Thimbron

[I don't think this review works. I've commented in brackets where I see problems.]

I am here reviewing my summary of 'Your Feelings Are Out to Get You' because in order to improve my summarization skills I need to know exactly what was wrong with it, and I need to write this review to learn from my mistakes.

Overall there is a lot of confusion in this summary about how to express the subject of various parts of the piece. In addition the structure of the summary is broken, I wasn't explicit about all the assumptions I was making about the piece, and I miscategorized it as being a general, rather than a personal piece [I don't fully understand what I'm saying here]. Also, where I didn't understand concepts, I failed to make note of that.

The problem with expressing the subject can be seen throughout the summary where, for example, I switch from "more and more people" to "you", and occasionally "she," and even an "anyone." Take the first instance, where I write:

Over time, more and more people have come to express thoughts as having originated from feeling rather than from thinking. The effects of this after growing mostly unnoticed suddenly became obvious and detrimental to the enjoyment of life.

The actualy subject of the first paragraph is the author, so an accurate summarization would have represented that the author "believes that..." I should also have either asked the author who "those enjoying the forest" were, or noted that it was unclear to me who exactly the people enjoying the forest were, or what the forest represented. I instead assumed that this just meant "life in general."

Another example of this problem is in the fourth paragraph which starts off with "Anyone could pretend..." In fact the author doesn't claim that anyone could do anything, she claims that she specifically could "construct a false sense of reality..." There are other examples, but I have run out of time to cover them.

Moving on to the structure of the summary, the paragraphs are not well linked together. Excluding all other problems with the first and second paragraph, the first sentence at least refers to something in the first. The third paragraph abruptly introduces the author's idea that her feelings don't matter, and I can see no direct link between the second paragraph, which ends with a paraphrased musing about the reason for people expressing themselves with "feel" instead of "think."

[I clearly don't know what I'm talking about here] I put this piece in the wrong context. I don't know much about the author, and haven't read much of her blog, or her work in general, besides her educational posts on the Bitcoin Talk forum, so I don't understand where she was at when she was writing this. I should have picked up on the clues that this was a personal piece - the main one being that she is talking about her personal experiences, and doesn't make any general statements or claims until the conclusion of her piece.

There was at least one case where I knew I didn't understand a part of the piece and tried to summarize it anyway. I'm sure the are many other parts of the piece that I didn't understand, but the one I knew about was when I tried to summarize "... a feeling doesn't matter within the context of thought, and has no impact whatsoever on anything at all unless I choose to act upon it..." I summarized this as:

Feelings in fact have no impact on anything without the feeler choosing to act on those feelings.

Instead of removing the subject and guessing at a generalized version of it, I should have stated that I didn't understand it, or asked for help in #ossasepia, or on hanbot's blog.

[There should be a conclusion here, but nothing came naturally to me to write.]

I am stuck attempting to write my review of my summary. These are the questions that arose (after diana_coman had to step away from IRC today) Since there are a lot I decided to make a post rather than start several threads on the channel.

1. What is the relationship of exercise to needed step? Is the exercise a necessary step, or is it something else that achieves a different end that I'm missing? Not understanding this got in the way of me properly attempting to put my goal into my own words.
2. Does the conclusion go at the beginning or end of the review in it's final form?
3. How do I decide what is detail and what is top level?
4. I do not understand how I changed the subject when summarizing the first paragraph. What is meant by subject? The person talking? The topic of the paragraph?

The fuck up happened roughly here: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-06-22#1487195.

I am persuaded by lobbes's explanation of why my key old key¹ is fucked.

That said, I will attempt to put it into my own words, and in general write down all my thoughts about it.

At some point I created this signed text file.  This text file, which served as a gpg contract, contains the text "I agree."  It does not specify to what the agreement pertains, or to whom (other than myself, which is indicated by the fact I signed it).

In the context that this agreement was signed, it was intended to be an agreement to distribute qtnra shares to my account on Coinbr: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-06-06#1477615.  Although I no longer have the logs, I probably pm'ed jurov the account name, then pm'ed the link to the signed agreement.  It didn't really make sense to me at the time, but I did it anyway, not realizing that jurov was joking, even though asciilifeform lol'ed on the next line.

Once this contract was published in #bitcoin-assets, it became clear to me that I had made a mistake.  The most obvious problem with the contract was that it's scope was not limited, so it could be interpreted to mean that I agree to anything.  One could object and say, "Well, but who would ever pay attention to such a stupid contract?"  The following hypothetical illustrates why this contract is still a problem.

Let's say I had at that point decided to continue to try and use the key.  Let's say I wanted to sign an agreement to ship 5,000 bags of potato chips (all the potato chips I have) to Jim in Chicago.  A competitor (Julie) could legitimately claim that I had actually already agreed to ship 5,000 bags of potato chips to Atlanta, and as evidence show the retarded "I agree" contract to the Chicago recipient.  How would Jim be able to determine which agreement I would follow through with, clearly not being able to follow through with both of them?  It would be a hassle for him to contact me and ask me "WTF?"  and he would also think I was pretty dumb for having signed such a document.  He might also think Julie something of an annoyance, but mostly he would just not to bother with the whole mess.

