While all caps may in fact be cruise control for cool, even with cruise control you still have to steer.
Oh LabourList promises to be so much fun. Not in terms of content, of course, but with personalities like Draper running it, not to mention the automatic managerial reflex of New Labour vs the more democratic, open-minded and accountable attitude of the web, anything to do with the site will result in laughter and hypocrisy. Its wonderful.
I am strongly advising people against buying the hardcover version of the Principia Discordia I have brought out ’til further notice.
My publisher has done a bunk and run off with the money. I wish it were not true, but it is. Exposure Publishing/Diggory Press have walked off with the only cash I have to keep POEE online.
I have now published the paperback version through Lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/683873 . It will be available on Amazon in a few months, but if you buy through Lulu http://www.lulu.com/content/683873 we will make more money.
Please, for the love of whatever (maybe this community, maybe something else) tell everyone you know, who may be interested.
Thanks, people.
Syn out.
Naturally, this sucks beyond words, and its terrible that his publishers have done this to him. So for now, if you are thinking of buying a hard copy of the Principia, please buy from one of the above links. Furthermore, if you already have the PD, but have some spare change knocking about, consider donating some in order to keep POEE running. Its a great Discordian resource and site, and deserves our help.
I don’t know who you are, or why you were Googling that, or even why you ended up here (though it does sound like something one of us would write about), but I think I love you, simply for supplying my mind with the possibility of such a thing being true.
Ripped this discussion, built on Cram’s earlier post and musings, from the forum. Enjoy.
LMNO: Because so far, nothing else seems to be working. Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.
Baron von Hoopla:Â Bingo.
Cramulus: [to LMNO] that’s a great angle. Could you expand on that a bit?
GA:  I don’t know about more relevant, because I wasn’t around 50 years ago. It seems to me that the Cold War was in pretty dire need of some lightheartedness, even more than our current War on Terror.
It just seems relevant to me because I personally had (have?) a problem with taking things far to seriously. And because many of the people around me have concepts like ‘mandatory’ and ‘forbidden’ and apply them to things that are really optional.
I makes me sad when people tell me that things like religion are to important to joke about, or old propaganda posters too offensive. It bothers me when I get suspended from school or hauled before Loss Prevention for reasons like “I know that this is just a misunderstanding, but we must follow procedure.” It hurts when I look around my infosphere and see nothing but advertisements, especially when those ads are meant to make people feel bad about themselves.
The world is ruled by an endless morass of strictures and convention, and no one wants to take responsibility for them. People are perfectly content to let the train follow its own momentum down the tracks, even though they don’t like where it is or where it is going, because this is Policy, it’s what Everyone (the everyone in “everyone knows that…”) has Decided. Rules and traditions might be annoying, but it’s Not In Our Power to do anything about them.
LMNO:  In today’s so-called “Information Ageâ€, most of us are constantly bombarded with stuff. Perhaps not with ideas, so much as pure input. While for the most part this input is pretty much bias-neutral, an increasing amount of it is being supplied by people who have an angle. What’s more, to get through to the growing population of Jaded Couch-Dwelling Fuckheads, there has been a new approach of making the stuff more-or-less self referential, as in, “we know you know we’re trying to manipulate you. See how cool that makes us?â€
So, what do you do when you are flooded by 50,000 points of view? The old way was to have Rules and Tradition and Procedure and Black and White. To take that stuff and cram it into a narrow worldview, distorting what little information you actually notice. Which only serves to hold you back, slow you down, and shut you up.
Our way, the Discordian way, is to make Temporary Models, make new Game Rules, to grab hold of the stuff and ride it out, making connections as you see them. You do your best not to have your views manipulated by stuff, and you do your best not to manipulate stuff to fit your views. Which serves to keep you on the Edge of What’s Going On.
At least, that’s the general idea.
Continue reading Why Discordia is more relevant in 2008 – Discussion
No, really.
The Washington Post has the info:
Spread John McCain’s official talking points around the Web — and you could win valuable prizes!
That, in essence, is the McCain campaign’s pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of “AstroTurf” campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.
On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (“John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.
Activists and political operatives have used volunteers or paid staff to seed radio call-in shows or letters-to-the-editor pages for years, typically without disclosing the caller or letter writer’s connection to a candidate or cause. Like the fake grass for which the practice is named, such AstroTurf messages look as though they come from the grass roots but are ersatz.
McCain’s campaign has taken the same idea and given it an Internet-era twist. It also has taken the concept one step further.
People who sign up for McCain’s program receive reward points each time they place a favorable comment on one of the listed Web sites (subject to verification by McCain’s webmasters). The points can be traded for prizes, such as books autographed by McCain, preferred seating at campaign events, even a ride with the candidate on his bus, known as the Straight Talk Express, according to campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.
“Anytime you’re getting supporters activated into online communities or taking other actions to spread the word, that’s a win,” Rogers says.
You are slumbering blissfully, dreaming of things that were, things that are, things that will be, and things that never will be. Your fantasy slides gently from the normal into the unbelievable, then pirouetting back into normality as dreams are wont to do.
A perfectly boring fourth-grade math lesson is disrupted by your teacher’s transformation into a clown, who proceeds to blast the classroom full of marshmallows with his rainbow-colored rifle. Your friend Danny gobbles up the candy with uncanny speed, then finally swallows the clown. Danny explodes in a puff of pink smoke, and through the wisps you see your teacher once again.
