https://floooh.github.io/tiny8bit/c64.html?input=${wait:200}...

This is the art of illusion.

This can be stretched to turn anything into anything else. For example, why can't this comment be a maze? In that case 10 REM; 20 END is my even shorter, more elegant maze program because I see a maze in it.

Some constraints that are typically implied when people say "computer generated mazes":

- They are solvable (have a start and end)

- OR they loop endlessly with no dead ends.

- Walls and spaces consume 1 element on the grid.

- No space on the grid is surrounded by all 4 NWSE walls.

Because unlike the one-liner nobody perceives it as a maze, so the "this can be stretched to turn anything into anything else" argument is tenuous...

Name one person who perceives your comment as a maze.

It must be perceived as a maze by people for it to apply.

As it stands, I’m not sure if people perceive your comment as a maze.

Maybe theoretically there’s a nonzero number of people who perceive the comment as a maze. But unless your audience is those few people, there wouldn’t be much utility in it. In the OP’s example this maze perception is not only highly widespread but it’s also leveraged for a particular intended effect.

”Although early Cretan coins occasionally exhibit branching (multicursal) patterns

[…]

both logic and literary descriptions make it clear that the Minotaur was trapped in a complex branching maze

[…]

In English, the term labyrinth is generally synonymous with maze. As a result of the long history of unicursal representation of the mythological Labyrinth, however, many contemporary scholars and enthusiasts observe a distinction between the two.”

I was today years old when I learned this.

I'd suggest to not go bar-hopping in Thailand with that mindset...

First, you come blazing with accusations of transphobia, because of a joking mention of Thailand's ladyboy scene, to challenge the parents' notion that everything is WYSIWYG. Do you even know me? Or you have a hobby of randomly assuming things about people you don't know?

Second, when I don't take that quietly, you add the above comment about having the gal to defend myself, going for the "This animal is extremely vicious. When attacked, it defends itself" angle...

Perhaps you can go even lower against some stranger on the internet, but you wont be getting any replies from me in this thread.

* A person goes into a bar in Thailand, sees what they think is a girl and are surprised to find that things are not what they seem.

Broken down:

* Person sees a girl

* It is not a girl

* This is a bad thing

Now, it would be easy to claim (as indeed you and GP seem to be doing) that this isn't a slur on the second party in this encounter. It's a fact of the world. They exist. OP, the person who is saying that 'things are what they seem to be' would probably not want to find themselves in a situation where they making an assumption that the person is female.

The fact that this is negative can be seen in the 'I hope you don't' words which set the tone and are the basis of most of the sarcasm. I have to say that even if GP had picked a different example, I don't like this kind of comment anyway. It's a bitter, jabby comment that I don't think furthers discussion and overall makes HN a more negative and uncomfortable place to be.

So an assumption I made, which of course is debatable, is that the setting of 'bar' implies a romantic or sexual intent on the first party. GP will probably deny or refute this, but really without this implication there isn't much of a joke to speak of. "I spoke to this girl and it turned out she was a dude! What larks we had!".

GP seems to be making this claim in this comment:

>Nice to see confusing a joke reference to a regional fact (as to things that can seem X but be Y) with transphobia. Anybody told you that merely referencing trans women in Thailand is opposing them? Projecting much?

If it was 'merely referencing' then it wouldn't be a joke. 'Merely referencing' would we to reword the comment as:

"Things are not always what they seem, like commonly accepted phenomena of Thaiwanese ladyboys".

I mean, not much different, and still in poor taste for a thread that is about beautiful code, but the tone of the comment is completely changed. It's now no longer a jab at the PC, but using a counterexample to illustrate a point.

And why is suggesting that someone being shocked to discover a ladyboy transphobic anyway? Basically, it boils down to the fact that trans people have to suffer against stigma that they're somehow 'out to trick' people and that unassuming straight males need to 'watch out'. This comment is a prime example of this. It's literally a warning. Sure, it's mild transphobia, but it's perpetuating this stigma and I feel like Hackernews generally, and this thread specifically, are not really places for this kind of comment.

