[HN Gopher] Scunthorpe Sans, A font that censors bad language au...
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Scunthorpe Sans, A font that censors bad language automatically
Author : WayToDoor
Score : 248 points
Date : 2022-07-02 09:38 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vole.wtf)
(TXT) w3m dump (vole.wtf)
| theelous3 wrote:
| How about we just stop censoring words in the first place.
| wonderbore wrote:
| The US is too deep into this shit to go back now.
| adventured wrote:
| Definitely not. The US was highly censored when it comes to
| language until the 1990s. [1] We improved considerably,
| including in (and thanks to) not censoring the WWW when it
| exploded onto the scene in the 1990s. It can be done again,
| as there will be a massive cultural backlash against the
| hyper over-sensitive woke era. The pendulum always swings
| back aggressively. The new rebels are, once again, going to
| be those that are intellectually free, not self-censoring and
| not over-sensitive. The US is becoming primed for a new era
| of shock, and young people will eat it up when it happens, to
| rebel against the hyper sensitive status quo.
|
| [1] See: George Carlin and Howard Stern, and their running
| battles with abusive government censorship and cultural
| repression around language.
| voidfunc wrote:
| New era of shock cant happen soon enough.
| wonderbore wrote:
| I hope it will happen, but the pendulum is going back so
| fast right now. Some old words are being more accepted now,
| but people are becoming more sensitive to whole topics and
| specific trigger words, even and especially young people.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| The 1st Amendment is one of the strongest legal protections
| on speech in the world.
| the_only_law wrote:
| That gives you legal protection against the government, but
| doesn't otherwise affect general culture.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > The 1st Amendment is one of the strongest legal
| protections on speech in the world.
|
| Just as long as that speech isn't pornographic. Or
| advocating direct harm towards a protected class. Or
| perceived to be threatening towards an elected official...
|
| The 1st amendment may have been intended as an absolute,
| but courts have typically interpreted it with a fair amount
| of leeway.
| educaysean wrote:
| Your argument is that the 1st Amendment is not one of the
| strongest legal protection of speech in the world?
|
| I'm not well versed in other nations' approach as it
| pertains to free speech. Can you enlighten me in terms of
| how other countries provide legal protection for speech
| in a way that you perceive to be "stronger" than the U.S?
| I can't imagine a functioning code of laws that allows
| for yelling fire in a crowded theater whose nation isn't
| straight up incapable or corrupt.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The United States allows for yelling fire in a crowded
| theater, and I agree with your judgment on it (although
| not for your reason.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_
| the...
|
| edit: it's strange not to even be able to imagine the
| circumstances you are currently in.
| mannerheim wrote:
| You can advocate direct harm towards a protected class.
| What do you think the Skokie case was about?
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| That the 1st Amendment is not an absolute protection on
| all speech does not change the fact that it is one of the
| strongest protections that does exist.
|
| Additionally, the Supreme Court has protected porn under
| the 1st Amendment countless times. I doubt that any
| serious person wants threats of violence to be
| universally legal.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| In paper is right and aims right. In practice we can
| discuss your claims but it's still one of the best (or
| more fairly, less worst) implementations in human history
| so far.
|
| And what's the alternative anyway? Some kind of Newspeak
| (with an officially approved typography)?
| vkou wrote:
| > And what's the alternative anyway?
|
| Any of the other implementations of the same concept
| found in most of the western world, take your pick.
| Whatever criticism you have of them, I'll probably be
| able to point that it also applies to some application of
| the FA (or of how speech is/was allowed in practice) in
| the united states.
| drdaeman wrote:
| I think the primary intent for the First Amendment and
| best indicator how US is different from most places is
| how in the US anyone can freely say whatever is on their
| mind about anything government. Okay, sure, except for
| the hate speech such as calls for violence, obviously. Or
| make a sort of a statement by desecrating national
| symbols - such as burning the flag or flying it upside
| down. And fear no legal persecution.
|
| People are people - they have emotions and whenever they
| argue politely or swear profusely they must not be
| persecuted for being upset with something. Even if
| they're most terribly wrong.
|
| I found this nice summary table: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Insult_of_officials_and_the_st... (sure, Wikipedia
| can be wrong, but I think this table should be accurate
| enough). It's all "no" only in Bosnia and Herzegovina,
| Canada, Georgia, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia and the
| United States. This is a minority, surely not "most of
| the western world".
| mannerheim wrote:
| You won't get arrested for performing a Nazi salute in
| the US, but you will in Germany.
|
| You won't get arrested for a joke video about training
| your dog to do a Nazi salute in the US, but you will in
| the UK.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of s***ch, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to ***emble, and to pe***ion
| the Government for a redress of grievances."
| framapotari wrote:
| Unless you're a student and want to hold up a sign saying
| "BONG HITS 4 JESUS" outside of school property.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_v._Frederick
| briantakita wrote:
| ...of the governments imposing bureaucratic will over
| natural man.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I would argue this with: Should the existence of such a font
| mean, when fonts can be user-configured in a browser, that all
| subsentence censorship can be opt-in?
| waterpowder wrote:
| Fuck yes
| sph wrote:
| Few words convey so much meaning, emotion and depth as
| expletives. Swear words are truly the peak of human language
| in my opinion.
|
| The absolute best are the ones in every languages that are so
| versatile. Like "fuck". One of these can replace whole
| sentences and still be as expressive.
| ddingus wrote:
| Profanity is a part of speech and it has two forms:
|
| Lazy profanity, which also has low value, is the form where
| the majority of the value of the expression is carried by
| profane words.
|
| The not-lazy form, which has considerably higher value, is
| the form where profanity augments the primary value
| contained in the non profane elements of the expression.
|
| In my view, the not-lazy form is to be respected and
| preserved. Using the lazy form is most generally a
| disservice to the speaker, though not always. Context
| remains king!
