Someone I know linked me to this mailing list archive thread:
https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2021-September/thread.html#30503
Seems like they're fucking around with timezone data, but he says it's mostly for muh diversity reasons, but I'm too stupid to follow this thread.
It looks like a sane person is trying to fork the modified time DB away into a separate project and leaving the original alone but I'm having a hard time following this entire thread. Anyone know of what's going on?
Another choice quote from this character for the road.
This austere individual is deeply, deeply concerned about the fact that he has to defend this aweful racist mess of time zone information that biases sources that were written in researchable locations and archived for posterity. What about Kenya? What about Niger?!
His entire argument is that the non-existence of those sources makes the existence of 'white' sources racist for existing and taking up space in the database he heavily contributed to back when he was a blithering and blind white supremist haplessly promoting the master race with his vile contributions of facts related to calendars.
His big move was to 'streamline' the database by creating a new arbitrary metric for data inclusion and retroactively apply it to the entire set.
He smugly adds:
He's an egomaniac traipsing as a friend of the downtrodden savages he regretfully overlooked before.
An actual solution to this problem would be to improve the database info for Niger and Kenya (and whatever other regions he deemed necessary). He's a professor: he has a large reserve of eager cheap/free labor who would love to take this on as a research project if given the time to do so.
Then again, maybe he's just like the rest of us and doesn't really give a shit about any of this "diversity, inclusion, and equity" stuff and has decided to just pack up and start phoning it in. He's right that this is a liability for his career, and one for which he isn't being paid or have any obligations toward. Better to just follow the commissar and damn the consequences.
Mind you I doubt this is the case because then he wouldn't sound so sanctimonious about it, but if it was I wouldn't blame him. After George Floyd Day was announced at work I started phoning it in too.