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photochemsyn

I can think of a few more!

"register" - might indicate that someone has to register as a second-class citizen, enemy alien, etc.

"bit" - might imply that someone is only a 'bit player', leading to feelings of inferiority.

"tool" - an obviously offensive word meaning that someone is only fit to be used by others.

"terminal" - we need to be sensitive about words that bring up the concept of death, to avoid triggering effects.

"inheritance" - individuals are not the product of their ancestry!

"class" - we don't need a class-structured society, that's a leftover from a feudal past.

"polymorphism" - too close to hermaphrodite, must be eliminated.

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"Stanford" - may refer to noted racist and Asian-exclusionist Leland Stanford. Also may refer to related location formed originally as a whites-only educational enclave on indigenous lands.

Yeah if they want to go full political correct that is probably the best place to start.

And of course the “Master’s” degree.

Now called a Main’s degree

I almost spit my tea out. You made me laugh.

That's too close to the spelling of the word Man, which would be exclusionary of the woman gender. Let's call it a Human's degree.

Or better yet, a Being's degree. Let's not be speciesists.

Scentient, please. But let's not use the New Order's classification of species as scentient or not.

Or elementist (Silicon vs. carbon)

Human has the word man in it, so let’s use huperson

"Terran" is an established term.

That's exclusionary of beings not native to Terra.

That's not going to be an issue. There are zero such beings known so far, no hard evidence they even exist, and we're not going to find or create ones any time soon - the same people who engage in language policing also currently dislike space exploration for various ideological reasons.

Well the colonizers didn't know that Native Americans existed before landing in America, and look what happened. We must prevent any and all such occurrences in our interplanetary future by only using a non-specieist vocabulary.

It’s so obvious that if colonizers had used inclusive language, everybody would have lived in peace. Though maybe labelling them ‘colonizers’ and not ‘welcome guests’ was only the first of a set of micro aggressions that precipitated the situation.

> That's not going to be an issue. There are zero such beings known so far

Maybe the reason there are zero openly non-terran (or, preferrably, differently planeted) folks is attutides like yours. Think about it.

> for various ideological reasons

They are opposed to colonies wherever they might be, even lunar colonies.

This is gaslighting the lived experience of those who have reported abduction by aliens.

You have no argument there. The same people who care about butchering language and destroying society are the same people who don't care about facts or what's real.

What do you identify as, though?

I just love this thread.

I think you missed the joke, friend.

But "person" has the word "son" in it, and that's gendered.

Better go with huperchild.

Huperchild has the words “per child” in it, which is exclusionary to people who choose not to worsen overpopulation by not procreating.

How about huperperson?

Uh wait, that’s recursi- political correctness overflow error.

Human ends in “man” and has already been regarded as offensive to “people” or “persons”. Being when referenced to an organism is only used in context of “human” (offensive) or an “alien” (offensive). Anything that is referential to an offensive word must be struck as well.

No word should ever create a mental reference to a banned word nor should a substitute word create a mental suspicion or guess of what the original offensive word was. A new vocabulary must be formed -newspeak if you will.

> Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

You're discriminating against non-beings.

Being brought up in multicultural Australia, I was colourblind [1] to race. I find it hard to even remember what ethnicity my peers were.

As such, I have no hate of other races but I'm filled with hate every time my "git push origin master" fails because the branch is now called "main".

[1] How was this word not on the list?

Add aliases to your gitconfig. Not gonna solve the frustration but at least it doesn’t have to be a trigger (oops). Also, I much prefer trunk over main/master anyway so I just went back to that.

I hope you've got a big trunk, because I'm going to put my bike in it

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Thank you! I had no idea one could alias branch names. Why be woke, when you can be aliased awake.

"Being brought up in multicultural Australia, I was colourblind [1] to race."

Tell that to Ibram Kendi.

He can't believe that kids in racially integrated environments are efficient thinkers largely concerned with simple priorities. Is Billy a bully? Should I pick Alice first in the game on the sandlot? Can Jose help me with this math problem?

I'm not very smart and would prefer it just being called a university degree, to describe where you get it from.

I mean what the fuck is a sophomore?

You're not wrong; it would probably make sense to have first/second/third level degrees instead of BSc/MSc/PhD (and their equivalents). We might even get there eventually. But the reason this would be desirable has nothing to do with etymology of "master's degree" (or "bachelor's degree"), nor with the hypocrisy of a university declaring the word "master" as offensive, while not renaming the corresponding degree.

