Often known as Cancer Brain McCain (RIP!!). I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as President I had to approve. I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a "thank you." That’s O.K. We sent him on the way. But I wasn’t a fan. I have to be honest, I never liked him much. Hasn’t been for me. I’ve really, probably, never will.
John McCain received a fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton. Right? And John McCain got it -- he got it. And what did he do? He didn’t call me. He turned it over to the F.B.I., hoping to put me in jeopardy.
I keep hearing, "oh, he was a hero." Well, he wasn't a hero. At best, half a hero. Sometimes referred to as the Six Inch. Too small to fill you up. Not too small to get shot down.
McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets and the V.A. And they knew it. That’s why, when I had my dispute with him, I had such incredible support from the vets and from the military. The vets were on MY side because I got the job done. I got choice, and I got accountability. MAGA!! pscp.tv/w/b2KXajFvTlFsTFJub1dwUXd8MXlOR2FPWm5WZ0R4at3FMBCBSFgrQipWDpPGz9sj1AYZx6X61DtQKgz6Vqvh
Hipsters and millennials, please learn what irony means. Most of the ways you use it, they're just you being a pretentious little shit not irony. This is irony (and also funny as a motherfucker).
"It doesn't make take a Genius team of investigators to realize that Collusion is a HOAX...Here we are 670 days after the Mueller Insensitive Probe and, intense as it's been, still no Collusion. None, ZERO, nothing! Yeah, it's a Witch Hunt." Sean Hannity. Thank you, Sean!!! pic.twitter.com/95I4towyEP
"He's not really a Doctor, just a sort of a Doctor."
– Charles Kelley "Chuck" Lundquist
My name is Mad Doctor Mike, and my days are numbered. How cool can that be? Now I'll get all the Chicks!
There may be a treatment - but not a cure - for what I've got, those being Theophylline - the stimulant in Tea - or Aminophylline. Commonly found in Asthma Inhalers, I'd get injections or tablets.
That Cheyne-Stokes Respiration or "Stoking" is commonly known as "The Death Breath" is due to it's being most-commonly experienced by those who are in their final hours of life. In this order, it is as well found in those who are about to slip into a Coma, have Congestive Heart Failure or as a - rare - Sleep Disorder.
None of these apply to me, though I do have some theories: secondary to my raging unquenchable thirst of Psychogenic Polydipsia, an uncommon, poorly understood symptom of Schizophrenia and my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Water-Soluble Nutrient Deficiency other than Sodium or Potassium, that my Party Animal Life has finally caught up with me, that I have Temporal Lobe Epilepsy or that I've suffered five concussions, two when I was beat up by the Police that put me into a Coma for three solid days.
(I call that last kind of thing "The Cost Of Doing Business".)
Azuma Hazuki speculates:
I've actually been thinking about you and your case a fair amount, and am completely utterly baffled. My first guess was some sort of seizure disorder well beyond TLE, maybe with involvement in Broca's Area among other places, perhaps with the pons or other parts of the lower brain involved as well considering the horrible agonal breathing you're suffering. And that it may be secondary to an actual physical lesion (mini-bleeds? Transient ischemia?) rather than just electrical glitches.
My PubMed reviews of the Clinical Literature regarding or "The Death Breath" indicate that my own form of it - awake and physically healthy - is as yet unknown to Medical Science!
I'M NUMBER ONE!
I'M NUMBER ONE!
I'M NUMBER ONE!
Inspired by the film Lorenzo's Oil, the Made For Hollywood but arguably true story of Augusto and Michaela Odone's desperate, relentless quest to find a cure for their son's "most-cruel disease" of Adrenoleukodystrophy or ALD, as the Odone's ultimate success was to a large degree the result of their organization an international conference of ALD Researchers, I shall too, I expect at Portland's Oregon Health & Sciences University, perhaps late this Summer so as not to conflict with the researchers' teaching duties.
You drunken layabouts shall of course all receive free tickets.
There's a simple way to help:
I need Postage Stamps, Envelopes, Paper and Printing to mail a two or three page purely informal paper to those roughly one thousand researchers, in which I shall invite them to my conference but not yet call for papers, as well as lucidly explain what I know so far, for example that sleep eliminates my Stoking, but only until I've been up for an hour or two upon awakening.