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I find that they are like a medicine, that if I use them
| for every ache pain or sniffle, they don't work as well
| when I truly need them. When I use an expletive I want
| people to understand I have exited my normal range of
| emotional intensity.
| z3c0 wrote:
| "Fucking" is the only English "infix" that I know of, where
| it can be inserted inside of words like "abso-fucking-
| lutely". The only other is "freaking", which is a just
| euphemism for the former.
|
| Edit: American English, I should say. The Brits have
| "bloody".
| withinboredom wrote:
| I say back-asswords instead of ass backwards.
| sib wrote:
| I've most commonly heard it said, "bass-ackward," in
| order to remove the "ass" as a standalone syllable...
| JasonFruit wrote:
| There's a song that goes, "Wouldn't it be loverly sittin'
| abso-bloomin'-lutely still?" Still just a euphemism, but
| an example that can be used with children who lack self-
| control with their language.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| IME 'fucking' is used very often in words, considerably
| more than 'bloody' - in British Fucking English.
| mattkrause wrote:
| The linguistic "process" that allows this is called
| "expletive infixation" and it, as you might guess from
| the name, only works with swears.
|
| There's some neat work on where within the original word
| you can add them, made all the funnier by hearing people
| dispassionately dropping strings of f-bombs "to see what
| works".
|
| Here's a classic paper on it: https://scholarworks.umass.
| edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1...
| someweirdperson wrote:
| > only works with swears
|
| It also works with "diddly" which isn't.
|
| It's intersting what information can be found out there
| in this world, even about something as diddly.
|
| https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/wendell.kimp
| er/...
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I disagree, but I do think that if swear words weren't
| verboten, you wouldn't think that.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| I once attended an experiment where soldiers were trialling
| a new CIS system. An officer asked how it was going. A
| soldier replied "the fucking thing is fucking fucked, sir".
| It was a succinct statement aimed at a senior decision
| maker and the trial was halted ten minutes later.
| IshKebab wrote:
| This is obviously a joke.
| natly wrote:
| I feel the same way. But just want to point out that the link
| is actually satire and makes a push for the same side as yours.
| simondotau wrote:
| Everyday censoring is the spice which makes these words
| desirable to use in the first place.
| [deleted]
| hanoz wrote:
| I often find people expressing that sentiment mean only the
| words they happen to be cool with, and on examination say well
| obviously we should still censor _those_ words.
| knorker wrote:
| I have never heard this in my life. Either people treat words
| as magic or they don't.
|
| There's a difference between "you'll never hear me say that
| word, just all other words" and trying to censor.
|
| I won't say the n word, but I'll watch a Tarantino movie.
| smegsicle wrote:
| tarantino the p*dophile apologist? i'd rather say the
| n-word
| thiht wrote:
| Why do you self censor the word << pedophile >>?
|
| No judgment, just an honest question. Do you also self
| censor << murderer >> or << rapist >>?
| smegsicle wrote:
| the topic originally under discussion being self-
| censorship, it is an expertly subtle reference to how
| things like rape (especially child rape), while not
| directly censored in the same way as expletives, are very
| rude subjects to bring up in polite conversation
| swayvil wrote:
| Ah yes, the "u r dum" retort.
|
| Wait, are we still allowed to say "dum"? Is this even
| visible?
|
| It's doubly hard to predict what will be censored these days
| given that so often the censored words lists are themselves
| secret and, well, censored from view. To combat spammers no
| doubt.
|
| Funny how "secret" and "censored" overlap.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Wait, are we still allowed to say "dum"? Is this even
| visible?"
|
| Nope. You've been moved here to the "shadow ban" forum with
| the rest of the "cool kids".
| icod1 wrote:
| And rightly so
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Upvoted because I make this argument too, but I think it's
| better applied to the kind of person who says "words are just
| words, man" than free speech absolutists.
|
| Though, to one who believes that swear words have power but
| shouldn't be censored: is that just in a legal sense or in a
| societal sense?
| simonh wrote:
| It very much depends on the context. As an advocate of free
| speech rights I believe the only justification for legally
| penalising speech is when it is incitement to violence or
| criminality. Speech being offensive is no good reason to
| penalise it legally, otherwise it's no freedom at all.
|
| However social groups and independent forums or publishers
| should be free to set their own editorial standards. Nobody
| (acting in their private capacity, that is not as a
| government employee) should have any obligation to repeat,
| distribute or publish the speech of others that they
| disagree with.
| int_19h wrote:
| Yet at the same time, there must be enough independent
| forums for a true diversity of opinions. If they all end
| up being owned by a couple of monopolists, any semblance
| of free speech is just that.
| simonh wrote:
| In theory maybe, but in practice we're nowhere even
| remotely near that. E.g. Twitter is full of very vocal
| politicians complaining loudly that their political
| beliefs are being, er, silenced on Twitter. It's all part
| of the show.
|
| The western media landscape is incredibly diverse, pretty
| much every conceivable opinion and niche community is
| available and discoverable. In fact there seems to have
| been a huge boom in fringe attitudes and beliefs, as
| barriers to communication have fallen away, exactly the
| opposite of what you'd expect if communications was being
| meaningfully restricted and moderated at the societal
| level.
