⊥ᵒᵚ Cᵸᵎᶺᵋᶫ∸ᵒᵘ ☑️ @falken@qoto.org

Video of the disk image running on a real PDP-11/45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh-9rBYmGow

*Cracks neck. "Yeah, I'll play."*

Greta Thunberg was arrested under the Terrorism Act for displaying a sign that read: "I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS".

The police allege she was displaying support for a proscribed (banned) organization. However, a linguistic analysis reveals a critical distinction. The police are reading keywords; grammar dictates she was supporting people, not an organization.

Here is how Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)—a tool used to analyse how language functions in real contexts—deconstructs the sign to show why the arrest is linguistically flawed.

In English, when we group words together to name something (like "Red delicious apple" or "Palestine Action Prisoners"), there is always one word that anchors the meaning. We call this the Head or the Thing. Everything else is just decoration or categorization.

Let's look at Greta's object of support: "Palestine Action Prisoners"

The Head (The Thing): PRISONERS

This is the core reality of the sentence. The physical beings she is referencing are incarcerated people.

The Classifier: PALESTINE ACTION

In grammar, this functions as a Classifier. Its only job is to tell us which type of prisoners we are talking about. It restricts the category.

To prove this, we can swap the classifier for something else. This is called the commutation test.

If she wrote "I support [remand] prisoners," she is not saying she "supports remand" (keeping people in jail). She is supporting the people subject to that condition.

If a lawyer says "I defend [murder] suspects," they are not "defending murder." They are defending the suspects.

The police have conflated the Classifier (the label) with the Thing (the people). Linguistically, you cannot simply lift the modifier "Palestine Action" out of the phrase and claim it is the object of her support. It is glued to the word "Prisoners."

Linguists use a system called Transitivity to map "who does what to whom." It traces the energy of the verb.

The Actor (Doer): "I" (Greta)

The Process (Verb): "Support"

The Goal (Target): "Prisoners"

Imagine the sentence as an arrow. The arrow of "Support" is fired by Greta. It flies over the words "Palestine Action" and lands squarely on "Prisoners."

Grammatical Reading: Greta → Support → Prisoners (who happen to be associated with Palestine Action).

Police Reading: Greta → Support → Palestine Action (the organization).

By ignoring the word "Prisoners," the legal interpretation creates a new sentence that Greta did not write. She is validating the human rights of the individuals (the Goal), not the manifesto of the group (the Classifier).

Language doesn't happen in a vacuum. We must look at the second line of the sign to understand the first. This is called Appraisal Analysis—how we judge value and stance.

The sign reads:

"I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION PRISONERS"

"I OPPOSE GENOCIDE"

The second line acts as a "decoder key" for the first.

"Oppose Genocide" sets a moral framework. It is a statement about humanitarian law and saving lives.

Because the bottom line is about human rights (opposing death/genocide), the top line must be read in the same context.

She is not supporting "Palestine Action" because she loves their logo or their specific tactics; she is supporting the prisoners because she views them as victims of the same system she is critiquing in line two. The sign frames the prisoners as humanitarian subjects (people suffering), not political agents (people acting).
The Verdict

The arrest relies on "Keyword Searching"—seeing a banned word and acting on it. But grammar relies on structure.

Structurally: She supported Prisoners.

Semantically: She supported Human Rights.

By ignoring the grammar of the Noun Group, the authorities effectively erased the word "Prisoners" from her sign, changing her statement from a defence of human rights to an endorsement of a banned group. 1/2
#HumanRights
#FreeSpeech
#RightToProtest
#CivilLiberties
#UKLaw
#GretaThunberg
#PalestineAction
#Activism
#SocialJustice
#PoliticalPrisoners

#LanguageAndPower

RE: https://c.im/@Opfoss/115770673278142264

My shorter, non-lexical analysis: If you’re arresting Greta Thunberg, you’re the baddie.

"Bringing back LimeWire to illegally rip copies of reporting suppressed by the government is definitely some cyberpunk shit."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/yo-what-limewire-re-emerges-in-online-rush-to-share-pulled-60-minutes-segment/

#censorship #uspol

Golden opportunity to become a reverse centaur! You only need to audit/review 5,600 lines of c++ code ported to rust per hour!

2025 Headline of the Year nominee (July)

MBID Mapper version 2.0 preview has finally arrived!

