Advertising sucks, an illustrated narrative
benkay The WoL ads were great, BTW.
mircea_popescu They sucked from a RoI perspective.
benkay What dominated the campaign cost? Ad art comission or actually displaying them?
mircea_popescu I'm not even counting the ad making. Actually, I'm gonna make a post out of it, I guess.
We got everything : oglaf, that nice legal matters comic, smbc, ms paint adventures, questionable content, a ton of forums and so on and so forth. As far as reach is concerned, anyone in the comics market was touched, which we judged to be exactly the sort of people who'd be interested in WoL - one of the golden demographics, in fact. Here's the bill :
So to sum up : 4`035`841 impressions at an average 0.00024066 BTC per impression, yielding a total 3`444 clicks (of which 2`924 unique), or 0.085% gross CTR (the 0.57% unique-based CTR is really not that bad, getting one guy to click in two hundred is way, way above what happens in general on teh internets these days).
Here are the banners run :
So now : imagine making these ads cost nothing at all. Just like that. Imagine managing the ad campaign (which includes all strategy, and all hands-on management, twenty or so billable hours - because the data you see above isn't someone trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work, the data you see above is the run once someone's already figured it out) ie all the good stuff ad agencies love to charge the big bucks for off naive customers cost nothing at all. Just like that, you're friends with god and god makes things be free for you only. Really really expensive, rare things that are difficult to get, you get for free.
Imagine the whole cost for this campaign was the ~one Bitcoin you've spent actually buying media. You're well ahead of the game at this point, are you not ?
No, you're not.
Here's referrals and pageviews for the 26th: http://[snipped]
Pretty good amount of traffic, but much lower converting than the previous social media campaign.
Funnel : Visitors 2200 ; Accounts 33 ; Deposit Address claimed 12 ; Deposits 0 ; Games Played 0.
In order for you to make that lone single Bitcoin back, you'd need 100 Bitcoins wagered (which is ∞% more than what was in fact deposited), you'd need an average of 8.33333333 BTC deposited in each claimed address (which is about 850% more than the average Bitcoin transactioni ), you'd need about 3 Bitcoins per account and 4.5 Bitcents per visitor. Which is an unrealistic proposition in the first place, seeing how there's eleven million Bitcoins and seven billion people, it comes to 0.1 Bitcents per capita, or 45x less than what you need. And even if you exclude all the subhumansii, you're still not going to get a match here.
And all this, mind you, to make back the media buying expenditure. Not the strategy nor the management. Just the media buying.
Obviously, "it's a good investment in Bitcoin", the sort that I've been making for ages, without the knowledge, consent or involvement of the "Bitcoin community" derps. Those people will now be curious about Bitcoin and about a number of other things, go researching, discover stuff.iii If you're in my position it's all gravy. But what if you aren't in my position ? And no, pretending like you were doesn't cut it, not in this neck of the woods.
And also - perhaps not as obviously - I'm not about to charge S.WOL for this expense. But all this aside, a major point remains : if your business plan consists of "1. Great idea (IYO) ; 2. IPO to money ; 3. Buy advertising ; 4. ??? ; 5. WIN!!!" you may wish to reconsider. It's not just that it sunk that fucktarded twennysomething posing as a CEO that Andreas M. Antonopoulos was shilling a few months back. It's that it doesn't even work when actual experts do it, and do it well. You won't be able to buy media as cheap as I can, and if I can't as much as cover the cost of the buy what are you going to do ?
Advertising is for suckers. Keep your Bitcoins safe.
———A shade under 50`000 Bitcoins transacted today (excluding change txn) over ~51`000 transactions coming to an average of 0.98039215. [↩]O, you don't think poor Africans and Central Azns and whatnot are subhuman ? Then why do you want to exclude them from this calculation ? [↩]In this line :
07:45:11 (SirCmpwn) yo
08:13:45 (mircea_popescu) hewya
08:13:56 (mircea_popescu) SirCmpwn welcome
08:14:47 (SirCmpwn) thanks, mircea_popescu
08:15:06 (mircea_popescu) so how did you find this corner of the webs ?
08:15:18 (SirCmpwn) you guys bought adspace on one of my websites :)
08:15:30 (mircea_popescu) ah hehe. which one ?
08:15:42 (SirCmpwn) https://mediacru.sh [↩]
« Discorsi da letto
So what do you want ? »
Category: Meta psihoza
Monday, 28 July, Year 6 d.Tr.
Advanced WoT course : how the WoT is attacked, and how it defends itself.
You are not expected to understand this.
mircea_popescu Let me write this out plainly. A WoT is a graph made out of nodes n1..ni, with their respective relations. A Sybil is a subgraph of this, with nodes s1..sj, which act in tandem, and could in principle take control of the wot even if j << i, by leveraging the fact that the n nodes do not act in tandem. (Acting in tandem is actually a weakness of a WoT, and undesirable. Also called groupthink.) Now, this attack fundamentally depends on the n nodes treating all the s nodes similarly. If each (or even just some) n nodes treat some of the s nodes one way and some of them another way (or further fragmented), the s nodes find themselves under a communication burden, which can easily become very large. If i and j are large enough, they encounter irresolvable translation problems (p,n complete, in fact).
kakobrekla Yeah, but "treating" in this case is a manual procedure is it not.
mircea_popescu Yes. It has to be.
kakobrekla So we figured out nothing new. I mean, the WoT was always manual.
mircea_popescu No question about it, I wasn't saying we figured something new. I was just explaining why me ignoring what I suspect to be sx has an effect. It's specifically because others don't that now sx has to play two different roles, as it were. And also sy, whom I don't ignore, etc.
kakobrekla I'm not sure that help though. You just cut yourself out of more data which you could use to determine stuff.
mircea_popescu Nop. It works specifically because we fragment the dataflow.
kakobrekla Your dataflow, not others'.
mircea_popescu Theirs. As a banal example, this is why teachers are so bothered if kids in class aren't paying attention. The teacher is the Sybil trying to attack the class WoT. The kids not paying attention are... ignoring the teacher. Because they are ignoring it at random points in its speech, soon enough its task of speaking to them becomes impossible.
kakobrekla Yeah, but theres just one problematic kiddo called Mircea :D
mircea_popescu So far. The problem is, of course, that attempts to isolate me are just about the reddest flag one could wave for most everyone there.
kakobrekla Ok, lets assume a simple case, with s1 and s2 which are both legit.
mircea_popescu Okay.
kakobrekla So now each of them herps derps legit things. You see half of it.
mircea_popescu Right.
kakobrekla How does that help?
mircea_popescu As a banal explanation, for intuitive understanding : I lack the context that would make you not ask a question with an "obvious" answer. So I do ask it. It doesn't reduce to this, but this is a good example.
kakobrekla Why does this remind me of a game theory.
mircea_popescu Because it exactly is.
kakobrekla Well I understand your theory, as for the practice I guess we shall see. I'm too dumb to simulate it in my brain.
mircea_popescu Ima post the general parts of this because I want nano to comment. He may be the only one who understands this shit well enough.
kakobrekla Yea.
« The problem of the past
In which we teach basic reading comprehension to a certain Mr. Preston Byrne »
Category: 3 ani experienta
Friday, 18 April, Year 6 d.Tr.
A virtual socioeconomic problem
As you perhaps know, Bitcoin's Rift guild is called Trilema. Coincidence.
Trilema is the largest guild on the serveri, by any measure : either guild level (13) or active population (varies between 500 and 1k depending on how recently I've purged inactives). Guild level is important in this game because the guild can acquire perks which help all the guild players. Trilema currently has banners granting 90 to all Resistances, 60 Crit Power, and a group resurrect on the active side. It also has +9% extra loot from PvE kills, +9% Favor rewards, 5% extra raid token rewards and 9% extra Planarite from all sources.
These perks in turn play into its large size. Consider that to achieve say 9% extra gold, one must obtain three guild levels, which for simplicity let's say means a total of 24 guild quests, which for simplicity let's say means 10 man-hours each, for a total of 240 man hours. If those three levels are obtained by a guy playing alone in his own private and personal guild, and he plays this game for three years, at the rate of twenty hours a week, and the average per-hour game loot is one platinum, then he has traded 240 of his 3`120 gameplay hours to beget an extra 259.2 platinum. So the one man private and personal guild has rewarded its players with a total of ~260 platinum, which works out to 1 platinum 8 gold per hour.
If on the other hand that guild is made out of 240 people, who play similarly in all respects, then each of them will receive the extra 9% for 3`119 gameplay hours, coming to an extra of 280.7 platinum. So the 240 string guild has rewarded its players with a total of 67`370 platinum 40 gold, which works out to 1 platinum 17 gold per hour.ii Considering that the other perks listed each take a further expenditure of man hours, it becomes rapidly obvious why one man guilds are a losing proposition : by the time you're done leveling it you're also done playing.
That would be the economic part of the conversation. Moving on to the social side of things, Trilema is a very relaxed space. It doesn't mandate you have or use a ventrilo server, it doesn't harass you to participate in any particular activity. It does allow you to, of course, and as it's filthy rich it can afford to give away HP pots and stat boosters for raids and whatnot. But nobody is there "organising" things quite to the degree of turning the game into another white collar low level office job, running excel spreadsheets with your weekly mandatory activity participation and obnoxious crap like that.
I understand that all the EVE/WoW/Etc experts would gladly slam me into the ground for daring to contest the benefits and advantages of "organisation" and generally replicating the avatars of the US middle manager wherever one goes. Nevertheless, I don't like it and so I won't have it.
On the other hand, the fact remains that games are social activities, and without a minimum of said organisation society doesn't seem to function. And I say this from bitter experience : over the past six weeks or so, about a dozen max level players left Trilema. They weren't max level when they joined, mostly, and this is starting to look to me like a trend : people join, level up, then leave. It's not exactly threatening to Trilema itself, the maxlvl population is still > 20, making it larger than the entire population of most guilds.
Nevertheless, it's annoying, and what I don't understand too well is the other end of things : people leave Trilema to join dinky level 3 guilds consisting of pretty much them and two other dudes. I log in, they're gone. I usually ignore this sort of thing, mostly because who cares, but today I actually followed up. Turns out, chick spent two weeks leveling from 40s to 60, then hit 60 and the day left because... nobody wanted to party with her or somesuch, and people weren't answering her in chat. I mean get a load of this, max level player leaves top guild overnight, without making any attempt to resolve whatever issues, without as much as a parting note, because... people weren't talking to her.
