Bartending to everyone - Inclusive language

Published August 23, 2020

Alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, we’ve started to see a lot of positive discussions on how the tech community can be more inclusive with its language. In this episode, we will be discussing our thoughts on making tech language more inclusive.

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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to another episode of the front end happier podcasts. We are still practicing our social distancing. So we are all remote. I'm tired of this, I want to hang out and be all together recording again. But this will work for now. Alongside the Black Lives Matter movement, we've started to see a lot of positive discussions happening on how the tech community can be more inclusive with its language. In this episode, we decided well, why not discuss our thoughts on making tech language more inclusive? Let's go around the virtual table and give introduction of today's panelists. Augustus started off Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
sure. Hi, I'm Augustus. I'm a software engineer at Twitch.

Mars Jullian
Hi, my name is Mars and I'm a software engineer in the Bay Area. All thoughts are my own.

Stacy London
I'm Stacy London. I'm a senior front end engineer at Atlassian. And all thoughts of mine are Mars's

Jem Young
Jem young, senior software engineer at Netflix, all thoughts or bars to wherever she is and wherever she works.

Mars Jullian
I have a lot of thoughts.

Ryan Burgess
I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. And I am actually now an American citizen here. And each episode of the front end happier podcasts. We'd like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned on the episode, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is

All
terminology

Ryan Burgess
terminology. If we say the word terminology From now on, we will all take a drink and we'll let's like hop right in why start changing certain terms and language in tech. I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts why we would want to start doing this.

Stacy London
It's definitely about feeling like you fit in and if you you know, let's say you go to your job and you start reading something or looking at code, and you see words that exclude you, as a human. I think that that feels bad. And it makes for like, not a very positive like, workplace experience. I read, I read something that really helped, I think, explain it in a way that was nice where it said like narrative. This it's a woman, Jan fortune, she'd written a article about, like, why language matters. And she said, narrative and meaning go hand in hand. We all need stories that makes sense of experience particular and universal. But if the if the language functions to exclude our experience, then how do we find this meeting? I thought that was a really beautiful way to kind of express what that why this stuff matters.

Ryan Burgess
I like that. I think for me too, anytime that anytime that we can just make people feel more welcome and you know, if something sounds offensive to someone, well, let's just try to avoid We have enough English words to use and replace, you know, we're not going to get it right all the time either thing, the word will still get sad. But if you can just be a little more thoughtful around that, I think that's a great

Mars Jullian
approach. One thing that I was reading was really interesting sort of just about how, like, the language that we use to really sort of like focus on personhood. And like put the people that you either work with, or just in the world, sort of at the center of the story, as opposed to like, as a person as opposed to like, whatever like characteristics you may see, or they may describe themselves by. And by changing the language we use, we can sort of remove those words that focus on like visible characteristics or sort of just like large groups that like putting one person into like a large category that they may not identify with, or a large category that makes them uncomfortable, and really just putting them at the center of the story, which I thought was a really interesting way of putting it too as a one way of making them feel better. Welcome that like you're listening and you're you're identifying with them and you're recognizing that they exist in the world as like their own entity with their own experiences that not can't necessarily be generalized by other people, or like or any, you know, language or term or whatever terminology. Yeah.

Jem Young
I think terms languages are changing in tech specifically because not the pat ourselves on the back, but we do tend to be a bit more forward thinking than other industries. I think it's the nature of we move faster. Just because that's what software is we can we can iterate much faster so therefore that applies to most things we can do. What's interesting is if you look back and you say okay, the push for diversity and inclusion, no, no even go for the back go for let's let's try to balance out. People who identify as women compared to men like why they're not more people identify as women in tech. And that started a few years ago, and then that is moved to wait. We look around the room. Yeah, cool. We have more women, why isn't there more people have that aren't white, or Asian. And then that is spread a bit more to our language now. And I think it's just reflective of just how we are in tech. Not gonna say we're all good artists like social liberal or whatever. But I think genuinely, most people, no matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, want to do better in the world. And while we may disagree on how to do it, I think that's the general sentiment of people in tech. So starting with language is or not starting with language, but like coming around the language. It's kind of a low, a low friction change to me. It's not that hard. I question people who have asked me like, oh, why are we doing this? Like, aren't there bigger issues to solve? But yeah, there's always A bigger issue to solve. But this one's pretty easy. And it's not that offensive, all you have to do is stop doing something. It doesn't require you to start doing something. It's time. I think specifically with people at home, we've all been more introspective. We just had more time to think about ourselves and our role in society. And before last year, had this been last year, we have a conversation about changing the term, master branch or something like that, I would have laughed out of the room like everybody would have and I myself I would have as a black person, I would be like, That's stupid. That's a stupid argument to have. We have bigger things to do. But now, we've just been by ourselves for so long and had time to think and see what's going on in the world. And we see like, yeah, a lot of Terms of Use are have really racist or sexist or just something, some terrible history behind the term, and we just come to use it, but we can choose not to do that. And that's what we're doing right now.

