asciilifeform: i, for instance, expect to end up slowly dismembered in a cia dungeon. ☟︎

asciilifeform: i conjecture that it's all a problem of expectations.

asciilifeform: i can't claim to have a handle on what ails pankkake et. al. ☟︎

asciilifeform: nubbins`: let's say you wanted to close your printery and spend the rest of your days as a taleb-like scholarly man of leisure.

asciilifeform: i'd imagine i'm not the only one who considers 'success' as implying a total exit from 'don't work a day - don't eat a day'

asciilifeform: it is precisely the existence of 'success stories' in #b-a that creates the problem (if you will) of nonzero expectations.

asciilifeform: the funny part is that nobody quit, e.g., a model airplane club, because they realize that it will not make them rich.

asciilifeform: l of this "code sharing" is an economic surplus phenomenon. It works only when none of the people involved in it are in any form of need. As soon as the need arises, a lot of people discover that it has cost them real money to work for the community and they reap very little benefit from it, because they are sharing value-less services and getting value out of something that people take for granted is hard to ☟︎

asciilifeform: marry, start a family, buy a house, have an accident, get seriously ill for a while, or a number of other very expensive things people actually do all the time, and the value of your work starts to get very real and concrete to you, at which point giving away things to be "nice" to some "community" which turns out not to be "nice" _enough_ in return that you will actually stay alive, is no longer an option. Al

asciilifeform: 'The whole idea that anything can be so "shared" as to have no value in itself is not a problem if the rest of the world ensures that nobody _is_ starving or needing money. For young people who have parents who pay for them or student grants or loans and basically have yet to figure out that it costs a hell of a lot of money to live in a highly advanced society, this is not such a bad idea. Grow up, graduate,

asciilifeform: they, i suspect, reach a point of thinking 'i can't eat hope'

asciilifeform: this may also explain the disappearance of moiety and a few other folks.

asciilifeform: some people don't react well to a (perceived) collapse of fantasy of escape from gravity well.

asciilifeform: not being the shrink for either of these folks, i can't say with certainty, but do have a hypothesis:

asciilifeform: is there, somewhere, a smoky bar where they down hard drinks and tell anyone who'll listen how 'it was all a sham11!1!' ?

asciilifeform: incidentally - are there other 'retired' #b-a folks?

asciilifeform: http://www.contravex.com/2014/11/04/lets-cut-to-the-chase-is-la-serenissima-a-cult/#comment-4569 << interesting re: pankkake

asciilifeform: ot even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellec

asciilifeform: 'I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, n

asciilifeform: the one piece of 'lack of gun' was that a launch is visible and audible for 40km or so around

asciilifeform: jurov: the pronouncement that he lacked the necessary rocket is not a denial ?

asciilifeform: re: top hats: i vaguely recall that the planet lost the capacity to make toothpicks for a few months at some point in '09 (?)

asciilifeform: like a death certificate that reads 'stopped breathing'

asciilifeform: decimation: except that none of this conceptually even applies to a computer program.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: imagine if, e.g., the 'golden gate' bridge had been built by a retarded child. out of match sticks.

asciilifeform: craftsmanship all the way down, after a certain point.