I just turned down an offer of (poorly paid) work in favour of staying home and writing articles.

I just turned down an offer of (poorly paid) work in favour of staying home and writing articles.

Several of the fibres of my being are deeply offended by this whole idea, but they’re all quieter than my basic sedentary laziness that is deeply relieved at the idea of me not spending 4 nights a week up until 1 or 2 am trying to learn about goddamn medieval stuff in order to be able to teach it the next day.

The trouble with trying to learn stuff on a short turnaround in order to lecture on it is that you don’t really learn all that much.

Downside: (small) loss of income, some of the self respect that comes from having a regular job, having people call me “professor.”

Upside: hopefully getting some damn papers published, preparing myself for a job I can actually do, maybe just maybe being able to run some kind of game in the foreseeable future.

Achievement unlocked: drank a Saratoga in Saratoga.

Achievement unlocked: drank a Saratoga in Saratoga.

http://cold-glass.com/2010/09/30/saratoga-cocktail/

Realized I had inadvertently recreated this drink during my Manhattan experiments.

Also a Sazerac (not nearly as sweet as I’d feared) and a Manhattan made with Knob Creek Smoked Maple Bourbon. The latter was very sweet indeed but ideal for a snowstorm with record-setting wind chill. Still, I don’t think I need to get a bottle: I can’t think of too many drinks to make with it and when I absolutely must, I sense I’ll be able to recreate it just by adding some maple to my whiskey.

#illadvisedcocktails

So having played two postapocalyptic FPS/RPGs lately (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

So having played two postapocalyptic FPS/RPGs lately (S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl currently and Fallout 3 last year) It occurs to me how much I really really need a dedicated team of amphetamine-popping obsessives toiling day and night to create a full conversion mod w/ Tharks, Carcosans, and Bollymechs rampaging around irradiated Uzbekistan.

Some scurrilous biographical notes on the short-lived Umayyad Caliph al-Walid II (NSFW), from Robert Hillenbrand.

Some scurrilous biographical notes on the short-lived Umayyad Caliph al-Walid II (NSFW), from Robert Hillenbrand. He was said to bathe in wine and rosewater, and was fond of tearing off expensive brocade tunics in his enthusiasms. Also an accomplished poet, musician, rider, hunter and bowman.

Al-Walid II and the last emir of Bukhara were the direct inspiration for Tartary’s Hefnocratic Khan of Khiva, who was recently voted NPC I am most likely to repeat in another game.

…and I am having some difficulty resisting the temptation to add “Hefnocrat” to my students’ vocabulary. We discuss al-Walid’s palaces tomorrow.

Oh goddammit, now because of Arnold K.’s poll I want to play an orc that knows he’s a literary construct.

Oh goddammit, now because of Arnold K.’s poll I want to play an orc that knows he’s a literary construct. And not just Tolkien’s parody-elf orc but underneath that, Blake’s pre-Lapsarian Spirit of Man and Freedom. He will talk like Mojojojo and deconstruct all his lazy Orientalist behaviours while being unable to break out of type. Like “as we pass the nuns with their white habits I evoke racist fears. Probably by leering and licking my sensuous, rubbery lips etcetera etcetera. In fact I must shout raucously. Something like ‘show us your wimple.’ Dear Author it is all so humiliating.”

In battle his violence will be disgusting, bestial. And he will say “you see how I show, by contrast, the refined swordcraft of the Paladin and the Elf but still I count as a parody of their heroism and reveal that their violence, too, is appalling and depraved. Here, the head can go bouncing down the stairs, like so. The blood it goes everywhere, even on the Paladin’s white surcoat, which he had previously kept miraculously clean.”

HELP!

HELP! I’m trying to come up with a title for a course I’m proposing. Architecture of merchant capitalist empires. The course is about the Hanseatic League, the Venetian and Ottoman seaborne empires, and the East India Companies, and all the new building types they needed for infrastructure – guildhalls, shipyards, colonial trading post forts etc. AND OF COURSE treating their ships as buildings.

Boring title: Building Merchant Empires

More exciting but misleading: Pirates, Princes and Palaces

…anyone got anything? I’d love to get a Guns, Germs and Steel/Lawyers, Guns and Money type title, but I’m open to anything awesome.