The attacks of severe fatigue I call "The Wearies" have been my most-common symptom since 2005; there's naught I can do but lie quietly in my bed until it passes. Coffee does not help; neither does sleep in this case, as I cannot get to sleep when I have The Wearies. My - frequent - Syncopes or fainting that because each episode last less than one second I call "Drop-Outs" are far, far more severe when I've either gone for more than two nights without sleep or suffered just one night with poor quality of sleep.
United States Resident?
Please send me the Postage Stamps in your purse, briefcase, wallet or desk drawer:
Mike Crawford
707 SW Washington St, Suite 1100
Portland OR 97205-3528
USA
Damn Ferriner?
Snail a check or money order in any - RLY - of USD, CAD, UKP or EUR to my address in Portland, or:
Everybody:
In return for your uncommon kindnesses, I shall invite you to my funeral, presently planned for April First of this year.
KTHXBAI
I have some tobacco seeds on order and I was gratified to discover that the subject was already being discussed on SoylentNews. I've previously grown tobacco and the result was curious.
Firstly, I grew them in the office of a start-up company. This led to some interesting conversations:-
Investor: Oh, that's a pretty plant. What is it?
Me: Tobacco.
Investor: Tobacco!? Is that legal!?
Me: It is if you pay the capital gains tax.
Investors like businesses which are financially rational and a business which has cash crops as office plants is viewed as maximizing opportunity. In practice, most tax on tobacco is paid by the shipping container. Any attempt to pay a significantly smaller quantity of tax will be deemed as time-wasting by officials.
Secondly, tobacco seeds are astoundingly small. Many people smoke cannabis with tobacco. Although I strongly recommend against smoking concentrated cannabis, people mix all forms of cannabis with commercial tobacco. Some people find that good quality cannabis opens their lungs too much and therefore commercial tobacco is used to compensate. Given the similarlies of the grown plants, the seeds are surprisingly different. Cannabis seeds often have an 8mm diameter whereas tobacco seeds are often mistaken for poppy seeds and have a diameter of 1mm or less. An advantage here is that it is difficult to purchase less than 200 tobacco seeds and they are typically less than US$0.01 each whereas cannabis seeds may exceed US$3 per seed. A seed of each, if viable, often leads to 1kg of dried material. However, tobacco is significantly cheaper and comes with its own insecticide, nicotine, which kills almost anything except tobacco weavils (which are able to metabolize nicotine) or apes and monkeys who smoke it or chew it.
Thirdly, tobacco is a strange looking plant. When it is very small, it looks like lettuce. As it grows and flowers, it looks like foxglove planted among rhubarb. At the top, the flowers look like Digitalis [foxglove] with a long, willowy string of bell flowers in white, pink and/or light purple. At the bottom, the leaves are bulbous, round and look like rhubarb. Each leaf may exceed a square foot (0.1m2). Like cannabis, tobacco grown outdoors may exceed 9 foot (2.7m), even when grown in Northern latitudes, such as London or New York.
Fourthly, tobacco is is one of the tuber plants. It is closely related to potato, tomato and poison ivy. All of these plants can be cross-bred although the result is more poisonous than the initial breeds. Tobacco cross-bred with tomato is commonly known as tomacco. There is an episode of the animated series: The Simpsons in which Homer Simpson starts a tomacco farm. Obviously, this poisonous crop has no commercial value. However, most people thought that tomacco was a work of fiction whereas some people grow tomacco for fun.
Fifthly, organic tobacco is very different to commercial tobacco. Technically, commercial tobacco is not food. Therefore, it is not subject to food regulations. Therefore, tobacco has additives such as arsenic. What is the purpose of such additives? Some additives increase the speed and intensity of a nicotine hit. Others increase the burn rate of tobacco to increase consumption whether it is smoked or not. Commercial tobacco is also processed with solvants. Many people assume this is to ensure a homogenous product which smoothes natural variation between batches. However, the opposite is true. Tobacco manufacturers have teams of field representatives who ensure that stock is correctly presented to maximize sales. The field representatives also ensure that stock is rotated in lockstep. Meanwhile, manufacturers (who invariably produce multiple brands) ensure that nicotine dosing follows a ramping sawtooth pattern. The intention is to rachet consumption from 20 cigarettes per day to 40 and then 60. Switching to another brand fails to satisfy the deliberately intensified nicotine cravings because each brand is racheted out of step. Organic tobacco is significantly more like organic cannabis. The natural buzz from the plant can take 15 minutes or more to have full effect. Indeed, if anything is to be smoked, it should be smoked communally and socially in the chilled manner of illicit cannabis or a peace pipe of tobacco or cacao.
