I wish they had called it something else. I hate to be that guy but you know, it's not that hard to be maybe just a little bit more thoughtful.
The word dramatically declined in popularity through the 19th century but started climbing again after ~1995[0]. The recent increase in usage is driven entirely by a much milder, colloquial meaning of "wildly foolish"[1].
I think being offended because our great-grandparents used the word literally is a bit silly.
[0] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=lunatic&year_s...
[1] Meriam Webster identifies the older meaning as "dated": https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lunatic
As someone who has family members with mental health issues, I don't find the term offensive at all.
I, for one, by default think more of someone who's obsessed with the moon, I guess it's because I never read that article, so I've never been told to be offended by it.
All that said, I do hope that the authors understand that they might be fighting an uphill battle with regards to adoption.
The very word has lost all real meaning.
I didn't say it was offensive. If it was called "autistic", the word is not offensive but... why? It's just a really strange choice.
I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it.
Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"?
> It's just a really strange choice
Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...
On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!)
I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness?
What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too?
Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs?
The list just goes on. And on. And on. AND ON.
Spare us the BS. Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not.
Case in point: legal proceedings for libel, threats and so on. Turns out society still gives meaning to words.
> it's impossible to even be proven wrong
You've been proven wrong right now.
Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others, and everyone else who just quietly don't care.
> You've been proven wrong right now.
I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority and you are so brave for standing up to them.
It isn't. Open a dictionary and you'll find a number of words clearly defined as offensive.
Language isn't just an opinion of few people.
> I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
Spare us the BS.
Are you implying that it's not? If so, do you have any reasoning to support that claim?
> Language isn't just an opinion of few people
Language is defined by how people use it. There is no central authority for the meaning, or level of offensiveness, of words.
> Spare us the BS.
Who's "us"? And what bullshit are you talking about exactly?
Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.
You are easily offended it seems.
Spare us the bullshit.
Sure enough, sensitized to it, I heard an NPR host and a Chipotle ad use it in the colloquial sense within the next week. And those are just the ones I noticed, and that were very-public rather than in private conversations.
This stuff's not mainstream and normal people don't care a bit. It's not even caught on in groups worried about impressing the word-police crowd (major advertisers and NPR both qualifying, I should think).
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dhrlhm/the-reith-lec...
It is the right question. If a term once considered offensive no longer is one, and there's no one who gets offended by it, is it still offensive?
> With the whole English language to pick from there are probably better choices that are less ambiguous.
Given infinite time and finite language, every term will become offensive. What then? Especially considering the euphemism treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Lifespan
So if you have a law on the books governing how to treat lunatics, or how lunatics should be treated, it's a dumb old law because there's no official test for lunatic. It would be just as stupid if you had laws about the "wacky" or the "nuts."
The overwrought nature of the concern about seeing the word as the name of a piece of software is just a symptom of the current zeitgeist.
A few years back a non-native English speaker presented an Erlang library called `coon` because he like this abbreviation of the word `raccoon`. [1]
The shitstorm from Americans (US and Canada) was unbelievable. Even though:
- most people on the mailing list where this was discussed never heard it used as a slur
- people in the states where this word was purportedly still used as a slur never heard it used
- several black people (both African Americans IIRC and a guy from South Africa) said they had no problems with the name (and promptly ignored)
The name of the library was changed.
Now. The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf.
See also: the performative activism around master/main branches in git.
[1] Actual reasons: the name was available: https://github.com/comtihon/enot/issues/59#issuecomment-3651...
In the US. Not even the whole of the US, but in some parts of the US.
> That some people ("a guy from South Africa", ffs) claimed not to know this
I wonder who is being a racist now. "South Africa ffs" and "claim not to know".
The world is much larger than the US and is not required to view everything through US issues.
> I invite you to go to any black neighborhood in the US
So, to quote myself: "The question is: who decides it is a slur especially in our global world? Somehow, increasingly, it's the white Americans who end up being offended on everyone's behalf."
The black people on the receiving end of “coon” would be the decision makers in this case.
And besides that, during the googling process of figuring out if the name is taken the negative connotations of this one would come up.
Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
The black people in the United States, specifically. To put this into perspective: 1.2 billion people live in Africa alone, most of them non-white.
> Anyway I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you.
And what exactly is the negaive connotation here for 1.1 billion English speakers (out of 8.7 billion people) who don't live in the US?
Once again. To put this into perspective since you both are being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US, here's a perspective of an English-speaking person from South Africa (I only quote parts of the messages):
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- staty quote ---
I think you just need to tolerate different cultures better. A word that is deemed racist in one culture isn't the same in another.
There are many other uses for coon. Maine Coon is a type of cat. Coon is type of cheese in Australia. Go on - tell all of Australia to stop eating coon.
Next you'll be telling me to rethink the use of the work 'monkey' or 'gorrilla' for a library. Where does it end?
--- end quote ---
- http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2018-February/0...
