The instrumentation of humanity

An agent, irrespective of the factuality of its agencyi can nevertheless represent itself, internally and for its own benefit, as a mere instrument, devoid of choice or purpose. Symmetrically, any instrument, also irrespective of the reality of its instrumental status, can nevertheless "represent"ii itself for its own benefit as an actual agent, capable of choice and ethically relevant.

If you can you must, and so it is unsurprising that both agents and instruments do in fact misrepresent themselves as the other thing.

An agent representing itself as an instrument is taking a very cheap approach to ethics, which is why the view is universally shared by human children of all places and times, in all cultures,iii and also makes it readily explainable why religious nuts and decerebrated leaders of men prefer this point of view. It is less expensive, and thus a judicious choice that allows them to cope with the immensity of their (self inflicted or no, it matters little) inadequacy. Lenin and Torquemada both, and both for the same reason, judiciously regard themselves as the tool of greater purpose. They'd be foolish not to, in their laughable situation.

An instrument misrepresenting itself as an agent is quite the laughable thing, of courseiv, but it doesn't stop there. The infinite subtlety of the human mind has long ago observed that should such an instrument be also inculcated with a very strong conviction that their agency is both paramount to their existence as well as a fact, then that deliberate vulnerabilityv can be used as the control panel of the instrument in question. And so it is, and so it goes, faux "liberation"vi such as taking some black slaves and telling them that they are now free, just like that, maintains them enslaved in all the ways that actually matter (economically) while creating the purely linguistic illusion of their freedom, ethical relevancy and economic agency. Which can then be debated ad libitum, and definitely used to create the much needed illusions of factual agency and the importance of agencyvii.

The way out, ironically, is the internalisation of the instrument's actual status as an instrument. Being a slave, in point of fact and not as mere linguistic convention, living by the will of another, in chains if so his will be, eating naught but water and dog food kibbles if that's his order, nude in the snow, sleeping on the floor, not touching any furniture for a weekviii or whatever else. Once the slag of linguistic nonsense impeding maturation washes off, the living thing rebalances and the boundless potential of humanity readily shows itself. It's actually not really all that hard to become a man, like it isn't really hard to become a woman. It just seems, for a while, early on, like the hardest thing in the world.

It is my considered, scientific opinion that the worst thing that could ever have happened to your children is having met you.

———As explained elsewhere, agency is the term of art that is used by specialists in this particular field to describe what everyday speech calls "personhood", and thus an agent is a "person" as that is held in the more or less shared if definitely unexamined imagination of the various web-ready tards. [↩]Instruments can't properly represent, in that they are mere representations of the agents that created (and presumably still) control them. Just like a dream can't have a dream of its own (but can represent you, the dreamer, as dreaming), an instrument can't represent unless it's an instrument of representation, in which case it represents the controlling agent rather than itself. [↩]Children are born poor, in more ways than one. Consequently they will quite judiciously select and have selected the least expensive alternatives. This is why children are born cowardly : it's cheaper than being brave, and furthermore always fleeing is cheaper than running a flight-or-fight processor to try and modulate the response. This is why children are born amoral : morals and their general and normative case - ethics - are an extremely expensive intellectual endeavour, which in their blank state they could scarcely afford.

We should perhaps in passing note that remedial of that defect can not take the form of simple statutory or declaratory manumission, and that it'd be more efficient (and certainly the only effectual avenue) to create the circumstance in which they can actually afford ethical understanding and a set of morals, which then can come from inside, the only place either of these can actually ever come from.

It is certainly the case that a child does not become a human being merely by passing an arbitrary age threshold, men are not cheese to age by themselves, through the simple virtue of nude passage of time. You can, and in selected places actually do see human twelve year olds. You can, and in selected places certainly do see non human twenty or thirty year olds. A good example of the former is any "bad place", those war torn and "dangerous" zones which are "bad" ; a good example of the latter is pretty much the entire West, filled to the brim with little girls physically threatened by menopause but mentally still struggling with the faux scares of defloration, something sane females two decades their juniors have, since time immemorial, trivially negotiated.

Note that the discussion of cheapness is held here with an eye to a proper understanding of economics, devoid of parasitic infiltrations from that other essence, language and its plurious political and religious manifestations. [↩]The barest case of this is the "I could quit any time I wanted to" addict. [↩]All situations where code behaviour does not match intended behaviour are code vulnerabilities. All situations where representation does not match reality, more generally speaking, are also vulnerabilities, and they can always be exploited in exactly the manner one exploits code holes, for much the same purposes. [↩]Speaking of this, consider the "structural reforms" currently adopted by the West-controlled part of the Ukraine, aimed at "freeing" the country, in the sense of making it amenable to outside control of a certain type, and refractory to outside control of all other types as well as - especially! - inside control. [↩]For it must be important, if the masters spend so much time talking about it. Because this is how the brain works, it lacks an ability to cut itself, like any other knife, and it also lacks an outside point of reference. As mentioned other places, it's not there to help you think, it's there to make you adapt, and consequently it will be readily excused for its tendency to think the loudest most important and most oft repeated most veracious. [↩]You don't readily understand what incredible sort of hell this is, because you're not my slave nor are you the slave of a master that simultaneously is smart enough and cares enough. But should you one day be so fortunate, you will find out a thing or two about this world, which is to say youself, that otherwise you never could have. You think you've read it and that's good enough, but this stuff's not technology, this stuff is pure magic : the incantations only work in the hands of a master. [↩]

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Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Tuesday, 27 May, Year 6 d.Tr.

The idea for a great film...

... just came to me as I was sleeping, and in my sleep considered the fate of the various powers-in-their-own-mind-and-there-only of the fiat world. The SECs, the IMFs, the US FEDs and the ECBs of this world were my example, and their eventual fate at the hands of Bitcoin, at my own hands the point of consideration.

The film would go like this : a young man, beautiful and happy, comes of age to the throne of the greatest empire that ever was. That ever will be. An empire founded by the gods themselves, and destined to outlive them. A place of beauty, of ancient rolls conserving ancient lore, of elegant columns supporting splendid arches, of marble and gold leaf, where women dressed in bedsheets hang around their husbands dressed in bedsheets on the side of warm crystal pools, and eat grapes. This world.

He has ministers, as any Emperor would, and in his case, he has the best ministers one could possibly have. It's not that the various barbaric states where the light of the Empire hasn't shone yet don't have ministers nearly as good, as smart, as penetrating. It's that it wouldn't be possible for them to. Like there can't be a larger binary digit than 1, and so if you have the 1 you have the maximum. That's how good his ministers were, and under them an entire bureaucracy, in design perfect, in operation flawless, easily capable of compensating through its marvelous workings for any individual failure on the parts of the lower echelons. Because, let's admit, it's hard to find good plebs, plebs as good as the ministers are great (for the Emperor himself, in his divine greatness, would ipso definitio be a bridge too far). And so is the army, and so is everything else : a perfect clockwork mechanism, made out of the best materials by the best watchmaker, populating the best world that there could ever be.

And all this beauty, all this marvel, all this plain, unabashed perfection is well displayed to the viewer, so he may understand it all. And then... perhaps slightly out of character, a younger bureaucrat rushes in the banquet hall, during a banquet. He is clearly excited. His nostrils flare, like a horse's once he's smelled the wolf. But he regains his composure, under the emperor's inquisitive half-frown, and whispers in his ear. We hear.

We hear that some barbarians - from the North, or East or West or anywhere barbarians come from - are restless, and they are moving, and the army will be taking care of them. This scene makes or breaks the whole film, because the emperor doth not quite understand why all the excitement then ? And the herald can't find a way to say, or perhaps doesn't even understand himself.

The barbarians continue to be restless, and the bureaucracy stays on top of the situation, and the army continues to have the situation well under control for a whole set of seasons, during which we can leisurely characterise the empire, its people and beliefs. Until one day...

Until one day when the eternal, daily, repetitive banquet is interrupted by a ruckus, and by the ghostly faces of all they present, especially the women, especially the women with small children. Their white faces nicely reflect the white marble, polished by hand. The emperor inquires as to the meaning and source of this! and the bureaucrat assures him it will be readily seen to. And yet... the noise does not abate, but grows, and as it grows there's silence growing in the great hall too, under the marble arches, over the limpid pools. The emperor bids his guests eat, but they swallow knots, he bids them merry, but the one courtly concubine that starts to talk, trying to tell a joke, runs hoarse.

And then, a centurion busts in, a different sort of man. Rugged, bearded, covered in soot and dried blood, he screams that the West gate fell, and this is the last hour.

Completely thunderstruck, the Emperor turns to his closest adviser, the eldest bureaucrat, the wisest man in the world. "The end of what ?" "The end of everything". Here follows a discussion, that will have to be written by Quentin Tarantino (or if not, by someone just as good with words that just so happens not to be an ignorant lout from Knoxville, Tennessee), and in this discussion the soon to be ex-emperor learns a thing or two about his life and life in general, about his empire and empires in general, about his men and men in general. And then the barbarians bust through.

The emperor becomes a concubine at the barbarian's court, castrated but otherwise well kept, wearing adequate harem clothing among a bevy of similar boys made women, and girls made women, for the pleasure of a man that's actually a man, in point of fact as opposed to mere pretense and consensus-enacted reality. In point of fact, and readily verified for the benefit of anyone with the curiosity.

The emperor now lives in yurts, among luxurious, natural furs, hand polished leather having replaced the marble, the gold leaf still in place. The emperor now competes - earnestly and effectively - with all the other harem slaves for the attention and the favours of the actual emperor of the entire world, the entire world that is, or that could ever be. The real one.

And in his journal the emperor writes that while he is now an eunuch, and his asshole used at his master's pleasure like any woman's, he nevertheless is more a man today than he ever was before, and more than he could have ever been, before. For at least today he rubs his delicate inner skins against actual reality, as opposed of a pretense thereof, and even if today he could no longer father children, at least the children he today could no longer father are actually his own.

The end.

Who wants to write the screenplay ?

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Category: Trilematograf

Friday, 02 May, Year 6 d.Tr.

The Human Stain

The Human Staini is a sorta-decent novel by Philip Roth horribly butchered by Nicholas Meyer into a rather abominable film script.ii The net result is a bad story that tries to choke down and swallow a good story, and a good story that tries to escape from the muddy embrace and shine through the pestilential foulness of a bad story. Were you a practicing obstetric surgeon you'd know that now and again perfectly healthy neonates have to be separated, scalpel in hand, from their parasitic, not nearly as successful, poorly differentiated twins. Mutant horrors that'd have been long aborted into oblivion had not the purity of the life signals emanating from the fully formed, healthy sibling they parasitise confused the gatekeepers of the womb.

Such exactly is the situation here : the bad story is some inanity with and about no name actors toiling endlessly in a sizeable pile of naturally-identical flavoured goop - something that looks like it should have had Ben Affleck/Adam Sandler/Ben Stilleriii in it - and for its presence the only way to watch this movie is by simply skipping over all the scenes without either Hopkins or Kidman on screen.iv

But when these two are there... oh my! Oh my oh my! It's a spectacular couple, they act extremely well, they are actually a lot better together than each is apart. The characters are quite convincing, I am bereft of superlatives. His is an unapologeticv male, hers is a well trampled tramp. He is calm, and quiet, and will readily go too farvi. She is very worried, and scarred, and very scared. She affects a toughness that she does have, like any woman does havevii, but only at the center. Meanwhile, sandwiched between this hammer of affectation and the anvil of her womanhood, a little girl with a curly smile is perpetually ground into paste. Fittingly then, she carries around the ashes of her offspring, in little boxes, hidden under her bed. But other than that - she has no luggage. She travels lightly, other than that.

