(((trianglman))) @trianglman@qoto.org

@freemo You expressly said you were NOT an illegal immigrant and didn't want anyone calling you one; you just joked about your actions being illegal. You're lying about things you said just a few toots ago.

You are describing the human as illegal. The phrase you use is "illegal immigrant" "illegal" is an adjective modifying the noun "immigrant" (a human). It is not an adverb not that there is a verb or adjective to modify. And that's where it's not just shortened to the noun "illegal."

I am 100% intolerant of bigotry. I wear that proudly. You want to dehumanize people, I will call you out on it and I will not tolerate it. You might not want to make it personal to you, but it absolutely is personal to the people you are dehumanizing.

@freemo
This level of bigoted contortions is just sad. Just say you don't see these people as human and leave it at that.

"Illegal" is not used to describe any other human, regardless of their criminal behavior, no matter how much you say they could be. It is exclusively used to describe immigrants of color (here legally or not). It is incredibly less accurate than literally any other moniker you could come up with.
@cm

@cm in fairness, it was my analogy. He just accepted it.

@freemo nobody who has argued against changing their language from "illegal" to "undocumented" has ever shown to be anything other than bigoted in their desire to hold on to this tainted language.

Your claims of "undocumented" being inaccurate is completely false. "Undocumented" means in a country without documented authorization. Someone who loses their visa entered the country with authorization and is still here with authorization (they currently can't prove it and may not be believed). Whereas someone with forged documentation is not here with such documented authorization, they just can lie and pretend they are.

@freemo "immigration can be illegal" is like saying "driving can be illegal." It's bullshit and not talked about like that. Only someone trying to blur the lines between legal and illegal actions talk about illegal behavior so vaguely.

Usually it's done the other way ("I was just telling my investor friend about my work" or "I was just driving") because it's not usually used to excuse bigotry.

@freemo Outside of North Korea (and I'm not even sure it's the case there) in what country is any form of entering that country considered illegal? This is what I'm talking about. You keep proving my point by calling immigration broadly something that is illegal.

Your description of your experience in Holland is a perfect example of how differently you want to treat brown people from yourself. You expressly said you weren't 'an illegal', you were just in the country illegally. You described your actions and separated them from your being. Brown migrants however somehow are "illegal" no matter how long they're going to be in the country and often no matter the legality of their actions.

This isn't about making words "off limits" this is about requiring accuracy in language and demanding people's humanity be recognized.

@freemo Immigration is not illegal. This sort of blurring is why this semantic argument matters. The usage of "illegal immigrant" (or worse, just "illegals") is a dog whistle to say brown people aren't welcome here.

Pretty much outside of this analogy, "illegal driver" is not used. Especially not in comparison with "speeder" https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=illegal+driver%2Cspeeder&year_start=1950&year_end=2018&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cillegal%20driver%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cspeeder%3B%2Cc0 (if they were interchangeable, even if one was not as popular, you'd expect a closer split; this split is as close to no correlation as you can get)

Bend over backward and lie to yourself to justify this bigotry all you want, but don't try to pretend to the rest of the world that it's the logical or just action.

@freemo should we call people "illegals" when they drive 30 in a 20? No, we call them a speeder. We describe the crime they committed. That's the same thing with "undocumented immigrant"; it describes what they did.

Relatedly, why is "illegal" never used to refer to someone from Britain or Canada who overstayed their visa, it seems to only be used to refer to brown skinned people (citizen, documented, or undocumented)

@tjemni
Yeah, you're just describing copyright here. Are the lifetimes on copyright too long? Absolutely, drop it back down to ten, maybe twenty years. I'll look for your new toot

@tjemni until any other person (say, any corporation) has it, then they can make money off of it, not you anymore. Copyright is the only reason there are creative works. Art, literature, or software.

@tjemni you're not an author, are you? Nor do you work in any other creative field huh?

@Liberty4Masses psst. He's very much pro-competent government, just against authoritarian governments.

@Joshywooful That you have to change how it's spelled to explain how you pronounce it kind of says it all... 🤔

Via twitter:

BREAKING NEWS!!!

In the first ever randomized clinical trial, we demonstrated that parachutes did NOT prevent death or major injury compared to control in individuals jumping from aircraft.

Published today in the BMJ https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

(src: https://twitter.com/rwyeh/status/1073267912037814273)