Topics

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/04/scienceshot-females-sport-penises-genital-swapped-insects

Actual paper: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(14)00314-5



LADY FLY DICKS. THIS IS A THING. 

There was a lot of "so what do we do?" talk when the PUA etc. reaction threads went up, and I was in the middle of some mads and wasn't super helpful. So, I'm going to lay out a couple little pointers that I believe to be accurate (ladies and others who have to deal with this bullshit, please let me know how close to the mark this is) and then I will share with you a story of a dude doing it right, possibly without even realizing it. These guidelines are intended for a general audience, I believe most of the dudes on this board are already basically following them.

1) Respect women's space. Women are used to getting their physical space invaded and nobody likes it. When dealing with strangers, the rule of thumb is two or three feet separating you (with obvious exceptions for crowded trains, etc.)

2) Respect women's feels. There's a lot of bad signal about women and their feelings, don't contribute to it. Let women have their space to be angry or sad or whatever. Don't tell them they're crazy or god help you on their period just because they are having a bout of feels. Do not assume that you know what caused the feels, or that you are the person to solve them. Sometimes we need space to have feelings in. Also, don't tell ladies on the street to smile if they're scowling, trust that they have their reasons.

3) Respect polite and soft "no"s. Many women learn the lesson that asserting themselves means getting hollered at, so they resort to soft "no"s, like retreating or creating excuses. It is not your fault this is how women have been trained to act, it is the fault of the people who hollered at them. Do not contribute by pressing the issue or challenging excuses. Obviously this does not apply when talking about workplace communication.

4) Respect their body language and what they say. It's not hard to read whether a woman is into you hitting on her. Don't hit on women who aren't interested. It's a terrible goddamn idea. If you thought she was interested and it turns out you were wrong, you were wrong. She's not a bitch.

5) Assume allegations of rape and sexual misconduct are credible. It's hard not to make excuses when the people accused are friends or people we look up to, but the stats are very clear that false allegations are statistically rare, and it's far more likely that a woman will say nothing than a woman will make something up.

6) Listen when a woman is willing to communicate how you violated her boundaries. It's a very difficult thing to talk about and most women will not take it on themselves to explain what went wrong and how you can do better next time. Not every woman has the same boundaries, and crossing lines is not the same as assault or rape, but listening to where things took a left turn can help you be a better guy.

I'm irrationally annoyed by Inge's icon. Propose people change icons to our own corset tits to shame the try-hard. Goddamn is that a try-hard costume.

hxxp://weev.livejournal.com/405848.html

I think he put in the McVeigh thing just to make sure no one could ever be comfortable agreeing with anything he says.

http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/2014/05/14/the-barrett-brown-review-of-arts-and-letters-and-jail-i-wish-i-could-do-like-magic/

Incidentally, you might expect that when one joins the Catholic priesthood there is entailed a sort of implicit agreement that one will refrain from engaging in recreational necromancy, but apparently not.

The eminently quotable and hopefully soon-to-be-released Barrett Brown.

http://time.com/81170/donald-sterling-los-angeles-clippers-nba-adam-silver/

In case anyone missed it: the owner of a successful basketball team said some awful racist shit to his mistress, which she recorded and sold to TMZ. It went public, and now there's DRAMA.

What I find interesting is the possibility that the guy is actually in the beginning stages of dementia. Nigel's thread about stupid/retarded got my wheels turning on that point, and if you listen to the interviews he's given it's a very real possibility. How on earth does a responsible society deal with someone who has money & power, and is both racist and crazy? Can we hold racist thoughts and speech against someone who isn't operating at full capacity? Will this whole affair seem ghoulish when he starts getting mental health services?

hxxp://0v.org/spying-is-censorship/ and hxxp://0v.org/the-internets-own-boy-and-me/

The first one is written as the husband because that's easier.

Apparently he slapped a copyright on "The Discordian and the Two Wiccans" at some point and I'm trying to get a kopyleft clean version of Holy Nonsense compiled at some point. If anyone knows how to find that guy, or if he even still exists, that would be awesome.

Good Guy Cop analyzes metadata about crime locations and times to devise a new beat which puts police officers in the neighborhoods they are needed most to improve response times and potentially dissuade criminal activities.

