Monday, April 25, 2022

Google Docs has become the latest speech enforcer

 We've all seen language evolve, but some of the kinder, sweeter, more leftist inclusive stuff is just nonsense and gag-worthy.  Google is now eliminating or suggesting alternates for "mother" or "lord" or "master" in some well-known idiomatic expressions.  It reminds me of some of the ridiculous phrase twisting we lived through in the 80s and 90s, like "handicapped" or all the polite ways to say "mentally challenged" instead of "retarded."  A whole generation of adolescents had to give up a favorite common insult.  The word "challenged" has become a joke.  I use it when I tell people I'm math challenged, or directionally challenged. (If I don't have my watch on my left wrist, don't give me directions.)  So that has given us pregnant people and assigned sex at birth. Remember a few years back when someone who didn't have a good grasp of English thought "niggardly" was a reference to blacks?  People are so incensed with "black face" (used mostly by Democrat entertainers and politicians like Jimmy Kimmel and Joy Behar) last week there was a black DJ at a high school dance accused of wearing black face--that's the live reenactment of being overly sensitive about words.  I'm so old I remember when black was the insult and Negro was the correct term. I think even "senior citizen" is on the chopping block.

https://www.techradar.com/news/google-docs-is-having-some-serious-issues-with-its-new-inclusive-language-warnings

https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dk8m/googles-ai-powered-inclusive-warnings-feature-is-very-broken

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-inclusive-language-cancel-culture-censor-free-speech-offended-woke-micro-aggression-microsoft-11642800484

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