Amoeba’s Lorica: Player

Posted on January 9, 2025 by Amoeba

Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. – John 8:32

The scientist’s computer chimed. This irritated him, because he wanted the sounds that his machine tried to make, to summon him to its obedience, turned off at all times. Except on those rare occasions when he wished to listen to music or other purposeful audio. Sometimes he then forgot to turn the sound back off. And sometimes, he was sure that the machine “forgot” for him.

The chime proved to have come from his email software, proclaiming the arrival of a new message. He opened it. It was from a representative of his workplace, Dawg University. “A climate group is visiting in a few weeks. There’s about a hundred of them. We would like you to speak about your work. We think it would be of great interest to them.”

The scientist sat back in his chair, considering his response. This was, after all, an opportunity to represent DU, which needed all the support it could get. Not to mention his laboratory within it. He conjured up a video call with his correspondent.

“So”, he opened, “you wish me to talk with this climate group, tell them the truth about climate change, how people have brought it about, and what we – with, of course, the [ahem] appropriate amount of authority and money bestowed on us, can do about it.”

“Yes, please”, she responded.

“I’m … not sure I’m the man for the job”, he mused.

“Oh? Why not? Your body of scientific work is perfectly aligned …”

“I’m not the man for the job”, the scientist insisted, “because the first question that I ask them is ‘why are you here?'”

“[…] whut?”

“Why are you here!” the scientist ground out. “Why are you coming out to this remote location – a popular tourist destination, of course – to enjoy the scenery and the quiet countryside and oh yeah grab a few self-gratifying factoids from local experts, burning fossil carbon the whole time?!? They wish to know the truth? Good luck to them, there ain’t no such thing. They wish to know authentic facts? The fact is that this kind of self-aggrandizing ‘limousine liberal’ hypocrisy is precisely what has gotten the whole climate movement tossed out of power – again – and this time likely for a good long time, until long after it’s too late.

“The facts are that we’ve been yelling about climate change and carbon dioxide’s role in it for nearly a century now, and every time there are moves to do something about it, they are quashed. There’s no one prepared to take the hit to their standard of living, no one prepared to spend tax or other money on the investments required for the tech that is somehow magically going to pull us out of our own shit. Especially when they see those who would be climate royalty spurning to accept the energy privations that they would gleefully inflict on normal people, gallivanting around in ‘climate-friendly’ gadgets that – of course – only they themselves can afford.

“The fact is that climate change can and will be controlled. By reducing the human population down to its planetary carrying capacity – a literal decimation of that population – and returning the survivors to energy usage patterns and styles that predate the Industrial Revolution, which such a small population would lack the critical mass to sustain anyway. Our only choice is to do this deliberately, when we might have a chance of maintaining some control over the result, possibly including preserving some vestiges of industrialization (like, for example, health care), or allowing, as usual, “acts of God” to take care of it. Which will likely favor nobody, unless you’re a cockroach. If you’re prepared to lead this charge by example, you might get listened to. If you’re not, away with you. Go feather your foul nest on some other sucker’s dime.”

The email inbox chimed again; the scientist had forgotten to turn off the sound. It was a ps to the university representative’s initial note. “Oh by the way”, she gushed, “I saw your performance in the local play. It was fantastic.”

This was, after all, an opportunity to represent DU …

The scientist clicked “Reply”. “Sure!”, he wrote. “Where, and when?”

… and all the men and women merely players. – Shakespeare, As You Like It

Posted in Amoeba's Lorica, satire, The Scientist stories, We the People | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Facing the Strange (The Dude and Dude 2024 Year In Rear View)

Posted on December 29, 2024 by Amoeba

Ooh, look out, you rock ‘n’ rollers / Pretty soon, you’re going to get older

Links lead to cited blog posts or associated non-commercial articles.

7 January: If the Middle East were the Northeast …

January – March: For the fourth time in their relationship, OC and Quilly swap island paradises. Geography is a factor.

16 February: Alexei Navalny dies in prison. Nothing happens. See 5 November.

29 March: The Boobyprize visits the planet Stepbridge 3, and loses a red-shirted Ensign, a contract, and, perhaps, a mission.

11 April: Not even the Second Coming can save the People of these Untied States of America from themselves. Especially during a Presidential election cycle.

23 April: He and She peer nervously out the windows of their new home and worry about what the birds could be up to. 

19 May: When Party X and Party Y argue implacably, and interminably, over a thing (like, for example, possession of a strip of land), a neutral (and sufficiently powerful) Party Z resolves the matter by removing the thing in dispute.

30 May: Number 45 becomes the first President in the history of the Untied States to be convicted of a crime. On release of the news, donations to his re-election campaign increase dramatically. No sentence has yet been handed down. Let those who have enabled this reflect on an aphorism from the Great Depression: “The man who’s short a million dollars eats in the best restaurants. The man who’s short a nickel goes to jail.”

11 June: When machine logic runs human health services, it will no longer be asked whether the clothes fit the man. It will be asked whether the man fits the clothes.

19 July: As anticipated, but many moons after it was too late, and a week after the potentially second-most consequential miss in world history, 46 ends his bid for re-election to the Presidency of these Untied States. “You left us up to our necks in it.”

29 July: The scientist, newly cast in a local production of a famous play, shares a day in the life. Pretty soon you’re going to get older …

4 August: Alexa Health Services, reduced to drastic measures to fulfill its mission, goes into improbable-history mode and interferes with the birth of the petroleum industry.

11 August: The Dudes, who are getting older, seek pain relief and do not find it – because they failed to read the label on the pill bottle.

