I’m also from the US and I’ll second that this is basically correct and should be taken as an implicit assumption about most Americans if you’re looking in from the outside.
Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”)
The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.
Too little too late. I left Twitter a few days ago after I saw some users complaining about animal torture videos showing up in their feeds and search suggestions, and this was on the heels of the footage of the shooting in Texas making the rounds.
It’s a completely unsurprising thing to see when you actively court channers after kneecapping content moderation.
Like CASM, there are groups of sociopaths who share these videos in private and occasionally in public. Everything from Facebook groups to small YouTube channels to private forums. The people who hunt them down, gather evidence and send it to the cops are true heroes in my view, alongside paid Facebook content moderators.
That’s cool, all manner of illegal shock content has always shown up on the chans as well, since day one. “Channer” as a term applies equally to all people in that ecosystem, even those that are reviled by the rest. :)
Sometimes scientists cover the same stuff as other scientists in the interest of checking reproducibility or finding new data. Sometimes new stuff is discovered, sometimes not.
No, not literally. But a "9/11 coverup" suggests a coverup about the substance of the events on 9/11, rather than a coverup about the extent or manner of intelligence operations that preceded it. Calling it a "pre-9/11 intelligence gathering coverup" would be more helpful.
but lets not pretend that's not on peoples minds when they read the title. it seems like it ought to be going out of its way to avoid that implication.
I did not interpret the headline that way. I’m not sure why someone would jump straight to that aside from the “Bush did 9/11” memes that get circulated every now and then.
Ya thats one reason. It's an incredibly well known conspiracy theory. I think most readers would've passed over the thought when reading the title and assumed thats what it was referencing.
I’m still not buying that “most readers” are so familiar with that conspiracy theory that they would jump to “FBI agents have taken it upon themselves to publicly accuse the CIA in involvement in 9/11”
There is so much room for discussion about incompetence and bad systems when talking about 9/11. There was even a whole tv show with Jeff Daniels a few years ago that managed to talk about it without reading like lyrics from an Anti Flag album.
They might not settle on that as the most likely interpretation, but I would bet money that it was one of if not the first interpretation that came to mind for most. I think title authors are accountable for such things, and less discriminating readers will not make their way all the way to more reasonable interpretations.
I love these one-person crusades against present reality. Words mean whatever a critical mass of people want them to mean. For example, the usage of the present tense here:
"Composed of" and "consists of" are better alternatives.
is incorrect. It should read:
Composed of" and "consists of" were better alternatives.
This thread is literally a clout ATM machine for a group comprised of pedants.
Allow me to quote you back to you. "It’s also not really serverless to begin with, because at the end of the day code is being executed on a physical device that many of us might call a “server” [1]
A critical mass of people have adopted the term serverless. Therefore, the term means whatever they want it to mean, right? No sense in swimming against the tide here, correct?
Yes, words mean what people want them to mean if we're willing to shrug our shoulders and accept the new usage or terminology. That doesn't mean it's never correct to fight against sloppy or non-standard usage in the hopes that it won't be considered standard.
That’s great example! That post is an unserious riff as a response to another post that meant to assert the correctness an individual’s personal definition of a term on what I found to be tenuous pedantic grounds.
I think in the case of "serverless" we still share a common understanding of what the term means, even if the term itself is misleading. This "comprised of" issue is different in that it can easily cause misunderstanding between archaic and modern users of the phrase, where meaning is inverted.
Semi-related, it always bothered me that we use the term "wireless" for something that still has wires (just not between the endpoints). Though I don't object, or have a better alternative, and I get the logic of calling it wireless.
The better alternative is cordless, no? At least some products do use that (e.g. cordless mouse). Of course, wireless is now so widely used it might not make sense to fight it :)
The problem here is the ambiguity. Someone who uses the original meaning of comprise will interpret a sentence in the opposite way of someone using the new. "America comprises many states and territories" -> "Many states and territories are comprised of America" have the same meaning with the original definition. With the new definition, you'd have to invert both sentences.
