Blogging in en-GB
I've changed the language declaration on my website to en-GB. Here's why.
Terence Eden recently published a post titled This blog is written in en-GB. Before I even read the post, I knew what it was going to be about, and that I had to make that change, myself too, for the same reasons as I'd guessed he was going to explain.
Terence expresses those reasons very well, so I won't try to reproduce them here. I'm in strong agreement with him and those reasons resonate with me. This is my blog, I string all the words together, in my own style, on the topics I choose, with or without bias, depending on what I think. That is called a voice. Everyone has one, this is mine.
To ask someone to change that (as a commenter did, to Terence), is not only poor judgement, it is also self-centred. It reminds me of how I sometimes feel about people who get "offended". Offence is taken, not given. Indeed, as Ricky Gervais famously said "just because someone is offended, it doesn't mean they're right".
I attribute much of my learning by coming across references or ideas that I didn't quite understand, and looking them up. Today, that's easier than ever. To ask someone to make their cultural references more "accessible" is asking to be spoon fed slop.
Talking of slop, one thing that gives me hope in today's world of generated content, is that the human experience as expressed by individuals is what will keep us sane. If you want more on that, I recommend the post The best response to AI slop, infinite advice, and online noise is from Robin Williams.
In turn, that post reminded me of the classic quote:
"The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows."
If you don't know who uttered that ... go and find out.