Sixthly, although smoking tobacco or cannabis is harsh on lungs, it is preferable to smoke both without solvants or accelerants. When smoked in this state, it is difficult to consume an excess which feels sickly. Although it is possible to chew tobacco and eat cannabis, both have downsides. Chewed tobacco has a particularly concentrated risk of mouth and throat cancer. Whereas, "space cookies" and similar may cause an overdose which may feel worse than a norovirus. Regardless, cannabis advocates are horrified that tobacco companies may wish to process and package cannabis in the manner of commercial tobacco while lobbying for restrictions which would make personal cultivation of cannabis and tobacco equally illegal.
Seventhly, the downsides of smoking have only become apparent as life-spans have extended. When a person was lucky to reach the age of 40, nicotine provided an effective fumigant. Bedbugs, which are able to obtain all moisture from air, are particularly inhibited by micro-particles of tobacco tar. Negative effects, such as lung obstruction, peripheral circulation obstruction, blindness or cancer from long-term smoking were very secondary considerations. Furthermore, smoking was seen a sign of sophistication and disposable income. Indeed, to cultivate sophistication, schools, such as the (male only) Eton College, made smoking mandatory. It amuses me greatly that people have been expelled from school for not smoking tobacco. Unfortunately, since then, advertisers have used false ruse of female empowerment with the intention of doubling sales and have used cartoons to lure children into smoking particular brands for life. Advertisers have also used doctors and professional sports to increase sales. Even when smoking commercial tobacco was known to be harmful to the general population, the same techniques were repeated as each country industrialized.
Eighthly, despite advances in hygiene and associated increases in life-span, tobacco retains a social rôle and a means of aiding drug delivery; most notably the stimulant nicotine partially counters THC and CBD, the active ingredients of cannabis. Perversely, we may be in an age where tobacco provides the most benefit to unhealthy people. Some people with epilepsy find that cannabis reduces symptoms but leaves them "stoned" and non-functional for much of the time. Although "stoned" is preferable to a potentially fatal epileptic fit, many in this situation do not find the benefits of commercial tobacco to be worthwhile. Organic tobacco, with or without cannabis, may also provide a creature comfort for elders in terminal decline.
Ninethly, organic tobacco may be preferable to electronic cigarettes or vaporizers. Although the heating element burns liquid in a more controlled manner, the reduced cost may increase nicotine consumption by a factor of two or more. Consumption of all additives may also increase by factor of two or more. Although the controlled burn reduces lung damage, the reduced tar reduces effectiveness against parasites, such as bedbugs. Electronic cigarettes are also a source of lithium battery explosion; typically when used, when carried or when charged.
Tenthly, a fair comparison of drugs has been hobbled by decades of prohibition which left, at most, one adulterated upper (commercial tobacco), one adulterated downer (alcohol) and a long list of chemical coshes on prescription. Despite this, it is within many people's first-hand or second-hand anecdotal experience that some legal drugs (prescription opiates, alcohol) are more dangerous than some illegal drugs (cannabis, mushrooms), when used by responsible adults, with the best of intentions. Although this is the optimistic case, it is generally accepted that juveniles will get "smashed" or "crunk" on anything available. With very few exceptions, the minimum age for cannabis, tobacco, opiates and possibly other drugs should be raised to 40 or more; historically the age of menopause, andropause, tooth loss and general decline. Whether or not this is considered extreme or impractical, the option of home grown, organic tobacco provides an additional path away from high intensity drugs, such as distilled alcohol, commercial tobacco or concentrated cannabis (which causes cannabis psychosis in juveniles due to use of unregulated, low quality solvants). Cannabis has often been demonized as a "gateway drug". Furthermore, if a succession of mass media reports are true then cannabis exceeded 100% known active ingredients by the 1990s. However, it is commercial tobacco and, increasingly, prescription opioids which are the gateway to drug fatality. This process would be deferred if home grown tobacco was intermittently available and reduced if it was consistently available. Likewise, partial legalization of cannabis in the US shows the benefit of cannabis when it is not concentrated, smuggled and sold alongside smuggled opiates.
