I'm trying to understand the code I found that I'm using to generate ASE swatch files and I'm not familiar with writing binary files so I started reading about the PHP pack() function where the code uses the "n" format which got me to look up big and little endian and the origin of the term endian is so funny.

#Programming #BigEndian #LittleEndian #GulliversTravels #JonathanSwift #Lit

Jonathan Swift – der Wütendste aller Satiriker

Kommentar von Michael Köhlmeier – Der Autor und Priester Jonathan Swift servierte seine Menschenverachtung als Fabelhafte Satiren, seine glühendsten Tiraden gegen die Umstände musste er sogar anonym veröffentlichen. Ein Musterbeispiel für Kritik in Zeiten der Zensur. – https://www.derpragmaticus.com/r/jonathan-swift-satiriker

T.A.E.’s Book Review – Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is one of the great paradoxes of English literature: a book often shelved as a children’s adventure, yet built as a savage adult satire on pride, politics, reason, empire, and the self-deceptions of civilization. What begins as a lively voyage narrative gradually reveals itself as a profoundly unsettling examination of humanity. Swift’s genius lies in the way he lures the reader with apparent simplicity and then turns that simplicity against us. Each land Gulliver visits becomes a distorted mirror in which human beings are forced to confront their own absurdities.

At the centre of the book is Lemuel Gulliver, a man whose plainness is part of Swift’s design. He is not a heroic adventurer in the grand tradition, but a practical, observant, often gullible narrator who reports marvels with calm confidence. This deadpan tone is one of the novel’s greatest satirical instruments. Because Gulliver narrates astonishing events in a matter-of-fact style, the reader is made to feel the absurdity more sharply. Swift lets the grotesque speak in the language of common sense. That contrast is devastating.

The first voyage, to Lilliput, introduces Swift’s method beautifully. The tiny people of Lilliput are ridiculous in their pettiness, yet their diminutive size is only a visible symbol of the petty rivalries of European politics. Their disputes over court favour, ceremonial hierarchy, and absurd party division satirize the real-world political world of Swift’s time. What seems miniature is in fact enormous in implication. The famous image of Gulliver strung down by little ropes becomes a brilliant emblem of how a supposedly rational society can be governed by trivial ambitions. Swift repeatedly shows that power is often less a matter of moral greatness than of arbitrary systems and self-importance.

The Brobdingnag episode reverses the perspective and deepens the satire. Here Gulliver, now tiny in relation to a race of giants, is no longer the observer looking down, but the specimen being inspected. This inversion is one of Swift’s sharpest strategies. In Brobdingnag, human vanity becomes physically embarrassing. The giants see Gulliver’s world not as civilized and glorious, but as morally corrupt and small-minded. Swift uses this perspective to puncture the self-congratulation of European culture. Gulliver’s pride in his own society is met with the Brobdingnagian king’s horrified judgment, a moment that cuts through the satire with brutal clarity. The novel suggests that civilization’s accomplishments may be only a thin veneer over cruelty, greed, and delusion.

If the first two voyages expose political folly and moral distortion, the voyage to Laputa and the surrounding regions turns Swift toward the satirizing of abstract intellect. Laputa is full of mathematicians and theorists whose minds are detached from practical life. Their obsession with sterile systems and impractical speculation mocks intellectualism severed from human usefulness. Swift is not attacking thought itself, but thought that has lost contact with reality. His satire here remains relevant because it speaks to any culture that prizes technical brilliance while neglecting wisdom. The novel asks a timeless question: what is knowledge for, if it cannot improve life?

The final voyage to the land of the Houyhnhnms is the most troubling and perhaps the most brilliant part of the book. The Houyhnhnms, rational horses, appear to embody order, moderation, and reason without corruption. Against them stand the Yahoos, degraded human-like creatures whose brutishness seems to represent the worst of humanity. At first, the contrast seems simple: reason versus appetite, civilization versus savagery. But Swift complicates the matter by making Gulliver increasingly unable to tolerate human beings at all. He becomes so enchanted by the Houyhnhnms that he begins to despise his own species.

This movement is both fascinating and disturbing. Swift exposes the vanity and violence of human society so relentlessly that Gulliver’s disgust feels, at times, understandable. Yet the novel does not simply endorse his conversion. Gulliver’s final misanthropy becomes its own kind of madness. He ends the book unable to bear the smell or company of ordinary humans, a grotesque comic finale that also serves as a warning. Reason, when stripped of charity and sympathy, can become inhuman. Swift does not offer easy consolation. He leaves us in a state of moral discomfort, which is precisely where satire works best.

One of the most enduring strengths of Gulliver’s Travels is its style. Swift writes with extraordinary control, moving between plain reportage, mock-serious explanation, and sudden flashes of outrage. The prose is deceptively lucid. It feels transparent, but beneath that clarity is a dense architecture of irony. The language never calls attention to itself in a flamboyant way; instead, it lets the absurdity of human behaviour emerge through measured narration. That restraint gives the satire its force.

The book also remains powerful because it refuses to flatten human beings into simple types. Swift is a harsh critic, but not a shallow one. He is interested in the contradictions of his age and of human nature itself. We laugh at the absurdities of Lilliput, yet we recognize them in our own political and social systems. We recoil from Gulliver’s final revulsion, yet we recognize the temptation to see ourselves as morally superior to the crowd. Swift’s satire survives because it is not merely topical; it is anthropological. It studies the species from within.

A few of Swift’s most famous images capture the whole spirit of the book: a giant man tethered by tiny ropes, a traveler humiliated by his own scale, a rational horse judging humanity, a narrator who cannot see how thoroughly he has been changed by what he has seen. These are not just memorable scenes; they are conceptual machines, each one exposing a different failure in the human claim to wisdom.

