凸凹

 Pronounced dekoboko 凸凹, the words mean rough in Japanese and sure look like it.

More Ascension of a Bookworm speculation - Spoilerific

P5V2 ~50%, I predict that the legendary holy book is a magic tool manifested by an individual, not a physical item.

A more orthodox twist would be that the holy book is written in disappearing ink that only manifests to the chosen.

Represent

Regarding "Q Force", Netflix delivered. On that subject, there is plenty of representation: Mineta (My Hero Academia), Mandy (I am not Star Fire), Snowflake & Safespace. They are even represented in live action media: Chris Chan, who identifies as trans.

Mandy especially represents the community who craves representation in the media. Geeky Sparkles over at Clownfish TV  is a mother & a teacher who used to be involved with her school's book fair. She described Mandy as an awful person, who raged at her mother and disliked herself. In a creepy turn, short & squat Mandy fell for a California-type blond, who bore some resemblance with her mother. Without improving in personality, Mandy gains powers, saves the day & gets the girl. Thus she started to like herself once the externalities changed. Now, Geeky said that Mandy doesn't have a character arc. I respectfully disagree. 

The world conformed to Mandy's wishes. Mandy did not need to compromise with the world. In fact, she could not have, because that would have invalidated her prior emotions, so she stayed the wretched human. This is the SJW mindset, where the world must change to alleviate their twisted psyche. They push people's language to change, public restrooms must accommodate their inclinations, and government must enforce this warping on the world. That is the character arc of the activist and the revolutionary.

The results are scattered throughout the 20th century, and they are being razed in the great reset, even as our pop culture is in the spate of remakes.

Ascendance of a Bookworm Guesses

 Here is some speculation regarding Ascendance of a Bookworm. I am following the j-novel.club weekly releases. The only spoilers that I am using are the color pictures from the future volumes that can be accessed via bookwalker.jp.

As of 07/05/2021, j-novel.club is up to Part 4 Volume 2 part 5.

1. Regarding the Duchy Foundations, I have cobbled a preliminary guess that they are located & locked away in each of the dorms. During the high beast test, Rozemyne mentioned that the Academy grounds were supposed to have been the place where the gods appeared.  As the site of the origin of the nation, having the Foundations of the Duchies set there would not be out of the question. 

The claiming of the Divine Wills in Part 4 V1 showed the grounds used by the Academy still contain sites of great practical & historic significance beyond Academics or diplomacy, i.e. it is not just a school ground.

Circumstantial evidence: 

* the dorms prevent entry from outsiders. 

* They have rooms for the Archduke & 

* were constructed from the special white stone. 

*They also have the teleportation circles. These are very powerful features that hint toward a purpose rather than just housing students.

I emphasized that this is preliminary, because it was mentioned that Duchies could be invaded if the Aub does not supply enough mana. Can an archduke conquer another duchy if the Foundation is off limits? Can the invaders force their way in through the teleportation circle? Or can the Sovereignty grant access to the conqueror once the defeated Aub cannot no longer function & render mana, tribute, etc. to the Sovereignty.

Another question is if the Duchy Foundation is in the dorm, isn't it too dangerous not to have a standing army? Answer, it is protected by the Sovereignty and there is a truce in place not to attack the dorms head on. This is the biggest hole & why I have not presented this as a theory.

2. From the jureve's description, humans can have mana harden in a near death situation, implying that feystones can be harvested from humans as well. There seems to be a taboo against harvesting and using them. It also looks like they are not kept as keepsakes.

I am guessing that the feystones of dead nobles are returned to the Farthest Hall. The feystones of executed nobles are snuffed out & obliterated like the traitors of Hasse.

This is not supported by text, which is why I have not brought it up in the forum.

A word to gardeners from an engineer

A little while ago, gardener & author David the Good broadcasted his creation of terra preta on Youtube, which is a layered soil and detritus mixture that has the potential for long term fertility. One of the components were broken pottery shards. One of his video commenters mentioned seeing plants prospering next to some old bricks, which are also fired clay. 

I emailed to ask if the function to improve drainage like vermiculite or perlite. He agreed that they were probably alike.

