SoylentNews

Now your poor aristarchus is approaching 12% acceptance. Through no fault of his own, let me assure you! It mostly seems to the the Head Editor, Janirorok, or, jANINORAK, or, jannirock, something like that. Anyone can look him up in the appropriate venue. But the real nub of the matter is, Janirakor is controlling what solylents see as news!!!

Yeah, so what, big deal. Same as it ever was. Except, for one brief instant in the history of the Universe, an idea arose, an idea whose time had come, and idea that could have TMB, Fricking Runaway, the Original gweg_, and that nasty woman, Hazumi, all come together for a common purpose. And that purpose was TRUTH! Do you hear me, eds?
Why are you here, if not for truth? Why are we here, except for EF, who is evidently not here, except for truth? Do you want an alt-right incest Traditional Workers Racist website, or do you want the obverse, a site that bans any mention of the total idiocy of the Right, because the Right, traditional or alt-right, is so dumb as to defy description.

Of course, denying and rejecting, and not accepting, and deep-sixing submissions that point out exactly this will not avail SoylentNews. We already have a rep as an alt-right site, and members like myself are only entertainment, I guess. But, if any aristarchus submissions were to make it past the Iron-ass, retired military, totally brain-washed but not as much as the Runway, gateway of the JR . . . . Janirok, or janrinok, ::: Remember. Back before you applied to MI6. can, you? Did they wipe your mind, your memory, you very basic human sense of decency? Well, maybe, but that is no reason to reject aristarchus submissions. I mean, the dude is a philosopher, a "lover of Wisdom", dedicated to the pursuit of truth, and you take it upon yourself to reject his submissions? Oh, JR, if you actually are retired military, you should know better than this!
What is the first rule of intelligence? Yes, exactly, and you deprive Soylentils of the truth.
When Brexit cuts your pension, expect no sympathy from any other soylentils, except turgid, who never was MI6, or even MI5! What the hell is an MI, anyway?

update, **** New shit has come to light, man, and there's a beverage involved, man!

So, seriously, how could anyone make the case that Soylentils are not interested, only peripherally, of course, in a submission about Furries? Alt-furries just kinda simulates certain instincts, but still. How can the eds justify depriving the SoylentNews readership of such interesting, and entertaining, news? Aristarchus really wants to know!

And, does this just work? If I post a link to my submissions, everyone can peruse a better SoylentNews, such as it might have been ?
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl
Hmm, looks like just me. Let me know what you see, my fellow soylentils!