Ongoing cocktail experimentation:

Ongoing cocktail experimentation:

1. Lillet makes a much sweeter Martini. I’m OK with that… sometimes. My Martini-loving friends are not. If Martinis are not sweet dammit then better stick with vermouth.

Test case: 6 Botanist/1 white Lillet. This drink also convinced me that the Vesper, James Bond’s contribution to Martini mixology, would not at all be my sort of drink: cheap gin diluted with vodka, plus Lillet. On the other hand it’s of professional interest to me, as a product that was first popularized on transatlantic liners. AIUI the “Kina” bit was dropped in the 70s, without changing the drink.

2. Negroni variant I actually like:

    2 gin (Botanist)

    1 Carpano

    1 Amaro Nonino

    orange twist

swapping cognac for the gin makes a sweeter, smokier drink, which I’m just going to add to the stable of smoky amaro-based Manhattan/1794 variants. I don’t have names for any of these, and the cocktail problem space is so well explored that I’m pretty sure they already all have names  anyway, it’s merely tiresome to look them up.

#illadvisedcocktails

Hugh Laurie’s first album (yes, that Hugh Laurie) is actually really unexpectedly good.

Hugh Laurie’s first album (yes, that Hugh Laurie) is actually really unexpectedly good.

On first listening, though, his second kinda sounds like exactly what you might’ve expected first time around – thin vocals, good but not inspired piano, superb supporting cast unable to lift the whole thing above mediocrity.

But I could be wrong. With music, my first impressions often are.

My only comment about today’s nonsense regarding parenting and video games is that this coming Tuesday the kids are going to cook dinner – they choose the menu, they go shopping for the ingredients, they make it, with minimal parental involvement.

Sure this will bring a tear to Richard Grenville’s eyes as he did not write this post years ago for Toxic Tartary w/…

Sure this will bring a tear to Richard Grenville’s eyes as he did not write this post years ago for Toxic Tartary w/ the country names changed….

“International observers agreed that as soon as the project is underway, Dubai’s claim to the title of world’s greatest human rights infringement will likely be measured and officially certified by several independent organizations.”

http://www.theonion.com/articles/dubai-unveils-plans-for-worlds-largest-human-right,37979/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:1:Default//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

were BBC and PBS documentaries better in the 70s and 80s or is it just that I was a kid back then?

were BBC and PBS documentaries better in the 70s and 80s or is it just that I was a kid back then?

I’m a bit embarrassed by the thought of showing any of the current crop to an actual university class. The talking heads are a who’s who of Islamic cultural subjects. What they’re actually saying is… not so much dumbed down as incoherent. Eurocentric bias is absolutely endemic, though probably more an artifact of the film-making than the scholarship.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/islam-empire-faith/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/islamic-world/

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/islam-empire-faith///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Amaro – what we have learned so far

Amaro – what we have learned so far

Montenegro: not all that keen

Lucano: easy drinking on its own, awfully sweet for mixing

Nonino: not as easy drinking but much better, great mixer

Bassano: like between Nonino and Lucano plus mint. Odd.

Picon: definitely belongs in this group of drinks despite being more orangey

Carpano Vermouth: kind of belongs here… like a waystation between other Italian vermouths and amaros. Like you could sub Dubonnet for red vermouth in many drinks that call for it, and probably improve the drink, but Carpano is something else

Campari and Aperol: really a different kind of drink altogether

Anyone got anything to add? Which amaros should I be drinking?

#illadvisedcocktails

I have to propose 2 medieval architecture courses next year (2nd yr undergrad). So far I’m thinking:

I have to propose 2 medieval architecture courses next year (2nd yr undergrad). So far I’m thinking:

1. Castles, cathedrals and caravanserais; the architecture of the Crusading Age

(covers Europe, Islamic, Mongols, roughly 1000 to 1300)

2. binding the world together; trade, travel, merchant empires and the birth of the modern world

(Hanseatic league, Venetian and Byzantine and Turkish sea-trade empires, architecture of the same.)

thoughts? How could this be better?

