Friday, August 21, 2026

New Sexual Technique Revealed (net.singles, March 1984)

Before it's lost from the net forever: 

Subject: New Sexual Technique Revealed (finally!)
Newsgroup: net.singles
Date: Mar 2, 1984, 9:04:45 AM

I've agonized for some time over this, but can't put it off any longer.
I promised to reveal the new sexual technique and that's what I'm going
to do, no matter what the consequences. I'm scared. Threats have been made,
threats which I take seriously, but that's not going to stop me. Most of you
have no idea of what's at stake here. And those that know, know only too
well. But I've made my decision, so here goes.

We, and by "we" I mean myself and the women whose existence mysteriously
ended following her mention of the technique in this forum -- we -- I
use that collective term now because somehow it makes me feel more secure;
it fills me with hope that others will come to my aid when I reveal this
secret of the ages. Well, no matter what the reason, "we" it shall be...we
(she and I) referred to the technique as "new" in our letters, but that is
hardly the truth; it is new only to you. To me and several others it has been
known for some time as jer-as-sanon.

Jer-as-sanon. Remember that name, for it is the name of the most powerful
sexual technique known to man. And remember this: soon it will be
yours to do with as you please.

Jer-as-sanon is not new; in fact it is quite ancient. Its origin, as they say,
is lost in the mists of time. I can trace it back to the era of Cleopatra
because it is through her that I came to know it. Jer-as-sanon was her legacy
to me. Her blood flows in my veins, only a trickle to be sure, but blood
nonetheless. And her secret envelops my soul.

She used the secret well, didn't she? I'm sure you've all heard her story;
there's no use my defending her virtue. She used it well (as soon you
may use it if you so desire). Whether you are male or female is irrelevant;
jer-as-sanon works equally well on either sex. Be prepared. The results
are profound. You will never know rejection once you've
captured the secret of jer-as-sanon. Never again will you hear the word "no"
unless you wish to. Word of your newfound prowess will pass over the
world like a summer breeze, gentle but irresistible, and
there will be knocks at your door, whispered invitations, and much much more.
Very soon your life will change more than you can begin to imagine.

It's heady stuff -- pundits might call it the right stuff -- and for awhile it
will seem as if you've been transported to some fabulous isle where dreams
are real and nightmares don't exist. No more begging or lying or wishing --
just doing. Doing what you've always wanted to do with whoever you wish to
do it.

But there is another side to jer-as-sanon (isn't there always?).
I haven't mentioned the story of my ancestor's death, have I? No. I
always neglect to mention that. Cleopatra lived by jer-as-sanon, and
eventually was consumed by it. You've probably heard the story of the
asp (even then there were cover stories), but
perhaps the more thoughtful amongst you have mused upon the phallic symbology
of the snake...and wondered. If so, then you have perceived some
glimmerings of the truth. The two-edged sword of jer-as-sanon cut deeply
into the soul of my most famous ancestor. She used it well, and she used
it often, and the world washed up at her feet because of it,
but it was an empty hulk of a world seeking...something else. Always sadly
something else. Never she. So one desperate night (not during the afternoon as
false history would have you believe), hoping to salvage some last victory over
her curse, she turned jer-as-sanon upon herself. Sometimes I imagine
she died with a smile upon her lips, but I will never know.

Yes, for awhile jer-as-sanon is beautiful, but then you begin to realize that
something is lacking in your life. The world continues to pursue you
with open arms and pleading eyes, but you perceive that it is
not you they are seeking but the ghost of jer-as-sanon. You may be
able to ignore the doubts at first, certainly you will try, but no one has
ever succeeded in ignoring himself. And it's a cold lonely feeling to rise
from the bed of your thousandth lovemate, with the sick realization that it
was not you they were seeking but something else. Something else. And you
will begin to wish you were that something else. You will begin to
yearn for that long ago day when they came less frequently but they came for
you.

Jer-as-sanon. Remember that name: soon it will be your curse.