*****
A friend has pointed out that rejected submissions are not publically viewable, so here they are:

Democratic Senate Judiciary report claims Russia ‘used’ the NRA to help Trump’s campaign Wednesday May 16, @10:15AM Pending
Janrinok rejects all aristarchus' submissions! Tuesday May 15, @10:53PM Rejected
Organiser of white supremacist march in Charlottesville planning second rally, nobody wants to come Tuesday May 15, @07:01PM Rejected
Alt-Right Trolls Are Using An Argument About Pit Bulls To Justify Racism Tuesday May 15, @04:08PM Rejected
The Intellectual Dark Web, Brought to You by Your Snowflake Tweets Tuesday May 15, @03:54PM Rejected
A Jewish investor linked to the Russia probe bought alt-right domain names Monday May 14, @01:10PM Pending
Alt-right in Montreal: How Charlottesville exposed key players in local white nationalist movement Monday May 14, @02:17AM Rejected
The real reason tech billionaires are prepping for doomsday Sunday May 13, @03:43PM Rejected
Alt-Right: From 4chan to the White House review – in search of a rightwing rabble Sunday May 13, @12:15PM Rejected
Russia-linked company that hired Michael Cohen registered alt-right websites during election Sunday May 13, @11:59AM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Friday May 11, @05:23PM Accepted
The “Intellectual Dark Web,” explained: what Jordan Peterson has in common with the alt-right Friday May 11, @05:16PM Accepted
Alt-right web domain names registered to company that paid Cohen Friday May 11, @02:56PM Rejected
Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, ‘alt-right’ to rally at White House if banned from Charlottesville Friday May 11, @01:53PM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Wednesday May 09, @11:08PM Rejected
Birth of a “Troll Nation”: Amanda Marcotte on how and why conservatives embraced the dark side Wednesday May 09, @12:58PM Rejected
Stop trusting the self-mythology of the worst people on the internet Monday May 07, @11:44PM Rejected
Neo-Nazi California Senate Candidate Barred From State Republican Party Convention Monday May 07, @11:30PM Rejected
Melt-down: Alt-Right Grifter ‘Baked Alaska’ Is Plotting A Comeback On YouTube Saturday May 05, @03:09PM Rejected
Debating the Intellectual Leader of the French New Right Friday May 04, @08:31PM Rejected
Police investigating neo-Nazi recruiting in Montreal, Mayor Plante says Thursday May 03, @11:27PM Rejected
Alt-Right Bible ‘Camp of The Saints’ Proves Everyone’s Still Insane Thursday May 03, @01:02PM Rejected
GoDaddy to Alt-Right Leader Richard Spencer: Find an Alt Web Host Thursday May 03, @12:41PM Accepted
I Watched an Entire Flat Earth Convention for My Research – Here's What I Learnt Wednesday May 02, @05:36PM Accepted
Alt-Right Ding-Dong Defeated By Sign Wednesday May 02, @03:29PM Rejected
Texas Town Terrified by alt-right gun Toting Tyrones Wednesday May 02, @12:32PM Rejected
White supremacist found guilty of beating a black man in a police garage during Charlottesville rall Tuesday May 01, @08:36PM Rejected
Trump: Viele „neue Rechte“ sind nun von ihm enttäuscht Tuesday May 01, @12:44PM Rejected
Η θεωρία της Νέας Δεξιάς - Ταιριάζει στην περίπτωση της Αυστρίας και της Ιταλίας; Tuesday May 01, @12:14AM Rejected
Πρωτομαγιά 1944: Η εκτέλεση των 200 από τους Ναζί -Ενα drone πάνω από την Καισαριανή [βίντεο] Monday April 30, @11:19PM Rejected
Alt-right spread vile libel about Michelle Wolf Monday April 30, @10:46PM Rejected
How to Fight Alt-Right Terrorism Monday April 30, @03:28PM Rejected
De Alt-Right: te vrezen of te bestrijden? Monday April 30, @12:31PM Rejected
Soylentil commanded to stop submitting submissions! Sunday April 29, @10:31PM Rejected
Seeing Through the Rhetoric of the Alt-Right Sunday April 29, @09:22PM Rejected
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer begs for money to pay his legal bills Saturday April 28, @11:35PM Rejected
Alt-right provocateur James Allsup makes WSU appearance, advocates for Identity Evropa Saturday April 28, @10:53AM Rejected
Foreign and 'alt-right' activists target Irish voters on Facebook ahead of abortion referendum Friday April 27, @08:44PM Rejected
NRA Gathers Documents Amid Scrutiny Over Ties to Kremlin-Linked Banker Friday April 27, @02:15PM Accepted
UPDATE: White nationalist Chris Cantwell, known for Charlottesville riots, arrested in Leesburg. Friday April 27, @12:35PM Rejected
UVa has issued a no trespass warning to Jason Kessler Friday April 27, @12:28PM Rejected
Here's why the alt-right loves Kanye West Thursday April 26, @03:32PM Rejected
Alt-Right Down But Not Out Thursday April 26, @10:45AM Rejected
How the alt-right uses milk to promote white supremacy Thursday April 26, @10:14AM Rejected
Looking Ahead to the Alt-Right's Second Act Tuesday April 24, @10:09PM Rejected
Neo-Nazi 'Tyrone' exposed as US marine Tuesday April 24, @01:02PM Rejected
The mysticism of the alt-right Monday April 23, @04:36PM Rejected
Laura Ingraham meets the Afrocentric “alt-right” — and it’s every bit as weird as it sounds Monday April 23, @02:30PM Rejected
Waffle House suspect Travis Reinking deemed himself a 'sovereign citizen,' a right-wing nut-job. Sunday April 22, @07:47PM Rejected