This is called a Janus word because it can be it's own antonym. There are other Janus words, like "table" as in "to table a topic for discussion", which means opposite things in American vs British English. The author touches on the fact that that's a regional distinction, but there is no such regional distinction for comprise. Therefore it makes sense for a website like Wikipedia to pick a single form, and the original is still more widespread than the new.
Biweekly is not its own antonym but it means two completely different things (every other week and twice a week) which for me as rendered it useless since you cannot know which meaning is intended.
Yeah the RAE is super useful to end debates on what a word means, thats it. I see no issues with language not "evolving enough". Spanish written/talked a century ago is different than what it's spoken presently, even if the words mean the same.
What I don't quite understand is the resistance. It's a fact that some people (and I mean readers, not the editors) don't like, understand, and/or accept the new meaning of this word, whether we like it or not. Whereas everyone should be agreeing that the alternatives are fine. So if you have an alternative everyone is fine with... it seems like a no-brainer to use it? When you have something that everyone is happy with, why insist on an alternative that some people hate?
Why take this personally? This is not a personal battle. It's isn't about disliking the way a person communicates, nor about it being right or wrong. It's about the way Wikipedia articles communicate, namely, in a way that hopefully minimizes friction for their readers (whom it's there for - it's not there for the editors), without compromising on accuracy. I would think editors really ought to be able to distinguish "I like this word more" and "I think this word is best for readers".
There are a billion of us speaking the language. It's a little presumptuous to tell a billion people what to do and there should probably be some amount of default resistance.
There's 380 million native speaker of this language, but another billion non-native speakers. If this change helps that latter billion, should the former 380 million object?
(On a personal note, as a non-native speaker of English I've always found the phrase "comprised of" confusing. I infer the "directionality" based on context but am unsure how to use it correctly myself.)
Nobody is telling a billion people what to do though? We're just talking about what word to use in an article edited by a handful of people. The billion people can keep using whatever words they want.
Do you really believe the loss society would suffer from editing "comprised of" in Wikipedia articles is actually comparable to what it would suffer if they discriminated against half the population on TV?
I can only speak for myself, but the actual phrase “comprised of” is the least interesting thing to discuss when it comes to this topic.
I am fascinated by a single person taking up the cause of “correcting” the language of others based off of their personal linguistic aesthetic preference.
I don’t see many people saying “I often have to stop at the words ‘comprised of’ and reevaluate the meaning of the sentence that I’m reading lest I completely misunderstand it.” This isn’t actually in practical service of clarity, it’s an exercise in preserving a sense of meaningful posterity — a deeply personal and sentimental endeavor despite what “reasons” one is able to elucidate.
But again, this isn't even about correcting others' language. People are fine to use whatever language that serves them personally well in their lives - but this isn't about that. It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers. Every comment I'm reading here so far seems to insist this is somehow personal toward the author and correcting them, whereas it really isn't.
> It's about writing encyclopedia articles in a way that's best for their readers.
This sentence contains a load-bearing “best”. The Wikipedia editor’s contention is that they have established the canonical “best”, and it is that contention that is being scrutinized.
"Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here. We're talking about an encyclopedia whose audience is the entire English-speaking population. Its #1 job is to communicate relevant information on each topic clearly and accurately to the broadest audience in each language - not to match anyone's preferred terminology, write Shakespearean prose, or push the boundaries of the language. We already have multiple words that are perfectly well-suited for use with the intended meaning - we don't even have that luxury with so many other words. Deliberately picking a word that confuses some readers and annoys others just introduces problems and friction where there don't need to be any.
> "Best for readers" is not particularly subjective here.
This is correct. It is exactly the same amount of subjective as the word “best” normally holds. Since there has never been a reproducible measure of best-ness in any objective sense of anything linguistic, it’s squarely in the territory of subjectivity.
If by “best” you mean “understandable to virtually all readers” then “comprised of” and “composed of” are equally “best”
If best-ness is measured by something other than usefulness, then the person that decides the new set of weights with which to weigh best-ness is performing a personal and subjective act. “Orthodoxy to a standard of English as cited by me in context of the year x” does not automatically qualify something for extra best-ness points.
