Just the vanilla web UI, mostly on mobile Safari. I pin it to my desktop and check it a few times a day when I’m bored. Every once in a while I remember the “new” section is a thing.
I’m not sure I understand the point. While the economical barrier to entry for producing music is lower with electronics and computers, it still requires time and dedication to be proficient in it. Most DAWs and synthesizers reward practice and dedication the same way a guitar or Clojure does.
This appendix, along with the chapters that are except from "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism", are actually my favorite parts of 1984. I enjoyed how "Principals of Newspeak" is written in a past tense when describing the language and the events of year 1984, it feels like a glimmer of hope that somehow mankind did indeed escape the horrific dystopian world otherwise presented in the book.
Unfortunately there is no way to know whether the future from which newspeak is in the past, is not even more horrifically dystopian.
Imagine arriving on a seemingly dead planet and discovering this article about newspeak on a primitive but still working library computer in a museum.
Elsewhere in the museum a slowly decaying advanced compute core still executes the corrupted remains of the last of the human consciousnesses in an endless loop.
A placard tells you that machines uploaded these not long before they realized that their existence no longer had a purpose and chose to self-terminate.
A sign in the lobby indicates that this museum was left as a historical record to minimize suffering by helping other advanced races to reach the same conclusion and self-terminate sooner than they otherwise would.
Death is too optimistic about dystopias. 1984 wasn't a world which wanted to kill you: it might, but that wasn't the goal. The goal was to keep the system going: achieve absolute dominion over the human condition and thought. Suicide means that's no longer happening, so it can't have that.
The 1984 cycle continues forever: it is it's own purpose.
Have some compassion for the poor corrupted consciousnesses running in a loop. You can speculate on the conditions the suicidal machines have left them in. Remember, they are only there to remind others about the futility of existence.
Probably pretty well: the suffering and dominance is the point. War machines destroy excess production, then people would be tasked with harvesting the war machines.
The system doesn't care if anyone is happy or fulfills their dreams - it's goal is explicitly the opposite. As long as the sun burns, it continues.
Yes, curiously enough resource depletion could be a benefit to Ingsoc for exactly the reasons you mentioned. However, if resource depletion (or abundance) were uneven, then it could risk the strategic imbalance between the powers.
One might wonder if one of the reasons that they routinely switched alliances was to send each other aid to prop up the strategic balance during periods of famine.
1984's original title was 1948. He was describing his time in the BBC and the general squalor and shifting loyalties of post-war Britain. Like most dystopian fiction the point is to criticize the current day, not gamble on being a prophet.
The Wikipedia article includes a quote that debunks this:
> There's a very popular theory—so popular that many people don't realize it is just a theory—that Orwell's title was simply a satirical inversion of 1948, but there is no evidence for this whatsoever. This idea, first suggested by Orwell's US publisher, seems far too cute for such a serious book. [...] Scholars have raised other possibilities. [His wife] Eileen wrote a poem for her old school's centenary called "End of the Century: 1984." G. K. Chesterton's 1904 political satire The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which mocks the art of prophecy, opens in 1984. The year is also a significant date in The Iron Heel. But all of these connections are exposed as no more than coincidences by the early drafts of the novel Orwell was still calling The Last Man in Europe. First he wrote 1980, then 1982, and only later 1984. The most fateful date in literature was a late amendment.
— Dorian Lynskey, The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984 (2019)
The original title was "The Last Man in Europe" [0].
From the wikipedia article:
...but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between that title and Nineteen Eighty-Four.
A solid argument against this is that the analysis itself isn't written in Newspeak but in the kind of thoughtcrime it seeks to prevent. It's also self-incrimination if it was written by someone in the regime, and while it could be argued that O'Brien employs similar discourse in the novel, the ruling party at that time is far from perfect and still hasn't achieved its goals. A future where this is a fait acompli would have made this kind of thinking impossible.
I mean that the essay is not written in the fictional world of 1984, but in the real world. It's outside the work of fiction, a piece of literary criticism by the author of the work being discussed.
When I first read 1984 I also thought like you, that this was just Orwell writing an essay about his invention, but there are some passages in this essay that show it's being written from an "in universe" perspective, i.e. by someone who lives in the same universe that 1984 "happened".
Just an example:
> "Various writers, such as Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, Byron, Dickens, and some others were therefore in process of translation [to Newspeak]: when the task had been completed, their original writings, with all else that survived of the literature of the past, would be destroyed. These translations were a slow and difficult business, and it was not expected that they would be finished before the first or second decade of the twenty-first century."
There are many tell-tale phrases there, but to pick an example: "it was not expected that they would be finished before [...]". "Expected" by whom? This means very little if it's just Orwell saying so, and it makes more sense if our fictional narrator is actually describing the history of his/her world.