‘Nazi scum get out!’: Watch entire New York bar chant at Milo Yiannopoulos until he leaves Sunday April 22, @07:36PM Rejected
The rise of fascist fashion: Clothing helps the far right sell their violent message Sunday April 22, @12:01PM Rejected
How the U.S. became Troll Nation: From Gamergate to the rise of Trump Sunday April 22, @11:48AM Rejected
The class conflict dividing America’s race warriors Sunday April 22, @12:37AM Rejected
Analyzing Kevin MacDonald's 'Culture of Critique' & the alt-right's embrace of anti-Jewish ideology Saturday April 21, @10:32PM Rejected
Militarized Cops At Tiny Georgia Neo-Nazi Rally Arrest Counterprotesters For Wearing Masks Saturday April 21, @08:32PM Rejected
Missoula judge advances suit against neo-Nazi who attacked Whitefish real estate agent Friday April 20, @10:46PM Rejected
Right-Wing Media Promote An Anti-Semitic Extremist To Mock Starbucks Controversy Friday April 20, @09:14PM Rejected
German neo-Nazis mass for festival on Hitler’s birthday Friday April 20, @04:04PM Rejected
Die Postergirls der neuen Rechten Friday April 20, @12:55PM Rejected
‘Imploding’: Financial troubles. Lawsuits. Trailer park brawls. Has the alt-right peaked? Friday April 20, @12:45PM Rejected
Fant nyfascist-ideolog i hyllene Friday April 20, @12:05PM Rejected
Violent alt-right members consider Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh a hero — 23 years after. Friday April 20, @01:38AM Rejected
Seeing Through the Rhetoric of the Alt-Right: Spotting White Supremacist Propaganda in W.Va. Thursday April 19, @07:34PM Rejected
McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan: Investigating pathways to the alt-right Thursday April 19, @04:31PM Rejected
Right-winger? Not me, says alt-right darling Jordan Peterson Wednesday April 18, @11:25PM Rejected
Why white nationalists are spreading conspiracy theories that Trump is being controlled by the “deep Wednesday April 18, @02:47PM Rejected
Gravitas Acquires ‘Alt-Right: Age of Rage’ Documentary Wednesday April 18, @02:36PM Rejected
Chat Site for Gamers Got Overrun by the Alt-Right. Now It’s Fighting Back. Wednesday April 18, @12:51PM Rejected
Paul Gottfried: Don’t call me the ‘godfather’ of those alt-right neo-Nazis. I’m Jewish. Tuesday April 17, @11:43PM Rejected
Paul Krugman: Unicorns of the Intellectual Right Tuesday April 17, @03:37PM Rejected
‘Dear White People’ Season 2 Targets Alt-Right Trolls Tuesday April 17, @11:46AM Rejected
Ann Coulter is retweeting a white nationalist Monday April 16, @02:52PM Rejected
Paul Nehlen, the alt-right candidate running for Paul Ryan’s seat, explained Saturday April 14, @04:12PM Rejected
Graham Linehan on the art of the risky joke – and why the alt-right get it wrong Saturday April 14, @04:01PM Rejected
This Is Stupid Watergate. Wonkagenda For Fri., April 13, 2018 Friday April 13, @11:55PM Rejected
Alt-Right Activist On State Of The Movement: ‘We Are Fucked’ Friday April 13, @04:29PM Rejected
Facebook Deletes Richard Spencer's Accounts in Hate Speech Crackdown Friday April 13, @04:24PM Accepted
Alt-right speaker cancels appearance in Grand Junction Friday April 13, @04:19PM Rejected
Alt-right magnifies hyopcrisy Friday April 13, @01:24AM Rejected
Dakota Johnson's Boobs Nominated for Best Actress in Fifty Shades Freed Friday April 13, @01:17AM Rejected
Why the idea that the English have a common Anglo-Saxon origin is a myth Wednesday April 11, @11:26PM Rejected
Professors Are Targets In Online Culture Wars; Some Fight Back Wednesday April 11, @05:26PM Rejected
Top Florida GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Spoke at Event With Bannon, Yiannopoulos in 2017 Wednesday April 11, @03:14PM Rejected
Controversial alt-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos' LSU talk canceled, organizers say Wednesday April 11, @03:06PM Rejected
Paul Ryan’s Retirement Gives a Big Boost to the Most Prominent White Nationalist in U.S. Politics Wednesday April 11, @12:48PM Rejected
Chelsea Manning reflects on her mistaken attempt to reach out to the alt-lite Tuesday April 10, @01:11PM Rejected
Does Unleashing a Neo-Nazi 'Troll Army' Count as Free Speech? Tuesday April 10, @12:53PM Rejected
Nazi From ‘Sieg Heil Taylor Swift’ Vid Arrested on Weapons Charge Tuesday April 10, @12:47PM Rejected
Less Than a Year After Charlottesville, the Alt-Right Is Self-Destructing Monday April 09, @05:54PM Rejected
Alt-Right Furries Are Raging Online, And Leftist Furries Wonder What Is To Be Done Monday April 09, @03:49PM Rejected
R/THE_DONALD Opinion: Reddit’s advertising strategies still hide hate speech Monday April 09, @03:42PM Rejected
The Alt-Right Media Bubble Is in Trouble Monday April 09, @01:46AM Rejected
Is Dutch Bad Boy Thierry Baudet the New Face of the European Alt-Right? Monday April 09, @01:04AM Rejected
Poet went undercover in the alt-right now talks about healing Monday April 09, @12:13AM Rejected
The Fall of the "Alt-Right" Came From Anti-Fascism Sunday April 08, @11:58PM Rejected
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: Bannon wanted data for alt-right candidates Sunday April 08, @11:45PM Rejected
