Style Guide

Drier = less moist.

Dryer = thing that makes something less moist.

I have used both spellings incorrectly frequently. 

It's A Test Of Character

Sensitivity readers are a thing in gaming.

They walked over from video games and have infected tabletop role playing.

Pretty much all at once it seemed.

It's a pretty specific form of Karen where they play the tape slower and slower until, THERE'S A DIRTY WORD!

I do love the elaborate trap set in it.

If you don't care if Eskimos are offended by being exonymed...  You're insensitive and the bad guy.

You can't not care.

You MUST care and you must care CORRECTLY. 

What never factors into their decision that you need to be offended for the poor Inuit at being called Eskimos is it mattering.

They never consider the transaction.

What do I get if I stop using Eskimo and start using Inuit?

Aside: I have used the words Eskimo and Inuit more in this post than I have, combined, in my entire life.

If I keep using Eskimo to describe the native population of Alaska, how am I harmed?

Are they as harmed at being called Alaskans, North Americans or Americans?

Because they are Alaskans, Americans and North Americans.

All three terms are exonyms because they are in English. 

As for how this actually affects my life...  It doesn't.

I wasn't even aware that Inuit were offended by being labeled as Eskimos until someone at Steve Jackson Games decided to make certain they got sensitivity credit when they decided they didn't want to be offensive to the Inuit any longer.

Which brings us to the real point.

If you decide to stop being offensive, just stop being offensive.  It's its own reward.  Seeking a prize of recognition for it says you didn't do it because it's the right thing to do.

PS: This little debate makes a Homer Simpson line that much funnier,  "Lisa, vampires are make-believe, just like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos."  It's the Inuit and Yupik themselves who've insisted that there's no such people as Eskimos. 

Sensitivity

I think I figured out the creepy feeling I get about sensitivity readers.

They do not consider how something is meant, only how it MIGHT be taken.

Increasingly it's not even worry about how the person referred to might take it, but how an uninvolved third party thinks that the person referred to SHOULD take it.

Ten to one they never even bother to check with the people they worry about.

I am, just, old enough to remember the flap about adding American to Indian when referring to Indians.

I know several Indians and they are not offended by being called Indian, and they thought it was silly to worry about adding American to it when there's so many other things that matter to them more, or at all.

Indian might be an exonym, but they've adopted the term to describe them because they know it's not meant to be an insult.

Until SJGames started revising the Basic Set, I'd never heard that Eskimo was even an insult, let alone a slur.  It was simply a word for the people who were native to Alaska prior to Western Civ taking over.

In Canada things are different, and the populations that Americans would call Eskimos without hatred expressed or implied emphatically reject the word and wish to be called by their own names, such as Inuit or Yupik.  Why?  Because in Canada, they use Eskimo as an insult and slur (or so I have been informed). 

Which is a good an example as any that you can make every word an insult or slur if you say it right.

It's how you MEAN the word that matters, not how the word is taken.

Even dueling societies had the knowing of this!

But the people with the vapors are everywhere making sure they're offended FOR the people who don't have the common sense to be offended for themselves.

At least that's how they act and don't seem to catch how bigoted it is.

As if someone can't tell if they'd been insulted on their own or make a decision about the insult being something to be offended over.

There's a lot of folks I don't give enough shit about to ever feel insulted by anything they call me.

Their, "boos," mean nothing because I've seen what makes them cheer. 

Arrr?

 ወዳጆች፣ በእርግጥም ዛሬ "እንደ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊ (ፓይሬት) የመናገር ቀን" ነው!

ነገር ግን፣ እውነተኛዎቹ የባህር ላይ ዘራፊዎች "እንደ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊ የመናገር ቀን" በሚያዘው መልኩ አይናገሩም ነበር።

ያ አነጋገር፣ ለዲዝኒው "Treasure Island" (የሀብት ደሴት) ፊልም ባደረገው ትወና ላይ ልዩ ድምቀት ለመፍጠር የወሰነው ተዋናይ ሮበርት ኒውተን የፈጠረው ነበር።

ይሁን እንጂ፣ የኢትዮጵያ ባህር ላይ ዘራፊዎች የሚናገሩት በዚህ መልኩ ነው!

That's Interesting

Well, Mr Punch said he wanted me to look up words...