| Cloudef wrote:
| I hate when games have no option to turn word filter off.
| Souls games are infamous of the word Knight getting censored,
| the word filter is so bad most people invading are just
| asteriks
| icod1 wrote:
| Why would "Knight" get censored?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| "Nig" is sometimes used as a racial slur by older, lamer
| racists.
| buchoo wrote:
| Reminds me of a Udemy Unreal Engine course where the
| instructor would pronounce APawn* as "APawn star", which
| Udemy's subtitle generator would suitably render as "a **
| star".
| bogota wrote:
| I have never met anyone who thinks words should be censored
| in print. Maybe this is specific to the US?
| kube-system wrote:
| A review of Chinese mobile games found 180,000 different
| censored words.
|
| https://citizenlab.ca/2017/08/chinesegames/
|
| The idea that print shouldn't be censored is more of a
| progressive western idea, than a non-US idea.
| swimfar wrote:
| Definitely not a US-only thing. Every time there's an
| article on BBC about someone getting in trouble for saying
| something offensive they often don't even provide a quote
| of what was said.
| koonsolo wrote:
| No, it's because we are non-US. We don't want that fucking
| stupid censor bullshit in the rest of the world.
| IncRnd wrote:
| If you think there is no censorship outside the US, even in
| places like Belgium, you are sorely mistaken.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Censorship is the norm practically everywhere EXCEPT the
| U.S.
| thiht wrote:
| feanaro wrote:
| I never find this. Isn't it quite weird to spend time
| thinking about which words should or should not be censored?
| How about we just leave people to speak their minds instead
| of slowly but surely meandering into newspeak?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| No more weird than spending time thinking about what other
| behaviours should or should not be censored (criminalised).
| Should harming people with words be separate from harming
| people with actions? Is it the case that blaring a loud
| noise at night is harmful enough to be banned, but putting
| racist leaflets through letterboxes is harmless?
|
| What about online forums where it's not about moralistic
| control, but a pragmatic action because if you _don 't_
| censor some kinds of words and speech, it's like a positive
| feedback loop where everything gets more intense until
| Godwin or his equivalents turn up? It does seem to be the
| case that control feedback is needed to keep discussion
| forums relevant and on topic, and that involves thinking
| about what needs censoring and by whom and in which
| situations. Does that same effect and consideration not
| apply in wider society?
| ellopoppit wrote:
| >Should harming people with words be separate from
| harming people with actions?
|
| Have you ever been physically assaulted, punched in the
| face, had your ribs broken, or been put in a strangle
| hold?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Thankfully, I haven't. Telling someone who was physically
| assaulted that at least they weren't murdered isn't much
| comfort. If you're saying "the amount of harm they do is
| different", I agree. If you're saying "people can't be
| harmed by words", I disagree - especially at a population
| level; popularising and spreading of ideas that certain
| subgroups are subhuman has happened over and over in many
| countries and caused lots of harm. Punching someone is
| worse than calling them a moron, but bruises from
| childhood heal in weeks where verbal assault from
| childhood (e.g. by an abusive parent or teacher, as well
| as by peers) can still be hurting decades later with
| wider knock-on effects.
| toolz wrote:
| I think people very generally miss the very important
| subtlety that words never hurt people. It's the intention
| behind the words that hurt and you don't need words to
| communicate intent. So banning/censoring words really
| doesn't do much other than placate the people who just
| wanted to feel involved in changing the status quo.
|
| Compare that to a punch to the face. It really doesn't
| matter if someone was just joking or angry with you, 150
| psi to your jaw is going to do damage.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| >bruises from childhood heal in weeks where verbal
| assault from childhood (e.g. by an abusive parent or
| teacher, as well as by peers) can still be hurting
| decades later with wider knock-on effects.
|
| That's like saying physical damage from a rape will heal
| in weeks but verbal sexual harrassment can still be
| hurting decades later.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| You're trying to say that I'm suggesting verbal sexual
| harrassment is worse than rape because it lasts longer?
| But you're ignoring that rape involves psychological
| traumas of losing trust in people, nightmares, loss of
| bodily autonomy and control, being afraid to go out in
| some situations, or to some places, which lasts much
| longer than the physical damage (of a non-violent rape).
| If you include those things then you have both types of
| attack having mental harm and rape having more of it
| (because of the intimacy and intensity and loss of
| control, among other things) and rape having physical
| harm too, which makes rape worse.
|
| > but verbal sexual harrassment can still be hurting
| decades later.
|
| In the vein of putting words in peoples mouths, you think
| this is a positive good thing and a reason you support
| verbal sexual harassment because it will toughen people
| up for decades? (I suspect not).
| wizofaus wrote:
| "Only someone who is so privileged as to have never been
| physically assaulted could think that it doesn't cause
| life long physiological and psychological damage"
|
| Depends entirely on the degree and nature of the assault.
| I was beat up badly at school at least a few times, I'd
| dare suggest if anything it made me stronger, and
| certainly can't think of anything likely longterm damage
| it's caused. But I certainly don't presume it's the same
| for all kids.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I don't think phsyical assault cannot cause lifelong
| damage. Is it a terrible weakness of my privilege that I
| would like a society where other people have such a good
| life as I have had, instead of a difficult stressful dog-
| eat-dog life to try and toughen them up to survive a dog-
| eat-dog life? As if that's my business?
