tables

While I understand the sentiment, I hate this trend that whenever someones talks about how soulless the internet has become, the answer is always Web 1.0.

I don’t want web 1.0. I like having CSS and Javascript around. I use them to build things I couldn’t with HTML alone, and I’ve seen countless incredibly creative websites which fundamentally couldn’t have been built without Javascript. It’s weird to me how the article mentions the creative aspect of the old web, versus the commercial aspect and “sameyness” of the current web, only to then toss out tools that allow for even more creativity and personalization in the current web.

Whenever I finish reading one of these articles it always feels like it’s mostly nostalgia and not much else.

This is a really well thought out post, cheers. I think your choice is fair in the end, but I also think that it becomes impossible to do this for every word that people decide is racist or offensive to someone.

Especially because it all comes from american internet culture and it’s hard for non americans to keep track. By this point, every few days some word or internet term or even the name of something in everyday life that I thought was perfectly normal is suddenly deemed immoral by american users. English is a secondary language to me, a lot of my knowledge of it comes from internet forums and such which only makes it even harder because I don’t have a deep knowledge of the roots of the language, especially when it comes to slang or “internet terms” I mostly copy what I see. And while my stance used to be the same as yours, that I could just avoid using that word and it wasn’t a big deal, I feel like at some point I started losing track of the list of words and I just gave up.

I remember there being a big fuss around a similar situation in home gardening subreddits because the most common worldwide name of some flower offended someone in the States, and a similar situation in baking communities, and it’s just… I give up. There’s no winning this fight. Someone is bound to be offended by something eventually. If people are refusing to look at context and intent, too bad I guess.

Also, on a side note, I noticed you tagged me while scrolling through the thread, but I didn’t get a notification or anything, I don’t know if tagged users are supposed to be notified? Just as an FYI as you might’ve expected that I would get a notification.

This is a really well thought out post, cheers. I think your choice is fair in the end, but I also think that it becomes impossible to do this for every word that people decide is racist or offensive to someone.

Especially because it all comes from american internet culture and it’s hard for non americans to keep track. By this point, every few days some word or internet term or even the name of something in everyday life that I thought was perfectly normal is suddenly deemed immoral by american users. English is a secondary language to me, a lot of my knowledge of it comes from internet forums and such which only makes it even harder because I don’t have a deep knowledge of the roots of the language, especially when it comes to slang or “internet terms” I mostly copy what I see. And while my stance used to be the same as yours, that I could just avoid using that word and it wasn’t a big deal, I feel like at some point I started losing track of the list of words and I just gave up.

I remember there being a big fuss around a similar situation in home gardening subreddits because the most common worldwide name of some flower offended someone in the States, and a similar situation in baking communities, and it’s just… I give up. There’s no winning this fight. Someone is bound to be offended by something eventually. If people are refusing to look at context and intent, too bad I guess.

Also, on a side note, I noticed you tagged me while scrolling through the thread, but I didn’t get a notification or anything, I don’t know if tagged users are supposed to be notified? Just as an FYI as you might’ve expected that I would get a notification.

Gimp is one of the few FOSS projects with some notoriety outside of tech circles. It, VLC and Linux are possibly the only names I could expect some random person to have heard of. Changing its name would probably torpedo years of work to become seen as a reliable piece of software and send it back to the realm of “software that only people who watch the code repository know about”.

And the whole changing the name to avoid offending someone is a losing battle in the first place. According to this thread, “rice” is potentially racist. I had no idea anyone could find “Gimp” offensive, but apparently they can. By this point, it’s part of american internet culture to be offended and no word is safe from americans turning it into a slur, dog-whistle, etc etc and advocating that everyone else in the world should stop using it.

Being a non-american, I never really liked the term “rice” because it’s not an intuitive term to convey modifying or customizing a system. But I have used it because that’s what the subreddit used to call it. I never thought it might be racist as I never saw anyone use the term in a racist manner - I can’t even understand how it could be racist - outside of this community, rice is just a word for something I eat for most of my meals. But again, I’m not american, so I might be lacking some cultural context - the whole culture war thing kind of escapes me and I’m not up to date on the list of forbidden words.

I’ll sometimes contribute when I’m travelling to more rural areas which are less likely to be well mapped. The experience in my country has been that cities are very well mapped on OpenStreetMaps with a lot of detail, often having more up to date information than Google Maps. Less populated areas usually don’t have as much detail, but the basics, like roads and buildings are usually well mapped.

I’ve also noticed OpenStreetMaps is awesome for trails and smaller roads used by hikers, usually being much more useful than Google Maps.

I second StreetComplete. I actually had quite a surprise when I first installed it - I expected to have a lot of mapping work ahead of me in my somewhat rural area, but most of it had been mapped in a lot of detail already.

I like writing things by hand. I don’t do it because of the supposed brain activation, but I genuinely like the feeling of writing. That’s most of it, honestly.

On a more practical note, I find that I’d rather have more organized information in electronic format, but writing by hand is much simpler for quick notes - so I’ll usually jot down stuff I need to last a few days, meeting notes and such, and I might type those things out in a tidier manner if I feel like the information warrants it, if it’s something I might need to come back to in a few months or years.

While yes, I technically do type faster than I write by hand, when I’m taking notes of something, I usually mix sentences with quick sketches and diagrams - and I can do that much faster by hand than using some sketching software.