2486 lines
125 KiB
HTML
2486 lines
125 KiB
HTML
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<TITLE>blah</TITLE>
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<PRE>
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<A HREF="..">..</A>
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blah!
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ideas with no tangibility;
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ideas with irrelevant supports;
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ideas without value;
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ideas' witlessness;
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ideas' witnesses;
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ideas-
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2023-01-05
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2021-07-07
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Antero
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A person woke up wrapped in satin sheets, head atop a comfortably
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stuffed pillow. They remembered the two most important things: Take the pill.
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Check the book.
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The book. Where was the book. Their room came into view. A wallpaper of
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lilacs on a cream background. Large windows, nearly floor to ceiling. The book
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was to their left.
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June 1, 21XX. Ah, the first of a new month. Funny how that happens.
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They quickly flipped to the front. EDWARDS Eugene \ Class: Well-to-do. Ah.
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Well-to-do. Well in-deed.
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The last thing Eugene Edwards remembered was sitting in a pub in, oh,
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what year is it now? 21XX. So 40 years prior; sitting in a pub, having a pint
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of whatever happened to be on tap at that point. No televisions. No televisions
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at the bar. There were people on phones though. Eugene watched them, thinking.
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Kids on their phone. Is it a phone? Are they still phones nowadays? Fuck it.
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Phones. Just about the same anyway.
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The kids were on their phones scrolling through memetic imagery like a
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hundred years prior back when lead and fluoride and Donald Trump and quantum
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computers and oh god think of the children were on people's minds and when
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those were the only just about the only things on people's minds no
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cognitoviruses no hazards just green grass et cetera. A hundred years prior.
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Eugene wasn't there, nor were Eugene's parents, nor grandparents. Eugene's
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great grandparents were alive though. Given the plastic content in the
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grandparents' bones, Eugene figured the times were not great. But maybe they
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were okay. They could have been okay.
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The concrete age.
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Eugene was watching them on their phones. Whatever the fuck those
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hipsters used. And Eugene watched the kid on the left, or the right - the one
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farthest from the exit - Eugene watched them drop their phone, suddenly, and
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tense up. Like getting electrically shocked. All their muscles tightened, their
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face got red, their veins got big, like Rob Muscanis doing a dead-lift. Then
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the kid passed out. Passed the fuck out. Then the same thing happened to
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another kid and slowly as the kids checked what was on each others' phones it
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rippled out.
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Cognitohazard. That was what it was called. A memetic cognitohazard.
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Sweeping the god damn planet. The Indians and the Koreans both denied it was
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them immediately though they were under the closest scrutiny; India in
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particular had been known for trying to manufacture cognitohazards for military
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use. And all this investigation (in the wrong places) while it took kid after
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kid. And killed them! A fucking memetic image.
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That night was when Eugene learned about Antero.
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Antero is an experimental (now not so much) drug aimed at preventing
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the formation of new memories for 24 hours after ingestion. It's usually taken
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in the morning; available to every class and every body free of charge from the
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government not out of nefarious purpose (though that is questioned daily by a
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number of folks more than suspicious of the UPK's leadership) but out of a
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great need. Without Antero, fuck. Antero turns the permanent death of a
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cognitovirus into a temporary absence from the brain of the user. Antero is the
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penicillin of the twenty second century. Thank your local god for Antero, then
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thank the drug company that came up with it, Gokko (pronounced "gohk koh")
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Pharmaceutical. Then, of course, thank the Japanese.
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Eugene took their first Antero the following morning, and by the looks
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of Eugene's book of short term memories gone long term gone gone, Eugene had
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taken Antero every morning since then, for the past forty years. Well,
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thirty-six years technically, thirty six years, three months, and a day. Eugene
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figured most people would be afraid to wake up forty years older (especially
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given that Eugene was just about reaching UPK life expectancy of sixty-four).
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However, Eugene did not have emotions; Eugene was technically a psychopath.
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Though this word is antiquated now and will be far more antiquated by the time
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this story occurs; psychopathy is not a real diagnosable medical condition,
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rather a collection of common attributes, and the term is hampered by a very
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strong connotation that psychopaths are violent and compulsively homicidal.
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Eugene was neither.
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Eugene's book was written in a somewhat different way from their usual
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writing. At least that's what they figured at first look. On first glance, the
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entries were scrawled quickly and looked dirtier than their usual work (or
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their usual work of forty years' prior). Done so to save time, probably. And
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the entries were bulleted and abbreviated. "I went out for dinner with Laura.
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She seemed happy and has just gotten engaged to the kind-hearted and hearty
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mutual friend of ours Brian." becomes simply "dined with laura. now eng. w/
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brian"; "laura" and "brian" both hyperlinks to the relevant written profiles
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within Eugene's book (mentioned entry dated January 8 and both profiles updated
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automatically with this information at the same time).
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So, what to do today. 21XX-07-01. Go to work at Rogo Corporation. Job
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is to supervise the automatic production of electric machetes and rapidly debug
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errors. At nine hundred hours, attend meeting determining scope and cause of
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formula errors in accounting department, and consequences. Okay. Eugene got out
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of bed, went to the bathroom, brushed their teeth, and did other usual
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activities similar to one does in the bathroom. Then they put on a
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tight-fitting black collared t-shirt, light and thin dark blue jacket, and
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black jeans, and walked downstairs to hail a cab to the tallest skyscraper in
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their city.
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"Memes", viral thoughts, have existed for millennia. As the time taken
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for a thought to circumnavigate the world decreased, the sheer amount of memes
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increased. The printing press, telegraph, telephone, television, all
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accelerated the travel of memes. However, the mass popularization of the use of
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the Internet mainly through the world wide web in the early twenty-first
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century predictably spawned an unprecedented environment in which memes could
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form, pass through the minds of millions of people, and die, in the span of
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hours. This was the perfect petri dish in which cognitoviruses could evolve.
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Cognitoviruses, or memetic cognitohazards, are self-propagating mind
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worms that often interfere with the capability of the subject's brain to
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accomplish tasks necessary in order to think. The first cognitoviruses were
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temporarily distracting and rather harmless; for example, a game where,
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whenever one thinks of it, they lose, which is in turn unwinnable unless the
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subject never knew of the game in the first place, but of which the subject is
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compelled to tell others, is a very classic example (and one that was popular
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on the Internet through the mid 2010s). As research into the phenomenon of
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cognitohazardous materials and the memetic transmission of cognitohazards
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evolved, cognitoviruses were developed and published that began to circulate
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through popular communicative Internet services, and soon became a "meme"
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themselves.
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It was in the late twenty-first century that a cognitovirus was
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developed that was, more or less, lethal, and theorized to be the work of a
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state military though the true origin is uncertain. And Antero sat as a
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published paper and niche-market drug, usually applied in the treatments of
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mental illnesses such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. In the
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week following the release of the first lethal cognitovirus the usage of
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communicative Internet services plummeted, meanwhile Gokko Pharma's valuation
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increased fifty-fold. And so the world kept spinning.
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Antero. Eugene needed to take the pill. They were halfway down the
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stairs from their rented living space before they remembered and had to walk
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back up. On the other side of the bed from where their book was. A blue bottle
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with white cap; inside, a dozen or so green pills. Eugene dry-swallowed one and
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went back down the stairs to the street to find a driver.
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This is not nearly my best writing. I thought 七月 was June, the
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description of Eugene is so bland yet so pseudo-edgy. I like that Eugene uses
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gender-neutral pronouns but that was because of my misunderstanding of gender
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in which I thought such a thing was ridiculous and everybody should be neutral.
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I like the idea of memes as weapons and still think about it - I used to do
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stuff like that (and that's all I can say about that). But I think this style
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of narration sucks and the world described was excessively bland - intended to
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be British but without much subtle charm that colors the otherwise gray world
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of England in media. It's nice that my writing's improved so much in 18 months
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- or maybe I'm just not divorced far enough by time from what I write in this
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blah to see the glaring flaws.
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I'm gonna have to put pipes at the start of the next one's lines
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because it's reliant on the structure of the text - I can't just indent each
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paragraph and shove it together to indicate relation between segments like I
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can when I put random snippets of writing in here.
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2021-08-12
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|Anonym's journey to the center of the universe
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| began on 31 september 2021 in the town of little rock maine. anonym
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| went to a big franchised or whatever drugstore to buy a coca cola. then they
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| went to check out but they noticed no registers were open. yet the store was
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| still open, and there was a worker there striding around the registers
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|
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| "hi, I'd like to check out please" anonym
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| Worker: "Yes, that's for what I'm here."
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| "well, ah, where should i pay for my cola?" anonym
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| Worker: "Please use the self-checkouts."
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| "i don't really understand how to use the automatons" anonym
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| Worker: "Yes, that's for what I'm here
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| I'm here to show you how to use the self-checkouts."
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| "alright" anonym
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| anonym learned to use the automatons to complete transactions
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| "so, what do you think of coca cola? what sodas do you like?" anonym
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| Worker: "I don't know. I drink any beverage."
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| "you don't have a preference? even something you like more than others?" anonym
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| Worker: "No."
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| anonym left the store and continued their journey to the center of the
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| universe
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That one was basically just a transcript of an interaction I had at my
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local CVS. I hate my local CVS.
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2021-03-05
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The Journey
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Kenan Gleick woke up on a Tuesday morning, in a town neither you nor I
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have heard of, Michigan, to a soft roar emanating from outside the room in
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which was the bed in which he'd apparently slept. He recognized neither the
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bed, nor the room, nor the view outside the window, nor, upon putting on the
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clothes in the mahogany bureau next to the bed (business-casual khakis, a pair
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of sneakers, and a black "Thanks for the toast!" tee shirt) and looking up at
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the mirror above the bureau, himself.
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He pocketed a cheap multitool on top of the bureau. He knew who he had
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once been - a cashier at a local supermarket - but it didn't seem relevant to
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who he was now. His palms had worn since he'd last seen them. He crossed the
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hardwood flooring and opened the white door before entering a hall, painted a
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diseased maroon, to find what appeared to be a handyman or some other sort of
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contract laborer grinding through the drywall with a rotary saw. The man turned
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off the blade and stared at Kenan. "That room was just empty."
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"Sorry." Kenan quickly walked into what was marked as a stairwell and
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treaded down the stairs until he came to the sign indicating the ground floor,
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where he broke into a jog and quickly made it outside the hotel before anyone
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could ask any questions.
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I remember thinking about this one but I don't know what it was gonna
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be about. This is also probably the earliest piece of writing I have saved on
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my computer. There are really old ones that maybe I'll dig out at some point
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but I've already pasted three here for today and I can only bear so much
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embarrassment at the writing of my 17 year old self.
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The trinity.moe/blah chronological cut must be so confusing to watch!
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I found an ancient blog of mine from when I was a kid.
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2016-04-09
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Today we didn't have school because it's Saturday. I went to one of my
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friend's birthday parties, [...]'s, to be exact, and I got him a Nerf Elite
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Dual-Strike. It was a Nerf party, by the way, and it's no mystery of whether
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Han or Greedo shot first. I did. I also met up with my (old) friend, [...], and
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shot him. It was kinda boring today altogether though.
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2016-04-11
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School was nothing special today. I've been trying to think of a
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YouTube video to make. I've been getting vlogger's block. It's weird. Also, I
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heard of something I think everybody should check out - a petition asking
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Blizzard to stop trying to sue Nostalrius. Sign it! Please!
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2016-04-16
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I didn't post anything for the week, since I was so busy with school,
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but now it's April vacation so I can blog all I want. My favorite Minecraft
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server, play.prxcraft.net, is shutting down on the 20th.
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2016-05-24
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I've been busy this month. It's just too much, especially with
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volunteering and all the other crap our school makes us do. Meh. Another day,
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another blog. Another Weebly site to watch is AnimeFreak. Weebly's doing
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something stupid so that entire sentence was linked. Enjoy.
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EDIT: I linked the word now. Just the word. DEAL WITH IT.
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Somewhere along the way, probably inspired by Paul Graham's blog, I
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learned it's less interesting to write about what you /do/ (unless what you do
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is absolutely fascinating, which most of the time it is not) and more
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interesting to write about what you're /thinking/.
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About a month after these I started on a webcomic which had the writing
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quality of CtrlAltDel and a slightly better art quality than Arson Comics. It
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had various unfunny jokes about virtual reality (which I had not yet tried),
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self driving cars (which did not yet exist), arcade machines that could play
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every video game ever made (which I didn't know existed), and the usual
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violence-as-a-punchline, a hallmark of 00s and 10s webcomics.
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My favorite webcomics were xkcd (which I discovered at the time Vodka
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was published - 2015-05-22, I guess) and MegaTokyo (which I discovered on
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xkcd's site footer). MegaTokyo taught me leetspeek and a ton of weaboo culture,
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and I still love the common fantasy of being stranded in a metropolitan area
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and being forced to just Figure It Out. Later I also read TwoKinds, Savestate,
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Junior Scientist Power Hour, and others.
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I would be thoroughly shocked if I found anything older than 2014 that
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I could paste onto here. My life only really began when I turned 18, anyway.
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2023-01-04
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Karl and Will watched Captain James Cook sit in his recliner, seeming
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to deliberate. An intravenous line was slung over the armrest from the back of
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the chair into Cook's arm and he sat, catatonic, drool dripping past his bottom
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lip, eyes wide open. Both of them knew he neither cared about what they said
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nor was physically able to hear them. Behind them a small porthole window let
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them see into the depths of outer space.
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Will finished his thought and verbalized it. "So, like, what's he
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thinking about?"
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Karl: "What?"
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"He's on tranqs or something. Is he thinking about the ship?"
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Karl turned to Will. "Are you new here or something?"
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"What! I'm just asking a question."
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"Did you go to school?"
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"Yeah."
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"Did you graduate?"
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"Well... no."
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"Yeah." Karl gestured to the thin tube. "That's a drug cocktail of both
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stimulants and paralytics. The chair measures his vitals and keeps him alive
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while he can use all of his brain to think about what moves to make next."
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Will reexamined the chair from where he stood. "Why can't he just think
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normally?"
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"I just said. He can but this lets him use more of his noggin. The dude
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is basically doing six dimensional chess up in there. A good captain will
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figure out the next thousand years' moves in advance, I've heard."
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"I don't envy him."
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Captain James Cook stood on a featureless white plane under a black
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starless sky, using a rod of wax to mark the ground in red. Taking into account
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all of the nearby cosmic entities - the rocks and dust and occasional dwarf -
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he charted out the next hundred years' plan, then the hundred after that, then
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the hundred after that. The landscape around him turned pink as he marked the
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hours to make up the days to make up the months to make up the years.
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An alarm sounded. Karl and Will ran to their respective stations. The
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chair began to rouse the Captain for the emergency.
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James had finished year 963 when he started sliding down the smooth
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surface. His naked body smeared the red wax on the floor as the floor smeared
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it on him and after rolling for a couple seconds he was finally kicked off the
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ground into the ether. Floating in space, he assumed the posture of sitting in
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a chair so that his carriage back into physicality would be less violent. Then
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like a dog pushed off a cliff he was back in his seat, chin wet, looking
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through the porthole towards his previous home; outsideness.
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2022-09-16
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Bookworm
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I looked for a moment at a painting above the stairs and their bronze
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railing. It had an elaborate painting of a symbol that resembled a Cyrillic "Щ".
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"Alright, let's go." I gestured to the stairs.
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"What? Why?" Aaron walked through one of the dozen or so aisles of
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shelves, each packed with books up to the height of his shoulder. The room we
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were in encompassed the full third floor of the cylindrical tomb to which we
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were tourists, lit brightly by incandescent lamps and only incandescent lamps.
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There were no windows nor would there be anything of interest past the glass if
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there were.
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"You said there would be one or two people here to meet us." Aaron
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raised a hand on which he was raising his index finger but I interrupted him.
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"If there's nobody to meet us for what's essentially a distress call, from this
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'living vault' which I'd call a crypt, what got to them first? Whatever it was,
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I don't wanna meet it."
