Tropical Trot
Coconut trees grow wrapped presents in the winter, but they're heavy and full of just milk and boxed with cement. Chicka Chicka BOOM BOOM
Cashiers used to ask: paper, or plastic. Now they ask you: paper, or electronic. Tomorrow: “Paper? Or Duckstack?”
Like all readers of The Duckstack, I have been wondering where the name “Duckstack” comes from. At first, I thought it was a nod to the newsletter's patron, bobdaduck, being named after a duck. But this is actually a misconception, and the name actually comes from the way 101 ducks are carefully arranged to form a keyboard, and bobdaduck bops them on the head in painstaking sequence to type out the letters of his craft. A duck then delivers The Duckstack to the email funnel, where it drips down the pipes and cheese-whizzes out into your email inbox. If you don’t open them before the next one comes through then they form a stack. That's why.
Thieves Cant
Thieves CAN.
Jargon, terminology, and technical language is always the largest barrier to entry into a field. Prospective employers will judge you almost exclusively by how you use the word “agile1” in a sentence. The simple reason it works this way is that mastery of jargon actually is a pretty reliable indicator of how well someone knows their way around in a field.
There are unspoken jargons as well, things like manners. A lot of the weird useless drills like fork on the left knives on the right napkin upside down folded into a crane in your mashed potatoes, etc, these are often vestigial markers of competence at navigating certain types of society. If you know to never put a fork in a casserole or electrical socket or whatever, this reflects on your “breeding”, in similar fashion your ability to be an idiot and misspell words online marks you as a high-status conservative.
Normally I'd footnote this to that last paragraph, but it needs to be clear that the reason for this is if you can speak even your dumb thoughts, then people know you are honest, and if you misspell words, then people know you are smart2.
Normally I'd footnote this to that last paragraph, but it needs to be clear that the reason misspelling lets people know you’re smart is because it shows you know where the enemy is- algorithms that ban right wing speech will miss you if you misspell, and enemies searching your history won’t pull up incriminating things3. This also signals that you will protect people who follow you- that you’re aware of the “lay of the land” and the dangers thereof. It marks you as trustworthy. So conservative communities develop all kinds of codes and rhythms4 and silverware locations that sends messages in cryptic deepcode, and most often these messages are just talking about what they are going to eat for dinner5. Its really beautiful.
HISTORY
I am almost certain there was a holiday this week, like the fourth of july or something
Here’s a couple things the little one said this week. “Its a hammer, but it's more like a tool to me.” Wonder what he thinks hammers are to regular people
“Santa is coming. Santa is not going to eat me.” What is going on in this kid’s life
Merry Christmas everybody.
I got the Christmas tree up in the basement but the ceiling was too low, which I solved by removing a light bulb and threading the tree right up in there. If you do this right, you can power the tree lights from the top down! I also got the lights out front up in the nick of time6, threading them around the porch rail in the shape of the letter M. For, “Myspace”.
I usually have a pretty hard time with Christmas but I think I did pretty well by getting my wife exactly what she wanted for Christmas I bet: A giant pvc pipe
HOROSCOPES
Scoping your horos since 1994
Air - You are now breathing manually.
Earth - Build your house out of wood, it will send out its roots deep into the groundsoil to keep the 2x4s alive and strong, nourished, ensouled
Water - Consider whether your friends believe you to be a hydration extremist. Is this a good thing? Are you comfortable with their perception of you? Do you need to take steps to increase their perception of you as a hydration extremist?
Fire - Your house has smoke detectors and smoke alarms, but no fire detectors or fire alarms. This is because the elites think your house is less valuable than schools and government buildings.
Plasma - You are evaporated in the substance of the sun and as such are not entitled to a horoscope, sorry.
Scripture Readings
Increasingly difficult without actual scriptures
My scriptures have disappeared so I’ve had to resort to brutal archaic methods of barbarism to get my fix, such as reading them on my phone. This is a dramatic hindrance to the spirit:
blue means “to feel down”, but scriptures are supposed to be uplifting, therefore blue light is antithetical to revelation.
paper originates from trees, which are God's creations. Phones originate from metal, which was never at any point to my knowledge alive. Christ is the living water, and therefore flows best through things that drink water. Metal does not drink water, and it is a rare sight indeed to see a parched computer guzzling down Dasani Spring bottled.
highlighting on phones and computers, though cross platform7, looks dorky.
paper can burn to keep you warm at night if you’re in mortal danger. Try burning your cell phone to keep you warm at night, hah!
paper scriptures crinkle providing meditative, tactile feedback
paper scriptures got your back 💯 they ain’t ever run out of batteries or distract you from the good word with preinstalled apps they a real one
For all these reasons and more, I must go locate my physical copy ASAP.
Christmas Music
Would you like some music? Do not let me stop you.
Here are a few of my favorite Christmas songs.
Agile is a programming methodology which is incredibly opaque, so much so that literally nobody knows what it is, only that compliance with it is a status signal for your company. The basic idea is that you code as sloppy as you can and then release it, then spend the next two weeks coding bandaids to fix your problems (again as sloppily as you can) and then the next two weeks you code as sloppily as you can bandaids to fix the sloppiness of the previous bandaids. The reason this works is because it is marketed to businesses with a buddhist pseudo-spiritualist aesthetic. But don’t worry, this isn’t unique to programming (though programming is an extremely faddy field), all fields of labor are like this, the moment someone says “methodology” just mercy them
Im a moron
basically the first thing a person does if they want to hurt you is search your internet history for the words “black” “jew” “gay” “women” and “white”, its ammo to tar you as white supremacist racist anti-semite homophobic sexist bigot etc, if they can get even one of these labels to stick they can usually get you fired, because HR Departments Do Not Worship the God of Israel
The most common rhythm is waxing ironic and then serious alternatively without particularly marking which is which.
before Santa came and killed me
Will you sacrifice light and life eternal for convenience?