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A380 said:
Nope.

But cunt in the UK*meaning isn’t discriminatory. Men, women , non binary people, straight, gay, black ,white, people with or without disabilities, atheists, Christians and Moslems can all be cunts.

* I realise that the word is more problematic in the States where it has a different usage and is more often used as an abusive term for women. But that’s Septics for you…
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The UK meaning you quote isn't unanimous in the UK, it's just agreed parlance on this site.

How about "trainable circuit"?
 
8ball said:
Also, is discriminatory in terms of cunts vs. non-cunts.
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Yeah, but extrapolation from employment law means the test is reasonableness. If someone is acting like a cunt it’s reasonable for any person (natural or judicial ) to treat them like a cunt…
 
A380 said:
Yeah, but extrapolation from employment law means the test is reasonableness. If someone is acting like a cunt it’s reasonable for any person (natural or judicial ) to treat them like a cunt…
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This can result in a proliferation of cunts.
 
A380 said:
I’d rather it wasn’t. It reinforces for me that the same hierarchy of discrimination that exist in so many places exists here. I also know that many other people living with disabilities find it exclusionary but don’t like to speak up. But if you enjoy using language from a time when some people were considered less than fully human then fill your boots. After all, it’s only a little disabled getting their knickers in a twist.
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I was genuinely surprised by the objection, since it's used all over the site including in thread titles, and I don't recall seeing it being objected to before, it's defined as 'a foolish or stupid person', I wasn't aware it was considered offensive by people living with disabilities, but I will try to reframe from using it in future.

* A search for 'moron' returns the maximum 40 pages of results, including 'moronic', and only covers from Aug. 2020. The same search for 'thread titles only', returns 4 pages going back to 2004, out of the top 8 results, 1 had the thread title changed to include the word in the title by the editor, who also started 6 more of those threads, including the ever popular - Discussion: UK anti-vaxx 'freedom' morons, protests and QAnon idiots

Hence my surprise.
 
cupid_stunt said:
I was genuinely surprised by the objection, since it's used all over the site including in thread titles, and I don't recall seeing it being objected to before, it's defined as 'a foolish or stupid person', I wasn't aware it was considered offensive by people living with disabilities, but I will try to reframe from using it in future.

* A search for 'moron' returns the maximum 40 pages of results, including 'moronic', and only covers from Aug. 2020. The same search for 'thread titles only', returns 4 pages going back to 2004, out of the top 8 results, 1 had the thread title changed to include the word in the title by the editor, who also started 6 more of those threads, including the ever popular - Discussion: UK anti-vaxx 'freedom' morons, protests and QAnon idiots

Hence my surprise.
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FWIW, it’s something that I’ll always call out when Tories use terms referring to intellectual disability.
 
There's a really big debate that's still really to be worked through by the left I think about the differences between personal, modern collective, historic collective and scientific meanings for the same word, and how it's all addressed, particularly when not in progressive settings. For example the word moron:
  • Etymology: From the Greek, meaning "foolish"
  • Scientific root: Edwardian/Georgian term denoting an adult with a mental age of 8-12 (now replaced by "intellectually disabled")
  • Historic collective: Mentally slow
  • Modern collective: Anything from mentally slow to missing a point or doing/saying something foolish (not necessarily meaning the person is intellectually disabled)
Trouble is people can be personally using it with any shading of the meanings above. Thinking back I've used it to denote pretty much everything except its scientific root before now. When I was younger I used it to sneer at someone who I thought was my intellectual inferior, and while I rarely use it today it slips in once in a while to mean "acting foolishly" or "saying something particularly poorly considered." As a trying-to-make-the-effort progressive I would certainly never dream of using it in its original meaning, but in its far more fragmented social meaning there's a lot of de facto wiggle room.

Question is, can/will that fragmented usage be pushed out entirely, with "moron" banished to the realms of unacceptability, or does it, like other words of its ilk, slowly evolve away from its original meaning? "Foolish" is in fact a good example of a word which starts with one meaning (an entertainer) and ends with another (someone impractical, silly, lacking substance). "Stupid" comes from the word "stupefied" but is broadly used to mean everything up to and including intellectually disabled. There's few insults which aren't in some way comparative, but most end up as words with little meaning other than a vague expression of disgust, anger, or disapproval - no-one's actually thinking of donkeys when they call somebody an ass, or sex when they call someone a motherfucker. Alternatives to "I don't like you/what you're doing" with a good mouth feel for the sake of variety.

