Hot Dog Linux – Horrible Obsolete Typeface and Dreadful Onscreen Graphics(hotdoglinux.com)
hotdoglinux.com
Hot Dog Linux – Horrible Obsolete Typeface and Dreadful Onscreen Graphics
https://hotdoglinux.com/
163 comments
"badly-written Perl scripts"
They do appear to be badly written on purpose, like this "hotdog-aboutDrives.pl" one:
https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/hotdog-ab...
The entire script is this:
They do appear to be badly written on purpose, like this "hotdog-aboutDrives.pl" one:
https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/hotdog-ab...
The entire script is this:
#!/usr/bin/perl
$str = `df`;
print $str;The rationale: https://hotdoglinux.com/PerlAndUseStrict/index.html
" Most tutorials about Perl will tell you to always 'use strict' or something to that effect. However, the general rule for HOT DOG Linux is to not 'use strict'. The reasoning behind this is that each Perl script should be as simple as possible. It should be simple enough to not need 'use strict'. If it gets to the point where the script would be easier to deal with if it did 'use strict', then that is an indicator that the script is too complicated and should be broken up."
I tried to come up with a comparison for this but failed. It's sort of like saying, "If you need to wear a helmet to do some activity, you should probably ......... break up the activity into three shorter activities ........."
" Most tutorials about Perl will tell you to always 'use strict' or something to that effect. However, the general rule for HOT DOG Linux is to not 'use strict'. The reasoning behind this is that each Perl script should be as simple as possible. It should be simple enough to not need 'use strict'. If it gets to the point where the script would be easier to deal with if it did 'use strict', then that is an indicator that the script is too complicated and should be broken up."
I tried to come up with a comparison for this but failed. It's sort of like saying, "If you need to wear a helmet to do some activity, you should probably ......... break up the activity into three shorter activities ........."
Since the smaller scripts run in separate processes, there is in fact a safety benefit to the break-up, which compensates in some way for the lack of strict. Processes are isolated; you know that a function call in one script will not misuse a function in another. Or that a global variable defined in one script can't be modified or accessed in the other. The scripts can only communicate via external mechanisms: command line arguments, environment variables, files/pipes/sockets, more rarely shared memory.
Unix was built using an extremely unsafe language. Yet it reached a decent level of reliability in just a few years, a lot of which was owed to the system applications being small programs isolated into separate processes.
Unix was built using an extremely unsafe language. Yet it reached a decent level of reliability in just a few years, a lot of which was owed to the system applications being small programs isolated into separate processes.
Simple is beautiful, less is more.
You just move the complexity one layer up, at the composition of all those small utilities.
> You just move the complexity one layer up, at the composition of all those small utilities.
Out of curiosity, what would the name of the metric for measuring this tradeoff be? Average lines of code per script/program? Average scripts/programs to accomplish a given task?
I feel like it'd be really good to talk more about this tradeoff, e.g. having smart programs that do a lot but are bloated (OpenVPN, OpenSSL, Docker all come to mind) versus smaller programs that do less, but chain together (most GNU tools with the piping mechanism) and the extreme ends of this scale.
Yet, i don't even know how much research has been done into this, what the status quo is and what terms to even look up. It's like talking about the difference between a monolith application or a microservices application, an abstraction that would be applied to tasks and the ways to do them, much like we have SLoC or cyclomatic complexity in regards to reasoning about code (though neither is exactly perfect either).
Out of curiosity, what would the name of the metric for measuring this tradeoff be? Average lines of code per script/program? Average scripts/programs to accomplish a given task?
I feel like it'd be really good to talk more about this tradeoff, e.g. having smart programs that do a lot but are bloated (OpenVPN, OpenSSL, Docker all come to mind) versus smaller programs that do less, but chain together (most GNU tools with the piping mechanism) and the extreme ends of this scale.
Yet, i don't even know how much research has been done into this, what the status quo is and what terms to even look up. It's like talking about the difference between a monolith application or a microservices application, an abstraction that would be applied to tasks and the ways to do them, much like we have SLoC or cyclomatic complexity in regards to reasoning about code (though neither is exactly perfect either).
Average number of interfaces/solution. If you only have 1 program, you have 1 interface (1 set of command-line arguments, 1 set of environment variables, 1 STDIN, 1 STDOUT). If you have 50 programs, you can have 50 interfaces. So, more interfaces, but.... more interfaces.
Composeability requires many different interfaces, but not every solution needs composeability.
Composeability requires many different interfaces, but not every solution needs composeability.
Fair point, but doesn't that also kind of muddy the waters because interfaces also being a regular programming construct? E.g. you might have 50 libraries with 50 interfaces that still go in one very large program, no? And in practice that would be very different from chaining 50 different scripts/simple tools together.
That is false. When a small utility terminates, I'm assured that any file descriptors which it opened are closed, that any memory it allocated is gone, and that it didn't touch any data structures of the adjacent programs I'm composing it with. That's a whole lot of complexity that didn't move to the next layer.
Debugging complexity is reduced also because if something causes an abnormal termination, only the containing utility will die, not the entire composition.
Debugging complexity is reduced also because if something causes an abnormal termination, only the containing utility will die, not the entire composition.
How do you compose those small utilities?
War is peace, ignorance is bliss.
If a brick could fall on you and kill you, just use smaller bricks.
If a crib needs a gate it should be lower down.
> CSV files.... that encode JSON?!
We need a new schema language with the ability to specify such cross-format …formats.
We need a new schema language with the ability to specify such cross-format …formats.
IBM has that JSONx that's... awful?
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/datapower-gateway/10.0.1?topic=2...
https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/datapower-gateway/10.0.1?topic=2...
I use jsonlines on those occasions https://jsonlines.org/examples/
This is nice. But less space-efficient than CSV when its strictly tabular, since CSV has columns legend on first row allowing 'pure' rows, whereas JSON will have to key every field, on every row.
