This essay originally appeared on secure scuttlebutt at %3k6qAo85Q/1hjMW6xc3S0MNt+PsBCM00S354HeXOUco=.sha256

I just spent like an hour fiddling with a (very short) script in order to get the RSS it generates to work in somebody’s preferred RSS reader — one that, I guess, was using a standard XML parser (and therefore couldn’t handle ampersands in URLs) and that could only support RFC882 dates (for some reason).

I have no idea if it worked. I can’t run their RSS readers, and all the readers I have can read this feed just fine. …

After a stranger on the internet accused him of being a poseur, Saint Dog went on a quest to live a more authentic life.

At first, he began to reject the things he did for other people’s comfort, because he felt that selfishness seemed more natural and therefore more authentic, but his guilt over the pain he caused other people seemed awfully real — surely his “true self” wasn’t a jerk, either. So, he looked for a different way to live authentically.

He tried acting based on his first impulses instead, because his first impulses seemed more primary. But he…

Facebook says I wrote and posted this on 12th February, 2009. I do not remember it at all.

The following is another brain dump, but it may make more sense since parts of it have already been articulated elsewhere in semiunderstandable terms.

We may not all agree with reality as a fully social construction (solipism is a four letter word to the mathematically disinclined), but I think we all can agree that a certain amount of how we interpret events that are arguably ‘real’ is socially or intellectually influenced. …

Saint Cat’s head was sodden with worries, so she went in search of Cilantro the Sage. One evening, she found him on the beach.

“Cilantro,” she said, “My head is sodden with worries. In this unprecedented time full of unprecedented events, no one trusts anyone, and we are all very tired. My old friends are threatening strangers to me now. Should I just stick apart from them?”

Cilantro scratched his nuts thoughtfully. “Let me tell you about the seasons,” he said.

“The tides are controlled by the moon. I have watched them. The rising tide rushes in, covering the Chaos…

St. Dog and St. Cat used to be room-mates, back when they both worked nights at the Qwik-Stop. Back then, as fall became winter and day, night, and hangover haze blurred, their comfortable routine was interrupted by a strange occurrence: for three days, they each dreamt vividly of a silver alarm clock. They talked about it and couldn’t figure out why they were having the same dream. It wasn’t something they had both seen on TV, or an ad on their commute. …

A friend of mine visited the site of the bowling alley. THE Bowling Alley. It was February of 2020 — quarantine came down right after and he got stuck in California for two weeks between that and the business with the plane tickets — and I’m pretty sure it was The Bowling Alley for a couple reasons.

See, a few years ago, I met this guy in a bar. Kinda sketchy looking guy, but it was a sketchy kind of bar. Wrinkly, covered in faded tattoos, trucker hat over an uneven scrub of long gray hairs. …

The medieval conception of a text is a unicursal labyrinth: it twists and turns, knotted in its convolutions, obscure a completely linear path. There is only one way to read such a linear text. Hypertexts, on the contrary, are topologically like multicursal labyrinths: there are many possible paths through, some being dead ends, and these paths fork at nodal points; they may even loop back upon themselves. While a multicursal labyrinth may only be traversed linearly — while the traces of its lines of flight are linear — its potential traversal paths, or its solution space, is both parallel, myriad…

The difference between ancoms and ancaps is ancoms think without government we wouldn’t have money while ancaps think without government we wouldn’t have community.

If ancaps are right then we’re fucked, because without government we also wouldn’t have money & so when the government bubble finally bursts we will be in the Hobbsean state of nature liberals warned us about. But, I dunno. I’m hardly a sociable or popular person, but even I have experienced fleeting moments of mutual aid. I expect these to become more common as the forces that pit us against each other weaken.

Here’s the thing…