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I don't know. My reasoning is really just it's the right thing to do. And, yeah, I think you touched on a really important thing like that. The historical, but the history of it of how it originated, has some like racist undertones. And, you know, we have the ability to choose to, like, not keep doing that, you know, it's like a low friction change. And so why not? I don't know, I've always been of like, if something is offensive to someone, it's pretty simple to just stop doing that, you know, like, Why? Why would I fight to be like, no, I really want to do this thing that fancy like, I've never really understood that mentality of people,

Mars Jullian
I think also like changing one's language is it? It can be easier for some than others. And like, on the one hand, it's like, we can just say, Oh, it's easy to change. It's easy to just like change the language we use. But I think also, it it's a small thing, and but it has like larger ramifications. people begin to feel more welcome. But beyond that, like you begin to show that you're open to like having that conversation and to feedback. And I think it actually has like network effects that are really, really important so well. It's a small thing. can make a large change in like your relationship with someone or even in the culture of a company. Yeah, cuz like,

Stacy London
to that point like psychological safety is, you know, this this research thing that says if your team has that they're going to be more successful and they're going to do better work together. And so like, if you want to just take it at, like a very, like financially, like, is this a good financial decision? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, it is, your team's gonna feel safer and more comfortable with each other, and they're gonna do better work, anything to reduce cognitive load for people to not stress or have anxiety over is going to allow people to show up to be their best self. And I think that's amazing. We've talked a lot about this language. And we've seen a few of them pop up. I know gem reference master and slave and get, I think we should mention some of the ones some other terms because quite a few that have popped up that people have been talking about. I know for one is like even blacklist and whitelist. That's a term that's used quite a lot. In technology of, you know, allowing, you know, certain users or blocking certain users, and it it really is one of those ones where you're like, yeah, we can just change that.

Stacy London
I don't know if a lot of your companies have this but internally at Atlassian there's like a style guide for writing. And in that style guide, it has some examples of words that like or phrases that are offensive and or, you know, make people feel like excluded and things that you should replace them with. And yeah, like blacklist whitelist that's like on there but there's there's things that maybe you don't even think about that are on there, like saying the word crazy. Yeah, that one's a

Ryan Burgess
Yes, I'm definitely guilty of that one a lot. And it's I think it's a really good one to call Oh, it's there's a wide

Stacy London
kind of a wide spectrum of language like ablest language or things like cross race or religion or there's just there's a whole bunch of words that you can use Usually replaced with other things. But it's nice to have a resource like that where maybe if you don't know what to say, then you could go and look for

Ryan Burgess
alternatives like for gender to is like saying, Hey, you guys, it's why am I calling you all guys? When I could say hey folks or Hey all, it's so widely used that if you have to catch yourself when you're like, Hey guy, hail, you know, you have to catch yourself in those moments and I think a lot of these terms it, you're not going to be perfect on them, but it's just being more aware of that I love that there's a style guide. And the last one, I think that's, like really helpful. It's just like, read this and just think about them a lot more as like, hey, instead of using that word you could use like these other 10 words that probably work to mean the exact same thing

Mars Jullian
like the power of language. And what's interesting is like there's there's the language you use when you speak like catching yourself and like saying, Hey guys, but also like the language that you use when you write things because the writing cannot live you or I mean it cannot last year to accompany So like that, like I like I love the idea that there's like a style guide like you're mentioning Stacey like things you can refer to so that way sort of your, the stuff that you write will be inclusive going forward. And one that I've like learned recently that I've started moving away from and I use it I don't even think I realized how often I used it before but like when writing docs, I was like, please see this link or please see below or whatever and sort of like changing that to say like, Oh, please check out this reference or reference the below like, stuff like that just like that's like a very ablest term that I've realized recently and just moving away and catchy, I still write it sometimes but I catch myself when I you know, I delete it and try to make it a different term. That's a good one.

