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Topics - Pæs

#1
Signora and I are visiting in a couple of weeks. We're spending most of our time in LA, staying a wee way out of the city in Valencia. We're also trekking over to DC, but only have a day there because we're ridiculous at planning trips.
#2
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/05/bitcoin_theft/?mt=1433547708657

QuoteA New York man was robbed at gunpoint of $1,110 worth of Bitcoin.

According to CNBC, on the morning of May 27, the 28 year-old man was lured into a car in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn to sell Bitcoin to a buyer he met on Craigslist.

Once inside the car with the two robbers, the man was reportedly forced at gunpoint to transfer $1,100 in Bitcoin (around 4.9 Bitcoins, based on current prices) from his account to another account controlled by the robbers.

The man, who was not named, then had his phone stolen and was told to exit the car before the two robbers drove away.

This is not the first Bitcoin robbery to be reported in New York. In February, a New York City man reportedly was robbed at gunpoint after meeting up with a buyer for his Bitcoin, and there's no telling however many other cases might have gone unreported.

It goes without saying that you should always be wary when making arrangements online to buy or sell goods, and getting into a stranger's car is never a good idea. Police in some cities have offered to let people carry out their Craigslist deals outside of police stations to help discourage robberies.

This latest crime, meanwhile, is only the latest in Bitcoin's long, shadowy history. Criminals have demanded to be paid in the digital currency in ransomware attacks, for example. And convicted Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht amassed a small fortune in Bitcoin from his online drug sales operation and had an estimated $33.6m worth of the digital currency confiscated by police at the time of his arrest.
#3
AND I AIN'T EVEN SORRY

CAN I GET A SHITFUCKDAMN?
#4
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / The Dating Wars
February 06, 2015, 09:28:09 AM
I stroll into the club, projecting an air of confidence and machismo. I know I'm projecting an air of these things because that's what my pheromone augmentations are configured to do and at the bottom left corner of my heads-up display are readings on range and efficacy.

I slow momentarily as I enter, evaluating my prospects for scoring based on competitor to eligible partner ratio. The pause is also an opportunity to calculate escape routes and establish whether any of the existing occupants pose a threat. I catch the eye of a brunette near the bar, not too tall, probably about a 4 in my estimate. I'm not far off. My HUD suggests nearly a 5 because of the modifier to social value afforded to her by some simple analytics on her SocioNet profile, ranking especially highly in genetics on the grounds that her mother is still pretty fit.

She inhales deeply, locking eyes with mine. I keep my face steady, knowing that she's tracking microexpressions and using olfactory enhancement to detect any signs of malintent or aggression.

The screen behind the bar lights up red, casting a menacing glow across her face as an advertisement from the AXE Corporation for mods maybe a version or two ahead of mine and the famous line. "Tomahawk. Bitches don't know about it." In a simpler time, that was true. Before dating became an arms race.
#5
A bunch of valid username/passwords have been released on internets with claims they came from Dropbox and there are up to 7 million more to come.

Dropbox have just responded by force-resetting a bunch of passwords but best to get in early and reset your password yourself in case there's any downtime between release and Dropbox reset.

Also, if you use the same password in a lot of places, please don't do that and change those as well.
#7
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11294678

Poem on Facebook suggests gay couple first to wed on day of law change have parted less than a year later

New Zealand's first legally married same-sex couple is believed to have split.

Former Football Ferns player Melissa Ray and sales representative Natasha (Tash) Vitali won a ZM Radio competition to have an all-expenses-paid wedding in the Unitarian Church in Ponsonby at 8am on the day same-sex marriage became legal last August.

They went by horse-drawn carriage to a reception at the Cloud on the Auckland waterfront, followed by a honeymoon paid for by Tourism Fiji. But less than a year later, it seems to be all over.

A poem on Ms Vitali's Facebook page yesterday read:

QuoteDrink it down, laugh it off,

Avoid the drama, take chances,

And never have regrets

Because at one point everything you did

Was exactly what you wanted.

There were no photos of Ms Ray on the page, which was later removed after the Herald made inquiries.

Asked to confirm the split, Ms Vitali told a reporter politely: "It's not anyone's business, we'll just leave it at that, but thank you for calling.

"I'm not talking to you about my private life, we got enough coverage when we got married."

Labour MP Louisa Wall, who introduced the same-sex marriage bill and spoke at the wedding, said: "It is inappropriate for me to comment."

Ms Ray, who was 29 at the time of the wedding, heard that she and Ms Vitali, 37, had won the radio competition on the day of the funeral of her mother, Inez Ray, who had died suddenly just a few days before.

Ms Vitali said at the time that she had proposed to Ms Ray a year earlier and they had an engagement party in November 2012, but had not set a date for what would then have been a civil union because of the cost.

"If we were going to do it, it was always going to cost money, so it was something we got around to when we got around to it. It probably would have been next year," she said then.

But she said she jumped at the chance of a free wedding when she saw the radio contest advertised on the Gay NZ website, and the couple decided to go ahead despite Inez Ray's death.

There were 668 same-sex marriages between August and the end of March.
#8
I have thousands of ebooks to read while standing on the train on my 2 hour round trip commute each day. I arrive at work/home with very little of what I've read retained. Part of this is because I am catching up on lost information to give context to what I'm reading, but much of it is just that once I've passed a page none of the detail of it seems relevant anymore.

