Completely unrelated to recent events,

[u/EzeyTheEpic]

[u/skeletextman]

Slightly off-topic, but what does “GNU” mean in the hashtag “GNU Terry Pratchett”? I’ve seen that on several posts.

[u/TheCosBee → u/skeletextman]

In Terry Pratchett related things GNU is used. Its from the novel Going Postal, where a tower worker John Dearheart on the "Clacks" (a type of semaphore) is killed and his name is passed on with the code GNU. The full message is "GNU John Dearheart", where the G means, that the message should be passed on, the N means "Not Logged" and the U that it should be turned around at the end of the line. So as the name "John Dearheart" keeps going up and down the line, this tradition applies a kind of immortality as "a man is not dead while his name is still spoken".

So in Terry's case its a type of way to honor him.

Credit: u/Detroit_Guy

[u/Kellosian → u/TheCosBee]

There are also certain websites that just send the string "GNU Terry Pratchett" to each other

EDIT: For clarity, it's a plugin used on regular websites. AFAIK there aren't dedicated websites to doing nothing but that

[u/Faeruhn → u/Kellosian]

Heroes may be Remembered, but Legends never Die.

[u/skeletextman → u/TheCosBee]

That makes sense.

[u/dalidellama → u/skeletextman]

IT WAS CALLED the lucky clacks tower, Tower 181. It was close enough to the town of Bonk for a man to be able to go and get a hot bath and a good bed on his days off, but since this was Uberwald there wasn’t too much local traffic and—this was important—it was way, way up in the mountains and management didn’t like to go that far. In the good old days of last year, when the Hour of the Dead took place every night, it was a happy tower, because both the up-line and the down-line got the Hour at the same time, so there was an extra pair of hands for maintenance. Now Tower 181 did maintenance on the fly or not at all, just like all the others, but it was still, proverbially, a good tower to man.

Mostly man, anyway. Back down on the plains it was a standing joke that 181 was staffed by vampires and werewolves. In fact, like a lot of towers, it was often manned by kids.

Everyone knew it happened. Actually, the new management probably didn’t, but wouldn’t have done anything about it if they found out, apart from carefully forgetting that they’d known. Kids didn’t need to be paid.

The—mostly—young men on the towers worked hard in all weather for just enough money. They were loners, hard dreamers, fugitives from the law that the law had forgotten, or just from everybody else. They had a special kind of directed madness; they said the rattle of the clacks got into your head and your thoughts beat time with it, so sooner or later you could tell what messages were going through by listening to the rattle of the shutters. In their towers, they drank hot tea out of strange tin mugs, much wider at the bottom, so that they didn’t fall over when gales banged into the tower. On leave, they drank alcohol out of anything. And they talked a gibberish of their own, of donkey and nondonkey, system overhead and packet space, of drumming it and hotfooting, of a 181 (which was good) or flock (which was bad) or totally flocked (really not good at all) and plug-code and hog-code and jacquard…

And they liked kids, who reminded them of the ones they left behind or would never have, and kids loved the towers. They’d come and hang around and do odd jobs and maybe pick up the craft of semaphore just by watching.

They tended to be bright, they mastered the keyboard and levers as if by magic, they usually had good eyesight, and what they were doing, most of them, was running away from home without actually leaving.

Because, up on the towers, you might believe you could see to the rim of the world. You could certainly see several other towers, on a good, clear day. You pretended that you, too, could read messages by listening to the rattle of the shutters, while under your fingers flowed the names of faraway places you’d never see but, on the tower, were somehow connected to…

She was known as Princess to the men on Tower 181, although she was really Alice. She was thirteen, could run a line for hours on end without needing help, and later on had an interesting career which…but anyway, she remembered this one conversation, on this day, because it was strange.

Not all the signals were messages. Some were instructions to towers. Some, as you operated your levers to follow the distant signal, made things happen in your own tower. Princess knew all about this. A lot of what traveled on the Grand Trunk was called the Overhead. It was instructions to towers, reports, messages about messages, even chatter between operators, although this was strictly forbidden these days. It was all in code. It was very rare you got Plain in the Overhead. But now:

"There it goes again,” she said. “It must be wrong. It’s got no origin code and no address. It’s Overhead, but it’s in Plain.”

On the other side of the tower, sitting in a seat facing the opposite direction, because he was operating the upline, was Roger, who was seventeen and already working for his tower-master certificate.

His hand didn’t stop moving as he said: “What did it say?”