Your use case is literally the first item in the link I shared (and the reason I shared that link too):
["Name", "Session", "Score", "Completed"]
["Gilbert", "2013", 24, true]
["Alexa", "2013", 29, true]
["May", "2012B", 14, false]
["Deloise", "2012A", 19, true]I don't understand why people keep using CSV today while SQLite is MIT-licenced and can be used everywhere, has a very portable and lightweight implementation, has a stable file format with long-term commitment, and a good compromise on the type system that gives enough flexibility to be on par with CSV if some entries happen to have a different type...
Installed base. You can bet there are thousands of AS/400s and similar architectures putting out CSVs. Also you cant get more lightweight than CSV, i have several microcontroller projects that output CSV.
Switch from the developer world to the business world and everybody has Excel to open the CSV files with the article information, the sales numbers and so on and can work with that. How do you even read data from SQLite to Excel? VBA? Some obscure connector? With CSV it's "import" or even "open file".
Ironically Excels implementation of CSV is terrible. It’s constantly destroying data (eg large numeric and pseudo-numeric fields) not to mention the whole issue around any cell bringing with an equal symbol being converted into a function.
It totally is, but that is was most people know, next to the XLS/XLSX files themselves.
Sqlite has an odbc driver that excel can use
Because if I want to do a graph from some data, it's much much easier to open the csv in Excel (or LO Calc) and create a graph from a sum of the subset of three columns VS a fourth column than it use to write an SQL query.
Does Excel support SQL? Because I feel confident that Excel+SQL would 100% replace Tableau and save us a million dollars
You have been able to include the results of sql queries in excel for decades.
Plus Excel includes PowerQuery with the M programming language which lets you do everything you can in SQL, just slower and with more verbosity.
Excel can't open SQLlite files
Yes it can, using the sqlite odbc driver.
Does that work with File > Open with a stock Excel install? Does editing work seamlessly?
No, but that's not why you would move your data to sqlite. I was only responding to the question of whether Excel could read it, which it can.
He said open, not read. They're subtly different terms but the distinction is important.
you can have json lines where each line is json array
That's like a file with S-expressions, only worse (because those already existed, whereas this had to be made up as a new thing, without offering any improvement).
You could make a similar argument about the redundancy of JSON or even XML too. S-Expressions predates all of them and can represent any of their data structures too.
The problem is S-Expresssions is still pretty niche where as JSON support is widespread and supporting jsonlines when you already support JSON is trivial.
If you’re old enough to be a LISPer then you should be old enough to realise that there’s always going to be a multitude of competing standards and sometimes we have to make pragmatic choices.
The problem is S-Expresssions is still pretty niche where as JSON support is widespread and supporting jsonlines when you already support JSON is trivial.
If you’re old enough to be a LISPer then you should be old enough to realise that there’s always going to be a multitude of competing standards and sometimes we have to make pragmatic choices.
Yes, in fact I frequently make that argument about JSON and XML. I'm definitely being consistent on that one.
JSON lines has a few nice properties.
The biggest advantage is that 1 line = 1 record, so you can use unix tools like head, tail, grep, sed to work on it.
It's also easy to sync state in case of errors, since a newline always means record boundary.
In CSV and normal JSON a record can span multiple lines,which sucks, so you almost always have to write custom code to work on them.
The biggest advantage is that 1 line = 1 record, so you can use unix tools like head, tail, grep, sed to work on it.
It's also easy to sync state in case of errors, since a newline always means record boundary.
In CSV and normal JSON a record can span multiple lines,which sucks, so you almost always have to write custom code to work on them.
An S-expression file with a newline after each top-level expression has the same property. So that's not really a problem.
Clojure's EDN is pretty decent for this.
ingy and I came up with p3rl.org/JSONY as a "JSON with less ceremony" compromise that I often find useful (it has a PEG grammar that's a superset of JSON so pretty easy to re-implement elsewhere)
ingy and I came up with p3rl.org/JSONY as a "JSON with less ceremony" compromise that I often find useful (it has a PEG grammar that's a superset of JSON so pretty easy to re-implement elsewhere)
The hyphen prefixed arrays are very weird. It looks like YAML but behaves differently. Doesn’t help that YAML is also a superset of JSON too.
I also don’t like space (char 32) used as a field delimiter because that opens up entire categories of bugs that are already a daily annoyance for shell scripting.
I respect your thought processes but I can see this particular specification being more confusing than productive to most other people.
I also don’t like space (char 32) used as a field delimiter because that opens up entire categories of bugs that are already a daily annoyance for shell scripting.
I respect your thought processes but I can see this particular specification being more confusing than productive to most other people.
The hyphen prefixed arrays were an ingyism. I don't use those at all but since he wrote the grammar I didn't feel like it was particularly fair to bitch about him sneaking in a single feature he wanted.
I use it basically like:
Plus because JSONY isn't at all indentation sensitive pasting chunks of JSON in becomes IMO a lot easier to comprehend.
A valuable thing for me is that if e.g. I'm writing a daemon that communicates via newline delimited JSON over a TCP or UNIX socket I can have a development mode where it uses JSONY as the parser so it's faster/easier to do quick interactive tests with socat.
I use it basically like:
{ key1 value1 key2 [ value2a value2b value2c ] }
Plus because JSONY isn't at all indentation sensitive pasting chunks of JSON in becomes IMO a lot easier to comprehend.
A valuable thing for me is that if e.g. I'm writing a daemon that communicates via newline delimited JSON over a TCP or UNIX socket I can have a development mode where it uses JSONY as the parser so it's faster/easier to do quick interactive tests with socat.
I'm not going to criticize personal usage but for the point of accuracy the indention sensitive syntax of YAML is entirely optional. Like I said, it's a superset of JSON, which means the following is valid YMAL:
{ key1: value1, key2: [ value2a, value2b, value2c ] }
"badly-written Perl scripts..."
You are much too kind to the monkeys who put this together. The config is nice, but Chicago? Chicago font? I thought that was buried deep, long ago.
You are much too kind to the monkeys who put this together. The config is nice, but Chicago? Chicago font? I thought that was buried deep, long ago.
