"So in 1897 he approached the Indiana state legislature with a proposal: if they officially declared the proof correct, he’d let them use it free of charge, thereby saving a lot of money on royalties."
I recently acquired both a 100 and a 102. I've gotten them to work over RS-232 to an older P3 machine I have with modern FreeBSD on it. Something about termcap stuff. I couldn't get it to work with Linux. But I was able to get a terminal login, use Lynx, etc. Wireless would be fun.
You're making a good point while still, I think, missing mine. You, the author, I probably all tell ourselves and others things that we "know" that we mostly hope for. "I know I'm going to lose ten pounds before Christmas." Do you really "know"? Do you have a time machine? And maybe one friend expressed support, so, "...and other people agree with me!" Well, you're implying more than one person, probably without feeling bad about it unless someone challenges you. "How many people? What are their names?" Oops. Now, we're in trouble.
My point is the irony of feeling bad and learning a lesson about being completely honest when caught by a master famed for "reality distortion". Reality distortion is almost literally truth stretching. No doubt the master of doing it was a master at detecting it, but that didn't mean he was deeply committed to the truth himself. He was deeply committed to and famously skilled at manipulating but not being manipulated, which is not at all the same thing.
This story and Jobs' reaction is not about the fluid meaning of the word "know." Jobs immediately caught on to the fact that Ali was lying to him about having a 150M offer, which he explicit admits:
"[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."
Is there more detail to the story, or could it have been simply a common interest in logic and the like? As a gay man I can assure you that we aren't attracted to every allegedly good-looking male.
(I really don't mean this to be snarky, but I know forum posts have a way of making it seem that way.)
According to the biography on which the movie "The Imitation Game" was (very loosely) based ("Alan Turing: The Enigma"), Turing was rather direct when expressing interest in the men he knew. Much more so than I would expect for that time. There were several times where he straight up propositioned acquaintances. So it wouldn't entirely surprise me if there was an actual expression of interest in the original story.
Of course it's quite possible that's what Turing was doing in this case. I'm not saying it wasn't.
My gentle objection from long experience is that gay men's motivations are so very often over-sexualized by people who are not gay men. Without good situational evidence, it's not a good idea to make that assumption.
I can't agree more - it seems very disrespectful to imply that Turing was only/primarily interested in OP's father due to his sexual preferences. I think the over-sexualisation is quite evident if you simply consider changing the gender here - "Mother was a good-looking football player who was interested in logic - I don't think she understood (at least at the time) why Djikstra was interested in her!"
Of course, neither I nor my (late, so I can't ask him) Dad knows what Turing's motivations were.
These are just my possibly incorrect assumptions, following later conversations.
V-force security checks were however a real thing when it came to homosexuality, and to certain extent heterosexuality - V-force liked nice, safe married couples with kids - but they certainly didn't always get them.
Um, if I click "Continue" am I agreeing to their cookie policy?
Is this popup a GDPR notice?
For anyone who doesn't see it: There's a giant blue box on the left that just says continue to lego.com, and then a giant yellow box on the right for going to their "Play Zone" for kids I guess.
Then in microscopic text underneath they only describe their cookie policy but say nothing about what you're agreeing to.
[EDIT] Okay, it seems there is a cookie-control thing underneath after you click. Only discovered it by meddling with the Inspector. But that whole first thing just really looks like a dark pattern.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYSgd1XSZXc