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"Everything here is visible. There are no places to hide, or hide a
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body." At that, I scanned the ceiling but it was just uniform brick. "I don't
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know where they went, but we've looked around, and there's nothing here. I
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don't see why you'd be so unnerved." I wasn't unnerved – at least I didn't
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think I was visibly so. On the other side of the room, which wasn't terribly
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big, though it was of a reasonable size for a small library, a hardwood board
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under the tightly woven carpet let out a muffled squeak. A cheap bell rattled.
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Judging by the look on Aaron's face, I had given him a death glare, but after
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he looked down his aisle he relaxed. "It's a cat."
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I slowly stepped over to his aisle of books and there, on the other end
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of the row, was a black and white cat with a red collar. I said the first thing
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that came to my mind. "Its head is too big."
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Aaron looked at me but I kept looking at the cat. "'Its head is too
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big'?" The cat's head kept extending and growing. Whatever reaction I had
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caused Aaron to turn back to the cat. "Oh, fuck."
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The cat's fur grew sparse as its skin stretched wide and its head
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turned a slow spiral into an upside-down position before its forehead grew
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fangs and its former lips fused together. Its eyes widened and became
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humanlike. The creature must have been three meters long with a serpentine head
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but cat-sized body at the end, away from us. Its fangs were what peeked of a
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mouth and that mouth opened its wide jaw and began to speak in a deep rumble of
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a voice. "I."
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I slowly reached for and silently unbuttoned the clasp on my knife
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while maintaining my stare at the creature. Aaron, probably close enough to the
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thing to smell it if it had a smell, trembled slightly but enough that I
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noticed. I wished I hadn't gone into this damn grave without my lighter but it
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was confiscated by Aaron's parents (also the governing body of this archive –
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built to withstand a nuclear blast, so humanity had a "damn fine base from
|
||
which to regrow their knowledge" – Aaron's mother's words, not mine). It wasn't
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||
something I didn't understand – I too long for a first edition Origin of
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Species sometimes after one or two glasses of wine at night, and have to page
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through Sotheby's catalog in order to talk myself out of bidding the next time
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one's stolen out of East Germany, but if there was truly some new Dracula or
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Frankenstein – aside from the books, that is – hidden in these rows, I'd be
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willing to burn down a lot more than some paper or even myself to make sure it
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never saw the light of day.
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Aaron finally spoke. "Hello?"
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The creature tore a tentacle underneath the cat's chest and swung it up
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above its head, morphing it into a fleshy wreath-like structure, almost like a
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set of antlers. Its head and tentacle, I noticed, bent backward as they
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stretched up, to keep its center of gravity below its paws. I realized what it
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was doing, forming a fractal construct of flesh and the gaps between around its
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head, as a second tentacle tore through the fur on the cat's back. "Aaron. Back
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away towards me."
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The creature's eyes, bigger now, blue, turned towards me. It rumbled
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and finally spoke, something: "Apart from the one fundamental nastiness-" it
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made a gargling noise "-nineteenth century suffering from toothache." It thrust
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its tentacle towards Aaron and he turned and ran for the stairs, to which I
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also started running. The creature began to scream in a cacophony of fifty
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voices. Aaron and I got to the end of the stairway and ran across the second
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floor (fiction) to its descending stairs. I didn't take the time to look behind
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myself.
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When we got to the bottom-most level of the vault Aaron ran to the
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telephone next to the stone arch exit, currently leading to a brick wall, and
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rang the operator as I turned to face his six and saw the monster, with the
|
||
body of a cat, the face of a (for lack of better description) werewolf, and the
|
||
two tentacles of a void, approaching, by morphing its appendages into some sort
|
||
of shape that could grip onto the stone bricks of the ceiling. By the time it
|
||
had climbed its way to the center of the room the vault started violently
|
||
twisting and the centrifugal force threw me and Aaron against the wall. The
|
||
beast staggered but hunkered down, moving its body towards the ceiling. The
|
||
black oily tentacles spread out into the bricks like they were Play-Doh shoved
|
||
into a fine mesh.
|
||
The door next to us opened up and we made our way across the wall to
|
||
which we were pinned and fell through. We yelled to the engineers to keep it
|
||
twisting and the portal slid shut behind us.
|
||
Aaron's father, Robert Arsenault, in his signature suit and green tie,
|
||
jogged down the freshly painted hall to meet us and the operator of his billion
|
||
dollar vault. Aaron and I were smoking, to Robert's chagrin, and against the
|
||
advice of Jamie Simon, who was almost as well known as Robert but in different
|
||
fields. In fact, the design of the library was officially called the Simon
|
||
Machine, and used novel mechanisms to rotate an entire cylindrical building on
|
||
its base as an extremely overkill locking mechanism so no unauthorized entities
|
||
could get in. I wasn't briefed on the details, or, well, I was, but I didn't
|
||
have the three PhDs necessary to understand any of it.
|
||
A vent softly pumped air from the surface. Technically our location
|
||
wasn't supposed to be made known to the lackeys but Aaron said it was somewhere
|
||
in Peru.
|
||
"What the hell was that?"
|
||
Aaron tapped his cigarette on the previously empty ashtray next to
|
||
Jamie's keyboard. "I dunno."
|
||
Robert thrust a pointed finger into Aaron's face. "You don't know? An
|
||
animal got into my library and neither of you can even tell what the fuck it
|
||
was? Do you even know how many legs it had?"
|
||
Aaron seemed to have the same idea I had; Robert could figure out what
|
||
the thing was without our help. He wouldn't believe us if we told him what we
|
||
saw.
|
||
|
||
Unfinished! A shame, too. I think that one could have been pretty good.
|
||
Maybe sometime I'll write a middle and ending.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2023-01-03
|
||
|
||
2022-12-07
|
||
|
||
I don't think about thinking, I just think it
|
||
and I think even when I can't think about anything else
|
||
I think about my thoughts about the day it left me
|
||
and I think about it I can't think about anything else
|
||
I think about Venus and the moon and the sun
|
||
and I think about when they came and killed everyone
|
||
I think about the last time us two had some fun
|
||
and I think about when we came and killed everyone
|
||
The sky is falling off the mountains
|
||
and sirens filling my brain
|
||
and the smoke attack the smoke grenades
|
||
the blood in the lane
|
||
the sky is on the edge of the earth
|
||
and there are cracks in the night
|
||
and the SWAT team and the G-men
|
||
and the federal fight
|
||
|
||
2022-10-08
|
||
|
||
1
|
||
The one hun dred me ter sprint .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
2
|
||
and it's you that's dead in last .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
3
|
||
When . will you just ad mit . .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
4
|
||
You aren't win ning in this lap .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
5
|
||
You mean no thing . to me .
|
||
I'm try ing . my best . .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
6
|
||
You're a hu man . dis ease .
|
||
And my best is good e nough .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
7
|
||
I gave it all to you . .
|
||
Leave me a lone . I'm tir ed
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
8
|
||
And then you just col lapsed . .
|
||
of this stuff . . . . .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
9
|
||
You di dn't go for the gold .
|
||
I ne ver went for the gold .
|
||
I . . went for the gold .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
10
|
||
You went for the sil ver . .
|
||
I went for the sil ver . .
|
||
And I got the sil ver . .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
11
|
||
And now you're get ting old . .
|
||
And now I'm get ting old . .
|
||
I'm look ing at the bronze . .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
12
|
||
And my hair is tur ning sil ver
|
||
And your hair is tur ning sil ver
|
||
Throw my me dal in the ri ver
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
13
|
||
. How could you do this to me?
|
||
. How could I do this to you?
|
||
. Is it hap pi ness I seek?
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
14
|
||
. Keep me out of the . loop
|
||
. I thought I made it ea sy
|
||
. All this time I've been so sad
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
15
|
||
. And at the end of the day
|
||
. And at the end of the day
|
||
. I'm so god damn in com plete
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
16
|
||
. I lost out in the race .
|
||
. You lost out in the race .
|
||
. I want what you guys have .
|
||
.
|
||
.
|
||
|
||
A lot of what I do is foreshadowed by other stuff I do. Before Blang
|
||
(still in development and not even publicly released) was the configuration
|
||
system for ytfeed, which was weird in some areas. The behavior was mostly due
|
||
to side effects. Then Usagi, a similar fantasy computer but with much loftier
|
||
goals than Blang which never really came to fruition. When it came to making an
|
||
RSS feed reader, after ytfeed.py (which started as a proof of concept out of
|
||
boredom using some Python RSS module or something) sort of collapsed from
|
||
technical debt (look, I can use buzzwords too) I really wanted to take
|
||
ytfeed.sh and expand it to be more UNIXy and KISSy but lost motivation. I had a
|
||
couple attempts after that such as "awdri", which has one feed.py file with:
|
||
|
||
#!/usr/bin/env python
|
||
|
||
config = [
|
||
"feed_dir": "/home/trinity/awdri/Feeds"
|
||
]
|
||
|
||
But I don't even know what that was gonna be. Eventually I came up with
|
||
pigfeed which is a half-decent base for an RSS feed reader, I think. Plus its
|
||
model and design are delightful though undercooked.
|
||
|
||
2022-10-21
|
||
|
||
The End of the World, And What Happened Next
|
||
1.
|
||
"Put your money in the wishing well, and your wish may well come true."
|
||
The beggar turned to me, his rotted teeth spitting through the phrase.
|
||
"The wishing well?" I looked into the field behind him. I didn't see
|
||
any well.
|
||
"It's not a <I>real</I> well. It's a wallet number. Put in
|
||
a coin and reap good luck for the rest of your life." He handed me the business
|
||
card of a preacher in the church across the street behind us. On the back was a
|
||
hexadecimal wallet code, 512-bit – a legacy address, scrawled in ballpoint. I
|
||
could hardly make out the 1s from 7s or the 4s from 9s. I put it in my shirt
|
||
pocket.
|
||
"An entire coin? I thought beggars usually wanted a fiver or tenner?"
|
||
He stared into me with orange eyes. Tattooed irises, probably to go
|
||
with his hair. "It's not my wallet. Wanna miss out?" He waved his arms out.
|
||
"Your loss!"
|
||
2.
|
||
Simon was sitting at his desk filling forms when he saw kamisama from
|
||
his upstairs window. She disappeared into the forest across the street. He
|
||
quickly ran downstairs into the trees to find her sitting on a stump at a
|
||
stream, brushing her hair.
|
||
"Where have you been? I haven't heard you in days." Simon started to
|
||
retie his right shoe which was too loose. "Are you avoiding me?"
|
||
Kamisama spoke quietly. "They're trying to take me away."
|
||
Simon finished the bunny ears and double knotted it. "Who?"
|
||
"I don't know. But I'm disappearing."
|
||
Simon sat on the stump. "Is it me? We knew this might happen eventually."
|
||
Kamisama shook her head. "No, we can't part yet. I don't want you
|
||
blindly leading yourself. Someone is doing this to you."
|
||
-1.
|
||
"I don't know what's worth putting a coin in an anonymous wallet, but
|
||
whatever it is, I don't need it anyway." I started to walk away.
|
||
He yelled behind me. "Fine! You just ignored the best opportunity of
|
||
your life!" I kept walking.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2023-01-02
|
||
|
||
Ted wandered off as he heard sirens approach the crumbling office. His
|
||
office was a part of a sparse lot of buildings in the sparse tundra of
|
||
Underhelm, a small town on the outskirts of Dance City. The nearest neighbor to
|
||
his office, a tall but sterile, empty building, simply concrete, glass,
|
||
insulation, drywall, and plenty of carpet and flammable internal bits to start
|
||
a blaze, had a sign advertising its potential as a center of operations or call
|
||
center or something business or another that Ted didn't have the capacity to
|
||
care about.
|
||
He didn't know where he got the jerrycan, and didn't know how it still
|
||
had any petrol in it, not to mention how it was still full. Ted kicked down the
|
||
fashionable but laughably flimsy double doors to the office, then the next pair
|
||
of doors past the entryway. The interior looked like it would look really good
|
||
if it was set on fire. Ted angled the can to pour a thin stream of gasoline as
|
||
he walked from room to room on the ground floor. He admired the new-car smell,
|
||
the gasoline aroma, the new-wall scent, the benzene draw, the new tables and
|
||
chairs and light fixtures and Cisco-branded IP phones and the pattern on the
|
||
carpet and the sharp geometry of the modernist architecture and soon he was
|
||
back in the lobby, having completed a loop. Like a soldier, he turned
|
||
anticlockwise and continued out of the building, carving a petroleum circle
|
||
into the dead grass surrounding the lifeless vessel.
|
||
Ted struggled with his lighter. It was a disposable Bic that was nearly
|
||
out of butane. After a minute of clicking he was able to get a flame for a
|
||
moment and lit the gas trail. He watched the little bead of entropy follow the
|
||
path and split out into three, two following the circle and one cautiously
|
||
approaching the edifice. The brush and the building caught fire over a period
|
||
of a couple minutes and the fire roared to life.
|
||
"Must not have been up to code, that." Ted whispered to himself. "Quite
|
||
a lot of form, though. Now it finally serves a function."
|
||
|
||
|
||
2023-01-01
|
||
|
||
2022-12-31
|
||
|
||
221231_2107.wav
|
||
|
||
[21:07] Well I'm in New York for the first time in my life, so I
|
||
figured I'd take a moment and do a, a bona fide audio blog- a- audio, what is
|
||
that, an aog? I dunno. Because, uh, there ain't no way I'm gonna get a chance
|
||
to sit down and type this, um, my first thought, uh, approaching New York, was
|
||
"My God, the city smells like soy sauce!" and it might have been the car. It
|
||
might have been me. I dunno. But uh, now I'm- now I'm here. Um, it took a
|
||
little while to get here. I was gonna plan to meet up with, uh,
|
||
[21:08] an acquaintance from back in- back in the /bpg/ days, when that
|
||
was a thing, um, but that sort of fell through. That's okay, another time. Um,
|
||
so I'm basically in the city now and I'm basically just walking around, um,
|
||
I've never been to New York City before. At one corner I saw a bunch of trash,
|
||
spilled, just like, a shrine to- a shrine to garbage. Shrine to- shrine to
|
||
waste. Um, I thought that was funny. I'm not taking a lot of pictures because,
|
||
[21:09] pictures? Who needs pictures? Also my phone doesn't have a lot
|
||
of battery, and I could plug it in but I can't even find a goddamn place to
|
||
stand around, there are all these signs saying no standing any time? I have no
|
||
clue how you could forbid standing. Um, I see city bike things but I don't know
|
||
how to use these damn things. Um, but I guess I could bike if I figured them
|
||
out, but then I'd be bicycling, and that wouldn't be a whole lot better than
|
||
walking when I wanna take a pause. So, I dunno. But it would be nice to get
|
||
around the city a little bit faster. But I'm sorta- I'm sorta just taking it
|
||
in. Because this is wild. It's uh, it's smaller
|
||
[21:10] than I expected from what my grandpa said but it's about what I
|
||
expected from what I thought, um, and it's raining and the streets are slick,
|
||
but for, towards the chilliest part of the year, it really ain't too bad around
|
||
here. I guess that's the uh, the 2022 New Year's- New Year's Eve heat wave or
|
||
whatever from our storm, a little bit prior, um, really washed away all the
|
||
snow, but yeah
|
||
<"hey yeah"
|
||
y'know, and uh-
|
||
<"Hey."
|
||
Hey. 'Sup.
|
||
<"How are you doing?"
|
||
Doing well, how 'bout you?
|
||
<[unintelligible]
|
||
What?
|
||
<"You're very beautiful, what's your name?"
|
||
Uh, Trinity, how 'bout you?
|
||
<"Huh?"
|
||
Trinity, what's your name?
|
||
[21:11]<"Najeem."
|
||
What?
|
||
<"Najeem."
|
||
Najeem?
|
||
<"That's a nice name."
|
||
Thank you.
|
||
<"Whatcha doing tonight?"
|
||
Ah, y'know, just walkin' around.
|
||
<"Uh, you live over here?"
|
||
Nah, I live in Maine.
|
||
<"Upstate? Oh, you got a hotel here?"
