We tell stories through movies & series, produced by expensive studios paying skilled actors. This allows for a better production, and a more exciting display. But it also makes for a less personal and less detailed narration, as is available through simple word of mouth.
A captivating tale, indeed!
Folk stories were passed on according to place & time. They changed narration to fit the situation. To give the best value, in the form of education; whether moral or practical. They were heeded and used, and while entertaining, also raised caution and curiosity in the listeners.
In stark contrast to word of mouth, media productions are not better than eyecandy and plain entertainment. They fail to make the audience learn from others, but instead encourage a mimicking of character, without any understanding of cause & effect. This is how we get a culture of people behaving like retards, trying to be popular.
Even now, people sit alone in front of their computer, television, and phone screen. More alone that ever before, as media has become so accessible, privately. For studying this is a great boon; you can study anything, anytime, anywhere. But for socializing, a more urgent need, we no longer tell stories, and figure those stories out, in groups.
Today, people are less free than ever before. All people, everywhere in the world, are now bound to the control of a government. No one is free from the say of another person; not even the remote vagabond or the hermit.
It is only with the advancing of technology that the fascists are able to monitor and control everyone, so tightly. While we enjoy improved communications, entertainment, and automation, our slavers can tighten their leashes and enforce their will, in its entirety.
In the past, different forms of slavery and rule existed, but there was always space to keep away from such things, and keep to your own small & remote community. Today, even empty deserts and remote forests are under the "rule of law."
We now have a culture of laboring for others, most of our waking hours, and being inside small rooms during. In opposition to it, there is the Rewild movement.
Ecovillages. Permaculture. Organic Agriculture. No movement is attending the issue of freedom. They all try to improve on our current life style, without addressing the source of the problem. That no one can live as they wish, without answering to another - the government.
Only Rewilders intuit the need to be free of these coerced bonds between people. That being born does not mean giving consent to what those before you have decided.
I need you to suffer. That is how I grow. You are alive, while suffering. What does not kill you, makes me stronger. Mute faces turn alive. There is meaning to your existence, when you suffer.
I check with others, who have different varying experiences, to form opinions about unknown topics. This can either be achieved through gossip, or actual presentation of evidence and arguments. The two tend to get mixed together to some degree.
The only way to quickly figure out if information may be true is by using Logic. However, the language of Logic is not as popular as it is useful. This means most people do not verify the gossip they hear, in any methodical way.
I LOL'd :D
Knowing this, many people take it on themselves to "inform" the public, regularly. Politicians, news-spokesmen, media representatives, and so on. All of them make a salary from passing on gossip to people, which more often than not is unverified and false.
Also, due to the ease of access and vagueness of information, their followers become dependent. Those public speakers become their daily source of information and social entertainment. Their window to the world, so to speak.
There is only one way to avoid false reports and useless gossip, so that you make opinions that reflect reality and are helpful to you: Having standards. Well, we all have different standards, so the requirement is high standards.
What do you know about the person speaking?
Would they have incentive to lie?
Do they verify their own sources of information?
Are you being told about research that is financed by a group with a particular interest?
Research financed by tobacco companies, showing no-correlation between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer, is not a surprise. News channels censoring any incriminating items about their sponsors, or anyone related to their funding, is again not a surprise. Even medical companies sponsoring dangerous pills that cause more harm than help, when it comes to the wide public, is only economically expected.
So, doubt both the person and the information they speak. Ask questions, and see if there is any resistance to providing evidence. Look for falsifiable arguments and statements, and see if they are actually being supported by the evidence.
The less I say in a single short phrase, the more meaning I pass with less effort. This is also true about coding computer software & websites. Commands can be passed in a simple, very readable fashion, similar to how we would talk to another person.
Or, commands can be passed in sophisticated, complex, and convoluted ways, which logically give the same results. But these complex methods, while more efficient for a computer, are much harder for a human to follow and figure out.
Making voxels with colors, lights, and different selection modes.
I have spent the last few months working on a new project in Node.js, using a front-end library for WebGL, called THREE.js. I am creating a 3D virtual world that uses voxels - 3d particles, usually cubes, for all its objects.
Two choices were in front of me: One, put a keyboard key-press event where it happens, which would be efficient. Two, put the event in a fast loop, where all events are checked at a rate of sixty frames per second, which is not efficient, but very readable and orderly.