Ryan Burgess
That's that's cool, though, is like those types of things is now you're more aware of that. And I think that's the whole goal of this too, is just being a little more aware. So that we're thoughtful and and can catch ourselves in those moments. It's, it's still going to come out like you said, If you're just probably in the nature of writing it, like, Oh, no, no, no, I gotta I gotta pull that out.

Mars Jullian
And the nice thing about I mean with writing you have the ability to think about it and change it for like, when you speak, that's the hard part to like, that's when you really need to have that psychological safety for someone to say, Oh, no, I, you know, that term makes me uncomfortable. I'm like, Oh, thank you for letting me know. You know, I will change my language going forward.

Jem Young
I one that I hate is, and people I know say it all the time. They say females, and like, Oh, those females over there, and I don't know why I can that is offensive. But like when I say women, yeah, I don't know. It just like, it's like the way it's delivered. It's like boils people down to their genitalia. Whereas like, if you say women, you're including people who were not necessarily born biologically a woman but like identifies a woman. versus if you say females, you're specifically saying a particular group of people. That one that always bugs me and that's like an easy one because you can say well Anyways, I've seen a few because like I had to catch myself crazy is when I say a lot I try to, I try to substitute that with wild. Like that's wild substitution. And that's Yeah, I might offend some wild animals somewhere but things I didn't want was no can do, which I didn't know was imitation of Chinese pigeon. Like that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Exactly. It just sneaks in there. Lame. I'm guilty of saying that one too. Like, Oh, that's so lame. When like I say not cool.

Ryan Burgess
The origin to that is like word describes of someone like with a walking disability, correct? Mm hmm.

Stacy London
Yeah, spirit animal. I have said that one. Before and then I was thinking it's like cultural appropriation. It's like Native American. You know, it's it's not yours to really say and it's sort of

Mars Jullian
powwow also was one meeting and I didn't even real I you No, I caught myself saying your wants and I was like, oh, dad that, that I don't know where that came from, but changing it to like gathering or meeting,

Ryan Burgess
even war room, right? Like we've often used to describe us all, you know, a team getting together and working together. Maybe they're on like a tight deadline put together a worm Well, that's not really the best terminology to use either

Jem Young
bottom of the totem pole. Again, yeah, preparation.

Augustus Yuan
First. I also want to say if your company doesn't have some reference, I would, I would strongly advise you know, maybe talking to someone about how that can get started because it is really helpful to just have a place to look to not only raise awareness of what those terms are, but also showing alternatives. So it's very easy for people to correct like, I was really surprised like, twitch and even Amazon they, they're very, very like big on this. Some of the terms that kind of surprised me were like brown bags for like, unfortunately, I wish I knew the origin but it doesn't Have some racial history behind it. So, like a good alternative is like a lunch and learn. And yeah, apparently Seattle had this really big trying to ban the usage of a brown bag. I have not heard. That one was very surprising to me. But yeah, that that's something to look into another one that definitely, I never realized I do is an agile stand up, you know that that is like that meeting stand up can be like, you know, it's not very accessible, you know? Like, yeah, yeah. avi Lewis. Thank you. And then I think the last one, which I don't use that much, but redlining when asking designers for specs, and if you haven't seen some of the talks around like, systemic racism, you'll you'll find a terminology called redlining of how racial segregation I don't feel qualified to explain it, but I highly suggest reading about it. If you haven't

Jem Young
read mining use and tech before, ah,

Ryan Burgess
ya know it when designers sometimes mock up though you'll get like redlining of it basically says like, this is like 20 pixels. This is like, you know, margin is 50 pixels or I don't know like all those like details are just like overlaid on the design. That's what that's referencing, which really funny and oddly enough, I almost always see them in pink. So why don't we just call it pink line pink lining?

Stacy London
I love it. Also designers would be a lot of designers. It'd be a fun day because that's a very old fashioned way to do things. Yeah,

Augustus Yuan
it reads that's a good point. It's actually so rare. I don't think I've seen

Ryan Burgess
so what a guy says you call me old because I see. No, no, no. I think things like sanity check. That's another one that I hear often use. And there again, it's referencing mental health. There's a lot of other ways to put that as like Check, you know, second opinion, safety check, final check, like there's so many things that could replace that, that really get at the same meaning. So, Jim, you'd started to mention earlier that some people almost are against doing this. And, you know, I have seen that happen quite a bit. Has others experienced that where people are almost fighting the change? I know a big one that's really funny is earlier when we're all when Jim kind of mentioned it, is we're saying that some of these things have historical meaning. But the thing is, is I've actually heard the argument that a lot of these words don't have historical references.

