Topics

16

Aneristic Illusions / UNLIMITED American gun slobber thread.

« on: May 26, 2022, 06:24:02 pm »

Starting this off with Ted Cruz shaming himself once again.   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/ted-cruz-storms-off-after-interviewer-asks-why-do-shootings-only-happen-in-america/ar-AAXLi39?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=e58f31a2a04049b797ae8f153443de41

“It’s easy to go to politics,” Cruz answered. “I get that’s where the media likes to go….The proposals from Democrats and the media inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people.”

Cruz was cut off by Stone, who noted the “violent psychopath” Cruz was referring to was “able to get a weapon so easily…an 18 year old with two AR-15s.”

“If you want to stop violent crime, the proposals the Democrat have…none of them would have stopped this,” Cruz said.

“Why does this only happen in your country?” Stone fired back. “Why only in America? Why is this American exceptionalism so awful?”

That’s when Cruz had enough, walking away from Stone and saying, “I’m sorry you think American exceptionalism is so awful. You know what? You have your political agenda. God love you.”

Stone proceeded to follow Cruz and repeatedly state that mass shootings are “just an American problem.”

“Why is it that people come from all over the world to America?” Cruz then asked. “Because it’s the freest, most prosperous, safest country on earth. Stop being a propagandist.”

Cruz then ended the interview once and for all.

17

Apple Talk / Banned on FB again.

« on: April 27, 2022, 02:52:01 am »

Just 24 hours.  I can do that on my head.   

18

Apple Talk / A thought experiment

« on: April 27, 2022, 01:08:23 am »

Okay, so let's assume you own or are the CEO of a business that is intrinsically dangerous.  Let's say it's a steel mill.

Your engineering department is small and entirely or almost entirely white.  Because it's always been that way.

Your floor employees are disproportionately people of color.

An engineer retires, and you are now critically short-handed.  You get two resumes on your desk.  One is from a white dude with 20 years of experience, and the other is a black dude with a rock solid set of scores in engineering school but no practical experience.  You have the budget to hire one of them.

Affirmative Action gives you incentive to hire the black dude, who is also cheaper due to his lack of experience, but he's more or less on his own.  If he makes mistakes, the people on the floor (again, mostly POC) will be exposed to additional risk to life and limb.  Which is no small thing in a steel mill.

If you hire the white dude, his experience makes him cost more but there is less risk to the floor employees, but you have once again established that your upper echelons are white, and will remain so until the next engineer retires, whereupon you will be faced with the same dilemma.

What is the ethical solution?

19

Apple Talk / OH NO

« on: April 12, 2022, 11:15:29 pm »

https://apnews.com/article/gilbert-gottfried-dead-baa553c9c0d30aec50a54db194cb9003

 

20

Apple Talk / Introductions VIII: Some bad news for new folks

« on: April 11, 2022, 07:59:15 pm »

Hello, and welcome to PD.com.  Unfortunately, we're extinct, mostly due to facebook but also because Discordians don't get alone by definition.

You don't have to tell us how zany you are or how fucked up your head is, because we've already been there and done that.  However, you CAN tell us if you want, because we're all dead and won't complain (much).

Anyway, there's a ton of great content buried under 100 tons of angry/bitter bickering, and those nuggets are worth looking for.

Please sign the guest book, using the provided quill and some of Faust's jellied blood (difficult, I know, but it's tradition.)

21

Apple Talk / Pango or Cain

« on: November 06, 2021, 04:16:39 am »

Just caught a 24 ban for a pic that doesn't violate FB standards, and I was told that they aren't reviewing bans right now.

Could someone make an announcement on my page?

22

Apple Talk / What If?

« on: September 27, 2021, 07:01:32 pm »

What if all the things They told you are true?  What if there IS a God, and he's just as described?  We're just his ant farm.  The kind of thing a kid gets and is absolutely FASCINATED by for a few days...and then forgets about it.  The ants get hungrier and meaner, and before long, ant-pocalypse.  The whole while, they're praying to the kid to come back and set things right, but he DOESN'T, so they decided that Those Bastards Over There have been SINNING, and that's why God doesn't come back.  Poof.  Instant pogroms, wars, and the kind of ants than bang on your door when you're hung over, just in case you haven't heard the GOOD NEWS.  The Good News being how you get to go to ant heaven if you are suitably shitty to those Other Bastards.  In God's name.

Meanwhile, the kid is on his X-box, playing WWF.  No living ant has any proof that he actually exists, but boy howdy, will they tell you all about it. 