Bad Guy Cop mines metadata from telephone records for information about the habits and associates of people he doesn't like to stalk and harass them.

[have we hit the tipping point where the majority of people are at significant risk of mental health concerns due to their intelligence?]

Random thought: people are (in general terms, in western society) less happy than they may have been in generations past. This is only in part correlated with the distressing economic situation, there was a lot of vague anxiety/distress/depression going on culturally in the 90s, too. Take into account the fact that people (in general terms, in western society) are by all reasonable measurements getting smarter, and that smartness is correlated with mental health problems, and you have to ask: have we hit the tipping point where the majority of people are at significant risk of mental health concerns due to their intelligence?

This might be too literal for people's tastes, but I'm trying to suss out the relevant variables to the calculation of cost benefit analysis for fomenting revolution. Right now I'm on the cost side.

Military/Police/Secret Police
For each: the base level of violence (how willing soldiers and police are to be violent in their day-to-day activities); how well armed they are; how many people they have in comparison to the populace; how loyal they are likely to be to the regime in the face of revolution.

Domestic Spying/Information Control
Will the internet be hijacked or shut down? Will your people be identified and captured/tortured/killed as a result of spying campaigns? Will support systems for the revolution be identified and attacked?

Utilities/Services
How volatile are the utilities already? Is a system for rolling blackouts or other kill switches already in place? How likely is a general strike? Does your country import a significant portion of its food? Will the hospitals be attacked if they accept demonstrators?

Rogue Elements
Can you rule the uprising with an iron fist? How likely is it that one or more demonstrators will turn violent at any given event? 



okay, sleepy, more later.

Nothing is worth doing "at all costs," Babycakes. Give that shit up right now and you'll save yourself some heartbreak and headaches. I don't care how romantic it sounds to waste your life screaming about something that will never be resolved because "someone has to do it," the only thing that gets you is a world of problems and maybe temporary pants access to an idealistic moron of your preferred gender. Tilting at windmills is not a life goal. You have some math to do here.

If you want people to join The Cause, you're going to need to demonstrate to them that the effort to results ratio is sufficiently low. The two ways you can try to go about creating that perfect ratio are lowering the effort to nearly zero or picking off low hanging fruit. Scientology was textbook low hanging fruit: they get mad about anything, couldn't secure their websites worth shit, and the public was eager to hear terrible things about them. Slam-fucking-dunk. Online petitions are a zero effort and occasionally get results. These are the things that work.

"But mama duck!" I hear you say, "I don't want to waste my life on low hanging fruit and rarely effective zero effort drives! I want to Change the World!" Of course you do. We get born into this place where the only people who feel they have a right to rewrite the rules are sociopaths and the first thing you think when you see the world as it stands is "Shit, I could do better than this!" And you probably could, Babycakes, if you weren't on a planet full of crazy humans who would rather be comfortable than kind, rather be right than wise, rather yell than listen. It's not their fault either (or yours), it's just the way we were wired. The way we survived. But we can survive and still work on being better. We do it all the time.

Don't marry yourself to The Cause. Don't shit on other people for their lack of dedication to Sparkle Motion. Keep your eyes open for that low hanging fruit, for the low effort options. When there's a big target, be willing to do big things, but never out of proportion to what you can hope to achieve. The goal of a rally is never "to have a rally," and anyone who says otherwise, or talks too much about "raising awareness" when they should be talking about "actual fucking goals," kick 'em in the teeth. Breaking windows won't stop governments from having a chat every couple of years about how the economy is doing. Throwing a parade so ridiculously fabulous that people are forced to acknowledge your right to love whoever the fuck you want? That's results. An online petition won't stop an international treaty, but blacking out the Internet and throwing huge protests around the world probably will.

The Cause will always be there. Save your effort for the actions that will count.

Unexplained muscle aches, upper abdominal pain, and generalized gastro-intestinal distress. Who has the cure?








Yes, I know these are common physical symptoms of stress and that's probably the cause.

No, babycakes, The Revolution doesn't really give a fuck about you. Its interest in you begins and ends with what you can offer, and when you're done you'll be discarded and probably labeled a traitor to the cause, or just "burn out" if you're lucky. The Revolution doesn't give two shits about your mental health, and the path it sends you down will undoubtedly shake you to your core.