I'm thinking I need to be taking notes, restating the arguments made in the texts, but this takes my only free hand and then I fall over when we go around corners which interrupts my reading. What is the key to information-retention while reading?
#9
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10232457/David-Cunliffe-I-m-sorry-for-being-a-man

(Not from article, but better summary)

Leader of the opposition David Cunliffe says he's sorry that he's a man because men commit most family violence.
He told a Women's Refuge forum in Auckland today that Labour would put an extra $15 million a year into refuges and other groups supporting the victims of family violence. But he started his speech with an apology.

"Can I begin by saying I'm sorry," he said "I don't often say it. I'm sorry for being a man right now, because family and sexual violence is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women and children."

To which the Prime Minister responded, verbatim, "NOT ALL MEN."
#10
Okay, not quite secret experiments because they kinda published a paper.

http://www.avclub.com/article/facebook-tinkered-users-feeds-massive-psychology-e-206324

QuoteScientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks," was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users' news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can!
#11
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Time was.
June 27, 2014, 11:08:01 AM
We barely remember who or what came before this precious moment

I found an old Tool CD and dropped it into the player while tidying my new house. Haven't listened to it in years. Time was, I would be adventuring at this time of night, alone or with a small band of like-minded dropkicks.

We are choosing to be here right now. Hold on, stay inside

Time was, I could climb a tree and quietly sing this to myself, feeling as though I could maintain an awareness of the death of each moment as it passed.

This holy reality, this holy experience.

Time was, I would spend days at a time in my own head, attempting some form of introspective cartography to help me find my way around, trying to build a foundation upon which I could build a sound rationale for finally going to work, despite my days of absence already costing me my job.

Choosing to be here in this body.

Time was, I would absorb the words of men the world said were wise, collecting tidbits of this wisdom as a bird might gather twigs for its nest. I don't know how successful this construction would have been, had I not built it from scraps of idea shared by spags here.

This body holding me. Be my reminder here that I am not alone in this body

Time was, I named the pursuit of Truth greater than all else. I was a purist. I was a guru. I was an insufferable twit.

This body holding me. Feeling eternal; all this pain is an illusion.

Time was, I couldn't imagine where I might be in five years, five weeks or five days. Time was, time was elusive.

Alive, I

Time was, Time was, I could climb a tree and quietly sing this to myself, feeling as though I could maintain an awareness of the death of each moment as it passed. And this is all I was doing with them.

In this holy reality, in this holy experience.

I got an email some time ago, in which a smug mystic challenged my faith in reality. Fuck that guy. It was a delayed-sending email from myself in 2009, observing that the email was memory now and asking whether it was always. Fuck that guy, fuck that guy.

Choosing to be here in this body.

Fuck that guy. He couldn't have guessed. I have a house and a wife and I get up every morning, put on a suit and catch the train to my office. Fuck that broke, drifting guy and his stupid stubborn refusal to compromise on only trusting Absolute Truth, a concept he failed to define.

This body holding me. Be my reminder here that I am not alone in this body.

This body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion.

Time was, I was mired in Cartesian duality. And thought this all meant something. Fuck that guy.

Twirling round with this familiar parable.

Spinning, weaving round each new experience.


Fuck that guy, though. Absolute truth is a crock of shit and I can continue to reassemble the bars of my cell, while keeping it comfortable inside. Pragmatism over purism.

Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.

And now I can change the CD.

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth

#12
Gun violence in schools in on the rise, according to 'Support, Teach And Help Parents' (STAHP) a Wyoming parents' group who have been tracking references to school shootings in national media. The group's cofounder, Kirsty McKnight, explained in a press release yesterday "every day now I'm bombarded with images of children committing violence against one another. Time was, my son could get into trouble beating up the odd effeminate playground buddy and we could just ground him and figure 'boys will be boys' but it's a different world now that these angry little people are coming in and attacking everyone indiscriminately."

McKnight and her friends at STAHP are pulling no punches. "This is domestic terrorism," explains their website. "As a direct result of Obama's pro-Eastern agenda, our children are being forced into classrooms where equal time is given to Islam and Africa or whatever as to the Founding Fathers of this country. We're making militants out of them. You didn't see this same level of spectacle around the whole thing before they starting feeding us this PC bullshit about how and why we need to live in peace together, introducing us to these dangerous non-Christian ideas."

And they're mixing no words about where the fault lies. "With the media," explains McKnight, "No offense [to this reporter] but when you are seeing images on the TV day in and out, and my children are watching TV all day, of armed children in Iraq or whatever, what kind of message does that send? It sets a bad example. Where else would it come from? They're not learning these things at home because, honestly, how on earth would a young American get the idea that it's okay in any way to carry weapons on them and open fire on people for the most arbitrary of reasons? We need to figure out exactly where that message is coming from and put a stop to it. Maybe it's okay in Iraq for a kid to have a gun but if you're going to show that image on my American TV then you need to censor that."
#13
In response to request for new house pics, I am starting a house pics thread, which will double as a DIY showoff thread or something.

HERE IS MY NEW HOUSE. ALMOST DONE MOVING IN.

EXTERIOR SHOTS:




DON'T LET THESE SNEAKY FUCKING STAIRS FOOL YOU. THEY SHIFT LIKE THIS IS HOGWARTS OR SOME SHIT AND SKILLFULLY EVADE ANY ATTEMPT TO TREAD ON THEM.