But enough of this maundering. It is time now to reveal the secret to you, so
that you may experience the ecstasy of Mara Hari and Casanova and Cleopatra and
me. No longer will jer-as-sanon be a tightly held secret known only to
a few. Now you also can descend into the willing arms of the world armed
with a technique so powerful that some have threatened me with death should
I reveal it. Alluring movie stars and sensuous musicians will flock to your
door, hoping for a glimpse of you, a touch, just a few hours alone with you
and jer-as-sanon. No matter what their famous names -- Debra Winger, Tom
Selleck, Nastassia Kinski, John Travolta -- all of them will either
adore you or envy you, but absolutely no one will deny you once you've
mastered the ecstasy of jer-as-sanon. You will have your
fill of lust and flesh and romance and joy. And the hook of
jer-as-sanon will drive deep into your groin; there is no escaping it.

Why do I do this thing? Why do I condemn you to a lifetime of lust?
We're back to that word again aren't we? -- we -- that's what I want: we.
Ecstasy is such a lonely place, and so I lure you to me with jer-as-sanon.
What an evil person I am. Isn't it enough that I have washed up broken upon
this shoal of endless sexual pleasure? Do I have to involve you also? No.
It isn't fair. I have no right to involve you in my problems. No. Forget
I ever mentioned jer-as-sanon. It doesn't exist.

Goodbye.

-- 

Don Davis
JHU/APL
...decvax!harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!ded
...rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!aplvax!ded


Sunday, August 11, 2024

The Grandfather Paradox

 All my posts are in Reddit or Mastodon these days. Woe is me.

Anyway, someone on Reddit was asking about the Grandfather paradox.

What paradox?

As soon as you go back in time you have created a new "you" out of nothing, there's no need for you to return to your future, you already violated causality and broke physics (conservation of mass-energy) by traveling in time anyway. The "you" in the past who has the memories of "you" in the future is not the "original" you... that one ceased to exist when they went back in time even if they didn't change anything. From the point of view of the physical universe the time machine is a disintegrator.

The whole "we gotta close the loop" business is narratively interesting, I guess, but it doesn't reflect any physical requirement. There is no "continuity".

When the you from the new timeline arrives that doesn't change the arrival of the first time traveler. Both still exist, created from nothing.

And there's no point in trying to restore yourself by stopping you from killing your grandfather. Just by arriving in the past you've kicked off enough butterflies to prevent you from being born no matter what you do. Chaos theory is a bitch.

You will go back into the past and there will be dozens of you who haven't yet realized that there's no point in trying to restore the past. Some will be dead because their time machines arrived close enough to each other that the wall of one machine intersected the body of the time traveler in another. Some of you went back together, so there's all these time machines left behind.

Some of you went off into the future and had adventures before coming back, so some of you will be heavily modified, with implants and artificial immune systems and extra limbs and different species and genders. You have kids with yourself.

Eventually you create a future where there is nobody who isn't a version of you, or your kids, or one of the people who stole one of the time machines you left behind.

Blame Larry Niven (All the Myriad Ways and The Theory and Practice of Time Travel), David Gerrold (The Man who Folded Himself), Douglas Adams (The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy), George R. R. Martin (Unsound Variations), and Charlie Stross (Palimpsest).

Go read all of these, they are all worth it, even the ones that are horribly dated.

Also read Asimov The End of Eternity, Heinlein All You Zombies, Leiber Try to Change the Past, and Niven Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation. Which brings us back to my blog. And now you know the rest of the story.


Sunday, January 7, 2024

CIY Novice68 function codes.

Having just spent several minutes copying this stuff down using Google Translate on my phone, I thought it might be useful to post somewhere, so the next person doesn't have to squint at it. Is there a central place to coordinate these kinds of things one has to glean from Chinese language only manuals?