I normally wouldn't write this much out about this topic, but GP seemed very upset about their comment being called transphobic. Note, I didn't call them transphobic at all. I didn't actually make any comment about them, their person, their intent or anything. Just that the comment was 'casual transphobia' which I firmly believe that it is.

Let's break down the rest of their comment:

>Well, I am amazed that one can be so rude.

In both cases they use my own words back to me. I'm not sure why. It seems to be a mix of defensiveness and sarcasm. I don't actually think I was being rude - certainly no ruder than they were being to who they were commenting to. I felt that their original comment was snide.

>First, you come blazing with accusations of transphobia

I called the comment transphobic. Addressed above.

>to challenge the parents' notion that everything is WYSIWYG

Not very well.

>Do you even know me? Or you have a hobby of randomly assuming things about people you don't know?

This is incredibly defensive. Especially the second part. It's not enough to call out transphobia, they have to then pile on unfounded accusations of 'randomly assuming things about people' I don't know. I think the irony of this is amazing. They're literally accusing me of doing exactly what they're doing. It's like a bad girlfriend stereotype. (If you want to do some whataboutism, why not pick apart the inherent sexism of that comment? I'll give you a starter for 10 by lampshading it).

>econd, when I don't take that quietly, you add the above comment about having the gal to defend myself, going for the "This animal is extremely vicious. When attacked, it defends itself" angle...

So GP edited this comment a couple of times. Originally this was basically all there was. 'Having the gal' to defend themselves is a laugh. There was no self reflection, no admission that what they wrote could have been seen as transphobic. Just immediately jump to a victim paradox. 'Poor old me being attacked by nasty SJW just for merely mentioning ladyboys. Is it a crime? What did I do wrong????'

>Perhaps you can go even lower against some stranger on the internet, but you wont be getting any replies from me in this thread.

I mean I love this sign off. It's the reason I knew I had gotten to them and the reason I didn't reply. They didn't want to hear it. It was clear they weren't going to learn, and in fact they're telling me that they don't want a response anyway. I love the way that they're so deep in the role of the victim that they think I'm going to go off and harass more strangers. It's a lovely thought, but I don't do that. I just calls em as I sees em.

So anyway, I'm glad that you don't see the transphobia, but I don't think I was wrong to call them out on what I saw as implied transphobia.

perl -C -e 'print chr(9585.5+rand) while 1'

  Wide character in print at -e line 1.

binmode(STDOUT);

To the front.

Unicode on languages made before it existed is...argh.

Expressed in terms of line width (w) and number of lines (n).

[0] Where there's a valid path from the first line to the last.

Edited for clarity and accuracy.

    /\/\/\/\

But I wasn't treating /\ as an invalid on the first line. Eg thinking of:

    /\/\/\/\
    \\//////
    /\\\\\\\ … and so on

What do you mean by that?

I remember being fascinated with Pascal program that makes snow fall.

Basically, it was white dots on a blue background in an infinite loop. :)

I don't recall if it was one of the full issues, or one of the "insert issues" found within Family Computing of the era.

It was a special kind of "snow fall" generator; IIRC, there were only a couple of versions, one for the Apple IIe and the other for the PCjr - I likely used the PCjr version for the conversion since the BASIC language was nearly identical between the PCjr and my CoCo 2.

What was special was that it managed to seemingly move hundreds of pixels relatively rapidly on the screen; now, this might not seem like such a feat, but it really was considering we're talking about a computer system running an interpreted BASIC program, with a max speed below 1 MHz in standard mode (0.89 MHz - there was a so-called "speedup poke" that "doubled" the speed - POKE 65495,0 if anyone cares).

I don't recall what trick it used - or if it really used anything special at all - but I do remember being impressed by that bit of code.