JB's Place

The Dream Internet

The internet is mostly a dystopian technological nightmare. The irony, or course, is that it was invented to deal with an apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in the guise of nuclear war. What is that old phrase about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Right. So what’s wrong with it?

Machines of the Internet

Well, the first thing that’s wrong with the internet has to do with the technology used to access it. Windows is a gigantic steaming pile of garbage. Linux, while better, is hard to standardize on due to differing distros and is a little like a group of anarchists trying to organize a time to meet for tea. Openbsd is awesome for stability and security, but takes security so seriously it will not run on certain kinds of hardware (I am looking at you, GeForce) which is, more often than not, stuff at the cheaper end of the user continuum. Haiku is a neat implementation of BeOS. It seems like it could be awesome but is not really ready to be utilized as a daily driver. Everything scratches one itch but seems to cause a host of other unsatisfied itches.

The DNS System

Before we even consider machines, though, there is the matter of the nightmare of DNS, which, even if we do find a machine that we like well enough to make a website with makes it quite easy to shut the entire website down via censorship. Add to this various firewall and traffic filtering, and even if your site is not down, if it is not able to receive traffic, it might as well be down.

The Ubiquity of the Web

Whereas in the early 90’s the internet was optional, now everything runs on it from toasters to cars. This would be fine except that everything usually has to cooperate with http inspired technology in one way or another better known to the rest of the world as the “www” system of hyperlinks. This system while very robust in certain ways, absolutely sucks in fundamental ways. One way that it sucks is in backlinks and “linkrot” where links that existed yesterday are gone today. There is a real lack of “where something came from” or who said it, which encourages a whole lot of a kind of Alzheimer’s induced stealing provided one is not an outright thief or despot. Oh, also the internet is NOT a utility.

Surveillance States

Add to all the above the fact that most of these devices that are on the web are busy reporting back to their masters about some aspect of your life that you have not expressly said they should. These reports are collated and sold to the highest bidders so that your life and the patterns in it become worth high amounts of dollars to those seeking insight into the behavior of crowds usually for the sake of advertising and how to pitch it.

No Flying Cars/Holograms

When you examine all the above facts, it indicates we are far from the internet of the future that movies like Minority Report indicated we were moving toward. We do seem to have the part about being arrested for crimes you have yet to commit down, though. The pieces for a “Dream Net” are all here, though. They just are not yet receiving funding or attention in the manner they ought to be.

Decentralized DNS

If you want to fix the DNS, burn it down with gasoline and replace it with something else. Gnunet has done that and developed a system that makes the domain system P2P where everyone is basically hosting their own DNS and peers can find the site of the friend of a friend. This system solves the DNS problems at a construction level, though how well it scales is an unknown. Check it out here: Gnunet

Machines of the Internet

If you want the ultimate in freedom and standardization, a solution exists in the structure of NixOS. In Linux, the biggest headache is usually being able to build an application on one version in the same way as you did on another. With Nix, you can automate all this. Heck, you can even automate the build of an entire machine WITH the program all ready on it. It accomplishes this task by using “hashing” of the programs in a store as opposed to using direct links to the bin files. This solves a lot of volatility around using Linux. If you could marry the concept of NixOS to something like OpenBSD on a Gnunet, you’d probably solve about 80 percent of the above issues quite quickly. See NixOs here:NixOs

Ubiquity of the Web

I sincerely doubt anyone will be putting all the toothpaste back in that tube. If all computers stopped working tomorrow, I suspect the mental model of the internet would still be there for many generations to come and something like it would be made again. Take my above suggestions, future technician!

Surveillance State

Most of the spying comes as a byproduct of not owning your own data. If, for instance, it were illegal to send your GPS coordinates to anything whatsoever without first asking your permission, anything that engaged in that behavior would be quite quickly lawsuitted. It follows then that if you made an internet where the user had their personal data and metrics more encrypted and locked up by nature that this kind of business would be greatly diminished.

Holograms and Flying Cars?

If the internet sucks less, then I see no reason why you could not stick some wings on a Tesla and call it a day.

Architecture of the Web

Finally, we visit the glorious area of the architecture of the web. A truth here is that there were other models than the www version. I am rather fond of the basic outline that Ted Nelson articulated in project Xanadu for the simple reason that it makes the back link as permanent as the forward link. I am not sure about his specific model for copyright and the seemingly proprietary elements of his model, but I think it is important to be able to visually show precisely where something came from so a person can read it for themselves. Otherwise, with footnotes and appendices, we have to stop the flow of our reading to go “look it up” which is, at best tedious. I especially like the idea of those who own a copyright being able to easily receive royalties, which is where the web currently is quite lacking. Most of the web has the content for free, and the price of time and hardware is being paid by someone else, somehow. Writers, I think, in particular, are especially hard hit by this model, since they are expected to write for free. Sure, you can get a crowdfunded subscription, but for that, you require building an audience which was traditionally what the magazine did that writers wrote for. Add to that the headaches of payment processors and deplatforming for someone writing something somebody else does not like, and it is clear what a mess and headache publishing becomes for a writer who simply used to write a query letter and then pecked away at his or her word processor to get paid for content. The gardens where this happens are rapidly growing smaller on a daily basis.

So, Dystopian Nightmare?

Yeah, but like any nightmare, the solutions to the problems are right here. At some point, we either believe in the nightmare and reinforce it, or say screw that, and start investing in the dream.

