It's Getting Serious

[KeithD]

A man has been arrested for threatening to bomb the offices of the Miriam-Webster dictionary publishers over the definition of "female."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/m...sedgntp&cvid=e26f962602404eaeea56b4b292224e9b

 

[SimonDoom]

It's been serious for a long time. From the beginning, I think.

Whatever one thinks of these issues, they're not a reason to want to hurt people. But for whatever reason, there are always people who want to hurt other people because they're different or because they think differently.

 

[TxRad]

If you want to know the fate of the world, go look for a movie called, "Idiocracy." I think that was how it was spelled.

The end of humanity won't be from meteors, atomic bombs or super volcanoes. It will be from stupid people. They have been allowed to breed for at least four or five generations so far and we are already seeing the results.

 

[SamScribble]

Girls and boys (and I use that purely as an all-encompassing salutation), we should remind ourselves that there are roughly the same number of people on both sides of the bell curve. Unfortunately.

 

[TxRad]

I disagree with that, Sam. Maybe at one time but that curve is slip, slipping along the wrong way.

 

[SamScribble]

I disagree with that, Sam. Maybe at one time but that curve is slip, slipping along the wrong way.

Oh dear, Tx. And just when I was trying to be optimistic.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I don't think there's more idiots nowadays, just that now they can more readily escape their villages and they can gang up and encourage each other without even leaving their homes.

And many aren't stupid per se, just want a club to belong to. Feeling like you and your new online mates are protecting humanity? It's a powerful attraction.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't think there are more idiots. Idiocy is always evolving and taking new forms. Social media allows the instant exchange of information, but also the instant exchange of disinformation. People can wrap themselves in little digital cocoons of ignorance.

The other element is that change happens so fast now. Some people react very badly to that.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

The only reason there seems to be more idiots is that there are now cameras around the world that document their stupidity. Before the advent of the cell phone and online media we just didn't see as many of them, unless they ran into us in their car that they couldn't drive.

 

[RachelPost]

I agree with Zeb. Online media have caused loneliness in many people. So they gravitate toward other lonely people. They join a group that may or may not interest them. There they are exposed to people seeking to make the changes they want no matter what it takes. Then, mob mentality takes place. They don't want to be left behind, so they join the madness.

This isn't a new problem. It happens in riots, mass marches, and in places where a charismatic but unstable person rises to power. For example Hitler in Germany. Jim Jones in Guyana. I could list more but you get my point.

 

[gunhilltrain]

A man has been arrested for threatening to bomb the offices of the Miriam-Webster dictionary publishers over the definition of "female."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/m...sedgntp&cvid=e26f962602404eaeea56b4b292224e9b

Interesting that it was a man who was bothered by the definition. There is not much about him in the article, but I'd like to know his story.

Maybe this guy could take a crack at explaining it.

Dr. Grande - Columbine Massacre

 

[lovecraft68]

If you want to know the fate of the world, go look for a movie called, "Idiocracy." I think that was how it was spelled.

The end of humanity won't be from meteors, atomic bombs or super volcanoes. It will be from stupid people. They have been allowed to breed for at least four or five generations so far and we are already seeing the results.

The main issue these days is there used to be limits, boundaries, and a word call no. None of those exist anymore and no matter how far they take something, they need to go further all in an effort, at the end of the day to play victim or try to be special in some way.

I work with a guy from Mexico and he asked me "Know why you have to call me Latin X now in stead of just Latino?"
I asked why and his response was.
"Because we had to grab the X because the alphabet mafia took it."
There is a movement that mother is no longer a correct term, its now "Birthing persons"...last I looked men can't give birth, but that must be because I'm some type of phobe because that's always the response to logic.

But like Simon points out nothing like that is a reason for someone to try and hurt someone else.

The veil is thin and the lunacy is growing. We're a society of people who are one outraged tweet from turning in mad dogs.

Its a sad day when I look around and say 'wow, these people need to stop being so angry"

 

[lovecraft68]

I think this link should be posted in that socially responsible/PC writing thread....because this where that bullshit has taken us. Women, females, and girls exist. Sorry for that heartbreaking news.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Well, go back fifty or a hundred years and we used to tuck them away in psychiatric wards. We didn't protect people from their own stupidity either, and societal expectations and cultural mores kept a lot of others in line. There's a price to be paid for all this moral freedom, or whatever else you want to call it. The old Roman Empire found that one out, and eventually we will too. It's a long slow process, this succumbing to the barbarians....