Today's word is "Gypsy," which the Roma people complain is an exonym for them.

And it is.

But it originates as slang for Egyptian.

It spreads as both a term describing anyone of a swarthy complexion and to people who are thieving by nature.

The thief part comes from it being ever so stylish to have Egyptian servants and associating servant with minor thievery from the estate.

Roma are dark skinned compared to most of Europe, so one can see where it jumped to them.

Roma have a reputation for being less than honest with outsiders and generally not respecting property rights of the people they live amongst.

But did that come before or after they became associated with the household staff stealing the silverware?

Remember, it's not slander if it's true.

So far the elimination of the word gypsy from the Basic Set has been justified on the grounds that the Roma don't like to be called that, not that the accusations don't have merit.

I find that telling.

But also, IF it is true.  If it is not, then I'd be offended at being accused as well.

Western Civ DOES have a bad habit of falsely applying bad attributes to outsiders and has done it so often we're in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when we find someone who actually HAS those bad attributes. 

I think, though, that the way to deal with an exonym is to embrace it, not reject it.  Kill its power to offend.  I'm 1/2 Dago WOP.  My grandfather on Mom's side experienced all that prejudice and bigotry, but here we are, not being offended by it because we decided that it had no power to hurt us.

Sticks and stones; you choose to be a victim of a slur or not.

For a recent example, look how conservatives embraced "deplorable." 

Chinks In Armor

Chink is a word to describe a gap in armor protection that dates back, at least, to the early 16th century.

It is also a word to describe a sharp, clear metallic sound, dating from the late 16th century.

It is ALSO a racial slur dating from the very beginning of the 20th century.

Which means you need some context when you say, "I'm targeting chinks in armor."

Is it an innocuous attempt at aiming for a gap in the protection, or a racist way of saying you're attacking the Chinese troops?

I remember this being an issue on a few fora.

Thankfully, the older word remains.  Even in GURPS 4eR.

Message For YouTubers

Tell me what you're going to say.

Say it.

Tell me what you just said.

That's normal, everyday, stuff we've seemed to have lost.

Yes, this is do as I say, not as I do because I'm not placing myself as someone who's trying to keep my readers informed.

But over and over the people who are trying to place themselves as information sources keep forgetting to tell me why they're explaining something for such a long time that I can't tell what their point is.

And if YouTube inserts an ad into your explanation before you reach that point, I'm stabbing the back button.

Let us also be honest.

The reason you're rambling like you are is to make the video long enough that the algorithm moves it up past the point where you get paid for putting it up there.

But cramming a few seconds of content into several minutes of video just means most of the video could be skipped and after a few of them, I know that's how you work and I will seek other sources for information on the topic.

Clues that your youtuber will waste your time:

Recites their resume and lists their awards at the beginning of every video.

Explains why you'd be watching a how-to video about how-to repair something.

Begins by answering a question not yet stated. 

I Don't Unnerstan

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

--Morpheus The Matrix 

GURPS: Basic Set 4th Edition Revised p. 518-519 says:

Loyalty
We offer no "loyalty table" for enslaved individuals; the GM must use common sense. The orcs' victims will escape or revolt at any opportunity, except for those too will-broken to make a move. The Janissary will shout, "Traitor!" and try to arrest anyone who attempts to "free" him.

GURPS: Basic Set 4th Edition, Vol. 2, Campaigns p. 518-519 says:

Loyalty of Slaves
Determine a slave’s loyalty per Loyalty of Hirelings (above). However, slaves are less predictable than hirelings. After determining the slave’s initial loyalty, roll 2d on the following table to determine a loyalty modifier:

• 2-7 – No modifier.
• 8 – He was enslaved for some crime, and resents it: -1 to loyalty.
• 9 – As above, but -2 to loyalty.
• 10 – His previous master was very cruel. If he is treated with kindness during the first week, apply +2 to loyalty; otherwise, no change.
• 11 – He has a fanatic hatred of slavery.  If treated well, he may like his masters as people, but will still escape as soon as possible. If treated badly (or even “average” for a slave), his loyalty drops to 6.
• 12 – He has the Slave Mentality disadvantage (p. 154), and considers himself truly the property of his owner. His loyalty is automatically 20. You need never check loyalty; he will not demur, even if given orders that condemn him to death.

