Alright, I give up.

So it all started (like all other good things always start) with a conversation in #b-a.

copypaste Also, mircea_popescu, if I may ask you what you think of the end of the Merchant of Venice, in this article you quote a good portion of it, but skip the end of the proceedings where the out of town lawyer is invited in and (nonsensically, in a deus ex machina way, in my opinion) determines that blood is not part of one's flesh and therefore the contract is unenforceable and goes on to seize all of the merchant's money or however it goes. i just found it odd how you skipped the end is all

mircea_popescu I think it's nonsensical pandering and not really worth the mention. Guy had to do a travesti because that's what a comedy was at the time. The situation of True Romance is very similar : compare Tarantino's own cut with the bullshit the studio released.

copypaste So we're in agreement then, even Shakespeare, one of the so called greats, pandered often in his plays for "widespread appeal". Good to know, thank you.

mircea_popescu Shakespeare is difficult to match in many ways, chief among which his inclination to pander.

copypaste Hehehe.

mircea_popescu He's an utter slut. I don't believe this detracts.

copypaste Oh no, up until that point it was an excellent metaphor, I understand why you left it where you did.

mircea_popescu No I mean, I don't believe Shakespeare's loose mores detract from his literary value.

* mircea_popescu realises with unmitigated horror that now he's going to have to rewrite the fucking merchant of venice

mircea_popescu Curse you copypaste.

copypaste D

copypaste mircea_popescu no one ever said that rewriting history would be easy, mind.i

mircea_popescu Motherfucker.

copypaste And further - I've read your essays about dead books, you can simply put the merchant onto the trash heap. Although I'd rather it not be placed there.

mircea_popescu At any rate, history dun even enter into it. The thing's broken for no good reason.

copypaste Indeed it is, but if anyone is capable of fixing it it's you.

A lot has happened hence, of all sorts. What hasn't happened is me succeeding in this attempt, in spite of spending a decent chunk of time on it. Looking through the detritus output so far, a single short fragment is actually worth the mention. I'll reproduce it below, with the original :

SHYLOCK: When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep -- this Jacob from our holy Abram was, as his wise mother wrought in his behalf, the third possessor; ay, he was the third...

ANTONIO: And what of him? Did he take interest?

SHYLOCK: No, not take interest, not, as you would say, directly interest: mark what Jacob did. When Laban and himself were compromised that all the eanlings which were streak'd and pied should fall as Jacob's hire, the ewes, being rank, in the end of autumn turned to the rams, and, when the work of generation was between these woolly breeders in the act, the skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands, and, in the doing of the deed of kind, he stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, who then conceiving did in eaning time fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were Jacob's. This was a way to thrive, and he was blest: and thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.

ANTONIO : This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for; a thing not in his power to bring to pass, but sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven. Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

SHYLOCK: I cannot tell; I make it breed as fast: But note me, signior.

ANTONIO: Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart: o, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

SHYLOCK: Three thousand ducats; 'tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate...

ANTONIO: Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?

apud Shakespeare

SHYLOCK

When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep -- this Jacob from our holy Abram was, as his wise mother wrought in his behalf, the third possessor; ay, he was the third --

ANTONIO

And what of him? Did he take interest?

SHYLOCK

No, not take interest, not, as you would say, directly interest. Mark what Jacob did. Laban and himself were compromised that all the eanlings which were streak'd and pied should fall as Jacob's hire. The ewes, being rank, in the end of autumn turned to the rams, and, when the work of generation was between these woolly breeders in the act, the skilful shepherd peel'd me certain wands, and, in the doing of the deed of kind, he stuck them up before the fulsome ewes, who then conceiving did in eaning time fall parti-colour'd lambs, and those were Jacob's. This was a way to thrive, and he was blest. For thrift is blessing, if men steal it not.

ANTONIO

This was a venture, sir, that Jacob served for; a thing not in his power to bring to pass, but sway'd and fashion'd by the hand of heaven.

SHYLOCK

Tis true that the thing itself were not in Jacob's power to bring to pass, for ewe in the autumn ram will seek, and one or another it will find, and fall with lamb. But lo! the rate of streaked eanlings to the herd is known to men, for it doth not change from one year to the next, but stays the same. This is why Laban so agreed to give Jacob the streak'd ones, for he knew that in twenty ewes there's one, and if not one then in forty ewes two, and if be more or less then in a hundred will be five nevertheless and so following. But Jacob, by his craft, did make nothing come to pass that weren't going to, yet altered how it passed and so what was to come to pass did come to pass -- but to his blessing and to Laban's loss.

ANTONIO Was this inserted to make interest good? Or is your gold and silver ewes and rams?

SHYLOCK

I cannot tell ; I make it breed as fast. But note me, signior, that what will come to pass will come to pass, yet man can alter such passage by his deeds, and that's a profit or a cost. What if Sodoma had one worthy man within its walls ? What then, pray ? What his reward ?

ANTONIO

Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek, a goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

SHYLOCK

Three thousand ducats 'tis a good round sum. Three months from twelve; then, let me see; the rate -- Tell me, what does thy Scripture say of man that lay with man ?

ANTONIO

I'll tell you, Jew --

SHYLOCK

You'll tell me naught. I know. You think the Christians wiser in this town, but we have known the law longer than all of you. Like a child that broke his mother's pot doth set the pieces back again together as they were, to pass for whole, you have a boy you wish to turn a man. A fool you are, Antonio, but crafty, and so suppose that for my hate of you, which you suppose from your hate of me, I will supply your want.

ANTONIO

Well, Shylock, shall we be beholding to you?

apud MP

The idea was to reconstruct the symmetry of the piece over layers : between the high strung principles of the Christians, splendiferous rulers of Venice, who pretend homosexuality to be evil even while they pretend interest to be also evilii and the tolerant outlook of the Jews, actual substance of the power of Venice ; between Antonio's own punk, who aspires to attain humanity through a process not unlike that of obtaining a souliii and Shylock's own daughter, who is a woman and as such betraysiv. The crises this arrangement provide for everyone should be ample material for one great play.

In this model Antonio is for instance very reasonably welcoming the Jew's knife - he wants to give life the only way he knows how, through the model his faith endows him with, through Christic sacrifice to cleanse his own sin (of having fucked the Bassanio boy) and also give him what he's lacking, ie, grace. The Jew has every reason in the world to act the part of executioner, even while he knows that's what he's doing - chiefly because knowledge is in fact orthogonal to deed, and of very little help in that field. He was betrayed by Jessica and has literally nothing left in the world, so he can proceed to kill. I've not decided if Bassanio is to succeed or fail in his quest to manhood, nor if Jessica should dissolve in the procreative matrix marrying a shepherd somewhere in Thracia or else to mate with the young Venetian or what. You really can play it either way, there's no obvious solution - we could say with subtle irony that I've made the play into a tree.

At any rate - I've not the patience. Maybe a better man, sometime, or maybe me when older, or whatever.

PS. Aww, did I accidentally your hopes & ambitions ?

———I was convinced at a time this is a direct quote from yours truly, but I can't seem to find the source now. [↩]Think about it, if they can derive joy without the possibility of procreation, why shouldn't they derive value without physical multiplication ? [↩]Lengthy theme this, go, read. [↩]This isn't an indictment, she has to, procreation and identity are obviously contradictory goals. [↩]

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What is the Leyla Black ? »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Saturday, 30 January, Year 8 d.Tr.

All my sons

All my sons i is a bad cinematographic reprise of a bad play. I'll go into detail like dissecting a corpse - it's not really worth watching, which means it's not really alive.

As the story goes, a rich guy was confronted with the usual choice of life : either fuck the guy down the line or face the end of your line. You know how this bullshit dilemma plays out whenever poor people are involved, nobody's yet proposed that some inept fishermen in Sicily commit seppuku for the crime of being useless. It's alright for them to pass the buck, you see, because they're poor, and that counts somehow, magically. They don't have to face the music, god forbid, shame on you for even thinking about it. What are you, some kind of sociopath ?! No, they "should" be helped, understood and of course supported. Emotionally, but most of all monetarily - out of imaginary public money that doesn't exist. That's what the fiat state is for, right ?

Anyway. This guy does what poor people do, and passes the buck. But it's not okay for him, the story goes, because he's rich. And rich people, as you know, are very much guilty for being rich, because being rich is bad mmmkay. So his one son commits suicide, and then his other son huffs and puffs like an idiot, until the poor guy, thoroughly disgusted by the scum he's leaving behind, gets a little bit of fast acting colon cancer to the headii. Yes, exactly like that other guy thoroughly disgusted with the scum he's leaving behind, the one in the good play.

Then there's a lot of song and dance about how we're all one goodness soap and assorted Californy insanity, and then that's that, the end. Perhaps notably, the man condemns his entire family, notwithstanding that his very obviously Idish speaking Polish wifeiii is both loyal and respectable. Yet they've made the idiot mistake of raising their kids "American", and now those kids have no place in the world and no value to anybody. Very much like Arthur Miller himself, actually.

That's not usually a mistake people wish to see, that they've raised their kids wrong. Nevertheless, it's the true moraliv of this unfortunate shambling horror of an agitprop piece - do not raise your kids as if the fiat state matters. Not only it does not matter ; but the atrocious poison of its nonsense will kill them ; and it will kill you.

