Today, I am posting it again because I believe the HN readers will benefit from it. Why? The majority of HN readers work in IT or adjacent information fields; we communicate information with strings aka words.
Falsehoods programmers believe about strings: All strings are words.
More seriously: While I find the topic appropriate for HN, connecting the topicality to the use of strings in IT is weird. If the ban only applied to audio or sign language, the topic wouldn’t be any less appropriate.
I flagged it because it is hyper-partisan hyperbole. Censorship is when the government prevents others from speaking. When the government decides what the government itself will or will not say, that is not censorship, and it is perfectly appropriate.
Many of the rest are clearly editorial or phrasing preferences (e.g., "Latinx" in place of "Latino/a"), which are reasonable to have; I'm sure any mainstream publication like the NYT also has its own preferred language and style guidelines.
Sounds like the Republican party would really support the adoption Newspeak.
> It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
"Black"? Being a black man I am more interested in the context in which this list is applied and hope just the list/words in the abstract are not being simply used as rage bait.
Edit: I no longer think me being a black male is relevant in this context because after looking further into the list it basically covers multiple terms that apply to everyone; thus I think context of application is even more important and the list in itself is fairly irrelevant.
In the context of "anti-woke" ideology. Many people currently in power believe that if we do not talk about race, by literally not using the words, that longstanding societal issues will simply disappear. Same too with many scientific principals. In power or not, these people are idiots.
Agreed, but I and obviously you are not and we do not have to pretend to be by becoming enraged at their idiotic behavior if it has no material impact.
Secondly, I do not agree that they think issues will "disappear"; I believe that they simply think this gives them license to impose their will on the groups that identify with said banned terms.
It has reached beyond government institutions. From the linked article:
"These policies’ tentacles already extend beyond government websites... Reports say scientists are self-censoring in hopes of improving their chances of getting government grants."
In regards to government institutions, limiting speech in this way will cause people to die.
For example, banning the phrase "air pollution" will curtail efforts to address air pollution, e.g. scientists not submitting research proposals addressing air pollution, causing people to die as a result[1].
Their CEO was in the Obama admin, and they didn't really press Biden/Obama to the same extent with high profile advocacy on whistleblowers, Assange, Espionage Act, etc.
I wonder what the ban list looked like at the peak of woke hysteria about five years ago. It must have been something along the lines of "white", "straight", "heterosexual", "traditional family", "pro-life" etc. The left is tasting its own medicine - I wonder if this is going to teach them anything or not.
Today, I am posting it again because I believe the HN readers will benefit from it. Why? The majority of HN readers work in IT or adjacent information fields; we communicate information with strings aka words.
More seriously: While I find the topic appropriate for HN, connecting the topicality to the use of strings in IT is weird. If the ban only applied to audio or sign language, the topic wouldn’t be any less appropriate.
Many of the rest are clearly editorial or phrasing preferences (e.g., "Latinx" in place of "Latino/a"), which are reasonable to have; I'm sure any mainstream publication like the NYT also has its own preferred language and style guidelines.
It seems the federal executive admin is censoring government websites of all levels and branches of government.
That sounds like censorship to me.
> It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
Edit: I no longer think me being a black male is relevant in this context because after looking further into the list it basically covers multiple terms that apply to everyone; thus I think context of application is even more important and the list in itself is fairly irrelevant.
Secondly, I do not agree that they think issues will "disappear"; I believe that they simply think this gives them license to impose their will on the groups that identify with said banned terms.
The rest are probably true in a sense but not written down like those are.
Example: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-fede...
> PEN America (formerly PEN American Center), founded in 1922, and headquartered in New York City, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
> whose goal is to raise awareness for the protection of free expression in the United States and worldwide through the advancement of
> literature and human rights.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEN_America
"These policies’ tentacles already extend beyond government websites... Reports say scientists are self-censoring in hopes of improving their chances of getting government grants."
In regards to government institutions, limiting speech in this way will cause people to die.
For example, banning the phrase "air pollution" will curtail efforts to address air pollution, e.g. scientists not submitting research proposals addressing air pollution, causing people to die as a result[1].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/climate-health/php/effects/air-pollution...
This is a left wing think tank.
Edit: article flagged presumably for bias.
You don't need to think about it anymore, just crawl back into the hole, cover yourself with that nice big rock.