Which makes me think I'm missing something here, as depicted this shit's too incredible to be factual, and on the other hand the fact that Trilema is slowly leeching max level players is directly observable. So, freely admitting that I'm a noob guild leader - the last time I was any good at it was in the 90s - and an asshole and anything else that may be required or expedient, I turn to ye, wise people of the Internets, especially of irc. What the fuck is going on!!?
tl;dr : People are leaving NY to live in KA, in spite of KA sucking balls. Obviously this means NY is poorly managed, but I can't figure out where. It could mean people are fucktards, but I'd rather not go there. Shoot.
———There's four major servers, they work sort-of like shards. Sorted from strongest to weakest : Brutwacht, Brutmutter, Brisesol. (The first to are German language, the third French. (Beaten again eh Frenchies ?) The fourth, Phynnious, is "international", which mostly works out as a bunch of Frenchmen, Russians and me.
I know all this because I am currently, and since December I have always been, the #1 crafter in game. The top of the top shows you what servers other people are from, and so I can count the top 20 : 8 Brutwacht, 6 Brutmutter and 5 Brisesol. And me, #1. (That's right, nobody else from my server. The next guy from Phynnious is on position 54.) [↩]Amusingly, just about 9% better, which should dispel any notion in your mind that all this math I've done here is overkill. Unlike the fine folks that wrecked Diablo 3, these people have done their math. The game is beautifully balanced economically. [↩]
« Anonymous derpage
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Category: Trolloludens
Friday, 11 April, Year 6 d.Tr.
A useful list of things
This article has a mother and a father. The father came first :
Me So whatcher up to!
Her Leveling a bit. How about you?
Me I'm having an argument with my feet.
Her Oh no why feet?
Me Which'd like to be suckled on.i
Her Hahaha.
Me Anyway, wanna come by and have a chat with my feet ? :D
Her Sure!
The mother came secondii :
fluffypony: I used to think that love was like the rush and swell of meeting someone knew
So as a result of their copulation in my head (of which the chan is an extension), I will now regale you with a list!
List of household items that work well for beating your girl(s).iii
The rigid tube part of the vacuum cleaner. It can deliver a slight tickle, it can deliver some very pretty bruises that can easily last the week. It's just the right length and its weightlessness gives you all the control in the matter.
Electric cables. Especially if you have a thick round cabled extension cord. For even better effect, this can be braided. In honesty, I've never used this thing to the full extent of its ability on anyone, and I don't think I ever will. Unless I start dating a hippo or something.
Your belt. Oldie but very goldie. Also, her belt, especially if she has one of those belts with a multitude of metal rings all over its length. As she god damned well should.
A cast iron pan. This is really just the superlative of the tired old wooden frame brush. Which, unlike the pan, doesn't really do much at all, unless your girl is about 12. In which case... what is this!
Rope. And string of any sort, provided it's long enough. If it's too thin, she can braid it. If it's still too thin, she can braid the braid. Eventually it will be thick enough. For best results it should be soaked first. If she's particularly rambunctious, soak in either very salty water or vinegar. Don't be a jerk : use good Modena balsamic.
Coat hangers. The thin metal wire ones might be too cruel - remember, a good beating does not draw blood though the skin, the point is ecchymosis not open bleeds. Nice plastic ones however... oh what delight.
The shower hose. In most arrangements you can unscrew this from the wall and from the head. Can be used either filled with water or empty for great effect.
Rolled up newspaper. It doesn't hurt in any sense, but if you're skilled with it you can make a lot of noise. Caning is not all about the pain, you know ?
An (empty?) wine bottle. Works on the same exact principle as the cast iron pan, but it's round rather than flat which changes things. Just ask her!
An old HDD. Definitely worth a try. You hold the thing flat in your palm and splat her butt. It's sort-of like assisted hand spanking, except the drive's weight and mechanical resistence protecting you ensures your hand doesn't tire before her skin warms up.
Ten should be enough. And remember : pussy whipped doesn't have to be about you. It can be about her!
———Because of this : [↩]Remember that, it's important! [↩]I know this from experience. As do they.
Safety tip : as discussed in Cum se bate femeia ?, all items to be applied to buttocks or ~maybe~ soles. [↩]
« The forum and its implementation.
Soft pre-announcement of awards at stealth third Bitcoin conference of any import »
Category: Zsilnic
Friday, 16 May, Year 6 d.Tr.
A story of manscarves
- O, how pretty you are!
- :)
- Do you have a permit ?
- :(
- Pretty without a permit, you shall have to pay fine!
- Hello sir what is fine ?
- Fine for not having permit!
- But I mean what is fine amount!
- Fine is not a mount, fine is a number of mountings.
Soi myii girliii's beeniv busy combing the expat community with a fine comb, resulting in various hits of interest such as a real estate agent with a decade's worth of history in the country, who we've subsequently met at the delightful bar of a local hotelv.
This was the MDMA serving tray (pot cream cookies to the right). The whole rest is perfectly matched, gold leaf everywhere, nice furniture and an espresso machine the size of a Massive Ordnance Penetrator shell. I'd gladly recommend it if I could remember what it was called - alas the only part I recall is that on the way over I got into a heated football conversation with the cab driver and so we missed the street. So you know, maybe try doing the same ?
Anyway, the expat's partner is one Pericles J Economides, a guy with a golden baritone that even participated in some sort of casting thing, and so we spent a pleasant half hour or thereabouts. After which we went for a walk in the neighbourhood, me an' the girl. It's a very nice neighbourhood.
For those of you into birdwatching, who's this little guy ?
Anyway, after a short walk we came upon
which yielded a curt "o, we're checking this out" from me and well... there went the afternoon : as it turns out the thing is immense, we walked ourselves hungry, I took hundreds of pictures (which will however result in a separate article - or perhaps two, a dedicated one for the adjoined cemetery).
So here we are, reasonably lost and definitely hungry. The day happens to be a holiday (a safe bet by now for most Argentinian days) and so many places are closed, but not exactly all. We go into a better looking open one, which purports to be a barbecue place and is doing the whole spiel, with people outside inviting the passerby inside and so on.
I order two sides of their big deal steak and insalata Caprese (people here have a serious problem eating veggies) and I get... two slabs of meat, plus six tomato slices with some meh mozzarella roughly cut on top. That's that.
I had ordered medium (demi-anglais, if you must), but irrespective of that one of the slabs was well done (definitely bien cuit), the other rare. Saignant rare. Fortunately the girl actually likes it like that and I can tolerate it, but God help the steakhouse that can't even get the general neighbourghood. It doesn't help that they obviously cooked different thickness meatbricks on the same fire, and to add to the amusement the waitress preventively offered to have the meat further cooked should we desire as she brought it in. I should have had her do the parkerised chunk for another fifteen minutes, see what happens.
Leaving aside the cooking, that veal was the worst piece of veal I ever had in Argentina, and by a large margin. In fact, it was just about Romanian level beef, and so if you're ever curious what's it like to be [trying to] eat Romanian beef, by all means, drop by Montana and order their steak. (Do not fret the cooking, as it doesn't matter how you say you want it cooked, you'll just get whatever the roulette comes out with anyway.)
That'd be all, for now.
———I tell you I am positively loving this arrangement where first I live and then I get to relive in detail as part of writing it into an article for Trilema. [↩]This note part of an experiment into footnoting every word ; disregard. [↩]You've probably figured out on your own by now we're not talking about the same person have you ? [↩]Experiment ends here, this is fucking obnoxious. [↩]I generally ask the other party to select the venue, because it's really the best way to find the good places in a new town. They're from there, after all, and so they should know at least a subset. In matching disjunct such subsets, one can and oft times does end up with a perfect selection in record time and for no expense. [↩]
« Supplemental visual aids as well as images, pictures, photographs and instagrams. Y con queso.
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Category: La pas prin lume
Saturday, 21 June, Year 6 d.Tr.
A short compendium of stupid things you should never say
Stupid thing you should never say #1 :
psterryl it's impossible to call it one way or the other
I'll believe there's a god once she comes to my house naked and gives me a divine blowjob. Not before. Before god comes to my house naked and gives me a divine blowjob she does not exist.
The quoted nonsense is often deployed by barely literate proponents of various religions, something along the lines of "it wasn't proven god doesn't exist therefore you should waste your time every Sunday listening to talking heads of type X". It holds about as much water as Russell's teapot, of course, but that does not deter the barely literate : they don't know who Russell was.
In any event, the standard for calling a Bitcoin business a failure (which is often shorthanded to "scam" for very good practical reasons) is not nor can ever be "when and only when the initiator releases a gpg-signed statement saying so". Not only because would-be "CEO"s to this day fail to use proper contracts, much to everyone's ulterior detriment, but also because your run of the mill "CEO" is roughly at the level of the five year old : he WILL tear open the wrapping, no matter how long that takes, but he WILL NOT take the shredded packaging material to the trash, no matter how little time or effort that'd require. Because what's in it for him ? What is this reputation thing ? He doesn't need the WoT, he would just like some BTC. Please ?
The standard is generally speaking failing to file reports. It got BitVPS delisted, at any rate (and if you're one of these would-be webexchanges, do learn that article by heart, it's - like it or not, agree or not - the Bitcoin standard of how to do such a thing).
~ * ~
Stupid thing you should never say #2 :
psterryl everyone is entitled to their own opinions/deductions
This is plainly false, in exactly the same way and to exactly the same degree claiming "every plot of land could be a seaport" is false. Those plots of land adjacent to the sea could be seaports. Those plots of land not adjacent to the sea, however, could not. Never. No matter what.
This isn't a negotiable point, or in any manner open to any discussion whatsoever. Some are entitled to their own opinions. Some others, however, are not. Period & full stop. Claiming otherwise is at best ill disguised socialism (which is to say, an immoral drive to profit for oneself from the stupidity of others through application of ideology) but otherwise simply stupidity.
So how do we distinguish between those who are and those who are not entitled to opinions ? Well, this is where it gets tricky. Which is why
~ * ~
Stupid thing you should never say #3 :
psterryl well, my 1st class university degree should suggest i'm ok for #1
Generally speaking, the standard for whether you're entitled to your opinions or not rests in the hands of the other party. If you manage to establish your authority with them, then you have it. If you do not, then you do not.