When checking the event in the fast loop, I use an IF statement that must be passed, in order to execute anything else. Not surprisingly, for a computer this is insignificant effort, so the performance is not impacted, at all.
If performance would be impacted, then I would choose efficiency over readability. But as long as it is not, then readability is always my priority. If you cannot quickly read through it, then it is too complicated to be practical!
A new generation should speak up the truth
Not just lyrics and rhyme, or beats and moves
When you speak of reason, method, and proof
Minds, not just hearts, will be moved
Make a statement in life,
No wait, statements in wrote
And find me a Youtube to watch,
Instead of the rhetoric they talk
'Cause I wanna know what it means
When a girl is fallacious
No, not sucking dick,
But just sayin' nonsense
I don't think school teaches that,
Or else people would notice
That rappers don't say
What's evident for us
Methodically faulty and follows to nothing,
Is an old generation of spitting and popping
It's time we talked real - not guns and police, or deals and regrets,
but arguments that we'd never fuckin' forget.
There is a difference between what an evil act can create, and what situations are sustained by evil action. I think the former is not necessarily evil, while the latter is necessarily evil. Lets take an example...
Click pic for more awesome prints from LawrenceArtsCenter.org
One of the most evil acts known to man is rape. The use of force to physically control another person. It is not uncommon for a woman victim to get pregnant from the assault. In this case, there is no obligation for the child to follow in the steps of the father. Good raising and care will create a good person, regardless of the father. We have all seen cases of good children from bad parents.
On the other hand, there are situations that can only exist - be sustained, perpetuated, by evil acts. Take another extreme evil: slavery. It is not possible to possess slaves, without coercing yourself on them. Without continuous coercion, slavery will not exist, instantly so.
It seems that anything caused by evil may be either good or bad, while anything sustained by evil must be also wrong. This observation lets us better judge people's choices! Anyone who enjoys the results of another's evil is not liable, unless they are also involved.
However, if you are enjoying the sustained evil actions of others, then you are collaborating and are necessarily committing evil!
Will power is the result of intuition & patience. Intuition means you have to trust yourself, rather than instantly turning to others. Patience can be trained, like strength or speed, and should be trained to where most things in daily life can not make you rush yourself.
Shia LaBeouf
Intimidation, on the other hand, is when external threats make you act, in your perspective, defensively. Rather than plan and think things through, intimidation rushes you to react quickly, and miss out on crucial information about your situation.
Without patience and trust in your intuition, it becomes difficult to motivate yourself into doing things that you want. Keeping in shape, studying, making & fixing items, and many more chores that are valuable, but hard to approach without an existing habit.
And that is why people turn to self-intimidation, or they let others intimidate them into action. Common examples are schools, militaries, and employment; where someone is in command, and orders you around, giving punishment when you fail to comply.
Not only does this not improve your ability to plan and act on your own - keeping you reliant on others, but also you do not actually gain the knowledge necessary to figure out the best choices for yourself. Those who command you, do it for their own personal gain.
Rely on yourself. You are the only person in your shoes. Make your own mistakes, and learn from them. Do not expect others to take full responsibility over you. They will not. They cannot, as only you can choose for yourself. Trust yourself, and improve at what you choose to do.
It is to the best of my knowledge, that the avid and infamous giant researcher - and hobbyist poet, Mikkel M. Handsome had noted down, in a chapter about the mating practices of Giants in general, this peculiarity of Stone Giants.
I do not have the original text with me, so I shall paraphrase in my own words, and through the vagueness of my own memory...
A hardy local population...
The Female Stone Giant will select a suitable place, where trees would not tend to forest, maybe in an elevation high enough - as trees are known to dislike the cold, and there she will stand. She will stand for as long as it takes, for a Male Stone Giant to incidentally, and without prior knowledge or intuition, ram his parts into... well... her parts.
End of misquotation.
As you can see, it is not a rumor beyond reason, that people say the Stone Giants have no libido, per se. It does not seem as if the Female is attractive to the Male, when viewed from our point of view. No ceremony of wooing seems to take place, but rather a metaphorical gamble.
This was my opinion in the matter as well, at least until I saw The Crevice of Zuperia, in New Russia, earlier this year. Oh, and what a crevice it was! Attached is a photograph.