--- start quote ---
I grew up in apartheid South Africa. This was a system of government that legitimised racist laws... I've been mocked and called racial slurs, served last in queues, talked down to. Bad words over there are 'kaffir' and 'coolie'. They're highly offensive words and given the nature of violence in that country, it's something you could be killed over. For me those words carry more significance than 'coon' ever will.
...
When I moved to NZ it was quite clear that those same words that were insulting in South Africa didn't carry over. Both countries speak English but the cultures are different, although SA has more languages. I noticed that there's there is a product called 'kaffir lime' grocery stores everywhere. Imagine having 'n...ga lime' in American/Canadian grocery stores. I got used to it after a while and it really doesn't bother me anymore. Instead of shouting out about the use of the word 'kaffir' in their product, I understood that different countries use words differently, and expecting NZ to change for me to accommodate my sensitivities would have been stupid.
--- end quote ---
Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
If the US were a person, literally everyone would tell them to get its shit together and go see a psychologist. And not make the world assume that all issues must be viewed strictly through skewed American view.
If Bubba goes on twitter and starts calling black people from Canada, Australia, Mozambique, or wherever "coon" they'll probably be offended by it once they figure out what it means.
> Now. Are you also going to dismiss this as "some guy from South Africa ffs"?
That wasn't me, so no i'm not. I'm not "being maximally culturally and racially insensitive to anything that is not US", I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth. Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest when we could just do a simple apples to apples comparison.
If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie" because I think it's a fun word and I used to like Coolio, then someone comes along and says hey that's pretty offensive to this subset of people on the other side of the globe for these reasons that will never affect you. I'd just change it. It would cost me nothing and probably net me some goodwill.
If that person is from the States and/or uses the term specifically in the way it's used in the US.
And even then most might just shrug it away because the word doesn't bare any significant emotional or historical baggage. What's another idiot on the internet?
Meanwhile you keep forcing the US-centric view onto the world.
> I just answered your question with the simple and obvious truth.
Ah yes. The "obvious truth" apparently meaning "whatever is true for this specific US-centric view of US-specific issues and US_specific cultural baggage is the truth".
> Honestly you're coming across as more of the "offended" type than the people asking for the name change in the first place.
Yes. I'm offended by the US shoving its way of thinking down everyone's throats and expecting everyone to meekly comply because "it's the objective truth".
> And your quote isn't really helping you out. Comparing changing the name of a new software library to changing the name of a long standing physical product on shelves is dishonest
Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
> If I consider a hypothetical situation where I named my project "Coolie"
You already said, I quote, "I’m working on a new terminal string styling library that I’ve named Colored which should be of some interest to you." which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me.
I can only re-iterate: stop forcing your US cultural and societal issues onto the world.
> I'd just change it.
You? Maybe. As it actually turns out, Americans expect everyone else to conform to whatever they find offensive while never, or rarely, changing themselves. A great example: Pidora has been "actively seeking a new name" for the past 9 years, and counting https://wiki.cdot.senecacollege.ca/wiki/Pidora_Russian
You keep saying this, but the world view presented i've presented is anything but. The coolie example is specifically addressing non-US racism right?
> Of course what makes it dishonest is your monopoly on the truth, got it.
No, what makes it dishonest is that a bad example was specifically chosen because it helped the point. Where a good example would have been detrimental to the point.
> which was probably supposed to evoke some kind of indignation from me
No, you've been indignant the whole time. The US existing and having people in it that have their own perspectives seems to be some kind of attack on your identity which is causing you to lose reason and froth at the mouth.
You keep talking about "shoving" and "forcing", but the only person forcing anything is you and your ad nauseam repetition of some "US centric" accusation. It's just as baseless and pointless the 10th time as the first. Everyone gets it, you can chill.
* An obviously racist and currently in-use racial slur is not ok.
* A Victorian-era word, which was not even used as a slur (although it did have some negative connotation back then and now too) is most likely ok.
Whether you agree or not with the use of the term, names are part of communication, and communication that people are going to take issue with (rightly or wrongly) is going to have an impact on a product/project/business, and should probably be reconsidered, unless the point is to cause controversy or dogwhistle certain values.
This name for example would probably rule out use at many companies, and I suspect many would choose not to publicise it with things like conference talks.
It's definitely a fine line to walk. There are names that originated in an offensive context, and it's easier for me to see the objection to those. But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century, so I don't think it's fair to stoke outrage towards a project that started in the 2020s and chose it for extremely innocent reasons.
Sure, but there's a big difference to the marketability of a product between whether 30% get a funny feeling that it's not a great name and won't promote via word of mouth, vs 0.0001% who are known for taking issue with a lot of stuff shouting about it in their echochamber.
> But "lunatic" hasn't been commonly used in its offensive sense in nearly a century
I think it was reasonable to refer to "lunatic asylums" or even "looney bins" until quite recently. The offensiveness may be less, and less targeted at individuals than it was 100 years ago, but it's still there.