Am I weird for liking Chicago?
Chicago is a great font. It’s also strangely popular in Japan, used in video games and I’ve seen several stores’ signs set in it:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-exterior-shop-front-of-cop...
Not so great kerning though.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-exterior-shop-front-of-cop...
Not so great kerning though.
Sincerely, no, it is a good low PPI font with a lot of (ugh actually unintended pun) character for its historical use.
I like Chicago too, but only the original 12 pt. bitmap version. For some reason it never looks quite right when scaled, I wonder why.
Probably because Chicago was originally created by Susan Kare in just the 12pt bitmap form for the original Macintosh. The scalable TrueType version was created years later for System 7 by different people, and I'm afraid they really didn't capture the spirit very well.
I like Chicago too, but fonts are a contentious topic! I really like Computer Modern too but apparently some people properly hate it.
Do you enjoy casserole that calls itself pizza, and roast beef sub-sandwiches that demand dipping?
Why yes I enjoy both of those things. But the former is better classified as a lasagna. And the latter is just a good way to keep your sandwich intact with such a moist condiment.
I like when they put weird shit on hot dogs
If you ever visit Vancouver (or apparently LA or Santa Monica) you have to try out Japadog! Seriously, check these out. Can never go wrong with the Terimayo (or even better, Spicy Cheese Terimayo)... http://www.japadog.com/menu_En.html haha :D
Sport peppers ftw!!
I’ve only ever had a “Chicago dog” in Minnesota, and the pepper relish was neon colored and over-seasoned with who knows what. But I’ve been told this is not a faithful representation, so I’ll try a real one next time I visit actual Chicago.
No. I've never really liked anything about Chicago the city (although I have some fond memories living in a nearby suburb for a few years as a child.) I don't like the food, I don't like the politics etc.
I do like the font though. It's a bit like the Plan9 font, it just feels comfortable.
I do like the font though. It's a bit like the Plan9 font, it just feels comfortable.
My company recently issued me a mac for remote work. I'm sorely tempted to load this in a VM so I can "accidentally" share my desktop via zoom and then claim ignorance that this is not in fact MacOS.
Nah. Use the Aqua one, then they can't complain it's not MacOS
Plank could provide a dock and iDesk can do desktop icons. It would probably take less than an hour to get the Aqua theme really close to the real deal.
do it
As I’m growing older, I appreciate those typefaces for the sheer fucking contrast and readability they have. On low DPI screens, I seek bitmap fonts for the UI (and it disappoints me that the support for them in toolkits seems to be getting shoddier, to the point that it’s easier to use TrueType fonts that mimic bitmaps); on high DPI screens, I’m using serif fonts.
I’m toying with the idea of purely black and white themes so I can use them on my eInk screens, too, pity there’s so little time.
I’m toying with the idea of purely black and white themes so I can use them on my eInk screens, too, pity there’s so little time.
I recently played around with the Badger2040 board, which has a low-res eInk screen, and was very disappointed that the firmware does not contain a single old-school terminal-oriented bitmap font - making all text look horrible almost on purpose. Hardware hackers can be occasionally puzzling in their choices.
I'm using a nice bitmapped font called knxt by Constantine Bytensky.
It's the reason why I'm still using xterm where I can. Even on the screenshots in the OP, the xterm font comes out super crisp.
> Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand, Amiga Workbench, Atari ST GEM, and Mac Classic and Aqua
Horrible? Were these not the cutting edge? Do we not hark back to these UIs with fondness for their simplicity and 'it just works'?
Horrible? Were these not the cutting edge? Do we not hark back to these UIs with fondness for their simplicity and 'it just works'?
The original 1.x Amiga Workbench was IMHO just ugly even when it was current (I would know, I owned an Amiga); of course it was just the best they could do with the 4 colour palette they allocated to it. The general design was still good. The look of 2.x was fine. I never had a mac, but I think that classic mac is indeed ok and I do like Aqua. For me the prettiest GUI design is still classic NeXT and I would still use WindowMaker on linux if it had more modern WM features.
The biggest issues with these old environments is that today we are used to much higher screen resolutions, but a modern WM with a classic look would be pretty good for me (and of course with themes you can mostly do just that).
The biggest issues with these old environments is that today we are used to much higher screen resolutions, but a modern WM with a classic look would be pretty good for me (and of course with themes you can mostly do just that).
> For me the prettiest GUI design is still classic NeXT
Someone with taste!
Someone with taste!
Back in the day when you worked desktop tech support you would come across folks who used the windows hot dog color scheme unironically. I imagine the contrast was good? It couldn’t help but give a little bit of a eyebrow rise and a a head tilt.
They made the Atari ST theme extra terrible by having the desktop render like it's a 320x200 screen, making the window decorations look way bigger and blockier than they would do if GEM itself was running on a 640x400 screen. Also a missed opportunity is replacing the standard xterm font so it matches the system font of the desktop they are emulating. But they do live up to their name!
> Graphical user interface based on retro computer systems including ... Aqua
Was not ready to see Mac OS X in a retro computing list. I feel old.
Was not ready to see Mac OS X in a retro computing list. I feel old.
It sounded like and is kind of a joke, but there was some serious work on those retro themes! Pretty damn accurate stuff.
If you could skin modern macOS with a 1:1 remake of the Panther or Tiger era Aqua interface I'd literally use it as a daily driver.
same
Mac Classic (Color) was so dang tidy.
System 7 was great with a color monitor. Subtle, clean, efficient without being boring or sterile.
Yeah, but without preemptive multitasking, it's like putting lipstick on a pig.
Preemptive multitasking is overrated. (In particular, it seems to me that graphical applications may behave better when they cooperate. I think that a desktop OS should accommodate both kinds.)
There are things where you can't do without preemptive multitasking. I remember that under Windows 3.1, I couldn't download a file over zmodem at 2400 baud while doing anything else, whether the terminal application was DOS or Win16. With the same DOS app, on the same computer, under OS/2, I could do pretty much as I liked while downloading.