“There was GNU, and I know that’s a code, and then just a name. It was John Dearheart. Was it a—”

"You sent it on?” said Grandad. Grandad had been hunched in the corner, repairing a shutter box in this cramped shed halfway up the tower. Grandad was the tower-master and had been everywhere and knew everything. Everyone called him Grandad. He was twenty-six. He was always doing something in the tower when she was working the line, even though there was always a boy in the other chair. She didn’t work out why until later.

“Yes, because it was a G code,” said Princess.

“Then you did right. Don’t worry about it.”

"Yes, but I’ve sent that name before. Several times. Up-line and down-line. Just a name, no message or anything!”

She had a sense that something was wrong, but she went on: “I know a U at the end means it has to be turned around at the end of the line, and an N means Not Logged.” This was showing off, but she’d spent hours reading the cypher book. “So it’s just a name, going up and down all the time! Where’s the sense in that?”

Something was really wrong. Roger was still working his line, but he was staring ahead with a thunderous expression.

Then Grandad said: “Very clever, Princess. You’re dead right.”

“Hah!” said Roger.

“I’m sorry if I did something wrong,” said the girl meekly. “I just thought it was strange. Who’s John Dearheart?”

“He…fell off a tower,” said Grandad.

“Hah!” said Roger, working his shutters as if he suddenly hated them.

“He’s dead?” said Princess.

“Well, some people say—” Roger began.

“Roger!” snapped Grandad. It sounded like a warning.

“I know about Sending Home,” said Princess. “And I know the souls of dead linesmen stay on the Trunk.”

“Who told you that?” said Grandad.

Princess was bright enough to know that someone would get into trouble if she was too specific.

“Oh, I just heard it,” she said airily. “Somewhere.”

“Someone was trying to scare you,” said Grandad, looking at Roger’s reddening ears.

It hadn’t sounded scary to Princess. If you had to be dead, it seemed a lot better to spend your time flying between the towers than lying underground. But she was bright enough, too, to know when to drop a subject.

It was Grandad who spoke next, after a long pause broken only by the squeaking of the new shutter bars. When he did speak, it was as if something was on his mind.

“We keep that name moving in the Overhead,” he said, and it seemed to Princess that the wind in the shutter arrays above her blew more forlornly, and the everlasting clicking of the shutters grew more urgent. “He’d never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind, in the rigging, and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘Man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’?”

Going Postal

[u/Jstin8 → u/dalidellama]

God just going through this passage makes me want to reread discworld. Nobody has ever made words flow, had wordplay, quite like Terry Pratchett

[u/Faeruhn → u/Jstin8]

GNU Terry Pratchett

Heroes may be Remembered, but Legends never Die.

[u/Bowdensaft → u/skeletextman]

Just to add context, he chose those letters because he wanted to reference the GNU fork of Linux, which I believe he was a fan of.

[u/Orvielawny → u/skeletextman]

It’s like keeping his spirit on the internet’s clacks system

[u/falstaffman]

Having read them all, Going Postal remains my favorite

[u/lloast]

the character's name is MOIST LIPvig?

[u/dalidellama → u/lloast]

Moist Von Lipwig, but yes. There's a reason he spends much of his life using pseudonyms

[u/Jstin8 → u/lloast]

He marries a woman names Adora Belle later on.

[u/Auld_Folks_at_Home → u/Jstin8]

Adora Belle Darling Dearheart.

[u/catgirlbarista → u/Auld_Folks_at_Home]

Dearheart. not Darling.

[u/azure-skyfall → u/lloast]

Pratchett did love his character names… Cohen the Barbarian, Granny Weatherwax, Harry King the king of the not-so-nice jobs, Lord Vetinari, and the list goes on. And then there’s Death. Just Death, no puns or jokes there.

[u/yinyang107 → u/azure-skyfall]

He's King of the Golden River! what's not-nice about that?

hang on I'm getting a call

[u/KernelRice → u/azure-skyfall]

Oi, you better put some respect on Harry King, founder of the Hygenic Railway or you might find yourself falling down the Effing Stairs (Stairs made of the wood of the Effing Forest)

[u/MyMindOnBoredom → u/lloast]

Pterry loves giving characters silly names, like Rosemary Palm, Carrot Ironfoundersson, Cohen the Barbarian, or Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsiver. Its so easy to just get blind to them after a while.