There's really no greater crime than telling some impressionable young mind that "we're all one" and the rest of the bullshit in that line. Getting them to believe in Santa and Pillow Pants the Cunt Troll is merely ridiculous ; but this will kill them, as sure as it will kill you.

Just say no to socialist lunacy. All the time. Everywhere. Starting today.

———1948, by Irving Reis, with Edward G. Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Mady Christians. [↩]To quote,

Nothing is bigger than that. And youre going to tell him, you understand? Im his father and hes my son and if theres something bigger than that I'll put a bullet in my head!

Yeah, I'm aware that the official nazi interpretation, taught in every school to the "new man" child doesn't wish to confront the obvious. Nevertheless, the old guy doesn't kill himself because he gives a shit about your inept notions of guilt. He kills himself because he's - rightfully - ashamed scum like you came out of his body.

I would be too. [↩]Really, a Platdeustch speaking Austrian woman. Who, irony of ironies, died of a stroke a coupla years after this film came out. She had been blacklisted, you see, and it didn't sit so well with her. [↩]We've discussed before this strange tendency of actual truth to break through bad socialist ideology and turn the whole aesop on its head. As if there's no room for the scum on Earth, somehow. [↩]

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El Pompenal »

Category: Trilematograf

Monday, 16 May, Year 8 d.Tr.

A story of men.

I never cared much for my country, which is tragic because it's small, poor and generally speaking helpless. There aren't that many people who understand it, and it can scarcely afford the disinterest of those precious few who do -- yet it never manages to retain their goodwill.

But then again, tragedy is the only certainty of life ; and so for this Christmasi let's look at the stubborn whore in the best possible light. Let's wash her up, let's dress her up, let's make her up and then sit her down and let the cameras roll. Action!

There's a lot of action in Romanian cinema, especially in the Romanian New Wave. The reason is that Romanian cinema, without exception, is a story of men -- and the new wave especially so. Especially so, exactly like all the prior waves before it. Exactly like the entirety of Romania, society and language, prostitution and religious experience, economy and theosophy, geography and history, practical zootechny and functional analysis. How can this be ? Oh I don't know, it can be. Somehow, it can be.

Eu cind vreau sa fluier, fluierii is the story of a man. He's a taurine sort, the kind that carries the world on his back, undeterred by the plowing flies even should they occasionally bite. This man has a brother, a kid who respects him as a god (which is proper, because he is). The man also has a mother, who is a whore. She doesn't matter. The man also has a love interest, who is a maiden with pretty lips. Not much more than a cup of coffee comes of it, because the man also has a prison, which is run by a warden, with whom he has no substantial disagreement : they both aim to protect the kids from the whoresiii. The film has a very happy ending : after a brief exploratory excursion in the land of the maidens, the man trades his share of the maiden herdiv for nuking the whore that originally traded her share of this life to ruin his. These minor, transient impediments resolved, the man and his warden are reunited in his big house, and live there happily forever after. The end.

Marilena de la P7v is the story of a man. This man has a horde of whores, because he is a pimp. One of the whores is magical -- her touch surges electricity. She falls in love with an idiot, because she is a whorevi. A child recognizes the unicorn, and steals his parents' savings to gift her, and tries to steal the bus his father drives, too. The whole world. His reasoning is fundamentally judicious if defective in implementation. If the gimps don't hang him first he will be a man one day. The dumb whore, wilfully blind to all around her, cuts her own neck. She doesn't want to choose what must be chosen, she wants to choose what she wants to choose. This is what whores do, and what makes them whores. The world ends -- la joie'st ailleurs.

Occidentvii is the story of a man. He is a colonel in the local police, which practically means he has a few men and a whole lot of gimps at his command. He also has two women - one cooks and the other opens the door. He doesn't think very much of either, but then again what can you do. They do each other's hair. He has a daughther, with the infangwif, and acquires a son through the offices of the outfangwif (who runs the equivalent institution for girls), in the shape of one of her workers' ex boyfriend. The man's daughter is a whore ; his son almost could have been a man -- but isn't. The whole film is essentially the story of the man trading out the whore for the broken son because who knows, maybe he can be fixed. God knows she can't be. The entire transaction is practically facilitated by a magical Jew with a ponytail from Germany that the man showed kindness to once, in a different life.

I understand that you'd like for women to have a voice in this world. That's nice, and Romania'd also like to matter in the eyes of those men who matter. Sadly the solution to these far fetched desires doesn't come in the shape of idle pretense.

What can you do ?

———Do you know what Christmas is, incidentally ?

I don't think this is possible, outside of Orthodox practice. I also don't think it matters, but then again that's my priviledge. [↩]2010, by Florin Serban, with George Pistereanu. [↩]And for that matter from their allies, the faceless gimps. You know, like you. Like everyone you ever knew. Or will ever meet.

You're, to quote some random idiot, "engaged in a war against terrorism with that ideology". As the Romanian expression goes, nu va vad in clar. [↩]Yes, exactly : his share of the maiden herd. "Consensual relations" in the sense that you'd better find someone to consent with, and quickly. Or else. [↩]2006, by Cristian Nemescu, with Aura Calarasu [↩]Not by occupation, which is incidental, but by substance. This is what whores do, and what makes them whores : falling for idiots. [↩]2002, by Cristian Mungiu, with Dorel Visan [↩]

« Who pops the largest pop ?

Handled ; badly. »

Category: Trilematograf

Sunday, 25 December, Year 8 d.Tr.

A quick word on feminism

There is no such thing.

"Feminism" has no substance. It's not "a sort of socialismi/racismii/mannerismiii/etatismiv" - these do have cognitive content, however nonsensical it may be.

Feminism has no cognitive content whatsoever. It isn't "a nonsensical belief which, for being nonsensical, only survives as a social signalling mechanism". Feminism is directly void of notional contentv, and strictly exists as a social signalling mechanism.

What does it signal ?

Two things. It allows beta males to signal they're not interested in participating sexually, and would much prefer to masturbate quietly in a corner while other people do it ; or to send wifey to be worked over by men and perhaps dine on the spunk she brings him home. Like this guy. Essentially, it allows the beta boy to advertise "I am a cuckold" in vanilla or otherwise sexually-repressive social environments. Considering that the cuckold inclination is present in most males and expresses something fierce in "civilised" settings, the ability to "be" a "feminist" is a lot more valuable for social communication than loud costume and speech affectations - there's a good degree of magnitude more cuckolds than faggots in the general population.

It also allows sexually disinterestedvi females to repress sexuality in a social setting. It is, of course, perfectly okay for me to whistle as she approaches and slap her butt as she struts by ; but if you try it... then she's a feministvii :)

To end on a bright note : there's really nothing wrong with it. People are what they are and like what they like. Relax and enjoy the rest of your life.

PS. Oh, and a lot of niggers are also making a bundle out of the Academia establishment/scam under the "feminist" banner. There, the fact that it means nothing whatsoever is a major advantage.

———At the core, all socialism - be it nazism, or Stalinism, or Rooseveltism or Clintonism or Bushism or Obamaism or whatever myriad mutually interchangeable sorts, indistinct kinds and equivalent versions - contains the notion that the problems of individuals should be resolved by the group.

This is nonsense, of course, but at least it's something.

Since the actual noetic content is nonsensical, the chief practical use and utility of socialism necessarily becomes social signalling, as any and all "we believe nonsense" ideologies ever become. In the case of socialism, it mostly works to attract retards, idiots, the self-disabled, ugly women, slow runners, the fat, the lazy etcetera. The bulk of that is supplanted by a thin sliver of zealotry, the offspring of neurotic mothers who can't consequently find satisfaction in their own work ; alongside assorted fanatics, zealots and other weirdos.

This leads to the usual treadmill, any socialist flag will end up attracting the sort of scum looking to eat for free ; as the zealots and fanatics get tired of the peculiar set of leeches they've attracted they move on to a "new" socialist flag, but this one with a fist instead of a zwastika or whatever. This is the motivation for the endless incessant "flavorings" of the socialist shitcone. [↩]See Racists and socialists, there's in fact very little difference between the two terms - about as much as there is between the Ist plural and the IIIrd plural form of any pronoun. [↩]Mannerism is the belief that form may supplant function. All religion as practiced in the Anglosphere is mannerism, for instance, and one could say protestantism is a mannerist reformation of Christianity. [↩]Etatism is the belief that the state is important and notable. Usually found these days in a thick sauce of misrepresenting the state as something other than individual estate ; and generally a transparent ploy of socialist tendency. [↩]To verify this for yourself, ask the afflicted. This guy is no longer vegan, he's "ecofeminist" now :

I wound up tagging along with my mother and a couple of her friends to a concert benefiting the Occidental Center for the Arts tonight. We got dinner at the Union Hotel, where I was fortunate our server was vegetarian and well-prepared to help me through to getting a vegan meal at a decidedly non-vegan place when it turned out the menu I had downloaded that made me think I could eat there was out of date.

