Thursday, August 29, 2013

Epistemological Nihilism: Practical Taoism


The cost of certainty outweighs the cost of uncertainty.

When we are certain, we filter out contrary information, often without being aware of it. This is covered extensively in the study of cognitive and social bias. It is rarely conscious, which makes it all the more dangerous.

When we are aware of our uncertainty, we may become overburdened by cognitive dissonance. This can lead to haphazard decision making, since it doesn't matter anyway.

Of the two, the latter is both the more honest, and also a better representation of the case. However, there is a better option.

This is to begin framing everything in your life not in degrees of certainty, but rather, in degrees of uncertainty. To what extent are you uncertain of a given thing? This may seem like an arbitrary semantic distinction. However, like most reframing tricks, the change of perspective makes all the difference, even though nothing has actually changed.

However, all the people in the world that live their lives in shades of certainty may see you as an Eeyore. They might even call you a nihilist.

That's alright though. This stance of epistemological nihilism is one of the many unspoken undercurrents of Taoism. Various passages of Chuang-Tzu's famous text deal with the subject, but the meaning is easily lost or misconstrued, because the Taoist approach itself recognizes only degrees of uncertainty. Consider the story of the Useless Tree,
Hui Tzu said to Chuang, “I have a big tree, the kind they call a “stinktree.” The trunk is so distorted, so full of knots, no one can get a straight plank out of it. The branches are so crooked you cannot cut them up in any way that makes sense.”
“There it stands beside the road. No carpenter will even look at it. Such is your teaching – big and useless.”
Chuang Tzu replied, “Have you ever watched the wildcat crouching, watching his prey. The prey leaps this way, and that way, high and low, and at last lands in the trap. And have you seen the Yak? Great as a thundercloud, he stands in his might. Big? Sure, but he can’t catch mice!”
“So for your big tree, no use? Then plant it in the wasteland, in emptiness. Walk idly around it, rest under its shadow. No axe or bill prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down.”
“Useless? You should worry!”
This seems to pertain to use rather than certainty, but as with the dialogues of Socrates, it is through the demonstration of what we think we know that the everyday is made absurd. Similarly, the useless is made ideal. 

The following passage is possibly a more 'traditionally Taoist' take on this subject, 
How can Dao be obscured so that there should be a distinction of true and false? How can speech be so obscured that there should be a distinction of right and wrong? Where can you go and find Dao not to exist? Where can you go and find that words cannot be proved? Dao is obscured by our inadequate understanding, and words are obscured by flowery expressions. Hence the affirmations and denials of the Confucian and Motsean [Mohist] schools, each denying what the other affirms and affirming what the other denies. Each denying what the other affirms and affirming what the other denies brings us only into confusion.

There is nothing which is not this; there is nothing which is not that. What cannot be seen by that (the other person) can be known by myself. Hence I say, this emanates from that; that also derives from this. This is the theory of the interdependence of this and that (co-relativity of standards).
Nevertheless, life arises from death, and vice versa. Possibility arises from impossibility, and vice versa. Affirmation is based upon denial, and vice versa. Which being the case, the true sage rejects all distinctions and takes his refuge in . . . [the Dao]. For one may base it on this, yet this is also that and that is also this. This also has its "right" and "wrong", and thatalso has its "right" and "wrong." Does then the distinction between this and that really exist or not? When this (subjective) and that (objective) are both without their correlates, that is the very "Axis of Dao." And when that Axis passes through the center at which all Infinities converge, affirmations and denials alike blend into the infinite One . . . . 

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

The Pop Culture Edition – What Had Happened Was Ep. 27

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by Susan M Omand, Omand Original, All Rights Reserved


GHCstitcher Subscribe via RSS, or download the episode directly.
What Had Happened Was is a grumpyhawk collective podcast co-hosted by grumpyhawk (that would be me) and Benjamin Combs. In this "week-in-review style" show, we cover and comment on stories with a tech, science, weird, or strange sort of angle. Visit grumpyhawk.com to see and hear more from the collective. 

Hello people of the internet! Today grumpyhawk and Benjamin Combs are talking about China collecting body parts from prisoners and how that will now be optional, Snowden denies giving sensitive information to the Guardian, Arkansas bill limiting body modification goes to the State House of Representatives, Time Warner Cable offering antennae to their customers as a way to alleviate the CBS situation, Marvel to bring superhero-themed road show to the US next year, and Ben Affleck as the new Batman. All on today's episode, The pop culture edition.

