It could be a David Foster Wallace reference. “In the eighth American-educational grade, Bruce Green fell dreadfully in love with a classmate who had the unlikely name of Mildred Bonk. The name was unlikely because if ever an eighth-grader looked like a Daphne Christianson or a Kimberly St.-Simone or something like that, it was Mildred Bonk.”

One could say that “u” is a lazily written “V”. This was before we had the concept of upper and lower case letters. The roman alphabet used for fancy writing is pretty much exactly as our upper case letters. This was written with a flat brush, but they also had a more cursive everyday alphabet which is quite hard for us to read. Eventually writing with pens made the alphabet evolve into uncial letters that look kind of Tolkienesque. To mark the beginning of a verse they used the old roman fancy letter to have something that stood out in the text, i.e. a versal. “V” is a versal, and “u” was the running text version, but it was considered the same letter. For example they would write “Vniuersum” where we write “Universum” now. Then some complicated things happened in history that necessitated different sounds and the pronounciation split into v, u, and w, over time.

In church latin yes. For example we say “vice versa”, not “wike wersa” (“wike” being two syllables btw). If it helps think of the w as our u. “ui-ke uer-sa”.

If you want to use old latin expressions, and also make people uncomfortable, you can pronounce it the way the romans did. Always pronounce “c” as “k”, and “v” as our “w”, to begin with. “Veni. Vidi. Vici.” becomes “Weni. Widi. Wiki.”, et ketera.

The founder of GNOME, Miguel de Icaza, stopped using Linux in favor of macOS in 2014 iirc. That makes me guess that the macOS design was at least acceptable to him. Maybe the visions were similar enough.

plain TeX is a joy to use, but you must really understand boxes and glue etc on a deep level. LaTeX makes that easier, but at the cost of extreme complexity internally (compare the output routines for example.)

Their “dominance” is the choice of the distributions. Gnome is opinionated, and I respect that they follow their vision. To me this is free software working as intended, people are free to fork Gnome if they want something that the devs don’t want. And apparently, many distributions think Gnome should be the default. Maybe it shouldn’t, but that’s up to the distros to decide.

Getting paid in money is one motivation for people, but not the only one. Some people do things because they want to, regardless of payment. And some of them want to give what they made as a gift to anyone. The flip side is that no one can force them to do anything, it’s all voluntary.

The author of JSLint wrote:
"So I added one more line to my license, was that, “the Software shall be used for Good, not Evil.” And thought: I’ve done my job!
/…/
Also about once a year, I get a letter from a lawyer, every year a different lawyer, at a company. I don’t want to embarrass the company by saying their name, so I’ll just say their initials, “IBM,” saying that they want to use something that I wrote, 'cause I put this on everything I write now. They want to use something that I wrote and something that they wrote and they’re pretty sure they weren’t gonna use it for evil, but they couldn’t say for sure about their customers. So, could I give them a special license for that?

So, of course!

So I wrote back—this happened literally two weeks ago—I said, “I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil.” "

Isn’t it a bit arbitrary to just divide time into generations like this? It makes more sense for big events in history, like the world wars, but now, I don’t know. According to this I am a millennial, but what does that mean really? That I saw the internet become what it is now? Not a very defining thing for a whole generation imho.

There are some old interviews with George RR Martin where people ask him about various characters, and GRRM would adjust his pronounciation to match the person asking the question. So he’s pronouncing names differently in different interviews depending on how others pronounce them. I wonder if it is to make the other person comfortable, or if he just doesn’t have a canon pronounciation.

A good story about a bad day doesn’t have to be about complaining. It can be about learning from mistakes, a strange irony, the absurdity of coinciding factors, etc.

Glad midsommar! Hade ni något regn med?

I guess it becomes a matter of strategy. Maybe progressive women aren’t the ones who need to hear it the most, and they may feel offended at the suggestion that other women could be part of reinforcing the patriarchy. It mirrors the way men are asked to shut down other mens sexist remarks and actions. I’m sure such behavior is prevalent, but I never witness it. So the question to me is, how do we communicate this whole thing to women as a group? The ones willing to listen aren’t the ones who need to hear it, and the ones who need to hear it are probably not willing to listen.

Yes, that’s a good point. And maybe sort of the reason I’m interested in these topics, is trying to figure out how to influence the social circles around me.

I agree that those are sane approaches. I do think that there can be immediate unintended consequences. If someone didn’t pay for a meal, there’s propably less chance of a second date. Etc.
I imagine women went through similar consequences while entering traditionally masculine jobs and behavior.
What I’m getting at is that I think that we often think that this pressure is all in our minds, and to some extent that’s true, but there are many stories of men opening up and being vulnerable and then their partners lose attraction. That’s a hard sell to young men. “Yes, you will be alone forever, but it’s necessary because in a couple of generations from now things might be better.”

By refusing to take part in the hierarchy of dominance you will eventually be subject to a more general and, frankly, human set of standards.

You mention some examples, like defending your partner from a mugger, calling out your boss when treated unfairly, paying for meals, etc.
Let’s say a man stopped doing those things, what do you think the immediate and short term consequences would be?

People seem to think that those who choose permissive licences don’t know what they’re doing. Software can be a gift to the world with no strings attached. A company “taking” your code is never taking it away from you, you still have all the code you wrote. Some people want this. MIT is not an incomplete GPL, it has its own reasons.

For example, OpenBSD has as a project goal: “We want to make available source code that anyone can use for ANY PURPOSE, with no restrictions. We strive to make our software robust and secure, and encourage companies to use whichever pieces they want to.”

I have actually never felt entitled to these things. What I mostly feel is a responsibility. If something breaks I’m supposed to know how to fix it. Because of this I have become good at fixing things. If we are lost I’m supposed to find where we are, so I study maps before I go somewhere new. If a decision needs to be made, again, eyes turn to me, so I need to know a little about everything, and never look indecisive. If an unexpected expense comes up, I need to have money saved away for this purpose. The punishment for failing things like this is not disapproval from other men or feeling less masculine. The punishment is that I’m viewed as less by my girlfriend. This is how I think things go hand in hand. By helping women get empowered, we can share responsibilities. By women helping us feel valued for ourselves, worthy of love, desired as we are, we don’t need to constantly fear being seen as less… then, I don’t know. Maybe it would also lead to men feeling safer to be better human beings. The impossible dilemma now, for me, is that I’m still expected to be successful in the traditionally masculine things, while at the same time not being successful in the traditionally masculine things. No way to win.

I think a positive step can also be to think back and reflect a bit. Why did I react the way I did? When I first heard the hypothetical, it made me feel bad about myself. After that came a feeling of defeat. I was thinking “why even bother, whatever I do I’m the villain.” I’m very afraid of bears, which may have played into this.
The main thing I’ve been thinking since then is that I find it easier to have empathy with people who show empathy to me. It’s easy to think “well then, when they start showing empathy, so will I.”, but it goes both ways, doesn’t it? That made me want to influence this loop of causality, or what to call it.
I’ll set my negative emotions to the side, and try to not contribute to the division between people. Maybe even manage to be a part in the positive direction. As I get older, the more I realize that I can’t change the world, but I have a very deep wish to be a net positive somehow.
As for acting on the things I have learned, I don’t really know what to do, and I hope this is a safe space for anyone who needs support.