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Ouch, Lane. Just ouch.
At least the corporate world has made great progress in not saying what they're uncomfortable with.
I was 'defunded' in the early '80s, but it was long before newspeak and nonspeak had evolved into the powerfully evasive and sensitive tools they are now.
I was just bluntly told that I was being 'laid off' (always the passive voice, though — no one was admitting to actively doing any laying off). And there was, of course, the implied possibility in that language that I might very well be laid back on again when things improved.
Still, in all the years since, I can't remember ever reading any headlines about hundreds being laid on down at the Navy Yard or at Roebling Steel.
I can't tell you how much better I would have felt if I'd known I had merely been defunded.
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