Jem Young
So I will read a message I got from someone I know. I know them fairly well. It says, Hey, Jeff, we have to talk I'm really confused with the blacklist whitelist and now the crusade onto all the words that have word have the word black or white in them. Why is this term offensive And it's like, I can go on

Stacy London
but like you're saying, also. Yeah, that's not a good word. Yeah. And also stuck out. Yeah. Oh

Jem Young
god, it's it's like passively hostile to use terms like that, like, Ryan, why are you on a crusade to do that and it automatically implies like, because crusades were bad. Like we look back historically, the Christians had beef with the Muslims was a Hindu See, I'm not gonna history but they had beef with anybody who wasn't Christian and they like rode off and then killed people and then rode back for victory. Like, we're so good. It turns out that was a pretty dick thing to do a fraction use that survey but I'm going to say so if you say someone's on a crusade to do something, it generally has a negative connotation. Anyways, this person's very intelligent they're one of the better engineers that I know. So like, it was it's very and Ryan is heard heard this from me before like it's very hurtful to hear like people who I consider my peers anywhere intelligent, to like, they can't get this really basic thing like yes, blacklist. And whitelist is offensive like we put up with it, because it just wasn't worth the arguments before. But now is the time to change that similar to the Confederate statues, confederate flag. Yes, those are all deeply offensive, but you got to pick your battles in life. And most of the time, people weren't gonna fight with people over the history. But now's that time. I don't know. It's human nature. It's the human condition. If you go after something that people perceive they hold deeply as core to them themselves, their identity, then they're going to fight that why people find blacklist and whitelist core to their identity. I don't know. Maybe people are bored and just

Ryan Burgess
want excuse to be offended, or I mean, I think change changes hard. I mean, nobody really likes change. I don't think you seek to be like, I just need to change everything all the time. And so that can be difficult. I guess you could argue that now there's work to do change those things in a code base. Maybe that's an argument. I don't really buy that because it works. There's always work Things that we do. It's like we make changes to features to make them better. And to me making a coding environment more inclusive is a great change.

Stacy London
It's it's funny like that that argument like, Oh, you know, why are we getting, you know, why are we getting so sensitive about these words and having to have all these long conversations about them from some of the same engineers who will argue for forever in pull requests? What a variable or a function well, that's a good one.

Jem Young
Oh, that's a good one. Yeah,

Stacy London
that's not my unique take. I've seen people mentioned this before, like on Twitter, but I was just like, Yes, exactly. Like, why are they you know, you there's like this sort of disconnect in you where you put your like, you put so much energy towards that, but no energy towards this other thing. And I think it's about empathy. I think maybe, if you've never if you as a person, I've never really experienced that feeling of not being included or not being a part of a dominant group. Maybe It's it's hard for you to put yourself in someone else's shoes to understand why that's meaningful and worth doing. And it's, I think the trick is trying to understand how we can create that empathy or make that person understand how it might feel. It's hard I don't know how you do that,

Ryan Burgess
but I also don't think it's necessarily up to the someone who's black. I don't think it's up to them to say like, hey, I need to explain this to you. So even this engineering asking gem like why blacklist whitelist it kind of feels like hey, there's there's enough stuff online that you could probably go look this up and read those arguments rather than asking the black man to explain it for you.

Augustus Yuan
Can I just quickly rant I'm usually like, pretty under. I think there's total some understanding of you know, you might not know the origins of this word, right? Like, for example, the brown bag we I actually didn't know, there is like some racial undertones. But so if somebody came and asked me, I wouldn't be like, Oh, this guy so dismissive for whitelist and blacklist Have to really questioned I feel like that one's kind of obvious. Oh whitelist allowing people and blacklist disallowing people you don't see the issue like no offense to your peer, but I I'm shocked.

Jem Young
I mean, anything that gets a gust it's one of the kindest quietest people I know. Like, that's something.

Ryan Burgess
People listen, listen when that happens.

Jem Young
Yeah, yeah.

Augustus Yuan
Listen to me.

