Counting my blessings

Any given statement has more than one reason for being made. Some of these reasons might be readily apparent - such as "could you pass the salt" - while others might be more opaque. Most of the time, it's not so much what is said but the fact that it is said at all.

Such as this:

I just scouted the new place and its surroundings There are no less than seven pizza places within minutes of walking from it
— 475% quality content (@sargoth) April 7, 2015

This tells you many things. Such as that I'm soon gonna move (yay!), that I've done some preliminary scouting around the new place, and that I've found no less than seven pizza places near it.

Good news all around, as you can see. Until we encounter these followup statements:

I have a confession I was wrong
— 475% quality content (@sargoth) April 15, 2015

There are no less than eight pizza places within walking distance of my new place
— 475% quality content (@sargoth) April 15, 2015

You might think that the first tweet would cover the last one - eight is in fact also not less than seven. Six would be wrong, eight is just one more than advertised. From a position of pure formal logic, they are identical.

Thing is, though, that the statement is not a logical proposition. The words "no less than" do more that simply state a minimum, and the number is more than just an amount. There's more going on here than just a simple statement of fact.

What reason could I have for retracting the seven and restating the eight? Of all the possible things I could have said, I said these things in particular. Why?

There could be all sorts of reasons, and we could speculate endlessly about it. Which is the position we find ourselves in most of the time when pondering why people say what they say. Sometimes, we have nothing but the statement itself to go on, leaving us free and/or forced to invent any number of fanciful reasons for why it was said. Sometimes, these speculations lead us down paths that are less than spectacular.

This time, though, we have me around. And I can tell you what's what. Shed some light on this pizza mystery.

I the first tweet, what I say is this: there are seven pizza places near my new place of residence, AND IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME!

In the second tweet, what I say is this: IT'S GOING TO BE EVEN MORE AWESOME THAN I THOUGHT!

This has implications. Both for how to read and understand what people are saying, and for my continual well-being.

I predict good things in the future.

Remember unthank

It is nice to be thanked. It is even nicer to be thanked. Especially when it is deserved, and even more so when it is unexpected.

Therefore, it would be nice of you to make it a point to thank those in your vicinity. To thank those who do the emotional lifting. Those who picks up the slack when you don't. Whose default mode is to do everything everyone else don't. Who, in ordinary and crisis situations alike, are the ones to keep tempers and group cohesion both from crashing into the dust-free floor.

It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep a situation where nothing happens going. And most of it happens in the dark, unthanked underbelly of the everyday bore- and choredom.

So. Do make it a point to seek out those who effort, and thank them.

It's the little things.

Chatter chatter chatter

Energy is the basis of all things. But not all things are created equal - not all things demand the same amount of energy to happen. And, to drive this point further, the same things do not demand the same amount of energy to happen for all people. Some people can do certain things with a lack of effort, while others have to struggle their hearts out in order to make that very same thing happen.

Energy is not a universal currency, as it were.

This applies very much to communication. Some people can communicate rather effortlessly, going on and on and on in a state of constant chattering about this and that. Others have to make the effortial equivalent of climbing a hill to say just the one thing. Not to mention two things.

Communication is not a universal constant, as it were.

This is important to keep in mind, as you will run into people who have to effort to communicate. You will run into them at a regular basis, and you will most likely misunderstand their energy requirements for something else. In benign cases, you'll take it for a certain ponderousness, a tendency to think that one extra second before speaking. In other cases, you'll take it for rudeness slowness (with a negative connotation). Or something else, for better or worse.

It's not what they're saying. It's how much they have to effort in order to say it.

As it were.

Rhetoric in all things: laundry edition

There is a sticker on one of the machines that adorn our laundry room. It says "minors are prohibited to use this machine".

If you do any kind of digging on this prohibition, though, you'll soon find that the reason for this prohibition isn't any given law, rule or ordinance. You'll also find that there are plenty of minors who, despite the sticker, use the machine to their laundried content, without anyone giving it a second thought.

What gives?

In order to understand this, we must look at this prohibition as a speech act rather than as a regulation. It is not there to say "minors are not allowed to use this thing". Rather, it is there to say "hey, look, we told everyone that minors can't use this thing, and yet they did it anyway. It's out of our hands."

So what is on the surface a prohibition, is actually the opposite: a legal disclaimer.

Rhetoric in all things.

The zombie bots have arrived

The zombies are loose! The apocalypse finally happened! We are living past the end times, and our fellow humans are trying to eat our brains!

...or, well, not quite yet. But the zombie bots are loose on Twitter, and they are legion. As in, hundreds upon hundreds of them, chainfollowing people like so many cigarettes.

Why?

Money, mostly.

