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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • There are many many reasons… and everyone replying to you is talking about them all

    1. a “better” candidate by most academic standards is more likely to be wealthy and, in the US, that means more likely to be White. Simply put, White people have more generational wealth, which makes them more able to participate in extracurriculars, more time to study, less general stress.

    2. If a college wants to create a more holistic education than just academic, it benefits them to have a diverse student body. The more diverse the student body, the more tolerant and open minded your graduates will be. They’ll be more open to listening to people that don’t look like them, and society will be better for it.

    and then there’s 3) The elite in this country have always been and thus have been biased towards Straight White Men. Without guardrails in place, they will select more Straight White Men, and we will regress.











  • I haven’t owned any Apple products since the ipod nano in 2005, and have only used Linux, specifically Ubuntu), since 2008 (then my sophomore year in college) for exactly the reasons your colleague spells out. I try to use open-source software whenever possible. Apple is the most closed-source vendor available to me, so I have no intention of ever using their products. When I was a teenager / early 20s I would espouse the evils of Apple to anyone who was nearby, whether they wanted to listen or not. Now, I cringe at the memory of that behavior and let people live their lives.

    I do see why your colleague connected the dots between your two separate arguments, and I do see where they’re coming from. The idea of Freedom of Scientific Information and FOSS do have many parallels, but I don’t think you need to beat yourself up over using Apple vs more open-sourced software. I don’t really think there’s anything particularly wrong with Apple devices, and when my current laptop starts to go I might even consider one of their offerings. But my needs are simple enough that Ubuntu has always worked for me. As far as phones, I just like Android better (and more of it is open-sourced).