Jem Young
I agree. It's, it takes it takes a lot of patience for me to like put up with that because I'm like, I give those people the benefit of doubt your person on the street. I don't know how educated you are. So like, I'll give you the benefit of alpha like people that are engineers and make a fairly high salary and worked in the industry a long time I consider you like you have some form of intelligence, otherwise you would have gotten this far. So it takes a lot of patience for me to not interpret side questions like that. Like why is this offensive as like, a subtle attack against the things I believe in in myself, because like, I know, if you took five seconds to think about it, you would see why it's offensive. And if you don't, then like, How am I supposed to interpret that in a positive way? Right? I like I've been doing this for months now. So like, you can hear a little frustration by voice. It's, I don't know, it's like if it it's not that if it offends when you stop using it, which is generally the case. It's just like, it takes five seconds to look this stuff up on Google and see like, Oh, yeah, master and slave. That's an offensive thing to say. And your one argument is, well, it's the thing. It's the way things have been done. It's not it's like, the worst argument in the history of arguments.

Augustus Yuan
Not an argument.

Jem Young
Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, sorry, but I could get rant all day on this.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, I like when you ask the question. I was like, I literally don't have an answer for you. Like, I can't. I don't know. I just can't imagine why something 111 and take, like Jamie said, like five seconds to just think about it and change your language. It can be awkward to be called out on using the wrong terminology in general, but like that you have to be okay with that vulnerability. And I don't know, maybe also I work at a company where we're just like so focused on blogging that it just like, it hasn't really been a big question recently, like, Well, why wouldn't we want to be more inclusive in general,

Stacy London
maybe like, it also maybe can challenge like people's identity. Like they they wrap their ego up in who they like their job as who they are. And like, my, you know, job as an engineer is who I am, and therefore, like, changing, having to go in and refactor a bunch of code or change core things to like the Linux kernel is just like, if my identity is so wrapped up in that it's like you're attacking me as a not just a word. I think maybe there's something there psychologically speaking range that like that's why it gets so, so heated, like feeling like you're in control and it's part of who you are. And and there's something deeper there that's getting pulled out, but I don't excuse it. I just think it's, I'm always trying to understand it because I can't like Mars was saying, like, I don't react that way and I don't like why Why?

Ryan Burgess
They just change it like, Who cares?

Jem Young
I love that say See that? That is such a good explanation. And yeah, maybe it is deeper. Maybe people identify with something and they say, this is what I believe in, I believe in spaces are better than tabs. And it's like, I don't know, like whatever I do whatever like cornerstone. Of course, I know. We've we've talked about this right? Right. I don't know that we probably all do. We probably have cornerstones that we have established who we are on and if someone were to take that away, then you're left without an ego because you don't understand who you are at that point. And that's a very scary thing. It's something we're going to hold on to to the very end, but I guess like a Harada is the father of modern history who's like first person to write down a history book like a long time ago, he wants that the only thing that endures is change. And that's true in 200 years, we are all going to be seen as so backwards and repressive and, like they did what they were thinking what I like, but that's the nature of progress. Like it has always been that way we look at people 100 years ago, never like, those backward fools. They didn't know any better. And I like honestly, and this is totally a side rant, but whatever. It's why you have a podcast. I think in like 100 years, people are gonna look back on us eating meat, and like be like they ate whites. You know, animals are intelligent, right? And I say this now, as a happy meat eater. I'll barbecue and smoke all day. I'm not going vegan or vegetarian, but I'm aware of the choices that I've made. And my son will probably be less of a meat eater than I am and his kids and so on and so forth. And that's the way It is that's the nature of progress. That's the way anything has ever gotten done. Otherwise we'd all be sitting around in huts, like wondering and hoping that a saber toothed Tiger goes way outside. It's like, Oh, no, you can't you can't fight change, you're just gonna be left behind if you do that. And I don't mean that in any malicious or hostile way. It's just, that's the nature of being human.

Ryan Burgess
So in dealing with people who you know, jam getting like that question, or people who are fighting these changes to terminology, cheers. Cheers, cheers. How do you respond to that? Because I think that can be difficult to is, you know, as as much as it's I love what Mario said. It's like, it's not always easy, getting called out on it either out, we're gonna make mistakes and you need to be vulnerable and that happens, but on the flip side, if someone ain't making those changes, like how do you have that conversation like what do you say to that person?

