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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A Subnautica developer has reportedly been fired over controversial comments he previously posted to Twitter, with the game's sound designer Simon Chylinski tweeting that he has been ousted from his position at Unknown Worlds Entertainment.
Chylinski has come under fire recently after a number of recent comments he posted to Twitter were placed under the spotlight. The sound designer took to Twitter yesterday to post an update on his status with Unknown Worlds Entertainment, tweeting: "so. i just got fired.. :("
Isn't it illegal to fire someone for their political views in California? Unknown Worlds Entertainment may be in for one hell of an uncapped damages lawsuit.
Source: http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/366749-subnautica-dev-fired-controversial-twitter-comments
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @07:30PM (55 children)
Isn't it illegal to fire someone for their political views in California? Unknown Worlds Entertainment may be in for one hell of an uncapped damages lawsuit.
Just like almost every other state in the union, California is a "right to work" state, which means employers can terminate you for any reason at all, or even no reason, as long as it isn't something discriminatory against a protected class. Right wingers are not a protected class, the way women or black people are. So yes, an employer can can your ass just because they don't like your Twitter posts.
It's weird how right-wingers are usually the ones whining about "too many" regulations on businesses, and also about our litigation-happy culture, but then when this bites them in the ass, they get mad, whine about discrimination, and want to sue.
I work in a place where I probably wouldn't make any friends if I let some of my opinions be known. So, I keep my mouth shut, and I also don't post shit on the Internet under my real name for anyone to find with a Google search. Posting controversial stuff on Facebook and Twitter is completely stupid: anyone (including employers or potential employers) can read it, and worse, they can dig it up years later, when you may have changed your views.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:37PM (16 children)
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=1101 [ca.gov]
For someone so proud of "keeping his mouth shut", you sure managed to produce a lot of text about something you have no clue about.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @07:42PM (10 children)
That just takes me to a blank "code search" page. Try again.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:45PM (9 children)
Blame SN's crap parsing of ampersands.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=1101 [ca.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:51PM (3 children)
How about you just summarize and we'll believe you? link still no linky
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:55PM (2 children)
Here's the content, posted throughout the comment thread for every armchair member of the California State Bar. Feel free to just Google a string from it to find the source on California's government website.
CHAPTER 5. Political Affiliations [1101 - 1106] ( Chapter 5 enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90. )
1101.
No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy:
(a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office.
(b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.
(Score: 5, Informative) by shipofgold on Friday February 16 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)
This isn't about supporting a political party or supporting political views....
This is about bringing unfavorable publicity to an employer. Yes, expressing your views may be freedom of speech in that you won't have the government at your door looking to arrest you, and supporting the Republican party is not grounds for firing, but bringing a shitload of criticism about you (and perchance to your employer) is grounds to can your ass.
Nothing to see...move along.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday February 16 2018, @11:28PM
Bingo! You win a prize, Shipofgold [xkcd.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Friday February 16 2018, @08:19PM (4 children)
Blame submitter for not knowing anything about link shortners and resubmitting the same crap with the same failure again.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @09:19PM (2 children)
Pay attention retard, first link was SN's parsing issue, second link was California's website's handling of request data.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @09:29PM (1 child)
Correction: it's not even California's website for the second issue. It's still SN's shit programming. After fixing the ampersand in the URL, it included it in the visible portion but removed it from the HREF tag.
Seriously, I'd link you guys to Perl's documentation on escaping/unescaping so you could fix this amateur hour nonsense, but the fucking URL probably wouldn't work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Friday February 16 2018, @11:18PM
So, why don't you just go find another site to troll on.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @09:24PM
The links are actually different. Unglaze your eyes, notice the difference between "§" and "§", and stop trying to defend the shit programmer here who doesn't understand URL encoding.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AndyTheAbsurd on Friday February 16 2018, @07:56PM (4 children)
Looks like you tried to link to 1101 (which didn't work BTW) on this page, which doesn't say anything about terminating employment for political activities. You probably wanted 1102, which does say that employers may not "coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity."
