What was the Lomax? Any why was it there? And who could have lifted it to take it somewhere ?

Pretty decent truck, wouldn't you say ? Seen from behind it most notably consisted of a guy perched way on high atop the whole thing, diligently hosing down the sidewalk with a small pressured water hose (who knew concrete mixers also pressure water!), and I briefly contemplated having girl go into the stream, do a little bit of ghetto nymphette something. But then, as I moved on, I caught sight of...

I came as the Lorax. I'll eat all your cheese.

But let's move on to some interior shots :

Pretty good hat, eh ? Speaking of good hats, ever seen the Mexican Jesus jacking it ?

No ?

Here you go :

Here's his context, the place he hangs out at (some other dubious items there as well) :

And here's something special for alf :

Chucka no figther, Chuka lover!!!

Speaking of twu wuv, Fredo's a pretty decent local shop catering to the needs of older gentlemen (you have to understand, Argentina is deeply catholic to the degree it produces homebrew popes). They're now offering their services online as well (via motorcycle). I've yet to avail myself of their services, but from what I hear from my friends, it's hips or lips, baby!

This concludes our visual foray into the fisual voray. I hop you enjoyed, and until the next time!

« MiniGame (S.MG), September 2015 Statement

La Chacarita »

Category: Zsilnic

Thursday, 08 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

What the actual threat of the medicalisation of individuality looks like

Generally, the most valuable insight comes from the people you like most. This case is no different.

This is going to be a lengthy consideration of considerable complexity. Let's kick it off by laying down some foundational reading. Firstly :

Time's Person of the Year Is Someone Who Doesn't Actually Matter

That would be youi.

The short version of the Time article is that we as individuals have formed a community on the internet (YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, etc), and this community is starting to "build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician... but person to person."

Ok, no. Wrong, wrong, wrong all over the place.

The author of this piece is Lev Grossman. Grossman is fairly famous book critic, one of the better ones. He also wrote a novel that's a nod to Borges. This isn't bad, it's just context.

The entire problem with Grossman's premise is exemplified by his first paragraph:

The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.

Well, not exactly. Grossman's thesis is that we matter, we can shape our destinies; he puts that in contrast to Carlyle's premise that great men help shape destiny. But that's not what Carlyle actually says. Here's the actual quote:

In all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the Great Man to have been the indispensable savior of his epoch;--the lightning, without which the fuel would never have burnt. The History of the world, I said already, was the biography of Great Men.

Carlyle doesn't say great men shape destiny; he says great men, and only great men, cause history. These great men should be given powerii to run society because only they can be trusted to do it. Great men actually drive history, not shape it.

Democracy can't be trusted. Paternalistic socialism, or at least a non-hereditary, anti-capitalist, aristocracy is all that can keep us from the dark of ochlocracy. Individuals trump ideology-- which sounds like a good motto, except when individuals means Stalin and ideology means liberalismiii. Oh, and the last book Hitler read was Carlyle's History of Friedrich of Prussia.iv

So Grossman is not really paraphrasing Carlyle correctly. This is important because Grossman is a book critic with a PhD from Harvard in comparative literature. Either he simply did not know this about Carlyle, which I have to assume is impossible, or it didn't matter: he commandeered the quote, stripped it of the meaning Carlyle intended and used it the way he needed to use it. And that exactly describes the problem: truth and reality aren't important, what's important is you.

Because "You" as Person of the Year is actually quite portentuous. It's is both representative and symptomatic of the problem of our times: narcissism. Nowadays we are so alienated and matter so very little to larger society that the only thing that inflames any passion is to be reminded of this. Consider Bush and Cheney. Put aside politics for a moment, it is clear that their single-mindedness of purpose ignores each of us as individuals. Give them the benefit of the doubt, that they are doing what they think is best. But it's best for society, for America: what we hate is that it isn't for us, for you, for me. That's what people hate about them, the seeming indifference to our individual worth, to our sense of importance. Our votes don't count; everything is about religion; "Global War On Terror." Where in all that is the individual? We are tools to their "higher cause." I know people say that they are angry at the cause; but I think it's really anger that we're being used for anything.v

Being on YouTube, having a blog, having an iPod, being on MySpace-- all of these things are self-validating, they allow that illusion that is so important to narcissists: that we are the main characters in a movie. Not that we're the best, or the good guys, but the main characters. That everyone around us is supporting cast; the funny friend, the crazy ex, the neurotic mother, the egotistical date, etc. That makes reminders of our insignificance even more infuriating.

Take a look at the photos in the Time article: a DJ, a punk rocker, a guy in dredlocks, a kid dancing with headphones, a guy singing into a mic, a hot chick taking a photo of herself-- none of these people could ever be "Person of the Year." They barely have identities outside of their image. (And observe how so many are defined through music they listen to.) They must be defined by something from without, like a tattoo. But they deserve everything anyone else can have. It's their right.

I'm not saying each of us as individuals is insignificant.vi We should, could, matter.vii But to protect ourselves from an existential implosion, we decide to define ourselves through images and signs, rather than behaviors; lacking an identity founded in anything real makes us vulnerable to anger, resentment. But no guilt, ever. The narcissist never feels guilt. He feels shame.

It can't last.viii If society chooses to make narcissism the default, it's going to have to deal with society-wide narcissistic injuries-- when we suddenly realize that it isn't solely our movie and we're really not the main character.ix And no one wants to see this stupid movie anyway. This inevitably leads to violence: the school shooting, inexplicable knifing over Play Station 3, Andrea Yates, beating the wife because she wore the wrong shoes type of violence.x Oh, they weren't white high heeled pumps? That bitch! She used to wear them for her old boyfriend.

I'm not sure anyone in psychiatry sees this-- they are too busy documenting Pharma excesses and Lamictal outcomes-- but it is the problem of our times. The only ones who seem to notice are advertisers, marketers-- they see it. They don't judge it, they simply profit from it.

Grossman could morph Carlyle into what he wanted because Carlyle doesn't matter, what matters is what Grossman wanted, what Grossman needed. Carlyle doesn't exist, or he only exists as we need to use him. He becomes a tool, another supporting character. Anyone actually read anything by Carlyle anymore? Why bother? We only need a few soundbites for our own use. Grossman is a clearly a good writer and hardly the problem here. But picking "You" as Person of the Year only reinforces the collective delusion that our individual selves matter more than other person, or a collective good, an ideology, truth, or right and wrong. It's relativism with a cherry twist.

It won't last. It absolutely can't.xi

Secondly :

Borderline

Narcissism- what I believe to be the primary disease of our times-- is one side of a coin. The other side-- the narcissist's enabler-- is the borderline.

If the analogy for narcissism is "being the main character in their own movie," then the analogy for borderline is being an actress.

Note the difference: the narcissist is a character: invented but well scripted, complete with backstory, identity. The narcissist is trying to be something-- which already has a model. Perhaps he thinks himself an artist type, or a tough guy, or the type interested in spiritualism, or like the guy in the Matrix. Types, characters. The borderline is no one: the borderline waits for the script to define her.

Her? Yes. Narcissists are mostly hes, and borderlines hers. (Not always, sure.)

The classic description includes: intense, unstable relationships; emotional lability; fear of abandonment. The borderline has no true sense of self.xii

Ironically, the borderline is a borderline only in relationship to other people. The borderline has a problem with identity only because other people in the world have stronger identities. Your Dad wants you to be one way, so you do it. Your boyfriend wants a different woman; so you do it. Your husband wants something else; so you do it. Who the hell are you, really? You have no idea, because you are always molding yourself based on the dominant personality in your life.

This is done mostly out of fear of abandonment: if you don't "be" the person they want, then they'll leave you, and then what? (Borderlines don't end relationships-- they end relationships for another relationship.)xiii

The narcissist creates an identity, then tries to force everyone else to buy into it.xiv The borderline waits to meet someone, and then constructs a personality suitable to that person.

If a borderline is dating a guy who loves the Dallas Cowboys, then for sure, she will love the Dallas Cowboys. If, however, she breaks up with him, and then dates a guy who loves the Giants, then she'll love the Giants. But here's what makes her a borderline: she will actually believe the Giants are better. She's not lying, and she's not doing it for him; she actually thinks she thinks it's true. Everyone else on the outside sees that it is obviously a function of whom she's dating, but she is sure she came up with it on her own. And she's not play acting: at that moment that she believes, with every fiber of her being, that the Giants are better.

Here's the ironic part: if a borderline was shipwrecked on a desert island with no one around, she'd develop a real identity, of her own, not a reaction to other people. Sorry, that's not the ironic part, this is: she'd become a narcissist.

The bordeline has external markings of identity: tattoos, changing hair colors, clothes. You may recall I said almost the same thing about the narcissist: the difference is, of course, the borderline changes her image as she changes her identity-- in other words, as she cahges the dominant personality in her life; but the narcissist crafts a look, an identity, which he then defends at all costs: "I would sooner eat fire ants than shave my mustache." Of course. Of course.

All those silly movies about a woman moving away, or to the big city, and she "finds herself:" that's a borderline becoming a narcissist.

If you look back on past long term relationships you've had, and are completely perplexed as to what on earth you ever saw in each of those people that kept you with them for a year; well, there you go.

This is why narcissists marry borderlines, and not other narcisstists. Two narcissists simply can't get along: who is the main character? Meanwhile, two borderlines can't be with each other-- who supplies the identity? The narcissist thrives with the borderline because she provides for him the validation that he is, in fact, the lead; the borderline thrives with the narcissist because he defines her. And, as she will tell you every single time, without fail: "you don't know him like I do." Everyone else judges his behavior; but the borderline is judging his version of himself that she has accepted.

Go back to my white high heel shoes example. The narcissist demands his woman wear white high heel pumps not because hem ay like them himself-- he might or might not-- but because he is the type of man that would be with the type of woman who wears white pumps. He thinks he's the sophisticated, masculine man of the 1980s, so she damn well better be Kim Bassinger from 9 1/2 Weeks. Blonde hair, white pumps. She could weight 400lbs, that's not the point (though it will become one later.) So she wears the shoes, and starts to believe she likes them, starts to believe that she is that woman. He reinforces this with certain behaviors or language towards her (he'll open the door for her, push her chair in, etc. You say, "well, what's wrong with that? Nothing, except that he ALSO beats her when she doesn't wear the shoes.)

It's almost battered-wife syndrome: what keeps her with tat maniac is that when he's not beating her, it seems like he is actually being kind to her, so great is the difference between being beaten and simply not being beaten. Meanwhile everything he does wrong has an external explanation: it was the alcohol, he's under stress, etc. And she's doing this rationalizing for herself, not for him, because it is vital to her own psychological survival that he actually be who he says he is, that he actually have a stable identity that things happen to, because her identity depends on his being a foundation.

That's why the therapist has to maintain such neutrality, consistency in the sessions. It's not just to avoid conflicts; by being the most dominant (read: consistent) personality, the borderline can begin to construct one for herself using the blueprints of yours as a guide.

If the borderline sounds like a 15 year old girl, that's because that's what she is. The difference, of course, is the actual 15 year old girl is supposed to be flaky, testing identities and philosophies and looks until she finally lands on the one that's "her." But if you're 30 and doing that, well...

And this takes us home.

The narcissist, as a human type, eventually as a stereotype, has been documented and discussed and represented ad nauseam during the past fifty or so centuries. The pathology of narcissism is a recent, and thoroughly nonsensical addition. Saying one's sick of narcissism is not unlike saying one's sick of tallness. Sure, tall people exist, this is directly observable and in contrast with other people, who also exist and who aren't tall. But merely difference is not per se meaningful. There's a tendency to define physiology as "the average" and pathology therefore as "deviation from the average". This works particularly well in the more scientific sides of medicine : for heartbeats, for instance.

