• @jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    1022 days ago

    TLDR

    “Young Chinese women have small fingers,” the article reads, “and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said.” […]

    there doesn’t seem to be a lick of evidence […] that small hands are preferable for manufacturing small devices. The closest thing we could find was a paper that found that surgeons with smaller hands actually had a harder time manipulating dextrous operating tools, which would seem to contradict the NYT’s claim that small hands are an advantage for small specialized movements.

    (…so should they be hiring big white men instead? Not clear to me how this article thinks that’s a rebuttal of the ‘race science’)

    • @Godric@lemmy.world
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      1222 days ago

      I don’t really know what I’m talking about nor do I have a horse in this race, but could it be that small handed surgeons struggle with tools because the tools themselves are designed for big hands?

    • Komodo Rodeo
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      122 days ago

      applies Netherlands flag sticker to 8 ft. ceiling by extending arm and making small hop

  • @LePoisson@lemmy.world
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    2922 days ago

    I guess the NYT no longer has an editor on staff? Who the fuck let that go to print, also who writes something like that into an article - that little paragraph where the NYT claims that “industry experts” said Chinese girls are better at assembling phones reads like cringe AI slop.

    I feel like literally one person proofreading that should have been enough for them to go, “maybe don’t print the stupid racist thing about small fingers.”

    • @givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      922 days ago

      Authors name is “Tripp” and if he’s a real person he 100% used AI to write it.

      I’m guessing his grandfather was/is loaded and connected. I’ve never met a man in my life who goes by “Tripp” and isn’t an insufferable douche coasting off generational wealth.

      The crazy part is he just “wrote” a book about Apple, and there’s a good chance Apple execs he talked to really said that stupid racist thing.

      • thanks AV
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        122 days ago

        He goes by tripp because, according to his personal image consultant, “Leopold reitbarth the third” didn’t test well with under 30s in their focus groups

    • flandish
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      222 days ago

      capitalist mutual masturbation and manufactured cognitive dissonance / distraction so they don’t have to actually change anything and effect profit potential. while they wait for daddy dictator trump to open their proposals in the form of a cotton sack with a dollar sign on the side.

    • @db2@lemmy.world
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      422 days ago

      If it’s children doing it then it’s not racist anymore. – NYT, probably

  • @Donebrach@lemmy.world
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    1722 days ago

    yall seriously need some media literacy classes. or basic reading comprehension classes.

    NYT paraphrased some industry people who posited that Chinese manufacturing benefits from small lady hands. that’s literally just covering a story. they didn’t say “us can’t make stuff because we don’t have little china-fingers and only tiny-china-fingers can make the pocket computers.” they just reported that some unnamed assholes said that.

  • @BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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    1622 days ago

    Terrible journalism. The author entirely neglects the fact that lemurs possess fingers even smaller than those of Chinese women. Why not have lemurs manufacture iPhones, given the particular daintiness of their digits? A true investigative journalist wouldn’t leave such crucial avenues of inquiry unexplored.

  • @Blade9732@lemmy.world
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    522 days ago

    So, NYT, do the Swiss all have micro hands? How do you explain Swiss watchmaking? For that matter, how about American watchmaking? America used to make all kinds of tiny wristwatches, including movements. There is also a few current American watchmakers, with a few building intricate movements.

  • @jsomae@lemmy.ml
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    322 days ago

    The use of “race science” in this headline has been bugging me and I only just realized why. Questionable race science would be claiming that e.g. asian women think in some particularly useful way, or any other specific claim about race that is hard to prove. But it’s actually quite easy to show asian women have small hands, I assume – at least, it seems to me like asian women do tend to have much smaller hands than men of other races. This is not the dubious claim. The dubious claim is whether those smaller hands are useful or not.

    I am not really sure what to make of this, I’m still grappling with this one. Just thought I’d share my scattered thoughts.

  • @58008@lemmy.world
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    222 days ago

    I agree with the outrage, but I don’t know that using race science to combat race science is the way to attack this horseshit. Futurism essentially says “the NYT says Asians have small hands, but what the race science actually says is that hand size is yada yada etc. etc.”

    Like, is race science silly or is it not? 🤷‍ If science said that, yes, Asian women have unusually small and “nimble” fingers, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference; the entire concept is stupid and racist, not just the inaccuracy of the hand measurements. Needling over the microdifferences in index finger girth between Asians and Americans (who may well be of Asian descent themselves) is missing the whole-ass point.

  • John Richard
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    222 days ago

    People are just now waking up to realize a pro genocide & pro wealth disparity publication isn’t moral?