This has the unfortunate result that it allows for what's been known for a thousand years as invincible stupidity, which is to say someone stupid enough to not allow any authority to anyone will then necessarily toil in a solipsist hell (and will most likely have to be put down sooner or later). Unfortunate or not it is also unavoidable, because any other standard would on the face conflict with Descartes' cogito, thus rendering the very (intellectual) existence of everyone quite questionable theoretically and quite practically absent. So it's one of those things required for the functioning of society and the well being of all individual members thereof. You know, like inequality. Exactly like inequality.
However, aiming to enact such authority on the theoretically very rotten basis of some entity external to the discussion (unless that university is in my WoT I couldn't care less what it says about you) and the practically very rotten basis of an anonymous such external entity belies a complete misunderstanding of pretty much everything involved, and as such certifies the emitter for the not-allowed-opinions campi.
~ * ~
Stupid thing you should never say #4 :
psterryl as of this moment, i'm officially talking to everyone in this channel apart from you
The problem with that is that it computes to a "please add me to ignore list" request (think about it). Which you know...
mircea_popescu aite.
* psterryl!*@* added to ignore list.
While it's true that I review the killfile once in a blue moon, it's not true that being on it does very much for you in that interval.
In closing, it occurs to me that this compendium is actually incredibly exhaustive, considering how very short it is.
———Or, to quote,
punkman1 psterryl: congratulations, you've removed all doubt
[↩]
« Here's an idea for you
Cunt size discussion. This is guaranteed to be weird. »
Category: Meta psihoza
Sunday, 30 March, Year 6 d.Tr.
A sad story, illustrated
Vaguely related to the earlier awstats data dump, in the sense that it comes from the same source :
This current month, people loading Trilema as a result of clicking some link on Stan's blog loaded 152 pages. People following the Trilema comments feed on the old url - which has been sporting a 301 for about a year now - loaded exactly as many pages.i My great fans over in goonland loaded 137 pages. Some random twitter derpage we'll gladly ignore.
Then some random kid that failed to do much recently and readily admits to it sent people loading 98 pagesii. Then Gawker with 82 and Washington Post with 81.
I'm not sure that sunk in on the first pass. The obscure blog of a self-identified lowly engineer, which hasn't really mentioned Trilema recently, carries twice the power of coverage in Gawker, or the Washington Post. He's roughly equal to these two combined.
A random bored kid with a blog started last month compares favourably with supposedly multi-million dollar press outlets. You ever wondered why these guys avoid linking out ? Ever occured to you it's maybe to try and keep the dirty secret of impotence hidden from their subjects ?
Some obscure, meanwhile suspended website (helenmccrory.org) holds its own against the luminaries of journalism. And, of course, Facebook is even lower than that, last on the list. This is why the "buy advertising and pray" plan doesn't work. Especially not if you're silly enough to pay ratecard.
What a strangely democratic world we live in, wouldn't you say, where people with a clue easily command more attention and more power than Conde Nast or that objectionable worm.
To be honest, I'm enjoying it. But for the various would-be powers, gatekeepers and other self-importants all this can't be anything short of a very, very sad story.
It happens.
———Btw, if you want that rss link, here. [↩]Apparently would-be noob haxxors have a lot more sense than various experts on topics. Funny how that works. [↩]
« Cunt size discussion. This is guaranteed to be weird.
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Category: Meta psihoza
Monday, 31 March, Year 6 d.Tr.
A practical exercise for people who can't afford airfare.
Conversation in the streets of Buenos Aires yesterday, upon noticing that the locals don't crowd up in bus stations, but neatly queue (even going around the block!) on the wall side, careful to not block the sidewalk.
- Imagine if these people were Romanians.
- O good God! They'd be all a swarming mass, pushing all the way into the bus so nobody could even get off.
- Incredible what passes for "normal" in different places isn't it. This is the advantage of travel, you get to find out just how fucking stupid, uncivilised and unbearable you actually are.
Now consider the following situation : a 4th wave feministi, a post-Lacanian pseudo-psychologist and a faux classical studiesii graduate hired by the airport as floor washers figure they could perhaps get promoted if they showed they can do much better than just rubbing the floors clean of phlegm and mud with their bare tits, on their hands and knees. So they decide to make a survey, find out how full the planes are. Clearly this will be very useful.
Towards this end, they proceed to ask all people getting off the plane how full they felt their plane was ("on a scale from 1 to 10"iii ), and carefully take down the answers. Predictably, their conclusion will be that the planes are in general full and very full, and duly report this to the airport manager, with a humble recommendation to allocate more funds for an airport extension, which they'd be more than happy to manage, for "everyone's" comfort and benefit, as well as greater [social] justice. For it is in fact quite unjust, socially and otherwise, to have pretty dumb things such as a 4th wave feminist, a faux classics graduate or a post-Lacanian pseudo-psychologist rubbing their bare bosomsiv in the dirt all day. Wouldn't you say ?
If you're lucky enough for your airport manager to be me or a passable substitute, the three graces get each a dozen lashes for being uppity niggers, get docked pay for the management time they wasted and get sent back to cleaning the floors. You probably aren't lucky enough for that and your airport is slowly going to shit under the pressure of all this nonsense sprouted by unemployable breast-fixated fuckwits, but hey. Who are you and why should I care.
Moving on : can you figure out what the problem is in that approach ?
To understand just how slutty a subject statistics is, consider this : two 100 seater planes landed. One had one passenger, the other had 99 passengers. By any sane accounts the planes are just about half full. By tits-in-dirt accounts, however, the planes are intolerably full : ninety-seven out of one hundred people asked said that their plane was so packed you could hardly breathe (two said they had a spare seat next and one said the whole thing was empty).
So now you know. And so now you can consider this gem :
Suppose you have this arrangement where I (a college graduate) made a billion dollars in Bitcoin last year. Alongside me, there live in the most abject poverty, sustained by ramen and mountain dew, employed at the task of redditing and assorted social media derping, another 99 women (of either physical sex) that'd be much better employed at sweeping the sidewalks with their bare tits. These made a negative one million last year, because tuition isn't free even if the subjects are pointless and the "teachers" unqualified. And on the other side of the street, one hundred normal people, making normal money, for a grand total two million between them last year.
So now : the "gap" as misrepresented by the USG propaganda for the clueless is a staggering 500:1. For the $999`000`000 "us" college graduates took home, the non-graduates took only $2`000`000 (and paid taxes on it, for I sure as hell am not paying as much as a dime out of my billion to any state that fails to enforce bare tit floor scrubbing). The reality of it however is quite reversed : anyone who isn't me has the choice of either not getting a degree, in which case they take home whatever the taxman leaves them out of their 20k, or else to get a degree, in which case they bring from home 10k. That's the choice.
So what'd you rather do, spend 10k a year of your parents' retirement funds to become one of these fascinating topless if slovenly women (of either physical sex) you see out there scrubbing away at the Information Superhighway ? Or you know, bring home an actual paycheck, as dismal as it may be once the government of the people for the people topless-if-slovenly-floor-scrubbers is done raping it ?
Hard choice to make, isn't it. Perhaps. The one important point, however, is to clearly grasp that any attempt at representing a college education as a ticket at perhaps becoming me is out and out conmanship. Being me is not a lottery, and you can't buy tickets from anyone for it. Those claiming otherwise are just trying to scam you.
Succes!
———People born after 1968 aren't [3rd wave] feminists any more than people born after 1969 are hippies. They're merely hipsters that saw records of the genuine article in whatever discount bin and figured it's just obscure enough to tolerate their marginal presence and support the requisite airs of mystery, beingunacceptedness and notbeingunderstoodness. Obviously they're being herded around for political and ultimately economical reasons by a thin sliver of contemptible worms, but we're not getting into that part now. Let's consider just the idiots being used for puppets and momentarily ignore the puppeteers. [↩]There do not currently exist in the United States any people qualified to teach classics past highschool level. This is a fact. If you're currently paying money for the pretense of such teaching you are being scammed. [↩]The discussion of exactly how stupid this "scale from 1 to 10" thing is doesn't fit here. It's roughly about as stupid as employing our friendly bunch at any other task than polishing the floors with their tits. [↩]Am I being sufficiently unoffensive if I say bosoms ?
If you had any sense you'd be offended by such a reference, seeing how the only thing "bosom" connotes is "tits too small to be worth the name". Jugs is what you really want to hear. If you had any sense, that is. [↩]
« The instrumentation of humanity
This is me being completely spaced out »
Category: Cocietate si Sultura
Tuesday, 27 May, Year 6 d.Tr.
A piece of cake
M : So few people understand what being rich is.
s : What's being rich?
Me : Owning the person that makes the best cake.
s : The chocolate goose?
Me : Ha. People imagine it's whatever, "I'm rich enough to afford flying to Mars!!1". Fine, go ahead. Why would anyone bother is beyond me. Just like any beach only too hot, no hotels and no women.i
s : It makes us happy to make you good things.
Me : And then those people with their "Oh, well maybe you have a slave I could be interested in : ."
s : "Could perhaps!"
Me : Yeah, perhaps even. This is why pimping doesn't work. If you don't like the girls, what're you doing with them? And if you do like them, why are you sending them off?
s : Well it's to make money, no?
Me : You can't make money without a relationship. This is what drove you nuts with GAFii, you were making money and in so doing ended up in this completely unwanted relationship.
s : Yeah. ...but maybe if you kept the girls on enough drugs? Then it'd be like having a relationship, not with a human really, but more like, I dunno, a cat.
Me : Eh. The problem there is the cost of a drug habit easily outdoes the potential profit involved.iii
s : Oh, yeah, it would huh. So then why do people do it?
Me : Why. It's spam, they do it 'cause they've seen other derps doing it so it must make money! Stan has a good mental model for this. Imagine you've got a mine, and you seal it up so people can't get out. You don't feed the miners, which means they will necessarily die, but before they do that for a little while they're going to keep on mining.
s : ...? Do they know it's been sealed? Okay, okay.
Me : They're going to keep on mining for a little while, during which while your mine essentialy is powered on biodiesel, as stored around their viscera and wherever. In any case for as long as you keep adding fresh people fuel canisters, you've got a working mine. It does not work for any one miner, of course, but that doesn't mean it's not still a perfectly functional and serviceable mine.
s : Aha.
