Oh God, it’s been a long time since I had to remember how badly the syntax for C++’s object-oriented features sucks. (A. It’s really bad.)

Good. The textbook industry is an obscene racket, predicated on extraordinary costs and a maze of perverse incentives. Pirating textbooks isn’t just a good idea. It’s a mitzvah. Burn the domming industry to the ground. Knowledge can and should be free.

I don’t have any great hopes for a Republic of the SNP. It will no doubt be just another government, doing more or less what governments do at a different address. Be that as it may: Of course Scotland should be independent from the UK. #EndAllEmpires #UKOut

Great Moments in Progressivism: This week millions are tuning in for lovingly rendered portraits of three multimillionaire dynastic politicians Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt. We’re told that Teddy was a crusader against economic privilege, for example by supposedly using expansive new executive powers to control railroad fares, supposedly in the interest of greater fairness. Of course, during his time in office, Theodore Roosevelt also used expansive new executive powers to fight repeated brutal counter-insurgency wars, and, among other things, killed about quarter million Filipino civilians. But hey, what’s a few hundred thousand dead foreigners, when Americans might be getting a bit of a raw deal on their railroad ticket? #ACovenantWithDeathAndAnAgreementWithHell #AbolishThePresidency

Hippocleides cares not.

Happy International Ignore the Constitution Day. http://ift.tt/XichlV «Producing a copy of the Fugitive Slave Law, he set fire to it, and it burst to ashes. Using an old and well-known phrase, he said, “And let all the people say, Amen”; and a unanimous cheer and shout of “Amen” burst from the vast audience. In like manner, Mr. Garrison burned the decision of Edward G. Loring in the case of Anthony Burns, and the late charge of Judge Benjamin R. Curtis to the United States Grand Jury in reference to the treasonable assault upon the Court House for the rescue of the fugitive—the multitude ratifying the fiery immolation with shouts of applause. Then holding up the U.S. Constitution, he branded it as the source and parent of all the other atrocities,—“a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell,”—and consumed it to ashes on the spot, exclaiming, “So perish all compromises with tyranny! And let all the people say, Amen!”» — William Lloyd Garrison, 1851 «Inasmuch as the Constitution was never signed, nor agreed to, by anybody, as a contract, and therefore never bound anybody, and is now binding upon nobody; and is, moreover, such an one as no people can ever hereafter be expected to consent to, except as they may be forced to do so at the point of the bayonet, it is perhaps of no importance what its true legal meaning, as a contract, is. Nevertheless, the writer thinks it proper to say that, in his opinion, the Constitution is no such instrument as it has generally been assumed to be; but that by false interpretations, and naked usurpations, the government has been made in practice a very widely, and almost wholly, different thing from what the Constitution itself purports to authorize. He has heretofore written much, and could write much more, to prove that such is the truth. But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. IN EITHER CASE IT IS UNFIT TO EXIST.» — Lysander Spooner, 1870.

Police forces really are institutionally pretty damned racist and violent against women, people of color, and sex workers. (Of course, the cops had *no* reason at all to presume that she was a sex worker, other than an appalling and presumptuously racist reaction to an interracial couple. But then, even if she *were* a sex worker, and even if the LAPD knew this, it would also still be presumptuous, inhumane and utterly tyrannical to accost and restrain her for kissing a willing client. Vice cops are an instrument of violent and oppressive social control and economic marginalization.) #AbolishThePolice #StructuralRacism #EndProhibition

Las Vegas folks: FNBLV is now doing a meal on Mondays

«[Queen Tomyris] then, when she heard that which had come to pass with the army and also fhe things concerning her son, sent a herald to Cyrus and said: “Cyrus, insatiable of blood, do not celebrate too much what has come to pass, namle because with that fruit of the vine . . . you overcame my son and not by valor in fight. . . . Restore to me my son and depart from this land without penalty . . . . If you shall not do so, I swear to you by the Sun, who is lord of the Massagetai, that surely I will give you your fill of blood, blood-thirsty though you are.” These words were reported to him, but Cyrus disregarded them. [… After the death of Tomyris’s son and then a pitched battle between the Massagetai and the Persians on the plain over the river Aras …] The greater part of the Persian army was destroyed upon the spot, and Cyrus himself died there, after he had reigned twenty-nine years. Then Tomyris filled a skin with human blood and had search made among the Persian dead for the corpse of Cyrus. When she found it, she let his head down into the skin and doing outrage to the corpse she said this over it: “Though I yet live and have overcome you in fight, nevertheless you have destroyed me by taking my son with craft. I nevertheless according to my threat will give you your fill of blood.” There are many tales told about the end of Cyrus, but this one is to my mind the most worthy of belief.» Herodatus, Histories, Book I §§ 212-213 #SicSemper