Some other chick is no longer fat, she's a "body something-or-the-other feminist". Some insecure spunkstain is no longer the weird kid nobody talks to at parties but an "intersectional feminist". Random helicopter mom whose children have finally escaped is a "mainstream feminist" or "traditional feminist" or whatever every Wednesday (she's also a knitting club Mahjongg champion on Fridays) and so on. [↩]For whatever reason. Such as for instance physical disability - maybe the lady's missing some parts ; or physical indisposition - maybe she's got diarrhea ; or psychological disability - maybe she grew up in a psychotic environment and as a result can't enjoy being fucked ; or psychological indisposition - maybe her poodle just got raped to shreds by a lecherous ram and she can't even think of accuplation until the image fades ; or contextual blockage - maybe she wouldn't fuck you if ~I~ ordered her to. The list is indeed long. [↩]This is drastically aggravated in those contexts where individuals convince themselves of the false theory that "the state" or "the socialist god" or whoever can and will protect them from violence, and so they aren't held to recognize the differentials of power socially nor cater to the powerful.

A girl brought up sanely will immediately recognize the serious dangers incumbent in attention whoring, but for a large swathe of ESL speakers with little social exposure (outside of pseudosocial media), the notion that failing to act submissive to the right guy is a surefire recipe to mass rape followed by execution may come as a surprise. [↩]

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Category: Cocietate si Sultura

Tuesday, 07 June, Year 8 d.Tr.

A novel once called Disgrace

The full title read "A novel once called Disgrace and badly written by an untalented politruk whose name history has not recorded, now substantially reviewed, fixed and improved by yours truly and actually worth reading for the first time in its existence", but it ran long.

It's not just that I've not sought the permission of the hack in question to modify his work. It's that I am firmly convinced the original is exactly that -- work -- and that I see no reason either the original or its author should be remembered.

I'm engaging in literary genocide, if you will, a sort of black-on-white holocaust. You should try it sometime, it's fun.

I intend to publish the result feuilleton-style over the course of however long it takes me, but for the reader's convenience I will eventually collect all the chapters in a list here below :

Disgrace - For a man of his age

Disgrace - Yet neither he nor she

Disgrace - What he throws together

Disgrace - He pauses. Blank incomprehension.

Disgrace - Does she know what

Disgrace - Never mind. Note that we

Disgrace - It is raining.

Disgrace - You say you have not

Disgrace - At first they do not

Disgrace - Don't the dogs get

Disgrace - Well, you're welcome

Disgrace - The house is just as

Disgrace - The sign outside the clinic

Disgrace - Are they all going to die

Disgrace - Three men are coming

Disgrace - Lucy returns

Disgrace - Before they set off

Disgrace - Katy is coaxed

Disgrace - In spite of all that

Disgrace - Petrus has invited us

Disgrace - He glances across at Lucy

Disgrace - The whole day Lucy

Disgrace - He buys a small television

Disgrace - The dogs are brought

Disgrace - Petrus shakes his head

Disgrace - But he is not satisfied

Disgrace - His spell with Lucy

Disgrace - Years ago, when he lived

For the stat collectors, it went from 4`560 lines / 67`049 words / 355`343 characters to 66`991 words / 374`397 characters ; and from nothingness to wholedom.

Three days, with time to spare.

« The problems of [the female notion of] sacrifice

Disgrace - For a man of his age »

Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte

Thursday, 29 December, Year 8 d.Tr.

A guide for torturing cats. Recently voted most likely to psychopath article on Trilema by anonymous and otherwise anodyne Romanian speaking derps.

Because any successful relationship is based not so much on violence itself as on its application in ways that matter, and because various haters who they are, dressed up as bleaters, piglets as well as other animals useful by the house of man-me try from behind and therefore with outrageousi shamelessness attempt to accredit the false notion that I were a mysoginist, which I am not, being as I am a misanthropist, which is something else entirely, I feel therefore the need to offer you this exhaustive guide for torturing cats. Literally.

Afore proceeding in the material, let us note that there's widely spread the opinion that cats were somehow above submission, that they're forever here mastersii where here = everywhere and so forth. These ridiculous as well as entirely erroneous ideas are the direct and otherwise expected result of enfranchising the gypsy slavesiii, untying the jobbagy and other such ill thought acts of past centuries, which has led to the creation of a large class of nominally "free" and theoretically "independent" slaves who nevertheless find themselves in a perpetual quest for masters, willing to befoul themselves even to that nec plus ultram of infamy scl etc.

So, we have a cat. How do we torture it ? By points :

I. The Fur. The cat is very much displeased with anything that impedes the proper ordering of hairs that compose its coat. As such, a strip of duct tape or scotch tape discreetly applied on its back can't help but deliver results. If you are in a particularly negative disposition, do not hesitate to cover its entire tail while it sleeps, producing a rigid cocoon of sticky plastic (something which drives the beast to complete exasperation, which is to say that phase where it runs around the house like crazy and with its eyes closed, banging on anything may cross its path until it dies). You also have at your disposal chewing gum, which has the potential to amuse the animal for many hours while you relax watching a movie, or perhaps cartoons (Trilema recommends : The Aristocrats).

The fact also should not be neglected that the cat has a very fine sense of smell, which does not necessarily fit with human taste. For instance, the majority of perfumes stink, as far as it's concerned, and we're talking here of expensive, quality perfumes that can make their blessing last days, weeks and even years. Just one single drop between the ears (where it can't lick itself) is sufficient to communicate to the cat that it did the bad. For days, weeks and perhaps years at a stretch. If you're in a somewhat sadistic disposition (har har) you can feed the cat one can of tuna in oil before starving it for a couple of days. After eating the oily tuna, it will proceed to wash itself, rubbing in its entire body the oil scented with the delicious fish which will remind it for the coming days that it has naught to eat, and in the process teach it to not act above its station in life. For optimal results eat yourself at a minimum seven or eight cans while it is dieting, and allow it perhaps to lick out the oil.

II. Water. Cats have a strange aversion to water, given how much they like fish. It would appear that we are not the only ones who torture cats, but that we merely follow, humble homo artifexiv as we are the Divine Example.v One of the most efficient methods of exploiting this... quality is, of course, the water gun. Ideally cold, so add an icecube to the reservoir. Bonus points if you manage to hit either its tiny nose or else butthole.

Furthermore, a cat captured in a box with holes, such as for instance those holding dirty lingerie and other clothes until some lost chick gets domestically inclined one morning while you look around for some of that virtual ebony, could be stuck straight into the shower. The opperation is recommended especially for the final moments of the tuna can adventure.

Finally, if you have a tub sufficiently large you can organise the following trap : fill the tub with water and lay comfortably with some goodies on a plate. Hold the plate towards the wall, and one knee relatively close to the other end of the tub, so that the cat is tempted to step from the margin on your knee to reach the goodies. Once she's engaged in the imprudence, remove the knee towards the wall. If you're at all experienced with this the result will be a huge splash, but do not despair. Instead, grab the loofah and rub it with faith and soap. You are of course advised to wear ringmail for this operation.

III. The claws. Every cat is outright proud of its claws, so much so it tortures mice for the pure pleasure of stringing up their guts in the road so as to have what to dangle, bloodly, off its claws. There's an operation called declawing, which consists in surgical resection of said claws. More horrible punishment can not exist for a cat (other than giving it a buzz cut) except if you perhaps also take it to the skating rink afterwards, without any skates.

This concludes my modest contribution to the nascent discipline of cat torturing. In the hope that I was truly useful to you, I wish you a merry time!

———Romanian word "sfruntata" is a very interesting case of applying the Italian privative mechanism (sfortunato = fortunato with the privative prefix s, thus "misfortunate") to a Romanian word (frunte is forehead) to denote "something which could not show its face in society" (for the obvious reason - doesn't have one). It only exists as adjective, there's no "fruntata" equivalent. [↩]Original Romanian references a verse in the (current) Romanian state anthem, something about how "we" forever own "here". National state period, whadda ya want. [↩]See also Sensitivity! Human Rights! Democracy! [↩]In this context "homo" does not mean "gay". [↩]In this context the final stop is also capitalized. [↩]

« MiniGame (S.MG), September 2016 Statement

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Category: Trilenciclopedia

Monday, 03 October, Year 8 d.Tr.

91.200.12.73 - An ode to a tireless bot.

The Project Honeypot has an ample file on it, of course. Ukrainian harvester, first seen about two years ago, last seen this week, before that straight spammer for about four years with a list of (mostly Korean) associated mail servers a mile long, etcetera.

So... what does it do ? Let's see.

$ wc -l trilema-apr2016.txt

2097579 trilema-apr2016.txt

$ grep -c "91.200.12.73" trilema-apr2016.txt

468

If you think that there's tens of thousands of these, suddenly logfiles a coupla million lines long doesn't sound like much, you know ? Anyway, let's try a narrative.

So, on March 31st at 8:16:30 the Tireless Bot loads trilema.com/climax coming from nowhere and claiming to be running Chromei. At 9:23:25 it loads An era ends today. A new era starts today. coming from http://trilema.com/ which is a place it's never been. A second later it tries to post a commentii, and two seconds later it reloads the page.