Make loyalty checks for slaves as for any other hirelings. Modify loyalty by +1 or +2 if they are in a situation where they have nowhere to run! 

And I wonder why this change was made.  Their whole point about the changes they make to slavery is about how it's dehumanizing and the players should be the heroes who oppose the very idea of it, but this is a table of very human responses to being enslaved in most places.

Making me work it out on my own as the GM does work, and I've been doing it that way since forever because I never looked for this table.

Still, how does this table convince someone that slavery is OK? 

The old version says:

Legal Complications
When slave-holding PCs enter an area where slavery is illegal, they must either dispose of their slaves or pass them off as free servants.

Possible anti-slavery attitudes include: legal to own slaves, but not to buy or sell them locally; legal for non-citizens to own slaves while passing through, but illegal for permanent residents to own them; or illegal to own slaves at all.

A creative GM may impose other laws and customs regarding slavery.  For instance, it might be legal to enslave members of some social groups or races, but not others. There might be ways for a slave to earn his freedom – some societies might even permit slaves to own property and buy their freedom. 

Eliminating the players owning slaves meshes with the idea of them as the heroes, but the rest is decent, generic, campaign guidance.

The new version is much shorter.

Social Complications
No one from an even vaguely egalitarian society likes those who enslave others or profit from it; they will react at -1 or worse. Enslavers are usually overtly Callous (p. 125).

Where the practice is illegal, they have Social Stigma (Criminal Record) (p. 155), and are treated as if they had Sadism (p. 152) – even if they don’t.  Exception: The masters of zombies, golems, IQ 3 tentacle beasts, and similar “pets” instead suffer the usual reaction penalties of necromancers or keepers of horrors, and may even inherit the creatures’ penalties!

I like this verbiage.  Adding it to the original would have been better, I think, than dodging the idea that slaves can be broken to the point that they have come to completely accept their lot even if they aren't happy about it. 

Eskimo No Mo

Among the changes that they virtue signaled in 4eR was eliminating Eskimo from p. B137 under Gullibility.

“Of course the Eskimos are descended from Spanish conquistadors; everyone knows that!”

Has been changed to:

“Of course the Yupik are descended from Spanish conquistadors – everyone knows that!”

On the infamous p. B2 we have:

And then there were the words we were ashamed of – exclusionary words, prejudiced words, even outright offensive words. We were guilty of perpetuating ethnic stereotypes, and using terms like “crazy,” “cripple,” and “slave” in lazy, hurtful ways. In cases where the correction was simple – a person is “Black,” not “black,” and the culture is “Inuit” or “Yupik,” not “Eskimo” – we made it and moved on.

Speaking as a cane wielding cripple, I was not offended and I am increasingly offended by the able bodied being offended for me instead of asking me if the use of crippled offended me.

If you're going to capitalize "Black" you'd damn sure better capitalize "White."  Just sayin'.

But the Eskimo thing stood out.

It's not a thing in the USA.  The Inuit and Yupik thing is an article of Canadian political drama concerning "what do we call the first nations people so we feel better about conquering them?"

Oh, and you clearly did not make the change and move on.  If that were true I'd have only noticed that Eskimo had been replaced with Yupik if I compared the books page by page or remembered the example and tried to show it to someone else with the new book.

The two main people doing this revision are Canadian and I think their political zeitgeist is creeping in while SJ Games is being taken over by all the people they hired from Possum Creek Games.

It makes me sad to see the change because SJGames was the different company from the others way back when.

It'll be interesting to see what they do with their legacy and classic stuff.

The customer for Old West is looking to recreate movies and TV shows, not try to figure out who the fuck the Ndee are.

Never mind you can make a Gestapo agent as a character from their WW2 line.

Slavery is up front in both Greece and Rome.

Things that really happened are far harder to sanitize than a wholly fictional universe like Dark Sun.

It makes me wonder if we're going to have to call corn maize because corn is the name applied to it by Europeans. 

Virtue

The best way to be virtuous is to simply be so.

Live it.

If someone notices, great!

If someone praises you for it, fine.

The problem with virtue signalling is the act of seeking praise by announcing you're doing virtuous things is, well, the opposite of virtue.

Steve Jackson Games added a full page of explanation about how they changed Eskimo to Yupik and that "slavery is bad, m'kay."