One thing I will say to illustrate the greatness of construction : she is transactional to the hilt, as you'd expect of someone in her crucible position. She has decided that since men pay you not as much to fuck them but to leave after, she will be forever safe from any horrors men can bring if she sacrifices, completely and dedicatedly, this particular bit of natural inclination. "I'll never stay and you'll never hurt me", says the dealmaker in her head, and so one morning when she does wake up at the site of the deed she is incensed, her pretty eyes aglare with all the sheer terror that this amulet was, in her mind, protecting her from. Terror that she knows all about, because unlike the worthless cunts that were never rapedviii, she is a beast of this world, not an imaginary "beast" of a world that "could be". Sure this particular man she slept with may be okay, says her worrymaker... but that wasn't the deal, now was it. The deal was as to specified behaviour and men in general, as a group, as an abstraction, as an unknown. As a set of endless surprises.ix As how magic thinking works.

Someone should release a cut version of this thing. Get rid of that idiotic twentysomething kid that can't even fucking look at his costar, let alone interact with her. Get rid of that monstrously ugly blonde chick with black pubic hair, what the hell is with that lip holy shit, uncanny valley central over there. Get rid of all the spurious narration and just let it be a beautiful love story, which it definitely, screamingly, flamingly is.

It's a sad but fitting comment on the fate of US "culture" that the most it can be remembered for is contributing a bunch of slag that will have to be excised off an otherwise beautiful love story.

———2003, by Robert Benton, with Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris (deliverer of that great monologue). [↩]The whole thing is constructed around the Broyard problem, even if the author denied a direct connection. Nevertheless, at issue is the choice of what ethic groups misrepresent as "a member of an ethnic group", ie, a person, to represent himself as whatever he may choose to, whether this meets or does not meet the criteria as put forth by whatever ethnic groups, which is to say whatever people making that their business.

In this case, a man born to black parents chooses to pass as white. The thing of course comes back to haunt, like any and all meaningful choices of any substance necessarily will, by the very virtue of being meaningful and substantial. Dealing with this without becoming a tacky and cliche'd piece of nonsense is perhaps easier in novel form, and at any rate Roth manages a lot better than Meyer. Admittedly this isn't saying much - so would have a drunk cow. [↩]" An actress...or a, uh, model...or a dancer...or a...news woman". Quite. [↩]And this, by the way, is severely bad news for anyone interested in postponing the decay of this smelly mess that once aspired to be recognised as a seventh art. Originally you see, painting consisted of sitting there with the master, and if he let you do a little work in a corner of a commissioned work, it'd be under his gaze and strict supervision. Similarly, shitty actors being perforce needed to swell up the ranks of the company, nevertheless their performance would occur under the close scrutiny of the good ones, and out of this a hierarchy, and therefore a community were borne. Which promoted, as all hierarchy and all hierarchy-based communities ever do, the perfection of every shithead noob dragged in by the cold weather outside - in fact most good painters in the early history of painting and most good actors in the early history of cinema, or for that matter theater were born exactly this way. Take Bacall as your example and we're wrapped up.

But then "business" considerations prevailed, and soon enough the shitty painters worked in the shitty painter quarters, separated from the good ones. Why should they be humiliated on a daily basis and as a matter of course ? That isn't... nice. Soon thereafter painting as an intellectual and aesthetic endeavour collapsed, and that is precisely and exactly what we have here : the B shitheads worked in whatever B shithead studio, their "work" was spliced together with the Hopkins-Kidman splendor as padding and well... the whole thing's going to hell in a handbasket. Not only will I simply cut out the padding and be left with something unmarketable pre 2001, a 25 minute film, but the shitheads in question will go on to building their pointless and uninteresting castles of shitheaddery, predicated on the unwholesome premise of following "their own nature" or whatever it is they supposedly have. They don't have a soul, clearly, a soul is born out of beatings, but a nature I suppose they must have. Even golums have "a nature", right ? So let's call it that, they're following their nature. Disgusting stuff, really.

And here we are - me wondering why there aren't any more great actors coming out of the new shithead generation, they wondering why there isn't any more money coming at them like it used to back when Kidman was a virgin. Win-win, as the shitheads pretending to be capitalists like to say. Different pretense, same shitheads anyway. [↩]To be distinguished from the pandering, despicable ersatz brought to the screen by Malkovich (Disgrace). [↩]Such as in the extremely unkind, and on the face unmerited dismissal of a friend who had the misfortune of also being his lawyer, and in this capacity was in no sense speaking out of line. [↩]"Barbatii-s facuti din carne - femeile, din otel. Ar fi trebuit sa fie altfel, dar Dumnezeu mai greseste si el. Femeile zic ca-s din carne, barbatii, ca-s din otel, si de-asta e noaptea intuneric, si viata e un hotel". You can listen to it here : Ca nisipul femeile sunt - A. Andries. It says, "men are made of flesh - women, of steel. It should be the other way around, but God himself can err. Women say they're flesh, men, that they're steel - and that's why it gets dark at night, and life's a hotel." Because yes, there's Cohens in Romanian, you just don't know about it. For you do not speak Romanian. Let's not even talk Oriya. [↩]Here's a hint : if you were never raped it simply means you're the sort of worthless woman nobody can be bothered to even rape. Think on that. [↩]You know who doesn't like surprises ? People, that's who. You know who likes surprises ? Fucktards. Fucktards, the sort of mentally insufficients that lived their entire lives on hospital grounds. That's why when you throw someone a surprise birthday party and he doesn't evict you with a flamethrower I know you're honoring a putz, and that's why I don't ever stay at such an affair. I don't like socialising with putzes and their circle of putzy friends. [↩]

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Category: Trilematograf

Wednesday, 03 September, Year 6 d.Tr.

The GUI, the twerk and the most valuable resource

SBi I never really grasped the appeal of the elaborate GUI crud for Linux. Must be something like the 'give opiate addicts substitute methadone' school of thought.

MP Do you understand how dog memory works ?

SB Go on.

MP Dog memory is basically a 3-5 second remanence volatile array. This was discovered in that experiment with flashing a light above food door, waiting for a little before opening doors. If delay > 6 seconds, most dogs do no better than a coinflip. Some however always do better, which puzzled scientists for a while, because no good explanation readily apparent, until an intern figured it out. Care to guess ?

SB Many beasts have 'cache only'. I'd guess some flaw in experiment (dog was able to smell) ?

MP Nope. Some dogs had enough life experienceii to point their truffle towards the light and then go where the truffle was pointed when door opened. Ie, using their physical positioning as a very cheap, yet very effective ROM. Now, this is precisely the benefit a GUI provides to the mentally subpar human. They can not think of things they do not see, which is why the icons have to be there or else you get the classical "I did not think of it" response.

SB 'Muscle memory' is a thing, though, and a useful adjunct to actual brain. But mousetardation is abuse.

MP In short, a GUI is not unlike the accessibility ramps. Those also can be badly made by people who don't understand wtf they're doing. At any rate, this is my best effort understanding of wtf it's all for. Generally, the two trends present in society are, the USG and its agents, preoccupied with squeezing the absolute last drop of social utility and function out of the dregs, like in youtube.com/watch?v=bNnCldG5Ug0 or www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgoyVRO0A0E etc, and the, whatever, terrorists, preoccupied in empowering the select.

SB There were folks like Jef Raskin ('the humane interface') who tried to apply rationality to UI design. Personally I was not especially taken with the results.

MP The only way to treat design rationally is as management of historical data. There's no grand deductive enlightment to be had really.

SB How does the dance (linked) enter into it? I may be thick.

MP Think about it. What is that video for ? What is its purpose ? Why did someone take the time to make it ?

SB Well, Paul Erdos in his (mistaken) reply to 'why war', answered 'because some people have no theorems to prove'.

MP Somewhere on a couch in america there is this chick, almost drooling. What shall be her future ? Maybe, just maybe, if she learns this skill she then goes on to appear as an extra in rap videos and earn money productively.

SB The one who was drooling, I'd expect will lose to the porn chick who has been dancing since she was 3 yo.

MP She will lose the good job. Most jobs. But maybe there's still a place on the ledger for her, out of the rain. It's just a desperate yet unrelenting attempt to squeeze the last drop out of a long discarded olive skin. I read this bit by a nurse specialised in suicide survivor care once, she put it perfectly well : "and if you try, after you're done, we'll work with whatever you've got left". That's pretty much the epitome of that whole thing.iii

SB 'We use everything but the squeal' of the Chicago pigyards ?

MP Yup. Quite exactly. It is after all the point and the measure of "society" as understood by that line of "thought". "Nothing rejected". It's a philosophy, sui generis. What is "representative democracy" if not this ? "You lot are stupid, how can we get the most out of a stupid lot ?"

SB This does not answer the conundrum of how Linux aficionados began to see the appeal of turning into swine in swineyard.

MP Afficionados ? The guys not smart enough to sling dope ? What's not to see ?

SB So, we still have the '90s folks around, but 10,000x as many sows who are also nominally 'Linux users.'

MP Quite. "I still have the corn nibblet I ate. It's in the toilet, inside a turd."

SB lol!

MP Clearly. Look here : for any social good, whatever it be, the majority of wanters will not be able to have. Somehow the gap between the 10mn that want college degrees, cars and "to use Linux" and the 10k that actually CAN have these will be bridged. It's not a question of if. The people who do not gain by the distinction have no incentive to enforce it. So, to the guy who can't afford a car, his bike is just as good. Not conventionally. Not epidicticallyiv. Actually.

SB Paul Graham (pre-zombie phase of life cycle) had a piece concerning 'blub', term he created to express how the fool views an artifact beyond his mental grasp. 'As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.'

MP Yep.

Is it better to improve the life of untold legions of imbeciles an immeasurably tiny amount, or is it better to do things the few worthy respect ? The ancients neatly favoured the latter, the contemporaries generally favour the former. It is perhaps wise to remember both exist.

———Stands for SomeBody. Guess who ? [↩]For what it's worth, intelligence isn't usually worth all that much. Knowing what to do with it however... [↩]By Renee T Lucero, at the time a nurse with Yavapai Regional Medical Center, Prescott, Arizona. Published in Reader's Digest, June 1985.

You've decided to do it. Life is impossible. Suicide is your way out.

Fine --but before you kill yourself, there are some things you should know. I am a psychiatric nurse, and I see the results of suicide-- when it works and, more often, when it doesn't. Consider, before you act, these facts:

Suicide is usually not successful. You think you know a way to guarantee it? Ask the 25-year-old who tried to electrocute himself. He lived. But both his arms are gone.

What about jumping? Ask John. He used to be intelligent, with an engaging sense of humor. That was before he leaped from a building. Now he's brain damaged and will always need care. He staggers and has seizures. He lives in a fog. But worst of all, he KNOWS he used to be normal.

Even less violent methods can leave you crippled. What about pills? Ask the 12-year-old with extensive liver damage from an overdose. Have you ever seen anyone die of liver damage: It takes awhile. You turn yellow. It's a hard way to go.

No method is foolproof. What about a gun: Ask the 24-year-old who shot himself in the head. Now he drags one leg, has a useless arm, and no vision or hearing on one side. He lived through his "fool-proof" suicide. You might too.

Suicide is not glamorous. You may picture a movie star in a slinky negligee drifting off to eternal sleep from an overdose of pills. But your picture omits a likely sickening reality: as she dies, her sphincter muscles relax, and that beautiful gown is soiled with her excrement.

Who will clean your blood off the carpet, or scrape your brains from the ceiling? Commercial cleaning crews may refuse that job -- but SOMEONE has to do it. Who will have to cut you down from where you hanged yourself, or identify your bloated body after you've drowned? Your mother? Your wife? Your son?

The carefully worded "loving" suicide note is no help. Those who loved you will NEVER completely recover. They'll feel regret, and an unending pain. And rage, because at that moment, you cared only about yourself.

SUICIDE IS CONTAGIOUS. Look around at your family: sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husband, wife. Look closely at the four-year-old playing with his cars on the rug. Kill yourself tonight, and he may do it ten years from now. It's a fact that suicide often follows suicide in families, and kids are especially vulnerable.

YOU DO HAVE OTHER CHOICES. There are people who can help you through this crisis. Call a hot line. Call a friend. Call your minister or priest. Call a doctor or hospital. Call the police.

