Word Histories traces the origins and meanings of English words and phrases, such as idioms, slang and loaded terms.
HN commenters link it to explain where phrases come from, such as "belt and braces" and "iron hand in a velvet glove."
I could agree in principle on the volume argument, perhaps after looking over some economic models. However, a big part of the USD stability in the past 78+ years stems from the causation chains which make the following fact possible: the US Navy is the second air force in the world [1]. In order to believe in the stability of BTC, I must ask the stalinist question: "how many divisions has Satoshi?" [2]. It is a sad reality but might will make right in this silly world of ours for the foreseeable future. Now that's an invariant which I would have loved to see cryptocurrencies tackle, but they seem to have no interest in this, it's more of a changing of the guard ceremony, this crypto-fiat dance.
Coming to your question, to regulate or not to regulate [3]. I come from the very far left field (pun intended). The most different approach that I've seen recently, one which could maybe move the world in a significant way, is the financo-fiction detailed in Yanis Varoufakis' Another Now [4]. One of the more radical proposals from the book is that the persons starting a company should have only one share each: more of a library card system than a market. In another presentation, Varoufakis says something along the lines: compounding interest becomes a tool of exploitation when the poor are forced to borrow more and more from the rich which only get richer. Therefore, no, I am against the status quo as much as you can get, and although I am not an optimist, I believe it is up to us…
The Dutch term for the German 'neurgierig' is 'nieuwsgierig' which translates to 'greedy for news' and as such is even closer to the subject of this post. I also use an RSS reader - Nextcloud News - to follow the 'news' (including this here site, HN) and I sometimes feel the same about what is pushed by the legacy media and its more recent competition. Much of what is published is tailored to fit some political agenda, often a 'progressive' one for most of the legacy news media and - due to my conscious choices - a more 'conservative' one for the more recent counterparts. I made this choice to get a somewhat more balanced view of what actual facts the stuff published by 'left' and 'right' seems to be based on but... man, is it often tiring to see 'both' sides go on and on and on pushing their agendas.
Even more tiring is to see how useful idiots [1] happily take the propaganda pushed by the media and trumpet it as if it were pure gospel, often with dire consequences. Should I just quit following the legacy media and the more recent anti-dotes and try to live here in quiet and solitude on the farm? Well, no, I don't think I should. I will be confronted with te results of the media poisoning the minds of their victims the next time I go to a city and find the roads blocked by a crowd of people shouting inane slogans. Where did they get those from, what are they blathering about, why does this crowd of screechy weasels hollering about some supposed misdeed performed by some…
Yes, what the author describes is encapsulated by the common idiom, "fair-weather friends" : https://www.google.com/search?q=fair-weather+friends
A google search found an article that cites an origin of that phrase as early as 1685: https://wordhistories.net/2021/01/14/fairweather-friend/
The level of "friendship" exists on a spectrum and sometimes we're surprised when the true extent of that friendship is revealed because of difficult circumstances. Sometimes, your "drinking buddies" -- are really just friends to share good times with alcohol. They're not friends you can lean on if you get cancer.
Git does not have the "slave" term, only "master" term. But the "master" term is being removed because it is derived from master-slave connotation from Bitkeeper allegedly.
https://discourse.gnome.org/t/renaming-master-branch-to-mainline/841/15
Master-slaves have been replaced in many projects, such as Drupal (primary/replicas), Django (leader/followers), OpenSSH (parent/children).
I wonder what would happen to robot term? Robot comes from Czech language, which is robota. It means forced labour.
https://wordhistories.net/2017/06/14/origin-of-slave/
Agreed. I've had some nice colleagues in Shanghai, and I suspect they'd prefer that the name of their home not be used to refer to an awful practice.
FWIW, according to https://wordhistories.net/2019/07/16/shanghai-kidnap/ , in 1857, in San Francisco, they considered the term vulgar slang:
> It was suspected that he had been drugged and carried off, or, as it is vulgarly called, “Shanghaied,” on the ship Oliver Jordan, which sailed yesterday.
These things definitely go in cycles, in the 90s, in the UK "Twoccing" was a big deal, particularly in and around Newcastle. (The stem 'twoc' is derived from Taken Without Owners Consent)
It was almost entirely kids aged 8-18 stealing and racing cars until they ran out of gas, or crashed. Police had very little recourse given that the perpetrators were minors
https://wordhistories.net/2021/04/21/twoc/