|
| > " _I was beat up badly at school at least a few times,
| I 'd dare suggest if anything it made me stronger_"
|
| Overcoming challenges builds character, but wouldn't it
| be nicer if you chose the challenges? If you had built
| strength by choosing to do Karate and learn Mandarin
| instead of being badly beaten up being foisted upon you?
| Women report being catcalled from puberty around age 13;
| is your response to that "if anything it makes them
| stronger; women who didn't get catcalled are just
| privileged and weak"?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Who said that was my response?? I totally agree that
| physical AND mental/verbal abuse should be chargeable
| offenses. I'm less sure why the former is necessarily
| always worse than the latter, but it's sure easier to
| prove the damage in court.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| That's a very good point which I totally agree with, and
| also why martial arts and controlled sparring can be
| extremely beneficial experiences
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Yes to all of those, and verbal attacks are often
| incitement or a precursor to physical attacks. I think
| anyone with security experience could summon numerous
| examples from memory.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| > Should harming people with words be separate from
| harming people with actions?
|
| Absolutely, YES! People should be resilient against words
| and name-calling -- "Sticks and stones" is a common
| nursery rhyme for a reason.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Even if you could demonstrate the long term impact on
| somebody's mental health and sense of self worth through
| constant name calling was worse than the short term
| impact of, say, busting their nose? (But I agree
| censorship isn't likely to help prevent the former. I
| assume physical abuse is subject to criminal charges far
| more often than mental/ verbal abuse is largely because
| damage from the latter is far harder to prove in court)
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Absolutely, YES! People should be resilient against
| words and name-calling_ "
|
| Maybe. Maybe not. If you choose to educate yourself about
| financial scams, and are always wary when strangers call
| you, that's sensible given the world we live in. If you
| see pensioners being scammed out of their life savings
| and support doing nothing because "I would never let that
| happen to me, they should take responsibility like I do"
| that's naieve at best and maybe cruel.
|
| Similarly, a society full of media which insults and
| swears at people because "people should toughen up" is
| like refusing to clean dogshit off the streets because
| people should just wear shoes. Great, now you have people
| trampling dogshit everywhere, what a success.
|
| Like, yes you should lock the door of your house when you
| go out. But isn't it interesting that there are places
| where _people don 't have to_? Wouldn't that be ... nice?
| Better? Do we really want to encourage a society full of
| people who are wary, calloused, defensive, always on
| edge, because doing something about it would be 'weak'?
| martin-t wrote:
| This is naive. Even if you can make _yourself_ immune,
| you can 't influence those around you. I barely care
| about words like "shit" and "fuck" but I can't stand
| lying because there will always be somebody who falls for
| it and starts treating you negatively because of it. And
| that's how harm using words turns into harm using
| actions.
|
| Of course you can't censor lies automatically. Toxicity
| doesn't have a technical solution.
| Someone wrote:
| > Should harming people with words be separate from
| harming people with actions?
|
| I don't think so, so let's treat the two cases similarly.
| We can forbid harming people with words without
| forbidding words altogether, just as we do for cars,
| knifes, hands, etc.
|
| Context matters. In the right context, said in the right
| tone, "Yeah, beauty" can be quite an insult.
| simonh wrote:
| Some words have specifically pejorative or derogatory
| meanings, and if general swears are considered acceptable
| I'm afraid there are people who will exploit that for
| genuinely offensive purposes.
| Swizec wrote:
| Is it less offensive to use the n-word with explicit
| intent to offend by saying "n-word" or by actually saying
| the word?
|
| I think it's the same. ie: it's not the word that's the
| problem, it's how you use it.
|
| To expand further: I think the obsession over words is
| the left's version of thoughts and prayers. We would
| rather debate what something should or shouldn't be
| called than fix the problem. Because it's easier and
| feels like progress.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Censoring words is much more the right's obsession than
| the let's. You're right in the particular case of the
| n-word, and slurs in general, but the conservative right
| has been adamant in banning all use of swear-words in
| mass media for decades.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I don't think the conservative right gives a flying fuck
| about censoring swear words.
|
| The religious right, on the other hand, cares a whole
| ducking lot.
|
| Makes arguments easier if you lump both groups together
| though.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What non-religious conservative right is there, at least
| in the USA? Who would be an example of such a thing?
|
| I do agree that the libertarian right does not care about
| this (say, Ron Paul).
| UncleEntity wrote:
| There are plenty of people who are politically
| conservative but don't have particularly strong religious
| beliefs. Not every republican is anti-abortion and pro-
| prayer in school no matter how the media portrays them.
|
| You should meet some real people sometime and see how the
| other half lives.
|
| --edit--
|
| Though...if you don't look like you walked straight off
| the set of _Duck Dynasty_ they are probably closet
| conservatives and won't risk offending some random
| stranger with their "hate speech" because that's what
| 'merica has become.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Makes arguments easier if you lump both groups together
| though.
|
| Which is easy to do when the only two parties with any
| influence are massive conglomerates of many different
| groups and factions.
| eesmith wrote:
| "MyPillow CEO's free speech social network will ban posts
| that take the Lord's name in vain" - "You don't get to
| use the four swear words: the c-word, the n-word, the
| f-word, or God's name in vain," -
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/14/22383841/mike-lindell-
| soc...
|
| "Parler CEO Says He'll Ban Users for Posting Bad Words,
| Dicks, Boobs, or Poop" - https://gizmodo.com/parler-ceo-
| says-hell-ban-users-for-posti...