Cooperative multitasking has gotten a lot better these days, though, in the form of coroutines and async io.
Cooperative multitasking has gotten a lot better these days, though, in the form of coroutines and async io.
I suppose we should do away with page tables and virtual memory then as well.
Maybe you weren't around to witness the instability of cooperative multitasking under both classic MacOS and Windows 3.1/95, or you've forgotten.
Maybe you weren't around to witness the instability of cooperative multitasking under both classic MacOS and Windows 3.1/95, or you've forgotten.
And I love how sparingly classic MacOS used colors.
I love everything about this. No other notes. Just that I love this and want to live here.
It's beautiful. Don't change a thing.
Folks who enjoy this may also like NsCDE: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
Folks who enjoy this may also like NsCDE: https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
Or the real one: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I've been a little disappointed that nobody seems to be doing a CDE-as-first-class-citizen distribution. Considering how many offerings there are that's "Ubuntu or Debian, but we changed the default desktop environment", it seems an obvious missing space.
This is so funny
Like... It's a hot dog. Like code version of lips and asses
I'm trying to think of what's still running in objective-c since the 90s outside of legacy iphone apps and it's SOGo [1]
[1] https://www.sogo.nu/
Like... It's a hot dog. Like code version of lips and asses
I'm trying to think of what's still running in objective-c since the 90s outside of legacy iphone apps and it's SOGo [1]
[1] https://www.sogo.nu/
It's named after the infamous "Hot Dog Stand" theme that was packaged with Windows 3.1
https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho...
https://blog.codinghorror.com/a-tribute-to-the-windows-31-ho...
You mean I don’t need my “Programming in Objective C” book anymore?
I don't get how a lack of Unicode support has anything to do with making an OS shell that's visually ugly and old-fashioned.
There's a difference between being ugly and being broken.
There's a difference between being ugly and being broken.
It uses really old bitmap fonts, with no fallback for missing symbols and no way to incorporate accents, diacriticals or essentially anything but ASCII characters. Under these circunstances lack of Unicode support is a given.
Simplicity. Full Unicode support is horridly complex.
What does it mean in practice, though? Only ASCII is supported by the UI layer? Latin-1? MacRoman?
[deleted]
The window manager seems to do a bunch of different things, some with files and input, so basically it would expect non-UTF text for those operations
In the early days you’d just replace the font to get whatever interpretation you want. :)
This is an interesting combination of extremely good-looking themes and frankly bizarre stuff like this: https://hotdoglinux.com/EverythingIsAStream/index.html
Wow the themes look so good. What a labor of love.
"Obsolete typeface" is an interesting thought.
This reminded me to the old awm (Amiga Window Manager). It keeps working on modern distros.
Perhaps you meant amiwm¹? awm² looks like a different thing.
amiwm is still packaged in at least Debian, and just firing it up in a Xephyr window is pretty nostalgic.
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiwm
² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardent_Window_Manager
amiwm is still packaged in at least Debian, and just firing it up in a Xephyr window is pretty nostalgic.
¹ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiwm
² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardent_Window_Manager
Horrible? Dreadful? I fear I'm going to have to waste my upcoming weekend trying to get the Windows 3.x theme running.
My God, it’s beautiful!
I remember using a program called HotDog Professional a long time ago. Brings back memories.
HotDog was sweet. Back when nobody cared what the code looked like. All you needed was a WYSIWYG editor to be a powerful webmaster, and "deployment" was just FTP
> and "deployment" was just FTP
Sounds like my PHP stuff in 2022. Sorry, not sorry, just works. :-D
Sounds like my PHP stuff in 2022. Sorry, not sorry, just works. :-D
HotDog Pro as an HTML editor:
https://www.malavida.com/en/soft/hotdog-professional/
https://www.malavida.com/en/soft/hotdog-professional/
I was sold on the retro Mac OS X screenshot with Windows 3.x system font text.
Now waiting for Azure and AWS products based on HOTDOG ….. :-D
I like most of these better than Ubuntu's defaults.
A perfect mixture of insightful and deranged.
Still looks better then Gnome ;)
Love the Amiga Workbench theme. Might give this a try.
I hope I can put it on my risc-v devterm
That's pretty cool, it's like if TempleOS was a Linux!
Well, it's missing the games, the religious gospel, and racist remarks by the author.
No! Apparently it does have games! This is crazy, the fonts and a bunch more things are all written in objective-C!
https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/tree/master/MainMenu https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/objects/o... https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/objects/o...
https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/tree/master/MainMenu https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/objects/o... https://github.com/arthurchoung/HOTDOG/blob/master/objects/o...
I love how all the games just stuff the graphics and level layouts into strings. Very WYSIWYG
And you're missing some compassion.
In what way? I recognize that the remarks Terry A. Davis made were not his fault, it's the mental illness. Doesn't change the fact that he had an unfortunate fixation on race. I wish his terrible fate could have been avoided, but having been very close for many years to a schizophrenic person, I can tell you that they will only get treatment if they want to. You can't force them. You can try to be there and help them in small ways, but sometimes it's just impossible to make them change course.
When I think of TempleOS I think that it was both strange and funny. It was the artistic creation of a mentally ill programmer. I still think that, if it made me and other people laugh at times, that's a small positive thing. I wasn't laughing at the creator, but the small religious minigames in TempleOS cracked me up at times.
Linus Tech Tips reviews TempleOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtlyeDAJR7A
When I think of TempleOS I think that it was both strange and funny. It was the artistic creation of a mentally ill programmer. I still think that, if it made me and other people laugh at times, that's a small positive thing. I wasn't laughing at the creator, but the small religious minigames in TempleOS cracked me up at times.
Linus Tech Tips reviews TempleOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtlyeDAJR7A
> Doesn't change the fact that he had an unfortunate fixation on race.
If so, he shares that trait with plenty of people in the US, who increasingly view "racial blindness" as untenable. Of course it's not their fault either: "noticing" race is simply a very successful, self-replicating memetic parasite which can leverage the likes of Twitter or 4chan equally as platforms for its spread.