Thinking about it again, I think that the desired property is the stabilized porosity. The weight of the soil above can compact the soil, which will squeeze out the spaces. Fired pottery or porous bricks do not compress under the weight of several feet of soil. From an engineering perspective, dense and less pervious brick is desired. A gardener would want the most porous brick with the highest water absorption.

In another video a woman cultivated a microbe rich mixture, then shot it through a sprinkler. While the exposure to oxygen was brief, the injected air & hang time could not have helped the microbes survive. In fact, the environmental engineers call it biological oxygen demand (BOD), the calculated aeration that a river, stream, or body of water needs to freshen itself.

Here is a rule of thumb:  when it comes to fertility, do the opposite of what civil engineers do.

In geotechinical engineering class, students receive dire warnings about the water retention & looseness of organic soils. Large buildings crack where there are large soil movement. Fertile soil compresses a lot under weight as the air and water spaces and plant fibers deform under the massed weight of  the building. Cracked building can become unstable and result in collapse. The seal against weather is broken, leading to infiltration of mold and mildew as moisture gathers in the building. These infiltrators can cause serious heath conditions in humans as well as eat building components. Inviting the great outdoors into the indoors is a death sentence for electronics and machinery.

The variability of life also translates into variable soil stiffness and strength. These all make construction more difficult and costly as soil remediation, such as compaction, mixing cement into the ground, or adding gravel to the ground. 

All of these actions directly contradict what farmers and garderners do. A tractor loosens soil, at least in the short term, while a compactor will densify. In fact there are tests & methods to find the optimum soil wetness and number of runs of the compactor to achieve density. Cement plus soil hardens into a low-strength concrete known as soilcrete. Imagine trying to plow that. Gravel are pieces of hard rock & provides a stiffer surface for vehicles to drive over, which is why it is used for driveways. Holes are also drilled in the ground & gravel is compacted in to make stone piers, as an alternative to piles or concrete piers.

The simplest solution would be to not build in organic soils. This was the solution for millennia as many cities were built in land that the farmers couldn't use. This was typically harder and firmer soil than the surrounding area. There are cities built on river deltas such as New Orleans or swamps, like DC or St. Petersburg. 

However, government managed to foul even that up in my hometown, which passed brownfield legislation years ago. Any industrial site (brownfield) must be restored to pristine condition prior to reuse. This applies even if the new occupant is another industrial use. That added cost incentivizes buying out farming land for conversion to industry and housing. 

Keep in mind that the original urban site was chosen, because it was was on hard land that was unsuitable for agriculture. The urban site also became enmeshed in the transportation system. The double whammy comes in with resources spent to extend the transportation system and the utilities. The site also has to be prepared with the aforementioned compaction or piles to rest on the soft soil in addition to paving. 

It's lose lose all around. The lawmakers came in the spirit of wrath; to punish someone, anyone, for polluting the ground. This in contrast to the spirit of cooperation to put that patch of land back into use with a measured requirement to restore the land to usable, not pristine. Instead of putting money into iron fisted enforcement, put money in incentive directly for the restoration, to restore the land into use & restore jobs back into the cities.

Amend that, gardeners, when it comes to fertility, do the opposite of engineers & gardeners.

There is no housing crisis

A house is the foundation and frame, facade, windows, plumbing, electricity, heating, ventilation & air conditioning. They are all tangible components that can be altered and set with physical tools, whether it is a saw, nail gun, or back hoe.

A home is the living that happens underneath the roof and between the walls. They occupy the same footprint, but they are two distinct ideas. With care and love, a lean-to, tent, or cave can be a home. 

Indeed, in Cleveland, the concrete walls and joists overhead were a dungeon rather home for several captives.

I point this out, because when activists talk about a housing crisis, they are wrong. Houses are going for $1 in Detroit. East Cleveland probably has the similar opportunities. Ditto for Schenectady, NY prior to the wave of Guyanese immigrants, which was left behind by GE. The rural areas likely have affordable land & buildings.

If you asked me if I would want to live in Detroit or these other places, my answer would be no. If I wanted to live in these places, I would already be there. However, my objection to these other locales has nothing to do with the concrete, studs, or piping that make up the houses. The quality of life issue has to do with crime, lack of jobs, and lack of services. The are problems with people. These are problems with the community. These are problems of people setting bad policies.

