PSA : If you're trying to escape the gravity well, you'll meet this on your way.

I. If you leave the US and you leave money behind, it will necessarily be left in a bank account.

II. If the bank suspects that you've been gone for a while, they will lock the account. Because they can, because "reasons", because your security and so on.

III. The process to unlock your account involves you showing up, in person, at one of their branches.

Except that excludes any branches outside of the US. The pretext that you'll hear is that Citi, like all the other major banks, simply sell their name as a franchise, shameful as this may sound.i The actual reason is that their owner, the USG, wants you physically present on its territory.

You could alternatively send them the notarized form. Provided, of course, that it's notarized by a notary public. Need I wink at this point or will you supplant the needed winks ?

You could of course sue. But the bank has a ready made defense to any legal proceeding on this line, because it can simply forward the account to another agent of the USG, that's in charge of "abandoned property". You can of course trivially recover your property from this entity, provided you manage to locate it, and... drive there. In person, of course.

Yes, there are ways to break bones so as to fix this wholly imaginary "problem". Yet. But not everyone has the means to break bones, and it definitely isn't likely to get any easier over time. In fact, exactly the opposite is liekly.

"The keys", as the legal expression goes, "are in your own pocket". By this novel legal doctrine allowing indefinite detention for as long as you could do something the government wants you to do and in so doing "be free", there's no further need of all those obsolete, reactionary things called complicated, racist, hateful names like "habeas corpus" and other such nonsense reminding people of a time when slavery was prevalent! Did you know the Romans were terrorists, by the way, had weapons of mass destruction and kept slaves around the house ? So then! Of course "society" has finally moved past the antiquated forms of their injust, patriarchical organisation. An' the keys are in your pocket.

tl;dr : spread your money around the world and don't leave any behind, because once you've left, your property is practically Tara.ii

———No really, think about it, there's a repair shop that can't repair, a bakery that can't bake and a Citi that can't Citi. Exactly like in the soviet state of old tales, a city consisting of shops in name only, a whole construction of cardboard - don't lean! [↩]"Oh, wait. I forgot to lock the front door. What are you laughing at?"

"At you, locking the Yankees out." [↩]

« Collections of views and other impressions. Also from Buenos Aires.

The wisdom of crowds. Apparently, it mostly depends on the crowds in question. »

Category: SUA care este

Thursday, 20 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

"Progress" and "Revolution"

The only notable thing to be said about these two terms is that they're exactly the same one thing.

Specifically : progress is an English word that denoted throughout Medieval times the travels of royalty or nobilityi, and became obsolete just around the apparition of the steam engine. It was then picked up by the French Revolution faction active in the colonies, much like an expired domain name would be picked up by an eager MFAii spammer marketeer. Meanwhile revolution itself is a Latin import (into French), originally referring to the cyclical movements of celestial bodies, or earlier simply meaning to turn, to roll back. Obviously this is quite distant from its current usage, which convincingly paints the picture of another hijacked term.iii

Both "progress" and "revolution", devoid of actual meaning as they find themselves, are neverthelessiv in wide use among the socialist party to denote respectively the inconveniences their followers must follow while the party is governing or aiming to govern. So, while Stalin is but a dangerous criminal throwing bombs and robbing banks in the Tsar's Russia, the poor unfortunate bystanders coming into contact with his antics are invited to excuse the damage to their life, limbs and property because "revolution". Twenty years later in Stalin's Russia, the same unfortunate bystanders coming into contact with the same antics are invited to excuse the very similar damage to their life, limbs and property - this time because "progress". Nothing substantial has changed, the socialists are still taking other people's things and causing a wake of desperation and misery wherever they go. However, the name for it is no longer revolution - but progress now!v

That's pretty much all of it. When the socialist steals from you without having control of the government, he's doing it for "revolution". When the socialist steals from you while also having control of the government, he's doing it for "progress".

Both terms, faces of the same coin, were born to support the needs and to mask the effects of the first socialist party, active in the late XVIIIth century in France but very eager and at times successful in exporting its brand of insanity, most notably : to the Eastern outskirts of Europe and to the fertile plains of North America. The terms survive to this day in common parlance for no reason other than the survival of the party in question, with its immutable malignant effects on human society, life, property and the quiet enjoyment thereof. They are not meaningful (nor, indeed, actually used) outside of the very specific context of the socialist mindset, but they are very useful there - where vast numbers of victims require some manner to refer to their wounds while ignoring both their cause and their substance.

For this reason, it is quite improper to call what Bitcoin is doing to the socialist world "a revolution". No, Bitcoin is not revolutionary, not in any way, not to any degree. Bitcoin is reactionary, and at long last - three centuries later - it actually seems there's enough on the table for the reaction to be both effectual and efficient. What the socialist world is attempting to do to Bitcoin is quite progressive in a few spheres, but by and large simply revolutionaryvi, and to this date also wholly unsuccessful.

Let's keep it that way. It starts by challenging the erroneous terms that the socialist tries to use, and by disallowing the specific manners of discourse the socialist needs in order to thrive. It starts there, and it goes all the way.

All the way, everywhere.

———But only inasmuch as the nobility in question was sovereign, so a margrave could progress through the swamps he was the lord and master of, but a viscount could not progress through the capital castle of his liege. [↩]Made For Adsense, the sort of spamsite half to ninety percent of all adsense clicks originate from. [↩]The reason socialism steals words is really the same reason it steals everything else it uses : its fundamental inability to produce anything of any value or import. [↩]This nevertheless is likely misplaced. In point of fact, socialist discourse can not really use words with actual meanings, its nature and structure relegating it to an idle... revolution of empty vessels. [↩]And you thought the typically socialist practice of renaming the category of people without a home so as to fix the unpleasant statistics of is some sort of recent innovation. Guess what : not only is it not at all recent (the French socialists did it, also in the XVIIIth century) but it is certainly no innovation. Unless you count the rabbit's hop innovative every time a rabbit hops, you've no grounds to think this renaming game is anything other than the party at work. [↩]Fortunately the sovereignty of Bitcoin over the current socialist arrangements of the old world is quite manifestly evident. [↩]

« This is how much I rule (today)

Strange in the street »

Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Thursday, 09 October, Year 6 d.Tr.

Pigfarmin'

One day Frank the Ditch noticed another car parked inside a long abandoned gas station, as if the damned thing still worked. A new, spiffy car too, that overpriced Chevrolet they keep scamming suburban ninnies with. At first he didn't know what to make of it, but a few miles down the road it dawned on him.

He drove to the nearest general store, bought a hammer, a pound of nails and a fistful of those fancy self drilling screws that come with a plastic cap screwed on. He drove back, parked right behind the Chevy and went straight for the stalls. Place was pretty delapidated, sky poked in through a corner of the roofing. It hadn't had running water for at least a decade, but that's not necessarily all bad : without water filth is just dust, there's no worms nor cockroaches and nothing can really stink. Sure enough a door was closed. Taking the plastic cap off the screw and placing it on the nail Frank went in to the left.

Sure enough a stubbly, shortish cock made its way through the glory hole just as soon as Frank slammed the door shut. He sat down on the grimy toilet and with a sigh started rubbing the shaft. There was no growth happening, so a few strokes later Frank grabbed the shaft firmly, pushed it back so the cockhead rested against the wood at the top of the partition and placed the plastic cap right in the middle of the underside, where the head meets. A second later screams and bellows filled the tiny room as blood dripped on the cracked paint, feeding the thirsty pressed wood beneath. Stubblycock was screaming and cursing, but Frank paid him no mind. Stubblycock was in no position to do anything anyway.

Carefully, teasingly, Frank poked the man's ballsac with his self driving screw. Eventually he had enough, grabbed the scrotum firmly, tugged it all the way to the hole's lip and screwed the skin against the wood with slow, methodical turns. Then he got out of his stall, bust down the door to the other man's stall - fancy that, fucking banker locked it! - with one solid kick to the rusty old latch and fucked the overweight, sweating, squealing pig in the ass. Once he was done he picked up the baseball cap off the now whimpering, mostly quiet mass, went outside, filled it with dirt, returned and shoved most of that dirt into the freshly discovered, recently enlarged, profusely bleeding love canal. Then he took the carkeys out of the stuffed pig's pocket and drove the oversized, pretentious piece of shit a mile or so off into the desert. Leaving the engine running, the windows down and the AC on max he got out and walked back to the decrepit old station.

As was his habit, he used his pocket knife to separate the shoe soles from the man's shoes, removed the belt and after cracking his princess loudly and perhaps painfully a coupla of times, leaving red streaks on the round, milky cheeks, he left with it as a souvenir. Besides, he didn't want the man to somehow manage to get a hold of his wits, get a hold of his belt and then strangle himself with it or something, god forbid.

As he was driving away, Frank smiled faintly at the thought of the concrete shit the slowly dessicating waterskin was going to experience. Perhaps just as soon as the sun set.

Or perhaps in the morning.

« Maramu'

An interesting anthropology question. »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Sunday, 09 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

Peri metaphyseos, in English this time.

This is a translated version of an older Trilema article, Peri metaphyseos.

I will bore you with an exposition of metaphysical ideas.

What does this mean ? Well, basically, it means we will not follow the chaining of some empyrically demonstrable truths, flowing inductively from some facts towards some conclusions, as is the custom in science. Instead, we will follow the chain of some sentences predicated in the ideal, which may or may not describe reality. It matters not if they do, all they're held to is the noncontradiction principle. Practically speaking, every time a metaphysical idea contradicts another, or any particular fact, it is upon us to find an explanation. And since an explanation can always be found...

This is the very reason metaphysics is muchly beloved as an intellectual pursuit : there is no possibility to err, by very definition there can not be such a thing as a false metaphysical idea. At the very most it'd be the case of a metaphysical mystery yet to be resolved. In one sense this pursuit smacks of geometry, it starts from some axioms and attempts to build upon them, but in the other sense it looks like nothing at all, because it makes no verifiable predictions as to reality (such as for instance geometry does, when stating things like "the height on the base of an isosceles triangle divides the opposite angle in two equal angles").

Thus represented, the problems of choice in metaphysics are in fact matters aesthetic, everyone being perfectly free to pick that set of metaphysical representations that best enshoe his hairdoi, as per his own opinion. Among others, this approach yields the benefit that it allows the existence of any theological system anyone wishes for, provided it's kept on a leash, and prevented from escaping from metaphysics towards actual science. There's not even a requirement that said system be homogenousii or even noncontradictory - everyone is entitled to pick, together with his preferred system, the set of enigmas, more or less eternal, that best satisfy his soul.

In fact, the only burden upon the practicing metaphysicist is to understand which are the ideas and which are the enigmas, and not confound one with the other. This would be the minimal level, but should we find ourselves in a demanding disposition we could further require some degree of culturality, by which the thinking citizen is to have knowledge of the cognitive tradition in which his choices are circumscribed, or in other words that he have enough truck with the history of metaphysics so as to be capable if asked to classify ideas, his or others'. This last requirement can in practice be translated to very simple or very complex problems, because the substance of ideas not being particularly defined, their structure is not necessarily accessible to inspection, and they can even turn around, or inside out, and generally perform all sorts of other acrobatics that may prove them entirely different from what they had appeared to be originally.

Past the psychological advantages we've already named - the impossibility of "error", the ample space for personal taste and inclination, immunity from the scientific obligation of intellectually submitting to proven truth - this continual charade of ideas that aren't in fact what they seemed to be offers, much like tobacco smoke, with which otherwise the occupation of metaphysics is often associated in practice, a vast firmament of solitary amusement and satisfaction that isn't, truthfully speaking, recommended for the youth, given the ample risk of desocialisation they carry, being in this sense exactly equivalent with computer games (which could be held as a very bizarre application of metaphysics, but let us pass on before it occurs to us that such a thing should not - in theory - be able to exist, and discover we now have to elucidate this mystery).

I was saying, afore this lengthy explicative periphrase, that I was about to bore you with an exposition of metaphysical ideas. Well yes, I do have some ideas I wish to share with you, which I will proceed to do in a future article because we've sprawled here.

PS. The title is a reference to things.

———Romanian, like most civilised languages, has a verb describing the action of putting shoes on. English however... [↩]Which means there's no requirement that it be made of compatible parts. [↩]

« An hero is he...

On essences »

Category: Trilenciclopedia

Monday, 21 April, Year 6 d.Tr.

Patriarchy is a thing because nobody likes living in a world populated by little girls

Master

Fourth: she misunderstood/completely understood his answer about whether the magazine was particularly masculine: "It's called The Economist." Uh oh. If I ask, "Is Cosmo Magazine particularly feminine?" and you reply, "Duh, stupid, it's called Cosmo, any more feminine and it would have a tailbone tattoo," then you are implying not only that the magazine is feminine, but that I should have been able to infer that because cosmos are feminine. To him, The Economist is masculine is because economics is intrinsically masculine-- and she implicitly accepts this. Now who's the sexist? Whose theoretical daughters have a better chance of learning economics? Of course she'd say any women can learn economics, yay women, but her daughters would be learning a masculine discipline, see also math, which I predict she's bad at. The barrier is in herself, sexism is merely her projection of it.

So while she pretends that it is the male perspective she doesn't like, it is evident that it's the contents themselves that she objects to. They're boring, but that can't be related to intellectual curiosity because she's a thinker. So it has to be the "male perspective". But didn't the same male perspective write the takedowns and dissections? Books, sex, relationships; those are "inclusive to women". What happens when you don't sign up for NATO-- that's masculine. But is it? Really?

I agree that most of the articles in The Economist are boring and don't "relate" to my lifestyle as an alcoholic, but I force myself to go through them like social studies homework, and most of the women who do the same are doing it as the same. The articles aren't supposed to be interesting to me, they are supposed to be important and I force myself to be interested.

There you go, the complete story of rape as required life experience. Girl says no fifty times and nobody cares. It's not her place to deny.

slave Totally unrelated wtf. The guy above is making a persuasive argument as to the misplacement of the perception of sexism. This has no bearing on "rape" nor "saying no fifty times".i

Master "The articles aren't supposed to be interesting to me, they are supposed to be important and I force myself to be interested."

slave Dude that's one person taking a stand against their own stupidity.

Master Exactly.

slave How does this translate into "nobody cares, it's not her place to deny" ?

Master Directly! No translation needed even, it is exactly the same thing.

slave No dude, there's an extremely important difference at work here. In the source material, someone is recognizing this FOR THEMSELVES and is doing something about it. In your conclusion, "the rest of the world" (implicit in "nobody") xyz.

