891–900 of 1001 posts
> "Yellow" is often used disparagingly against people of Asian descent. Has anyone ever (let alone "often") heard the word "yellow" used in this manner?
They apparently spider and scan their own websites for "harmful" language: I just find this wild. How and when did language itself become so dangerous to this degree? Along with most adults in my social circle, I care and think about my health, my family, my friends, my work, my dog, my environment, my community, etc. I could not give a flying fuck about language policing. Language isn't going to protect me on my bik…
> How do we close this Pandora's box? I don't see an end to this, I think it's getting worse. It looks like a revolution picking up speed. The places that stopped revolutions did it with very heavy measures. If there is a way to stop this that is not that, I don't know what it is. I don't think this guide is meant to prevent harm. It almost seems like this kind of language policing is like a shibboleth to identify th…
This story is not unique. We've seen it in WWII Germany and communist regimes around thew world. This language list by Stanford is just a modern reincarnation of the same thing. The language list isn't actually about making people feel safer. It's a means of power and control.
The founding fathers of the United States were well aware of this human behavior. The freedom of speech. The presumption of innocence. Right to a jury. Right to privacy. Are all principles enshrined into law to serve as a countermeasure to our proclivities of mob rule and hysteria. These are all effective. But we now live in an age of social media. Mob rule has returned. But it's now all virtual. Do we need to formulate a new list of rights to counteract virtual mob rule?
This got dark quick: "basket case" Originally referred to one who has lost all four limbs and therefore needed to be carried around in a basket. I've only heard of basket case from the context of barely ridable motorcycle in a constant state of repair with its random parts in a basket. I wish it was my job to make this sort of document. I'd make up all sorts of crazy backstories for slang no one has ever heard of.
Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
What if what you are calling bloat is actually a highly effective revolutionary machine? The way the US is structured, elite schools like Stanford are the gateway to the most powerful positions in the country. Jobs like scientists, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, federal agents, politicians, and academic staff are gated behind having an elite degree. So I actually see this as being extremely ominous and not just bullsh…
No other reason is needed, but "principle" is being violated here. Bad ideas need to be pushed back on. I think that's true whether or not rules achieve "de facto" status, because a society's dysfunction is proportional to the degree it that lets bad rules slide "because they'll never be enforced". In this case these bad rules lay bare an ignorant and bigoted world-view that is fundamentally anti-human. It is teaching students and teachers all the wrong lessons, and ironically is not even helping the people it's claiming to want to help. It is pure and overt thought policing and Stanford, and anyone who cares about the school and its legacy, needs to clean house yesterday.
It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…
Surely “American” is the most absurd. Literally no one is offended that people in the United States of America are referred to as American, even if there are 42 other countries in the Americas. The technical fact is it’s correct - anyone in the americas could be called an American correctly. But only one has “America” in the country name. But by including this it sparks a patriotic and nationalist response in most Am…
Actually, no - my Mexican wife is genuinely offended when I refer to US citizens as Americans, or when I refer to the United States as America.
So I do it as often as I can.
Probably what you should take away from this is not “wokism gone crazy” (err, sorry “wild”). The more important lesson here is that the bloat in academic institutions has gotten so outrageous that people start bullshit time-consuming initiatives to justify their positions and the positions of their reports. Absolutely no one will take this seriously including the person who wrote it but they will be able to put it on…
HN certainly has taken this seriously, which IMHO is disappointing. 1300+ comments on something that has hardly anything to do with technology. Really? To me, this is a dumb and actually kind of funny list, due to some ridiculous notions (e.g. "stand up meeting" is ablelist?) that seem poorly put together with zero thought for context. It's as if someone got an assignment to put this together and tried to really, rea…
Oh wow there was "latinx" there. People from Latin America take a lot of umbrage at having this little exonym pushed on us, believe me. It feels like colonialism. The term "Hispanic" is already very broad to refer to people from a large collection of polities with several cultural spheres in it, but at least the concept of "hispanoamérica" exists in it, and the word isn't a novel take on the Spanish language coming f…
You speak for all latin americans?
What if the suggested replacement is problematic? The suggested replacement for 'manmade' is 'made by hand'. Surely 'made by hand' is ableist.
It's pretty remarkable that this conflates: - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" - Outdated, now-offensive terms like "hermaphrodite" - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" - Gendered terms that if you're being assiduous you probably want to avoid, like "manpower" - Words that have long since lost any stigmatizing meaning by virtue of the original use being so ancient ("lame", "dumb", "stupid") - Words that,…
> - Well-known slurs like "Jewed" Homophones are next. "Hey Jude". > - Touchy metaphorical language like "slave replica" Slave comes from "slav"[0]. So speaking of "slaves" or "slavery" is racist. [0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/slave#etymonline_v_23653
An excellent illustration of the beginnings of an SJW dystopia. Not just the list itself, but the general feeling of fear they want you to feel while speaking. One can draw a link between any word and a possible harm - something that a few comments have hilariously shown with some examples. So if the goal was protecting anyone from every possible harmful word, the list fails. But this demonstrates real evil that hide…
I think you mean dystopia because what this leads to is no utopia in my mind
Personally, I miss the days when the Jewish-led ACLU would come to bat for neo Nazis when local police would violate their free speech rights. This is correct. We must give people the right to be bad people, and say bad things, because no-one can unambiguously define good or bad. This disciplined, principled approach to a notion of freedom seems to have disappeared completely, and within my lifetime! That makes me feel incredibly guilty because, right now, my kids have a much harder road ahead than I did, my son in particular.