But that's irrelevant, too, because the Twitter posts in question weren't political - they were racist.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @08:02PM (2 children)
It's supposed to link to 1101-1106 actually. The first link issue was Soylent's shitty parsing modifying the string "§", the second one seems to be a problem with the way California's state website handles request data.
Either way I've posted the relevant text about half a dozen times by now so it should be clear what I intended to link. And care to provide which of these tweets were "racist"? To save us some time, nationality is not race, and religion isn't race either.
(Score: 2) by forkazoo on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:14AM (1 child)
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the one musing about whether it would be good to ban black people from competing with white people in sports is not about "nationality" or "religion."
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:33AM
"I was trolling. But now that I think about it, yes men will tend to do better. But black ppl tend to do better in running. So should we ban black ppl from competing against white ppl because of this?"
And if so then it's fundamentally incorrect to claim this is racism, the subtext is clearly the exact opposite. Should we ban black people from athletic events that, statistically, black people do better at? He's not implying a yes here, but a no.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @10:04PM
But that's irrelevant, too, because the Twitter posts in question weren't political - they were racist.
Not necessarily: if some political candidates running in a race make racism a political issue (for instance, one candidate is an overt racist and has a campaign promise to pass racist legislation, and the other candidate opposes this), then racist speech supporting the racist candidate could be argued to be "political".
Really, almost anything could be "political", no matter how benign or offensive, if politicians make it a political issue. This seems like something this law could be argued up to a high court over. If some political candidates want to exterminate some race of people, and some employee posts a bunch of stuff publicly supporting this, and gets fired, could they argue this law forbids this firing over a "political" issue? Remember, this really was a real political issue not that long ago across the pond.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @07:39PM (15 children)
I'd also like to comment on his "tweet":
Funny how he talks about "3rd world tier IQ", and write a post this ignorant-looking. What kind of moron writes stuff like "now u r"? Did he never learn to capitalize words at the beginning of a sentence, or how to spell "you" or "are"? Maybe he should go take a remedial English class before making insinuations about other peoples' IQs.
Oh, here's another one:
"But street poo and rigid cast system in India didn't come from the west."
So he doesn't know how to spell "caste".
Perhaps his employer really fired him because he can't write worth a damn, and they want employees who can read and write proper English.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:43PM (5 children)
> What kind of moron writes stuff like "now u r"?
Someone nearing Twitter's retarded character limit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:47PM (4 children)
So, it could thus be possible that everybody who posts on Twitter is a retarded moron.
But we already knew that! :-)
(Score: 3, Touché) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @07:57PM (3 children)
Personally, I think usage of Twitter is a perfectly acceptable thing to use to discriminate against employment candidates.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 16 2018, @09:40PM (2 children)
And use of Facebook and YouTube.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @10:09PM (1 child)
YouTube might be OK. You can convey very useful information there in a format that has inherent advantages over text or photos, and YT gives individuals a way of making videos available on the internet for free and without having to deal with server bandwidth issues they'd have with private hosting.
For instance, if someone makes a YouTube channel with well-made videos teaching how to do surface-mount soldering, I would consider that a useful thing (and there are lots of videos just like this). Videos teaching people how to fix particular issues on their cars also abound there, and are very helpful.
This just isn't like stupid Twitter, where all you can do is write short text messages artificially limited to an arbitrary short length, which encourages bad writing and a complete lack of depth of thought.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:32AM
The usage of YouTube comments, on the other hand, should be a jailable offense.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Friday February 16 2018, @07:46PM (7 children)
Also I gather the fellow is Polish and has likely learned much of his "English" in the same or similar illiterate contexts.
As a 'sound designer' proper literacy probably isn't really a job requirement.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @07:53PM (6 children)
Is he Polish? I couldn't tell from the article. "Simon" doesn't sound like a terribly Polish name to me, and tons of Americans have Polish surnames without having any connection to the country besides having some great-grandparent or something who emigrated from there almost a century ago. I just assumed he was an American with that name.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday February 16 2018, @08:26PM (1 child)
Quote - In one such tweet, posted in response to an article shared by InfoWars editor and conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson discussing "Islamic no go zones," Chylinski tweeted: "ppl arn't blank slates that can be reprogrammed simply by being in a new country. importing random ppl from the 3rd world is also importing 3rd world tier crime rates and IQ. now u r dealing with 3rd world levels of dysfunction, condolences from Poland, but we tried to warn u." \Quote
""Simon" doesn't sound like a terribly Polish name to me,""
It didn't sound out of line to me, I expect Poland to feature most of the same names as surrounding countries, as so many of them are ultimately religious names from the Bible (Thomas/Paul/John/James/Simon and so on) but I'm certainly no authority on things Polish so I looked it up. It is indeed one of the more popular boys names in Poland, although it looks like he probably anglicized the spelling from "Szymon."
