Using "shibboleth" as a shibboleth is itself a shibboleth. She's declaring her bona fides (gratuitous Latin is also a shibboleth, especially if highlighted with italics) as a scholar by demonstrating her ability to use an obscure term correctly, and is being gracious to her audience by assuming their comprehension. Switching to "booboo" is intentional, showing consciousness of register.
My background is somewhat similar to hers, although without the parental guidance. Perhaps as a result, my acculturation was less successful. I think this is a brilliant article, and (having read and enjoyed many of your other comments on this site) I encourage you start from the assumption that the author is fully conscious of the tone of this piece.
A totally valid response, I was asking honestly, not sarcastically. :) The truth is, I'm not exposed to southern accents very often outside of media. I've lived and worked an hour north of SF most my life, and I think I'm more likely to identify a British or Australian accent in the area than I am a southern one. Unless they are hiding their accent, which I guess is entirely possible considering this thread.
> Switching to "booboo" is intentional, showing consciousness of register. ... I encourage you start from the assumption that the author is fully conscious of the tone of this piece.
I assumed the author was completely aware of the tone, I just wasn't sure how to interpret it myself in the short amount I had read.
> I think this is a brilliant article
Well, with that endorsement, I'll put extra effort into finishing it then. Not that I stopped for reasons pertaining to the content or delivery, I just ran out of time and all too often interesting articles are never finished due to that (the number tabs I have open in an obviously unsuccessful attempt to work around this behavior actually make for a comical view).
Oh, and thanks for the compliment, It's (usually) nice to be noticed. :) After you've been following discussions on HN a while, certain names start to stick out when you see them, and I've definitely noticed yours (for positive reasons!)
As evidence of my incomplete assimilation, I happened to spend last weekend up your way (north of Lake Sonoma) doing carpentry and pig hunting at a relative's cabin. Culturally, as an Eastern-educated Wisconsinite who was born in the South, I sometimes think I fit in better in your area than down here in the Bay Area proper.
the number tabs I have open in an obviously unsuccessful attempt to work around this behavior
I'm familiar with that. When I said "this is a brilliant article", it means I had the article open in a tab for months with the intent of submitting to HN at some appropriate time, and closed it only when I switched browsers (Opera to Safari).
My parents probably agree with your assessment of the area, as they both grew up in rural Wisconsin (Wabeno/Lakeview), and settled here close to forty years ago.
> it means I had the article open in a tab for months with the intent of submitting to HN at some appropriate time
I have the opposite problem, as I get a far larger proportion of my reading from HN than from external sources, and I've been thinking I need to fix that lately.
I knew my tab-bookmark prooblem was really bad when I had two separate tabs for Fogus best things and stuff lists for separate years, and each tab was started when they were first submitted. :/ (of course, this example is mitigated by the fact that a list such as that is not something that can, nor should, be consumed quickly).
No. Or maybe yes, but not in the condescending way you imply. The article is about "class", and stylistically, it's speaking to a particular class. If you are in that target class (or familiar with it), it reads very well. If you are not, well, that's the self-referential topic of the article.
I mean, those are just a few things I ran through and picked up near the beginning. I found the article extremely easy to read, and appreciated some of the subtle details in the writing that drove the point home. Is any type of long form writing on a subject pretension, or what would you prefer?
Ploughing as many 7 syllable words as possible into a sentence makes an author seem...self-conscious about tone. Strunk & White says "Omit Needless Words". I've always taken that as "Omit Needless Ornament". Thrice nested sentences, v̶e̶r̶b̶i̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶o̶b̶s̶c̶u̶r̶a̶ o̶b̶s̶c̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶v̶o̶c̶a̶b̶u̶l̶a̶r̶y̶ big words, flowery language, et cetera.
In contrast, I find the "ornamental" language of the essay itself to flow easily. It's all part of the register we're typically accustomed to. Shibboleth, for example, is instantly recognizable to me (though it always reminds me of The West Wing).
Or Shibboleth, of course. I'd actually expect quite a few folk here to know the word from the SSO solution.
Of course, it's entirely possible it's just my experience, I don't want the above to be taken as me discounting that possibility. That's just how it looks from my perspective with the input I've gotten so far.
OTOH, I first heard the term it was from working with academic institutions in the UK, because Shibboleth seems to be the favoured form of SSO there (though apparently it came from the Internet2 group, which is US).
So anyone doing SSO or SAML etc would probably have heard the word and you'd have to be fairly incurious not to look it up :-)
For example, early on we get "impecunious" and "shibboleths", followed up shortly afterwards with "booboo" (!). I find it distracting, to the point that I've lost the main thread of the article and I'm now wondering what the author was trying to accomplish with this style, if anything.
I often find myself switching to a different form of conversing when debating here, but I would like to think that's because I'm trying to be precise, and so I switch to a more precise method of expression. Sometimes that makes it into my speech, for example when I'm trying to explain or diagnose a problem. It can be detrimental to communication if leaned on too heavily though.