Me : And this explains a variety of things that exist despite not working. Like the Socialist United States. I mean, who's it benefitting? Not the mayor of New York. Not Obama. Not any of the numerous anon derps it claims to be servicing. Nobody, really, yet still it trudges on. Presidents get inaugurated looking 38 and eight years later they're about on par with McCain, 175-198 yo sort of thing. This has been going on for decades, but there's no shortage of idiots willing to trade a little fat for a little "recognition", a few years off their life for a few weeks inside a dream, stuff like that.
———This references an earlier discussion, in which I pointed out the Moon would make an excellent symbol of the general infertile failure of feminism, seeing how it remains so far unstained by the slimy marks she-astronauts (astronautettes ?) would leave behind if they had no legs. And were naked. Or something. [↩]Horrible, horrible site. Perhaps the worst design ever. And yet we're still to kill it. [↩]This is probably not directly obvious to you if you're the sort whose only acquaintance with math is arithmetics - another way of saying "if you'd make a horrible businessman". Think of it properly : the cost of a drug habit is an unbound exponential function. The profit of prostitution is a bound log function. [↩]
« The elephant in the room
George Orwell, spilling the beans »
Category: Trilterviuri
Monday, 22 December, Year 6 d.Tr.
A Mighty Wind
A Mighty Windi goes with Best in Show an' the rest of Christopher Guest's stuff : a very well made pretend-documentary about stereotypes, deconstructed attentively, reconstructed craftily, with very cold hands.
Christopher Guest proceeds exactly opposite of contemporary screenwritingii : instead of tryin to tell us who should we feel what for, he simply constructs characters that can stand on their own ; instead of hamming it up in the middle he hams up the superficial minutia. The pretty singer that had an ambiguous relationship with her co-lead vocal for while the flower lasted, then settled down with a more burgeois guy for a fruiting requires no straining of our suspension of disbelief. The co-lead vocal in question, while apparently very, very strange is in fact quite banal, and for this reason works well.iii On it goes, but why insist on the recipe.
What's important is the result, and the result is quite delicious : a pointed, disinterested but for this reason loving, immoderate but for that reason fair, story of a generation of idiots. Who, while they were indisputably idiots, are nevertheless much less harmful, much smaller idiots than the people gazing upon their now-gray hair.
You should probably see this thing. It's the good sort of vanitas. And did I mention it's hysterical ?
———2003, by Christopher Guest, with Christopher Guest (written by Christopher Guest, too). [↩]Which subsists entirely on a diet of "creating" adverts. This is very unfortunate for the actual craft for the reason you'd expect : the iron law of shoddy cheapness will push things that certain way.
For instance, the same law has pushed all viewports into the same proportions, irrespective of intended use or the needes of the buyer, because whatever, it's cheaper to cut all the floated glass the same way than two different ways. Just so it's cheaper to make averts and then tag them as "music videos" or "films" or "campaign messages" or "state of the union address" than to make that many actually different things, or to try and fit them to their purpose or anything. It's 80% after all, time for a wrap.
This mirrors the sad fate of newswriting, relegated to the status of copywriting by the current hordes of retarded, acultural children pushing the sad mud of their pretense to a life up the sand dune that's left of the gardens of Semiramis. It similarly mirrors the sad fate of everything, pretty much, from Debian to nuclear missiles.
Who could have ever imagined that encouraging the naturally excessive selfesteem of teenagers is a bad policy! [↩]This is a common mistake the inept noobs trying their hand at writing ("I tried and therefore no one should criticize me!!1") regularly make : they attempt to construct strange, weird, odd characters by packing a strange core inside chunks of smoothly machined outside. This works about as well as you'd expect, they keep trying to push the solid outer shards into their desired shape, pressuring the strange in the middle which thus keeps seeping out until they give up in frustration, dubious foamy froth spilling all over themselves and everything around. The correct approach, of course, is to machine a smooth core, and then pile on it as much whipped cream and nonpareils as it'll hold. [↩]
« Actual Bitcoin corporations (ABCs) versus fiat-based frauds trying to masquerade as Bitcoin companies (while masquerading as companies in the first place) on the solid theory that the general public is too stupid to make any difference, this one included, and on the flimsy theory that the general public matters in Bitcoin (FBF-TTMABC-WMACITFP-OTSTTTGPITSTMAD-TOI-AOTFTTTGPMIBs, alphabets for short).
The United States Scammers Service, Formerly Marshalls Service. »
Category: Trilematograf
Monday, 17 November, Year 6 d.Tr.
A conceit, or the importance of blogging
Contrary to what your average English-language-only singer-songwriter imagines (through the ever popular process of thinking about it as little as at all possible), art is not predominantly the result of one's imaginationi, nor is beauty primarily the result of the author's will, whether in a pedestrian, Nietzschean or in-betweenian reading of that word. Nor is either the result of the author's genius, whether in a pedestrian, Platonic or confusedii reading of that term.
Both art and beauty are the result of the resistence of the medium, which is exactly why some mediums are more and some mediums are less adequate to produce either art or beauty. That resistence of the medium casts its universal net over the populace, and from it selects, it selects! those who may put up a decent struggle before failing altogether. Before failing altogether, I say! Because that's what's going to eventually happen, or as Marsellus Wallace aptly puts it,
You see, this profession is filled to the brim with unrealistic motherfuckers. Motherfuckers who thought their ass would age like wine. If you mean it turns to vinegar, it does. If you mean it gets better with age, it don't.
This out of the way, let me point out that writing is as much art as painting, and beauty emerges from the written page as well as from the painted toille, and more importantly, perhaps most importantly, the page to be written, the yet blank page has a resistence all of its own. This has nothing at all to do with the friction of pen on paper and nothing at all to do with the soft coils of the keys in the keyboard. It has everything to do with the power of empty space to resist meaning much in the way the vacuum between the stars resists heating.iii
And this is where it gets interesting : in the endless if doomed quest to achieve a modicum of the ultimately impossible, man will fall upon some roads, some hillsides, some natural points for placing a foxhole or leading a charge. Much like a fifth armyiv venturing in uncharted enemy territory to achieve greatness over the wind-polished skulls and withered bones of the army previous and the three coming before it will encounter the same rivers, have to make the same pontoon bridges - often among the rotting remains of previous bridges - and avoid or be mired in the same bogs, so man trying to write will find the same white face of paper, whether it be paper or vellum or a very large glass cathode.
A conceit, in case you're wondering by now, is a cognate of conceive and concept. It also is an ancient word. What it means, what it denotes, is such a bridge as we've mentioned. Because men being what they are, which is to say wilful and blessed with memory, but also metasyntactically able (something lesser beasts, including computers or dragonflies, are not), the survivors of the fifty-ninth charge speaking to the survivors of the fourty-eight can simply say "the rotten bridge" and even if certainly the same bridge was not in fact seen by both, nevertheless the clear knowledge of what is meant emerges, because both encountered the same blind, mute, cold resistance of the same one void. Because there's only one void, and in its unique unity it forces something of a similarity among people. A brotherhood, if you wish, the only true brotherhood of man : of those who have faced the same one doom.
Which is exactly the importance of blogging. It is ultimately an impossible activity, one that can never be accomplished. And yet, when Shakespeare says that his girlfriend's eyes are nothing like the sun he does not merely put words together, but he also pointedly shows that one particular Petrarchan conceit is of no further use or interest to him. We who have read them both can follow what he means and understand the words, especially if we too were at that gullet, on that slope, in that ravine. If not... well then it means a lot less, if anything at all.
Take perhaps the best known conceit of the English language, Donne's flea :
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas! is more than we would do.
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
On its face the proposition is absurd, and as our puritanical friends may well point out, quite unsanitary. Unsafe. Unhealthy. Improper and definitely unbecoming. Like smoking, or "carbon footprinting", or fucking children, or not caring to feed the world out of imaginary bounties you can't bring about.
Nevertheless, the proposition has a point, even if not directly the point it states, and to the cultured, to the literate, to actual men and women this is enough.
This is what blogging is : an unescapably necessary part of the intellectual life of he who aims to have an intellectual life at all, because by retracing the marches and great battles of large armies in times past with their own stick horses and paper swords, children of any age can understand what their coddled mothers could never explain : why the world has to be so, rather than that or this other way. They get to develop a taste and an appreciation for the conceits of greater men and women that came before them not on the flimsy grounds that those were "great" men or women, whatever greatness may even mean in the first place, but on the quite solid footing of seeing why those choices were made, and why exactly alternatives perceived in the fancy, imagined in the mind were not actually available on the field.
Tis easy for any Miss America chicklet to answer the "how would you change the world" question. That ease comes from her complete ignorance of what the world is (encouraged for financial gain by them asking the question, of course, but that's scarcely our concern here), and that ignorance comes from the fact that she's not blogging, not really.
So my friends : do not be afraid of all the things that are scary. The most they can do while under your gaze is make you stronger. Be instead afraid of the things you make no effort to understand, because from behind they can give you quite the sound trashing. And the worst part of it is... you'll likely never know.
———And rechristianing that as "creativity" changes precious little on the actual field. [↩]In the classical Greek view of the matter, genius is an actual, separate, sensata-identifiable entity, apart from the author and working in a different incentive structure than the author (so the separation is not mere artefact of thought, as you could pretend your hand is separate from your body but then again even should you cut it off, you as a whole, you without your hand and your severed hand are still players in the same game, by the same rules, and the severance a loss to all).
Tellingly, in that cultural context a genius is called daemon, and as you might have heard later Christian authors predictably thought very little of it and feared it quite a lot, as the main opposition to their peculiarly stunted worldview (because "the daimon made me do it" isn't as you might interpret it a sort of abandonment of the self to oblivion, as in "the drugs made me do it", but quite the contrary an abandonment of the self to sublime, as in "for greater justice", or, quite adequately, "for the sake of art"). Clearly the xtian mind could have none of that, they were setting out to carve and conquer empires out of the world, not to make beautiful statues of young boys.
Conversely, the genius in the puritanical* contemporary version of English (as that language has barely survived to this day, mangled by the illiterate peons across the sea) is a substatial attribute of the agent, like the power is of the engine or the range of a rifle.