I will gladly entertain the issue of “comprised of” somehow lacking in accuracy with a person that is genuinely confused by its inclusion in a sentence.
While you could certainly argue that “words mean what people think they mean”, that is not a reason to use words in ways that are CURRENTLY considered wrong, especially not in a lexicon.
If you want to change the meaning of a word, that’s fine, and maybe in a few decades you will succeed, but until you get enough people on board you will only cause confusion.
The author means “composed of” and “consists of” are better phrases to use in general (i.e. according to style guides), not were better phrases exclusively for use on his Wikipedia project. We know this for sure because in the “Quotations” section the author says that he changes “comprised of” to “composed of” or “comprises” in quotations under certain circumstances. He is not wary of using “comprises”.
The author also indicates that this work is still ongoing and meant to be evergreen.
I'm pretty sure it's a joke: those were better alternatives but they're equally valid now and it's time for the author to let the language change and move on.
Yeah, I see that now. Instead of italicizing the word “were” to place emphasis like you did, OP italicized most of the quote and not the word that needed emphasis. Ha.
For this reason, I thought his “ATM clout” statement meant the opposite of what he meant.
Whether a language has a governing body is irrelevant to whether you should attempt to use clear, easily-understood language. The concerns apply equally in French and English.
If words don't matter, then ignore the edits. People tend to copy what they see. If they see it written with the original definition, maybe that's what the hivemind will adopt. I don't see a problem with that and I don't see the point in attacking people that care. I'm sure you have things in your life you care about.
No, the point is words do matter, and they mean what people think they mean. Not people from 100 years ago from a prestige university who wrote a dictionary. Languages are fluid, they change and when they do change the present reality is the way the language is spoken.
Obviously there's no universal agreement on which phrase is correct. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having a discussion. I don't know how many people we're even talking about. I'm certain the group that uses "comprises" instead of "comprised of" is not entirely "people from 100 years ago from prestige university who wrote a dictionary."
I understand languages change, which I think is an argument for the edits. If the language pivoted one way, pivoting back is just as valid a change as any other. "Comprised of" and similar phrasing doesn't come out of the ether. They build in popularity as they propagate through writing. There's a big snowball effect. I suspect going forward, you'll see "comprises" or "consists of" because people just copy what they see. Most don't have a strongly formed opinion about which phrase is better.
Personally, I view writing as a craft or skill like any other. Writing is different than speech and always has been. There's a huge qualitative difference in text that has been edited and text that is streamed out of someone's head. The former is almost always clearer to understand. Consequently, if someone points out a grammatical issue to me I say "Oh, TIL, thanks for letting me know" and then I adapt and go on with my life. My bias is to the established norm, not arguing that I'm riding the wave of a linguistic revolution. If I have an open question on something, I'll consult an established resource, just like I would in any other field or craft.
I think the problem is people get embarrassed when they're told they're using the language incorrectly. I get it. I've been there. It's true that English does not have a governing body like French, but I don't see that as a compelling justification for redefining terms or just arguing that nothing can ever be wrong.
How do we decide whether someone is using a word incorrectly, or if we should update our present reality?
Another question: are there places where accuracy and precision are more important than others? Would an encyclopedia be one of those places? I'll reveal my cards here: I believe so.
I am happy that you brought up accuracy _and_ precision!
Somewhat humorously I think a good chunk of the disagreements here come from people treating those concepts interchangeably. Attempts to apply mathematical reasoning to language and interpretation are doomed to fall into similar traps.
This thread is proof of the opposite, in fact. Since neither "composed of" nor "consists of" generate 300+ comment Hacker News threads, they are plainly better.
There’s probably a very high price ceiling for diehard Zelda fans! I was one myself until BotW, which in my opinion is the worst game with the Zelda name attached to it ever made.