“What did happen is that some governments succeeded in creating South Sudan and some celebrities, like George…

“What did happen is that some governments succeeded in creating South Sudan and some celebrities, like George Clooney and Nicholas Kristof, succeeded in making it the world’s emotional petting zoo. And it has also become a cash cow for NGOs and international aid workers……………………………………

But South Sudan was not a good place to save the world because it is a big mess. Also, the U.S. never really wants to save the world; like every great power it seeks to accrue more power and wealth and acts primarily to protect and expands its interests.”

http://gawker.com/why-is-south-sudan-a-hellhole-blame-george-clooney-1683838565//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Apart from the fact that nobody does Turkic Studies so this is About Bloody Time I have to love this syllabus for…

Apart from the fact that nobody does Turkic Studies so this is About Bloody Time I have to love this syllabus for the following acerbic direction:

I want each of you to FIND SOMETHING IN THE TEXT ABOUT WHICH TO WRITE. This is not the same as writing a biography of the author, or a description of the text. Both of those are examples of narrative, the weakest and simplest type of writing; the sort that one would find in an encyclopedia. Rather than narrative, I want critical analysis. During the early weeks of the semester, your best course of action is to read the text you have chosen quickly and without much thought; then, find opportunities to read it more slowly and carefully, letting your eyes seek what it is that the author is really saying, perhaps being disingenuous about, or not saying at all. The text is a nut to crack, a puzzle to solve, a mystery to unravel. That which you discover after close reading is what your essay will reveal.

http://www.indiana.edu/~cahist/course1.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

“Although Punjab Police initially confirmed his death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and…

“Although Punjab Police initially confirmed his death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru’s followers cannot be forced to believe he is dead.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10860998/Indian-court-asked-to-rule-on-whether-Hindu-guru-dead-or-meditating.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So I just finished watching The Fall (the BBC serial killer thing, not the Tarsem film or the old rock band or the…

So I just finished watching The Fall (the BBC serial killer thing, not the Tarsem film or the old rock band or the American season or whatever other thing is vaguely called “The Fall” which tells you that’s a bad title to choose right there).

It’s another entry in the Broadchurch genre of deliberately paced, portrait-of-every-viewpoint-on-this-situation community drama. Not as good as Broadchurch, but it tootles along well enough that I could get over my irritation at yet another bloody serial killer.

And we get to know the killer but not in a creepy “oh it’s OK because he’s secretly some sort of psychopathic superhero” way like Dexter. And it’s a crime drama but not like Law & Order where everyone’s important motivations are spelled out by the end of the episode. And people make convincingly bad decisions unlike an Agatha Christie type story so they seem more like real people.

But the end of season 2…

Can you forgive Lost its final season because the first couple of seasons were good? Can you remember the good bits fondly despite the ending? That will determine whether you should bother watching this one at all. Even if it comes back with a third season, it will plainly be spilling its guts all over the place, where in season 2 it was merely loose and baggy at the seams. Just, maybe, don’t watch the last episode.

This temple in Azerbaijan looks a whole lot like the prototypical Zoroastrian fire temple.

This temple in Azerbaijan looks a whole lot like the prototypical Zoroastrian fire temple… but it’s not. It’s a Hindu temple dedicated to Jwala Ji, the goddess of subterranean flame.

The miraculous, ever-burning fires were eventually put out by gas drilling in the 19th century – part of the work that built Nobel’s fortune.

#tartary

(and it’s the first result that comes up when you look for Zoroastrian remains)

(you know who was/is Zoroastrian? Freddie Mercury’s family)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateshgah_of_Baku//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

from that mu’allaqa link I posted earlier (repeated here): on the responsibility and power of bards…

from that mu’allaqa link I posted earlier (repeated here): on the responsibility and power of bards…

_the poet, or sha‘ir (“knower”), celebrated in the qasida the delicate social fabric of nomadic life, which was constantly under threat. The knowledge of the sha‘ir  ran deep. He was tribal propagandist and encomiast, elegist and lampoonist, arbiter and assessor, but also visionary and soothsayer. His powers were said, in fact, to be allied to those of the jinn, or desert demon. …Time and again… the poet-warrior presents himself not only as a clan leader but as a rebel and trouble-maker, a reviler, a man on the run or companion to a band of outlaws.

in the spirit of Patrick Stuart’s excellent excavation of DnDables from Jim Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed

in the spirit of Patrick Stuart’s excellent excavation of DnDables from Jim Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed

…but, sadly, lacking the time…

I offer this critique of the Mu’allaqat or “hanging poems” as a complete character background or perhaps campaign setting. Pre-Islamic Arabia, yo.

http://parnassusreview.com/archives/408//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Trials for witchcraft are odd things.

