asciilifeform: experimentally verified << ahaha, but does it work with Sr-90 in the atmosphere.
asciilifeform: and who even said we need more and more. just that there be some.
asciilifeform: we don't really know how to make 'more and more' actual people. to figure it out, would have to rewind to when they were mostly exterminated and go from there.
asciilifeform: africa had no soviets << vanishing the thieves and dekulakizers is not enough, one has to actually... produce wealth
asciilifeform: 'literacy' as understood by extant managerial civilization (usa, friends, imitators) is simply the ability to fill out forms and perform other simple mechanics of the giant meat computer of bureaucracy.
asciilifeform: this occasionally happens (nixon?) - then muppet is replaced with an otherwise-identical spare, who has not yet eaten the public kitten fillet.
asciilifeform: perhaps. given as i'm not even sure there's a game
asciilifeform: in reality, you have to patch into satellite and show him eating the kitten on prime time tv. for a week straight. to have even small effect.
asciilifeform: yes, in the popular imagination, 'exposing' something is as simple as printing a few words.
asciilifeform: unless you - personally - planted a video bug in the toilet stall where ebama fucks his interns, and brags to them about zapping the white man with obola.
asciilifeform: i'm not certain that an article per day of actually interesting matter happens in the world. at least, not where a reporter can get to it.
asciilifeform: well, if we were to go back to actual food, we would have to get used to perhaps 1/1000 as much of it mass-wise as we had 'food.'
asciilifeform: how we don't actually have more food today than in 1700, just greater quantities of food-like substance that staves off starvation
asciilifeform: another observation re: qntra. recall mircea_popescu's point about synthetic tomatoes?☟︎
asciilifeform: but now i strongly suspect that it is true
asciilifeform: i was very unsure re: this hypothesis prior to qntra
asciilifeform: in some 'unconventional' models of physics, they exist.
asciilifeform: mass news and derp are inseparable in my head. perhaps one can have one without the other, but that's not unlike a unipolar magnet.
asciilifeform realized that he simply regards william randolph hearst's basic invention (mass news) as fundamentally pernicious, and not something that 'good folks can do right because they're good and hearst is evil'
asciilifeform: i confess that i'm seeing a perpetuum mobile, but, 'this time it'll be different, we're using 6061 instead of villard de honnecourt's oak !'
asciilifeform: how is it supposed to generate income again?
asciilifeform: qntra reads just like ordinary newspaper! 'company c now selling turd t.' 'company s having supply chain problems with their shit.' 'politician p derps on topic t.'
asciilifeform: 'It is like going to a library full of books that took 50 man-years to produce each, inventing a way to cut down the costs to a few man-months per book by copying and randomly improving on other books, and then wondering why nobody thinks your library full of these cheaper books is an inspiration to future authors.'
asciilifeform: that's everybody's main gripe, but leaves certain things in the shadows
asciilifeform: true newsman, imho, actually goes places and lifts facts from the earth, not cut&paste.
asciilifeform: one of the problems i always had with 'news' is the regurgitation
asciilifeform: perhaps i simply don't like the dish, and should not bash the cook.
asciilifeform: example of -interesting- and genuine news - mp's piece. but he can't cough up the actual intel to substantiate the piece, that would aid the enemy.
asciilifeform: qntra lifted the choice of subjects from the turdmeisternews
asciilifeform: thickasthieves: imho folks who think 'hate shitnews, gonna make my own nyt and forbes, with hookers & blackjack' are missing some of the problem
asciilifeform: thickasthieves: i'd argue that it isn't simply too new, or done improperly in some way. but - does wrong job.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: that's the thing, i couldn't possibly write one and have it be any more 'on subject' than yours above!
asciilifeform confesses that he isn't terribly fond of the qntra articles to date. nothing against the folks who wrote them! but because the entire 'bitcoin news' sphere - not only reportage, but the subject matter per se - is permeated with spam oil.
asciilifeform: nd I felt the secret influence of an idea that the two were destined to live and die together.'
asciilifeform: 'The exhibitor, Professor Faber, was a sad-faced man, dressed in respectable well-worn clothes that were soiled by contact with tools, wood, and machinery. The room looked like a laboratory and workshop, which is was. The Professor was not too clean, and his hair and beard sadly wanted the attention of a barber. I had no doubt that he slept in the same room as the figure—his scientific Frankenstein monster—a