They will tell you that there's hope. Maybe you'll find it in the mail tomorrow. Or in a phone call this weekend. Or when you meet someone shopping. You don't know -- no one does. But what you're seeking could be just a minute, a day or a month away.

You say you don't want to be stopped? Still want to do it? Well, then, I may see you in the psychiatric ward later. And we'll work with whatever you have left.

That's, essentially, the socialist argument. "You are not your own thing", the woman goes, "nothing you ever attempt can succeed", she says, "and you'll never be rid of us". Then she wonders why people -- actual people -- want the fuck out, and why her notion of hope seems quite hopeless. Yet this is how the herd goes. [↩]Since we're doing big words : suppose I told you La Serenissima was all about apocatastasis. What then ? [↩]

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Category: Trilterviuri

Friday, 21 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

The fucking understudy

I know as little about Toronto local politics as you'd expect, perhaps even less than Toronto residents themselves.

But then again, there's BitBet, and on BitBet there are bets, and those bets are guaranteed to cover pretty much the entirety of the world to its nittiest gritty. In this case : BitBet - Rob Ford will withdraw from the Toronto mayoral race before September 12th.

So therefore, discussion with BitBet Mod :

Mod: Hey, you know who Tom Ford is ?

Me: No clue.

Mod: He's this outlier running for Toronto Mayor.

Me: Aha.

Mod: He's this big man, probably pushing 400 lbs, an ex coke addict... everyone hated him even before. However, today was the last day he could have withdrawn from the race. And yesterday, he was found with some sort of tumour in his gut. But he's not just retiring, he's come up with a replacement. His brother, Doug.

Me: Okay...

Mod: Who looks exactly like him.

Me: Huh ?

Mod: Exactly like him. Fat, incredibly pasty, like that sort of sickly pinkish skin that if you as much as blow towards turns white and then returns to pink ? Buzz haircut, blond hair. They're exactly identical.

Me: So then why didn't they run the brother directly ?

Mod: Uh...

Me: He's better in all respects right ? No cocaine history, people don't know him which is better than hating him... What sort of nonsense is this, the reserve is better than the frontman, the guy that was supposedly running ?

Mod: I guess so.

Here's a promo pic :

Are the Canucks making any fucking sense whatsoever ? What is this, guy goes to pick up his date in his beat up clunkler, "sorry honey, my other car is a Maserati, I keep it in the garage just in case this other one breaks down" sort of nonsense.

It makes one wonder who would have been Bill de Blasio's understudy. Leslie Cagan maybe ?

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Category: Politica si Prostie

Saturday, 13 September, Year 6 d.Tr.

The first trading day of F.MPIF

Some highlights :

May 01 01:41:36 mircea_popescu kakobrekla am I correct in assuming panacea F.MPIF investment is 50.0 May 1st ?

May 01 01:41:47 kakobrekla Correct.

May 01 01:41:49 mircea_popescu Ty. So that's everyone then, I will be publishing the F.MPIF 1st statement tonight.

Originally the F.MPIF inaugural statement had been promised "before the 5th", with trading to begin after it was published. Because the two managers in charge of finicky, non-automated aspects of trade were extremely on the ball and sent their reports within minutes of the month closing (and big propos to dooglus for being extremely helpful), I was able to amass all the data by 1am, and so started preparations to publish the consolidated report.

May 01 02:28:52 BingoBoingo mike_c: Looks like you are getting the first S.MPIF statement tonight so you can analytics.

Much to the market's delight.

May 01 03:42:48 JorgePasada In the meantime, work needs doing.

May 01 03:43:59 mircea_popescu Idem, these F.MPIF books ain't gonna cook themselves...

And so the first (and best) F.MPIF monthly statement was published, and there was much rejoicing :

May 01 04:24:53 assbot [MPEX] [FN] [F.MPIF] 4000 @ 0.000215 = 0.86 BTC

So much rejoicing, in fact, that by evening the entire stack was practically gone :

May 01 17:58:55 assbot [MPEX:F.MPIF] 1D: 0.000215 / 0.000215 / 0.000215 (832805 shares, 179.05 BTC), 7D: 0.000215 / 0.000215 / 0.000215 (832805 shares, 179.05 BTC), 30D: 0.000215 / 0.000215 / 0.000215 (832805 shares, 179.05 BTC)

May 01 17:59:00 mircea_popescu Holy. Mk Ima add another 1mn shares then.

May 01 18:00:02 jurov Oh, at the same price?

May 01 18:00:11 mircea_popescu Well yes.

May 01 18:00:13 assbot [MPEX] [FN] [F.MPIF] 167195 @ 0.000215 = 35.9469 BTC

That was it, 13 hours and change after listing, the entire million shares gobbled up. So as promised I created another million shares, which gave rise to some lively debate, which so far seems to have yielded a better understanding of how this thing is supposed to work. It also resulted in a collar put on jurov'si trade activity, which I think is a significant gain.

At any rate : the 1.5% spread I am tolerating currently is not firm, and may change as circumstances dictate.

And with that... happy first trade day, F.MPIF! And happy labour day everyone else - except the French.

———It occurs to me that the news of Profit Center 5's new manager was documented in an unlinked article. [↩]

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Category: F.MPIF

Thursday, 01 May, Year 6 d.Tr.

The FinFisher/FinSpy story, for posterity.

FinFisher (aka FinSpy) is a product marketed by a shell called Lench IT Solutions PLC, a subsidiary of Gamma International Ltd, a UK corporation subsidiary of Gamma International GmbH, a German corporation subsidiary of Gamma Group, which is owned through a web of offshore shells by an obnoxious septuagenarian named William Louthean Nelson. The whole charade is a GTSi marketing a bevy of dubious, relatively useless proprietary repackaging of buggy software that does not approach the reliability, quality or flexibility of open source alternatives.

FinFisher source code, pricing, support history, and other related data were retrieved from the Gamma International internal network and made available on the Internet a couple of days ago, but before we get to thatii, here are a few words from the hacker :

_ _ _ ____ _ _

| | | | __ _ ___| | __ | __ ) __ _ ___| | _| |

| |_| |/ _` |/ __| |/ / | _ \ / _` |/ __| |/ / |

| _ | (_| | (__| < | |_) | (_| | (__|

Saturday, 09 August, Year 6 d.Tr.

The femfanon

It's impossible to avoid running into the femfanon ... hm. I suppose at this point we need an explanation. Ok, let's.

The feminism canoni is of course set by the actual females : the slavegirls, the "raped", generally speaking the adult female. It includes all those fearfully frightening (to little girls) items, like for instance the happenstance that female self-determination only exists to repel unfit males, and only goes as far as finding one of those guys. One of those guys whose footsteps in the dirt she's more than happy to lick, and counts herself blessed for the grandeur of having found such wonder. Like for another instance the happenstance that females are practically immune to pain, and very vulnerable to confusionii. Like many other things we won't go into here.

The feminism fanon, however, is principally set by confused boys, the sort that gets a PhD from Urbana without a clue as to whether the field he's supposedly studying even exists - because he's bought into the bizarre theory that "you can do anything you want".iii Secondary, in lower numbers, to a lesser degree the feminism fanon is set by confused girls, the sort that have nothing. No money, no value, no knowledge, no skill, no ability, nothing at all. The sort that've not even bothered to learn how to suck cock properly, because "anyone can do that". The sort that are so immensely lazy that they figure morals and ethics are shorthand for "let's externalise costs", so that if she wants a $400 swimsuit she can't afford the best solution is for her to sit and whine as to how and why "society won't change". Because from her braindamaged perspective, it's much easier and therefore preferable for "all of society" to change rather than for her to get off her lazy butt and do half-and-half like a pro for the rest of the evening.iv What's this "all of society" to her ? Nothing, she dun' care, let them change on their own dime to please shithead-miss-perfect. Just like her shithead parents did, instead of whipping her lazy ass.

So now that we've explained ourselves, let's continue where we started off. Obviously an adult male, either monogamous or haremousv has plenty of interaction with the feminism canon. He has one or a few right at homevi, they bitch at him about how his text is liable to be misunderstood by their childrenvii all the time, he's up to date. It's impossible to avoid running into the femfanon however, especially when one does anything whatsoever with the Internet, and this because the Internet is (and has historically forever been) the house of fanon. That's really what it's supposed to be, that's the business model - from the first day of the first BBS you had the employees at the post office and the kids running the post office BBS. Different sets. The faculty of MIT and the kids running the MIT BBS. Different sets. On it goes.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, by the way. But I would like to point out that confusing the feminist fanon on the Internet for actual feminism is a mental lapse of comparable amplitude to forgetting that the community of Lord of the Rings fans are a group of people dedicated to exploring fiction, and interacting with them as if the place they're obsessed with is somehow real, perhaps an island off the coast of Japan. Obviously they wouldn't mind your approach, they'll probably be quite flattered by it, and in this sense spending an evening asking them about their fictitious costumes and the fictitious ethnology therein captured is a quite quaint, civilised and refined way to pass the time. Nevertheless, going home and forgetting that you've just discussed fiction would be the stuff psychosis is made out of. You know, mental illness. Actual mental illness, that thing where you take fiction for reality. When you think voices are real.

So you know, when I say feminism, I mean the canon. I do not mean the fanon, I have nothing against it, it's a cute and endearing way for children to spend their time, mimicking as best they can the behaviours and preoccupations of adults, the tropes of reality. Like a toy surgeon set intended for five year olds doesn't include scalpels, retractors or high voltage equipment, to wit all the things that actually make the medical profession, just so feminist fanon doesn't include any of the things that actually make feminism. But that's okay, because both the toy set and the fanon are intended for juveniles.

Nevertheless, when I say medicine I actually mean medicine, and when I say feminism I actually mean feminism. Which doesn't include confused little boys and girls with no historical footprint and of no direct importance in reality.

———The canon-fanon distinction is a repackaging - in terms familiar to and geared towards the intellectual abilities of the current generation - of the ancient nominalia/realia disjunction, a matter close to a millennium old by now. We won't rehash it here, suffice to say that in all actual encounters, materialism soundly handed idealism its ass, and what's worse : idealism showed itself as pleased as it could be and more than happy to suck realism's cock, and then take it in the ass, and generally be "raped" to shreds. And when I use the quotes around rape, is to signify that I mean by it what you mean by it. [↩]Men - or should we say young boys - are quite the opposite : not in the slightest bothered by any degree of confusion, just as long as they don't get hurt. [↩]Sure, once you understand everything that can be done, and how and why, once you grasp the whole mechanism of the Universe you can do anything you want, but this is principally the result of you becoming unable to want idiocy, which is to say stuff outside this world. [↩]Seriously, if it takes you more than a day to get some scratch together you're a failure, son, and I'm quite disappoint. [↩]How do you call people who keep multiple women ? Monogamy-monogamous, haremy-haremous, right ? Should work, this heresy. [↩]And if you don't, you're not an adult male, son. Cut that beard off, tis not for you yet. [↩]Whether they actually have some or not, roles are roles. [↩]

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Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Thursday, 03 July, Year 6 d.Tr.

The fallacy machine

Jurov linkedi an otherwise excellent article, discussing a discussion of a particular sort of self-selecting... organised fringe behaviour (OFG).ii Muy meta, verdad ?

The discussion being discussed proceeds quite sensibly, like so :

The Seven Deadly Sins of Biotech Investing:

[...]

2. Find a good Internet message board to discuss how great an investment the biotech stock you just purchased really is. When spending time on this message board, be sure to read closely all posts from those who are the most vocal proponents of the biotech stock you own. These people demonstrate their commitment by never writing anything critical. No one wants to attend a church where the preacher has doubts. The best posters will write at length about how the science behind the biotech stock you own has no rival and will completely change the world we live in. Lucky for you the world does not know this yet; you are one of a select few!iii

3. If/when you do read "outside" material -- best found by looking for links helpfully posted on your favorite Internet biotech stock message board -- be sure to highlight and read again and again those passages confirming your beliefs in the biotech stock you just purchased. If you have time, copy and paste those same passages to your favorite Internet stock message board to show your fellow longs how to conduct proper "DD." By doing this, you will celebrate together the riches to come.