Then at 9:25:34 goes back to Climax, and 09:29:24 it's back on the page it tried to spam. At no point during all this does it load any of the page design elements or anything. Then at 11:10:17 back on Climax, and at 11:14:21 back on An era ends today. Then same thing, 12:53:33 / 13:00:38.iii

Then, out of character, loads Awstats and stuff at 13:49:21, still calling itself Chrome and still coming from http://trilema.com ; and at 13:49:22 tries to post (still as "PHP/5.2.31"), and then checks. Twice, this time : once at 13:49:24 still as "PHP/5.2.31", then once more at 13:53:47, this time back to being Chrome. Then at 14:41:32 checks the previous attempt once more, and at 15:33:49, 17:17:47, and 19:03:54 checks this attempt. By 22:19:14 it moves on to MPEx - Status Report, where it tries to send a comment at 22:19:15 and then checks twice (at 22:19:16 as "PHP/5.3.56", at 22:21:52 as Chrome). And then moves back to Climax at 23:13:32, which it has time to try and post to before the day is out, in the usual manner.

This much brings us to the end of March, you see ? There's still all of April ahead of us! Out of curiosity I checked to see why its attempts to post fail. I found the IP blacklisted in my custom tailored antispam system in 2014iv! So no, its efforts didn't start in March current, nor in March last.

The attempts continue unabated, with variations in the PHP version installed (so far we've seen 5.2.31 and 5.3.56, but there's also 5.2.53, 5.3.18, 5.3.93, 5.2.05, 5.3.85, 5.3.64, 5.2.61, 5.2.70, 5.3.76, 5.2.83, 5.3.86, 5.2.90 and so on and so forth) but little variation in the user agent, until on April 9th it becomes "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Maxthon/4.4.3.4000 Chrome/30.0.1599.101 Safari/537.36". You know, the "cloud browser", which apparently sucks because on April 11 we move on to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:33.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/33.0" which turns to rv:34.0 within hours. We're then happy with this until the next day, when upgrading to rv:35.0 is de rigueur. Imagine the horror of this upgrade cycle, even the spammers pretending to be using the shit are stuck constantly modifying strings! Yet oddly enough, through thick and thin 20100101 stays 2010101.

This version serves us well until the 13th, on which it receives an adition : "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.21"v. The Alexa toolbar nominally stays until April 14th (no doubt greatly if nominally improving the overall relevancy and pertinence of yet another Amazon service), at which point we're again upgrading, this time to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko" which in turn changes to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:34.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/34.0" on the 18th and so on and so on and so on and so on AND SO ON. And so on.

By April 19th the Tireless Bot is still checking the Awstats article, who knows, maybe, and it's still trying to leave comments, this time on Five bucks for great justice. Who knows, maybe that one works. And if it doesn't - all the better, more stuff to check anyway. Same way as with any bureaucracy, amirite ?

Here's the source for your files, and remember you must have been amused as per Regulations of Insistence and Artificial Cognitive Products #574 dash W. Don't forget to leave your green copy of lulz with the girl at the entrance and remember to mail the crossword puzzle variant on the mauve (not the purple!) paper sometime before the cutoff (but not after the other cutoff!!1). Thank you.

———"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/39.0.2171.95 Safari/537.36" [↩]This time it's "PHP/5.3.40" and no longer Chrome, lulz. [↩]The deltas are 1:09:04 / 0:05:59 ; 1:44:43 / 1:44:57 ; 1:43:16 / 1:44:43. Such coincidental, you know ? [↩]If you're curious it was

name : moncler jackts

email : lkmjpexpu@gmail.com

url : www.littledresskits.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/cache/

with an empty payload. [↩]Speaking of which, get a load of this other peacock of a kalash :

"Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0; Crazy Browser 5.3.58; Dealio Toolbar 3.4.42; Dealio Toolbar 2.3.65; Alexa Toolbar)"

It comes from 89.34.126.145 which is actually a fixed cable address in Galati, Romania so for all we know it could even be an actual granny with TWO versions of something called the "Dealio Toolbar". The only strange is that the same IP identifies the running browser as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0; Dealio Toolbar 3.8.85)" at 03:13:22 ; as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0; Crazy Browser 5.3.58; Dealio Toolbar 3.4.42; Dealio Toolbar 2.3.65; Alexa Toolbar)" at 3:13:22 and as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0; Dealio Toolbar 3.8.85)" at the same 3:13:22 ; then as "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; Trident/6.0; MSN Optimized; GB; ZangoToolbar 6.5.14; .NET CLR 5.9.70)" at 3:13:23. Seems a little rich, doesn't it ?

Especially as we've earlier that same day (April 6th) seen this exact IP claiming to be "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36" or doing strange like

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /wp-content/themes/trilema/style.css HTTP/1.1" 200 10392 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /wp-content/themes/trilema/images/insigna-printre-primii.png HTTP/1.1" 200 267 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /wp-content/themes/trilema/images/insigna-trol.png HTTP/1.1" 200 259 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /wp-content/themes/trilema/images/insigna-1k.png HTTP/1.1" 200 269 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /avatar.png HTTP/1.1" 200 13024 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

85.9.20.151 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /2009/fumez/ HTTP/1.0" 200 72050 "http://trilema.com/2009/fumez/" "Mozilla/2.0 (compatible; MSIE 3.02; Windows CE; 240x320)"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:53 -0400] "GET /default_avatar.png HTTP/1.1" 200 3500 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

89.34.126.145 - - [06/Apr/2016:04:08:54 -0400] "GET /wp-content/themes/trilema/images/rss.jpg HTTP/1.1" 200 1455 "http://navigator.cognitiveseo.com/parser/?rq=1NH5L5ogOd5k8ff8vAaZePhLnSCl9vfCeEn5Q%2Fz%2B1HEUDbIya21N%2F1x7Tg8NhrcuS6TZ5S2o%2Ff6n4mTdcaItusjsr77fTv0XS%2BBP0s4i%2F0b3%2FyQkS1Q4NQe2PXO1PSlUV37wYKpW86LFWh%2BvzyqrDQWkv%2FuczBqDK5wA82uphIcVVB2cyT1FZileR3ck%2BhAO2gWwHVmHc0Ae48IDr%2F1GRPJFq4usS7kyDuAN0thAYreek6EW35IgHSSdWBNIOzjxzeB%2FYps7s2Lr1MzMczwYi7sThRrNul7lLQpaWBWHjlc%2BgPdcmvBpoqN6bhwOT6mRpqY3WwSuNoj5kQa5zzhpuw%3D%3D" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.110 Safari/537.36"

Cognitive SEO FTW, I guess. [↩]

« The Chosen

Today on Trilema : A history of the Polar Crabs ; A Discussion of Very Deep Globules ; A General Theory of the Corn Cobb as well as an Autobiography of Herzog Balthasar Hedgehog by Mr. Burt Mugg. »

Category: Meta psihoza

Monday, 25 April, Year 8 d.Tr.

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

Wasn't that a great closer by the way ? Well... the problem is there's no closure. There's never going to be any closure. There can't be any (somebody broke closure ?!). So on it goes :

asciilifeform I'm mindfucked. Searching for error msg, and #b-a log is #4 hit. The log of me crapping it in here a few hrs ago.

punkman Might be personalization...

asciilifeform Does not appear to be...

punkman Let me try.

asciilifeform 'gnat "error: field 'info' has incomplete type" '

punkman Well google loves the log apparently.

asciilifeform I've already learned the cause of the error, but was looking to see who else was affected. The shitgnome destroyed the ability to use an entire language.

punkman I've been seeing it more often for various search strings, but I assumed it was personalization.

mircea_popescu Yes. We dominate google mostly because we say interesting things. The machine can tell by now. To a large degree it's the silent progress that has been happening in the field of machine processing of human text for the past... 20 years ? Google is a major contributor. You can do wonderful things by sorting, word densities, etc etc. You know all those "how to spam google ? ORIGINAL CONTENT!!1" advice-y bits ? They're actually quite on point. Original of course doesn't mean what the marginal retard "trying to make it online" imagines.

asciilifeform Google has extremely questionable motives and - at this point - competence. For all we know, they favour #b-a log on account of the sheer frequency with which sp4mz0rz and sc4mz0rz are mentioned here.

mircea_popescu All motives are questionable. That's kinda what a motive is : "he's not doing it for me, he's doing it for himself". But in one sentence it'd be "for the sheer frequency with which rare associations that match types they only see in quality text are seen here". Believe it or not, Google can actually recognise useful new papers from shitty new papers better than "peer review" committees can.i

asciilifeform So 'google finds unique strings' - sure. Can we conclude that i'm the only one alive trying to build 'gnat' on 'gentoo' ? This is sad. Where did the others go? Ate their nagants from frustration ?

joecool Google moved away from unique strings over the past few years... moved to signals, will match synonyms and areas to a query.

mircea_popescu Only one trying in a sane manner for sane reasons ? Yes. Others : The perfect pitch. The fly eyes on the meat aren't a joke.

asciilifeform Where are the fossilized traces of folks doing it in insane matter, for lunatic reasons? I'd care to read'em. But nowhere.

mircea_popescu See the link above.

asciilifeform Just to underscore the sheer level of the braindamage I've uncovered - the thing won't build on any box with past 2+ yrs of glibc. 3+ actually. You mean to tell me that I'm the only one to 1) notice 2) say something on the net ?

mircea_popescu Yes. I don't think you actually understand how the world works.

asciilifeform Evidently not.

