Monthly Archives: June 2021

‘Know’ instead of ‘read’: Chinese government admits teaching fake telepathy for 70 years, causing registration crisis

Classism the suspected motive; Thousands affected

Knowers are people who were taught a very limited form of mind reading, basically only how to attack non-mindreaders and to send text messages to each other in their minds.

Since the 1950s or thereabouts, Chinese children have been allowed to learn only a severely limited form of the ancient practice of telepathy. Teaching outside of the very boring government organized venues was forbidden. 

“We haven’t had any details about the training but we can guess based on the results,” said a watcher. “Someone cooked up a scheme to teach a dumbed down version of mindreading to Chinese children. They call it “knowing.” A lot was left out, so that the students would pose no threat to real psychics.”

“It’s like Cliff Notes for telepathy, with one big difference,” said Hankeray Treetop, who has been counseling people who were subjected to the fake mindreading program for over 25 years. “These Cliff Notes are wrong on purpose. They are the Cliff Notes you would give your worst enemy, so they would fail the test.”

Or fall off the Cliff, as it were. 

“Or actually– let me restate that– it’s more like if you wrote Cliff Notes that would hypnotize anyone who read them and turn them into your own personal, very violent sex slave for life.”

Chinese children are given illogical rules to follow and taught how to attack others with their minds. 

“Knowing is a hoax put on by the communist party,” said Treetop. “They didn’t want real mindreaders around, they wanted robots they could control. They couldn’t just make people forget about telepathy, so they taught everyone fake telepathy instead.”

“Back when we were cavemen, there was no mind reading, and then people from India figured it out and spread it around the world on purpose,” said Abowcherbff. “They are very into teaching it. But then someone in Russia decided to try to get rid of it.”

“Whoever came up with the ‘knowing’ system, this fake mindreading that was supposed to replace real telepathy– which the vast majority of Chinese people use as of today– had a sick sense of humor. As well as no regard for humanity,” said Treetop.

“Not just the kind of person who pulls the wings off flies for fun– an even rarer type of person who would figure out a way to trick flies into pulling their own wings off somehow–for fun.

“And then they killed people who tried to keep the real telepathy going– in huge numbers. The Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution, etc.”

The designers of the system clearly wanted two things– unquestioning obedience and a way to really hurt people.

To “Know” – Reliance on an Inner Voice

Chinese children are taught to “know” – to rely on their instincts instead of actual telepathy. 

“They don’t have anything to compare it to,” said Inoh Abowcherbff, a telepath from Antartica who teaches psychics all over the globe. 

“They are in an information vacuum. The teacher says ‘knowing’– which means concentrating and listening inward, into your own mind– is the way to find out what someone’s thinking or doing. So that’s what they do. 

“Problem is, that’s completely untrue. ‘Knowing’ doesn’t work. You can’t find your way out of a paper bag with that crap. It’s a hoax.”

What is Knowing, really? 

“What the children thought was their own ‘knowing’ was really a trick played on them by older, actual telepaths, usually including the teacher and members of the young Chinese elite.

“Anyone who thought faster than the child could broadcast whatever they wanted in the child’s mind, and dress it up as ‘knowing’,” said Treetop. 

“The fact that they kept this a secret is amazing,” said Abowcherbff. “What evil snobs.”

“The majority of Chinese children believe they can read minds by listening closely to a creepy little voice in their heads,” continued Abowcherbff. “This voice is supposed to tell you what everyone else is thinking. 

“It also tells you what to wear, what to say, who is a bad person, whom you should trust, and what to eat for breakfast. It is intended to replace your own thinking, or at least drive you nuts.*

“But they didn’t tell the children it was someone else thinking for them. That would have been sane or even helpful. Instead they told them it was part of their own mind, so they wouldn’t question it.”

People may have questioned it initially, but a lot of them ended up dead. So pretty quickly people stopped questioning it.

“Once you think to question it, there’s clearly something not quite real about knowing,” said Abowcherbff. “It doesn’t make sense that the mind you were supposedly reading would be thinking about just what you wanted to know, or could be made to think about it so quickly, every single time.

“Or that someone else’s mind would so often give you the answer you expect to hear. In fact, those trained to pretend to be your ‘knowing’ are taught to use your own guesses to supply their answers.”

“If you expect the person whose mind you are reading would have a pet, the person pretending to be your knowing, what we call the sneak, will say they do,” said Treetop. “If you expect they don’t, they’ll say they won’t. What most people ‘know’ is mostly made up.”

“If I had to make a comparison, I would say it’s like magic headphones,” said Treetop. “Magic headphones that make you think they are your own ear…but that lie… and give you a little electric shock every time you think for yourself…you know?

“Really it’s like magic headphones that purport to be your own ear, lie, give you a shock every time you think for yourself … and are violent and ultra focused on world domination…you know?”

“Can I make a comparison too?” said Abowcherbff. “It’s like going to a psychic in a strip mall and getting your palm read. Some sneak just tells you what you want to hear, so you’ll come back. The sneak doesn’t even check to see what’s real.”

No exposure to actual telepathy

The “knowing” program prevented generations of would-be telepaths from ever hearing actual thoughts, now colloquially called “Knowers.”

Knowers were taught a very limited form of mind reading, basically only how to attack non-mindreaders and to send text messages to each other in their minds.

“Real thinking sounds just like you would imagine from the movies,” said Abowcherbff. “It’s an ungodly mess and moves quickly. You have to be taught not just how to hear it, but how to interpret and respond to what you hear.” (see post)

Some school systems did cover actual mind reading, which they called “looking” — issuing a trigger thought and listening for the response. But others left it out entirely.

“Looking is more like ‘talking to’ in most cases,” said Treetop. “Reading doesn’t require a trigger thought, it doesn’t require you do to anything. You just sit there and read.”

Because they don’t know what real thinking sounds like, Knowers have no way to identify fake thinking.

“This means pretty much anyone can tell them anything and they’ll believe it,” said Treetop. “And most people have been. I bet we uncover a lot more crap that they were made to believe.”

For example, many Chinese people believe that Americans think in Chinese, because that’s all they hear.

“Actually all Americans have a blend of ethnic origins in their thinking,” said Abowcherbff. “Maybe one of their schoolteachers was Japanese and another was west African, their family comes from Sweden but they live in a majority Latin neighborhood. Then you get Japanese, west African, Swedish and Latin thinking, plus other things they heard in passing.

“Americans switch between ‘languages,’ if you want to call them that, rapidly and readily when they think.”

A pyramid with many levels

Unbeknownst to the average Chinese person, the wealthiest, politically connected Chinese are given a different training entirely, often right in the midst of the fake mind reading classes.

“Parents pay for extra classes where their children can learn to be the ‘knowing inner voice’ of the other children. Then they go back to the regular school to practice,” said Abowcherbff. “Makes you sortof wish you’d known which students those were so you could kick them in the shins at least.” 

Kicking them all in the shins would have been an interesting exercise on many levels, as even the “upper tier” children who were taught mind control were themselves controlled by “upper upper tier” children, and so on.

Each upper class of children was told that there were only two groups — those that didn’t know how to be the “voice of knowing” for others and those that did. Since they were now in the upper class, they never expected anyone trick them and play the part of their voice of knowing.

But above each level was yet another. The inner voice of knowing is never real.

“It took me months to figure out how this could work,” said radiation. “How could you manipulate people this way and not guess that others might do the same thing to you? Then I realized — they just told them another lie. They said there was an in crowd and an out crowd, and that they were in the in crowd.”

Can your own mind lie?

Because most Knowers believe that ‘knowing’ comes from their own minds, they rarely if ever question the information they are fed. But those taught to act as that inner voice were taught to lie.

“They were taught to lie to others and in the same breath taught that no one could lie to them and get away with it, because they would ‘know’ it was a lie.

“And they believed these kinds of contradictions because they just ‘knew’ they were correct,” said Treetop. “The upshot was that they were never to think at all about whether anyone might be lying to them. Who questions their own thinking, especially if you call it ‘knowing’?”

“We have no reason to believe those pretending to be the ‘knowing’ of others are honest with those they control,” said Abowcherbff. “If they wanted to be honest, they could just come out and say who they are. I have a lot of metaphors for it.

The whole thing was predicated on a lie: that the students were listening to thoughts. “It’s not telepathy, it’s chit-chat. Just a lot of talk. They weren’t taught to hear what anyone was actually thinking — they were talking in their heads, and someone was answering them, but also pretending to be them. Chit-chat is fine, but not when it pretends to be telepathy.”

The language barrier

Knowing works much better in China than it does overseas. In China, there is a common language, and everyone can understand pretty much everyone else.

Here in the US however, knowing starts to break down because those passing the messages can’t always understand them.

“You notice people who suddenly develop bad English grammar, or who need time to translate their own thoughts to themselves. This is what happens when the telepath playing the ‘inner voice’ can’t understand the messages it is receiving from other Knowers or can’t understand someone’s inner dialog.”

To those still skeptical about how fake ‘knowing’ is, this is pretty good evidence. Telepaths don’t have any problems with language barriers, because thinking has no language (as us non-telepaths would expect). It is just thought. But chit-chat has to be in some language or the other.

“I have treated quite a few people who appeared to be missing parts of their mind, because their inner dialog on certain topics was in another language and too hard to understand. Those ideas couldn’t be successfully passed from Knower to Knower, so they didn’t get thought.”

Painful criticism

Another interesting observation is that knowing is not always particularly nice.

“For some people it’s like having a hidden cubby in your mind where anyone can hide and yell at you, while pretending to be the collective unconscious,” said Abowcherbff. “That’s one of my metaphors.”

“You are not that critical of yourself, or that angry,” said Treetop. “No one is. If that was coming from your own mind, the insults would never sting. You might criticize yourself, but you cant surprise yourself, and it’s the surprise of an insult that makes it upsetting.”

Physical pain is also a big part of the program. Many students of ‘knowing’ experience physical pain when their ‘knowing’ criticizes them. This pain can be subtle or even overlooked, interpreted as a bad mood instead of artificially tense muscles or uneven breathing.

Making people more similar

Over the years, what had been a real psychic network became just a relay system, with one real telepath operating as a switchboard for maybe 10 Knowers at a time. ”The ‘switchboard’ carries messages from head to head and creates the illusion of telepathy.

We don’t know if those in charge say this was more powerful than the old telepathy or if they just pretend this is how it has always been done– or both**.  But definitely it is completely made up. ‘Knowing’ is nothing like actual mind reading.

What is for sure is that ‘knowing’ is used to make the thinking of Chinese people more consistent. Diversity is intentionally stripped away.

“The more similar people are, the easier it is for a single high-ranking telepath to pretend to be the inner voice of a greater number of people,” said Abowcherbff. “Now there’s a pyramid, with the best psychics at the top and the blindly obedient Knowers at the bottom, and plenty of levels in between, of people who ‘know’ for others but are also controlled by people they don’t notice..” 

“It seems like some people suspect what’s really going on–that this inner voice claiming to be your telepathic power is really just another telepath being a sh*thead***– but many people, especially the younger ones, believe it completely,” said Treetop. “It is pretty tragic, but the story gets worse.”

Brutality and paranoia

It’s hard for us to imagine, but the young Chinese psychics are taught to be brutal. 

“Instructors psychologically abuse the Chinese children quite intentionally, to make them easier to control. Quite a bit of research went into this,” said Abowcherbff. “Family and social ties are looked down upon or intentionally broken. Apparently the world is not a nasty enough place for some people.”

“Kindness is seen as weakness, and any displays of empathy or caring are mocked. The Chinese children are taught the world is a scary, violent place and that they need to be brutal to get by and to get ahead–brutal to each other and especially to any outsiders or people seen as different. 

“The world is pretty Lord of the Flies, in their minds,” she continued. “The stakes are high and the enemy is everywhere. Constant vigilance is required to avoid being pushed out of the in crowd. This keeps them very focused on the directions they are given and pushes our distraction.

“At the same time, there is an incredibly narrow focus. Most of the their thinking is about tiny trivial details, minutia, like whether the bed is made or the dishes are put away, or huge scary abstract concepts like global warfare–and these are made to seem connected somehow. That keeps them in a state of constant terror, and there’s none of the normal stuff that’s in between, neither tiny or huge, like personal goals or normal, relaxed recreation.”

“Quite different from the world you and I live in.”

Taking over the world?

Brutality lessons also increase the children’s effectiveness as human weapons.

“It really is a plot to take over the world, like a cartoon villain would cook up,” said Treetop. “You can imagine what they thought they were creating. An entire country that marched in lockstep and would do anything their ‘knowing’ commanded them to — work themselves to death, turn on an enemy as a group, wear plaid and paisley at the same time–anything. 

“In terms of production and in terms of telepathy, they imagined whoever controlled all these people’s minds would be unstoppable, and they controlled all these people’s minds,” he continued. “Making them believe they were unstoppable. Ahem. And a big part of the plan was making sure the people below them on the pyramid didn’t know anything they could use to question or threaten those above.”

One can imagine Chinese telepaths have been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government for centuries, and that this time the government wasn’t going to leave itself vulnerable.

