It is clear from context that the original comment is using "indiscriminately" in a sense of "without due care; thoughtlessly". Your first reply comes across as simply contradicting it, i.e. asserting that actually these cuts were made with an appropriate level of thoughtfulness. Your point that there are criteria which are being applied is a useful contribution, but you should have expanded on this in your original comment, as it was not clear that you were reframing the discussion in this way.

Respectfully, I took the word at face value and made what I thought was a fair, albeit half-jokingly correction. Certainly, I understood the context of the original post and I expected that this community would understand my follow up comment which is using correctly applied English. For whatever it's worth, I see no synonyms for indiscriminately that would fall under "without due care; thoughtlessly" on Merriam-Webster. Even if I understood what the OP was saying, it was not technically the correct verbiage to use. I would have thought I'd receive a similar level of "allowable nuance" in my comment that the OP was afforded.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/indiscriminately

I interpreted “discriminately” as exercising due diligence. I think in this instance you were perhaps too clever by half.

Most of the general population can’t read above something like a fifth grade level. Here on HN it’s higher, but I wouldn’t say it’s safe to assume you can just engage in even mild word play without risking being misinterpreted, unfortunately.

Written word play, especially in such a short sentence, will be hit or miss with even capable readers because one's interpretation will be devoid of interpersonal context (including nonverbal signals) and heavy on other context such as expecting some in this community to continue to defend Elon/DOGE because we've seen it plenty on HN to date.

You're completely right, for what it's worth, and I appreciated the wordplay.

Thank you.

> albeit half-jokingly

It seems then that you could have acknowledged MiguelX413's comment without the feigned aloofness?

He came in quite hot and has made no acknowledgements of my rebuttal. To be honest, taking a deep breath and giving me a more sensible response than what I got could have gone a lot way.

We're allowed, and should be encouraged, to write with a small amount of nuance and creativity.

My intent was to argue by counterexample. That grant being cut merely because of containing the prefix homo is an example of indiscriminate cutting, in my opinion. Actually effectively cutting grants that only related to homosexuality or something would've been discriminate.

However, I might still be misunderstanding you, pardon me.

> That grant being cut merely because of containing the prefix homo is an example of indiscriminate cutting, in my opinion.

I disagree. I think it would be considered "discriminate cutting".

> Actually effectively cutting grants that only related to homosexuality or something would've been discriminate.

I agree and that's the point I was making. They're just cutting grants with the word "homo" in them because it meets their criteria of interest for cutting. Whether they deal with homosexuality or not is not a discriminate vs indiscriminate topic, but a topic of DOGE's competency in actually executing on their discriminate cutting vision.

Indiscriminate means at random or without judgement. The comment you're arguing with clearly (and cleverly) said the cuts are not random. As one data point, I did not read the comment as contradicting anything, but as agreeing and expanding.