Master In the source, the rest of the world doesn't care. In my example, idem. In the source, the subject recognises this for himself. In my example, she does the same for herself. Or to quote, "I am a little sleepy but fine. I had a very pleasant time with you yesterday. Kisses,"

That's what it is, all of it. For all the pretense, "getting students involved in their own training" is utter nonsense : in order to know what to learn you must already know what there is to learn. In order to know how to learn, you must know what ways to learn there are. These are supersets of the knowledge you don't have in the first place, and so it's plain impossible you'd have anything meaningful to say as to either what or how you should be learning. The most you can do, after having been educated raped, is picking the what and the how for other, later, virgins. Who in turn, irrespective of what they think they want and how they think they want it, will get whatever there's to get, exactly in the manner of getting it.

Do you know of a greater taboo than this banal observation ?

———This was a real life event, yesterday. Local girl with apparently no experience being naked and a good dose of verguenza didn't want to frolic nude, under the lights, with a bunch of dressed people. At least not originally.

Her protracted protestations were quite grating for the US born and bred slavegirl, who equally has no exposure with an entire different universe of human experience. [↩]

« I'll pay for your tits

The death of taxes »

Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Friday, 27 June, Year 6 d.Tr.

"Parody" is not there for you cancerous fags to try and hide your cancer behind it.

It all started, as all blood pressure fortifiers do these days, on irc :

fluffypony https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno

assbot Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Wealth Gap (HBO) - YouTube

mircea_popescu All these people and their weird equalitarian ideas.

fluffypony That segment is brilliant.

nubbins` Imagine! fluffypony could finally go back to speaking xhosa.

mircea_popescu Somehow I'm the only one vaguely offended by the fact that "humorous" talking head is "explaining to the masses" what "the president said" ? What is this, leninism ?

fluffypony nubbins`: Lol

asciilifeform ;;google start control talking pet

gribble Star Control II - Ultronomicon: ; Walkthrough - Ultronomicon: ; List of Star Control races - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

mircea_popescu fluffypony hmm, I killed it 10 seconds in. Too soon ?

fluffypony Yes definitely. He sits in front of an audience of Americans and points out how retarded their leadership is.

mircea_popescu Right. Sits in front of an audience of Americans and points out how retarded their leadership is for not being left enough.

nubbins` 2:10 "hashtag class warfare"

mircea_popescu Someone needs to explain to me sometime why "too much inequality can be very dangerous". Seems that TOO MUCH is perfectly fine, a little is fucking dangerous if the idiots now have the means to argue the point, and a shitton of it is just toxic, which is where we are now. Not in any sense dangerous, but just slowly asphyxiating everything to the point the whole society has to be destroyed by a bunchy of barbarians so the five surviving women can start over, in between buttrapes.

nubbins` Nation of haves and will-haves.

mircea_popescu Moar like might-haves, could-haves, should-haves and will-haves.

asciilifeform nubbins`: have-nots and will-nots.

nubbins` ;;ud willnot

gribble http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Willnot | A little round ball of shit (and/or bumwad) stuck in the hair of the crack of your ass and WILLNOT come out.

asciilifeform Lol.

mircea_popescu Isn't that a dingleberry ?

The discussion continues in private!

Her I think you sound a little oversensitive. The vid was a sorta Colbert-SNL parody show. It's there to make people laugh, not rly anything moar.

Me Yeah, I think I'm becoming oversensitized.i

Her But you seem to take it pretty seriously and hate it for even mentioning the sorta themes you don't like (whether it's arguing for or against them; in fact it was mocking the "income inequality" thing).

Me No it was not. That's the point. It was NOT mocking the income inequality thing. It was trying to mock into making it a thing. Just the fucking terminology you know ? 20% of the available income ?

Her But see, again. It's a show for the general public trying to make fun of the actually serious "political commentary" done on news shows. What terminology are they going to use?! Shouldn't exist, no creative TV, just the one channel with the "correct" show? See where that goes? He's mocking it, dude. That he may be mocking it imperfectly is certainly an observation, but to get super offended by it even existing because omg the wrong word seems....again, oversensitive.

Me It's not motherfucking "available income". It's income the 1% made available.ii

Her Sure it is. So?

Me Fuck that lmao. He is not even TRYING to be funny. He's just pushing pushing pushing. 4:05-4:10 ?

Her He's trying to be funny. You lack context.

Me Which is ?

Her The Daily Show, the Colbert thing, this has been a running thing for like 15? 20 years, this "style" of mocking the political news headlines/anchors. He's trying to be funny within those constraints. I always thought it was pretty boring, but hey.

Me But he is NOT trying to be funny. He is trying to package a specific, socialist message, in the trappings of some other funny show, so it may perhaps be swallowed by the idiots, and in any event so that people pointing out just how fucking lame and cancerousiii it is get told "they're oversensitive" and "lack context". I don't lack any motherfucking context. He does. That context being that unless inequality in the Western World increases tenfold this fucking year, so that all the currently "college degree" fucktarded kids start showing their face in the fucking videosiv designed to humiliate them, because they're so hungry and desperate they no longer think this is a problem it's going to be the case they actually get mowed down like chickens in a chicken farm on chicken steak day.

Her Mkay so until then nobody can fucking laugh or try to make something or play around?

Me I laugh and play around.

Her And anyone else?

Me Nobody can go around dressed like a slut trying to preach feminism. This is tumblr raiding 4chan, this video. Unfunny "social justice" faggot trying to pretend he's whatever other mildly funny faggot, because without this everyone'd just tune out the moment his mouth opened.

Her Why mix things? He is not a social justice faggot. He is some douche on a TV show trying to make fun of the actually serious political commentary on TV. Whether he manages to be funny or not is certainly arguable towards the negative, but you're taking it incredibly seriously, personally, and irrationally.

Me Wait, what ?!

Her ...?

Me You dispute this man went to the trouble of even being in front of the camera strictly because either a) he is trying to "do his part" in "lowering inequality" ; b) is paid by people so trying or c) both ?

Her Yes. This is because I'm not paranoid.

Me Eh get out of here.

Her He wants to be a star.

Me If he wanted to be a star he'd be doing something with a mild chance of delivering. This man has given up on being a star.

Her This is television. Is he running for anything? Does he write books? Does he anything indicating anything at all about him personally? No, he's a fucking SNL head. There's a whole slew of them, too, because since the Daily Show/Colbert/whatever this is now a thing.

Me Let me put it this way. Suppose John Lennon really wanted to be a star. What'd he do ? Would he be John Lennon, or would he try to be "Skinny Elvis" ?

Her Skinny Elvis.

Me Eh get out. That's no longer wanting to be a star. He just wants a little attention and to pay the bills.

Her Look I have no argument at all that most "famous" people or certainly people on TV have no fuckin' soul. But that's a different topic eh.

Me How ?

Her This is about people personally. The previous discussion is about the secret insidiousness and universal domination of socialism.

Me Wasn't aware of that. Maybe it's how you painted-it-by-the-numbers for your own use.

Her How would it seem otherwise? You've got a parody show that you're insisting is serious and evil.

Me But anyway, I dispute that I take it irrationally. Seems so far I'm the rational party here. I'm not taking it personally, which means, as to my person. Of course I am taking it personally as in, to his person. This is because that's how you interact with people. They don't get to be "an institution" just so as to have something to hide behind. And this is in general SOP : whatever "the police" may be, if any one policeman pisses me off I'm not going to go "o it's the police", I'm not some nigger from Compton. Instead I will go after him, personally. He gets fired, he goes to court, the whole gauntlet. Responsibility for one's deeds is always personal. That's what responsibility is. And finally, I am taking it seriously because that's what happens to cancerous faggots. They get taken seriously instead. If he doesn't want to be taken seriously, how about he is... you know, funny.

Her I think that's an interesting line.

Me And as to "how would it seem otherwise?", well say through you successfully playing a reductio ad absurdum trick, for instance.

Her TBH I thought that's what I was doing here: "mkay so until then nobody can fucking laugh or try to make something or play around?" and here: "What terminology are they going to use?! Shouldn't exist, no creative TV, just the one channel with the "correct" show? See where that goes?"

Me They all failed.

Her Is it the case that it's okay for people to try mocking this stuff and to make a show about it and so forth, but if you personally don't think it's funny it's therefore dead and cannot exist anymore?

Me Yes. For instance, if a screwdriver fails to work for me "personally" w/e that is, it then therefore is dead and can not be a screwdriver anymore. I'll even say "not that piece of shit, it doesn't work". How do you do it ? Reduce usage inequality between the screwdrivers ? Use them all so as to not develop a "personal" relationship with any of them ? "Personal" is not fucking codeword for discriminatory! Just because I identify an idiot as an idiot it does not follow I now have a personal relation with him.v

Her Well not the best hypothetical between the two of us. If a screwdriver fails to work for me personally I figure out how to use a screwdriver.

Me Yea. Well, here's the thing, I'm not really in the position where some douche on the TV screen is going to discover new crinkles in the space of humour for my benefit. The relationship is more like, I'll tell him how badly he fails and if he should keep the dayjob. In this case... he should GET a dayjob.

Her Okay, that's totally understandable. But then why not SAY THAT? Because the impression is more like "this guy is evil and the devil and thoroughly socialist just like everyone watching it and it's very offensive and should be burned at the stake right nao".

Me How the fuck am I responsible for what damge your primitive word filter does to your own head ? Ever read http://btcbase.org/log/?date=04-07-2014#742858 ?

Her Yep.

Somehow I'm the only one vaguely offended by the fact that "humorous" talking head is "explaining to the masses" what "the president said" ?

That's where I got the idea you were offended and in the course of discussion I'm sure I overshot it.

Me Yeah but it has a vaguely there.

Her Probably because rather than dayjobs you talk about people needing to be "hungry and desperate" and stuff like that connotes to me this very strong emotional factor. Obviously that may not have anything to do with you.

She's right : It absolutely has nothing to do with me. I'm in that 1%, and in the 1% of that 1%, and probably in the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. I make the shit work. How about you ?

———I've been reading all sorts of random stupid shit on the Internet the past few days, as well as watching a bunch of movies as filler activities for having to be online pretty much all the time to talk to server people. I may be getting popculture overdose. Jesus fuck it's bad, this soylent goop. [↩]Fucking Obama, seriously. IT IS MY BUSINESS, bitch. Even if your degree is not really your degree, even if your house is not really your house, even if your children are not really your children, nevertheless my fucking business is actually my business. 'Cause I made it, that's why. Nobody gave it to me because I was black, or stupid. [↩]Term of art. [↩]This apparently is a thing : camwhores don't want to show their face. What fucking sense does this make ? Isn't it sort-of like the cab driver that doesn't want to be seen in his cab, or the handyman that always keeps his hands in his pockets ?

It makes no fucking sense at all until you understand these mentally ill English speakers are most emphatically not trying to be something or do something. They're just half-ass doing it, so as to avoid narcissistic injury through the unavoidable failure. It's okay to suck at waitressing insofar as you're really a writer, and you don't have to confront how you suck at writing insofar as you're working as a waitress. Such is the ill effect of a generation raised by the mentally ill baby boomers in the false belief that "they can do anything" and all the rest of the libertardation. Sad, huh. [↩]The socialist ideology tends to argue - always implicitly, because it's too fucking stupid to put out explicitly - that discrimination can only be the result of "personal" dysfunction, ie, that the party discriminating is somehow broken and should fix it. This works well enough in some contexts, but in most contexts the party being discriminated against is actually broken, and will have to be fixed. Notice the passive voice there. [↩]

« Danika

I wasn't going to actually post this, but... »

Category: Trilterviuri

Monday, 14 July, Year 6 d.Tr.

Pakistani scammer & spammer, working for Sanofi-Aventis Pakistan LTD, aka indus-pharma.com

So I get an email :

Beloved in Christ Jesus!

I was touched to send you this message after much deliberation toward

your noble person.

I am Mazzone Kevin Fischer a noble man who love to care for people living

in poverty around the world, Most countries about 21% of seniors age 65

and up, 32% of women age 75 and up, and 46% of children almost families

are living in poverty some cope with HIV and AIDS without much community

support.

As a benevolent man with fear of God, I find it necessary to impacting

positively on the welfare of the less privileged, the orphans and perhaps,

the elderly, based on this, i decided to go into Orphanage and motherless

homes to help and also set up a community based programs to deliver better

care and support for people with illness.

But my position in the country do not permit me to handle this divine

project alone, I therefore decided to seek for your noble assist me by

representing me in your country so i can send you the funds to set up this

divine project.

Please I want you to consider the innocent children that are suffering and

take this obligation of working with me to help the motherless children. I

will give you more details on your response.

Mazzone Fischer.

Email: fischerman01@hotmail.com

Which is all nice and good, but check out the headers :

Return-path: <adamssjrit2003@yahoo.co.jp>

Envelope-to: *

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Indus-pharma.com just happens to be the website of one of Sanofi's more performance-minded labs in Pakistan, right across the Jaam Sadiq Ali bridge in Karachi. They gots all sorts of trophies and whatnot.

Apparently they also gots an inept kid by the name Mohammad Azhar, who doesn't seem to think he's being paid enough to do poor quality web management for these people - what with their thoroughly broken wordpress installi masquerading as a websiteii - or whatever he does there.

So, Mr. Khalid Saeed, if you don't mind my suggestion : give the guy a raise! That way maybe he won't be forced by the vicissitudes of fate and the hollow presentation of the pumpkin he carries upon his shoulders to try his hand at spamming, Internet fraud and all the rest of the modern petty crimeiii toolbox ? Who knows, worth a shot, no ?

———Speaking of which [↩]Speaking of which, can I interest you folks in a brand new favicon ? Cheap! [↩]Greenspun made the excellent observation that

A lot more men than women choose to do seemingly irrational things such as become petty criminals, fly homebuilt helicopters, play video games, and keep tropical fish as pets (98 percent of the attendees at the American Cichlid Association convention that I last attended were male). Should we be surprised that it is mostly men who spend 10 years banging their heads against an equation-filled blackboard in hopes of landing a $35,000/year post-doc job?

I stand behind this notion. You have to be an idiot to the degree only a (young) male can achieve to actually imagine this sort of crap (or that sort of crap) is a good use of your time and energy. [↩]

« The GUI, the twerk and the most valuable resource

The power of the press, in English this time. »

Category: Meta psihoza

Sunday, 23 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

One for the ages : Why does Seinfeld continue to do ad work ?!

There are two and exactly two reasons any human being would accept to be degradedi by acting or otherwiseii working for any advertisement.

One is that they desperately need the money, and are too cognitively impaired to steal it, too ugly or otherwise unattractive for honest prostitution work, too dumb to be able to do anything useful at all whatsoever. So they're reduced to the absolute lowest form of economic life, which is advertising. Literally, there's nothing below.