THIS SECOND PICTURE IS THE GROWING INTRO TO PHILOSOPHY LIBRARY IN OUR LOO SO PEOPLE CAN GET EDUCATED WHILE POOPIN'. BEST IDEA.


THERE ARE MORE ON SIGNORA'S FB IF YOU'RE HER FRIEND. OR ON MINE PROLLY. MORE TO COME WHEN WE START TEARING THINGS DOWN AND PUTTING NEW THINGS UP.

#15
1) What is Yo?

Yo is a mobile messaging app available for iOS and Android devices. You establish a username. Then a friend who also uses Yo can select your username inside his app and you will receive a push notification reading: "Yo" and featuring audio of a voice stating "Yo."

2) That's it?

Yes.

3) Is this a joke?

No. Yo is very real, I have downloaded it myself and Yo-ed with Vox.com senior UX developer Yuri Victor. According to the Financial Times the company recently raised $1 million in venture capital.

4) A million dollars?

Yep.

5) What are some non-app uses of Yo?

Yo is a popular informal English-language greeting. It's also the title of a Chris Brown song:

6) Who is behind Yo?

Yo is the brainchild of Or Arbel, a former iOS developer at the image-sharing company Mobli. Arbel had left Mobli to work on a not-yet-released product called Stox. Arbel's former boss at Mobli, Moshe Hogeg, asked Arbel to "to make an app with one big button that could call his assistant without having to pick up the phone or compose a text message." Arbel initially refused, pleading a lack of time, but then hit upon the idea of switching the conceit up slightly to the brief greeting that is now the app's namesake. The $1 million investment comes from Hogeg's angel investment fund.

7) Are people using Yo?

According to Tim Bradshaw, as of the end of June 17 "50,000 users have now signed up to Yo and sent a total of 4m messages — 2m of which were in the last month." Bradshaw's article has spurred considerable additional interest in the app so the numbers are surely much higher than that today.

8) Has the world gone entirely mad?

Perhaps. People have been looking for a new tech bubble for years long before there was any evidence of one, and now we have some real evidence — see Judd Legum for the case. Totally ridiculous novelty companies attracting seven figure investments. The smartphone product category in general was badly overestimated during the first couple of years of Apple's iPhone, and a range of smartphone app categories (gaming, messaging, etc.) have also badly outperformed the conventional wisdom. When that happens, the conventional wisdom tends to recalibrate. And now you have people investing a million bucks in an app that just sends "yo" to people.

In a non-novelty context, the idea is that people may want to sign up for ultra-simple notifications. If you add the user WORLDCUP on Yo, it will notify you every time a team scores a goal. Then you can make sure to look up and catch the replay. Arbel says he's hoping to commercialize Yo by turning it into a platform for companies to alert people to when they're running sales. Here's the Yo API for developers:

Some example use cases:

— A blog can Yo the readers whenever a new post is published. Imagine getting a Yo From PRODUCTHUNT.
— An online store can Yo its customers whenever a new product is offered. Imagine getting a Yo From JENNASHOPIFY.
— A football club can Yo the fans whenever the team scores a touchdown. Imagine getting a Yo From THE49ERS.
— An ice-cream truck can Yo the kids when it's around the corner.... Imagine getting a Yo From THEICECREAMTRUCK.

Keep in mind each service can only Yo its subscribers once per day and they can unsubscribe at anytime

9) That's the plan?

Apparently. You should probably think of this as a general illustration of the principle that investing in early-stage startups is not really a rational act. Hogeg has the money to spare (apparently), has a relationship with Arbel, probably enjoys this media attention, and stands at least a sliver of a chance of somehow making this investment pay off. So why not?
#16
Immanentize Insurance

4650 Eagle Drive
Detroit, MI 48226
Phone : 734-780-4408
Fax : 734-780-4409

Your ref : ESCT / 0023
Our Ref : FML / 1 / 1224

3 June - 2014

To :

Mr. Trent N. Stanton,
Mutiara Stores Sdn Bhd,
1694 Orchard Street
Minneapolis, MN 55401

Dear Mr. Stanton,

RE : Policy No. ZP 214/35

It is our desire to thoroughly investigate every claim which is reported to us and to make payment for those losses for which are covered under your policy. 

We have received your claims form No. 34276 in which, under our All-Care plan, you claimed $25,000 and ongoing medical expenses for your son, James N. Stanton after a vehicle collision in which he was knocked from his bicycle by a driverless car.

I regret to inform you after conducting an extensive review of your policy, we have found no coverage under this policy for your loss and so cannot pay compensation in this case as the damage was caused by factors outside the terms of the policy. If you check your policy, you will find that while you are fully covered for injuries sustained in motor-vehicle accidents, an exemption applies if the accident was caused by an Act of Google, defined in your policy as 'an unforeseeable phenomenon which involves no human agency and which is due directly and exclusively to decisions made by the artificial and superior intelligence of Google products and services.'

We offer our sympathies to you and while Immanentize Insurance cannot offer cover against Acts of Google we can assure you on Google's behalf that that these decisions are made based on relevant information from a variety of sources including the day's news, the email metadata of the parties involved, up-to-the-minute weather and other content hosted and owned by Google. As stated in their terms and conditions, Google will use the data it received regarding this incident to improve their error-handling services in future.

If you still have doubts, I can send a representative over to explain the present policy carefully to you.

