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If there was an American army during the middle ages, how would they be equipped?

Golden Rod approached the monk Nopants.


"Master Nopants, what can I learn by observing Primal Chaos?"


The master held up a pen. "Do you know what this is?"

"Yes, it's a pen."




The master said, "I use it to scratch my balls."

(originally posted on this forum here, but it's buried on page 4)

The Monkey Experiment

There's a famous experiment where they keep a bunch of monkeys in a room for an indefinite amount of time. There's a big white staircase leading up out of the room. Every time a monkey climbs to the top of the staircase, he gets blasted back down the stairs with a hose. When this happens, every monkey in the room also gets blasted with water. This makes them very angry.     Soon, the monkeys have figured it out: beat the shit out of any monkey that starts to climb the stairs. That's the new rule.     At some point, they remove a monkey and send in a new one. He learns the rule quickly: don't climb the stairs. And if we're beating somebody up, join in. One by one, they replace each monkey with a new one who has to learn the rule.     At some point they can turn off the hose. The monkeys will reliably prevent escape. Policing the stairs has become a cultural norm. Eventually, they have this population of monkeys who are trained to beat up any monkey that tries to escape, but don't even understand why.     The experiment is run by interns who are paid in course credit. Occasionally, an intern finishes the semester and leaves. New interns join the team and everybody explains how to feed the monkeys and how to record the data. But at this point, none of the interns are from the original group, none of them have met the scientists leading this project. Most of the interns don't fully understand the point of the experiment.     The scientist who began the experiment left long ago. Other researchers were assigned to the project by an administrator in order to keep this valuable experiment running. None of the remaining scientists are actually authors of the paper, or even understand what it's about.      The administrator supervising the project isn't terribly involved with it. He just prolongs the experiment because it's his department's main source of funding. But he didn't begin this project, he just inherited it from his predecessor, who is on a leave of absence and hasn't been seen in some time.     The company funding the experiment has a sum of money they spend annually on scientific research, mainly for tax reasons. But the person who reads and approves grants left last year. The last time anybody saw the man, he handed a huge folder to some new kid and said "make sure these stay funded." Then he disappeared up a long staircase leading into the sky.

_________________________________________

I hate to break it to you, but you're not conscious. You're just running a program. Your habitual mind is driving your meat machine. Your reactions are mechanical. You are running on autopilot. You are a script in human form.

There's a part of your mind which can become conscious, but it's too much work for you. It might open an eye for a moment, learn something, make a decision, but then it goes back to sleep. The autopilot is in charge.

Your mind is a mansion. But you? You spend 95% of your life jerking off in the basement. You didn't even know there was an attic. Can you even find the way there?

Your mind is a crowd. The party is buzzing and everybody's doing their own thing. But you? You're in the corner on your phone.

Your mind is a like a menu with 300 possible things to order, but you? You order the same meal every night.

Your mind is an anarchist commune. It has no leader. It resists leadership and coordination. But you? You couldn't lead them if you tried. If you were a real self, you could coordinate the collective and accomplish something. But you can't do it, so you let them lay around and talk shit all day.

And every time you start to wake up, when you begin to move from that comfortable spot you've been resting in for so long, you get distracted. Something else pops up, and you forget. Your habitual mind is overbearing, every moment of the day it's bullying the lazy conscious mind into the background. Your habitual mind doesn't want to be examined. It doesn't want to be resisted. And it's stronger than your conscious mind, so it wins every time.

And even now, as you read these words, your habitual mind is revving the robot's engine. Don't you have an update to check? Isn't there something else you're supposed to be doing? These words are boring, and there are too many of them. And it doesn't even apply to you, because you're conscious. Other people walk around on autopilot, but not you. Right?

In HONEY HEIST, you play a CRIMINAL BEAR. You have two stats: CRIMINAL and BEAR




Link to full size image


the guy's website

I really enjoyed this youtube vid discussing "The Problem with Irony"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4

The video follows a train of thought from David Foster Wallace. It is critical of how irony has infused itself so deeply into pop culture and everyday human relations. The video talks about how "Irony has no redemptive qualities in and of itself. It can point out problems and deconstruct things, but it has no solution." We've begun to treat irony as a statement in of itself.

This resonates with me through my experience spending years and years trolling the Internets with you cats. I found that there long-term consequences of wearing an ironic mask for so long, playing a character until it blends into your real personality. It made me argumentative and contentious in my day to day life. People told me that when they were talking, they felt like I was just searching for a weak point to pounce on it.  I was full of criticisms, and I defended myself against criticisms by not believing anything, by not presenting a solid base that could be attacked. Sometimes it felt like all I had was a critical posture... I had built walls and a moat ... with no castle to defend.

David Foster Wallace didn't like how irony (which, like Satire, is often employed to intensify the The Thing you're criticizing) had become The Thing itself. It has no values, no statement, no castle to defend.

Wallace's counter-movement is called the New Sincerity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity

[Is this man gifted or cursed?]

I think a bunch of yous guys have seen this already, but it deserves its own thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh9oLs67Cw



I am in awe of how far they go with this joke. How does he keep going? This looks like a single take. This guy is tapping into something deep and personal and awe inspiringly sarcastic.

Is this man gifted or cursed? The ability to do what he's doing is a rare talent. The level of sarcasm he wields actually transcends sarcasm. What is the tradeoff for this power? Is he like a savant, who can just do this one thing perfectly? Or is everything he does just as beautiful and perfect?

One of the things that's so brilliant about this is how straight he's doing it. It's a comedy video but he's carefully avoided making any ancillary jokes or absurdities. He's so intense, unwavering. Laser focused on exploring this joke out past the fringes of all meaning.

The Philip Glass score is p e r f e c t


This video is like when you repeat a word so many times that it loses all meaning. And he's elevating that confusion into a holy moment.


I have watched the whole thing about 1.5 times now and it keeps getting better.