Even if it does work, it still remains a heuristic, an empirical observation, not actual science. You can't find the "average human gender" and then proceed to treat women for womanity and men for menity. This is the direction one particular tentacle of the Organised American Pseudosciencexv is currently heading, sure, but fashion doth not a science make. Divergence in the human population is not pathology per se, even if being black was at some point considered more debilitating (mentally and especially morally) than any venereal disease. Fashion, again, is not what makes science.

Let's leave aside that "borderline" is a thoroughly constructive "disease", with no more substance to it than the "true" identity it proposes to diverge from, and also leave aside the quite obvious reasons of convenience that led to its invention - in the film called the DSM (in which every pseudoscientist sees himself as playing a role) it's that character that exists to cover a plot hole. Let's ignore "borderline" altogether, on the grounds that it exists about as much as centrifugal force exists, and instead focus on the fashion part of pseudomedicine.

It's true that fashion does not make science, but it nevertheless makes quite excellent politics. All politics is nothing more and nothing but very pretentious fashion.

The game of politics is played by leaders and their followers.

The game of politics is a game of representation : whoever gets to represent the other leaders as defeated wins. The trick is that it has to represent them as defeated to themselves. To quote a little Orwell :

The final ruin of England could only be accomplished by an English government acting under orders from Berlin. But that cannot happen if England has awakened beforehand. For in that case the defeat would be unmistakable, the struggle would continue, the IDEA would survive. The difference between going down fighting, and surrendering without a fightxvi, is by no means a question of "honour" and schoolboy heroics. Hitler said once that to ACCEPT defeat destroys the soul of a nation. This sounds like a piece of claptrap, but it is strictly true. The defeat of 1870 did not lessen the world-influence of France. The Third Republic had more influence, intellectually, than the France of Napoleon III. But the sort of peace that Petain, Laval and Co have accepted can only be purchased by deliberately wiping out the national culture.

And so this is the threat, quite exactly : should you accept Hiler's ideas as true and your own as false, you pose no further threat to Hitler. Should you refuse to do so, no matter what exactly is left as your material base, you remain a threat for him. The fiat state is no different from Hitler : it has the same exact interestsxvii, and the same exact means available to serve those interests.

Should you accept to see your leadership as "narcissists", should you accept to see yourself as "borderline", you then pose no further threat to it. Should you instead persevere in seeing its agents as the future corpses that they are, they will in due time actually become those corpses, hanging in the breeze for the crime of not having seen their future correctly.

It is said that there's no such thing as successful treason. The reason being, of course, that if it's successful the treason is to be found on the other side.

———After doing a typically badly implemented "vote online" thing, which was utterly owned by 4chan resulting in moot being "elected" to the position through the exact process Time had proposed, Time decided to fall back to a particular sort of emotional thinking : establishment logic. And so they proclaimed an abstract "you" as the concrete referent for the prize. Because why not ? Given the choice between logical impossibility and admitting that their entire identity is built on theoretically unsound and practically broken premises, the logical impossibility wins twelve cases out of five. You didn't really expect Times to publish a single page, all black edition going "We fail. Good bye." in sad gray lettering, now did you ?! [↩]The risk of approaching a field as an amateur isn't that you're not going to have good ideas. You probably will, good ideas aren't really that rare, on account of most good ideas being in fact rather obvious.

The risk is twofold. First off, you are not able to distinguish good ideas from wrong, or not-even-wrong ideas. But this can be readily overcome by sheer luck. The clincher is that you can't keep good ideas on the road, because various trivial obstacles that you don't have the experience to recognise as obstacle nor the skills to safely remove always overturn your cart.

Exactly what happens here : while Ballas correctly finds a chasm of a sore spot in Grossman's paralogy-in-essay-form, nevertheless he casually steps on a rake with that "given". There's not even the vaguest consideration of "giving" great men anything whatsoever. For one thing, because there isn't who to give (narcissism is generally diagnosed by narcissists, for the record - not for any reason than the obvious, statistical one), and for another because there is not what to give. Much like ideas aren't ideas unless in the hands of one who may have them, just so power is only power in the hands of the great man. That lightning doesn't exist "in and of itself". [↩]Have you noticed how dead this "liberalism" thing is, by the way ? When's the last time you heard a "all men are rapists" feminist say that "well, I don't agree with your idea that women should just take it and be thankful for every bit they get, but hey, I'll fight to the death for your right to promote it" ? Doesn't happen all that often, does it ? (Last one I recall is Clinton telling some derp - hey, I understand you don't like abortions, but we do, and as it happens we're in power. So we'll pursue our policy, not yours, and if you don't like it, do better in the next election.) [↩]And the last girl I used as a toilet was a feminist. What's this do, if anything ?

I am serious, by the way : on her knees by the urinal, drenched her from head to toe. And yes she was a feminist. This somehow matters, there's some relation ? [↩]The correlation between this and consumerism should probably be examined.

In a traditional society, the closest role I can readily identify for the average "civilised" derp, that consumer who "has come to expect" is the household's pig. Kept in a dirty wooden thing a ways from the house, fed all the leftover slop. (By the way : Prikoke's an excellent story of the whole thing done by a group of talented Eastern Romanians.)

Now, obviously the absolute consumer is not particularly interested in being used for anything. This is because the only thing he's likely to be used for has to do with his insides. You may think this is too subtle a consideration to be ever available to the average derp. However, this subtlety is more due to the winding road the mind has to take to see itself, nothing else. If consumption is the point, or comes to dominate existence, then by the very definition of those words nothing external can be the point. And if something internal's the point, obviously evisceration is the prototype of any future use. Whether the average derp's neocortex is or is not developed enough to breach these veils and notice, nevertheless any mammal's primitive brain figures it out in half a minute. If that. [↩]He should, because that's exactly the problem. All this vast pile of narcissism is not pathological, it is merely reactive.

Consider : a century ago, a kid walking down the street of some town, ten thousand souls strong, could figure himself the fifth most eligible bachelor and live with that. Even if in fact he was the 19th most eligible, and flattered himself to the 5th position. And if he didn't live in a small enough town, he'd just move a little West and the problem solved itself.

The Internet means everyone's connected. The same kid can no longer even walk on the street anymore. Not that street anyway. The street he hitchhikes on, drenched by rains and broiled by the Sun is called "The Information Superhighway" (remember that ?). He goes on youtube and notices there's literally an infinity of bachelors more eligible than him. The offering's so wide it's not even finite. And there's no place to go : youtube's everywhere.

The truth of the matter is that individual human life is drastically insignificant in any sort of randomly chosen scale or perspective. Neverthless, individual human beings can not generally survive with that outlook. The wounding of everyone's narcissism is why Stalin's "deaths are just a statistic" quip is still remembered. Not that it weren't true - of course it is - but that he shouldn't have said it! And he should be replaced with someone or something else - let's call it, for simplicity, "democracy", that will never - what ? That will never say it! That's what democracy can be trusted to deliver : never saying those things. The things nobody wants to hear.

Of course it can't fucking move history, or act remarkably, or deliver anything of practical value. In the immortal words of the Knights of Ni, "one doesn't get too far in life without saying it". But that's not the point, much like the amateur trader's not trading to make money, democracy is not here to do anything. It's simply here so that particular things are never said. This being also being why I'm profoundly and irredeemably undemocratic : I'll say whatever the fuck I please. Do you know any greater political evil ? [↩]Think about it - what would happen if every single member of an eight billion strong army mattered ? Suppose you're not you, suppose you're a game designer. Your game is played by eight billion players, and each of them makes a change to the environment. A meaningful change. Something that matters. How would you distinguish an average game session from a simple "X has crashed, blinkage and corrupted video memory artefacts" ?

Suppose you're a school administrator, and your school has eight... billion ? million ? thousand ? Eight hundred! Eight hundred kids, and every single one of them modifies the fucking building. Normal school administrators have enough trouble with the one kid in a hundred that breaks a window once in his school life. What if each one of them started altering the design, moving the doors, replacing windows with large faucets etc ? What then ?

Of fucking course people should not matter. God help us if they ever do. [↩]It'd better fucking last. [↩]Yes, but the alternative is dealing with an Earth that has already been shaped like a cube, a cone and Eva Longoria's left tit before breakfast today. [↩]Violence, you will notice, is great for this application : it reduces the size of the problem pool. [↩]It has to. [↩]The problem is, no one has a "true" sense of self that survives under deliberate scrutiny. The major depressive has this problem. The compulsive definitely. Let's not even get into the "true sense of self" in schizo. Every pathologic state of the mind has this problem, fundamentally because physiologically the mind has the same problem, fundamentally because "identity" is like Augustine's beauty : before you asked me I thought I had it, but now that you ask it seems to have melted away. [↩]"Feminine" women generally, not just "borderlines". [↩]Leaders generally, not just narcissists. [↩]Generally it calls itself "mainstream science", in a bout of unchecked narcissism. [↩]Remember Here's what they don't tell you when they bring you those papers to sign ? [↩]As defined by Mussolini : Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State; [↩]

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Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Sunday, 15 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

What MP wants, MP gets. Also, prayers are answered.

As Eulora progresses new bottlenecks keep getting exposed, which I suppose should be unsurprising.

As players managed to crash past the issue of supplying enough Wooly Mushrooms and Spicy Moss to keep the toolmaking machine churning, as enough Clumps of Dry Grass were found to keep the Small claims exploitable, as enough Shiny Rock and Flotsam flowed into Heina's coffers to support the ever flowing geiser of Slag, mother of all Euloran inventions, as Diana discovered the key to the trove of Toves, as Daniel managed to find enough Two Leaf Clover to keep the Alchemist's Cheap Gin cycle going, it turned out that the entire Faith line hangs on Better Beetle Brews, which do require one Magical Dungbeetle per.

For two weeks now this seemingly unsurmountable obstacle stood, seemingly unsurmountable. And so, yesterday :

(20:50:36) Daniel says: i was mistaken: supplications take 2 brews each

(20:50:43) Daniel says: or at least the ones i have here do

(20:50:52) Mircea says: so you can try one ?

(20:51:02) Daniel says: yep gonna make the chicken scribblings one

(20:51:10) Daniel says: as i've already sacrificed rocks and murky

(20:51:23) Mircea says: gl!

(21:04:13) Mircea says: got anything ?

(21:05:03) Daniel says: haven't tried yet

(21:05:13) Daniel says: the description of the supplication says something about "say"ing a prayer

(21:05:19) Daniel says: i'm gonna try something

(21:06:31) Daniel says: I pray that the location of a rich magical dungbeetle deposit become revealed to me

And then today :

(14:48:08) Foxy tells you: mbinei

(14:48:10) Foxy tells you: ma duc dupa mossii

(14:48:12) Foxy tells you: altceva?iii

(14:48:15) You tell Foxy: ordinary daca vrei iti scot.iv

(14:48:18) You tell Foxy: pai niste dung beetle.v

(14:48:23) Foxy tells you: aham, mdavi

(14:48:33) You tell Foxy: si gagica aia fainavii

(14:49:14) You tell Foxy: si o sticla infinita.viii

(14:49:28) Foxy tells you: lol infinitaix

(14:49:46) You tell Foxy: preferabil albastrax

(14:49:50) You tell Foxy: da mnoa, te orientezi si tuxi

(14:50:13) Foxy tells you: da, ma duc sa orientezxii

(14:52:19) You tell Foxy: bai deci sed in argentina, craftez bitcoini si ascult albastru infinit.xiii

(14:52:25) You tell Foxy: postmodernism curat.xiv

(14:52:25) Foxy tells you: bre, a gasit astaxv

(14:52:29) Foxy tells you: magical dungbeetle

(14:52:33) Foxy tells you: wow

(14:52:35) You tell Foxy: no $@!$@!$ way ?!