I believe this example demonstrates the principle spelled out by lobbes above.

Now, what should the text of the contract have been to avoid these problems?

I² request that jurov³ allocate Qntra shares to my account on CoinBr <account id here - forgot it> for all disbursements for the next year starting on June 6th, 2016.

This updated agreement limits the scope of this contract to the participants, includes the details of the agreement (my account name on CoinBr), and limits the time period of the contract.  Now, with these limitations, if someone were to wish to do business with jurov and (had I rated him) wished to inquire about his trustworthiness for some related type of contract I can answer that he performed according to the contract, whereas with the original contract this was not possible.

I think another aspect I misunderstood was the global nature of the contract.  It wasn't just something between myself and jurov.  It would likely be reviewed by anyone wishing to do business with myself in the future, for the rest of my days.  At the moment I can't think of a more abstract way to put this.

1. I used to go by gernika.  I have a new key registered to thimbronion. [↩]
2. we know who I am since it's signed by me [↩]
3. we know who he is because he has to sign a string with his key to get voice [↩]

Today I found a potentially interesting way to contact mainland Chinese.  I found a Chinese language exchange Discord chat room.   At the time of day I happened to drop in there were few Chinese online, but it was pretty late.  I was able to have some brief discussions in Chinese.  Overall the server seems pretty active, and I intend to come back when more people are likely awake in China.   The Discord crowd seems pretty young, but also pretty genial and earnest.  Also it is interesting to learn that at least some people can access Discord from inside China.

The most memorable conversation, sadly, was in English, and was between a French girl and Winston (a Chinese high school kid) about plastic surgery.  Winston was all about getting eye lid surgery, and the French girl was trying to tell him everyone is uniquely beautiful in their own special way and  Chinese girls are considered hot in France.

Kevin Pham is a crypto twitter personality who is known as one of the most maximalist of the maximalists. Prior to his focus on Bitcoin, Kevin was known as a whistleblower from within Wells Fargo bank (from the linked article it appears he went public after quitting his job there) on issues related to taking advantage of vulnerable customers by coercing them into opening up accounts that they didn’t actually need and incurring additional fees.

At this point I can’t remember why I started reading Kevin on twitter - other than that I agreed mostly with his maximalist philosophy and that he was active in attacking Ethereum, which itself is an attack on Bitcoin. He does have a talent for tweeting simple restatements of maximalist principles in relation to whatever nonsense the crypto crowd is currently pursuing.

Recently he as shifted his focus somewhat towards Cody Wilson’s 3d printable gun/free speech thing. This is the wrong way to go. Firstly, this gun is worthless, as are most guns, in any sort of drawn out conflict with a tyrannical government since the chokepoint is not guns but bullets, which cannot yet be manufactured at scale in a way that isn’t fatally vulnerable to traditional ground and air forces.

The most serious problem facing those who would be sovereign is the lack of any sort of modern secure computer - that is to say a computer that is not designed to be infiltrated by intelligence agencies (and thus anyone else with enough resources, really).

He is wasting his time with this freedom of speech/2nd amendment bs instead of focusing attention on the real problem. This bad turn might be due to a general lack of knowledge about history, or perhaps technology, but in any case it’s bad.

Mi vida me empezó¹ a cambiar

La noche que te conocí
Tenía poco que perder
Y la cosa siguió así

My life began to change
The night that I met you
I didn’t have much to lose
And the thing happened like this

Yo con mis sostén² a rayas

Y mi pelo a medio hacer³
Pensé: éste todavía⁴ es un niño
Pero, ¿qué le voy a hacer?

I with my striped top
And my hair half done
Thought: this guy is still a boy
But, what am I going to do?

Es lo que andaba buscando⁵
El doctor recomendando
Creí que estaba soñando, ooh, ooh
¿De qué me andaba quejando⁶?

No sé qué estaba pensando
Voy pal cielo y voy pateando⁷ ooh, ooh

It is the thing that I was casting about for
The doctor recommending
I thought that I was dreaming, ooh, ooh
What was I complaining about?
I don’t know what I was thinking
I’m going to heaven, and I’m going kicking

Me enamoré, me ena-ena-namoré
Lo vi solito y me lancé⁸
Me ena-na-namoré
Me ena-na-namo

I fell in love, I fell in love
I saw him alone and I jumped
I fell in love
I fell in lo…

Mira qué cosa bonita
Qué boca más redondita
Me gusta esa barbita

Look, a cute thing
What a mouth more round
I like this little beard

Y bailé hasta que me cansé
Hasta que me cansé, bailé
Y me ena-na-namoré
Nos enamoramos