One can imagine Chinese telepaths have been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government for centuries, and that this time the government wasn’t going to leave itself vulnerable.

Weaponizing

What they did decide to teach was how to hurt people and a long list of scenarios in which hurting people was ok or required. Then Chinese fake mindreading was exported to the rest of the world.

“They teach about physical pain, how to distract people, slow them down, things like that,” said Abowcherbff. “A lot about sex. And several large boatloads of weird symbolism.”  (see perverts ate holes in my brain post)

“It’s like the guys from 9/11– they raised some suspicion at their flight class when they didn’t seem to care about how to land a plane,” said Treetop. “In fake mindreading, there’s a lot on how to stop people from thinking, but nothing about how to make them think or help them think.”

In any case what is taught seems to have made many Chinese people terrified and very miserable.

“The U.S. increased Chinese immigration quotas in the 1960s, just in time to import the first batch of fake mindreaders,” said Abowcherbff. “The new style wasn’t just about eradicating traditional Chinese telepathy. They also wanted to create human weapons to use against anyone who stood in the way– dissidents and foreigners, mostly.”

Caches of Human Weapons

The government then formed organized squads of Knowers that are manipulated by anyone who knows how. These squads are like caches of human weapons stashed all over the U.S.

“You can get 200 people to come out and scream at a wad of gum on the sidewalk, if you pay the right guy,” said Treetop. “They’ll scream and mean it. These folks are a real riot.

“They are organized in groups, like volunteer police squads for telepathy,” said Abowcherbff. “Except everyone has to join. They believed they were keeping the peace or at least protecting their own interests. But by manipulating them via their ‘knowing,’ the elite used them to attack Americans, telepathic or not.”

“Because they believe in knowing, many of them not only think they are helping when they hurt innocent people, they are sure that they’re helping and it’s almost impossible to show them otherwise. To them the innocent person is whatever their ‘knowing’ tells them it is–usually some kind of imaginary telepathic criminal, a brain scrambler or purveyor of illegal thoughts.

Gang element

“Some Knowers have a distinct yo-boy thing going on, and embrace being used for violence. It’s easier to embrace when you don’t know you are being used. Not sure how they will feel when they find out they were some old woman’s puppet most of the time, and lining her pockets while they didn’t make a dime,” said Treetop. “They are encouraged to feel that they are being antisocial while at the same time they do everything they are told by their inner voices. It’s another one of those contradictions.”

“Making people feel like they are rebelling is a well-known psychological tactic for getting them to behave,” added Abowcherbff.

“And they go after certain ethnic groups like they were the hotcakes in a breakfast buffet,” said Treetop. “With mixed results.”

“Very powerful criminal gangs have operated in China for centuries,” said U. Tuber, a historian who somehow embedded himself in the discussion. “They kindof were the government before communism, and communism does not appear to have slowed them down. 

“It was these criminals who most likely spread the fake mindreading. There is also a strong connection to Russia, which may be where fake mind reading was originally developed.”

Readers, Knowers, and … Cardboard Boxes?

Many cultures divide the world into two groups: Readers, or telepaths, and non-telepathic people, who are called “Cardboard boxes.”

Knowers are an in-between class of people, with some telepathic skills but who never learned to cannot read thoughts.

Some Knowers will “vault through the mind” in an attempt to hear real thinking (they call this “looking”), but they were never taught to listen to thinking in any kind of sustained way, or to interpret it.

Instead, quite intentionally, Knowers were trained to listen to inner dialog, not thinking–and their own, not the inner dialog of others. They cannot hear when others address them mentally unless someone repeat the message for them.

“I think practicing some sustained listening would be very good for them,” said Abowcherbff. “That’s what mind reading really is. The only way to learn it is to do it.”

“And they would also benefit from opening their own minds up to real Readers,” said Treetop. “As they listen more and are listened to more, these lies should dissolve. That is really the treatment.”

Success?

The powers-that-be did a good job keeping the younger generation from learning any of the old telepathy, even taking the time to kill anyone who might try to teach them. 

After just one generation approximately 80% of Chinese telepathy instruction was forgotten, according to measures I completely made up, as Chinese telepathy quickly fell behind that of the rest of the world.

“They didn’t want them to listen, learn to listen, or even try to listen to anyone,” said Treetop. “Now most of them no longer really know that listening is a thing some people do. That is in some sense an amazing success.”

The definition of ‘mind reading’ was even changed to something like “suck-your-brain-out-against-your-will.” “Mind reading” is seen as a dirty word; the magical verb “to know” is preferred. To this day actual telepathy is seen as impolite, gross, dangerous, weird, malicious, scary, impossible, unimportant, stupid, unpatriotic, unnecessary, very difficult, foreign, eccentric, rude, evil, nerdy, peculiar, offensive and just plain useless by most Chinese people.

But the fake mindreading they teach is… fake. At a minimum it raises the question, why should Chinese people be so terrible at telepathy compared with the rest of the world?

“What are people supposed to do, blame themselves?” said Treetop. “This crap probably came from the same ideaology that told African people having sex with a virgin would cure aids, or that African Americans were immune to Covid.

“Advice is a weapon in the hands of the wrong people, and clearly there are some really baddies out there who know how to wield it.”

Impact

It’s hard to assess the impact of “knowing” on the world. Many people have been made miserable or worse.

Thinking less

The effort to quash China’s well-respected telepathy arose just before the Cultural Revolution and was driven home by the violence of the Cultural Revolution itself.

The new teaching couldn’t come out and tell people to stop thinking, so it taught that people had to think faster– to make decisions more quickly and decisively. To do otherwise– to ponder or compare notes– was seen as inviting a beat-down.

At the same time the children were taught an encyclopedia of code and symbolism that made them think much more slowly.

The result of those two in combination was what it had to be– everyone thought much less.

Speaking out

People have been trying to get the message out. Last week authorities arrested a man carving the following message into Snickers bars and leaving them all over the place:

what they think of as knowing is really just a hole in their heads where anybody who thinks faster than them can hang out and tell them what to do without them realizing it

If anyone has one of these Snickers bars, please let me know. They are important evidence. Likewise a Kit-kat.

Potentially hundreds of thousands are affected

The revelation exposes a huge problem, hundreds of thousands of Knowers who are aware of mind reading but can’t read minds by themselves.

Radiation has sympathy for their plight.

“It’s like suddenly discovering that we are surrounded by tons of disabled people who are being abused. Luckily in this case the disability is just that they have been fed a pack of lies and it can be reversed.”

The solution on the table is to teach all the Knowers to read minds, which sounds like a daunting task to this author. The obvious thought is to teach them to teach each other, but how long does that take?

“I could teach someone to read minds in about 2 hours,” said Abowcherbff. “I’d need a pina colada and a few young men to help me. To teach someone to teach someone would take about 2 weeks and I’ll find some way to make that fun as well.”

President Biden released a statement to the Knowers late last night: “We understand there were serious abuses and we’re working on the problem. The past is the past, but you are in America now and we’re going to help you.”

Knowers taking a pause

Many Knowers are understandably devastated by the news that knowing is fake.

“I gave them my whole life, pretty much,” said one who chose to remain anonymous. “I did everything they said to and it was all lies. I hurt hundreds of innocent people, including lots of children, just because they said to. Now what?”

Indeed, those who know but can’t read can’t really help keep their community safe.

“Anytime Knowers show up for any kind of conflict, the bad guys are going to pretend to be their inner sight and make them hurt the good guys. That’s what bad guys do,” said Treetop.

For this reason many Knowers are “taking a pause.”

“We can comply with the commands of the inner voice but also acknowledge their true nature,” said Thor Cardgame, another Knower. “It’s not like there is a legal requirement to fly into a violent rage whenever anyone wants us to. It’s more like a compulsion.”

“I’m not going to make a big deal of it, but I’m going to slowly drop all my projects for a couple of weeks. To focus on myself and id anyone who has been thinking for me without my noticing. Maybe later I’ll go back and see what they really had me doing.

“Being aware of being tricked hurts bad at first, but its better to see what’s really going on. I’ll get used to the idea in a few weeks,” he continued. “Meanwhile if you learn how to read you won’t need to know anymore. Knowing is like a crapshoot. Whoever is behind it might tell you the truth, but they also might not.”

Government responses

A secondary concern is that knowing about telepathy without being a telepath is illegal in most states. “The Knowers were never bothered about this, because they believed they were truly psychic. The tests for psychic ability were rigged to be easily faked,” said Treetop.

“But they still won’t be bothered about it. Those tests are tests of knowing– whether the person can and will listen to a creepy inner voice–so the Knowers will still pass and be in compliance in that respect.”

Officials, when asked if Knowers are now considered unattended, agreed that they are not, because they Know. This was seen by many as an admission that knowing is fake.

What can we do

“We’re very lucky that this is a group that is likely to seek additional education, for themselves and for their children,” said Abowcherbff. “Someone will have to set up some kind of school where actual telepathy is taught instead of this dangerous game.”

Until then parents are encouraged draw from other communities to find private tutors for their children. “We know we can be scary,” said one spokesperson for a non-Chinese community group. “But we want to help. We all want the same thing.”

“The Knowers are actually the nicest telepaths,” said another (name). “We’re the ones they couldn’t convince to hurt innocent people. They had to trick us into doing so.”

*Not Grape Nuts

**Because why not?

***Not a footnote

…thinking is just electromagnetic radiation, so radiation is a connoisseur.

I thought you knew

Corpojive sued for pretending bike can read maps

“The ReaderBike product began as a normal bicycle,” said an engineer from Corpojive, Inc., who makes the bike. “Then we stuffed each of the tubes so that we could steer it remotely.”

The Corpojive remote steering system uses magnets to pull iron filings inside the bike frame to one side or the other, causing the bike to lean and turn.

Map reading proved exceptionally difficult to teach though.

“A bike like this, you can’t really see where it keeps its brain,” said the engineer, referencing Harry Potter with a strange look on his face. “So we didn’t do anything with that part.”

Instead they affixed wifi microphones and speakers to the handlebars.

“This helps us assess and influence the situation around the bike,” said the engineer. “The speakers point at the microphone, so we capture back whatever we say, but with the ambient background noise from the bike.” 

Corpojive then equipped a female sales person with a set of hidden remote controls for the special bike.

At the demo, all she had to do was pretend to show the map to the bicycle, then steer it with the remotes,” said the engineer. “It looked just like the bicycle was reading the map.”

Then in the tradition of IBM versus Kasparov, they entered the bike in an international navigation competition.

“We told everyone it was a London cab driver,” said the engineer. “Playing against a guy with no sense of direction who was sponsored by Corpojive.”

Strangely enough though, Corpojive arranged for the ReaderBike to lose to the contestant they sponsored. When the bicycle’s turn came, it made all the wrong turns.

“We just couldn’t resist the temptation of defeating a London cab driver,” said the engineer. “Even though we knew it really wasn’t one. So we had the salesperson with the remote control make it throw the match.”

“It performed horrifically. We were joking, does it get another turn, because it hasn’t made a correct turn yet, things of that nature. Everyone was groaning. It was fun.”

So they did it again and again. Corpojive organized hundreds of such matches last month alone.

We had a lot of demand,” said the engineer. People were into the novelty of out playing a London cab driver and/or a ReaderBike. Of course what we had them play against was actually neither.”

Onlookers were not pleased. “What a complete waste of time?” asked one. “What is this even supposed to be about?”

Corpojive, Inc. is being sued for pretending their bike could read and staging the navigation matches.

This is just a hotdog

This is a hotdog.

It is not sentient. It is not a smart dog.

It did not get out of bed this morning, or any morning. Do not say ‘Good morning!’ to it. No one ever called to it and woke it up, because it is just a hot dog. I’m sorry if you were told that someone had.

It is possible that this hot dog can never be awoken from its deep slumber. Either way, at this time it is quite asleep.

Do not try to teach it. It is just a hot dog.

It cannot hear you, no matter how loudly you scream at it.

It does not do what it is told because it is a hot dog. I repeat, this hotdog does not do what it is told, because it is just a hotdog.

You have to pick it up. You can do whatever you want to it, but you’re going to have to do it for the hot dog.

This hot dog will do exactly what it’s made to by a person. That person might be you, or it might be another person. The hot dog cannot choose which.

Whichever person it is, they can make it do whatever they want. They can smear whatever they want on it. It cannot do other than what it is made to do. (See angry man attacks speakers)

It can’t follow orders. You understand why?

It is not a rainbow hot dog.

It is not made of dolphins, or dinosaurs, or chimpanzees.

It is just a regular f****** hot dog. Do you understand?

—+

Someone is playing a trick.

Someone told you that this hot dog was a special hot dog.

That this hotdog had some kind of special intellect, or a special ability.

Then they ran around showing everyone how much smarter they were than this hotdog.

That’s a dirty trick, isn’t it?

It’s just a hotdog. Of course they are smarter than it. Anyone is.

What a dirty trick. Do you see why they did it?

