starbeast

In the UK, we have had a government filled with people from the Bullingdon Club, an Oxford society that initiated members by having them burn money in front of the homeless. Homelessness has then rocketed under these people's reign, something they unfortunately cannot take seriously by the initiative act of their club. This society's association with government had the amusing high point where our sitting prime minister was accused of having oral sex with a cooked pig by another secret society member from within his own party.

This stuff might not affect the colleges that much, the fallout happens later when these people go off and get jobs.

I never underestimate humanity's ability to come up with shit that is as weird as it is ridiculous, especially when it comes to tribal initiations. We get bungee jumping from the tribal initiation of the Bunlap people of Vanatu, so unless your pledge involves something as dangerous as attaching a liana to your ankles and jumping off a tree with the intention being to actually hit the ground with your face, while naked except for a belt and a strategically placed leaf, then frankly you aren't even trying.

I've known several people associated with masonry. One got kicked out after doing a 'mason in distress' sign at a judge to get his drug trial stopped. Another, who has held several senior positions within lodges, has a second secret life that he has to keep hidden from them. Is just all borrowed power games and as far as I can tell the deal isn't worth it, the last secret has got to be an empty box, the power being in the idea of the secret itself. Then you get to stand around and look all enlightened and stuff. Then you go home and the car still has a squeaky noise that nobody can identify and the bath drain is mysteriously full of hair.

I got the shivers from this as well. It is not only absolutely fucking stunning in and of itself but considering what it took to be able to see this image, all of the people responsible are utterly magnificent bastards. Also I have had a thoroughly shit week, so I wish them extra thanks for gifting me a bit of optimism, which I sorely needed. Awe is an overused term, but here it genuinely applies.

>“Who was the fool, who the wise man, beggar or king? Whether poor or rich, all’s the same in death.”

As much as being fans of the Illuminati (and who isn't?) they might also be fans of Diogenes of Sinope.

>"I am searching for the bones of your father, but could not distinguish them from those of a slave."

Diogenes of Sinope trolling Alexander the Great (again) ~300BC

One thing about these secret societies is that they give the political hegemony some resistance to the Rasputin problem. People who are addicted to power have a peculiar weakness to woo merchants promising further power over supernatural realms, which if the power addict even slightly entertains as a possibility of existing, they will feel compelled to follow, even on the off chance of more power. If they already feel they have the inside track on the occult, they are far more likely to rely on the resident court woo merchants, rather than following the latest wild eyed cosmic debris that just wandered in.

As an aside, a friend of mine has the theory that Trump is conclusive proof of the non-existence, or at least lack of real power, of the Illuminati or equivalent. On the basis that there is no sane over-arching conspiracy of total control where you would choose to end up with Donald Trump. He only makes sense from a world of many groups that have varying power and competency, where one of them is currently trying to fuck the other up.

This site is still up.

What if I try to sell you on the notion that getting high quality is extremely unlikely by definition, otherwise it would be called average quality?

Ahh yes, well it is a jolly little number that, but be aware not to discuss it with your colleagues until you are well out of department. We don't want it coming up in committee, now do we? You don't want it becoming a wash.

Well, I think you have bias on this 'scandal', or should I say scandal. It is a scandal and also to claim loss of market value from the scandal is equivalent to some sort of fine or other legal punishment is beyond ridiculous (and kind of shows your hand a little).

Yeah, but everyone has a plausible case to play victim if the evidence threshold is 'scary things that could exist that we currently have no evidence either way for'.

There's a popular idea that it is bad to judge others. I disagree. I think we will judge others whether we like to admit it or not and also that many of the people I have met who claim not to judge anyone have also happened to have been some of the most hypocritical people I have ever met. I think the important thing is to judge yourself and your own judgements on other people, at least as harshly as you find yourself judging others. Put your own opinions of other people up to the coldest possible light. Judge more, not less.

Laws generally follow the calls for moral condemnation or the relaxation of those calls. And those calls are part of the debate on what should or shouldn't be law. Asking for moral judgment to be removed from discussions because those things are legal, is putting the cart before the horse.

I think you have your dependencies muddled.

How come nearly everybody saying pretty much this exact thing on every FB thread recently also emphasizes that they are not trying to imagine a conspiracy here? Now, I am not trying to imagine a conspiracy here...

>I sometimes think that if/when Britain becomes a dictatorship it'll be a brutally-enforced version of Middle England, with death sentences for people who don't put their bins out properly and so on.

You just reminded me of this old bit of news -

- Half of councils use anti-terror laws to spy on 'bin crimes'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-coun...

We took bids from a variety of suppliers and it turns out that bespoke and competent totalitarianism in Orwell's '1984' model is rather expensive and will restrict how much money will be available for the minister to spend on grouse shooting in the Scottish Highlands.