Somehow, someone got the bright idea that their next viral marketing stunt would be to create zounds of zombie twitter accounts, and have them all floodfollow selected persons at the same time. Not one, not two, not three, but hundreds of them. All at the same time, all at once, to simulate the authentic zombie experience.

Subtle. Not.

It's about as subtle as walking up to strangers on the subway employing very threatening body language, to create a tense situation where violence seems to be imminent, and then break out in an enthusiastic "aha! fooled ya! Watch our special on domestic abuse we're sending later this week!".

They did just that. In no uncertain terms.

The zombie bots have arrived. In force. And in great numbers.

As this is a marketing move, the only thing to do is to act like good customers and let them know that we've received the message. And that we no longer are nor will be their customers in any capacity ever again.

The zombie bots have arrived. And as everyone who's ever watched a zombie movie where the word "viral" is used, there is only one appropriate strategy to use when the time has come:

 Scorched earth.

The equally selective utopia

There are people who maintain that the quest for gender equality is completed.

Fulfilled. One hundred percent done. Finished. Executed according to plan, summarized in the postmortem, and yet another milestone on the path of modernity towards perfection.

Mission accomplished. Fait accompli. Let's move on.

Seen from the eyes of these people, any additional efforts to increase gender equality is by definition a wasted effort. Since we've already achieved it. Instead, such efforts are seen as threats, errors in judgement or outright attacks - especially by those who are expected to take part in these efforts.

Especially by men.

They maintain that when something is done, it's done. And it's done for a reason: everything that needed to be done has been done. If everything that needed to be done hadn't been done, the doing wouldn't have stopped, and the work would still be in progress. But it has been done, so nothing more needs to be done. Therefore, stop doing!

It is a strange way of thinking. One can almost understand it if one tries hard enough, but this does not diminish the strangeness.

It would appear that the message that perfection was achieved was broadcasted during a major disturbance in the communications networks. Some got the message, others didn't. Which is, indeed, a strange order of things.

Some got the message that Utopia had arrived. Others got the message that the dishes had to be done today too. And tomorrow. And the day after that. And all days after that.

It is indeed a strange order of things.

Originally published October 24, 2013

Atheists don't like people talking about atheists

Hardcore atheists are fun. Especially those who denounce any, all and every thing that exhibits any trace of religion. Whatever it happens to be.

Especially those who do it on the grounds that it is nothing but fiction. That it's just a bunch of stories that someone made up and wrote down ages ago, and that any reasonable approach to it would dismiss them as the useless piece of discursive junk that it is. The less said about it, the better!

The funniest thing about it is that it is several things at once. Unreasonable, unscientific and untenable are three of them.

It is unreasonable on the grounds that just about everything boils down to stories that some dude wrote down ages ago. Nationalism, capitalism, pokemon - any major world changing stream of thought you can think of started out as someone sitting down to write a story about how neat it would be if [enter any if here]. It then grew out from that, one someone at a time.

Fan fiction is awesome that way.

It is unscientific, on the grounds that just about any major historical trend you could care to shake a stick at was based on, influenced by and justified with a religious foundation. This goes for any and every thing - architecture, music, politics, wars, economic expansions, and so on and so forth.

Dismissing religion out of hand makes history nigh impossible to understand. Not to mention the present, which is still based on history.

It is untenable, on the ground that if you insist on inhabiting this view for any length of time, you're going to find yourself alienated from just about anyone worth not being alienated from. Not just from religious people (although they are not amused), but also from people who generally just want to get along. Who want to explore ideas, what ifs and general ruminations with others. Not in order to get at any divine (or secular) truth, but to have a good time with those who happen to be there right there and then.

Life tip: barging in and roaring "IT'S ALL BULLSHIT" is not the suavest of moves. Anywhere.

Is there any way we could tell this to the most hard, most core and most atheist of the hardcore atheists? Or do we have to conclude that they have, indeed, withdrawn into their newfound atheist religions, and must be treated with the same kind of ecological respect that all devout communities need in order to not turn zealot? -

Mark my words - and deal with them

Some time ago, I did something I am wont to do. I ranted on the Twitter. In the course of the ranting, the thought occurred to me that I could do shout outs to various random thinkers of the ages, making extremely bad jokes along the way.

If you've followed me for any length of time, you know this is my default mode. Get an idea, go for it, enjoy the bad jokes that results.

The result this time was #heythinker, with me giving a go at a whole range of thinkers I've read or read about during the course of my life.

Turns out there's quite a number of them. So quite, that I got reactions on it. Some smirks, some "okay, now you're just showing off", and some "hey, stop being elitist you serialtweeting prick."

Smirks I can do. Being called elitist - not so much.