Adobe Flash

In the early days of the internet, multimedia effects were not a simple thing to accomplish. I can remember having to make specific graphics for down states and up states for buttons, and doing clever manipulations with tables to get a page to display in a way that made it more interactive than HTML really had the ability to support. Everybody, though, was clamoring to get a website although nobody seemed to really know what that meant. More or less, it was, for businesses, rather like a telephone book listing with pictures. Flash occupied a place in history when Real Time video had little existence other than through Quicktime which was, to my memory, an Apple player. Flash allowed a person to make animations and interactive sites. It did this by not being HTML but being a plugin that one could embed in HTML. As a consequence, everyone dreaded seeing the “flash loading” on a website. Of course, this was not really entirely true. We dreaded seeing the “Flash loading” or “plugin needed” on a website we did not expect to have Flash content. Places like Albino Black Sheep and Newgrounds had plenty of Flash, and nobody complained because it was the nature of those sites to make videos. An example of one that made the rounds in 2004 that is typical of the Adobe Flash Style is the JibJab Kerry/Bush video which went viral. (something I would later, in a roundabout way, need for my dissertation on viral videos and marketing)

Hypercard

Before the day of Flash, though, there was Hypercard. Hypercard was a Macintosh-quasi-powerpoint like application that allowed one to make “stacks of interactive cards” that one could use to “program” a presentation. Supposedly, the inspiration for this program came from someone’s acid trip, and no, I am not making that up. The game Myst was supposedly inspired by Hypercard, and was programmed in a stack. People had large piles of these they saved and more than a few communites sprang up around them. Then, something happened to Hypercard that also would later happen to Flash, they were both discontinued.

Beginning Technology Stuff

Many beginners in programming though, loved Hypercard and Flash. The reason this was so is easy to surmise–quick results were easier to achieve with these two applications. The focus was on being user-friendly, and the approach was more heavily visual than code based. Programmers, however, hated both and indeed at the nexus of the end of these two pieces of software lies a common name–Steve Jobs. The replacements for these applications, however, was not forthcoming. Indeed, there is still a gigantic hole in the market where these two pieces of software resided. Sure, if you want to pay enough money, you can get close, but that really defeats the purpose of easy-to-use software. If the cost for ease is a trillion dollars, then it might as well be as difficult to master as C++.

Results Of The Death of Flash and Hypercard

The result of the deaths of Flash and Hypercard is that everyone who wishes to do something similar nowadays needs to learn an entire pile of code for something like HTML5 with Canvas support. There really is not, to my knowledge, anything that interacts like the above programs to make compliant sites using those standards unless you happen to live on an oil well. The death of Hypercard resulted in many clones and users trying to find ways to run the stacks they had invested in along with a wish for its return. The death of Flash has resulted in millions upon millions of hours of created content being unusable or needing to be adapted in some way or another to remain viewable. So, for using those programs, the users were hosed. The Apple Store, however, managed to make the barrier to entry quite high and getting rid of these two technologies has the quite–I am sure–”accidental” effect of making sure that “normal people” would not be creating much by way of content that could possibly go in such a store. The changes, of course, were made in the interests of “security” but the reality is many users who spent hours upon hours with these pieces of software were screwed, and the “new technology” that was rolled out served a very definite Priesthood of Coders.

Creativity

Now we have moved on into the age of the trustless web. Sounds about right, right? The next movement will be the “shotgun in your car at all times” trustless driving age otherwise known and shown in the film(s) Mad Max. The trustless web runs on blockchains and is by nature paranoid. Traffic is encrypted end-to-end, and decentralized identities that are not obviously tied to any one person are more the norm than the exception. Hell, as of basically a week ago, we are working on de-platforming an entire country! About the only thing half-way interesting to anyone doing anything artistic are NFT’s, and even those are trying to push the boundaries of what art actually is. Just because, for instance, I take a picture of your car or piece of art, one does not necessarily therefore have something that is “creatively theirs” but an NFT blurs those boundaries. Who owns what? Why? How?

For my part, I made an NFT of the front cover of my meditation book that acts as a token for an exclusive interview that I have pre-recorded concerning the making of said book. Since I am not going to hand this video out to 20 people, it is therefore rare and exclusive content which adds to the value of the token. It is rare because it is limited. It is up for auction at rarible.com.

What makes this a little different than the above Hypercard and Flash situation is that as long as blockchains exist, this item will exist. If someone places the hash that points at the address it resides on on the respective blockchain to which it belongs on IPFS, it will not go away unless blockchains and IPFS go away, which would probably mean that the entirety of the internet would be gone. Nothing is permanent, as it is said, but a house built of stone is probably going to be around a lot longer than a house made of wood all other conditions being equal.

Programmers And Artists

While I see programming as an art, I also see Art as an art and I think that the web is big enough for both. I do not see a need to kill out the hypercards of the world or the Adobe Flash Players. Nobody is forcing anyone to go to sites that choose one technology or another. It is not necessary for us all to agree on the technological stack and methodologies we intend to use anymoreso than it is necessary for us to agree that we must all take the exact same steps to take a brush to a canvas to render a painting. At this point, we are re-doing the web because it turns out we cannot trust people, but then again, did we not notice all the locks and guns in the world before the web? Who was it that thought we would be just one big, peaceful village as a world? Short of Messianic intervention, that ain’t gonna happen. The good news there is that I would say we are much closer to that than we ever have been. To fix a trustless web, the networking administrator just might have to be God. The problem is not the stack, or the technology. It is people, power, and greed. The normal way we solve that is we blow each other up with nuclear weapons of one kind or another, feel bad about it later, then do it all over again in about twenty years or so. I cannot think of a more trustless web than that.

Making The Internet Great Again

Since I am old enough to remember the world without the internet, I am aware that that makes me an increasing rarity. I am here defining the internet as “Not DARPA” which existed long before the
1990’s. I am talking about the AOL Compuserve dial-up modem internet of yore. So, my generation sits at precisely the cutoff between world without internet, and world with more internet than
we really know how to utilize. I have come to a conclusion having studied technology and even having earned a degree within the field of it. The conclusion is this: the internet really will never
progress until a certain select group of people are gone and greed is removed as an incentive.

The Internet That Was Not

I could go through the history of the internet and show you a thousand technologies that could have made it and probably would have been as good if not better solutions that what we have now. In
each instance of the internet’s history, there are always a handful of people that are working on something usually rather idealistically. Eventually, whatever this project is comes across the radar
of some “people with serious money” and usually those people with “serious money” have a specific agenda in mind. Most often, this agenda is not some ideal like “Freedom of Information” or the
“betterment of humanity”. Instead, it is usually something like “I would like to trade stocks slightly faster than everyone else, so I can keep my gazillions of dollars”. This, I call the “hidden pressure”
of the internet or what before the internet was called “The Market”.