[...]

4. Company-issued press releases are the best way to stay current and informed on the positive progress being made by the biotech stock you just bought. Don't bother reading SEC filings like 10-Ks, 10-Qs, proxies or registration statements. Like scientific papers, these SEC filings are overly wordy and filled with obtuse numbers and technical jargon. Also, the SEC is well known to be in the back pocket of the hedge funds, which explains why the SEC filings of the biotech stock you just bought are often filled with risk factors and other information used as ammunition by short sellers and bashers.

As you can see, I've followed the percepts of 2, being selective in my quotations. And now, let's move on to the discussion of this discussion :

No other part of the market seems to attract wildly devoted cultists like small biopharma stocks do; it's really something to see. And they must keep spawning, because many of them end up getting blown up, big-time, by their favorite stocks, only to be replaced by another cohort of true believers.

Let me point out that "no other part of the market", for it interests me.

So, no other part of the market behaves like this part of the market we're discussing, except all parts of the market do. Mining and mineral exploration stocks certainly display the same behaviouriv, Bitcoin lolstocksv certainly do... heck, according to Buffett all of the technology sector finds itself in this situation, he's stuck buying tomato sauce and chewing gum companiesvi. He probably thinks no other part of the market behaves like these do, too.vii

You see, the exact problem being discussed, casually displayed by its very discussion! It's almost as if the problem itself were a virus of the languageviii, and no matter what the approach was, as long as you're discussing it you got it! Even if you're merely being "ironic", or trying to be critical, no matter how you approach this problem, as long as you're touching it you're under charge.

The cause would be that your brain is not a tool of yours, here to help you think. Your brain is a tool of the species', temporarily being fed by you but feeling no further obligations to your own best interest or even survival past whatever would best serve the species in general. And so it engages in behaviours that are clearly against your own best interest, simply because they serve the more general goals of "exploring the space of possibilities", or "doing due diligence and evaluating obscure stocks" or "securing that beach head". And if questioned on the matter, happily swears up and down that it did not, and does not, and would not, and could never, like the typical unfaithful wife, in the rare circumstances the matter will even be considered - rare circumstances indeed.

Obviously the problem can be managed, like thieving employees can be managed, like lying whores can be managed, like any dishonest thing with a known interest can be managed. All it takes is for you to know how to manage, and that's an endless discussion we have scarcely the time for here. But it does all start with the Babylonians, their seals and their religion, as Nick Szabo aptly points out.

———Well he stole it from BB, how about that, you put all the hard work into DD and then shorts come later and steal your investment! [↩]Let's call them that to avoid the loathed idiocy label, although it is in fact proper, that's exactly what idiocy is. [↩]This would be one of the many fundamental reasons the old forum is not salvageable. Sensible men, even should they like a waterfront, make not their house in the river, but uphill a little from it.

In this metaphor, the "common man" (let's call him that to avoid the same label, although...) is the river. You don't want to find yourself in the midst of the common man for the same reason you don't want to build in running water : it has infinite hitpoints, and it's not afraid to use them! Nor is it intelligent enough to use them for any other purpose than wearing down your house and eventually washing it out into the sea. So unless you're running a mill or hydro plant or some other sort of scam, best go uphill a little.

And what does uphill mean other than... something which requires an iota more effort than none at all ? The one place water spilled on the floor can not possibly reach (unless and until propped by very large volumes of other bits of water) is your coffee table. Not that it's very tall or anything, just... tall enough. Pretty much anything is tall enough for water. [↩]More accentuated, wants my brain to say. Do you know why ? Because I've spent a degree of magnitude more time reading up on mining stocks than on biotech stocks (which I pretty much ignored for the past decade or two). Do you know what the author would say ? He'd say that I'm wrong, because he's in the inverse situation.

Or he might say that perhaps I have a point, if he too spent some time reading up on mining stocks. Which then indicates that we have common interests. You recall being 12, and your first question to new kids you might have met (for instance while your whore of a mother paid house calls and you were stuck hanging out with the richer kids of the host while your mommy slipped into her crotchless pantyhose and open top maid uniform and bent over for their daddy, or for any other reason) was something about what shows they watch/games they play/etc ? Same exact fucking principle at work : your brain compares your biases to other idiots' biases to try and create groups (both in the positive and in the negative). Because that is how groups are created, in primates. Because that's advantageous, not for the individual primates in question, but for the primate species : let emergently organised sets of biases compete so then some can run others out so then they can become culture and provide "all the benefits of thinking" without having to actually use the brain.

Because the brain is fucking lazy, just like you are : rather than code (and debug!) it'd much prefer to let individual computers crash and burn until they figure it out by themselves, then release a patch. [↩]As opposed to anything on MPEx. [↩]The two are not as chemically distinct as you'd like to imagine. [↩]And if he doesn't think so - he's still making a lot of noise claiming it. [↩]Have you read the all essences ? You should. [↩]

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Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Friday, 30 May, Year 6 d.Tr.

The discreet escort, or how Bitcoin makes prostitution unprosecutable

benkay: ;;later tell mircea_popescu how does the discreet escort leverage the WoT?

Before getting into that, consider that money changing hands is strictly the only way to successfully prosecute prostitution in all those backwater jurisdictions that still have particular flavours of sex criminalised.i Hook-ups, ie, fucking around, are legal pretty much anywhereii. Finding yourself in a certain place, such as wherever whores gather, be it a university campus or truck stop is also legal, and will stay legal by definition : if the place of gathering becomes illegal, people will necessarily gather some other place. Which will then be the gathering place. It's that simple.

Now suppose you're a policeman married to a fat ugly sow, like all policemen ever are. It's not as much a matter of not getting any nookie, for you. It's more a case of, you wouldn't want the sort of nookie readily available if it were freeiii. Consequently the hot, braless hussies running wild all over the place piss you the fuck off, with their complicated shoes and their gangbangs and slave collars and who knows what the fuck else. So you're gunna git yourself one, and put her slutty ass behind bars! And then jack off for two months to the memory of that high.

So it's settled, you be prosecutin' over here!

Except... how ? Bitcoin is impervious to your advances. Suppose you believe that 1 BTC moving from address 1richbusinessmanvisitingtown to address 1eageryoungsluttwilltakeitinthebutt through transaction a1b2c3m4o5r6t7a8u9x0v1a2c3h4e5s6 represents payment for sexual work done by Candice H. Plumsybutt upon Mr. James W. Ewesworth. Can you prove 1eageryoungsluttwilltakeitinthebutt belongs to Mz Candice ? Not really. If she wants you to, perhaps you could, but unless she gives you a signed statement to that effect, you've got nuttin'. (Notably, a signed statement by 1eageryoungsluttwilltakeitinthebutt is worthless to you, as anyone could have signed that thing, whether they were in fact Candice being honest or her sister Janice being jealous or just some random trollops trolling you all.) She doesn't have to keep her wallet on her person, it could be a paper wallet burried in the yard of her mother, three states over. She can still check the payment made it, on the public ledger, without proving thus that she actually owns the address. Isn't this new technology just fab ?

Ah! But there's still a matchboxiv left in your bag of tricks! You could pretend like you aren't really buying sex work, because you're a cop that's pretending to be buying sex services in order for to greater justice! You know, like all sophisticated and shit, a Victor/Victoria is you. I think South Park did it.v

This may be problematic, in that if Mr. Copper V. Butthurt contacts Candi and pretends to be just another Mr. Ewesworth, he could persay request a Bitcoin address from her. Should she be clueless enough to not reuse addressesvi and should she then do something else stupid, like proving to some cop or other that indeed she does control that address, it is conceivable that a jury may convict. It is inconceivable however that a DA would greenlight a case on such flimsy evidence, at least for another decade or so. This because the little known secret about commissars, be they in the old Soviet republic or in the current one, is that failure hurts them a helluvalot more than success helps. So, one single case lost before the jury scares our friendly asshole DA a lot more than the possibility of winning entices him. After all, it's not him that put all the hard buttwork into building the case, it's the cop. He couldn't care less.

For extra safety, this is where the discreet escort can leverage the WoT. For instance, she knows that I'm not likely to rate some guy who's just a cop married to a fat sow and butthurt about it. So if she only fucks the people in my WoT, not only can she turn a pretty penny because we're all rich and powerful and whatnot, but she can also rest reasonably assured that she's not about to get stinged. Moreover, if she does get stinged, she has recourse! She can complain to me, for instance, and I can just as soon turn my rating into a negative, and all that hard work put into penetrating the WoT and acquiring valuable ratings is now gone in an instant!

Which is the overarching point here, leaving aside Candice and her passionate cocksucking passtimes : perfect money corrupts absolutely. Like so :

mircea_popescu: Anyway, take the NSA Satoshi hypothesis. So the NSA spent 5mn making this thing, which we all embraced. As part of that expenditure it has premined 10mn BTC, which it kept, secretly. We don't know. Today at NSA headquarters, "Sir, I would like to apply for permission to spend 10bn USD in BTC equivalent by dumping our stash." "We don't have 10bn in the budget. Application denied."

jayk: hohoho

mircea_popescu: Bitcoin, even should it have been made by NSA, has actually taken it over. Win.

via #bitcoin-assets.

Should the copper get in the WoT, his incentive structure changes so that he's more inclined to act like us than like the other coppers. That's the major fucking point, it's not that nothing can kill Bitcoin. It's that nothing can survive it.

Nothing at all.

———Prostitution is only different from traditional marriage in the sense getting fat on McDonalds is different from getting fat on Skittles. A purely academic point, of interest strictly to some very weird, or perhaps very bored people. [↩]That's right, Saudi Arabia isn't somewhere. There, I've said it. [↩]Which it is, for very good fucking reasons, like say the efficient market hypothesis. And it's also exclusive. Very very exclusive. In fact, in the entire world, you're absolutely the only one to have it on his plate. Also for the same reason. [↩]To quote :

asciilifeform: re: 'wreckers' - correct. since the entire raison d'etre of the u.s. security apparatus is now 'terrorism' - well, the fireman, absent a fire, buys a box of matches.

[↩]Yes they did. Sting Operation. [↩]Like a certain group of not quite so innocent folks recommend, for very obvious reasons. [↩]

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Category: Bitcoin

Monday, 14 April, Year 6 d.Tr.

The disadvantages of living among idiots

The following happened in Romania quite recently : an elderly woman died in Oradea. A team of five surgeons was assembled in Bucharest and airlifted to Oradea, in order to pick up the liver, the kidneys and the corneas for transplants. There's a string of mountains between the flatlands where Bucharest lies and the hills where Oradea lies. The weather has been exceptionally foggy for this part of the world, and so the plane was being flown blind (ie, on instruments). It was probably not too well maintained, either, but in any case : it had engine trouble.

So what happened was that the pilot asked to go from 110 to 69, perhaps in an effort to get his second engine going again. After which he attempted a forced landing. On a hillside, thickly forrested, in thick fog.

The pilot of a bimotor Islander managed to land that thing to the degree that all seven people on board survived the landing. This was happening around three pm. The accident was announced to the emergency service, by cellphone, by the survivors. The airplane had the radio buoys and everything working. Romania, like all of Europe, is quite densely inhabited, you can't walk for a whole day at any place and in any direction without running into some sort of human settlement.

By four-something pm, the pilot succumbed to his injuries. He was good enough to land in impossible conditions, he was nevertheless not worthy of being airlifted within an hour, by the idiots he lives lived among.

By six or so, the one nurse in the team, a twenty-something girl in her fifth year of schooling, succumbed to her injuries. Also not worthy of being airlifted within three hours by the idiots she lives lived among.