The plants in my apartment kept dying, mainly because my girlfriend and I kept assuming the other one had watered them. So I invented a little gadget that tells us when the plants need to be watered. It's super simple.

The gadget has 3 buttons and 3 LEDs. Each pair is linked to one of the plants in my apartment.

It's only a timer, it doesn't detect soil moisture or anything crazy like that. When a light turns on, it signifies that one of the plants needs to be watered. When somebody waters it, we'll press the button, and it'll reset the counter.

This fun little gadget only cost about $20 to make. It was a lot of fun to build!

One of the interesting things Junkenstein touched on in the Laws thread is the the intersection of law enforcement and surveillance.

The current incarnation of the justice system is based on some ideas that were kicking around the post-monarchial world and went through the wash a few times until they came out clean enough to sell. Namely the Panopticon.

The idea is that bad people will keep doing bad things when the authority isn't looking- so you should put prisoners in a place where they can be observed. Maybe it's that their prison cell faces a 1-way mirror and there might be a guard on the other side who gives them a demerit if they don't act right. Or maybe it's because they're picking up trash by the side of the road and they are constantly feeling the judgment of the public.

But the effect of observation is that it forces the person - the target of the discipline - to internalize a set of rules. They have to behave in a certain way to avoid reprimand, and eventually they internalize these rules. That's how you affect somebody's spirit, you make them build the laws inside of them, going through the motions with their body. Even if they're faking it, still thinking criminal thoughts, eventually this will be eroded by routine and discipline.

And that's how we built schools, prisons, the military...

And now we're in the social media era, everything can be uploaded, commented on, upvoted and downvoted.

There was a twitter account that this guy started on a subway in NYC, it was just supposed to document people who were taking up too much space, or doing asshole things that aren't appropriate for the subway. He wanted to shame people. And it turned into this really acrid account where he was just picking on people for the way they were dressed, etc. And eventually, the backlash came to him - somebody figured out who he was, and got his pictures up on Twitter. Then, anybody who saw him in public would take a pic and tweet it at that account. He used his phone camera as a weapon, and discovered it was a double-edged sword.

What rules are being enforced by the social media panopticon?

The terms of the transaction are: you trade some your privacy for access and community.

Years ago, I thought the way to deal with this was twofold:

1. Maintain the ability to disappear completely. At any time you should be able to kill your account and escape from whatever storm is chasing you. To do this successfully, you should avoid using your real name on the net. You should keep personal details obscured, and don't leave any channels open that you can't later close.

2. Chaff. Cover your social media with false cues and information. This way, anybody datamining you will get confused and the value of any given data will come under question.


Are those still good strategies?

My real name is on FB, it's easy to track me down... it's a bit harder to figure out my real name from here, so maybe the ability to disappear completely is more contingent on (a) how well you've compartmentalized, and (b) how motivated people are to connect the dots.

If I publish Chaff, it kind of gets in the way of the point of using social media to begin with.

and as I think about the steps you have to take to escape an angry wasps nest, I think to myself... what rules do I have to follow to avoid provoking the wasps to begin with? what rules has this panopticon made me internalize?  What rough edges have I actually sanded off, not just concealed? Has the presence of this social power refined me like a crucible, or restricted me like a warden supervising a chain gang?

[William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"]

William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

[Gefter]

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

This article manages hit some of our favorite check marks:

  [ x ] Inviting a barstool
  [ x ] Because Quantum

but it's still a good read.

Hoffman, a professor of Cognitive Science, asserts that we are not evolved to see "reality" - natural selection has developed sensory and cognitive apparatus suited for fitness and reproduction, not truth.

Gefter: People often use Darwinian evolution as an argument that our perceptions accurately reflect reality. They say, "Obviously we must be latching onto reality in some way because otherwise we would have been wiped out a long time ago. If I think I'm seeing a palm tree but it's really a tiger, I'm in trouble."

Hoffman: Right. The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we're the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it's about fitness functions—mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.

Talking about what reality "really is" turns out to be a bit of a loop.  He says that according to physics, there is no "public physical objects". Ultimately the article posits that reality is subjective - I think he's claiming that our conscious experience is a type of reality, not merely an interpretation of it.

[0:30]

Join me on a 5-minute trip into the Twilight Zone. From the "High Weirdness"  file, I present to you

"Mother, Mother Ocean"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwwyCW10i7Q

This news clip from 2007 documents the mind-warping tale of a cthulhu-esque sea monster which attacked a woman in Rhode Island. It is simultaneously a hoax and a clumsy cover-up by the alien creatures which control our world.

Here are my favorite moments:

0:30 - This otherwordly entity, disguised as a human named Sean Daly, isn't put together too well. I don't know what it really is, but its not a human. There's something *off* about him and I can't put my finger on it.

He leads into the article with the perfect Lovecraftian hook: "Imagine swimming *mindlessly* in the late afternoon sun." Swimming mindlessly.



1:12 - This woman's acting is better than anybody else in the video

2:02 - a brief closeup of the couple's hands, interlocked. This is meant to show us the tattoo on the webbing between his thumb and index finger. You guys seeing this? What is it? A scorpion? I think it looks like one of Lovecraft's "Old ones" -



2:10 - The woman's fiance is identified as Dennis, even though at 1:59 she called him Danny. Anyway, Dennis describes how he pulled his fiance away from the monster. In this thick Rhode Island accent he goes "So I grabbed it by the ass, uh, 'rear end'..." <3

2:22 - "Rachel, swim, don't turn around no matter what you heah".

2:41 - Dennis describes the monster as having a head 'like a basketball' - second time that verbiage is used. Dennis punches that thing right in the face. What a bad ass.

3:20 - A mysterious twist. The monster was attracted to the extremely high quantity of *blood* in the water. A mysterious guy named Joey Malo said he bled nonstop for over an hour. When the cameras show him, he's wearing a hat, turned to face away from the camera, his face obscured. We never find out why he was bleeding, but apparently there was so much blood he's still cleaning it off 3 days later.

