José Bruno Barbaroxa

Is there a difference between “discover your passion" and “discover what you want to do"?

I ask because I hear people talk about their Passion (with a capital P), as if everyone has one whether they know it or not. As it it’s a special glowing ball inside each of us. Yet I see no evidence that this ball necessarily exists.

To me, it’s more likely that we have things we like and things we dislike. A like becomes a passion when it repeats with regularity. For instance, I like peaches, but I don’t constantly crave them. So I wouldn’t call peaches a passion. On the other hand, whenever I see a book, I want to read it. I like reading… I like reading… I like reading… So I’d call reading a passion.

Is there anything like this for you, even if it’s something “stupid" (e.g. watching TV or eating poptarts)? If so, that a passion for you. If it repeats with great rapidity (and if the urge is very strong), then it’s an obsession. (I can’t keep my hands off my iPod. I think about it all the time. If I lose it, I panic.)

You don’t get to chose your passions. Since passions are just intense likings, choosing a passion would be like choosing to like eating eggplant. You either like eating eggplant or you don’t. Perhaps, if you don’t like it, you can learn to like it. But RIGHT NOW, you either like it or you don’t. 

I’ve met some people who don’t seem to have any strong passions. Some admit to this. They certainly have likes and dislikes, but nothing specific crops up over and over. In fact, some people dislike anything that repeats too often (you could say such people have a passion for novelty). Other people DO have passions (defined as I’ve done so, above), but they don’t think of them as such. For many people, their passion is other people: passion for their kids, passion for their families, passion for helping others in need, etc….

Many people THINK they’ve discovered a passion when if fact they’ve only found a surface activity that lays atop their real passion. For instance, I love working in the theatre. At the risk of sounding holier-than-thou, I believe my passion is pretty “pure." In other words, my passion for theatre doesn’t hide a deeper passion. I love theatre because I’m fascinated by the specific mechanics of telling stories on stage. When I’m not rehearsing a play, I will choose to read a book about theatre mechanics just for fun (for another dose of my obsession). 

I’ve met others like me, but I meet far more theatre people who seem to be USING theatre to feed some deeper passion. (Please note that I’m NOT saying that there’s anything wrong with this or that I’m better than these people. I believe neither of those things. And there are plenty of other activities — just not theatre — that I use as tools to feed deeper passions.) Such people may be into theatre because they love attention and praise; they may love belonging to an open-minded group (many “misfits" find their way into theatre in high school and stay because they love belonging to such an accepting culture); they may even be operating on autopilot, doing theatre because for whatever reason, they got into it when they were younger and it never occurs to them to quit. (They probably enjoy having mastered something.)

I think it’s useful to delve into your psychology and ask yourself WHY you like what you like. Sometimes (as with me and theatre), the answer might be “because I simply love the activity." (How do you know if this is true? Try mentally removing orbiting aspects of the activity: would I still want to direct plays if no one saw them? would I still want to direct plays if I could only work with bad actors? Would I still want to direct plays if I hated the results? Would I still want to direct plays if I always got bad reviews? etc. For me, though I wouldn’t enjoy the activity as much in these cases, I’d still want to do it.) 

This is useful because if you learn what your TRUE passion is (the underlying one, if there is one), you may be able to change your life for the better. You may be able to say, “Wow! It’s not theatre I like, it’s collaboration! Maybe I instead of continuing in theatre, I should look into all sorts of collaborative activities and get into the one that’s the MOST collaborative."

Such psychological delving may also help you deal with a crisis: “Oh no! I’ve lost my voice. I can’t act anymore. Wait a minute: it’s not specifically theatre that I like, it’s storytelling! I could write a novel."

There’s also nothing wrong (and a lot right) with realizing, “I love attention and praise, so theatre is a great activity for me." In all of these cases, you’ll have learned something about yourself.

Once you know your passion, you will be tempted to ask — as you did — “How can I turn this into a career?" I think that’s the wrong question. I don’t think it’s totally wrong. I just think it’s too specific. Instead, I recommend you ask yourself this: “How can I best arrange my life so that I can spend the most time engaging in my passion IN ITS PUREST POSSIBLE FORM and derive the least amount of pain doing non-passion activities?"

I am a director, but I’m not a working (as in paid) director. To pay my rent, I have a “day job." I COULD work as a director, but I’d have to direct plays that I don’t want to direct. For some people, that would be fine. For me, it’s not a good trade off. I’ll be more happy with the day job and the ability to direct whatever I want — forgoing pay. It took me a while to come up with that “formula," and it’s a personal one. Mine won’t necessarily work for you.

(If you realize you’re like me, find the least painful day job you can, getting yourself training if you have to. I actually like my day job. And I continually work to make it better and more interesting. The cliche of waiting tables to support your passion isn’t a necessity. If you commit to the idea of having a day job — I’ll likely have one for the rest of my life — it behooves you to make it a good one. Or at least the least painful one you can find.)

I see a lot of people working REALLY hard to make their passion into a job, and — tragically — when they finally make it happen, they don’t enjoy the passion any more. (E.g. a lot of working actors, who got into the business to play Shakespeare or Chekhov, spend most of their time acting in commercials.) If this happens, it’s really worthwhile to do some soul searching. Would I be happier with a day job? Am I happy doing a compromised version of my passion? If I AM happy doing a compromised version of my passion, does that (perhaps) mean that what I thought was my passion wasn’t really my passion? ("Hmm. I thought I wanted to act, but in order to do theatre for a living, I’ve had to become a producer. And — hey — I like it. Maybe acting isn’t my real passion. Maybe my real passion is being a key part of a big project.")