I hope by the time they get shake off the “endless grind for crafting materials in a giant featureless grass field” high they won’t be charging an arm and a leg for a proper Zelda game.
if you consider BotW "a giant featureless grass field" then I don't believe that you are talking about the same game that everyone else is.
that BotW fails to handhold the player through Link's progression, is by far the game's greatest feature.
absolutely 0% of the overworld (excepting the four shrines of The Great Plateau) is required to beat the game. ok maybe 0.2% because you have to travel to the castle.
Breath of the Wild is as much of a game as you want. It is as much of an endless grind as you make it, no more, no less. BotW is as difficult as you make it, or as easy as you make it. Combat is as easy or as difficult as you choose.
it was extremely well received for good reasons.
is it perfect? absolutely not. when everything has a difficulty level that is actively determined by the player, as they play, the "game" kinda falls out of it, because rules become very fluid. you can eat everything you have in battle for effectively infinite life or you can choose to fight using only sticks and forbid yourself from healing. or you can fight with sticks then discover that your skills aren't where they need to be and you need to eat to stay alive. or you can stick to your guns and avoid healing and take the L if you want.
I'm trying to say that the game you want is probably in there, somewhere. it's up to you to enforce your own rules for progression on yourself, though. you can fight Ganon with three hearts or with 30. up to you.
> I don't believe that you are talking about the same game that everyone else is.
I’m talking about the one where you wander pretty aimlessly through a big field picking up sticks and stuff and occasionally get ethered by those stone robot things on sight. It’s the one where instead of getting key items by beating many different dungeons as you progress, you get a small handful of magic powers in the first hour of gameplay and then set out to collect ingredients for soup or whatever.
> that BotW fails to handhold the player through Link's progression, is by far the game's greatest feature.
I don’t quite understand this. Did you feel like previous Zelda games “handheld” you through progression? Were you a fan of the games that came before BotW?
> absolutely 0% of the overworld (excepting the four shrines of The Great Plateau) is required to beat the game. ok maybe 0.2% because you have to travel to the castle.
Unlike every single other previous Zelda game! It’s almost like a game thats only connection to the Zelda series is the character model and name!
> it was extremely well received for good reasons.
I’m sure it was! “Universal appeal” isn’t one though, as that’s not a real thing.
> Did you feel like previous Zelda games “handheld” you through progression?
yes, absolutely, but the franchise definitely did not start out like that.
The original Legend of Zelda plopped you on the map and gave you nothing. zero guidance. I consider this very good.
Skyward Sword (the mainline release immediately prior to Breath of the Wild) was extremely linear and even gave you the solutions to puzzles so you never felt stuck. I consider this very awful.
prior to Breath of the Wild, this linear hand-holding style of Zelda game was apparently loved by the creators within Nintendo and was definitely not loved by players who considered themselves Zelda fans.
I remember reading how Nintendo doubted that Breath of the Wild would be well received because it was so much like the original Legend of Zelda, once you left the great plateau. zero guidance (almost) and complete freedom to go anywhere, if you could survive.
after a couple of months of extreme praise, Nintendo promised to continue the "open world" style of Zelda game going forward. this will change, no question.
I felt choked when I played Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. you were Link on a rail, and you did what you were told. horrible.
> Were you a fan of the games that came before BotW?
extremely so very early on, and less and less as time went on, especially the last two or three 3D mainline games prior to BotW.
> The original Legend of Zelda plopped you on the map and gave you nothing. zero guidance. I consider this very good.
You literally can’t get far off the beach until you hit a specific milestone. And then the next milestone and so on. Zelda NES was very strictly linear, as was ALTTP, Ocarina, Majora, GC Wind Waker etc.
As for “handholding” I’ve never felt that way for a moment while playing e.g. Link’s Awakening or even the later titles like Oracle of Time/Seasons (Seasons was incredibly difficult but ultimately still linear!)
I personally did not find “But you can technically just go fight Ganon with a stick!” a plus. It’s about as much of a Zelda game as Zelda 2.
"zero guidance" and "zero requirements to proceed" are not the same.