The other is that they desperately wish to enter the impregnable fortress of tin, and they perceive that all the other entrances are sealed off to them.iii This, obviously is never true : that fortress is mostly hollow, on top of which the parts that appear "solid" are really made out of tin foil. Nothing in the world easier than getting in, but then again nothing in the world harder & more obdurate than the limits a brain sets for itself. And so it is and so it has to be.

And now, consider the case of Jerry Seinfeld. He's principally an unfunnyiv comedian with no acting abilities whatsoever. He achieved immense levels of famev and significant piles of doughvi through fronting the work of a large team of very competent people.vii

This, obviously, is once-in-a-lifetime sort of event, you're never going to get to ride the wave of other people's effort for free. Seinfeld is after all not a producer, his professional ability does not principally consist in motivating people to churn themselves into butter at the drop of a hat.

And yet he acts in all these repugnantly stupid commercials, mostly selling cars and other "high status" bullshit. Why ? He can't possibly be hoping that somehow, somewhere a producer sees him, and gives him a chance.

For one thing, he's old.viii That's it.

For the other, any producers that were going to give him any chances saw him already. It's one thing for the nineteen year old starlet to think her train ain't come in yetix. It's another thing for the used up, middle aged starlet to still be hoping her train ain't come in yet.x It's quite another for the ex-star with a massive career behind herxi to be hoping herxii train hasn't come in yet. Yet ? What yet ?!

He can't possibly be needing the dough. He can't possibly be deluded enough to imagine his chance is still to come.

What is it, I ask you ?

———Amusingly, porn actually has three, because on top of the two listed some stars actually do enjoy the fucking. So in this sense, porn is indeed much, much better. [↩]People who don't actually act, but work for the devil in some other capacity probably only fit one of those two reasons. Amusingly, most techs do it for the money, whereas most creatives fuckwits get very little pay and mostly do it for the "fame". Because yes, human beings are so vain it ends up making little difference if at all whether you're famous for curing cancer or for burning down the Colossus. Just as long as many people hear of you. It's a fear of death thing. [↩]I won't bore you with the list of stars that started their career through private application of their porn abilities, but Jack Nicholson for instance breached in through the venue of B movies. Have you seen The Raven ? [↩]His only merit is a dedication to getting as much humour as possible through the tiny hole of "stuff that will offend absolutely nobody". While the results are typically dismal (and Carson did a much better job without relying on a legion of writers - heck, the man even blew Rickles out of the water, an accolade which to my knowledge nobody shares) nevertheless, some admiration can be scared up for anyone putting themselves through such absurd constraints strictly because hey, why tell idiots they're idiots ?! That's hard work. [↩]I think in the 90s he was about as well known as that falsetto "singing" kid from a decade ago, or the chick with one eye closed whatever her name was. You see where this is going. [↩]To the tune of US 1 bn. [↩]If you wish to compare Seinfeld as written by Larry David (and Seinfeld) with Seinfeld as written by NBC's task force, compare season 1 episodes with later work. Barefoot Elaine holding a plunger ? Her in a granny robe reading the newspaper ? Jerry (as a grown man) taking advice from pops on how to pick up a stranger ? Stuff's practically a parody avant la lettre. Except unfunny.

Heck, compare the pilot, if we're on it. More awkward per square mile could not be intentionally devised. [↩]I am aware Louis de Funes was discovered at about Jerry Seinfeld's current age. Nevertheless, de Funes is a superset of funny, whereas Seinfeld... I'm letting this one pass. [↩]Seen Showgirls ? [↩]Ever seen Frankie and Johnny, for the passive, or The Fabulous Baker Boys for the actually successful ? That's right, the Pfeiff is the mother & patron saint of all middle aged waitresses with aspirations. Pray to her, she doesn't heal but she does save. [↩]In his case, that career ended on his say-so. NBC begged and begged, but ultimately there was nothing they could do. If you think "you'll never work in this town again" is a joke... well, here's the joke for you : independent agent with a billion dollars in his pocket is reduced to playing bit parts in shitty ads. You were saying ? [↩]That's right : all firemen are male and everyone in showbiz is female. That's the way it is ; get fucking used to it already. Gender matters, and while it can never be changed by you, it can and does change you in ways you can never undo. Messing with the words describing this fact is neither going to change anything nor a step in the right direction.

Learn to live as the man or woman you could be rather than wasting your days pining for a shot at playing the man or woman you can never, ever be, under any circumstances and no matter what happens. I get that you perceive it as "unfair" that in the plot of life others got the good parts. Tough and fuck you. [↩]

« No Woman's Land

Marie Antoinette »

Category: AICMF

Thursday, 02 January, Year 6 d.Tr.

On The Superiority of Monarchy (or, adnotations to Why the Worst Get on Top)

The text we will be discussing is Chapter 10 (Why the Worst Get on Top) of F. A. Hayek's widely read The Road to Serfdom. You should be able to find a copy online.i

From home we bring the concept of Monarchy, which is that form of politicalii organisation of a groupiii where the sovereignityiv of the entire group is vested in the person of one member of that group. The only practical alternative ever seen, and the only theoretically possible alternative for that matter, is not having the sovereignity of the group invested at all.

That's it - much like the male human over the age of thirty could either be a man or not be a man. He may call the state of not being a man "being a metrosexual" or "being a hipster" or "being a CEO" or anything the hell, but in the end it makes little difference - about as little as calling the bums "homeless" or "habitationally challenged" or "inequitably housed" or whatever you may come up with. Either they're bums or they aren't, either he's a man or he's not, either sovereignity is vested in a person or it's not vested at all.

The various political forms of organisation that fail to be a Monarchy find themselves in the practical world roughly in the situation of the various flying machines that couldn't fly pre 1900, or of the various perpetuum mobile machines that aren't actually perpetually mobile today : unable to actually distinguish themselves from their alleged peers substantially, they proceed to distinguish themselves through generous application of colorful paint, generally understood as "branding".

So in this vein, bureaucracy (often spelled by older authors "democracy") tends to represent the unvested sovereignity as having in fact been vested in some sort of positivist abstract value, such as "the well being"v of the group. Meanwhile collectivism (often referred to as "socialism", "communism", but confusingly also "democracy" though usually with a helpful "people's" nearby) tends to represent the unvested sovereignity as having in fact been vested in some sort of moral abstraction.vi Needless to say, none of this gargle can ever work - the young woman in question (virgin or more likely not) could never be impregnated either by some sort of "Holy Ghost" or by some more positive if pedestrian representation thereof as "the Father". Strictly, strictly a man put the bun in her oven if anyone did at all, and equally strictly a man will be the sovereign if anyone (or anything) will be the sovereign at all.

Thus armed, we're well ready to proceed into the text. Here goes :

We must now examine a belief from which many who regard the advent of totalitarianism as inevitable derive consolation and which seriously weakens the resistance of many others who would oppose it with all their might if they fully apprehended its nature.

It is the belief that the most repellent features of totalitarian regimes are due to the historical "accident" that they were established by groups of black-guards and thugs.

Surely, it is argued, if in Germany the creation of a totalitarian regime brought the Streichers and Killingers, the Leys and Heines, the Himmlers and Heydrichs to power, this may prove the vicious nature of the German character but not that the rise of such evil is the necessary consequence of a totalitarian system.

Why should it not be possible that the same sort of system, it if be necessary to achieve important social ends, be run by decent people for the collective good of the community?

This entirely misses the only important point to make about any group, which is to say that no group is ever homogenous. This may seem banal, but it does have a number of important consequences. To wit :

The displeasure of a member of a group (be he the sovereign of that group or not) with the behaviours of some member of some other group (again, be it the sovereign or not) does not rise to the level of enacting that second member as "a thug" or "a blackguard"vii, nor does it brand the group "vicious". However one tries to enact or represent his own political choices, the fact remains that inasmuch as Hayek is not Goebbels, Hayek is in a very poor position to judge how good of a Goebbels Goebbels makes. It is perfectly true that Hayek may be uniquely equipped to judge how good a Hayek Goebbels makes, but in this sense so am I : I judge Hayek makes a very poor teapot. So what of it ?

The presumption that there exist some sort of "decent people", or some sort of "collective good", or even a community in the sense Hayek's context limits that term readily reduces to and neatly requires as a prerequisite that the group be homogenous, its members fungible and all people in principle the same thing. This is falseviii, and its being false ends the entire discussion.

There's very little to be had from an idle consideration of whether the sun would have been bluer were it tetrahedral or conical. It's neither, nor is it blue.

We must not deceive ourselves into believing that all good people must support democratic processes or will necessarily wish to have a share in the government. Many, no doubt, would rather entrust it to somebody whom they think more competent.

This peculiarly limits the Hayek definition of "good people", but in a rather broken way. A rough equivalent would be something like "we must not deceive ourselves into believing that all honest merchants must act in good faith as fences for thieves, or wish to engage in trade with other merchants". So rewritten, the nonsense involved becomes readily apparent. On one hand, being a supporter of democracy, with its baked-in false premise of human fungibility, bars one quite plainly from any pretense to goodness, much in the way the fence is no merchant, but just another thief. On the other hand however, being uninterested in government bars one quite plainly from any pretense to manhood, much in the way the merchant that never transacts is perhaps a philosopher of merchantry, but never actually a merchant. So, shockingly, Hayek's "good people" are neither good nor are they people.

Although this might be unwise, there is nothing bad or dishonorable in approving a dictatorship of the good. Totalitarianism, we can already hear it argued, is a powerful system alike for good and evil, and the purpose for which it will be used depends entirely on the dictators. And those who think that it is not the system we need fear, but the danger that it might be run by bad men, might even be tempted to forestall this danger by seeing that it is established in time by good men.

The only way the government of another may be accepted is in the manner I accept it : inasmuch as it in no way differs from my very own will, I accept it in that I can not see it. Inasmuch as I at all see it, I immediately proceed to destroy what can be seen of it - and if that process brings further parts into view they shall be destroyed too. So it's not a matter of the dictatorship of the good, it's a matter of water with diamonds mixed in. If they're diamonds they may stay, but if they're glass they'll have to go just as soon as the light changes.

In this sense, dictatorship by good men is no dictatorship at all, just like someone doing what you yourself would have done does you no inconvenience. If I one day come home and find all my items rearranged I will count myself most grieviously assaulted, except should it be the case that they were rearranged exactly in the manner I'd have arranged them myself. In that case I'd likely never know, nor would I ever care, and for all you know untold legions of gremlins do this every night after you go to bed. Good gremlins they are indeed, and their tyrannical dictatorship over your things while you sleep not particularly now or ever likely to come within your interest.

There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of totalitarian systems are not accidental byproducts but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain to sooner or later produce.

It seems altogether more probable that what to us appears one way or another is not phenomena at all in the first place, but merely perspective. Is the flatness of the Earth you perceive this instant the phenomena of the Earth's flatness or the error of your very flat vantage ?

Just as the choice architect who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.

While the former proposition stands, and no architect is ever going to be free from this persnickety daughter of the cvadrature problem, the latter proposition is enjoying a peculiarly incestuous relationship with entropy. Specifically, why would the dictator have to confront the problem of ordinary morals in the ordinary terms proposed, and in so doing become the "totalitarian dictator"ix ie the bad guy ? Take a certain Jew that may have lived about two thousand years ago : has he been confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans ?

What fucking plans ? Why does the dictator have to absolutely have some sort of plans, aforethought ? Maybe he's a dictator in the proper sense, because his group perceived him as worthy. He didn't go to them, like an obnoxious lawyer spawn, with a list of whatever items are fashionable - promises, intentions, qualities, college degrees - to ask to be made a dictator and thus have the gaping void and ontological fear of nothingness chewing away at his frail identity somehow resolved.x No, maybe they came to him, saying "look Cincinnatus, you are the best among us, and the best by so very far you must be our dictator" and he said "Maybe; we'll see". What plans did then Cincinnatus have, exactly ? That all men must assemble on the Camp of Mars ? And if they hadn't, what exact moral impediment'd have that been for him ?

Obviously the dictator is not a common man. Obviously his grasp of the issues is not going to be ordinary. On what then is Hayek's conviction that he should run into ordinary problems predicated ? Is it perhaps on a deeply entrenched, purely Platonic, utterly Napoleonic conviction that all men are fungible, and that there aren't betters, but only slaves under the Sun ? Sure, if there are only slaves then we agree, no slave should be made emperor, for he will be meanxi and base and slavish, as his nature commands, and his fellow slaves will suffer mightily - for their sins of having followed a slave.

But what of the actual masters ?

It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more "successful" in a society tending toward totalitarianism.

If the society is tending towards totalitarianism, is it an unscrupulous and uninhibited society ? If it is so, then would the people average for their time appear indeed unscrupulous and uninhibited to average people in other societies tendentious in other ways ? It would seem that if success may carry the airquotes, so could unscrupulous and uninhibited, does it not ?

Who does not see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from liberalism, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentially individualist nature of Western civilization.

I will dare say this liberalism virgin seems quite pregnant to me. Hayek's ideas of liberalism seem fundamentally to rest on the exact same root that yields collectivism : the bizarre notion that men are the same thing, as theoretically nonsensical and irreconcilable with practice as that may be.

The "moral basis" of collectivism has, of course, been much debated in the past; but what concerns us here is not its moral basis but its moral results. The usual discussions of the ethical aspects of collectivism refer to the question whether collectivism is demanded by existing moral convictions; or what moral convictions would be required if collectivism is to produce the hoped-for results.

Our question, however, is what views are likely to rule it. The interaction between morals and institutions may well have the effect that the "ethics" produced by collectivism will be altogether different from moral notions that have led to the demand for collectivism.

This is a very good point, and history can readily be re-read without missing a drop as a lengthy string of stories of people and groups aiming for a status that has little to do with their aim. Naive children become doctors "to save lives" or lawyers to "fight for truth" and end up cynically working the grind, such as it is. Indeed the moral notions that send the average 17 year old to law school are quite unmappable on the ethics observed in the average lawyer, and MDs working 18 hours shifts and killing their patients "because it's what's done" are quite a far cry out from the intellectual independence you'd imagine to see from the members of a medieval guild that to this day are pretentious enough to swear an oath. People generally wish to be rich for all sorts of reasons and mental constructions that scarcely survive the transformative process which becoming rich entails, why'd a society be any different ? I went to Costa Rica for pride and stayed for the climate, the US Army went into the Gulf for the oil and stayed for fear, things change. Of course they do, and what part of this'd be at all disputed ?