The Revolution doesn't have time for nice people, because nice people don't get shit done and The Revolution only cares about getting shit done. You do not get to be a nice person if you want to stay and fight. There are no good guys in the trenches, only our bastards and theirs. The Revolution will make you a bad person, and it won't put you back together after.

Don't cry, babycakes. Don't cry where the others can see you. The new recruits don't know yet, and The Revolution needs them bright eyed and full of ideals when they head out to the front lines. Sure, they'll be back here in six months after their tour, carrying with them the memories of good men and women dead or imprisoned before their time, lost to the world. They'll cringe when they watch the news, because they know people there, and they knew more people there once. Because it's where their friends went to play medic in a war zone. Because it's where they used your images to protest climate change before the typhoon hit. Because that's where their friends went to jail, and that's the bitch who sent them there. You can't break them yet, they'll break on their own soon enough.

I'm sorry, babycakes. I wish things were different. But The Revolution needs warm bodies, and it doesn't have the resources to care.

We will never be imprisoned
We are the ones who will be shot on sight
They will invent guns for our firing squad if they have to.

We will never be captured
We are not the ones they want sitting in a cell
They will string us up in the town square unannounced.

We will never be tortured
We are the ones the torturers fear
They will scream to drown out our hideous laughter.

We will never be imprisoned
We are the ones who die upright
They will be afraid long after we are gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzjPva_MUAg

May you live a life of mundane misery and petty misfortune.

May you never be shot, stabbed, poisoned, or maimed.
May you never love anyone as much as your mother loved you.
May you never fight for any hopeless cause.
May you never wear a uniform of your own design.
May you never make the decisions that affect the course of your life.
May you never cry from laughter.
May you never be interesting.
May you die of mundane causes, after long and uneventful old age.
May your family never know who you really are.
May your memory fade away.

May you never matter at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/why-care-about-the-nsa.html?_r=0

The Internet has placed all of us firmly in a new and insecure world. Simultaneously, a perpetual "war on terror" has infused within that world a culture of fear and anxiety, along with surveillance policies that will have long-lasting implications. Now is the moment for a course correction, where civil liberties are written not just into our laws but also into our computer code.

Knappenberger made the Anonymous documentary "We Are Legion" and created this short film from footage he filmed for his upcoming documentary about Aaron Swartz. He's good people.

The Future is coming
The Future is here
And no power in the world can stop it
It sweeps us up like a tidal wave
And the old is smashed to pieces
And dragged out to sea
The Future doesn't care who you are
The Future doesn't care whose fault it is
It explodes
Like a bomb in a public square
Indifferent to the suffering it causes
The Future doesn't care about your wallet
The Future doesn't care where you come from
It is post-scarcity
Post-identity
Post-borders and post-fear
The Future is screaming
The Future is loud
It booms in our ears and shines in our eyes
A cacophony of old themes remixed and mashed up
It lives in the art
And the song
And the dance
It lives in test tubes
And robots
It lives in the wires
In our homes
And our cars
The trains and the buses
The offices and the streets
It lives in space and under the ocean and on the farms
The Future is coming
With all the wrong values
And those who do not hear its approach
Will not survive
The Future is beautiful
And terrible
With vertical farms and sustainable cities
And random acts of senseless violence
And it is not either-or
It is all

EVERYONE GET IN!

merge if there's another thread, but OMG HOLY CRAP BALLS: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/11/bob-dylan-rolling-stone-video/

Nearly 50 years after its release, Bob Dylan's classic "Like a Rolling Stone" has finally got an official music video, and it's pretty much the best thing ever: an interactive video that lets the viewer flip through channels on a virtual television and watch such luminaries as Drew Carey on The Price Is Right, Marc Maron on his WTF podcast, and the dudes from Pawn Stars lip-syncing to the 1965 recording of the song.

[will never]

The Little Man is six years old, has blue eyes and dark hair, loves Iron Man and My Little Pony and FUCK YOU.

The Little Man has a few friends in school, and is starting to get his work done more reliably, but that's only because he wants to and FUCK YOU.