Eleventhly, in the UK and the US, a disproportionate number of opioid deaths occur in rural areas. A cynic would suggest that urban rent/mortgage reduces disposable income. However, remoteness, even relatively, reduces opportunity. To these people, I urge them to grow their own tobacco outdoors. To anyone who does not have this opportunity, rural or urban, I have a partial solution. It requires some technology and is not ideal. However, cost may be minimal. Specifically, it requires growing tobacco indoors. Many have attempted "indoor horticulture", typically of cannabis where it is illegal. This has involved a serious level of shenanigans such as fully-enclosed environments which have been bricked-in to frustrate search warrants or smuggled children who don't speak the local language (or any language) to work as unpaid gardeners. It has also involved exotic air filtering and light cycles. The most profitable of these ventures have involved electricity meter rigging, meter bypassing or fraud. However, all of this can be averted by growing legal varieties of plants in harmony with nature. When it is legal and beneficial to expose plants to natural sunlight, the worst of the subterfuge can be stopped.
Theft remains as a problem. However, it is possible to implement an augmented light cycle where natural light is boosted with artificial light rather than replaced with artificial light. This is typically achieved by having an overlapping phase of artificial light which increases the apparent length of day but not the peak intensity. The optimal choice depends upon electricity pricing, available space and lifestyle. Given a free choice, I'd follow Bennett's Laws Of Horticulture:-
Unfortunately, I know many people who live in a space of 15m2 or less and have no access to a garden. Please understand that the solution given is suboptimal but may be preferable to no solution. After much consideration involving control theory and circuitry (and a trivial amount of programming), I have implemented an augmented light cycle controller suitable for deployment on a micro-controller with an Arduino compatible API. This code is licenced for personal use, for growing tobacco or tomacco only, under a maximum of 1kW LEDs and further restrictions described in the source code. If this doesn't meet your needs then write your own or pay someone else to do it.