I'm talking about "zero guidance" mostly, but I'll switch to progress requirements since that seems to be what you're interested in.
in Breath of the Wild, you are free to go up against Ganon unarmed, if you choose. you will lose, but you can do it. in LoZ, you can't reach Ganon without meeting the prerequisites to gain entry. those are both gates to progress, but one is implicit and one is explicit. in both cases, the games give you very little help on how to proceed until you seek out that info yourself. I prefer when you are given the choice about how to proceed yourself.
in BotW, if I am a skilled player, I can make whatever weapons and food I have go much further than I could if I were an unskilled player.
in LoZ, the requirements are the same for everyone, even if you are capable enough as a player to kill him before you collect all the gear, you can't. you have to do it all. those are rails. rails are bad. it's not handholding, though, which is good, because handholding is also bad. to me.
I liked Zelda 2. A lot. you may choose to use that little factoid to dismiss all I've said, and that's your prerogative, but I also loved the first Zelda, and the third. and Ocarina of Time. and many others. it's when the game leads you by the nose to the end that I dislike things, and that's what Skyward Sword was, very much.
> in LoZ, the requirements are the same for everyone, even if you are capable enough as a player to kill him before you collect all the gear, you can't. you have to do it all. those are rails. rails are bad.
So every other Zelda game has rails, and rails are (to you) bad. Got it.
I personally find the “rails” (being a fundamental and defining feature that distinguishes the gameplay of every Zelda game) to be a good thing.
I’m a bit confused here. You’re a fan of the Zelda series, but the “rails” that are a fundamental mechanic in every other game are “bad”? Wouldn’t that mean that BotW is the first fundamentally “good” Zelda game from your perspective?
If so, that makes sense! We are in fact talking about two different definitions of what is “a Zelda game”! For me that’s a continuation of a very enjoyable and distinct game design style that began with the NES, for others it might be “the playable character is named Link”
I guess. if you want the same game every time, then play the same game every time.
I want new stuff. I want new things to do, and new ways to discover what is possible. I do not want to be led around by the nose like an ox.
I want to learn about the overall Hyrule lore, and the repeated battle between Ganon(dorf) and the forces of Good. I want to know more about this universe, even if... no, especially if I need to discover it myself, without the game outright telling me.
I enjoyed and beat BOTW (I think I even did all the shrines) but spent most of the time wishing it were the game they almost made. There's just not quite enough body to it, not enough content. Lots of great-looking empty space, lots of cool stuff that punishes you for actually using it (the horse taming is such a good little system... but you're not going to ride horses much, unless you like getting places less efficiently), stuff that feels half-baked or weirdly dead (all the towns), et c. Lots of cookie-cutter shrines, four forgettable and way-too-similar dungeons, some labyrinths that are trivially bypassed and don't really reward you for going through them "properly", et c. The lazy "our economy and game-loop-incentive system are broken so we'll just make weapons break really fast to make the player give a shit about mob drops" thing that lots of people hate (I was OK with it—but I'd have much rather seen a better solution to that problem)
The best large element was probably the upgrade-nut (I forget what they were called) puzzles and a couple puzzley sidequests, but even those only had a few types, aside from a handful of (great!) one-offs.
Mostly, it made me dream of a world in which Bethesda uses that engine or one like it for the next Elder Scrolls.
It’s also not really serverless to begin with, because at the end of the day code is being executed on a physical device that many of us might call a “server”
Most Americans are only presented with increasing incarceration rates as the only realistically viable way of solving most social ills. As such, there are many flavors and colors of “increase the incarceration rate” across the political spectrum, and lots of people will pick a boogeyman (drug addicts, thieves, etc.) to justify it. For those that don’t pick a boogeyman their support of increasing the incarceration rate is tied to something entirely unrelated (e.g. “My guy that supports mass incarceration is so much better than your guy that supports mass incarceration! Look at his track record on {social issue}!”)
The fact that this is the view shared by the majority is reflected in the barely-fluctuating incarceration rate and military-sized “crime fighting” budgets. It is also a fact that is reflected in who Americans continue to elect and which policies we vote to enact.