Quote of the day

[henry quirk]

...you cannot open an anonymous account? Neither can anyone.

Your phone/ pc/ camera/ watch contains various serial numbers. One such set is the Media Access Control address, or MAC. This number appears on every document from the assembly line, to the device’s registration on the network. Every communications port manufactured anywhere, is hardwired with this address, which pinpoints the manufacturer, facility and model. There is no erasing this number, and no communication without it, it is part of all machines’ ‘hello, let’s swop data’ protocol.

By 1 Jan 2001, that port was trackable to 25 feet, by law. 5G gives accuracy down to less than an inch. Even if you use a stolen phone, sooner or later there shall be a data set popping up, showing your face, your other devices, your family’s devices, or a till slip, proving your continued presence close to that number.

There is no anonymity.

[iambiguous]

William Styron from Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.

I get this. Unless, of course, I don't.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.

Then the part where you can't pin it down: genes more or less than memes?

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.

I came really, really close once. And I've got the scar to prove it.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

Not counting the times you can't tell them apart.

There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.

Well, if you're William Styron anyway.

...it has to be emphasized that if the pain were readily describable most of the countless sufferers from this ancient affliction would have been able to confidently depict for their friends and loved ones (even their physicians) some of the actual dimensions of their torment, and perhaps elicit a comprehension that has been generally lacking; such incomprehension has usually been due not to a failure of sympathy but to the basic inability of healthy people to imagine a form of torment so alien to everyday experience.

Next up: describing dasein here.

[iambiguous]

Bill Watterson

Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?
Hobbes: (Reading Calvin's paper) "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender modes.
Calvin: Academia, here I come!

Cue the pedants here.

That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.

Aren't we the lucky ones.

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?

In a sim world, for example.

Do you think there's a God?
Well, somebody's out to get me!

And not just the cartoon characters.

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?

Only seven months to go.

If you can't win by reason, go for volume.

OR ALL CAPS. RIGHT, AGE?

[iambiguous]

Zadie Smith from White Teeth

Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.

Unless, of course, it's your God.

And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems some long, dirty lie... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?

See, I told you.

But I cannot be worrying---worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth that can be lived with.

There you go. Well put.

Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets...one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to becoming uninvolved.

The good news: death?

But Archie did not pluck Clara Bowden from a vacuum. And it's about time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings. Clara was from somewhere. She had roots.

Any beautiful women here? Your own tale of woe please.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt—something is gained but something is lost.

What's lost is immortality. And for some that's a big deal.

[iambiguous]

Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

Anyway, you never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Cue Benjamin Button.

If you knew there was somebody out there afoot that had two million dollars of your money, at what point would you quit lookin for em?
That's right. There aint no such a point.

And here in America there never will be.

I ain't sure we've seen these people before. Their kind. I don't know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they'd have to build a annex on to hell.

Or maybe another one altogether.

He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.

That and not giving a shit what others thought you were.

Nineteen is old enough to know that if you have got somethin that means the world to you it's all that more likely it'll get took away. Sixteen was, for that matter.

And after that, forget about it.

Trust me, Moss said.
I hate hearin them words, the driver said. I always did.
Have you ever said them?
Yeah. I've said em. That's how come I know what they're worth.

Anyone you ever trusted and then never trusted again?
Anyone you ever trusted and still do?

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Man Buys Wife Gun In Case She Ever Needs To Protect Herself From Him

Just out of curiosity, would you?

New Texas Law Requires Schools To Display Image Of God Hung Like A Horse In Every Classroom

Wait until you see it...tbink Shire.

Local Aerosmith Fan Sad This Last Time She’ll Be Giving Steven Tyler Head After Concert

Maybe in the next life...

Ominous New Report Just Lists Places To Hide

No, really, it's all right around the corner. Find one.

NASA Completes 52-Year Mission To Find, Kill God

Anyone notice the difference yet? Head's up, okay?

Ultrarunner Disqualified From Race For Using Car

Come on, the line has to be drawn somewhere.

[Agent Smith]

What's up doc?

We're not in trouble ... we're not in trouble ... we're not in trouble ...

[iambiguous]

Gabriel García Márquez from One Hundred Years of Solitude

What does he say? he asked.
He’s very sad, Úrsula answered, because he thinks that you’re going to die.
Tell him, the colonel said, smiling, that a person doesn’t die when he should but when he can.

You know, given that we should never die.

Cease, cows, life is short.

Or, here, pinheads.

Things have a life of their own, the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. It's simply a matter of waking up their souls.

Or their minds, the philosopher proclaimed.
Or, rather, here, what's left of them.

The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

Almost 10 years now and counting.

He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.

Words. Like we use here. Over and over and over for example.

She had that rare virtue of never existing completely except for that opportune moment.

Like some, however, I am still waiting for mine.

[iambiguous]

Stephen Hawking from A Brief History of Time

Only time (whatever that may be) will tell.

Unless, of course, you're no longer around to be told.