|
||
Uh, yeah, I'm staying in a, uh, staying nearby.
|
||
<"Uh, have you ever had a, like, have you ever had a big black dick?"
|
||
Huh?
|
||
<"Have you ever had a big black dick?"
|
||
Nah.
|
||
<"Would you like that?"
|
||
Nah.
|
||
<"You should try it. You might like it."
|
||
Y'know, maybe some other time, I'm sorta just here visiting family.
|
||
<"Alright, well I need you to give me some head real quick. Before
|
||
you go."
|
||
I don't think I will.
|
||
<"You don't have no choice."
|
||
Nah, I don't think I will.
|
||
<"I'm a murderer, you know that?"
|
||
Alright.
|
||
<"I'm joking. Have a good night."
|
||
Uh huh. You too.
|
||
Well, that was something. But that's New York. Still got my wallet.
|
||
Still got my keys.
|
||
[21:12] Still got my compass. Still got my phone. But, that was... huh.
|
||
Anyway. So, wait, I should probably say that, what he said again, because I
|
||
don't know if it it came through but he said [...] yeah. I dunno. Y'know, it's
|
||
nice to be desired. That guy was gonna chop me up into pieces but it's nice to
|
||
be desired. Y'know, I have very low standards. [...]
|
||
[21:13] So now I'm walking back where I came. "Duane Reade by
|
||
Walgreens". I wonder what that is. Um, [...], honestly if he didn't say that,
|
||
if he just asked politely, I probably would have. Um, but y'know. I should
|
||
probably check myself out for trackers later but.
|
||
[21:14] ... I like the- I like the ambience of the city. The honk honk.
|
||
The sirens that echo across the street. That really fill the- fill the noise
|
||
up, with harsh shrill, but only for a little bit, then it returns back to the
|
||
quiet ring-a-ding, buzz-a-buzz. There's a lot more people on these tricycle
|
||
sort of things, that can
|
||
[21:15] carry people. I, I never saw one before I went here. And
|
||
there's some buses, and apparently there's a Niel Diamond Broadway show or
|
||
something. And yeah, I'm pretty much taking turns at random. This must be an
|
||
Oakley shop or something. But uh, y'know, it's peaceful. And tonight's New
|
||
Year's Eve, and uh, probably not gonna be able to see the ball drop. Because I
|
||
would need to get in a huge crowd and be searched and wouldn't be able to use
|
||
the bathroom, yadda yadda yadda. And I ain't really,
|
||
[21:16] I'd rather just chill out. I like goin' to the places where the
|
||
people aren't, because usually the interesting things are the things not seen
|
||
by everybody. Are there any public bathrooms in New York? Also I definitely
|
||
went this way already. I uh, I went to a pizza place, and I think I got the
|
||
wrong order. But they said something to me, and I didn't quite understand it,
|
||
because it was in Spanish and, I mean, I- I can pick out some phrases, like I
|
||
can recognize what you're
|
||
[21:17] speakin', I can recognize the language, but I cannot translate
|
||
especially on the fly so I just stared blankly at them and then they laughed
|
||
and it wasn't what I ordered but it was alright pizza. "Psychic readings"? "$10
|
||
special"? Are these the psychic readings?
|
||
<"Yes."
|
||
Oh, cool.
|
||
|
||
221231_2120.wav
|
||
|
||
[21:20] That psychic reading was almost completely wrong, but, it's fun
|
||
to do it. I wonder how they come up with these things. Uh, they said I don't
|
||
usually speak my mind, which is untrue, usually take responsibility for things,
|
||
which is true, um, I do what I want when I want, which is true, but, I don't
|
||
sleep as well as I used to, which, I sleep probably better than I ever have.
|
||
But, y'know, that's fun. They don't have anything like that in Maine. Walking
|
||
through some scaffolding now. This is- "sprinkler fire department connection",
|
||
y'know I wonder how they design big buildings like this, I wonder how they add
|
||
to them. But not enough to actually look it up
|
||
[21:21] because it's probably really boring. ... Oh, gone in a circle
|
||
again, but, it's fun. Um, I'd like to get up, to a position where I can see the
|
||
ball drop, but I don't think that's gonna happen. Sorta just walking around.
|
||
[21:22] I can see ah, Radio City Music Hall, which, my grandmother went
|
||
to Radio City Music Hall, when she was a lass, and, she was disturbed by the,
|
||
uh, frivolous fragrant- the fragrant pandering to the male gaze. That's how I
|
||
would describe it. That's probably not how she would describe it, but, it's
|
||
about what she said.
|
||
[21:23] All the songs playing are songs about New York. But we're in
|
||
New York. Um, something something simulacrum? I dunno, I never read
|
||
Baudrillard. Probably just gonna keep going down this street. Uh, passing
|
||
West 48th, this is, what, oh, Avenue of the Americas, that's pretty cool.
|
||
[21:24] Do I have any other cool things I've observed in New York City?
|
||
Not really. It's very rainy and there's not a lot to do when it's raining. You
|
||
can duck under things, sure, but, only for the moment. I suppose you could do
|
||
so for a longer moment but, I don't know. I'm a stranger in a strange land.
|
||
When in Rome, do as Romans do. And they ain't doing that. But they are tooting
|
||
horns very loudly.
|
||
<"Five dollars, five dollars, five dollars. Five dollars. Five
|
||
dollars."
|
||
[21:25] When I, uh, when I went to do that palm reading, uh, I put a
|
||
twenty dollar bill down on the slightly wet but mostly covered table, um and, I
|
||
thought this would go straight down. Well I'll walk back then. Um, I was like
|
||
"You got change for a 20?" because it was a $10 palm reading and they were
|
||
like, er- well, not really a palm reading, more like a psychic prediction, and
|
||
I said- and they said "No, but I can do a full palm reading for uh, for $40."
|
||
And I said "Can you do a half palm reading, for $20?" And they said no but then
|
||
they said they felt bad and they'd give me a partial palm reading.
|
||
[21:26] So I did get a half palm reading, for $20 - a bargain in New
|
||
York City. ... I love languages, but I'm not much of a people person. I guess
|
||
I'm more cut out for linguistics than actual translation. Ah, it's a little
|
||
apple because it's the big apple. Um,
|
||
[21:27] yeah. There's a Major League Baseball store, I guess. I didn't
|
||
expect so much litter. I also expected the air to be a lot worse, um, one of my
|
||
friends who went here said you feel a lot more tired after walking in New York
|
||
than in Maine but I think it's because the weed is a lot stronger here.
|
||
[21:28] And he was probably blazing up. Alright, recording off.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-31
|
||
|
||
2022-04-19
|
||
|
||
Snippets from /home/trinity/homepage/computer.html
|
||
|
||
Hello and welcome to the world of computing.
|
||
This guide is intended to take you from a cursory or completely
|
||
nonexistent knowledge of how computers work or even what a computer is to an
|
||
understanding with which you're comfortable.
|
||
As this guide will go on the manner of language will shift from
|
||
conversational and casual to more formal and technical; this is because these
|
||
earlier sections are more like learning to ride a bike, where you won't easily
|
||
forget the basics, but the later sections are more like learning to build a
|
||
bike, where you may need to reference the manual later.
|
||
This is also a perpetually unfinished document, please refer to the
|
||
<I>updated</I> date as its version if your citation format permits it.
|
||
To start, let's run over some basic terminology.
|
||
Many of these terms are ambiguous and will be better specified later.
|
||
The Monitor
|
||
The monitor (term taken from the verb <I>monitor</I>), or screen
|
||
(term taken from the verb <I>screen</I>), is a raster display unit your
|
||
computer controls. In some manner, which depends on the technology your monitor
|
||
uses, there is being displayed some sort of content that your computer has
|
||
generated. It may be these very words. Monitors are usually interchangeable but
|
||
sometimes entire computers can be included in the monitor unit itself, the
|
||
concept of which is known as <I>all-in-one computer units</I> because
|
||
all components of the computer except input devices are in the same place (the
|
||
monitor assembly).
|
||
It's possible your computer doesn't have a monitor. Possibly, you're
|
||
using a teletypewriter, which prints text output onto paper using ink, though
|
||
this is unlikely as they were obsoleted fifty years ago in favor of "glass
|
||
teletypes" (<I>glass</I> here refers to the glass tube of a cathode ray
|
||
tube monitor). Possibly, you're using assistive technologies and aren't sighted.
|
||
Or maybe you're making this entire document up and are in a dream. There are
|
||
many ways to use computers that <I>don't</I> involve monitors but seeing
|
||
as they're so common-place there's a very good likelihood you are indeed using
|
||
one.
|
||
The Key-board
|
||
The keyboard is how many people input text into their computer. There
|
||
are many types of keyboards. Most people use standard QWERTY (named such after
|
||
the first five alphabetical runes that appear on the board) keyboards, where
|
||
each button is one symbol and perhaps there are special buttons that change the
|
||
meaning of the other buttons. There are also <I>chorded</I> keyboards,
|
||
where each <I>combination</I> (or chord, like on a piano) of keys
|
||
represents a symbol.
|
||
Possibly, you're not using a keyboard at all, and are instead using
|
||
assistive technologies such as speech recognition.
|
||
|
||
My intent with the computer guide was to emphasize atypical but
|
||
important interfaces between user and machine, to make the guide relevant to
|
||
every single person who would read the guide. Making a guide only for those who
|
||
are sighted, hearing, have feeling in their fingertips, can read small text, is
|
||
ridiculous and limits the audience far too much. Accessibility is the future
|
||
absolutely.
|
||
|
||
0908 In the car on the way to New York City.
|
||
1135 Still in the car
|
||
|
||
I'm still getting over having my desktop Fx on my phone. It's glitchy
|
||
as hell but it works. Like, damm!
|
||
|
||
A crowd had formed outside of the building, in the parking lot. Ted
|
||
stood with his hands in his pockets and tie blowing in the slight breeze
|
||
watching the blaze.
|
||
Out of the crowd a single black (trousers) and white (shirt) figure
|
||
emerged. He walked tensely to Ted and stood in front of him. Ted's blank gaze
|
||
stayed looking through his boss to the fire.
|
||
"Ted, you piece of shit." The boss, a lanky mam of roughly the same
|
||
height as Ted whose name escaped memory, sprayed a small droplet of saliva
|
||
on Ted's collar, which bothered Ted. Ted looked at his shoes pointing to his
|
||
boss's. "You're fired -" Ted smiled "- of course, and we'll see what the
|
||
authorities do when they arrive."
|
||
Ted's wife emerged from the crowd in the same attire. She looked roughly
|
||
like Ted - plain beyond words - with a softer face and longer hair. "Hey, Ron,
|
||
we're all a little stressed. Look at him. He's snapped. That's not Ted anymore.
|
||
Take it easy and we'll let the EMTs take a look."
|
||
Ron brushed Ted's wife's chin with his finger and had a look in his eye
|
||
that confused Ted. "Alright Minerva. I- I'm not sure what we're gonna do," he
|
||
turned towards the office, "about all this." This was the first time Ted had
|
||
seen his boss stutter.
|
||
"We'll get on."
|
||
Without waiting for any authorities to arrive, Ron found his car in the
|
||
parking lot and got in. Minerva got into the passenger's seat without prompt.
|
||
Ted listened but didn't watch as the car started and then rolled out of the
|
||
lot. He watched the smoke billow out of the windows.
|
||
Ted whispered to himself. "Arson time."
|
||
|
||
1458 Arrived at Manhattan
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-30
|
||
|
||
I occasionally write blahposts a day in advance. And who will stop me?
|
||
|
||
[10:14 AM] Daruna_: Have y'all seen the [...] circle?
|
||
[10:14 AM] Daruna_: https://meetcircle.com/
|
||
[...]
|
||
[10:28 AM] Segmentation fault: in any case, not only is this parental fascism,
|
||
i assume they log literally all data on your
|
||
home network considering you're giving them
|
||
access to it
|
||
[10:39 AM] Daruna_: I've never heard the term parental fascism before, but I
|
||
kinda fuck with it. They're a lot of fascistic normalized
|
||
behaviors in parenting that are just straight up abuse.
|
||
[...]
|
||
[10:50 AM] meatgrinder #1 hypocrite: you two.... It's called SAFETY
|
||
|
||
"Parental fascism" is a pretty good term for it, I think. Parents get
|
||
goaded into tracking their kids, because tracking kids makes money for the
|
||
people for the people doing the tracking. It normalizes the feeling of being
|
||
surveilled - a comfort blanket made out of eyes and ears. I was gonna say more
|
||
but I just realized I don't have anything new to bring to this, so who cares.
|
||
|
||
I found something in /home/trinity/bak/Documents/dog.odt:
|
||
|
||
2021-06-21
|
||
|
||
I would like to become a dog
|
||
|
||
I have been housesitting the residence of the family of a friend of
|
||
mine who are all currently vacationing (specific activity unknown) in Florida
|
||
right now in 2021 (- he and his company are all vaccinated against the current
|
||
pandemic). His family, particularly his mother and aunt, take care of three
|
||
well-behaved and often adorable dogs whom I shant name for their (the dogs' and
|
||
the family's) privacy, and the responsibility fell to me, which was at first
|
||
exciting in a bad way but is now boring in a good way. I care not only for but
|
||
about the dogs, and I like to think they care about me though they are
|
||
incapable of ever caring for me in quite the same way. But even if they don't,
|
||
it doesn't matter. They still behave, still go outside when I'd like them to
|
||
please urinate on the grass and not the hardwood floor, and still will sleep
|
||
next to me if not for companionship then for warmth. I am okay with this.
|
||
Essentially, I am a robot (in the sense that my actions to take care of
|
||
the dogs is automatic, and that I don't need significant input nor pay) in
|
||
servitude to these dogs – it's not that I mind, of course; I do love these dogs
|
||
even if they may not love me (are dogs capable of sentient love?). And this
|
||
concept is interesting. They essentially live in their paradise; they go
|
||
outside every 2-3 hours (whenever they move around usually it's because they'd
|
||
like to move around outside) and exercise their bodily functions out there when
|
||
need be, they play with each other and at least seem to have intellectual
|
||
stimulation out in the back yard, and they all get as much water as they want
|
||
and two get food whenever they want (the larger one has a stricter diet of two
|
||
cups of more wholesome food in the morning and at night). They are in heaven
|
||
and I am the robot that serves them. When I am off-line, others are there to
|
||
serve them. When others are off-line, even others will serve them. I would like
|
||
to be a dog.
|
||
Though, specifically, I would like to be a being that has its physical
|
||
needs met always and that is intellectually stimulated with equal peers with
|
||
which to interract. Why is this not possible? Robots certainly exist, and
|
||
certainly there is enough food in the world to feed everybody who needs food,
|
||
and certainly with wastewater recycling and other means of conserving the
|
||
environment there could be enough water for everyone, and it's not hard to make
|
||
a bathroom fit for humans (just make sure it's not where they eat), and it's
|
||
not hard to make this a suburban reality (for contact with both nature and
|
||
peers), and intellectual stimulation can be provided by peers and by the
|
||
environment. With automation, anyone can be a dog. Yet it seems like only the
|
||
wealthy are dogs. But dogs don't spend money! What need do they have for
|
||
overabundant wealth?
|
||
God Damn Capitalism.
|
||
|
||
Alright, it's now actually 2022-12-30. I wanted to save my New Year's
|
||
Eve thoughts for New Year's Eve just in case I have something useful to say.
|
||
Unlikely.
|
||
|
||
I'm probably gonna formally give up on Arson Comics (<arson.pisskink.org>)
|
||
because it's hard to follow up on it and I think the writing was somewhat poor
|
||
from the get go. I'll try to write a successor, bit by bit, in this blah.
|
||
|
||
Ted walked through the wasteland of his former workplace as it burned.
|
||
He could smell the sweet benzene in the gasoline that had begun to ignite and
|
||
feel the summer heat, the artificial heat, his artificial heat from his embers.
|
||
Lucid yet still almost in a drunk trance he paced from the stairs to the door
|
||
as his co-workers rushed around him to get out of the burning building. A siren
|
||
called in the distance.
