lolcatnip

But often it is a bad direction, and it feels like it's becoming politically incorrect to point out when that's happening.

Language evolves.

That's a thought-terminating cliche that people often use to dismiss legitimate criticism.

In this particular instance I think you've made a good case that broadening the definition is a good thing, but I really hate the implication no use of language is ever wrong, but rather just "evolution", which is implied to be least be a neutral process if not actively beneficial.

I've seen people defend literal typos as "language evolution" and get massively upvoted while anyone who dares to disagree is mocked. A typo isn't language evolution at all unless it becomes popular. Otherwise, to continue the biology metaphor, it's just a language mutation, and like biological mutations, typos are harmful to communication far more often than they're helpful.

Another example a bad use of language is how words and phrases are co-opted for political purposes. "Woke" is an obvious recent example. "Welfare" is an older much much more egregious example, where just the mere spelling of the word makes the original meaning clear, and that meaning is unequivocally positive, yet most people think "welfare" means government assistance to poor people. Or take "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", which went from an example of something that's literally impossible to something people are unironically told they should be doing. This sort of thing is language evolution, but it's not neutral. It's done with an political agenda. It impoverishes our language our language and stifles honest communication.

They've enshittified EEE!

That sounds like a word that's only used by people who are really into Linux.

acollierastro is a treasure.

What really concerns me is that the modern-day version of mobs with pitchforks seems to be fascism, because fascists have learned how to create the mob and harness it for their own purposes.

Twitter? Gross.

For software, it's like working with an intern who's really good at searching StackOverflow.

It's not like the idea of forcing everyone to pay a toll to use their operating system never occured to them. They had Apple to use as an example right from the start.

It has some intrinsic value because it's a metal with a variety of applications. It just doesn't have nearly enough intrinsic value to justify its price.

I think there might be a tiny bit of selection bias if you're looking at messages today were written illegally.

Neither do neural networks.