If so, he shares that trait with plenty of people in the US, who increasingly view "racial blindness" as untenable. Of course it's not their fault either: "noticing" race is simply a very successful, self-replicating memetic parasite which can leverage the likes of Twitter or 4chan equally as platforms for its spread.
Its an absolutely bonkers aspect of US society.
Its not that one needs to be blind to "race", and who could be blind to differences in skin colour? Its that Americans seem to be taught that it is so very important, and that instead of applying situational relevancy, they default to cultural relevancy.
So race and skin colour gets mentioned all the time, even by people who aren't bigoted. This can be seen in their news broadcasts, where they will find or make premise for mentioning brown people's ancestry, even when it isn't truly relevant.
Kid rescues puppy from sewer drain? Gotta mention that he's African American. Never mind that there he is on camera, and anyone can see, and shouldn't care. And thus morality is tied to visual appearance.
In that sense, US society is like the TempleOS guy, who, possibly not even due to his mental illness, needed to squeeze references to his faith into every digital corner.
Its not that one needs to be blind to "race", and who could be blind to differences in skin colour? Its that Americans seem to be taught that it is so very important, and that instead of applying situational relevancy, they default to cultural relevancy.
So race and skin colour gets mentioned all the time, even by people who aren't bigoted. This can be seen in their news broadcasts, where they will find or make premise for mentioning brown people's ancestry, even when it isn't truly relevant.
Kid rescues puppy from sewer drain? Gotta mention that he's African American. Never mind that there he is on camera, and anyone can see, and shouldn't care. And thus morality is tied to visual appearance.
In that sense, US society is like the TempleOS guy, who, possibly not even due to his mental illness, needed to squeeze references to his faith into every digital corner.
Not only that, Americans view everyone else and their cultural problems as being similar to theirs. Eg: Journalists who equate India's caste system and racism and writing opinion pieces. (both are terrible, but american journalists understand shit about caste).
Yes, another example is the minor kerfuffle the Game "kingdom come deliverance" had about it not having any darker skin toned NPCs in it. It is made by a Czech developer and set in a semi-historical 12th century setting.
From an American perspective that looked wrong enough to be called racist.
[deleted]
yikes. Racial blindness is still a form of blindness. If everyone spent more time working on their own shit everyone would be better off. Instead, one side is scared of and angry at the other side, easily leading to stubborn refusal to grow or down a slippery slope towards hatred or indifference.
> Racial blindness is still a form of blindness
I'm Australian, born in the 1980s, spent my whole life here. I can tell you growing up we rarely (if ever) thought about "who is what race". In part it is a cultural thing – in my lifetime, official Australian society (government/media/etc) has discouraged talk of "races", encouraging people to instead identify via finer-grained nationality/ethnicity/culture labels – i.e. "Chinese" or "Indian" or "Vietnamese" not "Asian", "Irish" or "Italian" or "Polish" not "white", etc. The whole "who is what race" thing sounds very American to my ears. I believe that way of thinking is becoming more common here, as Australia becomes more Americanised through social media and other sources, but I'm not inclined to see that as a positive development.
That's not to say there is no problem with racism in contemporary Australia. I remember at my high school, there was a significant minority of students of Lebanese ancestry (it was a Catholic high school, so our ethnically Lebanese students were predominantly Maronite Catholics) – and I definitely remember hearing some mildly prejudiced things said about them, even to their faces. But, in all that, I doubt anybody was ever asking themselves "are Lebanese people white?"
One of my school friends, who is of partial Italian descent (albeit via Argentina/Uruguay rather than directly), had to put up with dumb jokes at school about his dad being in the Mafia. He told me how when his father first moved to Australia in the 1970s, his coworkers would exploit his poor knowledge of English to trick him into saying offensive things to the boss. What "race" are my friend and his dad? The question seems pointless, irrelevant. At least here in Australia, "racism" is generally defined as prejudice on the basis of "race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin" – so it isn't necessary to categorise a person as belonging to any particular "race" to acknowledge them as a victim of racism.
How then does one describe this difference between the US and Australia – between a society which strongly (and maybe even increasingly strongly) focuses on coarse-grained racial categories, and a society which (in recent decades) has had a strong tendency towards avoiding them? Maybe "racial blindness" isn't quite the right term for it, but it seems at least somewhat adjacent.
I'm Australian, born in the 1980s, spent my whole life here. I can tell you growing up we rarely (if ever) thought about "who is what race". In part it is a cultural thing – in my lifetime, official Australian society (government/media/etc) has discouraged talk of "races", encouraging people to instead identify via finer-grained nationality/ethnicity/culture labels – i.e. "Chinese" or "Indian" or "Vietnamese" not "Asian", "Irish" or "Italian" or "Polish" not "white", etc. The whole "who is what race" thing sounds very American to my ears. I believe that way of thinking is becoming more common here, as Australia becomes more Americanised through social media and other sources, but I'm not inclined to see that as a positive development.
That's not to say there is no problem with racism in contemporary Australia. I remember at my high school, there was a significant minority of students of Lebanese ancestry (it was a Catholic high school, so our ethnically Lebanese students were predominantly Maronite Catholics) – and I definitely remember hearing some mildly prejudiced things said about them, even to their faces. But, in all that, I doubt anybody was ever asking themselves "are Lebanese people white?"
One of my school friends, who is of partial Italian descent (albeit via Argentina/Uruguay rather than directly), had to put up with dumb jokes at school about his dad being in the Mafia. He told me how when his father first moved to Australia in the 1970s, his coworkers would exploit his poor knowledge of English to trick him into saying offensive things to the boss. What "race" are my friend and his dad? The question seems pointless, irrelevant. At least here in Australia, "racism" is generally defined as prejudice on the basis of "race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin" – so it isn't necessary to categorise a person as belonging to any particular "race" to acknowledge them as a victim of racism.