The Alt-Right Is a Subculture Without a Culture Sunday April 08, @11:39PM Rejected
A Political Movement, Defining Itself by What It Hates Saturday April 07, @06:56PM Rejected
Gab Is the Alt-Right Social Network Racists Are Moving to Friday April 06, @03:12PM Rejected
Stormfront.org restricts access to donors, shuts down main server Thursday April 05, @03:41PM Rejected
Atheist Alt-Right? Wednesday April 04, @04:15PM Rejected
30% of World’s Electricity Consumption Will Be Spent Explaining Bitcoin Tuesday April 03, @03:00PM Rejected
Sam Harris, Charles Murray, and the allure of race science Sunday April 01, @03:38PM Rejected
The ‘crying Nazi’ from Charlottesville now says he’s an FBI informant Wednesday March 28, @05:40PM Rejected
With Kisses, from Russia, NRA is compromat!! Tuesday March 27, @11:32PM Rejected
Alt-Right: Age of Rage, SXSW 2018 Review Monday March 26, @12:58PM Rejected
Exposing Alt-Right Anti-Semitism and Its Enablers Monday March 26, @12:26AM Rejected
Lessons from the Left: The alt-right’s history in America Monday March 26, @12:14AM Rejected
Baked_Alaska or Baked in terms of Marijuana Racism Monday March 26, @12:00AM Rejected
The Hate Report: The alt-right is a mess Sunday March 25, @11:08AM Rejected
"Alt-Right News" is no more! Sunday March 25, @10:42AM Rejected
Looking Under the Alt-Right Rock Thursday March 22, @03:40PM Rejected
Alt-fight: Jason Jorjani, leaving the alt-right? Wednesday March 21, @10:50AM Rejected
Readership plummets for alt-right Breitbart without Bannon Wednesday March 21, @10:17AM Rejected
"White Wakanda!" Alt-right takes on yet another film. Tuesday March 20, @01:28PM Rejected
Free Speech! Except for Muslims. Alt-right Civil Liberties. Tuesday March 20, @01:07PM Rejected
The alt-right is in decline. Has antifascist activism worked? Tuesday March 20, @12:45PM Rejected
Everything We Think about the Political Correctness Debate is Wrong Tuesday March 20, @11:26AM Accepted
Heimbach Monday March 19, @04:17PM Rejected
Israel’s Alt-Right Is Now Mainstream—Are Lawmakers Doing Enough to Stop It? Sunday March 18, @10:54PM Rejected
Prominent US neo-Nazi arrested on domestic violence charge Sunday March 18, @01:15PM Rejected
What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong About Jews Saturday March 17, @04:41PM Rejected
How a white nationalist’s family came to blows over a trailer tryst Saturday March 17, @02:04AM Rejected
Before Heimbach was a Mother-in-law _cucker, he was excommunicated Saturday March 17, @01:36AM Rejected
White nationalist leader Matthew Heimbach arrested for domestic battery Saturday March 17, @01:19AM Rejected
Behold the incestuous master race: Neo-Nazi leader Matthew Heimbach has affair with mother-in-law Saturday March 17, @01:12AM Rejected
White Supremacist Assault and Adultery Scandal Ends in Jilted Neo-Nazi Web Admin Deleting Site Friday March 16, @09:55PM Rejected
Alt-Right: Age of Rage is a snapshot of one of 2017’s darkest moments Friday March 16, @10:50AM Rejected
‘Alt-Right’ Ringleader Richard Spencer: We Attract the Mentally Ill Thursday March 15, @03:59PM Rejected
White Nationalist Leader Heimbach Arrested On Domestic Violence Charges Wednesday March 14, @09:13PM Rejected
Matt Heimbach arrested! Wednesday March 14, @12:31PM Rejected
Does Richard Spencer’s Disastrous College Tour Mean The ‘Alt-Right’ Is Fizzling Out? Saturday March 10, @12:30AM Rejected
German Far-Right ‘Terrorists’ Jailed for Series of Attacks on Refugees Wednesday March 07, @11:34PM Accepted
Awkward! All of Oculus's Rift Headsets Have Stopped Working Due to an Expired Certificate Wednesday March 07, @11:04PM Accepted
Iconic Stellar Debris Ring Much Stranger Than Previously Thought Wednesday March 07, @12:34AM Accepted
Alt-Moonie Gun Blessing, with Robes and Crowns of Ammo! Sunday March 04, @02:00PM Rejected
The "Alt-Right" Is Building a White Nationalist Mass Movement With "Operation Homeland" Saturday March 03, @01:45PM Rejected
Here’s How an Alt-Right Troll Auditions for Survivor Saturday March 03, @01:20PM Rejected
Alt-right attorney defends racism, homophobia, Richard Spencer: but that is not the point. Friday March 02, @12:09AM Rejected
Stereotypes About College Students And Free Speech Are False Tuesday February 27, @05:45PM Rejected
These Companies Are Sticking By The NRA Saturday February 24, @12:23AM Accepted
Mind control or gun control Friday February 23, @12:34AM Rejected
It’s time for conservatives to retire the term ‘alt-right’ Thursday February 22, @09:40PM Rejected
Twitter “Bot” Purge Causes Outcry as Follower Counts Fall Wednesday February 21, @03:40PM Accepted
‘Fire this ammosexual’: Viewers demand CNN boot Kingston after he calls Parkland students left-wing Tuesday February 20, @09:20PM Rejected
Jordan Peterson, darling of the Alt-right, publishes a book Tuesday February 20, @03:41PM Rejected
‘Alt-right’ Oregon State student-government member ousted in overwhelming recall vote Sunday February 18, @08:27PM Rejected
James Damore's Labor Complaint Against Google Was Completely Shut Down Friday February 16, @03:43PM Accepted
Total: 148

