Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

thoughtco.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 429 posts

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#391

Post by nextlevelwizard »

mrtksn wrote: post #390
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you usually lead with your best argument and when your first argument is complete non-sense what hope does rest of your argument have? Also there is no "meat eaters culture war", but vegas sure try to spark a war. Vegas used to try sell the health benefits of vegan life style, but that has been disproven so many times that now they (or you?) only have the moral angle to work with. You can try to twist this as…

You really need to do something for your anger issues.

OK, so you didn't have an argument after all. Thanks for playing.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#392

Post by lamontcg »

DangitBobby wrote: post #385
lamontcg wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two are precisely what most car "accidents" are not. They're usually the result of negligence, which is captured in 2a, but the definitions which carry a lack of any agency usually overshadow the meaning in 2a. This is why it is a great "soft" word because of the inherently fuzzy meaning. Almost always in a "car accident" one or both parties, often along with the DOT, fucked up and need to do better. You sh…

You can argue whether it's negligence, but negligence doesn't make it not an accident.

Accident is a deeply misleading work to assign to negligence.

And I'd argue that there's circular logic at play since the dictionary definition is based on the problematic usage.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#393

Post by Exoristos »

ethanbond wrote: post #182
Exoristos wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you guys come up with this stuff? When I was a teen in Appalachia, I butchered dozens of chickens a day, by hand, during canning season.

I think you lost the thread. The claim was factory farming doesn’t change the volume of meat consumption and production, only the geographic location of it. It is economically not viable for every American family to produce and kill their own 2lb of (currently, on average) consumed meat per day. That is why we have factory farming and why it dominates our food supply: economies of scale. The lack of these economies i…

I'm sorry -- how expensive do you think chickens are? In fact, if everyone had them, they'd most likely be freely shared. You seem very out of touch with your own species.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#394

Post by jabradoodle »

tsimionescu wrote: post #345
jabradoodle wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very issue you linked appears to have a request from a screen reader user asking to be able to skip content with no alt text

I saw the comment you're talking about, but I'm not sure I understand what it meant. What does a screen reader do other than skipping an image without alt text? Either way, that person was also explicitly saying that they don't want mandatory alt-text, that they believe an option users can toggle on their own account to be reminded about alt-text is better, so I don't think they would qualify as "complaining about mi…

It seems they don't want it to be mandatory because people will likely fill it with nonsense, as your already suggesting, which is worse for them than it not being there.

I don't know what the screen reader does, presumably tells them there is an image there. I assume they want the option to remove the post all together.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#395

Post by SenAnder »

mcpackieh wrote: post #361
mcpackieh wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between deliberate and accidental civilian casualties is not clear cut. For instance, what do you call it when you intend to attack the enemies soldiers with a bunch of bombs but you know a certain percentage will fall on civilians and you accept that inevitability and proceed anyway? Is that deliberate? Not quite, because it wasn't your intention. Was it an accident? Not really, because you knew it wa…

Response to memefrog's [dead] comment: > It's not deliberate, which is the question that matters. I don't agree that deliberate or not deliberate is all that matters or the end of the discussion. In criminal law if you do something that could reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or murder or at least manslaughter. For instance if you drive your motorc…

> In criminal law if you do something that could reasonably be expected to kill somebody without really desiring that outcome, you might still be guilty or murder or at least manslaughter.

I think criminally negligent manslaughter would be analogous to collateral victims in war, and murder would be the intended victims. As your analogy correctly implies, neither option absolves the perpetrator of responsibility, which is what I think motivates many of the objections to 'collateral damage' in this thread - an erroneous belief that the term implies no guilt.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#396

Post by canadianfella »

lamontcg wrote: post #135
tptacek wrote: post #128

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

> * Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though he's getting some mileage out of switching "car" to "automobile" (I can hear his voice very clearly in my head dancing over the syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real language is "car accident". They're very rarely if ever "accidents"

[dead]

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#397

Post by eesmith »

DangitBobby wrote: post #387
eesmith wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Criticism_of... > In 1997, George L. Reagle, the Associate Administrator for Motor Carriers of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration wrote a letter stating that "A crash is not an accident", emphasizing that the Department's Research and Special Programs Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…

Yes, propaganda happens. Doesn't make them not accidents.

Ah, you agree with the car industry propaganda push to use the term "accident" instead of, say, motor killing. https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/8995151/crash-not-accident

"Crash" is a wider term.

If someone deliberately drives into a building, that is not an accident. It is still a crash.

Do you also say plane accident instead of plane crash?

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#398

Post by theodric »

Angostura wrote: post #276
theodric wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can put whatever text you want in the alt text field and it won't get clocked by the scolds because they don't actually care enough to check. It's enough that it appears compliant in a surface-level audit. However, there is an issue suggesting adding an automated scold in the Mastodon client (and Megalodon already has such a scold, plus a (!) of shame on images without alt text) https://github.com/ma…

> I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. What was your sample size?

Spending 27 years on the Internet

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#399

Post by theodric »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #331
theodric wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can put whatever text you want in the alt text field and it won't get clocked by the scolds because they don't actually care enough to check. It's enough that it appears compliant in a surface-level audit. However, there is an issue suggesting adding an automated scold in the Mastodon client (and Megalodon already has such a scold, plus a (!) of shame on images without alt text) https://github.com/ma…

> I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. One of Mastodon’s top daily posts a couple of days ago was a blind user expressing his gratitude for the culture of forced alt text.

> I'm sure there is one somewhere

And there he is

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#400

Post by pauldenton »

jancsika wrote: post #131

Activist became Social Justice Warrior. (Finally seems to be going away, though.) Nosy neighbor became A Karen. Being a trans ally/educator became groomer in some conservative circles. Liberal became libtard. In the past weeks, most modifiers used to discuss Israel/Palestine have intensified, not softened. (Wasn't there some Israeli official who used the term "subhuman" on Twitter?) Mask became chin diaper! Military/…

Don't forget being a Trump supporter became "domestic terrorist" since January 6. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/pro-palestinian-protest-underway... Funny none of the people storming the capitol or disrupting government since this Israel war started have been arrested as anti-Semites or Anti-muslim terrorists. I guess it's not treason to want to expel Jews or Muslims from the river to the sea.
Post reply on HN