So we took the liberty of soliciting a range of bids at different price points and as it turns out, G4S brought up a lovely little offering that they have titled 'Central Services from Terry Gilliam's Brazil'.

It is both cheap and looks the part, but most importantly, doesn't rely on anything actually working or anybody doing anything that could reasonably be described as work, especially at the top end, thus freeing up far more time for golf.

The value of that intangible asset is called 'goodwill' and the market gives it a value. Worldcom had to slash around $80 billion dollars in lost 'goodwill'.

Why don't we go and look? We do have the internet.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sanctions-on-syria

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-sanctio...

Well, there is nothing about restricting general employment of Syrians in there.

Which is great for politeness, but largely rubbish for working out what people might be up to, given that people not only regularly disguise malice as stupidity, but in some cases find it highly entertaining. Hence the existence of - https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/

Sounds vaguely related to this tech - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03787...

'Direct NaBH4/H2O2 fuel cells'

"A fuel cell (FC) using liquid fuel and oxidizer is under investigation. H2O2 is used in this FC directly at the cathode. Either of two types of reactant, namely a gas-phase hydrogen or an aqueous NaBH4 solution, are utilized as fuel at the anode. Experiments demonstrate that the direct utilization of H2O2 and NaBH4 at the electrodes results in >30% higher voltage output compared to the ordinary H2/O2 FC. Further, the use of this combination of all liquid fuels, provides numerous advantages (ease of storage, reduced pumping requirements, simplified heat removal, etc.) from an operational point of view. This design is inherently compact compared to other cells that use gas phase reactants. Further, regeneration is possible using an electrical input, e.g. from power lines or a solar panel. While the peroxide-based FC is ideally suited for applications such as space power where air is not available and a high energy density fuel is essential, other distributed and mobile power uses are of interest."

0 - you must play the game

1 - you can never win

2 - you can only break even on a very cold day << f.n.

3 - it never ever gets that cold

----

f.n. >> the maximum efficiency of the work that can be extracted from a heat cycle is dependent on the relative difference between the hot end and the cold end and absolute zero. The closer you can get the cold end to zero relative to the hot, the higher the efficiency. The energy of a heat engine comes from the potential. If everything is equally hot there is no potential energy just as much as if everything is equally cold. If there is a gradient, you can do work.

Caveat Emptor - Chandelor v Lopus (1603)

edit - there is a core difference in definitions of trust going on here and it is basically the difference between the list of people you would lend money to vs the list of people you would buy something from. For certain trades, these lists are essentially the same, but for other trades they are very, very different.

I think that for anyone paying attention, Facebook has been a continual shitshow since inception. The idea that they will ever learn to have a sense of civic responsibility towards their general userbase is simply delusional, for the simple reason that to do so goes utterly against Facebook's entire core business model. It is the 'punter model' of doing business with customer as puppet/adversary and it is also the main moral failing at the center of Google. The fact that there is a recent pile on by the media might be that there is some nefarious competitor stirring up trouble. Or it might be that they have woken up and decided to do their jobs for once and this seems unusual.

If there is, then it is being laid down on top of several feet of actual turf.

“In after-years he liked to think that he had been in Very Great Danger during the Terrible Flood, but the only danger he had really been in was in the last half-hour of his imprisonment, when Owl, who had just flown up, sat on a branch of his tree to comfort him, and told him a very long story about an aunt who had once laid a seagull’s egg by mistake, and the story went on and on, rather like this sentence, until Piglet who was listening out of his window without much hope, went to sleep quietly and naturally, slipping slowly out of the window towards the water until he was only hanging on by his toes, at which moment luckily, a sudden loud squawk from Owl, which was really part of the story, being what his aunt said, woke the Piglet up and just gave him time to jerk himself back into safety and say, “How interesting, and did she?” when—well, you can imagine his joy when at last he saw the good ship, The Brain of Pooh (Captain, C. Robin; 1st Mate, P. Bear) coming over the sea to rescue him.”

from 'Winnie-the-Pooh', by A.A. Milne. ;)

"But he who thinks that in the written word there is necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and his legitimate offspring;-being, in the first place, the word which he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and relations of his others;-and who cares for them and no others-this is the right sort of man; and you and I, Phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him."

Attributed to Socrates, written down by Plato (in Phaedrus) ca. 360BC. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

Postmodernist comedy has a surprisingly long history, it appears.

NASA

Ahh yes, that homogeneous block known only as 'Themedia'.

Some things will seem very innocent though. Having a video call with a family member while sending out data under the noise floor.

I agree that you have more of a point in saying that it could have had more substance to it, than in claiming that it is somehow a tangent from the article.