A “Market” does not work on any basis of logic. Rather, it is driven by supply and demand and a myriad of hidden pieces of logic that work counter to something like “freedom of information”. It might
be expedient in such a market to have one thing free so you can sell another thing that becomes demanded by the first being free. Of course, that only works so long as the second thing does not also
become free. I might, for instance, give you a free small box of nails for your purchase of a hammer. Why will I do this? Because I make more on the hammer, and nails costs me fractions of pennies.
I therefore can “afford” to give you something in exchange for your purchase.

Internet Databases And Data

Back in the later 90’s and early 2000’s, there was a big push to get data and presentation separate from one another for the purpose of data mutability. This meant you could write something once and
then turn it into a variety of formats. It might be a webpage, or a pdf. This format was called XML and it was made in no small way by the people who made the internet to start with at DARPA.

Microsoft and Office

Microsoft though, was busy making a small fortune off of document processing. Their office solution was hard to use with anything else other than Microsoft products. This is a trend that continues
to this day. While the windows interface is arguably easier to use than something like a Unix or Linux system, the tradeoff for the “ease of use” was to have all of your data completely tied up
in the commercial solutions that Microsoft offered. As time moved forward sometimes these formats worked backwards and sometimes they did not. If you spent a long time adapting your business to say an
Excel spreadsheet, then of course you had better have a working version of the spreadsheet in question, or else would would need to start all over again. All of these data entry requirements take time,
and if there is one thing business understands well, it is that time is money.

Circles and Circles

So all this starts a basic adoption cycle. The businesses are going to buy the products that seem the easiest to use. The easiest to use products are going to be developed by who gets funding. The people
who get funding are either going to work for the people making the seemingly easiest solution, or else make the easiest solution and then get bought up by one of the big players. The net result
is that the small fish who love to work on the internet for ideals are either gradually depleted of funding, or that the large sharks are so large that it is only a matter of time before you either
become a large shark member yourself, or your school gets eaten.

So where is XML today? You do not really hear all that much about it. Its school was eaten by other things, like XHTML and pandoc and a thousand
other ways to wrangle data like buying more copies of Microsoft Office. We keep re-inventing the wheel.

Fixing The Problem

I was always taught that you should not complain about something without a solution, and I think I have it. This small group of people who, usually through financial pressure, control what gets
developed and what does not need to simply get out of the way. I do not especially care how they get out of the way, but those people who I am talking about even if they make software that say, compromises
an entire election, can usually afford very good marketing even if their solutions suck. They rub elbows with big business, and big business rubs elbows with them, and so they crowd out the small folks who simply
would like an internet that does not force your data to travel over toll roads at every turn.

How Do They Get Out Of The Way?

Well, the best way is they put it down, or donate some funding to charities who are interested in specific humanitarian internet problems. I do not believe someone like say, Bill Gates, can turn
around after basically raping the data of humanity and suddenly decide he has motives that are “for the best of humanity”. No, what he can do if he has those deep abiding feelings is donate a portion
of his vast cash reserves to a charity he does not control and then simply walk away and let that charity do what it does. Some place like EPIC might be a good start. If, on the other hand, Mr. Gates
does not want to do that, then I submit to you the fact that he has the vast sums he has to start with is mostly by holding the data of common people hostage. In other words, we have a situation
where data has been kidnapped somewhat like a child and has been held hostage all the while being sanctioned by courts. This, I suggest, is what most people like Gates can do. My suggestion is that do
it now while they can still look like they have the facade of being decent human beings. Pretty soon, what I am suggesting will be more mandatory–just as mandatory as they are trying to make a COVID shot
except that in the case I am describing, the enforcement and authority to do as I am here describing will be absolute and without question. If that sounds scary to any billionaire who reads my blog–that you might
have to face the reality where you are not a multi-billionaire but a mere millionaire, then I do not have anything by way of solace to offer you. Ill gotten gains sooner or later always return back where they belong,
and of course, in technology as in many other facets of life, there are plenty of examples of people having “just done business”. I guess you can consider my words as a professional courtesy that I am not charging you
5,000 an hour to do. So, while I am done appealing to the “you should want to do the right thing” argument, I am stating, quite flatly “you definitely want to do it now if at all,” since the next leg of this journey
when what I have said comes to pass occurs, you will have no recourse and will do well to escape with your lives.

So There You Have It

To make the internet basically great again, the solution is to get rid of some very serious scarlet-red sin in the form of greed and other agendas. At that point, people who actually love both humanity and
technology can do what they do best, without having to provide a handjob to some executive who thinks he deserves a second boat in his garage.

Distilled Buddhist Teaching From Elsewhere

Five Things to Consider Before Speaking

Now we arrive at another of the Buddha’s teachings on right speech: The five things you should consider before speaking.[v] Is what you’re about to say:

Factual and true
Helpful, or beneficial
Spoken with kindness and good-will (that is, hoping for the best for all involved)
Endearing (that is, spoken gently, in a way the other person can hear)
Timely (occasionally something true, helpful, and kind will not be endearing, or easy for someone to hear, in which case we think carefully about when to say it)

In the Pali Canon sutta “To Prince Abhaya,”[vi] the Buddha describes the six-step process by which he, the Tathagata (which is a title for the Buddha, meaning “one who has thus gone”), decides whether or not to say something:

“[1] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[2] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, [but] unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[3] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing and disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

“[4] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[5] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, but endearing and agreeable to others, he does not say them.

“[6] In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing and agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings.”[vii]

source: https://zenstudiespodcast.com/right-speech/

Imagine then, with the above rules in mind, that I stand to gain something by personally withholding information. Or, imagine that I know something
horrible is about to happen, and I could make you aware of it so the horrible thing did not happen to you, but I do not do so. Am I participating
in accordance with the above rules? Or, if I know something I have been told, see evidence of the thing, understand it is evil, and still remain silent about
it, am I doing what I ought to be doing in accord with the above teaching?

On To My Interview

Had I been told what all the guests were doing and involved with in this interview ahead of time, I would not have done it. Why? Simple. It is not within my Dharma to do
an interview with all the participants present. Why is it not? Would you ask a horse to ice skate? No. Would you ask a master in oil paint to use crayons? Probably not.
There are activities that are proper for the person, and there are activities that are improper. If you make a person aware of something that is improper,
and they do not fix it, and they know it is not on your “path or dharma” and they do it anyway, is that in accord with the above teachings?