------
* What you believe shapes what you see, and what you see shapes what you think, and soon enough you end up with things like the Telegraph dedicating an entire day's edition to wondering why is it that the French don't seem to think it's any of their business what their President and the women he knows do, did or think about doing apart or altogether and generally don't care.
The reason obviously is that your average English speaker mostly jacks off whereas your average Frenchman mostly has sex, and that happens because the remnants of puritan thought rotting away at the fundaments of the former's mind are preventing him from reaching adulthood and so he's stuck in permanent highschool.
[↩]This, incidentally, was a conceit. [↩]This, incidentally, is another conceit. [↩]
« People have made blogs
Revolver & RocknRolla »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Wednesday, 15 January, Year 6 d.Tr.
3! 3 things!
~ First Thing ~
Me: Hey, let me ask you a question.
Her: Okay.
Me: What would you say is the number of women who are raped and then murdered in the US before they turn 18?
Her: Erm. What's the population again? Hundred million?
Me: Say three hundred million.
Her: And this is what, per year?
Me: Sure.
Her: K. ...ten thousand.
Me: That high, seriously?
Her: Yeah.
Me: Sucks. Okay. So say you could do something that'd increase the number of rapes but eradicate the murders. Say, there'd be a hundred thousand rapes, but none of the hundred thousand would be killed. And they wouldn't be really violent rapes either, the extra. I mean, the ten thousand would still be pretty rough affairs, but the additional ninety are more like slapped around a little rather than beaten with a tire iron until unconscious sort of thing.
Her: No. What would you do?
Me: I'm not touching it. Is there a number? What if it was ten thousand and one?
Her: Well what's my role in this?
Me: You're god.
Her: I'm god and these are my options?!
Me: You're a girl with a button.
Her: Are any of the... do members of my family live there?
Me: They could. You don't know anything, you just have the button.
Her: No.
Me: Really? This is why rape leads to murder, you know ? People just like you -- you're basically saying rape is just as bad as being killed.
Her: Nah, I'm just saying I wouldn't do it. If I'm a politician or something, it's not my job to make trades like this, it's my job to fix the problem in the first place.
Me: You're not a politician, you just have the button. So your thinking here is that if they're raped they might as well be killed.
Her: No, I'm not thinking that at all.
Me: But think from the utilitarian perspective. 10k rapes, 10k killings, that's 20k. You wouldn't trade 20k for 10k+1?
Her: This isn't something to be traded. If I'm a politician this isn't my job, and with the button...I'm not pressing it until I get some better options, what the hell is this. I don't think you can create a hypothetical situation in which pressing it makes sense.
Me: Oh, so basically you're not touching it.
Her: Right.
There you have it, ladies and gents : utilitarian morality doesn't actually work in practice. Now what ?
* Second Thing *
You invested in the Series A btw ? Undreesseen did!
Don't laugh, Facebook apps are big business! You'll see!
* Third Thing *
Suppose someone made an artesian fountain that didn't shoot out water, but soap bubbles.
How difficult is that ? You don't need a water pump, but use an air pump instead, which probably uses a lot less electricity. You don't need all the chemicals to keep the water from turning green, you just need some soap - like the monthly budget of a car wash probably has you set for a year.
You could make it reactive to light, perhaps shaped like metallic flowers that gradually open and close by the measured luminosity, and fix it so it only bubbles on average 500 minutes a year or whatever.
Pretty cool idea huh ? I guess people are too busy trying to make buttons and apps to literally think about making bubbles. Dommage.
« MPOE, May 2014 and June 2014 Combined Statement
S.WOL, June 2014 Statement »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Friday, 04 July, Year 6 d.Tr.
"You're the guy who wasn't good enough to sling dope."
thestringpuller @Mircea_Popescu "You're the guy who wasn't good enough to sling dope."
Wednesday, 22 May, Year 5 d.Tr.
You're gonna have to learn that variety speak
Let's start with something light (stolen from Randy Rogel) :
In Hollywood, they have a special language that they speak.
It's spoken by those folks who went to school for just one week.i
It's found inside Variety, a magazine they use.ii
And no one understands it when they read the movie news.
Like "Hix makes pix but the flick needs fix" means someone made a movie that bombed.
"The veepsiii in charge are now at large" means everyone involved is gone.
"The plot conflix, no beautiful chix" so it's comin' out on video soon.iv
"They're takin' their licks 'cause the critics say nix" and the editors are gonna try to fix it in the mix.
"But the stock sees green" on page 13 means Disney's up a nickel a share.
"Stallone cuts deal for a major reel" means Rocky number 6, so beware.
If you want the poop or you need the scoop on Hollywood Town this week,
You're gonna have to learn to talk that Variety speak!
[Chorus]
"A boffov smash makes Warner cash" means there's gonna be a sequel next year.
But "Paramount hurts and they're losing their shirts" means Schwarzenegger's doing King Lear.
"Oliver Stone does next Home Alone" means he's gettin' paid an arm and a leg.vi
The budget goes "crunch" but his name "packs punch" so they called up the accountants and they're gonna "do lunch".vii
But "the ratings smile on the O.J. trial"... means a movie of the week to premiere.
"Universal cuts deal with Mr. Spiel"viii to do a hundred thousand movies a year!
Ya gotta play it smart if ya wanna be part of the crowd that's hip and chic!
You're gonna have to learn to talk that Variety speak!
[Chorusix]
Normal talk makes producers walk, you might as well speak Greek.
You're gonna have to learn - or the meeting will adjourn - unless, my friends, you learn that Variety speak!
[Chorus]
In Hollywood, they have a certain way they like to talk.
It's used by all those folks who can't chew gum and also walk.
It's found inside Variety, a movie magazine.
And everyone who reads it wonders what the headlines mean.
Like "Mitch makes a pitch, and he's gonna get rich" means someone's got a movie that sold.
"Brando's mad, says the screenplay's bad" means someone else was offered the role.
"It's called Fargo Two with a story that's new" means they're gonna shoot it all in LA.x
"The budget got maxed, so someone got faxed" everybody's on the carpet, so the writer got the ax.
Well, "Merchandise scores in the theme park stores" and Disney is the king of the hill.xi
"Michael Ovitz talks with 20th Fox" means he wants another ninety-three mil.
If you want the poop or you need the scoop on Hollywood Town this week,
You're gonna have to learn to talk that Variety speak!
[Chorus]
"Studio bombs, gets Oscar nom" means all the actors gotta be Brits.
"Bronfman's play for MCA" means the Japanese are calling it quits.
"No scripts are new" means Jurassic Park 2 and a trillion little dinosaur toys.
"The cash flows nice, they're releasing it twice", since it isn't out on video, they're jacking up the price.
Well, "Studio tsar wants unknown star" means they couldn't get Robert Duvall.
But "They're in trouble again, doing Mice and Men" with Martin Short and Steven Seagal.
You gotta stay alive and if you wanna survive in Hollywood Town this week,
You're gonna have to learn to talk that Variety speak!
[Chorus]
Normal talk makes producers walk, you might as well speak Greek.
You're gonna have to learn - or the meeting will adjourn - unless, my friends, you learn that Variety speak!
Now let me explain for your benefit how this business worked, back when Hollywood was still a thing and Variety didn't look like fucking Vice.
So, producers option material for scripts. Books, mostly, but not only. To "option" means to acquire the exclusive right to use for a specified purpose, but no obligation. The mechanism is used extensively in land development too, and in all those situations where you have to herd catsxii. This task is easily delegatable.
Then, the studio people in charge of trends and so forth assemble predictions and projections as to what's likely to be hot. This is nominally also a producer thing, but so often delegated it's hardly worth the mention on the producer's plate. (Except, of course, most producers think they know better than the focus groups etc. The better ones actually do. Sometimes.)
Then the producer sits down with these two sets of data and tries to decide what the fuck to make. Sometimes this results in more focus groups being ordered, some other times this results in option hunting expeditionsxiii. Often enough the data from accounting is strong enough that the result is unquestionably Rocky 6. It's a business, after all. But in most cases the result is, "write me a treatment for X with Y and Z constraints in mind".
This is an order, and it goes to the screenwriters, the people who write for the screen. They are NOT motherfucking creative in the broad, general, architectural sense kids imagine. They are creative in the minutiae sense art actually requires of underlyings, which is what they are. The producer, the director and the lead actor(s) make the broad, general, architectural decisions in this art. Not the gofers, not the screenwriters.
Sometimes people who are too stupid to understand how stupid they are imagine they can bypass the entire system just because they want to, much in the way children would behave (before being housebroken, at least). So they bust down the doors of people's offices with "their script". As if there can even be such a fucking thing, "a script" in and of itself. Why not "their tree trunk", without roots or leaves ? But nevermind, what are the noobs to know.
Once a few things are picked, they get ok'd. This is where all a studio's producers meet with the top brass and explain "what they got". Some things get ok'd, meaning the studio will back them. There is infinite space for human interaction here - because the producers understand money, audiences and the process of production well but not perfectly, and the check management can put on their activity is mostly trying to keep them from doing obviously stupid shit that sits in their blindspot. So, a studio is likely to let a star producer do pretty much anything he wants to, if he insists. Except then there's human emotions at work, and the usual deadly sins, and all the circus of mankind. So it can get pretty livresque at this spot - the only problem is that it's so much of an in joke it can't really be made into a movie. Except it has, of course, multiple times.
Once some things are ok'd the horrid shuffle begins. Who can we get to star in this ? Who's available ? Who are they working well with ?xiv Who aren't they working well with ?xv
This is where an agent makes or breaks an actor's career. Because if the agent has a relation with the producer (based on past success) and insists, he may get away with anything he wants. Much like the producer could get away with anything he wanted in the earlier step, and for exactly the same reasons. Basically the system is constructed so that everyone who's someone can, at some point in the deal, get anyway with bloody murder if he so wants.xvi
So now, they've gone through the list of 500 possible people, and managed to break it up into sets and shuffled and reshuffled them together and "done lunch" to the point everyone's geting bulimia but finally managed to arraign a cast. This gives the movie its budget, because as a rule of thumb you're going to spend as much on everything else as you're spending on the actors, and if Tom Hanks wants 12 million pay-or-playxvii and his co-star then wants 1.6 even if his previous rate over the past 5 years averages .9 because hey, fuck you, you're going to end with a 15 mn set and a 30 mn budget. Which you'll overshoot to 53 million and there you go, maybe make a quarter billion at the box office. It's been known to happen.xviii
So the producer takes the budget to the studio, which puts some of its own cash on the thing and opens the rest to outside investors. Which has been going on for a hundred and more fucking years by now, just fine, and apparently "the SEC" has not yet hauled Hollywood to Alcatraz. Just a thought.
