dance like no one’s duckstack
A late Duckstack. Pardon Our Mess.
Have you ever visited the duck stacks? Most people don't know it but duck nests are more appropriately classified as hives. The worker ducks gather food from ponds and return it to the queen, operating under a single mind, which is why ducks generally operate in “flocks”, or swarms. These worker ducks carefully build intricate combs of wax to hold eggs and honey, and the young ducklings until they are of age. Its a very industrious culture and our very own newsletter comes right out of Utah, which is why Utah is called “the beehive1 state.”
Save The Date
Its daylight savings time, and you know what that means. Everyone must toss their clocks into the chronological wormhole and get back a new clock, one hour back, as our newest modern iteration on Aztec sacrifice rituals.
It is an error to say clocks can tell the time. They don’t even have eyes, and they’re illiterate, that’s why we sacrifice them to the wormhole each year. Clocks are so pure.
The clocks go, and they come back, one hour missing from their lives, none the wiser. It really is painless, by that understanding2. We're as humane as we can about this whole thing. But its gotta be done. Its like shearing sheep, you have to do it or their coats get too thick and prohibitive and it starts to damage their quality of life. They don't do it naturally, so its up to us. Chronological husbandry is a vital industry in our nation, and its a blessing to us all to get to participate in it.
Literal Nazis
Lets speak with our fists
People like to say actions speak louder than words, but they don't say this because it is true. Words are obviously louder than actions345. But, actions are more accurate. I can type anything I want right here and it costs me nothing678.
A founding principle (of convenience, it isn’t necessarily believed) of liberalism is that words are violence. This, too, is not true, but sometimes its better to act like it is, when the goal is peace love happiness and all that other stuff hippies love9. After all, getting bullied sucks so why wouldn't you want to live the golden rule? (answer: because you've gotten strong enough bullying doesn't suck)
But we aren't talking about protecting children’s feelings. We might be, but whether feelings should always be protected is actually a minor subset of the greater question, which is that words can lead to violence. And words can “lead” to violence”, so the obvious, irrefutable, 100% guaranteed most logical conclusion of this is: Never Speak.
Hardly a pragmatic thought but surely a necessary one. Everyone who has potential for violence simply needs to be completely censored and suppressed and raised in cages where none of their thoughts can possibly germinate into action. This is the morality we have inherited, as victors of world war 2, where communism defeated fascism with America on the side of communism.
But this is wrong, and shortsighted, and incomplete. Can words “lead to violence”? Sure, if someone is seeking to escalate conflict. In fact words are nearly always the precursor to violence, since most people are rational and intuitively understand that trying to talk it out is an important step of avoiding war. So if you stop people talking, you stop people escalating, and you stop people deescalating. Something to chew on for those uncomfortable with Trump’s second presidency.
Treating words as violence can lead to all sorts of neuroses. A religious person may believe that their god will send people to Hell for having wrong beliefs. In such a religion Hell is worse than death, so preaching a wrong belief is actually worse than deliberately killing people. What culture does this lead to? Most people believe that one of the few cases that justify violence (actual violence) is self defense. What if someone is “murdering” your family? What if someone is “worse than murdering” your family?
All this is not to say memes/beliefs can't be harmful. I know more than a few people led into drugs or divorce or general unhappiness just from some political belief or another that they took in unexamined. Its one of the reasons I'm even here, talking. But words need to be met with words. It can't justify violence. This is good morality.
A dose of humility goes a long way here. We have all seen shortsighted people misinterpret a situation and overreact, failing to accurately gauge consequences, and this could happen to you. If you don't have the spirit of God to warn you about things you can't see, then you're only as good as your predictive models. Are you really sure about where you think this leads? And I don't just mean like “have you actually gone to hell and checked”, but also just like not realizing other people might have other factors that keep it from going where you think. A lot of harm can be avoided just by checking for other factors like that. I believe people should fight for what they believe in, but be careful in doing so. In my experience, everything always turns out better with a little bit of care.
Bandages: A Brief Primer
What are bandages and who needs them? More likely than not: You.
Everyone’s got blood in them mostly. In fact, some of our top scientists have proposed that people are mostly blood10, and all the skin and philosophy stuff are basically dwarfed in comparison to the sheer amount of blood people have. So if you get a cut, you probably think “what’s the big deal? I’ve got a surplus”, assuming you are not a Jehovah’s Witness who believes your very soul is leaking out.