(14:52:40) You tell Foxy: AHAHAHAHA WOOT

(14:52:44) Foxy tells you: daaaa

(14:52:48) You tell Daniel: WELL DONE YO

(14:52:53) Foxy tells you: si sa moara jeana unde eraxvi

(14:53:00) You tell Foxy: lol unde ?xvii

(14:53:08) Foxy tells you: tot aici aproape de wmxviii

(14:53:10) Foxy tells you: in valea astaxix

(14:53:12) Foxy tells you: loool

(14:53:13) You tell Foxy: secxx

(14:53:14) Daniel tells you: :

(14:53:16) Daniel tells you: :D

(14:53:20) You tell Daniel: kill it!

(14:53:28) You tell Daniel: 500 of them if you bring me, ima brew

(14:53:32) You tell Daniel: the lot

(14:53:40) Foxy tells you: deci sa vad acum cum e cu sticla infinita, lolxxi

(14:53:46) You tell Foxy: sec tu

(14:54:03) You tell Foxy: bombardati-l in pula see you later stickurile ca mai facxxii

(14:54:17) You tell Foxy: asta "in pula cu" va deveni expresie

(14:54:25) You tell Foxy: in pula see you laterxxiii

So I've made a batch of 21 brews, which is notable seeing that the previous 2 (made out of a coupla beetles Mod Seis had salvaged off Electron back before Electron went into the bottle and sold his entire stash to space afids) sold for 100k a pop on the grounds that they were the only two on the server (and they were the two that failed, above).

Who knows what the future brings! But whatever the future may bring - know that what MP wants, MP gets. And know that prayers are answered.

Excelsior!

———Mkay. [↩]I'ma go get moss. [↩]Anything else ? [↩]The ordinary, if you want, I'll dig out. [↩]Well, some dung beetle. [↩]Aha, right. [↩]And that hot chick. [↩]And an infinite bottle. [↩]Lol infinite. [↩]Preferably, blue. [↩]But see what you can find. [↩]Right. I'ma go and see. [↩]Dude so... I'm sitting in Argentina, crafting Bitcoin and listening to Albastru Infinit. [↩]Pure postmodernism. [↩]Man, this guy found. [↩]Jeana nu e moarta, Jeana se transforma. [↩]Ha where ? [↩]Here, close to Wooly Mushrooms [↩]In this valley. [↩]Dry. Which is a Romanian nonary superlative - it doesn't need terms. [↩]So let me move on to infinite bottle now. [↩]Bomb the shit out of it with the Chetty Sticks (super duper mining tools), I'm making more. [↩]Stupid word filter replaces "cu" with "see you later", except cu is a common preposition in Romanian, means "with". And "in pula cu" is one of the more common forms of verbal penile usage. [↩]

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Category: Trolloludens

Sunday, 02 August, Year 7 d.Tr.

What does desperation look like ?

The man principally known for his muchly beloved dress-up routine at conferences and other public gatherings, and principally responsible for a shedding of value the likes of which the world rarely sees - about five billion or so over the course of a year, with its attendand suicides and general human misery is pushing a certain agenda.

That agenda is doomed, because I'm no Boehneri. The politicos involved seem to have not fully grasped this yet, for whatever reasonsii, and so are willing to risk the ridicule and expose their top tier propaganda tools to the unfortunate position the Financial Times finds itself in currently.

A. Bitcoin is not a commodity. It certainly wasn't "turned" into one. It certainly will not be turned into one. (BTW: you missed your turn, boys. Too late now.)

B. Gavin has no responsibilities in Bitcoin. He is however responsible. Not for Bitcoin's success. Other people did that, he's merely a plowing fly when it comes to Bitcoin's success. He is however responsible for much simpler things : some kid's brains splattered all over Astoria, for starters.iii

I guess the best closing is repeating a point clearly not repeated enough :

A person with competency in a field reads a [media] item on that field, and finds it full of holes and altogether nonsensical, then flips the page and treats some other item on some other field he has no competency in as if it were sensible and meaningful, somehow magically forgetting his experience minutes ago and somehow magically failing to infer that a broken pipe is probably broken in all lights.

If you understand an iota of Bitcoin, you've just discovered how altogether and completely stupid, pointless, meaningless and drivel-driven the FT is. Save your subscription, buy something useful instead. Doggerel of the sort can be had for free, no need to pay money for it.

———Imagine, for the sake of this conversation, a Congress that exclusively consisted of people owning a million dollars or more in property, and their representatitives. Do you see much room for unbalanced budgets, high taxes or welfarism ?

So there you go. [↩]The usual reasons, ie, their own idiocy. Look at what the Russian driven Swiss Franc cap removal has done to Europe, and tell me more about how dangerous the toothless US alliance has been for Putin. Seriously, he is going to lose office over the "sanctions" ? How about he keeps his office and pretty much every US politician in the Eurozone gets thrown out instead ?

Who could have predicted such an outcome! Outside, of course, of everyone with a clue looking at the matter. [↩]And yes, he will hang for it, but that's little matter : so will plenty of others. [↩]

« Bitcoin, circa 1800

[undata] Deed system for #bitcoin-assets, updated. »

Category: Bitcoin

Friday, 16 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

What disruption actually means

Motto: Shall feast on fawn and prawn.

The common habit among English speaking folk is for everyone to speak of the matters he's least qualified to speak of, and for everything to be chiefly discussed by they least qualified to discuss whatever it may be. You don't merely have thieves screaming "Thief!" in this unfortunate cultural space, but gender relations negotiated by a chorus of fat female whales and dispeptic male otakus ; legislation as the result of the labours of fraudsters and cowards ; maturity defined by prepubescent children and ancient harridans ; value explained by peniless ne'er-do-wells in conclave ; scholarship as a convention of the functionally illiterate and so on and so forth qs and beyond qs, ad nauseam and beyond even that!

It is then of little surprise that the blandest of the bland speak of nothing but "disruption", as a modern facelift of that (by now) ancient "revolutionizing". Who thinks himself as disruptive, who represents himself as disruptive, who talks of disruption and goes around in circles proudly riding the stick with a large "DISRUPTION" tag glued to the upper end ?

Why, idiots who imagine making a deal with a corrupt prosecutor is some sort of normalcy. "He was offering me 30 years, of course I took two". This is disruption now. That's disruption for you : playing along, because hey, not playing along might be difficult. Convenience, the new "disruption".

Why, idiots who imagine "never talk bad of another Bitcoin company" is a strategy. It's "professional", don't you know, to hobknob with known scammers, to keep pretending like hey, "I just work here", to keep shoving the dirt under the carpet until it forms a pile larger than the entire carpet, at which point calls for "regulation" can be conveniently used to you know, sort-of pretend like, version 2.0.

These are the dorks in the business of "disruption". However... that's not what disruption actually means. What disruption actually means is that you will not be able to keep on going like before.

That's it. That's the long and the short of it : you. won't. be. able. to. go. on. like. before.

Whether you're "just a government employee" that was "just doing your job", and hang for it ; whether you're "just a journalist" doing you know, "just what journalists do", which is to say penning insanities for very little money ; whether you're "just an entrepreneur" doing the general nonsense that has ended up meaning in the US ; whether you're "just a regular guy", doing the regular guy sort of social media bullshit while welfare papa-government pays your bills and feeds you bad cheese on stale crackers. Whatever you may be, wherever your place in the hierarchy of life (yes, it's a god damned hierarchy, you're no-one's equal!), whatever you are currently failing to do by not even trying, irrespective of any excuse, circumstance, story an' alternative worldview you might have prepared for just such an eventuality : you won't be able to go on like before.

Yeah, you. You.

That's disruption. That's what it means. That's what it does. The shit you used to think is okay ? Nope. It isn't. The shit you used to think "everyone does it" ? Nope, they don't. The comfort of commonality, where you don't actually have to think, merely follow, and in so following end up with a warm meal and a warm bed ? Nope, not anymore. Not that crowd, at any rate, and there's absolutely no guarantee we would even allow you to follow us, considering you somehow - magically ? - gathered together enough wits and penetration to even identify who we are, or how you'd go about following us in the first place.

That's disruption. That's disruption, and it's coming for your very asshole. It's coming for your very asshole and it doesn't intend to be asking absolutely any sort of questions.

No means Yes. Yes means Yes. Silence means anal. There are no plans you can plan, there are no insurances you can buy, there is no government that will save you, no grace you can recitei, there is absolutely nothing that'll protect you from disruption. Because that's what disruption is : the thing that asks no questions, takes no prayers, considers no considerations, and changes who you are and what you do. Whether you like it or not. Whether you want to or not. That's it.

Disruption is that unpleasant thing you can not be protected from.

———

GRATIANO: Can no prayers pierce thee?

SHYLOCK: No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.

[↩]

« La Republica Argelina (Democratica y Popular)

The godfather »

Category: Bitcoin

Friday, 23 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Views From A Shithole, or Periplus Through Stupidity

It is my considered opinion that we never should have landed a man on the Moon. It was a mistake. Now everything is compared to that one accomplishment. "I can't believe they could land a man on the Moon and taste my coffee!" I think we all would have been a lot happier if they hadn't landed a man on the Moon. Then we'd go, "They can't make a prescription bottle top that's easy to open? I'm not surprised they couldn't land a man on the Moon. Things make perfect sense to me now". Neil Armstrong should have said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for every, complaining, son of a bitch on the face of the Earth."

Why ? Why make a knife like this ? Why this Ubuntui of a thing ?

How much could it possibly cost to add a fifty of the width of the blade, running the length of the handle ? The problem isn't that "it's made out of plastic". The problem is that it's made by heads of plastic. Seriously, two milimeter grip, a twelfth of an inch is all the poor thing gets ? Why ?

Idiots.

I don't care to hear the rationalization, even. There is no reason possible under the Sun this thing should exist. It's the manufacturing equivalent of a bald eagle with gills.

McDonalds doesn't really need the government - it can actually print its own dollars, which are just as good as the originals, and in any case used for exactly the same purpose.

You think MPEx is a threat to the perpetuation of the USG ? Stop and consider for a moment what alternatives are there.

These read "Basta de bicicletearnos, recategorizaciones Ya!", which is difficult to translate.

You see, to the very pretentious Argentine, there is no greater insult than being forced to use a bicycle. Because every rotinculo with bad hair and an Italian fashion magazine from the '80s fancies himself jet set over here, and far, far above riding anything but Bugatti or Paris Hilton's dog. Notwithstanding that his derpy 5-6k a year could barely make payments on a Segway. Con todo el respeto q me merece vuestra persona la Republica Argentina no es un pais pobre!!

Moreover, as they're all (universally, and without exception) dumb as a whore's headboard (from all the hits to the head, see ?) it is entirely out of the question that they might make money doing something useful or productive. They know this, which is why they universally aspire to enter the civil service - not to serve, but to get paid. A government job is pretty much the only thing your adult Argentine expects of life, and the path to it is quite simple : start hanging around a government office. Then slowly insert yourself, George Costantza-like. Maybe you're the guy that paints those cute flowers in the toilets, or the guy that walks up and down the hallways frowning very creatively. Whatever it may be - and best make sure it's not actually anything, lest god forbid you do it wrong and then could lose your "job". Much safer to stick to pure nonsense - after a few years you're good to protest. Demand your "classification" be changed - get a salary, get a pension, get a funny hat. Get something. The government needs votes, right ? Well... most of the voters need their absurd daily activities justified through government fiat. Deal ?

And so it goes - the trotinettists are ready to become official governmental trotinetteers, and the government's ready to sell Europe more bonds. You gotta buy into the future of South America, right ? A cosmopolitan, cultured, refined city like Buenos Aires, it's a steal!

It is, yes. I'd rather give money to whores other people fuck, honestly. Definitely better ROI.

This is what populist discourse looks like, in the land of the idiots, abrutis by fifty years' worth of socialism : a bad pic of the country's First Whore (namestamped just in case) above two random twerps. They could have put Boxxy up there, the same exact way and for the same money. Or Ronald Reagan. Or Cleopatra.