This implementation uses a LDR [Light Sensitive Resistor] and one persistent variable which maintains an accumulated total. This is sufficient to trail the natural light cycle by almost five hours. (Specifically, 2^24 milliseconds or so.) The output is six binary values which are intended to be connected to banks of LEDs of different colors. After a status LED briefly lights, nothing happens for more than four hours. This is very similar to the lucid dreaming glasses featured in Make magazine which should never be constructed due to the increased risk of fatal photo-sensitive epilepsy while sleeping. However, rather than periodically blinking one channel to indicate dreaming, six channels are sequentially raised from 0% to 100% using PWM which is specifically outside of the frequency which typically triggers photo-sensitive epilepsy. It is intended that the first channel is connected to red LEDs, the second to orange LEDs and suchlike. This provides a broad spectrum of light. Also, the resulting color temperature will be similar to the Sun when viewed from Earth. In particular, in a temperate region, LED blue light should be proportionate to season. However, this may require tweaking. Debug of horticultural software can be tedious due to timescale. Therefore, a second set of constants can be selected which skips the initial wait and reduces a day cycle to a few seconds. Ideally, -DQUICK should be added to compiler parameters. However, in the patronizing Arduino interface, it may be easier to bodge an #ifdef to #ifndef. Finally:-
begin 644 augment-light20190315.ino.gz
M'XL(`#22C%P"`]58;6_;1A+^[E^QAT,!*9$229;=M(X+!+';!.?$/K\T'X)<
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M,Z9=ONSBEZL+,3&F[*=&`BU'AROK]^D4I['EQN*&L@2:\*&YJ#0"=@J9)"HB
M;`J)@"C7K9V>F;EZ4+;7>$_@KB,``PY7+<!E!BXC<M;*?,HF.]R_,#"8\(I,
M7EJ3KF/;Q#W!"44UP;>HG+_&(/C6+&1:+H1.V.P`;&+2U,QU/J5C8QWB``0R
M5?[8#U<,A<@DHYR96"<!Y;FQ]WU<UI]IK"<X8U6D9J$H*#A<V[A/F"S$3-J8
M^,`DI),("9U'QA8&%,<&G1.:A$ZF;*1E*@IKXBHJ:R]'`GB7&$\Y2^!006=5
MKN3#U&.D<,SP_H/HF%R)>PVO9%EV12=3TE46DY.%4"E"937X1;F`OV`0<;FP
M&J!Q0!%EI`<#4ED+[$6!.(*E,D+2P$(,1IY!A?+!T-/*5`C<'.GB9KH@;%/"
MHY,;2C;*(#)*3G%UE985DDHX73*Q:`+7/P`&$<]5FN+JAD+X#S@Z"F^LP(08
M[$L2'6FRB^.,&PUNZ`&%O-^"#Y&O#SDDZ)!-D:%SIA9V<K1,06ZP=9$USO4G
MA!*SLC09).*$X\$)=I_S+L<S.*D^>RQ$#..1^AP73YV+\S,G/GHY.\]TR6B>
M:?#4?1)6$>X^892\%ZZ@D,!B4$#E0&4A$FLR,1X.\DQTBLHB;;L4F^,7/`(C
M&WR.!.Z5$YWR-N!1YSV1RR>:GX/C<PD[L;G>>[R^-Y$Z!5'::X.&>A@0T[D`
M/3)6):P.J2B7+'5!^%9T@LY6#S*M9*V;FS1G[7M."_$E?5S:,9R#'(:9;B:_
M`3#"PU435TK0#TNC&4D%A<?K@9=(<);<`[7<B@6M:^H+DLJ2Z&3&0LLA$;H4
M,GZ0P-*Q3B"/>UNML$K&%%_FJ?/ZSR8T.655?U5[-P02YX(4)I]2HC0G`_M*
MM;&:2IW7.&7:656`3/6AA"NI(ZE24Q.I7@X.AT<X'@[4H\!\:F6VK`B$OI!-
M(?82$W$A#F*;DO830>,0T)5<;@5J_10KM>.XD';)S%1(7)('GIQRYL#5`G(!
M*\@]P)7"H0<%+*C^3O&_)N4SF6-HUUVDK"G"00%.Y51`Q]@\GJTWF0>NZ70H
MX9RJ?(KXAN(+]4I@!YM#VD)5/V`;R\7*.5Z75N)*EU*EFFFJXR!-;8"'LG%[
