[lazysheepherd]

Sorry, it has nothing to do with etymology. It is a remote and obscure use case which may or may not be offensive to some group or other.

I do not care. I'm here to read about some tech company changing their revenue model, and what tech people has to say about it. If I cared about endless discussions and virtual virtue hoarding about race, gender and politics, I'd be browsing the dark side of twitter, not the front page of HN.

I'm so tired of langauge being turned into a minefield, and every conversation ending up being about race, gender, religion, politics and whatnot. I'm a technical person, I care about technical stuff, and I use langauge to communicate technical ideas, not ideological ones.

[drekk]

This was way too many words to say "my language may have offensive and antiquated roots but I don't care and if you do you're sensitive and should not be taken seriously"

Like cool opinion, nobody has to accommodate you the same way you don't have to care about how the words leaving your mouth may be perceived by others unlike you

[lazysheepherd]

First, let me lay my credentials bare, so you would see where I'm coming from.

As I like so say: "I am merely 30 cloudy days away from white, and just one good tan away from 'person of color'." Therefore, I have the least stake in the racial discussion. Doesn't affect me one way or the other.

However, I am not least bit of shy to hiss at either side when they cross a certain line. At one side, if you take a person's race into account while deciding anyting, you're off the game for me. At the other side, if you try to control my language, you are off the game as well.

Your capability of being offended does not, and should not grant you rights or leverage against other people.

As a tech person, one should already know why censorship, blacklists and backdoors are bad ideas. Because no matter how pure your intentions were when you were first putting them in place, once in place, they inevitably will creep forward and get bigger and worse.

Let's skip the can of worms about if the political correct speech is effective. It will be an endless discussion. However, we can discuss the practicality of policial correct speech. Because those are the two requirements of any solution to any problem: 1) effectiveness 2) practicality If you fail one, your solution is, well, not a solution.

Simple argument:

1) "offensive" is a subjective, and elastic word

2) therefore set of possible offensive words for a large population is infinite

3) infinite amount of taboo words = no communication

4) THEREFORE: we must assert that political correct speech is not "practical", and can't be a solution to anything.

I advise you to put your energy into more practial solutions. That is, if you don't care more about being right, over being effective.

[allarm]

They’re just saying that mixing contexts is not helpful nor wanted. Not that it wasn’t obvious, though.