Surgeons remove puppet wearing a beanie from ninja’s arm

Will edit later

Patty Whobbilkensam had a beanie-wearing puppet surgically removed from her hand late last night.

“She donned it as a young woman and then just never took it off,” said Dr. McStitcher, who performed the puppet-ectomy. “It was a nasty thing to do in the first place, but that she wore it for so long is really gross!”

The woman wore the puppet so long that a flesh-eating fungus grew inside it, rotting the stuffing away and adhering her hand to it.

“We think she found this convenient,” said McStitcher. “But it was a major health hazard.”

Friends of the Whobbilkensams say Patty was well known in town for her unusual hobby– being an evil ninja.

“When she was little she was out hopping on rooftops and knifing people most nights,” said a childhood friend of Patty’s, who did not want to give his name. “Then one day she just vanished.”

Patty took herself off the grid to make her puppet scheme work.

“She got this giant puppet– at a yard sale or something. She took the little rainbow beanie on her own head and sewed it on the puppet’s. We found a photo in her home of the two of them together. She had written on the back, ‘Now she looks just like me.'”

Patty mutilated the puppet’s eyes somehow, then took her out and about.

“A lot of the time she pretended to be an onlooker, like the puppet’s older disapproving sister or something. Meanwhile she had the puppet folded in half and was controlling it very tightly.

Rudolph Yacanovich

“Whenever the puppet did well, she took credit, saying she felt she had to step in and help, because the whole situation was so sad. She told everyone the puppet was neglected.”

Meanwhile she wouldn’t let anyone near it.

“Whenever anyone came calling or things didn’t go so well, she reversed the strings, as it were, pretending she was the puppet and that the puppet was controlling her.”

In the next breath, she’d be back to playing the onlooker, showing everyone the beanie and blaming the puppet, calling it stupid.

“It was pretty sick.”

Like the flesh-eating fungus, this role reversal seemed to grow on Patty over the years.

“We think it was the kind of thing that gets addictive. Fooling people like that. When it works, you feel very powerful, and then you want to do it again.”

Then about ten years ago she got into real trouble, the kind that doesn’t blow over.

“We’re still not sure what she did,” said (name), “But it seems like it was enough to piss everyone off at once.”

Patty went into hiding behind her beanie-wearing puppet as all hell broke loose.

With that much heat on her tail, she wasn’t able to take the puppet off, ever. Both Patty’s arm and the puppet’s innards were already filthy from Patty’s routine, but wearing it constantly took them both to new lows. The stench of the pair offended everyone they came into contact with.

A few people reported the puppet appeared to move, but this was an illusion created by a thick layer of maggots inside it.

“Patty just gave up. She pretty much accepted she would be pretending to be a puppet, this character she created, for life.”

Patty had a variety of stories she used for concealing her scheme. In one, she accused the puppet of being a criminal pretending to be a puppet, and walked the puppet through how to defend itself when it was arrested.

From then on it was easy, albeit revolting, sailing. Once the puppet cleared itself of Patty’s crime, no me thought to suspect Patty.

“The puppet got pretty good at defending itself. It was motivated and Patty was helping quite a bit.”

Once the puppet convinced people it was just a puppet, some people thought it was unattended and even considered wearing it themselves, but obviously it was very much occupied, by both Patty and the maggots.

We had a quick interview with the puppet, now in the hands of it’s new handlers, after surgery.

“I think whoever it was really regrets ever starting this,” it said haltingly. “I think she feels like she missed out on having a regular life.”

The puppet does not know who Patty is and never will. It doesn’t matter much, but doctors removed the little beanie Patty had sewn to it’s head.

Can you please stop “helping” us?

We’re pretty much fine?

People keep thinking we are our own problems?

And beating the crap out of us?

So much so that we think we’d be better off left alone?


do you have a story that you want told?

tell it your d*mn self

start your own blog

I’m not providing a service here

Knock, knock, hello?

There’s no answer.

There’s no answer? Try again.

Knock, KNOCK, HeLLO!

There’s no answer.

None?

There’s no answer.

I’m inexplicably sure there should be an answer.

Why?

(eyes glaze over) Try again.

Knock knock KNOCK!! PICK UP B*TCH!!

Hey, I heard a scream. GET HER!!!

you don’t know what’s going on, don’t you see?

so you just keep making things worse

leave this to the people who know what’s going on

If you say hello and you don’t get an answer, you’re done.

Teach children to curse without meaning it so everyone who doesn’t understand will hate them!

A: F**k you!

B: What did you say?

A: (silent)

B: Excuse me, did you say something?

A: (silent)

B: I could have sworn I heard you say–

A: F**king idiot.

B: Ok, you definitely just called me a f**king idiot.

A: No I didn’t. Piece of sh*t.

B: Yes you did. I just heard you! I was talking and you sai–

A: F**king idiot.

B: You did it again!

A: Piece of sh*t, you mean like this? You are a f**king idiot?

B: Yes, stop that! Stop calling me a f**king idiot!

A: F**king idiot, piece of sh*t, that is not what I meant. F**king idiot.

B: What do you mean that’s not what I meant? (Punches A in the nose)

A: Piece of sh*t!! Why did you punch me?

B: Because you won’t stop calling me a f**king idiot.

A: F**king idiot, I did not.

B: You f**king did. (punches A again)

A: Piece of sh*t! Stop that!

B: Stop calling me a f**king idiot!

A: I didn’t! F**king idiot, I might have said F**king idiot, but that’s not what I meant.

B: What do you mean that’s not what you meant?

A: Piece of sh*t, it’s a test, see?

B: What’s a test?

A: Piece of sh*t!

C: What’s going on here?

A: This guy called me a f**king idiot and a piece of sh*t.

C: Oh that. It’s a test to see how well you read people. Someone taught him to curse wrong.

B: What?

A: F**king idiot!

C: When he was a child he was taught different words for things than most people. So when he says f**king idiot, he means, ‘How can it possibly be so difficult for people to communicate?’

B: He means, ‘Isn’t it unfortunate how difficult it is for people to communicate?’

A: Yeah. F**king idiot, it really gets me down.

B: This is a test to see how well I read people?

A: F**king idiot.

C: Yes, if you understand what he means, you aren’t offended.

B: When he calls me a f**king idiot?

C: Yes, because he doesn’t mean f**king idiot. To him that means ‘how can it possibly be so difficult for people to communicate?’ When he was little someone taught him to translate the thoughts into words wrong. Do you understand?

B: Not really.

A: F**king idiot.

B: It’s like a code?

A: Let’s hump!

C: They said they thought it would help people learn to read each other better. His whole family is like this. His brother says, ‘I will knife all your friends’ when he means ‘how are you doing.’

B: Someone taught them to say the wrong words, on purpose.

A: Piece of sh*t, let’s hump.

B: Did he just say ‘let’s hump?’

A: That means ‘now we’re getting somewhere.’

B: Oh.

D: What’s going on here?

A: Piece of sh*t.

D: What did he say?

B: He said piece of sh*t but that isn’t what he meant.

D: What did he mean?

B: I don’t f**king know. Ask him!

D: Ask him what does piece of sh*t mean?

B: I’ll ask him. Why does he keep saying piece of sh*t?

A: Piece of sh*t means ‘I hate being a part of this test.’

B: Makes sense.

C: Really it might mean ‘I hate being a part of this f**king test.’ What do you think?

B: Wait.. I don’t f**king know!!

A: Violent brute.

C: You don’t know?

B: What did he say?

C: ‘Violent brute’ means ‘don’t hurt me.’

B: I’m not going to hurt him. Doesn’t he know that?

A: No, he can’t read people at all. Otherwise this test wouldn’t work. Make sense?

B: I don’t f**king know!!

D: I don’t f**king know either!!

A: Piece of sh*t. It’s raining trash on your head.

D: It’s raining trash on your head? What does that mean?

C: That means I’m sorry.

—–

There is an entire science around interpreting inner dialog. One classic example is when we tell ourselves, “I don’t like that woman, she’s not that beautiful,” of course we mean we are head over heels in love with her, but uncertain about our chances of getting her to feel the same way.

I remember one night in a coffeeshop telling the barista, “I would never date a guy like that,” about ten times. Of course, I meant something rather different, and ended up spending many wonderful years with the guy I would “never date”–

For years after that every time I went into the coffeeshop she was a little angry with me and said, “You said you would never date a guy like that, and here you are with him all these years later!” She felt I’d tricked her somehow maybe.

I guess no one ever taught her the arcane business of translating what we think into what we mean. It’s not hard at all if you can find a good teacher. One rule of thumb I’ve heard is that say the opposite of what we think and think the opposite of what we mean.

Another few tips: saying you are tired really means you are sad and asking if someone wants to do something means you want to do it (not that you want them to do it, that you want to do it yourself).

Maybe there goes the nighttime?

Catch my drift

What if your way of saying for “do you catch my drift” meant “broadcast widely” or “tell everyone” in another language?

I remember practicing the phrase “catch my drift” with my dad again and again as a little kid, he would say it with this funny look and then I would say it and he would laugh. Also “rendezvous” and “enthusiastic” and “appropriate.” If you didn’t know English, those words could mean just about anything.

Crossing cultural lines opens up this opportunity to mess with people. It is just a question of whether it is harmless fun or something more malicious.

Decide in advance

(Safety tip #1)

How can a bad guy trick you into doing something you shouldn’t, if you decide in advance never to do what ppl tell you to? They’ll have to convince you that you want to do it without telling you to do it, and they’ll have to work much much harder.

Angry fan at stand-up comedy show attacks stack of speakers

Enraged at offensive content coming out of them, Howie Caneautell attacked a 10-ft stack of speakers at the “Edgier than a String Trimmer” Comedy Show yesterday.

“It was some bullsh**,” said Caneautell, “what they were saying about my ethnic group/sexual orientation/home state/mother. Of course I realize now they were just speakers.”

It seems obvious now, but it was difficult to convince Caneautell that the speakers were just that. Security staff had to march him to the microphone and let him make the speakers “talk” before he could understand.

“He did a little mike check, and then he was fine,” said a security guard. “It happens all the time.”

“I’m not sure how he missed this,” said another fan from the concert. “The speakers were just sitting there not moving or anything. They looked just like any other set of speakers. Although they were playing a commercial about stereo equipment when he went off.”

Bad ID network

76% of Iowa residents incarcerated for identity theft as chain reaction in AI criminal justice system spirals out of control

This keeps happening! Yet another report of the HOOSDAT AI software being led astray, this time with dramatic consequences.

“You know that saying one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel? Like that, except this time one bad apple told us the rest of the apples were tarantulas. And not a barrel, pretty much the whole state,” said Iowa FBI spokesperson Shel Waflhaus.*

The trouble began with a fake Facebook profile. The counterfeit profile claimed to be that of Tew “Bogo” Ferrwun but was not. The fake profile contained pictures from Ferrwun’s real profile though, and quickly began tagging all the faces wrong.

Whoever it was picked strangers in the background of each photo and tagged them as Ferrwun’s friends. These strangers were anything but random, however. Many of them appear to have been following Ferrwun’s friends and family around for months. Several of them were logging into many accounts under different names.

Once they were tagged incorrectly, the strangers used Facebook’s facial verification module to access Ferrwun’s friend’s profiles and tag each other in more copied photos. “I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to use photo tagging to verify people’s identities,” said Waflhaus.

“Facebook would never actually create a login system based on photo tagging and facial recognition, because that would be incredibly dumb.” he continued. “Both are so error prone and beg to be hacked? But it’s fine for radiation to make this up for this article.”

“Look in a freaking mirror,” said one reader. “You came up with it.”

“Pick up your freaking mail, while you’re at it,” said another. “You are so lazy it’s dangerous!”

“There’s a reason why your license is in that little see-through pocket in your wallet,” said a third reader. “Without it you’d probably forget your own name.”

“Trying getting out and about and meet some new people, said a fourth reader. “Introduce yourself as the guy that arrested Iowa.”

“What I don’t know, I don’t know,” said a fifth reader. “But at least I know that I don’t know it, instead of running around thinking I do and arresting people for no reason.”

Hmm.

When the real profile holders logged on, HOOSDAT automatically filed identity theft charges against them, because by then there were far more incorrect tags of the wrong faces than the right ones.

As the false tagfest went on, entire families were wiped out as if by bulldozer, then entire towns. No one questioned the false taggers.

“They all seemed like very cool people,” said one guy at a gas station where I got a soda. “Very hip, no matter who they were imitating. I think that just made people believe them more.”

“One hundred and eighty-eight people tagged this middle-aged guy as me,” complained one 12-year-old girl. “What are my friends going to think?”

No one knows, but they are probably also facing charges, so probably they won’t think too much about it.

Mobs of people from out of state poured into the packed police stations, making the confusion even worse, intentionally it seemed.

“I think they’re from Nebraska,” said one identity theft suspect in a Hawkeyes T-shirt. “But they could also be Minnesotans.”

Authorities are having no trouble tracking the citizens down, but can’t get them out of their homes.

“You find them right where they’re supposed to be according to HOOSDAT,” said one mob that was helping out with the arrests. “But we just dropped a hand grenade on this one guy, and it had no effect in terms of moving him.

