There’s a documentary, The Hedgehog and the Hare, being made about the prosecution of Andrew Auernheimer (aka “the weev”). The filmmaker wants to interview me for background and context on the hacker culture. The following is a lightly edited version of the backgrounder I sent him so he could better prepare for the interview.
Country-music hell and fake accents
A few months back I had to do a two-hour road trip with A&D regular Susan Sons, aka HedgeMage, who is an interesting and estimable person in almost all ways except that she actually … likes … country music. I tried to be stoic when stupid syrupy goo began pouring out of the car radio,… Continue reading Country-music hell and fake accents
Which way is north on your new planet?
So, here you are in your starship, happily settling into orbit around an Earthlike world you intend to survey for colonization. You start mapping, and are immediately presented with a small but vexing question: which rotational pole should you designate as ‘North’? There are a surprisingly large number of ways one could answer this question.… Continue reading Which way is north on your new planet?
Causes and implications of the pause
That is the title of a paper attempting to explain (away) the 17-year nothing that happened while CAGW models were predicting warming driven by increasing CO2. CO2 increased. Measured GAT did not. Here’s the money quote: “The most recent climate model simulations used in the AR5 indicate that the warming stagnation since 1998 is no… Continue reading Causes and implications of the pause
Sharecroppers, nomads, and early open source
The responses to my previous post, on the myth of the fall, brought out a lot of half-forgotten lore about pre-open-source cultures of software sharing. Some of these remain historically interesting, but hackers talking about them display the same tendency to back-project present-day conditions I was talking about in that post. As an example, one… Continue reading Sharecroppers, nomads, and early open source
The myth of the fall
I was a historian before I was an activist, and I’ve been reminded recently that a lot of younger hackers have a simplified and somewhat mythologized view of how our culture evolved, one which tends to back-project today’s conditions onto the past. In particular, many of us never knew – or are in the process… Continue reading The myth of the fall
Premises of the Dark Enlightenment
The Dark Enlightenment is, as I have previously noted, a large and messy phenomenon. It appears to me in part to be a granfalloon invented by Nick Land and certain others to make their own piece of it (the neoreactionaries) look larger and more influential than it actually is. The most detailed critiques of the… Continue reading Premises of the Dark Enlightenment
Come train with me
This is a shout-out to all martial artists and would-be martial artists in the western Philadelphia exurbs, especially: Phoenixville, Spring City, Collegeville, Mont Clare, Upper Providence, Lower Schuylkill, Valley Forge, Charlestown/Malvern, Kimberton, Audubon, and Lower Perkiomen. I train under Sifu Dale Yeager at the Kuntao Martial Arts Club in Phoenxville, and my school has a… Continue reading Come train with me
Namedropping “ESR”
For at least fifteen years my name and its tri-letterization has been something with which you could conjure up a lot of attention among hackers and other sorts of geek. This fact presented the more clueful of my personal friends with a delicate problem: under what circumstances would it be proper for them to invoke… Continue reading Namedropping “ESR”
Does firearms competency testing do any good?
My distant friend Kent Lundgren, one of the most capable and thoughtful firearms instructors out there, has written a blog post addressing the tricky question of how we might filter potential carriers of concealed weapons for competence without involving the government.
Progress in small things, and learning to fly
Storm Pax hit my area today as we were just recovering, still a bit dazed and reeling, from Storm Nika. This brought me 14 inches of snow, and it brings you a tale of progress in small things and how odd the brain’s information-retrieval process can be.
Operator rules
Everybody knows, or should know, the basic rules of firearms safety. (a) Always treat the weapon as if loaded, (b) Never point a firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy, (c) keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot, (d) be sure of your target and what is beyond… Continue reading Operator rules
Storm Nika crisis is over
I’m back home with the power on. Normal hacking and blogging will resume. There’s four days I don’t want to have to do over again. Cold, stress, constant fatigue, consequent inability to concentrate…being a disaster-displaced person, it turns out, is psychologically difficult even if you have money and a good support network and a hotel… Continue reading Storm Nika crisis is over
From an undisclosed location…
The title was a joke. The rest of this is not. Cathy Raymond and I evacuated from our home this morning. We’ve never had to do that before. Storm Nika has totally messed over the five-county area around Philadelphia. I’ve seen more downed power lines today than in my entire life until yesterday. Many roads… Continue reading From an undisclosed location…
Mapping the Dark Enlightenment
The Dark Enlightenment is a group of thinkers and blogs that has aroused a fair amount of controversy in the last several years. Most people who write about them from the outside piously dismiss them as a gang of crypto- and not-so-crypto- fascists, or a sort of grunting neanderthalism dressed up in intellectual clothes. The… Continue reading Mapping the Dark Enlightenment
How…does this even work?
Here is a curious fact. My wife Cathy is using Duolingo to learn German; she wants to be able to read sources on Iron Age and Viking costume in the original. Duolingo takes her through a lot of pronunciation drills. I’ve learned something by listening to her – which is that somehow, somewhere, I have… Continue reading How…does this even work?
Down the feminist rabbit hole
I fell down a rabbit hole today. By reading this: An Incomplete Guide to Feminist infighting. Bemused, I chased links and read manifestos and counter-manifestos for a couple of hours until the sources just began to repeat themselves. But in some respects my confusion was just beginning. As I was falling through all these diatribes… Continue reading Down the feminist rabbit hole
FOAD 2014 Party Pre-Announcemrnt
This is a pre-announcement of the second third Friends of Armed & Dangerous party. FOAD 2014 will be held at Penguicon 2014, in Southfield, MI, almost certainly on the evening of Saturday May 3rd (but we don’t have a confirmed party-floor booking yet). I believe John Bell is planning to run a Geeks with Guns… Continue reading FOAD 2014 Party Pre-Announcemrnt
Dragging Emacs forward
This is a brief heads-up that the reason I’ve been blog silent lately is that I’m concentrating hard on a sprint with what I consider a large payoff: getting the Emacs project fully converted to git. In retrospect, choosing Bazaar as DVCS was a mistake that has presented unnecessary friction costs to a lot of… Continue reading Dragging Emacs forward
Tackling subjectivity head on
In a response to my previous post, on Acausality and the Scientific Mind, a commenter said: “The computationalist position necessarily entails that subjectivity does not really exist, and what looks like subjectivity is a mere illusion without causal force.” There are, I’m sure, many vulgar and stupid versions of computationalism that have this as a… Continue reading Tackling subjectivity head on