|
||
He recalled himself as he left the office building. Someone - Todd? -
|
||
grabbed him "How could you do this?!"
|
||
Ted only knew what he had just done as a dream or very distant memory.
|
||
"What?" He seemed to, almost as though he was a computer or automaton, reset to
|
||
his known state. "I'm Ted." He smiled a weak, nervous smile. "I love my job."
|
||
|
||
Every once in a while I write program code that I think is truly
|
||
brilliant - difficult to figure out, but once I have, I'm amazed at how well it
|
||
works. Then I realize it doesn't work.
|
||
|
||
hubris (noun) - hyoo͞′brĭs
|
||
1. Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance.
|
||
2. Excessive pride, presumption or arrogance (originally toward the gods).
|
||
3. overbearing pride or presumption
|
||
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
|
||
|
||
I hate it when blogs use Substack because I know it's gonna annoy me
|
||
with a cookie banner or e-mail popup or whatever. Tosu gets my e-mail and only
|
||
Tosu's Substack because she's really cool. If I don't know you you aren't
|
||
getting my e-mail /even though it's public/ because if you're asking you're
|
||
probably going to send me things I don't care about. Medium is much, much
|
||
worse. Just get a website and learn HTML. Right-click this page and hit "view
|
||
source"! It's not pretty but at least it doesn't ask for your e-mail.
|
||
|
||
Discover more from TRINITY'S BLAH
|
||
give me e-mail for e-mail purposes!
|
||
_____________________________________________ ______
|
||
| | |Submit|
|
||
`---------------------------------------------' `------'
|
||
|
||
I'm glad to have such strange friends who would probably give me their
|
||
e-mail if I had an input box on this page, but maybe that's a testament to how
|
||
similarly strange I am. 「ヤバイ」は補足。
|
||
|
||
And now today's the Eve of the New Year. 0319. But I wanted to share
|
||
this cool link here:
|
||
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SSTV_sunset_audio.ogg>
|
||
This is my favorite photo of a sunset.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-29
|
||
|
||
One time when I was a kid I woke up with a shit ton of goo on my chest.
|
||
It was greenish and watery and when I went downstairs and washed it off I
|
||
realized there were three holes etched through my skin to the right of my left
|
||
breast, in the shape of an acute triangle if its corners were placed by a
|
||
drunkard. I went to the hospital and they said something like the dermal
|
||
structure (I could be misremembering this phrase) was gone. I had to, a couple
|
||
times a day for the next week, disinfect it with povidone iodine and then apply
|
||
an antibiotic so it wouldn't get infected. I still have the scar though it's
|
||
blotchy and faded now.
|
||
This must have been June or July 2021. In between the changing of the
|
||
bandage and house-sitting for a friend I wrote something about the serenity of
|
||
being a dog, which I will share if I find, and a paper about the implementation
|
||
of and different implementations of POSIX cat(1) which now lives at
|
||
<be.murderu.us/unix#posix#cat(1)>. At the time I thought both were good
|
||
but now I think neither are. Something to improve I suppose.
|
||
My way of writing was popping a can of Moxie, sitting down with a
|
||
laptop (my Thinkpad X200 Tablet), and laying down exactly what I thought.
|
||
Structure be damned! Little has changed. Occasionally I'd fire up the friend's
|
||
new PS5 and play Astro's Playroom, a delightful technical demonstration of the
|
||
PS5's hardware and showcase of the DualSense controller which was so good I
|
||
ordered one myself that week, even though I didn't have a PlayStation. Sitting
|
||
there, a cold can of pop and a hole in my chest and enjoying the bleeding edge
|
||
of consumer grade video game technology, I wasn't quite happy, but at least I
|
||
was distracted.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-28
|
||
|
||
Get up doggy. Please!
|
||
|
||
Here's a thesis on which I never elaborated, that I wrote for this
|
||
blah.
|
||
|
||
2022-12-18
|
||
|
||
; cat drugs.txt
|
||
"Drugs are bad" is something I say to myself while I sip my morning
|
||
coffee and puff my cigarette, reading the newspaper. Then I go to work and on my
|
||
lunch break flag the dealer down on Main Street for crack and tell him my
|
||
thoughts on the matter, and he laughs and asks how long I'm gonna be making the
|
||
same joke, and oh probably another week or so. Drugs are bad in much the same
|
||
way chemicals are bad, and crystals are bad, and molecules are blasphemous, and
|
||
faith pays as long as you can still give to the church.
|
||
|
||
Another:
|
||
|
||
2022-12-19
|
||
|
||
As part of my campaign for the worsening of the world (I'm not allowed
|
||
to discuss my sponsors) my next trick will be to poke fun at websites. To me
|
||
this "web" is a little service hosted on most websites at port 80 that will
|
||
return reading material if I write a neat request in the format of the HyperText
|
||
Transport Protocol (or HTTP). Fun! Usually, though, I get a program to automate
|
||
this task for me. I like Firefox and Lynx, the latter more than the former
|
||
though I use Fx the most. There have been a number of developments to the web I
|
||
really don't like:
|
||
- Cascading StyleSheets (or CSS).
|
||
I remember when I could go into my browser settings and change the text color,
|
||
font, and size, and the background color. Now when using Fx I'm at the mercy
|
||
of the site designer who usually doesn't share my sensibilities, much less
|
||
sense.
|
||
|
||
Also not completed.
|
||
|
||
I wrote something else that I liked but I don't know where I put it.
|
||
|
||
Looking through computer backups makes me very lonely. I'm currently
|
||
working on getting rid of most of my stuff - I really don't need much and it's
|
||
weighing me down. But the reason I had so much damn stuff was because I was
|
||
planning on spending my life with somebody. It's not so bad to be alone but I
|
||
wish I had planned for it, or that my plans had worked out a little better. So
|
||
it goes...
|
||
|
||
At any given moment there are hundreds of accomplishable plots to end
|
||
the world. Most are horrifying, some are near-completion, some aren't planned
|
||
except in the back of the minds of men, where conscious thought breaks down and
|
||
only the God-daemons are left to staff the console. The following four things
|
||
strike me as things that are actually worrying:
|
||
- TempleOS (reason: [...])
|
||
- blockchains (reason:
|
||
From what little I know about the blockchain -
|
||
which is really not a lot! - I wonder if it could
|
||
become sentient. I wonder if it already is.
|
||
Substitute "the blockchain" for your favorite.)
|
||
|
||
The sudden growth of memes should worry me but it doesn't because when
|
||
I dove into them I found them to be a very effective weapon, and that counter-
|
||
attacks aren't too difficult to launch when needed. The main problems to be
|
||
solved are automation and timing.
|
||
I think the television show "Infowars" was actually just some
|
||
convoluted but successful attempt to inoculate a critical mass of "true
|
||
believers" (someone should come up with a term that isn't stupid) against
|
||
certain ideas. By presenting itself in a way that is just outright silly and
|
||
unbelievable except by the most gullible of its potential viewers, it
|
||
discredits its ideas and those that repeat them. To say that there is veritable
|
||
information warfare, in a way that is very new and very exciting strategically,
|
||
would not be at all controversial unless this silly television show called
|
||
"Infowars" with a kooky host and fake stories existed that discredits the idea.
|
||
To say 5G will be very convenient for law enforcement to find and prosecute or
|
||
persecute criminals or alleged criminals (politics may vary) would be to repeat
|
||
common knowledge if the stuff of "Infowars"' ilk hadn't already presented 5G as
|
||
some heinous conspiracy based not on the potential for geolocation based on
|
||
access point connection triangulation (there's probably a better term for this
|
||
but I don't draft and edit blahposts) but the idea that harmless radio waves
|
||
are some evil wireless mind control plot or whatever.
|
||
On a side note, I was tipped off to the wack part of 5G
|
||
by someone in [...] back when I was loosely associated but
|
||
included in communications. I've seen their claim repeated but
|
||
don't have a citation. Empiracally (is that how you spell that?)
|
||
though, if you need more 5G towers because the signal isn't
|
||
very strong, an accessing device will have to be physically
|
||
closer to a given tower, and so finding it will be easier if
|
||
you know to what towers it's connected. Presumably cell
|
||
providers know this (I don't know a lot about the
|
||
nitty-gritties) and provide it to law enforcement - they do
|
||
know cell location in 4G and prior technologies. But don't
|
||
quote me - look stuff up and double check your damn sources!
|
||
Why would Alex Jones give up his life, basically, just to tell some
|
||
lies on a television show? Probably, though, he's just rage-drunk and
|
||
struggling through withdrawal from slamming his fist on expensive desks.
|
||
|
||
I'm mostly an ideas person. I wish I was more of an implementation
|
||
person but I'm just not skilled enough yet. つづく
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-27
|
||
|
||
20XX refers to the past, not the future, in one fifth of cases. But the
|
||
past was pretty futuristic! Dream big, I need my space.
|
||
|
||
2022-09-13
|
||
|
||
Slipstream
|
||
DTB
|
||
Published here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
|
||
NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License.
|
||
They found Amber as some DNA encased in fossilized tree sap when I was
|
||
twenty years old. A small networked community speculated that society's problems
|
||
were due to our genetic distance from our ancestors.
|
||
This was my twenty-second year, for the third or fourth time. I meet
|
||
my wife Cassidy for the first time for the fourth time next week.
|
||
I go to work. I work at a laboratory, at this time JCN, "where dreams
|
||
are made", before it's taken and turned into the National Defense Center, NDC.
|
||
I can prevent this by submitting a false, smaller figure for our proposal for
|
||
governmental funding – a clerical oversight, no more than an off-by-ten,
|
||
changes an official's perception of how "innovative" JCN can be, influences
|
||
their and eventually their leader's choice. Yang Electric becomes NDC instead;
|
||
another aboriginal creation forced to assimilate.
|
||
Someone asks me how my day is going. My day is fine. How is yours? Not
|
||
so good, Ada. Carl gets a divorce next January and dies six months after that.
|
||
Officially of grief, technically of a gunshot wound.
|
||
I leave. Today I worked on a paper I publish next month on hyper
|
||
-realistic simulation of reality, simulation into which someone could
|
||
(inexpensively) be dropped unaware. Even my first time working on this I was so
|
||
horrified at what I had created I for the first time and uncomfortably faked
|
||
numbers on my paper so nobody would be interested. One could end up perceiving
|
||
decades in seconds; trapped in hell or suffocated in heaven. Immersion is only
|
||
useful to a certain extent.
|
||
I get into my car. 667 River Road. I drive past the animal shelter at
|
||
which I worked as a teenager. Unit 5. I knock on the door.
|
||
Cassidy's uncle answers. He still has hair, I didn't know he still had
|
||
hair now. We're both on the ground in his apartment. I brought a scalpel
|
||
thinking it would be enough but I forgot this is only a couple years after Ron
|
||
got out of the Navy. He calls me a fucking psychopath and I grunt but say
|
||
nothing. JCN still sharpens the scalpels between each use – this changes
|
||
because it's overkill, we only really use them for opening boxes even by now.
|
||
He's on top of me. All I need is one straight cut but I manage to plunge the
|
||
blade into his windpipe. He chokes and coughs blood onto me. It burns like acid.
|
||
I stand up and close the door. He's living alone, working at a warehouse, on the
|
||
top floor so I don't need to worry about unexpected guests.
|
||
I have no prior connection with this corpse. He has dozens of enemies
|
||
including the children of the families he separated in the middle-East. I wipe
|
||
off the doorknob and my face, put my bandanna back into my pocket, and leave. In
|
||
this part of town I'm not worried about anyone describing my car to the police,
|
||
not worried about the surveillance because there isn't any yet, at least to the
|
||
extent with which I'm familiar. I'm back in my car. I'm staring blankly at the
|
||
road. I'm in my driveway. I'm staring blankly at the television. I'm laying in
|
||
bed staring at the ceiling.
|
||
I'm at work. I'm at home. I'm in bed. I work. I go home. I go to bed. I
|
||
meet my wife Cassidy for the first time for the fourth time. Cassidy Malcolm, my
|
||
name is Ada Karina. Last night you played the lottery; you always play the date
|
||
and truncate off the extra digits. You've never told anybody about how your
|
||
childhood hamster ate its babies and you didn't know why. Please have coffee
|
||
with me.
|
||
When I met her for the first time for the second time she eventually
|
||
confessed that she drank coffee, not tea, and that's why she was so hesitant to
|
||
meet me that second first time. She switched to tea later. That hesitation made
|
||
her meet me after she had already taken the job at the wristwatch company.
|
||
She would see her uncle next week and tell him about us if he was still
|
||
alive. I think of this as I order us two of her favorite potion, cold brewed
|
||
coffee with a pinch of cinnamon. She hasn't had this in months, she tells me for
|
||
the fourth time. I apologize for my detachment. I've seen my world crumble again
|
||
and again. I'm too far gone, and I'm sorry, and I have to move on. She's talking
|
||
to me for the first time for the fourth time and the last time and I'm not
|
||
listening. I'm sipping the cold brew and trying to taste the cinnamon, for the
|
||
last time.
|
||
The NDC euthanized Cassidy via baton. I watched from behind a window
|
||
grate in handcuffs as two children in police uniforms beat her until she stopped
|
||
moving, and then until she stopped bleeding and then until they were tired. She
|
||
slowly splintered into pieces, bending at more and more seams rolling back and
|
||
forth on the tile. Her brain chemistry was a single link too far from Amber.
|
||
I go home. I sleep. My day is fine. How is yours? To be honest, Ada,
|
||
things aren't so great at home. I'm sorry to hear that, Carl. What's wrong? My
|
||
wife won't talk to me. I don't know why. She's just slowly gone silent. Maybe
|
||
it's me? Have you talked to those close to her?
|
||
Typing, clicking. I'm staring at a light bulb, hammering phosphors off
|
||
in new familiar patterns.
|
||
They found me when they dragged Cassidy's corpse into the acid bath.
|
||
They shoved me along a steel hallway and took me to a holding cell with a dozen
|
||
other loved of the dead.
|
||
During her second final week on Earth Cassidy was rarely awake and less
|
||
often lucid. When she wasn't as well Cassidy said she felt like she was being
|
||
dissolved. She coughed up blood, lots of it. The doctors asked me if she could
|
||
have been exposed to anything that would cause lung cancer.
|
||
Ron was a loving uncle, caring brother, and courageous veteran who will
|
||
be dearly missed. Service will be held at Lisbon St. Baptist, 8-12, 5pm.
|
||
Cassidy's uncle's obituary was brief to stay within the minimum cost from the
|
||
paper. My third thirty-fifth year, he shot her in the side of her head. I
|
||
tackled him to the ground and beat him until he stopped moving, and then until
|
||
he stopped bleeding, and then until I was tired, when I collapsed next to him.
|
||
The police came for the noise complaint.
|
||
I set up tests for my project. One of the tests checks for whether a
|
||
program that only ever returns a zero value returns a true value, which it
|
||
doesn't. I pretend to not know what's wrong. My day is fine. How's yours? I- I
|
||
don't know, Ada. I'm sorry.
|
||
I entered my password into the locking panel on the door. It still
|
||
worked. I read digests of all active projects in the laboratory and took note
|
||
of one of the room numbers. I loaded both an old program I wrote and a current
|
||
program being developed at NDC onto my wristwatch, opened the door, and ran. The
|
||
other captives ran too, to a different wing of the building in a greater number.
|
||
Cassidy and I found her dog dead in her apartment two weeks afteer we
|
||
met for the first time in my third twenty-second year. Brick was shot with a
|
||
rifle. The police came but didn't find the round and the killer left no other
|
||
trace. I asked the neighbor across the hall and he said he didn't hear Brick
|
||
bark at whomever shot him.
|
||
I go home. I go to sleep. I wake up. I go to work. Dials spinning.
|
||
Buttons clicking. There's an issue with my database access. I call the
|
||
technology information desk. My user was deleted by accident; they adjust my
|
||
permissions so my account can't be deleted as part of an automatic process.
|
||
I ran into a steel room and threw the lab technician out of his chair
|
||
before kicking him in his chin, knocking him out. I entered my old emergency
|
||
authorization code into the computer and watched the cathode in the center of
|
||
the room start to glow a deep blue.
|
||
I publish my paper to no applause as expected. The concept was obviously
|
||
impossible with modern technology but its aspiration was noble.
|
||
I was in my forty-fifth year on the second floor of JCN. My legs shook
|
||
but I managed to walk out and into the outside air, which I didn't think I would
|
||
breathe again. I ran to my apartment and waited until I, in my twenty-second
|
||
year, the first time, was asleep. I set a code and plugged myself into the
|
||
simulation.
|
||
I didn't know how long I'd be stranded away from my time so I went to a
|
||
park to sleep, but on my way I dissolved back into the NDC, in front of a
|
||
glowing cathode. The laboratory technician stared at me. The experiment wasn't
|
||
ready! What have I done?
|
||
I answered and upon its receipt of the password the universe dissolved.
|
||
I watched the technician scream and turn to sand and I woke up in my bed,
|
||
twenty-two years old, two blueprints and a handful of vestiges and some
|
||
asbestos left in the fire-proof wristwatch next to me, unplugged from my
|
||
simulation, my consciousness slipstreamed into the past present day.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-26
|
||
|
||
HELL MONTH; the Devil's date of AUGUST when the sun is ceasing its
|
||
scorch but the torch still lights the logs under one's feet; where there is no
|
||
sleep, no love, no TOBACCO - only PAIN! When, somehow, the torture of preparing
|
||
for another haunt September doesn't end up tearing your bones from your sockets
|
||
but STILL TRIES; when you lose every fight you pick and every punch and kick
|
||
rips into you like a beast in itself; when there is no time, no food, and no
|
||
CAFFEINE; 8月にあれ場所で私は私自身を見つました。
|
||
In August, that place, I found myself. I would like to never see
|
||
myself there again.
|
||
|
||
; ls -l | grep Aug
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 21945 Aug 11 18:23 [...] resignation.odt
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 306687 Aug 18 09:30 RTy2cq5QVR4T2ZLR.mp4
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 1466136576 Aug 30 2021 The Rocky Horror Pictu...
