Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs: Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do." -- Donald E. Knuth

"PROPOSAL: scandals no longer get a '-gate' suffix. The new suffix of choice should be '-a-lago'" -- Gwendolyn Ann Smith (gwenners), 2022-08-11

"Capitalism is our core value, and as we've MORE than illustrated throughout this pandemic, when a body exists too far outside the capitalist system, we no longer see a duty of care towards it anymore.

[...]

"And if your gut instinct is to respond to this by saying, 'but it's still a stretch to think we'd just kill disabled people or leave them to die off?'

"Look around, you've ALREADY shown you're comfortable with mass death as long as 'they had preexisting conditions though.'"

-- Stephanie Tait (StephTaitWrites), 2022-08-13

"From my journeys in southern Europe I have gained the impression that in our time the Virgin Mary is the only heavenly creature who is really beloved by millions. But I believe these millions would be uncomprehending and perhaps even offended if I were to tell them that the Virgin Mary had made a significant discovery, solved difficult mathematical problems, or masterfully organized and administered an association of housewives in Nazareth." -- Isak Dinesen (a pen name of Karen Blixen (b. 1885-04-17, d. 1962-09-07)), Daguerreotypes and Other Essays (published posthumously in 1979)

[Wishing a good holiday to everyone celebrating the feast of the Ascension of Mary or Dormition of the Mother of God (Western and Orthodox respectively)!]

"It is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time it takes to knit something. Birthday on Saturday? No problem. Socks are small. Never mind that the average sock knit out of sock-weight yarn contains about 17,000 stitches. Never mind that you need two of them. (That's 34,000 stitches, for anybody keeping track.)

"Socks are only physically small. By stitch count, they are immense."

-- Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

"While #spacewalking I realized something: I used to think I was scared of heights but now I know I was just scared of gravity." -- Reid Wiseman (astro_reid), 2014-10-20

Riley Poole (played by Justin Bartha): "Anyone crazy enough to believe us isn't gonna want to help."

Ben Gates (played by Nicolas Cage): "We don't need someone crazy. But one step short of crazy, what do you get?"

Riley Poole: "Obsessed."

Ben Gates: "Passionate."

  -- from National Treasure (2004) by Jim Kouf, Cormac Wibberley, & Marianne Wibberley; directed by Jon Turteltaub

[Chag sameach to everyone celebrating Tu B'Av!]

"If you don't work to deconstruct your ableism the internalized version of it will absolutely kick your fucking ass when you eventually do become disabled (and we all do, at one point or another)." -- Your Friendly Butch Anarchist (butchanarchy), 2022-08-10

A Twitter sub-thread (scroll up from link):

Andrea Vaghy (abenyola): "When one of my twins was 10 she asked me how gay men have sex. I told her and then a day later she asked how do they decide the top/bottom and said 'do they do tic-tac-toe?'"

ConsiderTheBees (Wildfyrewarning): "A very reasonable assumption, I think."

Andrea Vaghy (abenyola): "How else would they decide?"

Llama_Survivor (llama_survivor): "Rock Paper Scissors"

they/them king (bgltdecker): "No that's lesbians"

"The internet is full of great things and terrible things. But one of the great things is that people have so much more opportunity to learn that they are not alone.

"It makes such a difference."

-- Loose Leaf Queer (genderqueerwolf), 2022-08-08 [See also: Ugol's Law (originially about kinks but generalizable to everything else human). I can't recall whether Hary Ugol posted it (on Usenet) before or after the Internet became the Internet.]

"Jaime Jara, a high-school teacher of American history and mother of three children, one of whom is a ten-year-old transgender girl, agrees. 'I thought Trump was bad,' she says. 'But for me, DeSantis is even worse, because he's smarter and more calculating. So it's terrifying.'

[,,,]

"When people ask if they plan to move, Jara insists: 'Let's call it what it is. It's not moving, it's fleeing. We're being persecuted.'

"And if DeSantis becomes president? In that case, Jara says her family will find a way to leave not just Florida, but the United States itself."

From "Florida’s Republican governor is attacking trans rights to gain power" by Chrissy Stroop, openDemocracy, 2022-08-04

Kyle Beshears (kylebeshears), 2022-08-02:

3 yo daughter, pointing to a broke toy: "We can fix it?"

Me: "Of course."

Her: "Why do we fix it?"

Me: "Umm, to make it work again?"

Her: "No. Because we love it."

Me: silently contemplates the theology my toddler just taught me

"Cancelling a Scooby Doo movie for a tax write down is ironically hilarious. Do you know the motives behind 95% of Scooby Doo villains?" -- Lunwi (Lunwi88), 2022-08-02

[To everyone fasting for Tish'a B'Av tonight & tomorrow, may you have a meaningful fast -- and a meaningful holiday to everyone observing, whether you can fast or not.]

