• go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    50
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    19 hours ago

    This is just intentionally phrased poorly to create a rise out of people. It’s like referring to water as “dihydrogen monoxide”.

    • Donkter@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 hours ago

      How so? I would certainly call something from 1894 to be from the "late 1800s’ or late 19th century. I mean, we’re a quarter of the way through this century, at some point it turns into history.

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        56 minutes ago

        When most of your life occurred in the 20th century, it looks a lot different.

        • Saleh@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          36 minutes ago

          Because you still had to watch things from poor quality VHS tapes on CRT monitors. Of course it looked different.

      • go $fsck yourself@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 hours ago

        Because people don’t use that terminology when referring to a time period within a majority of living people’s lifetime.

        • Donkter@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          58 minutes ago

          Sure they do. I’m sure the century cutoff helps too.

          If someone one would refer to the 1920s as “the early 1900s” cause it’s over 100 years ago it follows logically to call other parts of the 1900s the mid and late period.

        • broken_chatbot@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          8 hours ago

          This may be a “loanword” from the student’s native language. In Swedish, they use “1900-talet” (1900s) instead of “twentieth century”

      • woodenskewer@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        12 hours ago

        I put this on an unlabeled squirt bottle once at work. It was wrong to do because technically it’s an OSHA violation for being improperly labeled because it was just in sharpie and not a standard label. But it was night shift I was bored and the bottle was already unlabeled so it was already out of compliance. Why not write on it?

        A week or so later I heard people talking about this squirt bottle that said dihydrogen monoxide. Two safety guys were there so I didn’t take credit for my shenanigans based on the reception not being great.

        I said I think it’s just water, but the chemical name. Ya know? Nope, they didn’t get it. The kind of doubled down and started talking about things in that link because they “researched the name” and it was actually harmful.

        It was a strange experience.