Eingenberg Zumik, Doctor In Organic Gemology, Neptune Regional Academy.
There is no clear definition for the term poverty. Generally, it is a lacking, as in needing something in your daily life. Whether it is a lack of food, or a lack of electronic devices, is not established. Those considered poor in one land, may be considered rich in another land. [There is no doubt, however, that poverty in basic human needs is indeed actual poverty.]
A tiny house on wheels. Trailer life.
Before humans turned sedentary, the only kind of poverty imaginable was of basic human needs. And that, only possible when the natural environment receded enough to cause drought or famine, naturally.
When humans learned to master tools for working the land, they quickly began shaping their environment to their immediate benefit. Less forests meant more field crops. Less wild animals, meant less predators, and especially less competition over crops from grazing animals.
An expected long-term result of this sedentary human culture is human-made poverty; drought and famine, caused by human endeavor. A less expected long-term result was the advent of more sophisticated technologies, that would later on replace how we interact with our environment and peers.
A home today, has a variety of tools that have become fundamental to us. Communications through phones and the internet. Devices that cook and clean for us, controlled by microchips. Vehicles to reach remote places, now to be considered near-by. Screens & speakers that mimic socializing and social integration.
Because of these, it has become all too easy to be poor. Lacking a vehicle or communications, may leave you separated and alone, even though you have neighbors. You might have a house sheltering you, but without air-conditioning, it will turn too cold or too hot, and dreary.
This is a well evident fault of modern society. It will be a great task to solve it, without giving up on the benefits we have become used to.
I finished a short & fun reading of a short-story, in the "popular" section of Wattpad; a website for independent authors. Even though it is mostly filled with sub-par stories, there is the rare gem to be found!
Many people, not practiced in Logic, fear that a logical society would function like a bunch of merciless machines, not hesitating to sacrifice kindness and lives both, for the sake of the group. They see Logic as the antithesis to sympathy.
But they do so wrongly. Sympathy is actually a logical ability; to imagine yourself in the position of another person, even to the extent of having similar limitations, and to recognize the validity of their misery; that you could be suffering equally so, if misfortune struck for you.
Click the pic to read more inspiring quotes from dear ol' Henry!
So, stands before us the question of whether a society can be logical. Can the average person, and thus the majority of people, act in a consistently logical manner?
The evidence against such a society is clear. Philosophy and Logic have been around for thousands of years, yet even now in the age of Computers & Internet, most people are entirely oblivious to logical fallacies and how to compose a falsifiable argument. Rhetoric and politics are more powerful than ever, in the global arena.
The evidence for a logical society may be less distinct, albeit still encouraging. The Internet is very new, and already showing great influences over large chunks of the public, in many countries. Lies and rhetoric are better marked & avoided, and exposure to Logic is increasing.
Also, the contradiction between technologically possible lifestyles - which are evident in well-off populations, and the actual daily lives of most people, make it impossible for people to not see the injustice - and stupidity, systematically inherent to their society.
Do you see a near future, even for the next generation, where it is common practice for societies to be logical and just?
After about a year of using the name James as my online alias in chat-rooms, I have realized that it works much better than my Hebrew name. I never liked my previous name, but I could never figure out what to replace it with.
Now, James happened by chance. Any random name would do, and it was simple and accessible, and just uncommon enough in the chat.
I use their domain services, which are working fine.
So, with a more western name in tow, I have moved to this new domain! JamesKoss.com
All previous links should still work. Everything should work the same, really. And all pages should redirect to the new domain. Eventually, the old domain will die-off, so make sure you bookmark the new domain, instead!
Philosophy is the art of wisdom. Differentiating between true and false. Finding out the realities of life and nature, to any evident degree.
It is also a way of life. Logical thinking, as devised by ancient philosophers and improved throughout the generations, is a method of filtering out the useful ways of thinking, and avoiding the useless ones. Useful thinking, in the sense that such mind-effort will lead to true conclusions, rather than false fantasies.
Without acting on it - being logical and using those methods of thinking, there is no philosophy. Just opinions and rambling.
Click pic to learn more from RelativelyInteresting.com!
But then comes the question of whether being logical, and acting on evidence, is actually useful, in practice.
