lmmarsano @ lmmarsano @lemmynsfw.com

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7 mo. ago

I think even if there’s no absolute “intrinsic” meaning, with sufficient cultural use, that negative meaning is impossible to extricate from an unironic, active use of the word.

I'm not sure of a succinct way to say that, so I see why intrinsic may have felt right. Maybe firmly established meaning?

I think it’s a little academic to say “any offensive word” can be said in an “inoffensive manner”

Technically correct best kind of correct? 😄

I point it out because some people get carried away with bizarrely simplistic claims that make the rest of their argument hard to follow. The best way to interpret their argument is unclear.

we’d then need to debate what it means to “use” a word in an offensive context versus another

I think it could suffice to state it was used in a conventional sense as an insult or to stir animosity. Musk clearly is using it in the conventional, offensive sense to outrage progressive & elicit right-wing support of outraging progressives: classic demagogy.

Back to your contention, yes, he's using the firmly established meaning to offend & be bad, which bad people do. People criticize him to try to hold him accountable, which he is exploiting to advance his agenda.

While I can't see the comment you're responding to, I'm going to guess it concerns the question why do words offend & do we need to let them offend us that much? You wrote

Nobody is making the word bad.

This is the crux of the matter. Conventions change, words change meaning. It's not instant & uniform: various people influence & promote changes that not everyone agrees with, leading to contention. Some people do make words bad. This case had a campaign to do specifically that when the word was uncontroversial until then. People had to choose to make that word more offensive than it conventionally was, and not everyone was onboard with that with many still holding out.

To see that choice, consider the words idiot, imbecile, moron. These words had similar origins as technical designations for mental disabilities, they have similar meanings and serve the same role as insults that aren't that offensive. The current meaning & usage crowded out the historical one enough that it's effectively forgotten.

The word we're discussing could have taken the same course & was on track to do that until some well-meaning activists intervened. What good does changing a word objectively do for the subjects they're trying to support? If anything, it reinforces taboo. And it introduces a new, easy button to provoke moral outrage: if you don't agree this word in particular is very offensive (unlike before), then you hate people with mental disabilities. Seems like a disservice.

This moralizing conflict over words gives demagogues easy ammo to exploit. Was there a better way to support people that doesn't do that?

My company insists on expiring passwords every 28 days, and prevents reuse of the last 24 passwords. Passwords must be 14+ characters long, with forced minimum complexity requirements.

Outdated security practices & cargo culture. Someone should roll up a copy of NIST SP 800-63 to smack them over the head until they read it:

The following requirements apply to passwords:

1. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL require passwords to be a minimum of eight characters in length and SHOULD require passwords to be a minimum of 15 characters in length.
2. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD permit a maximum password length of at least 64 characters.
3. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept all printing ASCII [RFC20] characters and the space character in passwords.
4. Verifiers and CSPs SHOULD accept Unicode [ISO/ISC 10646] characters in passwords. Each Unicode code point SHALL be counted as a single character when evaluating password length.
5. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types) for passwords.
6. Verifiers and CSPs SHALL NOT require users to change passwords periodically. However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.

Maybe ask them their security qualifications & whether they follow the latest security research & industry standards.

Passkey is multifactor: something the user has (key), something the user is (biometric) or knows (password) to unlock the key. Yes, dead simple.

For some people it is that easy.

When it is saved to a cross-platform password manager, it is secured on all devices that password manager runs on including your computer on other operating systems. You can also choose other in the OS prompt & redirect to a device with your passkey or use a hardware security key (I don't). If your preferred password manager isn't the primary one on all your devices, then fix that or use the other option mentioned before.

How would a non-techie figure this shit out?

The same way they figure out passwords & multifactor. Their pain isn't ours for those who've figured this out & have a smooth experience.

Bitches don't know bout my awesome passkeys. It's like ssh key authentication for web apps. Just save the passkeys to my password manager & presto: use same keys on all my devices.

It replaces opening a TOTP app to copy a token with a click to select the passkey in a prompt from my password manager.

That's the good ol' euphemism cycle/treadmill. Linguists have long observed a process of semantic shift, often pejoration, for words of taboo subjects.

Words idiot, imbecile, moron were technical designations that became offensive yet somehow later softened into acceptable insults.

Words colored people, negro, black went through the euphemism cycle. At some point black was reclaimed & became acceptable. Now people are afraid to say it again.

VD became STD and now it's STI. I still don't know what was wrong with STD.

This phenomenon reflects society's avoidance of uncomfortable ideas by shifting words. The words change, though it's questionable they objectively change society's discomfort toward the subjects. The phenomenon might be reasonably criticized as ineffective & distracting.

Can you guess what will happen to today's euphemisms?

The word is intrinsically bad

While I agree words can offend, I challenge your understanding of linguistics: no word is intrinsically bad. They're signs & symbols with arbitrary, often conventional meaning.

Usage & context matter. Take any euphemism & say it in a hateful manner: now it's offensive. Lifewise, take any offensive word & speak of it in an inoffensive manner: not offensive. Language is flexible.