 

[Winter_Fare]

I think this link should be posted in that socially responsible/PC writing thread....because this where that bullshit has taken us. Women, females, and girls exist. Sorry for that heartbreaking news.

This link
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female
Is completely inoffensive. Only a total psycho would threaten murder over this link. Sub definition b does not erase or diminish any other sub definition. Bitch be crazy.

 

[TheRedChamber]

This link
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/female
Is completely inoffensive. Only a total psycho would threaten murder over this link. Sub definition b does not erase or diminish any other sub definition. Bitch be crazy.

The article is not particularly good because it's headline suggests he was offended by the definition of 'female' and the text said it was 'girl' and 'woman' that offended him so much. It should be noted that girl has a specific example sentence that involves trans girls (the horror! the horror!). Weirdly the definitions for 'boy', 'man' and 'male' are exactly the same (right down to an equivalent trans example), but its not clear if he was equally incenced by these (either way that maybe says something about his sexism or the way in which newspaper's report stories).

Obviously, the guy isn't playing with a full deck, but trying to pressure a dictionary over this is completely pointless. A dictionary's job is to document how words are actually used, not proscribe their meaning. Even if your worldview is totally anti-transrights, you have to note that plenty of people are using male/female/boy/girl/man/woman to refer to gender identity and however much you disagree with it, the dictionary should reflect that.

That said, having a definition of male that is 'the gender identity that is opposite of female' and defining female as 'the gender identity that is opposite of male' is some Baldrick level dictionary writing.

 

[KeithD]

All you need know was that he was arrested for threatening violence to publishing offices and employees.

 

[neuroparenthetical]

If you want to know the fate of the world, go look for a movie called, "Idiocracy." I think that was how it was spelled.

The end of humanity won't be from meteors, atomic bombs or super volcanoes. It will be from stupid people. They have been allowed to breed for at least four or five generations so far and we are already seeing the results.

Idiocracy doesn't begin until the smart, evil people behind the scenes all fuck off to their bunkers, islands, space stations, whatever. Note that Idiocracy actually carries a kernel of hope. People are so stupid that they're effectively guileless. Even though they're still stubborn and butthurt, they don't get actively organized and weaponized by the puppet masters.

We're still deep in pre-Idiocracy territory, and it's not clear we'll ever get there. It could just keep getting worse until it... ends.

The whole breeding angle was a fun nod to a thought experiment, but the bigger issue today is that the puppet masters aren't going to let there ever be a critical mass of intelligent people. If you shut off the spigot and let the infrastructure collapse, smart non-rich families will keep producing progressively dumber kids regardless. Hell, set aside education; the air and water quality alone will get so bad that it will make people noticeably dumber on its own; non-rich people will be getting poisoned and oxygen-deprived into stupidity.

 

[Philthy_Phil]

Who the fuck are these people?

 

[domroger]

Who the fuck are these people?

I don't know ,but it's a nice change .

 

[ishtat]

Who the fuck are these people?

The clue is that they can write - in sentences.

 

[mayfly13]

Who the fuck are these people?

Seconded. (Thanks to religiously reading your trolling, otherwise I would have missed it.)

Holy fuck! They came out of hibernation all at once, and half of them are even real!

 

[pecksniff]

I disagree with that, Sam. Maybe at one time but that curve is slip, slipping along the wrong way.

No, it's going the other way. See Flynn effect.

 

[pecksniff]

Idiocracy doesn't begin until the smart, evil people behind the scenes all fuck off to their bunkers, islands, space stations, whatever.

Idiocracy was based very loosely on Cyril M. Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons." In that story the moron world is ruled, behind the scenes, by a secret society of smart people, but they're not evil, they're just trying to keep things going, and they're overworked.

 

[pecksniff]

The whole breeding angle was a fun nod to a thought experiment, but the bigger issue today is that the puppet masters aren't going to let there ever be a critical mass of intelligent people.

There are no puppet masters but the plutocracy, and I'm sure they have no plans to exert dysgenic pressure.