While we are likely to think that, since the desire for a collectivist system springs from high moral motives, such a system must be the breeding ground for the highest virtues, there is, in fact, no reason why any system should necessarily enhance those attitudes which serve the purpose for which it was designed.

I should like for someone, some day, to show me such high moral motives. The only motives for collectivism are laziness and vanity, mixed in varying proportions : the laziness of he who knowing himself inferior, would prefer the world to change down to his level, rather than expend himself the effort needed to climb up to it ; the vanity of he who knowing himself inferior would prefer the pretense of equality to the world rather than the nude statement of his actual inferiority. That's all that's there, no matter how cloakedxii.

The ruling moral views will depend partly on the qualities that will lead individuals to success in a collectivist or totalitarian system and partly on the requirements of the totalitarian machinery.

We must here return for a moment to the position which precedes the suppression of democratic processes and the creation of a totalitarian regime.

In this stage it is the general demand for quick and determined central government action that is the dominating element in the situation, dissatisfaction with the slow and cumbersome course of democratic processes which make action for action's sake the goal.

It is then the man or the party who seems strong and resolute enough to "get things done" who exercises the greatest appeal.

"Strong" in this sense means not merely a numerical majority - it is the ineffectiveness of parliamentary procedure with which people are dissatisfied. What they will seek is somebody with such solid support as to inspire confidence that he can carry out whatever he wants.

This is very factual, but it also seems to me quite sexual. When in rut, society desires someone with a raging erection. So would you, if you were her. It would seem the only party upset with this factuality would be the cuckolded husband, if present.

In the above illustration, the mostly cropped man on the left with a raging hard-on is representing the black-guards and thugs, specifically the "successful" one of them. He is aptly colored for this role. The world-worn woman with a streetwalker's hairdoxiii is representing society. On the right, with shirt tied under absent tits and small flaccid penis captive in womanly knickers, Hayek, as a representative for all they who don't like the situation.

Why don't they like it ? Because it's bad, of course. Why is it bad ? Is it because others are "successful" in it that are equipped and ready to go in ways they themselves "aren't"xiv ? It must be. In any case, a strong erection in this case does not merely mean a large volume of blood - it also means some modicum of copulative ability.

But let's move on.

In the Central European countries the socialist parties had familiarized the masses with political organizations of a semi-military character designed to absorb as much as possible of the private life of the members.

All that was wanted to give one group overwhelming power was to carry out the same principle somewhat further, to seek strength not in the assured votes of huge numbers at occasional elections but in the absolute and unreserved support of a smaller but more thoroughly organized body.

This would be true, and it also happens to be why the ivory tower exists as a social phenomenon, perpetual and quite widespread. To be happy I do not require or even desire the faint approval of a colossal assemblage of people I couldn't tell apart, but merely the strong approval of a very carefully selected set. Or, in Cicero's own terms, equidem is sum qui istos plausus, cum popularibus civibus tribuerentur, semper contempserim. It's a very strange thing indeed to have created the completely nonsensical electoral system of modernity and then be surprised when there exist they who do not think the world of it.

What if I had created a cooking style which consists of putting a pot outside overnight, for any passerby so willing to come drop into it whatever he may find adequate, and then in the morning put the thing to fire and serve its contents as food ? Would you wish to eat at my table ? And if not, suppose the practice had spread far and wide, owing to its extreme cheapness (or if you prefer, convenience), and extremely sophisticated sophists spent a very long time discussing in great detail how the material contained is mostly protein anyway, statistically speaking, and deductively (for whence would it come from other than people, and then what could it be other than organic ?) idem - as if anyone cared for the fact they've been discussing such disgusting things, or as if the mere fact of them wasting their otherwise worthless time on this topic were to enact it into relevancy somehow. Would that change anything as far as you're concerned ? Because if not you're clearly a dangerous black-guard and all that, you enemy of bureaucracy and with it of all things "nice", "good" and "proper".

The chance of imposing a totalitarian regime on a whole people depends upon the leader's first collecting round him a group which is prepared to voluntarily submit to that totalitarian discipline which they are to impose by force upon the rest.

This reads to me incredibly askew. Why should the sovereign of a group impose anything to anyone ? A proper sovereign I mean, obviously the officious kind would, and it's quite plainly why - as long as there's anyone outside his group, the identity problems that pushed him in the first place are still present. But why'd a proper dictator want more citizens ?

The presumption clearly is there, that he would, or that the group would, but why ?

Although the "socialist" parties had the strength to get anything if they had cared to use force, they were reluctant to do so. They had, without knowing it, set themselves a task which only the ruthless ready to disregard the barriers of accepted morals can execute.

That socialism can be put into practice only by methods which most socialists disapprove is, of course, a lesson learned by many social reformers in the past. The old socialist parties were inhibited by their ideals; they did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task.

It is characteristic that both in Germany and in Italy the success of fascism was preceded by a refusal of the socialist parties to take over the responsibility of government. They were unwilling to employ the methods to which they had pointed the way.

I wonder if this is so. Obviously the general point about how socialism can only be brought about by idiots stands - it's an idiotic system based on idiocy, and as the saying goes "you can't make omlette without breaking eggs". In that expression, omlette stands for idiocy. Nevertheless, the historical point about Germany and Italy... it may well be, from what I know of the actual history of the first half of the XXth century. Maybe it isn't - for instance take France, in very much the same situation. I'd be curious to hear what others think on this score.

They still hoped for the miracle of majority's agreeing on a particular plan for the organization of the whole of society; others had already learned the lesson that in a planned society the question can no longer be on what do a majority of the people agree but what the largest single group is whose members agree sufficiently to mae unified direction of all affairs possible; or, if no such group large enough to enforce its views exists, how it can be created and who will succeed in creating it.

This is a minor point. The major point is the problem that you don't know what you don't know. To illustrate it : it happens that I take a slave that doesn't know how to cook. So I force her to learn, whether she wants to or not, and I enforce seemingly arbitrary, absurd and designed-to-be-mean-to-her criteria and processes. With the stick in hand, and liberally applied. Hundreds of bruises later, and gallons of tears past, the girl can now cook, and cooks exceedingly well, and can express herself as she is in this, while feeding herself and those she cares about, if she cares to. And she says she can't understand that people can live who can't cook, and how do they.

Meanwhile women that aren't my slaves at this very moment meet other idiots just like them for coffee or whatever they do, and declare they can't understand that people can live who can cook, and that women can be happy who are slaves. Because they don't know what they don't know, and to learn it they must be forced, and forcing is either pain or pretense, and only the former actually works. Once they've learned they can appreciate the stupidity of not knowing, but this is all in vain : of course they who know can appreciate how stupid they who don't know are. What's that do for the stupid in question ?

So, no. The question is never what people can agree on, and the proposition that some sort of a majority has anything meaningful to say on any topic is so much nonsense. If we were to go out for a drink and I started telling a joke, I would be telling the joke and everyone else would be closing the mouth and opening the ears. Then when some other told a joke, I'd be doing the same myself. Imagine a joke consisting of the word that popped into the heads of the most people present. Can you see the punchline ?

There are three main reasons why such a numerous and strong group with fairly homogenous views is not likely to formed by the best but rather by the worst elements of any society. By our accepted moral standards, the principles on which such a group would be selected will be almost entirely negative.

In the first instance, it is probably true that the higher education and intelligence of individuals become, the more their views and tastes are differentiated and the less likely they are to agree on a particular hierarchy of values.

This seems both nonsensical and a misstatement of the situation. As for nonsensical, take for instance the topic of the geometric shape of the planet Earth. Quite obviously, the higher the education and intelligence of individuals in a group, the closer the opinion converges towards a common view whereas the lower the education and intelligence of same, the more lively debate to be had and the more complex differences of opinion available. In fact, a bunch of idiots could spend their time happily debating whether the Earth is flat or banana shaped for the next fifty centuries. Similarly the case with the theory of evolution, or with the expediency and medical benefit of vaccines, indeed with any topic of import whatsoever. Well educated, intelligent people readily dismiss "global warming" as politically motivated nonsense. Not as well educated, not as intelligent people still struggle with it to this day, as they struggle "studying" the kaballah, "women's topics", counterfactual histories of that great saviour of the black race that was the Atlantic slave tradexv.

Much more importantly: the better educated and more intelligent the members of the group, the easier coping with various strange is for them. Take us two for instance, you and me : if the above footnote didn't make you want to find me and kill me, would you credit that to your intelligence and education, or to your lack of intelligence and absent education ? And if we wish to spend a pleasant evening together with another two dozen people, without oppressing them if at all possible, would you wish to risk the evening on the hand of intelligent and educated, or counterwise, bland and blunt ?

It is a corollary of this that if we wish to find a high degree of uniformity and similarity of outlook, we have to descend to the regions of lower moral and intellectual standards where the more primitive and "common" instincts and tastes prevail.

And what if we don't ? Where does it follow that agreement and collective action stem from uniformity of outlook and that only ?

This is where our reading will have to come to an end : Hayek is much too clueless, much too unintelligent and clearly not educated enough to speak to me. He jumps across chasms with all the obliviousness of ingenue ignorance, he proposes to discuss cups and then jumps right into describing china, as if no metal cup was ever made, it's unpleasant to try and follow his nonsense. But let it be said in summary that masters are not what slaves imagine masters would be, and that there is a lot more to this world than what the boring would make it seem.

A lot more, most of which is painful and unexpected, both of which are virtues, not vices.

———I won't recommend reading the book because so many others do that if you've not read it by now it's probably not because you never heard of it, and so the simple act of the recommendation serves more as a metasyntactic indication of political preference (in the eye of the recommender) and cultural berth (in reality). So no, I'm much too smart, and more importantly I'm much too well informed, cultured and experienced to recommend you read fucking Hayek. Go read Taleb's reading list instead, Alexander of Aphrodisias and Seneca and Lucretius and Tusi and Dawad and Mulla Sadra and Sabsawari. [↩]As opposed to economical, political is anything to do with speech, which includes all creation of ideas, symbols, and other means of representation as well as all interaction of any kind with the foregoing. [↩]A group in this context simply means "any set of agents". [↩]This is exactly equivalent to property, and so it's defined as the power to extinguish the group. Pure and simple, he is the monarch for whom and by whose word all die gladly. There aren't alternative definitions, there couldn't be alternative definitions. [↩]The impossibility of measuring such nonsense yielding the very predictable failure of bureaucracy, in all its amusing complexity, all the way to periodically renaming things to fix problems and so on. [↩]The circularity of this nonsense yielding the splendidly intractable indecidability problems of all collectivisms. [↩]For a good complement to this discussion, see Stage n: Bitcoin exists. [↩]It is not just merely a little false, it is completely and absolutely, universally and fractally false, with velvet ribbons and gilded tassels. People are not equal. Not born equal, not living as equals nor equals while alive. We may enact the legal fiction where people be treated equally in some context or other, but only for as long and only inasmuch as the context is drastically limited so as to avoid it becoming in any way meaningful for the people in question, and only in order to further underscore, bring forth and celebrate just how unequal people in fact are. This exactly in the manner where equal distances run makes it obvious which is the better horse, and running equal distances is crafted specifically in order to establish just how unequal two horses are, and is only practiced as a minor and ultimately irrelevant part of the horse's daily life.

For that matter, people are not even significantly similar. The only thing that can be inferred from being able to write a description of man that's shared by all the members of a group is that the group is very very small indeed, and very carefully chosen. In short, gaze upon this plucked chicken and see Plato's man. [↩]The term is nonsensical, what's a partitarian dictator supposed to be ? Dictatorship deals with totality by its definition, but I suppose Hayek can't simply and earnestly say "bad", because he imagines he's too educated to take a piss or something. [↩]Cat on a hot tin roof is quite relevant. Gooper does not get the farm. Quoth he :

Gooper Pollitt: You said I never loved Big Daddy. How would you know? How would he know? Did he ever let anybody love him? It was always Brick, always. From the day he was born, he was always partial to Brick. Why? Big Daddy wanted me to become a lawyer. I became a lawyer. He said to get married, I got married. He said to have kids, I had kids. He said to live in Memphis, I lived in Memphis. Whatever he said to do, I did.

[↩]In the old sense of this term, look it up [↩]Obviously the lazy vain will present the whole story in terms of third parties - not for themselves are they concerned you see, not for their own inferiority, but for a third, who's not even here (nor need he be). Much in the manner of a delightfully naive girlie asking embarrassing questions of venereal diseases for the needs and benefit of "a friend of hers" - because you see she's the first that ever came up with this idea, of "a friend", and actual adults neither heard it before nor can they see through her as if she were made of very thin latex. [↩]Closely cropped hair is much easier to keep clean, which may seem of no interest to you until you try living on the streets. Because you see, to he who lived in suburbia all niggers look the same, and to he who's never been a bum, all bums stink and are equally filthy. Not so for the niggers themselves, of course, nor so for the bums themselves. Some have lice. Some do not. The difference of degree in filth is larger than you could imagine. [↩]The quotes are here to match the quotes around success, which is to say, we'll put in quotes anything that if read plainly may endanger the vanity of the "liberal". Oops... [↩]Black population in Africa will become extinct under pressure from (legitimate) Chinese economic interest much in the way Red population in North America became extinct under pressure from (legitimate) European economic interest. Had the Europeans not forcibly transported a few million black sheeple, and then later made them people, forcibly, by the whip, there wouldn't exist any future whatever to that particular race. [↩]

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Heretic salmon teriyaki »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Wednesday, 11 June, Year 6 d.Tr.

On July 29, 1914

Allow me to quote from that edition of the New York Times (which at that time cost one cent in New York, Jersey City and Newark, and two cents everywhere else) :

Austrian Emperor to Take Command at Vienna Headquarters

WAR FEVER AT CAPITAL

Crowds Cheer Outbreak of Hostilities and Demonstrate at Friendly Embassies.

OUTBREAK OF FOOD RIOTS

Prices soar as Hostilities Are Declared and the Government Steps In to Regulate Them.

MANIFESTO FROM EMPEROR

Forced to Grasp the Sword, He Says, to Defend the Honor of His Monarchy

FRANCE FEARS A GREAT WAR

Army Moves to the Frontier -- Belief in Paris That Russia Will Not Desert Servia

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES

VIENNA, July 28.-- Upon the issue of the formal declaration of war against Servia today Emperor Franz Josef gave orders for the removal of the Summer Court from Ischli to the capital. His entourage tried to persuade him that Vienna air would not suit him, but the aged Emperor replied :

"I do not want the air of Vienna. I want the atmosphere of headquarters."ii

The opening of the war has caused the imposition of all kinds of restrictions upon public business. All the railways, of courseiii, are under military control, and the telegraphs are being reserved entirely for the service of the State.