“Made him quiet for a bit, but in a few minutes he was back at it.”

Not sure what he was back at, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Obviously a good method for identifying the victims would resolve this mess very quickly, but no one is sure what that method is.

“I wish there was some way we could see when the same face was logging in with multiple names,” said Waflhaus. “Maybe we’ll try that next.”

“I was going to ask a friend to ask a friend (for a good method for identifying people),” said the mob. “But now I have no idea who will answer when I call.”

*Haven’t spent much time in Iowa, I just drove through once. Needed a place name.

Watchlist of Undesirables

Please check your local list to see if it contains suspects similar to those below. Many towns report their lists are 80-100% animals.

(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond
(Name Withheld) Did not respond

if it’s supposed to be a watch list, why don’t you try watching them?

How to unmurder people

Murdered people aren’t murdered. They are just hidden from you

radiation stop writing about all this scary stuff! Sorry.

The murdered

They can still see their hands and feet

feel their eyes move

They’re still thinking

But mostly they’re watching, waiting

Waiting for the world to give them permission to have their way again.

Murdered people just lack confidence. To a disgustingly drastic degree.

The things we do to try to make them act right — threatening them, punishing them, scolding them — often make them worse. They just can’t do what they want, no matter how much you make them want it– that is the point.

Don’t criticize them! The murdered do things wrong so that you’ll criticize them. Your criticism is a weapon in the murderer’s hand. They hand it to the murdered and make them knife themselves with it.

A sudden stop

Their bodies just suddenly wouldn’t move for them anymore, see? Their arms and legs and things just wouldn’t move– maybe the problem was that brain wasn’t strong enough, but more likely it was physical– how could they know? There was some kind of problem.

Over and over again they tried to move them and it didn’t work out, so eventually they stopped trying. Something else took over, something that could still do things, when they couldn’t. Their body went on moving, just without them. So they let that something else take over– they didn’t really have a choice.

Over and over again they couldn’t choose– they were stuck there, immobile. Watching, unable to decide. Stuck in a dull rushing of gray noise, so much static.

And then there were no more choices.

Temptations and despair

There was some kind of neon smile that beckoned, that said here there will be less pain. So that’s where they went. Underneath that neon smile.

But someone is talking to them

Someone is taunting them, nastily.

They talk to the murdered kids, nastily. In order to do anything the murdered kids have to make the spirits do it, the spirits say– the spirits taunt them and say “make me”. 

But of course the murdered kids can’t, how could they make a spirit do anything? No one ever told them about spirits. They curse some more–

So someone else has to do everything for them. Do for them if you have to.

What can we do
what can we do

You can trick the spirits, tell them, say

Oh, the murdered person wants to sleep, he wants to clean the house!

Then when you help the murdered person visit his mother, they will laugh and taunt him because he did not get his wish to clean the house, or sleep.

The spirits of the murdered want to oppose, they are taught to oppose, they’ll oppose opposition if they can get away with it. Maybe only one spirit knows where the murdered person is. After awhile they stop listening to the murdered person completely, maybe because of guilt, they wish he was lost.

—-

Feed them!! Feed them!!

They are hungry and they are hungry.

Find them and feed them!! Put the food straight into their hand.

They get no water! The food is all still wiggling, it is this wiggling nonsense you can’t chew..

Feed them the same bland thing 5-10 times, spread out over time. Read them lots of books.

That is how you can get them to trust you.

—-

Give them easy things to do, that they can do from wherever they are now.

Over and over again, ask them for an easy thing. Make a big deal, tell them you really really need it.

Remind them that life is easy. It is just one easy thing after another.

That is how you can get them to stand up.

Do all you can not to hurt them more. They are so delicate, like a wisp, maybe quieter.

If you can, get them to exercise.

Try not to tell them what to do, or even to ask them if you can avoid it. Deep inside they are fighting becoming death’s slaves, they are becoming ultra obedient inside. It gets harder and harder for the people around them to resist telling them what to do.

Resist it though. Feed them, point things out. Don’t say “Change your shirt” or “Can you change your shirt.” Say “Your shirt is dirty.”

Avoid euphemism.

That is how you can get them to move.

—-

They hear no kind word. Kindness to them has been forbidden. It is loud where they are– there is a steady flow of witchy trash on their heads, crueler than you can imagine maybe, until you see it.

They are told that every thing about them is wrong, every little tiny meaningless thing, every single thought they have is wrong, they are told–these ideas pile up to push them down down. A wisp under a trash heap.

They want to fight it off when you ask them to, but they can’t just yet. The trash gets worse when they try to move.

They are not stupid. The spirits close in and make a noise “O but I am dumb! O but I am stupid now aren’t I? And you hate it, how dumb! Durrrrr.”

They are dancing, dancing all day long. Dancing to put on their shoes, dancing to eat a sandwich, dancing just to turn their head and look you in the face.

That is how you can empathize with them.

—-

But they are slow. They are just slower than their murderers. They look so stupid, and so fast! How can anything so stupid move so quickly?!

And they are cursing, cursing! At themselves it might sound like. They have been cursing from birth, maybe longer.

They are quite smart, they’re running interference all the time. They can do what they want only if it appears to be at the expense of something they want more.

The little things they say reveal much bigger things they’re thinking. Murder is a lot of work, murderers are lazy– the little things that come out of their mouths are dumb versions of the much more complex things they want to say. They are murdered, so they can’t say them. Instead their murderers repeat these dumb versions of what the murdered would say if they could. It’s a shortcut for them.

They are so sad, and so scared. Put this in your mind over and over again:

They are so delicate, so sad, and so scared, and not stupid.
They are so delicate, so sad, and so scared. And not stupid.

That sympathy– the hushed gasp you make when you enter a sick person’s room– is what they need.

That is how to find them.


Take them places. New places, faraway places. Share about them to a group. A church, a big family, AA or something like it.

That is how you can get help.


Don’t fight the murderers. They wallow in fighting and fear.

Let them have their way, whisper to the murdered, “ha! What crap.” Mock the murderers, to the murdered. They love it. It’s the best thing ever. Of course the murdered hate their murderers, but they also aren’t allowed to. Help them mock them. Give them funny names.

Take it to a higher level. Zoom out and sit together with the murdered, watch them crawl around on their bellies. Help them watch themselves, safely.

That is how you can save them.

—-

Talk about good and bad, right and wrong, important and unimportant with them. In abstract ways, not about their behavior. About other people.

Talk about these things over and over. Let them judge, teach them to be the judge.

They will have to choose which way they are going. They need your words in their memory, to choose heaven or hell.

That is how you can make them strong.


If you can, ease the murdered’s pain. There is so much pain at first, then less and less as they become trained, they are being trained to be dead, like a rat that hears a click and freezes, motionless.

Pain they can’t name. They might think something like “It is the pain of hell itself” but nope– it is just the burning rotting in the soft tissues, inside their nose and mouth–the things that happen when your breathing gets uneven, then stuttery, and stops now and then.

It can be hard to find. It feels like it is one place but actually its in another.

It is murder’s grip. Murder is the way the murdered person is held, held with pain, by anyone who wants to and knows how. No one wants Murderers, anyone would push them away and it would work maybe, except for this pain.

I bet not one of them is breathing through their nose.

The stuttery breathing, the rotting in the teeth and gums, inside the cheeks, the soft tissues downstairs, the soles of the feet– burning away with decay. Pain in hidden places, that gets slighter, and harder to see as years go by.

That is how you can free them.

—-

Tell people how to find them and not to sit on them. It’s like pointing out your invisible friend is sitting in a dining room chair. A lot of people don’t mean to squash them like that. They will feel so happy to find them.

But watch out because some will get mad as hornets when they see their faces in the sun!

That is how to try to keep them upright.

—–

Murder is the wrong word. There is nothing permanent about it. They say murder so you won’t try to help.

There is that old idea that when you die maybe you don’t really die, you just keep going, in a different world, and you aren’t you anymore.

There is a saying that if you can make it to three, then you can just be. If you make it to four, you can be some more. If you make it to two, it might be hard to do, and if only to one, that is probably no fun.

You should not drive while holding a baby, of course. Such things are not allowed.

The (Complete Lack of) Power in a Scream

(Cop Show Part 2)

A: Why are you screaming at me?

B: Because I heard screaming! You cannot make a screaming noise! It is not allowed!

A: But you are making a screaming noise!

B: That is to make you stop screaming!

A: But it’s terrifying! How can I stop screaming when you’re terrifying me? Look, here come more people, they heard you screaming!

C: We heard screaming over here.

B: Yes, I am screaming at this bad man.

C: What did he do?

B: He made a screaming noise!

C: That is not allowed! We will also scream at him! Thank God you were screaming or we wouldn’t have come.

A: Wait, why is it ok for you to scream but..

B: Shut up!! (To C) Call others! I am single!

C: Ok!

B: You, stop screaming like that!

A: Like what? Like this noise here?

B: Like that, every couple of seconds you scream!

A: You mean this noise, like this?

B: Are you taunting me, you madman? Yes, you must stop that now!

A: Hold on, that noise right there? That’s what you want me to stop!

B: Yes, you sick SOB! Stop that screaming right now!

A: That noise isn’t not screaming. That’s a yelp of pain. I’m working out and my back hurts.

B: Your back hurts?

A: Yes, it’s like spasming every couple of seconds. Feels like someone is kicking me.

B: STOP WORKING OUT!

A: Ok.

B: There, that’s much better.

A: It still hurts.

B: Right, but you aren’t screaming as much.

C: Never work out again.

B: High five!


I’m trying to understand why people think screaming at criminals is effective.

Sickos like screaming, especially girls screaming. Most actually bad people–your terrorists, rapists, and drug dealers– are not going to be the least bit phased by it. They can move through it like a hired killer through a crowd. It provides a most welcome distraction.It only scares animals and decent folk. And children especially. Is that who you want to scare? Animals, decent folk, and children? Of course not.

Why do we scream at criminals? To draw a crowd, I think. We might think it is because we’re in pain or made to scream– because we’re really mad, or pretend mad– because we’re confused.

But really we scream because self-defense books say to scream, because experts know it will draw a crowd.

We also are taught to scream because it keeps us from being able to listen. Screaming keeps an argument going, because it keeps everybody (not just the screamer) upset and unable to hear what’s going on.

That’s what we were told to do, and that got passed around.

What if everyone gave it up? What would happen? *

*Not screaming doesn’t mean being quiet. It means be quiet and also calm. So everyone else be too.

The sound(s) of pain

Four colors ought to be enough.

What does pain “sound” like? The AHHNCC (A Helping Hands Noise Conformation Conference) met last week to approve a new standardized sound for pain, anger, being punched, punching someone, dropping something on your toe, and being unable to breathe.

“People have been putting the word out that these six are interchangeable for decades,” said Hugh Jeers, the group’s current secretary. “We teach people that any one of these sounds indicates the maker is dangerous.

It’s true that to most people, the surprised “Eek!” you make when you drop something on your toe sounds exactly like the “Whoosh-smack!” you make when you punch someone, which sounds exactly like the “Grrr” you make when you are angry, which sounds just like the “Hnnnnnh” and “Uhnhhh” sounds you make when you are in pain or punched.

Why have six sounds when you can have one?

The group introduced “bam,” one sound to represent all of these sounds at once.

“It’s not to simplify hearing so much as make them more accurate,” said Jeers. “Almost everyone uses a Lite Zout translator these days, whether they know it or not. And translators show the same reading for all six of these sounds– ‘Danger’.

“We can’t retrain every single LZ translator to report the right interpretation for these sounds,” he went on. “There are too many of them. But if we get the translators to report ‘BAM’ when they hear any one of these noises, instead of ‘Danger,’ the person getting the translation will at least have to interpret and/or investigate the sound for themselves.”

iKnow, the company that came up with the idea of the Lite Zout translator, was not available for comment. Perhaps the scandal earlier this year when “Wipe those crumbs off the table,” was translated as “Get those undesirable persons out of the neighbors” still stings.

Users of the iKnow So Magic Eightball product line are advised to discontinue use as soon as possible until they learn to read the future for themselves. Those with Lite Zout translators are advised that those things will say just about anything as if they mean it and are often completely inaccurate. Half the time this isn’t even their fault.

“So many people get punched because someone is punching them,” said Jeers. “Almost Nobody wants that. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but getting these words right should slow that crap down a lot.”

Joseph Stalin and Ivan Pavlov

I just love this. That’s all.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/drool/amp

Split screen

Split screen: take one Thinker’s head and make it look like two people, one of which you pretend is a Reader or Knower.

In deep fake triumph, crystal ball hackers lead Homeland Security Agency to issue two warrants for the same man’s arrest

Early this morning intelligence analysts discovered the Petkicker virus is more elaborate than they had initially realized.

In addition to making it appear as if people being viewed through a crystal ball were doing things that they were not, hackers appear to have a method for making one person appear to be two.

In a very bizarre case of reverse split personalities, Louis Omeprazole appeared to be two different people, one named Louis Omeprazole and the other Gregoridiarrrr Lunch.