After nearly 6 years with a Motorola Photon Q (XT897/"Asanti") I finally decided it's time for a new phone, and spent the outrageous sum of just-under-$130-including-shipping for a Moto C Plus, screenglass, and rubber body armor.

Motorola, now a subsidiary of Lenovo, is known for most of its phones being fairly amenable to rooting and unlocking. This particular one also happens to be GSM-enabled and support dual SIMs, on the off chance I ever leave the US and want a data plan. Its specs are, by today's standards, unimpressive: quad-core MT6737M CPU (4x ARMv8 A53 @ 28nm, somewhat slower than a Snapdragon 425 for reference), 2 GB of memory, 16GB of eMMC flash, and 5" 1280x720 screen. The body is all plastic, though it's not bad plastic, and the battery is a surprising 4,000 mAh that weighs more than the phone itself does.

Now, it turns out the C Plus is *not* as easily unlockable as, say, the G4 is. In particular, the usual fastboot commands such as get_unlock_data simply fail with "unknown remote command" errors. The stock ROM is also kind of pants, though it's at least a fairly vanilla Android 7.0 rather than Madokami-forgive-us-all MIUI or TouchWiz.

However, there is a program called SP Flash Tool that is able to write directly to MediaTek devices' internal flash over a USB port. This is not for the faint of heart, as it requires carefully-crafted scatter files with the exact starting addresses and lengths corresponding to each and every piece of the stock firmware, and if you mess up by even one byte, you will very likely hard-brick your phone. For even more heart-pounding excitement, the way to get a custom ROM on here is not to use this tool, but to pop into an advanced mode and specify where to start writing (if you're curious, it's 0x2d80000 and no, that's not a typo) and with what file.

The purpose here is to flash a custom build of TeamWin recovery, known by its uncomplimentary acronym TWRP. And *this* involves dissecting the machine, removing its battery, holding VolDown, and hooking it up to a PC via USB cable, *in that order.* Somehow, Flash Tool is able to write to the device even though it's powered off and battery-less.

From here, disconnect from the PC, hold VolUp and Power, and select Recovery boot. After about 30s, TWRP will load, and you can pull up ADB in your shell, place the device in sideload mode, and "adb sideload /path/to/lineageos-14.1.zip," which goes a hell of a lot faster than you'd expect it to. But there's a catch: if you reboot now, you'll go into an endless bootloop, where the phone won't go past the Motorola logo. If you don't have a stock ROM or, preferably, a Nandroid backup, this is game over.

Turns out you *also* need to install SuperSU, and you need to do it in a special way: while in TWRP, pop a terminal, and do "echo SYSTEMLESS=true>/data/.supersu" before adb-sideloading a known-good SuperSU .zip onto the phone. The output will be quite verbose, and it will warn you that 1) on reboot, the device will likely restart at least once and 2) first boot will take "several minutes."

They're not kidding. I lost count of the exact amount of time, but I believe LineageOS sat there blowing bubbles to itself for a good 15 or 20 minutes, and I was literally seconds away from forcing a power-down and starting the entire process again with a stock ROM. It also takes well over a minute to boot; I counted 33 sets of right-to-left bubbles at the LineageOS loading screen per bootup, and that's after a good 30 seconds of the phone sitting at the Motorola logo with a nice fat warning about how the device can't be verified and might not work properly.

Yeah, that's the point: from Google's PoV, it's *not* working properly, because LineageOS seems not to have all that spying junk on it. I didn't even flash a GApps zip; instead, first thing I did was to sideload an FDroid archive, which is something like an open source version of the Play Store. Everything I need is on there and more.

So far, I am loving this thing. I've been zipping all over downtown Milwaukee looking for a new place to lease the last couple of days, and there is nothing like having a portable MP3 player for those long rides. And get this: after using it to play music for a good 3 hours, *the battery was still at 95% from a full charge this morning.* That is *nuts.* The Moto C Plus punches way, way above its weight with the proper love and attention paid to it.

So if anyone wants a good budget phone to run LineageOS, Resurrection Remix, etc on and doesn't mind doing some nailbitingly-scary stuff with direct flashing, I can heartily recommend the C Plus (NOT the C, that thing is junk). Happy flashing, everyone :)

I have been at the C++ again. After a few years I have been slowly managing to persuade people that directly testing (using TDD) the C++ code is a good idea.

Also, I have tried to put my C smugness and arrogance away in the spirit of doing things "the right way" i.e. in C++ and the way the earnest and eternally vigilant members of the C++ Inquisition would recommend.

A couple of weekends ago I was on a fairly long train journey so for entertainment I reacquainted myself with the C++ Frequently Questioned Answers and laughed out loud a couple of times much to the bemusement of Mrs Turgid.

I had been asked to supervise a much younger and inexperienced member of the team. He had too much to do and so I was asked to pick up some work he had started. Young people today... So I extracted some of his code into independent methods and put them under test with CPPUNIT which involved hacking on some nasty ANT build scripts (don't get me started...) just to add a few .so files to the linker command line. The build scripts are so bad that it takes upwards of 45 seconds to compile, link and run the unit tests (200 lines of code).

Now to the fun, std::map. Why oh why oh why? Well, because the STL and these are "algorithms" and they've been developed by people much cleverer than you and so they won't have bugs like the ones you would write yourself and they have performance criteria and they use templates so you get type checking at compile time and blah blah blah...

Yes, well, nobody expects the C++ Inquisition. Their main weapon is type safety and code reuse. OK, their two main weapons are type safety, code reuse and generics. Hang on, that's three. I'll come in again. Nobody expects the C++ Inquisition. Amongst their weapons are type safety, code reuse, generics, multiple inheritance, virtual methods, references, the STL... You get the idea.

And what was std::map being used for? To store pairs of strings and integers (hex) read out of an ASCII configuration file. How was the file parsed? sscanf()? No, some fancy stream object with operator<<. And what were the ASCII strings? Names of parameters. And there was a third column in the file that specified a width and was summarily ignored by the parser. And what about the names of the parameters? Well, they were looked up in the map at run time, hard-coded, to pull the values out of the map and put into internal variables with all kinds of shifts and shuffles on byte order. And what if the user changed the names of any of the parameters in the file? Yes, what indeed. The user will be editing this file.

