Messages

46

Apple Zone / Re: Another holist vanity thread

« on: September 30, 2012, 10:35:34 pm »

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31353.msg1137403.html#msg1137403

Yeah, well. Actually, I didn't mean it: I was so outraged by Roger putting that in my mouth, I didn't spit it out, just said yeah, right, sort of. As in: whatever. 

Thing is, once I realised that despite the primate tendency to think otherwise, your fantasies about who and what I am are actually totally unrelated to who or what I am, and practice remembering the ins and outs of a situation (I am playing sometimes a little rough verbal games with a bunch of strangers some of whom say interesting things with some regularity, but many of whom are amazingly opinionated and over-generalizing weirdoes, I don't get agitated any more.

This has been a valuable learning experience, actually, thank you.

Ah.

You didn't mean what you said.

Again.

But it's not your fault, it's my fault.

I see.

When you said this:

I think that if that's your definition of third-world, then East St. Louis, New Orleans, Vancouver, Detroit, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and numerous other cities are "third-world cities".

You were actually repsonding to a rather overgrown wall of words.

That large chunk included this, written by me, a while back:

"The difference between first-world cities and third-world cities (or parts of cities, because these conditions increasingly coexist in the same cities, within short distances of each other, as I attempted to explain above) is that in first-world cities, the proportion of entirely disenfranchised people in deep poverty is low, while in third-world neighbourhoods it is very high."

I'M too tired to dig out the thing that the "as I attempted to explain above" refers to, but I do recall it: about the increasingly fractal nesting and intermingling of cultures everywhere. This, incidentally, is pretty much the same as what Nigel now tells me is the colloquial use of the terms.

You need to be acquainted with East St. Louis. It fits your definition to a T.

47

Apple Zone / Re: Another holist vanity thread

« on: September 30, 2012, 02:41:08 pm »

Wait, this is bullying? Saying that something is "nonsense" and that statements are "completely ridiculous"? HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS! We are playing the "let's make up definitions" game again, aren't we? Should I break out my Phoxionary? 

That's sort of up to you.

But I think that telling someone that what they are saying is nonsense and completely ridiculous is verbal bullying. Especially if it is accompanied by complete disregard for the fact that in the meantime, that person backed down from that initial version of the statement, apologised and recast the point. The fact that the views being "criticised" are also consistently misrepresented doesn't help. Of course, all of it doesn't have much weight on a largely anonymous Internet message board. But that does not make it into rational argument.

No, it's not bullying. It's a description. "Nonsense", because your statements have no sense, and "ridiculous" because they are otherwise worthy of ridicule. I don't know why this isn't difficult to understand.

48

Apple Zone / Re: ATTN: Kai

« on: September 30, 2012, 02:36:51 pm »

I like how they made a distinction between shrimp and prawns. 

49

Apple Zone / Re: Well, this isn't entirely skeevy*

« on: September 29, 2012, 08:23:38 pm »

This is like something straight out of one of those horrible pornographic films I've heard about.

50

Apple Zone / Re: RICHTER! I HAVE NEED OF YOU AND YOUR TOOLS.

« on: September 28, 2012, 01:34:45 am »

"Everything changes when you start to emit your own frequency rather than absorbing the frequencies around you, when you start imprinting your intent on the universe rather than receiving an imprint from existence."

~Actual quote from that link. 

51

Aneristic Illusions / Re: Cain: Total War

« on: September 26, 2012, 10:37:04 pm »

This rant makes me fear the tea party and USAdian nationalism more than ever.

52

Apple Zone / Re: Wage Slavery

« on: September 26, 2012, 10:10:16 pm »

Okay,since you need your hand held through this: Professional sex workers work in the sex industry. Porn stars, strippers, prostitutes, phone sex workers, etc. People who post naked pictures of videos on the internet=/= professional sex workers.

Is it difficult for you to divorce the word "porn" from meaning "random naked pictures" and apply it in context to "commercially produced, for-profit, often exploitative erotic media"?

Once again, you can be counted on to say exactly what I'm thinking.

53

Apple Zone / Re: Help

« on: September 26, 2012, 09:57:59 pm »

Now, more importantly.....I demand to know why you do not like jazz! I take deep personal exception to the fact that our record collections are not the same! This is very distressing as I am unwilling to accept that other people, especially you, will not listen to Bebop. In fact, I am very sure you are responsible for making other people not like jazz.