| vkou wrote:
| In 2022 America, those two groups are welded at the hip,
| and the latter are steering the boat, while the former
| smiles and nods. It's a distinction without a difference.
| Swizec wrote:
| You are right and I think censoring swear words is even
| sillier.
|
| Although it does lead to the particularly beautiful art
| of the British swear word. How they can turn any random
| noun into an insult is pure poetry. I wish American media
| did more of that.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Just for clarification:
|
| Do you mean "offensive" as in people's feelings, or as in
| the antonym of "defensive"?
| simonh wrote:
| I mean people's feelings. See my reply to Brendinoo for
| my position on that in more detail.
| [deleted]
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| How deeply narcissistic arrogant and authoritarian one should
| be to promote the normalization of any kind of censoring?
| jodrellblank wrote:
| How deeply narcissistic arrogant and selfish one should be
| to see all the harm that comes from a free-for-all and
| still promote a free-for-all because you think you'll be
| one of the winners and other people's suffering doesn't
| matter?
| ellopoppit wrote:
| Hiding from reality via censorship sets one up for even
| greater harm and suffering, because they never have a
| chance to build up their mental strength and armor that
| they will need in the real world.
|
| Like never letting your child ever ride a bike without
| training wheels.
|
| It's a form of agoraphobia.
|
| Kevin Hart talks about the fact that no one can insult or
| harm him with words because of the initiative gauntlet he
| went through to become a comedian.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| More like never letting your child ride a bike with
| training wheels because falling off builds character, and
| when they grow up they're bound to be falling off a lot
| and need the callouses to protect them.
|
| Did your parents skip your childhood vaccinations on the
| grounds that a bout of polio or tetanus builds physical
| strength? Or did they prefer a more gentle introduction
| to let your immune system become accustomed in a
| protected, simplified, environment?
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| Note that, that unfounded accusation of indifference (and
| the rest of the unfounded accusations) to other's people
| suffering comes with the additional layer of arrogance of
| taking as granted that censorship is a valid solution
| that will not have consequences even worst than the
| original problem.
|
| It's like putting the most incompetent engineers in
| charge of architectural decisions in a system design and
| giving for granted that a service that is scaling fast
| and adding features to it will deliver 99.9999% uptime.
|
| No.
| haunter wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
|
| Do you think these countries are "deeply narcissistic
| arrogant and authoritarian"? I don't think so
| ellopoppit wrote:
| Yes, those countries indeed have a history rich with
| arrogant authoritarianism. Those laws are a literal
| recognition of that fact.
| jansan wrote:
| How is your experience with performance of ligatures in fonts? I
| recently tried to create a "meta-font" for Google fonts, which
| contained a glyph for each font displaying the font name in the
| font's own style. The glyph would be displayed as a ligature if
| the font name was encountered. This way I could have a list with
| all font names that would display normally without the meta font
| available, but with the meta font available, the font names would
| be displayed in the fonts' own style.
|
| I liked this idea a lot, but unfortunately with roughly 1500
| ligartures (one for each font on Google fonts) the meta font
| became much larger than expected and quite slow when used in the
| browser. Any experiences how many ligartures are fine performance
| wise?
| [deleted]
| shever73 wrote:
| Pity that the small town in Austria changed its name to Fugging.
| mike_hock wrote:
| Those fuggin' fuggers!
| mikey_p wrote:
| Sounds like this is a good solution to a clbuttic problem.
|
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-
| [deleted]
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| As usual - everything is US-oriented. French still have to suffer
| looking at merde and putain and politique.
| OisinMoran wrote:
| Scunthorpe is in England.
| educaysean wrote:
| It's ironic how you associated the English language font with
| the U.S. by default while complaining about everything being
| U.S. oriented. A fine illustration of how we're blind to our
| own biases yet others appear so obvious.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Ohhhh, that was a joke (as highlighted by the last dirty
| word). I am sorry for having offended anyone by mentioning
| the US.
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| hollerith wrote:
| Does not work when I "try it out here" on Mobile Safari with the
| content blocker Wipr installed.
| cabirum wrote:
| For those interested, to get the ligatures in this font, run:
| otfinfo -g scunthorpe-sans.otf | grep _ | sed s/_//g | tr
| '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | uniq
| throw0101a wrote:
| Etymology:
|
| > _The problem was named after an incident in 1996 in which AOL
| 's profanity filter prevented residents of the town of
| Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England, from creating accounts
| with AOL, because the town's name contains the substring
| "cunt".[1] In the early 2000s, Google's opt-in SafeSearch filters
| made the same error, preventing people from searching for local
| businesses or URLs that included Scunthorpe in their names.[2]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
|
| Also, grawlix:
|
| > _Grawlixes (#, $,_ , @): typographical symbols standing in for
| profanities, appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual
| dialogue.[2]*
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lexicon_of_Comicana
|
| * https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/grawlix-symbol...
|
| * https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/10/the-grawlix-how-the...
| walrus01 wrote:
| The residents of Dildo, Newfoundland have embraced the name,
| you can buy t-shirts that say Dildo and visit the historic
| Dildo museum
|
| https://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/plan-and-book/attractio...
| Someone wrote:
| On the other hand
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugging,_Upper_Austria):
|
| _"Fugging (German: ['fUkING] (listen)), named Fucking until
| 2021, is an Austrian village in the municipality of Tarsdorf,
| located in the Innviertel region of western Upper Austria.
| The village is 33 km (21 mi) north of Salzburg and 4 km (2.5
| mi) east of the Inn river, which forms part of the German
| border.
