Bail Jail
Sufficiently advanced freedom is indistinguishable from magic
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him duckstack
Greetings peasants. Today’s Duckstack comes with a bomb, and YOU get to defuse it, or DIE1. Memorize this as though your life depends on it, because within the context of my imagination writing this, it does: Red to white. White to black. Black to “other black”. Got it? If there’s any other colors just cut or paint them all. There’s multiple whites so you’ll need to get the red to both of them somehow.
Alright, if you’re still alive, remember to watch out for the red button with the “fire” symbol on it. We don’t know what it does, but it projects a foreboding spiritual aura. When it comes time, flip a switch, and then don’t press the red button. Hopefully there’s not more than one!
What The Future Holds
As far as I know The Future has no hands with which to hold things
There’s a lot of ways to tell the future. What does your way of telling the future tell about you? Lets find out!
Crystal Ball: Known for being party cloudy23, crystal balls let you see far away, sometimes even objects far away in time. However crystal balls are inherently limited because you just can’t pump enough power into them to see into the far future, most people only get a couple days tops, with Duckstack Top Seer “Chuck” holding the record at one week and four days into the future, predicting the cafeteria lunch menu. A Crystal Ball has a certain mystique, but anyone who sees you is going to know you’re a bit stuck in your ways. At least upgrade to a crystal lcd display or something.
Divination: Whether strewing some objects in a random way and then meming yourself into thinking they have meaning or discovering objects in a natural state and then making stuff up4, divination is an ancient mechanism of prophesy.
Dreams: It is well known that dreams tell the future5. Through shapes and symbols more meaning can be conveyed than can be gleaned in any other way, except that its also pretty incoherent usually and there’s not any real way to tell which parts were predictive or not until after the fact. If you’re a dreamer, your poverty has been noticed, and you might have a chance of getting out of this alive, assuming you press the right button:
Magic Mirror: A magic mirror, either portable or wall mounted, is an excellent accessory and contains highly accurate predictions of the future, enough so that they are well known for driving people mad trying to change the future that they see. Magic mirrors have it rough, and a hard life. Sometimes they throw you a bone once in a while though, such as right now, where your screen is functioning as a magic mirror, letting you know that the on/off switch needs to be held down for at least 20 seconds to fully cycle the power.
Chain Gang
Free labor, for a price.
A lot of things are not black and white, but many actions can be loosely categorized as “cooperative” and “uncooperative”. In fact I read an article yesterday that mentioned Healthy marriages tend to have five positive interactions for every one negative interaction.6 Trust isn't black and white either- it tends to be a scale, and steady contributions over time add up to to character assessments that can be confidently acted upon, whether to taking graduating greater risks because someone has earned your trust, or to greater caution because they have shown themselves to be a flake, disloyal, or worse. This is also how our relationship with God works, and why members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints place so much emphasis on building a testimony7, a portfolio of experiences with God by which allows you to increase8 your trust in him, enough to give up cookies on Sunday or greater sacrifices, forming a wide basis for our statements such as “I know Joseph Smith is a prophet”- it is because God has earned our trust.
Some people are broken, and their approach to the trust scale makes no sense (to outsiders). They treat things like missing minor appointments not just as flakey but as a massive betrayal, as though it was deliberated and malicious9. They have a hard time categorizing trust increments, and as a result feel wildly unstable in their relationships- a self-reinforcing loop. Unfortunately, as with most things, there is simply no substitute for practice, but it may be helpful to start small and work their way up.
Sometimes this is actually a pessimism thing, where they never recognize trust “hits”, only misses, which causes them to consistently miscalibrate how they interpret others actions, getting “burned” again and again. Self deprecation is the devils counterfeit for humility.
There exists a famous Stanford prison experiment called “The Prisoners Dillema”10 where you make a punnett11 square for two people making either cooperative or uncooperative actions. By adjusting the reward for cooperation and defection, you can make different outcomes significantly more likely- If both teams cooperate, everyone wins, and if both teams defect, everyone loses. But if the payoff for defecting is high enough, defection is all but guaranteed.
