ANZAC Day and Uncomfortable Truths
“Ethics is advertising” presents a fascinating model: people signal in all kinds of ways various things about them. Ethical attitudes can be used as a signal for distinguishing social class. – I think the model is compelling, (at least in the presented context, Buddhism in the West), though the term can be overused, to try and reduce an opponents belief [...]
Yes, The Wire is Good
“The Wire” is a TV show even Urban Dictionary approves of.
I’ve just finished going through the first two seasons: it’s good, it’s satisfying. It’s narrated/plotted with high intensity, and a largely concurrent set of subplots.
The interactions in the story largely build networks of ‘political’ tensions (e.g. a boss wants to advance his career, his subordinates want [...]
Every Ill in this World the Fault of my Other
There’s a particular failure mode I’ve been noticing more, recently:
“Everything bad is the fault of {my other}”. – e.g. the stereotypical rabid feminist blames everything on the partriarchy.
I’ve noticed it in quite polarized circles. e.g. Here’s an utterly fascinating video of Larry Elder discussing racial issues on The Rubin Report.
– As an aside, my [...]
Inclusive Conferences Upsets People for Being Inclusive
I’ve a huge amount of respect for Alice Maz, who tweeted out: lambdaconf refused to bow to the outrage mob and rescind an invitation offered to a programmer under a blind submission process. so the outraged turned on the sponsors, seeking to kill the conference entirely simply because they objected to one speaker’s writings. we of http://status451.com put together the [...]
The Second Gamer
Liana K made a great video ’splaining Simone de Beauvoir to gamers. I think if a typical gamer has any opinion of de Beauvoir, it’s not going to be a positive one; CHSommers wasn’t a fan.
So, if nothing else, making a video about some weird parts of feminism for gamers is a very against the grain thing to [...]
On Libraries, Reusability and Composability
There’s been a lot of brouhaha and schadenfreude regarding the recent failures in the NodeJS/NPM community. Essentially the problem / schadenfreude focuses on two aspects: A mutable package repository, allowing un-publishing of packages; this creates a number of practical & security problems. NodeJS’s ethos of “micropackages”; the package at the focal point of the issue was an 11-line package, to [...]
Tay and Alice
I’m very grateful to South Park’s season 19, for many things. Again, it’s season-long leadup to the punchline of “What is P.C. but the gentrification of language?” is brilliant.
But another line from the Season I really loved was “You’re thinking with your dick, Jimmy”, as Jimmy is rebuked for helping the ‘ad’ in female-form. It’s a reference to [...]
Consent and Etiquette
I wouldn’t want to be too abstract about all this. The short story “And Then There Were None” by E.F. Russell describes a society where consent is of the utmost importance. (More specifically, a free society, governed by two things: “Freedom - I Won’t”, and the notion of obligations). – Meredith Patterson makes some excellent observations/remarks. – I find the [...]
Jane Austen was a Bastard
Jane Austen strikes me as quite the bastard, from the stories she tells.
I mean that in an appreciative way. And I think the adaptations I’ve seen of Jane Austen’s work are happy, & don’t tend to show so much of an angry, bitter side to them. Pride and Prejudice Take Caroline Bingley, for example:
She’s (maybe) the [...]
Arduino Spaceship Interface in the Atom DSL
In my previous post, I discussed some of the simple details behind a pure C example programming an Arduino.
Using that understanding, I was able to implement a pure C implementation of the Spaceship Interface project. (“Spaceship Interface” = “green LED + 2 blinking red LEDs”, btw). The Atom EDSL is a DSL embedded in Haskell; and is advantageous [...]