They could have just made those changes without mentioning why and I doubt that anyone would have started a thread demanding that the kidnappers of the rightful king of Fnordia be named, as they were in past editions.

Eskimo isn't even as controversial as they seem to think it is, but I think that change has a lot more to do with David Pulver and Sean Punch being Canadian than a general recognition that Eskimo is a slur.  Especially since it's not even certain where the word originated from!

Aside: Am I the only American who is dead sick and tired of Canadians telling us we're doing our culture wrong and demanding we change how we do things? 

They still use "slave" or "enslavement" 25 times in 4eR; down from 52 times in 4e.  12 of the reductions comes from replacing "slave mentality" with "heteronomy."

Many of the deletions are changing to a term like "subject" and the deletion makes me think they've done more to sanitize it than condemn.

The eliminated mentioning that slaves were low status under the rules for status.  How did that mention glorify slaving?  They left in that being a serf is a low status job.  Being a slave is worse than being a serf, how does mentioning that keep us from figuring out that slavery is wrong?

They had to spend extra time explaining slavery in historical context because of this. 

Taking it out of the minion enhancement for familiars didn't hurt or help.

Still, these changes could have been made silently to the same effect, they just wanted to make sure they got credit from... Whomever keeps score on this.

I do know that page of virtue signalling has cost them more than one sale.  That should matter to them more than it does. 

PS: They even mention cleaning up use of the word "Black" and capitalizing it when referring to a Black person, and the word was never used that way in the original 4e... 

You Can't Save It

As an armchair historian and a degreed psychologist...  (What an odd thing to say).

I keep watching people trying to change the word being used for something to keep someone from being offended.

I've lived through three words to describe black people politely when the previous word had become a slur.

I used to have two editions of a textbook changing the names of specific diagnoses because the name of a diagnosis was now an insult.

I've watched an NCO reply to a Black officer with, "Sir," with little doubt that he meant, "CENSORED."

I wonder how long it will be before saying "n-word" carries the same weight as CENSORED.  Especially since you can tell what word was censored there, but it's OK as long as I only allude to it without actually saying it.

But you cannot avoid people insulting other people or disparaging them.

People throw slurs.

In the long run, it's generally better to let them so you can readily identify them and avoid doing business with their like.

You cannot change the words fast enough to keep someone from  being offended.  It's best to let them get accustomed hearing the slur until it loses its power to offend.

Being offended for someone is the absolute least helpful thing you can do about someone being offensive.  Let the target of the offense get offended, or not, as they wish.  Too often I find that the target dismisses the offense because they're familiar with the source only to have a third party cause a shit storm because they're all offended for the target who doesn't really care any more. 

Near Miss

4eR has a page on their virtuousness.

Of note:

 Learn it, use it?

Perhaps we should take the time to learn suffixes on Greek derived words.

Someone who has a slave mentality is heteronomous.

Someone who has been forced into slavery is being subjected to heteronomy.

Of course they'd get the vapors if you called the parts of your brakes by thier proper names. 

PS: 

Even more amusing is they admit on p.B518 that they're aware that slavery didn't always mean Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It must be really painful to deal with the rats racing around inside their skulls trying to reconcile the world the way they want it to be, the world as it is and the world as it was. 

Much Newer Than I Expected

The term "sound suppressor" refers to a device that reduces the sound intensity of a firearm when it is discharged. The earliest use of the term "suppressor" in this context dates back to a US patent in 1985, while the term "silencer" was originally used by its inventor, Hiram Percy Maxim, in 1902.

It's a quote from Wikipedia generated by the Duck Duck Go AI, so apply the appropriate levels of salt.

If the term silencer is wrong, and was never used and it's always been sound suppressor, what were they called for 83 years?

I am thinking that the youngin's are at it again and forgetting a lot of us old grognards were there when the changes happened.

I watched this happen with "assault weapon".

Assault weapon and assault rifle were terms the gun community itself was using for military look-alike guns at least as early as 1986.

I remember when the gun control people starting using it against us.

I remember when we tried to say it was always referring to a select-fire, intermediate cartridge firing rifle or carbine.

I remember when we tried to say we'd never used it for describing a semi-auto clone.

And I remember when a group of very young internet gun bloggers tried to "take it back." 