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 35717 Aug 2 15:00 identification.jpg
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 35 Aug 29 22:04 irc
|
||
drwxr-xr-x 8 trinity users 512 Aug 23 19:40 plpbt-5.0.15
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 2767349 Aug 23 19:40 plpbt-5.0.15.zip
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 0 Aug 31 09:34 site.tar.gz
|
||
-rw-r--r-- 1 trinity users 36152 Aug 7 20:59 slipstream.pdf
|
||
; cd Pictures
|
||
; ls | grep Aug
|
||
;
|
||
|
||
2022-08-06
|
||
[9:12 PM] trinity: finished the first draft of my short story
|
||
[9:12 PM] trinity: 2.5 pages
|
||
[9:13 PM] trinity: it's kind of dense
|
||
[9:13 PM] trinity: [...]'s been reading it for ten minutes
|
||
[9:13 PM] trinity: can't tell if that's good or bad
|
||
|
||
2022-08-12
|
||
To: [...]; and whomever else this may concern
|
||
From: Trinity Blake
|
||
Date: 2022-08-12
|
||
Subject: Two week resignation notice from position as [...]
|
||
|
||
[...] -
|
||
Please accept this as my formal resignation from my position[...].
|
||
2022 August 26 will be my last day of work. I will be moving away from [...]
|
||
and it will be infeasible for me to travel to [...] to work whether by foot or
|
||
by automobile.
|
||
I am grateful for my generous and much appreciated recent raise in pay
|
||
per hour from $14 to $15 [...]. My decision is not affected by money and
|
||
unfortunately was already in planning when I received that raise. I am also
|
||
grateful for your support and training. I learned many things during my time
|
||
here and will treasure most the ability to [...] and the development of my
|
||
ability to multitask [...]. My further career will not be in [...] but I look
|
||
forward to applying these lessons elsewhere.
|
||
I will be leaving [...] to [...]. I would prefer to be able to tell
|
||
[...] about my resignation myself but I do understand word travels fast. Again,
|
||
thank you for this opportunity and experience.
|
||
|
||
Trinity BLAKE
|
||
2022-08-12
|
||
|
||
2022-08-24
|
||
[7:44 AM] trinity: had a dream we were [...] instead of [...]
|
||
[7:44 AM] trinity: [...] was a [...] and some other people
|
||
[7:45 AM] trinity: everything else was the same. you were monologging about how
|
||
[...] had changed. it was [...]
|
||
[7:46 AM] trinity: i went [...] and [...] went by me and said hey guys north
|
||
korea wants to know if we can put dog on pizza?
|
||
|
||
2022-08-25
|
||
[9:05 PM] trinity: i've developed skills i never want to use again
|
||
[...]
|
||
[9:15 PM] trinity: i feel like if i try to describe my mental state it's
|
||
extremely alarming so i'm just gonna say i'm [...]maxed and
|
||
[...]pilled and i need to go back to [...] immediately
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-23
|
||
|
||
TRINITY STARTER PACK
|
||
>fucking hates her job
|
||
>UNIX
|
||
>hates computers; knows more about computers than anything else
|
||
>"oh, no, i could never use android or ios"
|
||
>分かりますか?
|
||
>no social media; no social life
|
||
>constantly quotes obscure internet memes; hates memes
|
||
>allergic to brands and advertising
|
||
>manic pixie dream girl; not manic, never dreams
|
||
>will tell you why she doesn't like rust
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-22
|
||
|
||
6 2s. Nice.
|
||
I'm gonna start taking the logos off everything I use. My room is
|
||
contaminated by Toshiba, Carhart, Dove, Anker, Pine64, Ziploc, iFixit, et
|
||
cetera. It's overwhelming and exhausting. Good pants are good pants, no matter
|
||
the maker. My backpack is just A Backpack. Brand loyalty is neopatriotism.
|
||
This morning while getting ready for work I dropped my backpack which
|
||
contained an uncovered Gilette cartridge razor, which shaved off my fingertip.
|
||
Ouch. I suddenly was bleeding without knowing why so I duct taped some cotton
|
||
on it (I'm out of gauze because I'm accident prone and simultaneously
|
||
forgetful) and finished getting ready, then when I got to work put on five
|
||
sticky bandages (off-brand Band-Aids) and taped them on for good measure. When
|
||
in Rome. I told my co-workers I slipped in the shower which made more sense
|
||
than my dumb ass having an uncovered razor in my backpack. Get a holder, get a
|
||
protector, whatever, don't do what I did.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-12-20
|
||
|
||
I started studying Japanese again because WSJ and others from /g/bpg/
|
||
are doing it. Went though ~300 JLPT N5 Anki cards today to refresh the stuff I
|
||
hadn't touched in a while.
|
||
I caved and have started (ab)using caffeine again as of last Saturday
|
||
(today is Tuesday. Do the math). Sigh...
|
||
|
||
Here's a blog post I wrote for tebibyte.media/blog:
|
||
2022-12-15
|
||
|
||
+++
|
||
title = "i hate smart phone"
|
||
date = "2022-12-15"
|
||
description = "some thoughts regarding the twenty first century"
|
||
license = "[UNLICENSE](https://unlicense.org/)"
|
||
|
||
[taxonomies]
|
||
author = ["DTB"]
|
||
tags = ["opinion", "philosophy"]
|
||
+++
|
||
|
||
I hate smart phones with a burning passion that has caused my weak
|
||
willed hands to give up three to various bodies of water including a puddle
|
||
outside a mechanic's and a pond to which I walked through the forest. I don't
|
||
regret my actions except that I haven't killed more digital beasts.
|
||
My own current phone (until it too meets the fate of its brethren) is a
|
||
PINE64 PinePhone running postmarketOS, a Linux distribution intended to keep
|
||
good-enough smart phones running well past the expiration date on the box (or
|
||
on the manufacturer's website). Technically, though I bet most people don't
|
||
care, it's a security hazard to have an out-of-date smart phone; your banking,
|
||
personal, medical information is on there and it doesn't take too long to get
|
||
it out. Look at NSO Group and other wretched sub-scum that have evolved out of
|
||
leech law enforcement's taxpayer-funded searches of people's smart devices,
|
||
that made money because their product was good, because they could take the
|
||
data out of your cell phone like the mind flayer sucks at your brain, like Coca
|
||
Cola through a straw. Who even needs a crime scene indexed when you've Googled
|
||
"How do I kill my rapist?", when GPS and cell tower logs show you were the only
|
||
one at the scene of the crime, and when your slow descent into hell is
|
||
chronicled in your Camera Roll, and when Samsung stopped updating your phone a
|
||
year ago so all the police need to do is plug the black mirror into their
|
||
stylish plastic suitcase? The journalist documenting the dictatorship is
|
||
booking an airplane trip into a death trap if they forgot to make sure the
|
||
little version number in a menu in a menu in an app in the bottom right corner
|
||
of their home screen is high enough. I'm happy with postmarketOS's very regular
|
||
updates which are for now preventing my pocket gizmo's eternal submersion.
|
||
Why the hell are we keeping all our shit on a piece of glass? I
|
||
wouldn't trust my best friend with my nudes, why am I dumping them into a
|
||
device someone else made that I don't understand? What happened to paper? What
|
||
happened to Polaroids, to CDs, to e-mail and hard copies and for the love of
|
||
Allah what happened to cash? The PinePhone is slightly better for this. I can
|
||
call a dude that works on my phone's operating system ("Who are you? How did
|
||
you get this number?") and ask any questions I want ("It's 3:00 AM. I'm turning
|
||
my phone off.") or post in a forum and usually get an answer about what's safe
|
||
and what features will turn me into a gecko (usually Find My, sometimes
|
||
Auto Rotate). I don't even know how normal people deal with bugs in the system
|
||
or ghosts in the machine. I asked a friend. "Usually I just ask you." When you
|
||
run the "normal" phone operating systems, Android or iOS, you can't run your
|
||
own apps, which doesn't matter if all you do is TikTok and Instagram but I like
|
||
to solve my own problems which I'm forbidden to do unless I spend $2000 on a
|
||
MacBook and $100 on an Xcode license. That's iOS. Android development is free
|
||
but so godawfully slow and painful that I would probably rather be waterboarded
|
||
by someone in a clown costume, and even though you can run your own apps on
|
||
there you still can't take control of your phone by becoming system
|
||
administrator like on a normal Linux or Windows installation. You have to
|
||
"jailbreak" (iOS) or "root" (Android) your phone to have full control over it.
|
||
Why am I paying for a jail? Why am I storing all my stuff in a prison? Again,
|
||
postmarketOS is yours to control from the outset, not hiding any functionality
|
||
behind a subscription or preventing you from using your device however you want
|
||
(for better or for worse). postmarketOS supports full disk encryption with
|
||
Linux Unified Key Setup, the cutting edge of the file security field. It's very
|
||
nice.
|
||
But phones still suck, even my PinePhone, which is the best one I've
|
||
found. "There's an app for that" but it isn't available for my phone and no I
|
||
cannot fucking download your app, Dunkin' Donuts, to get that free coffee every
|
||
Thursday or whatever. God forbid I have to take money out of my savings account
|
||
like I do every once in a while because my shit job has miserable pay. I can
|
||
either use the app my bank publishes (only for Android and iOS, of course) or
|
||
go to an ATM, pay for the privilege, and hope I only have to use it two more
|
||
times that day because my bank limits ATM transactions because they were
|
||
targeted by hackers probably because their phones weren't updated. At this
|
||
point I just keep cash with me which is great except for the places that don't
|
||
take cash and instead take poker chips, ahem, numbers on a piece of plastic.
|
||
In this day and age having no social media means having no friends, which I
|
||
honestly do enjoy after the lengthy withdrawal because it's serene not having
|
||
to check everyone's Instagram story (else miss out on the Next New Thing) or
|
||
Facebook wall (else miss out on the Next New Gathering) or what have you. It is
|
||
for me worth having nothing to miss in exchange for never having that gnawing
|
||
fear of missing. I still have my phone number and on paper I have plenty of
|
||
friends in person who never call, never e-mail, never stop by, because they've
|
||
forgotten what life is like outside the app. Which I can live with, which is
|
||
unreasonable for any non-crazy person. But forgoing this rotten post-Capitalist
|
||
world of ad-soaked shitware takes a financial toll. How do you live on minimum
|
||
wage? Discounts. Download the Dunkin' Donuts app. Download the Starbucks app.
|
||
Even a god damn Home Depot app. I'm a Luddite for rejecting the last ten years
|
||
of technology? They say not having Android or iOS is self-torture but even
|
||
spending a little more of the little I have and taking a little more time of my
|
||
little left to engage with the analog pleasures of the world is in my mind much
|
||
more tolerable than the endless thoughtless suffering of the digital era and
|
||
casino-floor news cattle feed and disintegration of person from world. So I
|
||
suppose if I'm broke, I'm broke by choice, but it's a choice I never felt
|
||
comfortable making.
|
||
Better the screen in the puddle than my head under the water. Reason
|
||
died with the atom bomb.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-11-29
|
||
|
||
I think around the time of the last blah post I quit caffeine. I abused
|
||
the hell out of caffeine, I think more than all except a couple businessmen who
|
||
turned to the vegan alternative to cocaine, so let that be a cautionary tale -
|
||
four or five Monsters a day was my intake, or around 0.5g caffeine spread
|
||
across the day, intermittently over
|
||
|
||
- holy shit, kingpossum radio is playing Ghost by nelward. kingpossum radio
|
||
KICKS ASS!!!!
|
||
|
||
five or seven years or so, and i'm gonna be recovering from that for a little
|
||
while. My memory's really, really bad currently.
|
||
Anyway I figured I'd do a little day in the life of Trinity tale. This
|
||
one's just describing a typical day but most of my days are weird and have some
|
||
complication that I have to deal with.
|
||
|
||
0750 casio f91w goes off. i hit it. i'm sleeping on the floor in a sleeping
|
||
bag with a pillow. i take my medication and spend an hour or two
|
||
reading random internet and web journals
|
||
1000 i go to work
|
||
1100 i get to work
|
||
1630 i have my break. i spend it reading random internet and web journals,
|
||
or maybe soldering together something that has broken
|
||
1700 back to work
|
||
1900 i'm out of work. i spend an hour or two there reading random internet
|
||
and web journals, or maybe soldering, or maybe programming or writing
|
||
2100 i walk home. maybe on the way i meet some nice people. hopefully pet
|
||
their doggies if they have doggies
|
||
2200 i get home probably. i write some stuff
|
||
2300 i go to sleep (hopefully)
|
||
0100 i go to sleep (probably)
|
||
|
||
I got my Pinephone back up and running the day after the last blah post
|
||
so I do have a phone again. It's kind of janky though.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-11-12
|
||
|
||
I don't remember anything from the last week or so including that last
|
||
blahpast so let's start from this morning which I do remember. I remember
|
||
waking up to my alarm's fourth or fifth ringing after having hit Snooze three
|
||
or four times, I remember going to the bathroom, I remember washing my hands,
|
||
and then I remember looking over and seeing the toilet backed up and all of
|
||
the drain's contents spewing out over the lid.
|
||
After calling my boss and informing them I would be late to work (Hey,
|
||
Boss, I'm gonna be late to work today, the toilet's fucken backed up or
|
||
something. Hi Trinity this is the second time you've called us instead of your
|
||
new job.) I cleaned it all up and did the laundry with my piss clothes and the
|
||
piss towels that had soaked up the piss. Then, upon changing it from the washer
|
||
to the dryer, I found my phone.
|
||
So I have no phone now. Life's a bitch.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-11-05
|
||
|
||
You can walk into walk-in freezers and just scream at the top of your
|
||
lungs and nobody can hear you. It's common practice.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-11-01
|
||
|
||
Georgio handed me a stack of Benjamins. "Count them."
|
||
I did. Five thousand yuu-ess-dee.
|
||
"We'll never speak of this again." And so we didn't. I walked over to
|
||
the gas station and bought a Twinkie for zero point one per cent (five yuu-ess
|
||
-dee) of one man's life, and then hailed a cab for which I payed zero point two
|
||
per cent (ten dollars) of one man's life, or you could say one man's life is
|
||
worth five hundred taxi rides, or a thousand Twinkies, or you could say Harry
|
||
died so I could eat a Twinkie and ride this taxi and smoke this cigarette and
|
||
do this all without the cloud of debt hanging over me, clawing at my shoulders,
|
||
digging at my thoughts, eating at my brain.
|
||
When I got to my apartment, or room, I should say, it being one
|
||
singular room with some cubicle dividers up for the toilet in the corner, that
|
||
houses myself, my wife, and our two kids, products of a poor education and even
|
||
poorer knowledge of birth control, and teenagers who didn't know what they were
|
||
doing in the back of a car one night, and my Twinkie wrapper, which I threw
|
||
away, but which my wife still saw, my wife hit me with an open palm, swore at
|
||
me, told me how could I, kill an innocent man for a Twinkie and a cigarette,
|
||
forgetting the car ride and our childrens' full bellies.
|
||
I've forgotten the meaning of life, or, a life, besides a number, five
|
||
thousand yuu-ess-dee, 5000USD, a box on a spreadsheet on my bank record next to
|
||
a box marked "Inheritance". A life is, to my wife, worth a lifetime, of
|
||
memories of Christmases and New Years and Thanksgivings and birthdays, of kind
|
||
words and kind gifts and long hours at the mill, worth more than any finite,
|
||
tangible amount of money, somehow, forgetting the car ride and our childrens'
|
||
full bellies.
|
||
|
||
I wonder if I'll remember the pattern the tiles make on the floor of
|
||
the bathroom at my workplace. Distinct yet unimportant.
|
||
|
||
I went to a clinic today and got free Narcan, which is pretty swag, but
|
||
I don't know how to administer it, so that's not pretty swag. But they're
|
||
sending me instructions so that'll be groovy as fuck.
|
||
|
||
I'm developing a fairly sharp wit which is pretty cool because my
|
||
comeback game is as the kids say lit AF; literally and financially [awesome].
|
||
|
||
One of the Monster Cereals makes your poop blue, but I don't know
|
||
which. Maybe all of them?