Show Notes:

  1. China says it will stop harvesting organs from prisoners
  2. Snowden denies being source of The Independent's "NSA leak" story exposing UK base
  3. Senate Passes Bill That Bans Certain Tattoos, Body Markings
  4. Time Warner Cable offers free antennas, Best Buy credit to customers caught in CBS blackout
  5. Marvel to bring superhero-themed road show to the US next year
  6. Ben Affleck is the next Batman

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Miley Cyrus Makes People Feel Things

    Okay fine, let's talk about the VMAs.

    Miley Cyrus's performance (some would call it "behavior") was an impeccably hewn diamond, each facet trolling a different subset of the internet with laserlike precision. She hit all the big ones. She was obscene, she was hideously racist, she's just not very good at dancing... And then there's anger at the event itself. There's her collaboration with Robin Thick in his apology for rape culture. There's the way she's been slut-shamed. There's the fact that she's distracting from actually important issues. There are even people who are angry about how angry everybody is. Miley Cyrus and the VMAs are, in effect, the worst thing to happen on the internet for at least several minutes.

    I have seen terrible things on the internet before. I think we all have at least one gaping asshole or horse-sodomy video we're still trying to purge from our subconscious. What interests me about this "scandal" is that everybody's equally up in arms about it, but we're all mad for different reasons. That says to me that there is perhaps something more primal, more unifyingly "human" going on here.

Opinionated

People are always eager to share their opinions. We have so many of them, after all. There are a few problems, though. Each person's opinion contradicts the next, if you actually bother to listen. What's worse, we have the strongest opinion about what we know the least about. What's worse, those opinions are often wrong. What's worse, those opinions are sometimes right.

This is why it's best to listen to no one, least of all yourself.

I could give examples of course, but you don't need me to. We all know what I mean.

And all those opinions, all that noise paints the darkness blind with its racket.

Many nights I want to disappear completely, opinions first- like toes first into a cold pool. The problem is that a disappearance like that would lend itself to all kinds of crazy opinions- he was whisked off by the NSA with a bag over his head for holding all those dangerous opinions; no, it was a drug overdose, one day his heart just gave out-- on and on. That's the noise I was talking about, the noise that covers our silent obscurity, our anonymity, our loneliness.

I think our opinions are our primary enemy against the forgetfulness of death. That's why everyone is so emphatic about them.

I could be wrong. That's just an opinion.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Saturday, August 24, 2013

The Complete Voynich Manuscript


At last! The mysterious Voynich Manuscript is available specifically formatted for tablets!

Using the highest quality images available, this complete copy of the codex is perfect for examining on your Kindle.

Custom resized to fit the dimensions of your tablet, will you be the first to crack the code?

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Thursday, August 22, 2013

new New NEW! - What Had Happened Was Ep 26

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by Susan M Omand, Omand Original, All Rights Reserved


GHCstitcher Subscribe via RSS, or download the episode directly.
What Had Happened Was is a grumpyhawk collective podcast co-hosted by grumpyhawk (that would be me) and Benjamin Combs. In this "week-in-review style" show, we cover and comment on stories with a tech, science, weird, or strange sort of angle. Visit grumpyhawk.com to see and hear more from the collective. 

Hello everyone, and welcome to another fine episode of What Had Happened Was. This week grumpyhawk and Benjamin Combs talk about Google saying that non-Gmail users have no expectation of privacy, UK officials detain Glenn Greenwald's partner at Heathrow to question him (and send a message), Hundreds of New York Police Officers ordered to wear cameras, and Microsoft issuing there own incorrect DMCA notices, plus a new segment with science fiction and fantasy author A. Lee Martinez, all on today's episode "New New New."

Show Notes:

  1. Google says Gmail users have no reason to expect privacy
  2. UK officials detain Glenn Greenwald's partner at Heathrow.
  3. US official admits that UK detention of Glenn Greenwald's partner was to send a message
  4. New York police ordered to test wearable cameras
  5. Microsoft uses DMCA to block many links to competing open office software
Special Thanks to A. Lee Martinez for coming on and speaking to us about Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Human Demonology: Your Creative Impulse

Life emerges from arrangements of matter and chemistry through a process that can't be traced from the properties of the physical component parts it inhabits. A similar phenomenon is the kind of artist who changes culture and how a society sees itself. This artist emerges from a complex of education, organization, rule enforcement and millions of points of sensory input. What is thrown at an individual for the sake of socialization is a set of base materials that may to some extent be woven into the body of this artist's work, but the living quality of expression arises as a new state that could not be calculated or predicted as a combination of this input. This impulse for creation and mutating the consciousness of humanity is like another layer of the chaos that expresses itself in the property that animates and mutates matter. This is a force so unstoppable that every jurisdictional, organizational and mode of indoctrination and application of force is ultimately put in place to keep it at bay. Alpha humans of every age in positions that can decide the fate of nations, whether they got there through action or accident, have a compulsive need to have things arranged as they want them and to envelop humanity in cryogenic deep freeze when they succeed in imposing their ideal.