By nine in the evening, ie enough time to play two games of baseball or four games of soccer, the locals actually found the wreckage. On foot. Forrest guards, equipped with the equivalent of 1800s top technology, which is to say boots, made it there before the GPS-directed helicopters that cost the taxpayer millions quite recently.

The political fallout of this event is banal, various bureaucrats being forced to relinquish their dearly beloved seats in the bureaucracyi, leaving beind notable observations such as that "what they regret is the event having occured during their term" and so on. I don't believe this to be exceptional, really : it's what bureaucrats are, and if you are ever in a situation where you have the opportunity to murder one, remember it'd be immoral to eschew it. The Internal Affairs minister presented some explanation or other to the Government, but seriously, who cares ?

Let's instead count the results of the want of a nail. So, because an airplane that should have been maintained wasn't properly maintained, Romania has lost a) a set of kidneys, liver and corneas which could have made the life of a few people easier ; b) the time and probably value of labour of five top specialist surgeons. Because a surgeon is much more than an athlete : nobody ultimately cares if Joe Q Schmuckson manages or doesn't manage to make the shot. Not a dollar of extra GNP results from his sportive "performance". Not so however in the case of a specialist with some sort of actual profession, such as a surgeon. Whether he makes the cut or doesn't make the cut matters, in that it may mean your ass.

If the athlete loses a leg, it's all the same : one extra guy with a limp and a bunch of beerbellies watching a different set of names on the screen. Bupkiss. If the surgeon loses an arm, it is not all the same : a number of beerbellies will die. Period & full stop, all over the world top surgeons are overworked to all hell, and if one dies that means a number of cases will have to wait. They will have to wait to die, let us be perfectly clear. In agony. Like people with no access to medical attention die. Painfully, abandoned, alone. Leaving behind the bitter taste of the plain knowledge that they could have easily lived. If, that is, if they hadn't been living among idiots.

Further : because the rescue services were manned by idiots in a country run by idiots, an exceptional pilot - not on the grounds of having whatever worthless certifications or assorted paperwork some bureaucracy issued him, but on the grounds of having actually accomplished the impossible, feats which make expert airplane pilots all over the world shake their head in disbelief - died. He is NOT replaceable. If each and every bureaucrat in Romania is put in a large cement room and washed in Zyklon-B, the total loss to Romania would be 0 (and this, incidentally, is true of any other place). They can be replaced within the week, by an arbitrarily large number of equally idiotic idiots, with an equally large pile of arbitrarily selected paper qualifications. If however one actual expert with an actual valuable skill dies, he is not replaceable. Ever. At all.

Sure other good pilots may in time appear. The problem is that there's an infinite need of good pilots, and absolutely no need of bureaucrats. As a consequence, even if we had an infinity of good pilots, the death of any single one of them is an irrecoverable tragedy. However, even if all - or the only one - bureaucrat dies, his death is of no import and no consequence whatsoever. We didn't need him in the first place, for any purpose, to any degree.

A girl also died. She was apparently pretty smart and hard working. You know, just like your girlfriend, if you love your girlfriend, except she was someone else's.

Had these people lived among sane other people, they'd have all been fine. Because they lived among idiots... welll... it didn't work out so well, for any of them : not for the pilot nor for his copilot nor for the nurse nor for the doctors nor for the people needing transplants and so on all around.

This, I will underscore, is by no means an isolated case. Romanian passenger trains run at 30-35 mph. That's right, there's no misprint, they go slower than what US trains did in the day of Lincoln. Some guy came to visit from Moldavia, a four hundred mile trip took him eighteen hours on the train.

The press all over the world covered the recent OpenBSD thing. Not just the English speaking press, by any means. Do a search, you'll find hits in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, the works. Absent ? Romanian.

MPOE-PR Interesting to see how/when this story is picked up huh.

MP Yea lol. Romaniantards avoided it like the plague. The equivalent being some guy from Boiseii winning the lottery, which is news everywhere EXCEPT in Boise. Because... what! a guy from our town ?! NO!

MPOE-PR Hehehe.

MP God forbid we run a "Finally! Definite proof we are all idiots and we suck! Sorry mom!"

MPOE-PR Or why not even a "Finally! Definite proof that it's not the fact that we were born in Romania that makes shit so hard! Look what is actually possible! Thanks mom!"

MP Even that.

The Romanian press was too busy discussing the comings and goings of a few ex-cons involved in the local soccer circus to notice that the actual Romanian billionaires are... well... other places. Like life itself. Sure, I'm rich and powerful and can single-handledly turn things around, I don't need nobody. I force submission and obedience and performance where none's naturally forthcoming, and hardly notice the extra effort required. But what if you're not me ? What if you do need help to be able to do the good things you do ?

And that brings us full circle : the disadvantage of living among idiots is that if you do anything where you depend on others, you'll go bust. Does your plane need fueliii and maintenance, things you can't do yourself, personally, with your own two hands ? You're fucked. Does your profession require you to move quickly over geographic distances, something you can't do by yourself ? You're fucked. Do you need health care ? Awww. Nice knowin' ya.

Sure, this sort of environment, the company of idiots, breeds self reliance. It breeds thin waifs, girls with nice legs on account of all the walking they do and wives that are happy with the old couch and thankful if they're not beaten to a pulp each day. It has a whole list of its own advantages. Conspicuously absent on that list, anything you'd ever actually want for yourself.

———Recall the Adrian Severin incident ? Guy caught stealing, refusing to relinquish his EU Parliament seat, even in the boos of that institution in corpore. What, it's his seat, why should he give it up ?!?! [↩]Idaho. World famous... potatoes. Or was it mamaliga ? [↩]One time I saw death with my own two eyes of many such times : the military helicopter I was in caught a droplet of water and the engine died out. We fell ~three thousand meters out of the sky just like any old rock before the pilot miraculously managed to restart the engine. Why was there water in the aircraft fuel ? [↩]

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The way of stones »

Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Thursday, 23 January, Year 6 d.Tr.

The death of taxes

The only coherent argument in favour of that particular form of robberyi which shuns its proper nameii comes to us from Nick Szaboiii : inasmuch as productivity of labour on one hand and security for that productivity on the other hand are the practical restraints which drive all human society, along with its institutions and generally speaking cultural and civilisational productioniv ; and inasmuch as security is a collective affair (productivity being in all places and times an individual matter), it then follows that taxation is not merely inevitable but perhaps also a good thing.

That "perhaps" tail is definitely weak - no robbery is ever a good thing, no matter how spun around. For one thing, it de-individuates the victim, creating first the possibility and down the road the suffocating actuality of philosophical zombies : entities that while human in every outer aspect, are nevertheless not human in any sense that matters. For another thing, it creates perverse competition and perverse incentives : as a master of a harem of women that are willingly my slaves, I should have empty field all around, commensurate with the relative frequency of people that are equally able. I should not have to interact with (which obviously means destroy) groups of people who act as-ifv, but are actually devoid of the if, because this simply wastes everyone's time (theirs, mostly).

But leaving the "perhaps" tail aside, it stands as truth that for most of human history (specifically, since the Marian reforms 21 centuries ago, when a country the size of the entire world composed out of independent landholders who also served in the military as independent soldiers was restructured as Parthian satrapyvi) it was in fact more effectual to run security as a collective rather than as independent individuals.

This is long ended now. It is unclear when the end came, the world works much like a Kafka novel - you do notice at some point you're way, way off but you can't really pinpoint the exact moment in the past when the story dived off a long plank. Perhaps it was the rise of nuclear warfare a century ago that did it, for the first time a large mass of army became a major liability. Or maybe it was the rebellion of the English western colonies, when red coats and English discipline proved a major liability.

Whenever it may have been, by now it's a fact, and quite indisputable. The United States have just expended 7 trillion in repayment obligationsvii, a decade of effort and more human life than the war on tobacco has saved to try and fight what they perceived as their enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the end result that their enemy now has more materiel than it did a decade ago, and the vain eagle is scrambling to safely demolish its embassy in Baghdad. A worse defeat could not be imagined, and it speaks to the entire principle : three hundred million people paying 23`333 dollars each - each , each, every last child, pregnant woman, homeless convict of them yet failing to defeat, over the course of a decade, hardly a million opponents.

Security is no longer a collective concern. They readily managed to destroy the Iraqi state, but what of it ? Afghanistan didn't even have a state in the first place. So what of it ? What use the state, in a world where security is not to be attained through the traditional workings of the state ?

Security is no longer a collective concern, and so the last possible argument in favour of that kind of robbery which shuns its proper name is herewith gone. Why collect taxes ? To equip the enemy ? How about no, how about forget it.

It has been said that Bitcoin makes taxation impossible, and this is very true. It is also not particularly interesting : long before being made impossible, taxation had been rendered useless. That's all that matters really, even if some might find themselves inclined to shoot the messenger, upset that without it being made impossible, however pointless taxation might have continued as a thing for just long enough for them to end their life "in peace", which is to say, dreaming their dream instead of living in reality.

I guess some people will be very upset. So what of it ? They weren't people in the first place, dreamers never are. Who's going to have the time to seriously consider the feelings of philosophical zombiesviii over the coming years ?

———The process by which a group (whether through its "representatives" or not) removes valubles from most individual members under threat of violence is nothing else but robbery. There's no pre-written argument, nor is there any recourse, so it's not a contract ; there's no will on the part of the despoiled so it's not a donation. At this point it could be either theft or robbery, but the fact that the victims know about the missing goodies and the quite present threat of violence solve the dilemma.

There is nothing more to say on this matter, notwithstanding the garrulously insipid efforts of a whole legion, from Hobbes (who - in line with any Chinese and Russian slave-peasant since the dawn of history - declares that as there's a yoke clearly there should be one) to Rousseau (who, smarting a little the day after, decides that instead of thinking himself a rape victim he'd rather pretend like there exists a marriage contract somewhere, that somehow nobody can find nor remember). [↩]All other robbers gladly announce : "This is a robbery!". Not these guys, they have a whole conceit going, calling themselves "taxmen" and so forth. [↩]History and the Security of Property [↩]We follow the distinction that cultural productions are all the items produced that have no physical existence, but exist merely in the ideal - software, if you wish ; whereas civilisational productions are all the items produced that do have physical existence - hardware, if you wish. It can be certainly argued that the software is evident in the hardware (and it has), and moreover many of our ideas of the software of meanwhile extinguished groups comes from an examination of the still extant hardware. Nevertheless, this does not reduce culture to civilisation, irrespective of how much culturally sterile failed groups (such as the one currently inhabiting North America) would like to convince the world so as to convince themselves that there's no place besides Iowa. [↩]This is covered in an older Romanian article, "Tara ca un hotel, sau o schimbare de perspectiva" :

So we understand each other : John is some poor and kinda stupid kid from some ghetto in some indistinct townlet. One day, Mircea the Bad comes there on whatever business, sits down in the bar with his two bitches curled up at his feet and drinks a rum or something. The girls from the ghetto, for love of their country (in our example, that sad ghetto) pick John up forcibly, sit him down at the table next to mine and curl at his feet, just like the other two. They're definitely not slavegirls, they have neither the training nor the skills nor in the end the needs or structure of that relationship, and no marble columns, no gardens where water sprinkles among the cypress nor artesian fountains springing forth marzipan await them at home, but instead the nude concrete walls, the [low class mass produced kitsch wallhanging stuff], the bedbug infested pressed shitboard nightstand. But indifferent to all these points, they play a role to support a theory : the theory that here too, in the assghetto of shit "we got fine stuff", and a John who, even if only four letters long, is still quite as great as any Mircea come from afar.

Well, that's patriotism, the girls in this example show "love of their ghetto" and that's the thing upon which socialist Romania was built, if you're curious - a structure otherwise borrowed from Carlist Romania. Totul pentru patrie!

[↩]Yes, I share the classical authors' disdain for the East. [↩]About two trillion in cash, which they propose to repay over fifty or so years, coming to roughly 7 trillion. [↩]Ever since I discovered how this term can be recycled to proper use, I love it.