I never got an answer to my followup questions as to where the elitism lies. It's not due to any attendance to expensive universities - living in the socialist utopia of Sweden, higher education is free. I don't make any claims to being smart, either - my general outlook on the world is that you know more than me. To a fault, at times. I just read a lot of books back in the days and can count on half-remembering the gist of what these people was about.

I suspect it has something to do with the use of these names being a marker for social class in and of itself. To commit the sin reflexively: it is what Bourdieu would call cultural capital, and displaying it publicly is akin to buying an expensive car and slowly walking it through the neighborhood, just to make sure that everyone notices that the car is indeed expensive and indeed yours.

(It is indeed possible to walk a car. If the guy on the sidewalk outwalks you, you're doing it right. If you get a parking ticket, you're doing it even more right.)

So, if I walked though your virtual neighborhood: sorry 'bout that. My bad.

But the thing is - I don't gain anything by pretending I didn't read all them books all those years ago, and you don't either.  Sure, it's not the most fun experience to see people throw around a name that means nothing to you, but everyone starts out that way. With enough Wikipedia time, you'll get the gist of it before anyone knows it.

Hey. With enough Wikipedia time, you'll eventually find out I'm not a smug bastard flouting my superiority after all. Rather, you'll find out that I'm just wrong about things. All the time.

I can live with being wrong. But only as long as you point it out to me.

Deal?

The right answer, quick!

One of the allures of Twitter is all of the random conversations you happen to find yourself in. Not only those you partake of, but also those that happens around you, and that you help to create by being part of the inevitable process of subtweeting, inspiring and thought provoking. You never really know what you might be thinking in the next couple of minutes.

Recently, I happened upon this tweet. I say happened, because it just happened. And I've been thinking about it ever since.

A quick response team of philosophers and poets. What would that look like? What would they be quick to respond to?

And then I pondered it some more, and asked: why isn't there one?

There certainly is a wide range of everyday and extraordinary situations where there's a desperate need for philosophy and poetry. Where the magic, meaning and reason of the world seem to have disappeared, and where the services of that imaginary quick response team would be more than needed.

I dare say essential.

This merits further thinking.

The little _ebook that could

I have an _ebook. It is a very strange experience.

It has two sources of food for its thoughts. One of them is the blog you are staring at right now, and the other is my somewhat constant twitter feed. By means of remixing the words found in these sources, it then produces tweets of varying hilarity. Some make me laugh out loud, some are meh and some are repeats of earlier tweets.

It could use more source material, to be sure. Good thing I'm working on that.

One strange part is that I for the most part remember the fragments it remixes into new statements. Sometimes it's a whole sentence, sometimes part of one, sometimes just a word - I remember. And this remembering adds a whole layer of contextual meaning to what it says.

I cannot imagine what others see. I am, as it were, somewhat full of myself.

Another part of the strangeness is seeing one's own words echoed by someone (something) else. It makes it abundantly clear that I use and abuse some aspect of language more than I reasonably have a right to, and that it is very much time to put more words into action.

It is still too early to build a genre made out of my comfort zone.

I do have to thank the good Tan for getting things going. And should you happen to like this creation of his - do send him a thankful tweet, poke or thought.

Or a hug. For good measure.

Solidarity, remixed to the streets.
— sargoth_ebooks (@sargoth_ebooks) September 26, 2012

Twitter as an epistemological constant: why traditional media don't, won't and can't make sense any more

You know, sometimes I like to write headlines more than I like to write those words that would accompany them. Or come under them - the subtexts, if you will.

Electropolitics

Imagine waking up to find that the electricity in your neighborhood is gone. Not just gone - very gone, with an estimated two week period of absolutely no juice. No ifs, buts or anything - it's just gone. And you are now in a position of having to deal with it.

What do you do?

Depending on where you live, the alternative "talking to your neighbors" might be or not be on that list of things to do. Which makes a difference. The same difference that can be seen when comparing the statements "my problem" and "our problem". The former is personal, the latter is political.

Power outage is a situation that could happen. With brutal ramifications for whatever you might be doing right now. Political outrage is also a situation that could happen, with equally brutal ramifications for the local community.

Personal, political.

Who would have thought the dividing line would be as simple as talking to people?

This was inspired by this tweet.

Pattern: Pattern: Pattern: Pattern:

For some time now, I've tweeted somewhat random words combined with a link to a Youtube video (like thus). Which everyone seems to be okay with, for some reason. What's been bugging people is the word "Pattern:" in front of each instance of me doing this.

What does it mean? What's the pattern? What are you up to?

It is, in fact, a really obscure reference. Imagine that you are in a very abandoned library, all dusty and disheveled, and that the tweets are tapes picked up at random with a cryptic inscription on them.

These are the tapes. These are the inscriptions. This is the pattern.