Logic represents likelihoods and impossibilities. Good arguments or fallacies. Looking back at history, those people who aligned themselves with evidence, are those that develop the most, both socially and technologically. The excitement around the Scientific method in recent centuries is plenty of evidence, to the benefit of logic.
It is common for people to seek the advice of wiser men and women. Tribes have their Shamans, Kings and Emperors have their Council - their citizens have Witches, and modern Politicians have their Scientists - their citizens have Psychologists.
And while science and psychology are founded on philosophy, their practice is far from logical. Logic had been replaced with experimentation; rather than reach the source of problems, symptoms are badly managed by gadgets and drugs.
I have rarely talked with a person who is aware of logical fallacies. Even more rare was talking with a person who practiced avoiding logical fallacies! Even those who studied philosophy seem to treat it as entertainment, abstract thoughts, rather than a practice.
Arguably, psychology helps emotional issues, but it does not show people how to be logical. Logic has a method and rules. Specifics that need be understood, and then practiced. Then applied to every choice you make.
Click pic to check Sidney Dekker's book...
The Question of AI
As a side note, I can also mention AI, or rather computerized machines. After all, if being logical is useful to us, then logical machines will continue making choices that benefit us, without the well-known "human error" factor. No wonder computers have become the highlight of the new millennium.
People, like other apes, used to roam the land and forage their food and water. Life in the jungle, for the experienced hunter, has all the comforts we need. Although most people live off farming culture - industrial-farming today, there are still many jungle-folk who keep the old ways, showing how it all works.
Farming has its benefits. Planting, harvesting, and storing food, give people security and abundance. Nature can be erratic, and farming lets people tolerate it better. Especially so in the drylands of the Middle-East, where agriculture became wide-spread.
On the other hand, the cost of stored foods is your freedom. Once a farmer, you must guard your storage, and continue working the fields. You could revert into a foraging lifestyle in theory, but in practice this is not possible, in most places.
Mushroom Foraging.
(Click the picture to see the workshop schedule.)
Not only are you unskilled in foraging, everyone around you are farmers, occupying all the lands near-by. Forests, which are crucial for foraging, are normally felled by farmers - in order to vacate new lands for farming. (Look in Google Maps, Satellite view, and notice how many lands are squarish farms - useless to a forager.)
Also, storage allows taxation, which means that any attempt to revert into foraging, will leave you nontaxable. And a person who does not pay his taxes, gets treated very badly, indeed. Even an attempt at mixing the two lifestyles is likely to leave you without enough to pay taxes.
Vacant land has also become inaccessible, as it is either held by those who tax you, or they require great payments and taxes, for anyone to live on it. Even the raising of animals & grazing are now taxable, and require costly licensing, and so on.
You must not become dependent on the charity of those who have food, when you do not. The freedom of having your basic needs is at the core of all freedom.
Practice finding & eating edible plants around you. Learn how to process them, if necessary, and do it.
Practice some basic survival skills, like rope-making, and shelter building. Spend regular periods out in the wild, getting familiar with raw nature, removing false biases about being outdoors.
Nobody has to give up modern life, to become a good forager. It is a skill worth having, and a skill as fundamental to your freedom as much as reading & writing, or swimming.
How often do you interact with wild animals? Wild forests? City life is about people. People all the time. Daily. Everywhere. No forests. No wild animals; excluding some few city-comfortable birds, and the small hardy bugs.
Delphi, Greece in ruins.
Click the photo to learn more about it.
A society centered around humans, ignoring other life, leads itself to detachment from nature, and soon-after collapse. Self-destruction. City-states thousands of years back had suffered from this same mistake, when they over-populated, relying on a local river. When that river dried up, the people had to disperse, trying to survive the chaos.
If not a natural disaster, then a collision of cities. Overpopulated societies become uncaring for the smaller part of their members, as people are in abundance, and become an easy sacrifice for further growth. Massacres ensue.
However, this does not mean that societies must be small and distant. A city is a lump of people under single rule. In contrast, a collection of independent towns can hold as many people, in a similar area of land, yet function entirely differently!
Societies can be endlessly vast, active, and benefiting. All that, without sacrificing nature. A town lush with trees. Streets that allow wild animals to roam. A daily life that does not lock people inside concrete boxes, or demand that they sit in tin boxes - driving for hours.