Saying the word is not the same thing as using it. It’s not like the N word that way.

Explain the logic for not quoting an offensive word?

Taboos are weird.

Dude, you do realize I didn’t endorse centralized moderation with a single word, let alone social algorithms or any of the other trash?

They're widespread varieties of moderation taken to natural limits. And they highlight the weaknesses of thinking that approach will save us when they're often blamed for doing the opposite.

Clearly, you disagree with that kind of moderation, so maybe you should "no true Scotsman" this & define precise boundaries of moderation you accept. The only type of moderation I might accept is the minimal necessary for legal compliance & labeling that allows the user to filter content themselves.

become an utter pile of trash

abundance of ways to spread nonsense fully automatically

Matter of perspective: that "trash" we had before was beautiful. Sifting & picking through it wasn't much of a problem. Despite the low moderation, the nonsense didn't really spread & the fringe groups mostly kept to their odd sites when they weren't being ridiculed.

Look at Nostr.

Also beautiful: beats bluesky & mastodon.

Given you’re literally starting off with ad hominem

Let's add hypercritical to the list. I disagree with the alarmism over images & text on a screen, and I disagree with the infantilization of adults. Adults still think and are responsible for exercising judgment in the information they consume. Expressions alone do nothing until people choose to do something.

it must be a bunch of dorks that pronounce it wrong just because, right?

Yep: I often see people try to "correct" learners at bootcamps pronouncing it Jason. The fact people pronounce it Jason until told otherwise tells us which is more natural. The "correction", in contrast, is a myth that must be learned.

Acknowledging something happens doesn't endorse it, and Crawford never endorsed your pronunciation as natural. As I suggested earlier, he said "I strictly don't care". Jason is a completely reasonable & natural pronunciation.

There's the original pronunciation, the suggestive spelling, the common phenomenon of punning in programming, and the natural way people pronounce it as a familiar name when they first see it. Then there's your camp with a mythical, dorky pronunciation they pull out of nowhere and reinforce because.

I think people are fine to call it Jason & drive you irrationally mad.

Pretty much everyone used anonymous handles, so it was hard to be a victim, and very easy to disregard junk we didn't like.

I'm sensing strong overtones of a victim complex and excessive catastrophizing. You know they're images & words on a screen, right?

Enlightenment gives us freedom of expression. It seems uninformed & backward to assume faceless moderators of some private organization are the defenders of enlightenment, freedom, & democracy (especially while arguing against too much freedom).

Centralized moderation & curation algorithms got us filter bubbles & echo chambers personalizing the information people consume, distorting their perceptions. It feeds users information they want to see (often polarizing them with extremist ideas) to keep them engaged on the platform & maintain a steady stream of ad revenue. Rather than defend enlightened principles of society, we observe & can continue to expect moderators to serve their own interests.

Internet anarchy is a pretty good answer to that.

You seem in irrational need for validation of your pronunciation despite clear justification against it. Cool ad populum. Fly that insecurity flag high.

Well, yes: gotta comply with the law. Legal violations are often quite clear, and removing illegal content is justifiable. Can't fault anyone for following the law.

It's the extra moderation that's problematic. People yearning for their corporate authorities to command the right words & images to appear on a screen & calling that progress feels quite backward like our ancestors fought so hard to gain these freedoms that our spoiled generation will so easily cede away to some nobodies at the slightest often imaginary inconvenience.

You & your buddies can keep pronouncing it jaysawn & sounding like complete dorks if it makes you feel better. However, it was clearly intended to be pronounced naturally as Jason like its inventor pronounces it.

Believing otherwise is almost as bad as the plebs who think the symbol ∅ is inspired by Greek letter φ instead of Scandinavian letter Ø.

Illegal content has always been unprotected & subject to removal by the law. Moderation policies wouldn't necessarily remove porn presumed to be legal, either, so moderation is still a crapshoot.

Still, that sucks.

No, it's pronounced Jason. Douglas Crockford was just too laissez-faire to correct anyone on it probably because he didn't give a fuck.

Ah, the rewards of moderation: the best move is not to play. Fuck it is & has always been a better answer. Anarchy of the early internet was better than letting some paternalistic authority decide the right images & words to allow us to see, and decentralization isn't a bad idea.

Yet the forward-thinking people of today know better and insist that with their brave, new moderation they'll paternalize better without stopping to acknowledge how horribly broken, arbitrary, & fallible that entire approach is. Instead of learning what we already knew, social media keeps repeating the same dumb mistakes, and people clamor to the newest iteration of it.

Well done: thanks for ignoring & confirming my point. 😄

Victimization is all on those like you threatened by naughty words & images who claim we need some great moderator hero to defend us against their toxicity, which apparently includes work-related disagreements.

people who think others shouldn’t be forced to tolerate your immaturity whenever you act like a cunt

And they'll be objective about it, or is anything someone disagrees with instance of immaturity & someone acting like a cunt? Do we need the noble internet police to swoop in and protect us against your words & images? They're here, yet somehow the world isn't crumbling.