Guard Card
Where cheaters are known to steal aces, you hold your deck close.
Is this your Duckstack?
Listen, things are getting bad out there. The world is getting rougher, darker and more dangerous1. I’m deputizing all of you. You are now Duckstack Sentinels2. Our last batch was insufficient, and they’ve all been overcome. You may consider yourself “The Duckstack’s Last Line of Defense”. You can introduce yourself to your friends this way, if you want. If you see a Duckstack in danger around you, you have permission to arrest the perpetrator on sight. You are authorized to use deadly force, as long as nobody gets hurt. I know not all of you would have chosen this path, but sometimes a hero’s destiny calls in ways we wouldn’t expect. One lucky Duckstack Sentinel Winner will be crowned “The Hero of The Duckstack!” How enviable! Work hard, everybody!
Bad Pottery
Clay pigeons
yes hello welcome to the bad pottery section, look at this pot, it has no design, its uneven and asymmetrical, and I am pretty sure it wasn’t even fired. Talk about lazy. And look at this teacup! Is this what you call Fine China? This sure isn’t my idea of quality materials. Look at this, we got it for only a couple thousand dollars, and if I throw it against a wall like this it freaking shatters. Can’t those Chinese be bothered to hurry up and get to the stone age already or something? I could make a mug from PAPER sturdier than that thing! We’ll put in for a refund, of course, and if not maybe we can sell it at a yard sale or something. And look at this! Well, actually, this is just a regular non-stick cooking pot. Its durable I’ll give it that. But it is ugly, I really wish they would put some embroidery around it or something. I’ll get our best technicians on it. In the meantime, I am going to stick to plastic for my curio cabinet, and that’s final.
Bad Poetry
Lorum ipsum dolor sit amit something something and then flowers
Internet poetry is like
words on a screen
instead of paper
and
also more carriage returns
I’m sure you’ve noticed it. There is very little substance to modern poetry, in my opinion this is the real pandemic. Where did it go wrong? Well: the communists won world war 2. In a word, breaking rules became for commoners.
Breaking rules used to be a skill, basically you had to have some awareness of the reasons a field was structured the way it was, to be able to know when the rules could be broken to greater effect than following them. Think like, a key change in one of Beethoven’s symphonies. And then imagine if someone decided key changes were transgressive, and thought they were being really cool to add 20 of them in every song, and then everyone just started doing that, and then a bunch of normies got into making music, and they started just banging pots and pans together and calling it key changing. And that’s basically what’s happened with poetry, and also all social sciences, and also STEM.
Because you see, constraints culture creativity. The more constraints there are (assuming people want to do the thing), constraints force them to get creative. Consider the different poetic forms- The glory of any of them, the thing that makes any of them interesting, is their rules. The poetic movement3 towards “free form” accomplished very little of note, yet has wholly taken over the culture, and to find real poetry you have to go to extremely thoroughly gatekept institutions: “We only publish haiku” or whatever.
You also see this with video games- the more freedom a developer allows players (freedom is not synonymous with “choices”- Dungeons and dragons is a good example of endless choices, yet with firm rules giving those choices meaning) the more games devolve to “just expression”- hence even custom minecraft servers have to retroactively impose rules to get any sort of competition going.
To be even more redundant, Twitter’s original value proposition was not that it was social media where you could talk to people- it was its constraints. A very strict character limit per post forced users to constrain their thoughts, and also gave way to many cultural shorthands, similar to how the constraints of texting on a numeric keypad phone 20 years ago developed many shorthands we still use today, such as “ur” for your, “lol” for laughter, “h8r” for hater, and so on. Removing constraints almost always removes culture.
Conversely, a wise leader is able to place constraints, especially arbitrary restraints, around boundaries they want their culture to form along, or muscles and skills they want their idea to isolate and show off. When building something new, this is something you want to think about. It is rules, not liberty, that lead to progress and innovation.
History
To be a parent is to be a chair
Our son Jethro often improvises spontaneous songs. From the backseat this week, he was heard to sing: “Naughty dinosaur eating Jethros thumb, one fell off and broke his head, mama called the doctor and the doctor said, no more dinosaurs eating thumbs.”
My wife walked into the room and said “Jethro, what are you up to?” and he looked up at her and said “um, mischief?” and then giggled
She told Jethro he is probably the most adorable kid that's ever lived. “I'm glad you think so”
Our toddler is becoming fairly articulate in stringing words together, I am not sure I am quite prepared for him to suddenly become someone I can discuss philosophy and capitalism with, but at least for now his sentences are still kind of basic and disjointed, and I feel it my duty to chronicle every little linguistic quirk he goes through. Currently he says “got it” instead of “got”, so he’ll be like “I got it an egg!” and I’ll be like “AGHHH MESSES NOOOO45”
Best Women’s Names of 2023
and their meanings
Since probably at least the middle ages, women have been given names. Not many people know this! But have you ever thought about where these names come from? By popular demand, The Duckstack is swooping in to reveal this fascinating etymology to you, our readers, for the low low price of whatever you paid to read this today6. There are other women’s names, of course, but these are the best because they’re the ones I thought of in the 20 minutes I spent writing this. If your name isn’t here, I would be happy to etymologize it in the comments, as I have faithfully done since I first launched The Duckstack newsletter two years ago. Without further adeu, I present to you: Names.
-Alice: One Lice
-Amber: A stylization of "‘an” and “bur”, the type of woman to be a thorn in your side
-June: A type of bug
-Carol: A type of door to door songstress
-April: A name that means nothing, but is derived from the sound of rain
-Lucy: “lucky” in adamic
-Eve: This means “the mother of all living” in adamic. It also stands for Environmental Virtual Evaluator.
-Mary: A girl who is married.
-Beth: The second letter in the hebrew alphabet, literally “B”. The prefix “Eliza” can be added. You get El (Hebrew for God) and “iza” which sounds sort of like eyes. thus the meaning: “Gods eyes, B.” As in the letter.
-Tiffany: A tiff is a spat, and a knee is a body part. Tiffany is the name of an ancient martial art involving only the knees
-Becka: A name to simulate bird sound
-Sarah: “to command to cheer”
-Brianna: The latter half of this name is asking “or nah”. It is up to you and whether you are a necromancer whether the first part is talking about cheese, or morgue procedures.
-Hannah: When your joke was bad
-Emma: Mama, backwards.
-Ciara: The same as above but spelled slightly better
-Gretchen: This name means “mosquito bite”
-Holga: A common female golfer’s name, named after the sound a golfer makes after a really bad putt.
-Brikaeli: An old stage saying- “break a leg”
-Amy: A redundant way of referring to oneself.
-Joy: A common greeting in England
-Madison: A girl who gives birth to boys
-Linda: An esoteric term for walking
-Ruth: A dog’s bark
-Violet: No living historian has been able to figure out what this name means, if you think you have an idea please write in they are going to fire me please
Maybe its just because I write The Duckstack at 11 PM
Don’t worry you’re still mayors too, this is what we call “multiclassing”
What type of movement? Bowel
Journalists: That’s a quote. Feel free to copy it directly to your own publication.
“AGHHH MESSES NOOOO” is just the cost of raising chickens I guess
I don’t mean money, of course. I mean effort to open up your email. Calories. Defeating The Duckstack sentries in mortal combat.