mircea_popescu Ok. Let's put it in perspective. At some point I ended up peripherally involved in the "art" scene by virtue of fucking in it. Out of every 1k kids spending in agregate at least 1mn man-hours/year discussing a) creativity, generally and b) various projects a total of less than 100 hours ever got put into any actually existent item that could be burned for instance. Just because it's easier (and cheaper) to type into box than throw paint at canvas does not mean more anything ever gets made.ii

asciilifeform What happens to the rest of the time ?

mircea_popescu Happens ?

asciilifeform At some point you end up wondering what they're doing instead.

mircea_popescu What is the Pentium 1 doing "instead" ? Instead of what lol. That's the clock rate.

asciilifeform Heating the room. I mean, it is approximately correct to say that it is discharging heat in the time between ticks. As the necessary 'instead'.

mircea_popescu Well I'm sure they all maintained metabolic balance throughout. One particular schmuck formulated plans for at least 24 months, at the rate of one a week, to TALK TO this particular whore. He failed, at the end of the reporting period, to have met the bare minimum level of achievement of finding out that the girl was actually working.

asciilifeform What would have been the purpose of such an exercise ?

mircea_popescu Dude I dunno... if I spend my time planning how to murder Obama, yet fail to find out, as a side product of all this planning, that he died three years prior... I'd be fucking worried. Imagine you were going to war in Afghanistan and discovered the CENTCOM thought Afghanistan is actually in Zanzibar ? If that happens im fucking defecting, because srsly... finding just one cockroach in the kitchen is one thing, but here we have found a cockroach inside the cockroach and no sign of any kitchens.

asciilifeform Why would someone sit and formulate a 'plan' to talk to a whore ? That was the question.

mircea_popescu He DID NOT KNOW THIS. And he failed to find out. Which should be informative. I've never spent two years planning on how to fix a window without discovering it really is a door, at some point during all that.

* asciilifeform suddenly grasps what the story was probably about.

mircea_popescu Aha. The process is wholly self-referential. It is in no sense different from the goings on in any insane asylum. You are essentially asking "ok, the sanitariums of the world hold a supply of at least 5000 Napoleons. Why is there no glorious history being produced ?"iii I dunno. Guess ?

asciilifeform 'Insufficient number and quality of bicorns issued to the Napoleons.' Moar phunding needed.

mircea_popescu Clearly. And in fact more funding is issued by the long suffering parents, either directly (as is the case in Romania) or through collective buying (the state ->taxes->etc in the US). But this can not result in any substantial change, because more effort applied to faulty premise. Consider the ever popular Bryan Adams hit single, Summer of 69. Now imagine that, through the miracle of technological advance, there is actually no real job for any of the kids to do. So Jimmy does not quit. And consequently Jodi has nobody to marry. So she does not marry. So twenty years later, they are still in that garage, still with that guitar. Fingers still bleed. Has more music been produced ? A lot of neuropathy to "explain" and justify it all does get produced, sure. But Google can sort through all that pretty fast, especially because it being psychogenic rather than rational it is dreadfully boring and entirely predictable. Read one police report of crime X, you've read half of them. Read ten, you've (practically) read them all. Clinical psychology is only interesting to the patently insane, as a practice. Otherwise all the notes say endlessly the same five or six things. There just aren't that many things to say. "And then the engine blew a cylinder". Gee.

———It's a good part of how they hire, actually. [↩]"You're the guy who wasn't good enough to sling dope." is good companion reading for this point. [↩]Or, for that matter, where's all the other Golden Ages ? [↩]

« Just how stupid is the Redditard crowd ?

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

Category: SUA care este

Monday, 16 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

Young Frankenstein

Young Frankensteini is a delightful B movie in the line of The Raven (the one where Jack Nicholson got his start). The dialogue is excellent - it rejects the conventions of the art to very much artistic benefit.ii The characters are absolutely fabulous - I know of no better imp than Igor nor could one be easily imagined. I know of no better soubrette than Inga, nor could one ever exist - I'd seriously propose young women aspiring to not grow up idiots spend some serious time studying Inga. The humour's something else, do you have any idea how rarely I laugh at a movie ? Yet the "walk this way" gag had me in stitches.

This is a product, like any B movie, and the corners show. But it's a product of the old school, with honest effort and actual workmanship put in there, and it also shows. In this age of computer generated goop, that's not any good but most definitely is very smooth and shiny, both the qualities and the defects of old stuff seem to transmute into valuable characteristics. I certainly recomend this film above anything that came out last year, and if Justice hadn't long fled the sinking ship Young Frankenstein would win the Oscars in pretty much all fields but cinematography (which I think no longer exists anyway ?).

Think about it, the 2nd rate products of the 70s beat out of the field anything the 2010s could come up with. Such is the place and such are the times.

Ps. Can you spot the Gene Hackman ?

———1975, by Mel Brooks, with Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr [↩]Note that in some variants good bits are cut off - for instance as the cart arrives to the castle door, which displays some humongously disproportionate old iron knockers, the hero's holding the heroine with her tits in his face, and observes something about the knockers. For which compliment she graciously thanks him. [↩]

« The genetics of intelligence

BitBet history »

Category: Trilematograf

Friday, 20 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

You are poor lolz.

Welcome to part one of our show. It goes like so :

**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Sat Jan 17 01:47:30 2015

Me secure.somethingawful.com/products/ad-banner.php

Saturday, 31 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

You already had what you think you want and can't get.

This is going to be a lengthy discussion, but bear with me.

Part One of the lengthy discussion about how you already had what you think you want and can't get

Let's do a little from Ballas :

Here's an example: in the "radical left" (their words) magazine Jacobin, the editor writes a defense of Gerry and Sarah as a way of arguing for the abolishment of, well, everything Randian. He's against the "work ethic", he wants a paradigm shift away from American producerism-- the idea that your value is based only on what you can produce for the economy-- towards social rights, e.g. Living Wages. I disagree with everything in it, so what? but it is very well written and reasoned, and if I played the same game as him I'd want him on my team.

The point here is that he wants CHANGE. Here is the last paragraph of the article, tell me if you can find anything supporting the status quo:

Rather than the "deserving" or "working" poor, with its connotations of moral judgment and authoritarian social control, it is time to begin speaking the language of economic and social rights. For instance, the right to a Universal Basic Income, a means of living at a basic level that would be provided to everyone, no questions asked. Against the invidious politics of the work ethic, it's time to argue that some things should be granted to everyone, simply by virtue of their humanity. Even hipsters.

Sounds sublime. But Gerry already had a living wage-- he spent it on the University of Chicago, 41 years of food stamps in 4 years. If everybody knew in advance the outcome was going to be unemployment and living wages, then why doesn't Frase challenge the capitalist assumption that college is money well spent-- could have been used differently? He can't. This thought cannot occur to him, not because he is dumb, he clearly isn't, or because he is paid by a college-- money is irrelevant to him. He can't because his entire identity is built on college, academia. He is college. Take that away, he disintegrates. So in the utopia he imagines, college still exists AND people get living wages. Call me a Marxist, that's what we have now.

Part Two of the lengthy discussion about how you already had what you think you want and can't get

Let's do a little from the back issues of Trilema, translated :

Dream Time

After writing about the genius, original, exceptional and fantastical not to mention necessary initiative of an ex-aparatchick in Ceausescu's repression, turned demagogue as the winds blew, wheels went in motion. Not that they ever stop, but whatever, as a manner of speaking.

So if you had at your disposal - not twenty thousand euro, that paltry sum constitutes capital only in the naive minds of the poor, people who don't matter nor have ever mattered anywhere and at any time - but a hundred thousand, that being the point from which one might perhaps talk of capital, in cash, on the table, in front of you, what'd you do with it ?i

Do not perceive any obligation to do anything "respectable", "projects like for the EU" or other bullshit. It's your own money, that's the big deal, and you can do whatever you please and feel like. I'm uninterested in how well you fit on some sort of social ideal that's presumptiously naive and stupidly implemented.

Be honest, be authentic, indulge a moment of solitude in your own company, in that inner circle which I hear everyone has even if not everyone spends any time there each day, or each year. So. What's the best use for a hundred grand ?

And, while you answer, so as to satisfy the needs of comedy, allow me to cite "a project" :

PROJECT PROPOSAL FOR THE INVESTNT OF THE BONDS ISSUED AS PER THE COJOCARU LAW [for 10 people = 200 000 euro]ii

INVESTED;

1. Land area = 10 000 sqm, of which 1 500 sqm buildings

2. Pigs, 700 heads.

DETAILS;

1. 1 500 sqm buildings

a; You dig up [with a bulldozeriii] a "canal" over a length of 150m 2 meters deep and 10 meters wide, with a 1 meter level difference [this level difference for drainage]. The ground excavated is to be pushed in one place [gully, swamp land etc; not in lakes or streams!] The terrain for emplacing the construction can be emplaced at the bottom of a hill, taking into account the possibility of catching a water streamiv. The final construction will be 3 meters tall on the sides [2 meters underground and 1 window] and 5 meters in the middle. The roof will be built in two "waters". The construction being half buried, it will be cool in the summer [20-25 degrees]v and warm in the winter [18-22] so as to save money with heating during winter!