The Little Man has a smile on his face and he tells you THIS SMILE MEANS BAD THINGS FOR YOU and he clenches his teeth and the whole world boils down to the one little conflict in front of him and he will never will never give an inch or surrender, and you just have to put his shoes on and drag him bodily out the door, because he is a little ball of FUCK YOU.

The Little Man was born into a world that knew for at least two generations they were fucking up the atmosphere and now HE has to deal with the weird weather patterns and storms and if things go much worse his city might end up underwater in his lifetime, and even if he doesn't know the whole of it he knows enough and FUCK YOU.

The Little Man doesn't cuss, because his whole life is one giant middle finger at the whole fucking universe for daring to spawn him, and he will ruin the shit out of everything and burn it all to the ground. He glares like he's expecting laser beams to come out of his eyes. The Little Man rejects this reality wholesale. Return to sender. FUCK YOU.

The Little Man smiles when he lies and when he tries to steal things, beams with pride at his forgery attempts. He is intensely proud of his picture of a tornado, the only one of his drawings I've ever seen him happy about. He's good at math and reads the dictionary like a novel and knows how cancer works and what the spleen does and the difference between a frog heart and a human one. He knows that when you die you're gone forever, and everyone dies and FUCK YOU.

The Little Man likes to hold signs and hand out flyers, even if you tell him not to. Especially if you tell him not to because FUCK YOU.

This is what The Future looks like.

LOOK, I KNOW YOU SAID THIS GUY IS COOL AND ALL AND I RESPECT YOU FOREBRAIN BUT SERIOUSLY. SERIOUSLY.

DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE HE STARTED DRINKING BEFORE YOU WOKE UP THIS MORNING, AFTER DRINKING LONG PAST THE POINT YOU WENT TO SLEEP? YOU WERE ONLY OUT FOR LIKE 6 HOURS. THIS IS NOT COOL.

ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO THESE STORIES HE'S TELLING YOU? THESE ARE NOT STORIES SAFE PEOPLE TELL. SAFE PEOPLE DO NOT SEE THEMSELVES IN THIS LIGHT. YOU ARE GOING TO GET US ACCIDENTAL ALCOHOLIC RAGE MURDERED.

YES, I UNDERSTAND THIS IS A PERSON WHO RUNS ON LOYALTY AND WHO HAS PUT YOU IN THE "MY DUTY TO PROTECT" CAMP, BUT WHO THE FUCK EVEN SEES THE WORLD LIKE THAT? OH, I KNOW: DANGEROUS PEOPLE.

STOP PRETENDING YOU ARE OKAY WITH THIS. PRETENDING TO BE OKAY WITH THIS IS NOT A VALID SURVIVAL TECHNIQUE. ARE YOU FUCKING HIGH?

THIS IS WHY YOU KEEP ME AROUND. BECAUSE THE WORLD STILL HAS LIONS IN IT AND YOU'RE TOO BUSY LOOKING FOR THORNS IN ITS PAWS TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY.

DUMBASS.

My phone is lost in Providence

https://bangordailynews.com/2013/11/05/news/portland/early-returns-show-portland-strongly-backing-pot-legalization/


(or not, I just saw it on CNN and it made me giggle)

PLEASE GET YOUR CLEAVAGE OFF THE TABLE, IT'S DISTURBING SOME OF OUR OTHER CUSTOMERS. THANK YOU.

[he was a terrible little man and was scared of progress.]

Okay, first, let's air out the racism thing. Dude was hella racist, even for his time. Some of his short stories are completely unsalvagable because of the racist bullshit, others you have to cringe for a couple pages to get past it. The Deep Ones (horrible fish monsters) are frequently cited as one of the best examples, but the story he ghost-wrote for Houdini is much more blatant. Sadly, Call of Cthulhu is also pretty much scrap heap material with all the "terrible cults" that are suspiciously full of brown people and intentionally resemble real world religions. This is going to come up more, but I wanted to make sure it got the front and center place it deserves. Now, the point:

Lovecraft wrote horror because he was a terrible little man and was scared of progress.