Mars Jullian
I really like the gems that earlier. About like giving them the benefit of the doubt. I think like, whenever I do encounter situations where the language is, like othering, and in a way, it's like to ask them like, like, Why use that word? Or like, have you considered using this instead and like to start the conversation from sort of, like a vulnerable position anyways, by just like beginning to ask questions as opposed to assuming the worst intent. I think because that puts us I think that would put anyone immediately on the defensive, which is really not where you want them to be if you want to have a productive conversation.

Jem Young
I love that bars. I think one of you has told me this before or set aside on podcast but it was just always assume good intentions. And if you come at people like that, you'll you'll get a lot farther versus I won't lie. It's my default to be defensive and hostile towards people because like, that's just how it's had to be for me. So like, I do try to come at people with the best intentions and, and I assume they mean well, they just didn't know. So I'm like, Hey, you know, we've actually changed that term. I probably won't call you out in public because I don't think that's helpful. Unless you're a leader of sort. And you're like, trying to say like, this is how it's going to be. But generally, yeah, I'm just like, Hey, we don't we don't really use that term anymore. I just want to say the elderly, those older, much older than me, I generally give them a pass a bit more just because, like, they're not gonna change. Like, if you're 70 you're probably not going to change you might, but I don't know if someone's like, yeah, you know, jam that colored fellow over there. I'm not gonna be like, Whoa, Bro. Bro. I can't believe you said that to me. He's 2020 you don't do that anymore. I'm more like, Yeah, whatever. There you go. Yeah, pick your battles. But like you said Mars, assume positive intentions are just people just didn't know. And it but if you attack people, they will become defensive. That is just how it's gonna go. And you're averaging anywhere. I think

Ryan Burgess
seeking to understand too, is like understanding both sides of that perspective. I think that's helpful, too. It's kind of similar lines of that, too, rather than getting on the defensive. It's just, you know, trying to understand both sides of it and have a healthy conversation about it a debate or conversation around that.

Stacy London
Except if they're a Nazi, there's no two sides. Then there's no discussion, then we don't have a discussion.

Jem Young
Yes. Plus one.

Mars Jullian
No, I think there are some things worth picking your battles over like. Like, if someone's really questioning the worth of someone's life. That's not a battle worth picking up. Right. That's just not an argument where it's happening. It's Yeah, it's not like, Oh, I like blue over you know, pink or whatever. Like, that's, that's not a human rights issue.

Jem Young
If you are any sort of blank, supremacist, doesn't matter what your screaming you're wrong. You're just wrong. It doesn't matter if I agree with you. You're still wrong.

Stacy London
What about a taco rah,

Jem Young
rah. If you believe if you believe that's the best taco out there, then I'll leave you to your sad life.

Ryan Burgess
So Stacy, I think, makes me think you've mentioned this on previous episodes that Atlassian has done even some interesting things. I think one of the episodes you've talked about this, that Atlassian has done things like slack bots, where it reminds you of certain words or like, Hey, did you mean that word? Maybe you try this different thing, which I think is really, really cool. I'm curious, are there other things that we can get creative to, to try and help people style guides? Absolutely. I think that's a great way to just share the knowledge and allow people to think about that. One that just as I'm talking I think comes to mind is like you could even have linting rules in your code base that watch for things like that, too.

Stacy London
Yeah, that that bot was a it's not around anymore. It was for like one of our older chat tools. It was kind of controversial it people, people definitely had strong feelings about it. It basically corrected you if you if you use like, Guys, who said, Hey guys, and it'd be like, Did you mean team or y'all or, you know, something like that? And I thought it was kind of cool, but I think I think because so many people still use that term. And it was just so caught constant. The bot was just like exploding in just like, everyone's just like, yeah, yeah. And so it was a little bit intense, but I thought it was kind of kind of great. But yeah, maybe there's ways to like tune the bot to be like, hey, you responded to that person already three times in the Select Channel, maybe he's off a bit and come back again. I don't know

Mars Jullian
overenthusiastic but

Stacy London
yeah, it was good. Because it was like, you know how you were saying people get confrontational, if you like, call them out on something. And we're like, well, what if it's a computer? And if it's a robot then do people react less harshly?

Augustus Yuan
Yeah, I'm actually surprised how. So. So twitch did something similar. Although they didn't make a formal bot. They literally use the slack bot that like, where it's like, you can say something and then it will like say something back to you. You know how usually usually for jokes. Yeah, like, good morning. It's like Good morning to you too, or something. Someone literally just put blacklist, and then anytime someone types blacklist it like it says, ahem, I think he meant blacklist or something. And it's actually worked pretty well for us.

