Topics

46

Techmology and Scientism / Hypothes.is: A Peer-Review Layer for the Whole Internet

« on: October 28, 2011, 02:15:48 pm »

File under "metacommentary"------------

Here's another really creative non-profit startup:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hypothesis_a_peer-review_layer_for_the_internet.php

Their goal is to create a collaborative annotation standard which allow data on the internet to be easily peer reviewed by both experts and crowdsourcing. Essentially a "community peer review".

If you're using their system, you'll see little heat marks on the margins of websites. These marks lead to reputation-weighted peer commentary. This structure is independent of the website itself - it can run on the whole web without the consent of the people it comments on.

Slated to launch in early 2012.

47

Apple Zone / #OCCUPY BIEBER FEVER

« on: October 27, 2011, 03:22:18 am »

WE THE PEOPLE
GATHERED HERE IN THIS THREAD
OBJECT
TO BEING FORCED TO POST
ON THE "BIEBER FEVER" BOARD
                         /






WE DEMAND
THAT THIS FORUM BE RETURNED
TO ITS RIGHTFUL NAME
"THE CAT PENIS SUPPORT FORUM"
\                   





ALSO: RESTORE THE FORUM SKIN
"CLOSET HOMO IN
THE FLORIDA KEYS"
IT WAS LOVELY
\             
                       




THOSE ARE EVERYBODY'S FUCKIN DEMANDS






UNTIL OUR DEMANDS ARE MET _{OR WE GET BORED}
WE PLEDGE TO USE JUSTIN BIEBER AVATARS
AND PLAY THE DRUMS

48

Aneristic Illusions / Frank Luntz

« on: October 25, 2011, 03:18:17 pm »

I first heard of Frank Luntz on the Colbert Report on Aug 16. He is a communications consultant (read: propagandist) working for the GOP. Luntz is a pollster, meaning he does really fine analysis of language, communications, and their effect on public opinion. In absolute seriousness: He is the modern incarnation of a court wizard. He is an expert at psychic warfare.  I find him completely fascinating, and I think he's worth paying attention to.

Here's Luntz coaching Stephen Colbert. Colbert has hired him as a campaign consultant; I'll be really curious to see where this is going. http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/394777/august-16-2011/colbert-super-pac---frank-luntz-commits-to-the-pac  - This interview is fascinating. I feel like we're peeking behind the curtain and seeing exactly how rhetorical machinery works.

Luntz's job is to get deep into the American psyche and tease out exactly what it wants. He then figures out what language most effectively taps into those hopes and fears.



Luntz is a memetic mercenary. An ontological alchemist. Luntz is the guy who framed the "estate tax" as the "death tax". He wrote the memo which became the Bush White House's playbook for dismissing global warming. (the American people are uncertain about the science, therefore you need to make them feel that the scientific community is uncertain too.)

Luntz draws a lot of heat. And it's a well placed anger - his work is incredibly manipulative by nature. It focuses on the form, not substance, of communication. And it's really effective, that's why he's worth keeping your finger on.

In this video, Penn and Teller try to take him down a peg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If9EWDB_zK4 -  they explain exactly why polls are bullshit. Watch how Luntz uses effective language to make somebody give two completely contradictory answers without even realizing it.


In this short video clip from PBS' Frontline, Luntz defends his famous "climate change" memo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yz8UwRsWPA -- he doesn't believe in the content of the memo anymore, but he insists that whether you agree with it or not, you gotta admit that it was genius. Watch him effectively shift the goal posts in this interview to move it away from being right/wrong. It really is a work of art.




Here's a long one, but it's absolutely packed with interesting stuff: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhdLGvcOuMM --- Luntz spoke at a luncheon at the Goldwater Institute last year during the healthcare debate. (Fast forward to 5 minutes, that's when Luntz starts talking) The room is filled with right wing politicians and big name donors. In this video, he goes over some of the linguistic tai-chi and psychic warfare he's developed for the 2012 election.

To the people in this room focused on tort reform: Americans are not particularly sophisticated. They think torts are a french pastry. Can you please call it "Lawsuit reform"?

The longtime PD members will recognize that Luntz shares a lot of characteristics with Ben "Call Me Doctor" Mack. I've never seen anybody wield political language this precisely. Watch how during the course of this speech, he insults nearly everybody in the room. He establishes that he's not just some fat fuck who sells books, he's smart as a whip, and you should pay attention to him if you want to know what's up.