The housing crisis is misnamed, which misdirects resources and ire. This is not a problem that will be solved by general contractors or mortgage brokers. Bringing in mix trucks and shipping 2x6's will NEVER make Detroit more habitable. Switching from on-site building to prefab will do little if either building get shot up. Few people have the capacity to fix-up a foreclosure if employers flee from high taxes and restrictions.

Moving people to ready homes with Section 8 worked for the households with stable works at the head of household. Once the program expanded, crime followed to the new neighborhoods.

This is a human problem & the broken humans have be fixed or set straight enough to make homes of the remaining houses. As for who broke the homes and the humans, I refer you to the activists themselves. You can't ask them, just observe the communities they work in and the wake of destruction that followed since the 60s. Calling it a housing crisis is not an accident, it is a way to guilt and pressure that banks that are holding the money, and just follow the money.

The Good Stuff

Pop culture commentators like Nerdrotic, Clownfish TV, or Yellow Flash have a lot grist for grinding, but most of it has been bad news. Body positive Wonder Woman, the M-She-U, or the threat of the Hordeculture are actually worst than bad, they are uninspiring and boring. Since the creators are cut from the same woke cloth, the news from the industry insiders is unlikely to change until a mass extinction event takes them out. Until then, cheap Fed dollars will keep money losers like IDW afloat in red ink.

Expecting DC, Marvel, or other mainstream publisher to return to making entertaining entertainment is akin to expecting a crack whore turning tricks at the street corner to spontaneously clean up their act.

There are far more profitable ways to spend your time:

• Arktoons
• Indiegogo has non-woke projects
• Back issues, DC alone has 80 years worth of archives
• Overseas offerings like Bande Desinee or manga
• Webcomics

I also enjoy Chuck Dixon's youtube channel with his Ask Chuck Dixon segments. He spins yarns about working on Batman, Night Wing, Punisher, and many of his other works. The breadth of his writing credits is astonishing. He talks about his inspirations, the craft of writing, and inside baseball. He even gives his origin story. 

Listening to Chuck Dixon, you can hear his love of good comics and why are those comics good. Even better, the good stuff is still coming. He is still churning out great stories like the alpha man of mystery Shade or the gritty streets of Avalon, which are both set in the Alt-Hero-verse. His adaptation of Right Ho, Jeeves is a delight. 

Good stuff is out there, it just needs to be found, then fed & watered.

Arkhaven: A Ship on Toxic Waters

These days, I only pay attention to Marvel & DC to point & laugh at their offerings:

Marvel's new New Warriors

AKA  I am DumpStarfire

I don't even waste my time by shaking my head at them anymore. Instead, I head over to Arktoons daily. I enjoy this site so much that it makes me want to shill for it:

Arktoons currently has 28 titles that include:

• Hard hitting, dystopian, anti-communist action in Hammer of Justice
• Vampire wars in Midnight's War
• 3 Original superhero-verses
• Hard mil SF in Quantum Mortis
• Epic swords and sorcery
• Phantasmagorical urban fantasy based on John C. Wright's Swan Knight's Saga
• Red pilled mice in Hypergamouse
• The whimsical comic adaptation of Right Ho, Jeeves
• Steampunk
• and more

Authors like Bane co-creator Chuck "the Legend" Dixon who is the most prolific, Brazilian comics veteran Luciano Cunha, epic fantasy author Vox Day, Amazon best-seller Jon Del Arroz, and others. Hi-res & vertically formatted, they are comfortable to read on computer or device. New content is added daily, each title is updated weekly, and more titles are slated. It's free, ad free, and supported by voluntary subscription.

If you're interested in comics with great stories and art, I recommend giving them all a shot. Typically 4 episodes is about 1 floppy, which is enough to give a title a fair hearing. Case in point, the eye-catching black & white Seasons started as a brooding drama only to have a reveal big enough to switch genres. Good stuff.

Love as a Drug & the effects on attraction

1. When women fall in eros, they get a high from brain chemicals, such as oxytocin. Successive experiences with men increase the hurdle height for the next chemical high. This tolerance leads to positive criteria like the need for 6-6-6 or more to give her the tingles.