With a certain density of human population on a planet, only so much freedom is possible. In fact, most people in recorded history have lived under terrible oppression. It is a part of modern western mythology that growing freedom is destiny, but it is taken  or scammed away so easily, that one might wonder if human tendency is in the opposite direction. Most things can be controlled in society and in a majority of individuals with little directive energy once set in motion, but the creative impulse can't ever be completely eradicated, and it doesn't take a huge endeavour to upset the whole arrangement. If this impulse is channelled less through culture and custom it comes out in twisted forms, commonly the SNAFU principle.

Monday, August 19, 2013

The Hyperloop is Elon Musk's Ticket to Olympus

    Okay, so, full disclosure: I really, really wish I was Elon Musk. I wish I was Elon Musk because the thing I spend the most time wondering about, out of all the things I spend time wondering about, is what the mass of ordinary human beings must look like to a person who is operating on a greater-than-global scale. I wonder about the kinds of questions you start asking yourself when you no longer have to ask "how am I going to pay all these bills?" I wonder what qualities a person has to possess to get to that rarefied zone. When Elon Musk crawls out of his diamond pit in the morning and hops aboard his private robo-pegasus to glide to work, do the blurry little dots scurrying along the streets below him look like people?

    Why am I asking these questions? Because Elon Musk just issued a challenge to the entire State of California, and I'm trying to fathom the endgame.

Friday, August 16, 2013

twenty five - What Had Happened Was Ep 25


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Subscribe via RSS, or download the episode directly.
What Had Happened Was is a grumpyhawk collective podcast co-hosted by grumpyhawk (that would be me) and Benjamin Combs. In this "week-in-review style" show, we cover and comment on stories with a tech, science, weird, or strange sort of angle. Visit grumpyhawk.com to see and hear more from the collective. 

Hello everyone, we've reached a milestone! 25 episodes! today grumpyhawk and Benjamin Combs discussing How the CBS blackout triggered a surge in piracy, a Senator wants the FCC to investigate If CBS's web blocking of Time Warner Cable customers is illegal, Apple patents insane tech to let cops switch off iPhone video, camera, and wi-fi, Lavabit and other secure email providers closing, Twitter starting their own PAC, and CBS Developing a 'Wizard of Oz' Medical Drama. All on today's episode, "twenty five".

Show Notes:

  1. CBS Blackout Triggers Surge in TV-Show Piracy
  2. Senator wants FCC to investigate If CBS's web blocking of Time Warner Cable customers is illegal?
  3. Apple patents tech to let cops switch off iPhone video, camera and wi-fi
  4. Lavabit Closing
  5. Twitter starting their own Political Action Commity.
  6. CBS Developing a 'Wizard of Oz' Medical Drama
Editors Note: Benjamin was wrong; it wasn't the Twitter Lawyer getting involved in the PAC, it was a Twitter staffer, William Carty, a former congressional staffer who will be the lobbyist.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Bedlam Stories, (origins)


After my upcoming move back to the Hudson Valley, I'm going to be digging into the 'origins' story for Pearry Teo's movie / transmedia franchise Bedlam Stories. If you'd like to follow along with the project -- and/or have an interest in a horror take on myths such as Oz and Alice In Wonderland -- then like the Facebook group!

Here's some of the concept art so far (click the images for credits and more project info):



Buddha of Compassion


A little mesmerization break. Details on the video on YouTube.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Monday, August 12, 2013

Where are the Trayvon Martin Riots?

    It's August now, four months since George Zimmerman was acquitted in April, and hardly anything is on fire. A couple whites have been beaten and robbed. A couple of hispanics. Time has passed, and the media has moved on. So this article is coming a little late, but that's kind of the point.

    I live on Chicago's west side, in a neighborhood that boasts two or three empty lots to a block. Some of these lots are fairly new, the only solution the city can find when an abandoned building becomes infested with squatters. Most of them, though, date back to April, 1968. When I take the train downtown, the first train station I pass is a charred skeleton, a stop that has remained unused since it was burned down by rioters. That was also in 1968.