Sincerely,

Randal J. Barnes
Manager
#17
WOAH. Slow down there, buddy.

Aren't you going to stop to say hello?
#18
#20
Published on one of NZ's two major news sites.

Quote from: JOJO MADDRENLabour needs the Greens and New Zealand First to even think about forming a government.

The Greens, if they ever got to any real political power, would destroy the wellbeing of New Zealand while attempting to save the country for all the sheep. But with the rest of the world busy cranking up the greenhouse gases, even the poor old Kiwi battler wouldn't survive under their rule.

For now, Labour has David Cunliffe but at the rate he's going in the opinion polls, it won't be long before we have another change of Labour leader. Just when we thought we had got rid of that fishy smell in Parliament, Shane Jones of SeaLord fame will step forward into the breech.

As for Winston Peters, since I met over him a year ago, there hasn't been a day gone by I haven thought of him. And I haven't thought about him today either.

So folks, why would you even think of changing a winning National team?

One which has led us through the great financial crisis to the promised land. That's the key issue which will get my vote: proven leadership in the tough times. QED.

Crowdsourced news ftw!
#21
Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich has stepped down, the company has said, after an online dating service urged a boycott of the company's web browser because of a donation Eich made to opponents of marriage equality.

The software company came under fire for appointing Eich as CEO last month. In 2008, he gave money to oppose the legalisation of marriage equality in California, a hot-button issue especially at a company that boasts about its policy of inclusiveness and diversity.

"We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act," wrote Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker in a blog post. "We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry."

The next step for Mozilla's leadership "is still being discussed," she added, with more information to come next week.

While activists applauded the move, many in the technology community lamented the departure of Eich, who invented the programming language Javascript and co-founded Mozilla.

"Brendan Eich is a good friend of 20 years, and has made a profound contribution to the web and to the entire world," venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tweeted.

Eich donated US$1000 in 2008 in support of California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck down by the Supreme Court in June.

His resignation came days after OkCupid.com, the popular online dating site, called for a boycott of Mozilla Firefox to protest the world's Number 2 web browser naming a marriage equality opponent as chief executive.

On Monday, OkCupid sent a message to visitors who accessed the website through Firefox, suggesting they use browsers such as Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer or Google's Chrome.

"Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples," the message said. "We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."

- Reuters
#22
RPG Ghetto / C0DA - The Elder Scrolls Series
March 30, 2014, 10:29:33 PM
So having played through the Elder Scrolls series a number of times, and most recently as a scholar interested in amassing all of the game's books and artifacts and reading all of the texts, I've just started to take a look at various communities discussing Elder Scrolls lore.

It looks like these communities are working at digesting something big and fairly new, which is a (presumably unofficial, or at least contested) text (or draft for a comic) released by Michael Kirkbride, one of the writers, called C0DA. In this text, as far as I can tell so far, the dude basically expands on some of the fairly crazy cosmology and metaphysics written for the series, as well as establishing that The Elder Scrolls series is roughly a multiverse, in which every possible thing is happening at once, or similar.

This seems to be an effort to end the "OMG YOUR STORY IS NOT BASED ON CANON" arguments, because those are stupid, so the dude has put together a piece of sci-fi writing about the previously seemingly sword/magic setting, to say that 'all statements about the Elder Scrolls setting are true and the elaboration on this setting is now an open source piece of storytelling'.

It's an interesting project which I don't at all understand yet. Here's a sample of the madness, a conversation between the various gods and demons interacted with during the game series.

QuotePAGES 24-25
DOUBLE PAGE SPLASH: Low angle looking up, as the five members of the Pseudo-6th-House (VIVEC, ALMALEXIA, SOTHA SIL, MOLAG BAL, and the UR) and Alandro Sul descend in a stable freefall through a monstrous white-hot interdimensional "tunnel" made out of liquid video.

The walls of this tunnel look like waterfalls of elongated, gelatinous television screens, alien news channels, monster-filled sitcoms, and mercurial infomercials all stretching past at terminal velocity.

Alandro looks quite terrified. He's being held stable by his best pal, Vivec.

Most of the super-people all look like they are having fun: Vivec is grinning, the Ur and Molag Bal are cracking jokes. Sotha Sil and Almalexia look stalwart and determined, but otherwise remain unshaken as they fall. This kind of stuff is completely normal to them.

SOTHA SIL: Everyone remember your pop-up blockers! Have your info-virals protex engaged! Lock and load! Almalexia will help us maintain physical and mental coherency!

ALMALEXIA: We're freefalling in pure television foam, team! Ten seconds until the LZ and don't waste one of them looking around or you risk pleasure-center infection!

ALANDRO SUL: HEY, V! IS IT TOO LATE TO CHANGE MY MIND?!?

VIVEC: YOU'RE ABOUT TO DOCUMENT THE PSEUDO-6TH-HOUSE PREVENTING EARTH'S INVASION BY THE INTELLECTIVE'S OWN VIDEOVERSE! TOUGHEN UP!

(beat)

HOW'S THE LZ, SIL?

ALANDRO SUL: THE INTELLECTIVE?!?

SOTHA SIL: ALMALEXIA AND I ARE STABILIZING A POCKET REAL, BROTHER! WE'LL HIT EARTH-TYPE GROUND! WE'RE ALSO WORKING ON GETTING THAT TINGLE OUT OF EVERYONE'S HEAD VIA OUR HYPER-AMYGDALAS!

