Jo Koy’s upcoming movie “Easter Sunday” has earned him the key to Daly City in a ceremony on July 22, 2022. The Bay Area city known for its large Filipino American population is the setting for the movie.
Easter Sunday is schedule to be released widely on August 5. Here is a trailer below in case you haven’t seen it.
Since I cover politics as my particular niche for 8Asians, I’m always interested when the latest Asian American Voter Survey comes out. Thus I was eager to see this years would say, as the latest survey was released recently. Here are some selected findings that I found the most interesting.
As you can see from above, it’s no surprise that Asian Americans overall, are considerably more Democratic than Republican. Those who are independent, lean more Democratic than Republican:
What’s also not surprising is that Vietnamese Americans are the most poltically Republican.
Feeling great about the announcement – let’s go!! 😀🚀🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/UT8nfbCH2U
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) July 28, 2022
On Wednesday, July 27th, Forward Party founder Andrew Yang announced something interesting – the merger of three third party political parties into one, under the brand of the Forward Party:
“Today, I have some incredibly exciting news: The Forward Party is merging with two phenomenal organizations—the Serve America Movement (SAM) and the Renew America Movement (RAM)! The new Forward Party will immediately be the biggest third party in the country by resources at the time you read this.
That’s right—the new Forward Party is now the biggest third party in the country! Our reach will expand very quickly. We are already on the ballot in several states with a goal of 15 states by the end of this year, twice that number in ’23 and all 50 in ‘24.
I now have amazing new colleagues who have been working their hearts out to put our country on a better path for years. One of them is David Jolly, a former Member of Congress from Florida who has been leading SAM. Another is Miles Taylor, formerly known as Anonymous, who has been leading RAM. Former NJ Governor and Cabinet member Christie Todd Whitman (a Republican who endorsed Joe Biden in 2020), former Congressman Joe Sestak, Reverend Ira Acree of Chicago, and many others are part of the Leadership Circle, with many more on the way. “
This public service announcement, created by director Brian G. Cheung and production company Only Today puts expresses a simple message: Asian Americans are Americans. This is in response to the ongoing trend of anti-Asian attacks, and in particular to the attack on a man and his 5 year old daughter in Portland Oregon. The daughter of Vicha Ratanapakdee, who was murdered in San Francisco, is shown in the PSA holding his picture.
The Asian American couple at the start has been posed to resemble the couple in the classic American painting American Gothic by Grant Wood.
Reuters, NPR, and other news outlets report that African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians receive less supplemental oxygen when hospitalized because of a problem with a common medical instrument, the pulse oximeter. This instrument clips onto a finger, as shown in the picture to the left, and uses light to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood. That data is used to determine whether supplemental oxygen is necessary. Doctor and Researcher A. Ian Wong talks about the real life implications of this in his own experience with treating COVID-19 patients.
For its part, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cautioned that given the knowledge that skin pigmentation and other factors like using nail polish can affect pulse oximeter readings, those readings should be considered an estimate and that data trends rather than absolute readings should be used. Pulse oximeters were created in the 1970s and tested on mostly white populations. The FDA is also planning to convene a meeting later this year of its Medical Device Advisory committee to look into these issues and make further recommendations.
Some studies like this one (although a preprint not yet peer-reviewed) do not find much of an accuracy difference between Asian pulse oximeter readings and that for whites but do find a black/white difference. I would venture that since “Asian” as a category encompasses a huge range of skin tones (ranging from pale K-Pop stars to Mindy Kaling), some “Asian” samples in studies might not encompass that variety.
(photo credit: Nenad Stojkovic by CC by 2.0)
If you live in the NYC and Westchester area, you might come across this Con Edison television commercial:
Con Edison is tripling our investments in energy efficiency programs for the businesses and homes that power New York. From swapping out appliances to cleaner heating and cooling, making a simple switch has an effect on your savings, home, and everyone’s future. To learn more about our programs, and what energy efficiency means for your home or business, visit:
This commercial stars actor Lawrence Wong.