For each high, there is a low, especially when chasing Chad. Since sexual bonds lead to emotional bonds, women who can still pair-bond experience psychic pain during each breakup. I posit that during breakups, negative criteria become ingrained. The "Steve Harvey LONGEST dating requirements list" included:

• non-smoker
• can't be anti-sugar
• must never wear sweatpants

Chads of hook-ups past likely were smokers, anti-carb, or wore sweats, so the hamster wheel latches onto these markers to avoid the withdrawal pain in the future. This rationalization allows the rollercoaster rider to continue riding rather than identify the sexual market value mismatch & switch to a monogamous strategy earlier. This model would explain why older women tend to have more requirements despite the lower SMV.

As for external factors, like peer pressure or economic requirements, they can attenuate or exacerbate the brain chemistry, but past tolerance-withdrawal remains the primary drivers. Immediate stressors like the acknowledgement of the biological clock, homelessness, or hunger can temporarily suspend these ingrained standards, but the rate of subsequent cheating and ghosting indicates that the primary drivers takes over once the stressor is alleviated. In traditional societies, threats of starvation or ostracism are persistent; therefore, the immediate and definite fear stops the rollercoaster riding from starting.

This all assumes a woman without childhood trauma, which would predate a voluntary ride on the rooster rollercoaster.

2. Assuming that the above is true, counseling, healing, and "working on oneself" are minimally effective. Just like an opiate or crack addict, recovery is tenuous & there is the lifelong temptation to lapse. This naturally leads to a counter-argument to "breaks" or hall-passes being healthy for relationships, since it would be analogous to blowing off steam with a hit of morphine.

The sensations of affairs get described with terms like their skin was on fire. That is far above the affects of a cigarette, joint, or shot of whiskey. Hence the hard drug analogy.

3. Let us assume the creation of a "spotless mind" pill that could reset the chemical high tolerances & withdrawal pains; therefore, it would restore the ability to pair bond. What approximate percent of long-term rooster roller coaster riders would get back in line for another ride? How many riders would settle down? How many previously settled women would get on the roller coaster if they thought the long term damage could be healed?

Deadwood Dale's Enables & Dis-enablers

In a video dated from May 11th, popculture commentator & youtuber Deadwood Dale commented that enablers & dis-enablers are similar.

Enablers are a familiar pop psychology concept, where Person A renders aid to Person B in an activity that will harm B in the long run. This is usually done, because A is rewarded with the feeling of being needed.

The dis-enabler denigrate & devalues the other person's ability. That way, the dis-enabler can step in to help. In my previous post about disempowerment, I identified this as the 3rd trick pulled: selling the problem to a sucker, to sell the cure as well. Deadwood Dale emphasizes the important point that the motivation is similar to the enabler, in that the dis-enabler feels needed & validated. The dis-enabler, like the enabler, also feels superior to the target, because the target needs their help to succeed.

The sheer amount of evil that is done to satisfy mere ego is quite amazing.

Poke, you're a GMO

 The COVID 19 "vaccine" is mRNA gene therapy.

RNA is a nucleic acid, which is genetic material. Congratulations, vaxxed, you are now a genetically modified organism (GMO).

Dim Bulb #1

The metaphorical light bulb flickered on while I was paying off my bills online. 

I don't autopay my credit card bills, because there might be dispute. During a dispute, who is holding the money has the upper hand. If you already paid, then the company keeps the money by inaction.

The payment process used to be really simple. I put in the website information once & the sites would forward the bills to my bank. My online bank account would then show all the bills in one place. For some reason that I could not work out, a pair of credit card companies stopped sending information & there doesn't seem to be a simple update, so I go to their websites to download the statements.

Since the statement cut-offs are different, I rarely got myself mixed up & got the month that I needed to pay & the month when the bill got accrued mixed up. So each month, I count up the number of monthly bills & make sure that I got all of them. For example, I have power and three credit cards, so I expect to account for 4 bills a month & when I'm done paying, I count up the number of bills to make sure that I have them all accounted for. It's a habit that I've gotten into in case I'm sick or tired or both.

The other occasional problem is transposing the cents, like paying $300.23 vs $300.32. The interest isn't changed on the 9 cents difference; it is charged to the full statement amount. At 16% to 30% APR, the previous example would yield a bill of $4 to $7.50. I've heard that a carry-over on a balance can trigger interest on two months, so it could cast more than that. After thinking about it, it's worth it to just round up to the nearest dollar. I will be credited with excess payment & only loose out on the interest that I could earn on my round-up, which is non-existent right now.