How then does one describe this difference between the US and Australia – between a society which strongly (and maybe even increasingly strongly) focuses on coarse-grained racial categories, and a society which (in recent decades) has had a strong tendency towards avoiding them? Maybe "racial blindness" isn't quite the right term for it, but it seems at least somewhat adjacent.
I agree with you that the US has a weird fixation on race. As a German I always cringe when I hear the term, because nobody (even strongly bigotet people) would use the term for humans since the 40s.
And there is really no biological justification. Skin color does not correlate with genetic differences, in other words two people with different skin colors can be much more similar to two other people with the same.
That doesn't mean that there isn't racism and I'm not sure if a country like Australia has "racial blindness" (whatever that means). Australia has huge issues with xenophobia and attitudes which would be called racist in the US are widespread, they just don't focus on race but on ethnicity instead (which IMO is a much better term)
And there is really no biological justification. Skin color does not correlate with genetic differences, in other words two people with different skin colors can be much more similar to two other people with the same.
That doesn't mean that there isn't racism and I'm not sure if a country like Australia has "racial blindness" (whatever that means). Australia has huge issues with xenophobia and attitudes which would be called racist in the US are widespread, they just don't focus on race but on ethnicity instead (which IMO is a much better term)
> That doesn't mean that there isn't racism and I'm not sure if a country like Australia has "racial blindness" (whatever that means). Australia has huge issues with xenophobia and attitudes which would be called racist in the US are widespread, they just don't focus on race but on ethnicity instead (which IMO is a much better term)
I completely agree Australia has serious issues with xenophobia, and ethnicity-based racism – indeed, my comment to which you are replying mentioned some examples I've witnessed first-hand: anti-Italian prejudice and anti-Lebanese prejudice. But those don't fit well into an American understanding of "racism" which focuses on race rather than ethnicity.
I suppose my point about "blindness" is this – if by it someone means "I don't see prejudice/discrimination/xenophobia/etc", then I agree that is problematic. On the other hand, if someone says "I'm not sure what races are, how many there are, or who is what race; cases of prejudice/discrimination/xenophobia I have personally observed can be understood in terms of language/culture/ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc not race per se" – is one "seeing race"? But even if one is not "seeing race", one is still seeing prejudice.
I completely agree Australia has serious issues with xenophobia, and ethnicity-based racism – indeed, my comment to which you are replying mentioned some examples I've witnessed first-hand: anti-Italian prejudice and anti-Lebanese prejudice. But those don't fit well into an American understanding of "racism" which focuses on race rather than ethnicity.
I suppose my point about "blindness" is this – if by it someone means "I don't see prejudice/discrimination/xenophobia/etc", then I agree that is problematic. On the other hand, if someone says "I'm not sure what races are, how many there are, or who is what race; cases of prejudice/discrimination/xenophobia I have personally observed can be understood in terms of language/culture/ethnicity/religion/nationality/etc not race per se" – is one "seeing race"? But even if one is not "seeing race", one is still seeing prejudice.
Very well put, I completely agree with you.
It goes back to the civil war and every step of the way when black people here were actively denied their rights that the civil war was supposed to have guaranteed them. I have lived in multiple countries across different continents. Even if race was not as big of a hot topic issue, eceryone could tell if a person of a different race is standing in front of them. So, to simply say racial blindness is the way to go is ridiculous. The fact that they were usually a very small minority and had no historically brutal ties to the founding of that country is probably the reason why it wasn't considered such a big issue.
Nevertheless, ultimately, one can't go through life blaming everything on racism. However, fighting for centuries to be free, to gain rights, only to be systemically rebuffed, ignored and even oppressed and brutalized along the way in different forms, that has to be recognized for what it is. Using a single event to disprove racism and even arguing that some historical things never happened at the very least is willful ignorance. Then, by the same token, reversing certain laws that were meant to safeguard and protect those rights that they finally did end up receiving. Ignoring what that time and history would do to any community to reinforce ones own stereotypical views, as political leaders use it as a way to stir up support from other disenfranchised communities.
In the end, the problems only get worse as the next generation kicks the can down the road. The issue could have been, perhaps, resolved a long time ago. At this point, things look even more complicated and the longer it goes on the more difficult it is to overcome or resolve.
Nevertheless, ultimately, one can't go through life blaming everything on racism. However, fighting for centuries to be free, to gain rights, only to be systemically rebuffed, ignored and even oppressed and brutalized along the way in different forms, that has to be recognized for what it is. Using a single event to disprove racism and even arguing that some historical things never happened at the very least is willful ignorance. Then, by the same token, reversing certain laws that were meant to safeguard and protect those rights that they finally did end up receiving. Ignoring what that time and history would do to any community to reinforce ones own stereotypical views, as political leaders use it as a way to stir up support from other disenfranchised communities.
In the end, the problems only get worse as the next generation kicks the can down the road. The issue could have been, perhaps, resolved a long time ago. At this point, things look even more complicated and the longer it goes on the more difficult it is to overcome or resolve.
> I have lived in multiple countries across different continents. Even if race was not as big of a hot topic issue, eceryone could tell if a person of a different race is standing in front of them.
Really? I'm of predominantly Irish-British descent – are Spaniards, Italians, Greeks a "different race" from me? How about Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Persians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indians? You can travel from one end of Eurasia to the other, and people in Western Europe look rather different from people in South or East or Southeast Asia (who in turn look rather different from each other), and yet they are just different extreme points of a smooth continuum – where on that continuum do you draw the line and say that people on this side are one race and people on the other are another? I can't do it, and I don't believe you can actually do it either.
Really? I'm of predominantly Irish-British descent – are Spaniards, Italians, Greeks a "different race" from me? How about Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Iraqis, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Persians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indians? You can travel from one end of Eurasia to the other, and people in Western Europe look rather different from people in South or East or Southeast Asia (who in turn look rather different from each other), and yet they are just different extreme points of a smooth continuum – where on that continuum do you draw the line and say that people on this side are one race and people on the other are another? I can't do it, and I don't believe you can actually do it either.