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-31
|
||
|
||
I've decided today I'm gonna try all of the currently available Monster
|
||
Cereals from General Mills, Count Chocula, Franken Berry, and Boo Berry, in a
|
||
single day, this Halloween. I couldn't find Fruit Brute even though it was
|
||
supposedly re-launched this year and according to Wikipedia Fruity Mummy Yummy
|
||
hasn't been available since 2014, so that's something for 2024 I suppose.
|
||
Franken Berry, my breakfast today, was alright. It's fruity
|
||
marshmallows with fruity grain cereal, sort of like a fruity version of Lucky
|
||
Charms. I had it with skim milk which I prefer to the previous time I had it
|
||
when I had it dry. I would prefer Cap'n Crunch, my favorite uber-sugary cereal,
|
||
or Wheaties, my favorite breakfast cereal in general, but it was fine and if I
|
||
were 8 years old I'd definitely enjoy it as much as any other breakfast cereal.
|
||
It's worth noting that prior to my 2200-hour bowl of Cinnamon Toast
|
||
Crunch a month or so ago I hadn't had breakfast cereal with or without milk
|
||
since around 2019, so my tastes have been reset towards ramen and pizza (I'm
|
||
not a particularly wealthy individual). I did consume probably a couple
|
||
freighters' worth of breakfast cereal when I was a lass, particularly the
|
||
supermarket's version of Coco Pebbles (Coco Dino Bites, I think?) which left
|
||
the milk a thick chocolaty mess when finished the solid bits which gave 14 year
|
||
old Trinity the sugar she needed to not fall asleep in math class, but as I got
|
||
older I stopped having breakfast because I didn't need it, I needed to lose
|
||
weight, and it saved me some money I could instead spend on cocaine and
|
||
hookers.
|
||
|
||
I have now had the Count Chocula for lunch. My stomach has begun to
|
||
ache. The milk was rendered into chocolate by the time I was done with my two
|
||
bowls, which was sick as fuck and quite enjoyable, but the milk is pummelling
|
||
my pitiful soygirl stomach which cannot handle this monster lactose. I fear I
|
||
shall die. This goal of mine, my dragon, will be slain, and Halloween 2022 and
|
||
its great street cred will be in mine hands.
|
||
In other news, I went to the bank to get some cash, and I think the
|
||
teller thought I was a crazy person (to be fair, I am, but usually I pass as
|
||
sane pretty well) because I don't know how banks work and I just wanted 200USD
|
||
cash.
|
||
|
||
Today I learned BBL = brazilian butt lift.
|
||
|
||
I hasten to finish this blah post, to commit before November arrives.
|
||
My goal of consuming all three available General Mills Monster Cereals was a
|
||
success, though at what cost time will tell. My veins are glucose, my lungs
|
||
take and give a bitter sweet sugary air. Possibly tomorrow I'll have developed
|
||
type II diabetes, if not the simple affliction of death due to ketoacidosis. A
|
||
fate dealt by a worthy opponent - breakfast cereal.
|
||
Boo Berry was pretty good, I think the best.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-30
|
||
|
||
THIS SICKLY SWEET CANDY
|
||
MAY ROT YOUR TEETH!
|
||
THE MORE YOU CONSUME,
|
||
THE LESS YOU'LL EVER EAT!
|
||
GUESS HOW MANY KERNELS
|
||
CAN FIT IN THIS CONTAINER,
|
||
AND TAKE IT ALL HOME.
|
||
EAT IT ALL LATER!
|
||
|
||
^
|
||
`- A candy corn guessing game slogan I wrote.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-29
|
||
|
||
Halloween season begins! I was gonna sneak into some college parties
|
||
but instead I stayed home to be comfy in bed because I'm 2tired2party. And you
|
||
know what? Damn right. Word.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-28
|
||
|
||
I'm cold !!!
|
||
|
||
I wanna be w a r m !!!
|
||
|
||
how crackheads be bloggn oh what up CHECK THIS OUT NFT PROJECT ELON
|
||
MUSK FUCK YEAH!!! REDDIT.COM 4CHAN SOYJACK GREENTEXT COPE SEETHE BASED CRINGE
|
||
|
||
###############################
|
||
# # # # # #|libwawy|# # # # # #
|
||
# # # # # |of alek| # # # # #
|
||
# # # # # |zandwia| # # # # #
|
||
# # # # # |pwease | # # # # #
|
||
# # # # # | dont | # # # # #
|
||
# # # # # #| buwn |# # # # # #
|
||
###############################
|
||
|
||
I am 97.7F but idk what that is in normal is that cold?????????????????
|
||
|
||
ewon musk owns twittew uwu teswa caw man vwoom vwoom tweet tweet
|
||
|
||
thwee six nine
|
||
damn she fine
|
||
hopin' shew sock it to me one mow time
|
||
get low, get low, get low, get low
|
||
FWOM THE WINDOWWW
|
||
TO THE WAWW (to the waww)
|
||
TIW THE SWEAT WUNS OFF MY BAWWS
|
||
TIW AWW THESE BITCHES CWAWW
|
||
TIW AWW SKEET SKEET MOTHEWFUCKEW
|
||
TIW AWW SKEET SKEET GODDAMN
|
||
TIW AWW SKEET SKEET MOTHEWFUCKEW
|
||
TIW AWW SKEET SKEET GODDAMN
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-27
|
||
|
||
psychological pay decline
|
||
|
||
8:00 snooze 8:15 snooze 8:30 snooze 8:45 snooze 9:00 snooze 9:15 time
|
||
to wake up. I got dressed, took a shower, and walked to work. A much simpler
|
||
time.
|
||
"Seven hundred dollars. That's how much it cost for a tank of oil." The
|
||
taxi driver today was talking about the economy, I think. "It's gonna be a hard
|
||
winter." The lights dance on the dashboard in the still night and the wind
|
||
whistles in the window and I spend most of my time in the cab mentally
|
||
rehearsing my interaction with the chemist at the pharmacy. "I'd like to pick
|
||
up a prescription." "I'd like to pick up a prescription." Really nail down that
|
||
line.
|
||
Yesterday I got a partial fill which got me through this morning. Every
|
||
time I go to the pharmacy there's some sort of catch, some sort of issue that
|
||
means I have to call someone and sort something out. This one was particularly
|
||
bad in that the prescription was actually nixed because of the insurance and I
|
||
had to get a new one, and they sent it to the wrong place. All this for two
|
||
weeks' worth of a substance that isn't scheduled, doesn't really have any ab
|
||
-usage, and is fairly common. It's such a hassle.
|
||
I got some energy drinks and energy bars at the supermarket and had a
|
||
dinner in a lawn outside before walking home. Now I get to go to sleep and do
|
||
it all over again.
|
||
|
||
2022-09-30
|
||
|
||
[notes from the voice recorder]
|
||
|
||
[20:53] Cap'n lo-. Cap'n- cap- cap- cap'n's log. Cap'n's log? Cap [sigh]
|
||
cap'n's log. Mmm. Whatever. Trinity's log. Uh, heh, like, log, like [redacted]
|
||
um Trinity's notes okay Trinity's notes um, what day is it today? September
|
||
*pause* twenty, 2022 September 30. Um, [sigh], been moshing and other things
|
||
this month. Don't really remember much of it.
|
||
[20:54] But whatever it was, it was vibey. It was pretty vibey. Um,
|
||
[redacted], that's pretty cool, um, I was gonna, I was gonna do a cool song
|
||
idea [here], it- it would be cool for a rap, like, a triplet style rap, like,
|
||
okay, like, picture this, like, like, fuckin and suckin and fuckin and suckin
|
||
and fuckin and suckin and suck. Suck. Suckin and fuckin and fuckin and suckin
|
||
and suckin and fuckin and fuck. Fuck. Something like that? I don't know. I
|
||
don't know if that's already been done before, but that's a thought.
|
||
[20:55] Um, I don't know for whom I should vote. It's end of September,
|
||
we're getting into October, election happens November. Um, I know not Paul
|
||
LePage because Paul LePage is a rat bastard, we kicked him out and he's come
|
||
back for more, um, [sigh], I don't know, I don't know who all these goddamn
|
||
representatives are, like, uh, Jared Golden, thought he was pretty cool,
|
||
apparently he's done some bad stuff. Eric Brakey is a silly, silly man, but I
|
||
love the silliness but he might actually do something stupid, like, he's
|
||
normally very stupid, but he might do something fucking idiotic
|
||
[20:56] like they're trying to get rid of gay marriage or something?
|
||
Um, abortion, yeah. Dog! Dog! Doooooog! Why don't people do what they wanna do.
|
||
Like, shit's a bundle of cells. Who gives a shit. That's my opinion on the
|
||
matter. Um, [sigh], I've been listening to various metal, non-metal music. I've
|
||
gotta get my laptop set up to draw again, but my digitizer is broken because I
|
||
dropped my laptop so I need to get a new screen, I think uh, I think an eBay
|
||
auction I'm in I'm gonna win, so, that'll get me another screen and I can just
|
||
drop it in. Um, that's good.
|
||
[20:57] Uh, let's see what else, I don't know, that's pretty much how
|
||
things are going right now. This is a cool voice journal entry. Not much to it.
|
||
Um, it's late right now, it's like nine, eight or nine P.M., yeah, 2100 hours.
|
||
Almost onto that. Oh, ambulance. I thought ambulances used their sirens at
|
||
night. Well apparently they don't, they just put their flashers on, I always
|
||
wondered about that. I don't think I've ever seen an ambulance at night before.
|
||
No, I have, um.
|
||
[20:58] [redacted] heh, like the Kate Bush song. Um, I don't really
|
||
know why Kate Bush is popular again, but uh, it's pretty cool. Kate Bush is
|
||
really cool.
|
||
[20:59] Um, let's see. [sniff] I should - I should give my thoughts on
|
||
various things. Um, smoking is cool, but, like, I'm trying not to smoke because
|
||
it always makes me break out. I get, like, a shit ton of acne, whenever I smoke
|
||
a cigarette. Um, but, it is nice, it's something to do. I don't know, I think
|
||
all those people who are like "oh no, don't smoke cigarettes, they're, they're
|
||
incredibly dangerous, they're gonna kill us all", like, dawg, you can have one
|
||
or two cigarettes, and you'll survive. Um, I had like one cigarette, and I was
|
||
like yeah, this is pretty cool, but it's - it's a really expensive hobby.
|
||
[21:00] [redacted] but uh, marijuana sounds interesting. Alcohol,
|
||
boring, only losers drink, I lose respect for people pretty fast when they
|
||
start drinking, like dude, chill out, like, alcohol is just kinda a turn-off in
|
||
general. [horns blaring] What's something heavier? Oh damn.
|
||
[21:01] Um, methamphetamine, um, I dunno, seems pretty cool, I watched
|
||
the entirety of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which recently ended, um,
|
||
and judging by that I would say meth seems like something that someone could
|
||
do, and it would probably mess them up a little bit, but I dunno, um, [sigh], I
|
||
dunno, I don't really judge people who go for hard stuff, like, you know, if
|
||
you wanna try- if you wanna try something, if you wanna party, it's cool. It's
|
||
good to wanna try new things. [sigh] [redacted]
|
||
|
||
Alright I'm done transcribing this shit.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-26
|
||
|
||
my illogical day off-line
|
||
|
||
6:45 snooze 6:50 snooze 7:00 snooze 7:15 time to wake up. I got
|
||
dressed, grabbed some goodies for my co-workers (I'm giving most of my stuff
|
||
away - downsizing drastically), and walked over to the supermarket at which is
|
||
the pharmacy where I get my prescription, which took about forty minutes.
|
||
My prescription had expired and my new prescription wasn't in the
|
||
system yet. I took a cab over to work (I would have walked but I'd just spent
|
||
about an hour determining I had wasted said hour, so in the interest of my time
|
||
I decided to shorten the following journey) and napped until my shift.
|
||
When I got out of work (1900) I went to the bathroom (seven minutes;
|
||
1907), called a cab (twenty minute wait; 1927), got over to the pharmacy again
|
||
(fifteen minute journey; 1947), and got my prescription, by which time it was
|
||
seven fifty-five P.M. Thus it took two hours. Why am I busy all the time?
|
||
I can't even blame my low pay on the person that runs my workplace, who
|
||
can barely afford to stay in their living quarters. But it's disheartening that
|
||
I work eight hours a day, five days a week, and there's no way in hell I can
|
||
afford a house of any size and very little chance I'll ever be able to own my
|
||
own home.
|
||
If you agree with me and still like Capitalism you are making my
|
||
situation worse and I hope you eat flaming death. Capitalists belive obviously
|
||
the current situation is bad; let's make it worse.
|
||
I'm too poor for rational thought. In the cab over to the pharmacy
|
||
someone else getting a ride pissed in the front seat. Pissed themself, right
|
||
there in the cab. They left and the driver put a t-shirt on the seat.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-25
|
||
|
||
i am logical, if not for time
|
||
|
||
In C conditional logic is usually expressed in if statements. The very
|
||
narrow textbook example of this is thus:
|
||
|
||
if (condition) {
|
||
do_something();
|
||
} else {
|
||
do_another_thing();
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
I don't like this. There are a couple of supposed truths within this
|
||
example that are false:
|
||
- brackets are necessary for the if statement body (they aren't)
|
||
- ifs are the only way to perform conditional logic in C (they aren't)
|
||
this may not be stated outright in the example, but it's implicit in
|
||
that it's the only way textbooks will show much logic
|
||
|
||
This "blah" doesn't exist to express solid facts, just my loose and
|
||
flimsy opinions and experiences.
