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Comment by aurizon | Hacker News Reader

Riches of empire extracted from the 'colonies' plus the industrial revolution led to a huge increase in fools with money - with predictable results...

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Why is 'colonies' in scare quotes?

If you don't know why it is in quotes, you shouldn't assume they are scare quotes.

It’s a single common word in the middle of the sentence. Doesn’t it have to be a scare quote? It wouldn’t make much sense to actually be quoting just a single noun with zero context.

They read like 'half scare quotes', not "scare quotes", to me -- 'mildly cautious quotes'.

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/06/scare-quotes.html

>Are scare quotes scary?

>[...] But the warning quotes you’re referring to, sometimes called “scare quotes,” should always be double quotes, not singletons, in American writing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/th...

>The Scare Quote: 2016 in a Punctuation Mark

>Doubled quotes developed as indications of a rational world. Now they’re developing as indications of the opposite.

I did not want to offend the USA/India whom eventually booted the brits

Why would Americans be offended? I’m fairly certain it is common knowledge that we used to be a British colony.

*several british colonies

I’m not the person who posted that comment but I think the idea is that the phrase “colonies” diminishes those locations’ worth implicitly. It makes their role as a subjugated territory their defining identity and characteristic, rather than placing their individual sovereignty and identity first. I am guessing it’s not as much of a problem for America as for other colonized nations (non white, non European ones) where colonial rule lasted longer, was more brutal, and has had longer lasting impacts.

You mean basically all of them.

>with predictable results...

Yet here we are in today's third world derived resource driven rush, where billions of dollars vanish and appear in the blink of an eye, unicorn startups come and go in a day and a fool(VC) is quickly parted from their money with a buzzword and some marketing.

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