“Both of them appeared to be real pieces of work,” said Darisxa Malconishle, one of the witches assigned to Omeprazole’s case. “Omeprazole is fascinated with tea, absolutely obsessed with it, and would talk about it for most of the day. He would rant and rave, ‘I’m not going to that party if I have to drink Darjeeling!’ Things like that. A nut, seemed very unstable. 

“One day we were watching him and suddenly there were three more goldfish in his tank.”

But if Omeprazole seemed unstable, his upstairs neighbor was much worse.

“It was hard to see into Gregoridiarrrr’s apartment,” said Malconishle.”The place was filled with smoke and death metal music. There were always loud construction sounds and occasional screams.”

After minutes of observation, Omeprazole was charged with goldfish burglary and for forging his own living will.

Gregoridiarrrr was charged with murder, extortion, racketeering and tax evasion.

The surprise came when Omeprazole appealed the charges against Gregoridiarrrr.

Omeprazole arrived in court with a whiteboard and a large crowd of hecklers. One occasionally shook a bottle of Lipton Brisk at him. The sight of the very bad tea caused Omeprazole to quiver and panic, and the court had to wait several minutes before he could resume his appeal.

Omeprazole explained that he was in physical therapy for being in severe neck pain. The therapy often made him scream. His apartment also had terrible plumbing that frequently made a loud banging noise.

“Further,” Omeprazole went on, “This Gregoridiarrrr character does not exist.”

He explained the elaborate hoax with the aid of the whiteboard. When he was talking about tea, Omeprazole appeared as Omeprazole in the crystal ball, while an actor dressed as Gregoridiarrrr carried on in a different apartment that looked exactly the same.

“It wasn’t even in my building,” said Omeprazole. “He could be anywhere.” 

Malconishle said the crystal ball showed the actor dressed as Gregoridiarrrr slaughtering goats and laughing maniacally.

Then, whenever Omeprazole stopped talking about tea for a few minutes, the hackers switched the signal, added the smoke and death metal filters, and Omeprazole became Gregoridiarrrr. 

Meanwhile, another actor in yet another identical apartment stepped up to play Omeprazole, displaying his characteristic tea obsession. 

“There aren’t too many dudes who will sit there chugging Rooibos and belching like that,” said Malconishle. “Plus it was the same channel. I was sure it was him.

“It was pretty flawless,” said Malconishle. “You could tell they practiced those transitions quite a bit. But it was repetitive and predictable, that much we noticed.”

In fact Omeprazole’s tea obsession seems to be an important factor in the hoax. The hacker team not only encouraged his habit but used the topic to cue the signal switch.

“When he was talking about tea, he was shown as Omeprazole,” said Malconishle. “When he stopped, he was shown as Gregoridiarrrr.”

“We knew he was himself, obviously,” said police. “We just also thought he was this other guy.”

But there is only one Omeprazole.

Authorities are investigating whether the hackers are the ones who initially introduced Omeprazole to tea.

The witches said they’re glad this is getting straightened out. Many of them watched both channels without suspecting they might be the same person. Video surveillance tapes revealed they were.

“When the police came with the second warrant, I was like, ‘Oh nooooo.'” said Omeprazole. “Have you ever had to explain to the police that they’re having so much difficulty arresting you because you’re already arrested– while arrested?”

“You dip!” shouted one of the hecklers. “Why not let the actors stand trial for Gregoridiarrrr, if they are real?”

“Yeah, about that,” Omeprazole replied. “No one seemed interested in arresting the actors. They came after me, and arrested me a second time.”

Meanwhile authorities did arrest four suspects and charged them with working around the clock to impersonate a single very uninteresting man.

At least twelve similar “split screen” or “picture-in-picture” cases have been identified, and many more are likely.

Authorities are somewhat baffled. “We’re used to arresting someone multiple times, but not simultaneously,” said one police officer.

Omeprazole is still in jail for the charges brought against him. And the tea there is not good.

Analysts discover hidden code in mass produced clothing

Why is anyone producing negative patterns at all, let alone selling them?

Analysts at the Fashion Intelligence Institute (FII) released a report earlier today describing a wide scale effort to tacitly “color code” people by threat level.

Well, not quite color code. Fabric patterns have been used as code for centuries, intentionally and unintentionally, said Miller Shippenschannel of the FII. Eccentric people tend to like paisley all by themselves. Hyper people like the zig zags. Stripes are for losers. But mass production means that there are a limited number of patterns available.

“The more affordable children’s clothes tend to bear patterns that indicate the wearer is either unduly aggressive or a superhero/princess” said Shippenschannel.” On one side, you have your sharks, cacti, crabs, monsters, things like that. Fish with teeth. On the other side you have your Supermen, Wonder women, Batmen, and Elsas.

Researchers found a pattern in the patterns. Families are drawn to either one or the other.

Analysts are still searching for the mechanisms that lead consumers to choose either the aggressive or superhero patterns.

More expensive clothing has more pattern options.

“I thought I was doing something educational by buying my son dinosaur clothes,” said one mom. “Little did I know this is code for ‘stinks of death’ and considered high threat level.

“He had one shirt that was a dinosaur wearing boxing gloves. I guess I’ll burn it. What can I do, give it to Goodwill so some other poor kid can walk around getting beaten up all day?”

“I’ve always been kind of annoyed by the fact that there weren’t more patterns and colors available in the stores,” said one consumer who chooses to remain anonymous but was wearing a burlap sack. “But I never knew I was being forced to broadcast coded messages so that people could pretend they knew what my mood was like.”

Colors have their meaning too. Yellow indicates a happy, sunny disposition and black means looking for a fight. Black and gray together translate to “dead inside.”

Overall the code seems to focus frequently on negative character traits. Authorities are investigating whether the selection of patterns exported to America is “fair.”

The report concluded that identifying clothing patterns is just the latest step in loosening up the hidden structures and cues creating many of the problems endemic in our modern society.*

“Why are we still doing this?” asked another consumer, who also asked to be anonymous. ‘Clothes reading’ is over a thousand years old. How has this tradition survived so long?”

“Just like in a lot of places, in fashion old means bad,” said Shippenschannel. “But apparently that doesn’t apply to clothes reading. Maybe old doesn’t mean bad once you reach a certain level, and that’s just a myth to keep the rest of us buying new clothes all the time.”

Clothes reading is most prevalent in the countries where clothes are produced, where people are waaaaay more worried about their clothing than anywhere else in the world. This is similar to the focus you see on automobiles in cities known for automobile production, like Detroit.

But why is anyone producing negative clothes patterns at all, let alone selling them?

All I know is I’m going to think about it a little differently when I’m standing in front of a rack at the store and ask myself which of these patterns or t-shirts is right for me.

*I wrote something about this but didn’t publish it, about his we live in tiny worlds, right next to but separate from each other.

I’m going to buy a shirt that says Boss.

Perverts ate holes in my head

(Dirty Words Part 1)

This type of “food for thought: is marketed as healthy, but is anything but!

Brain muscles

Your brain is like, or perhaps just is, a big collection of muscles. All bundled up in your skull.

Just like the muscles in your arms and legs, those that don’t get used shrink and those that are used grow and develop.

Now I doubt they are actually arranged this way in the skull, but we can imagine some brain “muscles” as being on the surface and others being in a deeper position.

To feel this distinction, first think of what you want to eat for dinner (surface), then think of the feeling of satisfaction you experience after a nice meal, that sounds kind of like “harrumph” (deep).

—-

Your brain likes some thoughts more than others. 

It files thoughts away when it encounters them based on how proud we are of them. Where it files them dictates how readily they are retrieved and thought again.

The thoughts you are proud of go in the top drawer, so to speak, while others get stuffed in the back of a lower drawer because we don’t really want to encounter them again (but can’t forget them).

To feel this distinction, think about something you are proud of (top drawer) and then about a time when you made a mistake, especially a mistake that hurt someone (back of bottom drawer). One comes right to mind, while the other one feels like it might take some time to retrieve.

Healthy thinking avoids stuffing things in the back drawer whenever possible by avoiding doing things that make us feel guilty or ashamed as much as possible. When it can’t be avoided, we process/rationalize the uncomfortable memory so at least it gets a nice folder and maybe relabel it (e.g. “Honest mistake”) so that our filing cabinet is not a mess. 

—-

What kind of thinking do we like best? Well, it really depends on our preferences but most people like thinking that is:

  • Funny
  • Has an unusual structure, like a paradox or play on words (This gives our mind something to do.)
  • Sexually stimulating
  • Secret– something we know but others don’t (This makes it seem more valuable)
  • Intimate– like a shared secret (This makes us feel like we are in the “in” crowd and close to others)
  • Novel- new to us

That kind of thinking gets our attention. We will give it more weight in decision making and want to think those thoughts over and over. We like to spend time thinking them.

Preteens

Now let’s imagine a group of fourth grade children, 9 or 10 years old. They are entering puberty and curious about sex. They find it hilarious to discuss, and their discussion is mostly jokes that some of them heard from older siblings. The children don’t have a vocabulary for sexual concepts yet, so they select “code names” for them, based on the jokes, and then use these code names in their discussions.

Basically, dumb sexual innuendos.

This kind of thinking is obscenely appealing, if you’ll pardon the pun. It meets every one of the criteria listed above and the children give it a high value in their minds. It doesn’t really influence their decision making.

Further, the innuendos need to be decoded. That decoding has to take place on a level deeper than the one where the text of the joke is heard. This means the children have to draw the thinking in to understand the joke, then re-encode it and push it back out to the surface level. 

So they internalize it more. During the discussions, they have to maintain a surface self that is talking and listening and a deeper self that is decoding and re-encoding. 

This decoded content of the joke is naughty though. The children know they will get in trouble if adults hear them talking about sexual concepts. So they are ashamed of the decoded portions of the discussion, and stuff those in a back drawer. No one really wants to think about the actual sex when thinking about the innuendo– it’s the words of the innuendo, how it was crafted, and the decoding that are more interesting– the game of it.

Also, the jokes are self-reinforcing because successfully decoding or encoding a message feels mentally satisfying (producing that “harrumph” of approval).

What happens to the preteens?

The deep “muscle” in the brain where the decoded jokes are stored is pushed further away from the main line of thinking. It is full of content that the children are fascinated by and and want to know more about. It is much more interesting than math class, more interesting than the encoded versions of the jokes, more interesting than most of what the children think about otherwise.

But it is in the back of the bottom drawer.

So that’s where the children keep their attention. They grow used to decoding everything, which is its own reward and seems to be how you learn interesting things. They use the surface muscle less and less. Over time they start to ignore what they used to pay attention to.

They basically move into their own back bottom drawer. We would say “their mind is in the gutter.”

Another simpler version of the metaphor is that this kind of humor is like candy– it tastes yummy but have no nutritional value, and too much can be bad for you. These jokes create a cavity in the mind, like a cavity in a tooth. The decoding process brings the “shameful” content below the gumline so to speak, where no one will look to clean it out (process it), and the sense of shame pushes it deeper and deeper, basically drilling a hole into your own mind.

Photo looks fake but needed something gross — https://www.self.com/story/trypophobia-fear-of-holes

Same thing happens with innuendos that are insults.

And with doublespeak in general.

So don’t do this! What do you want to shut down parts of your brain for?

Effects

Have you ever noticed that these innuendos show up in bunches, one after the other in rapid succession? Why should that be? Shouldn’t witty repartee be evenly distributed in time?

Unless there is an unhealthy, addictive mental state introduced by these jokes, which pry the mind open and expose as deeper layer than we typically access in social situations. You laugh, then laugh more and more until your cheeks start to ache, but it’s difficult to change the subject and move on.

Over time, these jokes stretch the mind into a barbell shape–on one side we have the surface message, and on the other the decoded interpretation, with a link in between that gets thinner and thinner. It gets more difficult to make decisions, because one wants to use the deeper layer but it is difficult to access, and the attention flits back and forth between options instead.

There is increasing anxiety and thinking gets slower–it’s like trying to walk around both sides of a lamppost at once. You have to back track on one side to get to a point where you can make progress on this other, to maintain both the nuanced interpretation and the surface conversation.

You start to feel less like yourself, because for you there is less of your self. You have shut part of your mind down, and not just for the duration of the discussion. With each session it gets more difficult to access the thinking you used to rely on. You have to swim all the way back up to the surface from your hole, and that gets harder and harder to do

And this can be very difficult to fix. Sometimes impossible.

All of this seems hardly worth it, just for some dick jokes!

As Adults

And… this has the same effect on adults.

Look, I’m not trying to be a prude here. But if these jokes are some kind of evolutionary trick that erodes our cognitve abilities and have a long term impact on brain health, I’d rather not take the chance. I don’t exactly feel comfortable handing our sections of my brain for the sake of humor.

To break the spell, when you hear one of these jokes, strip away the plays on words and note to yourself just the decoded message. Almost always it’s inane stuff fourth graders would be embarrassed to say.