MOLAG BAL: DAGOTH UR, QUIT STARING INTO THE SALES FOAM!

THE UR: BUT EVERYTHING'S ONLY $19.95!

MOLAG BAL: HEH.

THE UR: "MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF COMMERCIALS!"

MOLAG BAL: HA HA.
#23
DEAR MR PEAS,

JUST WHAT ARE YOU PLAYING AT, PAL?

REGARDS,

PAES
#24
"This the guy?"

"Yep. Door's locked, of course. Key stashed away in my office."

"Any other access to the room?"

"No, sir. Like I was telling the other guy, we've got cameras in this hall we must have been over five or six times. It was just me an' Charlie in there."

"And where's Charlie now?"

"Next room down the hall."

"Mm. I'm sorry for your loss. So you were there when it happened?"

"Yeah, right there. One minute Charlie's Charlie, y'know, and then he's not."

"How close to him were you?"

"Oh, we were pals. Work pals, y'know. Colleagues, we'd have a drink together now and then but I didn't see him on the weekends."

"I mean when it happened."

"Oh." "Close. Right there. Listen, I've got nothing to hide because I'd never hurt Charlie, so I was right there next to him and I had a scalpel, but it weren't me that cut him, I'm sure of that. And you'd be sure of that too, if you saw him."

"But I can't."

"No."

"Because of what happened to the first investigator?"

"Yeah, your guy Jones. How is he?"

"We work in different departments. Go over again what happened. One minute he was Charlie..."

"Then he stepped back, drew in a breath and looked down at his hand. Thought he must've nicked himself, which he never did, but... Then I saw the blood. Running down his right arm. Then another patch started spreading from his left shoulder, soaking through his coat, then.... then just everywhere."

"And what did you do?"

"I said 'Charlie!'"

"And then?"

"And then he came to pieces. And then I ran out of there."

"And half an hour later, Jones turns up to talk to you."

"That's right. And his partner."

"And what happened to Jones?"

"Same thing. He went in to see the guy, then his partner starts yelling. Next thing I know, doors are all locked and I'm told I can't go home until I tell the same story to at least another ten of you guys. Listen, what's going on?"

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss much of that with you. I can say that this sounds like exactly the sort of case my department specialises in. That body you've got in there is razor sharp. Sharp in ways you can't even begin to comprehend and pretty soon, Jones and Charlie are going to be sharp too."

"Sorry?"

"Don't sweat it. Just get back into your office and stay in there until someone comes in to get you." "Yeah, Gray, bring the team on in. We've got another case of Richter Mortis."
#25
With the recent failures of bitcoin, issues with cryptocurrency are becoming increasingly apparent, we see that a new system of trade is required.

Based on the economic theories of an anomyous Arabian scholar, we are proud to introduce the Necronomicoin. Our current understanding is that Necronomicoins are mined by way of occult ceremonies involving appeals to and bargains with Long Dead Gods, who are responsible for maintaining the Necronomicoin Ledger. The coins themselves take the form of unique sigils which can be charged to varying strengths to facilitate transactions of fractions of Necronomicoins.

This metaphysical ledger means that Necronomicoins can be traded almost without a trace, if the remains of those sacrificed during the trading ritual are destroyed.

Necronomicoin is intended to move quickly. The supply is regulated by Ancient Ones who keep inflation in check by responding to immodest mining requests by turning the occultist inside out and making their cohorts eat them. Hoarders of the coin find their grip on reality slipping. Unnameable creatures slither out of and into imperceptible corners in their paracentral vision. Some report that early stages of hoarding are regulated with the money literally burning a hole in their pocket, with the sigil being branded onto the upper thigh while the hoarder sleeps.

ITT: We share facts and our enthusiasm regarding Necronomicoin.
#26
I wanted an excuse to maintain a production copy of Discourse, a Ruby on Rails discussion board which is full of rather clever features, so I am now hosting principiadiscoursia.com. I don't especially want to set up a clone of what we're doing here, but am looking at the tech to get inspired about what purposes it might have. Solution before problem isn't the usual way to do things, but I'm just fucking around with this thing.

If anyone has any projects they think would benefit from a new environment, let me know how this site might be able to suit your purpose! It has a moderation system whereby I can appoint moderators, but by posting and receiving positive feedback, trusted users automatically gain access to some moderation, spam flagging, board maintenance tools as well, so seems to encourage democractic management.

You guys can play with it and see if it's any good! I only just spun up the server for it an hour or so ago, and am experimenting in the backend, so it's going to be a little held together by gum and rubberbands, but none of that should translate through to the user experience.
#27
I'm really happy for you and I'ma let you finish but THERE MIGHT BE A SPACE JAM 2.
#28
There's a hipster who's hear'd of a place which is weird
And he's hitching his way into Portland.
When he gets there he fears, because to him it appears,
That the streets and the stores are deserted
Ooh, ooh, and She's watching him sweat from the shadows.

There's a sign on the fence but it doesn't make sense
Who's this Empress and why should he fear Her?
And then breaking the night, there's a sound, gives him fright
Cause he's sure that he hears someone giggling.

Ooh, it makes my skin crawl,
Ooh, it makes my skin crawl.

There's a rumour you hear, when to Portland you're near,
Of a spectre with a penchant for flensing.
And it ties in I'm sure, with an old piece of lore,
About signs that the world may be ending.