They're looking for "indignant Peronists", which is like looking for angry codgers at the retirement home. For one thing, being "a Peronist" means anything to anyone, and is generally a vaguely defined prop for otherwise absent personal identity, somewhat in the manner of US Republicans being "religious". It suffers from that ancient problem of socialism, as there's no particular profile involved. Getting together a bunch of heavy metal fans offers you some reasonable expectations, such as "dressing in leather is probably fine". Getting together a bunch of Democrats, or a bunch of Peronists offers very little past "they'll blow their top if you say 'Evita was a whore' / 'niggers are genetically inferior' respectively". Which isn't much to go on.

For the other, being "indignant" is the cheapest, and the most common characteristic to be had in this country, where everyone sees themselves way above their actual station. Of course they're indignant, once their overinflated ego, unmoderated by any understanding of anything whatsoever, devoid of any perception of herd agreement as it finds itself meets the harsh reality of life in a country that's been going to look for Rhodesia down the drain in slow motion.

So, yeah, I'm sure they'll get "indignant Peronists" at that march/church thing/exercise in empty bathos, whatever it is. Whatever they are. And I'm sure they'll do great things together, in their own minds. Each in his own mind.

After which they'll get indignant. Older, of course. And indignant. And Peronists. And meanwhile Argentina will be struggling to overtake Chad, and on it goes.

———Yes, I will henceforth use Ubuntu as a superlative for shitty. Because it is.

Yes, I'm aware it's a Zulu word. [↩]

« I think you drastically overestimate the military importance of nuclear weapons.

In which Orwell avoids what he does not wish to see »

Category: La pas prin lume

Monday, 11 May, Year 7 d.Tr.

Views from a conference

The supersikrit plan to take over the globe. In Windows XP.

Minigame CEO demonstrating the Eulora 0.1.0 client across from Casa Rosada, while CTO supervises the server from deep inside MPEx' subteranean bunker many miles away.

And it loads!

As the screen illegibly says, Bitcoins shall rule the world.

Beef so tender the fork indents it! Or as Alf would say, it moos in the mouth!

Tango Porteno. The Vegas of the 50s and 60s has been resurected and lives! In Buenos Ayres. De donde es Maria.

Muff said.

« Determinations and proceedings of the Bitcoin Conference, 3rd edition, first day

The best biggest Bitcoin derps on welfare, or the misadventures of young Josh Garza, Jonah Dorman, Eric Capuano and Brian Klein. »

Category: Evenimente

Sunday, 19 April, Year 7 d.Tr.

Very Bad Things

Very Bad Thingsi is an exercise in deconstructing that "lots and lots of houses out of cheap, shitty materials such as strand-board and vinyl" way of life, at a time when such deconstruction wasn't really fashionable. Or, to be more careful with words, at a time when the recent fashion still retained all the carefree, "good humor" playfulness and none of the utterly desperate, enraged, hopeless fury seen today. You know, that time of your underwater death during which the kids holding you under still seem to be playing at it. That time before September 11 2001.

Cameron Diaz is the utterly broken if completely useless automaton with the ridiculous script, or to quote :

I am not to be common, Kyle, ok? I am a creature like no other. I know that. I am a creature like no other. And I will not -- I willnot be common.

[...]

I've waited 27 years, ok? 27 years I have focused and prepared to walk down that aisle, and I will not be derailed. I will not be embarrassed, and I will not be denied! So tomorrow, I am walking down that aisle, come hell or high fucking water!

What happens when you put a lot of pressure on women to behave according to an ideal which is the counterpart to a male role that no longer exists ?ii O hey, let's all agree women suck and such harpies they are! Because clearly the spring overextended for lack of a pinion is at fault for being... too springy! And what lacking pinions anyway!!1

In which spirit, theiii "men" are not only exactly representative of "men" as an ideal construct in the '90siv but incredibly amusing. They have all the force, decisiveness and general virility of your average fat nine year old. They have all the life experience and structural solidity of a rape victim, one hair tweak away from finding salvation in "personal development"/MLM/"positivity" and whatnot. They're just perfect to fill that new Project Manager position.

Oh, they also kill some people. It was sort-of an accident. Throughout.

———1998, by Peter Berg, with Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz. [↩]Here's a thought : Roxy, aka Hurrem Sultan, aka "my love of the slanted brow" was the first woman to marry a sultan in two centuries. Because she was also the first slave to be freed from the harem in the same interval. Because no, it does most emphatically not follow that the mother of your children has to be either your wife or free.

But then again, it's also not exactly easy keeping the shit together. Suleyman didn't manage, for all the lawgiving magnifico quality to him. [↩]Five! They need five of the derps to balance out one woman. [↩]Massively overrepresented Jews, nobody is black, office working pencildicks, that sorta thing. [↩]

« You know what gets no airplay ? Unflattering truth.

The strange case of the six hundred dollars and other stories. »

Category: Trilematograf

Wednesday, 23 September, Year 7 d.Tr.

Varia varietatis, or your All-About-The-Mollusc guide.

The Part With The Mollusc Cheese

Here it ize :

Did the Eulorian miners find Elusive Purple Snails (only the specimens which can't elude for shit) ? They did. Did Daniel pray for dungbeetles and in so doing managed to get some ? He did! Did Foxy promise to make a craft bot, and in delivering it supplied us with Slithy Tove to last for perhaps even a while longer ? She did!

Meanwhile on the other front, did everyone make piles upon piles of Indistinct Bark Shavings, and were thousands of Spicy Moss found and dug upi, and are we set to make hundreds of Indistinct Oil which will allow for maybe a dozen or two Multifunctional Samovars ? Yes, yes, a resounding yes!

Does this put together mean we can now make Mollusc Cheese ? Obviously! And add the Mollusc Cheese to some Tuber Milkii and Dulce De Lecheiii can we thus make Suspect Ointment ? Sure we can! And is that the main ingredient in Unsteady Scaffoldingiv (alongside some Grubsilk Thread which only really needs Alchemist Gin as the Swarming Grubs are found, and so we only need Daniel to make more Two Leaf Clovers and we're set) which is in turn the main ingredient in the Worn Old Screens, which is the absolutely requisite tool of the trade of Booquinism ? Why yes!

And do I have the one, single, unique recipe for that tool, which, once this whole shebang is ready, can be given to a noob to craft and perhaps loot more, so once reproduced we have now actually unlocked the Booquinism line in the proper sense ? Surely! Or else, of course, fail to make it and be utterly fucked, because there's no Sacrifice without Booquinism, not really.

Adventure! Excitement! Risk and Intrigue!

Coming soon to an Emacs near you.

The Part With The Mollusc Brain

Ubuntu, right ?

That's it. Automatic update is now off.

Except... it isn't. Ahh, that exquisite flavour on the roof of your mouth, when "Automatic Updates" pops up a textbox to "inform" you that your OS is "no longer supported"v which can not be closed because the process that spawned it died in a "futex wait me" state as if this is actually a fucking thing, and then it can't be turned off, because if one goes to follow the process that supposedly turns it off that one discovers the respective variables were zeroed out already.

That exquisite flavour, just like the sweet sweet taste of mollusc cheese in a light smegma sauce.

The Part With The Mollusc Tentacles

So a friend of a friend of mine which might even be me goes to check out the supposedly fabulous Tigre casino, greatest achievement of an Argentina that may be anything you wish but certainly no es un pais pobre. Because it's too busy being "rico en recursos umanos". That's right, it's not a beautiful landscape befouled by a stupid people, what is this! Un minimo respeto por el befouleador!

Here it is :

Leaving aside the cheapest-of-the-cheap "here's an industrial wall we covered in some metal profiles as the absolute lowest cost approach to facading in history - we'll call it artistic! Futuristic! Bauhausistic! Beeheheheheeee!" and the asphyxiating odour of disinfectant recirculated through poorly filtered AC a trillion times that'd go with it... there isn't much left of this Trilenium "here's our casino by the railway tracks" thing.

Specifically : the first floor is a random collection of one arm bandits scattered around the floor, with nary a consideration to anything. It looks exactly like the LAS waiting area for the non-first class travellers, whatever they call them these days. Then an escalator takes you to the 2nd floor.

The second floor is a random collection of one arm bandits scattered around the floor, with nary a consideration to anything. It looks exactly like the LAS waiting area for the non-first class travellers, whatever they call them these days. Then an escalator takes you to a wall. I am not making this up, you literally arrive to face a wall. A woman in uniform that was apparently taking a stroll through there stops to let you pass through an eight inch crevice to the left, between the wall and the rotating handrail of the escalator. It takes you a while to realise this is actually a PATH, intended for access. It should be funny to see what happens on that third floor if there's a fire. Or if there's a fat person. Or a horde of fat people on fire. But anyway.

This is where a collection of bovine middle aged men, dressed exactly like you'd expect retired train conductors and ex car mechanics to dress, all turn around to face you, because the girl's in proper stockings and you're actually wearing a suit - neither of which they've ever seen in the flesh before. So you start laughing and turn away, because no, I'm not about to sit down and play poker with the blue collar crowd.

So you go to try and have a meal instead, and discover that nope. All Tigre's got is icecream, specifically, one icecream parlour, with pretty decent icecream (this is very common in Argentina, blessfully). Other than that, the closest approximation to a restaurant is a nice enough looking place manned by an inept middle aged schmuck that approached me as "Chicos", and visibly shook when I told him to "Cartas, chico." in a moderately derisive tone. Apparently he understands deeply, with every fiber of his being, why it's a little off for a young man to address his imperial oldass majesty as "boy", but he somehow is still working on deciphering the mystery of the ages as to why it's improper for servants to address their masters thus.

And then the menus had beer and sandwiches on it. Because totally, the Spaniards of 1600 made a beautiful Moorish fortress right in the asshole of nowhere so that a bunch of Argentines can then sell barrio parichada fare in it, four centuries later. The flow of history all makes sense to me now. And remember! Con balotaje, ganamos todos!

Given the day today by yours truly, an everbrave Mollusc dissector and for his sins undesirious Mollusc coneisseur.

———Four ordinaries! Which did hit my dwindling supply of non renewables to some degree, but hey. [↩]Just needs Nondescript Tubers, which I have, and Indistinct Oil, which we can make and have been making and will be making omfg already. [↩]Mostly, Tuber Milk. [↩]Not to be confused with Escherian Trestlework, har har. [↩]You know the joke about the inept builders who built some walls but the only way they stood up was if they were left behind there to actually HOLD THEM UP, and so they wanted to add food and drink on the construction bill, forever ?

Yea, exactly, just like the DoD works. [↩]

« MPIF (F.MPIF) July 2015 Statement

The Structured Conversation »

Category: Zsilnic

Friday, 07 August, Year 7 d.Tr.

Trilema burns.

Four years ago give or take I wrote an article (Calea spre idiotenie, The Path to Idiocy) about some Romanian nobody (one Lorand R. Minyo) and some two bit local hoster (Webfactor - a hearty contender in the "first best greatest" nooby league). That article makes some on point comments, which are met with the usual empty posturing. Exactly like it works out in Bitcoin, incidentally, for the very good reason that hollow posturing, poor people and derpitude aren't in any way specific to Romania.

At any rate, there's hundreds of these executions scattered all over Trilema, and who cares ?

Well, "nobody cares", until the idiot in question discovers that Trilema ranks, and people take it seriously. At which point the reaction comes, always in the same tired manner : that the marks of his idiocy in the world should be erased. Yes, just like that. What, problem ? Not like this Internet thing is really real! Why shouldn't he be able to alter it! He's already lied about his own personal history, and if he's able to "alter the past" why should he be denied altering the public record ?! He's a people too, somehow, magicallyi, and what is this unfair anti-equalitarian thing where the marks of his idiocy are used to discriminate against him, and costing him jobs and promotions and customers and self esteem ?!

