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#wordsmatter — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #wordsmatter, aggregated by home.social.

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  1. @crazyeddie @aworkinglibrary
    It is probably about car dependency, car-centered areas. Like in the US where in many towns without a car one would struggle to do anything: getting to the grocery store, getting back from the store, reaching the other river bank as many bridges are motor vehicles only.

    People can’t live without cars in such places. Even food banks have huge lines of cars, four "lanes". Some homeless people drive cars as well. Imagine the closest grocery store being 1 hour walking distance away, and the weather may be extremely hot/cold.

    Many such areas don’t even have sidewalks or anything for walking at all. At the same time so called "jay-walking" is prohibited by law. The term "jaywalking" actually was invented by the cars lobby in the early 20th century. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalki
    Moving around by walking is extremely inconvenient, dangerous, taking ridiculous amounts of time, basically incompatible with everyday activities.

    Also the parking lots, roads, intersections take up huge chunks of the city. Consider how much longer it takes to walk somewhere compared to what it could be without all these. Urban areas could look very different if they were human-centered and Points Of Interest were packed tightly.

    And the bigger the city, the more space car infrastructure takes up. More lanes, wider intersections, parking lots can have up to many thousands spots, highways, freeways, interchanges of ridiculous sizes and shapes.

    The topic is huge, what I mentioned is just the tip. Think of what you see around every day. Also all the noise. And danger it brings to everyone, not just drivers. The number of so called "accidents", another convenient term for the horrible things that happen everyday.

    The areas which are pedestrian-friendly, bicycle friendly, have public transportation tend to have happier residents, more attraction points, more small businesses, more street life, way better air quality, less noise among other benefits.
    Also social connections and interaction happen there and not on a 4-lane highway.

    #Cars #Car #City #Urban #Streets
    #Cities #CarFree #Roads #CarDependancy #StreetLife #Safety #Bycicles #Walking #UrbanSprawl #OneMoreLane #InducedTraffic #PublicTransport #PublicTransit #Access #PublicTransportation #Accessibility #Accessible #PublicSpaces #Socialization #Capitalism #Subsidies #Lobbying #WordsMatter #History #CarsAreDangerous #FuckCars

  2. RE: fedi.copyleft.org/@bkuhn/11712

    Thank you @bkuhn, I love this succinct piece of wisdom! ❤️
    We should, in our communities, be mindful of how we communicate even with the best of intentions. Are we lifting each other up with encouragement or (sometimes unintentionally) pushing others down?

    #wordsmatter

  3. If you "buy" something that the "vendor" can take back any time, like a kindle book, no you didn't.

    You rented it, from a rental company.

    #WordsMatter #Marketing

  4. 🔥 I've never called anyone a “Karen.” And I never will.
    Not because women shouldn't be held accountable. Because I think we should be precise about what we're holding them accountable for.
    Come see why. 👀👇
    👉🏿 shorturl.at/4CeIm
    #Karen #Women #Accountability #WordsMatter #Alaska #AlaskaHeadlineLiving
    AI IMAGE DISCLAIMER: 🤖 The accompanying image is AI-generated and created specifically for Alaska Headline Living. It is a fictional illustration and does not depict a real person or event.

  5. @ai6yr

    "Training facility" is a weird name for a theft and destruction facility.

    Their marketing team are working hard.

    #WordsMatter

  6. CW: CW: queerphobia, hate speech, stochastic terrorism

    There is a reason I take the endless stream of anti-queer slurs, lies and accusations seriously.

    Stochastic terrorism is when people in positions of influence repeatedly spread hateful or dehumanising rhetoric about a group, creating an environment in which violence against members of that group becomes more likely - even if they never explicitly tell anyone to attack.

    And yes, this can and does include state actors.

    Calling queer people “groomers”, “predators”, “degenerates”, “child abusers”, or some other invented monstrosity is not merely “words”. When those accusations are repeated often enough, they manufacture a target. They tell the public who supposedly deserves suspicion, hatred and punishment.

    Words become permission. Permission becomes action.

    That is why “it was just a slur” is such a grotesquely inadequate defence. A lie repeated often enough can become a weapon. And when powerful people keep handing that weapon to an angry crowd, pretending not to know what might happen next is simply dishonest.

    We should take the words seriously, because history has shown us what can follow when we don't.

    #QueerRights #LGBTQIA #TransRights #StochasticTerrorism #HateSpeech #WordsMatter

  7. Why do people keep saying "taxpayers" instead of "public"?

    "Taxpayers deserve better", "taxpayers' money" …

    There are almost no cases where taxpayers in general have a special interest not shared by the whole public, regardless of how much tax they pay.