Stacy London
I think that's nice because it's just a message back to you. Right. So it's not like, quote, public shaming and In like,

Augustus Yuan
Oh, well, it is public. But it would be nice and the intention isn't to shame someone. It's just to make them aware. Like, I don't think I wouldn't. Oh, he's blacklist. Unbelievable. He must be racist. Like, I would prefer you don't say that. But I it's like, you know, like and like, when people when it happens people immediately edit their message. You know, it's like, that's, that's the first step right and then over time through Pavlov's dog, they will eventually you know,

Stacy London
the muscle memory gets switched. Yep. And yeah,

Augustus Yuan
exactly. conditioning. I was like

Ryan Burgess
Pavlov's have

Augustus Yuan
Pavlov's dog to figure it out.

Ryan Burgess
On that note, let's jump into pics. In each episode, we like to share things that we've found interesting and love to share with All of you. I guess you want to start it off?

Augustus Yuan
Oh, sure. Yeah, I have two picks. One is this show I kind of stumbled on called Night Shift. And it, it probably isn't happening as often now with COVID. But it's about just, it's just a series of episodes of people who, who work at night. And it's like, really fascinating to see some of their day to days, like I was watching an episode of a baker. And she literally wakes up to a gets into the kitchen three to start, like, baking the bread and she puts so much passion into her work, and she works like 20 times harder than I do. And it's just like, very inspiring, and I just thought I was like another lens. And also during COVID it was like man, wow, when people who are actually Yeah, well, okay, this actually may be a sensitive topic. Okay, maybe we can add it up. But yeah, so definitely check that out. Check that out. I thought that was it was very inspiring to see some of those stories. And then my second pick is I talked about cauliflower pasta at Trader Joe's one day. One of the episodes you should watch all the episodes to find which one but but, but I found something new, or my brother found it and it's the mango and cream bars. Ice cream. They Yeah, they look fantastic and I can guarantee you they taste even better than frickin amazing. It was it's just like the the best balance of mango and cream. It's authentic mango. I just got to try it. Get some cauliflower pasta and then some mango and cream bars.

Mars Jullian
Gosh, we're talking about tacos. Now we're talking about ice cream. So

Ryan Burgess
does everyone have food pics? Like I have something food related marzi want to go next?

Mars Jullian
Sure, um, I have two picks today. The first one is this resource that I just found called a progressive Style Guide, which is basically just like what we've been talking about, about, like, you know, different ways that we can change our language to make people feel more included, and also like more empowered as well. And it goes into like a bunch of different facets around which we can change our language, like age, economy, food, you know, race, ethnicity, gender, you know, like the obvious ones plus the ones I didn't even think of, which I thought was really interesting. So check that out. And then the second one is a talk by a woman named Dolly chug. And basically she talks about how like we should be let go of being good people, because it's getting in the way of us being better people. So basically, like we should sort of relegate ourselves to be good at People recognizing that we're always trying to improve and that we have good aspects of ourselves now, but we make mistakes. So we're good ish. And we're constantly learning because also things are constantly changing. So I thought that was really interesting just to sort of like, change the way you think about, like, the way you identify can really change the way that you approach the world. And like these types of conversation,

Jem Young
I love that idea. Like the idea of, we're all good people. And that's what holds us back is we don't want to change because we're like, we're already good. What else do we have to do? So the idea of letting that go become a better person is such a compelling statement. She has

Mars Jullian
a book around the whole concept, but I've linked a TED talk if you want like a shorter form to enter the concept, Jim,

Ryan Burgess
what do you have for us?