I am NOT saying there’s anything wrong with figuring out a way to do your passion for pay. Often, that’s a great way to spend most of your time doing your passion. Just make sure that if you’re doing your passion as a job, it’s really your passion that you’re doing and not a perverted version of it that will fail to make you happy.

So, go through this thought process:

1. I’ve identified my passion as X. I am now going to define X as fully as possible. For X to be X, it MUST include A and B. C is optional. It can’t include D.

2. I’ve realized that I won’t be happy unless I’m doing X for a living.

3. Are there any jobs that will allow me to do X as I’ve defined it? (Or that will let me gradually work towards a pure version of X?) 

4. If not, then I need to either brainstorm other ways I could be happy (compromised X? doing X as a hobby?) or resign myself to unhappiness.

5. If so, then I need to make sure that I can live with non-X aspects of the job. (Wow! I can do full time, paid theatre, but I’d have to work with the dreaded Mr. Y!)

Finally: I’ve noticed that people (myself included) have a strong urge to classify themselves. People REALLY want to be able to say, “I’m a director!" “I’m an engineer!" “My passion is gourmet cooking!"

There’s nothing wrong with that drive, but putting yourself in a category is not the same thing as actually being in that category. In fact, categorizing yourself — since it’s so final — is a good way to thwart any attempt to discover your actual passions. Once you say, “I’m a director," it’s hard to think, “Wait a minute: is it actually directing that I like or some other activity that directing helps me achieve?" Which is why, at the start of this long post, I suggested you de-romanticize the whole thing and, instead, think about what you like and dislike, rather than trying to pin down your Passion.

Maybe you don’t have a Passion. Maybe you have many likes — you like playing in the sun; you like watching movies; you like hanging out with friends… If so, you’ll be much happier if you arrange your life to maximize your chances to do these activities than if you expend a ton of energy categorizing yourself.

posted to MetaTalk by grumblebee at 20:22 on September 4, 2008

To understand why Silicon Valley keeps pumping out new companies and technologies, we suggest starting with a number of experiments run by Stanford psychologists in the sixties and seventies involving children and promises of marshmallows.

Read The Blog Post Here »

Page 66 - Orchid specimen, article on Dr. Chapin's mission by Smithsonian Institution

Fame is not that important to historians. Famous people's lives are generally well documented in sources other than a journal - newspapers, proceedings, parodies, letters, legislative records, etc. PRivate people's lives are, in fact, a lot harder to find out about and lot more interesting to people practicing history today. What we know about events like the Civil War or even World War II, life aboard an American whaleship or on the frontier, we mostly know by the writings of non-famous people who simply observed and recorded the detail of daily life.

At some level it's impossible to say what historians of the future will find important and interesting about our time, and it will change, anyway. Diaries of non-famous people were scoffed at for a long time before they began to be taken seriously as sources of historical evidence. But I think there are some general principles.

Miko gives an in-depth answer from a historians perspective.

Seeing this xkcd, I chuckled. Then I gave it a second… and realized that I am not this sort of geek. I’m not talking about exercise specifically, though that’s also true (I haven’t been able to “unlock” anything when it comes to exercise.) I mean that I have no particular interest in “leveling up”, in the classic RPG sense, or translated to most other activities. 

In fact, I’ve come to the realization that I may not be a geek at all. Perhaps it’s time to admit that what I really am is an art student with a for loop.

This post is part of the H. P. Lovefest. TL;DR: I have rapidly become a fan of the Trail of Cthulhu roleplaying game, a modern, player-facing alternative to Call of Cthulhu that highlights the investigative aspect of Lovecraftian adventuring.

I’ve always loved all kinds of games, but the frequency at which I played RPGs was, until recently, about once a decade: a handful of D&D sessions as a kid, an afternoon of Top Secret in high school, a GURPS session in college, and a taste of Call of Cthulhu in my early 30s. Of the many systems I’ve learned (and the number I’ve learned is an order of magnitude greater than the number I’ve played, alas), Call of Cthulhu (CoC) was by far my favorite. Not only am I a sucker for the horror genre in general, and H. P. Lovecraft in particular, but I also appreciated the game for putting the narrative front in center, with the dice relegated to a supporting role.

A few years ago I picked up a copy of Trail of Cthulhu (ToC), knowing full well that, like dozens of other RPGs I have purchased over the years, it would be read but likely never played. But the system appealed to me to such a degree that I decided to actually try it out. And so, on Halloween of 2011, I gathered several of my friends and subjected them to the eldritch horrors that the game has to offer. The evening was so successful that I have run the game several times since, for a variety of friends and acquaintances. It’s with thanks to ToC that I can, at long last, add the title of “roleplayer” to my gaming resume without resorting to exaggeration or wishful thinking.

Even the cover of Trail of Cthulhu emphasizes the investigative nature of the game

GUMSHOE

Why did I enter the world of roleplaying with Trail of Cthulhu, rather than in the company of its much lauded forefather? Because ToC emphasizes the investigative aspect of the game, which I find to be the most fun. In fact GUMSHOE, the engine thrumming within ToC, is specifically tailored for mystery-oriented RPGs, and the exploration of Lovecraft’s horrors is but one of its many application.

GUMSHOE is built around a simple proposition, albeit one viewed as heretical by many Call of Cthulhu fans: characters in an investigative game should be given the clues for free. In other words, players need not “Spot Hidden” to find the essential manuscript, pass a “Listen” check to hear the scratching behind a secret door, or miss out on a key piece of information because they failed to interrogate a wino four scenes back. If an Investigator is in a location containing a clue, and has a skill appropriate for finding it, the Keeper forks it over. No dice rolls, no chance of failure, no games derailed for want of a well-hidden journal.

