Airbnb hosts consistently discriminate against black people

Is it possible to construct a satirical fake quote that is so appallingly racist and horrible that Antonin Scalia would not actually say that thing?

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Scalia did say nearly that exact same thing re college. Seriously, go look it up. Youā€™ll be floored.

Hereā€™s one: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-democrats-bash-scalias-affirmative-action-comments-as-racist/

Edit, laterā€¦: Took me a while. Sometimes extreme irony does not effectively transmit through the InterTubez.

That is a detailed and comprehensive responseā€¦thank you!

As you suspected, physics is not 100% at fault. There has been a lot of human effort expended to improve how cameras (first film, now digital) portray light skin at its best, to the detriment of dark skin.

How Photography Was Optimized for White Skin

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Yeah. Physics is to blame for the fact that you have to make tradeoffs(both because you can never get as much dynamic range as you would want; and because the fewer photons you have to work with, the higher the sensitivity you need; which in the real world means more noise, whether using chemical film or silicon sensors); but(outside of specific scientific and industrial camera applications, where linearity is serious business) the imperfect capabilities of the medium go through a futzing-to-make-it-look-good process; and (as the interesting piece you link to describes) that futzing was mostly to make white faces look natural-or-better, likely expending more of the limited dynamic range in that area; at the expense of compressing various dark colors into indistinguishability.

Because of teeth and eyes, I suspect that dark skin is fundamentally a slightly harder use case; but since neither the whites of the eyes nor the teeth need that much detail(indeed, for recreational shooters people would probably prefer that blood vessels in the sclera, minor discolorations of the teeth, etc. be ā€˜blown outā€™ into nice pearly white); you could almost definitely get better results by allocating more of the available dynamic range to darker colors at the expense of compressing some of the lighter ones.

Anyone who claims that it is purely a matter of physics, totally out of their hands, donā€™t blame us, blame your photon-devouring melanin; is being dishonest; optimizations were made; and different ones could have been made; but it also true that most camera/film manufacturers would love to have more dynamic range, and better sensitivity without excessive noise, and plenty of photographers and software image processing people are playing around with multiple-exposure HDR composites, because they want dynamic range now that sensors simply arenā€™t good for; but when it comes to ā€˜making the best of the imperfect technologyā€™, the target of the optimizations was hardly neutral.

This is largely tangental to the topic, so Iā€™ll stop rambling; but it is always interesting to see what social secret sauce goes into ā€˜neutralā€™ technology. (Theā€¦surprisingly large roleā€¦played by a certain playboy model in the history of image compression standards probably goes here as well.)

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Milliefink, I can only assume that your response ā€œā€¦common senseā€ is
some type of justification for being a racist? The last thing those that
harbor racist feelings need is that their feelings are just common sense!

Say what now?

I wrote,

I think itā€™s mostly because so many of them believe that their racist feelings, thoughts and actions are instead just commonsense.

Iā€™m saying that I think they believe that, not that I do.

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Seemed pretty obvious to me.

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To be honest, though, Iā€™d totally pay a premium to watch a debate between Allene Swienckowski and Millie Fink on the continuing structural and systemic effects of racism.

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On the PPTN? Pay Per trolley Network?

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No, it is not possible. He will one-up any attempt.

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I guess the answer is no. No, it is not possible to imagine some idea so awful that Antonin Scalia would not think it, and then write it in a legal opinion. That applies to all the rest of us. As the official concept of Justice.

ack, we have posted the same thing at the same time

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My first response was at about 6am and I didnā€™t understand that you meant it was not possibleā€¦ I thought you were questioning why I would write such an awful thing. So later after coffee and going about my day, I re-read what you wrote and then wrote my edit on my post. Anyways, I feel ya dog. Scalia is a scoundrel.

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Opportunity to expose the hegemonic underpinnings of de facto white supremacy accepted!

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Iā€™d suspect that @aswienckowski would just get creamedā€¦ And @milliefink would be allā€¦

Cause sheā€™s awesome like thatā€¦ wouldnā€™t even break a sweat, either.

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So the news is : ā€œAirBnB hosts are consistently representative of the population at largeā€

I think weā€™re tending to lose sight of the fact that hotels no not discriminate in the same way. This is partly because they exist to make money, as the OP states, but letā€™s not downplay the role of regulation. there is government oversight of hotels in a way that there is not of AirBnB. Indeed, as noted elsewhere in the thread, the whole point of AirBnB is to avoid oversight and regulation (relating to things like paying taxes, guaranteeing guests safety, protecting the rights of workers, protecting consumers from discrimination and other old economy useless shit that was trying to create a better society - who would want such a thing??)

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Be one with the fromage blanc!

That aspect made up a large part of the the study, I thought. And can be read in two ways, depending on your attitude to regulation.

I am the one in conversations that tries to point out that these regulations were developed for reasons, guys - not for fun, when folk rave about the merits of Uber, or gripe about license requirements for small business owners.

I am an AirBnB host and also landlord, and I am aware the AirBnB business model skirts some laws that were introduced for the protection of both parties. Thatā€™s a tricky area, and an area in which (I believe) a new balance needs to be achieved as laws are updated to catch up. There will be a new equilibrium to be struck, and the current state is a little bit too far out-of-whack in favour of the ā€˜disruptorsā€™ IMO.
Thankfully, in my neck of the woods, we have broad consumer protection laws that favour common-sense-expectations over letter-of-the-law-exploitation, and so far the humans and not the lawyers have been winning when things go to court.

As a landlord, I also have developed, over time, some evidence-based preconceptions when it comes to tenant selection. I would be a bad businessman and a wilfully ignorant human being if I didnā€™t see, and make decisions influenced by observable data including age, sex, cultural background etc. I grant other humans, landlords, employers etc the same capability of thought. The demographics of placed I have lived, worked, rented, employed and been employed in are not the same as Midtown USA, and the patterns are different. And the reasons for patterns are very different. But patterns can be seen.

if I didnā€™t see, and make decisions influenced by observable data including age, sex, cultural background etc.

Hmm. So you make tenancy decisions (perhaps illegally?) based on social categories. And you didnā€™t list race. Why not?

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I love the ethnic food aisle!

Now where did I leave my monocle?

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