Cyber Yuki

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.

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

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.

CW: Trump, uspol

Trump separating families at the border. Children being put in cages. Americans waving the fucking nazi flag.

It’s one thing to read about genocide. Another thing is to see it with your own eyes, even on TV.

And if any of you fuckers tries to tell me that both “sides are the same” or that “democrats did the same” or something in that vein, they are obviously doing this in bad faith and they can go fuck themselves. 🖕🤬