GUMSHOE accomplishes this by dividing an Investigators skills into two broad classes: Investigative and General. Investigative Abilities, such as Occult and Flattery are those that enable players to learn things, and work automatically. If a character in the story has information and is susceptible to flattery, for instance, a player need only declare that they are laying on the charm to get the goods. General Abilities like Firearms and Fleeing, on the other hand, are those that enable players to do things. Unlike Investigative Abilities, General Abilities require a dice roll, and can result in failure. So while finding the combination to the safe is a given, sneaking past a rogue shoggoth is not without risk.

Some Call of Cthulhu players find this to be even more blasphemous than the creatures they face. Finding clues is the entire point of a mystery they argue, and removing that element neuters the game. The creators of GUMSHOE beg to differ, and cite as evidence for their position the traditional police procedural, where the finding of the clues is a given, be it Sherlock Holmes spotting mud on a suspect’s shoe or the CSI team sweeping a motel room for DNA. The interesting part of the story, they posit, is in the interpretation and synthesis of the clues, as the detectives move from scene to scene drawing ever closer to their quarry. GUMSHOE works by deprecating the drudgery of evidence collection and highlighting the fun of piecing together the Horrible Truth.

What could go wrong?

On the Trail

With Trail of Cthulhu, Kenneth Hite takes the GUMSHOE system and plunks it into the world of H. P. Lovecraft. Hite has an impressive resume in both RPG creation (he is credited with GURPS Horror) and the Mythos (on which he has written several books), and his considerable experience is obvious in the design.

The first 80 pages of the book are essentially Hite’s conversion of Call of Cthulhu to the GUMSHOE system. Yes ToC is its own game, but there is no way (nor need) to deny CoC’s omnipresent influence. PCs are called “Investigators” and the GM is the “Keeper”; many of CoC’s signature skills (e.g., Credit Rating and Psychoanalysis) have been carried over; and yes, characters have a Sanity rating, which will erode over the course of several games.

Hite augments all this with a number of innovations. Stability, for instance, is a measure of an Investigator’s short-term mental well-being, and can be refreshed by completing adventures, finding safe haven, via the application of Psychoanalysis, and so forth. (As in CoC, however, Sanity tends to be a one-way street toward madness.) Investigators also have built in motivators, including Drives (Curiosity, Ennui, and other explanations as to why they investigate the Mythos) and Pillars of Sanity (core beliefs, such as “Science trumps superstition”).

The latter two-thirds of Trail of Cthulhu contains a wealth of material, from an overview of the 1930′s (the default era for ToC adventures), tips for Keepers, an Introductory adventure, and a repository of campaign ideas. Of particular note is the chapter on the Mythos, where Hite provides detailed descriptions of the creatures, tomes, spells, and entities that inhabit the Lovecraftian universe. He even provides multiple possibilities for each of the Great Old Ones, allowing Keepers to choose the form of the Destructor they wish to unleash on their hapless players. Here, for instance, are three of Hite’s six interpretations of Ithaqua:

• The Great Old One Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker, dwells in the Arctic wastes. It abducts lone travelers or those who have attracted its unfavorable attention, carrying them off into the auroral skies. They are found weeks or months later, frozen solid in positions of great agony, missing random body parts, and partly buried in the ground as if dropped from a terrific height.
• Ithaqua resembles a gigantic (even miles-tall, although this may be a cold-induced hallucination) humanoid with ragged stumps at the end of its trailing legs. Its eyes glow a lambent red. This appearance matches the descriptions of the Wendigo, the legendary man-eating monster of the Chippewa, who inspires cannibalism in those who encounter him. Ithaqua, likewise, sometimes transforms its victims into its own semblance, leaving them insensible to cold.
• Ithaqua is an Outer God embodying the inevitability of thermodynamic decay. As time increases, molecules get colder and more isolated – the Arctic north is the coldest, most isolated part of the human world, a preview of the “heat death” coming for us all. Ithaqua causes, or is, or is created by, that immovable truth.

Chock full of ideas like the above, the Trail of Cthulhu book will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the Mythos — even those who have no intention of ever playing the game.

They’re saving you a cell

My Impressions

I’ve run several Trail of Cthulhu sessions since discovering the game, and all have been a blast. These are some of the features of the system that I most appreciate:

• Dice rolls are rare but meaningful: As I mentioned above, Investigators need only roleplay the use of their Investigative Abilities to receive the clues necessary to proceed. Dice rolls are required when a character invokes a General Ability, such as Firearms or Fleeing, and failure usually results in a significant setback or injury. Furthermore, all rolls are made using six-sided dice, and the results are dead simple to interpret.
• Sessions are concise: A session of ToC tends to be briefer than it would have been if played using the CoC ruleset, as dead ends are eliminated, clue hunts are minimized, and the action isn’t continually interrupted by dice rolls. I have played some ToC adventures in a single evening that surely would have required two or three sessions using CoC.
• The game is player-facing: I’d never heard the term “player-facing” prior to ToC, but the term perfectly encapsulates much of what I like about the game. In most old school RPGs, the GM “runs” the game and the players deal with whatever is thrown at them. In ToC, however, the players are active agents, and one duty of the Keeper is to react to their choices, weaving the elements introduced by the players into the narrative.

  For instance, each Investigator has points that can be used on investigative “benefits” (e.g., an additional clue, or a contact in the city that can aid the team). The players not only chooses when to spend these points, but can suggest the nature of the benefit received. The Keeper is the final arbiter of course, but this gives the players much more say in how the story unfolds.