Ooh, it makes my skin crawl,
Ooh, it makes my skin try to crawl away.

And it's whispered by loons, if we don't get out soon,
That Nigel may call us for judgement.
And before her we'll stand, with our junk in our hands
And the forests will echo with laughter.

If there are skeletons in your closet, don't be alarmed now,
You were guilty anyway s'far as she's concerned.
Yes, there are exits you can flee by, but in the long run
All roads lead to Nigel eventually.
And it makes my skin crawl.

You hear a humming and you don't know where it comes from.
You're full of bees and you can't think why.
Oh poor fool, can you hear her whisper, "Dear, don't you know,
They'll never find you once you're in the river?"

And as you stumble down the road
With a great weight upon your soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Whose blade is sharp and wants to show
How flesh separates from bone.
And if you listen very hard
Her voice will come to you at last.
"Darling, don't you know you volunteered?
Fuck, you said you wanted Weird."

And she's luring hipsters to Portland.
#29
I keep a close watch on this board of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep thinking, perhaps I should opine.
But that takes time, so hit F5.

I find it hard to write better than Cain
So rather than contribute I complain
And when asked why, I'll simply explain
Because I'm lame, I just abstain

As sure as we're all terrified that Dok was right
I am here to read and not to write
And if that bugs you and you want to start a fight
Just call me white and I'll take flight

So long as Discordia fits in a sound bite
I'm going to keep lurking on this site
And every now and then I may post something trite
Until some slight, causes me to post in spite

I keep a close watch on this board of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep thinking, perhaps I should opine.
But that takes time, so hit F5.
#32
Forgot to share this...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-25362938



They've denied that the poem is offensive and insist that it will raise awareness in rapists about the impact of their crime.

The poem is being placed as posters at train stations.
#33
Just throwing it out there because I haven't seen a forum structure topic for a while.

Do we have too many boards for our present level of activity?

Are there benefits to shrinking things down when it's quiet and are there any suggestions for which boards would be suitable for merger?
#35
RPG Ghetto / Rant at the game you're playing
November 27, 2013, 04:14:54 AM
I don't know who else ever needs to yell about their gaming, but here goes.

DEAR ASSASSIN'S CREED: BLACK FLAG.

SUCK A DOZEN DICKS. IF YOU PROVIDE THE OPTION TO USE NON-LETHAL MEANS TO DISPOSE OF OPPONENTS, DON'T HAVE A BUTTON WITH A TOOLTIP LABELLED "KNOCK OUT" IF SOMETIMES THAT BUTTON WILL, DEPENDING ON YOUR CHARACTER'S PROXIMITY TO SOMETHING INTERESTING LIKE A WALL OR A LONG FALL, CHANGE TO "KILL" AS SOON AS THE BUTTON IS PRESSED.

SOME PEOPLE LIKE TO PLAY NON-LETHAL PLAYTHROUGHS TO CHALLENGE THEMSELVES BECAUSE YOUR AI IS UNINTERESTING AND YOUR OPPONENTS SIMPLE TO THWART IN ANY NUMBER. THANKS FOR RUINING MINE A GOODLY PART OF THE WAY INTO THE GAME BY HAVING ME ACCIDENTALLY SNAP SOMEONE'S NECK THEN THROW THEM OFF A TOWER INSTEAD OF SIMPLY SLAPPING THEIR FACE.

ALSO, IF YOU'RE GOING TO GET ALL "LOLNO" TO MY PLAYSTYLE, I'D APPRECIATE IT IF YOU DIDN'T AUTOSAVE AFTER EVERY FEW KILLS, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO STRIKE THAT "ENEMIES KILLED: 1" OFF MY STATS SHEET.

FUCK YOU.
#37
Educational browser game about budgeting and prioritising while being poor.

http://playspent.org/
#38
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / HEY CRAM
November 19, 2013, 05:35:51 AM
Or someone with edit access to Cram's wiki.

I TRIED TO BUY CLAVAMOX FOR CATS AND NOW MY COMPUTER IS FULL OF MALWARE.

hxxp://www.principiadiscordia.com/cramulus/index.php/Generic_amoxil_-_clavamox_for_cats_no_prescription_-_buy_cheap_amoxil_without_prescription

WHAT GIVES? MY CATS ARE SICK, DUDE. THEY NEEDS THEM SOME CLAVAMOX AND I COULDN'T GET THEM A PRESCRIPTION.

THIS ISN'T FUNNY.
#39
In this thread, y'all spags can post questions about techy things and I'll try to explain them. If anyone doesn't quite grok that explanation, ask for more! Other tech types are totally invited to jump in with supplementary informations.

Background: I'm not a security researcher or a penetration tester (someone who breaks systems for a living to prepare businesses for real attackers) but I do work tangentially to information security, spend a lot of time at work documenting vulnerabilities in our software and socialise with these types of ne'er-do-wells. I'm looking at moving into this area professionally in the future.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT HAX?
#40
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Hey Shub.
November 15, 2013, 08:32:43 PM
Welcome back. I almost forget why some people disliked you. I certainly forget the specifics and I can't be bothered to read your UNLIMITED thread to hold any of that against you.

One thing, though.

Describing yourself as "PD rape bait" seems in very poor taste, as if perhaps you mean to equate your negative experience here with sexual assault. I would like you to change that custom title to something less trivialising of rape.

