Stretch Intent
When you're elastic like me, its easy to bounce back.
Where there’s a will, there’s a duckstack
Time is a funny thing. They say you live in the present, and can never visit the past without your memories. But I have easily done this, since in the past I didn’t have the memories I have now. They say you can’t predict the future, but I have easily done this in contexts such as “I will now raise my hand.” “I will now eat this cereal.” “I will now fall flat on my face because I am falling.” So what is the deal with time? The answer is that it is Non-linear. String theorists figured this out long ago, and ever since then time has been all messed up. But here is the important part. Time has also always been messed up. It didn’t change in the last year, because the change was retroactive! How bizarre is that?
However it used to be, or not anymore, the fact of the matter is we have to deal with it now. Here’s a simple experiment you can try: Any words in this entire newsletter can be read in any order. Nothing will stop you, or railroad you into reading it straightforwardly. You can simply read here, and there, and another word here, and another word there, and you can read the entire thing like this. With each word you stack, time becomes a little more dense.
However, that is not all. You can also do this with ducks. If you go to a pond where there are ducks, nothing can stop you from counting them, then counting them again but in a different order. Something is seriously wrong and always has been now. With no way of knowing what order the ducks need to be stacked in, all is surely lost. But that isn’t going to stop us from trying. For science.
The Parable of the Lock and Key
The Parable of the Lock and Key. Brought to you by Keyed Energy: The energy drink of choice. Yours.
Once upon the time there was a lock and key. The Lock was a bike lock, and didn’t need the key, and the key one of those keys to the city that doesn’t do anything. They weren’t in the slightest bit compatible, but through fate and happenstance they ended up together. And when you get to that point you make it work.
“Key, key key key, Key.” Said the key, like a pokemon.
“Bike? Bike Bike Bike?” Said the lock, because it was autistic.
Well, the two got on well, despite being separated by vast distances of culture and language and personality. Where the key was cold, the lock was hot, where they key was harsh, the lock was gentle. They were the gossip of the garage and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.
One day they got separated due to some random bike lock event and the bike lock was never seen again. This would have made the key sad, if it ever stopped thinking about opening up the city1. But it didn’t, and their relationship was never really meant to be in the first place. But the lock went on to fulfill its purpose. It locked a bike, got forgotten, got sawed in half by common bike thieves, and as it bled out, the bike lock reflected on its life. “I wish I had spent more time arguing on the internet”.
Duckstack Crime: Punctuality
Tough on crime? More like: Tough on time.
Many readers have committed crimes against the Duckstack lately which they have not received pardons for. And this week, there’s been an uptick of crimes of passion, which is generally the only valid excuse for this sort of category: The people have not been being punctual. We’ve had to execute three Duckstack scientists this week for being late to work, and one for being early2. We can’t afford all these burials not to mention sending condolences to their relatives, so do please make an effort to be curt.
Touching the Elephant
Beware that you do not stare into the Elephant, for when you stare into the Elephant, it also stares into you.
The art of reading whatever you want to hear into scripture is in reality quite a delicate process. If you say black is white, most people will simply not believe you- for that, you need scholars. This discipline is called “hermeneutics”: The study of Biblical interpretation.
There are a great many ways to interpret the Bible, and even a lot of different definitions for what the Bible “is”. I have talked with denominations that declare the Bible is God. Their thought process was: “The Bible is the word of God, John 1:1 says the word is God, The Bible is God”. There are a few errors there. But it is only one of many failure modes.
There is a near-universal tendency among Christianity towards what I would call “catastrophizing scripture”. In a word, this is to take a prophet who is speaking in a colloquial, folksy mannerism, and they are read to be making an ex-cathedra papal declaration about metaphysics. Baptists are most guilty of this.
Its easy enough to see where this is coming from- The reasoning goes, if something is divine, then it must be maximally true, and if something is maximally true, it must be a law of nature, or supernature even- truer than true. I believe this is a big part of where the creedalist doctrine of the trinity comes from, but I will come back to that later. For now suffice it to say that for various reasons, people feel bound to take the interpretive rule that God cannot speak in poetry, parable, fable, metaphor, exaggeration, or jest.
The most obvious of these reasons is for the sake of sanity.