The hope is still entertained here that the war will be confined to Austria-Hungary and Servia. The report that Russia and France have intervened in Vienna is incorrect. In official circles here it is maintained that any action by those powers must be supported by the third party to the Triple Entente, namely, Great Britain. It is known that Great Britain and France do not want a European war. Peace among the great powers or war among the great powers must depend on the action of St. Petersburg.

At the Foreign Office here it is freely stated that now that war has begun Austria-Hungary will be bound to no more conditions such as she propounded prior to the outbreak of hostilities.

Food Prices Up in Vienna

There was an abnormal rise in the price of provisions today, which caused great indignation on the part of the public, who flocked to the markets to lay in stores in anticipation of a possible scarcity. Vegetables in many cases trebled in price. Feeling ran so high that in many instances stallkeepers in the markets were mobbed or assaultediv, and the police had to be called out to restore order. The authorities declare that the sudden increase in the prices of provisions and vegetables is totally unwarranted.

A permanent committee appointed to deal with the question of provisioning the country, sat today to discuss the regulation of prices in order to prevent the public being cheated. A similar meeting with the same object also was held in the Diet.

It was officially asserted that there was no reason for apprehension with regard to the food supply, and that it was needless for citizens to start the accumulation of stores of provisions. The only effect of such procedure, it was added, would be to still further raise prices.

Official arrangements have been made to take care of families of reservists called to the colors. In the event of a reservist being killed or reported missing an allowance of about 25 cents per day for each adult and 12 1/2 cents a day for children will be continued for six months.

This would make an excellent summation of the contribution of government in the wellbeing of society and people generally :

Step 1. Take boneheaded measure.

Step 2. Declare that the market reaction to your boneheaded measure is "unwarranted". Because you'd know better than the market. Really.v

Step 3. Organise "commissions" and other bureaucratic nonsense to fight the market and authoritatively misrepresent the situation. Because this can be done. Really.

Step 4. Make sure the people are "taken care" of, in the sense that the surviving families of anyone killed as a result of following your boneheaded notions out in the field receives enough small changes to buy multiple newspapers each day. Or perhaps a potato, or half a celery root.vi

Step 5. Profit. By which we mean, of course, disaster. Complete, utter, absolute and unmitigated disaster.

But that's okay, surely a new government or five are ready to pick up where the previous attempt left off. All this because god forbid people find themselves in that horrible state of not having a government! Why, that'd spell out chaos! Disaster! Famine! Millions of people would kill themselves in ditches over a couple of miles, there'd be no food, no order, nothing.

Right ?

———Bad Ischl, on Traun River in the centre of the Salzkammergut. [↩]It is said that Austrians are principally to be remembered for two major accomplishments during their otherwise unremarkable history, the first thereof being they convinced the world Mozart was Austrian (he was Bavarian) and the second being they convinced the world Hitler was German (he was Austrian). It it perhaps also worth observing that Austrian nationals managed to start both World Wars. [↩]Why of course ?! [↩]In common law the crime of assault is giving rise to the apprehension of violence, which is why the word is contrasted with "mobbed". [↩]In the particular case at hand, idiot Austrian "authorities" declare there is no need to make stores. In 1914, this. Clearly it'd serve no purpose to have food set aside right before WW1. [↩]Suppose factories and generally economic activity were organised by this principle, that labour is free, and should anyone get killed in the process of working their asses off the family will receive a quarter a day for a whole half year. [↩]

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Category: Politica si Prostie

Saturday, 15 February, Year 6 d.Tr.

On essences

This is a translated version of an older Trilema article, Despre esente.

Before getting into the topic with which I baited you previously, we still have to do a short periple among the fields.

To ti en einai, "that which is to be" is a concept systematised in this bizarre form by Aristotle, but which for sure existed in the mind of man before him. We simply call it "essence", and do not define it, preferring to presume it's clear for everybody what it should mean, and then act as if this actually were the case. Actually... since we've come this far, let's try this, as an exercise in personal development : give yourself a moment and form a definition of essence.

Ready ?

Good. Let us mention in passing that the latin word essentia is born exactly of the need of Aristotle translators to somehow note this frighteningly difficult to translate concept, so they need'nt crack their skulls open with periphrase (peri phraseion ? :D)

So what is the essence ? Because if we shall speak of it, we should say what it is (we could, of course, claim mystery, but wouldn't that be a pity ?). Before definining it, let us extend a hand and pinch its nipple a little, through a joke. Do you know that one when Joe buys a car, and John asks him what color is it ? And Joe answers that "You know in the morning when the Sun's coming up and the whole sky's sorta red and pink and orange and all colors and sorts of red ?" "Aye" "Well, just like that but green."

Essentially, Joe's right, should we find it within ourselves to neglect the major fucking impediment that the rules of transforming from an essence to the other aren't given implicitly, essences not being matters material (for anything material, the rules of transformation from form to form are given implicitly, through experience, which is why "just like that only bigger" or "just like that only narrower" implicitly carry meaning in all contexts).

Essences are the unmediated content of being. Being also has mediated content, two excellent examples being matter and notion. Real objects manifest for the senses through the intermediation of matter, which interacts in certain manners with certain receptors, giving the impression of color, of thickness, smoothness, sweetness and what else you will. Ideal objects manifest for the senses through their notional content, which also interacts in certain manners with certain receptors, giving the impression of truth, of depth, of what else you will. Essences alone interact, if they do, unmediatedlyi.

Let us then cut the knife : in our definition, "being" is a notion, which makes it then an ideal object. It carries the flesh of its meaning, which allows it to interact with our minds. How is it then possible for this "essence" to be the unmediated content of... a mediated content ? Here's then an excellent metaphysical question, which will clearly show to you in action those things we were discussing in our previous article.

So then : the answer comes from whence the apparent trap comes itself. The definition in metaphysics does not work in the authoritative sense of science. The definition in metaphysics works as a metaphor, and pulls its sap from the power of suggestion. Just like that, except green, just like being, except without mediation.

Clearly such an approach may seem absolutely unacceptable, going from ridiculous to ignoble or even irrational. The minds of people are different and to some metaphysical thought is simply inadherent. It's not a crime, it happens.

First and foremost it's to be understood that it isn't the fault of metaphysics. Some grasp it easier, some have to work at it harder, some never grasp it. Going to war against it, taking it out of the rolls of acceptable preoccupations for a respectable gentleman is not muchly different from holding "all women are whores". "All women", like any other noun qualified by the universal identifier denotes... an essence. And the rapport of a real object to an essence always describes... the real object. Never the essence. You understand what I mean.

Mankind has always had a fear of nudity. The immediate, the unmediated is abrasive for the human spirit, it strikes fear, it terrorizes. Seeing how essences have not even skulls and crossbones, let alone that they don't have the pleasant tit of matter, but they even lack the bones upon which this tit could rest, obviously the situation had to be rectified. And rectified it was, through personification. From the profoundly human need of covering in some manner the unmediated of the essence were born Aphrodita and Athens, Enyo, Echo, Tethys and so forth.

And now, that we're finally done with the definition, we can finally move on to what I was about to tell you.

———I should perhaps say "immediately", which'd be strictly speaking the correct word. It'd also be confusing. [↩]

« Peri metaphyseos, in English this time.

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Category: Trilenciclopedia

Monday, 21 April, Year 6 d.Tr.

Of mendacity, mold, bugs and other things.

BingoBoingo Best preambulatory clause:

WHEREAS F.DERP issues synthetic equivalents of worthless fiat businesses fraudulently purporting involvement in Bitcoin and exposure to the Bitcoin economy with the irresponsible support of the US propaganda machine as well as the allegedly private investment arm of the US Fed, in order to allow unfettered price discovery for the underlyings in the actual Bitcoin stock market ;

mircea popescu That reminds me BingoBoingo : I was gonna say I don't like curtis yarvin / mencius moldbug for the following very specific reason - he sounds exactly like a propaganda job for smart people. That is to say, he admits some "outrageous" points, which gives him some credence in the eyes of the more naive intelligent folk, youngsters mostly. He then turns around and uses this capital to consolidate the very monster he pretends to position himself against. Stuff like Unqualified Reservations: The BDH-OV conflict is a very plain example in this spirit.

This should be reason enough for anyone to avoid taking up cudgels on behalf of either.

Orly ? The whole thing works, intentionally or not, as a fine work of Mr. O'Brien. Only a fucking imbecile would imagine that THAT is the book of the insurgency.i The insurgency is not derping with stupid books, the insurgency is the mob, amassing power at the bottom of the market fluxes in the utopian world. This because back at reality ranch, the only way to win the game is to constantly attack all the way to the king. There's no prizes for having lost the game but "successfully sieged a rook" - which is the spirit behind that clauseii, and generally speaking the spirit behind everything that'll ever work.

dignork He is consistent, Moldbag is proposing a model of "better" government, when current one crashes, for whatever reason.

mircea popescu He is consistent in the sense that he doesn't want the current one to crash. Once that's on the table, the difference between Yarvin and Dutta is purely cosmetic.

dignork More that he doesn't see how it can be crashed, so he stays passive.

mircea popescu I do not believe so. If this were the true case he wouldn't have been out there trying to make a bitcoin-killer-app six weeks after it became obvious to him bitcoin is the killer app.iii He'd have been here, long ago.

dignork He claims that democracy is self-stabilizing mud, and hence almost uncrashable.

mircea popescu I am aware. This is not a disinterested claim.

dignork In any case, through his writings I was searching for a better model, but he forgot to provide one, so it was fun to read, but nothing more.

mircea popescu Reading can't hurt anyway.

BingoBoingo I am astounded by that post, the structure and foundation of his argument, and his conclusions. Applying Subcontinental templates onto US society with the readiness a programmer might call some javascript data structures to be used in python.

mircea popescu What I most took exception with was the inane proposition that the mob (w/.e he calls it, D something) had "no cultural institutions". Fuck off, the only reason you can even have a decent meal in New York is the fucking mob. As far as that lasts, if it even survived past the Brahmin Bloomberg. But that aside, the relative success of b-a as compared to every other dickless-shitheadiv run channel on Freenode and beyond speaks directly to the superior cultural achievements and ability of the structured society.v

BingoBoingo Or that H and D are specifically "Blue" as though he has never been to this "Middle America".

mircea popescu So to come round circle, I guess he could be just incredibly fucking stupid, as dignork proposes. Perhaps. Be that as it may, he's a reasonably useful toolvi, and in a utilitarian world his idiocy does not define him as his utility does.

BingoBoingo Maybe he works as a "convenient highlighter". I've never really liked his argumentative style as he tries to put forth the grand societal argment relying on mush that seem reminiscent of Urbit "jets".

dignork I never said he is stupid, but the proposed model is not thought through.

mircea popescu De facto, in the "malicious or idiotic" dilemma you were proposing the latter. Or at least it's what I read.

BingoBoingo One can not build a banana republic by stacking deck chairs on the Titanic. The water's too deep.

dignork That's an extrapolation, but a good one.

mircea popescu I don't consider idiocy to be any more all-encompassing than genius. One can be a Chemistry genius and die of accidental exposure. One can similarly be a complete idiot in say politics and yet an accomplished farmer. (And yes I'm thinking of Jefferson).

dignork Malicious vs. idiotic problem is an intersting one: when I see somebody smarter than myself, by say +3 points, I can assume that he didn't find a solution because it required +4. Alternative: I assume that he is +6, because that's how smart he supposed to be to fool me... default would be +3.

mircea popescu This however is not supported by what we're discussing. When you see someone who displays the mental gymnastics required to comprehend the FFTvii and then fails to resolve a problem which requires merely differential calculus... What then ?

dignork It also can be a mental barrier, for example if he tries to maintain humanism, while rejecting democracy.

mircea popescu Functionally, this is idiocy (denying the fruits of reason lest they interfere with the desires of emotion).

dignork For most, self preservation is above reasoning.

mircea popescu No argument. Most don't get to serve as cultural reference points. For this reason.

BingoBoingo Amazing how the Yarvins don't separate their reasoned arguments from their emotional rants.

mircea popescu Do I ?

BingoBoingo You write in a way that the elements of the emotional rants and reasoned arguments have clear seperations discernable to readers.

mircea popescu I wonder if this is in any way my merit. I always thought the distinction is the job of the readership.

BingoBoingo May be because you didn't grow up on Ingles.

mircea popescu Or maybe it's because I killed Andreas AntonoWhatevs.viii

(after the shortest of pauses)

mircea popescu No but I'm seriously offended. The entire fucking pile of a century worth of Chomskis and whatnot "brahmins" has produced exactly 0 cultural output. It's not that the US doesn't have a great brahmin novel. It has NOTHING, and this schmuck has the unmitigated audacity to belittle other shit from atop of all that nonachievement ?! It contributed to the culture of the world less than fucking Chad.ix At least the Chadians dance and shit. Stupid ass US "brahmins" can't even take their clothes off.x

BingoBoingo I blame Husserl and Derrida.

mircea popescu Neither were USians.

BingoBoingo The USian Brahmin emulate the French, for some god awful reason.

mircea popescu What French lol. I fucked French. They're emulating a 1844 postcard sent from Paris, Wisconsin and drawn by some out of work industrial sketcher dude.

BingoBoingo More their imagined sense of the French. The USian brahamin could have done great if they would have let James starve when the dumpsters ran out of food and instead elevated Peirce.

mircea popescu Even leaving that scandal aside, consider their treatment of Buffett. Guy comprehends more economy than the entire profession of academic economist in the history of the United States. Yet... they're doing some pathetic recouping of old-and-senile Buffett now, mostly predicated on denouncing as heresy his actually useful contributions, two decades prior.

pete_dushenski At least Chadians dance and shit.

Friday, 29 August, Year 6 d.Tr.

Obama-Clinton, or the end of the republic.

Last year I said something in a MPEx board meetingi about how the current US presidentii is unlikely to respect constitutional term limits and will probably use his wife towards this goaliii. My uninformed and fundamentally disinterested opinion was shot down collectively by much more interested parties, and dispelled by the much more knowledgeable through for instance pointing out that Michelle Obama hates the entire political circus and is not in the slightest interested in actually participating. As if actually participating is in any way required or desired, or in any sense what Barrack Obama is doing. As if anyone asks women what they'd rather, now. What is this, the future ?

I shrugged then, a year has passed hence, as you can see in the vignette the campaign to that effect is right on track. If I were Messina or Axelrod I'd be starting with the astroturfing just about Spring 2014 too.