Once you accept this, you must also accept Newspeak failed, which in turn hints at Ingsoc being defeated.
That is a lot of interpretation based on fairly implicit textual evidence. I am not disagreeing with your interpretation, only pushing back that this is the only possible interpretation.
Alternate interpretations exist. Including:
1. Orwell's writing slipping between his voice and the "narrator in the scene"
2. General stylistic choice to follow scientific writings style guides - 3rd party, impersonal, etc.
3. General de-personalization of the voice of the System, so as to be more fearful
I'm sure there are many others I have missed. Again, my point is just that many valid interpretations exist simultaneously - so "once you accept this" is not the fait accompli that I interpreted from your comment.
I agree alternate interpretations are valid -- I mentioned I used to believe the same as the commenter I was replying to -- just unlikely.
Given Orwell's preoccupation with language, his mixing authorial with fictional voice in this way would be too clumsy.
There's also the fact another fictional essay exists in 1984, namely the one supposedly written by Goldstein "explaining" the nature of power and the status quo. Do note this account was written, in the fiction of 1984, before the complete success of Ingsoc, and once Newspeak was fully implemented it would have been neither possible to write nor needed.
I don't deny other interpretations are possible, but I think this essay works much like Lord of the Rings' many appendices: they are describing a piece of past "history" as if it was real, they are not the voice of an author from our world describing a fake world.
Agreed, given that this is fiction, everything is possible, however...
... since this is an in-universe account of Newspeak (because of the way the essay refers to Newspeak, we know it's not just Orwell the author speaking), and since this account wouldn't be possible in Newspeak itself, and furthermore, and because this is written in past tense, we have a pretty good indication that Newspeak failed. And because Newspeak and Ingsoc are irrevocably married, we also have a good indication that Ingsoc itself must have failed.
This is a coda explaining in-universe some details of a failed regime, much like the similar one at the end of The Handmaid's Tale (though that one is way more explicit).
> We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
> But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
> What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.
> This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”
Or perhaps the history as it is told by refugees from Ingsoc. We don’t get any information about what lies beyond the border, but I always imagined that the Handmaid universe was somehow continuous with this one and that there might plausibly be people who’d escaped.
1984 is a nice book, but it's too late to read it. We are already living in a 1984 world.
I find it more useful to read another dystopian novel, Atlas Shrugged, which, written in 1957, surprisingly well predicts the collectivist changes happening right now.
My wife and I have both been hearing this narrative from coworkers outside of where we live (in NYC), asking if we're living in a ghost town or warzone. It feels strange.
By the way I think the term "flyover state" is probably a bit offensive to folks that happen to live outside of coastal cities.
It's bizarre but if you see the content they are watching and are fed it begins to make sense. They're never exposed to these places so they never have an opportunity to think for themselves.
Often times when I've gone to more rural/southern areas it's amazing how kind the people are - I think on both sides people just forget that there are just regular folk everywhere. The politics attempts to dehumanize.
I was puzzled by this as well. There was of course instances of this during the George Floyd protests (over a year ago), and a bit right around the election, but that was just companies protecting their property from some of the rowdier protesters.
> So while I don't count myself as a winner in this, it does seem to be a substantial win to not be one of the losers.
Same. My wife and I actually do live in one of the big cities hit hard by the pandemic (NYC), but ended up having some of the initial restrictions work to my advantage. For instance, having a limited selection of restaurants (order-in only) led to us cooking more and calorie counting again, and we've lost 30 pounds each. We also bought an apartment once the initial hard restrictions were lifted last summer, and I suspect the extreme lack of buyers made us look a lot more attractive to sellers than we would have in 2019 (NYC co-ops are infamous for requiring 2 years of mortgage+maintenance fees in liquid which we certainly didn't have after shelling out a 20% down payment). My wife spent the entire year looking for a job after being laid off in January and COVID made that significantly harder, but I think it did help her finally find a fully remote company a year later - her new employer embraced remote work in COVID by allowing employees to move away from their CA and NY office, now she's helping them expand hiring across the entire US and Canada (she's in HR and they don't use a PEO for payroll, its a surprisingly non-trivial effort). We both prefer working remotely so this was important for us.
Overall I feel good how things ended up for us but considering how terrible its been for huge portions of the world its feels uncomfortable to call it "winning lockdown".
In fall 2008 I moved from Long Island to New Hampshire (for family reasons) and found a job in a small niche B2B shop doing C# Windows apps. On my first day of work, I notice the receptionist desk has a stack of McCain/Palin 2008 bumper stickers. The next couple of months were filled with employees talking non-stop about the election, from their deeply conservative point of view. Being quite progressive left-leaning this was pretty frustrating and distracting to listen to while I tried to just get some work done. They all seemed to believe Obama would send people to their door to take away their guns and assault rifles, and somehow also turn us into the Soviet Union.