And that's about it, the movie is made or not, released or not, promoted or not, bombs or not. The story ends.
Congratulations for making it this far. Now let's wrap this up :
The job of the chief stategist of a field is to identify the bits of history that may be productively employed to understand said field. Left to their own devices, tacticians (such as generals) will gleefully fight the present war as if it was the last war, because that's what's fresh in their memory. The job of the general staff is to find which old film we're seeing again now. And that's exactly what I'm telling you : Bitcoin is the rehash of Hollywood's golden age, or more generally 1950s to about 1990 or so. The exact same constraints operate, the situation is exactly the same in the broad strokesxix and eerily identical in all minutiae.
Much like "nobody knows how to make movies" was generally true in Hollywood, "nobody knows how to make Bitcoin businesses" is generally true in Bitcoin. Nevertheless, this does not logically follow into "so then everyone has the same chances, noobs and veterans alike". Such a proposition could not be further from the truth, because the veterans have the sizable advantage that they know all the ways movies can't be made. That's what they've been doing with their years and the investors' money up to that point : not coming one iota closer to knowing how movies can be made, but establishing vast inroads into the obviously endless topic of how they can't in fact be made. Noobs bereft of this very valuable (in that it's very expensive) knowledge ain't got a prayer.
Learn to fucking talk the Variety speak. In Bitcoin this means irc, and WoT and a small amount of phone number. And let this be perfectly clear to you, that if you haven't as much as found fucking Variety, you ain't a "mover & shaker", you're that weird dude working odd jobs that tells starlets he's a producer. You know, like Kramer, CEO of Kramerica Industries. "We only provide fantasy corporate experience".
It's what it is.
———This seems like a jab, but it isn't.
You see, school as practiced by the middle class, as the complete absence of any education papered over with "important" yet meaningless "certificates" was useless for any sort of practical purpose then, too. And as the sorts of people involved in this business handled reality rather than government subsidies for a living, school did them no good. In fact, taking more than a week to figure out school is not [useful] for you didn't particularly speak well of one's intelligence in their eyes.
Always keep an eye for the jabs that really aren't, the easiest to find door into any closed paper bag. [↩]The one, the only, the original trade rag. [↩]VPs, ie, Vice Presidents. The exact equivalent of Bitcoin's "CEO" or, if you prefer, "we", in the sense that there was such a deluge of them nobody was seriously keeping track or score. [↩]The snark rests on understanding that at the time bypassing the theatrical release was not unlike marriage that bypasses honeymoon. The cinema was where the money came, and stuff going direct to video abdicated the chief symbol of even being a movie in the first place. [↩]Carny for "very good". Yeah, alright, I know, they're not really carnies, they're in show business. Har. [↩]Because it costs a lot of money to make someone smart do something stupid. This, incidentally, is yet another way to explain why government never works in practice and all bureaucracies degenerate into meal tickets for the retarded. [↩]I am unequal to the task of writing the dictionary entry for "do lunch". It's where it's at. [↩]Spiel, of course, means game, but also the heart in the machine and the gremlin in the clock. In jewish, which is what most people in showbiz are and were - not because of any other reason than that their cvasi-religion doubles as a self-shrink kit and so generally allows them fewer fucking mental issues and therefore less fear of dealing straight with reality nude. In this case Mr. Spiel is Steven Spielberg. Who isn't Jewish. Narf. [↩]For the record, the chorus is naked girls. Because that's what it fucking is!
2012 Jun 14 18:38:33 jcpham based on the naked chicks, I'm saying mircea_popescu values aethetics
2012 Aug 01 23:54:53 Hollywoodundead get everyone distracted by the naked girls eh?
Aug 02 10:20:51 mircea_popescu quoted for 62 year old woman skype-ing naked suv gambling goodness
And etc. [↩]Because they used to do this, and to a large degree still do it : oh, cars work great on roads ? How about on water ? Let's try driving a car on water see what happens then! [↩]Because that's what Disney does, much like cigs were a "nicotine delivery vehicle" for the seven dwarves, "movies" are a cheap-bits-of-colored-plastic delivery device for Disney. See "toyific" to be thoroughly exposed to this horrific construct. [↩]Meaning, situations where trying to replace the plowing ox with 1024 plowing chickens work out more akin to getting 1024 small blowjobs instead of the usual half-and-half. [↩]Such as "get me O.J. Simpson exclusive cinematic rights"! [↩]People in general judge actresses by how big their tits and narrow their waistline, if male, and by how damp they make down there, if female. Nevertheless, a select few still consider "how well they can act". Well, the fuck's that mean ? O, the ability to "project emotions" and such jazz ?
None of that matters in Hollywood. What matters is how well an actor plays with other actors. Take Helen Hunt : she's not much, but she can stand up to Nicholson, and that's something. The Pfeiff is a great actress not because you'd fuck the living daylights out of her - you'd do the same to any of ten thousand starlets born 21 years ago each year of her 21 year long career. She's a great actress because she can play with anybody, literally anybody. That's a huge something. It's the one something that matters. [↩]Consider the Brando-Sinatra couple, it's the stuff of legends. [↩]Which leads us directly into the concept of "turn", a concept so heavy and important it almost rivals "call". Speaking out of turn is not like and not comparable to speaking of out line. The people who get a line are soldiers, not officers. The officers get turns, and when it's their turn they can go for what they actually want to get. But when it's not their turn, they are indistinguishable and not to be distinguished from simple soldiers. This is how tinseltown worked, and this is how any device predicated on building skyscrapers out of tin foil will ever work.
And which also leads us to understanding that corruption is a virtue not a sin. [↩]That's the contract you sign with talent : the project either plays, as in, theatres, or else you pay them. No way out, which as a side-effect ensures the film will be made if you can help it. [↩]And moreover, one can trivially spend 20 million on a film that rakes in two hundred bucks in total sales, so the point that "this is the budget, don't overrun it" can't be forced too easily. [↩]Just consider : everyone can tell you if a movie bombed or scored a week after the premiere, and nobody, not even the most subtle and refined mind can tell you the same a week before the premiere. You are competing for a fininte amount of viewer attention. Every year, yes, but every year finite. Everyone chases the same buck, and nobody has a fucking clue how to make movies. The list is endless. [↩]
« MPOE bonds historical data, Dec 2012 - Nov 2013
The Family »
Category: 3 ani experienta
Saturday, 14 December, Year 5 d.Tr.
You want to see reactionary ? I'll show you reactionary.
nubbins` mircea_popescu: just finished; we're *all* misrepresenting the situation. The artists, the art dealers, the museum-going public, and every single person who commented on that post, yourself included. This is why "what is art" is an interesting topic for discussion; everyone colors it with their own experience.
mircea_popescu No, you're all doing it except me. You know this because I can enact my point in your system, but you can't enact your point in mine. In all situations where a set of representations appears equivalent but one excludes all others, that's also the correct one, and the others are degenerate.
nubbins` I'm still trying to figure out if I should determine the nature of your point or the nature of your system first!
mircea_popescu Lol good point.
jurov The correct one, and the others are degenerate *rolls eyes*.
mircea_popescu I'm super cereal.
nubbins` I'm curious to know what your description of my system would be.
jurov "Lurk moar".
mircea_popescu He was asking you neh ?
nubbins` Nope, that was directed towards you. You can't claI'm to know a man's mind and not expect hI'm to ask you to elaborate.
mircea_popescu Ah. Well I wouldn't know "your" system. What you've written so far is coherent with naive nominalism, ie the ideology of all youths. Occam requires it be described as such. (Naive nominalism is the view that convention enacts existence, and thus forumers are "CEOs" and their harebrained schemes "companies"). That aside, there aren't really enough points given explicitly to make much of a call.
nubbins` And thus, random bozos are "artists"?
mircea_popescu If you call them that.
nubbins` If the random bozo creates something that I like, what else would I call hI'm ?
mircea_popescu But there's a difference between calling a dude a nigger for convenience, as the shortest word available, and calling a dude a nigger for racism.
nubbins` I dunno, man. Maybe I'm applying too much of my interpretation of your "system" into your words, but it seems like you're flat-out stating that it's not art unless someone in a position of power or influence over the artist decrees it to be so.
mircea_popescu No, I am flat out stating that.
nubbins` And I find such a stance so bizarre that I'm not even sure where to begin picking it apart.
mircea_popescu I know.
nubbins` About five years ago, I moved into an apartment and found a large piece of wall panelling with a picture painted on the back side of it. It's currently gracing the wall of my living room. No name, no identifying marks whatsoever, no way for me to ever find out who made it or to contact them in any way. To propose that I hold any position relative to its creator, above or below, is simply nonsense. And yet, there it sits on my wall. Unequivocally and inarguably a work of art.
mircea_popescu "Unequivocally and inarguably a work of art" only in the republic of one constructed by your own living room, of which you are president.
nubbins` YES! My fucking point exactly!
mircea_popescu Why do you expect solipsism to be considered by others ? Your problem, not apt to be brought to the forum.i For that matter, you may perhaps in time come to own a miniature of the Eiffel tower, which you may emplace on your commode, or in your rectum. It'd be "the Eiffel tower of my commode", but only inasmuch as you are concerned.
nubbins` Sure.
mircea_popescu It's not germane to call it "the Eiffel tower" in conversation.
nubbins` Well, you're the one bringing definite articles into play.
mircea_popescu Yes, because I am the one discussing art, not whatever irreelvant stuff you're personally dreaming up all for yourself.
nubbins` It's not THE art on my walls, it's A piece of art.
mircea_popescu The Eiffel tower on yoru commode is not "a piece of Eiffel towers". It has nothing to do with the actual Eiffel tower.
nubbins` Everything is irrelevant but the opinion of the observer.
mircea_popescu No.
nubbins` Yes.
mircea_popescu Well so there you have it.
nubbins` Universally, no. But as a matter of determining whether it's art, yes.
mircea_popescu There are qualifications needed to be an observer. You don't become an observer of the battle of Thermopylae just by stating yourself as an observer.