    Fn-I - Wired mode.
    Fn-O - 2.4 GHz mode.
    Fn-P - Bluetooth 1.
    Fn-[ - Bluetooth 2.
    Fn-] - Bluetooth 3.
    Fn-K - Backlight Speed.
    Fn-L - Backlight Brightness.
    Fn-; - Backlight Mode.
    Fn-' - Backlight On/Off.
    Fn-, - Vol-.
    Fn-. - Vol+.
    Fn-/ - Mute.
    Fn-T (3sec) - Match 2.4 GHz.
    Fn-Y (3sec) - Unpair Bluetooth.
    Fn-G - Switch Mac/Windows.
    Fn-H (3sec) - Reset settings.
    Fn-Up - Stop Play
    Fn-Down - Play/Pause
    Fn-Left - Prev Track
    Fn-Right - Next Track
    Fn-Win - Win On/Off

You need to select a mode when you first set up, it doesn't default to wired mode.

Right column:

    `~
    Del
    PgUp
    PgDn

Mapped keys:

    Fn-Del - PrtSc
    Fn-PgUp - Home
    Fn-PgDn - End
    Fn-Esc - `~ (again)
    Fn-1-9 - F1-F9
    Fn-0 - F10
    Fn-- - F11
    Fn-= - F12
    Fn-V - Pause/break
    Fn-B - Scroll Lock
    Fn-N - Insert
    Fn-M - Menu
    Fn-Tab - Delete (again)

Edit: gaming cluster on the left:

    Fn-W - Up
    Fn-A - Left
    Fn-S - Down
    Fn-D - Right
    Fn-Q - PgUp
    Fn-E - PgDn
    Fn-R - Home
    Fn-F - End


Thursday, April 4, 2019

Cheers, updated.

Because on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog.

♪♩♫♪♩♫
Sometimes you want to go
Where nobody knows your name
But they're always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
The troubles are all the same
You want to be where nobody knows your name...
♪♩♫♪♩♫
You want to go where people know
The people are all the same
You want to go where nobody knows your name...
♪♩♫♪♩♫

Friday, June 10, 2016

Quantum immortality and the Fermi paradox.

What if some kind of false vacuum energy exists and is easy to tap for a sufficiently technological species? All the free energy people are right, there's power to be had in "handwave zero point blah blah" energy.

But that means there's a lower energy level for the universe, and you're likely to collapse the false vacuum and destroy the universe if you try it.

So, the reason we don't see other technological species is because we can only exist in a universe where no other technological species has developed yet. Quantum immortality works, but it's not good news.

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Furry Taxonomy

A "furry taxonomy" for reference.

