[TUHS] "What UNIX Cost Us"

Tue Jan 21 03:40:06 AEST 2020

Hello Kathry.

Kathryn Spiers wrote in <CAGM9nhRPfZA2s17ociJfUTyq6WGt1rsqq=796xGynRD9c3\
bZbg at mail.gmail.com>:
 |On Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 12:35 Steffen Nurpmeso <[1]steffen at sdaoden.eu[/1]> \
 |wrote:
 |
 |  [1] mailto:steffen at sdaoden.eu
 |
 ||Rich Morin wrote in <[2]5A5107E4-06AD-4C2B-B590-15C17B301D44 at cfcl.com[/2\
 ||]>:
 || |FWIW, I found this talk to be quite amusing and interesting.
 || |
 || |"What UNIX Cost Us" - Benno Rice (LCA 2020)
 || |[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-IWMbJXoLM[/3]
 |
 ||That is the one who mutilated the FreeBSD fortune program no?
 ||(Despite it saying
 |
 ||  The potentially offensive fortunes are installed by default on FreeBSD
 ||  systems.  If you're absolutely, *positively*, without-a-shadow-of-a-\
 ||doubt
 ||  sure that your user community goes berzerk/sues your pants off/drops \
 ||dead
 ||  upon reading one of them, edit the Makefile in the subdirectory \
 ||datfiles,
 ||  and do "make all install".)
 |
 ||Nothing but a hollow lie ever since!
 ...
 |Or you could remove the offensive fortunes and make the default more \
 |friendly for everyone...
 |
 |Probably best not to re-litigate that change on this thread though.

Maybe the latter.  But for the former.  A citation is a citation,
and whereas you can clean your house, with huge amounts of
desinfection and insecticides, you could claim but i promise it is
not clean, and never will be, yes, in fact you will not even stay
alive without a tremendous amount of bacteria and more inside of
you, and on your surface.  But you do end up in a deserted and
deadly place.

So you remove citations of Hitler which are prominently marked as
Hitler citations, because you claim that is less offensive and
makes the world a smoothie place, but i do not think so.  In the
thread by then i think i said something like "back in the 70s
people had the capability to see things in a context", you know,
and if _i_ see a Hitler citation, then i, not only but also
because i am German, put that in a tremendous, let me say in
a monstrous context.  And it is plain, dear Lady, that the demon
is not gone, it is in almost each and everyone.  And in _my_
opinion, the "cleaning" that has been done is nothing but
a trivialisation, which goes alongside a common flattening that
happens in public discourse in general.

This is nothing new, and people sang about "shiny happy people"
decades ago, and have by far not been the first which did.  If
i recall correctly, the actual argument on the removal, which if
i recall happened "just like that", without discussion or that
issue tracker that FreeBSD now uses, was because of a Hitler
citation on women.  If i recall correctly it was in turn
a citation which revealed that Hitler did not understand Nietzsche
correctly.  Maybe i understand Nietzsche false.  Nietzsche also
sings and dances alongside the road that Richard Wagner claimed
some decades before Nietzsches book we are talking about.  Hitler
also was impressed by Wagner's art and saying, yet, did he
understand it, really?  So we are now about enter the space of
culture, philosophy and religion, the human being and its way of
self-organization, about the necessity of self-reflection, as
called for, and named, by the mentioned.  Will you ever be able to
develop self-reflection without a context, dear Lady, i am asking?

Off-topic, whereas i blame Hitler, and the endless shame that comes
alongside -- and today in a week is the 75th anniversary of the
rescue, of the remains, of Auschwitz --, the older i get, the less
i can blame my forefathers desires.  I can stand this ground, and
it is good that after WWII the winners acted more wise and
reflected than after WWI.  And i thought it was Churchill, but
i think it has been John F. Kennedy who said ~"either mankind will
put an end on war, or war will put an end on mankind".

Citations have been placed in a Unix distribution, to come back to
the topic.  Decades ago.  I do not think it was a giggling funny
old man who put them there, but even a giggling funny old man has
decades of life to look onto.  I who approach my 50ies in a not
too distant future (if i am lucky) have already seen dozens of
dirty wars, thousands of lies, and aggressively put false contexts
which are not lies yet are lies indeed, and millions and millions
of terrible deaths, and maybe-death-would-have-been-better's, too.
I personally do not think this gets better if the public discourse
becomes even more superficial or even becomes the total farce of
misinformation as opposed to slight censorship, which happens in
the western world even without official propaganda, which i hate
to the bottom of my heart.

But i am not Mr. Clean, the falsely understood.  My only concern
on the MeToo that i hate, is that the Suffragettes get finally
blown away because those who came up short wanted to have a whole
evening on Netflix or the BBC (nice neighbours for sure),
exclusively.  I have not and never had problems with strong women,
they always existed, and my very personal point of view is in fact
that today we have a lot less of strong women with personality
than when i was young.  And ever and ever again i read and see
stories of strong women from more than hundred years ago, when
Germany indeed was a source of science, culture and beauty, too.
I cannot do anything against people who read the bible as an
operator's guide, nor mental hedgehoppers which do not get
Nietzsche nor Wagner right, but only Might and Money.  The problem
seems to be that these people govern the world.

No, the sticky and greasy cloud cover of misinformation and
superficiality sometimes has to be torn open, and i admire that
the *BSD fortune program took the opportunity to burst in the
focused and selfish view that most people, me included, have on
a day by day base.  And how often do i myself become conscious of
something that i did not understand first, take the line Wagner
.. Nietzsche, .. and the incapable brain which did not get it
thereafter .. and has been lifted to responsibility nonetheless!
(Just a few weeks ago my eyes were opened that the "Fonty" in
Günther Grass's "Ein weites Feld" was indeed Theodor Fontane.
Granted that i did not really "lived" in "Ein weites Feld", but
maybe ... i should read it again!  But that is just bla.)

And, dear Lady, whereas i like friendliness, i think it should be
wholehearted and holistic.  Removing some citations which, by the
very heart of a citation, have a context, in which they should be
contemplated, strives me as peculiar if at the same time we,
western world citizens, either directly or indirectly, by means of
our buying behaviour, for example, kill or suppress people, and
even destroy life on earth as such.
Regarding MeToo i am happy that here in Germany this overheated
thing has been normalizest; crimes are crimes, and need to be
punished (maybe i am an antisemit when i bring sympathy to the
Public Enemy text "Jeffrey Dahmer, into the room without cuffs --
how the hell do we get stuffed????  In the back of a cell on an
Isle.").  But what if Jack Nicholson would have not been brought
to go nuts in Shining, what if Brad Pitt would not have had to
repeat the scene where he drags the dead Hector dozens of times,
what if raped "bitches" (or non-bitches) would look like if they
come from a gala dinner.  That is just grazy.

I personally do not think that removing these citations made the
world a better place.  And whereas i also do not think that it
make the world a worse place, hah, i start hoping he could impress
a nice young women, they got married and have some kids.
A nice evening i wish,
Miss Kathryn Spiers,

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)