DREAD Reviews 6
Dad Reads and Examines Authors while Distracted
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There’s this concept in the world of professional competitive sports that being the best at what you do often comes down to a difference of 1% or less between first and and second place. I’ve seen this discussed a lot - I’ve attended presentations by MLS sports scientists who brought figures in support of the argument, I’ve read it in books, and I’ve seen countless coaches, players, referees and other luminaries casually mention the truth of it.
However, I’d like to clarify an important ingredient hiding within this “one percent to win” concept. This 1% requires a lot of things like talent and luck and all that, but it also requires putting 10%, 50%, maybe even 100% more work than the competition to gain that sliver of an edge. Training, preparation, and talent all come with diminishing returns. The closer you get to perfect peak performance, the harder it gets to push closer.
True or not, this is the logic I use to convince myself that my whimsical desire to learn to 3d modeling and animation is worth it. A lot of folks around here seem to harbor a passionate hatred of AI (they’re not even sentient yet and you’re already a specist!), and I already had an interest in 3d modeling, so why wait? It won’t hurt using this new skill to get people to take half an extra gander at my spiel while they scroll along.
Yesterday I started with a cube. I shaped it to look vaguely like a human head, albeit it could’ve easily be mistaken for testicle. With many hours of experimentation I got it rigged up to roll around on the screen (this did not do it any favors in the not-looking-like-a-testicle challenge). I then experimented applying some physics to it at which point I ceased pretending it didn’t look like a full-on-testicle. I checked the clock and became frustrated: “It took me 5 hours to learn how to make a floppy naked testicle?!” I felt a overpowering urge to slap it,and scrambled to download usable assets to speed this process up. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, and the emotion has since expired.
You got away this time, lucky-practice-test-head-turned-testicle. Also, I've never felt more connected to my 3 year old and 8 month old. They’re prone to slapping and throwing when frustrated by something new, just like dad.
Speaking of slapping, how about slapping a couple of these story links? And should you be so inclined, follow it up with a slap of the heart button, and maybe even leave a comment that slaps:
Slapping down gods is just another job if you really think about it (you thought I was done?):
The Matrix makes a really interesting point about simulating paradise: we humans won’t stand for it. The places with the nicest weather and geography in the USA were once little pieces of heaven, but over time they became no different than Pakistan’s forever embattled and idyllic Swat Valley or the genocide-laden Garden of Eden of a country we call Azerbaijan.
If you come here and visit the places that look ideal in pictures, I have bad news for you - humans really don’t know how to operate in paradise long-term. For some reason everybody wants to go there and inevitably we all agree to be on our worst behavior. If you want to go to a country and find its nice people, visit the cities laid out upon hostile open deserts, nestled in its cold and rainy mountains, or the ones buried under 6 foot tufts of snow (also known as 2 meters for all those of you from countries that never put a man on the moon).
Or, you can ignore this advice, go to San Francisco’s Bay Area or New York’s Brownsville, Brooklyn like everyone else does, and get mugged and shot six times. The locals know how to keep their heads down and avoid eye contact but you probably don’t (at least they’re not crawling trenches dodging AK’s and growing tribal beards, but give it time). “But I went to a very nice little vacation island this one time!” sorry bud, these are no exception; tropical islands are remote, not self-sustaining, walled off fortresses (via the ocean) for the rich, and they’re often run by colonized or imported poor people. Literal hells with pretty paint:
Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (no, not that Caesar) was also known as “Little Boots.” A charming child dressed up in a little soldier’s uniform, Little Boots inspired the affection of many a crusty old legionnaire out on campaign slapping down barbarians. Oh, did I spell his name in English? I’m talking about Caligula, sorry. Still not ringing a bell? Dang it, do they not teach you kids history anymore? He’s the guy that made his horse into a senator and cruelly executed people he disagreed with… anyway, his daddy Germanicus did what he could. But sometimes, however charismatic the child might seem on the outside, you just get dealt a rotten egg. Oh, and he reminds me of Caleb, what a twat:
I could kick Mr. Harmless Bullet’s ass.
I’m not an aggressive person. I don’t go through life measuring my self-perceived toughness to that of other men. Since becoming an adult, this concept only comes to me by provocation, and even then I’ve got nothing to prove (I’ll cheat and reach for a tool or a gun). But sometimes a dude is just so… beta, and you can’t prevent the thought instantly leaping to the front of your mind: I could destroy you, and it wouldn’t even be hard.