nubbins` Oh, you most certainly do. An observer needs no qualifications beyond the ability to observe. The validity of their observations can certainly be debated just as the validity of what my opinion of art is can be debated.
mircea_popescu This may be the best stating of the naive nominalism discussed above. You presume youy have the faculty to observe. This presumption is wholly unsubstantiated.
nubbins` Art doesn't exist in a vacuum. You touched on this when you said it was inert, but that's just another way of questioning whether an event happens if there is no observer. Trees falling, noises being made, etc. And that's fair in the sense that art is some sort of Schrodinger's cat type thing where it's neither art nor not-art until someone looks at it. But the difference here is that all can agree on whether or not a cat is dead because that's quantifiable. None can agree on whether or not X is art because it's simply not quantifiable. How many arts is Starry Night? How many arts is Fountain?
mircea_popescu Nah, see, the equivocation at work here is that the requirements for being an observer in the forert with a falling tree are very low. One can't turn arround and expect all situations have equally low bars. Moreover I dunno what cats have to do with this. Is it an Internet thing ?
nubbins` http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_cat due to quantum physics gibberish, the cat is neither dead nor alive until observed. The natural extrapolation of your argument is that you can walk up to a woman weeping at the beauty of a painting, or of a spoken word, and politely inform her that what she has observed is, in fact, not art. But the very fact that she weeps I'm plies that she is having a strong emotional response to it, which in turn I'm plies that she oh fuck I smell smoke hold on
* jurov has hopelessly mainstream taste and readily agrees with any definition of art
mircea_popescu You could slap her, or kidnap her to the same strong emotional response. "What literature pays best ?" "Ransom notes". More's the point : your example is counterfactual. I would never talk to some anodyne serf woman, you might as well propose the cancer walk in the front door one day and begin jacking off. "Jacking off" ?! It has no penis. Incidentally, the miscasting as art as "that which yields emotional response" is roughly the reason trolling has become such a big deal culturally.
nubbins` And there are those who would argue that such a kidnapping is "performance art". I disagree, but my disagreement merely illustrates my point. I'm merely offering the simplest explanation for the fact that there are so many things which some people call art and other people don't.
mircea_popescu Yes, but your explanation requires people be equal and interchangeable, which is beyond naive. You might as well offer an explanation of art for spherical chickens that live in vacuums.
nubbins` Your explanation requires that some higher power declares X to be art and Y to be not-art, which is pretty lellyii. Suppose person X says "This sculpture I've commissioned is art" and person Y says "Nay, you are my subject, and I declare it to be not-art". Well, obviously person Z (X and Y's superior) should be the REAL person to ask, right? And so on and so on, and you arrive at the conclusion that art is declared by edict from Godiii. Or, y'know, Occam's razor. It's art if I think it's art. The obvious implication is that the words "to me" are inserted between "art" and "if". Because there's no other way to quantify it, and if you can't quantify things, you certainly can't classify them.
mircea_popescu Except no one cares about any "to me" sentence. They're voiceless.
nubbins` Sure, but what does that change?
mircea_popescu Looky, this trick where you go "MPEx is too hard, I don't understand it ; therefore we must all GLBSE because there's no other way to do it" isn't logically sound. It is the avatar of youth, but so are many other illogical topoi.
nubbins` S says a piss pot "is art to me". I don't care, because whether it's art to them has no bearing on whether it's art to me.
mircea_popescu The "to me" approach is unsound. This disqualifies it, perpetually and definitively. The remainder is the "to whom ?" approach, which reduces to social hierarchy. No problem here.
nubbins` Art acts on people. Without "to me", it does not exist.
mircea_popescu You presume all action is with the voluntary subjection of the subject. This may be true, but the subjection needn't be conscious.
nubbins` Agreed
mircea_popescu You don't discuss surgery in terms of the subjective impressions of patients. A similar discussion of any other craft is similarly out of place. Obviously the surgeons are surgeons by decree rather than because "people" feel surgeonized by them.
nubbins` Surgery definitely falls into the realm of the quantifiable.
mircea_popescu Only in the minds of people who have no idea what it is. In point of fact it's about as vague as art, which is why malpraxis is such a mess.
nubbins` "You're cured if I say you're cured",
mircea_popescu Exactly.
nubbins` "It's art if I tell you it's art".
mircea_popescu If and only if, when and only when.
nubbins` "I'm cured if my condition is gone", "it's art if I say it's art".
mircea_popescu Does the oncology patient go "all is well doc, I feel cured" ? No, they go "o please divine my fortunes, good master". It's quite a case of "you're cured if and when I say you're cured".
nubbins` "Cured" has nothing to do with feeling. Art has much to do with it.
mircea_popescu With feeling, perhaps. With conscious feeling rarely.
nubbins` Hmm.
mircea_popescu When I say "it's art because X feels Y" I may be right. When you say "it's art because I feel Y" you're certain to be wrong.
nubbins` "MP says it's art because nubbins wept", vs "nubbins says it's art because nubbins wept". Same conclusion, different route.
mircea_popescu To be formal, "MP said it's art, and it makes nubbins weep", vs "nubbins thinks it's art because that's why he thinks he wept". These are not the same, and for that matter the latter's logically unsound.
nubbins` You changed your example a bit there.
mircea_popescu How ?
nubbins` You went from "because x feels y" to "and x feels y". MP said it's art because it makes nubbins weep, or MP said it's art and it makes nubbins weep?
mircea_popescu There is no because in the correct statement. In fact, we can judge how good a nubbins you are by how adequately you weep when art is presented, NOT the other way around, judge art by how it "makes" you weep or not.
nubbins` Well, obviously it's not the art but nubbins himself that is the cause of the weeping. But let's not get tangled up.
mircea_popescu Nope. This naive "man at center of everything" goes well with the naive nominalism, but it's quite as nutty.
nubbins` Let's examine "MP said it's art".
mircea_popescu Ok.
nubbins` Presumably MP has criteria?
mircea_popescu None of your business as they may be, presumably he does.
nubbins` Sure. Nevertheless, we can presume that he does.
mircea_popescu Yea.
nubbins` We can also presume that nubbins also has criteria.
mircea_popescu Why ?
nubbins` As a facile counterpoint, why not? Surely there must be something that makes MP a good judge and nubbins a poor one?
mircea_popescu Because it's not only facile, but wrong. MP is one of the lords. He makes art be. Of course we can presume anything. Nubbins is no such lord. We're going to have to explain why we presume.
nubbins` Ahahaha. It's art by holy edict!
mircea_popescu That's the point of the article.
nubbins` You're a complicated man.
mircea_popescu "Surely there must be something that makes MP a good judge and nubbins a poor one?" implies that perhaps nubbins could move upwards in society, and contains implicit an equivalency of substance between the two. This isn't an accepted point between us. If it is true, you'll have to prove it.
nubbins` This implies that there's a ladder we're both on and you're above me on it. So if it's true, you'll have to prove it.
mircea_popescu Well not you and me personally but the icons we're discussing.
nubbins` Any two people, sure.
mircea_popescu I have to prove naught. I just make the art be art.
nubbins` So you pop into someone's house, point to a painting, and say "actually that's not art at all", and thus it was never art.
mircea_popescu How would MP and nubbins socially interract ?
nubbins` I'm not sure we would.
mircea_popescu I pop into someone's house by the intermediate agency of his wife which is now my slave and she throws out all their old shit cause now she knows better. "You know what ? My old junk wasn't art at all".
nubbins` That could happen without any outside influence, and indeed it does, all the fucking time. In fact, it even happens in the other direction! "hey, y'know, this album is actually pretty good", "this drawing has really grown on me".
mircea_popescu But this has little to do. You were discussing a particular application of the theory, with what I took as a view to reduce it to absurd. I' ve shown the approach not to really work, we can move on.
nubbins` Everything is absurd. Of course, absurdity is a spectrum. The entire sphere of art rests squarely on the more "absurd" end of that spectrum.
mircea_popescu Lol. The curse of this particular equalitarian-nominalism ogre is that it can't really make statements.
nubbins` Well, obviously, if you take my view, all art is a bit of a beat-off. An absurd, senseless beat-off. If one chooses to make himself an authority in such an arena, well, so be it. But he deceives himself if he thinks he can avoid becoming part of the beat-off. After all, what's a bigger beat-off than "I'm the guy who sez what's art and what's not"? It's enough to make your sides ache.
mircea_popescu You know that Seinfeld episode when george is pitching to the network nubbins ? "So what's this idea ?" "It's nothing" "Then why am I watching it ?" "Because it's on tv" "Not yet." That's it right there, "I'm the guy who sez."
nubbins` Not the best analogy. Tv has gatekeepers. You wanna air a tv show, you need the permission of your master. You wanna paint something or write a song, you're limited only by your own level of ambition.
mircea_popescu Ah, and "art" is free, you just put it on etsy ?
nubbins` Etsy has listing fees ;)
mircea_popescu But this sort of drawer novel, as it was known, doesn't exist in the sense of art. It exists in the sense of masturbation, or w/e the author does in his privacy. Think of an old painting being discovered in a stash. What is the question first and foremost asked ? Is it something as to the paionting itself or is it as to the pedigree of the maker ? Nobody goes "I found a 500 year old kinda cool painting". It only matters once it becomes "an old da Vinci has been discovered".
nubbins` So it's art if it reaches an audience of a certain size.
mircea_popescu Audience has nothing to do with it. This is wholly a medieval-inspired problem of probating. The question is if the found shipwreck survivor is a noble or a peasant, not if he owns a lot of farms and what have you.
nubbins` Nah, it matters to more people if it's an old da Vinci or what have you, but that doesn't preclude it mattering to anyone.
mircea_popescu If you insist to hold the utopian view.
nubbins` Oh, but I do! We're all floating in a void.
mircea_popescu Well the advantage of holding nonsense views (which utopianisms are by definiton) is that anything can be derived from them. Any conclusion is available to the inconsistent set of premises.
nubbins` Well, yes. The magazines at the grocery store tell me that kim kardashian is very worthy of my attention, but that's simply false. What's more nonsense than debating whether or not something is art? Or whether or not X or Y is a criteria for defining it? Or whether or not art exists? Or whether person X or person Y is an authority on the subject?
mircea_popescu There can be no such debate. Art is art. You disagree, you may be punished by your lord. End of story.
nubbins` Unadulterated nonsense, all of it, regardless of a self-appointed lord's opinion.
mircea_popescu So if you don't really wish to discuss art, why are you ?
nubbins` If I didn't wish to discuss it, I wouldn't. this is great. You assume that people don't wish to discuss nonsense. The length of this exchange implies otherwise.
mircea_popescu Lol no, you can't "Discuss" nonsense. To discuss a topic you have to renounce nonsense. If you wish to wallow in nonsense you're stuck doing it by yourself, whether you get some others to do the same in your general proximity is irrelevant, everyone's still doing it by himself. Bukkake like.
nubbins` Nonsense. You've been talking nonsense with me for like two hours.
mircea_popescu Wait 'till I publish it :)
nubbins` Wait til I draw it ;)
mircea_popescu Cool, go for it! I'ma add it to the article.
nubbins` Great, gimme an hour.