Or, imagine a very advanced teaching. Is it proper to discuss such a thing in front of a beginning student? Suppose it is about “advanced welding” and the student hears
you and tries the technique and loses a finger. What responsibility does the teacher then bear? If you think about the above questions carefully, you will understand
why I would not have done this specific interview in mixed company. So why am I linking it? Because, for one, it is done. For two, it is a teachable moment. For three,
it will allow a person to understand why my book is different when it comes to Buddhism and meditation.

Links: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYbkrnEJM2Q
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1Qv-iXu5Xo&t=1403s

So You Saw Me Speak, So What?

My dharma is different in that I delineate an entirely new spiritual path in terms of meditation that you might call “Messianic Buddhism”. I was not asked directly about
this in the above interview, but then, I have established that this interview was not entirely within my dharma. Indeed, I believe if one puts their time into the actual
practice, the questions and answers to the issues posed in the interview become quite clear. There is only chatter and discussion because minds are preoccupied with
problems that have been defined into existence by minds that do not practice such meditation. Therefore, we speak for an hour on a problem that we have colluded to collectively
create.

Link To My Book

Downloadble editions for free here: 1. https://archive.org/details/meditationbooksecondedition
2. http://thebp.site/217103

Final Remarks

Gentleman, it is no longer a stick you should be worried about from the master. It has instead become an iron rod.

Something Is Rotten In Stripe Land

As I have shown elsewhere in a long correspondence with Stripe elsewhere, I got the rug yanked out from supporting my small church with small books in
a most puzzling manner. First, the accusation was crowdfunding, and after that was all cleared up as rubbish, some generic “you are too risky to do business with” garbage
followed. Well, I think I found the issue. It’s right here: https://press.stripe.com/

We Call This a Conflict of Interest

So a payment processor is getting into the book selling field and decides that a place that is trying to sell used books for a church is “too risky to do business with”?
Right? Notice that the above link both sells books and suggests it is about “progress”. Now, that progress would not be some vaguely defined communist ideal
would it? Well, let’s look at what passes for something spiritual and is a book for sale on there:

“We are as gods and might as well get good at it,” wrote Stewart Brand in 1968, as the opening sentence to the now iconic Whole Earth Catalog.
For decades, Brand has had an uncanny ability to push “ideas that seem at the edge of believability,”
accelerating progress in culture, technology, environmentalism, and more. His approach to work and life influenced many technologists
who have gone on to shape our modern world, including Steve Jobs.

Really Stripe? You are going to push this quote from the Bible, which is a misquote, I might add, to push this agenda?

Hacker News

Hacker News pretty much consistently, despite the evidence, is on the Stripe train. I’m not surprised by that, since most of those guys work in technology and we
wouldn’t want to piss off the Stripe Gods now, would we? Well, here is the deal–when your payment processor is in other businesses, it can start pushing on those
businesses where it should have absolutely no input at all. In this case, it pushed on a church and its ability to receive money, I contend, due to an agenda
and a desire to sell books to a certain audience. If the technology people at Hacker News can’t see this fact, then really they don’t deserve to be in science
or technology. The church is too risky to do business with, although it did for years, but science and technology and basically lifting one’s self up as some Luciferic
God is totally in bounds, right? Right.

Time to Own Up, Technology People

I don’t see technology and faith as being at odds with one another. I think if you try to replace faith WITH technology, you are in for a hurting. I think if
you become arrogant with technology and try to use it to subdue faith, you are also in for a deep, deep hurting. I think if either side of the equation starts
trying to censor the other party without an extremely good reason, there is going to be immense danger still. It isn’t really a battle this technology and faith
concept. Indeed, faith gave birth to science, and science to technology. Trying to cut the root of the tree is a great way to get a lot of rotten fruit.

J’Accuse

I accuse you, Stripe, of picking and choosing what payment processing you will support knowing full well you have a stranglehold on the donation market and the subsequent API’s associated
with it. I don’t know what to make yet of Hacker News, but I will say there are a lot of smart people there than turn off their brains and become willing shills.
Are you really being paid that much by your robot overlords, Hacker News shills?

Meditation Book A La Carte

I have decided to release the e-versions of my book on meditation completely free. There is a catch, though. You gotta download it in torrent form! Why? Because
really, if we want a better internet, we should start just doing it ourselves. Torrents are peer to peer meaning you do not have the middle man of the server
acting like some sort of traffic cop between the person getting the file, and the person sending the file. There really is not a very good reason why most of
the internet cannot work this way at this point, other than people having become accustomed to centralization and therefore censorship.

Why, That’s Right Generous of You, JB

Yes, I know. I’ve given away paper copies of the book previously, but not now. Instead, I am going to give away the digital bits, and if you want a paper copy, you
are just gonna have to buy one. How are you going to do that? Well, download the torrent file and find out!

But Technology Makes Me Uncomfortable

Yeah, it pretty much has made the entire world uncomfortable. A real problem for meditation AND technology is an unwillingness for people to get out of their comfort zones.
If you want to grow, you will find yourself feeling somewhat uncomfortable. It is the nature of growth that it does not feel exceedingly good when it is happening.

How Do I Download a Torrent?

You need a client, and you will need this magical file. Does this mean you have to
trust me that I am not giving you a torrent laced with viruses? Yep, it sure does. But, here is a consolation for you. Microsoft has been doing that to you for years
and calling it the Windows Operating System and making you purchase it. So, worst case scenario you went for a self-improvement book and accidentally got a computer
virus. Best case scenario, I am not lying to you and you get the book for free and find some fabulous information you are not likely to find elsewhere.

But I Just Want to Give You Money For a Copy of the Book!

Bless you child. We once inhabited a world as simple as this, and then it got all messed up. You can go over here to find a link where you can purchase the paper
version of the book. I will likely place a link in the navigation on the website in the future for this.

Back When The CDC Did Not Suck

Back in the mid-nineties, the CDC was at its height. I remember seeing many of their materials scattered about amongst the web, but I particularly remember a
piece of software that allowed one total control over a Windows 95 machine–it was appropriately named Back Orifice.