For excavating the "canal" [2m deep and 10m wide] will be required about 150-200 hours. A bulldozer can be had for ~150 RON/hourvi... 200x150 = 30 000 lei = 7 500 euro.

b;Foil for internal insulation 2 250 mp plus 1 800 for roofy, approximatively 1 000 euro

c;Pouring 2 000 sqm concrete = 200 cubic m = 36 000 lei = 9 000 euro [the concrete to be poured also around the cake construction [1 meter wide]!

d;Roofing, 59 150 = 15 000 euro

1.Roof supports; 7x7 = 300 pcs 6m ea = 6000 lei

2.Inner poles; 8x8 = 150 pcs 5m ea = 3000 lei

3.Supports for supports;8x8=75 pcs 4m = 1 125 lei

4.Outer poles, 1 m; 7x7 = 60pcs 5m ea = 900 lei

5.External supports;7x7=75pcs 4m ea = 1 125

6.Roof reinforcers every 3 m; 8x8 = 50pcs 10m ea = 2 000 lei

7.2 cm thick board;1 800 mp = 36 cubic m = 9 000 lei

8.Corrugated sheet;1 800 sqm = 36 000 lei

9.Cellular concrete for interior walls 10x30x50 650 sqm = 26 000 lei = 6 500euro

Drywall etc 5 000 euro

f;Buying young pigs 700 heads = 140 000 lei =35 000 euro

g;Electricity, piping water inside, washing hoses[carcer uses 10L water for a 10 sq m surface] 2 000 euro

h;External fencevii 400m = 8 000lei = 2 000 euro

i; Warehouse for the storaging [corn, cereals] 4 000 euro

j; Shit collecting hole [6x6x3 concrete] 1 500 euro

k; Thar 700 pigs, to reach 100-120kg they consume 400kg corn each;this means feed 42 000 euro each year[50kg corn sack costs 30 lei]

So far there've been invested 130 000 euro

700 pigs x100kg = 70 000kg x 15lei kg viu = 1 050 000 lei = 262 500 euro yearly profit ! So 26 250 for each investor in the first year. The next year the profit will be smaller, because they will have to buy their own feed, there will be no need for livestock as they produce themselves!

I have made these calculations for they who do not want to invest,but just "sell" the 20 bonds for 5000 euro! Let's suppose a family has 5 members and each gets 20 000 euro as bonds. In total there will be 100 000 euro, which investment makes another 100 000 euro in a year! If it "sold" they, get 25 000 euro, which will be spent in a year and after it has spent they will deserve to become mere workers! They have no excuse for having become poor!

P.S. The building to be oriented East-West with windows in the South. I will leave it to you to evaluate the estimative value of window pane [150m length 1 meter tall]

They will deserve, you see, to become workers. The current crop of workers don't deserve, these haven't wasted any opportunity, haven't thrown out the window any occasion, never passed, like cows, by any chance.

They simply had no luck. But if you were to give them now 400`000`000`000 euro, if you "invest" this immense sum in giving a chance to every worker in this country, to every "slaves without employment" then I readily assure you that in 5, or in 10 years you will at most have nineteen, alright, maybe at most twenty-twentyone millions of dudes that also, never had a chance, and don't deserve to be worker slaves, and if you gave them another 400`000`000`00 millions or something, for sure everything'd be solved, and only who deserves would still be a slave after that.

Which is to say them. Like it happens.

This might strike you as outright raging lunacy right off the pages of timecube, and broadly it actually is. Nevertheless, it discusses actual historical events, some derp did in fact come up with a "plan" whereby every living thing in Romania was to get 20k euros just for existing. It never went anywhere, of course, but it got a lot of support. And if the entire "investment plan" makes you think of Bitcoin "companies" and the tardstalk forum, you're not terribly far off. The "consensus" among the ruminants as to the wisdom, feasability, practicality and morality of the scheme had a very XT air about it. Down to the T, actually, down to the tired ex Security agent in "charge" of it.

So it goes.

Part Three of the lengthy discussion about how you already had what you think you want and can't get

I don't know if you get it or don't, but I'll readily wager money on the theory you don't.

Here's a hint, nevertheless : the shelves of the bars in this country are mostly taken up by the miserable products of distilling grains. Notwithstanding that grain distillate is poor alcohol and as long as fruit's present it never makes the list. Notwithstanding that they live right south of the best rum in the world and so on and so forth.

The reason is that teenaged girls don't drink for the taste. You know ?

———Notice that this question was posed, and deemed interesting, before Bitcoin. It is stale triviality today, I wouldn't ask this anymore than I'd ask what to do if it rains. [↩]It's not explained whence one gets nine suckers to direct, but the quiet assumption is that the adult male in the sort of rural Romania that can't spell but aspires to economic relevancy (as opposed to slavery!) is the center of a family at least ten heads strong. Because Pashtun, that's why.

Note that they correctly found the degree of magnitude for capital, in one unconscious, practical step. [↩]Don't ask me how the fuck is this supposed to work, I didn't come up with it. [↩]Free of any charge or encumbrance, you realise, because the cow thinks it owns the pasture it grazes upon. [↩]He knows, he's done the research. [↩]50 bucks. The numbers are roughly accurate. Imagine a country like this. [↩]They probably intend to do the internal part of the fence in a later installment. [↩]

« Baires

Eulora continuat »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Monday, 12 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

Yo soy la Vista... de Buenos Ayres... soy yo!

Every beat up old clunker...

... needs its security measures!

Guess who owns Buenos Ayres' best icecream joint ?

A Kako!

That's some pretty incredible helado, by the way.

« [mats] PGP keyserver

Stop all the clocks (again) »

Category: Zsilnic

Tuesday, 21 April, Year 7 d.Tr.

X.IDIFF retirement

The sad fact of the matter is that throughout their two year existencei, the X.IDIFF difficulty futures have not managed to attract significant trade volume.

For a long time I thought this is due to objective conditions in the market that make such derivative instruments unfeasible - even though some voices held the view that their structuring is simply not useful. Meanwhile wild swings in difficulty are a thing of the pastii, and while intrinsic difficulty in pricing such complex instruments remains, no observable improvement in X.IDIFF trade suggests to me that the continuation of this instrument is simply not useful.

Consequently, the contracts in question will cease to be traded on MPEx forthwith. They go to join the ranks of the other futures, where perhaps they'll be happier in repose than they were in the daily bustle of the marketplace. There are currently no open position - in fact no open position have existed in quite a while, so this measure doesn't significantly impact anyone.

I remain open to listing futures on MPEx, particularly for Bitcoin mining difficulty, should someone trustworthy desire to marketmake them. It is altogether unclear to me how such an instrument could be well structured, but I am open to proposals and suggestions. Perhaps a close approximation of an actually delivered future, where delivery takes the shape of newly minted coinbases - so one contract deliverable in say July 2015 results in a Bitcent paid to the holder's address out of a freshly minted block reward sometime during July the 15th, 2015. Perhaps something else - I am willing to work with the prospective MM in drafting something sensible. In no case however will MPEx list an undeliverable future.

Sic transit.

———Introduced Dec 13th, 2012. [↩]The average difficulty increase over the past 7 changes, approximately 100 days, is a measly 2.35%, with four out of the seven under that amplitude and a single one change in two digits - if only barely. [↩]

« F.DERP December 2014 Statement

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". »

Category: MPEx

Friday, 09 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Women and incentives in tech

Quoth the Gnu :

The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is based on a variety of studies, [...]

Quoth MP :

MP It is strictly based on a felonious substitution. It is exactly like saying "sex can be unpleasant for women" on the basis of the sex we practice being very violent rape. The shit the puritan US does for "rewards" is NOT the statu quo. It is just the retarded, intellectually bankrupt, morally offensive charicature of the world that USian puritans came up with.

ALF Hey, engineering constraint. Just like sex in afghan means 'with donkey', to 1st approx.

MP So... no. Rewards do reward. Being associated with the refuse of white civilisation neither reduces to that, nor stands for it, nor is it a basis for drawing any sort of conclusions. Of course nobody sane or thinking wishes to be associated with the filth. Just like I wouldn't take a nobel on the basis that I do not wish to have the shit they gave Obama. "Oh, recognition has counter-productive effects". No. Perelman rejected the recognition you were offering BECAUSE IT CAME FROM YOU. Not "because it was recognition full stop". And no, promises to pay from Josh Garza are not Bitcoin. And no, the "opinions" of Tim Swanson are NOT opinions. Because no WoT. And so fucking on. The source matters first and foremost. Just like you cant have "a message" without first having the key to decrypt the .asc with.

That'd be it. And no, ISIS isn't bombing you because they don't understand how the world works.

« The actual state of the Bitcoin network

The Chicken Scribblin' Kronicles - A Look Under Eulora's Short and Knee-Length Future »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Sunday, 28 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

[williamdunne] Scoopbot

An irc bot to connect to #bitcoin-assets and

Announce each new post on a specified list of blogs in the format : "New post on {Name} by {Author}: {Url}". Check of RSS feeds every half hour should suffice.

React to a "-fetch" command by checking the RSS feeds.

A website to list short snippets from the RSS feeds of the blogs in question, linked to the original articles, in descending historical order, with minimal html cruft.

This is currently maintained by PeterL, over at btcscoop.com

Update, April 23 : PeterL got a new job, williamdunne took over.