And I danced until I was tired
Until I was tired, I danced
We fell in love

Un mojito, dos mojitos
Mira qué ojitos bonitos
Me quedo otro ratito

One mojito, two mojitos
Look what cute eyes
I stay a while longer

Contigo yo tendría diéz hijos
Empecemos por un par⁹
Solamente te lo digo
Por si quieres practicar

I will have 10 children with you
We start with a couple
I only tell you this
In case you want to practice

Lo único que estoy diciendo
Vayámonos¹⁰ conociendo

Es lo que está proponiendo, oh, oh
Nos vamos entusiasmando
Todo nos va resultando
Qué bien lo estamos pasando, oh, oh

The only thing I’m saying
Let’s go knowing
It is the thing being proposed
We go looking forward to
Every thing that happens to us
How great it is what is happening to us

Nunca creí que fuera así
¿Cómo te fijarías¹¹ en mí?

Toda la noche lo pensé
Este es pa’ mí o pa’ más nadie
E-es pa’ mí o pa’ más nadie

I never though that it would be like this
How could you choose me?
All night I thought
This is for me or for no one

1. Incidentally I’m able to insert all these neat accented characters in Vim using ctrl-k + <accent character> + <ascii character> [↩]
2. bra - or maybe women’s top [↩]
3. half-done is a guess - haven’t seen this usage of infinitives before [↩]
4. still [↩]
5. andaba + <gerund> messing around doing x [↩]
6. quejar is to complain [↩]
7. kicking [↩]
8. jump, plunge [↩]
9. pair [↩]
10. Let us go - imperative [↩]
11. to fixate on [↩]

Billions is a Showtime TV series about a federal district attorney (Chuck Rhoades) (aka a Preet) attempting to imprison a hedge fund manager (Bobby Axelrod). This is yet another excellent propaganda piece by the pantsuits. The characterizations are so very careful - Chuck is into S&M - but we know it’s OK because his “dom” is his wife. We are reminded often of his nobility in “serving” the public (i.e. living off of the public’s stolen taxes) as opposed to the many opportunities he has to reap massive rewards from working in the “private” sector by of course using his connections in the state apparatus.

The writers of the show (well, really, the sophists) ensure that every unethical action - such as opening a fake investigation to take the heat off of a mole - is backed up by a lengthy dialog of middle school fallacies. The reason it’s excellent is the mindfuck they’re trying to pull by setting up the conflict to be between the government and the free market when in fact the conflict is between the government and the government. See this situation here we’ve created by banning sound money and enabling regulatory capture? Well we’re going to solve it by infringing on your property rights, privacy, right to trial by jury, etc. And it’s all ok because, while we ourselves lack morality, we are certain that in this case this inidividual should rot in a cage.

Somehow the series managed to hold off the serious SJWism until the final three episodes, in which we discover one heroic character is in a gay marriage, the white judge who stands up for property rights is racist, and the assistant (possibly native american) DA dumps the white chick for the super smart, wealthy black chick who thinks that, you know, our democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s the better than the alternatives. This is in addition to the low level background radiation of Chuck and his wife’s conflict over their careers, Axelrod and his wife’s conflict over their careers, a female psychiatrist really being just as important as all the traders who have skin and the game, and on and on.

1. Philz is a private chain of coffee shops owned by Phil Jaber, a Palestinian (possibly Christian) immigrant to San Francisco in the 70’s. Before opening Philz, he ran a grocery/liquor store for decades. Philz is unique in the way they make their drinks - the barista mixes all the ingredients, including cream and sugar, before serving it. First you order your drink directly from a barista, then you go to a different place to pay. There is this inherent trust built into the flow - you order your drink without paying, then they just make it and trust that you will go ahead and pay. In the old days, mistakes would often be made in my favor - with me receiving a large instead of a small. Or I would get a free cup if it took too long. Incidentally the employees are inevitably hipsterish, as is the clientel. They used to hire hot hipstresses, but recently they’ve tended to hire more towards the dyke end of the scale, and at the one I frequent now there is an offensively ugly she-troll - fat - ugly face, nearly shaved hair, nose ring [↩]
2. For reasons that are not clear to me I can’t actually drink much coffee without experiencing almost immediate acid reflux - or at least I think that’s what it is. Coffee, while delicious, also seems to leave a taste in my mouth that lasts the entire day, and the caffeine buzz is harsh compared to that of tea.  [↩]
3. Oddly I can’t even find the line I remember from mircea_popescu that inspired me to begin learning Greek. On the other hand this is what I love about participating in public logged discussions - it forces thought to proceed from what was actually said. There was anothe line that went something like “He couldn’t read for not having glasses,” that I also can’t find, but which I thought was in reference to myself. [↩]
4. On these days I would question whether I was really interested in learning Greek or whether just because of the caffeine high I was interested in whatever happened to be in front of me. [↩]