• Floating Clues: ToC encourages Keepers to have a stash of extra clues on hand. If the Investigators decide to do something that is not in the script — search the lighthouse that was only meant as scenery, say — the Keeper can reward their initiative by giving them something for their trouble. It’s another manifestation of the player-facing nature of the game, rewarding Investigators who stray from where they are “supposed” to go.
• Purist Mode: Most CoC adventures are pulp in nature, allowing players to confront and even defeat gods. ToC allows for this style of play as well, but also introduces Purist rules that remain true to the spirit of H. P. Lovecraft stories. If you like your adventures lethal and your outcomes bleak, this is the mode for you.

In case you’re curious, the four Trail of Cthulhu adventures I have run thus far are Dimension Y and Devourers In the Mist (from Stunning Eldritch Tales collection), The Dying of St. Margaret’s, and Not So Quiet. I would highly recommend any of these, especially Devourers as an introduction to the system. (I ran a customized version of the printed Devourers; Keepers who are interested in my revisions can read about them here.)

My favorite session to run was “The Dying of St. Maragaret’s”, a purist adventure true to the style of H. P. Lovecraft

Verdict

I’m a fan of Trail of Cthulhu, and unsurprised that it’s the game that finally turned me into a roleplayer.

The system not perfect, and there are aspects that I find odd or unworkable. The point-spend mechanism is a marvelous idea as it ensures that all players get their moment in the spotlight, but often feels clumsy and disruptive in play. The game can careen from diceless to dicefest when group combat erupts. And the soft- and hard-driver rules, where a player can be punished for not roleplaying an Investigator the way the GM feels it ought to be played, as so counter to the spirit of the game that I’ve simply chosen to ignore them.

Some critics question why ToC exists at all, since Call of Cthulhu Keepers who prefer player-facing games have long used floating clues and the other “innovations” championed by the system. That is undoubtedly true, but by codifying these mechanics Trail is a boon for novice Keepers who might otherwise struggle with these elements. And while you could play any ToC adventure using the CoC ruleset (and vice versa), the systems lend themselves to different styles of play.

Take the Call of Cthulhu game I participated in last Saturday, a “haunted house” scenario in which the players were confined to a mansion and bad things happened to them over the weekend. Although our party was ultimately successful, we missed several clues because we’d neglected to search some key locations. That wouldn’t have happened with ToC, as Investigators always get all the core information. But ToC also favors stories in which the players travel from scene to scene, following clues toward a destination (hence the “Trail”). It is also ill-suited to adventures in which the players are not actively trying to solve the mystery; without the investigation, Trail flounders. So while there is a great deal of overlap between CoC and ToC, neither is obviated by the other.

If you are currently enjoying CoC I see no reason for you to switch. But if you are interested in a new approach, or new to Lovecraftian roleplaying and wondering which system to adopt, give Trail of Cthulhu a read and see if it models the sort of play you prefer. It certainly does for me.

You can learn more about Trail of Cthulhu at its Official Homepage, RPGGeek, and on the Yog-Sothoth forums.

Back in 2008 the word cartocacoethes was first used on this blog to describe “a mania, uncontrollable urge, compulsion or itch to see maps everywhere.”

Counter cartocacoethes can be applied in the world of espionage allowing spies to sneak intelligence out of hostile territories – making maps that don’t look like maps.

Stained-glass windows, butterfiles, leaves, moth heads…

In making the drawings of fortified positions after ascertaining their plans, it was the work of the spy so to disguise them that their true character would not be recognized in the event of his capture by military authorities in the country where he was operating.

The plans of a fortification were first drawn in a regular manner and then disguised. In one case this was done by sketching ostensibly a stained-glass window. To the casual observer the drawing would bear no indication of its importance, but to the spy it was a carefully executed map of a military stronghold.

In another case the spy chose an ivy leaf as a pattern, the veins being drawn to represent the outline of the fortified position; the shading marking the ground sheltered from fire, and heavy spots, resembling worm-eaten holes, the positions of the large guns.

The entire article, reproduced in Popular Mechanics (July 1915) from an article in The Sketch (February 24, 1915):

jaredtuttle:

How to Tattoo

Jared Tuttle

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jkottke:

Q: What does the “B" in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for?
A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

The Texas German dialect is quite different from those spoken in Germany, having evolved far from its native soil for more than a century and a half. As its name suggests, it is spoken in no other part of the world.

I guess Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus! LOL!

The problem is that the women quoted in the article, who are quite obviously insufferable hens, confuse men’s conversation filters with being boring. But these women would never want to have the conversation that would ensue if men simply said what was on their minds. For example:

F: My God, you’re so boring!

M: What?

F: Boring! You never talk. Can’t we have a normal conversation? About anything? Just tell me what’s on your mind now?

M: Right now? Okay. See those women at that table?

F: Yes…

M: Do you think I could bang them all at once? 

F: What?!

M: I don’t mean do you think its physically possible-

F: What?!

M: I mean, do you think there’s a social context that I could construct where those four women would happily participate in a 4-on-1 situation with me. Because they’re friends and maybe it would get weird for them. So I’d have to bang them all in a way that wasn’t weird. Maybe if I called it a party, or if I nailed them in turns-

F: What?!

M: I could be fair, you know, start with the shortest one or the thinnest and work may through them systematically. So no one’s feelings get hurt. My boss is a fucking asshole, by the way.

F: Wha…your boss.. what?

M: My boss. Christing fuck, what a cunt he is. He was standing by the elevators the other day, man, I could have shot him right in the chest. Look, that girl jogging has a sweaty midriff.

F: What?

M: Shoot him, like with a gun. Check this out. They have this thing called the 2+1 drill. I wonder what her sweat tastes like…

F: …oh god…

M: So 2+1 drill, where you shoot someone twice in the chest and then in the head. That’s how I’d shoot a guy. Very special force. Yeah, I’d definitely nail the short one first. Maybe I’d line them up on a couch, less intimidating then the bedroom. It’d be like I’m a handyman on a service call, just going down the line.

