Agreed, fantastic story but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t moved to tears.

Hey, Robin! I know you have to vent sometimes into your works, but give the poor guy a break, won’t you?

• Hyperion Cantos.

• Neuromancer.

Especially after the events that transpired last week. Politicians need to show the people that opposing them nonviolently IS viable. It’s in their own best interest.

Otherwise it’s “fuck the rules, let them try”, and based on history they WILL try.

Thanks!

More interesting is the origins of that phrase to designate prostitution.

Fortunately, I found an article in worldhistories.net, that shows the first documented time of this phrase. The person who coined the phrase was none other than Ruyard Kipling (“The Jungle Book”):

Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her very-great-grandmamma, and that was before the days of Eve as every one knows. In the West, people say rude things about Lalun’s profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that Morality may be preserved. In the East where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice, and that is a distinct proof of the inability of the East to manage its own affairs.

- On the City Wall, in In Black and White (Allahabad: A. H. Wheeler & Co., 1889), page 78

If you want to know about actual prostitution, we should go far back to ancient Mesopotamian texts.

According to “The Epic of Gilgamesh” (the most ancient epic in the world), the gods created a savage man, Enkidu, who lived in harmony with the animals in the woods. Gilgamesh wants to tame Enkidu, and is told to bring a “harimtu” (a “sacred prostitute”) to him.

and he [Enkidu] possessed her ripeness. She was not bashful as she welcomed his ardor. She laid aside her cloth and he rested upon her. She treated him, the savage, to a woman’s task, as his love was drawn unto her.”

Later, as he regrets joining civilization, Enkidu curses the harimtu:

“I will curse you with a great curse… you shall not build a house for your debauch you shall not enter the tavern of girls…. May waste places be your couch, May the shadow of the town-wall be your stand May thorn and bramble skin your feet May drunkard and toper (ed note: someone who drinks alcohol to excess) alike slap your cheek.”

Researcher Gerda Lerner, in her article “The Origin of Prostitution in Ancient Mesoportamia” (Signs, 1986, pp. 245-6), says:

The nature of this curse tells us that the harimtu who mated with Enkidu lived an easier and better life than the harlot who has her stand at the town wall and is abused by her drunken customers.

This would confirm the distinction we made earlier between the women engaged in various forms of sacral sexual service and commercial prostitutes. Such a distinction was more likely to have existed in the earlier period than later.”

So yes, there were prostitutes in ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.

EDIT: typo

Even then, you’re still a bigot. Dude, grow up and touch some grass.

Thanks for the info.

Okay you’re being a bigot. You know why? Because people aren’t demanding to be called “your highness”. They are just asking to be called with their preferred probouns. Putting neo pronouns aside, it’s not a heavy burden to be called he / she / it / they.

And this is the internet! The are no bodies, only usernames. Why do you care if a person claiming to be a girl demands to be called a she? Oh my fucking god,what a scandal! The oppression imposed upon you, a free citizen, demanding that you have to use a pronoun different than “he” on the internet! The world is doomed! 😱 /s

What you’re really asking for is the “right” to harass trans people (by misgendering them) because you don’t like them and abhor the idea of women having something extra down there. (it’s not like they’re plotting to force sex you, just leave them be, okay?) Not only that, you’re so obsessed with hating them that you went out of your way to post your biased opinion ON A LINUX FORUM.

You’re being a transphobic asshole, and the mods were perfectly right in banning you.

Just accept that there are different people in the world. If you have a problem with that, maybe it’s you who needs professional help.

I read a Twitter post of hers a few years ago where she was extremely apologetic towards China, saying that Americans listened to a lot of propaganda and so on. Now I’m starting to wonder if it was really her who made that twitter post.

I understand devs being busy. What I can’t stand is their fan club who keep shitting on every user asking questions or not having the time to do a deep search on every single solution and the problems that come with it.

Maybe this is news for you, but FOSS communities are incredibly toxic. Every single suggestion or legitimate complaint is taken as a personal attack.