Sophomore is an oxymoron:

> From earlier sophumer, from the obsolete sophom (“sophism or dialectical exercise”), likely influenced by Ancient Greek σοφός (sophós, “wise”) + μωρός (mōrós, “fool”). Compare oxymoron (literally “sharp-dull”), a similar contradiction.

Only in the UK. In the US, it's better known as a Line Degree.

it would be even easier to say that "Bachelors" degree is worse on multiple woke levels except perhaps race.

PhD isn't any better - the Ph stands for "philosophy", which ostensibly is about "love for wisdom", but it's clear etymologically that phílos + sophía isn't exactly ungendered.

Might explain some of the existential self-loathing embodied in this list...

Stanford also contains "Ford", a possible reference to the notorious anti-semite Henry Ford.

I propose renaming the institution after a more acceptable historical figure, one whom most undergraduates don't think did anything wrong: Stalin.

This should not be considered hyperbole. These people will write entire books which can be summarised as "Pol Pot did nothing wrong" [0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

They have an email link to submit additional words. We're I not early in my academic career and worried of potential repercussions, I would be emailing these suggestions to them. Though I worry if they wouldn't just add them all to the list rather than understanding the message.

Funny you mention this because it reminds me of the time I pointed out that Chief Seattle owned slaves and committed a genocide against the Chimmicum people. I forgot the context in which I made this observation but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of people of historical significance would merit cancelling by today’s standards.

The road where on can’t lead anywhere but renaming anything just so a younger generation can claim superiority over older generations whom they are forcing to adopt their new vernacular at risk of cancellation.

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” —Philip K. Dick

"black Friday" - what could possibly have been on sale originally when it got this name?

Clearly a reference to "white savior" Robinson Crusoe's manservant Friday, a highly offensive stereotype of a subservient BIPOC.

Know your hierarchy of oppression. That's sexist. Clearly it would be code for His Girl Friday.

"Girl"? Seriously? Infantilising women is sexist.

It’s a reference to an old movie.

I always assumed this was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 1929 market crash and subsequent events.

Taken to mean “this is going to be a really stressful day”. Probably utterly not at all that though.

The real answer is that financial ledgers used to use black ink for positive numbers and red for negative, hence the terminology "in the red"/"in the black" to mean an enterprise is in debt or profitable. Black Friday was the day of the year where every department store would have so much business that it put them "in the black", even if they had just spent the entire previous part of the year "in the red".

That's a good story, but according to Wikipedia this etymology was invented after the fact and isn't the real origin of the term (which is somewhat obscure.)

...and which pen is used in an accounting ledger at certain times of year is not obscure?

I don't get what you're saying. It's not obscure at all that black ink denotes profits and red ink denotes losses - "in the black" and "in the red" are well-understood English phrases.

All I'm saying is that this particular meaning of black/red doesn't appear to be the origins of the name "black Friday", at least according to Wikipedia, but I really don't care about this enough to investigate any further.

Origin early 17th century (as school slang, in the sense ‘Friday on which an examination is held’). The shopping sense dates from the 1960s and was originally used with reference to congestion created by shoppers; it was later explained as a day when retailers’ accounts went from being ‘in the red’ to ‘in the black’.

"Trigger warning" is now hurtful and should be replaced by "content note". That's recursively triggering.

Ask the French about the sensitivities involved in 'bit'. Actually, they've already highlighted the issue, with typical maturity and sophistication: https://coq.inria.fr/ . (The name wasn't a coincidence, no.)

These are brilliant, I can't wait to troll my well-meaning but sanctimonious colleagues with these.

How 'bout "gold standard", "golden rule", etc. After all, black people were forced to work in gold mines during South Africa's aparthied era. Maybe the name of the element gold needs to be changed too.

How do you feel about "bad faith"?

Clearly insulting religion, to be avoided!

... unless that religion is Christianity, in which case, fire away!

How dare you use such an offensive word as "eliminate"!?!?!? /s

<< "polymorphism" - too close to hermaphrodite, must be eliminated.

You do not eliminate, you disintermediate.

I will admit that this may explain some of the general public's attitude towards academia and higher learning.

"tool" is historically and currently also slang for penis. Can't have that.

> "class" - we don't need a class-structured society, that's a leftover from a feudal past.

You got this one backwards though, the notion of “social classes” is a left-winged concept, while the conservatives are usually the one pretending they don't exist.

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