In California we have this absurd voter-approved law we call Proposition 13, which caps property rates. It effectively eliminates the only "wealth tax" we have, leaving our schools perineally underfunded and removing incentives to upzoning from both city governments and home-owners! It's a real piece of work.
So, the rate is capped, but what does that mean if the value of the property goes up? Let's say the tax assessment went from $200,000 to $1 million, how much would the yearly payment go up?
// it is a bit off-putting to down vote everyone not up on CA law.
The tax basis value can only increase 2% per year, except when certain qualifying events (transfers of ownership, mostly, but IIRC some improvements qualify, at least as to the value added by the improvement, as well.)
So, given the prop 13 maximum tax rate of 1% and maximum increase in tax basis value of 2% per annum, a property that was fully taxed at a basis value of $200,000 in 1985($2,000 annual tax) that increases in value to $1 million -- or even $10 million -- in 2015 would have a tax basis value of $362,272 and a total annual property tax bill of about $3,623.
Prop 13 causes all sorts of issues. Many people want to move (kids moved out, changed jobs, etc.) but they can't because they would not be able to afford the huge jump in property taxes.
It's just another thing that creates artificial scarcity.
The people who want to move but can't afford to are the exact same people who would be forced to move without prop 13. At least with prop 13, people are not forced out of the homes they have purchased.
The problem is not with Prop 13. It's with property taxes at all. I'm not fundamentally against a wealth tax of some kind, or against cities raising income, but if you base this on assessed values of real-estate, a highly illiquid asset for most people, you are guaranteed to generate these problems, not to mention undermining the very notion of property.
The problem is not prop 13. It is that something else should be taxed instead of property.
Yes, Bitcoin seems to be stuck: true believers won't accept supply variability, but price stabilization (and with it, wider acceptance) is impossible without it. However it seems likely that an alternative could use some kind of internal mechanism that would effectively regulate supply without being "gameable".
The "Elite: Dangerous" example is interesting. What's the difference between flying around in space and flying around a typical FPS game? I don't have personal experience with the Rift but here are some thoughts:
- The "context" of the cockpit is helpful in some way, it's an environment which "agrees" with your inner-ear sense. If the cockpit were removed from Elite, would "presence" be lost? If a cockpit of some kind were added to a typical FPS game, would that decrease the dissociated-motion effect?
- Movement is different in Elite. The environment that disagrees with your inner-ear (space and the things in it) is far away, moves more smoothly than a typical FPS, and is sparse. This probably makes it easier to accept than the fast, jerky movement inside small, constrained environments of a typical FPS.
Great article. I think part of the difficultly with the word "guys" in particular is that it depends on the usage. Saying "hey guys" or "you guys" when referring to mixed company is generally interpreted as gender neutral. But talking about "ops guys" or "a guy" is definitely not gender neutral.
"Guy" and "dude" are definitely gender-nonspecific these days, and I don't mean just in tech. When those tapes of Tiger Woods were leaked, he called his mistresses "dude". Language has evolved.
While it's certainly possible (and I'd argue true) that they're less gender-specific than they were previously, I think the fact that we're discussing a blog post from a woman saying she felt excluded by "guys" is a pretty clear sign that it's not a gender-neutral term.
Well, I think in many cases the intent by the speaker is to be gender-neutral, including in the cases OP shows. It can be ambiguous and off-putting to others though, and in other areas people usually accommodate (e.g. female chair members are "chairwoman", not "chairman").
It does bring up an interesting subject: what is a good colloquial or informal way of specifying a plural of an individual unit for these sorts of things without resulting to annoying chaining of multiple words like "guys/girls" or "men/women"? DevOps "guys" is out. DevOps "people" doesn't use individual units. DevOps "monkeys" or "ninjas" are kind of gender neutral but sound very...stupid. DevOps-ers sounds awkward. I guess you could go with something like "gurus" but not every hire is going to be a guru.
I suppose the safest option is "DevOps engineers", but that adds some additional formality and isn't so colloquial or simple.
"Folks" doesn't abide by the unit requirement. And the others you offered sound a bit awkward and formal (and also don't really meet the requirement either).
"Folks" is probably the closest thing you'll get though.
Just the other day I overheard a group of teenage girls playing soccer, with one of them periodically referring to her teammates as "hey guys." It was odd enough to me that I took note of it.
I disagree. Many people attempt to use it as a non-gendered pronoun, but I don't think that makes it inherently "gender-nonspecific".