What made them different, back then, was they were combining two things that no one had really thought to do before. They were combining hacking and politics in a
very unusual way. The glue that held most of the organization together were nonsense documents that were counter culture and mainly designed to offend pretty much
everyone and everything. These were “joke files” but not exactly. They would discuss the latest release and most often mock the value system that led to the
release being a necessity.

So I Got This Copy of the Book About Um

So I got this book written by Joseph Menn to read what happened to this motley group of people and I was particularly interested in what they had to say given the
backdrop of the political landscape in which it was released. The most interesting data it contained, in my opinion, was what a lot of these guys and gals
eventually became. Some of them were working with the Department of Defense. Some of them became politicians. Throughout, there seemed to be a lot of younger kids
with computers that had military families.

What The Group Did Well

What this book discusses rather well, in my opinion, is how this group was one of the first to alert everyone to the fact that Microsoft had a very insecure
operating system. They did this first by discussing it with those who worked at Microsoft, but when nothing was done they took matters into their own hands and began
to release these exploits into the wild. In other words, they were going to force Microsoft to content with the fact their operating system was weak by basically
putting the weakness into the hands of people who would exploit it. This is the essence of an arm’s race, and that’s more or less what happened. Microsoft still
did not fix the security holes. Rather, in many instances, they just released a new Windows that had some of the same problems if not exacerbation of the previous
ones.

What The Book Does Not Do Well

The subtitle of the book says “it is about how the hacking group might save the world”. I had hoped this was hyperbole, but after having read the book I am not
sure it is. Instead, this book acts as one part documentary one part “What is the latest liberal political angle”. It is a bit odd, for instance, to see a group
of people who were essentially anarchists become congressman. Indeed, there is nearly something quite disingenuous about it all–especially since we know the CDC
was arming both sides of the technological political divide–including within the country of China. The feeling is a bit along the lines of if you live long enough
you will see everything eventually contradict itself into absurdity. “We hate the man, but we are gonna become the man, after having worked with and for the man, man.”

Parties and Other Social Activities

It is also mentioned that these guys still get together socially and it is interesting that some of them can still do so after all the ins and outs they have
been through. A few of them have nervous breakdowns. Some of them leave the group and go predictably into security consulting. Some join companies of their own. However,
I guess what I am sorry to see is that in the mid-nineties these guys were about activism and a better world through open technology and information.

One Thing I Learned that I Didn’t Know

One thing that I did learn from the book was how involved certain members of the group were with China. I did not know that they had gotten so deeply involved with
attempting to penetrate the “Great Firewall”. Of course, reading this book now and what has happened with elections, technology, China, and the actual CDC, it is a little
like reading some sort of strange foreshadowing of the world we inhabit now. The only difference is that we are all older and in many cases a bit more jaded from
the onslaught of fake news, mortgages, medical bills, and the ideals that were originally clearly present.

Every Age…

Of course, it may simply be that every age has its idealists until they are ground up like burger meat against the capitalistic system and betrayal. Sooner or later,
ideals must confront selfishness and greed. What is the solution when these issues are faced? Do you try to beat um? Do you try to join um? I am not sure, but
reading this book made me think about it.

In Total

In total, I would say this book is a somewhat sappy tribute in a silicon valley sense. Some of the history is interesting, and surely some of the stories in it are
interesting. I just wish it had been a bit more objective and less trying to persuade me of the underlying politics. I know what I politically believe, and I knew
what I believed back in the 90’s too. The rallying points had to do with freedom of information, and an open exchange and a desire to subvert those who would do
otherwise. Wasn’t that good enough?

Long Correspondence with Stripe

To augment our income for our church, I decided I’d start selling some of my
used books through my website. Stripe is who we used as a church credit card
payment processor, so I figured they would work just as well for used books.
After giving them a lot of what I felt to be a bit intrusive information about
the nature of my business, I got the following email from them:

>"Hi JB,
>Thank you for getting started with Stripe. We’re reviewing the information
>you submitted to us and will follow up on your account status within a few
>business days. This means you can’t process payments yet, but you can test
>charges on your Dashboard as you ramp up for integration. We might be
>reaching out for additional information, so please lookout for an email from
>Stripe Support so that we can resolve your account review as soon as
>possible.
> We hope to get beitesheldonate.org up and running on Stripe soon.
>Thanks again,
> Stripe "

Okay. Sounds good–except I all ready have this site up and running for like
four years now.

The next email I received was this:

>"Hi JB,
>We're reaching out today to request some information about your business,
>Beit Eshel LLC (account ID: acct_1JXC1h2HH3zdbNzr), that we couldn't verify
>using your website and Stripe account details.
>
>It is important that Stripe knows what businesses are selling, in order to
>make sure that your business is supportable under our Restricted Businesses
>list.
>If we can’t verify this, we will eventually have to pause payouts to your
>bank account on .
>Action Required
>To ensure your business is supportable under our Terms of Service, please
>reply to this email with answers to the following questions:
>What products or services do you plan to sell through Stripe?
>We'd like to learn about your typical customers. Who is your target
>audience?
>Specifically, could you provide details around products/inventory, pricing,
>shipping details, and customer-vetting processes, if applicable?
>Once we hear back from you, we will review your information and get in touch
>again within 48 hours.
>If you have any questions, please let us know and we'll be happy to help.
>- The Stripe Team "

Very annoying, but perhaps giving them the benefit of the doubt I went ahead
and provided them this additional information although it is VERY APPARENT
as I have used books up that this is what this “business” is going to sell.

Here is my reply:

>"Dear Stripe,
>
>I am going to conclude this is an automated problem, as I have used Stripe for
>receiving funds for the Church I have on multiple occasions. The latest website
>I modified for use is books.jbschirtzingerstore.com which is a place to sell
>used books that I will use as a sort of gift shop to help support the church.
>So, here are the answers to these questions, which I regard as somewhat
>intrusive concerning all of this:
>1. Used books/donations as I have been doing for over three years now.
>2. People that want to buy used books.
>3. To buy used books, you don't really have to "customer vet". Either a person
>wants to buy the used book, or they don't. Used books tend to be cheap. You can
>see the first book I have listed as Team of Rivals which is a book about Abraham
>Lincoln which is selling for 4.50. Media shipping seems the logical choice."

