Imagine if your language had a word that meant both "food" and "junk food", or at least that's how it was used in common parlance. Then people started pushing back against critiques of (junk) food, saying, "well we've always had food." This is exactly like the people (and i've seen this a lot lately) online pontificating about technology and how it's so great and important to humanity and we've always had it and in fact it predates humans. This is like saying otters busted open shells with rocks 5 million years ago so you should let your children eat nothing but takis all day long.

So. Stupid. I contend that to make an argument that collapses a term so much, conflates it with more general concepts in order to purposely confuse the issue, is gaslighting and basically makes the term meaningless, cuts off in advance any real conversation that's actually going on. fuck you people. You all know that all the modern complaints about tech are talking about _modern tech_. Do a little pattern match in your head and stick "modern" in before every use of the word "technology" and then come back and discuss in good faith.

#semantics #definitions #technology #techne

The Three Semantics of HTML, by @matuzo:

https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2025/24/

#html #semantics

I feel like the character #Rizzo in the opening of The #Muppets #Christmas Carol has a name that takes on a different meaning these days.

#rizz #film #films #linguistics #languagechange #semantics

https://youtu.be/Y3n_T3SiMyM?si=rPewWpKFxzocK4gQ

Words are violence, immigration is invasion, treatment is abuse, and now drug-smuggling is waging war. Is there another way to bastardize the English language that I should know about?

#uspol #English #bastardization #semantics #terminology

Semantics Beyond the Tag Name, by @knowler (@matuzo):

https://www.htmhell.dev/adventcalendar/2025/19/

#html #attributes #aria #semantics #accessibility