The Day The Clown Died, Tricksters

What is so terrifying about clowns? Why do they seem to pop up everywhere? Before you dismiss this as a recent phenomenon, or the ICP, take a look at some of this:
Clowns were an intrinsic part of many Native American pantheons, not to mention cosmologies. In fact, the fool is considered a central or pre-figuratively divine member of many pantheons the world over. Only the stolidness of monotheism could destroy such a wide-reaching, trans-cultural element. 
Along with what Joseph Campbell said above, consider,
A masked appearance is noteworthy to the observers because it contrasts with normal appearances. Just this extraordinary aspect of the experience signals that it is symbolic... It is in their genius for portraying the most extraordinary that clowns find their role, and therefor we can see them as masters of religious symbolism. ... Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Native American clowning was reported by outsiders in descriptions that scarcely hid the observers' disapproval of the actions they witnessed. Their use of Latin or English euphemisms to describe the explicit sexual and physical antics of the clowns doubtless reveals as much about their own religious and cultural values as about the Native Americans, (Native American Religions, Sam D. Gill.)
This is yet another function of the clown, to serve as a mirror, and to point out what cannot otherwise be shown to the authority who might otherwise grow to central and strong. In this way it is actually a powerful symbol designed to keep one-sided monotheism from fomenting
This actually seems so embedded in what a clown is that it needn't be intentional. Consider the "Day The Clown Cried," which recently leaked, 

If you're not familiar with it,
The Day the Clown Cried is an unreleased 1972 film directed by and starring Jerry Lewis. The film was met with controversy regarding its premise and content, which features a circus clown who is imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. The Day the Clown Cried has become somewhat infamous among film historians and movie buffs as a film that has never officially been released. (See above for recently leaked scenes.)
What an ill-conceived notion! And yet, how perfectly clown-ish.

There is of course a more sinister side to the clown, which goes far beyond Stephen King's IT,
Even for outsiders, clown antics are outrageously funny so long as they can be observed at a comfortable distance. ... In the matter of this delicate dividing line between humor and fear, clowns are also masters. To be only threatening would greatly limit the impact of clowning, eliminating the subtleties of the humor. Yet to eliminate the element of the fear altogether would be to truncate the symbolic significance of clowning; it would then be mere acting. (Native America Religions, Sam D. Gill.) 
This is something that we took to heart when creating the Gonzomentary, as discussed in this post. (And many thanks to my contributors there for helping me dig up some of this information.)


Real-life versions of clowns turned sinister are not always so funny, as the examples of John Wayne Gacy or Wearie Willie's grandson shows.

Full article here, Coulrophobia and the Trickster, excerpt:

Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes

The Elephant VanishesThe Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Murakami manages to keep the mind riveted in ways that I don't even fully understand. If most of these stories were pitched to me as an editor, I'd think they were somewhere between banal and stupidly fanciful in the way of a story that a seven year-old might tell. But in his hands, they're transfixing. They'd be transfiguring as well, except that sometimes he leaves you with so little to hold on to at the end of a piece that you're left just with a feeling like "what just happened?"

But then you come back to it a month or ten later and realize that it was transfiguring, and that oftentimes we are the last to know, when it comes to our own change. It is just more subtle than, say, an acid trip, which might grab your head and force you to look at what you'd rather not.

As a writer, I had long thought that the central method of the short story was the revealing, twist ending. "Everything was not as it seemed, but here's the big reveal." I'm happy I've had that illusion dispelled. In fact, with most of these stories, it's quite the opposite. Everything is not as you think it is, but you're left not with a revelation but rather a haunting feeling that won't go away. The depth of our uncertainty is itself unfathomable.

That is, maybe, one of the central themes in much of my own work, but it was only made clear when I had a mirror that let me "see around corners," in Jung's terms. That may seem like a leap for some, but you'll find that a Jungian reading of symbols is relevant for much of Murakami's surrealist ("magical") realism, as is discussed somewhat directly in his book Kafka On The Shore.

The bottom line is that if you are looking for a fascinating, troubling,
deep look at banal reality, this is a great opportunity for it.