Ms Marvel wrapped up its initial season with it’s finale, episode six titled No Normal. Here is my final episode and season review. Overall I loved the series but thought that the finale was a mixed bag. Major spoilers below.
I’ve been behind on my blogging, but I definitely wanted to catch up with the recent news that on June 24th, Michelle Kwan was officially inducted into the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame, Class of 2022:
I remember seeing Kwan live at the 2002 Salt Lake City winter Olympics and being mesmerized. To think I would have the opportunity to meet Kwan in person three times (at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser in San Francisco, a fundraiser for Vivek Viswanathan for California State Treasurer in San Francisco, and the kickoff event for AAPIs for Biden in Las Vegas) has been kind of amazing!
Additionaly, back in May, Kwan had her Senate confirmation hearing for Ambassador to Belize (her nomination was announced back in December 2021):
As a Taiwanese American, it was interesting to hear Kwan discuss the strong ties between Belize & Taiwan (as Belize is one of the few countries in the world that diplomatically recognizes the Republic of China over the People’s Republic of China).
It’s been quite a 2022 for Kwan, first with having her baby daughter in January, her induction into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, and her ambassadorship confirmation!
The Wife and I anxiously awaited Ms Marvel episode 5 and found most of it enthralling and even informative. Overall I thought it was worth watching, althoughI thought that this episode had some problems in my opinion. Major spoilers to follow after the jump.
Even as Ms Marvel has passed the half way point, I am still finding the series to be intriguing. While it wasn’t perfect, I really enjoyed Episode 4, titled Seeing Red, especially from an Asian American point of view (more on that below). Some major spoilers after the jump.
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You would think that tech rank and file positions in Silicon Valley (as opposed to upper and executive management) would be where Asians would experience less bias, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Researchers at Google have found that within Google, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, women, and older engineers receive more pushback from their reviews of source code than do younger white males. In their study published on March 22, 2022 in the Communications of the ACM, authors Emerson Murphy-Hill, Ciera Jaspan, Carolyn Egelman, and Lan Cheng said that they expected groups other than Asians to get more pushback, but they were surprised that Asians got more pushback too. The authors estimate that this extra pushback costs non-White and non-male more than 1,000 extra engineer hours every day, a productivity loss for Google.
What is code review pushback and why is extra pushback an issue? At Google and many other places where software is developed, proposed changes in code are reviewed by other people. Developers receiving the reviews don’t have to accept and act on the feedback, and they can push back on that feedback. Responding to the pushback make take a few rounds of explaining – the cost to Google (and most likely, other organizations using similar review processes) being extra time that Asians and others need to devote to this. Google, in their open source documentation, has a web page that talks about how to deal with pushback.
The paper authors say that they are surprised at the results, but is this result really surprising? Lots of assumptions are made based solely on names, and previous studies suggest that with identifiably Asian and other group names can suffer because of the assumptions and prejudices. The authors suggest anonymizing the reviewers names. Previous studies of orchestra auditions have shown that anonymization and hiding identifying information like gender can reduce bias. Using blind reviewing doesn’t seem to reduce the review quality.
Various levels of blind reviewing has been done in the academic journal spaces for some time. This has its disadvantages also, as some times reviewers can figure out who the paper submitter is just from the content or references. Similarly, the developers who are reviewed might be able to figure out the ethnicity of their reviewer from grammar and wording, detecting reviewers for whom English is a second language.
I find this study interesting because it shows that reducing bias has benefits for an organization beyond any particular notions of political correctness. The articles on this subject don’t actually say whether anonymizing reviewers reduces bias in pushback, only that it doesn’t impact the actual process of code review. I’d like to see them follow up on the actual effect on bias. I see this type of anonymization becoming more common, and I have even seen some uses of it internally within the company where I work.
When I first the saw this official clip, I really wanted to see episode 3 of Ms. Marvel, Destined. It has nothing to do with superheroes, but that is part of the charm of the show. Here are some of my thoughts on the episode below (some minor spoilers below).
