I heard it, and I instantly knew!

One of my favorite things is to explore really large music torrents. Huge collections of music that someone, somewhere has put together in torrent form, and then let loose upon a curious world with the blessing of the seeders.

Blessed be the seeders.

The thing about these torrents is that they include music I probably haven't heard before. And, more importantly, music I most likely won't ever hear about from other sources. Yet now, suddenly, it appears in front of my ears by means of serendipitous networking.

A key part of this is the exploring aspect. I'm not merely going through the motions of old musical preferences - I'm actively taking part in an exploratory effort to see just what this next piece of music might be about. More often than not, I have no idea what I'm about to hear, and this opens up the possibility of being positively surprised.

I can already hear someone wanting to interject. What about the artists? How will they get paid? How can I justify this blatant act of piracy?

To which I reply - what of it? More often than not, I've never even heard of the artists I discover, and any argument that they are somehow missing out falls flat due to the fact that I am not likely to buy something I have absolutely no knowledge of.

Knowing about things is - believe it or not - somewhat of a prerequisite for taking action in regards to these things.

There real question should be something more along the lines of: how will the artists I and my peers never get a chance to hear/know get paid?

So don't judge me and my musical explorations. Help me out instead. Seed the torrents that are out there, compile new collections for me to discover, and give people easy ways to help their favorite artists out once the discovery has been made.

Because people will discover new favorites. And they will want to make some sort of contribution to them, if and when given a chance to do so.

But only if and when.

Useless knowledge

"How come they don't attack each other? How do they manage something as complex as social cohesion with their bodies and brains literally decaying beyond the point of corporeal cohesion?"
"Actually, they do. And it took us quite a while to figure out on what grounds they form their friend/foe views of the world. You will never guess what it turned out to be."
"Ethnicity?"
"Not even close."
"Nationality?"
"Nope."
"Something relating to geography?"
"Still nope."
"Ideology?"
"You're in the cold."
"Religion?"
"Getting warmer."
"Preferred social media platform?"
"Heh. Extra bonus points for lateral thinking, but no, not that either."
"Okay, I give up. What makes the zombies identify each other as either friend or foe?"
"Turns out it had something to do with which nineties boy band they listened to before the end of death. The exact nature of how they divide themselves into distinct social groupings is unclear, but if you know their taste in this particular genre, you pretty much know who they'll regard as friends. And if you are versed in the specifics of the videos to the songs, you have a direct line of understanding into the subtle infightings of the various zombie factions."
"You're kidding me?"
"Nope. They tried to pin it to just about every other explanation the universe had to offer, but this was the one model that actually worked."
"But... boy bands from the nineties? And the music videos of that era? I don't understand?"
"It just goes to show that there is no such thing as useless knowledge. Now let's get moving. I'm afraid these full graves are quite likely to empty themselves in about an hour or so, and we don't want to hear this particular rehearsal again."
"Rehearsal? ...right. I'm already gone."

Don't ask, but do tell

One of the more striking features of the Pirate movement - may I never tire of that name - is the often invoked rule of the three-pirate initiative. It is a very simple rule, and can be summarized like this:

If and when three members think something is a good idea, they automatically have the movement's approval to make it happen.

Convince two people that something is worth doing, then go do it. Simple as that. No formal requests, no negotiating, no trying to get a point across the narrow mind of some bureaucrat - none of that. Just go ahead and do stuff.

And stuff gets done.

The main point of this is not that it is a giving out of permissions. No. The thing to notice here is that people have this possibility whether they are in a movement or not, and that you really don't need that much in order to get started in your project of changing the world. If you can get get two other persons to think that something is a good idea, then you already have a good start to the project of making this good idea happen.

You don't need to get permission to do good things or to be awesome. What you may need from time to time, though, is a reminder of this. A reminder that you have it in your power to make things happen, without having to ask for it.

Consider yourself reminded.

Unwrite me not

One of the biggest thresholds is the thought that someone else has already done that. And probably done it better, to boot. The sheer volume of other people writing the same thing as one is about to write can be offputting, to say the least.

There's no point in denying that things have already been done. The world is indeed a big and old place.

But you haven't done it. And that means more than one would think.

I tend to use three lines of reasoning to get over this particular threshold. Let's simply call them 1, 2 and 3, for the sake of simplicity.

1. Even if someone else has done it, that does not make your own take on it null and void. Even if you agree whole heartedly with what someone else has written, they still don't express your view on it. And, moreover, they don't tell those who write what you read what you think.

Your readers do not read most of what you read. And would most likely very much like to be introduced.

2. Even if someone else has done it, and done it consistently over a period of time, it still does not make your own take on it null and void. It just makes you a part of a movement (with whatever degree of formal organization), and moreover lets both of you find comfort in the fact that the other is around doing the good work.

Don't let agreeing being an unagreeable threshold.

3. Even if someone else has done it, you have something they don't: the chance to do it again. With the added benefit of their precious effort, and any eventual constructive criticism that might have followed.

Second chances to learn by other's doing is a good thing.

So. Don't be discouraged by discovering that the thing you've thought about writing suddenly gets written by someone else. Take heart and go forth anyway.

Because if you don't say what you mean - who will?

Untimely paradoxes

Some would say that the paradox of Zeno is just a piece of sophistry, intended to keep young people with overactive minds busy for a while. I disagree with this, and would propose that Zeno was just way ahead of his time. So far ahead of his time, in fact, that he did not know what he was describing.

I assume you're all familiar with the paradox in question. Achilles and a tortoise are about to have a race by foot, and to make things fair the tortoise is given a head start by a certain amount of distance. Running happens. When Achilles has made it to the point where the tortoise started out, the tortoise has moved that much closer to the finishing line. And as Achilles makes up for this distance, the tortoise has moved even further, and is thus still in the lead, leaving Achilles to catch up yet again - and so forth and so on.

The gist of it is that Achilles never catches up with the tortoise. Rather, they seem to get stuck in an ancient version of a time warp, lost forever in a race against time.

This is somewhat confusing. And the reason this is confusing is that it actually isn't about young men or tortoises, but about Youtube.

I imagine you've all been there, trying to watch a video which is slightly bigger than your bandwidth. The thing you have to do is to wait just long enough for the video to buffer enough so that the "never catching up" paradox applies. The video is bigger than your bandwidth can manage, true, but with enough buffer you can still watch it without having to pause. As you watch the buffered part, more is put into the buffer, and as you watch that part, more is put into the buffer - and so on, until the video ends.

The reason the Ancients had such a hard time with this is, as you might imagine, that they didn't have Youtube or online videos back then. Achilles and the tortoise are stuck in this eternal time loop not because of its paradoxical nature, but because of Zeno being two thousand years ahead of himself!

Now, some might argue that Youtube is just a piece of sophistry intended to keep young people with overactive minds busy for a while. I'm not so sure about that, though.

Thought error, January 8, 2012

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

Share me

During my virtual rambling adventures, I often meet new people. Such as you. And somehow, my seemingly random rantings seem to make somewhat of an impression on these new people. A good one, to boot. Sometimes, they even tell me about it, and occasionally they ask what they can do to help me do more of what I do.

I always tell these kind souls the same two things:

Thank you, and share.

Retweet it, post it on the Facebook, Digg it, tell a friend about it - whatever it is that you do when you tell someone about something awesome, do that.

That helps me more than one would think. And it just might make the same impression on your sharees as it did on you.

Thank you again.