I eventually get this email in reply:

>Hello,
>
>"Thanks for writing in. We’re reviewing the information you’ve provided, and we
>aim to be back in touch within 1-2 business days.
>
>In the meantime, if you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to
>reach out on this email thread and we’ll be happy to help.
>
>—The Stripe team"

What’s next in this rather annoying sequence with a payment processor I have
been using for four years?

THIS!

>"Hi JB,
> 
>We're writing to inform you that we have determined your business, Beit Eshel
>LLC (account ID: acct_1JXC1h2HH3zdbNzr), is in violation of the Stripe Services
>Agreement. Specifically, we are unable to accept payments for crowdfunding as
>mentioned on our Restricted Business List.
>
>We're applying a notice period of 5 days before taking action on your account.
>During this 5 day period, you can continue processing normally, but after this
>date, your account will be closed and you will no longer be able to accept
>payments. We will continue making payouts to your bank account until you receive
>all of your funds.
>
>Do you disagree with our decision?
>
>If you'd like to appeal your account closure, please reply to this email
>confirming one or more of the following:
> 
>All products or services that you're selling are in fact supportable
> 
>All products or services which violate our Restricted Businesses list are
>removed from your website Once we hear back from you, we will review your
>information and get in touch again within 48 hours. Please let us know if you
>have any questions.
>— The Stripe team"

Crowdfunding? What? Stripe is used in countless charities to take in donations.
That’s HOW IT BECAME a BUSINESS in part when I first started using them four
years ago. Needless to say, I disagreed with the decision:

>Again, I am going to assume this is some automated issue within stripe.
>
>First, I am assuming further you are defining crowdfunding as the following:
>
>Money and legal services: Financial and professional services
>
>Financial institutions, money transmitters and money services businesses, check
>cashing, wire transfers, money orders; currency exchanges or dealers; bill-pay
>services; crowdfunding; insurance; bail bonds; collections agencies; law firms
>collecting funds for any purpose other than to pay fees owed to the firm for
>services provided by the firm (e.g., firms cannot use Stripe to hold client
>funds, collection or settlement amounts, disputed funds, etc.)
>
>As per your own policy. We are not offering money or legal services to which
>this specific rule would apply. Rather, our church has a firm goal which is
>indicated on the site which it has not reached.
>Secondly, assuming that what you say is true, I am a little confused as to how
>Stripe is a business at all because well this:
>https://www.thrinacia.com/blog/post/stripe-and-crowdfunding#!
>
>So is Stripe no longer supporting all of those platforms and what exactly
>constitutes a "crowd"? I could, for instance, define a crowd as "people with
>large sums of money that want to use Stripe to process said money". How do you
>intend to stay in business if that is so?
>
>Clearly, this must be a mix up, so I will wait to hear back from you.

Finally I hear this back in return:

>Hi there,
>
>Thanks for your patience while we're completing the review on your account.
>
>I see you have an ongoing email thread with us in regard to the recent decision
>made on your account. To centralize communications, I’m going to merge this
>thread into that existing thread. I’ll notify the specialist working the
>existing thread of the urgency of the issue, and let them know that you’ve
>contacted us again. They’ll prioritize the case and get back to you as soon as
>they have any update.
>
>If you have any questions, please let us know.
>
>Best, Kelsey

Several other “cordial emails are exchanged” and I get this reply:

>Hi there,
>
>Thank you for keeping in touch. After reviewing your account and website with my
>team, I regret to inform you that we have closed your account and are unable to
>provide you service. We’re very sorry, but as previously stated, your business
>falls under our list of Restricted Businesses and Activities in our Services
>Agreement: https://stripe.com/terms
>
>We are required to follow strict guidelines on the types of businesses we can
>and can't support. We're unable to work with any business that we believe poses
>elevated financial risk, legal liability, or violates our own policies; in this
>case, after a thorough review of your account, we have determined that your
>business falls within these categories.
>
>These regulations are firm, and I’m afraid we don’t have flexibility with them.
>If you have any other questions or need further assistance, please let me know.

>Best, Kelsey

And hereee was my reply:

>I cannot say whether I agree or disagree with what you are here saying because I
>do not see a term which my "business" which I might point out to you is a
>non-profit church violates. Rather, without the context it seems like you are
>choosing a discriminatory path because you can always say what you have said
>without quoting the violation and what is a business or non profit supposed to
>do in reply? This is a little like arresting someone without informing them of
>their rights, which is a violation of due process.
>
>What I will point out to you is that you have provided me service for four
>years. What, exactly, is suddenly different? Well, I know one thing that is
>different is that Stripe is now a much larger company. Of course, that can
>always be changed. Tomorrow, you may find that your supporting partners in your
>business suddenly cannot do business with you as you have become a "restricted
>business" for unknown reasons.
>
>I do not intend to argue with you relentlessly over some nebulous policy that
>you have suddenly decided to enforce. What I can tell you, unequivocally, as
>that these are the End of Days and whatever it is you are here doing it is more
>consistent with a discriminatory policy of something like the Anti-Christ than
>anything actually just. Driving to work in the morning in your car carries
>potential legal liability. Your communication to me also carries legal liability
>which is something I think you might have overlooked.
>
>So, if this is the final decision, and you refuse to provide a firm rule or
>reason for this, I will go with the most logical conclusion which is that Stripe
>is discriminating against me funding my church and I will act on this truth in
>accordance with not only my full power, but the power granted to me also by
>Heaven and suggest that there is something of Judas in your organization. I am
>quite sure you will understand how that ended for everyone involved.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>JB Schirtzinger

Finally, I get this in reply:

>Hi there,
>
>Thanks for waiting while my team and I took another look into your account, I’ve
>got an update on this review.
>
>We do have to impose strict limits on the types of businesses we can and can't
>support. We're unable to work with any business that we believe poses elevated
>financial risk, or violates our own policies; in this case, after a thorough
>review of your account, we have determined that your business falls within these
>guidelines.
>
>That said, I can assure you that we have done a thorough review of your account,
>and we will be unable to reverse our decision. We are unable to provide any
>further details regarding the reason for your account's closure in order to
>protect our processes.
>
>We, personally, would love to have your business, but our hands are also tied by
>the legally binding policies. That said, we’ve been working to adjust these
>policies, but have not made any headway so far. If you want to read a bit more
>information about our stance, here is a great blog post:
>
>https://stripe.com/blog/why-some-businesses-arent-allowed
>
>I wish I could give you better news, but I'm afraid our hands are tied. Although
>we cannot support your business, I hope you find success with another payment
>processor! If you ever start a new business venture, you’re always welcome to
>reach out to us in the future! If you have any more questions, please feel free
>to reach out anytime. I’m always here to help.
>
>I wish you the very best in everything moving forward!
>
>Best, Kelsey

And my final interaction is this:

>"Very well. May the curse of Judas be your inheritance."