To explain myself : the "philosophical zombie" is a paralogic construct which socialistoid thinkers use as a formalised appeal to ignorance in what they imagine is refutation of non-socialistoid thought. The great thing about nonsense, of course, is that it can be equally applied every which way, once you prove that 1 = 2 there's little to stop me from using your proof to prove 1 = -1, and so here we go : the same zombie is perfectly useful to destructure any conceivable attempt at intellectually considering any point of socialism.

Irony. [↩]

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

Romanian bloggers, part 2 »

Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Saturday, 28 June, Year 6 d.Tr.

The dangers of Irish pubs

So I'm sitting in this booth, very comfortably upholstered, of this decent looking Irish pub around here. It don't say decent looking because it was something out of a magazine or looked like a movie set, but quite the contrary : the various elements making up an Irish pub were there present, well worn, with gaps here and there, exactly what you'd expect out of the only white people who endured two famines in modern times (hey, not even the Ukrainians managed that!).

As I'm sitting there, it suddenly occurs to me :

"Hey, what if there was a dog about this big" (palms about a foot apart)

"Okay"

"And it sat under the table over there" (indicates far end of booth, against a wall, some crumbs on the floor)

"Aha ?"

"And it were really really very quiet and well behaved. No whimpering, no scratching, no anything. How long do you suppose it could be there before anyone noticed ?"

"Well where would it pee ?"

"Suppose it didn't need to pee or anything of the sort."

"What does it eat ?"

"Crumbs. And I guess it could sneak a something out of people's plates when they're not looking."

"Forever. Especially if it learned how to sit upside."

"Hm ? "

"You know, sit, but on the underside of the table."

"This would be a pretty decent movie, you know ? Show the world through the eyes of a really small dog living under a table in a booth in an Irish pub."

"But there's no story!"

"No, just characters. You could have a really fat guy saying all sorts of suspicious stuff, a woman getting fucked, whatever."

"How is this a film ?"

"How is a documentary a film ?"

"It isn't."

So there you go, your Trilema takeaway : always check the underside of booth tables in Irish pubs you visit. You never know when a small well behaved dog could be upsitting there.

But moving on : suppose some guy went to college and got a diploma in Biology, and went to teach in some rural school in the middle of nowhere, only for the purpose of teaching wrong Biology to kids. And he'd put a lot of work into it, too, he'd explain to them that fingers really go through the hand all the way to the shoulder, and show them fake models and doctored dissection prints and whatnot. Just deliberately and elaborately spread a whole load of absolutely patent nonsense.

Obviously he could get the job, because nobody wants it. How long do you figure he'd be able to keep it up ? Eventually they'd arrest him for driving around with three heads of 12 year olds in his cars and no bodies, or something like that, twenty five years later, and going through his stuff they discover he's been doing this number on the "eager bright minds" for a while... suddenly there's thousands of adults that have to be reached out all over the country, with a notice from the government going "o by the way, that teacher we hired that told you kidneys are inside the lungs ? totally bullshitting you, they're not!"

Not so sure about the dog idea, but the freaky Biology prof would definitely make a pretty decent slasher/screamer flick. So there.

« Here's why we don't like how the world currently works

The problem of claims »

Category: Zsilnic

Friday, 17 October, Year 6 d.Tr.

The conference, third edition

The second conference was a lot of warm, intimate fun. As promised then, we’ll be having a third edition, which will work pretty much on the same APIi.

This will work as follows :

You can get on the VIP list. There is a cost associated with thisii and you will have to actually be a VIPiii. You will be expected to behave courteously towards the other VIPs, which specifically includes not trying to sell them. You may pitch if asked to pitch, you may talk business by mutual agreement, but you may not under any circumstances cold hit on peopleiv - they come to the conference to relax and enjoy themselves, not to be intellectually brutalized. Please respect that.

You can get on the press list. If you work for either well known or very cool outlets have your editor contact me for a press invitationv.

You can be a registered participant. The only requirement is that you make a comment here, signed with your gpg key, stating your intention to participate. You will get priority admissionvi and we will try to help you with any questions you may have or difficulties you may encounter.

You can just show up.

Here’s a tentative schedulevii :

Friday, April 17th 2015 : VIPs and guests arrive.viii. Open to the public lunch (15:00). Open to the public event (sightseeing or somesuch). Open to the public dinner (21:00). Clubbing and bar hopping (until last man standing).

Saturday, April 18th 2015 : VIP only event (12:00). VIP only lunch (16:00). Press meet (16:30). VIP only dinner (22:00).x

Sunday, April 19th 2015 : Open to the public Q&A session / workshops (12:00). Open to the public lunch (16:00), Open to the public Q&A session / workshops (18:00). Open to the public dinner (22:00).

All this will be taking place in Buenos Aires, smack drab in the center of townxi. Taking as a given that you will be flying, you will probably be arriving to and departing from Ministro Pistarini International Airport, Buenos Aires, Argentina (IATA: EZE, ICAO: SAEZ). If you have a choice I would advise connecting through Istanbul - perhaps with a day or two layover to take in the town. That’s what I did, and I loved it.

Yes I will have private security, but mostly to protect the participants from themselves rather than for any local concern. Contrary to what may hear from locals and panicked-as-a-lifestyle Westerners, crime in Buenos Aires is not significant (contrary to say, Los Angeles).

This is very much a VIP driven event, so if you would like any particular activity or equipment be included or provided please let me know in advance.xii

List of confirmedxiii participating VIPs :

Martha McCuller, MiniGame CTO, first woman in Bitcoin, first woman on the Internet, first woman engineer at RCA etc.

Benjamin Vulpes, Bitcoin Foundation co-chair.

Herbie Versmells, pants guy.

Hannah Wiggins, F.MPIF last standing manager.

Shane Kinney, Bitcoin Foundation co-chair.

Stanislav Datskovskiy, S.NSA principal.

Mike Cirello, BTCAlpha.i

David Francois, Paymium.

Press List :

Stevie "thestringpuller" Frederick, accredited on behalf of Qntra.net

———

How many things do you know that use the same API next year as they did last year ? Please count. [↩]

To reflect the theoretically absent but practically quite present inflation of the dollar, you can either pay the equivalent of 1`320 USD at prevailing market rates during 2014, or the equivalent of 1`950 USD at prevailing market rates up until the 15th of March 2015. Note that you can’t get on the VIP list late no matter what happens, if you’re not in by the ides of March you will have to wait for the third edition. All payments are final, there will be no refunds made on request. [↩]

This means that if you don’t run any sort of Bitcoin infrastructure, if you’re not well represented in the WoT, if you don’t have significant credentials you can’t get on the VIP list irrespective of whether you’re willing to pay the fee or not. [↩]

And yes if participants complain you will have your VIP status rescinded. [↩]

Press invitations are issued per outlet rather than nominal, which means you will have to bring along a letter from your editor stating you’re the designated participant. Note that they will have to make specific publishing commitments in order to obtain the invitation (such and such pages, such and such slots on such and such dates).

If your outlet is relying on the cool theory be prepared to argue it well and on the first pass, I won’t be sending my staff on research binges simply because the only way some obscure publisher can get himself out of bed in the morning is the self-delusion of coolness. [↩]

Should any open to the public event be full all the VIPs will be admitted, then any registered participants on a first come basis, then, if space allows, unregistered participants. [↩]

Bear in mind that we’re almost a full year away and things may well change. A definitive schedule will be published late March 2015. [↩]

Just like on the 1st edition VIPs get free shuttle service to and from the airport, free hotel accommodation including breakfastix, free meals and drinks everywhere. [↩]

Everyone is getting two room apartments wich contain a nice matrimonial bed upon which you can comfortably fit a hot Brasilian chick with deep green eyes on either side of you (I tell you from experience), plus a couch in the other room. So you can bring your wife and your girlfriend, or, I suppose, her boyfriend. [↩]

Note that Argentina has a weird biorythm. [↩]

If you’re fond of maps, somewhere between Puerto Madero and Plaza 25 de Mayo. I would have loved for it to be between Mayo and Mustard somehow, but sadly it couldn’t be arranged. [↩]

We’re normally going to talk openly and freely, gathered around some sort of square or round table. This, from what I’ve seen, is a complete surprise for anyone with conference-going experience, which quickly turns into a pleasant surprise. If however you’d prefer a more formal setting, or favour a particular format ; or if you intend to present things which require equipment, or would simply like a projector or something, do say, you’ll be accommodated. In any event it’s a good idea to think about what you’d like to say, and how, and why before being confronted with two dozen pairs of eyes attached to people you respect. [↩]

This means they’ve paid. [↩]

———Amusingly, in between last year's "BTCAlpha" and this year's "BTCAlpha" he was S.WOL principal. But if you miss the yearbooks, what's to do ?! [↩]

« This is me being completely spaced out

Visual Buenos Aires »

Category: Activism

Thursday, 29 May, Year 6 d.Tr.

The Bitcoin Lordship list, first revision

This thing was introduced four months ago, and at the time it was a wildly scandalous and utterly revolutionary idea : organise the space - all of the space, the entire world - not according to a "topic" but according to a lordship list. Not by "ideas", but by people. A republic not of "laws", but of men. You know, just like anything that ever worked has ever been organised in the entire history of humanityi to dateii. Quite revolutionary, in the reactionary sense of that term.

This revolutionarily reactionary idea worked quite well, and armed with experience I am now confident it will work even better in the coming years. Which is why putting in a little work maintaining it seems justified. So, here's the new list :

id

rater nick

rated nick

ratee total rating

created at (UTC)

34530

assbot

nanotube

781

2014-04-11 06:17:44

34506

assbot

mircea_popescu

183

2014-04-11 06:06:13

34505

assbot

kakobrekla

147

2014-04-11 06:05:47

34534

assbot

joecool

67

2014-04-11 16:52:08

34514

assbot

jurov

64

2014-04-11 06:09:14

36390

assbot

fluffypony

63

2014-08-13 01:10:49

34517

assbot

Apocalyptic

54

2014-04-11 06:09:32

34529

assbot

davout

53

2014-04-11 06:15:03

34509

assbot

thickasthieves

47

2014-04-11 06:06:42

34511

assbot

bingoboingo

46

2014-04-11 06:07:55

34520

assbot

Namworld

46

2014-04-11 06:10:31

34536

assbot

mod6

41

2014-04-11 16:53:11

34510

assbot

nubbins`

38

2014-04-11 06:07:05

34508

assbot

asciilifeform

35

2014-04-11 06:06:30

34507

assbot

ben_vulpes

31

2014-04-11 06:06:22

36389

assbot

dignork

31

2014-08-13 01:10:41

34515

assbot

mike_c

30

2014-04-11 06:09:20

36392

assbot

justusranvier

30

2014-08-13 01:11:02

36388

assbot

FabianB

23

2014-08-13 01:10:29

34516

assbot

thestringpuller

17

2014-04-11 06:09:27

34524

assbot

pete_dushenski

17

2014-04-11 06:11:31

34513

assbot

moiety

14

2014-04-11 06:09:02

34519

assbot

pankkake

13

2014-04-11 06:10:03

34527

assbot

artifexd

11

2014-04-11 06:12:03

34533

assbot

punkman

10

2014-04-11 16:51:40

34525

assbot

chetty

9

2014-04-11 06:11:38

36391

assbot

mthreat

8

2014-08-13 01:10:55

34528

assbot

dub

6

2014-04-11 06:14:35

34518

assbot

bounce

5

2014-04-11 06:09:42

34526

assbot

diametric

3

2014-04-11 06:11:56

In general, and for all time, one can get on that list, or off that list, through a process that's fuzzily defined on purposeiii and staunchly undemocratic. It's not necessarily unrepresentative, but emphatically no promise is made that it will represent in any particular manner (let alone "fairly" for any arbitrary definition of "fairly") any particular group.

