Absurdism corner

Why?


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odd-signs20.jpg
I still can't believe there are people who care that much about what other people do privately, and this sign takes it to a stupid level.  Sadly, I probably interact with people that think like this regularly.

Is the sign intended to be ironic?
Obviously the sign is ironic. I like this sign a lot. It makes fun of religious fundamentalist homophobics while educating people on the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Alan Turing.

Turing did in fact help a lot to shorten WW2 by cracking the nazi encryption. He was also a very important pioneer of not just theoretical computer science but also of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the biological field of morphogenesis. And he was tragically driven to suicide (at the age of 41) because being gay was illegal in the UK at that time: he was convicted of having commited acts of homosexuality, admitted this "crime" and got convicted to chemical castration (a hormonal treatment which a.o. gave him breasts).

All in all this is a very sad absurd-but-true story: a war hero and great intellect (comparable only to Einstein and Gödel) essentially got murdered in 1952 by a Victorian anti-gay law from 1885 (decriminalization only happened in 1967 in England).
 
[Alan] Turing did in fact help a lot to shorten WW2 by cracking the nazi encryption. He was also a very important pioneer of not just theoretical computer science but also of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the biological field of morphogenesis. And he was tragically driven to suicide (at the age of 41) because being gay was illegal in the UK at that time: he was convicted of having commited acts of homosexuality, admitted this "crime" and got convicted to chemical castration (a hormonal treatment which a.o. gave him breasts).

All in all this is a very sad absurd-but-true story: a war hero and great intellect (comparable only to Einstein and Gödel) essentially got murdered in 1952 by a Victorian anti-gay law from 1885 (decriminalization only happened in 1967 in England).
This is some exceptionally horrid stuff. oO

I never knew. I imagine the Queen was totally ok with that.
 
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I still can't believe there are people who care that much about what other people do privately, and this sign takes it to a stupid level.  Sadly, I probably interact with people that think like this regularly.

Is the sign intended to be ironic?
Obviously the sign is ironic. I like this sign a lot. It makes fun of religious fundamentalist homophobics while educating people on the life of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Alan Turing.

Turing did in fact help a lot to shorten WW2 by cracking the nazi encryption. He was also a very important pioneer of not just theoretical computer science but also of artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the biological field of morphogenesis. And he was tragically driven to suicide (at the age of 41) because being gay was illegal in the UK at that time: he was convicted of having commited acts of homosexuality, admitted this "crime" and got convicted to chemical castration (a hormonal treatment which a.o. gave him breasts).

All in all this is a very sad absurd-but-true story: a war hero and great intellect (comparable only to Einstein and Gödel) essentially got murdered in 1952 by a Victorian anti-gay law from 1885 (decriminalization only happened in 1967 in England).
Pardon my initial ignorance to the intended irony.  As I said, I encounter people who really think like this, so it can be hard to tell sometimes.

Cryptonomicon sparked my interest in him, and as you made clear, his treatment was wrong, yet his contributions were great.  He is just one of the examples of why people need to stop being so hateful of those who are different from themselves.  Who knows, that "freak" might do something amazing or immensely important.
 
He is just one of the examples of why people need to stop being so hateful of those who are different from themselves.  Who knows, that "freak" might do something amazing or immensely important.
The good thing about freaks is, that they naturally think outside of the box, so humanity really needs but normally despises them. :/

I know too well what I am talking about...
 
He is just one of the examples of why people need to stop being so hateful of those who are different from themselves.  Who knows, that "freak" might do something amazing or immensely important.
The good thing about freaks is, that they naturally think outside of the box, so humanity really needs but normally despises them. :/

I know too well what I am talking about...
I suspect that this may be a factor in bringing us to the Pandora.

As I said, I encounter people who really think like this, so it can be hard to tell sometimes.
Poe's law: it is impossible to tell the difference between parody and sincere extremism.
We may think it is extreme, but here it seems to be common and acceptable, and turns too few heads.  It wouldn't surprise me if the response to parody of this sort was violence.
 
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