Trials for witchcraft are odd things. On one hand, they assert the doctrine of the church – witchcraft is an error and reprehensible. On the other, they imply that witchcraft works.

From the wikipedia article on the Spanish Inquisition:

During the auto-da-fé that took place in Logroño on November 7 and November 8, 1610, 6 people were burned and another 5 burned in effigy

(emphasis added)

Dammit, Abu Mansur ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Tha’’alibi, you can’t just call your book The Book of Curious and…

Dammit, Abu Mansur ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad al-Tha’’alibi, you can’t just call your book The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information and leave it at that. Now I’m going to have to find the damn thing. And it had better be Curious and Entertaining as advertised or I’ll go back a thousand years and introduce you to lolcats.

https://books.google.com/books?id=DbCFBX6b3eEC&pg=PA764&lpg=PA764&dq=%22The+Book+of+Curious+and+Entertaining+Information%22&source=bl&ots=btsLMW1mjP&sig=gNu-dEjW7yBjwT0Vs2UzGdQmtF4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rf3GVIGDEoG1sAT38IDwAw&ved=0CF4Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=%22The%20Book%20of%20Curious%20and%20Entertaining%20Information%22&f=false//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Gary F mentioned that that Male Figure In Unreasonable Armour should’ve been put behind an NSFW clickwall.

Gary F mentioned that that Male Figure In Unreasonable Armour should’ve been put behind an NSFW clickwall… and I’m trying to figure out what’s the clearest yet most accessible method for doing that using G+’s interface. So, um, to see the full NSFW image, click here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/105975857413917046423/posts/5zL7ovf9cVP

The outfit’s fairly typical for Tartary’s chief Hefnocrat, the Khan of Khiva. The PCs struck up a mutually beneficial relationship with him after they’d negotiated his anti-dungeon – a weird particle accelerator repurposed into a gallery of libidinal distractions designed to figure out the dungeoneers’ priorities and to optimise the Khan’s bargaining strategy.

3.6 RPGs* that might expand a beginner’s understanding:* *

3.6 RPGs* that might expand a beginner’s understanding:* *

LotFP,* * * Call of Cthulhu, Bunnies & Burrows, Ghostbusters.

* look, if you get bitten by the bug you’re gonna go find the stuff. If you don’t, you’re not going to play 36 games.

* * specifically of old stuff. Yeah I just haven’t read much since 95, sorry. I bet there’s loads of good crazy I’m missing. And I’m kind of presuming that this is what these lists are supposed to be about. Like, really the answer to “what should a beginner play?” is “this game I’m going to run right now, because that’s what playing is.” If we’re really playing “favourite 36 RPGs” then I probably haven’t ever played 36 different rulesets. Also blah blah campaign diversity blah blah don’t get hung up on system. Blah blah actually don’t bother me with generic SF or fantasy, I want the thing that makes you excited.

* * * there are many, many deserving games that could be in this slot, but LotFP wins today because of its clarity, compatibility and the huge amount of free supporting material out there. Paolo Greco’s AFG is also lots of fun and arguably quicker to learn. SotU is an awesome exercise in minimalism once you know DnD. kirin robinson’s OSH is pretty much the neatest starter package ever, but googling LotFP will get you to the treasure that is there.

Dungeon conservators confirm that, once brought out of the Tomb of Horrors, most artifacts have a life expectancy of…

Dungeon conservators confirm that, once brought out of the Tomb of Horrors, most artifacts have a life expectancy of “minutes to months.”

In general, the more potentially useful or destructive a find, the shorter its existence once found. Magico-technological items in particular tend not to last longer than a week – and that’s just the ones that make it out of the Tomb to be counted. Even completely useless junk like this funerary mask faces an environment of radically increased risk, given the constant internecine fighting among the Autumn States and the frequent incursions of goblins and undead. “Honestly, until we can both put a stable empire together and grow up a bit as a society, we simply can’t look after these ancient treasures,” said Ragnar The Bloody at a recent conference. “This stuff has been safe underground since the First Silver Age of Man and here we are, digging it up and it’s lucky to last a couple of generations.”

#readingviriconium

Originally shared by Helen Calder

What was revealed when the beard “fell” off and why were they in such a hurry to conceal it.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/22/tutankhamuns-beard-glued-back-on-say-egyptian-museum-conservators//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

#thisiscorsica

#thisiscorsica 

everything we would put in Australia should go in Corsica. The name is too hard to pass up and I say the mysterious interior can hold anything. I might put the Tartary Flying Island Generator in there and/or Tartary’s mi-go brain-stitchery shenanigans. Let’s actually finish Corsica… in June.