So, I kinda just dropped in for the 9th chapter of this and had no idea what was going on. This proved no barrier to my enjoyment, and I like to imagine that even if I had read the previous 8 chapters, what I just read wouldn’t have made more or less sense. If you haven’t been keeping up on it I think you should just dive in right now. If nothing else, read this 9th chapter just for the part where someone whispers intimately into Harmless Bullet’s ear while people are being torn to bloody rags by crocodiles, or the part where he attempts to scream in frustration. Just lol:
Dear god, woman - I… You know what, never mind. No, don't ask why. Just skip this one. No, really. You’re going to ignore me, aren’t you? Fine:
I don’t know French but at first when I saw this I was like “hell yes,” I’m all esprit de corps for an an éclair, especially after the last thing I read! But it turns out this is more of a “cat got your tongue” thing. Has a cat ever gotten your tongue? You should feel lucky, then - at least you’re not clawing your flesh off in a room filled with saltwater and floating dead children:
Hans is me. I am this horse. I am not smart. I am the human equivalent of a clapping seal. I operate entirely on visual cues, and even then it’s hit and miss. In fact, I’m highly offended:
“You wanted a story on Valentine’s Day? Let me tell you about my ex and field trips.” We’re definitely off to a great romantic start with this one, but first we explore a scene full of discarded limbs and drink a Pepsi made of tar. Oh, also, everything has become a robot expressing only perfunctory care for their companions and their programmed duties. If you read M.P. Fitzgerald’s latest you’ll see gems like: “She asks the same question every time she’s stoned and never remembers what I say unless it’s a fight” and a great comparison of how using a robotic soda dispenser cat as a substitute for your missing girlfriend feels exactly like eating boiled leather in the valley of the Donners:
This killer really didn’t plan this well. Did he not think about how unattractive the woman would be as she became dead? Death does kind of uglify a person, you know? At least he had the decency to feel really bad, and he did avert his eyes from her breasts while throwing her into the lake. Sometimes, it’s the little things that matter. Unfortunately these little things did not matter for one of those sometimes:
Jimmy, I don’t like where you’ve been, and I don’t like where you’re going. But boy am I intrigued and overjoyed you’re here, this moment, and that you wrote about it! Maybe it really is the world’s most complete story:
My old man is the State Referee Administrator for Washington State. Basically he’s one of the 50 most powerful soccer mafia bosses in the USA. Many referees in the state won’t know who he is until the day after they’ve sparked his ire and wake up with a severed horse head in their bed. I mean damn, is it really so bad to post your opinions about sports teams you officiate, or sell your licensed referee assessor services over the internet like they’re USSF-Sanctioned? Anyway, scary as he is, I sent him this thing Pat Johnston wrote and this is what he told me (checks phone): “This sums up my current role with USSF” (United States Soccer Federation). I took it to mean that this network of old men might seem defunct, but they are wise, connected, and they see all:
Chocolates, sweets, romance and cuckqueening. These are the only rewards any decent self-respecting woman requires, and its best when they come with no more effort than sitting in the right diner at the right time on a Valentine’s day. We aren't obligated to feel bad for Julia. If Julia wanted to meet with Mr. Winter, a man she painstakingly corresponded with for a whole 5 years, she shouldn’t have ghosted him at their first real life date! There’s no better romance than the coincidental (and guilt-free) kind. Good for you, go get ‘em, Lily! Mr. Winter has been coaxing his long-distance hardon for a long, long time, after all, and it’s no surprise when he arrives that he’s drawn to the strongest magnet in the drawer - all hail the raw power of passive mental and sexual appeal. And remember, kids, 90% of success is showing up:
Turn that frown upside down, my large-skulled, broad-nosed, intelligent, extinct hominid friend. Neanderthals didn’t really go away, they live inside us (some modern humans are up to 4% Neanderthal)! Fun fact: human to human variation in DNA is 8 substitutions average per sequence, human to Neanderthal is 27.2 substitutions average per sequence, and human to chimpanzee is 55 substitutions average per sequence. Somehow this means chimpanzees are out of range for siring or carrying your child, but Neanderthals were not. Maybe it’s from Neanderthals that humanity gained its greatest weakness: love (or maybe we both had this trait). Love is the most powerful motivator in all civilizations, young and old. Even the Romans knew this; there’s a reason cupid is this unstoppable little jerk with a bow and arrow.
Anthropological evidence suggests that Neanderthal mothers had more difficulty producing half-human offspring while human mothers mostly struggled in producing a viable half-Neanderthal male fetus. If you live in Neolithic times, what are you to do as a human mother of only young hybrid daughters when your male mate dies (common) or becomes frustrated you won’t bear him a son (probably also common)? You go home to your human tribe and hit it up with a human man while you’re still young, of course.
Human mothers brought their half Neanderthal daughters back to the human tribe, meanwhile Neanderthal mothers kept their more rare half human offspring in the Neanderthal tribe. The hybrid offspring of Neanderthal mothers would have more success with other Neanderthals than their mom did, spreading more human genes in their less numerical tribes.
Note that reproductive rates are entirely based on the female population, the number of males has almost no effect. After all, women do somewhere between 99% and 100% of the work during the pregnancy stage. I’m no expert when it comes to math and genetics, but it seems pretty obvious this means there’s more human and less Neanderthal generation after generation in both cases, and nature seems to think 4% Neanderthal and 96% human is “you’re safe enough to reliably produce offspring now.”