4:00 -  I love the hand motions Dennis is making to describe the creature's movement.

4:15 - Dennis describes the existential horror he's faced since the monster attack: "I been goin to bed with things grabbin me, wrappin around my neck, choking, fightin' underground, everything" - I just want to highlight 'fighting underground' cause it's just such a weird phrase.

4:30 - Pod person disguised as a human Sean Daly comes back to the studio and assures us that reality is okay, nothing is wrong. Consume, obey. Scientists say it must have been a tropical fish! This has the veneer of some Man in Black coming on the news and saying "There's no such thing as UFOs... that was just ... swamp gas."



4:37 - Sean's non-sequitur closing line, "Mother, mother ocean." He says it reverently, almost like a prayer.

What is he? What was this? What the fuck did I just watch? This whole episode is very unsettling. We are floating on the surface of the water above a vast abyss, ignorant of its depths.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm probably living in an information bubble. My facebook and tumblr feed are filled with progressive memes which make a silly caricature out of the conservatives and libertarians.

The other day, a libertarian friend* popped the bubble by posting a riff on the "Jesus is a socialist" meme...



_{*this guy is a small-gov libertarian who is employed by the TSA... wrap your head around that one}








It made me curious to see some conservative/libertarian image-memes or political cartoons which are caricatures of great left-wing stuff I agree with.

What can you find?

For some reason, my Net obsession of the week is fedora wearing MRA neckbeard atheist types. Can somebody explain how the fedora somehow became this perfect symbol of like ten different kinds of shitbag?








Bronies and Fedoras are like macaroni and cheese



oops, or Trilbys, whatever






















fun fact

BY THE WAY,
You know this guy?


^{[knowyourmeme link]}


that's the grown up Pugsley Addams! (Jerry Messing)

I just picked up Adam Gorightly's latest book, the Historia Discordia. It's cool! It's basically a catalog of vintage Erisian stuff that was gathering dust in Bob Newport's basement, including a ton of original Discordian correspondences and tracts. Tons of lost writings by Mal-2. Great coffee table book for the Discordian archivist or researcher.

I've enjoyed tracing the evolution of a lot of the concepts in the PD. For example, there's that line in the PD about how Discordians don't have dogma, they have catma. And it turns out there's a whole little sermon about it that wasn't included in the PD and to my knowledge isn't on the net anywhere. There are a lot of 1st edition PD pages which were revised several times before the 5th edition we're familiar with. A lot of the jokes and 1-liners from the PD are referencing other Discordian documents which have been lost, until now.

For those of us interested in the genealogy of this whackadoo contraption, this is really satisfying. It gives a sense about what the first Discordian communities were like, and who the key players were. (something I've always been curious about) It's also pretty cool to see the early much rougher drafts of some of the texts we're familiar with.

Definitely recommend this for the archivists, collectors, and insane hoarders that get stuck in Eris' orbit.



[amazon link]

[transcript:]

Greg Hill and Robert Shea frequently exchanged letters... this is an article Mal-2 wrote for Shea's zine, NO GOVERNOR.

from http://historiadiscordia.com/ ...













transcript:

Greg Hill: Why I Am Not An Anarchist for Robert Shea's No Governor, June 1975, Page 00001.
Courtesy the Discordian Archives.

About five years ago I considered myself an anarchist (anarchopacifist, in particular), because I believe that the highest authority available to any individual is one's own honest experience and that any other authority provides only vicarious information at Most Unexceptional.

I've not changed my opinion about this, but I have ceased referring to myself as an anarchist. The reason is basic and simple: TOO MANY DAMN RULES.
OK, it's a joke. But it's a TRUE JOKE. The incompatibility is not between my position and some anarchist theories, but between my position and the position of most of those who use the label "anarchist."

It seems that Rule Number One of anarchy, as understood by authoritarians and by most who call themselves anarchists, is that a government is an enemy. Rule Number Two is that to gain freedom the individual is politically or morally or somehow obligated to fight this enemy.

In my opinion, these rules represent a position which would be better referred to as anti-archy. The prefix "a" means "without" and it need not imply "against." There is an exact parallel with the word atheist—it is usually used and understood, by those for it and against it, as thought eh word was anti-theist.

I can respect the anti-archist position, but I don't share it. The government is not my enemy because there is no government. OK, another joke, but still a TRUE joke. I know good and well that there are people with guns who restrict my free decisions, and I know about groups of people collecting taxes from me, and all of the rest of this government business. I perceive it in the same manner that I perceive (for example) a big rock in my path which necessitates stepping around and compromising myself. Frankly, I don't believe in rocks either—I just step around and compromise (which is actually easier than is believing in them). I think that there is a big difference in degree between (a) existentially responding to a phenomenon and (b) conceptualizing it as an "enemy." If everything in the universe that has ever thwarted my purpose is my enemy, then only nothing can be my friend—and that excludes even myself. But, still, I respect the anti-archist position. After all, if one does perceive aphenomenon to be an enemy then one would be a damn fool to do other than defend ones' self.

Much of this essay is futzing around with labels. Still, I feel free to futz, and in any case what I'm trying to do is to avoid the assumption by others that I am at war with certain people just because those people think that they are a government and go out of their way to forcibly impose their notions on me.

I'm not at war with them or with them or rocks either. And insofar as anyone thinks that an anarchist is one who is supposed to believe something or another, or is obligated to do something or another, then there are too damn many rules for me and to hell with the whole business.

I don't know anything about the parent website, but I thought this article was an interesting read. Would be curious to hear others reactions.

http://roarmag.org/2014/05/occupy-resisting-liberal-tendencies/


a sample

In Zuccotti Park in the fall of 2011 there were a lot of people who thought that if we could just articulate the Occupy idea to enough people they would just have to come around to it because of its sheer righteousness. But although the Occupy idea was broadcast far and wide, it was not enough on its own in the absence of strong and sustained connections with concrete struggles. Many liberals argue that all we need to do is come up the right ideas to "fix the world," but felled-forests-worth of visionary thought has been published for some time. We don't need another idea; we need the power to make it happen.