Next time you ponder about society or civilization, drop that city image off your mind. Instead, imagine a wild lush nature, with life-loving people, and an array of technology that only reinforces this.
It is not a widely known trick that all cameras, that means webcams and cell-phone cameras as well, can change their attributes with an extra lens. Yes! Just like a normal photography camera.
I am now very much enjoying a cheap & effective, and easy to setup, 0.67X wide-angle lens on my Logitech C310 webcam. It lets me locate the webcam close-up, yet show a nice wide view of my self and my surroundings. It uses a sticky circle part, which holds the lens itself with magnetic force. Perfect.
Direl [DEE-REL] smiled at the guy, but he did not notice. It happens sometimes. Ever since she started hitting on guys, and feeling okay with them rejecting her, or worse - mocking her, she noticed these sort of different behaviors. Some guys were aloof. Oblivious. It was not that they were mean, or anything like that. They just did not notice what other people considered obvious.
Take this guy. He was looking at her, for that moment, but when she smiled, he just looked away. Talking with his friend there, at the bar.
Direl sipped her beer.
"You're staring," Jen said and smirked at her.
"So what?"
"It's rude."
"Who cares? I'm bored of being polite. Everyone's so fucking shitty polite, all the time."
"So you're just going to be rude?"
"To you?"
"Not to me," she laughed, "to the guy!" Jen looked over at the two guys over at the bar. Both were deep in conversation. "Wanna hit on them?"
"Yes." She smiled, and both girls stood up, and went to approach the guys.
"But, if it's not aliens, then what is it? Some secret society? I'm just saying...." Kevin paused mid-sentence, and turned to look at the girls, now standing over them. Clarke turned as well, looking at Jen first, making Direl angry with him.
"Hi," Direl said, and forced up a smile at Clarke. "I'm Direl, and this is my friend Jennifer. Mind if we join you?"
"Sure, go ahead," Kevin said smiling pleasantly.
The girls looked at each other in agreement, and each sat next to one of the guys, tactically surrounding them, and setting their drinks on the bar table.
"How old are you?" Direl asked, looking at Clarke, but then - wanting to be friendly, glanced at Kevin as well.
"Ah, I'm twenty seven, and Kevin just turned twenty eight. And you?"
"I am twenty eight," Direl said.
"And I am the same, twenty eight," Jen added.
The guys turned to look from one girl to the other.
"Good," Jen said and smiled, "we're a match!" And she laughed, sipping on her mug.
They were not actually a match, it turned out, but ever since that night, Jen stopped complaining about Direl being so forward with guys. Hey, it works.
People can tease the basic needs in others, and create a strong emotional pressure. Often, with little effort.
Underneath the intricate thinking and reasoning of the Human mind, there is an impulse-driven mechanism that demands obedience. We get tired and fall asleep, we get hungry and eat, and we get horny and lust.
Yes, please don't tease, if you won't please.
I have recently had two instances of girls teasing me, either to enjoy my company, or to use me for their own personal interest.
The first appeared friendly enough. I liked her vibe, and decided to send her a personal message. We started talking, sharing a bit about ourselfs. However, she would also regularly tease me, and others, saying things like, "hey baby," and, "I love you," along with other catch-phrases and cutsie poses. When I asked to get more personal, she declined, saying she is not interested in "an online relationship", or mixing that chat with her personal life.
Not surprisingly, I later learned, from noticing her behavior and asking questions, that the reasons she gave me were lies - and did not actually apply to everyone. She did indeed become more intimate with other guys from the chat. And that she has a record of guys "just falling for her, for no reason." Yeah...
The second girl was also nice enough, at first. I actually did not have much interest in her, until she asked me to see if I can find more information about her online; to see how vulnerable she is to hackers. This, being quite a task, hinted to me that she is interested in me finding her out. Like a game. So, I did, and later on I found her Skype, and we got talking.
It was soon after that she asked me another such favor, to do some employer's long online quiz, to see how her results compared to mine. I thought to myself that such a personal and tedious request could only show very personal interest in me; although I did make a deal with her, that if I did it, then she would send me a gift by post. :-D
And yet again, when I asked to clarify out relationship, she insisted that it is nothing but being friends. I pointed out her unusual requests, and she appeared surprised that I saw things that way. She apologized... only to continue teasing, making requests, and eventually lie about me to a friend, and put me in a bad light. Yeah...