Short video - Frank Luntz on the six critical components that determine the success or failure of a political party: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DOy9mQZy8M

Frank Luntz addresses Ron Paul supporters who are killing his platform: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0mS35mqnRE&feature=related -- In this video he talks a bit about how mudslinging works.

It's all smoke and mirrors! Here's a short clip which exposes a layer of manipulation. Fox News showed clips from a Frank Luntz poll of "random citizens". This video shows the same "random citizen" in two different videos, clearly indicating that he's a paid actor. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3BDvfAf2c4&feature=related


Politics aside, I find Luntz and his work fascinating. Let us know what you think, and please share any other Luntz media of interest.

49

Apple Zone / The 6 Stupidest Internet Reactions To Shocking News Stories

« on: October 25, 2011, 02:42:52 pm »

I liked this article:

The 6 Stupidest Internet Reactions To Shocking News Stories
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-internet-reactions-to-shocking-news-stories/


Back in 2007, we had a group here called the Adam Weishaupt Society, a secretive cabal which competed over who could come up with the most persuasive fake news, we discovered a number of these "typical stupid reactions". One of our notable adventures took place about two weeks after the video game Halo 3 came out, we ran a fake news article about how a guy in New York died from dehydration while playing. This article spread pretty effectively and we were all cackling as we read people's reactions to it.

But after the first wave, all the other reactions were identical. I think we tripped 3 out of 6 of the "typical reactions" in this cracked article.

I like this cracked article because it's metacommentary. It's commenting on how people comment, and that can lead to shifts in communication patterns.

I now invite you to demonstrate these reactions in the posts to follow. 

50

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Intermittens 2011

« on: October 24, 2011, 08:01:02 pm »

2011 is wrapping up. I'm wondering if we should document what our corner of the Discordian Society has been up to for the last year. Maybe we should release some kind of periodical which captures it.

So here's my idea: use this thread to cross-post the best PDdotcomforum content from 2011.

What are we looking for?
Stories, rants, quotes, meme bombs, WOMPs, other images, etc.
articles about stuff that's happened this year
blog posts written this year
reactions to this year's big news items

We are only interested in ORIGINAL CONTENT.
We are only interested in THINGS THAT CAN BE REPRINTED / REDISTRIBUTED.

I'm really interested in meet ups, pranks, group projects, and other times when Discordia has manifested in 3D IRL.

Who is putting this thing together? Nobody yet. I'm starting this thread because collecting all the material is actually one of the hardest parts. I will volunteer if there is enough content and nobody else wants to do it.

Are you guys interested in this idea? If enough people are interested, and willing to help put it together, we will all have a souvenir of this crazy year we've spent together.

We are of course open to any submissions at all. If you want to put together a crossword puzzle, word search, whatever, we'll print it.

aaaaaaand BRAINSTORM

51

Principia Discussion / Asian Translator Needed

« on: October 24, 2011, 05:04:19 pm »

Chinese? Japanese? I have no idea.

I'm curious about page 00012 of the Principia.

It has this image on it.




I am really curious what that chinese-food-menu looking thing is. So I did a reverse image search at tineye and found that somebody made a t-shirt of that image?? weeeeird, what a random thing to turn into a product.

http://www.cafepress.com/discordianist.15930772#

that page gave me a better resolution version of the image.



Can anybody here help with translation?

I fed the image into an OCR scan website and it outputted a bunch of chinese characters. Feeding those characters into Google Translate produced the following garbage results:

;. L. | ..
..;|...'| E.. \
Lu Chui rocky hill turn yu cicada 〃
.|;|.| ith |.
.
The situation.
.|.|. j.; | ..
Rangfanjingcheng
Saoyinianxi

The word "situation" suggests that maybe this is from the i ching? Every chapter of the i ching has a line like "The situation is expected to improve."

I'm grasping at straws. Can anybody assist?