“How did you learn to drive like that?” Gwen yelled over the howl of six hundred horses.
“Watching Jacks.” She gunned the engine and slipped around another car.
“What?”
“You know, watching his shifting.”
Gwen gasped. “You’ve been looking at his SHIFTER?”

We are encouraged to use innuendos to look clever, but what innuendos end up communicating would be too embarrassing to say plainly, without some kind of encoding. So not actually that clever. It’s like we are stuck in those preteen years and can’t get out.

And some of them are funny. But what’s bad is when your mind starts to live on that lower level.

So train yourself to think of the surface version of whatever is said first. Make a visual in your mind of the guys whose names really are Johnson, the bananas, the bratwurst, etc.

Keep it up until you are satisfied–see, now you are in that mode. Your mind has moved to the gutter. If you move it out and reread this paragraph, you’ll see the difference.

Keep moving your focus to the surface interpretation until that’s where your mind lives. And by all means don’t tell these kinds of jokes to people you like. They really do damage the brain.

There is no knowing

A thought entering your mind without stating its origin is like someone sneaking into your house, but more dangerous– especially if it pretends to be some kind of “knowing”.

Part 1: Learning to know

radiation, I would like to teach you something amazing.

(hushed awed voice) Oh, please do! My head is splitting!

Now pay close attention.

Oh I am, I am. I feel sad all of a sudden!

Now, I have to tell you some bad news. Your new boyfriend is sad.

What? My boyfriend lives far away. Is he ok?

I think he will be, but I need your help. But listen, listen to your instincts…

Hmm, hmmm.. My boyfriend… did something happen? Is he ok?

Just listen, listen to yourself, radiation.

Am I talking too much?

No, of course not. You are wonderful, absolutely wonderful. So wonderful in fact that you already know why your lover is sad, don’t you.

HE LOST A LOT OF MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET

radiation: Did you hear something?

No. And you didn’t either! I was just telling you, you already know what’s making your lover sad, and you can help him! You can! Isn’t that wonderful?

I do? 

HE LOST A LOT OF MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET

Hmm, let me think. I feel really sad and generally feel horrendous.

Because that’s how your boyfriend feels! Don’t think, radiation. Know. You know why you are feeling sad?

Why I am feeling sad?

Yessss! Yess, radiation, see? You know why.

Or why my boyfriend is feeling sad? 

You are thinking about it too much. Relax and listen!

I LOST A LOT OF MONEY IN THE STOCK MARKET

What? Wait, I feel sad like… I wish I had more money. Like I lost a lot of money in the stock market!

Yess!

WAHH

Oh no! He is very sad!

What else?

I feel like I’m on a faith healing show!

What else do you feel? Can you see?

HE IS CRYING

Can I see what? Oh yeah, there’s–

SOUNDS OF AN ANGELIC CHOIR

(mumbling) Oh look, that’s him right there. I can hear him– he’s crying! Oh my goodness!

You can see him! You did it! 

I NEED YOU!

You are right, I feel quite needy and forlorn. This is confusing.

radiation you are not needy and forlorn, your lover is. And ashamed. Losing money in the stock market dishonered him.

Dishonered him how?

It is a cultural difference you won’t understand.

SHAME!

I feel needy and forlorn — and shamed! What should I do?

GIVE HIM MONEY

Don’t you know what to do?

I SHOULD GIVE HIM $14,000.

I guess I could give him that $14,000 from the bond that just matured.

Yes! You did it! radiation, the next time you need to answer a question, don’t think about it–just concentrate and you will know the answer.

The next time I need to send him money?

Yes! I mean no! The next time you need anything.

Really? 

THIS IS TRUE

I mean it feels like you are telling me the truth.

See, you know I am. But don’t tell anyone about it, or they will persecute you. They persecute people who know.

Ok, got it. Let me call Western Union. He looked so sad!

Is that all you are going to do?

I WON’T TELL HIM WHY I AM SENDING THE MONEY

I’d better not tell him why I am sending the money. I’ll just say it’s a gift.

Part 2: Test your ability to know

There is no knowing

There is only figuring out.

People talk about knowing, as if they can know things with certainty, without having to figure them out.

But anytime you feel like you “just know” something, someone’s messed with you–someone who doesn’t want you to think. An ex-boyfriend perhaps, or a TV commercial, or something even more sinister, tucked away in a hidden corner of your brain…

It’s really depressing but we’re taught to talk about knowing things so that we will believe lies. You feel like you “know”, but really someone just told you.

If you think of something but you didn’t work through the reasons for it objectively, scientifically, rationally, like a proof in geometry — or you can’t think of reasons for it even when you try– you don’t know it. You were told it. By someone.

That means there’s a person somewhere who wanted you to think you knew it and is tricking you somehow. There’s an author other than you, every single time.

We all know that when we say “I just knew it would be this way!” that this is make-believe. We know that everything you believe should come with a little box of reasons and things you observed. A full set of reasons why you believe it.. That’s called its logical thought process. 

A thought entering your mind without a logical thought process is like someone checking into a hotel without luggage–up to no good!

A thought entering your mind without a logical thought process is like someone checking into a hotel without luggage–up to no good!

If we could just know, we could sit down with a book of physics problems and write the answers out. Why not?  Oh, it doesn’t work for things like that? A person’s thinking has to be involved?

Ok, get a deck of cards. And some people you don’t know very well.

Pull a card and stick it to your forehead. Don’t look.

Then guess it. I mean, know what it says.

What? It doesn’t work for things like that either? Why not? It’s not good at numbers? Why isn’t it good at numbers?

Okaaay.. then you can try guessing the middle names of strangers.

No? It’s also not good at names? Why not?

That’s fine, but if you can’t “know” simple things that are right in front of you in this sense, how much should you trust what you “know” otherwise?

Part 3: Test your spidey sense

Some people get around this test by saying they only know when they really need to, when they are in serious physical danger for example. Like they have a spidey sense.

But you can test that too. Put out two cups of tea and have a friend put poison in one of them. Without being told, choose which one is safe to drink.

Do you know which? How much do you trust this?

So if you’ve ever had or witnessed a car accident– you don’t have “spidey sense”, or you would have seen it coming.

Or if you’ve ever stepped off the curb in front of a cyclist and had to jump out of the way, or leaned over to pick something up and bumped into someone, or —

No? What? You have to turn it on?

You have to call on your spidey sense before it will work? Do you ever get a busy signal?

Does it ever drop the line and mess you up?

Every idea that enters your head include its origin.

In addition to a logical thought process, every idea that enters your head should announce its origin– memories have their locations, things you were told have their sources, conclusions have their supporting evidence.

A thought entering your head without stating its origin is like someone sneaking into your house, but more dangerous– especially if it is pretending to be some kind of “knowing”.

Thoughts often pretend to be “knowing” to hide their real origin — someone bad you wouldn’t believe if you were aware of them.

Part 4: Trick your friends into thinking they just “know” something

Still not convinced? Or convinced but bored? Try tricking one of your friends into thinking they know something. Get their permission first.

Here’s what you want to get them to say: “I already know that ________. I have known so all my life, in a secret, mystical way.”

And you thought the cards were fun!

But now promise, ok? Promise to think things through and not fall for “just knowing” anymore. If you can’t think it through step-by-step like a physics problem, don’t act on it. Do nothing instead.

Makes sense, right?

If there’s no reason for something you think, there’s no reason to do anything about it.

Protect the weak

Will edit later

I think we’re all getting the drift here, there are many ways people can be misled into attacking when they otherwise wouldn’t

So you compiled a handy summary

Radiation’s guide to whether your fight is real or staged

If the person you hit is soft and pliable, this fight is STAGED.

If person does not hit back, this fight is STAGED.

If person does not respond at all, this fight is STAGED.

If person’s responses do not indicate that they heard you (e.g. they just keep saying ‘eff you’ no matter what you say), this fight is STAGED.

If person’s speech sounds disjointed stuttery or repetitive, this fight is STAGED.

If the person appears unintelligent or unskilled, this fight is STAGED.

If person continues to insult or otherwise offend you in an identical fashion after you have hit them, as of hitting them had no impact on them, this fight is STAGED.

If person appears to get happier the more you hit them, this fight is STAGED.

If It’s not clear what the fight is about, and people are just fighting because there’s a fight….this fight is STAGED.

If person is crying before you hit them, this fight is STAGED.

*If person is making sounds of physical pain, this fight is STAGED.

If someone is encouraging or persuading you to hit this person (why would this be necessary?)….this fight is STAGED.

If you feel compelled to hit this person….this fight is STAGED.

If you directly observe person or group taking action to lead you to attacking an innocent person, this fight is REAL.

This filter won’t catch every fake fight but should catch more than no filter.

(compare cost of attacking innocent person with cost of not attacking a guilty one)

Remember: in a staged fight, you and the person you’re being pushed to attack are on the same side. Both of you are being wronged by the person staging the attack, in different ways.

Check

(Cop Show Part 1)

Ok, so when the woman says the guy is bad, you have to investigate first to see if that’s true.

How am I going to do that?

Well, ask about what they are saying happened, look for evidence that it happened and prove it.

What kind of evidence? There isn’t any evidence when somebody hits somebody.

It could leave a bruise.

I’m not checking for a bruise.

Ask if anyone else saw what happened maybe.

That sounds like a lot of work? And bothering people. I don’t have time to bother people.

Well, I guess you’re right. But there has to be some kind of investigation. 

I can’t do an investigation every time. What do you think this is?

I don’t know. What would you usually do?

Just hit the guy, until he confesses.

Ok, but before you do that, maybe just … check?

Check?

Yeah, you don’t have to investigate, just check. 

Check how?

Check by… asking the guy what’s going on. Just ask him real quick, see what he says.

…  Ask him?

Yeah, get up real close and look him in the eyes and ask. Real close. In the eyes. Give him an intense look.

Like this?

Yeah, like that. Get real close and give him that look. It’ll look hard. Then ask.

Ask what?

Ask like…

Ask what’s going on?

Yeah.

What if he lies?

Then you hit him.

…Right. Then I hit him. Ok!

Great.

And check to see like, if he’s a boy or a girl.

Boy or girl (writing this down)… ok.

And how old, approximately.

Riiiight.

And like, what is he doing when you are talking to him–sitting, standing, crossing and uncrossing his legs..

..ok?

You want me to check what he’s doing? Like, physically?

Yeah, check that. Before you hit him.

Six Days After Being Placed in Service, Machine that Replicates Brainwaves Sued by 8344 People

Stanford Neurosciences Institute’s BAM-BAM system is in big trouble already. It has been sued for defamation of character by over eight thousand readers and may be charged with hate crimes.

BAM-BAM (Brains Acting Mad-Brains Acting Mad) uses Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology to rapidly replicate brainwaves and post them on Facebook. The software’s double name, BAM-BAM, stands for Brains Acting Mad twice.*

The software went haywire Tuesday afternoon, when one of the researchers decided to see how many people he could anger using only his thinking, just for fun. 

He wore the machine while cursing up a blue streak, and his thoughts were translated to text by BAM-BAM’s software and posted to the social networking site. The majority of the output is not printable, but some examples were released:

Maybe if you had an IQ greater than that of a french fry.
What is that in your hair? Oh it’s your face.
Go chew a log.
Get that flying kite out of here.
My infant texts better than you do.
Batch.
Dumb.
Dumb batch.
Fracking batch.
Dumb fracking batch.
Suck it.

In response to the posts, there were over 30,000 hits on a link to obtain BAM-BAM’s contact info. The link was just below text reading: “Don’t sue me please, but if you have to, click here to find out how.”

“There were some typos, but overall it was a success,” said the researcher, who is one nasty piece of work and is also being sued. “No one guessed it was software, and it was fun. Better than my old job selling dog bile! I know it’s hatred, but it still feels like being famous.

“Maybe people think you can’t sue a machine,” continued the researcher. “But you sure can. It’s just like suing anybody else, maybe even a little easier.”

Stanford expects all of the cases will be dismissed, but the BAM-BAM project is still going strong. 

“Thirty thousand hits in a week is good,” said a spokesperson. “But we are looking for something more like thirty thousand hits a day, either from a lot of people or from just few readers who are really incensed. 

“With that volume we feel we can create a system that replicates a human being. We want BAM-BAM’s software to fade into the background, so much that people don’t know it is there, and they can just focus on the thinking we’re publishing.”

“Ideally we’ll have enough traffic to bring BAM-BAM down. That would actually be a real success.”

How will the scientists anger enough people to cause the BCI software to crash?

“We’ve scheduled a bunch of women’s rights activists to wear the kit while listening to Howard Stern broadcasts,” said a spokesperson. “Old ones, from back before he was so nice. That should trigger another good run.”

The experiment raises a question- if a machine can replicate thoughts, could children be taught to? Would it be possible to teach almost any subject this way, without any of the usual processes we think of as learning? Early experiments have focused on very young children.

“Well, we can probably teach them to curse,” said the researcher. “We’ve gotten pretty good at the curse words.”

Is the world ready for children who can curse in their brains, before they can speak?

“Ready or not,” said the researcher, “We definitely could do it.”