MP@U%E56I%UJ2P`ET$BV)SB'K]17@(.Y0CX6OK^5,^KZDO=9W%4#%+P&4!E'B
MG(CU@^;LU3:J-)5>R(OS-Z(&BD0_8@LHA$%*"2XA-#L<#.[%Y2QC2,",B[/K
M6L[.5$$<`#K78=^G1HPZD4E]?8;0,4F6!T$2?I^0\O;$)$5CTQ,+186W)Z8F
MC;]0Q-;FP_\,]P!AV;-N`[[:XFCHB&;R0?G:ONK@"DPH`Q4%W'A8I9C!/T$:
MP>)E)B62C1J^RA(D+-7K%/#QD2D.V0P2@8;9PFAFJ)S+(.S4)1&?:V*R:%%G
M"NSD5"'MYY*W)`@'-8'/6DXWO,&\-S96),FPU8FK#^_$QZLJ1=/S0<<H8^^@
MK2E3\Q-V4HUCKB'Z3C_6/01)9ZY2=^)%@KSE&DCR3P1`O)NQ"=W([155I;9A
M+`Z<!)H=@L904`!LG00H2=!*5W=*X0,I'VA3J@P91XMK^:82ENH@4+6VPOBM
M>3T<(2^0ST!"6H8"AD"8N!G#;O0\U"2C&E#OR;V#%QW<A0'Y8'3LVT"N=8E5
M_ZY02M'0!FM(79#8%6PH9J8T?<?E&DHE%/7*A:-Y,:L@4FY%)=`R)M39`I;Q
MX,U_T*%1L76(6Y<-)4!">\QRR03U%*?."QZ/GAU1\T'0+@IJWR".9*"V08[Y
MUC7%FEC"!\1HK"'=J_!\\<\*(,N)V>@Z;J465Z,'<XK:86[&V0B_8VY6_'(D
M?]0.N_!>(/S(&?QQ7_]MJ=2&%5702<`$<]%V@0%NHQHZ`\/0525>T0TH;P65
M0D*%C`Y/'A^MBG.E3E-94;7A=Q2M)$BW+FQ9TW38_P*%5IR'B^/!#\>96RX9
M#3:6R`)<?]1H&*ED#;]'J)".5:G:V\9?V3:&^Y6E^]8W$P\>0!9@\9NQU*O5
ML:,(%"3%7#:)2'&%Z:;8P%4/MW>"8HG"$=7TH(.=)*C#NOK&\&`(>0>"+#DG
MX<NXAW]>T&D>,30!NO`WDKB$R\@<MJ2IN\LBAUMI`[%9WM/37)5SI1H[?1";
MS@^Z`P<G)->N%\HN28FW#V:PEOBOK1+9L#^A%RQ=TCH`="LDO1HAV^'^SM="
MT^WQ191[03S#\W`*0^%X.W3KB_`FHRXNJ9"*RP0-MFTC#SL<7I_^L>J?<@0P
M01[J8U-.+9#L>:&F-/!*W8@\:\\<-8I2C3MHM=I"=-O&`X:(K,,"2QM(FCAQ
M/2+>:&@K7J&^6L*$K9U,E4.DRBIG1+F_#L=S'\K`N3HUZRI+H5V>S.69SW1U
M#PY794E=HG_[KEH1EE)K)QZTXQ\<ZD=S>(![8:$>G7H%"HCSFJ]6ES1Y09Z'
MHN&?+=AFJ;/J<.\((UP7X!*C"?[0["'E,T6I*JU3*U&MX:66W1$!Z0*JUV45
MTRLDYX$H92;Z*N&'YG!\YA_?X2>+E7/GFLB%LO0(9ML)9P+UG-_0X_M2%TJ+
M:V/*ZZG4'(?HLZ8Q545G4^&*M'+<98!@7#PVM+,+$W&>:H,%XRD0B];%#*V>
MYM0S`7K,T1N-GVC<_\XE$7.CB%!,6W[-_*]B7$]92NK>%H_49HC?->OJ$:H)
M_2K&UOI@U3\J^7>G;XZD^%7E\-K_@DGLU?!7>OX<_)U_.E3BYO;5[=V-&!XN
M1UZ]N[HX%Z-FX/+N=B`.VY]#,6Y_CL11^_-0'+<_Q^+[]N>1>(';=8(1\<^[
MMZ__T4Q"0CY?G5^_O3P3G>'+E\?=9N;VS?7YS>>[]V?GUV*P-GKYZ\K@S>M7
M%^>?SRX_O&]9X0?OKF@=5$?MNG(XVG[G]CF^>7VJ=?^+S?L!&_6O"2-`6SOU
MU-/EQN[?3I=VX61E+3U>=BSV/[HA0]"!MMSAWRSG(#>RIU"EKG]IF,HB9*07
MD\8@M%V>;2?\*+<5ED-[F"W4C%+F5$6G*WX_$*+0.9IYU?'LZ2&L5W>WW9/V
M#+.H]_;]^@2Q:=L&HM6.\=&.\<,=X^,=XT?M\5A/T7RG']##!*,N+C]LG1GN
MG!GMG#G<.3/>.7.T?29@_.;M+V_\I$KE@FDWW+FX.6AM+0?X=$!_6H33YB<'
M7PY\>`MZJ'6(!:$X]^CONAGS8:^_OFL1=,.$>ON:P<U).S>L&KV\H;^RM65W
MH"D1G`0R72S)FAI3<Y7<F,],JD["1T(_$?)'T@F&7"L9!\IV3T_9<M[+:QBT
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4=7I[6=EP^LMJW_!?E-;@Z^<A````
`
end
(Usual instructions for uudecode process.)
(If you enjoyed use of "eleventhly", search for Mark Twain's use of the word. For Mark Twain's opinion about tobacco, search for "old soldiers".)
Dr. Hamburg,
I'm in your ER's waiting room now, at 4:10 on the morning of Sunday, March 17th.
