Our Steve Sailer has reported on The American Ornithological Society renaming North American birds so that none of them bear the names of evil colonialist white supremacists or persons known to have picked their nose in public or split an infinitive.
Well, first they came for the ornithologists, now it’s the cosmologists. The National Pulse reports that there are galaxies that need renaming.
Galaxies Dedicated to 'Colonist' Explorer Must be Renamed, Demand Academics.
— The National Pulse (@TheNatPulse) November 13, 2023
Read more:https://t.co/mN4oRWr336
Glancing at the headline without much attention, I thought it sounded odd. Not many galaxies have names. The ones that do tend to be called after the constellation they are in—Andromeda, Cassiopeia—or else just to have bureaucratic tags like NGC 5011C or M82.
When I got round to reading the article, though, I learned that only two galaxies are urgently in need of renaming: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, named after Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He was a colonialist, you see?
Wait: Wasn’t Magellan hacked to death by Polynesian savages?
Shouldn’t he get a break on that account?
Shame on me! Those Polynesians were living in an idyll of harmony, wisdom, and peace until Magellan came along and made them field hands. They’d still be at peace today, plucking fruit from the trees for sustenance and playing delicate love songs on stringed instruments of their own devising if we white supremacist demons hadn’t broken into their little Pacific paradise.
So no, Magellan’s style of death doesn’t get him off the hook. The metaphorical hook, I mean; not the actual hook they hanged his corpse on before they cooked and ate it.
