NYC has roughly the same stats - 40% of the residents there are foreign-born. This is more to do with low birth rates by natives, so population growth in NYC and London is entirely driven by immigration. The biggest problem is that it's too expensive for most people to have and raise kids in major cities.
What was more troubling to me was that he called the Tommy Robinson rallies "heartwarming". TR was a member of an explicitly fascist, white nationalist party. The rallies were full of signs calling for death to Muslims. Or, in the same blog post, his disproven claims of migrant gang r*pes. On top of that, he has written some really vile things about transgender people.
I would like to go to a tech conference and focus on Ruby, not politics. I'd like to leave my identity home and discuss software engineering and interesting technical ideas. DHH has made that impossible.
> I suspect these "really vile things" will turn out to be not so vile (like JKR)
"Not so vile" things like spreading lies about a female Olymics Boxer's gender, calling her terrible names, and inciting her online followers to harass her? She not only bullies transgender individuals but also targets other women who don't meet her own standards of femininity. If you have no problems with people like that, no wonder you can't fathom why the Ruby community has trouble accepting similar people with open arms.
Evidence for thee, but not for me? You write with such authority on this topic, yet you insist on demanding evidence for even the most basic knowledge surrounding it.
Consider what this conversation was actually about - a male sexual predator, caught pleasuring himself in the showers attached to a girls' changing room, who claimed, when caught, to have a female gender identity:
Setting aside that you're passing claims from a far-right troll as facts, that still doesn’t make it acceptable to equate trans women with sexual predators, both morally and logically. Or are you suggesting that if you can find one male sexual predator, it justifies equating all males with predators? I have a feeling you’d be up in arms about that.
Anyways, it's clear that you're intent on dehumanizing others, even creating a new account for the sole purpose of saying the most vile things, so I'll stop replying here.
The reason that this male sexual predator was allowed to use the female changing room and showers is because he claimed to have a female gender identity.
This illustrates the safeguarding risk in allowing males to use female spaces on the basis of simply saying that they identify as female. It ends up with situations like this: a registered sex offender pleasuring his erect penis in a shower area that young girls are using, and a reluctance of the authorities to stop him and file charges because they're in the thrall of policy that deems self-declared gender identity to be unquestionable.
> are you suggesting that if you can find one male sexual predator, it justifies equating all males with predators
For the purposes of safeguarding, yes. This is much of the reason why we have female-only spaces in the first place, as a preventative against male predation.
Not all males are predatory, but one can be quite sure that the subset of males who disregard and ignore women's and girls' boundaries are. Including the sex offender being discussed in that Twitter conversation. And any other male who demands access to female spaces.
Oh sorry I thought you were talking about DHH. I've been trying to find a link to something awful that he's said but nobody has one.
And as for that incident, "spreading lies" is clearly an exaggeration. That boxers gender is at best debatable. She's clearly on the awkward boundary between genders that sport (and society in general) doesn't really know how to deal with.
> literally equating trans women with sexual predators
Not what she was saying. She was calling out an only-true-scotsmen argument.
Shame on you for promoting libel by spreading unverified claims as fact. Have you even paused to consider what it's like for those on the receiving end of such harmful lies? Or do you, like JKR, revel in it even more after you've thought about it?
The evidence indicates that Khelif is male, with male physiological advantage, and therefore should never have been competing in women's boxing. And it is a matter of record that Khelif withdrew from the Eindhoven Cup rather than take the sex verification tests required to compete.
That proposed lawsuit mentioned in your BBC article near the end of 2024 went nowhere, by the way. How could it? The facts show there was no libel.
I'm not. It's true that I dislike Ruby and prefer everyone would abandon it, but that's orthogonal to the issue we're discussing. In fact I'm saying that the Ruby community is being stupid and shooting themselves in the foot by characterizing relatively mainstream right wing views as "extremism".
If I was being disingenuous I should really encourage this schism!
> It
Dunno if you're a native English speaker or not but the normal way to refer to someone of unknown gender is "they". "It" is offensive.
This doesn't preclude extreme. Not commenting on whether the community's is shooting themselves in the foot or not, just that the reason provided is not a good one for believing so.
> If I was being disingenuous I should really encourage this schism!
I do not think that you are necessarily being disingenuous but misunderstanding the difference of opinion in this way actually seems to encourage said schism.
You have misunderstood why people use the term "extremism".
> Mainstream views can't be extreme by definition.
Of course they can; mainstream views can't be uncommon by definition. Extreme doesn't strictly mean uncommon (not even in a political context), it is also used to mean "high degree", which can include distance from political centrism but can also include, e.g., frustration or flavor of cookie. To give another example, various online "challenges" like the "ice bucket challenge" are extreme but were also relatively mainstream when they were commonly performed and posted online; the term "ice bucket challenge" is still mainstream and the challenge itself is extreme (in fact, the reason it's called a "challenge" is because it is extreme).
Thinking there's too many immigrants might be mainstream (it currently is) but whether or not it's extreme depends on the degree to which it's believed. If it's believed to a high degree (such as "immigration is the worst thing about the capital city of this nation") by a large number of people then it is an extreme mainstream view by definition.
> various online "challenges" like the "ice bucket challenge" are extreme
Ok I think you just have a very abnormal (extreme even?) definition of the word "extreme".
In a political context it literally means "far from the norm". His views are not far from the norm, as much as you might hate that. (I'm not a huge fan either but I'm not going to distort reality to make myself feel better.)
> In a political context it literally means "far from the norm".
No, this is simply what you want it to mean, keeping in mind you're trying to tell other people what they mean with their word choice. Extreme views can be normal and mainstream and typical. There are many normalized-but-extreme views in current mainstream politics.
> Ok I think you just have a very abnormal (extreme even?) definition of the word "extreme".
Pouring a bucket of ice water on your head to bring attention to something is extreme. Like, it's over-the-top and exaggerated. You can disagree but that's kinda moot: someone isn't strictly wrong that it's extreme, you just disagree. You still didn't address the greater point that extreme, as it's being used, is orthogonal to mainstream.
But I guess I can link to a dictionary so you can see that I have a pretty normal (and mild) definition of the word in question. I hope you don't cherry-pick definition 1c, ignoring definitions 1a and 1b, which are, of course, valid.
Maybe 4 is the best definition, seeing as it gives "the extreme political left" as an example usage. It's not obvious to me how "advanced and thoroughgoing" means "not mainstream", though. I wouldn't mind an explanation.
What was more troubling to me was that he called the Tommy Robinson rallies "heartwarming". TR was a member of an explicitly fascist, white nationalist party. The rallies were full of signs calling for death to Muslims. Or, in the same blog post, his disproven claims of migrant gang r*pes. On top of that, he has written some really vile things about transgender people.
I would like to go to a tech conference and focus on Ruby, not politics. I'd like to leave my identity home and discuss software engineering and interesting technical ideas. DHH has made that impossible.