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Cake day: October 19th, 2023

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  • And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, [writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.

    —a story told by Socrates, according to his student Plato


  • Words become more acceptable over time. In centuries past calling someone a devil or saying that they should go to hell would have been deeply offensive. Today these insults are so mild that even schoolchildren say them to each other. Even twenty years ago the word “fuck” was viewed with nearly as much taboo as racial slurs. Now, it’s a very common word that people will throw around in a casual context.

    Even the word n****r (means “black person”) and its non-hard-R variant are starting to lose their offensiveness. In African-American Vernacular it has taken on a variety of inoffensive meanings. It is now only offensive in certain contexts while fifty years ago it was pretty much offensive in all contents.

    At the same time, new words emerge and get labelled profane. For example, the word t****y (means “transgender”) would not have meant anything twenty years ago, and now it’s one of the most offensive words in the English dictionary. Similar story with the word f****t (means “homosexual”).