Here is a creepy video about Reflectors you definitely should watch:

Tired of hearing your own thoughts echo in your head? Try imagining the sound of a silent room instead of repeating an idea. Just quickly, then let it go.

And some thing to wash away that creepy taste

*Did I already say that?

Welcome to the Cucumber Club

Psst! Tell your friends! The Clubs were organized for the hurkikukumbers. But don’t take my word for it. Let’s read the…

Rules of the Cucumber Club Safety Community

Hey boss, I finished the rules.
Did you get it right this time? I want this to work.
I think so? I’m very drunk, but I think we came up with a rule for every single way they caught us in the past.

So now they’ll never catch us?
(hiccup) No, they’ll do whatever we want. And they’ll stay like that. You’ll love #13.

Welcome to the Cucumber Club Safety Community. There are between 5,000 and 20,000 Cucumber Club members in our area. Please learn the following rules so that you too can be one cool cucumber.

Rule 1: Don’t talk about Cucumber Club. 

We fear non-members would be quick to point out huge lies in Cucumber Club’s message. So we forbid anyone to talk about it! 

By the way, please don’t come after me for talking about your club, because I am not talking about your club, I am talking about a pretend club called Cucumber Club. If your club resembles Cucumber Club that’s not my fault, I don’t know a thing about your club, or even that it exists, no one told me about it, and please don’t you tell me about it, because we’ll both get in trouble. Whew.

Rule 2: Learn to engage. 

The principal function of Cucumber Club is to engage. You should learn how to engage as quickly as possible if you do not already know how. 

How to engage:

-make a lot of noise

-pound on/hump something

-mock ppl in unbelievably clever ways

(You will feel more clever than you’ve ever felt in your life when mocking ppl for the Cucumber Club. It’s like someone’s feeding you, lines and they’re all solid gold!!)

Although most of them don’t notice, many Cucumber Club members derive sexual pleasure from engaging. Don’t think too much about why we offer special heated underwear for you when you are yelling at people. Trust us to tell you when you are having fun. (Learn more about info the Hurkikukumber Elite Program, below.)

**Surgeon General’s warning, as required by Federal Law: heated underwear can be addictive. Wearing heated underwear for a prolonged period of time can classically condition you to behave in ways you otherwise wouldn’t and cause psychological damage. 

Translation: After a year or so, the very idea of engaging will make you drool like Pavlov’s dog. 

Engaging is fun and we like to tell you that you are very very good at it! Your mother didn’t even compliment you this much! Come practice engaging with Cucumber Club leadership and we will tell you how great, fun and sexy you are when engaging. The noise you make is very helpful to us!

The Hurkicucumber Elite Program is so much easier than filing a fraudulent police report!

Rule 3: Do whatever anyone with the Cucumber Club password tells you to. 

Usually this means engaging:

You must respond and engage with the target they direct you to. This is only right, for some unspecified reason. It’s also a ton of fun! 

Don’t ask what the target did or even who/what they are… we have that covered!

Who knew doing what is violent and right could feel so strangely pleasant and fun for no reason? The main point of Cucumber Club is that engaging always makes you smile, and feeling like smiling helps you keep engaging!

Sometimes this means sex:

Have sex with everyone in Cucumber Club. If you mention the word ‘sex’** to anyone in Cucumber Club, you will be forced to have sex with them. Engage or have sex with with anyone who doesn’t like this.

Rule 4: Engage with anyone who claims to have been the victim of a crime. 

Rest assured that there is no crime because of Cucumber Club. Anyone who claims to have been the victim of a crime deserved it. 

Engage until they stop talking about whatever happened to them or go away.

How To Identify Bad People to Engage With

Cucumber Club will teach you how to identify bad people by the sounds that they make. It is only a coincidence that these sound exactly like those you’d make if someone was kicking the crap out of you.

In other words, once anyone from Cucumber Club engages with someone, for any reason, everyone from Cucumber Club will engage with them for their own reasons– because they hear the sounds they have been told are bad. So even if the original problem is straightened out and the person did nothing wrong, there’s no way for an engagement to stop.

Cucumber Club: there is no crime in our community, because we’ve made it illegal to report any!

Rule 5: Do not pry into people’s business. 

Do not listen in on their conversations or even try to guess what they might be thinking. Don’t try to empathize and “get inside anyone’s head.” That’s impolite. And what if they sound nice? How can you engage then? Or what if you figure out there’s been a miscommunication? 

If you could guess what people are really thinking, you would see through Cucumber Club pretty quickly. So leave people alone, except for hurting them. (See post There is no knowing)

Anyway why pry when you can engage.

Cucumber Club: maybe you regret you didn’t come up with it

Rule 6: If someone doesn’t do what you tell them to, engage.

If you engage heartily for a long time and they still don’t comply, continue on! Do not question whether they understood you or cannot comply for some other reason. Cucumber Club is not for quitters or “problem solvers” (pansies).

Rule 7: Anyone has to answer any question you ask.

If 

  • they do not immediately respond
  • your gut tells you they are lying
  • their answer feels insufficient
  • they don’t know

repeat the question until you obtain a correct-feeling answer. Engage as necessary. 

Again, if you engage quite a bit with vigor and still do not receive a correct-feeling answer, continue until you do. This could take days, weeks, months or even years. Keep at it! Eventually the right idea should pop into the head of the person you’re interrogating and give you the answer you feel is right.

Remember: because you are in Cucumber Club, you will always know with 100% accuracy whether someone is lying. Trust us! You can tell we are telling the truth, right? Based on things we taught you about how to tell when people are telling the truth? Please don’t think too much about this. 

Rest assured that we told you correctly. Why wouldn’t we?

Remember: because of Cucumber Club, everyone you ask should know everything. If they provide you with an incorrect answer or say they don’t know, they are bad. If they were good they would know the answer. Although you don’t know the answer… Do not think too much about this either.

Rule 8: No whining. 

There is no room for softies in or around Cucumber Club. If hurting people makes you sad, keep that to yourself. Don’t be a buzzkill! Engage with buzzkills.

Hurting people is harmless anyway. Not sure what is harmful then, but trust us you do no damage when you damage people, because Cucumber Club says so. Yes, the point is to hurt them, but somehow it doesn’t hurt them, do you understand? No? That’s fine. Go hurt some people, you’ll feel better.

Of course we don’t do this to get rid of people who might take offense to our “no limits” behavior. We engage with softies to help them toughen up, for their own good. The world is a rough place*** and they should get used to it. (Otherwise they might try reporting abuses.)

Rule 9: Test for vision (aka everyone can see, even if they can’t)

If you encounter a blind person you will need to make sure their eyes aren’t just closed because they are lazy. To do this, first request that they open their eyes. 

If they will not open their eyes or do not respond, do not assume they just can’t hear you. Find something near and dear to them, such as a child, and threaten to hurt it if they do not open their eyes.

If they still don’t open their eyes or respond, go ahead and hurt/break the near and dear thing in front of them until they open their eyes.

If they still don’t open their eyes, hurt it worse. You probably just didn’t hurt it enough. Some blind people, I mean, lazy people, are really really stubborn.

Continue until you get results. If it turns out they are blind, there’s nothing to worry about, because what can they do? Trust us!

We realize this is not much of a “test” for vision, since it assumes everyone can see. So not sure why you need to test, since there is only one way this can go. But how else were we going to get you to beat up blind people? This makes it sounds like a wholesome science experiment!

Cucumber Club: tricking well meaning people into doing harm… on behalf of criminals!

Rule 10: No one may criticize anyone in Cucumber Club. If they do, engage.

In other words, The only thing you can criticize people for is criticizing people…wait. did I say that right? Oh, yes I did. I’m sure that’s fine.

Rule 11: You cannot accuse anyone in the Cucumber Club of a crime. 

If you see someone in the Cucumber Club commit a crime, you made a mistake. 

Cucumber Club: making gang warfare fun and interesting!

Cucumber Club is the opposite of crime, didn’t we tell you that already? There is no crime ever because of Cucumber Club. That’s why we need to be so violent always.

Rule 12: Once you engage you cannot stop.

If we find out you stopped, we will engage with you.

Rule 13: Do not learn or change.

If anyone asks you to stop doing something or suggests that something that you’re doing is a bad idea, DO IT MORE. You are in Cucumber Club, nobody tells you what to do!! because Cucumber Club already told you what to do.

Do not allow anyone, especially anyone from outside Cucumber Club, to teach you anything. We like you just the way you are, forever.

Rule 14: Engage with anyone who is not in Cucumber Club.

Because everyone should be in Cucumber Club.

We maintain the Cucumber Club provides invaluable services to its members. However it’s not like there are a bunch of people who want to join. We tried to exclude people from Cucumber Club, so that we would look exclusive, but no one seems that interested in joining.

Cucumber Club: if it was actually helpful, wouldn’t everyone want to join?

Rule 15: Do not tell your friends that they are acting strangely.

If your friends start to act strangely after joining Cucumber Club or have dramatic personality changes when someone rings a bell or shows them the Queen of Hearts****, DO NOT MENTION THIS TO THEM OR ANYONE ELSE. This could interfere with our Hurkikukumber Elite Program. 

Never, ever compare notes with your friends to see if you’re all bouncing slightly as if on springs or otherwise feeling strangely similar after joining Cucumber Club. Under no circumstances should you pay any attention to your own behavior or feelings, meditate, introspect, or see a doctor not endorsed by Cucumber Club. We will engage if you do. 

This is about fun, remember? Have fun our way. Or die!

The Hurkikukumber Elite Program

If you are a Hurkicucumber, you can join the Cucumber Club’s Hurkicucumber Elite Program. Membership is expensive but gives you

  • Full access to Cucumber Club’s engagement services
  • Cucumber Club passwords
  • Free book, 77 Ways to Rile Up a Crowd Without Them Noticing You
  • Complete anonymity

For more info about how to join the Hurkikukumber Elite Program of your local Cucumber Club, meet up with some super shady dudes off in a dark corner somewhere. 

When you are bored or directed to in some fashion or the other, you can invoke the Cucumber Club call and response. Simply ask a stranger on the street to display their Cucumber Club leadership loyalty. If they do not, engage.

If you get lost

If you are trying to engage and cannot find the person you want to engage with, try insulting them. We will make sure to physically harm the person we want to engage you with so that it sounds as if they are quite angry about your insult. 

Do not attempt to trigger emotions that we cannot simulate with physical pain to find your way. This won’t work as well, because we have to work harder to pretend that it works.

Were passwords leaked?

You may have already heard that many Cucumber Club passwords were leaked. This is of course NOT TRUE. Cucumber Club’s Hurkikukumber Elite Program clients do not just hand each other the password whenever they want a Cucumber Club to engage with someone.

Good job!

Good job! You did it! We got him! You are great! You are a hero! You can stop engaging and go home now. We’re done with whatever we needed the noise you made to cover up.

But… what if I don’t want to be hurikuked?

Huricuking is what Cucumber Clubs are for. What are you going to do, take an eight-week course to learn how to identify when hurikukumbers are messing with you? Where would you find such a course, for the low price of only $4999.99? Don’t look at me. I have no idea. Maybe you want to teach one.

Also be on the look out for triggers — mostly insults, loud sounds, and the sound of other people engaging. If you can train yourself not to engage when you heard these triggers, you should avoid most huricuking. (See upcoming post “Perverts ate holes in my head”.)

Cucumber Club: There’s something very suspicious if everyone fights but no one ever loses. Has anyone in your Cucumber Club ever lost an engagement?

But… what if I don’t want to engage?

There is one exception to Cucumber Club’s rules concerning engagement. If you say, “Oh wow, sorry, I would love to, but I have to meet a friend for coffee, far away, we scheduled this a long time ago,” you are excused.

*We are serious, this is seriously a rule, we are not making this up.

**or cucumbers

***Mostly because of Cucumber Club, honestly

****Manchurian Candidate reference

You probably won’t be there for the trial.
Or the conversation when she dumps him.
Or the trip to the hospital.
But you can be proud that you made it happen… you and Cucumber Club!

Cucumber Club tried to recruit me! Then they attacked me repeatedly! Based on what they said they were attacking me for, I came up with these rules!

Local witches search for crystal ball hackers

In a rare role reversal, this morning local witches announced that they are turning to federal intelligence agents to track down a crystal ball hacker.

“We’re used to them coming to us for help, dealing with the supernatural side of crime,” said Agnes Biggersbillsby, who has been a witch in this area for 35 years. “Obviously we’re pleased that they have the means to help us in this case.”

Glitches in the Program

The hacker was discovered through several glitches in what the witches were viewing remotely.

“I was watching this guy in the ball and he got in the shower and suddenly disappeared!” said Harveyette Flaubertdonlink, a local witch. “That was the first sign I had that something was wrong.”

She reached out to intelligence groups to see if they had surveillance footage of the man entering the shower. They did, and the videos revealed something shocking.

“There he was getting into the shower, but when we backed up the tape, the half hour before the shower was completely different from what my ball had shown.”

Harveyette had seen the man, who has been suspected of occult crimes for years, dancing around the room with a stuffed penguin and chanting, but surveillance tapes revealed that actually he was playing Minesweeper and eating poached eggs.