In which spirit, Google writes to me! With pretty much all the forms of a tired old teacher forced by idiots to support other idiots in their idiocy, against his better judgement and all reason, because idiots stick together like shit sticks together. It reads :

Hello,

Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, we are no longer able to show one or more pages from your site in our search results in response to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.

These pages have not been blocked entirely from our search results, and will continue to appear for queries other than those specified by individuals in the European data protection law requests we have honored. Unfortunately, due to individual privacy concerns, we are not able to disclose which queries have been affected.

Please note that in many cases, the affected queries do not relate to the name of any person mentioned prominently on the page. For example, in some cases, the name may appear only in a comment section.

If you believe Google should be aware of additional information regarding this content that might result in a reversal or other change to this removal action, you can use our form at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/eu-privacy-webmaster. Please note that we can't guarantee responses to submissions to that form.

The following URLs have been affected by this action:

http://trilema.com/calea-spre-idiotenie

Regards,

The Google Team

The only result of this being that I was enticed to try and search, which attempt delivered exactly the expected results : that page (and in all likeliness a sensible increase in the monthly volume of searches for the guy's name). Apparently the EU is about as impotent in practice as its fame for impotence promises in theory. Nevertheless, it still strikes me as beyond incomprehensible that someone, somewhere actually thought this is not a good idea, but an idea at all - that somehow people not liking what other people are writing may have any say whatsoever in the matter.

So in conclusion... 1) Trilema burns ; 2) Idiots don't change, nor do they substantially differ from one another ; 3) Assemblages of idiots such as states etc are not as effective as the idiots composing them taken separately, but less effective - generally significantly less effective. Unsurprisingly enough.

———No, I don't agree stupid people are people too, just like me and you. They may be people too just like you, if you wish, but they can't be people too just like me. Because I say so. End of story. [↩]

« Yes, yes I can.

Mika Epstein aka Ipstenu is a thoroughly clueless poser »

Category: Meta psihoza

Thursday, 01 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Top Secret!

Top Secret!i is an absolutely delicious and, as it turns out, timeless spoof.

Released the same year as Orwell's thirteen-thirtyseven, it pokes fun at a shockingly skinny Elvis (Val Kilmer) that is accidentally invited to sing in a shockingly Polish Warsaw-pact "East Germany" (as part of an ellaborate ploy to "distract the world's attention" through no lesser means than having it fix its eyes upon... a cultural festival no less!). After which there's carrying ons.

Sadly the deeply bovineii Lucy Gutteridge utterly ruins the love interest side of any story, but then again Abrahams has the good sense to downplay the matter altogether. Otherwise, the gags are spread thickly and far from jackbooted heavy, they're light and gracile and cause in the viewer a most delicate and feminine sort of laughter. None of that HA! gross, unrefined welder stuff, we're here in a magical land of ehehehehe-hehehehe and hihihi.

You must see this thing.

———1984, by Jim Abrahams, with Omar Sharif, Val Kilmer. [↩]Deeply bovine not in the good way, of udders, but in the bad eye oops I mean way, of... gaze and behaviour.

This thing'd have been so much better with either something blonde a la Christina Applegate's signature character or else planturous and dumb like say Marilyn Monroe throughout her irl but most notably on display in say All about Eve.

Alas, perfection is not of this world. Oh Lorna, where art thou! [↩]

« La Chacarita

El Defloreador tum tum tudum tum-tum! »

Category: Trilematograf

Saturday, 10 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

Tin Men

Tin Meni shines through the characters it creates. You'll find here none of the overdone, thick factitiousness, none of the color-by-the-numbers schematism so fashionable with and so typical of an illiterate public. Dreyfuss' intelligent, neurotic narcisiac stands as a living and breathing, credible slice of life. DeVito's charismatic, epicurean narcisiac also stands as a living and breathing, credible slice of life. Unless you were born after the Internet, unless you've never had a life to know what you're missing, you've known these people. You must've.

Between the two offerings of ultimately self-same. self-absorbed, immature manhood, Hershey's desperate, loving yet frustrated would-be mother futilely seeks her happiness while wondering what about her attracts tin men. She's the sort of woman that leads "how can I help" into the other's "I have a problem". Straight up, just like that. She's the sort of gal that says nothing much about coming back home after a romp only to find all her stuff scattered on the front lawn, nor about the dude that did it wanting to keep decorum later on. Not even about that same dude managing to get himself sealed out of their house by the IRS, or about not remembering the footstool that's been in her family for more than three generations left behind in there, except on the second pass.

It doesn't stop there, either. Levinson doesn't merely eschew the usual made-in-America idiocy when it comes to the two leading tin men. The supporting cast are equally well crafted, most notably of which the boss. You know, what you'd expect as the stock character of "ruthless capitalist", dressed to the nines and with "strictly business" on his lips - except here he makes sense. Not in the sense that you can, with some effort, understand what he's all about. In the sense that it's fucking obvious what he's on about before he's even on about it. Listen :

Masters was gonna take this company apart. You're the low man on the totem pole, Tilley. There's a lot of guys earning a good living... no sense for it all to go up in smoke. You understand, don't you, Tilley? It's just business.

He's fundamentally decent - because yes, ruthless capitalism IS being fundamentally decent, that's what the fucking words mean, as illustrated quite well in another Dany DeVito movie : Other People's Money. Yes, I am aware that you're so used to hearing the thieves scream thief! and the sociopaths scream sociopath! while pointing fingers at the wall, the sky, a passing butterfly and anything - anything whatsoever just as long as it's not themselves - that you might be a little confused. Nevertheless... no ammount of energy expended in pointing and screaming will change wolves into sheep or anything of that kind.

There's probably a few better films you could watch instead of Tin Men. There's certainly a boatload of much, much worse films you could be watching, also.

———1987, by Barry Levinson, with Richard Dreyfuss, Danny DeVito and Barbara Hershey. [↩]

« Continut platit no more.

Moment poetic »

Category: Trilematograf

Thursday, 24 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

Timeo Danaos, or let's enjoy the Romanian language together.

Motto: She's a whore, she doesn't mind.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes is a Latin expression. What does it mean ? Something like "I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts."

Something like.

The cannonical form in Romanian is "Ma tem de greci si cind aduc daruri". It's plain and the translation readily apparent : ma tem, I fear. Present active indicative, nothing plainer could be said in any language. But what do I fear ? Eh... well... the Greeks. Always and everywhere, the Greeks. L'esprit de finesse, always and everywhere the thing to fear for all those that have something to fear for, the blessed geometres of the world. That murky, slatterny, fearsome Greekness.

"Si cind aduc daruri". Daruri is gifts, that part's simple. Aduc is to bring, also present-active-indicative, plain as day. Cind is when, and si is and, faithful to the Latin original but barely relatable to the English even. So the Romanian cannonical really says "I fear the Greeks, and when bring gifts". Not really English, in any sense, but perfectly good Romanian.

Another perfectly valid Romanian version'd be "Ma tem de greci, si de-ar fi aducind daruri." This one's tenser in Romanian, but closer to the original intent. Still "I fear the Greeks", but now "even were they're bringing gifts" is much more palatable in English. There's a lot more going on in there than previously, a gerund at work, a counterfactual tense... The divorce between function (bringing gifts) and being (Greeks) is made quite explicit, something like "I hate Injuns with warpaint or without" is a lot closer to the surface now.

Just as good, "Ma tem de greci, fie si facatori de daruri", "I fear the Greeks be they gift makers" is slightly closer to the Latin, even though facator is the participle of a face which comes from facio not feroi. At least it displays the sparkling ambiguity of fieii.

But the plain truth of the matter is... I do not actually fear the Greeks. They aren't, as it were, Greek enough.

Insufficiently Byzantine, what a failure mode!

———To bring, carry ; also to endure. [↩]It's not clear if it speaks to the general mode of counterfactuality, "let it be", "fiat" or to the specific case of the Greeks in question. It could readily be "fie si facatori de daruri sa fie", which'd be "let them even be gift makers", the first fie = let them and the second "[sa] fie" = be. Obviously this implies Romanian has more tenses and carries more tension than English - which is broadly true. This "fir-ar sa fie" form is oft used in various imprecations, for that matter. [↩]

« Here's part n of our endless saga, aptly titled "The People Know Shit" or alternatively "Nothing's Dumber Than The Voice In The Crowd".

People we don't like, fighting each other. An ode. »

Category: Trilenciclopedia

Saturday, 10 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

This is why medicine is not a liberal profession, but a servile career

From Ballas :

ME: Well, if he refuses, what are the alternatives?

THEM: We'd have to discharge him on oral antibiotics.

ME: Would this work?

THEM: Well, it's not ideal. There's a good chance he'd end up back here in the hospital in a few days.

ME (not punching anyone): if he has someone at home who can help take care of him, etc, he, unfortunately, (squeezing the thumbtacks in my hand) has the right to refuse.

THEM (frustrated, angry): Fine. Whatever. They have to sign an AMA discharge, and know that we're not responsible for what happens.

ME: Unfortunately, (tacks in hand again) his refusal doesn't discharge our obligation to treat. He'll need an outpatient appointment within a day or so.

THEM: No, I'm not doing that. If he doesn't want to follow my prescribed treatment, I'm not going to alter my schedule for him.

ME: Unfortunately, if you were ready to find him incompetent and keep him in the hospital, lawyers won't understand why you didn't follow such a sick person more closely as an outpatient.

That's it!

The doctor's intuition ("them") is that Medicine is their own property, and they are free to dispense it as they see fit. This is the liberal profession view of medicine, making it (along the practice of law, architecture and a few other "intellectual" pursuits) a proper avenue for the interests and efforts of intelligent, educated men - the thing that yielded "la noblesse de robe" in the Empire.

The reality of the matter (as pointed out by "me") is that... well... the doctors have absolutely no rights. None whatsoever. All the rights belong to the patient, and they are unlimited. Does the patient have or have not the right to present himself with a subdural hematoma ? Metatarsal fracture ? It doesn't matter, right ? The patient may present himself with anything in the book. If he so damned well pleases he can even present himself with something not in the book at all! Or maybe sort-of in the book, kinda ? The patient has the sovereign and undisputed right to invent new diseases, and if he does the doctors will crowd around him in awed admiration, like so many teenage ditzes around the one guy that invents motorbikes every year in every highschool. The patient has the right to take his medication, all of it, some of it, none of it, when told to do so or at any other time. There's some effort to limit how much he takes to whatever the doctor says, but this is done from a prone position : the doctor's on his knees begging, essentially, and the patient does as he well damned pleases. And it's his right.

Meanwhile, the doctors have obligations, and - importantly - these are not transactional but factual. They have an obligation to treat, general and universal, from which they can't be discharged by any authority, except retrospectively.

This exactly mirrors the situation in my harem. My slaves have obligations, that are equally factual. "Must keep the pantry stocked" or "must keep pubic hair cleanly shaven" or whatever else - tons and tons of whatever else. They're not transactional, there's not a "if you have the time" or "if you feel like it" or "if you agree it's a good idea" in there. Do it, or else you're screwed.i

Meanwhile I have rights, and they're neither defined nor relative. They're in fact boundless and absolute. I have the rightii to beat them, for any reason or no reason at all. To any degree.iii I have the right to compel them to do, or not do, I have the right to set up thought processes to replace whatever they're currently employingiv, I have the right to nominally alter realityv, and the right to invent new rights or (obviously) redefine existing rights and on it goes, boundlesslyvi.

And since we're on the topic : any situation where rights are involved is exactly this. There can not exist that "balance of rights and obligations" that you daydream. Any practical situation predicated on such nonsense readily resolves to one side or the other, either water or butter. The police, for instance, have the right to beat you up, and the "obligation" to "protect and serve". In practice, whenever you run into them you're their bitch. And yes, stop pretending. Shave that pubic hair instead, and wear the nipple clamps. No, not those. The painful ones, with the bells. Bitch. Conversely, in a different space, you have the "right" to vote, and the obligation to pay taxes. You see where this is going, do you ?

