Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 04:59:49PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote: [...] > I have never once interpreted them as promoting Nazi ideology. Rather, I > have always interpreted them as being a useful reminder of the sorts of > things that Nazis said and stood for [...] Context. I wouldn't ever have, myself. But we share one (very narrow) context. As an anecdote: I was for two weeks in Cairo (taking a course in Arabic language). The whole setup was pretty immersive, living in a flat in some pretty normal part of the city. Just normal shopping, public transport, the whole thing. When people heard we were learning their language, they even got more talkative (although talks mostly ended up in English: their English was usually much more usable than our Arabic, but hey). More than once we heard from them "Hitler, good man". We cringed (without showing too much of it) and tried to explain carefully that, back in Germany, most of us didn't like this guy very much. Cheers -- t signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 02:25:10PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > At 2022-11-21T07:58:29-0700, Sam Hartman wrote: [] > Thanks, Sam. (And Tomas, to whom I have an unfinished reply lingering > in my postponed folder.) Don't bother much. Other than Sam's, my message is not that deep that it deserves reply :-) [lots and lots snipped, although believe me, I've read every word: I do enjoy your eloquence and erudition] > But, since you asked, that's my sketch for a future fortunes-nsfw or > whatever. (Let's please be honest enough to admit that the original > purpose of the package's segregation was attempted avoidance of > interactions with U.S. corporate HR departments.) I'd be careful in that: Debian's user (and contributor) base has expanded a lot since Day Zero (or well, I've been looking at it since Day One or so). Nowadays there are probably believing Muslims or national Chinese around, who may be hurt by things "we", steeped in white male western culture we may not even see. So the ability to listen, to overcome the "nah, that ain't so bad" first reaction becomes ever more important. I think the kind of curation envisioned here can only be a very careful collective work. I haven't even myself an idea how to try to tackle that. Perhaps even this "one category" of a fortunes-off is a reflection of our very simplistic asymmetrical-dualistic (one Heaven and one Hell) view of things, I don't know. You say "contextualize", but how do you contextualize Anita Bryant to some person socialised at the other end of the world? As a bog standard European, I, at least, have a slim chance to understand what you are talking about, but... > > But please don't fan the flames. > > Fear not; I feel my resolve flagging apace. I should see a doctor about > my inability to sustain a flame war. There may be a drug for me. Don't do drugs. At least, not against this :-) Thanks for the links. I just followed one (working class history). Bandwidth, alas. Cheers -- t signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 07:58:38PM -0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > [3] Still called "FTP masters"[4]. Even long after FTP is deprecated > and Git repositories the world over have gotten their main branches > renamed to avoid terminology redolent of unjust power inequities, > we'll cling to our antiquated terms to the bitter end, won't we? > While we're on the subject, I'd vote for "SCP Czars" (yes I am aware that "Tsar" is the preferred/more common spelling in English, but I think that the natural prononciation of "Czar" has better concord with "SCP") or perhaps "Rsync Emirs". If we want to be forward looking and anticipate a future where we are uploading with a simple Git tag, then we could also throw "Git Shahs" into the mix. Actually, forget it, I'm all in on "Git Shahs". I don't think we'd be able to conjure up a better double entendre. Of course, if anyone has other suggestions, let's hear them. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On 2022-11-19 at 11:31, Dominik George wrote: >> The specific query was about Nazi quotes from someone in Europe - I >> don't believe our database currently contains these, as they were >> purged from the BSD package from which ours is derived but I would >> be prepared to be very wrong here. >> >> The point was made that if the database did contain Nazi quotes / a >> swastika it might make it illegal to host the content on mirrors in >> at least Germany or Austria. > > ❯ apt source fortunes-off [snip] > ❯ grep -ri "Mein Kampf" fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles | wc -l > 52 > > > The question is not whether hosting is illegal (I don't think it is). > > The question is whether we promote Nazi ideology or not. And the > answer is clearly "No", and that is a fact, not sumething that is up > for discussion. I would like to take what I think is a slightly different disagreeing angle from those who have objected to this thus far. I run with 'fortune -a` in my ~/.bashrc, so I see an excerpt from the fortunes database - the full scope of that database, including fortunes-off - with every terminal I open. As such, I have sometimes seen these quotes from Hitler in those locations. I have never once interpreted them as promoting Nazi ideology. Rather, I have