The Blog With Five Names

For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway. In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.

Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.

This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.

Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.

If this seems harsh: There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour. Over fifty people lost their homes. Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.

The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this

-And there is! It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)

Abstruse English

Introduction

I appreciate the worth of restricted varieties of English that solely contain frequently utilized words, exemplified by the Simple English Wikipedia and Randall Munroe’s volume Thing Explainer. Pondering these varieties, an additional query materialized to me: what if in lieu of increasing the straightforwardness of the vocabulary, I increased its complexity and unpleasantness?

Consequently arose Abstruse English.

Regulations of Abstruse English

Abstruse English excludes from its vocabulary the 1,000 English lexical items utilized with maximal frequency. Abstruse English permits essential exceptions:

Articles (“the”, “a”)

Pronouns (“I”, “it”)

Prepositions (“of”, “as”)

Conjunctions (“and”)

”No” and “not”

Abstruse English additionally permits numerals ("1,000") and capitalized nomina propria (“Abstruse English”, “Randall Munroe”).

Auxiliary Challenges

The vocabulary of Abstruse English entirely lacks varieties of the lexical item “to be”. Consequently, the constraints resemble E-Prime, a restricted dialect of English lacking conjugations and contractions of that lexical item.

Abstruse English additionally lacks varieties of “to do”, necessitating atypical negations.

This reminds me of a story...

In the social media boom of the 2010s, I was a social media professional (a new career thanks to this very tumblr account and a short-lived career because I like my mental health).

Back then, it was obvious what platforms companies needed to be on: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. Becase that’s where their customers and potential customers were.

Then, there came a rumbling through the profession. Our colleagues were told we had to be on Google+, it was going tro be the new king social platform.

A lot of social media pros got their companies or clients to jump in with both feet. Some of us, however, took a beat and asked a simple question: “Who told you Google+ was necessary?"

We asked this because it felt like the reverse process of what had come before. Previous platforms grew into something first. No one could have predicted what a cultural juggernaut Tumblr became, the result of a sense of community among the users that formed organically and was fostered by the staff. Twitter started as a place where people dropped clever one-line jokes and became the largest and most critical breaking news outlet in thr world (RIP Twitter).

But, in the case of Google+, no one seemed to be rushing to the platform. The user base was nearly non-existant. Yet, the buzz that it would be the next big thing was loud and, for that reason, many comapnies started official accounts and shifted a part of their social strategy to the platform. But still, if the numbers weren’t there, who was saying this?

The source of this new push to join Google+, it turned out, inevitably led back to Google. Yes, upper level Google staff had been telling tech bros, investors, and tastemakers Google+ was the future of social media. That trickled down to us plebes, the ones who would dutifully fulfill the prophecy.

Needless to say, it wasn’t the future of social media. It was a trainwreck that saw its few actual users spend 3-5 seconds per day on the platform compared to the hours per day people spent on Facebook.

Now, the “buyer’s remorse” over AI we’re seeing from all of these corporations feels very similar. It’s not users saying we need AI in every goddamn fucking thing, it’s AI companies. They're pushing a product tech overlords claim is the solution to a host of non-existant problems. And the comapnies got in line.

The difference this time is two-fold: Us plebes and commoners are fighting back and the companies that bought in are losing money. (At least a Google+ account was free.)

But, the truly shocking revelation is how fucking gullible these big CEOs are. They were told by AI salesmen that their already successful product will only continue to succeed if they bake in AI.

And what happened? One super fun example is how Google touted themselves as the best search engine in the world. Now, the first result on any search is an AI summary, followed with this warning in very small print:

That seems like a pretty clear admission that Google is not a reliable search engine any more.

So, I guess the moral of this story is: If you want to sell something for millions of dollars that no one needs, talk to a CEO.

Incantation used to ward off a specific group of malevolent, vampire-like spirits known as the Seven Utukku (or Seven Evil Spirits).

Also, because this is incredibly important to Bond for some reason, she needs to be an incredibly predatory, womanizing lesbian. Some perfectly happy married straight woman needs to become gay by the end of the movie.

someone else shaves the barber (that would make the barber someone who does not shave themself, which would mean the barber shaves them)

the barber shaves themself (this would make the barber someone who shaves themself, which would mean they aren't shaved by the barber)

the barber is shaved by a different barber (a different barber still counts as a person.)

the barber is shaved by a razor and not a person (if this counts as not shaving themself then nobody in this town is being shaved by the barber and this does not actually fit any part of the scenario described)

the barber is a woman (women actually count as people so she still needs to be shaved)

the barber is bald (bald people are people too.)

Looks like this corrupt government is gonna have to find another grounds to arrest him. And hey look there’s this incident with a hotel and some money’s left unaccounted for….. perfect excuse to jail an enemy of the state.

The story of the incident never included the barber in any of the tomfoolery, but changed were made as the story was gossiped about. Characters and events were forgotten and replaced with new ones until no elements of truth remained. Is it still the same rumor?

The barber is arrested for this fake story. They take him in. Now, cops are allowed to lie, but if all they do is lie then the barber is safe believing the opposite of what they say. The cops grill him by playing the role two opposite characters— truth cop and lie cop, and the barber isn’t told who’s who. Luckily the cops are kinda dumb and don’t realize that if they answer ask questions this makes it trivially easy for the barber to figure out who to ask for an attorney. Soon, he’s slated for trial

The judge doesn’t care if the story’s fake as long as the prison pays them. Many call this place tyrannical. But at what point in adding unjust laws, one by one, does a government become a tyranny?

Back to the barber though, he’s through with it. He’s making a daring escape. Because the cops have no idea what he’s got in his pocket.