The move is, in my humble, uninformed and still quite disinterested opinion extremely likely to succeed. It's exactly the unsubstantial sort of gimmickry that the US media loves, because it's easy to "explain" and, as one anon leahiv explained, "the content just writes itself". If you were hungry, stupid and sad you'd want the content to "write itself" too, and your job to "do itself" too, because you'd be too busy throwing the covers over your head and screaming "I can't hear you nonono" too. Just the way the nookie crumbles.

It's also extremely convenient : the purposeless, clueless pretentiousness that was "The Monkey Does White House, 2008 - 2016, a musical" created a vast armada of political clients, their aggregate cost reaching well in the trillion of dollars. Just like you know, any weak emperor in the history of the "republican" empires of Asia. These people aren't going away, they'd rather set the palace on fire than leave it.v A disinterested Michelle Obama coupled with oh... how sad it is.

Do you remember how hot Clinton was in her youth ? Not just sexually, how clever this woman was ? How utterly seductive ? Nothing much is left today, a Pelosi-esque abandoned, hollow husk. Which brings us to an important side point : allowing women access to politics does not result in women being represented in politics in any sense. It's not the young lovable 1960s Clinton that acquires any sort of power or import in the field. It's the Nancy Pelosies, it's the 70 yo Clintons that do. By opening politics to women you really open it to old women, and in the known world there is nothing worse. Old women are the bane of civilisation, because they're not interested in knowing, like old men, they're interested in loud upsets not existing, like Cixi. They're the natural enemy of men of all ages and young women and children (hey, they're also loud, right ?) and everything nice and good and sweet and worthwhile.

Just like there is a lot of wisdom in writing lifetime terms out of the Constitution, there is a lot of wisdom in writing women out of the political process. Very little of this is directed at actual women, the flesh and blood creatures you love and are loved by. Most of it is directed at keeping old hags out of everyone's way, those loveless, soulless husks that these same women become, after fifty years of politics. And they never die, also, that's the other problem : in any world in which women live an average five years more than men, any papacyvi will be vastly dominated by women. That's why you can't have a woman pope, not for any other reason. Nobody hates women, but everyone who doesn't yet hate hags will definitely live to learn to.

So in short : I don't believe Red USA Army defeating White (southern ?) USA Army is any more avoidable, down the road, as Obama-Clinton is avoidable in 2016. After all, the death rattle is not something your dying father does deliberately, nor is it something you can in any way prevent. It's just the way the cookie... crumbles.

———We discuss all sorts of far ranging or otherwise plain old weird stuff. [↩]Really, the political machine using him for a sockpuppet. [↩]A wet dream of the socialist party at least since Clinton. Except Clinton was actually a lot more competent a president. At least by today's standards - isn't it interesting how this political deflation thing works, Clinton was a meh president for the 1990s and would have been a great president for the 2010s. [↩]This shall be henceforth the noun collectively describing Leah McGrath Goodman and people like her : women (of either physical sex) in their 30s, with a dead degree in nonsense and a good load of college debt still unpaid, depending on the benevolence of friends, which are really ex classmates that had the sense to avoid feminism and instead married well. (If you can't be bothered to read them, Kristen Wiig is pretty much stuck depicting the type cinematographically : a pretentious yet mean spirited, ambitious yet incapable, grandiosely frustrated neurotic mess.)

Bereft of much intelligence, with little practical experience and even less understanding of it, these unfortunate souls labour under the LED lights to produce words by the meter, which may be "published", in a sense, by the numerous outfits nobody really reads anymore. [↩]This is no joke, incidentally :

After his marriage, Puyi began to take control of the palace. He described "an orgy of looting" taking place that involved "everyone from the highest to the lowest". According to Puyi, by the end of his wedding ceremony, the pearls and jade in the empress's crown had been stolen. Locks were broken, areas ransacked, and on June 27, 1923, a fire destroyed the area around the Palace of Established Happiness. Puyi suspected it was arson to cover theft. The emperor overheard conversations among the eunuchs that made him fear for his life. In response, he evicted the eunuchs from the palace. His own brother, Pujie was rumored to steal treasures and art collections and sell to wealthy collectors in the black market.

The life and times of that unhappy scion of a weak emperor following an ambitious but close minded ex-whore empress (who notably forbade railroads because train engines are "too loud") are in no way specific to him. He is specific to them, because weak and insignificant people don't create their own environment but quite the opposite : are the products of their environments. He was succeeded by Communist China, incidentally, which defeated Nationalist China in the field, as improbable as that seemed originally.

Will yours ? Likely, for the same reasons, in the same way. [↩]Which is to say any political system predicated by "who dies last" [↩]

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Category: SUA care este

Thursday, 03 April, Year 6 d.Tr.

O hai let me wanna-be!

Being as I am the realisation of their idealized image of the self as well as the icon of the father they always wanted but never had plus that beloved older brother they had a nonsexual crush on, of course I'd hear from each and every wanna-be kid on the Internet. The self-avowed hacker, the grandiose expert, the pro-professional, the many plurious things a recent birth with no power, no knowledge and no importance tends to vacuously ascribe himself.

Without even going into the piles and layers accumulated back while I was writing in Romanian, and without bothering to notice that Jeff Berwick is still working on something better than "I just read the story I made up on your blog and it doesn't sound as convincing as I thought it did", let's have some quick examples : O hai let me verify your identity! ; O hai. I was justing doing a penetration test of your site. ; MIRCEA POPESCU IS AN ASSHOLE! etc etc etc.

So then it comes as no surprise that :

kakobrekla: Pasted per request; http://dpaste.com/0DQZB8W.txti

mircea_popescu: So was BitBet actually down ?

kakobrekla: Well BitBet was sort of down and assbot suffered the most.

Apocalyptic: Hard to tell if guy was serious or trolling.

kakobrekla: I dont know, I saw 'low orbit ion cannons cannons' and got scared.

mircea_popescu: Apocalyptic that's the new generation. Sorta half-ass doing things and being "ironic" about them at the same time as a sort of multi-hedged insurance agaisnt the scary world. Can't say he's not tried. Can't say he's really tried, either. Can't say he's a faggot, not really, can't say anything. Aderpynymous!

kakobrekla: Imagine cannons shooting out whole cannons

* kakobrekla runs in the basement to hide.

[after a break]

mircea_popescu: You know your secret agent reddit/4chan guy tried to "ddos" Trilema earlier too. He... failed. "Number of simultaneously running php and cgi scripts, as well as cron jobs and shell sessions: 65724(max)." That's not SO BAD is it ?

Turns out the logs on Trilema actually had a story to tell. It goes like this :

54.215.115.74 - - [24/Sep/2014:02:34:37 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 26649 "-" "WordPress/3.9; http://ec2-54-215-115-74.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com; verifying pingback from 43.254.40.25"

The complete file weighs in at 25 Mb. That's 183`902 lines worth of (served!) requests for Trilema pages, sent by various WordPress blog installations. 95`651 of them include the "verifying pingback from 43.254.40.25" line, 3`731 show a different IPii, the rest omit the source.iii All this happened from 02:34:37 -0400 to 2:55-ish, with a few stragglers all the way to 3:00.

Obviously this is not what "LOIC" means. Nevertheless, it's perhaps a usable reflected DDOS attack. All you need is a host that'll let you do it, WordPress is dumb enough to go for it, and now that you have the list...

Enjoy. Or fix it, whatever, I don't care.

UPDATE, September 28th : Failure breeds insistence in the narcissistically wounded, so here we are again, doing the same thing only bigger this time. <sarcasm>Because that totally works, if you fail it's not time to try a new tack, it's time to try harder. The time to try a new tack is when you succeed. </sarcasm>

The splendiferous haxxor at that difficult age doesn't think the foregoing should apply to him, of course, because he thinks he should get a say in what applies to him and what doesn't, because that's democraticfairnormalrapetriggersomgbbq or whateveriv, and so here we are.

This time there's a grand total of 2`211`833 lines, more than ten times the size of the previous attempt. The complete list is here. Of some interest are the first five lines,

50.62.208.39 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:35:39 -0400] "HEAD /2014/today-is-the-international-day-of-remembering-how-mirce$

50.62.208.39 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:35:40 -0400] "HEAD /2013/the-greatest-smartphone-app/#comment-91767 HTTP/1.0" 40$

50.62.208.39 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:50:36 -0400] "HEAD /2014/today-is-the-international-day-of-remembering-how-mirce$

50.62.208.39 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:50:37 -0400] "HEAD /2013/the-greatest-smartphone-app/#comment-91767 HTTP/1.0" 40$

97.88.208.209 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:51:37 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 500 - "-" "WordPress/3.0.4; http://diehoch.net"

54.201.25.164 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:51:37 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 500 - "-" "WordPress/3.9.2; http://54.201.25.164;$

107.170.18.6 - - [28/Sep/2014:02:51:37 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.0" 500 - "-" "WordPress/4.0; http://authenticorepilat$

Obviously 50.62.208.39 knew what was about to happen seconds before it actually did. It's an abused GoDaddy IP (which have, of course, been notified, and which, of course, still suck). The list of originating IPs (appearing after the "verifying pingback from" built-in header) is significantly shorter than last time.v This, coupled with the pathetic appeals to mercy proffered by the "hacker", with the significant increase in the list of abused blogs and with the frequent repeats suggests perhaps that she's running out of resources. Which is fine, and the first step towards embracing the slavery that'll perhaps spit her out on the other side a complete being.

Good luck, Britni!

PS. If you don't understand why this article figures in your pingback list, while your link isn't in here : it's because your blog has been abused to try and DDOS this blog, as you can verify by searching for your name in the attached gzips. Please consider hardening your WordPress installation so that this can't be repeated in the future - as it currently stands I am immune to this because I am rich and powerful, but most bloggers out there are neither rich nor powerful and who knows how many you've squished so far, unknowingly ?

———

~fccccck@184.75.212.202

**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Sep 24 13:54:47 2014

[13:54:47] fccccck hellllllllllo

[13:55:19] kakobrekla hi?

[13:55:29] fccccck we are reddit police

[13:55:44] kakobrekla who is we

[13:56:05] fccccck subreddit you dont know because admins keep shadowbanning us

[13:56:13] fccccck you spam reddit, this is your punishment! muahuahua

[13:56:30] kakobrekla i spam?

[13:56:45] * kakobrekla does not have a reddit handle.

[13:56:59] fccccck yes you spam

[13:56:59] fccccck http://trilema.com/2014/spamming-reddit-an-experiment/

[13:57:10] kakobrekla i am not mircea btw.

[13:57:27] fccccck oh

[13:57:33] fccccck you are Anon?

[13:57:50] kakobrekla i am http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=kakobrekla

[13:58:25] fccccck our expert secret agents well versed in /b/tarding have pointed LOIC cannons filled with cumboxes and declare WAR!

[13:58:38] kakobrekla ok

[13:58:47] fccccck you are impostor and scammer, website says

[13:59:04] kakobrekla and you are doing the world a favour.

[13:59:46] fccccck yes. anyway i am watching you mitigate if you want to try

[14:00:06] kakobrekla k

**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Sep 24 14:08:32 2014

[14:08:32] fccccck your nginx is still down?

[14:08:47] fccccck wai

**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Sep 24 14:27:34 2014

[14:27:34] fccccck Hetzner has good DDoS protection, but we have well lubricated cumboxes that will pierce the firewall

[14:30:25] fccccck I mean, layer 4.

[↩]Specifically :

12,"10.0.0.1"; 8,"10.0.11.193"; 11,"10.0.113.35"; 3,"10.0.1.4"; 4,"10.0.3.1"; 9,"10.10.0.113"; 2,"10.100.1.3"; 12,"10.1.0.1"; 3,"10.101.101.245"; 10,"10.105.101.162"; 12,"10.105.102.41"; 14,"10.111.204.2"; 15,"10.1.1.61"; 19,"10.142.191.108"; 11,"10.143.0.53"; 16,"10.147.146.230"; 11,"10.15.128.202"; 12,"10.156.250.9"; 14,"10.158.4.2"; 8,"10.160.234.201"; 9,"10.160.234.253"; 28,"10.16.56.199"; 10,"10.167.12.44"; 6,"10.172.74.53"; 10,"10.179.226.90"; 18,"10.183.186.158"; 19,"10.183.248.250"; 4,"10.183.248.252"; 1,"10.183.250.134"; 3,"10.183.251.1"; 11,"10.189.245.5"; 3,"10.189.246.4"; 5,"10.189.254.10"; 6,"10.189.254.5"; 16,"10.189.254.6"; 3,"10.190.254.11"; 4,"10.190.254.5"; 7,"10.190.254.7"; 10,"10.192.16.32"; 15,"10.196.113.4"; 13,"10.206.27.57"; 10,"10.21.10.9"; 5,"10.2.130.253"; 12,"10.217.161.3"; 19,"10.225.175.112"; 4,"10.2.2.6"; 10,"10.227.1.193"; 6,"10.229.75.99"; 12,"10.2.3.1"; 8,"10.231.20.96"; 22,"10.234.6.182"; 13,"10.236.168.50"; 24,"10.240.107.42"; 19,"10.245.0.1"; 18,"10.245.0.155"; 15,"10.247.6.76"; 17,"10.248.36.182"; 9,"10.250.250.1"; 7,"10.252.35.3"; 19,"10.252.67.67"; 11,"10.27.0.6"; 8,"10.28.41.106"; 17,"10.29.42.15"; 23,"10.3.1.1"; 12,"10.43.101.70"; 11,"10.43.148.58"; 15,"10.4.56.19"; 16,"10.50.101.190"; 21,"10.52.1.254"; 10,"10.70.11.13"; 8,"10.70.11.3"; 9,"10.73.131.91"; 5,"10.75.1.13"; 1,"108.162.218.89"; 1,"108.162.219.245"; 1,"108.162.237.79"; 1,"108.162.245.154"; 1,"108.162.249.215"; 9,"108.61.47.194"; 10,"10.86.7.254"; 37,"10.89.140.154"; 4,"10.9.160.24"; 2,"10.9.160.25"; 2,"10.9.160.26"; 2,"10.9.160.27"; 1,"10.9.160.29"; 1,"10.9.160.30"; 1,"10.9.160.31"; 5,"10.9.160.32"; 2,"10.9.160.33"; 15,"10.97.50.153"; 10,"12.133.118.20"; 1486,"127.0.0.1"; 6,"127.0.0.3"; 4,"140.112.202.148"; 1,"141.101.98.99"; 6,"144.76.98.212"; 18,"154.35.133.34"; 1,"162.220.112.18"; 14,"163.245.1.248"; 5,"165.137.226.135"; 10,"169.254.11.253"; 1,"172.16.0.2"; 9,"172.16.15.1"; 11,"172.16.1.80"; 42,"172.16.24.1"; 17,"172.17.0.2"; 9,"172.17.0.5"; 12,"172.17.42.1"; 5,"172.20.1.10"; 15,"172.23.4.254"; 11,"172.24.0.4"; 4,"172.31.0.170"; 3,"172.31.10.72"; 10,"172.31.13.59"; 11,"172.31.14.52"; 11,"172.31.14.75"; 13,"172.31.19.65"; 14,"172.31.20.19"; 8,"172.31.22.250"; 13,"172.31.23.169"; 11,"172.31.23.20"; 15,"172.31.25.67"; 11,"172.31.26.199"; 10,"172.31.28.196"; 15,"172.31.30.125"; 13,"172.31.37.98"; 15,"172.31.41.85"; 13,"172.31.43.254"; 16,"172.31.46.209"; 8,"172.31.47.203"; 8,"172.31.7.127"; 9,"173.208.201.141"; 10,"173.214.170.179"; 1,"173.245.48.120"; 1,"173.245.55.64"; 9,"176.9.120.132"; 40,"178.63.135.0"; 12,"181.224.154.199"; 9,"187.33.232.18"; 11,"188.132.158.129"; 16,"188.225.33.130"; 29,"192.163.204.49"; 10,"192.163.246.206"; 10,"192.168.0.1"; 8,"192.168.0.4"; 13,"192.168.0.96"; 10,"192.168.1.1"; 11,"192.168.1.100"; 5,"192.168.1.2"; 9,"192.168.1.31"; 5,"192.168.160.41"; 20,"192.168.2.102"; 7,"192.168.213.3"; 8,"192.168.4.66"; 10,"192.168.49.200"; 9,"192.168.50.254"; 6,"192.168.5.240"; 28,"192.168.57.1"; 21,"192.168.7.8"; 14,"192.168.9.4"; 17,"192.169.20.1"; 11,"192.241.202.92"; 20,"192.76.138.201"; 7,"194.5.108.254"; 6,"194.58.40.120"; 15,"194.58.61.100"; 17,"194.58.93.43"; 30,"198.1.124.229"; 15,"198.57.176.232"; 3,"199.184.149.2"; 4,"199.184.149.3"; 3,"199.184.149.4"; 5,"199.184.149.5"; 1,"199.27.133.67"; 1,"199.27.133.71"; 14,"199.59.160.140"; 15,"205.147.111.7"; 20,"207.210.203.66"; 13,"207.67.4.254"; 13,"212.25.8.164"; 8,"212.68.57.222"; 8,"216.121.53.151"; 2,"30.0.0.97"; 9,"30.176.171.13"; 4,"31.20.2.238"; 3,"46.38.178.10"; 7,"50.7.64.146"; 11,"5.172.196.65"; 11,"5.45.111.30"; 12,"5.9.211.108"; 12,"62.75.232.242"; 1,"64.22.103.188"; 13,"66.11.132.73"; 8,"69.10.51.45"; 9,"69.59.187.219"; 71,"77.232.66.255"; 18,"77.92.141.208"; 12,"81.38.109.100"; 12,"82.221.39.11"; 13,"82.94.169.36"; 11,"85.235.174.162"; 15,"91.208.40.20"; 5,"91.228.152.9"; 20,""::ffff:43.254.40.25"