always interpreted them as being a useful reminder of the sorts of things that Nazis said and stood for - and it's important to remember those things, both in terms of remembering the things that Nazis *did*, and so that we have the additional warning if we ever find ourselves at risk of stepping towards the same paths. I have the vague impression that I may have also occasionally seen a quote in this way which I would have found utterly unobjectionable if it hadn't been marked as being from Hitler. Those too have value - both in that they can serve as a warning of the directions which seemingly unobjectionable sentiments can lead towards, and in that they can (more rarely) help remind us that a good sentiment or insight is not rendered less good just because a horrible person also felt the same way. I am not always - nor, indeed, often - pleased to see one of these quotes come up in a new terminal, but they do serve as helpful / useful reminders, and I would not be pleased to see them vanish entirely. Indeed, I would probably wind up going out of my way to install the most recent version of that leaf package from snapshot.d.o, until such time as a better way of retaining access to these uncomfortable but important reminders could be arranged. I'll also note that most (all but three) of the named "Mein Kampf" excerpts are found in the 'atheism' file; their purpose there seems to be to argue against (Christian) religion by pointing out the degree to which Hitler claimed to adhere to it, not to glorify Nazism or Hitler's own views in any direct way. As such, the claim that shipping these quotes constitutes "promoting Nazi ideology" seems rather wide of the mark. There are also rather a few other quotes from Nazis, including Hitler, in that file which do not come from "Mein Kampf"; they seem to all be in that same vein, of advocating for atheism by pointing out its opponents. But if you're wanting to cite the presence of such quotes as reason to drop this package, or these quotes from this package, then you're undercounting to some noticeable degree. There are also quite a few non-Mein-Kampf quotes from Hitler in the 'politics' file, which from a skim seem to be mostly or entirely in the vein of "warning of how dangerous a particular line of thought can be, by reminding that Hitler promulgated it". That latter file also includes a quote which *is* from Mein Kampf, and strikes me as relevant to the modern political moment, in that it's been referenced continually throughout the US political-news media for the past couple of years: >>> The broad mass of a nation... will more easily fall victim to a >>> big lie than to a small one. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
G. Branden Robinson left as an exercise for the reader: > I only have so many fights in me. Cajoling man page authors to use a > new "MR" macro to put hyperlinked cross-references in their documents, I > expect to take the preponderance of my feeble persuasive energies for > some time.[3] hot damn, there's a MR troff macro for hyperlinked cross-references? sweet! > [3] > https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/NEWS?id=eac39afe3e7a86f3adbfb02ff5e33bfd69d4c224#n224 indeed there is! -- nick black -=- https://www.nick-black.com to make an apple pie from scratch, you need first invent a universe. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
At 2022-11-21T07:58:29-0700, Sam Hartman wrote: > > "G" == G Branden Robinson writes: > > G> By your metric, so is the Hebrew Bible. For all the slaughter, > G> xenophobia, and ethno-religious supremacism in it, there's some > G> good stuff as well. I find the exasperated jeremiads of some of > G> the later prophets relatable and applicable to modern life, > G> though I acknowledge that my interpretive frame would alarm many > G> practitioners of faiths that hold that work as sacred. > > I appreciated your first messages in this thread. Thanks, Sam. (And Tomas, to whom I have an unfinished reply lingering in my postponed folder.) It's a personal victory condition when anyone derives value from my epistles. Especially meaningful to me is when someone is entertained or follows a link that they enjoy more than my own superficial scratchings. That's partly why I include them. > I think perhaps you have continued in the same style without fully > considering the implications of doing so. Fair. Old dog performs old tricks. > Trying to create a reduction like you did above particularly on a > topic like religion or like the worth of someone else's sacred text is > going to (as another person pointed out) start a culture war. Maybe; I would point out that as far as I know no one has (recently) proposed dropping the "bible-kjv" package and I would oppose such removal if they did, despite my own ill-treatment at the hands of its exponents. Too bad the copyright holders in the NRSV[1] don't place their modern translation under a Free license; I think doing so would, in the long run, undercut the King-James-only movement, which is dominated by reactionaries dedicated to the production and retransmission of material of the sort fortunes-off is being removed to discard. But I digress. The point is that these scriptures retain presumptive value in our distribution, whereas everything that _is_ of worth in fortunes-off (R. Hofstadter, H. S. Thompson, A. Bierce, E. St. Vincent Millay, A. Einstein [yes], W. LeoGrande, S. J. Gould, G. Carlin, ...) was already deprecated by dint of the term "offensive", and I will point out yet again how dubious the curation process was in the first place, but now it's just plain gone. You may perhaps understand how one could perceive this as maintaining Judeo-Christianity's regnant status in the Debian distribution. I propose a research project for a courageous volunteer. Count up how many women, non-whites, and Jewish people quoted in fortunes-off whom Mr. Dowland muffled in the name of anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-Nazism.