Jem Young
I've got two picks today. The first one is a Netflix original called. I'm no longer here. It's in Spanish. It's from Mexico, which is really fascinating. When I started moving as well to my wife and I'm just like, you It's funny how little I know about Mexican history and Mexican culture, even though they're directly to the south, I just, it's just something I've never learned in school even growing up in California, like, it's a very large Spanish population or Spanish speaking population. So anyways, it was like fascinating to get insight into Mexican culture, but it's about a 17 year old kid who he hangs out this gang and I use the gang loosely of just like kind of miscreants, and just people that are into this type of music called cumbia. And it's I think, that originated in Colombia. I could be wrong about that. But essentially, it's like, slow down and chops, Spanish songs, and they just dance to them. And it's just the dancing is phenomenal. It's because it's not dancing in the way we're thinking breakdancing, or speed or coordination or something like that. It's just it's really, really slow and deliberate. Which you don't I didn't consider before how much dexterity that takes to move slowly. It's actually easier to move quickly than to move really, really slowly. precision. And like, the music gets into your, it gets into you. It's because it's like, it's just subtle and they're just drumbeats. And just watching these people dance like, really, really slowly. It's just the story was okay. But it's more like it introduced me to this type of music in this type of dancing that I just found really fascinating. So if you get a chance, check it out on Netflix called I'm no longer here. My second pick is well, I want to talk about a problem I had. It's, you know, I have a toaster and it just doesn't toast my bread the right way. And so it sent me this this link on Twitter under the valley silicon pic. And it's for this toaster, and I'll just read a bit of the promo. It uses revolutionary technology, heating more rapidly than air a thin stream of steam envelops the bread lightly toasting that surface while keeping its interior moist and flavor from escaping. And I thought that's what I need in my life. So my Valley silicon pick is the toaster. That is the name of it from Bell muita I guess it's called the toaster. It is a lower price of $330. It toasts two pieces of bread at a time. So you know who's that

Ryan Burgess
better? One?

Jem Young
Yeah, yeah. What is for people that can't afford the the toaster that's for regular people but special people who really value their bread and their toast they buy this toaster. So I think I think a lot about it, but it's a $330 toaster. It fits in perfectly Valley silica. I don't know why this exists. But the reviews are all five stars. I don't know if that's people that do five stars could expend $330 in the toaster want to justify their purchase to themselves, or others. I don't know. But expect what are you going to get for seeker? 10 this year just because it's pretty funny.

Mars Jullian
According to their website, it's got two bread modes. It has a sandwich bread mode and an artisan bread mode because you need to toast those types of breads,

Ryan Burgess
obviously,

Mars Jullian
and I am so hungry.

Ryan Burgess
This This episode is just literally about food. Stacy, do you have any food pics to share with us

Stacy London
I don't gonna ruin the street. I have three picks. The first one is a song called Part Two by a band called spotlights and they it's been described as atmospheric shoegaze meets sludge metal. It's mostly instrumental. And there's a lady bass player, which I'm always very excited when I see women in the metal scene. there's not very many. Yeah, it's really good song. And then the next song is all I need. And it's a Radiohead cover by that same band, which is kind of interesting. So it seems it shows kind of their range of like styles. And the third pick is speaking about like tooling that can help you be more inclusive. There's a really cool project called Alex, Alex j. s calm and it's Kinda like a COI tool at you can hook into some of your editors, your code editors can hook it into slack. And it helps find like gender favoring polarizing race related religion and consider it unequal phrasing of any kind. It helps find those things and then suggest alternatives, which is really cool. It was it's been around since 2015. So it's been around for a bit. So there's not like a V, I noticed there isn't a VS code. It doesn't list that as one of the IDs that are editors that are hooks into so maybe, maybe one of our listeners or maybe one of us could contribute back to that and get that in, but it looks like a cool tool. Awesome.

Ryan Burgess
And I have two picks. One is food related. My first pick is actually a music playlist, and it's one I came across on Spotify. It's great for coding. Just very like nice Music just like really relaxing chill music the whole playlist has been really good. So I highly recommend that one it is called the all nighter playlist. And then I food pick is I recently purge? Actually no, I did not recently purchased this. I purchased this a long time ago. But because of COVID it took a very long time to show up, but I ordered a smoker. And so I've recently got it received it. And so I've been spending a lot of time smoking lots of different meats, and I have tried vegetables, the vegetables, and they weren't as good, but I've made some really good meats but yeah, the smoker has been great. I've used it quite a bit. It's called the backwood chubby 3400. Like I love the Chevy's they're like, I mean, it's probably just gonna describe me after a few weeks of eating all this like smoked meat, so I'm not a fan of The name either but it's kind of funny. So yeah, it's been a really great smoker. It looks like a safe. It's this like vertical standing container. It's interesting. Yeah, it's been cool. Thank you all for listening today's episode, you can find us on front end Happy hour.com you can follow us on Twitter at @frontendhh. Also leave us a review on iTunes and Google Play. I feel like I've started to see more and more popping up that there have been really great reviews. So thank you for all our listeners that have shared reviews but I would love to even see more of the reviews apparently Help others discover the podcast so please let us know what you think. Any last words The more you say terminology, the more it sounds like a store at a mall terminology

All
cheers