Our engines had engine retarders on them. My mechanic, Mike, said he was a retarded retarder. Self burns are the best. As a slur towards others, no bueno.

Not sure what your context and life story is. From my perspective it seemed like an aggressive and vitriolic choice where "stupid" would have sufficed. As an insult it seems to have a lot more cultural weight behind it which is why I called it a slur. Words are all just sounds, it's the societal landscape which decides what they actually mean. My friends were telling me they've been hearing that word used a lot more frequently as an insult than they remembered from a couple of years ago, so I was particularly primed to make a comment on it.

I am not in favour of censorship of people's words at the state level. Language is a community project which should be dealt with at a community level. Which is why I said something. I think we should try to be a bit kind in how we speak.

Now that I think about it I don't think calling people stupid is helpful either. I feel like a lot of "stupidity", especially as relates to politics, is about low quality schooling and a social media landscape which is designed to implant and further certain beliefs.

Yeah anyway, I guess, mostly I'm tired of watching the world crumble around me and would like to start building things so this mostly ended up as a pile of my random thoughts. I hope you're having a less tiring day today 😊

It no longer means the same though. Language changes, and the R word is used as an insult equating somebody to somebody with down syndrome (as an example) while Moron and Idiot don't have a direct correlation to a group.

While all are still uses medically, there is context needed. Like the test might say your child is in the idiot, moron range. But a doctor will now say they have mental retardation or reduced mental capacity. They dont say hey parents your kid is ‘Re----"

People still using the R word (as non time related uses) are just behind the times, like when my mom called black people colored..at some point somebody has to confront you and say "hey, this is not how we do things now"