Now I do need to use some sort of dynamic data structure myself in this project. I need to map strings to integers, but with integers as the keys this time. My table needs to be populated with the names of files read from a directory and the files sorted in order. If I were doing this in a sane language like C it would be relatively straight forward. Anyway, we're in C++ land now and the C++ Inquisition are in attendance. So I thought I'd take a leaf out of their book and use std::map<uint32_t, std::string> table or something (note the code is infected with stds all over the place, another cool feature) so I decided I'd better read the documentation. I thought I might use the insert() method and check for duplicate keys in the map. Nope, template error. It seems one must use operator[] but that doesn't check for existing keys, it just overwrites them. The suggested remedy? Ah, scan the entire map from the beginning each time to make sure the key isn't already there. Doesn't it throw one of these pesky exception things? I thought they were the Modern Way(TM)?

::iterator is fun. Try to iterate over an empty map, or to an entry that isn't there. How do you detect it? Well, ::iterator is some kind of pointer (you get at the data with ->first or ->second) so you might compare with NULL (sorry, 0 nowadays) but no way because operator== is not defined. The best advice is not to try to iterate over an empty map or to dereference an iterator that doesn't point to anything.

I could have read my file names into a (sorted) linked list checking for duplicates along the way. It would have been less than 50 lines of C, and I could have written it and tested it in the time it took me to get angry about C++ all over again.

The word is chagrin. I have wasted very precious time and haven't even got any working code.

Edited 20180328 to use proper escape codes for angle brackets.

Reversing his veto threat, Trump signs the $1.3 Trillion dollar spending bill.

National Review says it's the Biggest Spending Increase Since 2009.

Trump briefly threatened to veto it. Mostly because it didn't spend enough: “... the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,”

Spending wouldn't be such a problem except for the fact they also cut revenue by a over a $trillion with the tax bill.

I'm no mathematician but that seems to put a bit of crimp in his promise to eliminate the national debt in eight years.

Isn't that what the government types keep saying?

So why is it that the head of that self-same government doesn't play by those rules? Does he think the law doesn't apply to him?

In my mind, those who are privileged to represent us should be *more* forthcoming and avoid even the hint of any conflicts of interest, illegality or lack of transparency.

Why then does our current administration fear the Mueller investigation? Let's get to the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

Which is why it seems odd that our 'fearless' leader is acting like a frightened animal:

A lawyer for President Trump called on the Justice Department on Saturday to end the special counsel investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, shifting abruptly to a more adversarial stance as the inquiry appeared to be intensifying.
[...]
Mr. Dowd said at first that he was speaking on behalf of the president but later backed off that assertion. He did not elaborate on why he was calling for the end of the investigation, saying only: “Just end it on the merits in light of recent revelations.”

People close to the president were skeptical that Mr. Dowd was acting on his own. Mr. Trump has a history of using advisers to publicly test a message, giving him some distance from it. And Mr. Dowd’s comments came at a time when members of Mr. Trump’s legal team are jockeying to stay in his favor.

Hours later, the president echoed Mr. Dowd’s accusations of corruption in the theoretical “deep state” that Mr. Trump has long cast as a boogeyman working to undermine him.

”There was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State,” he wrote on Twitter.

In the end, the truth will out. Let's hear it. Whether it's that there was no collusion with the Russians or if there was. That's actually less important than making sure we have the facts.

Short notice here. I call upon all Soylentils to submit Fine Articles to SoylentNews, but in this particular instance, any articles on the extremely embarrassing incident in the trailer park in Indiana involving White supremacist Matthew Heimback, founder of the Traditionalist Workers Party. Yours truly has submitted an entire shit-load of submissions, but for some reason they get rejected. I can only surmise that this is embarrassment by some editors who have alt-right leanings, or live in trailer parks, or have feelings for the old "Mother-in-Law".

But that is neither here, nor there. Soylentils are against censorship. Hell, we let Eth and jmorris, and Runaway post their crap, so why no report on the latest follies of the alt-right? No interest? Oh, seriously, who is not interested about a guy who lists his profession as "white nationalist", carries on an affair with the wife of his webmaster, who is also his father-in-law, and then assaults said father-in-law, and the daughter of the father-in-law, who would the the "wife" in question. Oedipus had it much easier than Matthew.

So submit away! Ten times a day, or an hour! Keep that queue full of submissions! Make the editors work!

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UPDATE! Wow, subs barely last half an hour now! Here are some more that have been, um, "declined".

Prominent US neo-Nazi arrested on domestic violence charge

And a totally unrelated, but very informative and interesting article on the source of alt-right anti-semitism.

Finally, another on the Israeli alt-right movement.

Just not of interest to Soylentils, huh? That's what they want you to think! (Not saying that there is an alt-right cabal controlling SoylentNews, but there just might be an alt-right cabal controlling SoylentNews.)

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What? No White Wakanda?
Or Antifa has succeeded?

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March 22, more declined submissions, which are actually quite interesting for the average Soylentil.
Jason Jorjani to leave the alt-right
Readership plummets for alt-right Breitbart without Bannon

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March 23!