We've been working hard to improve our automatic matching. Please test and feedback here: https://community.metabrainz.org/t/mbid-mapper-version-2-0-preview-has-finally-arrived/813908

I shouldn’t have to say this, but please don’t post direct links to the elementary OS ISO, especially on release day. This is my only form of income and I really don’t make a lot of it. I want to keep making elementary OS as my job, but when you bypass our pay-what-you-can ask it cuts directly into the revenue I rely on to pay rent and buy food. The vast majority of people already pay nothing when they download. Please don’t take away the biggest opportunity I have for folks to support my work

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Video!

https://exquisite.tube/w/qoHtHzpNXncHwrfqpx31tF

«
This is a mobile phone video of the reading of a UNIX V4 magnetic tape at the Computer History Museum. Video originally by Jon Duerig, the people primarily responsible for the tape restoration are Al Kossow and Len Shustek
»

@LillyHerself All it takes is ONE TIME needing something, remembering that you saved that thing, being able to find it, and having it actually work, to be doomed to a lifetime of saving every "perfectly good" thing you don't need any more.

It’s that time again! 🎄✨ All my music on Bandcamp is FREE to download for a limited time 🎁 If you like retro vibes, grab my albums & singles in .WAV .FLAC .MP3 .SID and enjoy some tunes 👾🎶 (And if you know someone who’d dig it, just pass it on!)

👉 https://lukhash.bandcamp.com/

Thanks for all the support this year and have a great festive season! 🎅❤️

Twenty years ago today we released X11R7, completing over a year of effort to split up the X Window System monolithic source tree into separate modules for each library, program, driver, etc. and to build it all with the GNU autotools instead of Imake. While we’ve recombined a few modules since (xorgproto instead of individual modules for each protocol definition) and are moving from the autotools to meson now, overall it wasvery successful and made it easier for us to maintain the packages we’ve kept going and to retire those we chose to let go.

https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/2005-December/011616.html

Airplane with incapacitated pilot lands safely thanks to emergency autoland system:

https://avbrief.com/autoland-saves-king-air-everyone-reported-safe/?utm_source=newsletter-88&utm_medium=mastodon

I haven't listened to the attached LiveATC recording, but there is one if you are curious how an air traffic controller would mix emergency automated traffic with normal human-piloted traffic.

@joomy

I once read a story about the people writing the software for the NASA Apollo missions. There was a functionary in charge of weight accounting, who came to them and asked how much the software would weigh.

They told him it weighted nothing, but the functionary had heard *that* one before and insisted—everything had to be accounted down to the last ounce. He demanded to see it.

They showed him a stack of punched cards, and he was triumphant. “You see,” he said smugly, “it doesn't weigh only ‘nothing’!”

“No, you misunderstand,” they replied. “The cards aren't going on the spacecraft. Only the holes.”

the UNIX v4 tape reminded me of this story by Ali Akurgal about Turkish bureaucracy:

Do you know what the unit of software is? A meter! Do you know why? In 1992, we did our first software export at Netaş. We wrote the software, pressed a button, and via the satellite dish on the roof, at the incredible speed of 128 kb/s, we sent it to England. We sent the invoice by postal mail. $2M arrived at the bank. 3-4 months passed, and tax inspectors came. They said, “You sent an invoice for $2M?” “Yes,” we said. “This money has been paid?” they asked. “Yes,” we said. “But there is no goods export; this is fictitious export,” they said! So we took the tax inspectors to R&D and sat them in front of a computer. “Would you press this ‘Enter’ key?” we asked. One of them pressed it, then asked, “What happened?” “You just made a $300k export, and we’ll send its invoice too, and that will be paid as well,” we said. The man felt terrible because he had become an accomplice! Then we explained how software is written, what a satellite connection is, and how much this is worth. They said, “We understand, but there has to be a physical goods export; that’s what the regulations require.” So we said: “Let’s record this software onto tape (there were no CDs back then—nor cassettes; we used ½-inch tapes) and send that.” Happy to have found a solution, they said, “Okay, record it and send it.” The software filled two reels, which were handed to a customs broker, who took them to customs and started the export procedure. The customs officer processed things and at one point asked, “Where are the trucks?” The broker said, “There are no trucks—this is all there is,” and pointed to the tape reels on the desk. The customs officer said, “These two envelopes can’t be worth $2M; I can’t process this.” We went to court, an expert committee examined whether the two reels were worth $2M. Fortunately, they ruled that they were, and we were saved from the charge of fictitious export. The same broker took the same two reels to the same customs officer, with the court ruling, and restarted the procedure. However, during the process, the unit price, quantity, and total price of the exported goods had to be entered—as per the regulations. To avoid dragging things out further, they looked at the envelope, saw that it contained tape, estimated how many meters of tape there are on one reel, and concluded that we had exported 1k to 2k meters of software. So the unit of software became the meter.

The "UNIX v4 tape" running in simh PDP11 emu on IRIX: