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Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

vole.wtf

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Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#141

Post by twic »

stavros wrote: post #34
oefrha wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inspired by you, I grepped my system words file in search of words containing fuck. What I didn't expect is Apple's /usr/share/dict/words comes pre-censored. > grep fuck /usr/share/dict/words > grep '^shit$' /usr/share/dict/words > grep '^dick$' /usr/share/dict/words dick > grep '^cunt$' /usr/share/dict/words > grep '^bitch$' /usr/share/dict/words bitch Wow. (This comment doesn't reflect well on me. Fortunately, this…

> (This comment doesn't reflect well on me. Fortunately, this is a pseudonymous account.) If anyone thinks less of you because you simply know five swearwords, it's pretty much their problem.

> If anyone thinks less of you because you simply know five swearwords, it's pretty much their problem.

That's your position. When i'm hiring, there is simply no way i would bring someone on board who didn't know at least ten.

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#143

Post by swyx »

IgorPartola wrote: post #66

As a way to show off the capability of ligatures, more power to them. As an effort to censor, why in the ever loving fuck nuggets would you ever actually do that? I have young kids and a large family. We all curse periodically. Instead of telling the kids that these are bad words, we told them they are adult words. As in, when you are old enough you can curse all you want, but as a kid you can’t. We felt that this wa…

a+ parenting, i will adopt this if i ever have kids.

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#144

Post by swyx »

twic wrote: post #141
stavros wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (This comment doesn't reflect well on me. Fortunately, this is a pseudonymous account.) If anyone thinks less of you because you simply know five swearwords, it's pretty much their problem.

> If anyone thinks less of you because you simply know five swearwords, it's pretty much their problem. That's your position. When i'm hiring, there is simply no way i would bring someone on board who didn't know at least ten.

if they don't constantly swear at their machine are they really a programmer?

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#145

Post by twic »

unklefolk wrote: post #22
arijun wrote: post #8

This is very cute! But I wonder why the creator decided to special case of Scunthorpe and not more common terms like peacock

I live not too far from Scunthorpe and heard a story that Scunthorpe county council rolled out a new spam filter on the own email servers and no one in the council could sent any emails that day as they all got blocked. This was a few decades ago and I can’t find a source but there are references to the origin here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

Different, but Essex University still has the domain sx.ac.uk to be able to work around daft profanity filters.

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#146

Post by nogabebop23 »

sbarre wrote: post #135
jawns wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around middle school, I decided that I would stop using swear words, because it seemed like getting myself in trouble by letting one slip out at an inappropriate time was more of a bother than just avoiding them and coming up with more inventive ways to express myself. Refraining from curse words has been part of my character ever since, and just about everybody who knows me knows that I don't swear. And you know wha…

I've heard this argument before (and I tend to agree with it), but here's a counter-point I heard recently and appreciated: Eloquence and good vocabulary are important, but there is a time and place for something vulgar and basic. Just like there's a time and place for a rapier and there's also a time and place for a folding chair or a pool cue.

This. People who swear do it so frequently it looses the power. It shows a lack of vocabulary more than any sort of moral failing. If you only swear rarely you get a lot more impact when you do, vs. the person who cannot avoid every 3rd word being a blue one.

Also, there are some truly eloquent swears out there!

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#147

Post by dylan604 »

jsjohnst wrote: post #127
dylan604 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never given credence to the "cursing == less articulate" either. It's knowing the impact dropping a curse can have to get people's attention. Plus, sometimes, people are just too dense to get how bothered you are, but drop a colorful phrase, and they tend to get the point. Like the George Carlin bit, take a word like "incredible" and it's a nice word. Stick fuck in the middle of it to make "infuckingcredible" an…

> Fanfuckingtastic > fantastic and is much more impactful than "most fantastic" I’ve always heard and used that “word” in the sarcastic sense, rather than as meaning more/most fantastic. Using in context to illustrate: Friend: I broke the part we need to finish the project. Me: Fanfuckingtastic, guess I’ll get busy making another one.

well, people have misused grammar for ages

Again though, that's the great thing about "swear" word. Shit can be good, shit can be bad, and shit can just be shit. Not being a grammarian, how many words other than curse words be a noun, verb and adjective all at the same time. buffalo comes to mind, but is just non-nonsensical when used.

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#149

Post by infogulch »

jstanley wrote: post #99
flurdy wrote: post #86

I once worked for an online game aimed at children. With some limited messaging and a forum, we needed to automatically filter swearing especially when it started to reach millions of users. The initial limited English only blacklists were useless. Kids are creative and terrible. So we replaced with big processes of failover with several external swearword filtering services. Costly... But kids are creative..., they…

As soon as you start trying to automatically filter out messages you don't want, you enter an arms race that you're not going to win. Surely a better solution is to provide the players with a way to votekick abusive users, and leave it at that?

Humans are basically symbolic representation generating machines. Trying to stop such a being from communicating ideas by limiting their available vocabulary in a particular language is short-sighted and massively underestimates humans in general. Maybe that's a fancy way of saying that the only thing that scales with the community is the community.

Re: Scunthorpe Sans – a self-censoring font

#150

Post by Aeolun »

akdor1154 wrote: post #81
searchableguy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am not for any kind of censorship, if someone doesn't know swear words, would they be able to use them? Is swearing orthogonal to human nature? I had known few kids who didn't know what swearing was and they never did anything similar to swearing. Is there value in swearing? If not, what's the argument for letting kids learn about it? It's an interesting thought. Would limiting the vocabulary lead to people e…

Tangential, but I recall a pop sci write up of a paper that claimed the experience of pain was lessened if the experiencer was allowed to swear. Fact-checking this claim is left as an exercise for the reader, sorry.

Sounds correct to me. Swearing (with whatever words) takes your mind of your stubbed toe.

I don’t think the actual words are relevant to the act of swearing.

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