Although social media and 24-hour cable news rapidly accelerated the dissemination of Occupy across the country and around the world, it catapulted OWS into the spotlight before it had accomplished the organizing that needs to happen initially in order to develop the capacity to be able to incorporate thousands of new people. We were constantly playing catch-up and before we knew it the meteoric rise of OWS was followed by a correspondingly precipitous plunge once social media and cable news moved onto the next big thing.

In that way, OWS was like the pop sensation "Gangnam Style" by Korean singer Psy. For a brief window of time "everyone" sang the song and did the dance (often with an ironic detachment) just as they flooded parks and squares so they could tell their grandkids that they too had "Occupied." But anyone who was caught blasting "Gangnam Style" (or organizing an Occupy event) a few months after it went out of style was considered hopelessly passé. Therefore, one of our most pressing questions is how to build a solid social movement that can withstand the inevitable social media hangover.

Here's my latest invention: https://plus.google.com/photos/yourphotos?hl=en_US&pid=6010135988551778338&oid=103726414447614453893

In this weekend's adventure, players will have to use mirrors to reflect a laser through a foggy room, hit a target on the painting.

When the painting is charged up enough, part of it will glow.

When the red light on the painting is glowing, players can touch the painting to get one attack that can actually affect the hideous monsters or boss in the room with them.

There's a game coming out called Watchdogs, which is about being a 21st century hacker. Kind of a modern day assassins creed.

To promote the game, they launched this website called Digital Shadow. If you go there, it asks for all your Facebook data. If you are trusting enough to give it to them (I was. As a rule I never share that data but ehhhh okay fine just this once), it will generate all these interesting charts about you. It creates a profile which lists what words you typically use, what time of the day you're online, profession and income level, which people in your social network can be used to exploit you (based on your interaction frequency), and what time of day/week you're most likely to be using facebook (and are therefore more vulnerable to attack). The more data you've given facebook, the more complete its profile is.

It was fun, a bit scary, but ultimately I was relieved that my privacy settings and general good practices online left big holes in their data.

here's an article about it:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/22/watch-dogs-facebook-privacy-settings_n_5191237.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

here's a chart it generated of my language use vs Roger's.

(my name shopped out, obviously)


and here's the site
http://digitalshadow.com/shadow.php


Anyway, I thought you guys might be amused by this. If only for that chart of Roger's language usage.

[discipline]

Foucault's Discipline & Punish may be the most important book I've read in years.

In it, Foucault discusses the transition between the sovereign mode of power and what replaced it. He takes us from the public torture and execution to the modern prison. He documents in meticulous detail how the new "modality of power" manifested itself through several institutions: the prison, the military, the hospital, the asylum, and the school. Foucault documents how new methods of control quickly spread from one institution to the others, in the ultimate service of creating a "disciplined society".

The thesis of Discipline & Punish, put briefly, is something like this: We did not abandon the old ways because they were cruel. We abandoned them because they were ineffective. The new modality of power which followed the French Revolution is much more subtle and pervasive. We help operate it. Power is no longer held by a singular sovereign who can be overthrown, it's been distributed in a way to disguise its locus. Modern power does not manifest itself in a way that can be resisted. It's pervasive in that it fills every interaction we have, it expresses itself through what Foucault calls a "microphysics of power". We're the ones observing each other and applying the pressure of normalization.

Just to illustrate the above (dense) paragraph -- let's look at the Jury. It used to be that "justice" flowed from some noble, then it was handed to judges because nobles kept getting decapitated by the families of the "guilty". Then it was handed to a "jury of peers", so that people would feel like they were responsible for a lawful society. It's not that a "jury of peers" is inherently good at ruling on matters of justice - it's there so that you believe the verdict came from your peers and not the state.  You can't lynch a jury. And if you did, it wouldn't change anything.

And that is a microcosm of how power is distributed and maintained. Nobody really holds any power, but what little they have is a tool to reenforce a greater structure of power. Look at Occupy Wall st - there was a public acknowledgment that the bankers are cutthroat bastards who have been systemically screwing us. So what now? Do we lynch the bankers? It would make no difference. The bankers hold no power. They would just be replaced by more bankers who are beholden to the same power structure and would therefore pull the exact same shit. If you talk about changing the banks, the people you're talking to will tell you all the reasons we need banks and the current institutions and hierarchies need to be maintained.

The executioner's face is no longer hidden - Vader's mask came off and Luke's face is staring back at him.




One of the main concepts in Foucault's description of power is discipline. There is this idea of the "disciplined society".

Code Select Expand

dis·ci·pline
noun \ˈdi-sə-plən\

: control that is gained by requiring that rules or orders be obeyed and punishing bad behavior

: a way of behaving that shows a willingness to obey rules or orders

: behavior that is judged by how well it follows a set of rules or orders


The goal of disciplining a soldier is to turn him into an extension of the officer's will. Just as a soldier's gun should be a part of him, something he can control as effortlessly as his own limbs, a soldier is a similar instrument to his leader. And that leader is an instrument to another leader, and so forth up the hierarchy.

The goal of a disciplined society is that the lowest tiers are in harmony with the values of the upper tiers. Prison, mental health, education -- the goals of these institutions are to produce docile subjects who are extensions of the current power structures.

At some level, that's all that "homework" is, right? A way of getting the child to internalize the values of the institution while he's not actually there? It takes discipline to do your homework. And we tell students---this is preparation for the workplace. We are turning you into parts of a machine which produces ... itself.



