The Agency is a NY Times Magazine piece by Adrian Chen on the hunt for a Russian-run "Troll Farm".
It is interesting. Brew some coffee and take a rather long read.
When you finish (or decide you want to skip to the end), read below (which begins by quoting the end of the piece):
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This is just adding another node on the network requesting the same information.
Making it higher-ranking. More searched.
You cannot observe the thing without changing it.
You're not just part of the solution, you're also part of the problem.
The things is that as we go forward and stop making sense, you won't find the ability to tell the difference so clear as that old saying. That's the thing about old sayings-- often they are as much about the contemplation as they are about the direct conclusion.
Then again, so too with all things, yes?
I'm back at home with my own coffee.
Thanks again to those who've hosted me over the holidays, but my coffee is better.
For me.
Your coffee is thin and bitter by thirds or too noisy by half or too metal or too dark or too light or too mixed up and blue.
Just the way all other beds are too hard or too light or too dark or too light or too shaped not at all right by the other occasional guests in the house.
When we all look for the same thing it becomes easy to find, though the things we might look harder for offer more reward.
Or at least a different way on through to nowhere so unique that we can't leave the details up to each reading mind.
To mine is the thing while sitting while walking while reading again. While writing and seeing and believing in self
Whether or not it can be explained as an individual or a piece of a manifestation of a bigger thing like an iceberg
Or a different thing like a will-o'-the-wisp or an anglerfish.
How is what we each see choreographed around us?
How is it pre-/self-selected/curated/managed/edited/sorted/remembered?
And then what does it say if we all do it the same way or if we come to different conclusions about what is around us?
What is more likely and which is more true?
Perhaps the reason it is on the list is due to how many times it was read... or some rather than no relation to it being on this list.
Perhaps this means something rather than nothing. But by virtue of it being on this list, it is now more of either nothing or something.
It's a cold world out there...
But then again as we walk we release heat. We burn fuel. We move we eat.
Are we making it warmer or colder? We breed we create more of us to do more of "us".
Are we making it warmer or colder?
Are we asking the right question?
Are there wrong questions to ask?
Heavens, hell we go again on our own.
2016 A New Year.
I will read more things from 2015.
Aka "The Past."
With apologies to Mitch Hedberg:
"Every[thing you read] is from the past".
Which means everything you write is
A message for the future.
We all knew time-traveling was possible.
So possible we'd forgotten we'd already done it.
That we do it whenever we read and write and discuss.
Our past selves so near that the person we're with remembers too.
But by the end we're not ever even the same persons we began as.
So to with the meaning of all things, no?
We try and we try to do our best or our worst and then we're all revealed to have failed or succeeded by the standards of others as/after we pass from this life.
We each could as easily be an elaborate ruse as a truthful direct representation of self.
We then again must return to "What is self" and here we.
A belated toast to all the best we are and were and hope to be.
Whether we ever understand it, it is all we ever mean.
20160102
Longreads 2015 #1
20100927
20090806
There is plenty of money
in the world
but there are damn few jobs an intelligent man can do without compromising himself intolerably.
-hst, The Proud Highway
20090313
20081218
20080623
20080530
20080527
20080512
20080428
20080424
20080407
I just realized
... that the reason I know who the host of Family Feud was
(Richard Dawson) is because of a line in a Wu-Tang song whose next line is:
"Fatal Flying Guillotine chops off your fuckin' head."
I've never seen Richard Dawson. Nor Fatal Flying Guillotine. But know I like RZA's style.
20080328
Another Wasted Hedberg Reference
At Work Today:
"I like vending machines because snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar in a store, sometimes I will drop it so it will reach its maximum flavor potential."
perhaps I should have said
"I like Hedberg references because he is funnier than I am. If I think of something clever on my own, sometimes I will reference him so I will reach my maximum humor potential."
Yup. Conversation successfully Jerk-Stored.
20080327
20071223
multiple selves and deconstruction
truly (post?)modern?
First, I'll quote a piece by Lance Morrow from the January 2008 version (from the future!) of Smithsonian magazine in which he quotes Norman Mailer as having quoted Virginia Woolf in Mailer's book about Marilyn Monroe:A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as one thousand.