If there are two scriptures, one saying a man is saved by faith only, and another saying he is saved by faith and also baptism, which scripture is correct? If you turn off your brain, there is a contradiction. Most people believe the Bible cannot have contradictions if it is divine. The fact is, in real life contradictions like this happen all the time, when people are talking about slightly different senses of a word or slightly different aspects of a thing. “God is love. God is also a human named Jesus Christ”. But these concepts are three dimensional, all concepts are. These are simply angles. If you think like this there are hardly any contradictions at all, but this also makes it very difficult to discover and proclaim truth, since it relies on inference- and everyone knows that while your own inference capability is high3, everyone else on the planet is dicey, at best. I can picture a person saying “that’s all that matters!” in context of a wider discussion about something- a lesson on long division, for example. where in another context that would not be “all that matters” in a literal sense, as in higher math you start to see long division by imaginary numbers and all sorts of stuff and the mere basics that you learned are not “all that matters” in an absolute metaphysical sense- they were all that mattered in the context of performing the operations in that lesson. Who is to say Paul was not speaking like this? For that matter who is to say Christ was not speaking like this? In most of these cases (by necessity) we outsource the question to Authority.
Which verses in the Bible one believes to be metaphysical statements and which ones one believes to be what could be termed “simple” statements mostly comes down to your denomination- the thinking goes that if your religion is “true” then they will also have true interpretations, including regarding the apostle’s tone and intent. The Bible itself is not so clear, but who is to say that the phrase “God is one” proves the trinity? Could not God be a comically large number ‘1’ floating in space? Who is to decide which metaphysical sense this Oneness is meant to be? You did not live at the time of Paul, and the amount of letters Paul wrote are way, way less than has been written by just about anyone you follow on social media. The mere volume I have written in The Duckstack alone exceeds anything anyone knows Paul by, by more than sixteen times. In Duckstack units, Paul wrote Ten Duckstacks. That’s how well you know Paul.
So on come doctrines such as transubstantiation. Jesus administered the bread and wine and said “this is my body”. Well, maximum truth would be maximum literality- So the doctrine arises that it turns into God’s literal flesh and blood once the priest gives it to you. I’m not sure what purpose such a doctrine even serves- I can’t really imagine it making a difference in how a religions adherents act, it almost feels like its a doctrine that arises out of principle- just to prove a point about how literally you take the Bible. Obviously I qualify this by saying as an unbeliever in that doctrine that I’m unlikely to understand it well.
This sort of catastrophizing scripture first occurred to me listening to preacher doing a classic “Roman Road” sermon: “all have sinned, so all will die, but Jesus saves, now say the sinners prayer.” He used the verse “whoso believeth in Christ shall have everlasting life” and I thought “But John also says that ‘to know God is life everlasting’. Which metaphysics trumps?” And I had a similar question about… Well, every verse he preached from. Surely if the goal is to follow God then a maximally contextual reading of scripture would be preferred? But it evidently is not, therefore I conclude that the goal is something else.
This is just to give you an idea of how difficult the subject is- if you don’t cling to a maximalist-literalist-metaphysically catastrophic framework, the problem of interpretation inflates very quickly. As many friends have argued to me, as soon as every word in the Bible isn’t 100% inspired, then its by definition “untrustworthy” (I disagree, I think if you can have 99% trust in something that’s REALLY GOOD)- and how do you tell what 1% isn’t inspired? What if its more than that? So people are locked in. Determining what % of the Bible is metaphysics and what % is “simple” history/uninspired is an impossible task. Therefore its either 100% or nothing, for most people. Unfortunately, the Bible does not call itself The Word Of God. We inserted that into our preaching, retroactively, in a process called Eisegesis
One Hundred Years Ago a linguist by the name of Hugh Nibley wrote the definitive guide to Theology, titled “The Way Of The Church.” These essays are so important that I’ve been thinking of mirroring them here on The Duckstack just to keep them from falling out of circulation. As a linguist, Hugh Nibley knew the difficulties in translating from one language to another, but more importantly he also knew the liberties in translation. When stories are being passed on, we underestimate how quickly authors can diverge on meanings, and how quickly their own get inserted.4 To identify real truth, Paul has to come down as a resurrected angel and tell it to you. Failing this, God himself can do it, and is in my experience fairly willing to answer people’s questions, though sometimes he makes you put in a little legwork first. And that’s my alternative to the atheist interpretive framework- if you can’t tell which verses are inspired or not, which stories are true or exaggerated or meant to be taken one way or another, you can either assume most of them aren’t (atheist) or all of them are (catastrophic)- the alternative is to go to the source, and receive guidance for your own.