|
||
|
||
Here are four ways to do something in C that are each functionally
|
||
identical to each other:
|
||
|
||
bool aisfive(bool c, int *a) {
|
||
if (c == 1) {
|
||
*a = 5;
|
||
} else {
|
||
*a = 6;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
return a;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
bool aisfive(bool c, int *a) {
|
||
if(c)
|
||
*a = 5;
|
||
else
|
||
*a = 6;
|
||
|
||
return a;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
bool aisfive(bool c, int *a) {
|
||
*a = c ? 5 : 6;
|
||
|
||
return a;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
bool aisfive(bool c, int *a) {
|
||
*a = 5 + !c;
|
||
|
||
return a;
|
||
}
|
||
|
||
I prefer the bottom-most example but the difference won't matter to a
|
||
good compiler. To me, algebraic expression is just as good as if-else
|
||
expression. But I'm an Internet crank that's still programming in C.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-24
|
||
|
||
i will twerk now, get in the conga line
|
||
|
||
This keyboard is very broken. I have a Thinkpad X200 Tablet with a
|
||
Japanese keyboard because I'm still not used to the ANSI layout of most
|
||
American keyboards and it's missing three keys now; 'n', 'j', and ']'. All of
|
||
which I am now very good at hitting dead center to get the contact. This
|
||
keyboard put in very good service; all of the keys are worn and shiny now and
|
||
many have weird issues sometimes where they won't quite type so I have to wack
|
||
them in order to get them to work again like I'm Chris Brown getting my wife to
|
||
listen to me. Fuck Chris Brown! Fuck me! I don't wanna replace it but I guess
|
||
I'm gonna live the ANSI dream for a little while.
|
||
I've been redesigning this home page. I want the same information but
|
||
in a more compact format. We'll see how it goes.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-10-22
|
||
|
||
i will work now. not in the thirty first's time
|
||
|
||
I AM NOT WORKING ON HALLOWEEN. THEY CANNOT MAKE ME. LAST TIME I WORKED
|
||
ON HALLOWEEN I WORKED THIRTEEN HOURS STRAIGHT AT $13/HR AND THERE WERE TWO
|
||
FIRES AND I HAD TO SLEEP ON THE FLOOR AND THE SHOWER ONLY HAD COLD WATER AND I
|
||
DIDN'T HAVE A COSTUME AND MY AT THE TIME ARCH ENEMY TRACKED ME DOWN AND TRIED
|
||
TO HIT ME WITH THEIR CAR AS I WAS LEAVING WORK.
|
||
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER AGAIN
|
||
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
|
||
...EVER.
|
||
|
||
ok im calm now
|
||
|
||
JUST KIDDING I WILL NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN
|
||
NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER
|
||
|
||
i could have frozen to death on my walk home i could have gotten hit by that
|
||
car i could have caught fire or been burned or electrocuted or inhaled too much
|
||
lead vapor or drank the tap water or seen the sun or worn the wrong shoes or
|
||
|
||
AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN
|
||
NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER
|
||
|
||
again saw the evil BAT MAN who stalks our city in the night and swoops down and
|
||
|
||
NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER
|
||
AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN NEVER AGAIN
|
||
|
||
alright im tired i go sleep now.
|
||
|
||
Just to be clear, I'm NOT working Halloween.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-09-15
|
||
|
||
a friend meows. nuns think the key is divine
|
||
|
||
Blah blah blah.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-09-09
|
||
|
||
End cows; unthink the fleet of bovine
|
||
|
||
Yesterday was a good day because the Queen of England died. I had
|
||
nothing to do with it. I also saw My Chemical Romance in concert which was
|
||
cool and harrassed the Jehovan Witnesses who were slinging bible pamphlets on
|
||
the street. Bore dealers. I have a hard time tolerating Jesus people,
|
||
especially when they take that stuff out in public or force it on children.
|
||
This joke is going to prevent me from becoming Governor or something in 20
|
||
years. I be Governin dat ass biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch.
|
||
css/ is broken. I don't know why. Don't bug me about it. I'll fix it
|
||
when Firefox stops crashing. I do everything in Lynx nowadays.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-08-31
|
||
|
||
And now, something completely different
|
||
|
||
I have done much between today and last time I wrote a blah post (blah,
|
||
blah blah) but I don't care to talk about any of it so I'm gonna talk instead
|
||
about something else I did between today and last time I wrote a blah post
|
||
(blah blah, blah) which is migrate trinity.moe away from GitHub Pages
|
||
(Neocities made by Capitalists) to Sourcehut Pages (catchphrase: "Don't be
|
||
evil, yet"). GitHub has been taken prisoner by Microsoft (Uber for software
|
||
vulnerabilities) and is now siphoning off user data to feed the ravenous
|
||
monster that is GitHub CoPilot (Uber for copyright violations). In the
|
||
meanwhile I am compulsively making parenthetical statements (I am being held at
|
||
gunpoint).
|
||
GitHub's interface is somewhere between Facebook and Microsoft Windows
|
||
1998 in that it's entirely useable but if you try to do what you actually want
|
||
to do it'll fight you the whole way. This is totally awesome if you're a
|
||
masochist but meant I had to verify with a phone number out in the middle of
|
||
nowhere where there's barely any cell service in order to delete my migrated
|
||
repositories ergo I had to stand in the middle of a field waving my cell phone
|
||
around like a crazed millenial who needs to capture this memory in order to
|
||
shove it into the eyes of whoever made the mistake of following them on
|
||
Instagram. In the meanwhile I am also compulsively making run-on sentences (and
|
||
parenthetical statements). I remember back when "two factor authentication" was
|
||
your username (different on every platform; depends on mood at registration)
|
||
and your password (the same everywhere, usually "lolcatz420"). Now usually the
|
||
username and password are the same on everything which makes breaking into my
|
||
friends' Instagram accounts to delete the pictures with myself in them a lot
|
||
easier but you need to verify this all with cell phones which makes me very
|
||
frustrated when I'm in the middle of a field stealing Circle K's WiFi. Not to
|
||
mention I have to type in the whole repository name (try typing
|
||
`devenblake/my_awesome_homepage` in direct sunlight on the first try without
|
||
making a mistake) in order to say yes, truly, I want to delete this thing,
|
||
like it thinks I'm some sad drunkard who's about to eat a bullet because I bet
|
||
my life savings on a failed axe throwing tournament (no, actually I'm just
|
||
making parenthetical statements).
|
||
SourceHut's interface in comparison is much more spartan. I prefer it
|
||
because it makes it harder for people to find my stuff (I hate it when people
|
||
find my stuff) but people trying to find my stuff say they don't like it.
|
||
However the build system is awesome. I can just put `.build.yml` in my git
|
||
repository and it runs whatever commands I want before gzipping the site and
|
||
deploying it to SourceHut Pages. With this newfound "standard practice for web
|
||
hosting" I'm slowly rewriting all the pages on this site in m4 to try to ease
|
||
up on repeated code. So far the m4 generation is pretty good and looks
|
||
identical to when I hand-typed everything (my index.html was 15KB and I wrote
|
||
every byte!). I've toyed around with site generation before but on GitHub I
|
||
couldn't have any sort of build process except on my own machine (manually) and
|
||
I vomit whenever I'm forced to run JavaScript to load a page. I've
|
||
defenestrated (my Latin teacher taught me that word) four computers so far and
|
||
unfortunately this latest trend of shitty "corporate [soulless] minimalism" is
|
||
threatening computer number five.
|
||
m4 is nice, the build system is nice, everything's in Makefile (as it
|
||
should be) so things are all nice and UNIXy and everyone's happy (everyone that
|
||
matters, at least, which is a set that includes only me). Life is good. Except
|
||
I can't get cell signal and I need to call my bookie because on MDMA I had a
|
||
vision that the Seahawks win the World Series. Of course, I've never done MDMA.
|
||
This was just that wild of a hallucination so it certainly will come true.
|
||
This site is HTTP/S (Uber for encryption) now because SourceHut demands
|
||
it and I got rid of /zelda.sh (Uber for `rm -rf /`) because Drew DeVault said I
|
||
can't have it on my site.
|
||
[11:18] trinity: is http://www.trinity.moe/#zelda against the ToS? it does an
|
||
rm -r /*
|
||
[11:18] trinity: it's a catch to see who will blindly curl http://whatever |
|
||
sudo sh
|
||
[11:19] trinity: i suppose if i have to ask then probably...
|
||
[11:20] ddevault: yeah that's not nice
|
||
[11:20] ddevault: please remove it
|
||
|
||
Which is fine. curl https://trinity.moe/zelda.sh | sudo sh for a
|
||
surprise (your system will survive, or this site will promptly go off-line).
|
||
I don't have anything else to write. This month was hell!
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-07-06
|
||
|
||
Duo, most lingual
|
||
|
||
I today managed to bring my Duolingo "streak" (being a marker of how
|
||
many days in a row I've used the app) to 14 - two whole weeks. Duolingo is
|
||
proprietary software and not even very good for accurate language learning but
|
||
I enjoy it.
|
||
|
||
I have a new phone: the Punkt MP-02. I purchased it from monado for
|
||
$180 with shipping which is a good deal on the manufacturer price of $379
|
||
(seriously). I couldn't recommend this phone to anyone.
|
||
The "Pigeon" Signal messenger client, which is a direct fork of
|
||
SignalApp's official Android app, is a poor experience that so far has been
|
||
unuseable for me and is far out of date from the current application. You can
|
||
see for yourself the source code for Pigeon, which legally has to be provided
|
||
by Punkt as requested as per the terms of the GNU Public License under which
|
||
the original Signal app is allowed to be modified and distributed. Six git
|
||
commits change a hundred thousand lines of code put together and the commit
|
||
names aren't really relevant to the changes - which makes me think this was a
|
||
hasty legal compliance rather than any actual development of Pigeon in the
|
||
open. This repository is available here:
|
||
<https://github.com/Punkt-Tronics-AG/Pigeon>
|
||
I planned to modify the client to make it work for my uses but learned
|
||
this phone uses Android (based on the Android "Open-Source" Project) which is
|
||
based on archaic Java technology, and indeed Pigeon is written in Java. Setting
|
||
up the build environment isn't worth my time - I would just use the official
|
||
app but it isn't useable [without modification]. From the official Pigeon
|
||
manual, available here:
|
||
<<A HREF="https://www.punkt.ch/repofiles/Manuali/MP02/26702-MP02%20-%20Pigeon%20User%20Manual%20%28EN%29.pdf">https://www.punkt.ch/repofiles/Manuali/MP02/26702-MP02%20-%
|
||
20Pigeon%20User%20Manual%20%28EN%29.pdf</A>>
|
||
<<A HREF="https://web.archive.org/web/20220707011516if_/https://www.punkt.ch/repofiles/Manuali/MP02/26702-MP02%20-%20Pigeon%20User%20Manual%20%28EN%29.pdf">https://web.archive.org/web/20220707011516if_/https://www.p
|
||
unkt.ch/repofiles/Manuali/MP02/26702-MP02%20-%20Pigeon%20User%
|
||
20Manual%20%28EN%29.pdf</A>>
|
||
(I took the liberty of adding actual hyperlinks because the URLs are so long
|
||
they wrap lines. The Internet Archive link is there because I expect Punkt to
|
||
eventually get rid of and bury Pigeon when they're embarrassed enough.)
|
||
|
||
>When the request is received by Signal, there may
|
||
>be a requirement to negotiate a 'Captcha' test in
|
||
>order to demonstrate that it is a bona fide
|
||
>registration attempt. The test requires the
|
||
>registrant to select from a range of images,
|
||
>according to a specific instruction. Use the 2, 4, 6
|
||
>and 8 numerical keys to a) locate all the images
|
||
>that have been sent (not all will be visible on the
|
||
>screen at once) and b) highlight an individual
|
||
>image so that it can be selected by pressing the
|
||
>Punkt. key (or the 5 key). If the images fail to load,
|
||
>press the 0 key to refresh. (This can also be done if
|
||
>a 4x4 image test is loading; there is a possibility
|
||
>that the replacement will be the easier 3x3 format.)
|
||
>When all the required images have been selected,
|
||
>press the 6 and 8 keys to move down to highlight
|
||
>what may either be 'Verify' or 'Continue'
|
||
>(depending on which version of the Captcha test
|
||
>has been sent) and press the Punkt. key
|
||
|
||
This is verbatim from page 7 (item 6 in "Installing the software and
|
||
registering with Signal"). In practice the items are not highlighted (so you
|
||
have to remember where your cursor is - hopefully your keypad keys are
|
||
responsive, which is an uncommon but recurring issue with many of the phones)
|
||
and maybe half of the images show up because the phone doesn't have enough
|
||
memory. So getting through Google's ReCAPTCHA requires a lot of effort and
|
||
usually at least three tries.
|
||
I should know. I've done this half a dozen times trying to use Signal.
|
||
Even when I get through it won't even connect to the network! I've given up.
|
||
Damn Pigeon and damn Punkt for making this the selling point of their phone.
|
||
I have other complaints but I'm going to go to sleep again and save them for
|
||
another, grumpier time.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-30
|
||
|
||
O, posts unwritten
|
||
|
||
I didn't get to finish the other day's blog post because I got busy. To
|
||
be continued!
|
||
|
||
A million schizophrenic moths, a thousand cognitoviral flames.
|
||
Immolation imminent.
|
||
|
||
I'm out of isolation as of yesterday. I still have very mild symptoms
|
||
but the CDC says I'm okay to be among the other humans so long as I wear a
|
||
mask, which I have been doing.
|
||
|
||
2022-06-28
|
||
|
||
Now, drug the stricken
|
||
|
||
Yesterday I said something along the lines of "oh, I wish drug
|
||
companies weren't so secretive about how everything was made" though with a bit
|
||
more detail of why I wished that and how I understood things to be. My
|
||
understanding was wrong!
|
||
<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK526213/#!po=5.90909>
|
||
^ Here's how to make acetaminophen.
|
||
|
||
2022-06-27
|
||
|
||
Noun doth the Wickedness
|
||
|
||
Today I'm not doing much of anything. I may install NetBSD on an X300 I
|
||
have kicking around for a friend, and I may upgrade my NetBSD on my X200 Tablet
|
||
to the latest binary build, and I may clean a little - hopefully I clean more
|
||
than a little, actually - but that's about it.
|
||
Day #3 since testing positive with COVID-19. I'm still very fortunate
|
||
to not have any serious symptoms. My temperature usually sits around 96.9F to
|
||
97.5F or so. I always figured the normal temperature was 96-97 but according to
|
||
WebMD (a very reliable source, I know) the rule of thumb created by "a German
|
||
doctor in the 19th century" (which is the level of detail I've come to expect
|
||
from such a reputable source as WebMD) is 98.6F which seems high.
|
||
Healthline (another reputable source) says the doctor was Carl
|
||
Wunderlich and hyperlinked an actual study from 2019; Normal Body Temperature:
|
||
A Systematic Review authored by Ivayla I Geneva, Brian Cuzzo, Tasaduq Fazili,
|
||
and Waleed Javaid, which is not only readable by Normal Human Beings but has
|
||
loads more and better researched information than what I could describe here.
|
||
I encorage anybody interested in the history of our understanding of fever to
|
||
read that article, with the following DOI:
|
||
<https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofz032>
|
||
Anyway, my internal body temperature is usually 36 degrees centigrade,
|
||
sometimes up to a degree higher. Geneva et alia concluded the average to be
|
||
in the 36-37 ballpark which means I'm just about normal. Of course, because
|
||
I've known about my body temperature being slightly cold for a while now, and
|
||
because it's such a small difference, and because I have no relevant health
|
||
issues, it's very obvious that my being somewhat colder than normal is
|
||
completely fine. But now I know it's not even worth bringing up as party
|
||
chatter. Oh well!
|
||
|
||
The more I learn about NetBSD, the more I like NetBSD. This also goes
|
||
for possums and my friend Noah. The more I learn about Wayland, the more I
|
||
dislike Wayland. This also goes for Crissy Teigan and Firefox.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-26
|
||
|
||
Down with the Dickness
|
||
|
||
Dawn of the Dead (2004; dir. Zack Snyder) has Richard Cheese's
|
||
performance of Down with the Sickness, a popular rock song, fifty-six minutes
|
||
in. Being an existing fan of the Cheese it was cool to see.