ALSO #mechawrestling needs a text overhaul and I’m inclined to pop Carcosa Wacky Races in the back as a supplement – or into Corsica if you like. You know the Bourke to Burketown Bash or the cross-Australia Camel Race? Like that. Ajaccio to Montalban so you get ejected in Mexico.

…back to work.

Originally shared by lucy valentin

lol

I genuinely cannot think of anything more Carcosesque than this. We have hit the Platonic plane of fuckedupness.

I genuinely cannot think of anything more Carcosesque than this. We have hit the Platonic plane of fuckedupness.

Originally shared by Terje Nordin

This Finnish movie is a tribute to Italian sword & sorcery and post-apocalyps cinema. There’s lots of Carcosa-esque imagery here!

From IMDb: “In the year 2034 on the plains of the post-holocaust wasteland of Eastern Finland, a trio of synthesizer warriors calling themselves Nightsatan conduct musical rituals in order to maintain what is left of their sanity. They end up saving a fierce vixen from her brutal captor. Failing to understand her own good, the savage beauty escapes into the hostile territory of a merciless musical tyrant – just to become trapped, tortured and in need of being saved again. Nightsatan won’t swallow it – and all hell breaks lose. The apocalyptic and atmospheric action adventure features cannibalism, graphic violence, visual lore and a synthesizer score paying tribute to the classic works of John Carpenter and Goblin. It is a heart-warming tribute to the Italian Mad Max rip-offs of the 1980’s, with a hint or two of Alejandro Jodorowsky thrown in.”

http://youtu.be/opD1q0KDzZY//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Nizam al-Mulk sets out the duties and qualities of the Sultan’s drinking buddies.

Nizam al-Mulk sets out the duties and qualities of the Sultan’s drinking buddies. Just in case anyone was confused about this stuff and thought that such confidantes might have something like political influence… #pfffnetflixmarcopolo

(the missing section is on not taking doctors or astrologers as boon-companions because they’re always telling you what not to do)

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054090314;view=1up;seq=19

HOLY CRAP YOU GUISE Nizam al Mulk’s Rules for Kings is available free on teh internets.

HOLY CRAP YOU GUISE Nizam al Mulk’s Rules for Kings is available free on teh internets. If you are writing/playing a fantasy kingdom this is your primary source. I mean sure you could read GRRM but this guy here is the real deal.

Who what? Nizam al Mulk was the grand vizier of Sultan Malikshah, ruler of the 11th century Seljuk empire (probably the world’s most powerful empire at the time, kind of a big deal). Both Nizam and Malikshah were assassinated by the original and best hashashin.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015054090314;view=1up;seq=19

Extract below on keeping a careful watch on your tax collectors. I’m going hunting for the bit where Persian bureaucrat Nizam tells Nomad warlord Malikshah that he needs to act more like a big man Turk and do the drinking and banqueting, dammit. That’s what the horseclans like. Leave the beancounting to the ministry.

#pfffnetflixmarcopolo #Igotyoursongoficeandfirerighthere Paolo Greco Chris Kutalik David McGrogan 

Benjamin Armintor 

I don’t care what y’all say, that is the awesomest buttplate ever.

I don’t care what y’all say, that is the awesomest buttplate ever. Imagine skiing down endless spiral bannisters on that thing, with the one leg extended permanently outward like that.

Stylin’

Totally worth it.

(this does not change the fact that I’m on G+ hiatus, you understand. See you in June and all that)

Originally shared by Christian Buggedei (JollyOrc)

New Final Fantasy protagonist gets the chainmail bikini treatment.

Fanboys get… upset. 😀

http://neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=959608//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

You know how you could be absolutely sure something was false if George Bush said it?

You know how you could be absolutely sure something was false if George Bush said it? You can have similar certainty that something is a terrible idea if David Cameron proposes it. I’m pretty sure every direction directly away from David Cameron points to freedom.

