Apparently these pitched battles have been happening monthly for years.

We need to bring everyone together and realize they all live in an us-terus, not a you-terus. Our slogan will be “Peace, period.”

I remember being a square with an arrow sticking out of it trying to kill dragons.

Hell, I remember being lost in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

It’s 0-255 when you’re indexing like that. 11111111b = 255.

Perchance programming with pointers has plunged as a percentage of programmers.

But thank you. I was hoping someone would notice that.

When you’ve eaten more than 50% of the hamburger, do you claim to have eaten one, or do you claim zero? Are you useing standard founding or are you using floor()?

This.

One of the reasons indexing starts at zero is because back when we used to use pointers and memory addresses, the first byte(s) of an array were at the address where the array was stored. Let’s say it is at 1234. If it was an array of bytes, the first data element was at 1234, or 1234 + 0. The second element would be at 1235, or 1234 + 1. So the first element is at location 0 and the second at location 1, where the index is actually just an offset from the base address. There may be other/better reasons, but that’s what I was taught back in the 90s.

Counting always starts at 1 (if we’re only using integers). You don’t eat a hamburger and say you ate zero hamburgers.

I completely agree. There should have been a backlash, and there needs to be one in the future.

The Dodgers disinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence brought a backlash that made them re-invite them. Dropping them because some politician in Florida thought it was offensive and the right wing tried to turn it into a thing was wrong and it was a terrible look. It was exactly what those in the community most complain about with regard to rainbow washing - that corporations (at least some of them) are fair weather friends. I have to give credit to Disney for going hard on that number, and the mouthbreathers are never going to come after Apple or Google because those are companies that have roots in place.

We need to hit back hard when they go after Target or Bud. We need to take it seriously because they take it seriously, and they know that getting Target to pull rainbow tee shirts is the thin end of the wedge in making LGBT something people should be ashamed of. We have to fight, not because rainbow wear at Target is important, but because LGBT rights are important.

The only place I’ll generally draw the line these days is with the Log Cabin crowd. I’ve never personally known an LCR who was active in the rights movement. The few that I know wore-Trump have become very quiet about it, or else we’ve simply stopped speaking. Those guys (and in my social circle they’re all guys) can fuck off.

I was very surprised and a bit weirded out when I saw companies like Lockheed and Raytheon marching in Pride. I’ve even supported banning some groups - like some police groups - from marching due to their history or policies.

I am really conflicted on rainbow washing, though. I’m one of those people who has been around for a long time. I marched with ACT UP in NYC to get the government to conduct AIDS research, and I was beaten up pretty badly several times by people who just wanted to bash some queers. I remember when the only gay people we saw on TV were “not gay” gay-coded actors like Vincent Price and Rip Taylor, and performers like Elton John. Everyone denied that they were gay. It wasn’t allowed to be openly acknowledged. And that’s just the “open” folks - people like Rock Hudson were completely closeted. I know a guy who got booted just as don’t ask don’t tell was coming into effect because someone told on him, and I almost got fired from a national security job.

All of which is to say, I am really glad we’ve reached this level of representation. Lockheed doesn’t march in Pride so that gay generals are more likely to buy their weapons. There might be some publicity victory they’re getting, but Lockheed was doing just fine when all they did was make weapons (I know that’s not all they do).

When Lockheed marches, it’s because of their LGBT employees. The employees organize, start a resource group for mutual support, and do things like put together programs about trans healthcare in the employee insurance system. I respect that. It’s honestly the same thing for companies like Google and Netflix (Amazon’s group is called Glamazon). They get a bit more mileage out of it because they’re Bay Area companies, but it’s still more about the employees (current and candidates) than it is about the company.

One of the more openly homophobic companies (known for openly supporting right wing candidates and causes), Coors, was among the first to recognize same-sex partnerships as qualifying for benefits, solely as a result of employee action.

And, honestly, even if it’s just rainbow socks - I will take it over where we were and where we seem to be heading. Naomi Klein wrote a great book called No Logo back in 1999. One part that always stuck with me was that despite her very anti-corporate stance, she recognized that even obvious campaigns like United Colors of Benetton were doing good by making high end ad campaigns with a broad spectrum of people. Will and Grace was huge. Brothers (a Showtime show I had to watch late at night so I didn’t get caught) had a gay character whose beer drinking homophobic brother learned to accept. Queer as Folk. Ellen coming out. All of those things were absolutely huge.

We’re moving away from that now. I’m not expecting a big Pride presence from Budweiser this year. The LA Dodgers came close to pulling part of their Pride fest over complaints from a congressman from Florida. Target pulled rainbow-bearing clothes from their shelves under the threat of being bombed by christian domestic terrorist groups that act with near-impunity across the US. People are showing up with AR-15s at children’s libraries to threaten staff members, often without consequence. Transphobic and homophobic rhetoric is completely dominating half of the political spectrum - it’s literally the major plank in their 2024 platform. It’s bigger than tax cuts or terrorism this year. We are the number one target.

We’re going to have to fight to get back to the point where we can be cynical about Lockheed rainbow socks and rainbow Pepsi bottles, and it’s not going to be fun. And it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

You are the problem. The right wing nut jobs are in charge because chucklefucks like you can’t be fucked to give a good goddamn about anything outside of a narrow view in which you’re the goddamned misunderstood oppressed motherfuckers. You’re the “stop making race an issue” crowd. You’re the “women have the same rights as men now and should shut up” crowd.

I hate to break it to you, and I know you’re not going to hear it. You’re the person Martin Luther King was talking about in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. At the time, there was a “call to unity.” There was a perception that black Americans shouldn’t be protesting. That they should wait for the changes they want to just happen naturally. That if they stopped making such a fuss about equality, it’s just happen. Let me give you some quotes, in case it’s been awhile since you’ve studied it.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly … Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

You not only have a shallow understanding - your understanding is deliberately shallow and you revel in it as if it gives you some kind of intellectual validity. It does not.

And the first PC I built myself out of the parts I saved up for was a 286, bitch. The first game I played was on a Bell Labs Vax on an actual teletype using a coupler with a rotary phone.

It’s okay to be a nerd. We make shitloads of money and people are interested in what we say. You don’t need to be a dickweed.

Yes. Fuck you.

Fuck you for not giving a fuck that a shit ton of people do fucking care that queer people exist and are actively trying to drive us out of of society. Fuck you for not caring that the standard rule on the right is now to refer to the LGBT community as pedophiles - criminal rapists of children. Fuck you for not caring that people are showing up with fucking AR-15s in the children’s section of libraries to defend kids against us.

That’s what fucking Pride is about. Pride is about saying No to shitheads like them, but also shitheads like you who have the privilege to not care.

So, yes. Very much. Fuck you.