Your ER staff leads me to completely overcome with the desire to take my own life.
I'll explain later, I can't just now as I cannot breathe and so am fighting for consciousness - Syncope is quite a common symptom of this.
I Beg Of You!
Forget my aphasia!
Please FIND SOME WAY I DO NOT HAVE TO DIE!
I CANNOT BREATHE, AND YOUR EMERGENCY ROOM WON'T _DO_ ANYTHING ABOUT IT!
"Please I beg of you Sir, could you put me on a Respirator."
"No. To be on a Respirator is pretty extreme."
"Sir: I am going to DIE soon."
He didn't reply, just quietly looked down at the paper he'd brought for me: my Discharge Papers.
Surely there is some reason?
Thank You For Any Help You Can Give Me.
Anne: You are my only hope.
Mike
"But what can just one person do?"
-- Portland FBI Agent, after I explained to him the true meaning behind any flavor of Kool-Ade Mix other than Lemon.
It is a Technical Measure.
There is nothing in any way unlawful about it; thus your donations would not be regarded as facilitating crime.
I want you to understand that I am a very dangerous man, in that my chronic insomnia leads me to become obsessed with dreaming up such Technical Measures as for example dreaming up several significantly different ways not for America to lose the War On Terror, but for Vlad to Set Donald Up The Bomb without us G-d Fearing Americans having a whole lot of opportunity to do anything about it.
In that specific case, I dropped a dime to the United States Secret Service - Toll Free! - then after taking great care to reassure the - quite cheerful and friendly - agent who answered, I quite lucidly explained how I all by myself was The Antichrist, were I not such a nice guy. However, that security hole, while easily plugged with a technical measure of its own that would cost I'd say a half-billion or so - Chump Change to the Feds - remains exploitable, so instead I'll snail some dead trees to the National Security Council. But I digress:
I'd love nothing more than to lay waste to Silicon Valley right around now but to actually do so would result in Mom's California Public Employers Retirement System seeing a drop in its Portfolio Value. Thus, after A Great Deal of quiet contemplation, not only will I not release my Technical Measure as Free Software - Open Source misses the point, see - I will not release it for free along with a pint of Guinness, nor will I sell it.
No, I'm going to run in on my MacBook Pro while I relentlessly charm every last barista and waitress on G-d's Green Earth. Perhaps I'll even get blown on their breaks in the backs of their cars in their parking lots! How cool could that be?
Thus, I have some expenses:
Short-Term, I need just a few very modest things; some such as the Starbucks Card you can order online then send me an eGift Card - actually bar code: mdcrawford@gmail.com.
That's it: $575.00 - but just for my first month.
After that, I'm going to need some wheels - that is, if you get my drift - but as I'm handy with tools, and Mom's been paying the rent on my locker, I've still got my tools, my father's tools, his father's tools, and because Grandpa's best friend had no heirs, Charlie Wilson's tools.
There is a word, "accelerationist," to describe the mindset of people like yesterday's Christchurch terrorist. You see, he didn't do this just for its own sake; he's trying for nothing less than to provoke the collapse of civilization via race war and internal strife, presumably to rebuild it as some sort of whites-only paradise. He in effect believes that he has to destroy it to save it (and that worked out SO well everywhere else that idea was tried...). I believe his scope is global, and he's trying to encourage copycat attacks worldwide with this.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't be too worried about one single psychopath trying to start a race war, and even saw him explicitly compared to Charles Manson and his "Helter-Skelter" plan in the main forum thread. Ordinarily, I'd agree and let it go as another sad but inevitable tragedy. Ordinarily, though, we wouldn't have an Anglosphere that's spent at least the last 20 years soaking in hatred and the last 2 and a half gleefully parading around its worst tendencies and members with all but official sanction from the leader of the supposed Free World.
"Accelerant" is also something that worsens and fuels fires, and there's a good reason for that. What we have now is the social equivalent of a pine barrens forest with decades of leaf litter, just waiting for that one spark. I did my junior year research on precisely this phenomenon, back in college. When the litter builds up, the entire forest goes up in flames at the slightest provocation. So I would say another term for people like this is "socilogical arsonist."