It's funny how nerds have latched onto the guy, when he literally represents the backwards attitudes most of them despise in the world around them. He was afraid of scientific progress, of racial diversity, and so utterly confused by women that barely any appear in his stories. The time he lived in (1890-1937) was full of massive cultural and scientific upheaval, and his response to this was to dig his heels in and screech about the horrors all around. A contemporary of Tesla and Einstein, all he could see from their amazing work was that MAN IS LOOKING INTO THINGS HE SHOULD NOT KNOW and he filled his stories with fevered dreams of what nightmares science might unleash. Only a few generations removed from slavery, he was terrified of the idea that western culture might get influenced by all these BROWN PEOPLE and wrote multiple stories on the horrors of mixing races. The world around him was forever in decay.

He contributed something to society, it's true. He and Mary Shelly paved the way for modern horror: terrifying stories based not on ancient superstition or religion but new and terrifying things outside the scope of human understanding. Scientific horror. The rich shared background of his short stories has given generations a jumping-off point for their own otherworldly horror, and many of these successors have salvaged the good and the interesting from the bad writing and backwards attitudes. But he deserves to be made fun of, because little man couldn't handle the idea that the world was changing all around him. Not everyone is cut out to live in interesting times.

[MARK ALL AS READ]

MARK ALL AS READ

Okay, so this isn't really my story, it's my mom's story.* She grew up with George Clooney in Southie and one summer afternoon they were out at a little league game and this one fucking kid, I don't know his name, but he says "number two dookie got out, number three dookie needs a napkin!" And nobody there fucking knows what a number three dookie is, but everyone can smell the turd this kid just laid on the ground, and they all shriek and run away. Problem is, game's not over yet. So there in the sand in the dugout there's this stinking loaf, shining in the sun, and George turns around, gets a napkin or something, and just picks it up like it's no big deal and gets it out of there so the rest of the kids can get back to the game. He's the child savior of the summer.




* No, actually this is a story that I was relating to someone in a dream I had this afternoon, but how could I not share?

We got a demon shoved in our heads on September 11. I remember, I was sitting there watching the television in a state of shock, and the guards in my brain that keep the Out ideas Out and the In ideas In just stood there, dumbfounded, and a whole mess of demons got in. "This looks like a movie" barely got a shrug as it wandered in the door, then made friends with "Everything looks fake if you look at it long enough" and "I'm so media savvy." "President Bush is an idiot" waved in "Look at him sitting there with a fucking picture book while New York is collapsing." But those guys probably would have gotten in anyway. There were a couple that got shoved in, intentionally, and I'm not the only victim.

"Islamic terrorists want to kill you" was not a demon I would have let in on a normal day. Once the alarms sounded a few days later corrective actions were taken, but you know how it is with demons: once they get in, you can never get them all the way out. "Not all Muslims are terrorists" and "Seriously, what are you an idiot?" have to help out the immune system from time to time.

The bad one, though, was "Why did the government let this happen?" If you think back, there was a point near the middle of the day where the media started spouting that demon, trying to infect you with it. It was a nasty trick, too, because it infected the Democrats first. "President Bush is an idiot" held the door for it. "Why did the government let this happen?" has fucked up more shit than any other demon I've known in my life. It's the one that paved the way for "nothing to hide, nothing to fear," for PRISM, for Guantanamo, for drone strikes and body scanners.

"Why did they let this happen?" turns into giving them more power to prevent bad things from happening. It removes the responsibility for bad things from the people who do them and turns it over to the state that should have somehow stopped them. Please make this not be happening, you say, no matter what it costs. And anyone who fights back against the cost is implicitly allowing bad things to happen again, is part of The Problem.

Check it out here: http://imgur.com/aRJvLnD,ajAO6tZ

Text is The Strange Times from Et Cetera Discordia, unattributed. I had SOOOOO much fun putting together the layout, I have like a dozen new dings fonts I get to play with! PDF (with outlines, because fonts won't embed) available upon request.

You can print these out double sided or print two sheets and glue 'em together. Fold in half and hand them out to passers by, or leave them places they're likely to be found. Enjoy!

[IMPORTANT NOTE: Unlike other threads, my posts here are not kopyleft.]

1500 words a day starting November 1st

IMPORTANT NOTE: Unlike other threads, my posts here are not kopyleft.

