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Expecting historical literacy from a college-educated progressive is like expecting fluent latin from a duck.
Do I even need to tell you why this warrants a warning?
No you don't. At the same time it was on Yom Kippur and from Justin Trudeau of all people.
You can't tell me this aint something directly out of a Tom Wolfe or David Foster Wallace novel. A duck speaking fluent latin would have been less absurd.
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Weird meta-thought: if Hylinka had gone for a paraphrase of the Dr. Samuel Johnson quote about a woman preaching being like a dog walking on its hind legs (not done well, but you are impressed that it is done at all), would that have passed muster by seeming high-effort? Same sentiment, better language.
Hard to say. Maybe?
The decision to drop an official warning is not made on the basis of any hard-and-fast criteria. We let, honestly, a lot slide. There's only so much time in the day, and depending on what else is in the mod queue, the applicable standards may flex. Our approach is, in other words, inescapably conditional, adaptive, and imperfect.
Ultimately, if you're trying to get away with just enough badness in a post that you won't get called on it... odds are pretty good you won't get called on it. Until, of course, you do. Like driving over the speed limit, most of the time you'll get away with it, but if you do it a lot, you raise the odds of facing consequences for that.
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