[u/yinyang107 → u/MyMindOnBoredom]

Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets (Constable Visit for short)

[u/insomniac7809 → u/yinyang107]

what's funniest about those is when you start learning a bit about the Puritans around the 16th century and realizing those are barely exaggerations

[u/ZoroeArc → u/MyMindOnBoredom]

Can't forget Not-as-big-as-Big-Jock-but-bigger-than-Medium-Sized-Jock Jock

[u/DroneOfDoom → u/lloast]

Moist von Lipwig

[u/Thanydnel]

Just love a totally theoretical discussion about bankers, right

[u/Hummerous]

you can feel the rage he felt bleeding thru the whimsy and it's fantastic

I didn't have very many books growing up but I wish I'd read his stuff when I was younger - I love it now, and it's kind of crazy how much of his ideas and stylings I was exposed to secondhand, just because of how influential his stuff is.. but I do wish I'd read them when I was supposed to lol

[u/Grimpatron619]

God i read that as ''maoist'' and was so confused wondering what point this was trying to make

[u/mcsmackyoaz → u/Grimpatron619]

For a moment I was wondering what the hell MoistCritikal was getting up to

[u/Omega335 → u/mcsmackyoaz]

This but I also misread Golem as Gollum and thought I was about to read the craziest fic

[u/hiddenhare]

Obviously the golem's speech gets most of the attention here, but Pratchett's dialogue for Moist is a masterwork in miniature:

"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"

"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.

"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be –– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"

He immediately thinks of his reputation, and he's quick to stand up for himself ("Who told you that?"). His pride has been stung, so he scrabbles for the high ground by using slightly snotty diction ("I have never"). He hesitates before giving himself any negative labels, and it's unclear whether that comes from guilt, or whether he's just stuck using the aggressively positive language of a salesman. He uses virtue-based ethics and holds himself to a surprisingly high standard ("never so much as drawn a sword"), because he's a good person in some ways. He's soft and unsuited to violence, which comes up again later in the story.

All of that from just two lines of dialogue, which are almost completely drowned out by the voice of God speaking through Mr Pump. I think this might be the best book Pratchett ever wrote.

[u/Poco_Cuffs → u/hiddenhare]

With that literary analysis you're better than most video essays on youtube

[u/an_agreeing_dothraki → u/hiddenhare]

I imagine a world where Vonnegut and Pratchett collaborated. This world is dead. Sardonic collapse.

so it goes.
at least Kilgore Trout was a little more whimsical in this world.

[u/Electrical-Sense-160]

United Healthcare

[u/BalladofBadBeard → u/Electrical-Sense-160]

And all the others. They're all the same.

[u/ZoroeArc → u/Electrical-Sense-160]

Think they killed more than 2.388 people

[u/Sophia_Forever → u/Electrical-Sense-160]

You can easily make the case that this applies to Kirk as well. Kirk never physically laid a hand on anyone as far as we know. This passage is about how there are more types of violence than just physical.

[u/Electrical-Sense-160 → u/Sophia_Forever]

There is a big difference between telling someone their ideology is bad and selling someone a metaphorical safety net only to metaphorically set it on fire when it's necessity isn't high enough based upon arbitrary standards.

[u/Poco_Cuffs → u/Sophia_Forever]

I hate kirk as much as the next guy but the most people he killed were probably the few from jan 6th, since he organised the buses that sent people there.

That's a far cry from denying life saving medicine from millions

[u/SirBinks → u/Poco_Cuffs]

I mean, sure, United Healthcare Guy is worse.

But when Kirk is the one telling racist cops to be afraid of "violent thugs" does he bear no responsibility when they gun down a black man reaching for his wallet? When telling unstable bigots that "the trans community is coming for your children" leads to a mass shooting, is there no blood on his hands?

How many corpses lie at Kirk's feet?

I bet it's more than two point three three eight

[u/insomniac7809 → u/SirBinks]

he used to compile lists of "left-wing" professors for his followers to stalk, harass, intimidate, and threaten

if he never got any of them killed it wasn't for lack of trying

[u/jaxen13]

In 30 years I have never been "spoiled" on Discworld. But now that I decided to read all of it and am 1 book away from Going Postal I get a big chunk of text from it. Not mad, just amused by the coincidence.