I hope so.  With only a few exceptions (Ella Fitzgerald, etc), Jazz consists of 4 different guys playing 4 different songs in the same room at the same time.  No, wait.  4 different guys tuning up their instruments in the same room at the same time.  It isn't music, and can best be compared to That Guy at a party, who gets ahold of an accoustic guitar and "plays" it (fucking with one bad chord and commenting about how badly tuned it is) until TGRR and Knuckles drag him out back and kick his ass.

Jazz musicians should be beaten mercilessly and then be sold to medical research.  Or a pet food factory.

I used to be really into instrumental jazz. Back then, I took exception to your and ECH's poor opinions of it. How in the world could you guys possibly hate Kind of Blue, it's Classic! That sort of feeling.

More recently, I've been listening to blues and swing, especially the big band and vocal stuff. And then when I go to listen to jazz, it just sounds...well, like people who don't actually know how to play their instruments well. Like they're just horsing around, not trying to actually synthesize something worth listening. I don't even mean that improvisation is bad; Di Meola, DeLucia and Mclaughlin did all kinds of improv in their trios, but it always came out sounding like music. I guess what I'm saying is, jazz sounds like a cacophony. Especially the trumpets.

54

Apple Zone / Re: Help

« on: September 26, 2012, 12:16:11 pm »

Didn't you once say you didn't like me very much? Are you the sentimental type that misses things that are old even if you didn't like them just because they are a familiar reminder of a time past?

Probably. I used to say a lot of things that I not realize are stupid.

55

Apple Zone / Re: Rant for Holist

« on: September 26, 2012, 02:39:59 am »

Perhaps he left to go post in the best of all possible threads?

Whichever thread you are in is, or course, the best of all possible threads.

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in an 18th century satire...?

56

Apple Zone / Re: Help

« on: September 26, 2012, 02:33:27 am »

Ho-ley shit. Well, that's one walk in I never thought I'd see again.

What the hell have you been up to? Besides the college bullshit, I mean.

What?! Wait. why?! Were you sure I died?

We had no idea what happened to you. You've been gone for YEARS, man.

~The artist formerly known as B_M_W

57

Apple Zone / Re: Help

« on: September 26, 2012, 02:30:00 am »

Ho-ley shit. Well, that's one walk in I never thought I'd see again.

What the hell have you been up to? Besides the college bullshit, I mean.

58

Apple Zone / Re: Wage Slavery

« on: September 26, 2012, 02:25:08 am »

LMNO, does this strike you as being similar to what Yudowsky was talking about, when people try to widen the frame of their analogies as far as possible, instead of narrowing down the differences?

I only ask because I'm having dinner, it's bugging me, and you would know where the link to it was.

Nevermind, I found it.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ic/the_virtue_of_narrowness/

Within their own professions, people grasp the importance of narrowness; a car mechanic knows the difference between a carburetor and a radiator, and would not think of them both as "car parts".  A hunter-gatherer knows the difference between a lion and a panther.  A janitor does not wipe the floor with window cleaner, even if the bottles look similar to one who has not mastered the art.

Outside their own professions, people often commit the misstep of trying to broaden a word as widely as possible, to cover as much territory as possible.  Is it not more glorious, more wise, more impressive, to talk about all the apples in the world?  How much loftier it must be to explain human thought in general, without being distracted by smaller questions, such as how humans invent techniques for solving a Rubik's Cube.  Indeed, it scarcely seems necessary to consider specific questions at all; isn't a general theory a worthy enough accomplishment on its own?

It is the way of the curious to lift up one pebble from among a million pebbles on the shore, and see something new about it, something interesting, something different. You call these pebbles "diamonds", and ask what might be special about them—what inner qualities they might have in common, beyond the glitter you first noticed. And then someone else comes along and says: "Why not call this pebble a diamond too? And this one, and this one?" They are enthusiastic, and they mean well. For it seems undemocratic and exclusionary and elitist and unholistic to call some pebbles "diamonds", and others not. It seems... narrow-minded... if you'll pardon the phrase. Hardly open, hardly embracing, hardly communal.

Declaring all work as akin to prostitution is much more deep and wise than talking about the overwheming number of ways in they differ.

This is one of my most favorite LW posts, and totally fits the bill for this thread.

59

Apple Zone / Re: The Porn Princess Rant, Re-Written

« on: September 25, 2012, 02:21:16 am »

I'm sort of stunned that someone is actually equating sex work (and yes, I include pornography in that; you're being payed, to have sex with someone, whether or not it is on camera is irrelevant) with translation services. It's pure idiocy.

60

Apple Zone / Re: This Week's Nightmare Fuel

« on: September 25, 2012, 01:58:21 am »

Wow, indeed. It was one of those, "I don't get what everyone's so....[wait for it....wait for it...]....ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....oh man" moments.