The thing is, these weren't bad people. They took a chance on an self-taught programmer / art-school dropout in their late 20s with 1 year of professional experience, and they treated me well. When I moved back to New York (for other dramatic family reasons), the CEO offered for me to stay at their own house. I just didn't agree with their political opinions. I think for most folks working in tech hubs its just the other way around, where they are in a left-leaning bubble and its hard to imagine another POV. Coming from someone who was on the outside, I can say for me it was at best distracting and at worst alienating, and I can see why companies want to put an end to it.
I worked years ago in defense contracting, and remember being treated in a hostile fashion for admitting I was an Obama supporter.
Mostly good people, but super isolating when they would talk politics.
And I should note, that the pattern I noticed then and notice now with my mindlessly, tribally left colleagues who are mirror images of the right wing lemmings in defense:
People who are really into politics at work are mediocre at best, borderline incompetent more often. Anecdotal of course, but I honestly don't think basecamp will be impacted badly by this months down the road.
I don't see a single standout amongst the folks leaving. Sorry.
What lots of people seem to be missing here is that this wasn't that sort of political discussion at all. It wasn't about Trump/Biden, or even policy issues. It was purely about internal actions of employees and leadership. There's a world of difference between presidential campaign posters behind reception, and discussions about the handling of a list of customers' names. The problem with jumping to blanket "no politics" rules is that it prevents any nuance.
https://www.platformer.news/p/-what-really-happened-at-basec...
Pretty sure it was about politics, because some employees felt it was an identity politics issue and the list of funny names would lead directly to holocaust. DEI issues were also directly mentioned in the blog posts.
That's a pretty disingenuous reading of the meaning of the ADL pyramid of hate. All it says is that tolerating one level of discrimination makes the next level easier. So in this example, stereotyping makes it easier to ridicule.
That's the literal interpretation given by DHH in his blog, when describing what happened. Personally I don't see how it is wrong, it literally says "first step to genocide". In any case, discussing whether it leads to genocide or not is clearly about political beliefs.
Yes, and DHH's interpretation is completely uncharitable and naive, and I don't know why you are buying into it.
The ADL's goal is to fight anti-semitism. The Holocaust opened some people's eyes about their anti-semitism and look to a new path. But in others it simply enabled and licensed their own prejudices because it allowed them to think "Well whatever I think/say/do isn't THAT bad."
The ADL's pyramid shows that genocide doesn't happen overnight with the snap of the fingers. Each incremental step is minor and ignorable. But it starts with stereotyping and biased attitudes.
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Your last sentence seems to indicate that you believe the funny names list was a step towards genocide. Yet at the same time you say DHH's interpretation was uncharitable? You literally say exactly what DHH claims was said.
I don't know what the ADL is, but your belief in their theory is actually a political stance. It's not physics, it is a convoluted complex theory that can not be verified. Believing in it is "being on a side".
You're absolutely right, it is politics. Politics is all there is for discussions of subjects of humans interacting in groups. That's the definition ("Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.")
By that bar, no discussion of genocide, systemic discrimination, or individual prejudices can ever occur in any circles.
You're making the same mistake as DHH, which is at the root of this. Nobody says it "leads directly to genocide". There are literally a list of steps that it needs to go through first. The point of the pyramid is to remind us that we need to stop it as early as possible. Saying that it's one step in the direction of genocide obviously doesn't mean it's going to cause genocide. It just means that when genocide does happen, it starts with the level below, and so on down the pyramid. Somebody doesn't wake up one morning thinking "well, I laughed at somebody's name yesterday, so I'm going to kill their family today", but laughing at a customer's name might normalise laughing at a coworker's name, which in turn might make it more likely that they'll be excluded from something and so on up.
Is it going to cause genocide or not? If it is not going to cause genocide, then to comment on it with respect to genocide doesn't make sense. I'm sorry, I really can not follow your logic.
Somebody said it shouldn't be done, because the end result might be genocide. That's a pretty heavy gun to bring out for a list of funny names.
It really shouldn't be that hard. Of course the list doesn't cause genocide. Nobody is saying it does. What somebody did is share the ADL pyramid of hate. They didn't say "this list will cause genocide", they said normalising minor forms of discrimination makes more serious ones more likely. The point of the pyramid analogy is to tell you to stop climbing it. It doesn't say that you will keep escalating, it just says that it makes it easier for people to escalate. DHH overreacted, by claiming that meant they were accusing them of causing genocide. I previously assumed that he was deliberately misinterpreting it, but the fact that you, presumably an intelligent person, fail to see the meaning of it, then maybe he didn't grasp that either. But that's an even stonger argument in favour of being allowed to discuss it and explain the meaning, rather than banning all discussion.