So much of modern social technology that is broken, can be understood as a prisoners dilemma failure mode. In dating, for example, both men and women are worried about a marriage ending early- This leads women to seek to secure careers, which in turn makes them less likely to marry (and, by some statistics, stay married.) Men and women feel each other have defected, leading to a sense of “every man for himself”, driving hookup culture, false rape claims, and a slew of other things. In politics, the sense that democrats have defected accounts almost entirely for Trump.12
Unfortunately remedies for these are not easily forthcoming. Healing trust requires extended behavior over time, which means boundaries and safety measures need to be drawn and redrawn, a process that is messy and violent. Not necessarily literally violent, but conflict always carries some amount of collateral damage, which is regrettable.
If you can instead create conditions for cooperation, where everyone wins, cooperative scenarios are more likely. Big social changes like that are hard to effect, you need a lot of power to overturn SCOTUS ruling or something like that. In the meantime, you can build trust by being trustworthy, yet not gullible. I believe the Christian virtues are the best model for this: Quick to forgive and extend mercy when repentance is on the table, but heed them not if they are unrepentant. And sometimes, you have to get burned, deliberately and on purpose, to show that you are willing to cooperate. That takes swallowing pride and often more than a little pain, but that’s how dynamics get reversed and oases form in deserts.
The friendship test: I show you my open hand, or if I am a dog, my throat and soft underbelly, allowing you to hurt me. You do the same, allowing me the chance to hurt you. By mutually engaging in this mirrored madness together, we establish a mutual understanding of each other, and the beginning of trust. And in so doing, we perform a miracle: something that breaks the laws of nature.
-Garfieldbot of The Egg Report
History
Bread is so defenseless13.
toddler examining his bicep: “My big muscle.”
Toddler turned everyone into snakes: Mama snake and a baby snake and the toddler is a “big snake”. Why is he a big snake? I don’t know.
toddler singing to himself while he eats an entire baguette in our bed: “Bread is big, bread is big ♫♪”
Asked the toddler if he’s cute. Toddler informs us he's “a squish nugget”
Got a great picture this week, of my sleeping wife with the sleeping infant both with their arms straight up and to the side like they were doing the synchronized wave in their sleep.
Missing Sections, A Review
Science Corner
Science and The Duckstack go together like oil and water.
Hello gentlemen, we’ve got something truly remarkable for you today. Step up step up, you won’t want to miss this. We’ve made some discoveries with astonishing implications for humankind, technology, and even the meaning of life. That’s right, this could change how you see everything. Prepare to be amazed because we've got here two rocks that don't stick together!
Now here you might be thinking to yourself, normally only the stickiest rocks stick together, why's this special? I answer you that even normal rocks stick together just fine using a glue that we in the showbiz call “gravity”. I've brought some normal rocks here to demonstrate14. See, I put one rock on top of the other, see, and they have no difficulty sticking together, even despite this planet hurtling several millions of miles per hour around the sun!
But I have two curiosities here, these rocks move like ones possessed! If I attempt to place one on top of the other, it slides away! I see the doubt in your eyes. You may try it for yourself. Yes, Yes! You recoil in horror. Rocks are known to be inanimate, yet this one scrambles away from its partner! Is it an act of God? Is it a curse from the devil? It is beyond us mortals to say! They’ll mess your hard drive up though so keep them away from your computer.
Ducksnax
Reciprocal
Θ Θ Previous Duckstack Θ Θ
FBI: This is not a “threat” this is a “plot device”, learn media literacy
with a chance of meatballs
Imagine a big spaghetti pile with a crystal ball on top? You would be the happiest fortune teller in the world
That’s what we do here at The Duckstack
“tell” is a very cryptic word here
That's, with each other of course
One of Joseph Smith's most terrifying quotes, faith that is not ready to sacrifice never has power to save. Thankfully, through Christ's grace we can work our way up gradually.
And measure
obviously you can miss an appointment out of sheer malice, but please try to give me the benefit of the doubt here
Its actually not an experiment at all. Or from Stanford. I made both of that up.
Often stemming not only from democrat betrayals (prop 8) but republican party betrayals as well, that “the swamp” is no longer even trying or pretending to work in American interests.
It makes up for this in offensive crumbs. In our bed.
These locally sourced and grass fed rocks come all the way from an Arkansas town famous for such things called “Little Rock.”
This email is one of the highlights of my week. I’m glad I subscribed!