Revolution Solution
A square top pirouettes gently in increments of 90 degrees
Its a duckstack eat dog world
Guys I need to level with you, we are running out of duckstacks to throw into the volcano.
Lifelines
Around and around it goes. Where it stops, nobody knows.
Life. Its all around us, but hard to define, but what we do know is we can draw it.
The Circle of Life: Vultures eat carrion, and become carrion. A great cycle, represented by a circle. If you put two of them together, you can make a bicycle. Upgrade your life with this one simple trick.
The Octagon of Life: The bees understand there are eight points of doctrine to abide by to bee your best self. 1) Bee kind, 2) Bee good, 3) Bee charitable, 4) Bee nice, 5) Beeutiful, 6) Go hard, 7) Bee considerate, 8) If some human messes with the hive STING THOSE SAVAGES TO DEATH1, GLORY TO THE HIVE AND LONG LIVE THE QUEEN
The Triangle of Life: Yin, and Yang, and the little yinyang in the middle. Triangles have six sides, three without and three within. This goes to show the duality in all things, and symbolizes equilibrium, and that life can have “degrees” when it goes to college and otherwise. I am alive to some degree right now, and so are you. Its up to us to decide whether our life is acute, right, or obtuse2.
The Square Rhombus Dodecahedron of Life: she was fearless. She was crazier than he was, and she was his queen. Do not disrespect life or it’ll GET YOU.
Who Is Buying It
Stats 101 and other demonic lies
Everyone selling anything has at least two currencies- whatever the normal currency is, and trust. People won’t buy it if they don’t have the two, so you have to give them some trust first. This is how lying was invented, and shortly after that, mathematics.
There is an ancient stone age adage that goes something like this: “Grug is standing on a railway intersection and there is a stone trolley hurtling towards a kitten on the wooden tracks. Grug can divert the tracks from the kitten by kicking them, sending the trolley into Brug’s house killing all of his cats instead. Should Grug do it? This is his chance to get back at Brug and his stupid cats.” This is known as the “trolley problem” and is the first thing you learn in any philosophy class, because the purpose of philosophy is to turn you gay.
I jest. The purpose of philosophy is to turn you communist. Maybe you will argue it is the same thing. Maybe I am arguing that, right now.
The distinct feature of the trolley problem is to get you in the frame of mind of a power-drunk narcissist who holds lives in his hand, and then get you to make utilitarian calculations on the values of those people’s lives. What’s a little stone trolley and carnage if the proletariat becomes 5% richer? Most people will not be in this sort of life and death situation in their entire lives, and almost none of those that do will be in the position of power to do anything about it, and of those that end up with this power most will Not Actually Have That Much Difficulty deciding who to save. I’ll admit it makes a compelling plot point for I, Robot though. What if a shortsighted unthinking inhuman entity saves the wrong dude? Wonder what that’s like.
Thus enters statistics. Not only can we abstract human lives into units of productive value, but we can then measure them and do math at them to arrive at correct conclusions about them3 without having to consider any specific person. Its cold, its pragmatic, its hands off, its evil, what’s not to love.
On top of all that, statistics are hard to argue against. Look how many people are against you, don’t you feel embarrassed? You can literally conjure up quasi-imaginary people to make your argument for you. Statisticians are literal necromancers. That’s a crazy amount of power. I compel you to believe what I’m saying! Actual magic spells. Math.
I’m extremely guilty of this. Statistics are an absolute necessity for someone trying to get a broad picture without their own survey, because the more data you can aggregate the more accurate of an (average) picture you can paint of the world. I use statistics all the time, to support my points. Statistically, I do this all the time4.
Humans learn about the world through stories. If you haven’t experienced something, you need a story, and we all know that a single data point could but “an outlier5” The normal way we get around the world is through anecdotes, its the way we learn about nearly anything social, from how to act to what to expect to why people do what they do. So if you don’t have data, you can get further than nothing by using statistics to conjure a number of hypothetical anecdotes. That’s what statistics is for.
But the numbers by themselves don’t mean anything, and the stories a person extracts and tells from these anecdotes can vary wildly in truthfulness. I think we all heard the propaganda about “Biden’s Economy” even as our grocery budgets doubled and tripled. The statistics are just numbers- but what they mean can be grounded or ungrounded.
But it is anecdotes that are being fabricated by the statistics, and the goal is to have an accurate map of the world, which means that real world anecdotes are worth a lot more than statistics. Even, hypothetically, if your real world sample is not representative, it might be representative for everyone you’re realistically encountering in your sphere. For this reason, if you encounter a statistic that goes contrary to your experience, you should be immediately skeptical. Now, I’m sure I have some Logic Fans reading along with us6 and they probably have some objections right about now, but don’t worry, I’m something of a logic fan myself7, and this is more than merely pragmatic.
