> The N-word has been reclaimed by people of color, but remains taboo for others to say.
The "N-word" was never reclaimed by black people, we always said it, and it always means something different than when said by a non-black person (and there was never a "hard-r" or a "soft-r," that's just a mockery of black dialects.) It's like the word "bitch." If a woman calls another woman a "bitch," she's obviously not demeaning her for being a women.
Also, the "N-word" was not a swear word for non-black people. It was a word to demean black people, who were demeaned by consensus by the majority of the population of the Anglo-American world. It was also used for any dark-skinned person that they didn't think of as fully human, as it was the prevailing slur during the US-Philippine War.
The "N-word" has become a swear word for non-black people because the consensus about black people has changed for the moment, and using it indicates a particular political position on race. It has been a perennial issue for non-black people to complain about because white people want a place in the oppression olympics, and it's really hard to find something that they've ever been officially restricted from doing.
This is a best-of comment, and I'm glad I waded through the rest of the dreck in the thread to find it. Thank you.
[Edit] Thinking through your final paragraph a bit more, there are "oppressions" (and I'm putting that in scare-quotes, because I think it's too strong a word; I'd say something like "prejudices" or "restricted opportunities") which some (USA) white people accurately perceive being applied to them. Those are based around class markers (think: what schools someone went to, what accent they have, what body-type they are), not race. Accurately understanding that would require / create an entirely different sociological paradigm.
I don’t think bitch is an appropriate parallel because I hear women use it in both insulting and friendly senses. And while I think a word being taboo for some but not others is silly, it doesn’t constitute oppression. For instance, I don’t think you should cancel some kid for singing along to his favorite rap song.
Regardless, I think using either word is in poor taste.
We're on the internet, anonymously discussing swear words, you can just type out nigger.
There's still large segments of the internet not subject to hysterical brigades of thought police demanding every typed word be cross referenced with the ever-growing Manual of Self-Censorship and Conformity with Whoever Is Offended In The Loudest Manner.
Because there are insane people who will try to ruin your job and life over it, even if you use it in a factual, rather than personal, context.
Yesterday on twitter someone posted reddit screenshots of a ukrainian dude in a thread. He said he was voting for trump and his account was semi-public, and some absolute sociopath started sending screenshots of it to every university and internship program he could think of.
> even if you use it in a factual, rather than personal, context.
We all know that the 'factual context' is often used as cover by trolls. Whatever the excuse, people are not idiots.
Also, I'm not sure 'factual context' is a good idea - why say things that are upsetting to people? If my friend's mother just died, I don't talk about death 'in a factual, rather than personal, context'. In general, I don't describe, e.g., torture 'in a factual context'; it's not nice.
Sure, I’m not saying trolls don’t try to cover it up. I don’t see any particular issue calling them out for it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t also bad-faith nutcases who can and will cause problems. The internet is a big place and there’s no test of basic sanity to log on, and few jobs or schools would want the reputational risk of defending even someone who was using a word in a factual discussion.
I don’t think there’s any virtue in using it when it upsets people. I also don’t think there’s virtue in refusing to use a word, even in discussions about that word. There’s a line of reasonability: using it to express hate can and should be frowned on. But substituting a euphemism in all contexts is excessive.
The person that comment referenced doesn't seem to be a troll and obviously wasn't writing in a hateful context. Ironically, the fact that he used a euphemism pretty much proves that.
The only requirement for shaping language and informal thought policing is a sufficiently malignant army of trolls then?
I'd rather have a wild jungle internet full of anonymous people saying nigger in every second sentence than one of voluntary gestapo thought police combing through post histories to dox and hound common people because they don't fulfill the "linguistic standards" imposed by a small group of ideological/political activists.
Those words are "taboo" because they convey a direct "you are property or worse and I can hurt you and you can't stop me" violent threat. At the moment, at least in some parts of the world, that _violence_ is what is taboo. Maybe some people don't understand the implicit meaning, but lots of people do, especially the ones who're threatened.
That article didn't discuss class / culture, so whatever a nobel who's threatening an underling might say, "peon" or whatever, wasn't mentioned. Elsewhere someone made the distinction between 'insult' and 'slur' which I think is a good way to distinguish vulgarity/insult from threat.
Most cuss words are more taboo for women to say than men, and somewhat accepted in male company (bars, locker rooms, cigar bars, etc.) than in mixed. At least that’s how it was, and closer to how it is where I live.
> I'm right eye dominant, though, so I throw, swing, shoot, use scissors, play instruments and use a mouse right handed.
Dominant eye and hand don't have to match; in fact, they often don't. To quote Wikipedia:
> ...the side of the dominant eye and the dominant hand do not always match. This is because both hemispheres control both eyes, but each one takes charge of a different half of the field of vision, and therefore a different half of both retinas
im embarrassingly right handed but also left eye dominant. my family is obsessed with bird hunting and took a while before my dad realized i had to close my left eye to hit anything
The presidency is not the only election on the ballot.
And if you ask people who don't vote why not, very few of them are going to mention the electoral college. I would wager most people who don't vote couldn't even explain what the electoral college is.