Why is this my final interaction? Because, over the past four years, I have done
much to try to keep this little church going. It has been heavily discriminated
against and this is the last of a long line of entities/people who have done so.
As a consequence, I closed my Stripe account and I am dissolving the LLC which
makes up the Church as a corporate entity. I am doing this because I feel this
church is being unfairly targeted. I am aware Stripe has a history of pulling
sponsorship out, but this, as I mentioned, is not the only incident that I have
had to field concerning this little church.

So, to all you bad people out there that want to try to tell people how to
worship, Congratulations, you won! The Church of Beit Eshel will be no more. Of
course, I am also sure you all remember what I said would be the case should
that occur and I am QUITE sure you remember the warnings I gave PREVIOUS to our
current state of affairs in the world.

Ministry is a calling and messengers are provided. If you do not heed the
warning, you cannot be too surprised by the outcome.

By the way, lest you think Kelsey was being super considerate above, she made sure to time several of her messages so that they arrived
at three and four AM to make it rather harder to reply. Sometimes timing can be a quasi-malicious act.

The Web BeforeTime

Back in the early days of the web, there was an effort to make online communities. They called them “dungeons” and since there were usually more than one person involved in the
server, they added multi-user on the front of it. Put together, you had a multiuser dungeon or a MUD. These dungeons hosted programmed content that created a virtual world. This
was rather like a primitive version of Second Life with no graphics. It was a world served via a protocol called telnet and you simply had to point your client at the appropriate
link to log on. One such MUD was called Lambda Moo.

The Event For Consideration

I was introduced to the Moo by someone who had previously used it at a university they had attended. The host for the Moo I poked about on was a purple crayon server which
I think was originally hosted somewhere at MIT. I came to the scene a bit later than the event that I will here examine although the event under consideration did overlap
with some of my earlier experiences of the web. This Moo that is Lambda Moo was not the Moo I inhabited, but it was within the community of Moos that existed like
an ecosystem before the web as we know it now. The date for this event is December 23, 1993.

The Infamous Date

This date is famous for a bad reason. This is probably one of the first recorded cases of internet hate speech/assault. You can read about the event in detail here.
The really short version of all this is that this Moo had something called a voodoo doll type of avatar, which allowed a user to be in the room but also not be in the room. It
also, with some modification, allowed a person to take over and control the avatars of other users. One of the users somewhat confusingly had a Haiti-voodoo name that was called
Legba. Therefore, we have a situation where the users and the reality and what was virtual became highly entangled. Yet, all the users after what is here described as “virtual rape”
appeared to suffer a sense of trauma as their avatars were forced to do sexual things to one another in text form.

Back In ‘93

So back in the early nineties, people apparently still had sensitivities to the virtual act of rape. Nowadays we would simply call this trolling. How did we get from the point
where we are back in the early nineties to where we are today, when this sort of interaction would probably hardly faze or surprise anyone? Were we more innocent then, or had
we simply figured that the internet was somehow inherently safer than reality? What is especially interesting about the event is the reaction. There are many case studies of
the ordeal. In the end, they discover it is some lone guy in NYU being egged on by what are probably his frat buddies. This sounds a lot like the plotline to “Porkies” or something,
so what was it that caused everyone to recoil so violently in 93 whereas in the world of today we probably would hardly blink?

Loss of Innocence?

My theory is that we have lost some innocence in the intervening time or else been desensitized to stories like this because they have become so common. We are awash in a world
at this point of a thousand sexual acts of questionable morality. So, when someone does something twice removed from reality, we are even less moved by it than we are if it
happens in reality. The female participants involved in the above ordeal seem to feel as though that the virtual rape was tantamount to actual rape. I am sure women who have
been physically raped would likely disagree, but that is not the point. The point is that in the early web, the feeling of having been raped was not really possible to distinguish
from actual rape at least in this case.

Other Meanings of Lambda

An interesting extra point to the discussion is that Lambda has a lot of connotations. One source has this to say on it:

Historians believe that the lambda symbol was adapted from the Phoenician alphabet called ‘lamed’ or ‘lamedh.’
Lamed/ lamedh is the twelfth letter in the Semitic abjad system – a type of prehistoric writing systems in which glyphs or crude drawings were used to signify different consonants. Lamed looked like a slightly tilted version of the Latin alphabet ‘L’ that we use in modern English. If you rotated it 90 degrees clockwise so that the two sides were pointing downwards and away from each other, the symbol would be congruent to lambda letter as used in an uppercase font.

The lamed sign was said to be inspired by a goad. A goad was a type of pastoral staff that was traditionally used for guiding livestock on the field (e.g. to round up cattle or prod oxen that were plowing the land).

However, other semioticians suggest that the lambda symbol in the Greek alphabet is derived from ‘Lam’ in Old Arabic. This is probably because lam bears close resemblance to an inverted ‘L’ and hence, by extension, the Phoenician lamed as well.
Quite interestingly, variations of the lambda symbol can be found in other ancient languages. For instance, in the Cyrillic alphabet, the eleventh letter El
(denoted by the symbol Л) is said to be derived from the Greek lambda. Moreover, the Roman letter L was also adapted from the lambda symbol.^1

They further distinguish that in the Greek alphabet Lambda is the eleventh letter before Mu. Moo?

Here are some other uses of Lambda from the same page as the above:

In modern physics, or even math and engineering for that matter, the lowercase lambda is officially recognized as the shorthand symbol for wavelength i.e. it corresponds to the shortest distance between two consecutive points on a wave that are in phase with each other.