We're sorry, your submission "Looking Under the Alt-Right Rock" was declined for the following reason:
We are not interested in the sexual habits of this individual.--JR

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

Such an interesting submission, Looking Under the Alt-Right, alright. Somehow I have the Idea that even if I fix it, and resubmit, it will still get rejected. But you know, despite Rhinos and K-pop, it is not about the sex.

Oh! The main thing is that janorinok is back! So nice to be denied by my favorite ed, who has safely returned from the jaws of death! Thank you, JR!

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March 25, 2018, Rejected again!
This one is good, can't remember what it is about. There are so many, so many.
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March 30!!! Oh, Noes! Crying Neo-Nazi story rejected!!!

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April 5, 2018
I have submitted several reviews, or stories about reviews, of a film that was premiered at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, "Alt-right: Age of Rage", all of which have been rejected! It as if somebody does not want Soylentils to know about this movie?
  https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=25584 Enjoy.
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April 8, 2018
Can we just link my submissions page, so anyone can see the whole sorry episode?
https://soylentnews.org/~aristarchus/submissions

In Momenti ad Mortuum Ethanol_fueledum.

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April 18, 2018

Oh, the Soylent Carnage! A week's worth of worth submissions, rejected without comment, apology, or notification! Some were quite good, like the Anglo-Saxon archeology piece, and the bit on alt-right attacking professors. Or, we could read the eds lame submissions! Ha!

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April 30, 2018
"We're sorry, your submission "De Alt-Right: te vrezen of te bestrijden? " was declined for the following reason:" And nothing follows. Our eds can't read Dutch? What are they, Austro-Spanish-Hungarian?

Just in case we were wondering if arming teachers is a good idea:

As thousands of students walked out of their schools on Wednesday to pressure Congress to approve gun control legislation, three other students were healing from wounds inflicted when a teacher’s firearm accidentally discharged in a California classroom.

The teacher, Dennis Alexander, who is also a city councilman in Seaside, Calif., was showing the students a gun on Tuesday during his advanced public safety class at Seaside High School when the gun accidentally went off, Marci McFadden, a spokeswoman for the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

Across the country, another school was also investigating a weapon that discharged accidentally this week. The Alexandria Police Department in Virginia said that a school resource officer accidentally fired his gun inside his office at George Washington Middle School on Tuesday morning. Nobody was hurt, the police said.

Teacher’s Gun Is Accidentally Fired During Public Safety Class, Injuring 3

Rex Tillerson has been fired as Secretary of State; CIA director Mike Pompeo has been nominated to replace him. Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Pompeo at the CIA is Gina Haspel, who had been the agency’s deputy director.

In 2002, Haspel was present, in a supervising role, at a “black site” in Thailand where an individual named Abu Zubaydah—believed to be a top al-Qaida official—was tortured. Zubaydah was waterboarded, slammed against a wall, and confined in a “coffin-like” box. As ProPublica reported in 2017, though, “CIA analysts were wrong when they had identified Zubaydah as the number three or four in al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden. The waterboarding failed to elicit valuable intelligence not because he was holding back, but because he was not a member of al-Qaida, and had no knowledge of any plots against the United States.”

He remains imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay and, as the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins has noted, lost his left eye at some point after being captured under circumstances that remain unclear.

When questions began to swirl about the Bush administration’s use of the “black sites,” and program of “enhanced interrogation,” [Haspel] began pushing to have the tapes destroyed. She accomplished her mission years later when she rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters and drafted an order to destroy the evidence, which was still locked in a CIA safe at the American embassy in Thailand. Her boss, the head of the agency’s counterterrorism center, signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a giant shredder.

Trump’s Nominee to Lead CIA Supervised Torture of Mistakenly Identified Subject, Then Destroyed Evidence

This one is probably going to catch me a lot of heat from both the extremes, as it touches on that most sensitive and landmine-laden of topics: gender identity and the expressions thereof.

First, the parts which are going to piss the TERFs off: I am a proudly cisgender, XX-chromosome-having ("womyn-born-womyn" as they'd say) lesbian, with a strict policy of dating only other lesbians (after some bad experiences with bisexual women)...and I am also trans-inclusive. This is going to draw the usual predictable howls of outrage, and might even get me called "traitor to the lesbian race."

*Again.*

Because yes, that is a thing that happened once. Satire sometimes writes itself.

Incidentally, if someone knows where the lesbian race lives, please by all means send me a couple of plane tickets; I'm getting married soon and would love to have the reception there. Hopefully it's somewhere with nice beaches!

And now the parts which are going to annoy non-TERFs: some of the TERF arguments hold more water than their detractors give them credit for. In particular:

1) There are biological differences between the sexes. Note that this does *not* mean I believe transwomen and transmen are deluded or faking their lived experiences; it means that gender is not purely a "social construct," that one's brain structure and hormones play heavily into it. Incidentally, this is *not* an anti-trans argument. If anything, this is the reason I support trans* people in their transitions. Nature screwed up somewhere and put the wrong sort of mind/brain in the wrong sort of body. I can't imagine what that's like, but I can take their word for it, and having seen the real, positive changes in trans* friends of mine once they started hormones only cements this support.