« Introducing the Trilema jobs board

[jurov] Binary maintenance for Eulora »

Category: Job Board

Monday, 05 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Why should the Argentine population go graze already ?

Because they're bovine, that's why.

The above would be the short answer, but if you must there's also a long answer. Arbitrarily long, as long as you could possibly find the time or summon the interest. Longer than that, really. For starters :

They do not think, they just agree with each other.

It's not even the case of retardation as observable in the US, where one group of retards (let's call them libertards) agrees with itself that right-to-choice and words-are-like-bullets! and everyone-is-unique-just-like-everyone-else and whatnot whereas another group of retards (let's call them Bush, because they're all related anyway) agrees with itself that every-sperm-is-precious and drugz-r-bad-mkay and whatnot, and then they go about "disagreeing" with each other and "debating" "issues" in the psychotic manner of each side repeating its mantras at the other like so many magical incantations.

None of that in Argentina, everyone just agrees with everything anyway. They're not rich enough to have two sets of opinions even, let alone any sort of counterculture of any kind whatsoever. Nope, none of that, it's all "humanism" and socialism and "democracy is best" and human rights and human dignity and footbal is great and "the politicians" suck and dolche de leche. You can't find the group of people who think football sucks, because they don't exist. I don't mean the group doesn't exist, I mean the individual people that'd make it up don't exist. An Argentine may either not think about it at all, or else think football's great. Those are the two available states, and the arrangement makes the very notion of "an individual Argentine" somewhat dubious. Individual unicellular organisms making up together a sort of immense dog vomit is to my eyes a description much more considerate of the truth of the matter and perceptible reality.

There. Is. No. Counterculture. In. This. Country. Do you comprehend this ? The fucktarded teenagers agree with their fucking parents! Who agree with the grandparents. They're so far away from a thinking population they never even ecountered subversive ideas as a thing. Not ever. The average local does not know what to do when confronted with a divergent opinion just like the original penguins didn't know what to do when they heard gunshots. So they agree with you! Oh, you want to eat babies ? Sure, that sounds like it might be fun. But left to their own devices they're so idiotic as to import faux sex-issues and assorted ready-made bullcrap so they look, to themselves, in the mirror, like they're all controversial and shit.

It's disgusting.

They don't do anything, just go through the motions.

This country does not exist, economically. It simply survives on handouts. For a while (mostly last century) the Europeans kept throwing wealth away at Argentina, and as a result the downtown has some pretty decent Colonial style constructions. Then that ended but fortunately China is willing to send over plastic goods it doesn't particularly insist to be paid for, and so, everyone gobbles down the rice with soy sauce, wears the plastic sandals and plays the Banasonic. That's it. If tomorrow the China faucet turns off, and Congo starts somehow magically sending them shit, they'll all play the mvet and that'll be that.

The normal way you'd expect something like Argentina to work would be, a large but mostly rural population that is very active and industrious building up the provinces, with a capital city slash port that keeps pumping people and tools into the deep country. That'd be sane, a functioning organism that has some sort of future. What actually happens in Argentina is that half the population is huddled in Buenos Aires doing nothing in particular, whereas a few stragglers here and there lost in the vastness of the Pampas also don't do anything in particular, mostly for lack of infrastructural support. The government goes abroad and borrows money because "Great potential of the Pampas", then comes home and distributes that money to the poor of Buenos Aires (and they're all poor, literally, because none of them does anything useful) in exchange for votes. So it can go next year and borrow more money. That's the sum total, even the notion of a return on investment... what return ? What investment ?

The only thing Argentines (as aptly represented by their "various" governments) can invest into is pretense and imagination. They came up recently with this natural resources scam called "Vaca Muerta", which according to the government and nobody else is an immensely immense oilfield of immense potential and hey, did I say immense enough times ? Ok let's also add potential potential potential, lest we shortchange these simple hearts and honest people, god forbid. So then nobody gives a shit and five years later the government discreetly wonders in the government press how come is it that the government owned ('cause they nationalised it, of course) YPF is the only entity claiming to be interested in this great potential (and doing as little about it as it can possibly get away with - for the obvious reasons).

Yes, they can cook, in the sense that if you eat here you discover the food is great. The reason, however, is that the kitchens are already in place and the recipes holy. They don't actually cook, you see, they just follow blindly (that, they can do) a tradition, and are lucky enough the original items that thing was made for still exist, and are also lucky enough that the rest of the world fucked itself over with "progress" so that eating meals made on 1965 tools by unthinking automatons programmed sometime in 1965 is actually a great deal. That's the whole lot of it, and should tomorrow a selective meteor hit the old kitchens in town, that is the end, complete and unmitigated, of good food in Argentinai. Because these schmucks could never rebuild the thing, for any sum of money. It's just good while it lasts, which may be a decade or two, yes, given the unthinking slavish bovine fixation they have on following the book, but then what ?

If you honestly wish to see where the US is headed, come live in Argentina for a bit. Delusions of self-importance and the narcissism of misery unwarrantedly encourage most thinking USians (ie, most USians that understand the place peaked) to imagine the thing's going to come down into a huge fiery cataclysm, of fire and brimstone.

Not so. It may be how it works on TV, but reality isn't TV. Socialist states without a national basis collapse slowly, painfully, like a fistful of pussy, blodshot snot coming down a sanatorium wall.

———Did you know that their main export was beef, up until they couldn't actually fill the minimal contract quotas so they lost the contracts, because contrary to what an Argentine imbecile might think, no it's not worth it to export two cows at a time.

Now they're reduced to exporting soy, which is even less intensive than meat. They couldn't balance the trade before, even, but by now it's a foregone conclusion : for as long as the Chinese don't demand actual payment for their exports, Argentina has a "quality of life", and once the Chinese start demanding payment the party's over. That's it. [↩]

« Come see what "positive", "affirmative" etc mean!

You know what gets no airplay ? Unflattering truth. »

Category: La pas prin lume

Wednesday, 16 September, Year 7 d.Tr.

Why "representative democracy" doesn't work and doesn't make sense

In the classical model, women, children, young adults, slaves, travelersi and other 2nd tier denizensii were blessed with the immediate acquaintance in their own social circle of a privileged entity, the fabled adult male. Absent this, they were pretty much SOL.

Adult males congregated in their own social clubs, of varying description and complexity. Men in charge of large householdsiii had perhaps direct access to a Senator. Men of lesser proeminence has perhaps mediated access to a Senator, through their priest, or head tradesman in their trade, or politicaliv relations and so on. Then the Senators would get together, and work out the distilled voices that had filtered to their ears into some sort of convention for the land, have it carved on a rock and be done with it.

This system leverages a large number of fundamental human behaviours, such as the very universal tendency of people to tell another their troubles, and the particular workings of memory, and the strictures of speech and language and the ancient institution of the gift and of hospitality and on it goes. This system also leverages a number of convenient bits of math. To understand, let's do some. Take the average notable man, who has on average two women, one slightly older with five surviving children, the other slightly younger with three. That is so far ten people. He further has five apprentices in his shop, two of which are married, so seventeen. He has three house servants, which are old (and perhaps the younger woman started as a fourth, as oft is the case), two of which care for their parentless grandchildren : two one, one the other. Twenty-three. He has maybe a dozen client relatives, younger brothers, cousins, what have you. Thirty five. There's still room in the Dunbar numberv and so we may well consider our man average.

People above him socially, such as for instance the guildmaster of his craft, the priest in charge of some local temple, the owner of a significant bit of real estate and so on probably would maintain relations with a hundred or two such men, which extends their second tier reachvi to a good three to five thousand individuals, in all walks of life. A congregation of a hundred or two such men can reasonably interact with one Senator, and so a Senate in session can maximally represent say 5`000 souls * 100 per Senator * 100 Senators = 50 million peoplevii! And this representation would be factual, rather than statutory : the murmurs of each woman and child heard in the Senate through the filtering of a voice four steps removed, but heard nevertheless.

This system has one major flaw : it only works among the naive. Once people start thinking in meta-terms, (something that's called genre savvy when discussing literary characters) the whole shebang's trivially hackable, and in so many ways mere enumeration is an impossible taskviii.

The first result of that unfortunate circumstance is a shortening of the strings. If back in the days of darkness you could trivially find five-jointed proteins, taking word from a woman to her husband to his boss to his Senator to the Senate (and generally expect this to work, even), under the merciless gaze of the ultraviolet star above you'd be much surprised if three joints do anything. So the hierarchy flattens, the franchise is expanded "to everyone" - even those cursorily unqualified or incapable to exercise it - and yet generally you can't even trust your Senator to carry your voice past the bathroom, in spite of this "direct" contactix.

Sadly each node lost means a huge decrease in coverage : if you go from five to four you also go from representing a maximal 50 million to representing a maximal half million - a 99% loss of coverage corresponds to a 20% node loss. This was the exact failure mode of the Greek statex : as rhetorics challenges the naivite of the population, rendering more and more (especially younger) men genre savvy, the links shorten and so the maximal size of a state that can be supported drops significantly. There's a good reason Constantinople could rule over millions at a point those millions were clueless, but by and by ended up in charge of five villages swimming among pastures within the immensity of its ancient walls, proportionately to the increased refinement of the villagers in question.xi

Long story short :

representative democracy worked fine five to two millenia ago, back in a time when people were doing it without knowing that's what they're doing - much in the way Monsieur Jourdain speaks just fine for as long as nobody's told him that's prose.

the only way representative democracy may work is with limited franchise and complex social hierarchy.

while it is perhaps the case that genre savvy people may nevertheless deliberately choose to live in a civilised worldxii rather than starting fires in their own beard, so to speak, it is certainly the case that what currently passes for "democratic" is the exact opposite and also the exact bane of any sort of functional democracy.