In many districts, your vote for US House and Senate seats largely doesn't matter, either. For many people, those are the only elections they are thinking about when it comes to November.
Senate seats are elected state-wide, so they largely go the same way as the presidential vote. If you're in a deep-red or deep-blue state (i.e., nearly all of them), your individual vote isn't going to make a difference.
House seats are district-specific, but:
a) the re-election rate of incumbents is over 90%
b) districts are often drawn to lock-in control for a specific party
State senate and house seats are often no better.
However, much to the credit of the sibling response, there are all kinds of local and regional races as well as ballot initiatives that are important.
Setting aside gerrymandering (which is a huge issue), the reelection rate doesn't tell the whole story. By what margin are House candidates typically winning? I'm sure there are plenty of landslides, but also lots of districts that were decided by a few percent -- and those who don't vote could be a deciding factor in those races if they chose to vote.
Or if we analyze this from an opportunity cost perspective, IMO voting is always the right choice. Maybe there's an 80% chance your vote "doesn't matter", but the cost is only 15 minutes of your time every 2 years. Isn't the 20% worth the risk? (OK, I am lucky enough to live in a state where voting lines are short. I understand it takes more than 15 mins for some people.)
Bottom line: Turnout reflects the odds that an individual vote will impact the outcome.
In most races, there is little doubt (more than 80% odds) as to who will win. And this extends all the way down to the local level. And voters, candidates and political parties all know this.
Probably they couldn't explain it, but many of them will have taken to heart the idea that "my vote doesn't matter". Which is especially sad, since like you say there are potentially all kinds of local and regional races and ballot measures their vote could in fact have impacted.
This might work, but it also guarantees you will be first on the chopping block when layoffs come around. I have seen this happen first-hand multiple times: any employee with a special arrangement that doesn't meet what the executive team desires will be let go at the first chance, even if they are a huge asset to the company.
Not to say you shouldn't try that approach. Just that you'll have less job stability.
Agree 100%, even if you can manage an exception it does not look good to be the odd man out. It's easy to imagine people like this being the initial "easy choices" when layoff discussions happen. Not saying people should just roll over, but if you can manage an exception and see work from home as a requirement, I'd view that as your opportunity to maintain employment while looking for a company that takes remote work seriously
Yup, and I think the only guarantee for a remote-first workplace is if the whole company
( or at least the whole engineering dept. ) is spread out enough that there is no possible plan for an in-office setup.
Seems like most these types are building niche products (e.g.: tailscale) and not just SaaS or CRUD-with-AI ?
While layoffs can be pretty horrible, getting a severance package (or even just a "severance package" in the style of not being allowed back to work during the WARN Act period), can be a pretty good deal and/or vacation that you've needed.
As far as I can tell, darkweb has no actual meaning anymore anyway.
I saw an article recently claiming that something like 80% of people under 30 access the dark web at least once a week. 80% of under-30s use Tor? Seems highly unlikely.
My understanding is it merely meant sites not indexed by search engines. Your employers internal websites or the sites for your college coursework would count.
"Not indexed" is the deep web. The dark web is ones that use alternate protocols on top of the web so they can't be indexed by web search engines (includes things like Tor and Discord).
I suppose ones that require authentication (like internal employer sites) could also be dark web.
It's definitely hidden behind a login, and is often the source of many controversies including underage users, where it's easier for predators to groom and prey upon these kids. Trying to figure out a label such as "dark web" is less about the actual definition, and more about the intention behind the technology (IMO, of course).
Don't forget bit torrent. There are teenagers out there committing several world GDP worth of piracy on the daily if you believe the entertainment industry
> No one would mind if they were building new homes
I get what you're saying - producing new homes is actually what we need and would be more beneficial compared to just buying up existing housing stock - but the same NIMBYs who I mentioned further up would actually be upset about people building new homes.
Isn't that the beauty of open source? That we are empowered to make tools that fit our needs and the needs of our users?
I don't see why open source tools should be intentionally crippled in the name of some sort of "purity". Implementing this feature costs nothing (it is an open standard, unencumbered by licenses or patents), and you can continue to use the tool as if the vendor-specific option doesn't exist.
It's less about purity and more about overhead. Adding this feature adds friction to refactoring the code, adds surface area for vulnerabilities (and the user ignoring it won't make that go away), and makes the binary bigger. The cost/benefit ratio might well be favorable, but implementing this feature absolutely costs something.
Have you seen the price of housing? Mortgage payments are twice what they were in 2021 for the same house, largely due to high interest rates. Of course people want big rate cuts.
But if you cut the rate to 1%, the increase in home sales would just drive the principle up. If anything, the high rates have finally slowed the crazy housing market.
Yeah Zillow's estimate for my house worth only went down for a short while, and not by much. It's now going back up again (up 3% just this past month). It still thinks the house is worth 60% more than when I bought it 5 years ago.
Granted this will be different depending on where you live. This chart for the median sales price of homes sold in the US[1] seems to think it's still trending slightly downward.
It almost makes it more newsworthy: "look, it finally happened!"
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