Again: not being a gender essentialist here, and certainly not committing that stupid "physical sex and/or chromosome cohort *is* gender" fallacy. I'm on your side, I'm just not going to fall for the stupid, mush-headed "thinking" that attempts to reduce something as complex as gender to "just a social construct." Real data has borne out that this is not the case.

2) Trans* people do not have the lived experiences of cisgender people of the sex they are attempting to pass as. Transwomen: you do not bleed, you did not go through female puberty as a child/young teenager, you will never be pregnant, and you were not seen by society at large--this is different from "not seen by molesters and paedophiles!"--as potentially and primarily objects of convenience, sexual and otherwise, for men.

3) Expanding on 2 above, I support cisgender-women-only spaces. This does not mean I don't view you, transwomen, as "real women." Your experiences are your own, and if you feel so badly mismatched to your body that you want to change it, to me, that is enough to qualify you as "real women." Just...not cisgender women. Again, different life experiences.

So please, if some of us want *some* space that's not dealing with trans* issues, please, please, give us that. You can be in the inclusive spaces, and even start transwomen-only spaces; I will not intrude on those, because I do not have your lived experiences, and can't imagine what you've been through. I only ask that you extend us the same courtesy.

4) Having a genital preference does not make you anti-trans* or transmisogynist. I am a lesbian. I like ladybits. This means I'm not going to date a pre-operative MtF, no matter how well she passes otherwise. We can be friends, but we're never going to have sex. Of course, this one is a moot point *anyway* since I'm already taken, but even hypothetically, it's not going to happen. It's not personal, but it's also not negotiable.

5) Surgery does not change your chromosomes or your lived experiences. This is actually not anywhere near as important as TERFs make it out to be, since at least to my mind, most of gender and gender identity is performative anyway. I'm also not saying to feel invalid or less of a human because of who and what you are. But at the same time, understand that history is history, and it can't be retroactively changed.

Just understand that the social transition is going to be bigger than the physical one for you. We can spot otherwise well-passing early-stage transitioning MtFs very well based not on any physical cues, but based on behavior. It takes time to lose that male privilege, and understandably, some of you are going to be reluctant to let it go. It sucks on this side of the gender divide sometimes.

6) Please understand that much of the backlash from the TERF camp is because women have always, always, always been marginalized and shoved aside for mens' interests, and some of us feel that men are intruding *even as they become women.* There's hardly any discussion of FtM people compared to MtF, and I don't hear hardly anything about FtMs having trouble integrating into groups composed of cisgender men the way MtFs tend to kind of stomp all over womens' spaces sometimes (in my observation, mostly early in transition).

The reasons for this are probably complicated. They likely have something to do with male being the "default," so FtMs are basically going from other and different to default, if not "normal." And the MtF friends i have, both of them, both told me there was a tremendous backlash against them for abandoning being male, mostly backed up by "WHY would you want to be a chick?!" with the unspoken corollary being "womens' lives suck."

I am, again, not a TERF, and I will defend you against them in all arenas. In return, please keep the above in mind.

This all sounds reasonable enough, right? In the end, doesn't it just boil down to the golden rule, treating others as they want to be treated, taking their basic humanity (a level well below gender expression, mind you!) into account? But I'm sure this is going to catch me more flames than a California wildfire. So be it; I'm wearing my asbestos nightie. Have at it.

So here we are, once again being the alternative to the "other site", which seems to have crapped itself, but we still have our own problems. Yes, I have gone on about them for maybe way too much, but I wanted to bring up one nicety of SoylentNews that is honored in the breach. Notification of submissions rejected.

For Example:

We're sorry, your submission "Here’s How an Alt-Right Troll Auditions for Survivor" was declined for the following reason:
Journal for this - not worthy of the front page--JR

Now I love JR, or janrinok, he is my favorite editor, he tries to stay true to the ideal that was SoylentNews, but I have to ask, not worthy, why? Us submitters could use some more constructive criticism! Is it just that once again, I was critical of the alt-right? Knowing that would help. Or was it that the submission was about broadcast TV? Was that the reason? Not enough to go on, even for a 2400 year old philosopher!

And then there is the boilerplate:

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

For some reason, in my particular case, I feel that this is less than sincere. I have resubmitted, with the limited guidance given by the eds, and had the re-submission also rejected. Oh, poor aristarchus! Doomed to a level of Dante's hell where the editors are the authorities, and they can make decisions based on things we know not of. So I guess I will put something about how there are boobies, a la TMB, on Survivor, with the alt-right rejected because there are never any boobies in alt-right things at all because it is just like the scene in the Blues Brothers, where the Illinois Nazis were plummeting to their death, and the second in command, cmn32480, says, "I have always loved you." So, there is that.

Now is the time for all good Soylentils to come to the aid of their news aggregating website! We need more balance, more inclusiveness, less right-wing fanbois bubbling! We could use an aristarchus submissions, not because he will just submit more and make us look like a bunch of right-wing dweebs, but because there is a viable, majority, sane and everyday position out there that thinks the alt right needs to be hung out to dry. Let the racist bastards speak, I say. And my submissions are the one way to do so. If the eds reject them, they have made the bed in which they will lie. Not a good bed. Roll over, and there is Milo? Do you really want that?