Gulliver’s Travels is therefore not simply a fantasy of strange lands. It is a stern, brilliant, often darkly funny meditation on the fragility of reason and the vanity of civilization. Swift invites us to laugh, but never comfortably. He wants laughter to become recognition, and recognition to become shame, and shame to become thought. Few books do that with such merciless elegance.

The difference between rationalising and reasoning, and why it’s futile to argue on social media

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Here’s the thing! I’m about to advise you not to do something I have been regularly indulging in. Having lots of time at my disposal, I developed an admittedly nasty penchant for responding to the blatant bigotry in the comments sections of various social media platforms.

You can hate me later, but first let me tell you why I’ve decided to come clean about it. It’s not just the barefaced ignorance of recorded history, wilful misunderstanding and perversion of current events, debasement of civil norms, disingenuity, and rank hypocrisy of the social commentators. Worse, it’s the (mis)appropriation of divine authority (why is it almost always the Christians?), and the sheer inhumanity, entitlement, and complete lack of awareness that incenses me.

I have, unfortunately, developed a habit of making screen prints on my mobile device of exchanges with complete strangers on social media because of the distasteful practice of some who, having been called out or chastised, delete their comments. Here is an example of just one such comment made in response to an article by a local online newspaper, bemoaning the bombing of Palestinian schoolchildren in Gaza:

There were so many others, most excusing or justifying the Israeli bombing, closing ranks around the depraved Israeli soldiers and nation, while cold-heartedly ignoring the object of the article itself. My comment, as it usually does, generated a heap of nasty responses and, of course, the obligatory insults.

Of course, my antagonist had to double down on his position when I challenged both his insult and his uneducated approach to reasoning.

My parting response remains unanswered. Maybe he finally figured it out, but perhaps that’s too much to hope for. The subtleties of the English language were furthest from Paul’s mind. Paul’s intention was to ridicule, insult and score brownie points with like-minded online commentators who frequently use laugh emojis among others to buttress their argument, or lack of it.

While I’m not particularly proud of my final response, it does lead to the main reason for this post. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered someone who does not understand the difference between reasoning and rationalising.

Reasoning is the objective process of using logic and evidence to discover the truth. Rationalising, however, is a psychological defense mechanism where you start with a preconceived conclusion or emotional bias, and work backward to invent superficially plausible justifications to defend it.

Paul had already rationalised his support for Israel and their military campaign in Gaza. He had convinced himself that his rationalisations were sound. Arguing with him online was bound to fail. Writing in the Blog of the American Philosophical Association, Isaac Wiegman provides reasons why arguments almost never work.

Wiegman writes about our inclination for defensiveness and motivated reasoning, and draws on The Scout Mindset, a book by Julia Galef, who hosted Rationally Speaking, a podcast I used to follow more than a decade ago, before podcasts became so widely popular. Julia distinguishes between thoughtful reasoning, which she calls the Scout Mindset and motivated reasoning, which she calls Soldier Mindset. She outlines six broad categories that a soldier mindset defends as follows:

Comfort: We shield ourselves from unpleasant emotions. If you have invested time and energy in convincing yourself and others of something (e.g., that the earth is flat or not, that global warming is a threat or not, that abortion is okay or not), you will avoid evidence to the contrary because you want to avoid the shame, embarrassment, or dissonance that would go along with admitting you were wrong.

Self-esteem: We enhance or protect our self-image. If you are wealthy, you might ignore or discount evidence of systemic injustice or inequality. At some level, you want to maintain the belief that you earned what you got within a just and equitable system. If you are relatively poor, you’ll think the opposite and blame bad luck for your setbacks.

Morale: We fight to preserve our motivations and expectations. If you are committed to a new business idea, you might avoid evidence that it could fail. You want to protect your motivation to give it your best shot, holding on to your expectation that your hard work will pay off.

Persuasion: We defend our ability to convince others. If you’re in the middle of a messy divorce or court battle, you might fiercely deny your adversary’s claims, however reasonable. You want to stay convinced of the righteousness of your cause so that you can be convincing to others.

Image: We shield our reputation. If someone accuses you of plagiarism, you may look for all kinds of reasons why your uncited use of a source was excusable. As in the case of René Diekstra.

Belonging: We protect our place of belonging in social groups. If your belief in God is required for membership and belonging in a community of faith (or required to keep your job in it), then you may tend to avoid evidence that God might not exist.

Given the outlined futility of unstructured online argumentation, it remains to be seen whether I will, in the future, resist the urge to engage with those who demonstrate blatant bigotry. The mindfulness required could well be the deterrent.

Ojalá hicieran una serie animada de "Los viajes de Gulliver", que abarque TODOS los lugares a los que fue, y con el mayor detalle posible⛵🌊

#losviajesdegulliver #serieanimada #fantasía #jonathanswift #librosdeviajes

De gigante en un mundo de enanos a enano en un mundo de gigantes. 🗺️⛵ Acompaña a Lemuel Gulliver en sus viajes fantásticos que, tras su apariencia de aventura, esconden una mordaz sátira a la humanidad. ¡Un viaje inolvidable!

Escucha el audiolibro completo GRATIS aquí.
👇👇👇
https://youtu.be/oTUaq0yE4iY?list=PL5DTV9q_lz9KTj4h_of73gYRRNk6IuPav&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=fedica-Copys

#Audiolibro #Novelas #LiteraturaClásica #Aventura #Satira #LecturaParaTodos #LosViajesDeGulliver #JonathanSwift #YouTube #Viral #EpeArboleda

Jonathan Swift’s Last Joke

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/jonathan-swifts-last-joke

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
-- Jonathan Swift

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #JonathanSwift #Lies #Truth

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #LavaFlow #Galapagos #Geology