A tease will display sexuality, and cause a yearning lust in potential mates. This yearning makes others become increasingly interested in the tease, wanting to make a good impression.
At this point you might think, "What's so wrong with that?", or, "Are you calling me a slut?"
A tease and a slut are two different things. A slut actually follows through on his or her teasing! A tease however, while being sexually explicit, and even friendly and intimate, will never gratify those sexual needs.
And that is why a tease is so much worse! You might hate a slut for "using" you, sexually, but you will not feel the emotional compulsion that teasing brings. A slut will be straightforward, and let you off. A tease will continue, even after clarifying that you will not be getting anything!... Anything but emotional abuse, that is.
You will continue to suffer the oppression of strong feelings and interest towards a person that does not feel the same. Often, they will not even care about you, other than as entertainment. And they do so, the tease, because it is a tool that lets them force you, manipulate you into "liking them", or rather, giving them the attention they want.
If you are reading this, realizing that you do tease others, then stop that!
It is inconsiderate to manipulate other people's feelings, if you actually want to be friends with them. Friends let their friends choose; they do not put emotional pressure - guilt, tease, shame, and so on - on them, for personal benefit. Only tease when you are actually willing to commit, and follow through sexually. Be honest.
And if you are a victim of sexual manipulation - by a tease, then get the fuck away from that person. Right now!
Sadly, there is no way to stop feeling. We are designed to feel, and respond to attractions. Even if you can withhold yourself, it takes effort, and eventually drains on your emotional reserve. It is just not worth it.
I once heard the wise phrase, "Do not play a losing game." You have nothing to gain from tolerating a tease, just as you have nothing to gain from tolerating any other form of abuse. A tease is not your friend. If they were, they would have cared and been considerate enough to avoid triggering you emotionally, on a regular basis, in a way that does not match their own intentions.
Keep your eyes open, and do not hesitate to catch a tease in action, and tell them off!
Love is when you're good
To yourself
To a friend
To your girl or guy
To the stranger who's alive
Or the stranger that'll die
It's a gesture, a hint
A word or a smile
It's something that you give
And you give it for a while
Because you really want to
And not because you're told
Love is when you're good
Even when it's old
A kid thinks love
Is nothing but a sham
A sexy misdirection
To get out of a jam
But loving isn't one thing
Not sex, cash, nor a pic
Love is when you're doing
Not always knowing what it means
And if you've ever wondered
Am I really loving this?
Then you must be smarter
To know something's amiss
In life it ain't just one thing
It's a myriad of thing
Love is when you're good
And being good is everything.
For about a year now, I have been enjoying the online service called Tinychat. It is a place where random people can create virtual rooms, and chat on camera, with a microphone, and by text.
Looks a bit different...
Their service is provided through a Flash client that handles all the technicalities. Naturally, people became curious, wanting to hack into the service, for fun. It becomes a sort of game, where one hacker would annoy another person's room, by figuring out which data packets do what, and replicating or changing them; spamming the other room with messages.
Other than spamming for fun and challenge, users figured out they could create bots. Bots are applications that mimic an actual user, but usually only to the extent that they obey another. So, if only moderators could play videos in the room, now a user with access to the bot can also play videos.
This sort of delegation lets rooms become more friendly and interactive, by reducing the workload of the moderators. The bot itself works by using RTMP and AMF libraries; the former to make the streaming connection, and the latter to encode & decode the data packets.
I have had the pleasure of working with existing PHP and Python bots, and editing them for increased functionality. I used Wireshark, filtered for the room's IP address, and sniffed out the command packets. It felt like the internet should be;a wild place, full of opportunities and troubles, inhabited by curious lively individuals.
I wanted to share all of this, in summary, with you. I have just had a good couple of weeks, coding and cracking code, enjoying the results with my friends there. I will leave you with a reference list, for those who are curious about the details. ;-)
https://www.wireshark.org/
Use the Find option, to locate commands or names. Here's a few examples of filters: ip.addr == 209.212.144.103 ip.dst == 209.212.144.117 !(ip.dst == 209.212.144.105) && frame.cap_len < 200 && !(frame.cap_len == 54)
http://pastebin.com/Aht0r1V9
An older semi-functional bot in Python, that I found while googling around. It's quite a big hint.