I'm asking nicely.
#41
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / BIP: Moving words.
November 15, 2013, 11:48:07 AM
I'm experimenting with mashing some of our material together with various web libraries as an excuse to learn how to use them better.

This is my first pass at a slideshowesque thing using the impress.js library. Will get fancier next time around and am already thinking how it might be interestingly applied to a choose your own adventure game.

[development page taken offline]

Press spacebar or use arrow keys to navigate.
#42
http://what-would-i-say.com/

Reads your posts. Markovmashes them together. Decides what you would say.

FACEBOOK KNOWS ENOUGH ABOUT US TO MAKE US REDUNDANT.
#43
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24927078

The death of MI6 spy Gareth Williams, whose body was found in a padlocked sports bag, was probably an accident, police have said.

Last year, a coroner said it was likely Mr Williams, 31, from Anglesey, had been unlawfully killed in August 2010.

But the Metropolitan Police said an evidence review had found "it was more probable" no other person was present when he died in his London flat.

Mr Williams's family said they stood by the coroner's findings.

In a statement, they said: "We are naturally disappointed that it is still not possible to state with certainty how Gareth died and the fact that the circumstances of his death are still unknown adds to our grief.

"We consider that on the basis of the facts at present known, the coroner's verdict accurately reflects the circumstances of Gareth's death."

Mr Williams's body was found naked at his flat in Pimlico on 23 August 2010 after colleagues raised concerns for his welfare.

He had been on a secondment with MI6 from his job as a communications officer at the GCHQ "listening post" in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Police discovered his body inside a zipped-up red sports holdall, in the empty bath of his bathroom.

It had taken a week for MI6 to investigate the code-breaker's disappearance, and a post-mortem examination carried out by a Home Office pathologist failed to determine the cause of death.

During a seven-day inquest in May 2012, the question of whether Mr Williams could have padlocked himself into a bag in a bath was central.

Pathologists said he would have suffocated within three minutes if he had been alive when he got inside it.

None of his DNA was found on the lock attached to the bag and his palm prints were not found on the rim of the bath.

Coroner Fiona Wilcox concluded that "most of the fundamental questions in relation to how Gareth died remain unanswered".

But she said he was, "on the balance of probabilities", unlawfully killed.

At a briefing on Wednesday, the Met Police announced the conclusion of its three-year investigation into the incident.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said he was satisfied it was "theoretically possible" Mr Williams could have padlocked the bag from the inside, although "many questions remain unanswered" as to the circumstances of his death.

But he said there was no evidence that the MI6 officer had intended to take his own life or that his death was connected to his work.

And he insisted it was "beyond credibility" that he had been misled.

"I do not believe that I have had the wool pulled over my eyes. I believe that what we are dealing with is a tragic unexplained death," he said.

There were about 10 to 15 traces of DNA in the flat from which it had not been possible to gain full DNA profiles, but all other DNA profiles and fingerprints had been eliminated, said DAC Hewitt.

'Endless speculation'
DAC Hewitt also said there was no evidence that Mr Williams' flat had been forensically cleaned, adding it was a "fallacy" that it had been deep-cleaned in such a way that only certain DNA was left in the premises.

He acknowledged that the coroner, having studied "all the evidence available at that stage" had made "the logical inference that it was more likely someone else was involved in Gareth's death".

"However, she also recognised that there has been endless speculation but little real evidence and it was her view [that] 'it is unlikely that his death will ever be satisfactorily explained'," he said.

"Now at the end of our investigation, based on the evidence, or where we have been unable to find positive evidence, we believe that it is a more probable conclusion that there was no other person present when Gareth died.

"But the reality is that for both hypotheses, there exist evidential contradictions and gaps in our understanding."
#44
This place has its own rhythm.

Click tap F5 F5, whirrrrrrr of the scroll wheel. Click tap F5 F5 whirrrrrrrrrr.

It's regular. It's easy to fall in line with.

Click tap whirrrr. Click tap whirrrrrrrr.

It's catchy and it's comfortable. It takes a while to get the hang of but once you're into the swing of it...

:lulz: ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha click tap whirrrr.

:lulz: ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha click tap  :argh!: ARGH  :argh!:

Open the regular threads with the regular suspects and if they were saying something new you wouldn't be able to tell because you've got expectations and you're going to see them met.

Click tap F5 F5. Click tap F5 F5.

Who else is waiting for the beat to drop so things can start getting Saturday Night in here?
#45
Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / After the party
November 01, 2013, 06:08:06 AM
For a few short days, we were kings. The Party took hold of us, gripping its most inappropriate grip around whichever part of us lead us here and tore us away from the mundane, dragged us from triviality and the day-in, day-out and sent us hurtling out of control towards THE WALL, sometimes running, arms outstretched towards our inevitably messy ends, sometimes falling, flailing impotently, sinking and trying to swim back to surface to get some air.

Everyone's going to come away with a different story to tell because we've each lived enough in the last few days to make up for the increasingly apparent reality that the rest of our lives may be spent trying to relive and trying to forget what we did here. A few short days and I couldn't tell you how many times the cops busted this thing up, how many times the music stopped and the crowd dispersed only to reform somewhere else doing something new. But it's different now...

Now we're coming down and trying to make sense out of the mess we've made, sorting through the debris and trying to determine what this place looked like before we happened to it, trying to determine what we looked like before it happened to us. There's an awkward self-awareness and a sad communal understanding that we may not rediscover the abandon we knew last night.