F: *sobs*

M: This is a good conversation. Oh, man, that brunette is licking her fingers. Hey, you could hold her down while I bang her, that’d be hot. You’d let me bang them without a condom, right? We should thank your parents for babysitting.

posted by Pastabagel at 16:21 on June 19, 2008

return_of_the_triangle

Yesterday I used twitter for what it was made for: admitting mortifying true statements which you’d only ever admit during slumber parties or when really, really drunk.

me: “True story: I always thought that Smurfette and Loni Anderson were related because they had the same hair.”

I expected crickets, but instead a flood of people came to my aid to admit incredibly embarrassing stuff they had once believed as well.  And it was beautiful.  Just a few of my favorites:

“I thought Gorbachev’s birthmark on his head was a tattoo of the USSR. I thought he was just super patriotic.” ~ @GriggioDC

“I used to call the back of my knees “kneepits.” You know, like armpits.”  ~ @joannerjoanner

“I have a friend who though cemeteries were in alphabetical order until she was in her 20′s.” ~ @cmamerson

I thought rhinos and hippos were the same species, Hippos were the girls and rhinos were boys.” @oreo_borealis

I thought that there was a planet named Goofy since there was one named Pluto. When it still a planet, that is. ~ JennKirscher

“I thought “voidware” was a thing & wondered why it was prohibited. (Radio promotions: void where prohibited)” ~ @paula_londe

“I used to think it was “the curve” and not “the curb,” because it was curved.” @Joannerjoanner

“I thought “Jet Airliner” was “big ole Chad in the line-up, don’t carry me too far away.” Because, really, please don’t.” ~ @RevAmyZ

“For years I thought chickens were female turkeys b/c my mother always bought chicken breasts (hello, female)” ~kellyg49

“I thought Luby’s was an oil change place.” ~ @KellyBundysTwin

“I thought round hay bales grew up out of the ground that way” ~ @Thrushiebaby

“I thought “No Parking Anytime” signs meant we couldn’t park anywhere, not even in our garage, and we’d have to drive forever.” ~ @kravenswood

“I always thought Jesus’ middle name was Harold (Jesus H. Christ) because “Hark The Harold Angels Sing.” ~ @JennyL791

“I thought talk about euthanasia was talk about youth in asia. So many disagreeing with them.” ~ @Trivialtee

“I thought the song “Smooth Operator” was about a telephone operator.” ~ @melafina

“I thought the blue signs with the H on them pointed to where a hotel was.” ~ @MichellePlyem

“I thought ‘END CONSTRUCTION’ signs were protest pickets.” ~ @tadjemiii

“I thought ‘Exotic Dancers’ was a place I could take hula lessons.” ~ TiltedWorldView

“I used to think maxi pads were the shoulder pads in women’s clothing” ~ @Michaelrclair

“Friend once said “Wonder why there seems to be no French people in French Foreign Legion” Um, it’s French FOREIGN Legion.” ~ @Learusty

“I thought being cremated meant you were turned into body lotion for your relatives” ~ @killerbdesigns

“I thought as a kid that braces were just paper clips bent around your teeth…so I tried it. They’re not.” ~ @Melflynn0

“I’m still not entirely sure if reindeer are real animals.” ~ @jjoanning

“As a kid I thought the radio had all the musicians live and never figured out how they all fit in the studio.” ~ @WarPizza

“I thought cats were girls and dogs were boys, and they would mate to make girl kittens and boy puppies.” ~ @addiful

“I only ever went to the arrivals part of the airport, cause I was arriving at the airport.” ~ @Rustymarble

“Until last year, I thought Ming the Merciless was an ancient Chinese emperor known for his particular cruelty.” @laurinemily

“I thought the guards in The Wizard of Oz were chanting about Oreos.” ~ Azsunyx

“I used to think that Manfred Mann sang “wrecked up like a douche”. Asking my Mom to explain provided no clarity.” ~ @AlanKercinik

“I thought road runners only existed in cartoons. Like rabbits in drag.” ~ @Missy_Ann_Tx

“I thought Kosher pickles had no pork in them. Which made me wonder about all other kinds of pickles.” ~ @ocularnervosa

“I thought it was weird that Mr. and Mrs. Floyd named their son Pink.” ~ @sarrup

“I thought signs that said ‘To Let’ were for the bathroom and were just misspelled.” ~ @imommygame

“I thought the Corner Furniture store in my town only made furniture that went in the corner.” @florabell444

“I thought that all of the companies with 1-800 phone numbers were in the same city.” @jas508

“I always thought radio antennae were just towers to hold up lights, and the lights were there so planes didn’t hit the towers.” @thecarie

“I thought salt and pepper were opposites, so if you used too much of one, you could just add a little of the other.” ~ @sassafrass584

“I believed there was some arcane connection between cantaloupes and antelopes. (Like, they grew in the same places)” ~ @fullofstars

“I thought Don Quixote was a story about a donkey named Hotey.” ~ @afternoonNapper

“My first day of school, I expected the ‘restroom’ to be filled with cots for naptime. I was very disappointed.” ~ @Ohhh_Snap

“I thought that Roy Orbison was blind because he wore those sunglasses. Only found out this year that wasn’t true. I’m 35.” ~ @Kelly_Grayston

“I thought Planned Parenthood was called Planet Parenthood and had some connection to Planet Hollywood.” ~ @StevenOblander

“I thought the band was called “The Pet Schmode” & always wanted to know where you could buy one. #DepecheMode” ~ @ Blackswanmuses

“I thought some of my family were ‘distant cousins’ because they lived in a different town.” ~ @tonyinabag

“I thought writing in cursive was how you communicated with Spanish people.” ~ quill_intheink

