Bait Strait
trolling the fish with dynamite
I’m just like you, I put my pants on one duckstack at a time
By reading this, receiving this, or being in proximity to someone reading this, you agree to release The Duckstack from all liability for any devastating insights into the nature of reality which will warp your mind and personality into a shuddering refugee from the great seams. We don’t consider this likely given, you know, the nature of the topics we typically cover but we wanted to get ahead of it. Some other things our Chief Duckstack Occultist Richard does not consider likely and which you release us of liability for are:
Gaining the Eyes of the Depths, your sensory apparatus unraveling frayed into the Astral
Becoming a professor of sayings, the man who knows, or a teacher of stuff, the woman with wisdom. You agree such knowledge or wisdom will not extend to wiggling your way out of Duckstack Prelude Liability Agreements1.
Cryptological Speciating. Divergent evolution from humanity towards an encrypted worldview, way of doing things, wrapt within an opaque and coded biology
At Least One Email
Wiremade traces visible to you, a comprehension of the paths, linker nodes at your fingertips. This is incredibly useful and may alienate2 you from your peers.
There’s more but I wouldn’t want to worry you.
Upon Genetic Hypotheticals
Would you still love me if you were a worm3
There is a common leftist thought experiment that goes like this: What if you were born as an Afghan Muslim? Then you’d be Muslim. Therefore your beliefs don’t mean anything. Bet you feel stupid now, huh? And they’re right. I do feel stupid. But mostly because I’m sleep deprived today, not because this is a good thought experiment.
Now. Imagine you are a duck. You’re now influenced, obviously, by your duck physiology- you want to eat bugs, swim, quack, and other things ducks do4, and your preferences are modulated by what’s available to you in the wider duck culture. If your duck parents have the right gene, you might have a predisposition to duck alcoholism. If Ducks have a culture of stacking, you’ll learn to stack too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this thought experiment. It can be kind of fun to imagine how your preferences and personality might translate to duckhood. I do so every day. Compared to that, imagining you were born with an extra finger or a liberal5 is easy, and it might be useful to discovering where some of your biases come from, which is why leftists like this thought experiment- they’re all deconstructionists and any rhetoric that can be used to knock any standard or system down a peg immediately becomes leftist rhetoric. But not everything is wrong just because it is leftist. Sometimes you have to knock real and good things down to build them up stronger. Some things are wrong because they aren’t right enough.
So asking you to imagine being someone else isn’t bad, except we all suspect that the motive in doing so is usually to teach some very specific “lesson™” about “empathy™” and “obligations™” and “white people™”. As opposed to, like, carbon atoms in the oort cloud. Imagine you were born as a carbon atom in the oort cloud. Why’s it restricted to humans?
Some people online are calling this the “Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance”, which my 2 minutes of googling tells me goes like this: “Imagine nobody could tell who anyone was and you had to make laws. You’d make laws to support the most pathetic just in case you’re one of them. So that’s the best system of government.” Well. The solution to Pascal’s Wager isn’t to play along with it, its to recognize that you are being mugged6.
The right wing response to this leftist thought experiment is still being developed. Most of my friends have coalesced around the answer of “you could never be anyone but yourself because who you are is genetic” which is at least 30% true7, but if we’re being honest this is mostly a dodge of the question, and a deliberate one at that (being unwilling to imagine not eating breakfast is different than being unable). They correctly sense they’re being tricked but they don’t know the trick to name it. So they deny the existence of the soul and then act like leftism is stupid for accepting the existence of the soul. But affirming the existence of the soul isn’t inherently leftist lol
If there is an “cosmic antechamber of souls” (what my gentile friends are calling the pre-existence) then it directly stands to reason that pre-existent actions would have pre-existent consequences, both for who you are and even what mortal circumstances you’re born in. If you’re a leftist and you buy that all these spirits were hanging out somewhere before getting sucked into bodies, wouldn’t it stand to reason that those spirits had some influence in their embodiment process? Would it even stand to reason that the embodiment process is nonsentient? Surely spirits formed relationships, and sought out ways to find each other again “on the other side”. If you’re a leftist and you think birth happens through a nonsentient vacuuming of the soul, then why wouldn’t you also believe souls can just wait to step into the cosmic vacuum until its aligned correctly?
But all of these are metaphysical assertions- basically unprovable, at least on a colloquial level. But even gesturing vaguely at the theological payload is enough to attempt the sort of mental extortion going on here. If you can’t physically take someone’s stuff or force them to physically support your causes, then your next best bet is to get them to forfeit their right to ownership in the first place, through either cleverness or hiding from them the existence of their claim. Cindarella’s step mother. There is no need to try to battle metaphysics with metaphysics. You are a right winger. You can simply name the demon: Privilege Is Not Random.
Now, I am not a determinist- I do not believe God engineers and micromanages every aspect of people’s lives and arranges every event that comes to you. Sometimes there really is a confluence of wildly complex variables that play into specific situations- the butterfly effect. Enough that it feels random, and random things really are by definition undeserved. Some guy chose to get a glass of water which reminded him to water the garden which made him slightly late and then he got stuck behind a person driving slow which made him later so he sped and got into a car accident and every one of these tiny choices could have been different8.
At a macro scale its normal to call such a wild confluence of events “luck”, although this is technically inaccurate- and herein lies the sleight of hand employed by the deconstructionists. It relies on the reasonability of conflating complexity with luck, therefore you say “I was lucky enough to be born in a good family” rather than “I stand on the shoulders of giants, and my parents pasts, and the millions or billions of tiny good9 choices that they made which brought me here.” Its just easier to think about.