Outside of the inflamed brainbox of henpecked husbands there's not a situation involving rights that's not outright slavery. Make sure you only participate in the Poly Houses you actually wish to participate in. Don't be the stupid dude that pats the wolf thinking it a kitten - the wolf's not a kitten, and whosoever makes the confusion probably needs medication. Antipsychotic medication.

PS. If you're about to go "but it is my nature to do so!", here's a fable for you :

There were two monks who were washing their bowls in the river. Suddenly they both noticed a scorpion that was drowning. One monk immediately scooped it up and set it upon the bank. In the process he was stung. He went back to washing his bowl and again the scorpion fell in. The monk saved the scorpion and was again stung. The other monk asked him,

"Friend, why do you continue to save the scorpion when you know its nature is to sting?"

"Because," the monk replied, "to save it is my nature."

Don't be that guy, seriously. It's beastly. Being a slave is deeply human. Being her master is deeply human. Being a scorpion-related automaton is fit for an arthropod. You don't buy a Pentium IV to run a Z80 emulator on it, do you ? Why then would you use all the power and beauty of the human body to recreate a scorpion counterpart ? Do something worthwhile with all that capital.

Don't be afraid to live your life. Be afraid of living your life as an MD.

———And screwed in the same exact way, incidentally. What happens to the doctor that egregiously and intentionally fails his obligations ? Why, he will be castigated by the authority, cast out by the other doctors, and no longer be able to call himself a doctor.

What exactly do you think will happen to the slave that egregiously and intentionally fails her obligations ? Guess, seriously. Castigated by her master, cast out by her sisters, no longer able to call herself a slave ? Ding. [↩]Importantly, this is a right, not a freedom. Of course I have the freedom to do this to her, and to any other woman - but then again so do you. The important difference between rights and freedoms is that rights create relationships, whereas freedoms preexist any human arrangement. It's not that I can beat her that makes her my slave, it's that she submits to this that makes her my slave. This is also why you do not wish to accept the grant of rights from any entity you do not mean to have a relationship with : rights bind you to it. Which is why they're being granted in the first place. [↩]You might not agree that I have the right to kill my own slave by beating her to death, but this is entirely your problem. Neither her (because I say so) nor I (because I say so) are interested in entering a relationship with you, except as predicated on your acceptance of your obligations and of my rights. Prior to entering a relationship, anything you may wish to think on such topics is entirely your problem - and should you wish to enforce it you will need violence. It is immaterial how you justify that violence to yourself, the fact remains that you will have to support your own views in a manner that you yourself claim unethical.

This logical conundrum is, obviously, why plenty of people have serious problems with the institution of slavery. [↩]This is called education, by the way. [↩]"Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun: but sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is; and so it shall be so for Katharina." [↩]In fact bounded by my own arbitrariety, of course. [↩]

« You've made the bed. Enjoy dying in it.

Sooo... FetLife is butthurt. »

Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Monday, 16 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

This is how social media failed

I. Sometime in 2006, Christos Ballas, a respected psychiatry clinician / academic at Penn Uni started a blog. His blog sucked in every conceivable way, except for onei. That one happens to be exactly what I was pontificating @romanians, in 2012 :

Not everything I want [for the new year] is negative. For instance, I want a blog by an airline pilot. But written like this one, you understand me, no derpage and aspirationage, no empty pretense and dumbass "in" jokes.ii Because blogs aren't there as an outlet of our inferiority complexes and xenophobiaiii in full battle gear. Blogs are there to allow the curious to live our interesting [intellectual] lives vicariously, for five minutes at a stretch, with minimal cost.

So, not another "young adult" blog, thanks, I piss on the whole fucktarded young adult lot of you. You're not to talk and there isn't what you could talk about, you banal cumstains you. There's no need for yet another "dumbass raising children" blog, there's no need for a "look what I foundiv in the supermarket" blog, there's no need for yet another "Internet expert", "marketeer", PR cunt and other he-bores and she-bores, he-idiots and she-idiots, further exercises in trivial banality that make bananas hurt. You plain and simple don't interest, anyone, ever, it's not possible, just die painfully but quietly already, the world's chock full of supernumerary nothings.

An airplane pilot's blog. A tiger trainers' blog. A glue sniffer's blog. A White House callgirl blog.v A something blog, dude, anything as long as it's identifiable and concrete, as long as it's more than herp derp what my day was like going to the post office, what the parking meter said, what I think about the news and the rest of the shit, stale already roughly before the Iron Age. It's an Internet not a roll of toilet paper, show a modicum of respect ye last week's crop of literates.

As you can see, my tone in English is actually a lot friendlier than it used to be in Romanian, by and large. This is because there's a lot more of you now, and you might come and beat me up. But let's move on.

I. Sometime in 2007, social media discovered this blog. That's a year late, which is the first but not the largest problem. The largest problem is self-reported :

145000 unique visitors may not seem like a lot to those in the porn industry, but it's a lot for me, and especially for a "throwaway post" like the one on Halloween.

Getting on Digg and the front page of reddit certainly is the cause of this, but not the explanation. The post got over 200 comments, not counting what my spam filter destroyed; more importantly, the post went to places like metafilter, where it had over 170 comments-- more than any other post that week.

Why?

Because they're dumb. Seriously, what social media exploded over was that this guy went to a cinema, to see a horror movie, and saw a stroller, and said the people associated with it were white and fat. Ie, rednecks.

And the fat retarded rednecks that make up the infrequentable section of the Internet, those 99% of visits/clicks/whatever that yield no value/importance/utility collectively lost it, because oh mah gerbil, this is what interests them. By virtue of it being what they can represent with their limited cognition, this is what interests them. When's the last time you saw a dog sitting quietly with a book ?

So let's fucking debate whether it matters that stupid people are generally fat, and let's pretend we're unware that most stupid people will necessarily be white for simple statistical reasons : people of other colors don't live in circumstances complex enough to allow meaningful difference between the stupid and the smart. Just so the 99% can pretend to itself like it "participated" to the "conversation".

Meanwhile, and this is the third problem, meanwhile social media lost even that numeric power. Back in 2007 when digg was the thing spikes measured in 150k "uniques" whatever thay may mean (generally, it means mouthbreathers), but by 2014 reddit has serious trouble sending a fraction of that.vi

Summa : Social Media failed by being late to the party. Sure, they claim to be quick. This is exactly like the claims to chastity of Jimmy Swaggart clones - there to disguise a contrary reality. Otherwise, finding out about things years late means you get to be one of those guys that get to seethe at how I'm Bitcoin rich.

Social Media failed by being, like any mass movement, a mass movement. There's really no further need to explain why anything that has mass involvement will fail, or to quote FOCA, "Booon... o sa iasa un dezastru"vii.

And in the third, and final, and most painful phase... Social Media failed by not even being able to deliver the numbers anymore.

That's it. It's done, it's buried, forget about it.

Notice that blogs are still here.

———"How do you make footnotes on movabletype", he wants to know. Because yeah, he was on movabletype, the blogspot of 2005 - but notice that footnotes are in fact an absolute requirement for a working brain expressing itself. That they're one of the exactly two plugins I use here is perhaps coincidental. [↩]If you think that entire "gender issues" in "media" is anything more than a gang of about a hundred or so unemployable Leah McGrath Goodman clones that are trying to pay their mortgage by circlejerking while the publishers look the other way - because you're stupid and they're cheap - you're very very new to this world and could I perhaps interest you in my Rikers Island auction ? [↩]"Fear of the other", for the record. [↩]Seriously, you FOUND it ? Well done, don't breathe with your mouth open. You realise that - don't breathe with your mouth open! - someone designed it, someone else made it, someone shipped it and a don't breathe with your mouth open just like yourself stocked in the shelf for you to find it while not breathing at all, and then take it to the checkout where another dude will try to bag it while holding mouth closed at the same time.

Go find a slippery ledge off the Silver Cock why don't you. [↩]Seriously, you think WH call girls don't exist ? What, that Tiger golfer dude is the only cvasi-black fucker in America that does blow off "dancer" crack while the wife's tied up in the closet, beaten black and blue ? Spare me.

Or come to thing about it... don't spare me. Instead, let me tell you about the deal of the century : I'm auctioning off Riker's Island, with Preet Bharara in a package. Best bid gets it. It even has an unlisted bridge going to it! [↩]The same dynamic significantly reduces the value of Google searches :

Moreover, of all the people interested in one particular topic, or niche, or segment, a vast majority already have a hierarchical structure of sources in their head. If you wish to hear the Republican talking points on the shutdown you don't go to google and type "please show me some representative Republican sites". You already know where to look, which incidentally makes Google significantly less useful in aggregate : sure it can send some visits, but the users it sends aren't representative of the Internet population. They're a selected group, and they're selected for cluelessness. Who would want to pay to be visited by more clueless people ? Some some sort of scammer, perhaps, like a patent toy vendor or something - unless you're selling cheap goods for massive mark-ups, google advertising makes absolutely no sense for you.

[↩]Maybe just say "Occupy" to you, then point and laugh ? [↩]

« Joe Stack (1956-2010)

Do most slavegirls exhibit Borderline Personality Disorder ? »

Category: Meta psihoza

Friday, 20 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

Third pass addressing the more common pseudo-arguments raised by the very stupid people that like the Gavin scamcoin proposal

X. A mousy Princeton graduate who resides in Amherst, Massachusetts and has lived his entire life firmly attached to the govenrment tit is going to "save Africa" from imaginary problems it doesn't actually have by inflating the Bitcoin blockchain to the point nobody but his USG owners can maintain a full record. This is good for Bitcoin.

You are an idiot. Go the fuck away.

XI. Raising the limit doesn't force the blocks to be filled. It just gives miners the option to make bigger blocks should market conditions make it to their advantage to do so.

This is not how economics work. Quoting Buffetti :

The domestic textile industry operates in a commodity business, competing in a world market in which substantial excess capacity exists. Much of the trouble we experienced was attributable, both directly and indirectly, to competition from foreign countries whose workers are paid a small fraction of the U.S. minimum wage. But that in no way means that our labor force deserves any blame for our closing. In fact, in comparison with employees of American industry generally, our workers were poorly paid, as has been the case throughout the textile business. In contract negotiations, union leaders and members were sensitive to our disadvantageous cost position and did not push for unrealistic wage increases or unproductive work practices. To the contrary, they tried just as hard as we did to keep us competitive. Even during our liquidation period they performed superbly. (Ironically, we would have been better off financially if our union had behaved unreasonably some years ago; we then would have recognized the impossible future that we faced, promptly closed down, and avoided significant future losses.)

Over the years, we had the option of making large capital expenditures in the textile operation that would have allowed us to somewhat reduce variable costs. Each proposal to do so looked like an immediate winner. Measured by standard return-on-investment tests, in fact, these proposals usually promised greater economic benefits than would have resulted from comparable expenditures in our highly-profitable candy and newspaper businesses.

But the promised benefits from these textile investments were illusory. Many of our competitors, both domestic and foreign, were stepping up to the same kind of expenditures and, once enough companies did so, their reduced costs became the baseline for reduced prices industrywide. Viewed individually, each company's capital investment decision appeared cost-effective and rational; viewed collectively, the decisions neutralized each other and were irrational, just as happens when each person watching a parade decides he can see a little better if he stands on tiptoes.

After each round of investment, all the players had more money in the game and returns remained anemic. Thus, we faced a miserable choice: huge capital investment would have helped to keep our textile business alive, but would have left us with terrible returns on ever-growing amounts of capital. After the investment, moreover, the foreign competition would still have retained a major, continuing advantage in labor costs. A refusal to invest, however, would make us increasingly non-competitive, even measured against domestic textile manufacturers. I always thought myself in the position described by Woody Allen in one of his movies: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

For an understanding of how the to-invest-or-not-to-invest dilemma plays out in a commodity business, it is instructive to look at Burlington Industries, by far the largest U.S. textile company both 21 years ago and now. In 1964 Burlington had sales of $1.2 billion against our $50 million. It had strengths in both distribution and production that we could never hope to match and also, of course, had an earnings record far superior to ours. Its stock sold at 60 at the end of 1964; ours was 13.