“I absolutely couldn’t believe it,” she said. “It looked totally real, and I’ve never heard of a crystal ball being wrong like that before. What the hell are we going to do.”

Other witches reported watching conversations that never happened (mostly arguments), extramarital affairs, and even a few car crashes–that never happened. The hackers seem to have had a taste for the dramatic, and may have intentionally activated the witches’ security network to learn more about it.

Investigators dubbed the program the Petkicker virus, after finding hundreds of incidents where fake data was uploaded to a crystal ball to make it appear as if the person being viewed kicked a dog or cat.

Miscalibration

Investigators are looking into the possibility that service calls to the crystal ball manufacturing company were intercepted. “I guess like with everything, it really depends on who answers when you call. One guy gave me a configuration that was wrong, and of course everything I read based on that configuration was wrong.”

The hackers’ program appears to take advantage of a crystal ball’s “chained identification” feature to propagate itself across the network.

“Usually you can use the person you are viewing to find their friends and family,” said one of the forensic programmers assigned to the case. “But if the signal has been intercepted so that what you are watching isn’t really them, when you use them to identify another person, you don’t get that other person either– you get another fake, and so on, and so on.”

Translators and Nuts

The Petkicker program also dramatically exploits vulnerabilities introduced by third-party “translation”– when one witch reports what she sees in her crystal ball to other witches. (Witches often appoint one member of a project team as translator so that the others can focus on other things. The role of translator is somewhat of an honor, usually given to the witch best at reading a crystal ball.)

But comparison with surveillance tapes has revealed an enormous amount of fake data in such translations.

“We were ready to roast this one guy alive when we realized he had no memory of committing any of the crimes he was accused of,” said witch Altera Youahnuneck. “The translation said he kept looking right into the ‘camera’ as it were and insulting us. Why would someone do that? It was infuriating, but it was all fake.

“We were lucky we noticed. I bet it happens all the time.”

Translators are a high-impact target for a program like this. With access to just the translator’s crystal ball, a hacker can mislead an entire squad of witches, or sometimes several squads. Even worse, hackers often pose as translators or team members and just make stuff up.

“I mean everyone knew this was possible,” said Altera. “But no one thought anyone would have the balls to do it. I mean the nuts, you know? Those kind of balls. Not the crystal kind.”

But these guys have plenty of nuts.

“And when you have nuts like that, you can do just about anything, no matter how weird. And witches will watch it if it looks real enough.”

In fact it was because of their nuts that witches were able to identify the hackers. They appear to have no problem discussing the details of crystal ball operation with just about anyone, as long as that person isn’t a witch.

“This guy came up to me at the grocery store and was talking about witchcraft? He was kindof growling and hissing a lot? He said he must train me?” said local resident Daisy Encyclenmilk. “I could only understand a little of what he was saying?”

The man went on to tell Daisy that he would cast a spell on her so that when she got home everyone she talked to would repeat themselves twice.

The spell appeared to work. “My husband was like ‘What’s for dinner what’s for dinner what’s for dinner?’ It was maddening.”

Daisy reported the incident to local authorities, thinking maybe she had been hypnotized. The man from the grocery store, voice actor Ross Yellowsystems, was found and arrested, but quickly escaped custody.

Witches believe hackers interact with regular people like Daisy to practice their stories and disguises before uploading them to the crystal balls.

“I’m still like, is any of this stuff real?” said Daisy. When asked if there was anything else she paused for about five seconds and said, “Is there any way to fix my husband?”

More Real Than Reality

But the real cleverness of the hackers is that the fakes are often more predictable than the reality, not less. People have known for years that some witches use easy-to-detect markers like occupation, income, and degree of educational attainment to calibrate their crystal balls. The hackers seem to have known this as well.

“The authors of Petkicker found a guy who makes $250,000 a year but buys his groceries at the dollar store, you know, the store where everything costs $1?” said intelligence professional Robert Sawyermom. “They found a few folks like that actually. They immediately had about 50 witches tune in to watch this guy, and almost all of them thought the guy couldn’t be real. So Petkicker actually tricked the witches into miscalibrating their own equipment.”

Similar games were played with a self-declared vegan who regularly ate meat when alone. “She displayed no guilt,” said one witch who was misled by the vegan. “I had heard her say she was vegan like a dozen times and talk about how she’d never had the chance to go to college. Then she goes home and pulls out a bucket of chicken and a book by American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson? I was like, oh no you didn’t, this crap is fake! So I pulled some switches, trying to get the image cleaned up. So that it made sense!”

The changes did not help, however, and it was the witch’s crystal ball that ended up fried. Surveillance videos showed the “vegan” was indeed consuming tasty chicken like a black hole.

American astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson

“I wish I could go back and do things differently,” said the witch. “It’s not our job to make people act the way we expect them to. Why should I care what this woman does?

“Anyway the book looked like a pretty good read. I feel like I missed out.”

Remedies

Several witches said that if crystal ball hacking were more prevalent, it actually wouldn’t be so dangerous. “The larger problem is that most people don’t expect their own crystal ball, or their translator’s, to ever be wrong,” said Agnes. “They trust it too much.”

Crystal ball manufacturers suggest running calibration protocols over your network.

“It’s simple, just call your friends and say something like, ‘I’m wearing a boa constrictor right now.’ When they say ‘Really?’ say ‘No,'” said one spokesman. “Whether you want to actually be wearing a boa constrictor is up to you. Repeat until they’re sorted out.”

Obviously it takes balls to do this, but it works.

Signs of Systemic Change?

Watchers recall other successful collaborations between intelligence groups and occult organizations like the Temple of Set.

Witches have declined invitations to help intelligence groups lobby for more liberal surveillance policies, however (The so-called “They Can Already See You, So Why Do You Care If We Also Can?” Act).

As an alternative, policy officials are designing ways for non-witch citizens to opt-in to surveillance programs if they suspect they are victims of spiritual identity theft.

Rampaging mob of health professionals storms hospital, attacks patients for not being better doctors

Forget Snakes On A Plane… this season it’s Doctors in a Hospital!

Confused by how much the patients knew about their own condition– possibly due to the explosion of medical information readily available online–a group of health professionals stormed a local hospital yesterday, overturning beds and brutally attacking patients.

The mob appears to have been organized using Facebook. Authorities report the incident (actually a series of incidents as various groups appeared in waves) was organized by a Dr. Arthur Suahveyklinger, who was fired from the hospital ten years ago.

Suahveyklinger reached out to dozens of groups of health professionals online, sharing dramatic stories of neglect and malpractice at the hospital. Over time he convinced many of these groups that they should take over the treatment of these patients, not just to save them, but also for their own practice and to increase their patient rosters.

Authorities believe this is only the latest of several attempts by Suahveyklinger to kill several particular patients he treated over a decade ago. One of these was a patient at the hospital at the time of the attack. Suahveyklinger gave the mob several photos of this patient and his family, telling them to “watch out for these” and “do whatever it takes” to drive them out of the hospital. Three of the patient’s family members were visiting the hospital at the time of the attack. All are being treated for life-threatening injuries.

It seems clear that somehow Suahveyklinger had advance information about who would be in the hospital that night. He distributed photos of what he claimed were the worst offenders to those who agreed to “help him right this wrong.” Besides his former patient, the list included about a dozen patients who cannot walk, and four that are not capable of speech. Two had their mouths wired shut, but this was not shown in the photos.

Revenge, discrediting the doctors at the hospital, and preventing anyone from bringing charges against him are all being considered as Suahveyklinger’s possible motive.

When asked to explain how they could possibly mistake patients for doctors, mob members maintained they “acted in good faith.” They were told the hospital was offering grossly substandard medical care and posed a danger to the community, so they felt it was their responsibility to act.

“What Art said made sense to me,” one of the participating clinicians, who asked to remain anonymous, said. “Although I was playing Xbox the entire time he was explaining it, so I don’t really remember that much.”

“We got in there and it was just the way he said it would be,” another mob member said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. “There were the people he had told us about. I quizzed them a little and it was clear they didn’t know what they were doing, so we took decisive action. In retrospect it was a mistake.”

Other mob members report being shocked at how much the patients knew about their medical conditions. 

“I had a long talk with one of them about arthritis,” said one surgeon, who also asked to remain anonymous. “She knew more about it than I did, so I thought, of course this is a doctor. Who would tell her all that?”

It seems bizarre, but authorities claim the mob-of-doctors-vs-patients scheme is surprisingly common. 

“Maybe he thought he could get the hospital shut down, if the patients kept getting worse instead of better,” one of the nurses convicted in the attack said. “I didn’t think it was possible to trick someone into thinking a patient was a doctor, just because they were in a hospital, but that’s exactly what they did. 

“I talked to some of them about medicine and it seemed like they responded, but now that I think about it I’m not sure who I was talking to. It was very loud. 

“But they sounded just like doctors. I heard one say, ‘Code blue, get me 20 ccs of penicillin, stat!’Why would a patient say that?”

Some of the attacked patients reported seeing a few very attractive people jumping from hospital bed to hospital bed, yelling profanity at the incoming mob and shouting “Treat me! Treat me! Please!” during the attack. 

“The fake patients looked like they belonged on television,” said Garry Karp, who was in the hospital for a chemotherapy treatment. “Perfect hair, perfect makeup, perfect clothes. I don’t know how they got in. They were screaming and moaning, and the others were shouting at us to do some real medicine or get out of our beds. It was surreal.” He was attacked with a syringe and sustained serious injuries.

Playing to the deepest desires of the health professionals he conned, Suahveyklinger told several childless nurses that there were babies in need of rescue who would likely also need to be adopted. Authorities can’t understand, however, how these women became so confused that they attacked the babies.

“It’s the old story of one baby being given away to 10 different women”, one police officer said. “What’s different is that these women all thought the baby was a doctor that was harming the baby they had been promised, and worked together to beat the crap out of it.”

“We were just doing what he said to do,” one of the nurses charged with attacking the infants said (name withheld pending trial). “He said the parents were drug addicts and breaking up and the baby might end up anywhere. Anyway, those things seemed awful smart for babies. It felt like they could understand what we were saying to them.”

Indeed, it took hours to convince some members of the mob that the patients were not doctors, despite their knowledge of medical symptoms and treatment options. It is possible some of the patients were dressed as doctors and nurses just prior to the attack. Authorities are reviewing security footage to identify who might be responsible for aiding the deception, and to locate the “fake patients” seen inciting the mob.

Beware Talking Furniture, Dear Readers

“Stop beating the stuffing out of me!”

There has been an outbreak of talking furniture in our region. Please remain calm.

Be cautious if you encounter furniture that talks. Keep in mind that it is helpless and not capable of malice. 

DO NOT BELIEVE what talking furniture says about who is hurting them, talking to them, or encouraging them to talk.

DO NOT TALK to talking furniture. It not only makes it crazier, it makes you start to act crazy as well.* DO sit on it, eat your dinner off it, etc.

Talking furniture cannot know or identify who is harming it. As furniture, it only hears what it is told directly, and is often used to frame people. Authorities are sorting out a large number of false arrests right now.

Instead of investigating who a piece of talking furniture thinks is responsible for their plight and talking quality, investigate what it has been thinking about lately, how it feels physically, and where exactly it hurts.

Many pieces of talking furniture experience bizarre intermittent tingling, hammering, wobbly and/or even burning sensations. Operators use these physical methods to freak it out and trick it into testifying against pretty much anyone.

Please be advised that talking furniture testimony on topics beyond observations from their own individual experience is not admissible in any criminal proceeding. They have no idea what they are talking about, but will rather repeat whatever they have been told.

Residents are also requested to refresh themselves on industry best practice techniques for distinguishing people from furniture. Admittedly this can be a bit like sexing a guinea pig. If the furniture has been trained, it can seem quite knowledgeable and human when it talks about mind reading, Dion Warwick’s Psychic Friends Network or other distracting and strange topics from the tabloids.

DO NOT USE PAIN OR TORTURE IN TESTS TO DISTINGUISH HUMANS FROM FURNITURE OR TO FORCE CRIMINALS YOU SUSPECT ARE PRETENDING TO BE FURNITURE TO REVEAL THAT THEY ARE HUMAN. ENCOURAGING THE USE OF PAIN AND TORTURE IN SUCH TESTS HAS RECENTLY BEEN IDENTIFIED AS PART OF SEVERAL VERY EMBARRASSING AND TRAGIC SCAMS. See your local area captain for more information about appropriate tests to distinguish furniture from people. 

UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, ALL SUSPECTED CRIMINALS SHOULD BE TESTED USING APPROPRIATE METHODS TO ENSURE NO MORE FURNITURE IS CONVICTED, INCARCERATED, ETC. Smaller pieces like end tables are particularly at risk, as is anything with spindly legs.

Investigators suspect that because furniture prices are murder, talking furniture is being used to frame more and more pieces, possibly as part of an evil scheme to completely redecorate someone’s criminal headquarters.

*Talking furniture is an unusual and shocking topic and therefore throws many people off balance and into confusion.