Local JWs approached me a couple weeks ago, we had a lovely discussion about religion and they want more! I'll be meeting with them Friday morning, ITT any suggestions for wacky shit to fill their impressionable little brains with.

Thank you for coming America, please take a seat.

What is this?

Please just take a seat, all of your friends are here and they just want to talk with you.

[America sits]

Canada, why don't you go first?

America, when you suffered a terrorist attack in 2001, you made the decision to require all Canadians to present passports to enter your country. We once shared the largest open border in the world, and we were peaceful neighbours for almost 200 years. I know that you were hurt, but your actions have hurt our relationship. In addition to the border, your addiction to punishment had been a negative influence on many of our politicians. We have all gathered here today to ask you to seek treatment for this addition, for your sake and for the sake of our relationship with you.

Treatment? Canada, what are you talking about?

We just want you to get better, America.

Afghanistan, why don't you go next?

[I will not add "riders" to anything. Ever.]

I ____________ do solemnly swear to actually do my fucking job. I will not take any money from anybody for anything, except my paycheck for doing my fucking job. I will not maintain any financial connections to entities that will benefit from my work in Congress, nor will I graduate from Congress to some lobbying firm or industry that benefits from my work in Congress. If I am caught doing any such thing, I consent to having my teeth ripped out with pliers by a crack whore on national television and all my life savings (including assets such as real estate) donated to a charity of my pissed off constituent's choosing. I will generally not act like a shitneck, including but not limited to: lying about the bills I propose or support, being an obstructivist dick for political reasons, ignoring my constituents, making misleading statements on the house or senate floor, funding bullshit that I know is bullshit, etc. I will at all times work to create a body of laws that makes life better for my constituents and the American People, even if it makes me look "soft on crime" or some such nonsense. I will read the bills that are put forward, and I will not submit any bills that are obnoxiously long or worded in ways that are misleading. I will not add "riders" to anything. Ever. I will not vote to outlaw anything just because I don't like it. Finally, I swear that I will take this shit seriously.

I need more pages for things. I'm reading through what I can find on scribd right now, but recommendations on quotables and short essays would be tremendously helpful. I can only use things that are kopyleft or written by folks here I can ask for permissions.

[OKAY YOU BASTARDS, THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF BULLSHIT SPEWED ABOUT CHEESE ON THIS FORUM AND I AM HERE TO SET SHIT STRAIGHT]

OKAY YOU BASTARDS, THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF BULLSHIT SPEWED ABOUT CHEESE ON THIS FORUM AND I AM HERE TO SET SHIT STRAIGHT

THIS IS CHEESE:


MOTHERFUCKING VERMONT WHITE CHEDDAR UP IN THIS BITCH. YOU LIKE FLAVOR? THIS CHEESE IS MADE OF FLAVORS. THIS CHEESE IS SO INTENSE IT HAS TO SIT IN A CAVE FOR AT LEAST SIX MONTHS TO LEARN HOW TO BE AWESOME. THIS CHEESE GOES ON CRACKERS LIKE A BOSS. YOU WANT A GRILLED CHEESE? SLICE THIS SHIT UP REAL THIN AND SLAP IN ON SOME BREAD, GUY.

THIS IS NOT CHEESE:


FUCKING CHEESE CURDS ARE NOT CHEESE, OKAY? CHEESE DOES NOT SQUEAK WHEN YOU EAT IT. FOOD DOES NOT SQUEAK UNLESS YOU'RE EATING MICE WHOLE. THESE LITTLE FUCKERS ARE WHAT YOU MAKE CHEESE OUT OF. WHEN YOU EAT CHEESE CURDS, YOU ARE STRAIGHT UP EATING CHEESE ABORTIONS.

THIS IS NOT CHEESE:


BASTARD SLIMY KRAFT SINGLES BULLSHIT. NOT CHEESE. NOT EVEN FOOD. YOU MIGHT AS WELL USE MAYONNAISE IN YOUR GODDAMNED GRILLED CHEESE, YOU DISGUSTING PHILISTINES. THEY AREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO MARKET THIS NONSENSE AS CHEESE. LEGALLY.

