
Collection of letters by Alan Turing found in filing cabinet - synthmeat
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/27/collection-letters-codebreaker-alan-turing-found-filing-cabinet
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cooper12
This makes me wonder what remnants we'll have left of the greats of this
generation amidst tech juggernauts bound to fall and every URL expiring after
only a few months. People forget passwords, the owners of accounts die, hard
drives fail, but ephemera like letters are tangible things that can last
longer if stored properly. I think in the future they'll just say "x was known
to have an account on defunct service Instagram and his profile picture on his
private Facebook account has him wearing sunglasses".

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gerdesj
It's rather sad that the only thing a trained journalist can find in 150
letters written by a hero of the first order is “I would not like the journey,
and I detest America.” - a remark made once by him.

I'd like these letters to be analysed by people who could make some real sense
of them and put them into a decent context. Finding a throwaway remark that
many have made on the spur of the moment and headlining it is a bit crass.

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burkaman
You can analyze them if you want:
[https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/4f6c3f0c-9a70...](https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/4f6c3f0c-9a70-33c5-bd03-df331fb06146?terms=%22BBC%22)

This article is written for a general audience, and there's probably not much
else of general interest in them if they're mostly about academics.

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kdoherty
All I could find on these archives were summaries of the letters, is there
anywhere where we can view the actual documents that are archived (either
scanned or OCR)? I admit, I had a hard time navigating that page, so I may
have missed something obvious.

Edit: My bad, after reading the Conditions Governing Use I found this:
"Photocopies and photographic copies of material in the archive can be
supplied for private study purposes only, depending on the condition of the
documents." So it looks like these written summaries are all we can get?

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sjbase
This would be perfect for Letters of Note, a blog I _highly_ recommend:
[http://www.lettersofnote.com/](http://www.lettersofnote.com/) (I have no
affiliation with the site)

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krisives
> I despise America

Sadly it was his own State that killed him in the end.

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rurounijones
"detest", not "despise". Small thing I know but accuracy is important.

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manyhands
Fortunately those two words are synonyms, so readers have not been terribly
misled.

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DonbunEf7
Hi! Lemme help you out here.

"Detest" and "despise" are not synonyms. To detest is to speak out against; to
despise is to look down upon. Their roots come directly from Latin/French. If
you detest something, you are issuing speech which indicates that you dislike
it. If you despise something, you have observed it and disliked your
observation (or, more usually, something about the detail of the observation!)

When people use these words in idioms like, "I despise and detest their
actions," they are saying that they have seen the actions, they do not like
what they have seen, and they are now speaking out to denounce those actions.

~~~
grzm
> _To detest is to speak out against_

Interesting. I've never heard this use. The definitions I've seen of _detest_
are some form of _dislike intensely_.

Reviewing Merriam-Webster[0], I see there is an obsolete sense of _detest_
that means to curse.

> _1 : to feel intense and often violent antipathy toward : loathe · detests
> politics · They seem to truly detest each other._

> _2 obsolete : curse, denounce_

I can't recall ever having across across the word used in this way in American
English. I've only seen the first sense used, and would have interpret someone
saying "despise and detest" to be effectively doubling (redundantly) for
emphasis, not to distinguish between the two.

[0]: [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detest](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/detest)

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rainbowmverse
An American dictionary in 2017 might reflect different meanings than a British
person in the '50s and earlier used.

~~~
umanwizard
OED should have citations for these purported meanings, if they exist. Does
anyone have access (perhaps through a university library) and can check?