What if the devil is, as described in the book of Job, a civil servant of God?  Take a minute, look it up.  The first chapter ought to do you just fine.  So God is allowing this guy to screw people up, sometimes on a BET, and God just goes along with it.  Maybe there are space constraints in heaven and God didn't really think we'd be quite this fruitful.  7.9 billion of us, all wanting our heavenly condo...When he had probably planned on maybe 150 million tops.  So he has the devil running around trying to make sure as many people find themselves somewhere else when they die.  What if hell is just a storage locker?

And then there's those OTHER guys that tell us WHAT.  Take for example the Wheeler interpretation.  What if you actually exist in an infinite number of universes, with every decision point made by an intelligent being splitting off another one?  The good news is that in at least a couple of those universes, you did just fine...Financially fine, a great love life, and you're all-around happy.  The BAD news is that those universes aren't real to this one, so you're stuck in the life you got.  And the OTHER bad news is, in most of those universes, you're even more fucked up than you are here.

Example:  In universe 2, Trump got reelected and went hog wild.  In universe 3, he didn't get reelected, but the 1/6 insurrection succeeded, and now you are getting on a train to go hang out with all the other liberals and leftists and paleoconservatives.  Somewhere in Northern Alaska, maybe.  Concertina wire and dogs may be involved, and you will now learn the joys of hard labor on 1100 calories a day.

Or wait.  What if those ivory tower dumbasses are right, and this is all a hologram?  You can't even use the barstool test to dismiss this one, because the barstool would be part of the hologram.  What kind of person would run a hologram like that, and how would that be different than a negligently hostile God?  You couldn't distinguish between them.

Lastly, what if I got some sleep?  Would things be better or not?  Is this universe hopelessly fucked, or is it just my BAD ATTITUDE?

Or Kill Me.

23

Apple Talk / Cram! fuck's sake!

« on: September 01, 2021, 09:49:17 pm »

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/07/14/Hawaii-goat-lottery-Puuhonua-o-Honaunau-National-Historical-Park/1031626282350/

Hawaii plans goat lottery to clear animals from national park

THIS IS YOUR MOMENT!

24

Apple Talk / Charley Watts has died.

« on: August 24, 2021, 07:32:23 pm »

No more Rolling Stones.   

25

Apple Talk / So. Walter White, etc.

« on: August 06, 2021, 10:34:52 pm »

I finally binge-watched the entirety of Breaking Bad, El Camino, & Better Call Saul.  Until 3 weeks ago, I had only seen the intro scene to season 1, ep 1 of BB.

It is sort of like trailer park Milton.  It reminds me of Boardwalk Empire, only in boardwalk empire, everyone's a scumbag from the beginning and you don't have to watch them ride the roller coaster down into the sewer (in fact, one minor character in BE has a redemption arc).  But it has the same "there are no good guys" vibe going on.

Frankly, it was depressing as hell, because it is all so familiar (in kind, rather than degree).

26

Apple Talk / Letters to James

« on: June 21, 2021, 10:16:07 pm »

A friend of mine is on a 30 day FB ban, so I have started writing him letters.

Dear James,

Remember when we all used to worry about Large Hardon Collider thingie being turned on and fucking up the timeline?  Well, if you look at the date they turned it on, it explains everything.  It ran from 2010 to 2013 before being shut down for “upgrades”.  Then it ran from 2015 to 2018, and then stopped for MORE upgrades.

And we all know what happened from 2015 until now, right?  Leaving the Bloated One aside, 2015 killed all of our heroes and 2016 showed us that the ones that didn’t die were all perverts & abusers.  Murder hornets.  Plague.  An insurrection AND the boat got stuck, and believe you me, the current economic disruption from that has just started.  And the entire time all of this has been going on, Trump has been weaponizing stupidity and using it against the American people.

Do your part, James:  Whup on a Swiss physicist today.

I mean, it’s not like you Ohioans are any strangers to violence, after all.  There’s footage James, of you at the Godless Mingle meet up, yanking the colostomy right bag off of that dude who wouldn’t shut up about his “Blasphemous Bible” and wearing it like a party hat.  Not to mention Shauna <last name redacted for PD> explaining contemporary feminism to po’buckers with a meat hammer.

It is just this sort of nonstop violence that is driving us all to cheap drugs.  Do better.

Speaking of which, I am now down a tech because one of my guys did the road rage thing the other day and shot a couple of people.  But nobody involved was from Ohio, which strikes me as odd, in that only one person died.  Mindless murder & mayhem here are generally taken far more seriously.

