> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles.

To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine that a swastika is offensive (in the west) by its shape alone.

In this case, the term "colored people" gained racist connotations from its history of being used for discrimination and segregation - and avoiding it for that reason is the primary principle at play. There's also the secondary/less universal principle of preferring "person-first language".

I think there’s a fascinating throughline from older Christian moral enforcement to what the essay calls “wokeness.” Historically, a lot of Christian movements had the same impulse to legislate language and behaviors—just grounded in sin rather than privilege. For instance, the 19th-century American Puritans famously policed each other’s speech and actions because the stakes were framed as eternal salvation versus damnation. That social dynamic—where the “righteous” person gains status by exposing the lapses of others—feels remarkably similar to what we see now with “cancellations” on social media.

The one thing I'll never understand are people using self-aggrandizing titles on things that are otherwise vacuous shitposts. It happens more with blogs than it does with actual, hardcover published books. Maybe "Ferromagnetism" by Bozorth but at least he discovered/invented a particular combination that works well so he gets a free pass by the virtue of it.

(to be clear i'm not calling Bozorth's work a shitpost, but you have to got to have balls to slam that kind of title on a textbook)

If pg wants to hang out with dt at mar a lago he's gotta have some easily googleable bona fides afterall.