This melting pot of genes likely flowed pretty heavily in one direction for social and reproductive reasons, but this is deduction, not science. I certainly don’t discount all the other things anthropologists hypothesize for the Neanderthal’s disappearance, nor the insights of James below:
My top spot goes to Steve York for writing this fascinating and insightful piece. What also causes me to put him here at the bottom (in the top) is his stumbling upon a concept for which I can proudly boast of some expertise.
As a historian, let me explain something very important to deciphering the writings people have left to us: what they put down on a page is almost always the necessary and highly evolved “Official Reasoning.™” This Official Reasoning™ bares varying resemblance to a dimmer, darker truth, one that is often quite banal and almost always rooted in power and violence. The Official Reasoning™ is safe cover against this, and protects your idea or institution from powerful contemporary threats. In this particular case, the one that that “ideas come from God,” The Official Reasoning™ should be self-explanatory. While it’s safe to say most monks did in fact believe this, it was more of a comforting, feel-good campfire fiction for an institution whose true purpose was to harbor the physically weak and the inconveniently born, granting them strength in numbers and holiness.
Some monks were people strong of mind but lacking in strength of body. Some monks lacked the will to face the world, or were smart enough to know the outside world offered a pretty risky deal even if you were strong. Monasteries were also a very useful dumping ground for ambitious second and third sons that, if not for swearing vows and taking up the cloth, might otherwise launch succession wars for daddy’s titles, or split up a formerly functional estate into broken malfunctioning pieces through inheritance (not you, England, you cunning male primogeniture jerks).
I’d like to introduce a word: Ketman. I use this word “ketman” because I have not encountered a similar word in English better suited to the concept. “Ketman” refers to a form of cultural and intellectual resistance practiced by individuals living under oppressive regimes, particularly in the context of totalitarianism. The term originates from the Persian word ketman, which describes a practice of concealing ones true beliefs or feelings in order to survive or navigate a repressive society (though I first encountered the term in a wonderful book titled “The Captive Mind”). In the Persian example, a Ketman prays five times a day, adheres to sharia, drapes his daughter in a veil and all the other good things. But if he’s a writer he’s sneaking little hints between the lines that we historians find, and we go “Ah, so that might be what really happened.” This is not a feature of life unique to Islam, and not all Islamic countries and regimes are totalitarian. Also, there are many analogous words, but I’ve not seen one that fits quite as perfectly as ketman.
Historical writing is chock-full of ketman belief and sentiment. Most of history is divided into uniformly brutal and oppressive periods where by definition an academic is the slave of someone who can sic an angry superstitions mob on them at any moment, or simply cut them down with a sword and be cheered for it. Even by the time of the Renaissance (in Europe, at least), academics were exclusively the servants of rich patrons. Entertainers bought and paid for, long before they created their first historically celebrated invention or painting.
This “ideas come from God” the monks profess is ketman at work. It allows them to do a ton of otherwise very unpopular devilish things - like research genetic engineering, or question a man’s station in life and relationship to his lord and God, or write down histories of events past and current which the current king is not too fond of being distributed (all real examples). If something comes from God, it must be good, and the monks we know of were masters at convincingly demonstrating God as their source (the ones who were bad at this definitely died). Monks aren’t disbelievers in God, this is not what their excuses were for. Their ketman behavior allowed them to quietly and passively rebel against their societies and/or their governments.
Monks didn’t rely solely on ketman behavior to survive. Just because someone is uneducated doesn’t mean they’re stupid, this was as true then as it is now. This was why Monks also lived in mini-fortresses - just look at their monasteries and abbeys, the tight entrances, towers, the hallways - all double as chokepoints. Heavy wooden doors, sally points, underground tunnels - everything a respectable castle needs. As master ketman, monks had an excuse for everything: “It’s not security, its seclusion!” “We’re not fat and happy from maintaining diplomatic immunity to war - watch us fast, watch us deny ourselves earthly pleasures!” “We hoard no riches to plunder, we grow our own food and accept donations only!” “There are no women here to rape, even our young boys are frail, sickly, and half bald!” And the best one of all: “we monks are way, WAY holier than you, so if you kill us you’ll anger the Big Sky Dad”:
Since DREAD comes out faster than I can write my fiction, my final self-promotions have gone further and further into the past. To avoid the mind-chilling threat of feeling obligated to share material from my high school days - or worse, baby pictures - I think I might start condensing my irreverence and snark into little haikus which I will then smear onto the end of this page. Until then, please enjoy this mind-bending story about a robot-inside-a-robot with deep philosophical questions and hiding a nice pair of tits:
Stay slappy.
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Thanks, if I need a deformed 3d testicle I'll know who to ask.
Came here for the snark, was happy to stay to learn this 'ketman' concept