This could be a handy starting point for surveys. Basically, collapsing the tree of life into anthropomorphic chunks that I've seen identified as "different things" by furries.
  • Arthropods (insects, spiders, shrimp, etc)
  • Cephalopods (octopi, etc)
  • Piscines (fishes, etc)
  • Amphibians (newts, etc)
  • Reptiles (maybe split off dragons here)
  • Avians (birds)
And that gets to where things start getting tricky, the mammals:
  • Monotremes (spiny anteater, platypus)
  • Macropods (your basic kangaroo)
  • Other Australasian marsupials (there's quite a lot of variety here, but I'm trying to be minimal)
  • Opossums (new world possums)
  • Other new world marsupials (Yapok, etc)
  • Lagomorphs (rabbits, etc)
  • Rodents (maybe include shrews and hedgehogs here, though it's taxonomically iffy)
  • Bats
  • Primates (maybe split off lemurs, they seem more popular than other primates)
  • Elephants, rhinos, hippos (this is iffy too, but people lump them together, so do eet)
  • Manatees
  • Whales and dolphins (which are definitely not manatees)
  • Pangolins, sloths, armadillos, giant anteaters, stuff like that. (Pangolins don't technically go here but they look like they should, so whatevers.)
  • Cervines (deer, antelopes)
  • Sheep and goats (again, we're being slack because furry logic)
  • Equines (horses and zebras)
  • Miscellaneous artiodactyls (camels, stuff like that)
And finally, we're ready to take on the carnivores. Take a deep breath. There's two main divisions, feliformia (cat-like) and caniformia (dog-like). We'll do feliformia first.
  • Domestic cats
  • Small wild cats (the ones that go meow)
  • Big cats (the ones that go roar - lions and tigers but no bears)
  • Civets (actually a couple of groups go in here)
  • Linsangs, genets, and other cat-like viverrids
  • Hyena and aardwolf
  • Fossa (Really, all by their lonesome, the other Madagascar carnivores look like covets and mongooses so we'll leave them in with those groups)
  • Mongooses (actually about three groups of viverrids)
  • Meerkats (actually a kind of mongoose)
  • Other viverrids like the binturong.
And now we get the canoid carnivores. This group is full of surprises.
  • Bears (including giant panda, for the moment, but you might split that off)
  • Red Panda (all by its lonesome, or you can mix it in with the raccoons and kin)
  • Obvious procyonids (raccoons, ringtail cats, Coati)
  • Non-obvious procyonids (Kinkajou, Olingo)
  • Seals (seals, sea-lions, etc... yes, really)
  • Skunks
  • Badgers
  • Weasels (and kin, but probably not otters. This includes ferrets and weasels and stoats and martens and wolverines...)
  • Otters (because water weasels seem to have their own fanclub)
  • Domestic dogs
  • Wolves (and coyotes and golden jackals and a few other basically wolves of different sizes)
  • True jackals
  • Red foxes and grey foxes (though they're not actually related, they get lumped together)
  • Fennecs (because cute)
  • Tanuki (Raccoon-dog, the ones from Pompoko)
  • Cape hunting dogs and dholes (and I think that actually does it for true canines)
  • South American foxes, including the maned wolf
  • Other miscellaneous foxes
Phew

Anything I missed?

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Four hours of sleep loss = a six-pack of beer?

This one is all over the net. People claiming that missing four hours of sleep is the equivalent of drinking a six-pack of beer.

If I drink a six-pack of beer, I'm unconscious.

So I did some looking, and I haven't found an original source to this quote. The earliest sources claim that missing four hours of sleep for four or five days in a row is equivalent to staying awake 24 hours, and that is equivalent to being legally drunk. I can see how that got conflated by the usual game of telephone into missing sleep one night having that effect, and thence to someone's idea of what "legally drunk" entails.

There is also a US Army document that claims "On 4 hours sleep, 1 beer can have the impact of a six-pack" (the image below). Again, a much less strident claim and a more credible one.

Surprisingly, a perusal of Snopes fails to reward me with an article on the subject. I would have thought they would be all over this one.

Gentle Readers, can you find me a source for this claim?




Friday, October 16, 2015

Welcome to the Ergocene.

In the early days of the universe, before the stars and galaxies burned out, there was ample free energy. You could create an entropy gradient and extract useful work from it just by putting a heat engine in the shadow of a reflective surface. It was a wonderful time to be alive.

In the modern era, where we survive on reversible computation driven by quantum fluctuations in space-time, we refer to the youth of the universe as the "ergocene": The era of work.

The simulation you are experiencing is the best approximation we have been able to create to what it must have been like to live in these heady times.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

50 Shades of Grey

#181818 #1c1c1c #202020 #242424 #282828
#2c2c2c #303030 #343434 #383838 #3c3c3c
#404040 #444444 #484848 #4c4c4c #505050
#545454 #585858 #5c5c5c #606060 #646464
#686868 #6c6c6c #707070 #747474 #787878
#7c7c7c #808080 #848484 #888888 #8c8c8c
#909090 #949494 #989898 #9c9c9c #a0a0a0
#a4a4a4 #a8a8a8 #acacac #b0b0b0 #b4b4b4
#b8b8b8 #bcbcbc #c0c0c0 #c4c4c4 #c8c8c8
#cccccc #d0d0d0 #d4d4d4 #d8d8d8 #dcdcdc

Friday, August 16, 2013

Cats and dogs... living together - convergent evolution.