Humans have personal interpretations of every word they use, with communication essentially being a process of attempting to line up each others' internal conceptualisations. Sometimes, particularly in any circumstance involving aggression, fear, defensiveness, doing so becomes fraught. Even harder is the situation where someone uses an expression one way in the heat of the moment - "don't do that you fucking moron" meaning "I'm worried about your safety if you continue doing this thing which I know to be dangerous, and which you should know is dangerous" but is then told off by someone seeing it a different way in which it means "don't do that, person whose foolish actions I will now for no good reason link to the intellectually disabled." Especially when, to the person saying "don't do that you fucking moron," the real meaning, their intended meaning, seems blindingly obvious and is generally accepted as such in their own circles.

Which is a bit of a meandering way I guess of saying it's not easy, this language navigation lark, and it's deeply contextual both socially and personally. Just something to try and bear in mind when discussing it - everyone can be meaning the best, while sounding to each other like we're not.
 
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What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
 
Rob Ray said:
There's a really big debate that's still really to be worked through by the left I think about the differences between personal, modern collective, historic collective and scientific meanings for the same word, and how it's all addressed, particularly when not in progressive settings. For example the word moron:
  • Etymology: From the Greek, meaning "foolish"
  • Scientific root: Edwardian/Georgian term denoting an adult with a mental age of 8-12 (now replaced by "intellectually disabled")
  • Historic collective: Mentally slow
  • Modern collective: Anything from mentally slow to missing a point or doing/saying something foolish (not necessarily meaning the person is intellectually disabled)
Trouble is people can be personally using it with any shading of the meanings above. Thinking back I've used it to denote pretty much everything except its scientific root before now. When I was younger I used it to sneer at someone who I thought was my intellectual inferior, and while I rarely use it today it slips in once in a while to mean "acting foolishly" or "saying something particularly poorly considered." As a trying-to-make-the-effort progressive I would certainly never dream of using it in its original meaning, but in its far more fragmented social meaning there's a lot of de facto wiggle room.

Question is, can/will that fragmented usage be pushed out entirely, with "moron" banished to the realms of unacceptability, or does it, like other words of its ilk, slowly evolve away from its original meaning? "Foolish" is in fact a good example of a word which starts with one meaning (an entertainer) and ends with another (someone impractical, silly, lacking substance). "Stupid" comes from the word "stupefied" but is broadly used to mean everything up to and including intellectually disabled. There's few insults which aren't in some way comparative, but most end up as words with little meaning other than a vague expression of disgust, anger, or disapproval - no-one's actually thinking of donkeys when they call somebody an ass, or sex when they call someone a motherfucker. Alternatives to "I don't like you/what you're doing" with a good mouth feel for the sake of variety.

Humans have personal interpretations of every word they use, with communication essentially being a process of attempting to line up each others' internal conceptualisations. Sometimes, particularly in any circumstance involving aggression, fear, defensiveness, doing so becomes fraught. Even harder is the situation where someone uses an expression one way in the heat of the moment - "don't do that you fucking moron" meaning "I'm worried about your safety if you continue doing this thing which I know to be dangerous, and which you should know is dangerous" but is then told off by someone seeing it a different way in which it means "don't do that, person whose foolish actions I will now for no good reason link to the intellectually disabled." Especially when, to the person saying "don't do that you fucking moron," the real meaning, their intended meaning, seems blindingly obvious and is generally accepted as such in their own circles.

Which is a bit of a meandering way I guess of saying it's not easy, this language navigation lark, and it's deeply contextual both socially and personally. Just something to try and bear in mind when discussing it - everyone can be meaning the best, while sounding to each other like we're not.
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Good post.

Dennis Potter used to say “the trouble with words is that you don’t always know whose mouths they have been in”.
 
AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
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welcome to urban
 
AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
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I see she has a crowd funder to produce her book


Does it really cost £13k+ to produce a book these days?
I have esoteric tastes - and have bought obscure books which turn out to be self-published on Amazon
I'm sure Amazon facilitate self-publishing for much less than £13k - and there are several UK competitors
www.bookbeaver.co.uk

How much does it cost to self-publish a book?

We explain how much formatting, editing, proofreading and cover design cost for an average book. Learn how much it costs to self-publish a book in the UK.
www.bookbeaver.co.uk www.bookbeaver.co.uk
 
AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
Click to expand...

1658483605945.jpeg
 
Does it really cost £13k+ to produce a book these days?
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Depends on the length of the run, size of the book, whether you're paying contributors, what quality you're making it etc, but can do yes. Or considerably more. Plus you have to do discounts if you want a crowdfunder to work properly, so it's partially offsetting future profit against initial funding. As an example, Freedom can do a short run of 200 slim books done via a cheap printer for £400 (converting to a cover price of about £7-8 as 25% goes to print, 50% to wholesaler/retailer and 25% comes back as profit), but we can then also get everything else free or close to, including volunteers for copy editing, layout and distribution, and have a relatively good reputation in an esoteric field to guarantee selling a majority of the stock. If we were paying people we'd need to significantly up the run and increase the cover price just to break even.
 
