> "My name is Holly Million, and I am a professional shaman, an artist, an herbal medicine maker, and a micro-homesteader." > > "Eight years ago, I realized the best word to describe me must be “shaman.” A shaman is a bridge between the material and spiritual worlds, between the seen and unseen worlds. I am now a professional shaman."
This is a description of someone without a scientific mind. You don't need to be a scientist, but if you believe in magic, maybe a technology organisation isn't the best place for you.
Before you bring up that there may well be some Christians or other theists in the mix, and why don't we treat them the same; I extended this judgement to them too.
(She seems to have been exec director of a bunch of non-profits, which is what you want in an exec director of your non-profit, generally.)
> All of which set off my "This doesn't sound like a person with software experience" alarm.
This is a pretty weird take; would they be similarly concerned if the foundation's lawyer or the person who manages the office facilities didn't use GTK+ very much?
If they also offered, 'group shamanic energy clearing,' and sold 'spiritual herbs' on venmo? Yes. An organization hiring pseudo-scientists like this obviously gives credence to such people and I find the idea icky.
> Holly brings three decades of invaluable experience in nonprofit management, having served as a consultant, director of development, executive director, and board member for numerous organizations. Notably, she founded the nonprofit organization Artists United, dedicated to empowering individual artists and fostering collaboration across artistic disciplines for the collective good. Additionally, Holly served as the Executive Director of the BioBricks Foundation, an international, open-source biotechnology nonprofit.
> Holly holds a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Harvard University. Her academic background, combined with her extensive professional journey, equips her with a unique perspective that will undoubtedly contribute to the growth and success of the GNOME Foundation.
Even the actual software parts of GNOME are all about staying between the user and the real software that does work. It can be argued that function was never a goal, the purpose is to promise, not deliver.
The Foundation seems like the same thing but writ larger: suck up money and "support" from everywhere they can, make sure none of it is wasted doing anything real. AFAIK this is the form all nonprofits mature into within days to at most a few years of formation.
This person's skills may be perfectly on point for the true job she now holds.
EDIT: Well, it might be the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37920624
That's the way it's supposed to be tho.
Posing as a theocrat to soak up the money of the gullible is nothing new. Plenty of people in this scene are ordained priests in the church of Satan, UU and others; BFD.
The woman managing ARKK claims to take investment advice from God himself. That one, I'd be more wary of.
this is absurdly anti-science and pro-pseudo science POV.
'group shamanic energy clearing' and selling 'spiritual medicines' is absurd than a psychiatrist following clearly debated, adjudicated, well-researched cited scientific procedures.
This is not the most horrible of things, but I have a feeling some people would defend GNOME foundation even if they started chucking babies in the air.
“a professional shaman, an artist, an herbal medicine maker, and a micro-homesteader” as the background for gnome kind of needs some justification, because it’s very unclear what anyone was thinking here
I honestly think at this point HN should auto flag anything from that guy, ever since he stopped with Linux sux series (even then the last one was a weird one), he's gone down a very weird doom and gloom rabbit hole.