|
| Despite having a population of only 106 in 2020, the village
| has drawn attention in the English-speaking world for its
| former name, which was spelled the same as an inflected form
| of the vulgar English-language word "fuck". Its road signs
| were a popular visitor attraction and were often stolen by
| souvenir-hunting vandals until 2005 when they were modified
| to be theft-resistant. The name change to Fugging, which is
| pronounced the same in the local dialect, was rejected in
| 2004 but passed in late 2020."_
| walrus01 wrote:
| In the UK, there is also: Brown Willy,
| Cornwall. Cock Alley, Calow. Shitterton,
| Dorset. Fanny Barks, Durham. Fingringhoe,
| Essex. Bitchfield, Lincolnshire. Moisty
| Lane, Staffordshire. Shitlingthorpe, Yorkshire.
|
| The residents of Shitterton now have an almost theft-proof
| sign.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitterton
| twelvechairs wrote:
| There also used to be much more explicit street names
| until they were sanitised
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gropecunt_Lane
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Also Slutshole, Kent
| [deleted]
| 0xedb wrote:
| wh*e made it through. What is bad language? Who decides?
| npteljes wrote:
| Society in general, and often an authority in particular. For
| example if you were a radio broadcaster, your employer might
| warn you about using particular words:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words
| blooalien wrote:
| George Carlin was a comedy super-hero.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "What is bad language? Who decides?"
|
| And then who gets the privilege of goin' back and keeping all
| these silly censor lists up to date everywhere when the
| standard of "acceptable words" changes? And how to handle
| "regional" curses? All just sounds like more hassle than it's
| worth to me.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| 30 seconds browsing the site at the domain vole.wtf, where the
| newest piece of content (found clearly promoted on the
| homepage) is "Penga - the penguin physics game" with slogan
| "How many penguins can you rescue?", should be enough to inform
| you that this is a comedy site, not a gender politics
| manifesto.
|
| If you want to decide, then fork it.
| zamalek wrote:
| I get the idea that this font is a joke.
| momirlan wrote:
| English only :-)
| blooalien wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/health/swearing-benefits-well...
|
| Why swearing is a sign of intelligence, helps manage pain and
| more
|
| Although, I must admit, it's a creative (mis)use of ligatures.
| tgv wrote:
| The study actually says that the people who could produce most
| words starting with F, S and A in a limited timespan, also
| produced most swear words. So CNN buggered a (rather useless)
| finding for a clickbait headline. Wonderful.
| omoikane wrote:
| If you like creative uses of ligatures, you might also like:
|
| "Video Game in a Font":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495059
| bj-rn wrote:
| Reminds me of Paranoia Sans "a self-censoring, conspiratorial
| typeface that will automatically redact more than 150 words
| popular in conspiracy myths/theories."
|
| https://fleg.de/paranoia
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It would be fun to be able to generate these fonts for any
| arbitrary phrases people might use!
| Semiapies wrote:
| That's delightful. Thanks for showing a sense of humor, unlike
| most of the people commenting.
| gs17 wrote:
| Weird that it turns "alien" into "aTRUTHn", but "aliens" gets
| blanked.
| ovsuvdjv wrote:
| At a guess, the dictionary contains "aliens" and "lie", but
| not "alien", and rewriting proceeds in alphabetical order.
| Hanschri wrote:
| My only guess would be that it for some reason picks up on
| 'lie' within the word while you're typing it out, changing in
| to 'TRUTH', and then blanks when it detects 'aliens'.
| shric wrote:
| It censors puss for some reason. What a sourpuss.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| and I won't be able to write a letter to my friend Dick about
| his ass breeding, or the tennis balls he left at my house.
| geuis wrote:
| So I don't know if this really works or not, but if you copy and
| paste the purported blacked out words, it's just using asterisks
| ie shit is s**.
| projektfu wrote:
| Yeah, I think they did that so that if the font doesn't render
| you get the idea. Certain letters followed by *** are render
| the blackout bar. But if you wrote the "bad word" in the
| inspector, or the text area provided, it would also get blacked
| out.
| Semaphor wrote:
| 2 years ago, almost 300 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23131559
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Can anyone summarize how this works?
| KhalPanda wrote:
| Right on the home page...
|
| > How this s** works: Modern fonts can combine letters into a
| single ligature, usually for things like fi or fl but you can
| pick anything so we've done it for swears.
| breakingcups wrote:
| They are abusing Font Ligatures
| (https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/ligature), a
| feature that allows you to substitute one glyph in the place of
| two or more other glyphs combined if it looks more
| aesthetically pleasing. Also used for some other script
| features / rules.
| onion2k wrote:
| https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/ligature
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Ligatures [0] are special glyphs which replace a series of
| letters. For instance, an "fl" is often replaced by a single
| glyph which looks far better than the individual glyphs.
|
| Scunthorpe Sans has ligatures defined for each nasty series of
| characters, but instead of replacing them with something more
| readable it replaces them with a black box.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)
| chmod775 wrote:
| This doesn't censor anything at all, because it's still perfectly
| clear what is being said.
|
| Makes as much sense as replacing 'dickhead' with 'penishead'.
| pwr22 wrote:
| Some engines are profane.... apparently :P
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine
| croes wrote:
| The N word is possible
| wonderbore wrote:
| "N word" isn't a swear word. N[?][?][?][?][?] is
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Is it swearing, though, or just occasionaly very offensive?
| croes wrote:
| In the demo box it's possible to type N[?][?][?][?][?]