Shake hands. Say your farewells. Promise to look each other up on Facebook.

and then try to forget.
#46
http://ns2.bring4th.org/forums/showthread.php?tid=2760&page=3

QuoteNEWS: So it has been written in the Holy Book of the Profit-sees of the Spend Times:

In the Fatter Days, they will come from all corners of the globe, misshappen, insane and drug addled, chanting "Roger, Roger, Roger...." while charging their sigils in an autoerotic frenzy. And that this evil cult shall take on the appearance of Roger fetishism. They shall go forth to the interbutts and set up an account on PD. They shall lie in wait, and they shall try and bait the Holy Man of Tucson, sent by our Lady Eris to warn her faithful of the things to come. Many be their number, and varied be their names. The Furby, the Poptard, the Weltburger.... all twisted minds given over to an ancient horror bent on the torment of the faithful. But, oh ye children of Discord, despair not, for Eris is with you and hears of your tribulations. Those who have faith in Chaos shall not be touched by these simians, but verily shall derive their lulz from the derision the monkeys bring upon themselves.

This is the Word of our Fnord. Amen.

Is this NEWS from here or is StickerNinja wandering the internet as a Roger's witness?
#48
So what, Suzie? These treacherous Discordians advertised a culture in which every spag and his mother are aware of monkey politics and playfully dance around them? "Oh, ho!" you cried, "I think what's happening here is a failure to communicate caused by a deliberately antagonistic delivery of an otherwise discussable idea followed by a plausibly deniable refusal to define terms, all carefully wrapped in a hostile package of board history and predictable tropes designed to invoke the failures of the past to derail the conversations of the future". "Shut up, holist" the board resounds. LE GASP. You've hit a wall.

Did Dirty Old Uncle Ratbag sell you on the "be a biped" bit and now you're spluttering between sobbing breaths "I d.. d.. don't come here to be insulted. I T... THOUGHT THIS PLACE WAS DIFFERENT."

WELL, STRAIGHTEN YOUR MONOCLE AND RETRACT YOUR PINKY, BERNARD. That "higher level of discussion" you keep expecting of this place is your responsibility too. AND SOMETIMES (here's the kicker) the humans at the other end of the internet aren't going to be in a position to deliver your Daily Discorja: Just The Way You Like It.

Has the WOMP Cabal sourced an image of your enflamed buttocks and fabricated evidence of your using said buttocks to twerk against Obama at the VMAs?

Has SOMEBODY WRONGED YOU?

Well, you know what to do, Billy-boy. Unhinge your jaw and reach back into your throat, right back down the tube, deep into the simmering bile-sac where you've been storing minor sleights and uncage l'esprit_de_l'escalier, throwing out every parting shot you ever missed a chance to hurt your fellows with. Because they shouldn't have fucked with you, should they?  Nigel shouldn't have Nigelled AND HOW WERE YOU TO KNOW YOU WEREN'T ALLOWED TO CURSE NIGEL AND UNCLE R IN THE SAME BREATH? Oh, no. These Discordians don't know who they're dealing with. You've got an amazing capacity to destroy which, while kept restrained for the most, you're secretly very proud of. You were 'the crazy kid' at high-school so nobody would fuck with you.

Now's your chance. Burn the motherfucker down. Drink gasoline and then piss all over the bridge before you burn it.

Burn the motherfucker down, SHIT YOUR HATE and GET IT ALL OUT IN THE OPEN. Or don't and let it continue to fester and colour your experience of the board and instead of going out in a blaze of glory you can just sit here until necessity dictates that the board categories are limited to "YELL ABOUT DRUGS", "POST POLITICAL NEWS YOU FOUND ON FACEBOOK AND/OR FEEL SMUG ABOUT NOT BUYING INTO THAT SHIT".

Just hit capslock, son, and get it all out of your system. Fight the power.
Or alternatively you can invest a buttload of faith into your own metacognitive ability, superficially declare "I AM RIGHT BECAUSE I ACCEPT THAT I MAY BE WRONG" and wear the damn uniform like the rest of us.

FUCK.
#49
I swear to god if I see one more post about personal information I am going to dox each and every one of you and then make latex masks of your faces so I can go to fancy restaurants and skip the bill WHILE WEARING YOUR FUCKING FACES OVER THE TOP OF MY FUCKING FACE.

WHEN PEOPLE ON OMEGLE ASK ME A/S/L?, I'M GOING TO ANSWER THEM AS YOU AND THEN THE CAMERA TURNS ON AND, OH HOLY JIZZ, IT'S YOUR PRETEND FACE OVER THE TOP OF MY ACTUAL FACE AND IT'S JUST SMILING.

I'm going to make anonymous donations TO YOUR WORKPLACES and ORDER PIZZA FOR YOUR NEIGHBOURS without referencing you at all.

I'M GOING TO RANDOMLY COMBINE YOU, IN PAIRS, INTO "WHAT WOULD OUR CHILDREN LOOK LIKE" SIMULATORS AND THEN I'M GOING TO USE FACEBOOK'S FACIAL RECOGNITION ENGINE TO SET UP COLLEGE FUNDS FOR WHICHEVER FUCKING HUMANS LOOK THE MOST LIKE THOSE HYPOTHETICAL CHILDREN.

FUCK.