[2] Of those, how many expressed _any_ of the attitudes he objected to? > Your point will be lost in the strength of others reactions. I have always found this sort of thing difficult to manage. I might buy electrons by the barrel but when discourse degrades to sloganeering I feel I lack the tools to cope, and tend to lose interest. (As impolitic as it is to say, that includes some expressions of support. I have been informed by close friends that I am difficult to please in some ways.) > I do think there are constructive things you could do: > > * Maintain the package with filtering if you believe that's best. > > * Maintain the package without filtering if you believe that's best; > take the position of being a maintainer and force those who disagree > with you to fight the uphill battle of overriding a maintainer. > > * State your support to be counted in any determination of consensus > and leave it at that. I only have so many fights in me. Cajoling man page authors to use a new "MR" macro to put hyperlinked cross-references in their documents, I expect to take the preponderance of my feeble persuasive energies for some time.[3] If I had unlimited resources, I'd adopt "fortunes" and discard some items. I might keep some of the stuff like the ugly quote from Anita Bryant--but with contextualization--because she is nearly forgotten (at least by hetero folks in the U.S.) and yet she was a newsworthy figure who illustrated how high you could rise with smug homophobia in the late 1970s and at the same time how swiftly and effectively a community opposed to bigotry could organize against her even in the Carter presidency. Less than 10 years after Stonewall, Anita got cancelled before it was cool^W^Weven had a name. It was not a downhill glide from there, though...in 1981 the Reagan Administration swept in, packed from top to bottom with homophobes who welcomed the advent of AIDS with undisguised glee, greeting it as a scourge that would cleanse the land of gay folks who invited God's revenge for the incorrectness of their desires and private conduct.[4] There's an organization called Working Class History[5] that shares a daily historical calendar on some social media sites. You don't have to be a Marxist to infer that the history of the working class is a bloody one, with much savage victimization of
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
Hi Jonathan, Thank you for stepping forward to present yourself for potential criticism in a discussion forum. Unfortunately that is the only laudable aspect I can locate in your message. At 2022-11-21T15:39:24+, Jonathan Dowland wrote: > On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > > As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. > > Don't let cancel culture win. > > Indeed; my action is not irreversible. It might in fact be; as I observed earlier, the archive administrators have some power in this area as well. But this does not absolve you of responsibility, to the extent that their (in)action is a foreseeable consequence of your own actions, particularly if they would regard it as tedious if they had to deal with the package henceforth, and especially if they can expect accusations of pro-racist, pro-sexist, and pro-Nazi attitudes from people just like you if they defer to the wishes of the uploader when a package is otherwise in technical good order, then you retain considerable accountability. > Anyone who has a problem with what I did and believes I should be > censured or subject to some other form of disciplinary process, please > just go ahead and do it, don't beat about the bush. Why ever not? Why should process be immediate? If you have erred, should you not have to worry about the possible consequences to yourself forever more? Would you not find it just for a racist, sexist, or Nazi to endure the remainder of their life with a sword of Damocles dangling over them? Even if not just, wouldn't you find it satisfying? > Anyone who wants to put their name to explicitly racist, sexist and > pro-nazi material in Debian is free to re-upload it. I see: you assert only one possible motivation, an inherently repulsive one, for preserving the status quo ante, and offer yourself up as a martyr to your noble cause of anti-prejudice. What a sacrifice. This is civil disobedience as cosplay. You cannot possibly be this simple-minded. You are putting us on. If inspectors were to enter your home and catalogue all of the physical and digital media in your possession, would they be correct to infer your personal full-throated endorsement of every utterance they can find within? (Don't think you can escape punishment by pointing out contradictions within such a notional corpus of propositions; inquisitors curate, too, often to the disadvantage of the suspect.) If I were your judge--which I am not--I would sentence you to produce the equivalent of a master's thesis, say ~20,000 words in length, on one of the following works of your choice, relating it to the processes and culture of the Debian Project. 