I mean, don't name your privately funded research after Nazi mythology, either. But ffs, you're the federal government.
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"Oh, yeah, that does sound cool, but isn't that associated with the Nazis somehow?" *everybody checks Wikipedia* "Dammit. Nazis ruin everything. Okay, next idea for the name ..." I am honestly at a loss to understand how this was not the end of it.
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More seriously, you know how I'm always yelling on here about how it's stupid and dangerous to pretend science exists in an objectivity bubble uninfluenced by all politics and culture? Do you remember that? *stares in Midwestern*
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Thule is a well-known Swedish sportswear / outdoors company. Ultima Thule is a brand name of a well-known Finnish design house since. How are either related to Nazis?
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Please read the article. There's a tie to Nazi mythology. The people at NASA knew that and picked the name anyway. There are literal Nazis marching in the streets here. This is a not okay choice for the federal government. I don't really care what else shares the name
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There’s a much older tie to Greenland and a an ancient geographical meaning “past the borders of the known world".
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That's great. But you know, sometimes the Nazis fucking ruin things. Think of how you'd think about two adults if you found out they named their kid Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot. Now imagine you pay taxes to those parents and they're in charge of your country.
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Yes, they do, especially when you let them, like how you're doing here.
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Just because you're fine with the choice of name, doesn't mean others are. What's worse, by chosing such a name, you run the risk of making some of the newer nazis feel legitimized. Was that the intend? Nope, but it could happen. It's simply just okay, to name it something else.
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in what deranged possible way could a name like this ever "legitimize" nazis? If anything, when I would listen or watch Richard Spencer try to "own" this rock in space, he'd be immediately laughed at.
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It doesn't really matter, though, what YOU would hear. To the people who's outside society, because they've chosen to hate other people, this kind of rhetoric can empower them. And that's no matter what the intend behind was.
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I thought the answer, "well its not an official name and we picked it because we got fed up saying 2014 MU69 was a bit weak." They could call it 'peanut' for starters if they don't like numbers.
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Look, my brain is still slightly on vacation mode, but if I am faced with the designation MU69 and the option (apparently) of picking wildly inappropriate nicknames, I could come up with something better than Ultima Thule.
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Boom. Hire me NASA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_love_and_lust_deities …
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I thought I was the only one that caught the Thule thing. Everytime I heard the name I thought to myself "Space Nazis".
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I hadn't caught it at all, until I hopped on Twitter last night. I'd just been thinking "man, that sounds like something from a 1930s fantasy novel." Which, yes. Apparently.
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Funny thing is the thought Thule was a land in the Artic.
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Not playing devil’s advocate here. Sincere question: I am Indian. The holy symbol of swastika (a Sanskrit word) was exploited by Nazis & made a symbol of hate. But in India, during festivals & in Hindu temples you see it used—it is still a part of our culture. Is that wrong?
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So as a Jew who has a rather visceral reaction to that symbol: In my opinion there's a difference here. The swastika isn't a new symbol for people in India, and it’s not being taken on as a symbol of something new. It was theirs to begin with.
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Nazis perverted the symbol (and it still gives me the crawling heebie-jeebies), but people never stopped using it for its original purpose. In this case, though, NASA was deliberately naming something new, and used a phrase that had become perverted to name the new thing.
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They picked that Ultima Thule KNOWING its Nazi implications. It’s still frequently used that way. They just decided that meh, it didn't matter. Which…wow. Just wow.
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And it’s not like there weren’t other names to choose from! Heck in the popularity contest it only came in 7th!https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-named-its-next-new-horizons-target-ultima-thule-mythical-land-nazi-844318 …
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That is definitely odd that they chose the 7th most popular name! What were the other candidates I wonder. Most people are not aware of the Nazi association.
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Here were the other options. http://www.frontierworlds.org/vote
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Almost all of those are equally awesome sounding. Plenty are equally marketable. And, again, the people who chose this knew about the Nazi connection. It's just such a lazy privilege thing. Take the two seconds to go "Oh, yeaaah, that's maybe not a thing we want to bring up."
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