I'm really just scratching the surface here, there's a lot in this book worth discussing. But what's been on my mind recently is this idea of Discipline, and how we individuals should relate to it. (individuation in the context of power, btw, also worth talking about, but let's save that for another time)

On one level, being disciplined is worthwhile. There are a lot of rewards for being able to focus and get shit done, being respectful of the hierarchy, being able to internalize a set of rules, etc. I don't think you can really get anywhere in western civilization without discipline.

But on another level, being disciplined is dangerous. It means you're under control, an object of power. If you're not disciplined, you're more skeptical and critical about the Mission Statement, the War, the Hegemony.

Sometimes I'm sitting in some corporate training and I just want to excuse myself and never come back. I can't help but think about the power and personal control I give up for that paycheck and 401K. We've all gotta do it. Which makes me wonder, was I doing myself a disservice by reading all this Foucault? Is being undisciplined something I should actually strive for? Am I just confusing myself and making myself less effective at my job by brewing up all this cynicism and criticism? To what degree am I served by being an iconoclast? Isn't it better to be focused on acquiring more power?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/

[The Experience of Being Trolled]

I am a big fan of this youtube channel called IdeaChannel. It's a weekly 10 minute show which mulls over pop culture topics and gives a new spin on them. It's usually pretty interesting, and was recently picked up by PBS, which gave it a nice shot in the production quality.

I wanted to share a video posted this week about our favorite past time, internet trolling. I want to say -- this is not the best first taste of IdeaChannel, (because I don't exactly agree with a bunch of the conclusions in this particular video), but it is at the very least thought provoking. It's also nice to see somebody talk about Internet trolling in a bit more depth than the typical "Trolls are just bullies with inferiority complexes" explanation.

Without further ado, The Experience of Being Trolled



I have my own opinions but I'll wait until some people have seen the vid before I weigh in.

http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Muchao-J-Moocow-KSC/e/B00HGRMDJG/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

This guy, who calls himself Dr Muchao J Moocow KSC, (no relation to Prince Mu Chao) is rounding up all the kopyleft discordiana on the net and compiling them into omnibuses. A lot of the original works are kopyleft or have no explicit license (like the Om Nom Nomicon, or the postergasm collections). Fine. No problem there.

But he's selling (for profit) some material which is definitely not his, and does not have permission to sell - including the Chao Te Ching, posts from Iason's blog, The Etc. Discordia, Hey Jim, Intermittens, the Wise book of Baloney, and the Himeobs training manual.

I've sent a number of e-mails on this subject already, but I wanted to alert you guys to it. It fucking breaks my heart -- because for the most part I would rather have a fork in my eye than get in a legal copyright throw down over some stupid stuff I posted to the net which wasn't generating revenue anyway. But god damn it, it's definitely not cool to ignore a license because you don't understand the difference between "kopyleft", creative commons, and public domain.

http://rickroderick.org/

Rick Roderick was a philosophy professor and journal editor at the University of Texas until 2002, when he died of a heart condition.

Roderick produced a series of VHS tapes of his lectures. They mostly focus on the existential philosophers and what he called "The Self Under Siege". After he passed, people scanned the lectures into youtube and freed them onto the net.

I've found his lectures very insightful, well organized, and easy to follow. He steps through some really complex topics with relative ease. I just wanted to share him with you cats, perhaps some people here will dig his work as much as I have.

His website breaks the lectures up into little 10 minute chunks (with transcripts) which are more appropriate to the short attention spans we develop on the net. But if you look him up on youtube, you can find the full length videos.

I'll leave you with Rick Roderick's lecture on Baudrillard's "Fatal Strategies", which happens to be his final lecture in the Self Under Siege series. I think it's his best one.

Dril (also known as wint) is the most hilarious account on twitter.

https://twitter.com/dril

Just read a few articles which suggest there is no archaeological evidence that the Jews (well, Israelites) were ever enslaved in Egypt... My mind is a bit blown!

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/the-jewish-thinker/were-jews-ever-really-slaves-in-egypt-or-is-passover-a-myth-1.420844

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus#Archaeology

EVERYTHING I LEARNED IN SUNDAY SCHOOL WAS WRONG 

http://www.warpheim.com/

Saw this floating around the web. Website links straight to the PDF:
http://nebula.wsimg.com/8cc248140685df95f804ec643470741d?AccessKeyId=106E559DD1C408868CD5&disposition=0

Only just cracked it open, so I don't have any comments yet --- but I figured it should be posted here!

Below, you will see an incomplete drawing I hastily made using MS Paint.

Copy this image to your clipboard, fire up a shitty image editor, and fill in a bit more of the picture, then post the results.

Post your own definition/imagery of a "spag".


For me, the perfect image of a spag is:

an obnoxious ten year old boy making too much noise and windmilling his arms for no goddamn reason

"Beavis and Butthead like things that are cool, and hate things that suck."

Saw that description on netflix and it made me laugh, and I'm still processing why. It's like a zen koan. It sounds so dumb! Why? Is it because B&B's dialog is so stupid, when you try to summarize it, it sounds even stupider? Like trying to describe the oft mundane plot of Seinfeld, "It's a show about nothing." Or when somebody asks me what I did today, and it doesn't make a great narrative, I say, "Ah nothing much." And that line fascinates me because it's also a description of so many conversations I have. We're all collectively processing the news, pop culture, whatever thing comes down the reality tunnel into the perceptual field. Most processing happens on the first circuit of consciousness. Either you eat it (cool) or you run away from it (sucks). Approach or avoid. We add a lot of data to that decision but at its core it's very basic. I heard that the kernel of inspiration for Beavis and Butthead was a moment when Mike Judge was eating lunch in a mall food court, and he was listening to these two teenagers talking, and they sounded so stupid, so utterly moronic, that he had to draw a cartoon about them----and the rest is history. And meanwhile, I'm sitting in a living room having a spirited debate about Obama Drones Syria NSA etc etc etc, and what do I have to say about it? If you boil it down, I'm either saying "that's cool" or "that sucks".