This is not accidental or an oversight, but quite foundationally deliberate. The goal is not a spot for everyone under the sun, we're not socialists over here. The goal is quite contrary to that : making it impossible for the unworthy to ever see the sun again, and coming up with some sort of definition of "unworthy" that may be well applied. No matter who gets hurt and how badly, just as long as the thing sort-of manages to keep most of the shit buried it'll be so very much better than any possible alternative the bureaucratic Morlochiv of socialist statism can ever provide. So, so very much better.

For they less ideologically consumed and more practically minded : have intelligent things to say, you will eventually end up on the list. Not have intelligent things to say, you will eventually end up off the list. That's the whole of the law.

Finally, for they interested in doing a little bit of work : a nice graph of the WoT would be nice. Something like this except up to date and b-a centric.

———The most productive way to look at the history of the Roman Republic and subsequent Empire is in the following terms : "there was a set of benches somewhere, and people put a lot of attention into sorting the way they occupied them". That's all, the whole Republic : a very complicated game of pecking order played under some hills somewhere. Everything else flows from there, that was the prime motivator : not armies, not commissions, not money. All these mere means towards the actual goal of anyone involved, called "glory", but practically meaning... a better spot on the benches. That's it. [↩]With the unnotable, short lived exception of the Internet, or more specifically : of all the things that were tried once the Internet became infected with the September spawn that shouldn't have ever been allowed online in the first place. Those things that never worked. [↩]So it can't be gamed. Same story as with punishment, only the other direction. [↩]As asciilifeform points out, a Morloch is a Moloch worshiped by morlocks. [↩]

« Terms of Endearment

PetaMeta »

Category: Bitcoin

Wednesday, 13 August, Year 6 d.Tr.

The Bitcoin Foundation finally incorporated!

The Bitcoin Foundationi was incorporated on #bitcoin-assets last week. Here's a section of its charter :

0x1] BACKGROUND ; SCOPE ; OBJECTIVES

Bitcoin is a far reaching innovation with effects unknown and unknowable.

It is altogether probable that its effects will conflict with all currently established human conventions.

Maintaining the core values as established by the original author in the form of a reference implementation that is lightweight, coherent and cruft-free in face of this conflict requires deliberate effort involving multiple people, which in turn require management and guidance.

``THE BITCOIN FOUNDATION'' will endeavour to provide these, while fostering community growth and development, under the general principle that if and when any other thing conflicts with Bitcoin, that other thing must either be discontinued or amended in such a way as to no longer conflict with Bitcoin.

Stan's desire for a printed version of the reference Bitcoin implementationii provided the impetuus for the Bitcoin Foundation finally coallescing.

Since then work has been proceeding briskly in the salt mines of "peeling the layers upon layers of crap inserted by the Power Muppets since 2012ishiii". Notwithstanding the appalingly poor quality of the original code drenched under all that ulterior cargo cultism and "lookma!Impatchsubmitting!"-ism, there is still plenty of hope that an actual Bitcoin reference implementation may eventually emerge from all these joined efforts. I, for one, am cautiously optimisitc.

The Foundation has appointed a treasurer in jurov, who has duly registered 1FundZy7m7b8begbh9haCguKJcAdFopRJ9 as the official Bitcoin Foundation donation address. I have just contributed 10 BTC myself, and I encourage anyone interested in the ultimate success of Bitcoiniv to contribute themselves. For my part, I intend to contribute again in the future, contingent on how efficiently and effectively the Foundation employs its treasury.

As a general rule, if intelligent people take the time to reject stupidity, governments don't stand a chance.

PS. Per request, f9beb4d9.org domain coming soon live!

———Yes, I am aware there also exists a scam run by a [group of] scammer[s] that purports to call itself that. It makes very little difference, in the end. [↩]Which is totally happening, by the way, talk to nubbins`. [↩]And lordy is there a lot of it, ask Vulpes. [↩]As Bitcoin, not as yet another Cenaclul Flacara / "USG sponsored fake freedom thing". [↩]

« WarOfLife (S.WOL), October 2014 Statement (closing)

The #bitcoin-assets deed system »

Category: Bitcoin

Tuesday, 04 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

The #bitcoin-assets deed system

After an earlier failed attempt that old idea finally seems to have come to fruitioni, thanks to punkman's tireless efforts.

The system consists of :

An IRC bot (punkbot, for now) that idles in #bitcoin-assets and

Responds to commands, like

jurov punkbot, deed https://coinbr.com/foundation.txt.asc

punkbot jurov: Queued 1 valid deed for next bundle.

ben_vulpes punkbot: status

punkbot ben_vulpes: No pending deeds | Last bundle 2 hours and 31 minutes ago

ben_vulpes punkbot: balance

punkbot ben_vulpes: Balance at 1LAwrWMbP[...] is 0.0146 BTC (0.0 unconfirmed), enough for 132 more bundles.

Issues its own status updates, like

punkbot [trust-update] | removed: fivezerotwo

punkbot Bundled 1 deed | http://deeds.bitcoin-assets.com/b/12CJHNrB

punkbot Confirmed bundle 12CJHNrBGLNxLaYbX9NH2tnU1JAeXxByZ6 | http://deeds.bitcoin-assets.com/b/12CJHNrB

notifying the channel on updates of assbot's L2 listii, of prepared bundles being sent as transactions and of such transactions being confirmed.

A website (deeds.bitcoin-assets.com) where registered deeds are listed in historical order, and the raw deed as well as details about its confirmation can be inspected.

An unseen part, which takes all the deeds received during an hour, sha256 hashes them, b58encodes those hashes, joins with "," all the b58encoded hashes, sha256's the resulting string and uses that as a private key for the confirmatory transactioniii and also maintains the database, website and so forth.

The point of the system and its advantages are not going to be discussed here. It's a registrar of deeds, it serves exactly the same central purpose in commerce, politics and the life of the city generally that any other registrar of deeds systemiv ever served : a definite statement can be registered as having been issued by a specified party at a certain timev.

It serves them better, of course, seeing how pgp signatures are and will remain an unmatched advance in merchantry, but this is entirely besides the point : just like we won't bother to try and explain to the peasant that's never seen a horse anything about the economic advantages and military importance of locomotion, similarly we won't bother explaining to the rider hordes anything about the economic advantages and military importance of the superiority of internal combustion engines over trained animals in terms of locomotive power. Let everyone figure out the world in his own time, on his own dime, or else die trying. It's not like anything about it is optional or needs any persuading anyway.

The bot only accepts pgp-signed materialvi. The code is open source. The future is now.

———As you've perhaps noticed already. [↩]That almighty lordship list. [↩]The way deed bundles are confirmed by the bitcoin-assets deed system is by sending a Bitcoin transaction from the system's fixed address (1LAwrWMbPLLSpt7nkD5Jv1Yf4cwPhD98ny - that LAw part being a coincidence!) to an address obtained by hashing the bundle. There's some work done to help independent third parties to spend that transaction, thereby passively verifying the bundle. [↩]The Torrens title office in your town, for instance, provided your town lies in a jurisdiction advanced enough to use that system, or else the notary public service. [↩]Not in a certain place, because the Internet is all the same one place. [↩]And only from people on the #bitcoin-assets lordship list. [↩]

« The Bitcoin Foundation finally incorporated!

MPIF (F.MPIF) October 2014 Statement »

Category: Bitcoin

Tuesday, 04 November, Year 6 d.Tr.

The bicameral world : in one room, the city dump. In the other room, the starred restaurant. Do these talk to each other ? Read on to find out!

Her Oh and re that bicameral mind thing - I remember you telling me about it before, tho I don't remember the context. Anyway it's a pretty intersting theory, but some of the guy's support for it doesn't make much sense, which may in truth be a reflection of the poor quality of the wiki article, 'cause how would they necessarily know how to form a good argument. So Ima prolly read moar. (One issue for instance is how article notes that Iliad has no self consciousness but Odyssey does; even granting the whole Homeric question as probably healthy skepticism, the pieces afaik are more or less acceptably 8th century BCE, so what, the change occurred within the span of 100 years, being super generous?! And if that was a "support" for his theory, why does it later suggest that mass migrations in 2nd century BCE lead to the change -- if it was demonstrated six centuries earlier?!)

Me No they aren't ? The Iliad is a more or less faithful notation of matter that had been circulated by as much as 1k years at that point. The Odyssey is more or less Homer's own material trying to follow up.

Her So this would suggest the change was even older? The mass migrations of the second millennium BC, caused by Mediterranean-wide earthquakes, created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses that required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. Why is that being posited if change already occurred to the degree it's present in literature several centuries beforehand?

Me But you realise such a change would be gradual ?

Her Yes but how gradual; before it was six centuries, now it's as much as 16 centuries.

Me Let me make a model for it shall I ?

Her By all means.

Me Ok. At some point illo tempore, the chimps moving around started hearing voices. This is the deep reason some people insist there must have been an outside influence to civilisation (UFOs, god, w/e) : because to the chimps themselves it appeared that way.

Her Wait.

Me These voices were in fact not external, as it subjectively seemed, but internal : the brain had developed emergent organised permanent errors.

Her (Sorry didnt mean to interrupt.)

Me Now, the deep reasons for this particular set of OPE is not well understood, but it is a point of fact that sufficiently complex systems can develop these. The most accessible example is the computer virus. In the particular way it worked for humans, what happened was that structures in the brain emerged in one "zone", and needed to talk to the active zone, which is to say the part of brain that controlled the body and behaviour. Lacking sufficient bandwidth (because neuron bandwidth, ie axons, are an on-demand and kind-of slow application) the data ended up being routed around through a more distant node, which was well connected. That node happened to be speech. And so the chimps ended up with what the brain interpreted as "someone" speaking, merely because in brain-terms this'd actually be what'd happen. It's not so much unlike calling a cake "the French cake" because it came to you with the French post. Notwithstanding they got it from China. As coincidence would have it, this mutationi was also [mostly] beneficial, allowing for much more complex behaviours, at which point humanity split once again : those whose mutations worked fine were the new people ; those whose mutations didn't quite work were the schizophrenics. This is coherent with the emergence of schizophrenia in the later life (onset is usually 30 to 40, and the earlier it emerges the more hopeless the prognostic) and it also unifies and explains beautifully an otherwise ununderstood and incomprehensible set of perhaps unrelated issues. (Generally this is true, as onthogenesis follows filogenesis, disease appears at failed twists in the road, as it were.)

Her Aha! Well modeled this way it seems much stronger. Except for one part

Me Now, since this mutation happened to use speech as its route...

Her Oh sorry. Fuck.

Me ...it had the incredible and never before seen ability TO INFECT, which is indeed rare for such a thing. Because it could well hijack the auditory processes of uninfected people, to expose them to THE VOICE, which in some cases perhaps organised the volitive zone in such a way that it started to hear (or demand to hear!) the other zone. Regardless how or why, it did spread, over perhaps as many as 10 or 20 thousand years, achieving (through populational pressure and negative selection for the ex-"healthy") pretty much unanimity (or perhaps a strong majority) cca 3k bce. AT THIS POINT the routing problem started to be resolved in some people, allowing direct communication bypassing the hearing pretense in some select individuals. Also at this point we believe there were a lot of sudden stressors, such as perhaps earthquakes. These two are probably coincidental, even if the former is perhaps denuding the human experience for a more deep and anxious experience of the latter. Nevertheless, the impression created in the "fixed" minds was that of abandonment : not only were the voices now silent, but also look at all the trouble! This pretty much explains the Jewish sacred texts and their many copy-pasted versions hence, as the journal of some people some time ago. A shared journal, and rather primitive in notation, but nevertheless. This also created a strong demand among these for a retelling of the world, such as it was. Homer fulfilled this need, by collecting together and reshaping in an non-audible-ready format all sorts of previous grunts and stupidities. The shape of the Iliad pre Homer doesn't exist not because the events depicted did not exist and were not known having been invented by him, but because their previous expression is of a completely different nature. The difference being of the kind of Joe grunts atop Jane vs "and then Joe grunted atop Jane". Joe's experience of Jane is not literary, nor vice-versa, and they wouldn't necessarily describe it as I have. This met with extreme success, being exactly what was needed. But eventually Homer ran out of material and wanted to make new material. Which he did make, and which was equally successful, but it was substantially different. For this was not a description of Joe and Jane, but an imagination of Joe and Jane, and you can tell this difference analysing the two texts. All the beauty of this theory aside, the support is indeed weak and will likely remain so. ~Fin~

Her I'm not even gonna put the question to the one bit that seemed weird early on right now, I'd rather sit with the whole thing.