Burlington made a decision to stick to the textile business, and in 1985 had sales of about $2.8 billion. During the 1964-85 period, the company made capital expenditures of about $3 billion, far more than any other U.S. textile company and more than $200-per-share on that $60 stock. A very large part of the expenditures, I am sure, was devoted to cost improvement and expansion. Given Burlington's basic commitment to stay in textiles, I would also surmise that the company's capital decisions were quite rational.

Nevertheless, Burlington has lost sales volume in real dollars and has far lower returns on sales and equity now than 20 years ago. Split 2-for-1 in 1965, the stock now sells at 34-on an adjusted basis, just a little over its $60 price in 1964. Meanwhile, the CPI has more than tripled. Therefore, each share commands about one-third the purchasing power it did at the end of 1964. Regular dividends have been paid but they, too, have shrunk significantly in purchasing power.

This devastating outcome for the shareholders indicates what can happen when much brain power and energy are applied to a faulty premise. The situation is suggestive of Samuel Johnson's horse: "A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician." Likewise, a textile company that allocates capital brilliantly within its industry is a remarkable textile company, but not a remarkable business.

My conclusion from my own experiences and from much observation of other businesses is that a good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row (though intelligence and effort help considerably, of course, in any business, good or bad). Some years ago I wrote: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." Nothing has since changed my point of view on that matter. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

So, no : infinite blocks to not give "the miners" any sort of option, because "the miners" as a collective noun do not exist. There exist individual miners exclusively, and the incentives of individuals are, should the Gavin scam actually be implemented, firmly oriented towards destroying the commons that is Bitcoin.

There's no way out of this problem, and simple ignorance of economy or game theory is not a solution.

XII. The current 1Mb limit is arbitrary. We want to change it. Please ignore the fact that the discussion is about whether to change or not to change, and please ignore that the onus is on whoever proposes change to justify it. Instead, buy into our pretense that the discussion is about "which arbitrary value". Because we're idiots, and so should be you!

Go away.

XIII. Bitcoin has worked fine so far, and is sending the world's elite running for cover - from political to financial to media elites. Clearly this means more of the same won't work in the future, and it must be changed to more closely conform to what these elites like to see, which only coincidentally happens to strictly resemble each and every other previous challenge to their authority, which only coincidentally happened to all fail. Because we're idiots, and so should be you! For equality!

Go away.

XIV. We all agree.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant. Bitcoin is about money and about power, not about opinion and social media. You can agree until you are blue in the face, that's not what makes a difference. Your public humiliation on this score - in case your shepherd be dumb enough to actually take the field and be humiliatedii - should be instructive for you.

Take notice on the why and the how you don't matter, understand why "MP doesn't cater to my idiocy which makes me want to support anything else" doesn't actually do anything, break through the shell of your own idiocy and start actually developing as a human being already. Going by your infantile behaviour this is clearly the first time you had the chance, but going by the messy state of the world around you it might actually be your last, too. Try and make the best of the very little you have at your disposal.

That'd be it. This third installment actually covers the entirety of the "arguments" brought by the idiots (and assorted incentivised shills / "political activists") pushing this particular attack on Bitcoin. Ridiculous how little they have, considering how much they cost their government, their parents and the Earth generally. But such is life.

———Really, you should do a lot more reading of MPOE-PR - she is pretty much the only avenue for a tardstalk user to actually relate to Bitcoin. Everyone else there is just hallucinating nonsense. [↩]Seems improbable, if nothing else on the strength of the recent very embarrassed Fed release - apparently once MP destroyed their shill in Bitcoin they're not even willing to name Bitcoin at all anymore, it has to be "Digital Value Transfer Vehicles" now. Nothing quite like wounded narcissism in bureaucrats, eh ? [↩]

« The worm

Qntra (S.QNTR) January 2015 Statement »

Category: Bitcoin

Saturday, 31 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

There's a one Bitcoin reward for the death of Pieter Wuille. Details below.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Hash: SHA512

The first party to produce a verifiable death certificate for one Pieter Wuille, aka sipa, last known to exist somewhere around KU Leuven in Belgium will receive payment of 1 (one) Bitcoin to any valid* Bitcoin address of his specification.

===

* Valid Bitcoin addresses start with a "1".

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJWaYs9AAoJEIpzbw4vt7RSp90P/Rp55mjGxsEKthZM5Qrl0JP2

rO28IWuZ/GErDPhZF1xrBE8l2X6S/nYjnIxFnhORBhJLC6c2puF6iyN4PAj0aqDn

cZWq7Ghm4DHy2Mq51zVITIsVOVJvsTT5f9Sg0q+C6Ior8+VXQGjRuG+ERyvkd1bk

GMHQCBlDYk8706slPxXBYxODxqJCHpx4/530/NKUY0jLab/W1Kh6U38NLi1xYZ+I

g6iAEnNa7Sf7Am1QsjUiZGsvBZeBmMyqQiynjIM302CBCo60BGgjlT7X0goHAHGq

YSUiPOSnA328GncdocRWPKsuyADI0Wv8bmrUjcydGQ+WG39P4XqxpWLEr1rwVE18

73Sa7bScahOtljZWK4Dcfsezz/IL64Pe34e2ZU5aqNMdoykOCCsvGUvqnsvK8oOy

0Jgf1c8EBzI7j/xrZVP/YPXWAuSriIkpk1hqALZSWGvQXt3ExQd5fx9vFDnBRUo/

ajRo3dY78o6Fit4ynDlMzOymNx9z/k81U+NCGtPLgglDvcqjSyFZubS4TGVBlrv6

CxjVUJ1A4hsBUH8gpP97KZ8HmxZOlworbhZMAUZAekEg7WZhmmk2wVWZFfWK1+60

PmOa/NrfNUvVO8YJBQLGVDA0vlLywKx5ifgRq6+VykYRs7GbdKe1as3glkXyrooI

M85j/tKGmtrckZVRndMJ

=DDdo

-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

If you know enough about cryptography to be involved in cryptocurrency you know the above is valid ; if you know enough about Bitcoin that it's useful to you, you know it's also good.

Now that we've taken the dirty but necessary business of governmenti out of the way, let's go into the more interesting technical details. Here's an archival copy of the offending material, find quotes with commentary below.

Okay. So I am Pieter Wuille. I'll be talking about segregated witness for Bitcoin. Before I can explain this, I want to give some context. We all know how bitcoin transactions work. Every bitcoin transaction gets inputs, which refer to previous outputs being spent. Every input has the txid and the signature to prove that it is allowed, plus an amount and script in every output. What this presentation will mostly be about is the question of whether all of this data is equally important.

In particular, we are going to be talking about signatures. It's important to realize here that signatures are really only needed for fully-validating nodes. As a light-weight client, you are not validating signatures, even though they are part of the transactions you still have to download them. If you are using a full-node that is syncing historical data, you don't actually validate all of the signatures in there. Currently there is a mechanism in there using checkpoints, which we want to deprecate soon, but the result will still be that we're not validating all signatures from years ago in deep history.

The point here is that non-validating nodes are not nodes. If you decide to buy some Trilema creditsii, the relevant, Bitcoin-related interaction happens at two points : when whatever validating node that holds your Bitcoiniii signs and announces the transaction, and when whatever full node I use sees the announcement and verifies the signature. At no other point and in no other manner is Bitcoin to any degree involved. Not when you use the "SPV Bitcoin Node" that is "your" online wallet ; not when you use the "SPV Bitcoin Node" that is the browser which displays Trilema to you, Mozilla, Chrome, whatever it may be. Not when the "SPV Bitcoin Node" that is your NAT Router or Comcast-owned modem passes the bits back and forth. Bitcoin is something that happens, on the social level, between holders ; and on the technical level between nodes.iv

The other important point is that the signatures are the only important parts of the transaction. The reference Bitcoin implementation, as released by the Bitcoin Foundation (the real one, not the n-th reboot of Vessennes' original MtGox-promoting, BFL-promoting fraudster den) already ignores most of that crud, and will be removing more of it in the future. This can not be emphasized enough : you can not be building any type of business on any sort of Gavinism, because they will not survive on the middle term. It's not just the Bitcoins, that you would have lost had I not murdered "XT". Everything - every hour you spend "developing" atop the crud USG agents try to stick in Bitcoin is a wasted hour, because the stuff you build upon has the consistency of smoke and the life expectancy of... well, I was going to say ephemerides, but I guess we could just as well say Pieter Wuille.

All the captatio in the world, all the carefully-engineered, plainly USG-Democrat style narrative, all the attentive positioningv is not going to change the simple fact : Bitcoin wants Wuille's head. Follow down the path that got him killed at your own peril.

These signatures are only needed at time of validation. They don't go into the UTXO set, the database of all unspent coins.

And your dad doesn't go with you to the club. Notwithstanding that the clothes that you're wearing, he bought, and the car you drive or else the ticket for the bus that gets you there - he paid for. The notion that signatures "don't go into the UTXO set" is like the notion that hard work and living within one's means "don't go into WMAGvi". You can see how well that worked for your parents just by looking around : if they didn't buy that nonsense, at the cost of their labour and their lives, you wouldn't have some random gypsy from Eastern Europe decide if you live or die. How's that for captatio ?

These unspent transaction outputs don't enter into the UTXO set. This is a significant cost on the resources of both keeping a node running but also the speed of propagation and access to the UTXO set needs to be fast. Of all the data in a transaction, signatures don't go into the UTXO set, even though they account for 60% of the blockchain data. Segregated witness is about ignoring this whenever possible.

They of shorter memory than their noses will no doubt have already forgotten the previous attempt at a "soft fork" organized by these same people, affectionately dubbed the Power Rangers. I guess we're supposed to not recall last year, nor any details about how non-validating Chinese miners managed to drag a soft fork in and then not enforce it, causing a netsplit that took a day to heal, the worst since Mike Hearn's deliberate sabotage a coupla years ago.

The reason for this name is because signatures are not part of the transaction.

Yes, they are. Not only are they part of the transaction, not only are they an integral part of the transaction : they are the only actually needed part. What makes a transaction a transaction is the signature, nothing else. Everything else is like marketing : contributes to costs, not to revenue.

They don't describe what the transaction is doing.

The attempt to import meaning and state into Bitcoin is the true attack vector here, and particularly pernicious. Review the sad history of XML and HTML standards if you're too young to remember how Erik Naggum died.

The only thing htey are doing is proving that the transaction is authorized by the previous owners of the coins.

I know, right ?

There are usually multiple possible valid signature for the same transaction.

This is a major problem, principally driven by the deliberately broken state of the FOSS (and guess who broke it, or are you too new to have read the NSA agent notes from various crypto conferences ?) resulted in braindamage being imported into Bitcoin via openssl. This is to be healed, mostly through removal. What the enemy would desire, of course, is for it to become the baseline, a new normal of sorts upon which further rot to be imported ad infinitum, slowly but surely chipping away at Bitcoin's disruptive capacity. This will not fly.

We don't really care what the signature is, all we care about is that at least one signature for that existed. Such an example of where something exists is known as a witness.

This is not even wrong.

We don't care that what it is, well we do for auditing purposes, like in multi-sign setup where you have 1-of-3 people that are able to spend a particular output, perhaps you would really like to know which person signed, which we will solve later. Inside a transaction, you still don't care.

This attempt at confounding the problem is the proof that not only is he not even wrong, he knows he's not even wrong, and actively, deliberately trying to cover it up. No, "1-of-3" bullshit has nothing to do with Bitcoin, and is uninteresting in this discussion.

Wouldn't it be nice to just drop the signatures?

No.

That's it, and that's all. Please take my money.