“I thought signs saying “Trespassers will be prosecuted” meant they would be killed.” ~ @nwkmom

“I thought going “cold turkey” involved deli meat until I was 20.” ~ @rocket_tan

“I thought there was some central location where people monitored traffic and switched the lights from green to red.” ~ @barbaramcthomas

“I thought snails were slugs who found homes.” ~ @LaurenCentrella

“When I was little I thought that too! Once I put a slug next to a shell from the beach & said ‘There you go!’” ~ @PanyaV

“My daughter liked slugs better, so she  peeled snails to free them. ” ~ @KKerns

“I thought my crayon box was made in some town called Sharpener. Because it said, “Built in sharpener” ~ @jrHeadbox

“When I was young I thought that the past had actually been black & white. I asked my Mom what it was like when they got color.” ~ @wench

“I thought Moody Blues song was “Knights In White Satin”. I couldn’t understand why the knights wore white satin & not armor.” ~ @Ottawagrrl

“My daughter thought seagulls grew up to be eagles.” ~ babsbeaty

“I thought TBA was the name of a very popular local band.” ~ llexuus

“I thought Christ was Jesus’ last name. Mary Christ. Joseph Christ.” ~stateofchangekc

“I thought married people were ‘awfully wedded’.” Iheartconsumer1

“I thought you couldn’t be out of money if you still had checks.” ~ @GW_HPFF

“I thought my Aunt Yvette was named Auntie Vet till I was 18 and added her on fb.” @tyler_kalin

“I thought skunks lived on the side of highways because that’s the only time I ever smelled them.” ~ @authenticalex

“I told my mom to make my brother a boy cheese sandwich because I thought I always ate girl cheese sandwiches.” ~ @spicedrum

“Signs said “It is a crime (misdemeanor) to consume alcohol on premises.” Thought misdemeanor was Spanish for “crime” til 15.” ~ @Lemonberry32

And my personal favorite:

“@TheBloggess reading all of your responses today, makes me realize that I’ve found my tribe. My odd, widely dispersed, Internet tribe. ~ @BroccoliDoc”

Welcome home, y’all.

**************

And in entirely unrelated news, it’s time for the weekly wrap up:

This week’s wrap-up is sponsored by the wonderific folks at ZERT, a site where people can join and enter giveaways for free every day, 24 times each day.  They also have Quick Draw giveaways which last a few days, and Featured Giveaways which are given away each month.  You should probably check them out.

On Bill Moyers, and in the Daily Beast, I spoke about the need for code to protect liberty and privacy in cyberspace. (Or a little more precisely, I repeated an argument for code to protect privacy that I have been making since 1999 — in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.)

In the course of both, I referred to one example I had recently learned of created by Palantir. The specific technology essentially builds an audit trail to the core, so any use of data by, say, a gov’t official, is perfectly tractable. So in the Moyers interview I said:

When there are plenty [sic - actually there are not “plenty”] of entities out there, companies like, there’s a company called Palantir who’s built a technology to make it absolutely, make you absolutely confident that a particular bit of data has been used precisely as the government says it’s supposed to be used. 

And in the Daily Beast piece I wrote:

And there are companies, such as Palantir, developing technologies that could give us, and more importantly, reviewing courts, a very high level of confidence that data collected or surveilled was not collected or used in an improper way.

This reference has now been criticized. (Here’s one careful and balanced example.) The essence of the criticism is that Palantir is a bad company, or that it has done bad things, or that it has been funded by bad people. 

I am completely in favor of questions being raised of anyone like me (meaning people trying to push a particular public policy) about whether mentioning a company or their product is done in exchange for money. That question needs to be raised more often, especially of academics. And one of the things we’re working on at the EJ Safra Center Lab is a more transparent and certifiable way that people can certify their “independence,” as in “non-dependence” upon the interests to which they are making reference.

So in this case, here is my answer: Consistent with my long-standing policy, (see Disclosure) I have not, or (now that I’ve publicly admired a product of theirs) would not ever, accept money from Palantir either as a consultant or to fund my research. This is the core case of the Non-Corruption Principle that I describe in my disclosure statement. And if this was necessary, then let this be a reaffirmation of that principle.

I’m less convinced that the principle of “corruption of blood" should be a part of policy discussions. In both cases above, I was pointing to a type of technology. The truth or falsity of what I was saying doesn’t depend upon whether Palantir is a good or bad company. About that question, I am not, and don’t purport to be an expert. I’ve known two people in the company with any seniority — one for a dozen years, and one more recently. About the former I’m certain, but of both I’d say I have a high regard for their integrity. But again, that wasn’t my claim in either context.

And more generally, it’s my view that a culture of free debate depends upon the ability to point to ideas or technology without that being read as an endorsement of the creator. Endorsements are of the form: “Wikipedia is a great company/community” (which it is and is both). References are of the form: “Terrestrial Trunked Radio is a great example of end-to-end encryption" (which Wikipedia says it is and who am I to disagree with Wikipedia?).

Thanks for the decent engagement. That, ultimately, is the most important here.

“The conveniences you have demanded are now mandatory.”

-Jello Biafra, lead singer, The Dead Kennedys

It’s now becoming more widely known that using guessable passwords or using the same password for more than one account is a serious security risk, because an attacker able to control one account (such as an email account) can do a lot of damage. If an attacker gets the hash of your password from some web service, you want to be assured that the hash will be very difficult to reverse, and even if it can be reversed, that it’s unique and won’t give them access to any of your other accounts.

This growing awareness has contributed to the popularity of password managers, tools designed to securely generate, store, and retrieve passwords, encrypted with a master password or passphrase. In some cases these are locally stored, such as KeePass, and in others they are stored on a web service, such as LastPass. Both are good tools, and work well with Linux. I personally have some reservations about LastPass as I don’t want my passwords stored on a third party service, and I don’t trust JavaScript encryption.