No You're Wrong

Dear everyone clucking like you know what the fuck you're talking about:

A thing you screw onto the end of your gun's barrel to make it quieter is a SILENCER.

How do I know that?

Because that's what it's called in the 1921 patent by Hiram Percy Maxim.

Got an earlier patent for one that's called a suppressor?

Because if you don't, saying "there's no such thing as a silencer, they're called suppressors," just makes you sound ignurnt.

The person who invents something gets to name it.

Maxim named it a silencer.

He could have called them mufflers, because that's the only earlier patent for something that makes the noise from a tube quieter. 

It's Baked Into The Language

The paper that was posted on the white supremacist site (much to the author's chagrin), and I can't find it posted on a non-racist site, focuses on how most African languages have no concepts we consider bedrock ideas in Western Civilization.

Without these concepts, you cannot be a true member of Western Civ.

The sooner you are exposed to these concepts, the easier it is to learn them.

And the question becomes the old nature vs nurture debate.

I believe that the average African-American can learn these concepts and be successful in American society.

I base my hypothesis on the fact that they used to be successful members of American society before the Democrat party actively hamstrung them.

In fact, it often seems as if every time racism is almost dead and black Americans are poised to become full members, some Democrat comes along and fucks it with a dick dipped in resin and rolled in ground glass.

I believe that race has nothing to do with their circumstances because the same failures are present in Appalachia.  Thomas Sowell has mentioned the similarity more than once.

That similarity has the "fucked by Democrats" in common. 

Processed Chemicals

Just as every bit of matter is a chemical...

If you're not eating it raw, it's been processed.

Cooking is a process.

Harvesting is a process.

Butchering is a process.

Motor oil is organic, by the way.  All hydrocarbons are organic molecules.

All domesticated food sources are genetically modified.  Some by injecting genes and splicing, some by the old fashioned method of selective breeding. 

This has been your linguistic science fact diatribe of the day! 

Worth Your Time

 

Woz Is The Smart One

Steve Wozniak expounds on "you will own nothing and (dis)like it."

It's a growing problem and most people aren't any more aware of it than a fish is aware of water.

FuzzyGeff, first made me aware of the ancestor of this problem back when he asked me to look up Stalin in a paper dictionary.

"Does your dictionary say, "a Soviet politician," or, "a Soviet politician and dictator?"

Other things to check are the definitions of Nazi and Fascism.

I was shocked, all those years ago, that definitions had changed between editions.

Then I was angry, because words mean something.

For example:  Vaccine and inoculate were changed while I watched during COVID.

Amusingly, my Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary from 1959 contains some archaic stuff.

Vaccine: adj 1. Of, pertaining to, or derived from cows, or, especially in technical use, cows afflicted with vaccinia or inoculated with its virus; as, vaccine lymph.  2. Of, or pertaining to vaccinia or vaccination.  n 1. Matter or a preparation containing the virus of cowpox or vaccinia, in a form used for vaccination.  2. In general any substance for preventative inoculation, especially, a suspension of sensitized, attenuated, or killed, bacteria, called preferably bacterial vaccine, injected into the body to induce immunity to the same species of bacteria and their toxins.

Note that second noun definition and "induce immunity".

Here's the current definition from Merriam-Webster's website:

1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see attenuated sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin) b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)

 

2: a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseases.

1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body's immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see attenuated sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)

a trivalent influenza vaccine

oral polio vaccine

Many vaccines are made from the virus itself, either weakened or killed, which will induce antibodies to bind and kill a live virus. Measles vaccines are just that, weakened (or attenuated) measles viruses.—Ann Finkbeiner et al.

… a tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine might be recommended for wound management in a pregnant woman if [greater than or equal to] 5 years have elapsed … .—Mark Sawyer et al.

In addition the subunit used in a vaccine must be carefully chosen, because not all components of a pathogen represent beneficial immunological targets.—Thomas J. Matthews and Dani P. Bolognesi

b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein) 

The Pfizer [COVID-19] vaccine—unlike the seasonal flu shot—does not contain the virus or viral material. Rather, it is an mRNA or messenger RNA vaccine, which creates a piece of genetic code that instructs the cells to create proteins which trigger an immune response.—Jerry Nowicki

Viral vector vaccines, another recent type of vaccine, are similar to DNA and RNA vaccines, but the virus's genetic information is housed in an attenuated virus (unrelated to the disease-causing virus) that helps to promote host cell fusion and entry.—Priya Kaur

Note: Vaccines may contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) designed to enhance the strength and duration of the body's immune response.