    #wordsMatter #Propaganda

  8. @karlbode.com

    💯

    Why aren't the media calling it "OpenAI and Anthropic bosses criminally negligent"?

    Oh, wait! Lemme guess.

    #wordsMatter

  9. Why the AI industry is so fond of the prefix ‘co’ – by an expert in linguistics

    theconversation.com/why-the-ai

    > Why AI companies are so fond of the prefix ‘co’.

    > “co” evokes shared agency and joint ownership of a task

    #WordsMatter #Propaganda

  10. RE: texasobserver.social/@TexasObs

    #DonaldTheDeplorable Trump’s #ICE goons are *not* “above the law”.

    But they are beyond the reach of cowardly or feckless law *enforcement*. See the difference?

    #WordsMatter when you #resist intelligently!

    #Houston #Texas

  11. A Forgotten Wave of Extinction May Have Erased Thousands of Human Languages 

    Photo: (Yale University/Wikimedia) Around 7,500 spoken and signed languages are used worldwide today. Yet this extraordinary diversity may represent only a fraction of the linguistic richness humanity once possessed. A new modeling study published in Science suggests language diversity reached a forgotten golden age between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago, when tens of thousands of languages may have coexisted. What followed was a dramatic decline that appears to have begun long before European […]

    onlinemarketingscoops.com/2026

  12. @TheConversationUS And when #DonaldTrump won his first ‘primary’ in the #2016election he famously and sincerely said “I love the #PoorlyEducated.” youtu.be/O9F6EAMPky4

    Note that he did not say he loved the *UN*educated.

    The #chemistry graduates at #LibertyUniversity are not *uneducated*, but they are #PoorlyEducated.

    #WordsMatter
    The #education bone is connected to the democracy bone!

  13. @faab64 What ‘war’? There has been *no* declaration of #war against #Iran. There is only a #FelonsCrusade that is going according to the nonexistent plan. 🤷🏻‍♂️

    #WordsMatter
    #Resist

  14. RE: mastodon.chrisclark.net/@rssbo

    Not "Washington", "The Trump régime".

    Not some abstraction, a specific oligarchic gang.

    #wordsMatter

  15. If Acts Happened Today, Would We Call It Communism?

    For many, "communism" has become less a political philosophy and more a conversation stopper. But is every effort to use our shared resources to care for the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable really communism? This article examines the difference between political labels and biblical principles, comparing the teachings of the early Church with today's political rhetoric.

    polymathchristian.wordpress.co

  16. Mark Carney spent a year gathering political capital. Now he’s spending it — along with billions of taxpayers’ dollars

    They are NOT "taxpayers' dollars". Why do the media and others keep using this phrase.

    It belongs to the general public.

    Nobody claims that when corporations spend money that it's "customers' money".

    The phrase implies that it's been illegitimately taken from people, as if thieves spent their "victims' money".

    thestar.com/politics/federal/m

    #taxpayers #wordsMatter #Propaganda

  17. @fsinn

    💯

    And why "fatally shot" instead of "killed"?

    News media are too mealy-mouthed.

    #WordsMatter

  18. I wish people on the left would stop using diagnoses as swearwords and swearwords as diagnoses.
    That's nazi rhetoric.

    #ableism #saneism #WordsMatter

  19. RE: flipboard.com/@independent/new

    "All on her own"? Do you mean she didn't need a man to help her? Imagine that! A woman able to manage her money without a man's help! 🙄 #WordsMatter

  20. @Independent @MissConstrue @news-Independent "All on her own"? Do you mean she didn't need a man to help her? Imagine that! A woman able to manage her money without a man's help! 🙄 #WordsMatter

  21. @JeffGrigg @wavefunction @markmetz @clew Also, when I said "you" I didn't mean you. I meant people in general. Maybe I should use the word "we." #WordsMatter

  22. @GiftArticles Humans killing humans is as old as humanity itself.

    #Ukraine is teaching the world how to *kill killers* (at scale) again. Like the #Antifa Allies did during #WorldWar2.

    #WordsMatter
    #Resist intelligently.

  23. Listening to the news yesterday, I heard three uses of the phrase "men and women" when "people" would have been more accurate, unless they really think non-binary or intersex people should be excluded.

    Years ago—and still, in some circles—they would just have said "men", so we've made progress, but surely it's time to remove irrelevant gender references from our language?

    #wordsMatter