| without censoring
| lostlogin wrote:
| L3viathan wrote:
| With a built-in exception for Scunthorpe, but not for the million
| of other examples why automatic swear word filtering is a bad
| idea (Shitake, Sussex, classic, peoples' names, ...).
|
| A fun piece of art, but I hope nobody actually uses this font.
| The_suffocated wrote:
| Yes, it's a fun piece of art. I don't think this was meant to
| be practical. It was probably just an interesting experiment or
| proof of concept.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It passed my buttbuttinate test, but it turns out it doesn't
| think "ass" or even "ass hole" are swears.
| cynix wrote:
| > Shitake
|
| This one wouldn't have been censored if it was spelt correctly
| :)
| bencollier49 wrote:
| What, in Kanji?
| cynix wrote:
| No, shiitake. It was missing an i.
| hvdijk wrote:
| No, it wasn't. Merriam Webster includes shitake as a less
| common but valid spelling.
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shitake
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This reminds me of a professor who while reviewing a
| paper of mine, circled a word in red ink and said "not a
| word". So I brought in my dictionary and pointed to the
| word, and said see?
|
| They then told me that Merriam-Webster is shit, and I
| should be using the American Heritage dictionary: https:/
| /www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=shitake+&sub...
| hvdijk wrote:
| I wonder what your professor's opinion on OED is. It
| includes shitake.
|
| https://www.lexico.com/definition/shiitake (note the
| "also shitake")
| toast0 wrote:
| OED is a great reference, but not really normative for
| the US.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's just institutionalized mediocrity, it's only valid
| because enough people spell foreign words poorly that you
| just have to deal.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| The dictionary's job is to describe you how words are
| used, not prescribe definitions.
| omoikane wrote:
| At this point, we should probably acknowledge that
| "shitake" is a common accepted variant of "shiitake",
| just like how most of the world uses "Tokyo" even though
| it should be "Toukyou".
| cynix wrote:
| At least there's a good reason behind Tokyo, since it's
| meant to be Tokyo but the diacritic was dropped because
| it's hard to type. What's their excuse for dropping a
| perfectly typable i?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Because double "i"s don't mean anything in English
| orthography, and at best serve as reminders of a sound
| you've heard somewhere else?
|
| The name for that mushroom is not from a Roman script. It
| is translated into one in various ways, official and
| unofficial, devised by arbitrary missionaries. Once it
| becomes an English word, it's nice if it is respelled in
| a way that we can easily pronounce, although it's against
| our nature as Americans not to just leave it obscure and
| look down on people who aren't in the know.
|
| British people will happily mangle a word to make it an
| English word, especially if it's French, but they really
| should be tried for what they do to the word "jaguar."
| Americans are more insecure, I guess, due to youth.
| comradesmith wrote:
| Isn't that the same justification for Shitake vs
| Shiitake?
|
| In Japanese it would be kanji or occasionally hiragana,
| some transliterations will be imperfect, and so long as
| the authors intent is clear, to me that's all that
| matters
| [deleted]
| benj111 wrote:
| I don't get it, what bad words does the string "people's names"
| contain.
|
| Is 'les' a perjoritive for lesbians now??? Or is it the near
| anagram of 'man penis'??? Or is it because it doesn't contain
| any of the letters in 'shit'???
| simonh wrote:
| Some personal names contain naughty words.
| traverseda wrote:
| They mean names that include swear words in them. For example
| there are people with the last name Shite (mostly in the DR
| Congo) according to google.
| benj111 wrote:
| Yes. I was joking. I would have hoped that my increasingly
| silly theories would have made that clear.
| neya wrote:
| I may actually use it just to p** off people. Oh wait, maybe I
| didn't need a font for that :)))
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Did you mean piss off, or is it a three letter word that is
| missing from my vocabulary ?
| sh4rks wrote:
| He's talking about the other end
| smegsicle wrote:
| i think it's hn's formatter mangling it, let me check
|
| a*
|
| s**
|
| p**
|
| yup, though when editing it escapes them so they don't get
| mangled again
| npteljes wrote:
| Maybe it's piss
| [deleted]
| JasonFruit wrote:
| This is totally broken. It still lets me say "damn". I'm calling
| the police.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Doesn't work on Strine, try "Bloody hell, quit arsing about, ya
| total drongo".
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I remember when I stumbled across a forum and was very confused
| by the near universal use of the phrase "gently caress"...
| [deleted]
| MrYellowP wrote:
| Bad language doesn't exist.
|
| It simply fucking doesn't. That's just the person, who has a
| problem with words, blaming the words for his problem.
|
| The problem is _solely_ within those who don 't want to hear it,
| who believe they can tell others how to speak.
| millzlane wrote:
| The problem comes in when the crybabies cry because noone wants
| to play with them.
| colmmacc wrote:
| So far this font has failed to censor a single horrifically
| racist or homophobic slur that I've tried, and these words are
| _much_ more universally taboo in every culture. It makes me
| nervous even just to type them in as an experiment and the words
| are so shocking to me that it 's very possible I have _never_
| spoken or typed them out. But they are not censored.
|
| It also only blocks one misogynistic slur (the slur that is in
| Scunthorpe, but not say the slur that looks most like 'slur')
| that I've tried.
|
| That's quite a skewed definition of "bad" language.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's a shame it blocks like this as down here the highest
| praise of character is to be a 'good cunt'.