2: a preparation or immunotherapy that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against noninfectious substances, agents, or diseases

The U.S. Army is also testing a ricin vaccine and has reported success in mice.—Sue Goetinck Ambrose

… many of the most promising new cancer vaccines use dendritic cells to train the immune system to recognize tumor cells.—Patrick Barry

Those are not the same.  Are they?

I also love how they include some extra stuff as examples that is really just justification for no longer using the word as it once was used.  Definitions aside, people use vaccinated to mean immunity because vaccines for hundreds of deadly diseases means you don't catch them.  It does not mean that you have an easier time dealing with your smallpox, it means that you don't break out in blisters at all!

How does this relate to Woz and not owning anything?

Because in 2018 the Merriam-Webster definition of vaccine was:

1: matter or a preparation containing the virus of cowpox used to vaccinate a person against smallpox

2: a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease

chicken pox vaccine; also :a mixture of several such vaccines 

measles-mumps-rubella vaccine

My paper dictionary didn't change when the CDC and WHO redefined vaccine to explain why you weren't getting any immunity to COVID despite being vaccinated against it.

The online dictionary changed and if you didn't have a paper version, or think to check the Wayback Engine, you would never know they changed it.
 

Speaking Of Exonyms

Nazi is an appellation to members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or National Socialist German Worker's Party.

It was intended to be derogatory.

So, if you set out to strip all offensive exonyms you need to stop using the word Nazi.

Or you need to start defending why it's OK to offend some people and not others.

If you manage to do that, you will find that you didn't need to strip exonyms from your writings.

Some people do live up to the stereotype.  Even if you go out of your way to not offend them. 

Shiny Let's Be Bad Guys

The descent into woke at Steve Jackson Games continues apace.

"Sensitivity reading" is the process of editing a manuscript to replace privileged wording – phrasing favored by majorities, the powerful, or the elite, whether in the region of publication or globally – that is offensive to, reinforces negative stereotypes of, or erases the less privileged. Examples include calling a physically disabled person a "cripple," calling a mentally ill individual "nuts," referring to a minority group using a disrespectful exonym, dismissing the contributions of a group, or implying or outright stating that everyone in a certain group is a criminal or less intelligent. The goal of the procedure is to remove negative overtones that target ability, ethnicity, gender, geographical origin, religion, sexual orientation, wealth, etc., rendering the writing more inclusive and equitable without loss of meaning or clarity.

Kromm, GURPS Line Editor

Considering that the people making those sensitivity changes are the epitome of powerful and elite...

But it's an effort doomed to fail.

You cannot make something completely non-offensive to everyone.  The fact that the attempt is offending so many people in the hobby is a sure clue to that truth.

A lot of noise is being made about "exonyms" and how they offend the people so labeled.

Gypsy and Eskimo come up most often.

Sioux and Commanche...  Those are not the words those tribes called themselves.  Those are the, deliberately, offensive labels their neighbors applied to them.

But if I say Oceti Sakowin, or Numunuu, will you know whom I speak of?

The Blackfoot don't call themselves that.  They call themselves Siksikáí'tsitapi.  You will not find my wife being offended by the name of Blackfoot.  Me?  I'm saying Blackfoot because I will BUTCHER their name in their language.

I know where Gypsy comes from.  The Roma people, living according to their own rules, are not good neighbors.  Having earned that reputation, they really haven't earned a lot of right to complain when the stories grew a bit past the truth.  And by the way, the only Roma I've met who are offended by the term Gypsy are exactly the same kind of race-grifter you'd expect them to be.

Eskimo vs Inuit is the same thing as Sioux vs Oceti Sakowin.  Someone else's name for them.  The Inuit are insulted by how Eskimo was used.  Fine.

Give English some time, though, and your preferred name will be used in exactly the same way.

Remember, English, despite not being a tonal language, can magically change the word "Sir" to mean CENSORED.  I seen't it! 

PS: While working for the Tavrchedl', Mr Punch has engaged in something that's extremely offensive to the people of Florida: Being a fucking Canadian telling us that we're doing everything wrong.