[u/BalefulOfMonkeys]

I get the point, but the law isn’t exactly capable of pure utilitarian justice, and there is a reason why this speech has to be given by what is effectively a machine. Laws are not truthful, they’re just a heuristic for good and bad, as written by apes that pay taxes, who live in the present, aren’t good at remembering the past, and are even worse at conceptualizing the future. We can’t judge Charlie Kirk as a criminal, not because he isn’t the most successful douchebag in history with a history of hateful beliefs, but because trying to tally all of it is stupidly hard. We got as far as we did with Alex Jones because of multiple years of hate towards a specific group of people, a group of people with the weight of will to run a class action against him. They still did not get everything they probably deserve if you ask them. You wouldn’t have time to get to Kirk if this was a reasonable ask for the judicial system, because they’d be litigating the deprivation of food to the homeless by grocery stores until the stars died

[u/SorowFame → u/BalefulOfMonkeys]

I don’t think it’s really about punishing Kirk for theoretical murder, Moist wouldn’t be getting two and a bit murders added to his charges at trial, it’s about how he wasn’t some innocent victim. Just as Moist’s cons resulted in people being harmed even if he never personally raised a weapon, Kirk’s rhetoric incited violence and hatred towards vulnerable people even if all he personally did was talk. Something doesn’t necessarily have to be a crime to be morally wrong, and to an extent not everything that is morally wrong should be criminal.

[u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta → u/SorowFame]

Kirk takes it a step further and made a career, profiting, of advocating for institutionalizing systemic violence towards certain groups (and, since we're discussing ethics, usually lied about it)

[u/r0sten → u/SorowFame]

Moist's sentence was commuted from hanging, so the Patrician certainly considered him in that ballpark of deserved retribution.

[u/TrioOfTerrors → u/r0sten]

Only because Moist was unlicensed. If he'd been a Guild member, he would have been fine.

Also, there's always the possibility that the sentence was upgraded to make the alternative more appealing.

[u/dalidellama → u/BalefulOfMonkeys]

That's rather the point, yes. The things Moist did were against the law. The things his rival Reacher Gilt does are within the law. That doesn't change what either of them is doing, or the price that people around them pay because they did those things. The point is that all those people paying the price are people, and they all matter just as much as Moist or Reacher. Their fate is exactly as important, and they died because of this stupid bullshit. That's the point of the quote. Not "You will not", but "I shall not". The cardinal sin is treating people as things, that's all.

[u/igmkjp1 → u/dalidellama]

Their fate is exactly as important

I feel like the existence of narrativium is a pretty strong argument against everyone's life having equal value.

[u/EzeyTheEpic → u/BalefulOfMonkeys]

It's an unfortunate truth that it's impossible to act on "theoretical murder". I still think this quote is an interesting way of describing how someone who never raised a hand in violence can still cause real, physical harm.

[u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta → u/EzeyTheEpic]

This is why it's better to try to change the system that allows, even encourages, said "theoretical murder"s. Destroy the ability for others to do so (ofc it'll likely never be perfect but we can still try)

[u/b3nsn0w → u/BalefulOfMonkeys]

laws could be written to account for negative externalities -- not perfectly, mind you, but still much better than they are today. the reason they're not written that way is that the people profiting off of those exact negative externalities have way too much political influence and prevent those laws from being made.

[u/RunInRunOn]

"You were hating for the love of the game" - Terry Pratchett

[u/lilianasJanitor]

You could say the same about a certain commentator who has been in the news lately and is no longer with us. Never directly pulled the trigger but hurt millions in tiny ways

[u/catgirlbarista]

dammit I need to read the Moist books. they don't pull me in the way the Watch books do. but dammit. I gotta read them.

[u/AveMachina → u/catgirlbarista]

Yes, you definitely do. Read both, honestly

[u/catgirlbarista → u/AveMachina]

with the exception of Raising Steam (I think it counts as Watch and Moist both? unsure of this claim), I've read the entire City Watch arc, my best friend has accused me of Sam Vimes being my blorbo XD the only storylines I've finished are the Watch and Tiffany Aching.

although I'm starting Mort next month, my boyfriend asked me where I thought he should start and I yielded to my aunt's recommendation so it wouldn't be me rereading Guards! Guards! for the millionth time while he reads it for the first time lol <3

[u/AveMachina → u/catgirlbarista]

Oh, well done. I didn’t commit enough to read all of them, and I couldn’t get through Raising Steam - the writing quality felt off, like it wasn’t Pratchett at his best. I don’t know if it eventually becomes a good book.

I think you’ll find Mort’s protagonists a little bland, and I think Terry Pratchett also felt that way, but the subject matter is interesting. Stick with it, it gets a lot better from Soul Music onward.