Latest landmine: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/15/cameron_wants_obama_to_back_crypto_ban/

http://boingboing.net/2015/01/13/what-david-cameron-just-propos.html

Previous mouthturds: immigrants can’t have “access to justice;” http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/02/14/PM-Deny-immigrants-access-to-justice/UPI-24471360823868/

Screwing his libdem partners by vetoing proportional representation: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8067505.stm

master list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_David_Cameron#Overview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBumQHPAeU&app=desktop//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Tartary News is Better Than Reality (TRTM)

Tartary News is Better Than Reality (TRTM)

…I’ve been running across Islamophobes for years spouting weird, conspiratorial factoids and a few of them have even shown me the bullshit-aggregator sites where they get their worldview, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen FOX News go completely Icke-overse.

Presumably because I never watch FOX News.

I must remember to include this catechistic format in all Tartary News broadcasts. It allows you to repeat things endlessly for the benefit of the monkey getting electrocuted in the back of the hall. “So you’re saying they’re taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas?” “Yes, I’m saying they’re taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas.” “That’s incredible, so everyone will have to wear burkas when the Muslims take over the world?” “Yes, everyone will have to wear burkas when the Muslims take over the world.” “This just in, some dude with no eyebrows says Muslims are taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas.” “They’ll have to wear burkas.”

…last post from me for a bit: way too busy to internet for the next few months.

On Tartary Radio this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnaTLcFpQnE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV3FMjW1YNY

https://myspace.com/kingchangofans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYsymJU0Go

Originally shared by Teo Morgan

Please watch this at 0.5 speed. To do that click on the little gear in the lower right hand corner, and pick 0.5 on the Speed drop down menu. 

It makes the “facts” being delivered hit that much harder.

FWIW: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/nogozones.asp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zF7nbEvwY#t=177//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Tartary News is Better Than Reality (TRTM)

Tartary News is Better Than Reality (TRTM)

…I’ve been running across Islamophobes for years spouting weird, conspiratorial factoids and a few of them have even shown me the bullshit-aggregator sites where they get their worldview, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen FOX News go completely Icke-overse.

Presumably because I never watch FOX News.

I must remember to include this catechistic format in all Tartary News broadcasts. It allows you to repeat things endlessly for the benefit of the monkey getting electrocuted in the back of the hall. “So you’re saying they’re taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas?” “Yes, I’m saying they’re taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas.” “That’s incredible, so everyone will have to wear burkas when the Muslims take over the world?” “Yes, everyone will have to wear burkas when the Muslims take over the world.” “This just in, some dude with no eyebrows says Muslims are taking over the world and everyone will have to wear burkas.” “They’ll have to wear burkas.”

…last post from me for a bit: way too busy to internet for the next few months.

On Tartary Radio this week:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnaTLcFpQnE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV3FMjW1YNY

https://myspace.com/kingchangofans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXYsymJU0Go

Originally shared by Teo Morgan

Please watch this at 0.5 speed. To do that click on the little gear in the lower right hand corner, and pick 0.5 on the Speed drop down menu. 

It makes the “facts” being delivered hit that much harder.

FWIW: http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/nogozones.asp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_zF7nbEvwY#t=177//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

The Tartary zine will have this as its header and rationalization. This Tartary

The Tartary zine will have this as its header and rationalization. This Tartary

Only b/c fabulous dance moves, mecha robots, stiletto death heels, and  nuclear genocide are side effects.

“On this reading, the riot effect is not only a ruse, but also a rationalization of existing interests.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/when-rioting-is-rational-ferguson///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

kids are watching Once Upon A Time. A dementor from Harry Potter has shown up to threaten Mulan.*

kids are watching Once Upon A Time. A dementor from Harry Potter has shown up to threaten Mulan.*

Someone onscreen says “what is that thing???”

My kids: “it’s a dementor from Harry Potter!”

(it’s a wraith)

* It helps if I think of it as like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – all fictional characters are in here somewhere.

Feral half-thought that won’t let me go:

Feral half-thought that won’t let me go:

So imagine you’re playing Call of Cthulhu or any other game for which you want an insanity system because you want to model books getting a weird grip on the PCs’ minds and the possibility that the new sense of purpose they have is actually them completely losing touch with reality.*

Each PC is especially vulnerable to one type of mental contagion and/or adept with one type of magic. That is their colour. They do not know their colour but it’s rolled at chargen (3d6).

3: Ulfire: wide open to all magic possession/unhinging. No saves. Can summon anything but bind nothing. Good luck.

4: Blue: they can mirror magic effects cast at them or hold them to use later (on a successful save/POW v POW battle).