[↩]APNIC reports 43.254.40.* owned by PEL-IN, who supposedly is "uniquely positioned to provide Spamfree". I've notified them, seems somehow magically 100k+ fake pingback notifications managed to flow out of their network at the rate of >100 a second. Nothing suspicious there at all whatsoever, amirite. [↩]And then, in a stroke reminiscent of matters discussed over at Cel mai adevarat in gangsta rap, ends up being the one in need of favours. Ain't it funny how the world teenagers dream actually works ? [↩]Specifically,

1 from ::ffff:142.0.44.50 ; 2 from 188.226.244.159 ; 3 from 64.79.64.162 ; 22 from 10.183.250.134 ; 32 from 192.168.160.41 ; 33 from 10.190.254.11 ; 65 from 10.231.20.96 ; 80 from 82.94.169.36 ; 108 from 10.245.0.1 ; 120 from 10.189.254.5 ; 125 from 172.17.42.1 ; 127 from 194.58.61.100 ; 132 from 10.10.0.113 ; 134 from 10.247.6.76 ; 135 from 176.9.120.132 ; 135 from 212.25.8.164 ; 137 from 172.31.14.75 ; 146 from 10.189.246.5 ; 146 from 5.172.196.65 ; 166 from 10.183.251.1 ; 227 from 10.1.1.60 ; 237 from 172.16.1.80 ; 240 from 62.75.232.242 ; 244 from 172.31.20.19 ; 245 from 207.67.4.254 ; 248 from 10.158.4.2 ; 252 from 10.111.204.2 ; 253 from 10.214.31.8 ; 261 from 10.2.3.1 ; 264 from 10.28.41.106 ; 316 from 181.224.154.199 ; 370 from 10.0.11.193 ; 509 from 10.1.0.1 ; 621 from 172.16.24.1 ; 621 from 192.168.49.200 ; 643 from 10.167.12.44 ; 980 from 10.0.3.1 ; 1454 from 192.168.4.66 ; 1498 from 82.221.39.11 ; 1743 from 207.210.203.66 ; 2125 from : ; 2207 from 10.240.107.42 ; 2897 from 205.147.111.7 ; 4158 from 194.58.93.43 ; 4397 from 10.29.42.15 ; 5080 from 77.232.66.255 ; 5892 from ::ffff:192.187.118.162 ; 24925 from 127.0.0.1 ; 397748 from 142.0.44.50 ; 706747 from 192.187.118.162.

[↩]

« Shots from a voyage

The Hour Of Reckoning »

Category: Meta psihoza

Wednesday, 24 September, Year 6 d.Tr.

No Woman's Land II

~ Continued ~

I don't remember how long had passed, how many track miles had seen me there, in the rickety wagon, holding my knees far apart and my everything well exposed for the small world in the small compartment. It must have been a while. My man was nodding next to me as if he were asleep, and maybe he was. Then the woman spoke and he jolted, startled.

"It's high time she put some clothes on, that one."

"Nay, I'm not done with her yet!"

"You seem pretty well done to me..." retorted the woman with her mordant wit, a light in her eye. "What if she promised to take everything off her back again any time you wish ?"

"Uhhh..."

"You promise, don't you dear ?"

"Oh, I promise, I promise. I swear!" said I. And so I have, that was a promise well kept, you'd best believe me.

"Any time I wish ?"

"Any time you wish!"

"Well then... uhh..."

"There's her trunk, grab her something to wear, it's unchristian to be going around the trains nude like the day her mother made her. And besides, she might catch her death of cold."

It was a strange proposition, this, that I may catch any degree of cold in the sweltering heat of the desert, with my throbing entrails on fire. But then again... what did I know ? This old crow was clearly more adept at settling my life for me than I had ever been. Isn't it funny how that works ?

Ted went through my things and picked what I was to wear, and I wore that for the rest of the trip, and then I wore him three boys and two girls - your mother and another that never made it - and then I wore his mourning and then... oh but what use is it.

I'll tell you this though, I had no idea what love is when we met, I have no idea now and you will have no idea for as long as you live. Except in retrospect, when you sit down to write the story of your life for people that will never read it, then it is obvious. It's always fairly obvious in retrospect.

At the next station three men climbed in, idle workers of some description. They seemed a little drunk already as they passed by in the hallway, and no sooner were they settled down in the next compartment over that the scent of cheap gin permeated the air and the belaboured, unconvincing cheer of the poor filled the ears with its sounds. All this seemed to have a strange effect on that little shit, my mother-of-occasion's daughter. Her nostrils'd flare up and her cheeks were just a wee bit flushed ; her breathing just a wee closer to heaving than you'd expect.

After a while their boasts and loudness took a sudden turn to whispering, and within a click they were filling the doorway to our compartment. Ted and the woman looked at them cooly. I did not look at all, because I couldn't take my eyes off the little shit. You'd think she's witness to a miracle, an answer to her prayers, Lazarus walking on his hands to reach the set of a skin care commercial. Was Lazarus the one with the leprosy or the one with the paralisy ? I forget. Anyway, the one gifted with more speech among the lot of them put that gift of his to use :

"Way we figg'r is these are for eight people we figg'r sit all apart like strangers ain't none to neighbourly we figg'r."

And with that grand introduction, combined inauguration of congress, declaration of war and welcoming address they sat themselves down, a pair to my right, opposite from Ted, a straggler on the other side, in the corner, opposite the little shit's corner. Soon enough they offered us to share their drink. Ted refused, which I thought strange, the woman refused which seemed to go without saying. The little shit never refused, but also was never asked, and I could see in her deepening colors she well resented that. I don't know about a woman's intuition, but I can tell you straight out there's no such thing as intuition on a man anymore than there's tits on the back of any pig. Or any less, same difference.

The trip continued a little tense for a little while, the three trying their best to drink like they imagined higher class people drank, inviting each other after each gulp and so on, the woman looking them on sternly and Tom glancing over occasionally as if he were forced to ride against his will with the three men that he suspected stole his sheep but could never prove as much. It was riotuous, really, and I should have laughed, save I could never take my eyes off the little shit. You could almost read what was going on through her mind, a crazed race of crazed thoughts. I suppose this is normal, and to be expected of a girl that age. I know it was the same for me when I was a little younger than she was.

What's not ever expected - and I scarcely can think of why, seeing how often it happens - was the exact manner in which her crisis was resolved. Suddenly, her face drained white, her eyes a feverish look, she pulled her blouse roughly over her head, threw the whole thing at my feet and stood up.

"So what about this, then!" she almost yelled, standing there eyes ablaze, her bellybutton in plain view under a very stern and wide old-fashioned brasiere.

Everyone was in shock, unable to as much as open or close their mouth, respectively, but when she undid her bra and threw that at the speaker of the three the small world of the small compartment lost on tracks erupted.

"Look at me!" she yelled in a voice they probably heard in Sydney, booming, thundering over the hills and shrubs, reflecting back into the horizon.

"You silly little girl, what are you doing! Sit down!" bemoaned her mother, trying in vain to grab a hold of her errant offspring, to cuddle her up among her skirts somehow, to at the very least make her sit. The girl was having none of that, her mother couldn't budge her off her feet anymore than ants can move a tree. Well... I suppose in the end ants do manage to move trees, but never in the moment like that, and in that moment that's what'd have been needed.

The men whistled, they said I don't remember what, Ted shook his head.

Soon enough they had resolved they will take the girl away and converse privately for just a little while. Two of them had their booty by her waist, plucking her from the clinging arms of her protesting mother just as the crazed girl was screaming "No, mother, let me go! I want to go with them! I want them to do things to me, mother!" at the top of her lungs. The third, the straggler was by the door, looking up and down the corridor, a useful behaviour in some circumstances turned into habit by an obviously lengthy practice. Some fine gents the little shit's found herself, I thought.

Out of nowhere little Tommy sprang up. Incensed with the aggitation he grabed of his sister haphazardly, her calves, her breasts at one point. He swore that he shall save her, he kicked the men in the shins with all the unbridled anger of his youthful conviction. Eventually the mother let go of her daughter to restrain her son and And so they did take her, but they did not take her very far.

I could feel her body bumped against the back of my seat, by the three men in turn. For one thing, she was a virgin, briefly, at the start of her adventure. Of her new husbands, one was clearly hurting her, though she could scarcely bring herself to admit this, or perhaps she had no idea there can be such a thing ; the second, the silent middle one she mixed and matched with beautifully, and their bouts lasted a while and pleasantly exhausted them both ; the third she didn't really like, and he seemed to be resenting her, the sure sign of a man more endowed in his mind than in his pants. Incredible how much one can tell by merely being the back against which the waves of another's toil break, is it not ?

We could hear it just fine, too. The grunts of the men, her squals and screams, the things she said. It was incredible, what she said. At one point she was yelling "Put your boot in my mouth! No wait, not your boot, put your cock in my mouth!" She called out to be used, I distinctly recall "defiled" and the verbal imperative peppered throughout the conversation, it was a scene to behear and she was definitely having the time of her life.

"What is she doing mommy ?"

"Never you mind that. You'll see when you're older".

The little boy was pensive. He'll see when he's older ? Defile ? Boots, mouths ? Perhaps the world awaiting him out there is a wee bit wider and thicker than he had hitherto imagined. Perhaps...

The happy foursome took off at the next stop, the girl not as much as coming to say her goodbyes to her mother. "Like any mongrel, like a rabid dog!", the woman observed, in tears, and maybe she was right. Or maybe there just wasn't any time.

The old woman sat there, distraught, fighing back her tears and a painfully visible knot in her throat. She mechanically patted her son, with the absent air of the bereaved, and the son in turn looked back at her with an apprehensive confusion painted all over his face.

It was at this juncture that I burst out in laughter, colored, incontrollable, a little absurd I suppose, like all laughter ever. What was I to do ? It was funny, it was hysterical, it was beyond belief. There we sat, me, the girl she thought ill equipped to face the realities of their foreign, strange culture, happily married within the hour, without asking or indeed needing as much as a candle, let alone priest or church bell. You have any idea how much a church bell costs, a hundred tons of brass ? Or how hard they are to make, so they sound like anything but gargled glass ?

There we sat, the painful absence of her well groomed daughter strangling her. She did more for me in two hours - turning nothing at all into absolutely everything - than she managed to ever do for her own kin, and if that's not laughable then I scarcely know what is. Why do you suppose we always do more for strangers ? Is it perhaps because we do not care about them ?

"You're not going crazy, are you ?" she asked me with surprisingly calm lucidity.

"No. Are you ?"

"I should definitely hope not."

"Once we are settled down", spoke Ted in a croaked, unsure voice, " I trust you will do us the honor of your visit ?"

"My dear boy" she answered with a sad, sad, very small and tiny smile, " I would certainly love to".

Indeed she did, and then baptised my first, the daughter, the one that never made it. And of her daughter, the one that never made it, indeed we met her again, and sooner than anyone in that little train compartment at the time suspected.

But that's a story for perhaps another time.

« Marie Antoinette

BitBet, December 2013 Statement »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Friday, 03 January, Year 6 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), September 2014 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

Geari

0.77897139

Total

0

Total

0.77897139

S.NSA assets

Account

01.09.2014

Net change

30.09.2014

Cash

460.97278354

0.77897139

460.19381215

Tangibles

3.46902593

0.77897139

4.24799732

Intangibles and goodwill

7.98496216

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.09.2014

Net change

30.09.2014

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

We're bringing the epistolary style back from the dead over here :

A boring month (literally; bored a great many - quite accurate - holes.)