The United States government pigeon holes all human beings into five racial categories[0]. All of Eurasia is White, including the Middle East and India. I imagine this is policy driven but haven’t speculated much. It’s an oddity that seems to percolate culturally as well.
[0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/note/US/RHI625219
Not defending OP here, just providing some possible context for their unfortunate choice of words.
[0]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/note/US/RHI625219
Not defending OP here, just providing some possible context for their unfortunate choice of words.
For what it's worth, my aim was to disavow anyone from claiming that they are "color-blind" even when they have good intentions. I should demand of myself to grant the same level of respect and courtesy to anyone else regardless of their race.
The reasoning there is due to the fact that, in the US at least, race is often tied to identity, in terms of background, culture, and even experience in daily life.
Ultimately, as I eluded to, we should all try to be better people first and foremost. I'm not saying that calling out and standing up to injustice is not important. But we each have the potential to control our own actions much more so than to control anyone else's.
The reasoning there is due to the fact that, in the US at least, race is often tied to identity, in terms of background, culture, and even experience in daily life.
Ultimately, as I eluded to, we should all try to be better people first and foremost. I'm not saying that calling out and standing up to injustice is not important. But we each have the potential to control our own actions much more so than to control anyone else's.
For what it's worth, my aim was to disavow anyone from claiming that they are "color-blind" even when they have good intentions. I should demand of myself to grant the same level of respect and courtesy to anyone else regardless of their race.
Then what is your definition of color-blindness? What you demand of yourself in that second sentence is pretty much the definition of color-blindness that I was taught, so to me your first and second sentence are in direct opposition: you disavow it in your first sentence, then claim to strive for it in your second.
Then what is your definition of color-blindness? What you demand of yourself in that second sentence is pretty much the definition of color-blindness that I was taught, so to me your first and second sentence are in direct opposition: you disavow it in your first sentence, then claim to strive for it in your second.
Oh yes, I'm familiar with the US Census Bureau's definition of "races". They themselves admit that it is a US-specific cultural construct: "The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups." [0]
And yet many Americans seem to treat it, not as a cultural construct specific to their own country, but rather as some sort of objective universal fact. The idea of "race" in itself is not specific to the US, of course – but the US seems to be one of the few countries in which it has been elevated into a government-mandated formal categorisation scheme, as opposed to a vague and ambiguous informal concept.
> All of Eurasia is White, including the Middle East and India
Not India. People from "the Indian subcontinent" are classified as "Asian" not "White", with India and Pakistan explicitly called out as "Asian". I believe, that as far as the US government is concerned, the boundary between "White" and "Asian" runs along the Iran-Pakistan and Afghanistan-Pakistan border. So, a Pashtun is "White" if they come from Afghanistan, but "Asian" if they come from Pakistan? It seems utterly ludicrous – and yet, so many Americans seem unable to see just how ludicrous it is.
> I imagine this is policy driven but haven’t speculated much. It’s an oddity that seems to percolate culturally as well.
I don't think it can be explained simply as "policy-driven" or "culture-driven", I think there is a circular feedback loop "culture -> politics -> policy -> culture".
[0] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
And yet many Americans seem to treat it, not as a cultural construct specific to their own country, but rather as some sort of objective universal fact. The idea of "race" in itself is not specific to the US, of course – but the US seems to be one of the few countries in which it has been elevated into a government-mandated formal categorisation scheme, as opposed to a vague and ambiguous informal concept.
> All of Eurasia is White, including the Middle East and India
Not India. People from "the Indian subcontinent" are classified as "Asian" not "White", with India and Pakistan explicitly called out as "Asian". I believe, that as far as the US government is concerned, the boundary between "White" and "Asian" runs along the Iran-Pakistan and Afghanistan-Pakistan border. So, a Pashtun is "White" if they come from Afghanistan, but "Asian" if they come from Pakistan? It seems utterly ludicrous – and yet, so many Americans seem unable to see just how ludicrous it is.
> I imagine this is policy driven but haven’t speculated much. It’s an oddity that seems to percolate culturally as well.
I don't think it can be explained simply as "policy-driven" or "culture-driven", I think there is a circular feedback loop "culture -> politics -> policy -> culture".
[0] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
So, what's the argument here exactly? Many of those countries were created by colonial powers without regard for culture or any other variation among the people. Perhaps I wasn't lucky enough to benefit from the enlightenment that the British Empire has bestowed upon you.
On the other hand, is your idea of "different" just another way to dismiss or categorize people? I don't know. What I do know is that, while certain variations in physical characteristics exist (and the predominance of those may vary geographically), I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa. China and Europe and India.
I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
On the other hand, is your idea of "different" just another way to dismiss or categorize people? I don't know. What I do know is that, while certain variations in physical characteristics exist (and the predominance of those may vary geographically), I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa. China and Europe and India.
I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
What is race? The problem with the term race is that implies genetic differences where there are none.
Regarding being able to tell apart races by looking at them, I highly doubt you could I mean are a black US American and a Nigerian the same race? How about a Namibian? In the US the Nigerian would be classified as African American which says a lot about the ridiculousness.
Regarding being able to tell apart races by looking at them, I highly doubt you could I mean are a black US American and a Nigerian the same race? How about a Namibian? In the US the Nigerian would be classified as African American which says a lot about the ridiculousness.
Classified as black/African-American. Classification is weird, true enough.
> So, what's the argument here exactly?
Many Americans take US-specific cultural concepts about topics such as race, and try to apply them globally, without realising that those concepts fall apart when you try to apply them outside of the specific historical/cultural context in which they evolved. And even in their country of origin, their existence is sustained (in part) by ignoring the existence of people who don't fit into them – so long as those people remain a small enough minority, they can be ignored. If they start to get too numerous and loud, political pressure will result in changes to the scheme to try to accomodate them, through the addition of yet further categories – but failing to address the fundamental problem that trying to reduce the immense biological and cultural diversity of humanity to a small number of coarse categories is a fool's errand.
> I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa.