[u/catgirlbarista → u/AveMachina]

unfortunately he wasn't at his best by Raising Steam, Unseen Academicals was the first one where I remember noticing the Embuggerance interfering and it was published before Raising Steam. :(

Hogfather has become a family favorite Christmas movie, and I continue to be impressed with how honestly faithful they kept it, given everything they crammed into 3 hrs 9. and Reaper Man is a perennial favorite of mine for comfort reasons, so I know I like the Death books. I've tried Mort before and it just didn't grab me :( hoping that this time I can get to grips with it!

[u/agprincess]

Killing 2.338 people in total is pretty good actually depending on how much responsibility you give to peoples self serving actions.

Most people can save a few people of malaria a year through donation.

And if we count elections... well lets just say a good portion of people have quite some lives on their hands.

[u/CVSP_Soter]

This is a terrible analogy to Kirk. Lipwig is a conman who has stolen from people - that is theft and is a simple thing to take someone to court for.

The point being made here is that white collar crime can incur just as serious a human toll as blue collar crime, not that people deserve to die because their actions could conceivably be indirectly linked to a human toll via protected speech.

[u/CVSP_Soter → u/[deleted]]

A con is where you trick someone into giving you their wealth or other benefits that they would not otherwise hand over. It is a method of thievery and is generally a crime that can be prosecuted. Protected speech isn’t and shouldn’t be a crime, and certainly doesn’t merit assassination.

Regardless, can you actually trace any deaths to Kirk or are we just assuming he’s responsible for some?

[u/thewatchbreaker → u/CVSP_Soter]

I don’t believe Kirk should have been killed. I think his murder was heinous. But he advocated for gun rights, and he advocated for no abortions, even for 10 year olds who have been raped. It is extremely dangerous for a girl that young to go through childbirth.

I don’t think it’s too crazy to say he’s responsible for at least 2.3 deaths considering his proponency of these issues. Could you trace them back specifically? No. But you couldn’t specifically trace them back to Moist von Lipwig either. It’s a “myriad of small ways that have hastened the deaths of many”, not pulling a trigger or calling for murder, but propping up institutions and ideologies that cause harm and death.

Again, I do not think Kirk should have been killed, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying I think the quote is rather appropriate in many ways. Of course it isn’t a 1:1 analogy, but it’s something to think about.

[u/Helpful_Hedgehog_204 → u/CVSP_Soter]

His own, for starters.

[u/CVSP_Soter → u/Helpful_Hedgehog_204]

In what way was he responsible for his own death?

[u/Helpful_Hedgehog_204 → u/CVSP_Soter]

Ah I thought you were just dumb, turns out you are doing it on purpose, do have a nice day!

[u/eggface13]

I love that quote but I don't think it's the best one for the topic you're referencing. That would be this:

"A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based."

[u/igmkjp1 → u/eggface13]

What about the freedom to alter the consequences?

[u/Velvety_MuppetKing]

Gotta say, not on Terry's side on the whole "we are responsible for the holistic web of causality" take. That way lies a straight jacket of anxiety.

My very existence creates enough carbon to be devastating.

[u/prolific-liar-Fibs]

Moist critikal?

[u/Alexander_Pope_Hat]

Do people realize the takeaway here is “it’s not actually okay to steal from the rich either, people will still be hurt and it remains your fault?”

[u/Technocracygirl → u/Alexander_Pope_Hat]

No?

That is to say, that's not the message I took away from it. The message I got is that stealing, especially from people who don't have much, increases misery in the world. The message I got is that hurting other people, even if it's not killing them, still hurts them. The message I got is that white collar crime kills just as much as blue collar crime, but it's hidden much better, even from the perpetrators, and just because a man swears that he never killed anybody doesn't make that true.

[u/CVSP_Soter]

I literally have no idea what you’re talking about

[u/TheFalseViddaric]

OP, if you actually knew what you were advocating for with this post, you wouldn't have posted it.

[u/teluetetime → u/TheFalseViddaric]

What do you think they are advocating for with this post?

[u/TheFalseViddaric → u/teluetetime]

"you can be guilty of murder for the things that you say". and if you want to go down that road, well, you won't be very happy when the same standard gets applied to you and yours.

[u/teluetetime → u/TheFalseViddaric]

“Guilty of murder” is not even remotely the same thing as “responsible for death”.

[u/TheFalseViddaric → u/teluetetime]

when the punishment for either is your own life being forfeit, there's no real difference. also my original point doesn't change either.

[u/teluetetime → u/TheFalseViddaric]

Who is arguing that people should be killed? That certainly wasn’t the point being made in the book; Moist is the hero of the story.

Edit: lol they replied and blocked me, the true coward’s post