Interesting. Could you suggest how to rewrite that comment and express that a person noticed something (in the literal sense of the word) without using a dog whistle?
I realized that...
I became aware...
That's without even looking for a thesaurus. Not that I'm supporting this alt-definition of noticing, but your question seemed pretty trivial to answer.
Maybe it's better to assume that most people in the world aren't evil degenerates unless there's hard evidence to the contrary.