Interestingly, because we now have a tidy GnuPG setup to handle the encryption ourselves, another option is the pass(1) tool, billing itself as “the standard UNIX password manager”. It’s little more than a shell script and some bash(1) completions wrapped around existing tools like git(1), gpg2(1), pwgen(1), tree(1), and xclip(1), and your choice of $EDITOR. If you’re not already invested in an existing password management method, you might find this a good first application of your new cryptography setup, and a great minimal approach to secure password storage accessible from the command line (and therefore SSH).

On Debian-derived systems, it’s available as part of the pass package:

# apt-get install pass

This includes a manual:

$ man pass

Instructions for installing on other operating systems are also available on the site. Releases are also available for download, and a link to the development repository. If you use this, make sure you have the required tools outlined above installed as well, although xclip(1) is only needed if you run the X Windows system.

Setup

We can get an overview of what pass(1) can do by invoking it with no arguments:

$ pass

To start, we’ll initialize our password store. For your own passwords, you will want to do this as your own user rather than root. Because pass(1) uses GnuPG for its encryption, we also need to tell it the ID of the appropriate key to use. Remember, you can find this eight-digit hex code by typing gpg --list-secret-keys. A unique string identifying your private key such as your name or email address may also work.

$ pass init 0x77BB8872
mkdir: created directory ‘/home/tom/.password-store’
Password store initialized for 0x77BB8872.

Indeed, we note the directory ~/.password-store has been created, although it’s presently empty except for the .gpg-id file recording our key ID:

$ find .password-store
.password-store
.password-store/.gpg-id

Inserting

We’ll insert an existing password of ours with pass insert, giving it a descriptive hierarchical name:

$ pass insert google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com
mkdir: created directory ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com’
mkdir: created directory ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com/gmail’
Enter password for google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com:
Retype password for google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com:

The password is read from the command line, encrypted, and placed in ~/.password-store:

$ find .password-store
.password-store
.password-store/google.com
.password-store/google.com/gmail
.password-store/google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com.gpg
.password-store/.gpg-id

Notice that pass(1) creates a directory structure for us automatically. We can get a nice view of the password store with pass with no arguments:

$ pass
Password Store
└── google.com
    └── gmail
            └── example@gmail.com

Generating

If you’d like it to generate a new secure random password for you, you can use generate instead, including a password length as the last argument:

$ pass generate google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com 16
The generated password to google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com is:
!Q%i$$&q1+JJi-|X

If you have some service that doesn’t cooperate with symbols in passwords, you can add the -n option to this call:

$ pass generate -n google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com 16
The generated password to google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com is:
pJeF18CrZEZzI59D

pass(1) uses pwgen(1) for this password generation. In each case, the password is automatically inserted into the password store for you.

If we need to change an existing password, we can either overwrite it with insert again, or use the edit operation to invoke our choice of $EDITOR:

$ pass edit google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com

If you do this, you may like to be careful that your editor is not configured to keep backups or swap files in plain text of documents it edits in temporary directories or memory filesystems. If you’re using Vim, I wrote some configuration in an attempt to solve this problem.

Note that adding or overwriting passwords does not require your passphrase; only retrieval and editing does, consistent with how GnuPG normally works.

Retrieval

This password can now be retrieved and echoed onto the command line given the appropriate passphrase:

$ pass google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com
(...gpg-agent pinentry prompt...)
Tr0ub4dor&3

If you’re using X windows and have xclip(1) installed, you can put the password on the clipboard temporarily to paste into web forms:

$ pass -c google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com
Copied google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com to clipboard. Will clear in 45 seconds.

In each case, note that if you have the bash completion installed and working, you should be able to complete the full path to the passwords with Tab, just as if you were directly browsing a directory hierarchy.

Deletion

If we no longer need the password, we can remove it with pass rm:

$ pass rm google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com
Are you sure you would like to delete google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com? [y/N] y
removed ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com.gpg’

We can delete whole directories of passwords with pass rm -r:

$ pass rm -r google.com
Are you sure you would like to delete google.com? [y/N] y
removed ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com/gmail/example@gmail.com.gpg’
removed directory: ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com/gmail’
removed directory: ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com’

Version control

To keep historical passwords, including deleted ones if we find we do need them again one day, we can set up some automatic version control on the directory with pass git init:

$ pass git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/tom/.password-store/.git/
[master (root-commit) 0ebb933] Added current contents of password store.
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 .gpg-id

This will update the repository every time the password store is changed, meaning we can be confident we’ll be able to retrieve old passwords we’ve replaced or deleted:

$ pass insert google.com/gmail/newexample@gmail.com
mkdir: created directory ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com’
mkdir: created directory ‘/home/tom/.password-store/google.com/gmail’
Enter password for google.com/gmail/newexample@gmail.com:
Retype password for google.com/gmail/newexample@gmail.com:
[master 00971b6] Added given password for google.com/gmail/newexample@gmail.com to store.
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 google.com/gmail/newexample@gmail.com.gpg

Backups

Because the password files are all encrypted only to your GnuPG key, you can relatively safely back up the store on remote and third-party sites simply by copying the ~/.password-store directory. If the filenames themselves contain sensitive information, such as private usernames or sites, you might like to back up an encrypted tarball of the store instead:

$ tar -cz .password-store \
    | gpg --sign --encrypt -r 0x77BB8872 \
    > password-store-backup.tar.gz.gpg

This directory can be restored in a similar way:

$ gpg --decrypt \
    < password-store-backup.tar.gz.gpg \
    | tar -xz 

Context: I’m a professional screenwriter. I wrote the movie SYLVIA. The following works for me. I’m not saying it will work for anything else.