This is all very inconvenient, of course, because we still have DEFF ROBOTS to build, and now I have a bottleneck in carbon production.  How the fuck am I supposed to make murder machines when my employees keep murdering people?  It’s like they don’t understand the difference between retail and wholesale.

So, if you know anyone who likes 113-degree temperatures and doesn’t plan to kill anyone at a gas station because someone cut in line, send me their resume.  I mean, 113 sounds bad, and I am sure 120 sounds worse (that’s next month), but 120 is only half way from water freezing to water boiling, and I think that’s reasonable.

But this letter isn’t about savagery, James, it’s about SCIENCE.  And nobody does SCIENCE to people like we do, here in The Corporation™.  For example, did you know that aquatic drones are 170% as terrifying to people as airborne drones?  It’s a fact, proven by large poll sampling and maybe a little bit of empirical testing which may or may not have pushed the boundaries of our ethical rules.  Probably has something to do with hardwired crocodile fears from when we were all still living in Africa, way back when Mitch McConnell was young.

The best thing about aquatic drones is that weight isn’t really an issue, so you can throw everything AND the kitchen sink in that bastard.  In fact, the USA just finished building an aircraft carrier which cost $12.8 billion (not including aircraft, etc) and it was obsolete when they built it, and they knew it was obsolete when they built it.

Because, of course, that small fact has nothing to do with appropriations committees in the house and senate.  They will build you a piece of shit and you will like it, because our entire economy has been predicated on doing just that since 1947. 

Which seems sustainable as hell, right?

I am not going to go into specifics about what we’re doing, because frankly it’s Nerd Level 1000 stuff and would bore you silly.  Just rest assured that we are in fact on the case, we are in fact committed to success.  Because I have a dream, James.  I have a dream that sometime in the not-so-distant future, our creations will mindlessly fight each other long after we’re all gone.

And that doesn’t even figure on aliens.  And let me tell you, I fucking hate aliens.  You can’t trust aliens for the same reason you can’t trust gods, and that reason is they aren’t human and don’t have human motives.  So I have an interest in drones that can last a long, long time.

And on the day that alien archeologists show up and try to figure out what happened to the noble primates of Sol III, they will ask themselves many questions…But the only important question they will ask is “Did you just hear something by the hatch?”  The survivors will flee, and they will put Earth off limits as a horrible nightmare of a death trap, and I will finally get what I always wanted:  A little peace and quiet.

I don’t feel this is unreasonable.  I am connected to the internet, and goddamn are humans LOUD.  They never shut up.  Governor Abbott in Texas is now jabbering that he’ll build Trump’s wall across his state, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is stating that diseases can’t mutate because she doesn’t believe in evolution, and Ted Cruz is on about the LGBT crowd again because someone might choose to shit in “the wrong bathroom” and we’re still dumping plastic in the ocean.

What the hell am I SUPPOSED to do? 

Build DEFF BOTs, of course.  It is the way.  Let’s face facts:  You don’t like primates and I don’t like primates and with 7,685,000,000 of them running lose, you can feel free to thank us.

Because The Corporation™ has a solution.

Until next time,

Dok

27

Apple Talk / How to eliminate yourself as a force for good.

« on: June 18, 2021, 06:14:22 pm »

https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/greta-thunberg-new-zealand-school-strike-b1866457.html

But now the group, School Strike 4 Climate Auckland, said in a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday that it will disband over concerns it has become a “white-dominated space”.

The statement said: “School Strike 4 Climate Auckland is disbanding as an organisation.This is under the suggestion and guidance of the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) members of our group, as well as individual BIPOC activists and organisations.

So basically, fighting climate change is now a racist activity.

28

Aneristic Illusions / This isn't at all alarming.

« on: June 04, 2021, 02:54:49 pm »

https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-world-news-alexander-lukashenko-belarus-europe-dcae4d9b7e050323800d098c62bd91c9

No further comment is required.

29

Apple Talk / The Happy Prince (Hey, Louie)

« on: May 24, 2021, 03:32:39 pm »

Hey, Louie,

Most people think The Happy Prince¹ was by Hans Christian Anderson or the Brothers Grimm.  It wasn't, of course, it was written by Oscar Wilde, and that alone should be a warning, Louie.  The story doesn't end well, even by the standards of the other two authors.