After class you find yourself flying with your friend Danny, soaring through the sky on leathery wings, on your way towards Dinzyworld… What a summer it will be! You make a broad loop through a cloud, singing with joy, when suddenly…
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
You are woken up by the buzzing of an alarm clock. You open your eyes and blink in the morning light streaming in from your window, the dreamy haze quickly dissipating into oblivion. You’re still very tired…
The internet was created as a network to allow humans to mostly interact with others and share knowledge. Amirite? Much like the cruel open world, we’re all mean here, arrogant, and yet faceless. Why do I leech on for my daily dose of the tubes? Besides some form of ridiculous co-dependence, the internet has allowed me to remember that humanity, even at it’s most amazing and selfless hours are still nothing but a collective of douchebags spreading their douchebaggery abound whilst flaunting their epic douchitude. And I find it amusing.
Do NOT come to me asking for help, posting threads of pity or buttons of Paypal on pages asking for donations to keep your website alive or to keep your bunny alive. Eat your bunny plz, post pictures, grant us thee folk of the internet the horrormirth we desire to continue our lives in a sick, twisted illusion of awesome. I am awesome, because I tell myself this on a daily, as it helps me get through my day with no medication requiredâ„¢!
I don’t tell you about my debt, my marital issues, my financial stress and overall hatred of my current status quo in great detail and outside of general jest, because you’re not listening. I did the Livejournal thing for a while, and all it did was create an abundance of drama I haven’t seen since middle school anytime I posted about something a wee bit wrong in my life…then I remembered I didn’t read my friend’s shit anyway, so why the fuck bother?
I don’t listen; you don’t listen.
I began a brief ritual of ‘Wednesday Rants’ on the ol’ LJ during my Sophomore year in college in an attempts to at least bring some sort of reason into having the damned thing…it didn’t work, and I abandoned it rather quickly, as the answers I either got were my friends of the best variety giving me empty praise or some faggot twisting it into bullshit. Therefore, I felt like I accomplished nothing. I often think of posting on Verwirrung, and feel that in short, it will really only benefit those here anyway if at all, because outside of PD.Com, no one could give a fuck about this site, but perhaps they need to? Maybe? Who knows. I highly doubt anyone here will get anything from this smear on the blog.
I’m not an entirely cold human being, no…but I have my moments. I am close to those I allow to be close, care for them, laugh and cry with them, but my shell is a woman that rarely smiles. This doesn’t mean I’m upset, it means that I just don’t care to unless I have good reason. There was a Daria episode in which the football alum from their high school died because the fucking goal post fell on his head or some shit, and it was pointed out that the reason Daria never smiles is because she ‘thinks’. I often use this as my excuse when I’m asked about my sour countenance. The reaction I get is usually an odd look and a, “But I think too, and I smile, so smile, damnit!” My retort is typically, “Well, maybe you aren’t thinking hard enough?” And leave it at that. I also like leaving my thoughts to myself.
…I also hate my teeth, but that’s another tale entirely.
The internet is my escape from thinking, sometimes WAY too much. It allows me to be creative during work, or gaming, it allows me to sit here and giggle like a motherfucker all day long as I leave this forum tabbed on my browser. The internet is a collective of minds that do the thinking for me, and I like it that way, because it gives my tired brain a break. No doubt others do the same.
So why should I give a fuck about what’s wrong with your life anyway?
GTFO my internet with your piteous throws of fits and excuses as to why you NEED to be accepted or WHY you’re different. We’re faceless, mindless-minds who congregate to feed off of your insolence like sociopath vampires…hiding our identities while we attack you with little or no remorse. If you need a shrink, GO TO A SHRINK, don’t come here, to the internet to find answers because Wikipedia gave you a link or you felt lucky on fucking Google.
Of course, one could always allude the internet is like a gang that you need beating into, which means that you better lay there and get it over and done with quickly to avoid severe injury…rather than putting up a struggle.
Oh fuck it, I really just wrote this to conjugate forms of douchebag. You all may go about your business.
Japan has decided to beat France and the United Kingdom (both who have similar proposals) to become the first country to ban file sharers from the internet.
Oddly the agreement to do so has not come from the Japanese Government, but from Japan’s four internet service provider organizations after pressure (not surprisingly) from the record and movie industries. According to Torrent Freak, the agreement would see copyright holders tracking down file-sharers on the Internet using “special detection software†and then notifying ISPs of alleged infringers. File sharers will initially receive a warning for a first offense, then be disconnected for subsequent offenses, eventually be disconnected from the internet permanently (it wasn’t clear whether the agreement is a three strikes proposal).
The process will formally commence in April and will primarily target users of Winny, the most popular file sharing network in Japan.
(via Techcrunch)
Needless to say, I’m not impressed, and I very much doubt this “special detection software” can tell the difference between a legitimately downloaded file from a P2P network, and an illegal one. Consider for example the latest NIN’s album, available for free download. Not to mention it puts copyright holders in charge of investigating infringements. I can’t see that going wrong at all, oh no….
On a related topic, Matt Mason, the author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism has an interiew which you can download here (mp3).