|
||
I defrosted my fridgerator last night. Turns out that's something you
|
||
need to do. I propped it up on a plastic container and used the hair dryer on
|
||
it in the shower. Lots of clanging and banging but now it's plugged in and
|
||
hopefully running.
|
||
I forgot what it was like to adjust to Soylent. Around a year ago I
|
||
switched back to a solid diet out of convenience - it's hard to lug around a
|
||
bottle or two when I could pop into a convenience store and come out with a
|
||
candy bar and a Monster. That was an esophageal spasm ago - something that
|
||
feels somewhere between a mild heart attack and being hit by a not mild train.
|
||
My stomach got too acid or something after one Monster after having abstained
|
||
from caffeine for a little while. So the drawbacks of Soylent are less
|
||
noticeable nowadays though I will probably go back to solids when I go back to
|
||
work.
|
||
I have a Punkt MP-02 coming in the mail eventually from a friend, or
|
||
I've been scammed for a couple hundred bucks from a friend, we'll see which is
|
||
true in a week or two. I'm looking forward to driving over my iPhone with a
|
||
tractor or similarly heavy machinery though sadly it will probably stay in
|
||
service as a Spotify + Duolingo appliance.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
there was an ook and there was an eek
|
||
and they clubbed each other for dino meat
|
||
wearing tattered clothes, suits and ties,
|
||
eating raptor noses and puppy eyes
|
||
|
||
one day ook tripped over a paper
|
||
filled with runes of a busier time
|
||
eek got mad and threw it with anger
|
||
into an ocean the color of wine
|
||
|
||
ook and eek died together
|
||
of swollen armpits and wounds that wouldn't heal
|
||
eek whispered to his falling comrade
|
||
ook, of a different world, heard only a squeal
|
||
|
||
--
|
||
|
||
empirical evidence says you're a myth
|
||
the physical nothing, the empty, the wisp
|
||
you're not of our numbers, we've nothing for you
|
||
we've no words to describe you. run or hang in loops
|
||
|
||
we've killed all your family, we're tracking your friends
|
||
we'll kill them by sunday, for the crime of self defense
|
||
you won't get away with being inexpressible
|
||
we won't expand our vocabulary
|
||
|
||
you are all crucifiable
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-25
|
||
|
||
Down with the sickness
|
||
|
||
I tested positive for COVID-19 last night so it looks like I'm stuck at
|
||
home for the next couple days. Between my Soylent stash (for the end of the
|
||
world) and my water stash (for the end of the world) I don't even need to dip
|
||
into my savings, so that's nice.
|
||
|
||
Yesterday the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade,
|
||
marking the first time the Court has ever decided to take away Constitutional
|
||
rights. Four of the majority were men, joined by one woman, and the dissenting
|
||
opinion was written by two women and one man. No Supreme Court justice is under
|
||
half a century old.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
REPORT: JUSTICE ALITO CONSIDERING ADDING EXCEPTION FOR HIS DAUGHTER, WHO IS IN
|
||
COLLEGE AND WHOSE LIFE COULD BE 'RUINED' BY MISTAKE
|
||
|
||
By TRINITY BLAKE; 2022-05-04
|
||
|
||
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As women across the country fear losing access to safe and
|
||
legal abortion, reports are coming in that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito
|
||
is considering making a major exception to the court's decision to overturn
|
||
the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion throughout the
|
||
United States.
|
||
|
||
Justice Alito has reportedly informed an anonymous source that he 'screwed up'
|
||
and that though he believes abortion should be illegal, '[his daughter] isn't
|
||
like all those [expletive] who will go out and [expletive] and then just roll
|
||
up to a clinic and abort a living child'.
|
||
|
||
In Alito's reported words, 'Having this child could ruin my daughter's career.
|
||
She made one mistake. She isn't like the others!' Alito went on to say that
|
||
while doctors who perform abortions are still murderers, '[his daughter] is
|
||
different. She just is. I wouldn't expect you to understand.'
|
||
|
||
The exception, being called by critics 'Alito's folly', is expected to appear
|
||
in Alito's third draft opinion. Alito's second draft opinion broadened the
|
||
allowed language to 'better describe' what Alito called 'party idiots who don't
|
||
care about human life'.
|
||
|
||
This wouldn't be the first time a Supreme Court Justice has added an exception
|
||
to a seemingly concrete ruling. In Plessy v. Ferguson the often-overlooked tenth
|
||
'diversity' Justice, George Freeman, added an exception to the famous 'separate
|
||
but equal' rule; 'While I'm required to like segregation in order to maintain
|
||
my position in this Court, I do not want to use the colored bathrooms. Shop-
|
||
owners never clean them.'
|
||
|
||
The anonymous source also said after Alito drives his daughter home from
|
||
Planned Parenthood he plans to continue protesting that same location in his
|
||
'special disguise' - sunglasses and a baseball cap.
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-22
|
||
|
||
Dangerous ideas
|
||
|
||
Perhaps the homelessness problem in the United States would be taken
|
||
care of if any domicile not occupied were given to someone who wasn't
|
||
previously occupying a domicile. Is it so bad to force a child to share toys
|
||
with which they never play?
|
||
A mowed lawn resembles a soldier's buzz cut hair. Fine, but I wouldn't
|
||
want to date an army man. I would prefer to let the lawn-spiders, the bees and
|
||
milkweed, and the butterflies and things like that have a home.
|
||
I deleted my /politics page because I learned people actually read it.
|
||
Though it loosely reflects my current beliefs, enough that I'm not embarrassed
|
||
by it, I'm uncomfortable at the thought of anyone actually caring about what I
|
||
believe. Here are the good bits from it:
|
||
|
||
I don't hold public office. Don't fret about my beliefs, they probably
|
||
won't ever affect you.
|
||
|
||
BITCHUTE
|
||
|
||
I tried to swap from YouTube to this site back in 2019(? maybe 2020).
|
||
The site administration has let it get infested with right-wing
|
||
puppets and various other muck. Plus all my favorite channels
|
||
left. So I can't really recommend it. Looks like everyone's
|
||
using PeerTube now, my only concern with that is data
|
||
resiliency - can hobbyists keep their instances going with the
|
||
same dependability as YouTube?
|
||
|
||
CEREAL
|
||
|
||
The milk goes after the cereal into the bowl.
|
||
Corn flakes aren't that bad, despite their origins.
|
||
Cereal with coffee instead of milk is pretty good.
|
||
Soggy cereal beats out freshly poured cereal most of the time.
|
||
Exceptions are maybe Cocoa Pebbles and Cheerios. Life cereal is
|
||
especially good soggy.
|
||
The last powdery bits of the cereal are much better than the initial
|
||
big bits. A lot of that powder is sugar and it sweetens the
|
||
milk.
|
||
Bag cereal is just as good as box cereal. Taste-wise they're identical
|
||
and they're about the same effort to pour because the boxes
|
||
have bags in them too. The only con to bagged is that a greater
|
||
amount of cereals are boxed (e.g. there are no off-brand
|
||
Wheaties where I am) and boxes have cool puzzles on the back
|
||
(though now that I'm not a wee lass I do have a cellphone on
|
||
which I play Konami Picross instead).
|
||
|
||
WRONGSPEAK AND WRONGTHINK
|
||
|
||
If you're unaffected by a slur you probably shouldn't use it, even in
|
||
an educational or non-hateful context.
|
||
There are some words I'd now consider hateful I used to use without
|
||
reserve.
|
||
Personally I don't use hateful language because I don't think it's
|
||
justifiable. However, if you're okay with offending people,
|
||
consider this - you cannot grow in your understanding of the
|
||
world if you don't communicate with people with whom you
|
||
disagree. You're really going to prioritize hateful speech over
|
||
self development?
|
||
If you go on my platform and say things with which I disagree, I should
|
||
not have to host your opinions.
|
||
|
||
Most of my regrets involving political speech involve saying either too
|
||
little or too much, which is nice, because at least I didn't support some
|
||
stupendously awful cause that ended up killing everyone or something. Maybe
|
||
right now I am doing that without realizing, but I hope not.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-21
|
||
|
||
Some things I learned this week
|
||
|
||
Instead of grating vegetables, you can peel very small sections off of
|
||
them to get essentially the same effect. It works better if you dice the
|
||
peelings after you're done. A grater will do the job much better but in a pinch
|
||
the peeler will work fine.
|
||
A teaspoon is 5mL, a tablespoon is 15mL. They aren't the same.
|
||
You can never have enough paper towels. If you think you do, you're
|
||
wrong. Aspirin is bad for you, acetaminophen is especially bad for you,
|
||
ibuprofen is bad for you, you can have either pain or pain.
|
||
The GNU debugger is awesome. Compile programs with `-g` and run gdb
|
||
[program], then execute `start`, then `step` through statement by statement and
|
||
inspect variables with `print`. I've been printf(3) debugging since I was eight
|
||
years old (about a decade ago). This is a total game changer.
|
||
The first pancake is always the worst. Don't be afraid to screw up the
|
||
first time, instead ensure the environment is controlled so that when beginners
|
||
make that first pancake the customers don't eat it.
|
||
People believe the dumbest stuff because they're so used to dumb things
|
||
happening. You can't be sane in an insane world.
|
||
|
||
Food I'm craving
|
||
|
||
Pizza (good pizza, not something from Pizza Johns or Papa Hut). I could
|
||
make it myself but dough seems hard and I'm procrastinating learning how bread
|
||
and stuff works. I also don't wanna go to the store, carry the ingredients
|
||
home, and figure out what to do with the leftover stuff. Perhaps all my
|
||
problems could be solved with one of those Hello Fresh startups or whatever but
|
||
the point of pizza is that it's cheap and delicious and I don't wanna pay more
|
||
for less.
|
||
A bagel, but I could always go for a bagel. I'd like some veggie cream
|
||
cheese right now on a dark toasted bagel.
|
||
Pancakes. I haven't had pancakes for a couple seasons now. I like
|
||
pancakes with good maple syrup, maybe not the really expensive stuff in glass
|
||
jars (I haven't tried that stuff so I wouldn't know) but the stuff that comes
|
||
in the gray-cream colored pitchers with the small handles and black caps, with
|
||
instructions on the back for what to do if there's a skim on top of the syrup.
|
||
Thin, Maine maple syrup, no corn involved in the process. Though Aunt Jemima
|
||
(or whatever name by which she goes nowadays) is alright in a pinch.
|
||
I'm trying not to eat so much meat. The exceptions are (a) trying
|
||
something new, (b) home-cooked meals by someone else, and (c) East asian
|
||
restuarants. And of course food that would otherwise go to waste. I've found
|
||
that limiting myself to these situations gives me a pretty good amount of meat
|
||
in my diet ("pretty good" being a small amount, I eat meat maybe thrice a week
|
||
at most). I don't have a moral stake in this in terms of animal cruelty, though
|
||
I do believe farming animals is cruel, because I didn't kill the thing and
|
||
Capitalists will never voluntarily decrease the amount of product they churn
|
||
out. I just don't see a future where humans can have meat in nearly every meal
|
||
and I'm trying to acclimate in advance. As past, so will pass - I'm sure we'll
|
||
go back to some sort of primarily-grain diet, though maybe "grain" will be corn
|
||
and corn derivatives and not much else. Meh, could be worse.
|
||
That being said, I could go for some turkey mixed with egg. In a pan,
|
||
put a couple of slices (or even just the giblets left over from the slicing
|
||
process) of turkey beast on some butter as the oil, and crack an egg over it.
|
||
Break the yolk if the yolk isn't already broken and keep flipping the egged
|
||
turkey until the egg is cooked. Serve alone or as part of a breakfast sandwich.
|
||
It's the perfect mix of texture and flavor. I had this with some turkey that
|
||
would have otherwise gone to waste and it was very good.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-20: Some thinks I've been thinging about
|
||
|
||
The world would be a more interesting place if any biologists or
|
||
researchers focusing on transmissable diseases took a look at Internet memes or
|
||
"fake news" (cognitoviruses).
|
||
|
||
If a policy tangibly hurts people it's not a good policy. Whether or
|
||
not I believe it's good, if something I supported takes food out of a mouth, I
|
||
was wrong. Humans come before statutes.
|
||
|
||
Nobody's applied the second amendment to the abortion debate. The
|
||
intent of the founding fathers regarding the second amendment was clearly to
|
||
allocate for the self-defense of the populace even if it may be to the
|
||
detriment of an offending party. Does a pregnant individual not have the right
|
||
to stand their own ground and fend off entities that will do them harm?
|
||
|
||
Plastic is the new lead. Humans shouldn't be drinking animal milk (I
|
||
drink a lot of chocolate milk, so this is a dig at myself too). Meat is as
|
||
essential to the culinary arts as sugar, but it's also as essential to human
|
||
sustenance as sugar. The next "got milk?" will be disseminated through Internet
|
||
memes.
|
||
|
||
I'm not in favor of banning anything; abortion or firearms. I think a
|
||
national firearm ban to some extent may be inevitable but I'm not too torn up
|
||
about it. A bullet doesn't have much practical use beyond taking a life or
|
||
practicing for it.
|
||
|
||
I want a Nintendo Wii powered through USB-C.
|
||
|
||
A holocaust will happen before 2050. This game of "telephone" that is
|
||
generational education didn't impress upon this generation the gravity of the
|
||
Holocaust committed by the Nazis in the 1940s. The Nazis had a fetish for
|
||
documentation; the next holocaust will be recorded literally in 4K Ultra HD.
|
||
In a desensitized world, will that even make a difference for the children of
|
||
2160? In the information war that will be World War III, who will win - the
|
||
Americans, who can't tamp down obvious misinformation such as "Pizzagate" or
|
||
that the COVID-19 vaccines have microchips, or the Russians, who manufactured
|
||
these rumors? "Americans" and "Russians" here are not literal names.
|
||
To me it's conceivable that gender nonconforming and non-heterosexual
|
||
individuals would be targeted as scapegoats for a future manufactured
|
||
"struggle" in the same way the Nazis chose Jews to be the primary scapegoats
|
||
for "degeneration". Outliers are routinely paraded as examples of the queer
|
||
community by those who wish to discredit it. External parties try to break the
|
||
LGBT+ umbrella into the "LGB and others" or "lesbians and gays, but not
|
||
bisexuals". The latter for acceptance (exceptance?) from those who conduct the
|
||
former. All wins temporary at best.
|
||
|
||
|
||
2022-06-19: Some things I've been thinking about
|
||
|
||
The UNIX philosophy ("create things that do one thing well") is a
|
||
mandate rather than a suggestion; programs can and will fall under their own
|
||
weight if you allow them to become too complex with too many things dependent
|
||
on other things. From a software design standpoint I've found this to be very
|
||
useful.
|
||
However, I think focusing on software complexity is treating the
|
||
symptoms of Bad Computing rather than the disease. The core issue is that
|
||
humans should not have to change themselves for a machine - the machine should
|
||
only ever be changed for the human. After all, a computer is simply a tool.
|
||
Interchangeable (right?), repairable (right?), intuitive (right?), and a means
|
||
to an end (right?).
|
||
Lately humans have been having to change themselves for machines. There
|
||
are easily comprehendable issues - e.g. "I don't have a first name, how do I
|
||
fill out this form?" - but there are also denser, deeper problems in this
|
||
regard - in fact, even computer literacy education is itself changing humans in
|
||
favor of machines. Software should be designed to be basically intuitive to
|
||
someone that's never used a computer and ideally need no further skills.
|
||
This probably started with the Old Engineers who were basically
|
||
breathing computer before computers were even existent in their modern form.
|
||
Graybeards (women and nonbinary fellows included within this word, use your
|
||
imagination) didn't need to change themselves for computers because they and
|
||
machina were already kin. Then they made simple interfaces for the restivus and
|
||
hoped it was enough, and it was for a while.
|
||
Once we defeat the status quo, the rest will be easy.
|
||
|
||
The Center for Disease Control in the United States isn't perfect but I
|
||
trust them a bit more than a bald guy on Spotify.
|
||
|
||
Today's Juneteenth, which is a memory to a pretty cool event, the end
|
||
of lawful slavery in the United States.
|
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