But leftists are not usually being convenient or lazy when they ask this, they are trying to tell you on the (blatantly false) idea that all people are equal and you’re no better than anybody else, as though aggregations of systems10 cannot be judged. They tell you explicitly that inheritance is immoral. You own it, but you shouldn’t, because you didn’t build it. If the Right of Conquerors doesn’t exist, then all virtue is up for re-negotiation, which is why they have such a vested interest in getting you to give up your inheritance. If you don’t “deserve” it, who does? Getting you to focus on this is to hide the obvious answer: Whoever gave it to you. They deserve to decide what to do with what they built. And You deserve to decide what to do with what you have.
The reason this is liberal because the emphasis is to revoke accountability. The right wing flipside of unearned glory would be stewardship- the right of kings. You stand on the shoulders of giants and therefore you have a responsibility to honor and increase. If you’re thinking carefully, it is almost trivial to turn this thought experiment into a conservative one by simply saying “No, this actually is Mine.” Conservatives are trying to do this by saying people are 100% genetics and you could never be born as anyone else. Genetics is certainly a more important part of it than most people like to give credit. Its definitely healthier to believe than thinking your spirit happened to go into a body of the wrong gender or whatever. Latter-Day Saint scripture says the body and spirit combined are the soul of a man. I would add to that and say culture. We’re all a product of the water we swim in and on that the only thing you can do is to seek better waters.
But most people don’t. And their parents didn’t. And their neighbors didn’t. That’s why their lives are the way they are- luck doesn’t play into it nearly at all. Africa is extremely resource rich! Their problem is not a lack of water. Brigham Young led the Saints into a desert with zero water, told them to make it a utopia, and they just did. I deserve access to that Utopia just because I am here, and you can’t even make some colonialist stolen land nonsense claim because nobody even wanted Utah until they made it blossom. Anyone who demands pity access is for sure an ingrate and most likely a robber. “Should you give up something for nothing” is where the real snakes of morality dwell.
Its natural to look at the greats of the past and think you do not measure up. This can even induce a sense of guilt, and guilt can feel very righteous. This is one of Satan’s prime strategies on Earth- See, you are naked, go and hide. Its not what God wants. You are to stand before him naked with the talents he gave you and give an account of your increase. What you “deserve” and what other people deserve does not even factor into it.
AI goblins
Distinct from AI gremlins, which are an entire different thing
Someone recently found out that AIs somehow have a system prompt instructing them to not talk about goblins. Nobody knows why, but many people have been investigating. One person tried to get AI to reverse engineer what a goblin is, and in the process generated the most Latter-Day Saint image I have ever seen in my entire life. I can’t even comprehend how LDS it is, it boggles the mind.
History
Stained deck, stained kids, samsara
Our son rushed in after interacting with the new baby, all excited: “She called me waa!”
At church there was a mothers day program featuring the kids singing “love at home” or something along those lines. Our son sang great and when the song was done he announced to the congregation: “I did like, so good!”
Son whining: “baby is cuter than me”
Duckstack Technology: new plane
5D
I’ve invented a new plane its just a really, really big frisbee. frisbees already fly so lets just pile a bunch of people on one. just take your vertigo pills first
Ducksnax
Piñata
anything else have at it I guess
it also turns you green and gives you almond eyes, as a side effect
Once Upon a Genetic Hypothetical, your beloved wife, who you were certain was a human just yesterday, became a worm. You know this was still her because the worm was still wearing her clothes, just very small, and the worm noises she makes sound startlingly similar to a worm version of your wife saying “help, I’ve been turned into a worm!”
You are moved with grief and confusion. How could this happen? She does not know either, she informs you wormily. Do you still love me? She asks. You find, to your surprise, that you do. Your love did not vanish the instant your wife lost her standard temporal form. You are somewhat relieved that your love has passed the test which was for so long merely academic. How can you turn your wormwife back? Your mind races with unpleasant possibilities. A kiss, a song, a crystal slipper? You have never seen a crystal slipper in your life. And you’re not about to kiss your wormwife, not as a first resort anyway. You mean no offense by this.
You bluff. “its probably some kind of injury. Put some ice on it and get some rest.” Your wormwife agrees that she is feeling a bit exhausted, which you don’t bother to say is normal. But before she can curl up for a nap, the worm kingdom arrives to honor their new queen. You explain to them that there’s been some kind of mixup, but they aren’t having it. They show you a picture of your wife, and even though the picture is a worm you have to admit you can definitely see the resemblance. They tell you its prophesy, and she needs to go with them to rule her kingdom and restore order. Well, you’ve always had a philosophy of respecting worm philosophy, but you are finding yourself a bit conflicted on this one. You give them a copy of seven habits for highly effective people, and tell them to try that first.
The worms enthusiastically carry their new book back to their kingdom, convinced that it holds all the answers to their recent anarchy and uprising. As an afterthought, you tell them they better take your coffee table copy of how to win friends and influence people, which they joyfully do, struggling out the room at a snails pace, or a worms pace, but even slower because they can barely carry two whole books. You’re impressed.
You turn back to your wormwife, who is impressed with your ability to win friends and influence people through effective hospitality habits. At last, it seems, you have become a master of the ancient techniques. And that was all it took. Your wife poofs back into a human, having accepted you for who you really are (a wormkingdom famous librarian) and you both happily resume your argument from last night.
The End
R
Imagine you were born with an extra liberal
hypothetically, in minecraft,
Body, Soul, and Culture.
If only we had passed a law banning people drinking water
Or even bad choices, which you can also be grateful for
aggregations of systems could be here