And in parallel

                      A student once asked his teacher, "Master, what is enlightenment?"

                      The master replied, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep."



it sounds really dumb, and yet---                  does it need to be complicated?






IN CONCLUSION
maybe beavis and butthead     (read: us)
are enlightened masters     (read: cool)
but maybe     (hang on)
they are shitheads     (read: sucks)

[TEEN EXORCISTS]

From the "reality is too hilarious to be unscripted" file

TEEN EXORCISTS



Here's a quick intro

Three teen girls, trained by Rev Bob Larson, are being trained to exorcise demons. He is trying to get them a reality TV show, so he's sending them on these high profile exorcisms, like trying to save England from Harry Potter. (did you know that the magic in harry potter is REAL and those movies are the culmination of centuries of evil witch planning)

In this video, the journalist corners bob larson, who believes that half the global population is possessed by demons and will sell you his services as an exorcist. The money shot in the video shows one of the girls texting while performing the exorcism.

and the journalist is like, "Aren't you taking money from people who in some cases actually need real psychiatric help?"

and his answer is so great, he basically says, "I get paid well because what I do is important in the public eye"


right now I'm listening to Anderson Cooper's half hour episode on the topic. It is awesome. Anderson isn't pulling any punches.



I lovvvvve it. Somebody asks the girls if what they are doing is responsible, and they say "Oh we have parental supervision, Brynne's dad is there the whole time."




It's 2013. You have the right to believe any crazy shit you want, and sell products or services to poor suckers who are just as crazy as you.

[Artemis]

Artemis is a Star Trek Bridge simulator. It's played with 6 people in the same room. It uses five to six laptops/tablets/mobile whatever.

Each laptop is a different control station: communications, helm, weapons, engineering, science... and then there's a captain who doesn't have any controls, but is basically the ship's brain, coordinating the different officers. You hook one laptop up a TV which acts as the "main screen".

You play a mission that lasts 10-20 minutes, then everybody switches stations. It's REALLY REALLY FUN.



gameplay footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Q2X32hZNk

UNLIKE THIS GUY
YUO MUST CHOOSE!

[HATE.]

HATE.

ZOMG like, literally, right?

    I just...  So much.  So much :wail: :stabbydeathkill:

I'm laughing, but mostly at how twisted people get when language changes.

If you listen to how people talk in 2013, yes, this is one of the meanings of "literally". That doesn't cancel the previous definition, it expands it. This process has happened at some point to most of the words in our language.

It's the same dance with AAVE (african american vernacular English, sometimes called "Ebonics") -- are AAVE speakers just speaking English wrong? or does that grammar and usage represent a legitimate dialect? For some reason, people get very hostile about this issue. 

TIFL you can't just start a thread for no reason

WE ARE NOW LIVING IN THE POST-ALTAVISTA WEB.

How the FUCK am I supposed to find the hottest new geocities.com websites? This is fucking bullshit. I'm not going back to goddamn lycos.

[sudden speed bursts and even seatbelt data is being collected and could be easily shared.]

http://rt.com/usa/car-recording-edr-device-429/

Nearly every car being manufactured right now comes with a little added bonus by way of a tiny recording device nestled under the center console. And if you're looking to keep your driving habits under wraps, you might want to start worrying.

As many as 96 percent of the cars mass-produced in 2013 include event data recorders, or EDRs, yet the existence of these small "black box" surveillance devices are rarely known among the automobile drivers whose data is being collected with every quick turn of the steering wheel.

Despite widespread ignorance of the EDRs, though, they could soon become mandatory. The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is asking that the installation of EDRs in light passenger vehicles be mandatory starting September 2014, and opponents are already attempting to raise awareness in order to make auto drivers aware that their sudden speed bursts and even seatbelt data is being collected and could be easily shared.

Depending on the type of EDR, these black boxes can record the speed of a vehicle, the crash force at the moment of impact and an array of other information about the automobile's inner workings.

"It really just takes a snapshot of the event," John Giamalvo of Edmunds.com told CBS News.

Other information that can be collected and then shared includes whether or not the car's brake was activated before the crash, the state of the engine and whether the vehicle seat belt was buckled before an incident.

[Microreligion #412: Excreationism]

There are a million ways to be holy and it only takes 5 minutes to get there. We are spiritual pioneers, hacking a shortcut through the postmodern jungle with a machete of blind ignorant faith.


Microreligion #412: Excreationism. We simulate the creation of the universe by stripping naked, sitting in darkness, and taking a huge dump.


Microreligion #190: Cafe Gnosticism. We consume toxic amounts of caffeine in order to slash the material veils of the 40 hour work week.


Microreligion #284: Murdochism. We believe everything printed in a Newscorp publication is literally true. Join us on MySpace.


Microreligion #128: Emotichondria - We believe each emoticon is an archetypal force which we can commune with via a ritual conducted in an IRC channel.

We believe there is an afterlife reserved for forgotten emoticons. Somewhere, :-$ and =:o] sit on a cloud, playing harps. At last, self expression.



Microreligion #162: Wiccan Reconstructionism. We are reviving traditional witchcraft as it was depicted in 1996 documentary "The Craft".

Anybody here playing Ingress?

If so, what's your experience been like?


For those of you that haven't heard of it --

Ingress is a game for mobile devices running android. It's a video game that you play by walking around in the real world. It's an ARG, definitely the biggest one ever launched. Here's how it works:



There's a blue team and a green team. (I'm on the green team)

Many public locations (mostly public art, parks, and public buildings like libraries and post offices) are "portals". A portal can be controlled by either team.

You can "hack" a portal if you're within a certain distance of it. That's like opening a treasure chest, when you do it, you get a few pieces of random gear.

Each portal has resonators surrounding it, these are like the portal's health bar. You deploy them to defend a portal, or you attack them to capture a portal.