Me Good habit.

Her If it was intriguing before it's miraculous now. TYVM for the model.

Me Usually takes a little explaining for people to realise wtf the guy wanted to say. I guess i should publish this.

Her Well your presentation is (shock of shocks!) about infinitytimes better than the disorganized pancake on the wiki page.

Me Lol. Who could have believed that a city dump run on communist principles is not quite equal to a starred restaurant run by an actual chef.

Her That's funny until I try to answer it honestly ;/

———Not used here as the genetics term of art, but for its plain and ordinary meaning. [↩]

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Orlov is wrong, and other stories. »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Saturday, 22 February, Year 6 d.Tr.

The basics of banking. A discussion.

* deanclkclk (~chatzilla@190.83.srs.ly) has joined #bitcoin-assets

deanclkclk Anyone here who's a money manager? I want to ask something about fractional reserve banking. Or anyone here who understand franctional reserve banking.

mircea_popescu Go ahead.i

deanclkclk Well just looking at a t account..how can fractional reserve banking be inflationary what is loan out (asset to the bank) is always equal to it's liability (deposit)?

mircea_popescu You'll have to phrase that question better. What's your definition of "inflationary" ?

deanclkclk If the depositor withdraws money ..it comes from the bank reserves. Inflationary..rising prices.

mircea_popescu That'd be rising prices. Traditionallyii inflation is defined as that state where the monetary mass increases. If in 2010 the total volume of payment instruments is 5, and in 2011 it's 6, then you've had 20% inflation.

deanclkclk But, let me ask you this. In an investment bank...one which the depositor can't withdraw from his account because, he knows the bank doesn't have it (it's loan out)..that's isn't inflationary. But, it is said in a fractional reserve bank...the depositor still has access to his deposit even though it's loan out that doesn't make any sense, because if deposit is 9 == loan 8 + reserve 1.

mircea_popescu Well, you've constructed it so it doesn't make any sense. Take a better example : say I run a whorehouse and you bring me your wife.iii Then one day you want to have sex. Just because I've sent her to work the streets of Mexico doesn't mean you can't have sex, I'll just hook you up with some other dude's wife. Am I running fractional reserve whorehouse ? No.iv Do you still get to have sex, even if your own wife is out ? Sure.

deanclkclk If the depositor withdraws from his account ...how would that show on the T account? Says all his 9 dollars.

mircea_popescu IB just takes a liquidity loan.

deanclkclk Huh?

mircea_popescu Myeah. Best I can tell, you've painted yourself in a corner trying to understand this and now nothing makes sense. Time to re-examine your priors.

deanclkclk I understand your whorehouse analogy. If someone can show me how that would reflect on a T account..it would make a whole lotta sense. I'm just wondering how that would show. banks == liability (deposit $10) and assets (loan $9 & reserve $1), that balances.

mircea_popescu Okay, fair enough. Central bank creates 10 bucks. Pushes 2 each to 5 commercial banks. The banks loan out 20 bucks each, on the grounds that they are required by CB to keep 10% in reserves. Now, the monetary mass at the Central Bank level is 10, and the monetary mass at the Commercial Bank level is 100. That's a 1`000% inflation.

deanclkclk Yeah but, just listen.

mircea_popescu Kay.

deanclkclk Just an simple example in this illustration banks == liability (deposit $10) and assets (loan $9 & reserve $1). That's their T account right. They loan out $9. So what if..the depositor wants to withdraw his 10 dollars, how would that show on the banks T account?

mircea_popescu This is a purely accounting q, but : step 1 : deposit 10, loan 9, reserve 1 ; step 2 : withdraw the 10 : deposit 0, loan 9, reserve 1, owed 10 to liquidity provider. This bank now owes the 10 it owed before, except not to its original depositor. Nothing much changed. Note that accounting generally is just a convention, and it may be uniquely adequate or uniquely inadequate to resolve any factual problems. In some formulations inflation is opaque to accounting, in some others quite transparent.v This doesn't make inflation go away, even if it's very tempting for all governments historically to pretend so.vi

deanclkclk Ok. Hmmm. Yes I know mircea_popescu but, I'm just wondering how would that show on the account. But, with a deposit being 0...wouldn't that cause the T account to not be balanced? Liabilties are greater than an asset.

mircea_popescu Nope. You still owe 10, but not to depositors anymore, to liquidity provider instead. Just as balanced as it was. It goes from "liabilities 10 (depositors)" to "liabilities 10 (government)" or w/e.

deanclkclk Ohh so the liquidity provider funds the 10 dollars to pay back the depositor?

mircea_popescu Well yes. Someone will have to, as the 9 loaned out are loaned on terms and can't (in this example we use) be recalled. In practice obviously some mix will be implemented.

deanclkclk Liquidity provider in this case will be the central bank.

mircea_popescu It isn't the central bank in a functioning economy. This is why the LIBORvii originally existed : so banks can liquidify each other. The interest they settled on becoming the "fair" interest for everyone, smaller players.

deanclkclk Ohh ok.

mircea_popescu If it is the central bank you have by any sensible definition a central command economy like the soviets, and even discussing "banks" is just a masquerade.

deanclkclk Ok. But, if the banks are funding themselves..would that not increase the total stock of money?

mircea_popescu Well, how ?

deanclkclk Because, if bank A give to Bank B...bank A is decreasing it's money stock and giving it to Bank B...

mircea_popescu So...

* deanclkclk has quit (Ping timeout: 260 seconds)

———Don't ask to ask. Just ask. [↩]Once the organised thieves started their attack on prosperity, inflation was redefined to "mean" something meaningless, to wit "a disparity between the increase in means of payment and the increase in available goods and services". This is poppycock, primarily because if on a wharf somewhere there's ten yachts which each cost one million, then you and your nine friends are THE ten people with yachts. If tomorrow the wharf is chock-full, sporting one hundred yachts, the fact that the monetary inflation is matched by corresponding inflation of yacht volumes doesn't help you any : you're now stuck with ninety more fuckwits on your wharf, and yachting shall never be the same. This is definitely inflation. [↩]This is not me being exotic, this is me giving what's indeed a very good example. It's common parlance to consider "the bitter fate of women" in those olden times when they were property in terms of "you know, just like some item the husband owned, so he owned his wife". This happens to be factually incorrect, it's not that the wives were property like any item, it's that all items hence are property just like the wives were property back then, because woman was the first property of man in the flow of history. And since ownership of woman is a lot more akin to ownership of real estate than chattel, what with her rich valleys and luscious pastures one can't nor does one want to put in his pocket but nevertheless does want to control access to, it'd be reasonable to expect real estate ownership was codified much before, and to much more of a complex degree than chattel ownership. Which expectation is, of course, solidly borne by an examination of the history of law and commerce, and which line of consideration gives the ridicule to those to this day speaking of "chattel" slaves. They're real estate, not chattel, dears.

Moreover, people are wired a certain way, let's call it "ancestral memory" and leave it at that, which makes them eminently more capable to correctly follow ownership when the object owned is their own wife than when the object owned is a can of coke or some metal rounds. Consequently, MP's whorehouse is an excellent example you're more than welcome to use whenever the intricacies of trade and the complexities of ownership give you trouble. Just send your wife over to me for a space and everything will miraculously clear up, I promise. [↩]Obviously there can never be such a thing as a fractional reserve brothel, in the sense that I can only send out women which I've actually taken in, I can't make some out of craftily arranged pillows and lampshades. [↩]One of the best examples of inflation being transparent is the percentile system, such as Bitcoin enforces. So, if one day I own 1% of all the goods in the world, and the next day I only own 0.5% of all the goods in the world, my position has factually erroded, and this means there was an inflation of goods in the world. This is the subtle meaning of owning say one thousand Bitcoins : you know that come Hell or high water, you will still own 1/20`000 of everything that there is. No matter what happens, you've got your 0.005% stake of everything. Of everything. If today that means you own five women out of ten billion people and tomorrow they manage to find better ways to pack the species up like sardines and the population jumps to 100 bn, that means your own harem headcount will also jump to 50. Just so, and just by itself - you won't have to do anything whatsoever. Just sit there and it just comes to you, by virtue of you being the modern equivalent of an aristocrat, and all new good things that happen have to be given to you in proportion to your aristocracy. Jus Primae Noctis is no joke, it's a policy as far as Bitcoin goes.

Now conversely, in a fiat system, where there's no fixed relation between the mass of money and the world itself, having any sum of money simply means you have to keep running, or else you're getting erroded by those still willing to run. And even if you do keep running, you'll still be erroded, by all those running faster - or, what's worse, by all those running smarter. For instance if you're the sort of idiot that runs the hard track of trying to get value out of reality you're in for a sore beating at the hands of those who know the most productive sort of running is running to mommy government to bitch and whine. So mommy prints money, diluting your ownership of the world, to give it to these guys that are apparently smarter than you, because instead of beating reality into submission they coddle and compliment mommy to orgasm.

Obviously the first system has the disadvantage that it encourages serenity (you know what Pascal said) and ossifies society, whereas the second has the disadvantage that it encourages activity. Or pollution. Either make the atmosphere unbreathable, to be frank. In any case, it's all about progress, which is to say the constant degradation of the quality of life on the wharf by constant import of filthy, unworthy louts that have to also be fed and clothed and given yachts. So wouldn't you make do with a small rowboat instead, this way a hundred thousand more idiots you never met and never would care to meet can also have their own boats, and be cool just like you ? We'll issue you yacht certificates for your boats, of course, so nobody can say you don't own a yacht anymore. We'll even make it illegal for anyone to laugh at how stupid you are. Deal ? [↩]Only in electoral systems. Otherwise, governments imposed by the aristocracy in spite of the hopes and aspirations of the mob are extremely finely and acutely aware of inflation. [↩]You know, that Central Bank run fraud. [↩]

« Equivalency in cooking

More about Caesar cyphers »

Category: Trilterviuri

Thursday, 09 January, Year 6 d.Tr.

The anti-True Romance

This filmi is the exact, absolute opposite, played for a different director by the exact same opposite Christian Slater. You will not believe your eyes, nor would you in a million years have guessed the lead is Slater. Shocking, the actual range of that oft-disregarded actor, so easily mistaken for a B series action flick hero.

In it, a nobody, a cockroach, a pointless office drone dies. And in that short second between the click and the bang, his entire life rolls before his eyes. Except, not his life as it actually was, the cold glassy life flowing in an objective reality he keeps scarce custom with. Instead, his life as he imagines it could have proceeded were he not killed, and were he not the killer. And were he not a cockroach, and were the rivers made of syrup and the riverbanks of marmalade and if the koi could talk and if the colibri cared enough to speak to him as some sort of later day Francis of Assisi.

They could have found an actual hottie for the role, Cuthbert doesn't cut it. They could have found a better asshole boss than the anodyne William Macy - say Malkovich, or Baldwin, or even Clint Eastwood for crying out loud, or Susan Sarandon, or Paris Hilt...well maybe not her, but you get the general idea. They couldn't however have found a better homicidal maniac subjective double than David Wells, guy's excellent in the role.

Anyway, if you liked True Romance (the director's cut!) I propose you see this too. You'll probably enjoy it, in the cultivated, comparative manner educated people enjoy things.

———He Was a Quiet Man, 2007, by Frank A. Cappello with Christian Slater, Elisha Cuthbert. [↩]

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MPEx status update »

Category: Trilematograf

Thursday, 10 July, Year 6 d.Tr.