This would also be why I don't think so very much of the libertards, and why I find myself so often in contradiction with people who view them as either powerful or in any sense a threat (usually both) : they aren't, either, nor could they really be, either, because the only tool they knowxiii actually works for them only a short distance of its run, and for us the entire length of that same run. The libertard's gambit is essentially the position of the Catholic church, hoping that it may teach people to read and write in such a way that they'll actually continue to take the "Holy Scripture" seriously. Why would they ? They won't, they don't, it's just not how that works.

———The notion that people traveling are subject to the laws of wherever they find themselves is at least strange, if you stop and think about it. The saner, and historically more prevalent approach, was to make them immune to law (going both ways - it wouldn't protect them nor would it do anything to them except for banishment) and dependent upon whatever citizen they were visiting or was willing to extend them his protection, as guests.

With the migration of the law from a protective device to the harness preventing human development and individual enjoyment of life that it is in the socialist world, its scope increased, ballooned and eventually metastasized into a dysfunctional "everything's proper subject of law" with its expected fruits arriving in due time : "Congress shall pass laws to improve the workings of gravitation, fix the economy and provide the citizenry yeomanry with footwear." [↩]The notion that "everyone's a citizen" is relatively novel, and makes about as much sense as "everything's a car : the wheels, the headlamps, the upholstery... [↩]Not strictly a matter of either headcount or wealth. Particularly large groups that were poor were discounted, because the only way to stay poor as a large unit is to be quite stupid, lazy and generally undesirable. Particularly wealthy groups that were small, and unvigorous (ie, old) were discounted for the obvious reason - who cares about them!

A balanced situation - large group with a good chunk of wealth - was likely to have its head male destructively promoted into a position of social responsibility, which is universally unwelcome for his own social group because it forces them into uncharted territory.

Consider the case of dependent women as a good working example to examine the mechanisms of this destruction : if you and your two best friends are the fucktoys of this particularly great guy you all love and respect, his attention is probably already divided past what you'd ideally like. If he becomes a Chief Of Whatever there's going to be even less time for you now, which directly sucks, and there's going to be a lot of idiot women you don't particularly like trying to force you into a relationship similar to what you originally had with your beloved - ie, that you listen to their problems and pass them along up the social hierarchy. To him. Well... confound this shit, innit ? So you either go nuts in the leisurely situation of what's now a proper harem - that sad replacement of the warmly shared intimacy of yesterday - or else you try and pretend like the new office of your beloved now means you inherited his old office, and try to be, or at least socially play, the role of an adult male, only slighty younger than you are. Obviously the former's laced with bitterness and obesity, whereas the latter has all the weird in it that attaches to secretly wearing your mom's underwear, but what's one to do ? Not like there are any alternatives.

You see this problem to this day : Nancy Reagan was more inclined to the latter (to no small degree due to both her age and dry WASPish tits&ass. That created the ridoinculous office of the "First Lady", and now the very juicily tit&assed Michelle Obama is stuck pretending like she's interested in anything besides growing fat by the pool. Reagan resented the expectation she be more like Monroe, Obama no doubt resents the expectation she be more like the Anglo drycunt bitches, nobody's happy and for pretty good reason : social promotion of the successful head of a successful herd is bad for the herd. If you ever wondered why and how could L. Q. Cincinnatus abandon the imperial purple - why the answer's plain : he was happy at home.

The shadow of this problem extends over all seekers of offices : they're obviously idiots, by the very fact of their seeking. If they were any good a) they'd have much better things to do and b) office'd be a curse not a blessing, something the brighter of them at least figured out. It's just more of the same amuk boyishness that makes a habit of putting the carriage before the horses : seeking "a woman to make him a man", unwilling to comprehend that's exactly backwards, and once one's actually a man women do an excellent job of seeking you out themselves, the problem being more of somehow sorting them and somehow keeping them out ; seeking "your advice as if you were me", because totally, that's exactly what the world is, a giant highschool, and everything's the office of the prom queen, which is to say everything exists conventionally, and what would the outgoing seniors wish to impart upon the impetuous freshmen, who necessarily will get their own everything because hey, everyone gets everything all the time! It's nonsense of the first degree, and nobody even remotely qualified for any sort of office'd be wasting their limited time entertaining such. [↩]The proper use of this term is at work in Spanish : your relatives on your parents' side have various names, and the people occupying the same positions in the family tree on your spouse's side are called the same names, but prefixed with "politico". So abuelo, grandfather, abuelo politico, grandfather-in-law. [↩]It's generally observed that the headcount of people any one person might maintain social acquaintance with is about one hundred. The proposition that this variable plays a major limiting role for social organisation seems well supported on the face, and it is generally expected that various technological advances such as writing or the printing press worked their social effects principally through its mediation. [↩]What in modern parlance is referred to as "their L2" [↩]Obviously the number's smaller, due to overlap : one's employee can well be another's son-in-law and so on, which would mean we've counted him twice. This however gives one good incentive to participate socially : the more relations, the louder one's voice in the final product. Which, obviously, is exactly as it should be (on both ends : people should have incentive to participate socially, and the voices of the vigorous should be heard above the aspies & other sufferers of assorted conditions). [↩]See The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security for a discussion of why you shouldn't even try - and yes, there's no difference between the society of men and the network of computers. Networks are networks. [↩]Contact that is rejected, blocked or ignored is not in fact contact at all. The illusion of contact, the pretense of contact, no matter how pious the fraud, is still no actual contact. You are better off, and society is better off with you having a fiftieth of the ear of a man who has the fiftieth of the Senator's ear, than with nothing at all. Which is what you're presently getting, and for very good reasons. [↩]And of the Roman Empire, too, if we are to credit the early emperors' desperate and ultimately doomed attempts to limit importation of Greek arts and fashions. [↩]The matter's further expounded on in Povestea celor trei imparati smecheri si a celor trei negustori fraieri - fabula in versuri ilustrata. [↩]This is basically what the WoT is trying to construct. The wilful submission of men that understand that they are submitting and wish to do so is in fact just as functional as that of unwashed German hordes trying to "make it" in ancient Rome. If slavery can be reconstructed among genre savvy, intelligent and informed people as an intimate arrangement far superior to anything else available - notwithstanding its charged history - then perhaps classical antiquity can shine again, this time among people that generally understand what's going on (not that selected ancients didn't, but nevertheless the bulk had absolutely no idea). [↩]"Education" and "information", as for instance very aptly displayed by Mark Twain. [↩]

« Advanced fucking

The Board of Indirectors »

Category: Politica si Prostie

Tuesday, 20 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Whoever said resource allocation is a solved problem deserves a kick in the nads.

From the very logs in question :

mircea_popescu and of course now the problem that faces me is the twin headed monster of how to split and how to price this bunch of chetty sticks.

mircea_popescu whoever said resource allocation is a solved problem deserves a kick in the nads.

danielpbarron mircea_popescu> those kits to make samovars are incumbent upon danielpbarron delivering my 500odd io.

Thursday, 01 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

Who made this ?

Sadly the sauce didn't know, but the thing is so utterly, admirably, extremely apt in its description of an entire raft of inept imbeciles.

From Tim Swanson to Jorge Stolfi, from Dr. Foreskin to those derpy kids, from Scott Locklin to Curtis Yarvin, from Gavin Assassinsen to Anton Derpopolous, from Max Keiser to Daphna Waxman, from Jed McCaleb to James McCarthy, piles upon piles of oh my fucking god I didn't know they stacked shit that high.

So who made it ?

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Stuff I don't understand and other likable parts. »

Category: Bitcoin

Tuesday, 10 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

Where did your years go ?

Here's what Awstats thinks about the time people spent on Trilema :

It's unclear to me exactly how that time's derived, and so it's unclear to me just how worthy of being taken seriously the numbers are.

In any case, let's do some math (and as a symbol of our distrust, let's do it with words rather than numbers) : one million two hundred and twenty-nine thousand twenty-six visits times two hundred and forty-seven seconds each comes to a total of three hundred and three million five hundred sixty-nine thousand four hundred and twenty-two seconds. Which is five million fifty-nine thousand four hundred and ninety minutes and change. Which is eighty-four thousand three hundred and twenty-four hours and change. Which is three thousand five hundred and thirteen days and change.

Which is NINE FUCKING YEARS. And change.

If Awstats is to be believed, Trilema has consumed this month slightly less time than the wholly corrupt US "justice" circus managed in the Barret Brown case.

One can only hope that it did so with more benefit for all those involved. I personally hope that sometime soon - perhaps even this year, or perhaps the next, or perhaps after that - the aggregate time spent with US bureaucracy becomes a tiny fraction of the aggregate time spent with actually interesting, actually worthwhile, actually human shit.

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The meta problem. »

Category: Oda Superbiei

Friday, 30 January, Year 7 d.Tr.