Portals can be outfitted with upgrades that defend the resonators from damage or attack opponents when they get too close.

If your team controls several portals, you can link them together to create a "field", and capture territory for your team. There is a global score that is constantly shifting based on how much territory each team controls.



I find this is a video game that gets me out of the house a lot. I'll notice that a portal near my house has been damaged, so I walk up the street and repair it. Or another player needs gear, so I go somewhere private and drop a bunch of equipment. He then has to get within 10 meters of the dropoff location, spot the gear in his ingress scanner, and pick it up.

It's made me explore my neighborhood quite a bit. Made me notice little trails and statues which I normally just drive past. And I've now met seven or eight people who live nearby and I would never have otherwise bumped into.

The game is still in beta, and it's being updated constantly. There is an ongoing story, which is dispensed in the form of media items... once a week, when you hack a portal, you'll find an "Ingress Report" which is a little 5-minute video about current events in the game. Sometimes they stage plot events in big cities where you could actually meet some of the game NPCs and influence the story. They also have a website where plot info is kept, and it's full of bizarre puzzles. If you solve a puzzle, it gives you a code you can plug into your scanner for free gear. (although you have to be one of the first people to solve that particular puzzle, so I haven't succeeded at that yet)

It's a very interesting game. It's kind of like geocaching but with teams. Not perfect yet, by a long shot... but I enjoy that we are finally playing games that combine GPS and RPG elements. It's so bizarre to me that I'm playing a video game which involves getting exercise. Every so often, I bump into my neighborhood nemesis, the guy who foils all my plans and controls most of the nearby territory. It's weird, because our relationship exists on this game layer which is invisible to everybody else.

Just the other week, I was standing outside of this bar (girlfriend was smoking a cigarette), and trying to capture the nearby enemy portal. Suddenly, my nemesis came running down the street, phone in hand, to recharge the resonators and block my attack. He looked up and saw me standing there, and we shook our fists at each other. My friends were like, "What's going on?" They didn't even know that the two of us were engaged in this hyper-nerdy form of gang warfare.

[Setting Up:]

Deck Duel

(c) Cramulus

A fighting game for 2-4 players using regular playing cards.

Setting Up: Each player is dealt a hand of cards and given some tokens to represent life points. One player is given an "initiative" marker.

In a 2 person game, you get 5 cards and 5 life points.
In a 3 person game, you get 6 cards and 6 life points.
In a 4 person game, you get 7 cards and 7 life points.

Black cards represent kicks. Red cards represent punches. The card's number indicates how strong the attack is.

Taking Turns: Play is divided into rounds. The player with the initiative marker acts first. Then, play goes to the left.

Attacking: On your turn, you may play one attack. This attack is applied to each opponent simultaneously. Each opponent may try to block it by throwing a card of the same color and an equal or higher number. For example, a red 5 can only be blocked by a red card of 5 or higher. If the attack is not blocked, the defender loses a life point.

Flying Attacks: If you have two cards of the same number (example, the two of spades and the two of hearts), you may use them together as a flying attack. Both cards in the flying attack deal 1 damage and must be blocked separately. If the defender can only block one of the cards, the attack deals 1 damage.

Counter Attacks: If you block an attack using a card with the same number (for example, blocking a jack of clubs with a jack of spades), it is called a counter attack. The block card counts as an attack against the original attacker. He or she may attempt to block it as normal. You may not counter a flying attack.

"Finish Him!" When a player runs out of life points, he or she is dying. The person who landed the final attack may immediately throw an attack as a "finishing move". If the dying player can block the finishing move, he or she survives the match but is still knocked out. If the dying player cannot block the finishing move, he or she is beheaded.

At the end of the round (after everybody has taken a turn), draw cards until your hand is full again. The initiative marker is passed to the left.

How to Win: You get one point for being the last player alive in a round. You lose a point for being beheaded. Play a few games to see who is the best fighter!

[Human Occupied Landfill]

Human Occupied Landfill, or HOL, is a tabletop RPG printed in the 90s.

Game Rulebook: http://www.scribd.com/doc/96485292/Ww5900-Hol-human-Occupied-Landfill

Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hol_%28role-playing_game%29

At this point, I'm really used to playing overproduced, highly polished RPGs. Books with a dozen editors, a highly trained design & layout department, and tons of official branding and merch. I'm used to books with proper spelling and well-playtested rules.

HOL has none of that. But it has more spirit than any RPG book I've ever read.

First, take a scroll through the rulebook in the link above. Notice how the book is ALL HAND WRITTEN? It screams 90s zine. It makes me want to write a 90s zine. It was picked up by White Wolf's Black Dog division. Black Dog specialized in edgy, fringe, often experimental games which probably wouldn't work for a mainstream RPG audience. All the black dog publications have attitude. This book has a bad attitude which will get it sent to bed without supper, but instead it stays up listening to punk rock and drawing pictures of guns.

Writing an RPG is a labor of love. HOL was clearly a labor of hate. You can tell from the blurb on the back cover:

We know that look.

That "If I have to check for traps one more time, I'm going to sneak a spoonful of drain cleaner into the GM's yoo-hoo and start screaming "GUESS YOU FAILED YOUR SEARCH CHECK ON THAT ONE MR. TEN BY TEN STONE CORRIDOR."

You need help.

You need HOL.

Science Fiction Roleplaying for gamers who've had a really bad day. Get it before you hurt someone.

These guys hate D&D. You can tell. They played it to death and now they're bored as hell. You can see it in their parodies of D&D munchkins and "gary" style gaming. They want something more, but they're not entirely sure what. Just that it's loud, and rude, and might result in personal injury.

I get the sense that HOL was written more or less as it popped into the authors heads. You can tell they were making it up as they were writing it. The rules are difficult to understand. They self-contradict. They ramble. They go off on diatribes. The example text for how to parry an attack goes in circles until the GM (or HolMeister as they are called in this game) decides its too complicated and tells the player to fuck off and just dodge the goddamn attack already.