| nmilo wrote:
| Really? You see a joke project made for fun and the first thing
| you do is try every horrifically racist and homophobic slur you
| can think of? Do you always look for things to be mad about?
| politician wrote:
| I've been toying around with the idea of building self-
| censorship software. These comments are good for
| demonstrating that there's a market of people who would
| eagerly engage in blinding themselves.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It would be neat if the black list was easily configurable.
| Just imagining the workplace arguments is fun.
| politician wrote:
| I don't think it can just be configurable, but needs to
| be programmable. But yes, 100% fun times ahead.
| void-pointer wrote:
| Perhaps because it's a joke font that's not supposed to be
| taken seriously?
| causality0 wrote:
| Swear words that mean "jerk" are mostly gender-divided. That
| doesn't make them sexist slurs. Just because you generally
| wouldn't call a woman an asshole doesn't make the word asshole
| a misandrist slur.
|
| You're quite right about it failing to block ethnic slurs
| though.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'm interested here, because I've noticed that there's a
| loophole to the gendered nature of "asshole": I wouldn't call
| a woman that because of what she's done to _me_ , but if she
| offends my wife, we might agree that she's an asshole. I'm
| not sure if that's a common usage or not.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| > this font has failed to censor a single horrifically racist
| or homophobic slur that I've tried, these words are _much_ more
| universally taboo in every culture
|
| How to say you're from the US without saying you're from the US
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Related: Sans Bullshit Sans (https://www.sansbullshitsans.com)
| spicybright wrote:
| Bitch doesn't work. Was the first one I tried lol
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Bitch doesn't work.
|
| At first I interpreted that entire sentence as slang for, "The
| font doesn't work."
|
| I guess that's another limitation of that approach: multiple
| parsings of the same sentence.
| sph wrote:
| You might be referring to a female canine.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I used to have a friend who would get offended when I
| referred to my dog as "my little bitch" and it's not like I
| spare the profanities during everyday speech or anything.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| because bitch could mean female dog
| aeturnum wrote:
| This is a neat project!
|
| It makes me think about the worlds of 1985 and Fahrenheit 451 -
| what does it look like to make it impossible to express
| something? When you see a dystopia, what are the mechanics moving
| underneath its surface, supporting what you can see?
| ajuc wrote:
| > When you see a dystopia, what are the mechanics moving
| underneath its surface, supporting what you can see?
|
| In the dystopias that were realized in practice mostly
| autocensorship.
|
| Let's say you have 1 in 1000 chance of going to Gulag and 1 in
| 20 chance of losing your job if you say something bad about
| Stalin. Will you risk it? Will you promote a guy that openly
| talks bad about Stalin? He will get into trouble eventually and
| your career will suffer in turn. And so on. 1% is enforcement
| 99% is fear.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Sure - but generally new dystopic situations are unlike
| previous ones. Things change and art gives us the potential
| to reflect on how they might change. In 1984 there is the
| idea that newspeak is trying to eliminate the ability to
| express thoughts contradictory to the party line. It's
| interested to think about what that might look like at every
| level of implementation.
| ajuc wrote:
| > but generally new dystopic situations are unlike previous
| ones
|
| Not really. Replace Stalin with Putin and the incentives
| not to talk about the war in Ukraine are very similar.
|
| > In 1984 there is the idea that newspeak is trying to
| eliminate the ability to express thoughts contradictory to
| the party line. It's interested to think about what that
| might look like at every level of implementation.
|
| That's nothing new. "Troubles" in UK/Ireland. "Special
| Operation" in Ukraine. Blasphemy in most of religious
| societies that still cared about these things. N-word. Etc.
|
| Language is a weapon, always was. It's not even restricted
| to totalitarian regimes, totalitarian regimes just use it
| more and generally for evil means.
|
| My problem with 1984 and how it's perceived today is that
| it made a whole mythology around totalitarianism that makes
| it seem there's healthy "normal" state and inhuman
| totalitarian state, and they share nothing in common. In
| practice they use the same tools, the differences are in
| scope and intentions.
| crikeyjoe wrote:
| Fuck that shit
| viginti_tres wrote:
| Try to type fuckuck
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Back in the day, I was the Exhibits Engineer at the Computer
| Museum in Boston. We had an exhibit with a robot arm and alphabet
| blocks; visitors could type in a phrase and it would be spelled
| out. I maintained the "dirty word" list, which was the list of
| things that the robot wasn't allowed to spell out.
| biztos wrote:
| Did it autocorrect, like Apple's famous ducking duck?
| fortyseven wrote:
| More useful: make it change 'cloud' to 'butt' automatically, like
| that browser extension.
| jl6 wrote:
| Everybody's got an opinion on what bad language means, but maybe
| everybody should maintain their own local variants of this font
| that censor specifically the words that they don't want to see.
| noneeeed wrote:
| That's delightful. I love this sort of silly (miss-)use of
| technology.
| ddingus wrote:
| A broken font that does not accurately represent expression.
|
| Seems pretty useless to me.
|
| Edit: Joke or Art font. Got it!
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Charles Dickinson
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Doesn't censor "classic", "mass", and anything with "ass".
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is 'ads' considered something that should be censored by
| anyone?
|
| I come from a land where 'arse' is probably more common, so may
| be missing something.
| AHappyCamper wrote:
| They didn't block the N word
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| My cockerel was not amused. Nor was my pussy-cat.
| layer8 wrote:
| Won't help for text-to-speech and screenreaders. ;)
| awsrocks wrote:
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(page generated 2022-07-02 23:00 UTC)