———This is what I think of your "empathy". It's a private affair, ye douchecanoes, not something open for public discussion. [↩]He means lulzy. [↩]He's trying the classical Aristotelian proof of the existence of a god (ie the prime mover) as a counterargument to the existence of that which would require a god to exist. I believe Aristotle is the sore recipient of the most-raped historical award. [↩]
« What is art ?
The coyote, the hyena and the expired water buffalo. A parable. »
Category: Trilterviuri
Monday, 04 November, Year 5 d.Tr.
You Swedes with your pickled herring
On the far right, fine Maasdam cheese, from the Lower Countriesi. On the far left, ripe olives from the island of Cyprus (Turkish side, the other one is bad for banking). Middle, pickled mackerel (the title is a misnomer).
Excellent breakfast, seriously now.
———In which case where is Holland and who are the Dutch ?! [↩]
« The doctrine of total depravity
Discovering the Secret Villanies of Alluring Strumpets »
Category: Zsilnic
Sunday, 14 April, Year 5 d.Tr.
You have no potential.
Isaac "Traiesc cu speranta ca o oarecare isi va da seama in mod miraculos de potentialul meu si ma va ridica din starea de 2 lei si asa o sa mi se rezlove toate problemele."i Dude. Romanians. Insanity spreads.
Daniel Potential for what. Hoping?
Isaac Nono. His "potential". Do you know this theory whereby when you're born the government by virtue of obscure legal alchemy deposits 347957698379384769384 dollars in your name and your birth certificate is the deposit receipt thereof ?
Daniel Nope.
Isaac O boy. Google "Redemption movement".
Daniel How does this tie in tho, he's worth 11teen billion it's just that it was misallocated?
Isaac There's this fictitious fund associated with people at birth, which gives them value at no cost of effort or toil to them. This is the exact transcription of the notion of a soul into a capitalist context.
Daniel O whoa. People actually believe this shit?
Isaac Absolutely. All of them. You will in fact not find one worthless schmuck who neatly confronts his worthlessness. Necessarily, as if he did it'd go away.
Daniel O get out, I've never heard of it before.
Isaac You never heard of Langerhans' islets before either. Doesn't mean they're not part of every living person.
Daniel It can't be the case all Americans believe they have secret gov't given dollar worth.
Isaac Yeah, they do. Formalised differently, but basically this is what it is. "Potential". Infinite amount thereof.
Daniel "The government deposits $630,000 in a hidden bank account linked to the newborn American and administered by a Jewish cabal." because we can't come up with crazy theories that don't involve Jews anymore.
Isaac I kid you not. "Other important documents in this theory are the security agreement, power of attorney, copyright notice, hold-harmless agreement, Form UCC-3, notice of security agreement, birth certificate bond, Form 56 (notice concerning fiduciary relationship), Form W-8BEN (serving notice to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury of the correct status of the issuer of the bond and countering any presumption that the issuer might be considered to be a fictional entity), declaration of status, Form 1040-V, Form 1099-OID, and the Notice of International Commercial Claim in Admiralty Administrative Remedy."
Daniel I bet the bureaus having to deal with this shit wished people would put as much work and study into... you know... regular filings and shit.
Isaac Absolutely. "Classes are often set up to teach the intricacies of the theory, and books have been published about it in the underground press. Canaanite law is held to be an important source of law and The Wizard of Oz (presumably because of the scarecrow character, i.e. the "straw man") and The Matrix trilogy are held to have important symbolism in reference to this theory".
Daniel Lol
Fact : Everybody lied.
Fact : You have no potential and no marketable value.
Fact : Your worthlesness and lack of potential are not indications that the world is broken.
Fact : No amount of "fixing" the world is going to fill the gaping void that you are.
Fact : Any proposition contradicting the foregoing is fraudulent. No exceptions.
PS. I am certainly appreciative of the great progress the past two centuries have wrought upon this our Occult Jewish Conspiracy : instead of ceaselessly repeating "when you die that's it, you're dead - you don't go anywhere" I am now ceaselessly repeating "you are worthless and you have no potential".
———I live by the hope that some chick will miraculously realise my potential and lift me from my shitty state and thus all my problems will be resolved. [↩]
« Real men cabling
Squares do Morals. A Porno. »
Category: SUA care este
Monday, 30 September, Year 5 d.Tr.
X.IDIFF.SEP has settled
The previous Bitcoin network difficulty future settlement (X.IDIFF.JUN) saw an increase of network difficulty to 19`339`258, which at the time was considerablei. Today's X.IDIFF.SEP settles at no less than 1.12628548 BTC per, almost fivefold that previous value.
During its lifetime X.IDIFF.SEP was significantly impaired first by the perceived and then by the actual unlikeliness of its coverage actually being sufficient. Indeed the settlement value for holders was 0.56083848 BTC, due to the 2.9x the previous settlement limit baked in. This comes to roughly half the final value of the contract. As one would expect in these circumstances volumes stayed well below the thrershold of relevancy.
The currently close future, X.IDIFF.DECii will be covered up to ideally 3.266227892 BTC periii, corresponding to a difficulty on December 18th of ~326 million. Seeing how the estimated difficulty change for the next retarget (about ten days away) shows a further ~20% increase, I judge it unlikely that X.IDIFF.DEC is in any better position than X.IDIFF.SEP was with regards to coverage. Nevertheless, I don't think it's either sane or feasible to increase the upfront reserves required to create these, as currently the required collateral is quite significantiv. The only reasonable avenue seems to be waiting for the difficulty to saturate, as it doesn't really make sense to try and catch runaway exponentials in financial instruments anyway, and in the meanwhile whatever legitimate hedging needs may be supplied as they have been supplied so far, through the venue of betting. I am however considering a split, something perhaps of the order of 1`000 to 1.
PS. Last settlement said
The good news is that coverage remained at all times sufficient, allowing traders to succesfully hedge their various exposure by using the instrument as intended and showing that the original parameters arbitrarily selected at the creation of the instrument back last year were judicious.
While I still believe the parameters were judiciously picked, permit me to lol.
———A 4x increase over the 4`847`648 in March. [↩]The first future traded was X.IDIFF.DEC back in late 2012. This means MPEx difficulty futures just got to be one year old, and X.IDIFF.DEC gets to be the future on the run for the second time so far! [↩]There may obviously be contracts bought earlier. For instance should someone have bought X.IDIFF contracts sometime in February 2012 they would only be covered up to ~ 1.6 BTC each or so. [↩]To best understand this : creating the furthest future available today, the X.IDIFF.SEP (settling on Sepember 17th 2014) requires ~79.66003205 BTC in collateral. Per contract. [↩]
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Category: MPEx
Wednesday, 18 September, Year 5 d.Tr.
X.IDIFF.JUN has settled
The previous Bitcoin network difficulty future settlement (X.IDIFF.MAR) saw an increase of network difficulty to 4`847`647, which at the time was considerablei. Today's X.IDIFF.JUN settles at no less than 19`339`258, a 4x increase practically.
During its lifetime so far X.IDIFF.JUN has traded for an average price of 0.11995776. The current 0.19339258 settlement means that on average net contract buyers realised a ~60% gain with net contract sellers realising a ~40% loss. The good news is that coverage remained at all times sufficient, allowing traders to succesfully hedge their various exposure by using the instrument as intended and showing that the original parameters arbitrarily selected at the creation of the instrument back last year were judicious.
MPEx continues to lead the way in all matters pertaining to Bitcoin finance as well as to provide the only actually secure, actually safe, actually sane trading environment catering to the needs of the Bitcoin finance professional. Enjoy!
———A 45% jump over December's 3`370`182. [↩]
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Category: MPEx
Wednesday, 19 June, Year 5 d.Tr.
X.IDIFF.DEC has settled.
So we've lived to see one year of X.IDIFF. Now get a load of this :
Previous settlement : 3`370`182 on Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:40:34 GMT.
Current settlement : 908`350`862 on Wed, 18 Dec 2013 19:05:48 GMT.
That's right, folks : the underlying of this future went up like a helium baloon : Dec 2012 3`370`182 (starting), Mar 2013 4`847`647 (+43.83%), Jun 2013 19`339`258 (+298.94%), Sep 2013 112`628`548 (+482.38%) and finally today 908`350`862 (+706.50%). Does this look to you like it's slowing down anyi? I only ask 'cause that $10k by November bet is still open, that's all.
Due to this settlement, collateral for one contract on the close date (so X.IDIFF.MAR, settling Mar 18 2014) would require 26.342174998 BTC. Each contract. On the other extreme, the one year out contract, X.IDIFF.DEC (settling Dec 17 2014), would require 642.459306026 BTC in collateral. Also each contract.
This is untenable an arrangement, in my opinion, and so the contracts will be slashed back by a wan. From now on each contract represents 1/10`000 fractions of the difficulty.
The book was cleared and trade in X.IDIFF is suspended for today, to give everyone a chance to adjust their pricing mechanisms. Tomorrow trade reopens, everyone's holdings of old X.IDIFF will be multiplied by 10`000, and the settlement will proceed on this new basis for the future.
Hopefully I don't end up having to do this every nine months or something.
———To help you decide this point,
mircea_popescu .d
ozbot 908350862.43702 | Next Diff in 505 blocks | Estimated Change: 27.5628% in 2d 12h 43m 25s
[↩]
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Category: MPEx
Wednesday, 18 December, Year 5 d.Tr.