Hacker News Reader

Comment by seumars | Hacker News Reader

I find it weird that they use so many euphemisms for death when its the main motivation for the feature here. Is it really that uncomfortable for some?

View on HN

When I interviewed at GitHub, I had to answer some questions to determine how inclusive I really am. Microsoft is very big on this new type of culture.

Github/Microsoft also immediately jumped at the PR opportunity to be among first companies to tone-police things like master/slave, whitelist/blacklist etc.

Always funny when organizations paint themselves as do-gooders and people even applaud them for it. While in reality Both MS and Github have contracts with ICE, there is JEDI, HoloLens, AnyVision, ... The tone-policing and pandering to the woke mob / cancel culture, is just to distract from the actual disgusting things they do. The Wikipedia entry on FUD makes for an interesting read in corporate propaganda.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

It's an example of political recuperation.

It's kind of amazing the way woke culture got contorted so much compared to its radicalized origins and how it achieved widespread notoriety only after morphing into some sort of language policing movement with a nullified political impact.

There seems to be a concentrated effort to de-politicize the economy and to de-economize politics. The left used to be all about things that impacted the bottom line of capitalists such as maximizing worker's rights and leverage. Now it's about gender identity and tone policing.

> to distract from the actual disgusting things they do.

I dislike war and all its horrors as well, but curious, what do you think would happen if a 'magic' event occurred and the US decommissioned its military presence and all advanced technology, command center software etc.. (MSFT/PLTR/etc) ? Surely no other country would abuse this in the next 100 years right? right?

> I dislike war and all its horrors as well, but ...

> Surely no other country ...

I'm not anti-American. I'm anti-unchecked-capitalism. But I understand to most Americans that's tomato tomato potato potato.

Corporations need to be stripped of their rights so the result (tax law) looks closer to what existed in the 60's so they have enough cash to educate their citizens on basic common sense. A country that spends trillions on Pentagon and defense but is unable to provide basic healthcare, min. wage, 30 days paid vacation for every employee is simply a backward land of hillbillies and trailer park trash. No country hates their poor as much as Americans.

For sure it's profitable keeping most citizens dumb and below the poverty line, but it's unhealthy. And it also violates all laws of human decency. Especially when they're also in the business of tone-policing the rest of the world and exporting their "values" with foreign policies.

I really want the US to be a role-model because the world needs one. But bloody hell they should try a little harder and start treating their own people like people.

Understand that most Americans who oppose this don't hate their fellow citizens; they see their government as an unwieldy monster bigger than any corporation, and they just want to put on the brakes.

Is talking about death not inclusive? I would have thought it was about as inclusive as one could get seeing as it is a life experience that applies to literally everyone.

The whole inclusion also includes providing safe space, which I noticed means to basically act like there is only good things. So if you mention death in a different context it could trigger someone who recently lost someone, for example.

Personally, I am not a fan of this, but this is how I understand this.

This is absolutely insane and I'm so glad there are still companies and industries that don't give a fuck about any of this.

To be fair, any mention of a death of someone roughly my age and situation sets off my anxiety like nothing else.

I’m not saying they’re obliged to prevent that, but I can sort of see where they are coming from.

Interesting. The thought of death calms my anxiety because I know* that if I die then all my worries will be taken away, and nothing will really matter anymore. It's the prospect of an unhappy or difficult life that worry me.

* well, I have a strong belief

Hmm, I guess that is exactly what bothers me so much about death.

I’d rather spend an eternity worrying than a second in oblivion.

I understand that, but do you really think that it helps you cope and move on over time if you just avoid the word death forever?

When I lost my dog it was devastating to see other dogs. But it really helped me move on to just expose myself to more dogs and eventually even get a new one.

> An appointed successor can manage your public repositories after presenting a death certificate then waiting for 7 days or presenting an obituary

Looks clear enough

> to manage your user owned repositories if you cannot

At first I was thinking this was more general, like say you got trapped in Afghanistan with no internet and nothing but a phone line, you could direct your successor to take over your project. But then the process clearly states you have to submit a death certificate.

I agree with gp: why the obscure language. Why not just "in the unfortunate event of your death blah blah blah"?

Actually the trapped without internet thing makes me think. Why not do some sort of dead-man-switch? I.e. when you haven't committed (or been online) in X months the project is transferred to your successor.

In this situation, would you want to do complete transfer of repository? If you expect to come back, you want to give them just commit rights.

People have different sensitivities to the subject of mortality and death, I guess.

I grew in a European catholic majority country and I can say death is much more of a taboo and a Bad Subject to discuss in general (at least compared to protestant majority countries).

I've been seeing this a lot recently as my father died before Christmas. I think it's also down to people trying to be sensitive too - back when he was in the hospital I had many calls from doctors and nurses and there was a wide range of words and phrases used to talk about how long he had left, the possibility of death etc. It's the same too now that I'm dealing with closing down all of his accounts.

Death, especially in the USA, seems to be fraught with propriety pitfalls when speaking about it with strangers.

I'm not so sure why. It could be the general American cultural tendency toward heavy euphemism.

Naturally, any GitHub announcement is going to be run past world-class PR staff abiding by Microsoft corporate policies (that is, burn no bridges, offend no one, take no unnecessary risks with the brand). Microsoft is a US company with primarily US decisionmakers.

a squared plus b squared equals fearful, bland, and circumloquacious.

> I'm not so sure why.

Because a lot of "weird" cultural norms in the US are based on its roots of puritanism.

> At the same time, the Puritans regarded death as God's punishment for human sinfulness and on their deathbeds many New Englanders trembled with fear that they might suffer eternal damnation in Hell.

https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=72

Imo, the puritanism as root of everything is massively overstated.

In this case in particular, puritans talked about death a lot. They have been kinda obsessed with it.

There are not many euphemism. There is "not being able to" and "cannot" and that is it.

And yes, it is not exceptional to talk and write this way. And it was not exceptional in the past either.

Can you list the euphemisms? I found exactly one, if you could the “if you cannot” as one.

I think “if you cannot” may be appropriate too. It makes me feel that the author would be sad if I died, so they don’t want to think about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com