If you remember every word in this book, your memory will have recorded about two million pieces of information: the order in your brain will have increased by about two million units. However, while you have been reading the book, you will have converted at least a thousand calories of ordered energy, in the form of food, into disordered energy, in the form of heat that you lose to the air around you by convection and sweat. This will increase the disorder of the universe by about twenty million million million million units - or about ten million million million times the increase in order in your brain - and that's if you remember everything in this book.

Next up: if you don't read it.

Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory.

Except in reality from the cradle to the grave the results are always the same regarding any number of experiences.

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don’t shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light.

Especially theoretically.

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!

So, up into the intellectual clouds they go: in a world of words defining and defending yet more words still.

The rate of progress is so rapid that what one learns at school or university is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being made or the excitement they are generating.

The human condition 2.0.

[popeye1945]

This is not so much a quote as it is a definition, but particularly relevant to dialogues with others.

Ignorance is innocence, not stupidity.

[iambiguous]

Aldous Huxley from Brave New World

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

And making you unhappy too, of course.

It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.

Praise the Lord!

When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.

We will need a context. Unless, perhaps, it's all of them.

Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.

Up the nose and then some here. Right, Mr. Pinhead?

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.

Especially in Florida.

Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.

Next up: the road to Hell.

[iambiguous]

Ursula K. Le Guin from The Left Hand of Darkness

This story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed, I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them is false, and it is all one story.

Next up: your story.
Or do you prefer mine?

Estraven stood there in harness beside me looking at that magnificent and unspeakable desolation. 'I'm glad I have lived to see this,' he said.
I have felt as he did. It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

No, actually, for some of us, it's still the devastation.
In other words, how unspeakable?

The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrödinger most famous thought experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted - but to describe reality, the present world.
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.
Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

I predict that you'll predict something different.

Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number - Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysis, every now and then.

Or, sure, fuck Apolo once and for all.

I tried to speak insipidly, yet everything I said seemed to take on a double meaning.

Don't you just hate that?

Oracular ambiguity or statistical probability provides loopholes, and discrepancies are expunged by Faith.

Or, of course, wagers.

[iambiguous]

David Markson from Wittgenstein's Mistress

You will say that I am old and mad, was what Michaelangelo wrote, but I answer that there is no better way of being sane and free from anxiety than by being mad.

I'm trying, I'm trying.

Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One's language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.

Me to. Here. Take dasein for example.

Doubtless these are inconsequential perplexities. Still, inconsequential perplexities have now and again been known to become the fundamental mood of existence, one suspects.

I certainly do.

On the other hand it is probably safe to assume that Rembrandt and Spinoza surely would have at least passed on the street, now and again.
Or even run into each other quite frequently, if only at some neighborhood shop or other.
And certainly they would have exchanged amenities as well, after a time.
Good morning, Rembrandt. Good morning to you, Spinoza.
I was extremely sorry to hear about your bankruptcy, Rembrandt. I was extremely sorry to hear about your excommunication, Spinoza.
Do have a good day, Rembrandt. Do have the same, Spinoza.
All of this would have been said in Dutch, incidentally.
I mention that simply because it is known that Rembrandt did not speak any other language except Dutch.
Even if Spinoza may have preferred Latin. Or Jewish.

https://youtu.be/GOoJK_fY7nE

Although what I have basically been doing about the rain is ignoring it, to tell the truth.
How I do that is by walking in it.
I did not fail to notice that those last two sentences must certainly look like a contradiction, by the way.
Even if they are on such thing.
One can very agreeably ignore a rain by walking in it.
In fact it is when one allows a rain to prevent one from walking in it that one is failing to ignore it.

Next up: ignoring me here.

In addition to remembering things that one does not know how one remembers, one would also appear to remember things that one has no idea how one knew to begin with.

You know, in a free will world.

[iambiguous]

Julio Cortázar

Come sleep with me: We won't make Love, Love will make us.

Next up: https://youtu.be/5ebv3i_9Ltc

I sometimes longed for someone who, like me, had not adjusted perfectly with his age, and such a person was hard to find; but I soon discovered cats, in which I could imagine a condition like mine, and books, where I found it quite often.

Of course, he's just paraphrasing me.

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

Especially with practice.

She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.

Sounds intriguing. Even mysterious.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

Until, one day, almost any distractions will do.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

Yo, Mr. Definitionist! Parse that!!

[iambiguous]

The Onion

NASA Frantically Announces Mission To Earth’s Core After Accidentally Launching Rocket Upside Down

Quick thinking, right?

Nostalgic Woman Hopes ‘Barbie’ Movie Lives Up To Girlhood Body Dysmorphia

A Barbie movie. It's true, isn't it?

San Francisco Realtor Shows Couple Earning Under 6-Figure Salary Around Neighborhood’s Best Tent City

Pup tents, of course.

Court Finds Ed Sheeran Did Not Violate Copyright With Song ‘I Wish I Were An Oscar Mayer Wiener’

Also, 'The Star Spangled Banner'.

10-Year-Olds Found Working At McDonald’s Until 2 A.M.

See for yourself: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/10 ... -rcna82583
They were paid with Happy Meals.

Amy Coney Barrett Pissed She’s Been Doing Whatever Conservative Donors Want For 30 Bucks

Let's pray for her.