http://www.behindthename.com/top/lists/poland
http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/penpals/stats.php3?Pays=POL
http://culture.polishsite.us/articles/art359fr.htm
Several different sources with minor disagreement but all place it in the top 10.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @08:32PM
Good catch, somehow I missed or forgot the "condolences from Poland" bit. You're probably right about the Anglicization part.
(Score: 1) by Crash on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:47AM (3 children)
Destructive Creations, of Hatred [hatredgame.com] fame, are also Polish.
It would seem white supremacist sociopathic ideologies aren't the exclusive purview of America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:35PM (1 child)
Are all the enemies black or something? What's racist about "kill all humans?"
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:27AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday February 17 2018, @10:29PM
You know that those Nazi guys were German, right? Those fellows who carved Africa up among them at the 1884 Berlin Conference were French, Belgian, Italian, English, German, Austro-Hungarian, Dutch, Italian, etc, too; That was a white supremacist doozy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Friday February 16 2018, @08:13PM
He's actually complaining about Indian programmers taking our C++ jobs. What a twist!
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:40PM (13 children)
I was gonna say wrong as some initial searching returned "political affiliation" as a protected class, but this has a nice table breakdown by state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
So TL:DR these are the protected classes in CA:
Race, color
Ancestry, national origin
Religion, creed
Age (over 40)
Disability, mental and physical
Sex, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions)
Sexual orientation
Gender identity, gender expression
Medical condition
Genetic information
Marital status
Military and veteran status
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:46PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday February 16 2018, @09:42PM
He could cite potus as an example of wrongthink, twitter and mental disability connections.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:47PM
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=LAB§ionNum=1101 [ca.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:49PM (9 children)
Wrong.
CHAPTER 5. Political Affiliations [1101 - 1106] ( Chapter 5 enacted by Stats. 1937, Ch. 90. )
1101.
No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy:
(a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office.
(b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @07:56PM (2 children)
Ah, strange they don't put that in the list I found (gov site). I'm not certain whether non-political tweets counts here, he wasn't engaging in any politics aside from general opinion about the world. The legal definition might be much more narrow, otherwise everything could fall under "politics".
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @08:37PM (1 child)
The legal definition might be much more narrow
That's what I'm thinking. Otherwise, all you have to do is find a political candidate somewhere who's an actual Nazi (like the guy in Ohio or Wisconsin or something now, I just saw an article a few days ago) who espouses some obviously horrific things, then make posts supporting those same things (which are blatantly racist/sexist/supporting genocide etc.), then when you get fired claim it was "political". Any opinion at all can be construed to be "political".
Surely what the writers of that law really meant was that an employer couldn't prevent you from running for political office, or demanding that you vote a certain way.
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:45PM
s/guy in Ohio or Wisconsin or something/elected officials in D.C./
:-)
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday February 16 2018, @09:26PM (3 children)
Since when is hateful speech a "political activity" or "political view"?
Hate speech coming from the highest office doesn't make hate speech okay. Nor does it make it a political view.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 16 2018, @10:11PM
Hate speech coming from the highest office doesn't make hate speech okay. Nor does it make it a political view.
It may not make it OK in your view, but how on Earth does it not make it a "political view"? If the hate speech is not only made by a politician, but it's a big part of his campaign, then of course the hate speech is a political view. You (and I) may not like it, but if the voters really are voting for someone because of their hate speech, then it absolutely is a political view.