It can also be used to signify the linear charge density. In nuclear studies, small lambda symbol refers to the radioactive or exponential decay constant, whereas, in microelectronics, lambda refers to the channel length modulation in MOSFETs (a type of transistor devices).

Lambda particle, sometimes also called lambda hyperon is a term used in particle physics. It corresponds to an uncharged particle having a mass equivalent to that of 2,183 electrons combined together.

The lambda symbol is also employed in statistics. It is one of the main parameters for calculating Poisson distribution, where it indicates the probability of the occurrence of a certain event in a given period of time.

Lowercase lambda letter is the symbol for latent heat in Chemistry.

You might be surprised to know that the lambda sign is also used in criminology. It shows the total number of times that an individual has committed an offense.

Since 1970, the lambda sign has been associated with the gay civil rights movement. Its use to denote the rights of the gay and lesbian community was first popularized by Tom Doerr, who chose lambda as the symbol for Gay Activists Alliance in New York.

You might come across people wearing the lambda symbol on pendants and charm bracelets to show solidarity with, or identify themselves as members of the LGBT community.

An interesting use case from Hebrew is that Lambda is most often associated with things that have to do with teaching and/or learning. So if we examine everything above, we could
say that the Moo community in question didn’t learn anything and have people re-offending as per all the different meanings of Lambda alone. What is the offense and what is the
time that must be served? Clearly, use of sexual energy and perhaps herds/groups of people. Is everyone going to keep repeating the same story till the cows come home?

Remember the Eiggghtiiiess?

Growing up in the eighties, most of the /images of Russia in my world were limited to submarines, hammers and sickles, and many, many spies. The word “comrade”
was meant to make you perk up your ears, and the word “revolution” when it came to Russia was about the same as referring to Nazi Germany. In other words,
we were mostly taught the USSR was over there, and was most often unfriendly. My family had a set of encyclopedias from the 1960’s which were not especially
helpful concerning what the USSR was up to. New countries had come and gone, and basically I learned that if you heard a Russia accent in James Bond films,
there was a good chance that person was “not a good guy”.

Russia Politics Back Then

So, I picked up Autopsy on an Empire with some hesitation in the sense that Russian politics are about as clear as mud to me from that time period. I knew
a whole lot of things went down in a very small amount of time. I remembered Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and a little bit of a shirtless Putin wrestling bears
or something, but that was about it. Part of my ignorance on the subject matter was, I think, because Russia had such a foreign system compared to the
US when I was growing up. The names sounded very different, and the institutions were radically different. It is hard for me, as an American, to truly
understand the dialog after say Tsar Nicolas II. Why? Cause commies, that’s why! America(tm).

I Did Not Understand Squat Back Then

Reading through Autopsy on an Empire gave me an appreciation for the tremendous pressure Gorbachev was under. He had to try to do something new and different
while also attempting to make sure not to alienate a base that wanted neither. He was trying to hold the center such that the entire country could roll
into a new kind of unity that it had not had previously. Some of the old would have to be carried over, and a lot of it would have to be chucked out the
window. At any given moment, it was difficult to tell what should be retained and what should be chucked. It is to Gorbachev’s credit that the entire
country did not erupt into a bloody massacre.

Political Pressures

In essence, Russia had outgrown communism, but it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be when it grew up into what it was becoming. What was apparent was that the Revolutionary economy
was not going to cut it anymore, and Empires were more of a liability than an asset. What caught my attention in this book was the tension between Gorbachev
and Yeltsin. Gorbachev had to be the “let’s sorta hold the old together” which allowed Yeltsin to be the “Screw it, rip it all up” guy. Though they were often
rivals, I am not sure things could have gone as they did without their two personalities being involved. Yeltsin could afford to be more radical BECAUSE
of Gorbachev. Gorbachev needed some foil like Yeltsin to show the regular party members what would happen if they didn’t figure things out. Interestingly,
and somewhat worryingly, Yeltsin was mostly trying to get Russia to unify as per a UN understanding of what unity among nation-states looked like under
that model.

In The End…

In the end of the book, Gorbachev isn’t being radical enough fast enough to keep up with Yeltsin, and so Yeltsin winds up taking the point and essentially
ousts Gorbachev as a relic of communism when in reality Gorbachev certainly did not care for communism. Gorbachev becomes little more than a reminder of the past
of Russia, although without him it is unlikely any other meaningful change could have occurred. Certainly, the Revolution would have been bloody yet again.

My Interpretation

I found the book a little hard to follow, but that was more because my mind drifted across Russian words that I did not fully know. I had to remind myself
what was being done and why. In about the middle of the book, it was like all that cleared up, and everything made sense in terms of the nation changes
that started to happen. Toward the end, Matlock gives you a “the rest of the story” about what happened after everything unified. Matlock, the author of the narrative,
was the US ambassador who wrote his impressions of the fall of the USSR.

Q Movement Links

I think it is likely that the Q movement referenced this book because the United States as at a not dissimilar point to the USSR in the sense that we have
to put up or shut up. Nations periodically change, and it is time for the United States to become more of what it should be and less of what it should not be.
As can be seen, free speech has been hushed up with regard to the movement, and now there is nearly a terrorism label if you question certain narrative lines.
None of those are inherently American values, regardless of whether in practice that has been the case in the past or not. Matlock keeps up the dialog with Reagan and
Bush Sr. with what is an American adversary and the result is that the whole thing implodes and changes. While I think there is an advantage in speaking to
an apparent adversary, like the USSR in the 80’s, I also think there are times and places where no discussion or diplomacy is applicable. I am not sure that the US
is not in a place where we are past the point of discussion. I’d like to think there is still the ability to have freedom of choice, but it is beginning to feel
more and more like the only freedom you can have is the freedom that is available at the tip of a sword.

Book Takeaway!

My feeling is that this book ought to be read by anyone who lived during the time periods wherein the USSR was a super power. It will give you a different
insight into what was happening during a time when the “Iron Curtain” was large and cold. It might also help you understand some of the stuff you lived through
without knowing it, and it might as well show you what can happen to any super power that cannot roll with the punches.