You do indeed have a surplus of blood, and smart people keep their blood in “blood banks” in order to compound their wealth through financial investment, but most people are too poor to do this, so its actually fairly important you keep your blood in your body. Which having a cut is antithetical to, as you might imagine, so science has come up with a few ways to deal with this, which are all various levels of amputation.
First, Amputation. This prevents bleeding from the injured limb by removing it.
Second, Tourniquet: This prevents bleeding by “soft amputating” the limb, only slightly. It is like cutting something off, except when the pressure is not enough.
Third, Bandage: Putting a strip of tape over just the cut “‘soft’ soft amputates” the afflicted area.
So you can see bandages work by pressure to keep the blood inside rather than outside, which is their slogan. “Bandages: Keeping the blood inside, rather than outside.” So just think of that next time you see a first aid kit. Bandages are also endorsed by Jesus Christ himself, who famously said “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out”, referring to amputation.
History
Learning a lot about things that don’t exist
Toddler, unprompted: “snowballs have legs. And they're so fast though!”
something you don't want to hear from your three year old: “I fixed your toothbrush!”
Trying to teach the toddler not to pick his nose. Followed by trying to teach him not to put them back after he gets caught.
The toddler regularly runs up to me and introduces himself. To me.
We’ve tried disciplining the toddler. We’ve tried being angry. We’ve tried time outs. We’ve tried spankings. Nothing works. You know what works? Telling him “poof, you’re a potato.”
The baby is impressively clever. When we're driving over a bumpy spot, she starts using her voice to amplify the vibrato effect and she's actually really good at it “aaaAAaaaAAAaAAAaAAaa”
The toddler found a bath bomb, and turned into a leprechaun. Then, he brought down the house.
“Off of the toilet, little zombie!” and then he runs off
Imploreoscopes
We know what you want from your horoscopes. But what do they want from you?
The Pleaser: If your star sign is the type to say please, you’re blessed with a polite astronomy. With good manners comes good neighbors, and to be a good neighbor is all your stars want from you.
The Beggar: Your star sign is dirt poor. It is dirty and messy and frankly is content to parasitize you by absorbing your wishes until the end of time, never working for you a day in its life. There is no way to change this.
The Cajoler: Your star signs are nice, but kind of manipulative. They have your best interests at heart, and you have the best interests, yes you do. They know because they’ve been listening to your wishes! There’s just one little thing they need you to do first. Assassinate the crown prince of the empire.
The Petitioner: Your star signs understand you are a busy man, and certainly you have many things on your mind, but if you could give some aid and relief, that would be great. They know it is a big ask. But could you build them a little model universe in a box using those glowing stars to draw them as constellations? These stars need homes.
The Solicitor: Your star signs have a lot to offer, and only wish for you to wish for what they already want to give, and also for you to wish to pay for it at 3.5x the market rate. They are giving you a good deal, they promise. They want you to set up a payment plan with 0% APR for the first ten minutes. They have called their star-boss and he is willing to cut it down to 3.4x the market rate, they don’t usually do this and the offer is only good if you sign today. Their goods may or may not be of middling quality.
The Exhorter: Your stars preach from milk crates in the star town square, and want you to repent, for the Kingdom of the Lord is At Hand. Forsake your sins and take up your cross and follow them, like the wise men to the little child, and make the pathways straight.
The Extorter: You’re being blackmailed dude. Your stars know your worst desires and all your frivolous secrets. And they want money.
Ducksnax
Recursion
++++ Previous Duckstack ++++
This is because bees also have hives, and Brigham Young preferred them to ducks. This is how we know prophets are mortal men, and fallible
as long as we modify their memory after the fact its as if it was painless, right?
There are some actions that are louder than words, but they usually require gunpowder
I’m talking about decibels here. Since words are vocal.
Other than the written kind. But who reads, anyway?
other than blood sweat and tears, but who buys any of those?
Besides the red cross I guess
I sacrifice so much for you
Not me. I only love Sandstorm, by Darude.
They haven’t done any tests, they just proposed it, at the water cooler or whatever