52

GASM Command / FnordGASM

« on: October 24, 2011, 04:44:47 pm »

I found this and thought I'd share: http://fnordgasm.tumblr.com/

It looks to be a tumblr photo blog which shows currency that has been "fnorded". Anybody who googles Fnord is sure to find THE TRUTH (of the pance crapping variety). This is part of an oldschool Discordian project called "Fnord Your Ones"

53

Apple Zone / Hi I'm looking for the Beaver Fever board

« on: October 21, 2011, 07:16:59 pm »

Am I in the right place? I drank some lake water and I'm sick as hell.
My symptoms include:

• abdominal cramps, watery diarrhea, vomiting, foul flatus, and fever
• loss of appetite, malaise, fatigue, and weight loss

I need MEDICAL ADVICE
from a QUALIFIED PROFESSIONAL
right NOW

54

Techmology and Scientism / Chime.in - A Social Network that Pays You To Post

« on: October 21, 2011, 04:34:03 pm »

Interesting idea --- a social network which gives you half of the ad revenue they make from your profile.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/chimein-social-network_n_1016634.html


They're calling it an "interest network," not a social network.

55

Apple Zone / Crowdsource Search Thread

« on: October 21, 2011, 01:42:35 am »

I'm looking for the series of posts about somebody's pilgrimage to the Brunswick shrine in Whittier CA, the location where Discordia was ehhh "discovered". There were pictures. Anybody know where that thread is?

56

Principia Discussion / Annotated Principia Discordia

« on: October 20, 2011, 07:39:08 pm »

Hey cats. I've started a project at 23ae.com called the Annotated Principia Discordia.

The Principia is dense, sometimes confusing, and contains a lot of obscure references. I'd like to examine those things and hold them under a magnifying glass. I'm curious about what sorts of things Mal and Omar were thinking about when they put it together.

Every Thursday, I'll post another section from the 5th ed Principia and share my notes, observations, and other crammings.

The first section is posted now. http://23ae.com/2011/10/annotated-principia-discordia-page-5/

A lot of this will be old news to the PD scholars on this forum. But I am already finding some cool stuff that I had never noticed before.

As an example, here's a section from the upcoming entry about the Pentabarf:

Let's take a look at this line:

    after 10 weeks & 11 hours of intensive scrutiny he discerned that the message could be read by standing on his head and viewing it upside down.

These are not just random numbers. There's a joke here if you look for it.

10 weeks and 11 hours is a specific amount of time:  1691 hours.

Notice anything funny about that number?



If you stand on your head and view it upside down, it's still 1691.

Right-side up or upside down, it's the same thing. Mal and Omar are telling us that opposites are balanced, another recurring Discordian theme. Mal-2 already touched on this theme in his Greater Poop interview where he tells us "False things are also true".

The Principia will return to this on page 00009, where there's a Niels Bohr quote: "The opposite of a trivial truth is false; the opposite of a great truth is also true. "

I enjoy pretending I'm a monk studying the bible or something, meditating on some old illuminated manuscript.

I invite you join me in sharing your own observations on each section.

57

Or Kill Me / The Society of the Spectacle has its demands too.

« on: October 14, 2011, 02:32:28 pm »

(a work in progress, post will be edited as I edit it)
It demands your attention.

It demands that you state your position in the form of a sound-byte which can be re-contextualized by another sound-byte.

It demands a remake of yesteryear’s summer blockbuster, the one with the hairy hippies on drums and mud, but with this year’s celebrities.

It wants to roll up your energy and sell it to kids on the street corner in a dime bag they have to hide from their parents.

It demands that you smoke that energy in secret and get all excited, fuzzy headed, forgetful, then you want more, and it’s got some, but the next hit’s gonna cost you.

It demands a glass jar full of passion, on display, so we can see the passion through the glass without getting any on our hands.

It demands that by end of the episode, we return to the nuclear sitcom family you saw in the opening credits.

It demands that you stop bringing up its disease, because that is embarrassing to both parties.

It demands your attention to these issues right now, before it listens to you.

It demands that you stop talking over it.

58

Apple Zone / I'm so sorry to hear about your cat's penis

« on: October 14, 2011, 02:05:44 pm »

I am really really really really sorry.

I feel awful about it.

59

Apple Zone / Halloween 2011

« on: October 13, 2011, 02:31:20 pm »

What are you spags going to be for Halloween this year? (if you're dressing up)

60

Aneristic Illusions / Would You Occupy?

« on: October 06, 2011, 01:55:49 pm »

If there were an Occupy ___ protest within a reasonable distance, would you attend?