Second, I'll start typing:
The first thing that came to mind when i read this was the nature of my thousand selves. I know now that they're there, not separate in any way. And accepting that even inside of myself I have multiple viewpoints and opinions about even the smallest thing was a huge step in learning to love life even when things didn't go according to the plans of one of my past selves. The trick is to get out of that headspace and get into a different one. Tougher, of course, the more initially unpleasant an experience is... but who knows, perhaps you could do it, mentally at least, with any given experience, no matter how terrible, if only you focus well enough.
Then gain... that sounds like a buncha mumbo-jumbo.
The second thing that ripped through my skull was the serious translation Wool's quote has gone through to land here. I wondered...
1. Had Mailer actually read the document that he quoted and understood the context? Had he violated Woolf's original intent somehow?
2. Had Morrow fully understood the context of the quote in Mailer's use? Had Morrow Fully understood the quote in Mailer's context? Did a full understanding of Mailer's usage of the quote rely on a full understanding of the work from which it was originally quoted? Had Morrow's use agreed with or contradicted those sources?
3. Did I understand Woolf's/Mailer's/Morrow's usages? How the related to each other? Their contexts? Intended meanings? Reasons for quoting? What they were each trying
to convey to me by quoting the other person (quoting the other person)?
Shit No! And now my fucking head hurts.
In part because I just thought about the notion of someone leaving a comment on this entry, quoting me quoting Morrow quoting Mailer quoting Woolf and then me responding to that comment quoting person x quoting me quoting Morrow quoting Mailer quoting Woolf.
And then I imagined the conversation dying for a while. Then the passage of time and
the blog falling into non-update land (as most websites eventually do) and then
even further into the future, someone randomly coming across it years down the
road with some google search like 'Mailer Woolf "multiple selves" deconstruction' and
quoting my last comment to her friends in an email....
And so it continues. Further removal of context.
Does it retain the same meaning? Does it lose meaning? Does it gain meanings like a snowball rolling downhill gains snow? Actually, the quote is probably exactly like that. As it gains more and more meanings layered on top of one another, the ability to fully comprehend it diminishes until you can no longer tell how big it is. And
then, if it continues for long enough, a person observing it wouldn't even be able to tell it was round...
Perhaps that metaphor went too far. But since I'm not handing in a lit paper to some snotty grad student without a sense of humor, I don't have to worry about it. I can just think on it and jot this down for later mockery. Or future quotery.
Or for nothing at all.
20071120
newsradio
Is a complete genius show.
If you don't know that, you simply didn't spend late nights in college watching reruns two-at-a-time. And that sir/ma'am, is your loss. You could buy them on dvd and watch them. I'm told you can find them on the internet somewheres, but I don't know for sure. I've got them on dvd and that's the way I likes it.
From the episode I watched today:Bill MacNeil (Phil Hartman): Hey I here someones in the market for a few good Ted stories.
Genius. In the same episode, Matthew Brock (Andy Dick) sings a random 30-verse song about Ted (mentioned twice), which is really a song about he (Matthew) hobbits, elves, vorpal swords and mythril blades. With Matthew accompanying himself on "weird vocal noises" while the Guy from above looks horrified.
Guy: Yes, that is correct.
BM: Then walk this way. Through the gates of Ted-dom into Bill's secret repository of tasty Tedbits and fond Tedmembrances. Oh and a please forgive Dave. He's wearing a mask of callousness hide his grief. Y'know what they say: Little man big emotion.
G: Never heard that before
BM: Well, I'm part cherokee.
[cut to scene of the two talking]
BM: Hell of a guy. One of the bravest sons-of-bitches I ever knew. Best man in the world to be in a foxhole with. He took bullet for me in the battle for San.... Luis Obispo.
G: anything else you remember about him?
BM: Nope.
G: Did Ted have a favorite song, movie, book anything?
BM: Nope.
20071119
tao te ching 1
this blows my mind every time I read it
"Wise souls keep their part of the contract
and don’t make demands on others
People whose power is real fulfill their obligations;
people whose power is hollow insist on their claims"
wow.
That's deep. "Deep like the mind of Minolta."
(Tao Te Ching Wikipedia Link)