u/CallMeTank

Any poo flingers feeling interested in a book by the man who coined "Metaverse" in a book satirizing cyberpunk tropes so perfectly that it deserves the status of being where "Metaverse" originated? Hiro Protagonist is a bro. In a trench coat. But it's totally the coolest.

What I really want to talk about is a technology from "Fall - or Dodge in Hell". Journey through Ameristan with me. Visit the brochure kiosk next to the flaming cross. Reinvent civilization with Egdod. It's an epic tale of the grandest proportions.

Yet, its most relevant modern day concept are Pluto's APEs. Autonomous Proxies for Execration - poo-flinging apes of the programmer art variety - are bots who spam everything everywhere with defamatory content about someone.

Overwhelmingly.

Accusing them of everything - of being a whore, of being a fascist prude, of being a gold digger, of being a bank robber. Obviously none of it real. But it's designed to drown out conspiracy theories on the internet. If there are a hundred posts about Maeve and each one is blatantly false, why would my angry uncle's opinion matter? I'm going to filter out that name and go on with my life.

A Braden - of Maeve Braden - is a single post, blog, video, or tweet that defames and attacks the target. A kilo Braden is a thousand posts. A day? They insinuate faster times than that, but there's got to be a limit before you are just DDOS'ing Twitter's servers, right? Someone could do the math for it.

In the book it's a specific campaign to affect the internet Crazytown population from doxxing and tormenting a main character - Maeve Braden. Pluto created the APE system and drowned out the Crazytown content with floods of antagonistic content all targeted at "Maeve". It was powerful. In Maeve's name Pluto broke the internet, and the whole story points out some uncomfortable weaknesses in our own systems.

Anyways. What kind of kiloBradens could we hit with today's technology?

I see FIFA being pushed everywhere - fucking McDonald's kids toys?!? - and I can't help bug to wonder if that circus is actually doing what The Diaper Man Cronies & Co think it's going to. Does the "Bread and Circuses" concept really rely on such low-quality Circuses, or does FIFA (a company that has been riddled by scandals and corruption for years) actually have such a big global following as to distract the masses from... Everything else...

Just got a gig busking on a tourist train in Montana. Cowboy costumes, fiddle, and countryside.

The train is too loud though. I need amplification for my guitar and vocals. Does anyone have recommendations for a battery powered setup?

It's still an enclosed space, but the sounds of the train moving were just too much for people to understand me. The fiddle was loud enough though, so we had a good night.

Without the beard lore though.

Get out of here with your skinny chicks for a Lusian - they were literally born on a different gravity planet. You gotta be squat, thick, and brawny as hell. Constitution like a brick. Shoulders someone else can stand on like a ladder. Tendency to go on adventures.

I'd love to see a Brawne P.I. fanfic. But I imagine her shaped like a barrel, four foot 6 at the tops and a mane of hair.

I've been thinking about a markting program that would bring Humanism to the broader community. If you haven't noticed, 30% of US respondents list their religion as "None". This _should_ be a huge, vital, and organized humanist community. It's anything but. To say that it punches below its weight in political and social forums would be a vast understatement.

One reason is clear: when we walked out of the church, we left the mechanism of community behind us, as the sole monopoly of the religionists. They own marriage and the ceremonies around life cusps. We have humanist celebrants, but they are more of a dial-an-officiant service than an actual operating community.

So, can we take back what we left? I wrote up a way to do so. Please look at noesian.org . Criticism desired.

I'm a cheap tech with a bunch of old machines. I "know a recycler" so everyone gives me their old tech and I go through it, throw a new OS on it, and let the kids have at it.

What kind of offline models work best with the stuff we already have? I'm on Ubuntu with a GeForce RTX 2060, someone's old gaming PC that I play Age Of Empires on. It was mine, and gaming runs better on Linux.

And now I want to run models on the old workhorse. What do I run?

I've been using a DXL elastic belt for YEARS, because it wraps around me almost twice (could have trimmed it. Never wanted to) is slim, keeps my pants up, and the low profile belt buckle doesn't hurt my belly. That belt buckle bit the dust this week, and the elastic is worn the heck out.

So I'm in the market for a new belt. What's your favorite belt?

I've used suspenders, but I like the feeling of a belt. I got to like the thick elastic feel, and the way it wrapped around me quite a bit extra. Online ordering options would be nice.

Thanks in advance!