If you look at the transition zone between the two – places like southern Egypt and northern Sudan – you will find many people whose physical appearance is somewhere in-between the two. You seem to be ignoring the existence of those people.
> China and Europe and India.
Europeans and northern Indians are historically related peoples – they both speak Indo-European languages, Hindi and English are distant relatives of each other. They are both cultural/linguistic descendants of the ancient Aryans, and also have some common biological/genetic ancestry. So what makes them "different races"? Some Pakistanis look rather European – seen most strongly in groups such as the Kalash and Nurstanis – are they a "different race" from Europeans? Why?
The majority of Indians are by ancestry a mixture of Aryan and Dravidian, with greater Aryan ancestry in the north and greater Dravidian ancestry in the south. Does that mean Indians are actually two different races? But the reality is the majority of Indians have ancestry from both–few Indians are purely descended from one or the other–so the idea of classifying Indian people into separate Aryan and Dravidian "races" doesn't work. And don't forget North East India – the majority of people from there have more linguistically and genetically in common with the peoples of China and Tibet and Southeast Asia than with people in the rest of India. What race are they?
> I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
I think your ideas on this topic are naïve.
Many Americans take US-specific cultural concepts about topics such as race, and try to apply them globally, without realising that those concepts fall apart when you try to apply them outside of the specific historical/cultural context in which they evolved. And even in their country of origin, their existence is sustained (in part) by ignoring the existence of people who don't fit into them – so long as those people remain a small enough minority, they can be ignored. If they start to get too numerous and loud, political pressure will result in changes to the scheme to try to accomodate them, through the addition of yet further categories – but failing to address the fundamental problem that trying to reduce the immense biological and cultural diversity of humanity to a small number of coarse categories is a fool's errand.
> I am able to tell the difference between a person from Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and North Africa.
If you look at the transition zone between the two – places like southern Egypt and northern Sudan – you will find many people whose physical appearance is somewhere in-between the two. You seem to be ignoring the existence of those people.
> China and Europe and India.
Europeans and northern Indians are historically related peoples – they both speak Indo-European languages, Hindi and English are distant relatives of each other. They are both cultural/linguistic descendants of the ancient Aryans, and also have some common biological/genetic ancestry. So what makes them "different races"? Some Pakistanis look rather European – seen most strongly in groups such as the Kalash and Nurstanis – are they a "different race" from Europeans? Why?
The majority of Indians are by ancestry a mixture of Aryan and Dravidian, with greater Aryan ancestry in the north and greater Dravidian ancestry in the south. Does that mean Indians are actually two different races? But the reality is the majority of Indians have ancestry from both–few Indians are purely descended from one or the other–so the idea of classifying Indian people into separate Aryan and Dravidian "races" doesn't work. And don't forget North East India – the majority of people from there have more linguistically and genetically in common with the peoples of China and Tibet and Southeast Asia than with people in the rest of India. What race are they?
> I do get the underlying idea, though. I just think it's naive.
I think your ideas on this topic are naïve.
We are having at least 2 different discussions here. From a biological perspective, again, we are human beings. I can easily agree with you here, and with any of your arguments in fact. But in real life, skin pigmentation and other differences that have been attributed to the term "race" have an impact on a person's perception, whether or not they admit/realize it.
My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive. Whereas your views may be right, but I still think they are naive.
My argument may be misguided or even wrong in any sense of that term, but I do not think it is naive. Whereas your views may be right, but I still think they are naive.
> black people here were actively denied their rights that the civil war was supposed to have guaranteed them.
The Civil War was not supposed to have guaranteed anyone any rights.
Some changes to the Constitution rammed through after the Civil War were, but it's important to separate those from the war, which was about the objective that, even before the rebellion, the notionally-abolitionist Republicans expressly put ahead of treating blacks as humans, the preservation of the unity of the Republic.
The Civil War was not supposed to have guaranteed anyone any rights.
Some changes to the Constitution rammed through after the Civil War were, but it's important to separate those from the war, which was about the objective that, even before the rebellion, the notionally-abolitionist Republicans expressly put ahead of treating blacks as humans, the preservation of the unity of the Republic.
Granted.
Your comment came off as lacking compassion; perhaps I was mistaken in that impression.
> In what way? I recognize that the remarks Terry A. Davis made were not his fault, it's the mental illness.
I don't think mental illness really changes whether or not you have a good heart. I've met many people dealing with mental illness who are gracious and compassionate to all people no matter their race. Though it's possible his views might have been informed by his upbringing or his environment. Perhaps mental illness impairs self-reform or the capability for better judgement, but it can't be said that the mental illness, in and of itself, was the fault of mental illness.
I don't think mental illness really changes whether or not you have a good heart. I've met many people dealing with mental illness who are gracious and compassionate to all people no matter their race. Though it's possible his views might have been informed by his upbringing or his environment. Perhaps mental illness impairs self-reform or the capability for better judgement, but it can't be said that the mental illness, in and of itself, was the fault of mental illness.
My own experience has been that, at least in the case of severe mental illness, even well-meaning people can hurt others a lot, without meaning to.
> but it can't be said that the mental illness, in and of itself, was the fault of mental illness.
Late edit: racism can't be said to be the fault of mental illness
Late edit: racism can't be said to be the fault of mental illness
Everything I've seen about Terry Davis suggests that he was consistently gracious and compassionate to pretty much anyone, other than perhaps those pesky glow-in-the-dark folks...
> mental illness
> not just 4chan massively fucking with him
> not just 4chan massively fucking with him
In what way?
If it doesn't have System D I may have to check it out.
Based on the design goals, I would guess that they intentionally want a PID 1 that doesn't properly handle and pass signals to child processes :-D
I can't tell if that means probably systemd or not.
write the init as a perl script; you know you want to.
If people can make emacs pid 1 and run the system in lisp, surely perl can do the job! Or maybe that doesn't follow; emacs is already its own OS...
And hey, Slack 15 is out! If they do a new release they won't need to release again for another 6 years!