Most games start their book with a disclaimer which tells you it's just a game. This game begins with a claimer, promising you that playing this game will lead to drug use, psychosis, and kitten murder.

I'm not sure if HOL is playable. I'm going to find out. The rules are really weird. The setting is there, but there are no plot hooks or story ideas, just a lot of setting elements. There are no rules for character creation. Just "come up with a character, and the GM will gut it, then give you some numbers." I'm not really sure if the numbers even matter. It's like the whole game is about the attitude.

We're gonna play this week. My friend is going to run it--he says he played a few sessions back in the 90s and it's actually playable. I'll believe it when I see it. I started to make a character - I'm going to be a Health and Safety Inspector who specializes in trivia and quiz shows. I'm not going to take any combat skills, but I will have the ability to throw fundraisers and make my voice sound really important. If I understand the game properly, at some point I should punch another player in the face. (right, Player, not Character.)

So that's a quick intro to HOL: Human Occupied Landfill. Take a flip through it, check out what I mean. It's like a fractal. If the book feels like it's flipping you off, it's because every paragraph, every sentence, every piece of punctuation, is also flipping you off.

Any of you guys seen this book? Tried it? Lived to tell the tale?

[WELCOME TO THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA FORUMS]

Hey strangers! Long time no see.

They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single flying round house kick, then we snatch the keys, steal his car, and get Chinese food.

It was Confuflux, the end of Confusion. It was a Monday in the year of our Lady 3179. I was heating up the leftover Chinese food on the dashboard of the stolen vehicle. Triple Zero sat next to me in the passengers seat, warming his face with a cigarette lighter.

"Trip," I said, "we're lost, bad." The wipers pushed the snow off the windshield, making a eeeky eeky rubber-on-glass noise which made Trip flinch.

"No no no," he said, turning the map upside down, "we're right near.... just after ...." he squinted and turned it over again. "Hey man, this is a chinese food menu."

"That's it, I'm making a ü turn."

"No no no," Trip said, "I think I figured out where we are. This is ... we're in ... one of the lunch combos."

Shaking my head, I screetched the car around, and then made it hop twice, completing the ü. The windshield was covered in snow again. I jumped out of the car, wiped off the snow with my sleeve, and got back in the driver's seat.

We were about six inches from the over-sized welcome sign.




<font size 72,00> WELCOME TO THE PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA FORUMS </humorous size>




"Sweet Merciful Fuck," said Trip, taking off his sunglasses.

"Alright," I said, "Just a quick stop..."

Awesome!!!

First, let's do Common Walls!

On this day in history, St. Valentine banished all snakes from Scotland. And on clear nights, if you listen very closely, you can still hear him riding through Sleepy Hollow, his severed head held aloft, crying out "The British are coming!" Ah, Love!

I was going to buy a set of Dwarven Forge tiles off a friend of mine, but he ended up selling them to somebody else. I love 3D terrain, and Dwarven Forge stuff is pretty much the corvette of tabletop accessories. So now I want some more 3D stuff.

I found a link to this website which sells molds you can use to build your own 3D tiles:

http://www.hirstarts.com/

So for $29, you can get a mold of some architecture, pour some plaster in there, glue together the little bricks, and voila, a cool 3D hallway for little miniatures to march around in.

after you pop stuff out of a mold and paint it, it looks like this:


then you build the thing:



then eventually it looks like a (crappily assembled) version of this!




I'm thinking about buying some of this stuff, even though that definitely commits me to a lot of arts-and-crafts time. What do you guys think? Is there other 3D terrain out there that's worth checking out?

This awesome topic / writing / photo project has been moved to THINK FOR YOURSELF, ASSHOLE. Close all your other windows and GO

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31601.msg1144953.html#msg1144953

Hi guys! Help me solve this mystery.

In my "discordian" google alerts for the day, I noticed a website just went up:

http://www.discordian.net


There's nothing there, except a cool image (above), and the phrase "VUGA VULET SAGA SHAN ISA GO!"

I am intrigued. I want to find out what this website is and what that phrase means.


When I googled that phrase, it only pointed at this page, which has little other information. If you look through the history of that page, you find that it was created in 2003, and the only text on the page read

"VUGA VULET SAGA SHAN ISA GO! Spirit of the Sky, Remember!"


the phrase "spirit of the sky, remember!" is from the Simon Necronomicon.


Does that VUGA VULET sentence sound familiar to anybody? Does anybody have any ideas?

Project ideas...

Everybody involved, go out, take a dozen (or more/less) photographs.  Grab an image that speaks, something with some emotion behind it, that might do the same for others.

Shove them all in a common photobucket (or whatever) account.

Go in.  Grab an image.  Yours, his, mine, whatever.  Doesn't matter if someone else has used it, in fact, better to get multiple stories per image.  Grab one that tells you a story.  Tell us the story (with link).

Rinse and repeat.

This guy is our Messiah



let's list his holy properties

Quick idea. Here's the prank:

We create a little archive of text files. These files appear to be the "discordian secrets". They might be actual Discordian texts, sermons, etc. They might be stuff we made up. It might be single pages from existing stuff. Some of it might be gibberish.

The vault is password protected. On the page somewhere, there's a unique string that appears nowhere else on the web.

Then we create posters that contain that string, as well as the password to the vault. The password might be a puzzle of some sort, or we could just be straightforward about it. The posters are distributed and put up in cities all over the place.


People who are intrigued by the posters will google the string. This leads them to the website. Those that figure out the password get access to these secret files. In their minds, this is a reward. That text will get more of their attention. They'll tend to think that these files are "significant".


---that's the whole idea! It's just a really roundabout hook for Eris. If we can present it in a way that's surreal, intriguing, and makes you feel like you've discovered some kind of secret conspiracy, you'll be more likely to be CURSED with the MADNESS.