A lot has been said about the nature of Really Real Music^TM and its role in society. I am here to tell you it's all horseshit, and you should never listen to that Dirty Old Uncle Roger anyway.

Music is, at its heart, a GAME. It's a game of making noises. Sometimes, those noises are things the rest of the world wants to hear, and will pay you good money to continue making. Other times, those noises are awful and make everyone wish you would fall off a cliff onto some llamas just to make it go away. This is all part of the game. Music brings NOISE into the world, and noise is frequently more interesting than silence. Those who create music, even if they aren't creating Really Real Music, are engaged in creative acts, and creativity is a thing we should all have more of, mmmkay?

Some music is played by strict rules: minuets, concertos, 3 minute verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus pop songs, etc. Some music is played by loose rules, or none at all. Whether musicians are playing games of Order or Disorder is irrelevant to the fact that they are playing games. Whether one person prefers to hear games of Order or Disorder is irrelevant to the fact that both are games. Comparing an Opera to whatever the fuck Skrillex is making is every bit as nonsensical as comparing the 2014 Canadian Olympic Curling team to the 1984 Denver Broncos. Different. Fucking. Games.

It is worth discussing when games become toxic to the players. Just like people are starting to question why all these former football players are turning up with massive brain damage, we should examine why it is that certain generas of music seem to have a detrimental effect on the performers. This does not mean we ban the game, it means we look at the evidence in front of us and come up with solutions that preserve the game for those who want to play it while preventing undue harm to the players.

Music is an excellent game, because it spawns new versions of itself all the time. Musicians try on new sets of rules like teenage girls in a thrift store: enthusiastically and often with a poor sense of taste. What comes out isn't always good (maybe not even frequently good) but sometimes they succeed in making their audience feel things, and that is a Noble Fucking Cause.

As an example, here is a clip from, of all things, American Idol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uRz6MgpkGw

That is as Middle-of-the-Fucking-System as you can get for the music industry, and it doesn't matter because I still had feels.


If you want to talk about tearing down an industry that stifles creativity, I'm all for that. If you want to talk about the toxic effects of certain musical tropes, I'm there. But fuck every last one of you that feels like they have the right to say "THIS is music, and THIS is not music." That's not how games work, and that's not how subjective things like "taste" work. You can dislike it, but that doesn't make it not real. Let them play.



(edited to correct link)

Anyone know what license the Wise Book of Baloney is under? There's no legal page.

Commandments:

1. Thou Shall Make Good Food.

2. Thou Shall Honor Thy Kitchen and Thy Cutting Boards.

3. Thou Shall Not Give Everyone Food Poisoning.

4. Thou Shall Give The People Many Options, For They Are Picky Bastards.

5. Thou Shall Not Cook The Same Dish Every Time.

6. Thou Shall Not Hassle The Cook.

7. Thou Shall Make Sure There's Booze.

8. Thou Shall Not Be A Dick.

9. Thou Shall Not Do That Which Will Get The Cops Called.

10. If This Is Your Second Tuesday, You Have to Cook.*


* The First Church of Tuesday Night, Reform schismed from the Holy Sanctified Church of Tuesday Night when they declared that the tenth commandment is more of a polite suggestion and perhaps doesn't need to be taken literally. Some Tuesday Night Reformists replace this commandment with "Thou Shall Take Your Turn Cooking, Or At Least Bring A Dessert Or Something."

I believe that everyone needs some weirdness in their life.

I believe that everyone fucking needs to swear more.

I believe that being a smartass is the best medicine.

I believe in yelling at people on the internet, because if I don't yell at them then the internet will be wrong, and that's not allowed on my watch.

I believe in getting drunk on Tuesday night.

I believe that adequate food, water, sanitation, shelter, and health care are basic goddamn human rights.

I believe hitting people with pies is an appropriate expression of free speech.

I believe in causing trouble.

I believe in dressing like an idiot.

I believe that staring at your navel too long results in a headache.

I believe in good design and silly fonts.

I believe the two party system is a miserable failure.

I believe in delicious things.

I believe in making stuff.

I believe that heaven is for chumps.