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday February 17 2018, @12:58AM
How about we get to basics. You are simply fudged up and do not belong in a society with Free People. Hate speech is not a thing. ALL speech is ok. The only acceptable response to speech you disagree with is to speak your objection. I know some of the folks here live in shitholes without the Right to speak freely, but here in America we believe we have an absolute Right to speak, assemble, petition our government, print stuff, etc. and CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW bridging those Rights. If it isn't controversial speech it doesn't need protecting. Nobody ever got sent to the camps for agreeing too strongly with the current official Party Line. It is speech that sends pussies to their fainting couch that requires protection.
Most of what what this guy was fired for tweeting is best described as painful truths. If you import too many shitholians your country turns into a shithole. That is simply reality. Haiti isn't a shithole because of some mystical radiation seeping from the land, it isn't blighted or suffering some extraordinary natural disaster. If the current inhabitants were removed it would be a tropical paradise again in a few short years. It is a shithole because it is filled with Hatians. And if you relocate large quantities of them they will bring their defective customs and patterns of thought with them. Same goes for most other shithole countries.
If small numbers are introduced into a developed country there is some evidence that after several generations many can be assimilated, but we aren't discussing small numbers. And in the case of Europe this guy was discussing Islam is a complication. No program of assimilation that doesn't involve conversion can make them suitable as citizens in a civilized land.
Company is in CA but if this guy is not in the U.S. he probably can't sue. Sad.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @12:45PM
Since Hitler.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday February 16 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)
Hmmm...Let's see.
1101.a -- The employee wasn't forbidden or prevented from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming a candidate for public office. -- He was fired for being an asshole and shown the door. [xkcd.com] No violation on that count.
1101.b -- The employee's political activities or affiliations were neither controlled nor directed. -- He was fired for being an asshole and shown the door. [xkcd.com] No violation on that count either.
TFS could easily be changed to:
Obnoxious asshole fired for being an obnoxious asshole. No film ever.
and still be just as accurate.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:42AM
When you can’t attack the argument, you attack the man instead.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16 2018, @08:19PM
Or when what is considered PC has changed.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 16 2018, @09:50PM (2 children)
http://www.warplife.com/ethics/reputation.html [warplife.com]
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 16 2018, @09:51PM (1 child)
This Time For Sure:
When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.
As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.
I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.
John J. Chapman
Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday February 18 2018, @02:11PM
Thanks for that. It's a clarion call. At first I thought it might be Teddy Roosevelt, but the date places it as his contemporary. We desperately need the animating spirit of that time back, now.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday February 16 2018, @11:25PM (2 children)
And that's because you're not an idiot.
Simon Chylinski wasn't fired for his beliefs, his principles or because of his (self proclaimed) proclivity for trolling. He was fired because he was too stupid to separate his personal life from his professional life.
Perhaps he should move to Alabama and run against Doug Jones in 2021. He might even win, not in spite of his tweet history, but because of it.
It's not that hard. I don't use the handle 'NotSanguine' anywhere else but here (well, I used it at that other place too). Yes, SN staff, and presumably anyone who hacked the DB could probably figure out who I am IRL pretty easily. However, I keep my social, political and other personal opinions/beliefs to myself in the professional arena. Mostly because they aren't relevant to my professional life.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:32PM (1 child)
NotSanguine, ladies and gents. He thirsts for your blood, thus his dislike of speech used freely.
Also note that his earlier retort to claimed facts by the ex-dev was to completely dismiss them... using mere ad hominem.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday February 17 2018, @10:55PM
Interesting that you employ the same tactics of which you accuse me. Please review my posting history [soylentnews.org] and show me where I've expressed anything even remotely like what you claim.
You won't be able to because I've never expressed such a thing.
In fact, I've even mentioned just that in this thread [soylentnews.org].
It's actually kind of cute reading your weak attempt to be derisive. Surely you can do better that that, can't you?
Kissy kissy honey!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:43AM
"As long as". Political viewpoints are one of those protected classes. But having said that, a claim his opinions on homosexuals, Third World poor, etc are protected political speech probably wouldn't fly with a jury. And Subnauticawould then be able to argue that all this behavior happened while he simultaneously made clear that he worked for them. Even if California weren't an "at will" state, there are exceptions made for employees who make asses of themselves in public while identifying as employees of the company.