#introductions

I got into programming for idealistic reasons, try hard to hold on to that feeling. In spite of everything, I still believe computers can be empowering. But you can't delegate their care to a mechanic, certainly not a mechanic with millions of customers. These days I try to create programs that run anywhere, show off their inner workings, are trivial to modify, let you make mistakes and help you understand what went wrong. I call these freewheeling apps.

http://akkartik.name/freewheeling-apps

I very recently learned that the term “boycott” comes from someone’s actual name: Charles Boycott. Boycott was an English land agent who tried, in 1880, to collect unpayable rents from Irish peasants on behalf of an English aristocrat landlord. When he failed to collect the rents, he tried evicting the tenants. The Irish Land League responded with a campaign to ignore Boycott’s orders and isolate him socially and economically.

They not only ignored his eviction orders and threw manure at his process servers, but refused to deliver his mail or sell him food.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

It was pretty effective—the British government eventually had to deploy a thousand soldiers (naturally, because the state works for the propertied class and none more than the 19th century British state) at a cost of some £10,000 to harvest £500 worth of crops. Boycott had to be evacuated by the soldiers, who even had to drive him out, as no locals would agree to drive his carriage out of the region.

Imagine being cancelled so hard that your name becomes permanently associated with getting cancelled.