Judge Doom: [picks up the record from the record player - reads] "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down". What a looney selection for a group of drunken reprobates.

[all the drinkers turn away and cough - Doom sniffs the record]

Judge Doom: HE'S HERE!

[throws record like a Frisbee into Stupid's mouth; the other weasels laugh]

Judge Doom: Stop that laughing!

[Hits Smart Ass with his cane]

Judge Doom: Have you forgotten what happened last time? If you don't stop that laughing, you're going to end up dead just like your idiot hyena cousins!

Silly Judge - weasels aren't related to hyenas. Hyenas are in the "cat-like" carnivore family, and weasels are in the "dog-like" family. The doglike nature of the hyena, and the weasel-like nature of the mongoose (a close relative of the hyena) is convergent evolution.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

New avatar

By the talented Vaekke (Vekke at Deviant Art).



Thursday, November 15, 2012

My new avatar

By Avanii at Deviant Art


Saturday, November 3, 2012

Twilight in Detroit



This is Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, with the Electronium... an analog sequencer and algorithmic composer, the life work of Raymond Scott. You may not know who Raymond Scott was, but you've heard his music... he wrote some of the most distinctive tunes used by Warner Brothers in Looney Tunes, including the incomparable Powerhouse theme.

Mark has bought the only surviving model of the machine from Motown, and is going to repair and refurbish it.

I think it looks like something Wile-E Coyote would use, and it sounds like it too: http://oldsite.raymondscott.com/ElecTwil.wav

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Falling through the planet - geek edition.

Marco September 17, 2012 at 12:15 am
Hope they don’t fall into one of those bottomless pit traps!

ToaSoul September 17, 2012 at 5:50 am
those make no sense its pretty much impossible to make

a “bottomless pit” there has to be an end sometime!!

Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 7:03 am
If your pit’s deep enough there’s no bottom, just another top!

Raska September 17, 2012 at 10:56 am
that would get /weird/. You fall and fall and fall and then are spit out at the edge of the pit. *shudders* portal physics are mindbending

Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:19 am
Well, actually, you’d get cooked by the heat of the molten core of the earth long before you get anywhere near the opposite top.

Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 11:26 am
Ignoring thermal effects and air resistance, it would take 42 minutes.

http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-earth.cfm
It turns out that *any* trip along any straight line (chord) through the earth under gravity, and ignoring friction, would take 42 minutes. That’s also half the orbital period for a sea-level satellite (though it would have to be a black hole or something to avoid being slowed down by air resistance).

So if you had an evacuated maglev line from San Francisco to New York, it would take 42 minutes. San Francisco to Bombay? 42 minutes. San Francisco to Los Angeles? 42 minutes. The science is easy. Engineering it, now that’s a charming young woman.

Keldor September 17, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Of course, once you add just a tiny bit of friction, you’d fall until you stopped just short of the other side, at which point you’d fall back the other way, stopping just short of where you started. You’d continue falling back and forth for quite some time before eventually settling in the center of the earth, at which point you’d face a climb of nearly 4000 miles to return to the surface…

Argent Stonecutter September 17, 2012 at 4:10 pm
Oh, you want *realistic* calculations?

Let’s see, in a vacuum the maximum velocity would be almost 8 kilometers per second. Terminal velocity for a human at 1 atmosphere is more like 50 meters per second. So under ideal conditions you’d have less than 1% of the speed to get back to the surface on the first pass. Air pressure would get higher as you dropped, and acceleration due to gravity would be reduced, so your actual velocity as you passed through the center would be much less than 50 meters per second.

Also, the walls of the tunnel at that depth would be several thousand degrees, so the terminal velocity of the charred remnants of your body would be even lower.

Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:22 am
To be fair, if you just let air fill the shaft, the pressure would be such that somewhere around 1/3rd (napkin calculations FTW!) of the way down, the pressure would be such that air would become a solid, so you wouldn’t even make it to the core. Engineering-wise, proper climate control (including a vacuum for you to fall through in your spacesuit) would be the least of your concerns, given that the strongest materials known to science would collapse like a wet sponge under an 18-ton hydraulic press. 50 million PSI is a *lot*.

Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:34 am
Come to think of it, air would be solid well before that. I was basing my calculations on the theoretical depth in Jupiter where hydrogen becomes solid, and multiplying my 10 to account for the different gravity, but hydrogen is much lighter than air, about 15-fold, so, assuming a similar amount of pressure turns mostly nitrogen into a solid (ideal gas laws state that the number of particles determine the pressure/volume, so the relative density of the gasses is completely determined by their relative atomic weights (and temperature, but we’re assuming that’s the same)), the depth for solid air would only be around perhaps 75 miles, which is well away from the center.

Keldor September 18, 2012 at 12:36 am
Actually, 40 miles.

Marco September 18, 2012 at 2:08 am
Oh I love how you guys incorporate real science within the fantasy realm! I think Tarot would approve greatly if she was there!

Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 8:11 am
The partial pressure of oxygen would be toxic only 6 km down. I don’t think you can extrapolate so linearly from Jupiter, though, not just because Earth’s gravity is less but also because it falls off much faster with depth.

The walls of the tube would be under significantly higher pressure than that from the molten rock (average density 5 grams/cc, versus 0.0012 g/cc for air). Like I said, the engineering challenges are a real charming young woman.

Raska September 18, 2012 at 10:55 am
:O…

C-Shock September 17, 2012 at 8:38 pm
Argent Stonecutter, your science is now the “About Me” info on my skype. and i’m putting it on facebook, if it’s not a problem…just to increase general knowledge. you is smart!

Argent Stonecutter September 18, 2012 at 9:59 am
Heh, maybe I should preserve this thread in my blog.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Be thankful for weasels!

Weasels kill 60 million mice a year in the state of New York alone! 60 million! That's gotta be enough to fill the Statue of Liberty!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Alternate History #56.5"


Just got back from the alternate reality where Ben Franklin was the first Hereditary President of the US. In that universe the Civil War was over Metrification and railroad gauges. The summit party had to change trains on the Nashville-Atlanta line and a banjo duel broke out in the confusion. Sherman’s banjo misfired because he couldn’t get metric strings in Atlanta. Nothing to do but burn the place down and wage terrible war!

Game Mechanics in Second Life?

What does Hamlet mean by "Game Mechanics"? Something like this, perhaps?


Congratulations, you've worn an outfit, you have achieved the Wear An Outfit Award™. You have now filled the top shelf of your Second Life Trophy Case™*.

* To display your Second Life Trophy Case™ in Second Life™, upgrade to a Premium account and set your home position (review Setting Your Home Position Award™ here) to your new Linden Home™ and your Second Life Trophy Case™ will be revealed!

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Six Stages of Debugging


Geekier post than usual!

From an old and abandoned blog:
Somebody taped this on their door at work:
Six Stages of Debugging
  1. That can't happen.
  2. That doesn't happen on my machine.
  3. That shouldn't happen.
  4. Why does that happen?
  5. Oh, I see.
  6. How did that ever work?
Today is debugging blog day. I spent the entire day trying to debug a crasher that nobody knows how to reproduce, although there are multiple bug reports with the same stack trace...

See more at Archive.ORG ...

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Yes, yes, another gravatar snapshot...



Saved for posterity, for when Xane changes his avatar...

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

On Optimization


There's nothing like a five year old program written by the damn fool you used to be to wise you up and take pity on the damn fool you'll be five years from now.
--Argent Stonecutter, SL Scripting Tips forum, Dec 8, 2008

About Me

My photo
I'm just this shapeshifting simulation of a critter originally from a little planet in the Slow Zone that you've probably never heard of.