today and hired purely based on how good an employee someone will be, we’re likely still unknowingly skewing our decisions based on past social racial issues.
I’m probably not putting it very well but hopefully you get the idea! It’s probably pretty common knowledge anyway I guess haha, seems pretty obvious to me and I don’t even think about this stuff much :-)
Anyway, point is, we do still need to work as a society on ensuring diversity and fairness even when we’re not racist at all - I think the saying might be “Equity over Equality”, or such?
Obviously the USA Government are fascists, so they’re more interested in wiping out groups they don’t like, but they’re just another in a long line of evil governments that will eventually fall, no point thinking too deeply about why they’re being evil. They’ll eventually die off as all fascist regimes do. Hopefully we won’t have to fight a World War against them this time.
For context, I am an old white man engineer. I’ve worked in large and small companies over my career. Almost without fail, even with DEI policies in place, a non-white person or woman still had to be 10x more qualified than their white male counterparts to be hired. Once in the organization, they were generally put into some dead end role while far less qualified white men were advanced to higher positions. When I worked in the bible belt southeastern USA, you had the added factor of protestant christians ruling the roost too.
Because Congress and the Supreme Court have been captured entirely by fascists.
Because conservatives convinced people that DEI was literally about filling a quotas at the cost of competency, because “controlling the narrative”.
To make matters worse, the terms included a provision that if the PSF was found to have voilated that anti-DEI diktat, the NSF reserved the right to claw back any previously disbursed funds, Crary explained.
Likely why it was not accepted
Yeah, even if they weren’t willing to take a principled stance, that’s really dangerous. Especially with how temperamental these fascists are.
It’s not even on principle. From a pure business perspective, giving a funder the right to claw back money you previously spent is insanity.
Fuck yes, Python.
“… do not ,and will not … operate any programs that advance or promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion], or discriminatory equity ideology…”
Aren’t these contradictory? 🤔
They’re really pulling the childish ‘We’re just going to make up a fake acronym using DEI’ card in an official government communication?
This is a clown show
No. Employment is finite. Including someone means excluding someone else.
Not necessarily. But your reaction is a good illustration of what the conservative narrative is when it comes to DEI.
DEI isn’t about excluding a majority to promote a minority, but to make sure being part of a minority doesn’t handicap someone.
But some people feels that it is in their right to exclude people they don’t like, which can be understable when it comes to not recruit someone who stole from you previously, but in most case it is based on prejudices against specific minorities. And that’s the main problem.
Those prejudices, most of the times based on misunderstandings, fear of the unknown, if not jealousy (antisemitism in Europe is often based on the idea that Jews perceived overall wealth is stolen from others).
Those prejudices greatly diminishes (or, as you wrote, “steals”) their chance to be chosed for well paid work (if not work at all), and to be represented in media like videogames (because of knee jerk reaction like that game where you steal back artifacts from museum got).
DEI, when not exaggerated to the extremes, is beneficiary for everyone involved. Recruiters find talents they wouldn’t have previously considered, people broadens their horizon by learning others culture, philosophy and history. Who in their right mind would refuse that, other that self-centered bigots?
In my case I’m gladof the diversity of people I meet at work. I don’t care if they are black or white, gay or straight, male, female, or anything in between. They are competent and hardworking, that’s the only metrics that should matters.
Eh, some DEI programs were discriminatory by having quotas, most were not. The one at my company was great, which was basically minorities giving talks about difficulties getting hired, promotions, etc. We didn’t have quotas, just reports.
I bet if they solicit crowd funding to replace this grant they’d easily surpass its dollar value.
Is there an existing way to donate to the Python Foundation?Never mind, answered my own question: https://www.python.org/psf/donations/
Thanks for doing the research for us lazy folks, donation sent!
Fucking hell, good for the PSF for maintaining their values. I’ll make a donation when I get paid. I’m sure they would appreciate it if any one else can spare a dollar or two.
https://psfmember.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?reset=1&id=2
Edit: Added donation link
Go team snake 🐍
Trump’s bullshit already violated those laws though. Repeatedly.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
Good for them, standing on principle 😁
Especially in light of how incompetent this administration is, and how bad it is at clearly communicating ideas, they made the only sensible choice. Maybe there’s more details in the grant terms itself, but from the article it looks like it just says “don’t advance or promote DEI”, and without explicitly defining what they mean by that they are setting up a trap.
PyPI is smart not to take the money.
It’s a purchase of No DEI, not a donation.
