_We’ll assume we’re watching from a spot high above Earth’s North Pole, which would mean that everything is moving counterclockwise._ Now, __hit pause__. Where are the planets? Maybe Earth is off to the left of the sun, and maybe Jupiter and Saturn are to the right. From this view, it doesn’t really matter what the line from the sun to Earth is like; after all, there’s always a straight line between any two objects in space. But what’s the Earth-sun line doing with respect to, say, Saturn? For most of every year, the Earth-sun line would need to jog off in a different direction to get to Sa…
I've just had one of my questions edited on StackOverflow to swap out "black list" and "white list" for "allow list" and "deny list" respectively. There was no comment on the change but I assume it to be due to those words being racially charged.
I don't mind the change (except for the introduce...
@M.A.R. I feel all kinds of weird because I answered the question about alternatives to blacklist and whitelist many years ago. And that seems to be what people are starting to use (and I've had a steady stream of votes for th epast two months with hardly anything in the intervening years.
@Mitch If someone is writing something, if the first thing that comes to their mind is allowlist, it's OK. But to correct "blacklist" and "whitelist" has a LOT of implications.
"allowlist" is rather bland and boring, regardless. You're literally stripping the words of their color.
Honestly, if this isn't 1984 levels of dumbing down the language, I dunno what is.
For people that would still use "blacklist", the next step is being flagged and harassed because they're being racist.
In a science fiction future, people naturally live forever, although accidents and murders are still possible, even if much less common as there's a lot to lose.
Suppose a future person looks at our time, when death was commonplace, when people died left, right an centre, when everyone has dead r...
@Robusto I don't think it'd be such a load on the mods to exclude a question with certain criteria from HNQ whenever they stumble upon it, but you need meta to agree on it
@M.A.R. Yes, I think that is unfortunate to assume that everybody is informed of the change and should implement it immediately otherwise you go to bad person jail. I would call that sophomoric.
@Mitch @M.A.R. Darn I liked that “casual death” question. While not worth an argument, only embarrassment to ELU justifies closing it when compared to the continual onslaught of similar vocabulary look-up questions.
It's the whole reason closing and downvoting exists. You either do that or be part of the 'you can't prevent floods with diapers' crowd. Shrug Both are fine by me
A person without any vices is known as....
A person without any bad habits is known as or called as.....
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…