"There are many ways to summarise the differences between Judaism and Xtianity but a key one is their different answers to the following question:

"'Is martyrdom ever something to be desired?'

"Xtianity: Yes!
Judaism: No.

"So much stems just from that.

[...]

"Like we honor martyrs but we don't glorify or romanticise martyrdom and that describes the entire philosophical difference clearer than most other attempts

-- Meig/Tzippi (ey/em/eir) (DinosaurBiology), 2022-08-02

"When an article says "some scientists think" then remember this: I, a scientist, once thought I could fit a whole orange in my mouth. I could, it turns out, get it in there, but I hadn't given sufficient thought to the reverse operation.

"I should also, on reflection, have practiced in private. I had an audience, which grew as my initial satisfaction at an hypothesis well proven, slipped rapidly through stages of qualm, disquiet, then alarm (mild through severe) and ended in full blown panic."

-- John Kennedy (micefearboggis), 2022-08-03 (go read the whole thread -- from the "at least we know he survived and prospered" point of view, it gets screamingly funny, but I don't want to give away spoilers beyond the obvious "yes, it got stuck".)

"In the weeks before the November, 2016, U.S. election, I talked to several experts to gauge the danger of a Trump presidency. I recently consulted them again. While in 2016 they were alarmed, this last month most were utterly dismayed. All told me the U.S. political situation has deteriorated sharply since last year's [2020] attack on Capitol Hill.

"Jack Goldstone, a political sociologist at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and a leading authority on the causes of state breakdown and revolution, told me that since 2016 we've learned that early optimism about the resilience of U.S. democracy was based on two false assumptions: 'First, that American institutions would be strong enough to easily withstand efforts to subvert them; and second, that the vast majority of people will act rationally and be drawn to the political centre, so that it's impossible for extremist groups to take over.'

"But especially after the 2020 election, Dr. Goldstone said, we've seen that core institutions - from the Justice Department to county election boards - are susceptible to pressure. They've barely held firm. 'We've also learned that the reasonable majority can be frightened and silenced if caught between extremes, while many others can be captured by mass delusions.' And to his surprise 'moderate GOP leaders have either been forced out of the party or acquiesced to a party leadership that embraces lies and anti-democratic actions.'

[...]

"In this context, it's worth noting the words of Dmitry Muratov, the courageous Russian journalist who remains one of the few independent voices standing up to Mr. Putin and who just received the Nobel Prize for Peace. At a news conference after the awards ceremony in Oslo, as Russian troops and armour were massing on Ukraine's borders, Mr. Muratov spoke of the iron link between authoritarianism and war. 'Disbelief in democracy means that the countries that have abandoned it will get a dictator,' he said. 'And where there is a dictatorship, there is a war. If we refuse democracy, we agree to war.'"

[...]

"a lot of morning people will try to convince you that being a morning person is the only way to be successful, centered, balanced, etc. it's not. be an evening or nighttime person if you need to be. you can cultivate a life/schedule that allows for it.

[...]

"i'm always glad to see morning people discovering routines that work for them. i want afternoon, evening, and nighttime people to have the same experience. everyone should have such ease and satisfaction, but we live in a culture that only encourages us to be early risers.

[...]

"i want everyone to have the ability to structure their day with the ease and confidence that many naturally early risers do, even in the midst of cultural messaging that says having an unconventional, later schedule is nothing more than 'laziness' or 'disorder.'"

-- heterophobique (SherrondaJBrown), 2022-08-01

"Star Trek represented, and still does represent, the future we can have, a future that is beyond the petty squabbles we are dealing with here on Earth, now as much as ever, a nd are able to devote ourselves to the betterment of all human kind by doing what we do so well: explore. This kind of a future isn't impossible - and we need to all rethink our priorities to really bring that vision to life." -- Nichelle Nichols (b. 1932-12-28, d. 2022-07-30)

"'Stop pushing it on kids' I turned into a socialist trans woman despite a white supremacist cult pushing cisgender ideology on me for over 20 years through homeschooling and abuse in rural isolation. Is your gender really so fragile you need me to stop existing to preserve it?

"Christian nationalists and cisgender supremacists love telling me that they're going to raise their kids exactly how I was raised so they won't turn out like I did"

-- Lucy (anarchopianist), 2022-07-29

"There's nothing like the clarity that comes after you call your energy back out of an experience." -- (Maryamhasnaa), 2022-07-29

Today is
Gregorian: 2022 July 30
Julian: 2022 July 17
Hebrew: 5782 Av 02
Islamic: 1444 Muharram 01 -- New Year 1441!
Persian: 1401 Mordad 08