All of September was spent on the laborious construction of the instrument described in the August and July announcements. Most of the machine-work is for the rotor (August report) and paste-layer (amply discussed in #bitcoin-assets) subsystems.

Pictured below is the (first attempt at) the rotor per se:

Process of construction (excerpt) : lathe.avi

Presently engaged in producing turnings for: the stator (for vacuum flange) and the paste-layer piston. (positive-displacement pump.) Milling the stepper motor mounts. After that, the microscope mount (see this month's BOMii.

———1 x 8X-100X 55mm-290mm C-mount Industrial Lens ; 1 x 8X-100X 55mm-290mm C-mount Industrial Lens ; 1 x 5.0 MP USB2 Industrial Inspection Camera ; 1 x renewal domain (currently aging while hosting phuctor). [↩]As with August's BOM, the physical components are solely for the 'pick-and-place' apparatus. Once again billets of raw material are not counted, their cost is negligible, and a great quantity was wasted on the education of an inexperienced machinist (yours truly.) [↩]

« F.DERP September 2014 Statement

The USG wasted another hundred million dollars it previously stole from average, hard working US citizens. Nobody cares. »

Category: S.NSA

Saturday, 04 October, Year 6 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), October 2014 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

Geari

0.21548633ii

Total

0

Total

0.21548633

S.NSA assets

Account

01.10.2014

Net change

31.10.2014

Cash

460.19381215

0.21548633

459.97832582

Tangibles

4.24799732

0.21548633

4.46348365

Intangibles and goodwill

8.31827553

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.10.2014

Net change

31.10.2014

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Main points this month :

Lot of mechanical engineering work done, building the NSA microfactory. Hole drilling, threading, that sort of thing.iii

Lot of time spent writing the necessary image processing code for this component, and adapting a salvaged six-degree 'spaceball' waldo control to the task at hand - output of motion vectors to 'tinyG' steppermotor control apparatus .

In the interest of actually getting somewhere reasonably quickly, CTO decided to postpone the construction of the paste-laying appendage for the Instrument. The XYZ platform will be used as an SMT pick-and-placer. Paste for the current prototypes to be laid using stencils, and a traditional paste press to be requisitioned in the coming week (anticipated expense, 400 or so USD.)

Some small parts purchased.

In closing,

mircea_popescu Central points missing from your letter,

asciilifeform Eh?

mircea_popescu "And we hope to... by ..."

asciilifeform When have I ever put those in, lol.

mircea_popescu Well ?

asciilifeform Hesitant to say usefully definitive things quite yet, on account of presently boiling in a cauldron in day job hell. But I did bet on own delivery bet, for what that's worth.

It is eventually getting done, this thing.

———1x 3 Way 2 Position Solenoid Pneumatic Valve 1/4" 24V DC (MettleAir) ; 1x AmScope LED-64S 64 LED Microscope Ring Light with Dimmer [↩]The softening BTC is not particularly helping the cause. [↩]Mounting platform for the centroid-finder camera:

This is the 5MegaPixel thing purchased last month. [↩]

« MPIF (F.MPIF) October 2014 Statement

F.DERP October 2014 Statement »

Category: S.NSA

Wednesday, 05 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), July 2014 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

Coolness

0.33331337

Total

0

Total

0.33331337

S.NSA assets

Account

01.07.2014

Net change

31.07.2014

Cash

461.89802769

0.33331337

461.56471432

Tangibles

2.87709515

0

2.87709515

Intangibles and goodwill

7.98496216

0.33331337

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.07.2014

Net change

31.07.2014

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Excerpts from a letter :

Dear MP,

1) Routed mainboard. Introduced a small detail: transistor to let CPU cut power to micro-sd card during 'red' (crypto) operations - to frustrate a hypothetical Satanic sd card (which could, in principle, carry out differential power analysis.)i Board gerbers will be sent off to golden turd when item #3 is complete, see below...

2) Eliminated /all/ dependencyii on our microcontroller manufacturer's (Microchip Inc.) build chain and libraries: by writing all of the support routines normally supplied by the latter from scratch, in asm. Based only on the supplied chip docs! We now use exclusively traditional gcc/gas/ld (MIPS little-endian ver.) This not only abolishes the closed-source turd from the build chain, but enables a quick and painless future port to any MIPS based core (there are quite a few of them, e.g. Loongson, or even my own MIPS-compatible Verilog core for use in FPGA or ASIC design.) [1] Presently the firmware is such that a completed board, when it appears, can be meaningfully tested. ('Pre-alpha' ver., if you like.)

3) Why didn't order boards fabricate yet? Answer: these particular boards (mainboards) will be a substantial expenditure. Can't afford the inevitable duds [2] if assembling by hand (tweezers OK for passive 0805 components, not so much for TQFP-64 flat-pack ICs.) Paste application by hand for a large SMT component is also out of the question. But the expense of professional assembly run for a miniscule qty. of boards is ruinous. So I finally bit the bullet, and came up with a sharp, if arduous, cut for the Gordian knot:

Assembling a semi-automatic [3] pick-n-place and paste layer apparatus in jungle conditions!iii

Loony? nope. See figure 1. That's most of it... All that's really needed: a gadget for moving a small object (paste extruder or vacuum nozzle) in Cartesian coordinate grid (xyz) in a repeatable way. No artificial intelligence is necessary for the prototype assembly - what I want is essentially a 'waldo' micro-manipulator. Fortunate find a few weeks ago: a carcass from laboratory robot, with three functioning lead screw rails and motors. Z axis is not shown in the photo, I have removed it for rework [4]

Presently building simple driver apparatus (pc interface) for the motors. For the actual targeting of z-plunge, I obtained: a small crosshair laser. (cheap and angry, works.)

When #3 is complete (see note 4) it is to be tested by way of assembling a number of RNG boards, for which the PCBs, complete component sets, and test rig are already at hand.

- -----

[1] this was a first-class bitch - essentially wrote an elementary OS (init, interrupt handlers, drivers for peripherals: i2c and spi eeproms, sd interface, the whole shebang.) Not because of MIPS itself - it's perhaps the world's simplest cpu arch, instruction set fits on an index card. Mainly on account of the gnarliness of the peripherals. But now I understand this chip very, very well...

[2] it is possible to assemble virtually anything by hand. but to do so accurately, and never have to wonder 'doesn't work; is it a defective pcb? firmware bug? or 0.5mm^2 of splashed solder paste?' is another matter.

[3] it only needs to obey carriage motion and vacuum release commands from pc keyboard, and return to particular, saved locations at a later time when so prompted. if I had the necessary cnc tooling, I could fabricate feeders for the SMT component tapes (if you've never seen these tapes, they look like movie reel. most parts ship lodged in such tapes.) but I don't presently have the tooling. Instead, the tapes will be peeled and clamped to the base of the gantry - just as they are clamped to my desk during a tweezer assembly. Dirty.

[4] removed boom which holds the z-axis rail and its motor. (the original aluminum boom that came with the carcass) - need a rather different shape here. was originally planning to machine the replacement from Al, but presently lacking the tooling. Instead: laser-cutting the part from acrylic. This is arguably a kludge, but will suffice for the actual short-term purpose of this instrument (rapid prototype assembly.)

------

P.S. The components of the instrument described in Item #3, just like the rest of my workshop tooling, are purchased by myself in my capacity as a generic human and will not be charged to the S.NSA piggy. Total cost of it so far is ~200 usd. Won't starve on account of this.

Yours,

-S

As you can see, there is a charge on the S.NSA account, so he's not getting away with that PS.

———This is not quite as theoretical an avenue of attack as it may seem. Suppose one's opsec is casual enough to allow control of inbound items (say someone gives out free SD cards in his vicinty, which he then pops into the Cardano) and also not bother to properly dispose of sensitive material (SD and flash cards are supposed to be hammered into a fine powder). Building a magic card that does some magic and saves the results isn't really all that hard. [↩]Holy shit. So how much is this corp worth, a company which owns a) a complete reimplementation of a generic micro and b) the skunk worker that did this ? [↩]Holy... hell ?

Seriously, this guy is sitting over there building a handcranked factory. How much is a functioning handcranked factory - of anything - worth iyo ? S.NSA is going to end up with its own museum, I tell you. [↩]

« MPIF (F.MPIF) July 2014 Statement

The twinheaded announcer announces! »

Category: S.NSA

Tuesday, 05 August, Year 6 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), August 2014 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

Geari

0.59193078

Total

0

Total

0.59193078

S.NSA assets

Account

01.08.2014

Net change

31.08.2014

Cash

461.56471432

0.59193078

460.97278354

Tangibles

2.87709515

0.59193078

3.46902593

Intangibles and goodwill

7.98496216

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.08.2014

Net change

31.08.2014

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Excerpts from another letter :

Dear MP,

Much of August was spent on the dreary chore of setting up a 'jungle conditions' machine shop at minimal cost (not billed herein, and will not be billed) and learning the basics of its use. I will not describe this painful process here, as it is likely that most readers of this document have experienced the selfsame pain earlier in life and will say 'should've gone there earlier.'ii

At present I am finally cutting (aluminum) fittings for the 'pick-and-place' waldo described in the previous letter. The fittings in question are braces for new 'nema-8' stepper motors (billed to the piggy - see below. Replacing the old servomotors that happened to be included with the carcass - we need steppers in particular for this application.)

Also in the process of machining (brass, Teflon) a rotary vacuum flange for the 'business end' of this apparatus. Here's some terrible ascii art, not to scale...iii

| |

Thursday, 04 September, Year 6 d.Tr.

No, it's not the revenue.

assbot [MPEX] [S.MPOE] 90400 @ 0.00085357 = 77.1627 BTC [-] {4}

copumpkin That's a big MPOE sale there. MPOE has a remarkably deep book.

pankkake What I don't understand is why the other things don't have that volume. Well at least BitBet. It's operating.

mike_c It's because S.MPOE is so huge. S.BBET actually has a higher share turnover over the last 6 months than S.MPOE.

mircea_popescu Interesting.

pankkake Oh.

mircea_popescu $vwap s.mpoe

mpexbot mircea_popescu: S.MPOE 1 day: average: 0.00085721 high: 0.00086297 low: 0.00084891 volume: 1624150 btc: 1392.23827571 7 day: average: 0.00087835 high: 0.00093912 low: 0.00082189 volume: 7039964 btc: 6183.54502157 30 day: average: 0.0009022 high: 0.00101414 low: 0.00082189 volume: 26985544 btc: 24346.2590462

mircea_popescu $vwap s.bbet

mpexbot mircea_popescu: S.BBET 1 day: no data 7 day: average: 0.000621 high: 0.00062299 low: 0.00062099 volume: 9360 btc: 5.8125299 30 day: average: 0.00069705 high: 0.0009 low: 0.0006 volume: 16002 btc: 11.1542499

mircea_popescu ;;calc 24346.2590462 / 1000000000 / 0.0009022

gribble 0.0269854345447

mircea_popescu ;;calc 11.1542499 / 10000000 / 0.00069705

gribble 0.00160020800516

mircea_popescu Not quite. 'Course... you did say six months.

mike_c To redeem myself, since July 1:

mike_c ;;calc 80819516 / 1000000000

gribble 0.080819516

mike_c ;;calc 1452230 / 10000000

gribble 0.145223

mircea_popescu Aha. S.DICE was also outtrading S.MPOE for a while there. But I guess overall yeah, just damned hard to beat.

mike_c Wow.. so, also since July 1 those trades meant 70,000 btc in volume on MPOE! And 203 btc on S.BBET. So, that's why moar volume on MPOE :)

mircea_popescu Actually...

mike_c Well, cause/effect, whatever.

mircea_popescu Tell you what, ~8% of the mkt cap trading over ~7 months is just about exactly right. Best scam in history, every way you look at it it's legit. So basically two good dividend months in a row for BBET killed the volume.

mike_c Nobody wants to sell.

mircea_popescu I guess the fundamental negotiation going on has tyre kickers and car collectors on either side, and they have trouble finding common ground. Team A being "I don't care how good these Internet funbux corps look" and team B going "Unless I need money to buy rope to hang myself I'm not selling my BTC securities". In the end... this being exactly how greatness is built. By the time they do find that common ground... look out. All the bitching about how difficult it is or it isn't to acquire btc with fiat is irrelevant. That's not where the hot core of btc is happening. This is.

mike_c Turn on the hft. More volume instantly.

mircea_popescu No rush, volume can come later. Let people figure shit out first.

mike_c Oh yeah, I was kidding. More volume will come with increasing revenue I believe.

* mircea_popescu checks out Facebook revenue.

mircea_popescu ;;calc 0.31 / 700

gribble 0.000442857142857

mircea_popescu Check it out, 4428 satoshi per share!

mircea_popescu ;;calc 63.55 / 700

gribble 0.0907857142857

mircea_popescu So basically Facebook trades at 100x S.MPOE on 4x the revenue per sharei. I would say it is definitely not the revenue.

mike_c Well, S.MG trades at a higher revenue multiple than S.MPOE tooii. But I still think revenue will help :)

mircea_popescu I doubt it. What will help is the passive effect of people hearing about S.MPOE and forgetting about Facebook. Because see, Facebook existed back in the day when Myspace was trading for 700mn. It's just "nobody" had any idea, because the future is totally unknowable and nobody could have imagined they'd use a coffee mug as a champagne flute. A "social network" with nothing at all can not begin to stand up to the Central Bank of Bitcoin. It's a contest between a cockroach and a bulldog.

(This conversation has been edited for clarity. The original is recorded over in the friendly log.)

To help drive this point home : Twitter lost a dollar per share last quarter, it never saw a profit ever in its entire public life and yet it's still trading at ~8 bitcents per share (and let us not even delve into the pile of other sad tech sector stories available, we'd be here all night).

More importantly : Google is trading at about 1.67142857 BTC per share, and reported ttm net income avail to common of about 0.05428571 BTC. That's about 3.2%. Meanwhile S.MPOE is trading at about 0.0009022 BTC per share, and distributed, which is much better than reporting it, 0.00001010 BTC per share. That's about 1.1%. S.MPOE will be two years old in April, and as an exericse for the reader (encouraged by how informative the previous one turned out to be), please find a company in any field in the history of companies that a) made money every single month of its history without exceptions and b) was within 1/3 of the market leader in its second year. Add the list as a comment, I am truely curious.

Summa: the revenue ? I dun think so.

———S.MPOE per-share revenue was 1010 ttm [↩]Not quite, it's actually trading within 5% of its book value or something like that. [↩]

« The Most Serene Republic, and its laws.

The miracles that matter »

Category: MPEx

Tuesday, 11 February, Year 6 d.Tr.