———You are now confronted with the unhappy choice between making this "go viral" or whatever you call blathering endlessly about shit you can't affect on "social media" ; or else tacitly admitting that I have the right to issue death warrants, something you don't otherwise admit for anyone else. What's all that precious "public choice" theory have to say on the topic ? [↩]Still to this day the principal, real-world use-case for Bitcoin as Bitcoin, rather than as a proxy for some fiat or another. Though in fairness S.MG's products are catching up. [↩]No, "you" don't hold any Bitcoin until and unless you control a full node that has a wallet. If for instance you're "using blockchain.info" then USG has your Bitcoin, and you use them, maybe, sometimes, at their pleasure. Or not. [↩]Nodes means "fully validating" nodes. The other version, the faux-nodes, the "not really nodes", the "I can't believe it's not a node" SPV nonsense are the ones that require the specification just like when an honest man meets a thief the honest man is Jim and the thief is Jeff the Thief - not the other fucking way around. [↩]Oh, of course you're the ones running non-nodes, who want to pretend otherwise, right ? [↩]What Makes America Great. [↩]

« Eulora as seen by Mircescu

Here's who doesn't belong in Bitcoin : you. »

Category: Bitcoin

Thursday, 10 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

The worm

Ascaris cerebrofoetida is an obligate parasite found in humansi and, rarely, a few of the great apes. Its relative ineffectuality infesting any species other than humans, clearly related to specific adaptations that support its exceptional virulence for our species suggest that perhaps it has exceptionally first evolved to infest humans and from there spread out towards other Hominidae, rather than the other way around seen in all other parasites.

The exact infection agent is disputed, primarily because infection pathway varies by gender. In females, the infection always begins through the traversal of the mucous membranes lining the nasal concha (proceeding to the sphenoid sinus, by far the most common pathway), the vocal folds or the lacrimal ducts by a stage IV parasite. This vaguely snailshell shaped organism burrows its way to the pons. The process lasts a few hours, and it is generally reported as extremely unpleasant itchiness, rarely painful. Generally a few dozen up to a maximally reported hundred foreign organisms migrate, creating a colony through the extension of special filaments (the hypha).

The colony generally becomes established within a few days to about one week. Once established it begins secreting an array of about five hundred hormones and other linked aminoacids, lipids and complex polysaccharides, most of which were not described before in any living species. It is generally accepted that these mimic or otherwise interact with the normal functioning of human metabolism. The specific mechanisms are not understood in most cases, although there have been advances made recently in documenting some possible mechanisms of action for VVb-1, 2 and 8 as well as MSI and FD-c, FD-d-13, FDX-a and b as well as some of the simpler VU and VUx compounds.

In a clinical perspective the net effect of these are observable changes in the affected individual. As far as behaviour is concerned, an almost complete shut-down of higher cognitive functions, with language use sharply limited to rarely more than thirty words and incomplete sentence structure ; poor impulse control, manifested variously as aggressivity (primarily sexual in nature) among peers as well as suicidal or more broadly destructive tendencies if isolated, and in most cases an intolerance of clothing and confined spaces. The victim prefers to breathe through the mouth and tends to suckle on small items almost constantly - often its own thumbs.

Various anatomical modifications are also visible : a marked enlargement of the breasts generally and of the nipple particularly, which becomes extremely sensitive. Lactation is permanent. The waist narrows significantly, with few recorded instances over seventeen inches, age irrespective. The so called Malinovski sign, an obdurate bump protruding half an inch from the skin, about three or four inches under the umbilicus or roughly halfway between the umbilicus and the tip of the pudendal cleft, not swollen nor painful, giving a chitinous, bony impression upon palpation is the definite mark of the presence of the parasite. The buttocks enlarge significantly, maintaining an otherwise uncommon round, firm appearance. Other moreover cosmetic changes are also commonly reported : narrower pores, a general "brightening" of the complexion, greatly elongated eyelashes, much greater activation of the usual vaginal lubricating glands (resulting in the so-called "drip").

The colony firmly established it sends runners through the spine, which then follow through the celiac ganglia and into the ovarian plexus. Once the ovaries are reached, the fruiting bodies of the colony become established. The follicles are individually pierced over time, the ovary therein contained "impregnated" by a specially adapted agent vaguely resembling Arabis pollen (three colpi, prominent surface structure) which results in structural modifications of the cell that eventually yield a stage I parasite, which is excreted into the environment along with other vaginal discharges. An infested female will yield a few thousand successful stage I parasites over her lifetimeii, marking this lifeform as one of the invertebrates with the lowest offspring factor.

The stage I parasite is not infectious to humans, requiring a maturation phase inside Drosophila melanogaster, where it turns to stage II. If the fly is swallowed by Vandellia cirrhosa, then the parasite can move on to stage III, which is infective to human males exclusively. The parasites do not migrate through the urethral lacerations caused by the parasitic catfish into the bloodstream, but instead merely follow the urethra, proceed through the epididymis into the testicles. While the pain caused by the V. cirrhosa infestation is described as "excruciating", once the tell-tale sign of the urethral burning and itching makes itself felt the fish can be disposed of. The A. cerebrofoetida infestation continues, restructuring the testicle over a period of weeks, which is subjectively perceived as extremely pleaurable by the victim - frequently described in primary literature as "nothing but pure bliss" and "the best orgasm ever, just going for weeks". Infected males produce large quantities of stage IV parasite, which are found in seminal discharges alongside spermatozoa.

On the biology involved it would rationally be expected that A. cerebrofoetida is an extremely rare infection - in fact there's no good reason for it to even exist in the first place. The transition from stage II to stage III is particularly problematic, seeing how the common fruit fly and the parasitic freshwater catfish have very little ecologic overlap, not to mention that the latter do not normally consume the former. However, because of the parasite's exceptional fit with particular human behaviours, it has in fact proven as the most successful parasite known, with 90% worldwide infestation levels projected within five years. Particularly in less developed countries, and among the economically marginalised, the infestation of a pubescent female is viewed as a significant benefit, notwithstanding her loss of intellectual acumen and life expectancy, because the accentuation of prized sexual dysmorphisms that the parasite promotes significantly increase her prospects of a good marriage or a lucrative webcam entertainment career. Poor families will often expend months of their income to secure an infection for a daughter in one of the numerous if illegal and insalubre "beautification clinics" constantly springing up all over the ghetto and generally the thirld world.

Males on the other hand generally find the intrinsic rewards of the infestation irresistible, and since attempts to promote legislation making infestation illegal for males, or to force quarantine of the sufferers have always met with fierce political opposition it is probable that the male infecting stage III A. cerebrofoetida is here to stay. The triviality of helping the parasite bridge its II-III gap is also a factor. Currently, V. cirrhosa is by a large margin the most commonly kept aquarium fish by the general public, and accounts for most of the recent revival in aquarism as a hobby. The common process involves obtaining dessicated vaginal secretions of an infected female, adding them to a bowl of cut up fruit and then feeding the inevitable flies to the fish. Within weeks the whole tank is ready to carry the infection over, usually resulting in a frat party (the so-called "Bleed of Brotherhood" or "BB" in juvenile slang). The fish is small and undemanding. Attempts to curtail its importation have so far not been successful.

It is noteworthy that even 100% male carrier status would not likely result in significant female exposure, for obvious reasons. A. cerebrofoetida infestation in females is more of a poverty mediated political problem than a bona fide medical problem, and should probably be addressed with financial, legal and political incentives and disincentives as a social behaviour rather than through medical means. A cure in any case seems a fair distance away, provided a cure can in fact be had. The parasite does not respond to any of the common vermifuges or fungicides, in any case not moreso than the host. Its eventual extinction is in any case a complicated political problem for the reasons stated.

How the parasite came to be is a baffling question. It seems improbable that it would have appeared naturally - not least because the V. cirrhosa clears it out of its system entirely within about five to ten weeks, provided no re-infection occurs. As the parasite does not have any dormant stages, nor any significant biological reservoirs, as it can not survive dry conditions in the slightest, lacking any sort of cystic form, it is not readily obvious how it could have arisen evolutionarily. There is currently substantial debate between the proposition of a "meteoric" (or generally, alien) source and the proposition of a "conspiratorial" source. Neither theory is widely supported in the larger medical community, leaving the origins of Ascaris cerebrofoetida a mystery for later generations.

———Note that it is currently disputed whether this organism is a fungus or a nematode. At the present time it is classified as the latter, in spite of displaying a number of characteristics more neatly characteristic of fungi. [↩]Generally, an infected female will not survive past about the age of about thirty-eight, irrespective of the age of infection, although there are two known exceptions that survived to fifty-one and fifty-two respectively. [↩]

« You are poor lolz.

Third pass addressing the more common pseudo-arguments raised by the very stupid people that like the Gavin scamcoin proposal »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Saturday, 31 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

The war of the Roses

The war of the Rosesi is a summary of a very stale, wilted hell. It depicts the very serious, real, burning problems women - rich, smart, accomplished women, women that actually matterii - encountered in a society that was poorly designed and sparsely populated (with men, with opportunities, with things to do in general). So she's a gymnast after which she can be... a lawyer's wife ? She'd rather chew gravel. Now what ?

Little do the mayogenderediii hikikomoriiv pretend-feminists/social activists/awareness raiserists of today know or understand of the actual meanings of terms like "glass ceiling" or "patriarchy". Turner's character in this movie runs quite flat against them, and in so doing exposes the exact mechanisms underpinning a simpler, quainter time. A time when insanity was pretty much the only solution for half of the population, or at least the fragment thereof not fortunate enough to have been born blind, spineless and dumb.

Definitely worth seeing, if nothing else then in order to understand why I both despise "conservative" perisexual stupidity even in people I otherwise like and respect and why I will never ever support a return to "an earlier, simpler, quainter" time. A fie upon it, me and my slaves aren't going back to the "post-war" or whatever you'd call the US version of the obsessive decade if it means the end of the world. Fuck it, it's due for an ending anwyay.

———1989, by Danny DeVito (who also produced, and financed, and released and basically I think he'd have done anything to be able to deliver that closing line), with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito. [↩]Understand : I support gay rights because Turing and for no other reason ; there's also Hey, stupid women ? We need to talk. Smart women don't want to be with you anymore.

The idea being that the struggle for rights is only meaningful if interpreted from a classist perspective : upper class members of society should have rights, and if they do not they should get them ; nobody else should, and if they somehow do they must be tortured horribly and then murdered painfully. [↩]There's three genders known to the human species : male , female and fat. Mayogendered denotes fat. [↩]Means "Redditard" in Pashtun. [↩]

« How is it the end ?

Qntra (S.QNTR) October 2015 Statement »

Category: Trilematograf

Wednesday, 04 November, Year 7 d.Tr.

The very very jealous with envy thing, part deux.

I was minding my own business doing other things while my most mircescuesque avatar was busy crafting by itself, when suddenly I was congratulated! For outstanding achievement! Like so :

That's ~20k Slag recipes + ~5k Coarse Cordage recipes + 3k Disgusting Goop recipes + 800 Braided Coarse Thread recipes, my fair and square payment for doing one click. The right click.

Yay!

For the mathematically inclined : 0.03 BTC = 3`000`000 Eulora copper coins. Whereas the Disgusting Goop click costs ~500 coins, depending on qualities and such esoteric considerations. Which means that above represented is me hitting a 6`000x jackpot.

Which isn't even the largest available in game. Because, get this : Eulora returns are uncapped. Yes, actually. There isn't a "largest loot" nor is there a "largest multiplier". Obviously they have to be finite, but on the basis of the formulas employed, you can not exclude any finite value. They get less and less likely as you go up, of course. But the probability never actually reaches zero.

The probability never actually reaches zero.

« What MP wants, MP gets. Also, prayers are answered.

The 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 Sunday event »

Category: S.MG

Monday, 03 August, Year 7 d.Tr.