View all my reviews

Read a translation online of one of my favorite short stories from this collection, Sleep.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Psychology in the Venture Brothers

It has been long established that the central theme of the Venture Brothers (the gem of Adult Swim's programming) is failure. Some may be surprised just how hilarious failure can be, and that is likely because in one way or another, all "success" stories are just failure arcs that haven't met their apex. Today a star, tomorrow turning tricks for $50 at truck stops. This may contain the germ of our fascination with the two sides of this coin, as our jealousy is fueled by seeing the famous torn down
For some of us, it might be our only ticket to a brief moment of "living the dream" before we've got to pay the toll. As I've said before, in the end the mob will only be satisfied to see your bloody sacrifice. But first, for a time, you can be King For A Day. You know the deal: today, virgins and feasts. All the kids can project their angst and suffering on you. Tomorrow, the volcano will have you, and they can grow up and get to work.
It also may come as a surprise that the themes of comedic cartoons may owe anything to Jungian or Freudian symbolism, so let's take a look at two popular episodes, "the Doctor is Sin" and "Assisted Suicide" with that in mind. (Although part of the joy of this show is how many layers of cultural reference can be piled on, so that it's actually rather reductionistic to look at it simply as a play on any one thing.)



Friday, August 09, 2013

The Absence of Myth

"Now you know the key of mythology, and are free to unlock all the gates of the unconscious psyche." But then something whispered within me, "Why open all gates?" And promptly the question arose of what, after all, I had accomplished. I had explained the myths of peoples of the past; I had written a book about the hero, the myth in which man has always lived. But in what myth does man live nowadays?  
In the Christian myth, the answer might be, "do you live in it?" I asked myself. To be honest, the answer was no. For me, it is not what I live by. "Then do we no longer have any myth?" "No, evidently we no longer have any myth." "But then what is your myth--the myth in which you do live?" At this point the dialogue with myself became uncomfortable, and I stopped thinking. 
I had reached a dead end. -Jung.

The absence of myth is also a myth: the coldest, the purest, the only true myth. - Bataille. 

What is your myth?

Thursday, August 08, 2013

Hack the Toilet - What Had Happened Was Ep 24


GHCstitcher 
Subscribe via RSS, or download the episode directly.
What Had Happened Was is a grumpyhawk collective podcast co-hosted by grumpyhawk (that would be me) and Benjamin Combs. In this "week-in-review style" show, we cover and comment on stories with a tech, science, weird, or strange sort of angle. Visit grumpyhawk.com to see and hear more from the collective.

Hello everyone! grumpyhawk and Benjamin are bringing you all the nerd news that caught our attention. This week we're discussing Jeff Bezos of Amazon and his purchase of the Washington Post, Apple getting a 5 year ban for price fixing, NSA keeping congress uninformed and denying requests for information, CBS and Time Warner Cable taking their dispute online, and a Japanese toilet with Bluetooth vulnerabilities. This and more all on today's episode, Hack the Toilet.

Show Notes:

  1. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, has bought the Washington Post for $250 million.
  2. Apple faces 5-year ban for e-book price rigging conspiracy
  3. Members of Congress are being denied access to basic information about NSA
  4. A dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable over retransmission fees for its broadcast content has spilled over onto the web, with a blackout of television programming also being extended to CBS’ online properties.
  5. CBS says Time Warner Cable a la carte proposal is 'a sham'
  6. Japanese toilet users vulnerable to Bluetooth bidet assaults
  7. A security advisory from researchers at Trustwave.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

Megalodon: Myths and Misinformation


001-800px-Carcharocles_megalodon_10315There is an 85 foot shark lurking in the depths off the Cape, and it's Photoshopped as hell. 

For many of those that caught the Sharknado meets Blair Witch atrocity of MegalodonWil Wheaton's comments probably feel familiar - this very discussion occurred in the room as we watched with mild amusement and growing disgust - as it raises a larger question of where the burden of responsibility lies for stations such as Discovery or the History Channel, which has aired any number of dubious "documentaries." (Whatever it was, It Was Aliens.)

