People’s History is turning out to be a gem. I am treating it like a template more than a definitive history textbook (apparently just the way Zinn prescribes it).

If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death?

—  Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

Such a beautiful lens to look at most pragati versus the people debates that end up in fruits of development checkmates.

Reading this in conjunction with Stallman’s Guardian column (A Radical Proposal to Keep Your Data Safe. See link. ) where he tells us how honouring people’s data is a trait to be built into systems with the power to abuse it:

The basic principle is that a system must be designed not to collect certain data, if its basic function can be carried out without that data.

It is the Blahg over at Rivendell that usually copy-pastes bare links into articles, letting readers choose to—painstakingly—copy-paste them back into address bars. The last few times I visited those links I was glad Mr. Petersen ignored basic usabilty wisdom to make such a low-noise statement on the virtue of effort(?).