1. _The Open Society and Its Enemies_, Karl Popper 2. _The Origins of Totalitarianism_, Hannah Arendt 3. _Doubt: A History_, Jennifer Michael Hecht 4. _SCUM Manifesto_, Valerie Solanas 5. _Mapplethorpe: A Biography_, Patricia Morrisroe I would serve as your academic advisor but would not hold the authority to claim your task fulfilled--instead, that would be done by a jury of your peers; if, say, ten Debian developers[1], sponsored the inclusion of your thesis in the distribution as a package. (Possibly in non-free, as I would not insist that your work product be Free Software...simply that it be freely distributable, as in CC-BY-NC-ND.) Fortunately for both of our time commitments, I am not empowered to impose such a sentence. You might nevertheless wish to consider developing yourself as a person by reading at least one of the above with sufficient attention to discuss it intelligently. If you did, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Pluralism and diversity work not because everything heard or seen in a society meets with approval by everyone all of the time; they work because people practice toleration (contrast: approval) even of speech or appearance that they find repugnant, because they understand that their own words or physical presentation might be odious to some. Regards, Branden [1] Thanks to Steve Langasek for suggesting this "unmotivated" number. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Dowland writes: Jonathan> Anyone who has a problem with what I did and believes I Jonathan> should be censured or subject to some other form of Jonathan> disciplinary process, please just go ahead and do it, Jonathan> don't beat about the bush. Hi. I want to explicitly support your action. You took a situation where you thought there was a problem and fixed it. I think that's great; as I mentioned elsewhere I think these sorts of issues should generally be left up to the maintainer. I would also support someone who as you said wanted to "put their name to it," and maintain the package. Even if someone does do that, I still support your action. "Hey I think this is junk and I don't see anyone maintaining it, so I'm removing it," is something we should encourage, not discourage. As you pointed out, and I agree, if someone does want to put in the effort, that's easy to solve. Thanks for making Debian better, --Sam
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. Don't let cancel culture win. Indeed; my action is not irreversible. Anyone who has a problem with what I did and believes I should be censured or subject to some other form of disciplinary process, please just go ahead and do it, don't beat about the bush. Anyone who wants to put their name to explicitly racist, sexist and pro-nazi material in Debian is free to re-upload it. -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net ⠈⠳⣄ Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
> "G" == G Branden Robinson writes: G> By your metric, so is the Hebrew Bible. For all the slaughter, G> xenophobia, and ethno-religious supremacism in it, there's some G> good stuff as well. I find the exasperated jeremiads of some of G> the later prophets relatable and applicable to modern life, G> though I acknowledge that my interpretive frame would alarm many G> practitioners of faiths that hold that work as sacred. I appreciated your first messages in this thread. I think perhaps you have continued in the same style without fully considering the implications of doing so. Pointing out that something has value once is constructive. Trying to create a reduction like you did above particularly on a topic like religion or like the worth of someone else's sacred text is going to (as another person pointed out) start a culture war. Your point will be lost in the strength of others reactions. I think it has crossed into the realm of not so constructive. I do think there are constructive things you could do: * Maintain the package with filtering if you believe that's best. * Maintain the package without filtering if you believe that's best; take the position of being a maintainer and force those who disagree with you to fight the uphill battle of overriding a maintainer. * State your support to be counted in any determination of consensus and leave it at that. B ut please don't fan the flames. Thanks, --Sam signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Aw: Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