Unfortunately, I also believe his kind has won the day. I felt the US go over the edge about 12-18 months ago; civil war is at this point a matter of when, not if, and unlike the last one, today we have powerful enemies who are just waiting for the right time to swoop in and rip the country apart to loot it for their own ends. Which, to be fair, is probably what the country deserves at the national level, but will suck massively for individuals, most of whom are innocent. You know, just like when the US did it to other countries. Regardless, unless something incredibly huge and positive happens, I believe we're long past the point of no return.
Now, as to the other two terms in the title: you may be familiar with Roko's Basilisk already. I am referring to something more general than that: my definition of basilisk in this sense is "a pernicious meme or memeplex that does permanent damage to the mind in, at the very least, ways related to itself, specifically regarding removing itself or blunting its influence." Like the stare of the mythological basilisk, it slips in through the eyeholes and flays the mind from the inside out. You can think of them as a kind of memetic advanced persistent thread-type malware.
Basilisks have several things in common. They are "sticky" in memetic terms (that is, they leave a lasting impression). They are self-sealing, meaning they reinforce themselves, often recursively and through a variety of mechanisms, including hijacking other memes. Sometimes they work in pairs or larger groups, reinforcing one another. While they need not be readily infectious, they often are. And, like the stare of the real thing, they are often fatal if left untreated.
One key component of a good basilisk is that it takes advantage of the human tendency to be lazy thinkers. That is, once within its gravitational field, people will prefer to stay in it rather than change what at that point has become a large and important part of their thinking. Thus a good basilisk has an ad-hoc answer to pretty much every objection that might be raised to it as a sort of anti-malware-evasion routine.
Calvinism is an excellent example: it centers on the idea of TULIP, this being "total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, persistence of saints/saved." Basically, this undercuts critical thinking by making it an issue completely out of one's control; one is either saved or not, through God's action and not one's own, no one can do anything to become elect or reprobate, and (here's the stinger): "if you're really saved, you wouldn't be doubting in the first place, now would you?" The "stickiness" is of course the threat of eternal torture, which is probably the single "stickiest" meme it is by definition possible to create. So what we have here is a persistent, all-encompassing black hole of a memeplex.
Much white supremacist thought, or supremacist thought in general, works the same way. The hook, the "stickiness," is something along the lines of "your life sucks unfairly, and it's not only not your fault, it's the fault of $ETHNIC_GROUP." That is *very* powerful to anyone who's suffered unfairly. Plant this one, and entire categories of critical thought get cut off at the roots, not least because when people are suffering and tired and angry and traumatized, they very literally do not have the energy to do more than the laziest thinking.
Finally, the exploitation of these patterns is what I am referring to as "dark psychohistory," which is a direct nod to Asimov. People who understand this can have effects completely out of proportion to the amount of direct force they are capable of bringing to bear. "Stochastic terrorism" is another way of talking about this, and it's something Trump is doing: while we're going to get bootlicking psychopathic apologists like Hallow pointing out that Trump himself never directly incites people to violence, he says things that make it likely-to-certain that among a large enough group of people with a certain mindset, *one or more of them* will do something violent.
If hiring a hitman is one degree of separation, stochastic terrorism is two or three. We can't, in this case, draw a direct line as we could from the hitman and the person hiring him. But it's fairly obvious that things like "I'll pay their legal bills" are just a degree or two of separation further removed; we have a name for this, which is "incitement to violence."
And that is one tool in the accelerationist toolbox. Our friend in Christchurch sees himself as a sort of revolutionary vanguard trooper; he is hoping that the very fact that he was able to pull this off, combined with the force multiplier of global news broadcasts, will be enough to spark off more attacks of a similar kind, which themselves will generate more, and so forth. It's rather like a runaway nuclear fission reaction in that sense.
So what do we do about this? Unfortunately, little to nothing: i have concluded that most humans simply are not capable of the type of introspection and critical thought necessary to ward this sort of memetic plague off, many of them because they are suffering too much and too concerned with simple survival to have the energy to invest in that sort of mental hygiene. I do, sadly, believe that civil war is not only inevitable but not so very far away. My one solace is that these "accelerationists" are going to get exactly what's coming to them, here and hereafter; the world they create will be one in which the living envy the dead.
If you all wonder why I keep saying death holds no fear for me, this is why.