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Rob Ray said:
Depends on the length of the run, size of the book, whether you're paying contributors, what quality you're making it etc, but can do yes. Or considerably more. Plus you have to do discounts if you want a crowdfunder to work properly, so it's partially offsetting future profit against initial funding. As an example, Freedom can do a short run of 200 slim books done via a cheap printer for £400, but we can then also get everything else free or close to, including volunteers for copy editing, layout and distribution, and have a relatively good reputation in an esoteric field to guarantee selling a majority of the stock. If we were paying people we'd need to significantly up the run and increase the cover price just to break even.
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Thinking of a local example (to me) the Brixton Society publishes small local history books from time to time.
Usually small-scale colour cover but stapled for £500 ish for a few hundred.
Their magnum opus was the History of Brixton by Alan Piper which was funded by Brixton Challenge back in the Tory days in 1996. The problem with that type of work is that due to council negligence/malevolence some of the built environment referenced gets demolished - the the book has to be revised. See here

Books – The Brixton Society

www.brixtonsociety.org.uk www.brixtonsociety.org.uk
 
Stapled is much cheaper than perfect bound per copy, but only useable up to a limited number of pages and much harder to get into outlets other than your own (pamphlets are a pain in the arse for a bookshop as the only easily identifiable way of displaying them is face-out, which is either a wasteful use of space for a low-profit item or requires a dedicated zines space to flick through like in comic stores - high effort, relatively low reward basically). I'd guess they're making a loss or getting rid of old stock on a few of those titles.
 
AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
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But not you, right? :D
 
AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
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Yes, because those of us living with disability are just ‘petty’ for mentioning inappropriate language. We should just be grateful we are allowed to participate alongside proper people after all. It’s ‘insulting’ for us to get uppity. (ETA This looked like I hadn't posted it, hence the double post when I came back with the link.)
 
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AmateurAgitator said:
What a ridiculous and petty exchange yesterday - obviously the main thing Lisa McKenzie would be at the bookfair for is to be a stallholder because of the book she was involved with making - the lockdown diaries - which she is not allowed to do - which is what I was saying.

But no, people have to be petty, pedantic and unnecessarily insulting.
Click to expand...

I like the way you dismiss the the experiences and feelings of people living with disability as ‘petty’. I suppose we should be grateful to be allowed to participate with real people at all. You talk the talk of a revolutionary vanguard but if people challenge your discrimination they are ‘insulting’ .

You showed your antisemitism when you completely disregarded the arguments and feelings of Jewish people. Now you are showing exactly the same behaviour in relation to people living with disability. Seems you just plough on regardless. To me that seems the behaviour of a bigot.

( For people unaware this is the horrible behaviour I am referring to - the whole thread BTW not just this one post.)
AmateurAgitator said:
Have to honest, really don't know why I'm supposed to care about the misfortunes of the jewish equivalent of the Taliban. The Mount Meron disaster is the main story on the Guardian site. The irony is that if it was pretty much any other group of people, these fundamentalists and bigots would be delighted and would be claiming it was a 'punishment from god'. These are ultra orthodox jews we are talking about after all.
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A380 said:
I like the way you dismiss the the experiences and feelings of people living with disability as ‘petty.
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Ridiculous nonsense as with the rest of your post (I also have a couple of disabilites myself btw) - a desperate attempt to silence someone who holds and expresses views that you disagree with - dragging up a post from ages ago that I regret and apologised for ages ago. This is all pathetic just like the other bullshit posted in reply to me today - including a pathetic call to ban me from this thread for postin about facts that are inconvenient for people like you.
 
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AmateurAgitator said:
Ridiculous nonsense as with the rest of your post - a desperate attempt to silence someone you disagree with. Pathetic just like the other bullshit posted in reply to me today - inlcuding a pathetic call to ban me from this thread.
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to prevent you wearing pathetic out please consider pitiable, lamentable, woeful, feeble, despicable and contemptible in its place
 
AmateurAgitator said:
Ridiculous nonsense as with the rest of your post - a desperate attempt to silence someone you disagree with. Pathetic just like the other bullshit posted in reply to me today - inlcuding a pathetic call to ban me from this thread.
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You are a bigot, it’s just how far your bigotry extends that’s at issue.. I presume your fantasy revolution will be run by you and a coterie of loyal Stakhanovite white men leading the rest of us for our own good?
 
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