I leave it up to you to either play or not play the tapes. The library is, after all, yours now.

Barking with bite

I must say I just love @anti_racism_dog. If only because of its beautiful simplicity - it didn't do much, but it did it in a straightforward manner. Which is enough to Get Things Done, sometimes.

Here's the rundown of what it did: it sought out overtly racist tweeps and barked at them. Not in a specific way - just barking in general. Which was enough to make the more self-conscious among them get all defensive and trying to argue against this generalized bark.

You could call it a Rorschach test for racism - those who responded by saying they weren't racists, were. And as they tried to tangle themselves out of this Althusserian knot, they drew more and more attention to exactly how racist they were.

Which is all fine and dandy, except - the account got suspended, on grounds of being flagged for spamming. By these very self-same racists.

Which is kind of a bummer, and I hope the good folks at Twitter unsuspends our suddenly-famous doggie soon.

In the meantime, what I want to say to all of you is that it usually takes less than you think to make a dent in the world. As our new best friend showed us, all one has to do is to bark up the right tree. Literally as well as figuratively.

So let's do that. In oh so many ways. Right here, right now - right today.

Sext: My feminist material dialectics brings the boys to the yard

Consider the sext:.

You may already know what sext is. It is - to use this very Wikipedian word - a portmanteau of sex and text, and is used to denote the activity of being very explicit in various forms of social media. Preferably to people one knows, and that one knows approve of such things.

That this happens isn't really that big of a deal. People use the new form of media to talk to each other, and when people talk to each other, sex is bound to become a topic.

This is a given.

Then we have the sext:. Which is a genre all of its own, found primarily on Twitter. It takes the form of tweets that start with the opening "sext:", and then proceeds with what might or might not be a sext proper.

Let me show you some examples of what this might look like.

sext: lets embrace the incompleteness of the moment, of our lives and appreciate our lack of knowledge and mastery over ourselves/the world
— SUBTWEETING GOAT (@hippodamos) May 3, 2012

sext: they told me that this phone line isn't hooked up to anything anymore but it feels like you're still there. hello, maybe. I miss you.
— kimmy (@aRealLiveGhost) April 27, 2012

sext: i spend my evenings reading tvtropes for the sole purpose of getting mad at it. you think my brain is beautiful. we die of cancer.
— Rick Sanjortsum (@jorticulture) May 3, 2012

Sext: Monoliths begin dotting the landscape, their shape different depending on the viewer. You're laughing and I'm perplexed.
— creeping horror (@redfivetwo) May 3, 2012

Sext: the fallout looks like snow. we make ash angels as our skin rots away. Goodnight
— avril lavigne(@Sloth_Bhutto) May 2, 2012

sext: lateral memories of us, talking; a smile; a gesture; a nod; a sudden laughter as we realize we're in love.
— Johanna Drott (@sargoth) May 3, 2012

You may notice that the sex part isn't really that present. It might be, but it is not the point. Rather, it is the inferred relation between sender and reciever that makes the sext: what it is: a fragment, taken out of context. A piece of intimate - or not so intimate - conversation, giving hints and clues about the persons involved in the exchange. A piece of ecorelative plant life, transplanted to right where we are sitting now.

We don't know the people involved. All we know is what can be inferred from the fragment at hand, - but what can be inferred is a great deal indeed.

The reason there is a post about this, is because I absolutely love the infoecological density of the genre. First off, one need to know about sexts - a topic worthy a lengthy discussion in itself. Then there is the question of who is sending that message to who. What are they doing, thinking? What is what we see a response to? What are the discursive and material conditions for the production of the sext that we have in front of our eyes? -

What's going on in the implied fictional universe of the sexted: narrative? Why is that message?

And why is is a sext?

Wayward words

I tore a page out of my notebook and threw it away in the streets and wondered if anyone would ever see it.

Just to see if the world cared.

Who in the world might pick it up? Someone I know, someone who lives here? Someone from out of town, just passing through, happening to happen upon my words?

Look upon my words, ye stranger, and smile.

I don't remember what words I wrote on that page. I do hope they were, are, good words. Strong words. Words that will move mountains in the world of my anonymous reader. Words that, in some way or another, will change things to the better. Nudging the odds the tiniest of bits in favor for this reading someone.

Maybe they will remix these words. Make them into something else, something new. Something I would never have thought of, something that would never have happened should I not had shared my words with the world. Something that, one day, will make me smile, unknowing of my own part in it.

Or into a gift to someone I don't know. A gift that will change yet another life, in ways I have no way of ever knowing.

Or, maybe, into something written on a page in a notebook, which someone will share with the world, just to see if it cares. -

(This is a reflection/expansion on a tweet. This tweet.)