This is, at the very least, a case-in-point for Shark Week jumping the shark
Why bother getting upset about yet another stupid “found footage” fake documentary passed off as real? Isn’t that pretty much par for the course on cable these days?
And then I realized why I was (and am) so angry: I care about education. I care about science. I care about inspiring people to learn about the world and universe around us. Sharks are fascinating, and megalodon was an absolutely incredible creature! Discovery had a chance to get its audience thinking about what the oceans were like when megalodon roamed and hunted in them. It had a chance to even show what could possibly happen if there were something that large and predatory in the ocean today … but Discovery Channel did not do that. In a cynical ploy for ratings, the network deliberately lied to its audience and presented fiction as fact. Discovery Channel betrayed its audience.
An entire generation has grown up watching Discovery Channel, learning about science and biology and physics, and that generation trusts Discovery Channel. We tune into Discovery Channel programming with the reasonable expectation that whatever we’re going to watch will be informative and truthful. We can trust Discovery Channel to educate us and our children about the world around us! That’s why we watch it in the first place!
Last night, Discovery Channel betrayed that trust during its biggest viewing week of the year. Discovery Channel isn’t run by stupid people, and this was not some kind of mistake. Someone made a deliberate choice to present a work of fiction that is more suited for the SyFy channel as a truthful and factual documentary. That is disgusting, and whoever made that decision should be ashamed.
But I wouldn't hold my breath for that apology. Nor would it likely matter. The line continues to blur between reality TV, documentary, and science or journalistic programming, and the most obvious reason is a different kind of line, the almighty bottom one. 

After all, empty speculation can be made more interesting through dramatization, and certainly leads to higher ratings amongst US audiences than rigorous skepticism. This seems to point toward yet another way that the gamification of reality in the form of $ produces diminished returns in most every other appreciable way. 


When an audience was schooled in fill-in-the-blank, rote and regurgitate form, programming takes the role of teacher. Not to harp on the tropes of bad Sci Fi like The Faculty, but it should come as no surprise that many fell for the little trap Discovery set. The only truth in the show was that in a literal sea of uncertainty, anything is possible. That does not, however, mean that anything is probable

This could raise still deeper questions about the nature of fiction, fact and myth, as we have explored in so much depth here already.  It may not be a murky line in the case of Megalodon, but within the larger context, the line is murky indeed. Those that have learned to distrust authority tend to distrust everything they're told, while those that employ a staid, idiomatic "coloring within the lines" mentality can't seem to muster the wherewithal to think critically about anything that comes from a supposed authority. These lines are established before the fact. (Had enough of lines? You must not be a child of the 80s.) 

And what of the "authorities"? Do you think that these channels should be held to some kind of higher standard? 

One thing is for sure: if an audience doesn't demand a higher standard, it is unlikely that it'll arise on its own. 

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

Monday, August 05, 2013

Lollapalooza is God, And God Is Blackout Drunk

Sup guys. I'm new here, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cory O'Brien, and this is what most of my days are like:

     Lollapalooza was hardly an hour old, and a gangly boy in a muddy yellow t-shirt had already become an object lesson in collision physics. In the midst of the mob he was safe enough, bobbing as he was in a sea of people animated by a tsunami of bass, but take the crowd away and he became a newborn wildebeest with half the requisite number of legs. I could tell you what music we were listening to when this happened, but you've got the whole rest of the internet for that. Instead I am going to tell you about the crowd, because the crowd is where I found the agents of the gods.

     More accurately, they found me. My friend and I were a little sick of having all the hollows of our anatomy vibrated in four-four time while strangers cheerfully attempted to feed us their elbows, so we retreated to the relative safety of the port-a-potties, where the only danger was hepatitis. I wasn't too jazzed about locking myself in a closet full of other people's shit, so I opted to wait outside. I found a few square inches of lightly-trampled grass to call my own, and began juggling to pass the time. This was my first mistake...

Trolling in the 21st Century - What Had Happened Was #23 from the grumpyhawk collective


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Subscribe via RSS, or download the episode directly.
What Had Happened Was is a grumpyhawk collective podcast co-hosted by grumpyhawk (that would be me) and Benjamin Combs. In this "week-in-review style" show, we cover and comment on stories with a tech, science, weird, or strange sort of angle. Visit grumpyhawk.com to see and hear more from the collective.

Alright peeps, episode 23 of What Had Happened was is live! Listen to Benjamin Combs and grumpyhawk talk about some new court developments regarding leak cases, states making it illegal for employers to ask for your social network logins, state attorneys general trying to undermine free speech, the great wall of censorship that will soon exist for the UK, and some ridiculous death threats directed at a Call of Duty developer.

 Show Notes:

  1. Court Eases Prosecutors’ Burden of Proof in Leak Cases.
  2. It’s now illegal for employers to ask for your social media passwords in Washington.
  3. State Attorneys General Ask Congress to Gut Critical Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act Concerning Online Speech Protections
  4. UK censorwall will also block "terrorist content," "violence," "circumvention tools," "forums," and more.
  5. Tweets to Call of Duty developer @DavidVonderhaar from angry players. Why? Because the stats of an imaginary gun were changed.

[Take a Trip with us... Mythos Media.]

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