So you're this swallow, right, Louie?  No, you're not a swallow.  You're a human being.  Maybe a prince.  Human beings have a dual nature...They have requirements necessary for them to live, but they also have obligations to their fellow humans.  If this balance isn't met, a human becomes something else.  If the obligations are not met, they turn into monsters, and if the requirements are not met, they die (or, in these easier, modern days, they simply turn from being the swallow or the prince into being the match girl from the story.)

Again, it's all about balance.  Extremism is ugly no matter what you're being extreme about, whether that be the extremists hollering inside the capitol building (swallows) or the ugly-faced politicos driving them on (princes).  The difference in the prince and the swallow in the story, of course, being that one is a reformed exploiter who is still exploiting, and the other is a person addicted to being exploited.  The prince (in the story, for example) doesn't even have to be a bad guy.  Just someone who exploits others to do things in the prince's name to wash away the prince's sin (you're getting the irony right now, I am guessing), even as it loads the prince down with more sin.  Extremism in this tale, as in life, always ends badly...Especially if you don't believe there is a god up there to make it all better when you are destroyed.

Another thing about extremism is that it's not only ugly, but it's boring.  People not invested in your extremism don't want to hear it, so they make polite excuses and go do other things, your group of swallows heads to Egypt for the winter, leaving you with a dwindling set of friends until one day it's just you and the prince.  Then you want to leave, it's getting really cold, but the prince tells you that escaping the cold excludes BIPOC folks or LGBT folks or whatnot.  So you stay.  And you die (or just find yourself broke and alone).

And then, in the story, the people you tried to save via logical, concrete assistance find your remains and the remains of your stripped prince and your frozen body, and they call someone to haul the trash away.  You performative capacities have been stripped, so there's not much use for you.  They won't think of it that way, of course, they're not monsters.

But they'll do it anyway.

Yours Truly,
The drab iron statue of Hamish.


¹For those of you barbarians that don't know the story, it can be found here:
https://artpassions.net/wilde/happy_prince.html

30

Apple Talk / I guess that's that (Hey Louie)

« on: May 18, 2021, 06:50:03 pm »

Hey Louie,

I've been on this board since the day after it was up, way the hell back in 2002. That's coming up on 19 years this next December.  And while the board has had its ups and downs, it's been down an awfully long time this time.  The reasons for this are varied and sundry, but perhaps not as varied as they seem.

Possible reasons:

1.  The BBS format just flat up lost to Facebook and other modern platforms.

Problem:  I know of at least 10 other BBSs that still have hundreds - or in one case, thousands - of active users.  This is not the answer.

2.  Discordianism literally eats its own guts.  It feeds on itself, by its very nature.

  This is in fact part of the problem.

3.  This board and I are considered inseparable by many people who don't particularly care for me, either because they don't like me or they have been instructed to not like me.

I would dismiss #3 as maybe being a little over-sensitive, except that a certain person followed me to Debate Politics and busted out my troll in public a week or so ago.  Which was both rude, and an indicator that no matter where I am or what I do, this person's obsessive hatred of me will cause her to blast me wherever I go, if show up anywhere being recognizable as myself, or do anything at all that would in any way tie whatever I'm doing to my old accounts.

(It's worth mentioning that she is running a troll account composed of bullshit as well, but had no problem busting mine out.  I am of course less than happy about this, but what can you do?)

The solution is obvious.  The Doktor Howl/TGRR personas, as well as any accounts known to be linked to those have to simply be dropped, and I can start over somewhere else as someone else and not have to worry about being stalked by her or her adoring fans (and by adoring, people literally ask permission to speak with her or include her in a conversation, over on FB.  It's servile and cringy as hell.)

And as for those adoring fans, you can fuck right off until what happens to me, happens to you.  And it will, just as soon as she gets drunk and bored.  If you ghosted me because she told you to OR just because you didn't want to run afoul of her OR you decided I'm a big old bastard or whatnot, just die in a fire.  Or don't.  Just don't bother speaking to me again, should you trip over me somewhere on the internet or whatnot (this would exclude QGP, Cain, and Faust, of course.)  I am sick and tired of being the bad guy because one day almost 6 years ago I wouldn't agree with Nigel that my wife and my kids and I are all horrible racist Nazis because we disagreed with her about the 2015 primary race.

And while I will be here for a short while in the background, vacuuming up ebook material that hasn't already been backed up, you guys can safely assume that I won't be a bother.  You guys can come back, Faust can run a board that isn't a morgue, and I never have to think of you folks ever again.

That's a hell of a bargain, for the low, low, price of...well, nothing at all.

So that's about it.  Fuck off with yourself.

Yours Truly,
D.B. Cooper