Think of it this way. When you call a male-identifying person "guy" it affirms their gender. When you call a non-male-identifying person "guy" it passively denies theirs. "Guy" is not gender nonspecific, and when you use it that way, it has the potential to make a non-male person feel like their gender identity is being assimilated into your idea of a "guy", whatever that is.
Another thought to leave you with. "Guy" == male when the gender of the person it refers to has not been established. Suppose someone tells you "I saw this guy biking down the street the other day..." Do you ever imagine that they're talking about a woman?
If you believe this is an issue of people simply "taking offense", then I don't think you fully understand this issue. This is a matter of people feeling unwelcome and outcast. Try and place yourself in the author's shoes.
If someone is genuinely friendly and welcoming, and you reject their company because you look for and find offence where none was intended, then that's kinda your problem, not theirs.
Regardless of what you think about it, plenty of people disagree. As a plural, sure "guys" can generally mean a mixed group, but as a singular noun used in a generic sense (eg, "we need a devops guy"), I challenge you to find any native English speaker to whom "guy" primarily denotes a woman.
In a professional setting, it's important to use language carefully. And in a situation like this where you have evidence that at least some people feel using "guy" and "guys" is a poor choice, and where there are plenty of equivalent alternatives ("folks" is my go-to), the only reason to use "guy" is to be a jerk.
GP: > "Guy" and "dude" are definitely gender-nonspecific
You: > find any native English speaker to whom "guy" primarily denotes a woman.
It's not supposed to primarily denote a woman, GP specifically said it's non-specific.
That said, I disagree. I think guy is gender specific, typically. I also have very, very seldom heard a woman called "dude." Certainly the non-specificity isn't universal.
I think the example in TFA is great: I'm not likely to pick up a cute devops guy at a conference (seing as how I'm a straight male). Like it or not, language matters and it is deeply tied to the culture in which it has evolved. If we want to change our culture (to be less misogynistic), we'll have to change the language we use, to facilitate the thoughts we would like to think. It will involve trying out new terms, seeing which ones fit our meaning without being too corny.
As an aside: what is a devops guy/girl/individual anyway? Isn't the core of devops (as opposed to system administration/system development) a holistic approach where everyone has a responsibility for implementing the system as a whole, including both development and day-to-day operations? Hence:DevOps?
You don't even need to make it sexual to highlight the difference. If you say "Can someone help the guy at reception?", most people would head to reception expecting a male.
I was considering an edit to the effect that misogynistic might be too strong a word -- but on reflection I realized that many (most?) cultures have quite recently (from the perspective of evolving language) either burned women alive as witches, or stoned them to death. So I don't think such a qualification would be warranted. Even if what I might have had in mind might more aptly be described as being "merely" oppressive towards women, rather than woman-hating.
I'm not for calling people jerks in online forums either, but I think that in this case the point is valid. Someone is behaving like a jerk if they deny the experience of others through lack of empathy. If you (the general you, not you) respond to someone who tells you "this language makes me feel unwelcome" by arguing that their experience of the language is wrong, you are in fact being (quite literally) a jerk.
Brilliant article; I've caught myself making the same mistake many times even though I try hard to avoid it. I do think that saying "hey guys" (or similar) is the gateway drug - I find myself making the mistake much less often when I consciously attempt to erase all gender-associated terms. You can say "Hey people" or "Hey team", and get the same effect.
Hey everyone, one of the authors here. Myself and the rest of the Tools and Frameworks team at Box are available to answer any questions or respond to feedback.
A hundred people out of how many beta testers? 10,000? That would be outrageous.
There are obviously a lot of legitimate safety questions about robot cars. Are they better or worse at avoiding pedestrian collisions than a good driver? An average driver? How does the average severity of an accident vary between human drivers and robots? It will take some expensive testing and stats/actuarial work to sort out whether they would actually save lives at this point or anytime soon.
There are some important security questions too. How many exploits will be found per year? Will they be used to commit anonymous acts of violence? Do the cars connect to a network of any kind and pass viruses? If a car has been off or out of range during an infection, does it have to be quarantined from other cars and forced to update? "Pulling over to restart driving-service." How do you verify that an infected car has actually updated? Lots of completely untested, life-critical systems.
When other vendors enter the market, what kind of standards will they have to meet? How do we verify the security of their car software, will we require they be open source? If a vendor goes out of business, who is responsible for maintaining their upgrade distribution network?
There's a lot of important policies to decide on, it's going to take awhile.
