HN user
Fair enough, I guess the main point is that whoever is being asked (you, I presume) is not offended :) At least, I hope you're not (maybe I can get a non-anonymous question in this way :p)?
The examples just seem preposterous. Like a sibling post says, "I have a black friend who wants to listen to music. What music do I play to please him?" -- seriously? Would you say that about your friends? What about asking the person in particular, as I'm sure this doesn't generalize to skin color? Or, "Who are your top 5 rappers?" That's making quite an assumption. Or, "I'm having black friends over for dinner, what should I cook?" Like, whatever you normally cook, unless they are e.g. vegetarians or have allergies?
Yeah, in summary, I think the thing that bothers me most is what seems to be gross generalization all over...
Having said all of that, I am not black.
Hm, that's what put me off pass. I want to manage my own dotfiles git repository.
I'm almost scared of suggesting it since it might get destroyed by marauding infidels, but I am a fan of bewelcome.org. It is much smaller, of course. They run OSS!
What killed couch surfing for me personally though, was that no matter how many people I've hosted, I could never find anyone who would host me when I was traveling somewhere.
So much this. I've probably hosted easily 30-40 different groups or individuals (which is perhaps not a lot by CS standard, but fine, I've done my dues, no?), and I have only been able to surf 3 times, of which 2 were arranged by the attractive young lady I was travelling with (I am not 100% serious, that is sexist, but I suspect this dynamic does play a role). On the other hand, I have frequently sent out 20-50 reasonably personalized surfing requests, depending on popularity of destination, etc. Of course you'll have to take my word that I didn't just copy and paste a one-liner like "Hey I'll be in your city from x to y July, can I stay at your place?", but still, CS is dead to me, I don't even try to surf any more.
Another telling thing is that in many popular destinations (New York most recently for me) the first two pages of search results include predominantly photos of muscular males posing without t-shirts. Somehow I didn't feel drawn to that. :(
Great idea, tragedy of the commons?
The tone of the landing page is extremely racist. IMHO.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that not all drugs are the same thing. The "drugs are bad" or "drugs are good" discourse breaks down fast, simply because they are gross generalisations.
For example: nicotine is much more addictive (has to do with the speed with which tolerance for a substance is increased) than, say, THC. Which is yet again different from LSD. There are a whole host of factors, and a spectrum of "how dangerous $DRUG is".
(disclosure: it's my pet peeve when people make lump statements about "all drugs")
“Crazy” is a term you probably don't want to use when referring to mental health and/or patients/sufferers.