They asked me my religion, and I told them I was a Discordian. We spent like 20 minutes chatting, and they were super receptive and want to know more. I'm planning on printing out a new copy of Holy Nonsense (gave away my last one), and getting a new copy of the Principia for reference next time. Anyone have recommendations for good topics to bring up?

Check in if you want cookies. Please include any allergies or dietary restrictions in your post. If you didn't do cookies last time, or if your address has changed, send it in PM.

I didn't manage to do the international shipping last time, and after I got the returned package I'm not convinced cookies will survive the trip.

I was walking back from the school this morning and saw what looked like a bird corpse on the pavement. It turned out to be a little city tumbleweed of fuzz, leaf fragments, string, and sticks, but for a few brief moments there I was sad for that bird that never existed. I don't know if I quite caught all the feels in this, but it's close to what I wanted.

CC attribution to Thomas Stellmach for the bird overlay: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dysturb/846392499/

This image is released CC Non-Commercial. As usual, I'm not interested in credit for myself, but do pass along the attribution for the other guy if this ends up being useful for something.

Really big image link: http://i.imgur.com/xTgRUDs.jpg

A thought that I had walking back from dropping the kids off at school: the way we've talked about the BIP cells has frequently left me a little confused, because my brain likes running everything through the spatial relations filter and that doesn't work if every thought you have is a wall. So, this is how I simplified it for myself.

East Wall: Intellectual Pursuits
West Wall: Artistic Pursuits
North Wall: Interaction with Reality (the Bars)
South Wall: Identity
Floor: Physical Capabilities
Ceiling: Morality

When others look into your cell, they see the South Wall. This is populated with your wardrobe (uniforms) and your mirror (sense of self). You look at others through the North Wall, which would be totally open if not for the bars coming from the adjoining walls. If you are hiding in your closet, it's even harder to see clearly.

The East and West Walls expand with the more stuff you put in them. A cell with large West and East Walls can be pretty comfortable, but sometimes the extra real estate comes with extra Bars.

The Floor determines how well you can do the things you want to do. It's genetic disorders, eyesight, your diet, an amputated finger, strong lungs. Some people have very tidy, sturdy floors that make it easy to do the things they want to do. Some people have floors with the concrete all ripped up. A lot of us have junk on the floor that we trip on from time to time.

The Ceiling is what keeps us in line. Some people set their ceilings up so low that they're always bumping their heads (too restrictive). Some people try to tear apart their ceiling and end up with nothing but a view of the terrible stars in the screaming void.

[Version 1:]

Version 1:
     > Fresh chicken breast strips
     > 1 egg
     > bread crumbs
     > spices you like
     > olive oil

Wash your hands.
Put chicken strips on a clean surface.
Punch the chicken flat. (IMPORTANT: DO NOT USE FROZEN MEAT FOR PUNCH CHICKEN IF YOU VALUE YOUR FISTS)
Wash your hands again.
Crack egg in a bowl, add a little water or milk and mix.
Put bread crumbs and spices in another bowl.
Put a little olive oil in a frying pan. Turn the heat on medium-ish.
Dunk one chicken strip in egg, then toss with the breadcrumbs, then put it in the pan. Don't burn yourself.
Do a couple more chickens til the pan looks like it might be getting crowded.
Flip chickens.
Remove chickens from pan when they're kinda brown on both sides. If you have a lot of chickens, you can store them in a warm oven (160-200 degrees) until they're all done.
Repeat until no more chickens.
Eat.

[STOP SHARPENING MY DILDOS.]

STOP SHARPENING MY DILDOS.

It's getting weird.

[terrorism.]

So, our GURPS campaign has finally been declared dead (farewell, cyperpunk househunting), which means it's time to start up a new one. We settled on Mistborn, a system that has a lot of up-front party building - a problem we've had in several campaigns with this particular group. The eldest kidlet will be joining us, for her first grown-up game.

We decided that we would be living in one of the smaller outlying districts of The Empire and be working to free our district from its rule. When asked what our primary tactic would be the answer was unanimous: terrorism.

I have just discovered that two of my buddies from the Anon days are involved in Canadian politics. In different parties. And one of them is using an anonymous twitter account that's loudly discordian to smear the other guy's candidates.


I do not know what the punchline to this joke is.