“Whose side are you on?”
“We are on the side of the truth. Is there another?”
Ashan and Lennier in Babylon 5: “There All the Honor Lies”
While personalization is standard in software, it can also be done with physical objects. If you’re not a fan of stickers, an engraving might work. Sure, most people want their names engraved in their cherished objects, but personally, I’m more for nice quotations. My iPod nano got:
“Dum vivimus, vivamus!”
Motto in “Glory Road” by Robert A. Heinlein
which translates as “While we live, let us live!”
And as for my fountain pen, well, look for yourself:
I think it’s a fitting quotation for a pen.
And considering the flak you get when you move outside the approved “well dressed emperor” narrative, it’s surprisingly hard.
But why do simple things, when you can challenge yourself?
So yeah, in this Age of Endarkenment the motto of the Age of Enlightenment becomes more important than ever.
Oh, and I also got an inkwell. I realized that the converter I bought is pretty useless without it.
Nice pen. But why the tag “gender”?
The quotation is very fitting for this subject. There are a couple of subjects where people get extremely emotional and irrational: atheism (and that you wouldn’t even care if god existed), sex work (pro decriminalization), and gender (challenging the “women have it worse” narrative). Many even otherwise smart and rational people go bonkers on these topics (edit: or rather these positions). And the most extreme reactions came usually from so-called “feminists” when you challenge their gender-narrative. The amount of rationalization and emotional pressure is staggering. So yep, I think the quotation applies here very well. It would be a shame if after decades of enlightenment and movements towards equality the grievance/victim feminists and the eternally offended fuck up gender relations by going for equality of outcome while ignoring personal freedom and equality of opportunity. It will hurt us, men, women, and the relations to each other. And our chances for a better future. Mankind can do more. And looking at the world, we have to do more.