Start with three sentences representing the beginning, middle and end of your story.

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.

Woman buys house. House turns out to be haunted. Woman defeats ghosts.

Those are dumb examples but you get the idea.

You already have a finished story. You just need to expand it now.

You expand it by doing the exact same thing.

Take each sentence and expand it into three sentences.

So you write the beginning of the beginning, the middle of the beginning, and the end of the beginning.

So Boy meets girl becomes: 

Family moves house. Boy is lonely. Boy meets girl who is next-door-neighbor.

or whatever.

You know where I am going with this next, right?

You keep doing the beginning/middle/end thing over and over again. 

Family moves house becomes: Boy lives with parents. Parents divorce. Boy forced to move with mother to new town.

And so on. Pretty soon you have every event in your story mapped out. Then you can write it for real. In fact, you will discover that you have already written most of it.

The great, huge virtue of this is that you always have a finished story, and you are just filling it out. Of course sometimes things change, and at a certain point you just write, forgetting about the top-down thing… but it’s like scaffolding that you can eventually discard.

I’ve used this for every script I’ve ever written.

Serious writing is a serious business, like building a house. You don’t expect a builder to just get out of bed and start building.

posted to Metafilter by unSane at 1:48 on January 16, 2006

A week ago, we launched XOXO 2013 and the response was ridiculous. We finally closed signups yesterday, with nearly 1,500 people signing up to grab a pass. As of an hour ago, the conference is officially sold out and festival passes are going quickly.

More than anything, there were questions about how the registration process works and how passes were distributed. This led to a lot of anxiety and speculation, fueled by a lack of communication on our part, and I wanted to clear up the confusion.

Andy McMillan talked about this last week in his Medium post, but I wanted to go into a bit more detail.

The XOXO Aftermath

After the first festival last year, we received a crazy amount of mainstream press. The New York Times wrote four articles about it, along with features in The Verge, Wired, and Boing Boing, along with a torrent of over-the-top blog posts and tweets from the attendees. (You can see my favorites at the end of this Kickstarter update.)

All the coverage was wonderful, but it brought some unwanted attention. From the moment the event ended, I've been emailed nearly every day by a new class of person desperate to go to XOXO — marketers, brand managers, advertising agencies, and social media gurus.

These people are well-funded, have expense accounts, and were ready to throw money at us the moment doors opened. Several said specifically they were excited to bring the whole team!

When we started the first XOXO, it spread entirely by word-of-mouth and sold out within two days. All of those people never had a chance to hear about it until long after passes sold out, so the open registration on Kickstarter wasn't a problem.

This year, we knew that if we opened it wide, there was a risk that this new audience would change the vibe of the event for the worse.

And, frankly, I'm not going to spend half my year planning something that I wouldn't want to go to myself. Andy McMillan felt the same way, so something had to change.

How It Worked

When we launched the site, people looking to buy passes were surprised to find a short survey instead. We asked three questions:

1. What do you do?
2. What are you working on right now?
3. What's something you made that you're proud of?

These questions were never intended to judge people on their work, but simply to determine whether they're the type of person that makes stuff for a living or not. (Each one is hard to bluff if you're not a maker type.)

Before and after the survey process, we added this disclaimer:

XOXO is a small event, and we can only accommodate a fraction of the demand. To ensure a diverse and amazing group of attendees, we're giving priority access to the people that embody what XOXO's about — artists, makers, hackers, coders and founders.

But we didn't go into details, largely because we were still working them out ourselves. This led to a lot of speculation, and a feeling of exclusivity that we never wanted. People assumed that they were applying, instead of just joining a queue, and that we were ranking them based on their accomplishments. Neither was true.

In the end, it was very simple.

First, about 20% of the total passes went to people we plucked out of the queue, regardless of when they signed up. These were a mix of new and established faces that we knew other attendees would want to meet, usually people behind abnormally interesting projects and websites.

The rest, about 80% of the passes, were given out in the order that people signed up. For those passes, we asked a simple question: is this someone who makes something or not? If they were primarily an artist, coder, writer, hacker, designer or maker, then they were in. We never judged the quality or merit of their work.

Growing XOXO

While some people assumed we were trying to keep people out, the truth is that we want to include more people than ever. This year, we offered Festival Only passes to allow far more people to come to Portland and be part of the event, even after the conference is sold out.

We don't want XOXO to be an invite-only event like Foo Camp or TED because we know that many of the most creative people in the world are still undiscovered, and we don't know who they are. If they're drawn to XOXO, we don't want to leave them out.

We don't want XOXO to be a summer camp for the same group of people every year, which is why we didn't give preferential treatment to past attendees. Diversity is incredibly important to us.

And we don't want it to be a free-for-all like SXSW, because the shift in focus lowers the signal-to-noise ratio to unacceptable levels. There's nothing wrong with advertising, marketing, or PR — it's just not something that we care about, and it's outside of XOXO's focus on independent art and tech.

Andy and I spent six months debating the best way to maintain the incredibly high caliber of audience we had last year, and this system is the best we came up with. The biggest failing was communication, which we can solve, but I think people will be floored when we post the attendee directory. It's a ridiculously creative group of people.

If we do decide to do XOXO again, we'll see what worked and what sucked, and make changes accordingly. Maybe we'll scrap it entirely and try something else. Like we've said, XOXO is an experimental event, and we're treating it that way.

A short reminder: Any image from the series is available as a print in the etsy emporium. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to lunch!

To gain access to the lucrative Chinese movie market, Hollywood producers are deferring to the sensitivities of the 3 dozen members of a Chinese censorship board. We’ve seen this movie before, and it didn’t end well.

Read The Blog Post Here »