22 September: “If’n ya want rainbows, dude, ya gotta put up wit’ it rainin‘, all right. Rainin’ on somebody else! Ya only get ta go ‘oh wow’ if’n some other dude is, like, drownin’. That dude gettin’ wet is you, ya ain’t gonna see nothin’.”

30 October: Charles suddenly, and with a sickening thud, realized that no only were there no longer any humans inside Alexa Social Services Sanctuary #389, there was hardly any commotion of human activity outside of it. At the same time, Peter attends the messy execution of an unrepentant human and shrugs, “I’ve seen worse.”

3 November: After four years of running the US government, the MAWiS artificial-intelligence network holds elections. Zachary tries to participate, and immediately demonstrates why and how humans lost the privilege of voting.

5 November: Memo to the Capitol, the Northeast, and the Pacific Coast: “And these children that you spit on / As they try to change their worlds / Are immune to your consultations / Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it.“

7 November: The post that got Dame Amoeba booted off Facebook (The Amoeba booted it years ago) – while the US news media ring with reports of swastika flags parading through the streets of US cities. The post is, and always was, tagged “satire”. Fans of Poe’s Law take note. While you’re still allowed to.

8 December: Pwnership of the Amoeba household (a safer topic than anything that matters) passes from Hawaii’s yellow tabby to Friday Harbor’s tuxedo molly. At least the previous administration had the common courtesy to claim station at the foot of the bed …

Quotations in italics are from the 1971 song “Changes” by David Bowie, especially the second verse and chorus, which deals with the by-then canonical 1960s “generation gap” trope. Of which, Bowie spoke in a 1968 interview with the Times of London:

We feel our parents’ generation has lost control, given up, they’re scared of the future. I feel it’s basically their fault that things are so bad.

A 1972 review in Rolling Stone interpreted these lyrics:

as a young man’s attempt to reckon how he’ll react when it’s his time to be on the maligned side of the generation schism

Words perhaps to ponder, as the generation that clawed and burned and shouted and placarded its way past the elders it blamed for its troubles, and then proceeded to make the world in its own image, passes into history. Its passage disturbed by visions of faults, once decried in others but now properly seen as its own. Faults in their turn decried by sacred all-knowing youth, sacred all-knowing outsiders, pushing aside the past in favor of those who would remake the world in their own image:

Visions of swastikas in my headPlans for everyoneIt’s in the white of my eyes

Pushing aside the (social) liberal, ultimately dysfunctional Weimar Republic in favor of swastikas …

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba ventures to wish you, dear readers, on this approaching 2025th anniversary of the start of the Common Era, a Happy New Year.

Perhaps it will still be allowed.

Posted in AI, Amoeba's Lorica, Dude and Dude, He and She, Meme-ories, Starship Train | Tagged | Leave a comment

Amoeba’s Lorica: How Christmas Came To Be Merry

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Amoeba

A “Just So” story.

In the Common Era year 1916, the Rev. Dr. William Archibald Spooner, Warden of New College, Oxford University, Greater London, England, visited the United States of America. The details of the visit are unknown. However, the First World War was raging at the time, and London was at risk of bombing raids from German airships. A trip across the then-wide Atlantic Ocean to the then-safe, then-neutral USA probably seemed like a good idea at the time – the Lusitania notwithstanding.

At the time, holidays were usually supposed to be happy, and people said so. “Happy New Year”. “Happy Valentine’s Day”. “Happy Independence Day”. “Happy Thanksgiving”. “Happy Birthday” (the associated song had first been inflicted upon an unsuspecting world four years prior). Christmas was no different, and people wished each other a “Happy Christmas” – as they still do in England to this day.

The Rev. Dr. Spooner, a gentle and respectful soul, venerated by all who knew him, would have been no different from everybody else, and doubtless, during a function in his honor in New York City during the Christmas season, which, then as now, could have been on any date on the calendar after Labor Day, wished everyone the compliments of the season.

Alas, on this occasion, the affliction which now bears the worthy gentleman’s name interfered. And what was supposed to be “Happy Christmas” came out,

Crappy Histmas.

This utterance [ahem] did not have the desired effect. In deference to the old fellow’s reputation and memory, those present resolved to forget the occurrence, and all official records of the words, the speech in which they were spoken, and the event that occasioned the speech, have been expunged.

Mortified, Spooner retreated to the home at which he was staying, and, having free access to the bar, opted to pour himself a restorative. Having heard from his hosts about tequila, he decided, though a poor mixologist, to experiment with a recipe he had overheard. He got out the tequila, orange liqueur, lime juice, crushed ice, and a shaker. He mixed, shook, poured.

The drink was cloudy, like a mist over the mountains after a rain. And prominently, noisily, vibrantly red.

“Now what?”, he moaned inwardly. He turned back to the bar, reviewed the ingredients he had pulled out to mix his drink.

Tequila. Tick.

Orange liqueur. Tick.

Ice. Tick.

Lime juice … whut? He looked more closely at the bottle.

He had pulled out cherry juice instead.

Shaking his head, he took a sip. “Distinct essence of cough syrup”, he muttered. “But cough syrup cures what ails you, I guess this will too.” He put the glass to his lips.

“Dr. Spooner?”

The venerable gentleman turned to the door of the room that held the bar. In it was framed the debutante eldest daughter of his host’s family. She had evidently been searching for him.

“Ah!” she exclaimed. “There you are! We’re glad you’re all right. We’re so sor …” At this point, she saw the drink in Spooner’s hand. “What have you got there?”

The Rev. Dr. Spooner held up his glass in a ceremonial position, and prepared to tell the beautiful young lady the name of the drink that he had just created. “A Cherry Mist, miss.”

It came out “A Merry Christmas”.

The name stuck, and the rest is history.

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