> Gesendet: Montag, 21. November 2022 um 03:10 Uhr > Von: "Roberto A. Foglietta" > An: "Steve McIntyre" > Cc: "Michael Neuffer" , debian-project@lists.debian.org > Betreff: Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm? > > On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 at 00:59, Steve McIntyre wrote: > > > > On Mon, Nov 21, 2022 at 12:07:53AM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > > >Am 20. November 2022 23:04:05 MEZ schrieb Mattia Rizzolo > > >: > > >>On Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:45:15PM +0100, Michael Neuffer wrote: > > >>> On 11/20/22 22:14, Roberto A. Foglietta wrote: > > >>> > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson > > >>> > wrote: > > >>> > > > >>> > > Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some > > >>> > > of > > >>> > > the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there > > >>> > > is > > >>> > > material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its > > >>> > > retention > > >>> > > in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries > > >>> > > that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the > > >>> > > BTS. > > >>> > > > > >>> > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > > >>> > <3 > > >>> > > >>> I can only very much agree to this. > > >> > > >>I also wholly agree, alas it seems we already lost before this even > > >>started :( > > >> > > >>https://tracker.debian.org/news/1385116/accepted-fortune-mod-11991-72-source-amd64-all-into-unstable/ > > >> > > > > > >As it was an NMU, this should be easily rectified. > > >Don't let cancel culture win. > > > > Are you volunteering to pick up the package and review its contents, > > removing the worst stuff that is clearly *not* fit for us to publish? > > In its previous state it included: > > > > * content that is downright illegal in many jurisdictions > > Obviously illegal material should not be distributed. How many of > these quotes do you find that violate the law in some countries? > Please, keep in mind that in Germany the nazi propaganda is out-of-law > but in some other countires out-of-law is the use of the name of the > profet (whoever he is). So, law compliance might not be as easy as you > pretend to be unless OUR ONLY culture is considered (which by the > way?). Not a lawyer, and I did not have a look into that package, but in Germany, in part also because of our censoring-and-we-punish-your-family-if-we-cannot-get-you-for-it past, it is unlikely that you are censored as long as this is satire - and fortune-off from the descriptions given I consider to qualify. Also, just wait until we are sued, then we know. The main concern I understood to be that our community would see some damage by such an exceptional package being redistributed. But I do not see that. > > * content that is impossible to justify against Debian's stated values > > Nice, so we are going to burn "Mein Kampf" in such a way nobody will > be able to read it? That is is bit off. The question would be if Debian would decide to redistribute it. I have my full trust in our FTPadmins that this would not happen, though. That package would be a bit sick, also a fortunes-meinkampf that comes up with random quotes from it. There are many differences between redistributing that with redistributing anything like fortunes-off, the most important one to me is "intent". > Every library should do that, conforming to their > values. Burning books, uhm where we saw these before? So, the great > difference here is to explicitly tell the reader that the content can > be offensive in some culture or under some PoV. But if there was something like fortunes-rickygervais - oder fortunes-jordanpeterson - not? Even though those two are triggering many feelings. > This is exactly what the -o option does > > -o Choose only from potentially offensive aphorisms. > > Please, elaborate your opposition because it is quite generic, > everything above considered. I would leave that fortunes-off package in. And I just hope for some self-censoring that keeps the trolls in us in check so we can delay discussing what we are discussing here. Steffen
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
"Roberto A. Foglietta" wrote on 20/11/2022 at 22:14:35+0100: > On Sun, 20 Nov 2022 at 21:42, G. Branden Robinson > wrote: > >> Thank you for, perhaps inadvertently, compelling me to review some of >> the content of the package. I can now say that I am certain there is >> material of worth in the fortunes-off package and support its retention >> in the Debian distribution. A review process for individual entries >> that are incompatible with the project's values is manifest in the BTS. >> > > rational approach vs cancel culture: 1 vs 0 > <3 Cancel culture would be shaming those having done the content/package, trying to hide it so that no one could see it (it's on GitHub and no one here plans on having it removed from there) and burn on a bench anyone asking for it to be back. The mere thing I did is to state that it's garbage to me and it should be thrown out from the archive because we have better stuff to do with our free time. Your answer: "cancel culture". I guess it's supposed to be a "rational approach"? This is rich. Regards, -- PEB
Re: Fortunes-off - do we need this as a package for Bookworm?
"G. Branden Robinson" wrote on 20/11/2022 at 19:28:59+0100: > [[PGP Signed Part:No public key for D19E9C7D71266DCE created at > 2022-11-20T19:28:52+0100 using RSA]] > At 2022-11-20T11:41:56+0100, Pierre-Elliott Bécue wrote: >> I'm personally fine to defend the "less neutral" position we take by >> dropping fortunes-off which is total garbage. > > "Total garbage." Have you _read_ it? Yep, not fully, but as a rule of thumb, there's probably between 10 and 25% really offensive garbage in it. The remaining is not really worthy IMO. So either someone *wants* to take the time to filter out any problematic quote or I'd rather throw the lot. -- PEB
