Plot Got
Storybook stew, the new superfood for those hungry to read
Once a Duckstack, always a Duckstack
The world’s first Duckstack originated in ancient Egypt. It was found by Pharaoh’s wife’s niece’s daughter in law, floating down the Nile river1. Rumor has it that the secrets of the universe were engraved on it, and that it was buried in the Pharaoh’s wife’s niece’s daughter in law’s husband’s tomb, the location of which has been lost to time. However, if you were to find it, out there in the sand, you would certainly acquire knowledge no living person today is privy to. The tomb will be known by the image of a duck engraved hieroglyphically2 on the Pharaoh’s wife’s niece’s daughter in law’s husband’s tomb’s doorway, and the sign by his elaborate sarcophagus, which reads welcome, to the Pharaoh’s wife’s niece’s daughter in law’s husband’s Duckstack3.
GRAVITY: A REVIEW
it is always bringing me down
I first heard about gravity when I was about 12 years old, when they talked about it in my 7th grade science class. They told me this stuff is everywhere, and that it can behave as both a particle and a wave. They told me that gravity cannot be created or destroyed, only submitted to, and that gravity was like a big space blanket combined with a big space bowl that made planets go around in circles. They told me gravity is both everywhere and nowhere, and they told me that the number of gravity is 9.8 meters per second. This all sounds fishy as fudge
So I set out to test gravity, see if it can live up to its promises. Apparently you have to use science to truly come to know gravity and accept it into your heart, so I devised three “experiments”:
1: jumping up and down if gravity is real, then why can I jump up and down? It seems to me that if gravity is all that the scientists crack it up to be, I would be stuck to the ground, but this is obviously not the case. With a little effort such as wings or buying a plane ticket, I can fly too. bobdaduck: 1, gravity: 0
2: pushing my toddler down slides For this experiment, I prepared three slides of different lengths and slopes. I then pushed my kid down them (gently). My observations are as follows: My toddler enjoys slides, and different slides result in different speeds. This is significant, it shows that gravity, if there is such a thing, is fickle and changes based on any number of arbitrary factors.
3: turning the sun into a black hole With a couple weeks of prep, I was able to construct a simple dyson sphere around Sol, and begin pressurizing it equally from each angle, scrunching its mass down into a single point. Gravity scientists think suns can randomly turn into black holes, dramatically increasing their gravitational abilities, which sounded like woo, and I was right. When I collapsed the sun into a single point the size of a marble, the result was *not* an increase in gravity. All that happened was the earth didn’t get as much light so everything died, but the sun didn’t gain gravitational superpowers, it was, by all readings, the same mass both before and after, somewhat like bread that is made soggy and wadded into a ball. I am forced to conclude that gravity is far too weak to bring about any meaningful changes, and I see no necessity nor benefit to believing in it at all.
The Stories We Tell
amplify your storytelling ability, by being multiple stories in the air
When you present someone with the cold, hard facts, the most common, reasonable, and human response is for them to ignore you completely. You will find this throughout your life, in various scenarios of varying degrees of importance. The cold hard fact (which you should ignore, opting instead to continue trying to convince people of things) is that the human brain isn’t built for assembling facts into beliefs. And I think that’s beautiful
What humans are built for instead, is stories. Happy stories, sad stories, boring stories, moralistic stories, people can’t get enough of this stuff, they tell you “thanks for telling me that story” and so on. This is why a lot of different beliefs have staying power- because an anecdote is, generally, more reliable for informing behavior than a scatter plot. There is nothing wrong with this, but it means that all humans have a security vulnerability, which we call “propaganda”. This includes propaganda you create for yourself, which I believe we have a duty to do, because if you don’t propagandize yourself other people will do it for you4. Nobody should consider themselves immune to propaganda.
If you remember the BLM riots of 2020, that wasn’t about bar charts and statistics, it was because someone told a story. When people came rabidly to the defense of Donald Trump, that was because someone told a story. Trump is very good at telling stories by the way. In like manner you are usually not going to convert someone with a bunch of statistics- Not by themselves. Though it is nice to know the statistics are there.
To some extent I’m making this all up as I go, but I think there’s at least enough truth in it to be worth talking about. I noticed when I was a child that when I was really angry or just generally upset about something, I could “defuse” that anger by trying to think of different narratives for it that would make it not that bad. This could be as simple as “Someone cut me off? Maybe they’re having a bad day” but it was usually most effective when I would take responsibility for something. “I’m upset because this need wasn’t met, but I didn’t ask for it in a way that they understood, so my anger is a reaction to feeling misunderstood but it isn’t justified”
To tell a good story, you need a character. I mean, you need to be a character. As a storyteller. What’s your narrative personality? Angry? Bright eyed? Confused? Shy? Remember: In life, you usually get more of what you look for5.
You also need pacing. In telling a joke, for example, the distance between premise and punchline can lower narrative impact. A good story is concise this way, though expert storytellers will be able to find exceptions6, good stories manage lulls to keep a certain pacing. I think steadiness of pacing (i.e. every four sentences has something that is at least a 9903520314283042199192993792 on the excitement index.) If you’ve ever watched someone tell a joke poorly, its pretty much the same thing as that
So learning to tell stories is a good skill for everyone to practice and learn, and as you refine your craft you’ll get better and self control and resisting propaganda and stuff. Just seems like an all around good idea.
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history
I forgot to mention in Florida I got my mouse pad out of our suitcase and it was soaked just from like, the natural humidity lol
The toddler is learning his body parts very well. I was playing some music in the car called “The girl with the silicone eyes” about, you know, propaganda and living in a media dominated world, and we looked in the backseat and the toddler is sitting there all strapped in poking himself in the eye going “Eyes!” because he heard it in the song.
Both kids have been suffering from lower patience for driving lately- the toddler especially though. And he was crying, and my wife asked me something, and I was like “yeah” and gave her a thumbs up, and the toddler quickly stopped crying because he had to figure out how to do this alien gesture, and pretty soon everyone in the car was just flashing thumbs up at each other. Jethro invented “double thumbs up!”, so maybe this will become some sort of family tradition or motto or something when we’re sad
We have two infant chickens, hatched by two hens of very different sizes (one is a silkie, so picture like, the size of your hand, and the other is a fat cochin, so picture like, the size of your head). To keep the babies warm, the silkie will sit on them, and to keep the silkie warm, the cochin will sit on her. “eh, she’s small, she’s probably a baby too” very generous of her to adopt her, very amusing to see a little stack of chickens.
We’ve started pouring concrete epoxy stuff, my wife finished with something and started to go upstairs and found Jethro, awake and energetic at the top of the stairs holding a little tiny plastic toy saw: “I’m ready to help you cut some wood!” He said.
Finding things in the Nile river was a common pasttime, you see. TV hadn’t been invented yet
real word. The Egyptians did everything this way
“yeah make yourself cozy, we get grave robbers all the time, I think there’s some 4000 year old soda in the stonework minifridge over there”
Examples include things like “go into marriage with both eyes open, but stay married with one eye shut” and “lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief”. Mental illness is when your quirk becomes so overshadowing that you stop being able to function- if truth does the same, is retconning your memory and becoming functional and normal again that bad?
(Perhaps there are societies where it would be that bad- but we live in so much propaganda that I think personal effort to lie to yourself in our day would actually be more accurate, on net.)
I look for: Cute things my kids do to put in The Duckstack
Naruto gets good after episode 653 bro