A Comm for Historymemes

Wait a second, Alan Turing was a queer icon? I had no idea.

I cannot fathom how anyone can allow people to be punished for loving who they love, in a consenting relationship between two adults. What a terrible and tragic story. Fuck anyone who wants to punish people for doing something that doesn't hurt anyone; for doing something that in fact is literally the direct opposite of hurting anyone. Like, fuck them to the core, and not in any nice way.

Apple laced with cyanide is an accident ??

Damm what a wild times. I would though, with my quite non-normal, reasoning capabilities it would have been done intentionally to murder someone....

"Almost singlehandedly" is way off the mark. Welchman, Tutte - the place was filled with eccentric geniuses; it was the success of management as much as the individual that Bletchley saw so much success.

("The story of Hut 6" is a good read on the subject. What comes across was that success was down to serendipity as well as hard work, and some remarkably enlightened leadership.)

Not to mention, the soldiers

I remember reading somewhere that upon liberation from concentration camps, many gay individuals were simply transferred to prisons from their home country for the crime of being gay. The Nazis were terrifyingly effective in branding exactly what kind of "undesirable" you were:

Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge

The whole of the UK could have been a tech powerhouse if they didn't screw over Turing and send the women of Bletchley Park back into the kitchen.

He was undeniably brilliant, and was instrumental in both the development of the Bombe (which broke the Enigma code), and the programming of Colossus (which broke... the other code the Germans used of which I can't remember the name). Plus he was instrumental in the first steps of both computer science in general and artifical intelligence in particular. He deserves the plaudits.

But so do a lot of other people who worked at Bletchly park (if you get the chance, go there, it's great) and elsewhere.

He was singularly brilliant in coming up with the Turing Machine and contributing towards the Church Turing Thesis which are the foundations of all computer science. It is true that he did not crack enigma by himself but his scientific contributions shouldn’t be understated.

The Cryptonomicon is such a good book. I'm pretty sure I've read it 30 times now.

Could you hold put your arms for 30 seconds please? Just need to check for a stroke.

Historically speaking it's a lazy character assassination.

It completely misses the mark on what he actually accomplished.

There was nothing to forgive. And it was too late for her to beg his forgiveness.

He was pardoned 9 years ago...an entire lifetime after his death...

It wasn’t just the British system it was just the culture at the time for everywhere.

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway...

I don't mean to say that Britain was some barbaric backwater with this. You are certainly right that this treatment was common in other states, even if not universal. But it was very much a case of Britain doing something that was no longer regarded as essential to the behavior of a civilized state to one of their most brilliant minds, a man who was a hero who saved thousands of British lives at minimum by his efforts. It's a reminder of how brutish we can be by adhering to established norms without consideration of their reasoning.

The United States was far further behind the times at that point in time Britain.

Speaking as an American, I might suggest that using the social norms of the US of the first half of the 20th century as a yardstick might be setting the bar a bit low.