Then they wonder why people don’t pay enough attention to Linux and Open Source Software in general.

Perhaps they should realize there’s too many assholes in the community who keep driving people away. Normal folks have a limit. They just leave and hope their Windows doesn’t crash away, which is less frustrating than having to personally deal not only with tech issues but the shitty attitude of peple who are knowledgeable enough.

Worse, when you want to point out a flaw, you need to build an exhaustive list of reddit posts, archive org pages and so on and face trial because unless you give every single piece of evidence then your complaint is invalid. And I’m sorry but normal people just don’t have time for this shit.

Remember that joke? Ask for help and you get no response; Say linux sucks because you can’t do X and you get dozens of apologetic posts explaining step by step how to do stuff.

Turns out there’s some truth behind that joke.

Ah yes, end users have no right to point out a software’s flaws unless they’re better than the developers who made it.

Don’t tell me you forgot what a “non technical end user” is?

Users can’t even add a feature request because they’re met with a storm of insults and snobbery.

Well, I have some news for you: You can’t hope for the year of the Linux desktop and keep treating end users like shit.

Wayland is still too immature. I couldn’t get it to work on my Kubuntu distro.

And then there’s this list of problems with Wayland.

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

BEGIN RANT

“Move fast and break things” may be fine for software gurus who love to experiment and have no problem hitting their head against the wall every few days while believing in the promise of a free-to-fix future, but this isn’t true for poor or busy people who are NOT middle class folks living in their own house in a suburb with a garage full of computer parts. There are single parents, caregivers with disabled and/or elderly, folks who need a reliable computer for their studies, and in general people who simply need something that JUST WORKS.

I’m a caregiver, and unfortunate I’m poor enough that I don’t have money to buy a commercial OS. Heck, I wish Windows just worked instead of making old versions obsolete. I was perfectly fine with Windows 7 ten years ago until Microsoft started doing planned obsolescence bullshit with their forced updates. I had to switch to Linux because Windows became very unreliable and I needed a stable platform that wouldn’t ruin my work.

(So if you’re one of the persons who reply to “Help my Linux is having problems” with “well you should know Linux is like that, you should have thought it twice before switching”, then you’re part of the problem because that’s a very, very shitty answer to give to a non technical end user with limited time and resources)

The year of the Linux desktop will never arrive if developers keep pushing incomplete and buggy software to the end users instead of actually fixing bugs and delivering their stuff ONLY when they’re ready.

Wayland is NOT ready for the end user.

END RANT.

Or to be REALLY mischievous in the long tun, randomize it with 0.1% probability of erasing the file.

The very nature of the fediverse makes fragmentation part of it. Since it’s not centralized, control is distributed to the different instance admins. It’s only natural that people with different opinions will want to split from each other, and that’s without taking into account the levels of toxicity allowed by different moderators.

Is an instance allowing racists to thrive in there? Of course it will be blocked by leftists, since banning is a concept that no longer applies.

Let me repeat for clarity: You CANNOT ban someone from the fediverse, you can ONLY defederate from them.

And don’t tell me it’s that much different from reddit, I’ve seen political subs denying access to people simply based on what other subreddits they’re subscribed to.

Would you rather have a single hierarchical “network” where an asshole dictator decides who is and who isn’t allowed to post? Of course not, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.

Federation implies defederating instances you’re not comfortable with.

And that’s perfectly fine, because safety comes first.

My freedom of association necessarily implies that I’m free NOT to associate with people I don’t like, and my insurance admin should be able to make sure I’m free from harassment by those same people.

Want to solve this issue? Solve human nature first.

Looking at VTuber fandom out there. Two weeks ago, a famous female VTuber called Ironmouse (who, BTW, has an immune disease and cannot leave her house) won an award, and you know what the fans of other candidates did? They sent her death threats.

Oh boy 😬

The remote control T_T

LOL this reminds me of the numerous news articles that kept saying how Mastodon wouldn’t scale and how it would never take off. The most ridiculous one: “Mastodon is crumbling”. (We’re over 13 million users right now.)