Here are some problems statistics can have. Statistics can be collected using extremely poorly worded questions. With trickery such as “not not not” and worse, social science surveys can be easily rigged in favor of certain conclusions. Surveys can be self reported- meaning if there is incentive to lie or spin answers to leave a favorable impression participants often will. Surveys can have tiny sample sizes- especially in social science. Surveys often do not account for race (or culture, if you prefer), and indeed often make little effort if any to control for confounding variables. This alone is enough to take social science with a massive grain of salt, and indeed, ~90% of psychology studies do not replicate when attempted again.
“hard” science surveys are no less gameable- especially when funded by interest groups, “researchers” have strong incentive (and ability) to fudge the results in favor of “more funding”. How can they do this? First, by excluding relevant variables. For example, the way the United States calculates inflation doesn’t take into account real estate values, one of the largest monetary drains in an average person’s life. Are the measurements in the data reasonable? Is the reporting reliable? In many major cities across the United States, precincts have simply outright stopped reporting certain varieties of violent crime. Makes it a little harder to decide policy, doesn’t it? There are dozens more ways of massaging data to say whatever you want it to say, but what really matters is “what provides you with an accurate map of reality?”. For this, what you have seen is much more reliable.
On a religious note, this is one reason Latter-Day Saints place so much emphasis on “testimony” and “baring testimony to each other”, which just means “sharing your experiences with God”, and there is a deeper principle beneath that, which is “judge God by your experiences with him.” Though I could support any number of beliefs in the restored gospel with scripture, it really is the wrong way to go about it. In proper context scripture should be a launching off point, a foundation to start learning and trying to gain experience- no substitute for the real thing. For just as surely as statistics can be manipulated, scripture can be, and it is anecdote that should triumph over tradition.
I think there is a tendency to view God as a sort of perfect computer or abstraction/principle- When we think about God this way its very easy to reason about him the same way we reason about statistics- as a “hypothetical anecdote” by which to orient ourselves by. But in reality God is a person with personal, immediate affect- and the more you treat him like one, the more experiences with him you are going to have, and your faith will grow stronger and stronger as you become more and more confident in him, your beliefs, and yourself.
Science Corner: Fizzics
Like mentos in a duckstack
Have you ever wondered what lava is? Lets conduct a little experiment, shall we? First, build a large mountain out of paper machete. Then, stick a bunch of stuff in it. Water, detergent, baking soda, red dye number 5. This is what’s called a chemical reaction and you should never do it with cleaning chemicals. After you’ve done this, dump some white vinegar into it. The lava does not like this8.
History
If you were just born, do not read this
The toddler meeting his Sunday school teacher: “You’re my school.”
We brought some Christmas treats, or intended to bring them, to some church neighbors in the ward. The Hawkas. And as we were driving the toddler started saying they were “your hawkas”. Okay, we’re giving them some cookies or whatever.” And the toddler was fine with that, and then when we were done he said “Okay. Now we give one to MY hawkas.” After that we were at a loss.
Took toddler to a jogging track and he ran, probably about a mile? six or seven laps. Then he stopped for 10 seconds then ran another three. I guess it encourages us to not slow down but I don’t know why his legs don’t get tired.
Other than all that, the toddler has been having a hard week. Lots of meltdowns. Probably important to show him some extra attention and love right now. You know a lot of times babies (and toddlers) can’t pull themselves out of states of minds, so its good to just switch their environment or whatever for them. They forget what’s wrong, and eventually this establishes a new equilibrium where things are “alright” and then the kid has more resilience next time something goes wrong or he gets scolded for drop-kneeing you in the face.
My wife tried to do a puzzle, but the baby ate it.
Afflictions
Say these to the mirror daily
“Unmatched, damp socks. With holes in them, even.”
“More uninteresting notifications. More!”
“Completely unpronounceable name, despite it being very basic.”
“Melty drippy ice cream, even though you are trying very hard to eat it quickly.”
“Miraculously untying shoe laces. As quick as ten minutes sometimes.”
“Dry pens. Mountains of them. The toddler ate the lids.”
“A slightly too short blanket. And its too cold to go get another one. And the bed is on fire. With sharks.”
“USB upside down.” (repeat 3x)
Ducksnax
Skate
█▄▌▄▐▀ Previous duckstack ▀▐▄▌▄█
most likely yours, in bee world
You have to pick right now and you can never take it back ever.
“kill the witch!” calm down man can you at least wait until the end of this article
Think of it like garlic to vampires
Thanks for reading along with us. We welcome you to the Duckstack conglomerate, even if only for a day.
lava does not like a lot of things.