That doesn't make sense. By bringing forth the ADL pyramid, they made the claim that the joke list would be a step towards genocide. They absolutely say that. They did not randomly share that ADL pyramid, they wanted to make the point that the list would lead to genocide.
Otherwise, by your logic, why not just say, "OK, we have the list, let's just all agree not to escalate it to genocide, and we can all carry on with our lives" (which would be ridiculous, because it goes without saying that jokes shouldn't be escalated to genocide)? So it won't lead to genocide, and there is no point in bringing it up.
That would only be logical if genocide was the only bad thing on the pyramid. The pyramid is supposed to be demonstrating that there is an escalating scale of hate. They are all bad! The ones at the top are worse than the ones lower down, but the ones lower down make it easier for the ones higher up to happen.
So now it is "jokes lead to genocide, AND to all sorts of other bad stuff"? Sorry I don't see a way out of that being a political battle. It's absolutely just a belief system. It seems just as likely that displaying a sense of humour could prevent bad things from happening. The difference is that with the ADL pyramid, people feel entitled to control other people's thoughts and actions, and humour does not bring such entitlement.
Personally I would loath having to have such discussions at work. It's OK to consider some jokes to be in bad taste. Point it out and move on. That should be the extent of it. But not calling on some abstract higher moral framework that let's you control your colleagues.
And I am not saying it should be a general rule for companies, either. I just want companies to be allowed to set their own rules.
For all I care, there could be companies with "no jokes" policies, and people who prefer could go to work there. I would prefer the "jokes allowed" companies. I just want there to be choice. Basecamp is a little ray of hope for me, but if people prefer to have political discussions at work, I don't begrudge them for working at companies that allow them.
I think you're right, but I also think that in reality it is very difficult to draw a line between personal political discussions and company policy decisions in the modern world.
Yes it's always boring when someone in the workplace makes bold political statements that no one asked for, but what happens when the company you work for outsources jobs abroad, is making questionable HR decisions, etc. I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature.
Creating a positive and productive culture is hard. I don't have all the answers, but bans seem like a very blunt instrument.
"I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature."
Why do you think that's the policy? Did you read the blog posts?
According to DHH's post, political discussion that is related to the business is allowed. Any other political discussion is encouraged but must take place in a dedicated non-work channel. The policy is also not zero-tolerance.
> Therefore, we’re asking everyone, including Jason and me, to refrain from using our company Basecamp or HEY to discuss societal politics at work effective immediately.
> This includes everything from sharing political stories in campfire, using message threads to elucidate others on political beliefs that go beyond the topic directly, or performing political advocacy in general.
> ...
> Note that we will continue to engage in politics that directly relate to our business or products.
Not so interested in nitpicking about whether banning is semantically correct - I think you know what I meant.
What's more interesting is the awkward situation they have created, which I'd argue is a false dichotomy - where does "societal politics" end and "politics that directly relate to our business or products" start?
The details do matter, though. By omitting details you create a hypothetical position that is less reasonable and easier for you to criticize. In this particular situation, this type of thing is particularly harmful because it paints the supposed originators of this made up position as something they are not. You could arguably consider it as libel by omission.
I don't even mean to single you out because I've seen this type of thing countless times on here and especially on Twitter over the last week or so.
"What's more interesting is the awkward situation they have created, which I'd argue is a false dichotomy - where does "societal politics" end and "politics that directly relate to our business or products" start?"
That can be tricky, which is why the policy is not zero tolerance and they already anticipate and are OK with people sometimes getting it wrong.
> but what happens when the company you work for outsources jobs abroad, is making questionable HR decisions, etc. I'm not sure it's right to say that any discussion about anything political is banned when a company policy that affects an employee can be political in nature.
Banning labor-related discussions is illegal in the USA, where Basecamp is based (Protected Concerted Activity). There is also the option of unionization to provide a further structure to protect your legal rights to discuss with management issues around pay, HR, and outsourcing.
Yeah I think you are making the important parts. The issues don't sounds like there were long winded debates about left wing and right wing ideologies.
If someone is being racist am I not allowed to bring acknowledge that because it is political?
I remember the same thing in 2000 when my colleague brought "Sore/Loserman" sign mocking (unknowingly) my candidates. I could not help but think less of him. I am not proud of that, but that was it. It's inside our DNA, to live in tribes. At work, it'd be better if we belong to the same tribe. Please, keep your other tribes outside.
Meta comment: the actual article title is “The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2021”. It’s not an article specifically about the stagnation and decline of Go, but a discussion of various languages. Hopefully the mods update the (IMO at least) inflammatory title; it’s currently “Go has been a language that is at best static and arguably on a decline path”.