Small, but real life applications of proofreading & rounding.

A Cappy's Response

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My request was for the Cappy to read & respond my previous post Two Empowerments.

In his analysis, the Cappy added a very important idea: "permission". People want an authority or parental figure to approve of their actions. The Great One at the Cynical Lib Society pointed out that marijuana legalization advocates are still seeking permission from the gov't. The naked mountain climber seeked validation of their view point. The Marchers got the approval of the media and the leftists that the media wanted to amplify.

Far from being a freeing and self-actualizing experience, pop-empowerment falls back on the instinct of monkey see by seeking validation & permission from others. Copying the activity of other monkeys was useful in surviving the primordial forests & savannahs of yore. However, independent thought & sanity are all the more important when bad ideas are easily cloaked in colorful, candy shells:

* Follow your passion & the money will follow

* YOLO

* It's for the children...

* Just a dollar a day to cause X, will...

How do you know they are bad? Just look around you & see where this conformist, conventional thinking has gotten us.

J-novel Club interface

Each novel volume is broken up into 6-12 parts & are posted on a weekly basis.

 

Two Empowerments

In the Clarey Podcast 340 & a subsequent consultation, Captain Capitalism addressed empowerment in a pair of articles & had difficultly pinning down how the word 'empowerment' was used.

The root difficulty is a dual definition similar to 'equal opportunity' versus 'equal outcome'. Likewise, empowerment has an individualist and a collectivist usage. One empowerment is the power or capability to self-actualize. The individual develops the knowledge, skills & will to overcome obstacles & accomplish achievements to rise up Maslow’s hierarchy.

In contrast to this self actualizing empowerment or self-empowerment, there is a leftist version born of pop-psychology, AKA self-esteem culture, and has infected pop culture through Oprah & self-help books.

Podcast #340 examined the example of a tattooed 37 year old woman. To recap, she felt empowered by naked mountain climbing. The climbing was done for both the camera and male co-climbers. She appreciated the online praise for her pictures and real life attention, and encouraged other women to do the same. 

The first trick of pop-empowerment is to give praise & good feelings, without requiring actual achievement. She got more publicity for stripping in an unusual setting, than if she had been the X thousandth to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, though the latter would have been a far more daunting achievement. Pop-empowerment is artificial flavoring without any nutritional content.

The second trick is to substitute group action in lieu of individual action. She call for other women to strip en masse. With enough numbers, she could conceivably reduce the social stigma on public nudity. While this is power to create lasting societal change, this power is wielded by the group at the expense of the individual’s time & energy. 

The third trick lies in her pitch to these other women. By selling other women on stripping to become empowered, the naked climber is implying that they are currently disempowered. Specifically to this case, other women aren’t getting the same attention as her; therefore, they are missing out by keeping their clothes on. In addition to persuading the dupe to buy her cure, she is also persuading the dupe that they have that particular problem in the first place. Perish the thought that the other women need to hit the gym or something.

Example #2:

With the nude climber, the stakes are merely ‘likes’ and a brief local interest article. If we multiply the scale by about 400,000 times, we get the Million Man March of 1995. In that setting, these tricks become more apparent. The ostensible goal of the march was to improve black lives in the inner city. From the fiery, but peaceful protests of 2020 to present, we can surmise that these marches failed to meet those goals.

The first trick of promoting feels over reals was apparent with the Day of Absence. To show solidarity for inner city economic growth, they pushed participants to not show up for a day & not produce economic output.

The second trick was apparent in the fact that this march was followed by more marches : Million Mom, Millions More March, Million Muslim, Million Woman etc. Basically, to get the same feeling of progress & unity, they repeated the same group action.

The marchers were encouraged to pour their energies into the political organization and held a voter drive. They were convinced that a lack of political involvement was the problem & political empowerment was what they needed. The "solution" was to further empower the same political party than ran the inner city for decades & ran them into the ground.

In contrast to actual history, we can only imagine if a half a million had focused the past 25 years on getting youths into trades or the right major as was encouraged in the fine books "Worthless" or "Black Man's Guide oout of poverty". Through pop-empowerment, these hundreds of thousands were put into motion to advance the causes of politicians, activists & the media who got a story, and many marchers walked away with only a warm, fuzzy feeling.