#rationalist

I am not a spiritual person. While I recognize these are important to many people, spirituality, magic, "magick", and "metaphysics" are not practices I follow or believe in. When people talk about crystals, reiki, astrology, things like that, the best they'll get from me is a polite nod and a tight smile while I hold back opinions that I know they won't like.

However. I will go to bat for tarot (and oracle decks et al). I find them incredibly useful tools, and not because of card spirits or any divinatory power within a deck. I regularly read tarot as a meditative and reflective practice, and I know other atheist tarot-readers as well.

Why am I making this exception when other magick makes me roll my eyes? Well, I think tarot works in a way that the others don't. If you're not spiritual and curious about a rational explanation for tarot as opposed to a "magickal" one, the one-word answer is: semiotics.

A shiny new prediction market appeared, before the mods removed it at 11:11pm.

In a bathroom, an Avery stared at their face, marking it with eyeliner. “Will this Avery East-Asian pass? YES: 33% NO: 67%. 23 votes” appeared on the mirror. They smeared the word NO with cherry lipstick. Dissociation in progress.

The Chinese are too familiar with dimorphic facial characteristics; Long hair alone is insufficient to pass.

The Avery of ancient Lin’an was a court debater, dying of suffocation when the emperor spoonfed hot coal down his throat. The Avery of Shinjuku was a nameless immigrant from Kathmandu, known only in a post about violent public suicide near a train station.

Avery yearned to be seen; They wished not to be found. Averies typically do not agree.

In an alley, an elderly Avery knelt besides cages. Birds of yellow, leaf-green and white. Living in extremely confined ways. Not bright; Not tragic. The gray parrot’s cage has a QR code. Old Avery scanned it with his son’s phone. The market loaded: “Will this bird speak again?” YES: 94%. He misclicks “YES”.

The mathematical Avery was peeling an orange. A Seville, bitter, chosen on purpose. The sunlight vectors petitioned the room and settled neatly on the floor. He sections the orange, methodically, into a flower. He moved sequentially, placing each segment on a plate beside: a printout of Grothendieck’s Esquisse d’un Programme, a worn paperback of Intercourse, a photograph of Badwater Basin printed on the back of a Finnegans Wake index card… And a terminal with yet another prediction market. P(Avery deletes source code) = 0.50000. He nudges one segment. The display ticks to 0.49999. This Avery existed in abstraction, theory, academia. In closed systems.

Averies agreeing: 2/10.

An Avery was bankrupt in Hong Kong, spent their last money in an arcade, alone in a booth. Every missed note pushed the candle bar toward “YES, delete”. The rhythm game paused at INSERT COIN, staring. It was a question with a single acceptable input. An Avery in a black hoodie walked in, cyberpunk, holding a Monster can. She clocked him instantly.

“Hey… Aren’t you the guy who made a market about deleting himself?”

“Yes,” Avery said, didn’t blink. “It resolved N/A.”

The prediction stalled at 49%. Hoodie-girl laughed, sharp. “L. Skill issue. Can’t even hold 50%.” She tapped on her phone. Vote: “YES”.

Averies in consensus: 3/10.

Breakfast, Avery’s place, 6:51 AM.

The cooking robot blared. “Good morning :D Would you like today’s relationship forecast? P(Avery is girl) = 0.5 +/- 0.000. Updated every 5 minutes.” “Thank you for the unsolicited information.” Avery said, retrieved a marker and scribbled on a sticky note: Humans are not—The marker dried. They opened the browser; an kinetic of a hetero, normative, couple blocked the viewport. The sticky note slid, covering the last trailing 0.

Time: 00:17 AM. Location: Twitter DMs.

An Avery opened their DMs. Overcaffeinated. He wrote like a 2010s wordpress comment, unhurried and slightly out of time.

“Hey. I knew you from the forums. This conversation is due ten years ago.” Silence. “haha you never replied.” He sent two memes, one about Sasha Gusev, the other about people sea attacks. He squinted at a question. Couldn’t understand it. Clicked “no”.

Averies agreeing: still 3/10. Stale.

Somewhere in Asia. A high school. An Avery soft-forked himself into a feral node, roaming the metro stations. The glass door displayed: “Will Avery self-delete by 2030? BID 0.97 ASK 0.98.” The door slid open before the trade executes. Avery stepped in.

New Year’s Eve. Rooftop. City fireworks blast. Drones overhead began forming ‘2030’. “Will Avery self-delete/be here?” a market hovered. Avery leaned against the railing. Drones overhead rearranged.

“Humans are not—” Someone yelled in the distance.

He input: NO.

Market resolved.

All available Averies have voted.

Humans are not—

-----

I made this post about the 21st Century Shoah back before we knew what the death toll would be, and I have recently been getting utterly mobbed with Rats who have found it and are defending themselves by saying that nooooooo the Thoughtleaders were *totally* in favor of USAID and PEPFAR and not addressing in any way their decades-long histories of arguing that Someone Needs To Do Something About the "low IQ populations", or that LaSota blatantly revealed that the main goal of the movement is and always has been extermination of the Unworthy.

As horror-movie Gothic as a samurai sword attack on an octogenarian in a desolate corner of the San Francisco Bay might sound, it was only the first in a series of alleged violent crimes that law enforcement authorities have linked to members of the strange group Lind had welcomed into his motley community.