Can't Even Think Straight
You know what they say: You can't teach a gay dog straight tricks.
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Quote reblogged from Absolute Escape
Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…
Damn kids. They’re all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me… Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I’m a smart ass.. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.
The Mentor (via absolute-escape) -
I’ve recently graduated my university Bachelor’s degree. Not as high honours as I had wanted, though I still achieved honours and struggled though quite a few emotional issues of my own this year, there were other things to do than stress about how I could get an A+ instead of a B+.
This year, something that I noticed last year has continued, and I have no idea how to fight it, or if it’s even worth wasting my energy over.
In Belgium, I attended a philosophy program I did well in and enjoyed learning things I may have never learned in Canada. Yet I was a small minority of women in the program, and I was not the only one that felt this way. When the group got together outside of class, or talked to Professors in a more social setting, the women felt like aliens. Excluded from the philosophic conversation, and when we forced ourselves into the conversation we were treated like aliens. We were three women in a crowd of men, what could we add that would be of value?
Even now, when I’ve returned to Canada, I sensed a similar attitude in my classes. I have always preferred to phrase my ideas and contributions to conversations in colloquialisms and generally understandable terms, though I completely comprehend others who prefer the most obscure terms possible. I find accessible language opens the conversation to all those who could contribute, instead of closing the conversation in order to “appear smarter”. However this seems to have isolated me from some of my peers who have judged me unable to keep up with their intellects.
I feel this even more strongly when it is brought up that I will not be pursuing a Masters degree. I may in the future, but I have no idea if I can pay for it, as I would prefer to keep myself from sinking deeper in debt.
Basically, I hate the tendency of my peers to look down upon conversations that do not source specific philosophers as “unintellectual”.
I also hate the feeling myself, and my female peers get when we try to add our perspectives to the conversation, even when we are being “uber-intellectual”.
As one of my female peers once so eloquently put it,
“To be taught humility is good - I would say, it is right. The lesson in itself is not difficult; shortcomings are always in good supply. The difficulty comes when we want to accomplish things. Accomplishment needs assertion, and self-assertion, in just the way humility asks us to give up.
I feel as though I am at once humbled, and expected to excel. Does this really make sense?
How can I speak when I’ve been made to shut up? “
And there are my ramblings today, inspired by reading a post from one of my friends who feels he has to remain silent because he is apparently too intellectual to engage in conversation with “normies”. -
Photo reblogged from De nobis fabula narratur
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
(Source: ladyhistory)
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Photoset reblogged from bluescanary
Wehrli takes everyday scenes of disorder and rearranges them into neat rows, sorted by different attributes such as color, size, shape, and type, etc.