When I have done this, it has helped immensely in understanding different passages in the scriptures, because I can connect it to ways God has spoken in my own life- one time, God even used an apple iphone advertising jingle when explaining how to live my life to me. I wonder what apple iphone advertising jingles Paul quoted, when he wrote to his followers. You might not be privy to their shared context, but you can create your own shared context, by listening at the feet of one of the people Paul was closely acquainted with. God remembers5, and when you’re acquainted with him, its a lot easier to see how he has worked with others.
The Smartest Home
Room Temperature IQ
Lucky Winner!!!!! You have won a full Duckstack remodel of your house which we have completed while you were reading this email. We’re so glad you gave us this opportunity6 and we’d like to give you a tour of some of your houses new features. You see, this is not just any home, we’ve brought your home to the future. Welcome to 2099, baby. Come on!
First up, we have the room you are in right now. We have kept it mostly the same, but the upgrades behind the scenes are simply to die for. For example, have you ever needed to deliver vital instructions to your drywall, but didn’t want to stand up to go over to it? Well, now you can! With our bluetooth and wifi enabled drywall, you can deliver commands wirelessly and on the go. You can even deliver it commands when you’re out and about, when you’re not even home! It will not follow these commands, of course. We haven’t changed drywall’s essential function.
We’ve also bluetooth enabled things like your sink, so that you can turn it on with your phone. Simply download the Sink™ app, open it, connect to the internet, pair it, and tell it to turn on the water. Hands free! No need to touch dirty sink knobs anymore, decreasing private germ exposure by as much as 80%. When you’re done washing your hands, simply open the app in your phone, and swipe down with your wet hands, turning the sink off, to conserve water. Otherwise, our smart sink will assume you want to keep washing your hands forever. Its the logical assumption to make. In this way, sinks have always been very smart, but we’re taking it to the next level. We’ve also updated your soap dispenser with the same technology. Simply download the Soap™ app, open it and swipe up, and the soap will dispense! Then once you’ve got some, it will again assume you want it to keep dispensing soap onto your hands until you take your soapy hands and open the app and swipe down. This assumption is much better than old soaps, which often would stop dispensing soap even without a command- If you needed more soap, you would have to issue multiple commands. But no longer!
Your doors now open up. This is to emulate those futuristic cars where the doors open out. It also imitates doggie doors, but for persons. How convenient!
Your Christmas tree is now sentient. For your convenience, it cannot move or scream, but it can hear you whispering sweet nothings in its ear, rendering this Christmas tradition meaningful at last.
Your car’s accelerator and brake peddles have been replaced with buttons. Why bother constantly having to press down with your foot- just a binary is plenty sufficient here. This isn’t part of your home remodel, we’ve done this free of charge.
Your heater and air conditioning have now been combined using an unholy process of dark magic, and now hang together in eternal torment as a grotesque amalgam of both. This saves on both energy and time, since both are always running, and it can’t turn off.
Your windows have been removed. Windows to the outside went out of style 10 years ago. The new windows only look inside. These are windows to your soul.
Your houses mirrors have been replaced with windows. Now you can see better!
All of your lights have been upgraded to constantly cycle through different colors. This high-tech feature has been in high-demand7 and we got you some of the last ones. Now you can get every kind of light. No need to settle on just one.
If you like your new smarthome, be sure to share this email with others, entering them a chance to win a futurehome Duckstack makeover of their own. Now get out there, and enjoy your new and improved8 house!
historyt
Tonsil recovery. We will retrieve them from those thieving surgeons
Our son has been recovering from getting his throat removed, and so he’s been a little under the weather, and in talking my wife or I remarked “maybe he has a yeast infection”. So I asked him, “Do you have a yeast infection?” and he said “No, I have a pikachu blanket.”
Baby crying, toddler comes to tell us “she says there’s a monster in there.”
Tired toddler: “I want you to make me a nap”
Wife asked the toddler “What do I eat?” and he said “You eat meat.” “Do I eat cows?” and he laughed and said no. “Do I eat Chickens?” Because you know, he’s seen us kill and eat chickens. “Noo!” giggling. Where do you think meat comes from? “The ground”
“What are you doing to my toy?” “I’m putting new batteries in it.” “but papas in the living room… That’s papas.” He knows my place. The batteries place.
Ducksnax
Chasm
~~~~~ Previous Duckstack ~~~~~
The key was one of those “urban planning” nerds
Don’t worry. This is all in the past. The early bird can’t hurt you. This time.
I’m sure.
Unless you watch a lot of subbed anime. Then you know this instinctively.
he was there
against your will
BY WHO????
all improvements are good improvements, that’s what my official duckstack mad scientist, George, always likes to say