5-7: Green: susceptible to grass and algae, druids and kelpies

8: Orange: all red and yellow magic is slightly displaced in space or time

9-10: Yellow: freak out on reading The King In Yellow and related stuff**

11-12: Red: freak out on reading Tibetan Book of the Dead/finding Agartthan stuff

13: Purple: you are SOL. Curses naturally flow to you, otherworldly forces want to collect you like a distillate or vessel

14-16: Dolm: can use any sorcery but at direct cost to your senses/attributes

17: Brown: completely magic-immune

18: Jale: natural sorcerer

Cracked pretty much wrote this article for me.

Cracked pretty much wrote this article for me. Although they missed Russia’s contribution to the whole radium soap thing: GUM soap the only soap with radium! (they wished)

List of radium-laced products: http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1008/ML100840118.pdf

I particularly like the Radium Bread for its down-hominess. Somehow it seems worse than Ra-tor Radium Mineral Water or Yashuhiro Shimizu Mineral Liquid Producing Device because those seem like they might have uses as medical supplies or supervillain powerups.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19607_the-6-most-reckless-uses-radioactive-material_p2.html?wa_user1=5&wa_user2=Tech&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=companion//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Bhoothnath Returns is a Bollywood comedy about how an honest man can only safely run for office if he is already…

Bhoothnath Returns is a Bollywood comedy about how an honest man can only safely run for office if he is already dead.

Amitabh Bachchan plays a ghost who lays other ghosts to rest by dealing with the problems that make them haunt the living. He quickly discovers that pretty much every ghost’s unfinished business involves government corruption, crooked property deals, and criminal negligence. So he runs for office as the only incorruptible candidate. The rules don’t state that dead people can’t run – but candidates do have to be able to vote. Happily, because of bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency, the ghost’s death certificate has never been filed and in fact he’s been registered as voting in the last 3 elections.

Money quote: “But if everyone knows he is a crook why does nobody oppose him?”

“Plenty have opposed him but this is India. Some take the money, some take the bullet. Business as usual.”

So yeah. A comedy about endemic corruption and the practical impossibility of fighting it. “These dirt road? these filled up gutters? The trash? I’m used to them. Now if someone would bring us water just once a day then I will vote – even for a dog.”

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x26zrms_bhoothnath-returns-2014-hind-full-movie-with-subtitles-380p_shortfilms

the first comment here – “most likely it was suffocating” – gives me an idea for a 0-level funnel adventure, in…

the first comment here – “most likely it was suffocating” – gives me an idea for a 0-level funnel adventure, in which mysterious aliens* have locked you all in a shopping mall/elevator/submarine/HMO/abusive religious community to see if any of you happens to be a natural Houdini.

If you do escape, your reward will be to face a harder challenge.

Originally shared by Nenad Ristic

I love the fact that the octopus climbs out, takes a look around, then climbs back in…

It just wanted to have the option of getting out…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvvjcQIJnLg&feature=share//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I’d heard that this Viriconium thing was worth checking out, but I rarely have the time or patience to sit down with…

I’d heard that this Viriconium thing was worth checking out, but I rarely have the time or patience to sit down with a book these days unless it’s for work. Solution: long car journeys.

It’s so weird to have half the ideas in Tartary presented back to me. So very weird to wonder if somehow I got them from Harrison in the first place through some kind of osmosis.

I don’t love Simon Vance’s delivery, nor the close description of skeletal injuries, but for the notes of that other Vance in the prose, and the Homeric repetitions, it’s pure pleasure. Thanks, everyone who recommended this. If anything, it’s oddly encouraged me to write.

https://mobile.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Viriconium-Audiobook/B006L88VMY;jsessionid=8FE4116F99D871929CA860DCC92EB3F5?s=s//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

In American Tartary you would plug the sword into any telecom connection.

In American Tartary you would plug the sword into any telecom connection. Then wait 1d6+5 minutes to see if you could get into a high speed 16.6k modem connection. The roll to to see if you could hack into the connection.

And you will love it.

http://blog.spark.io/2014/12/17/warsting-a-wifi-scanning-sword-for-hobbits///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

new year party in Brazil features unexpected Tartary band: 2 rappers and 2 backing singers plus keyboards + drums,…

new year party in Brazil features unexpected Tartary band: 2 rappers and 2 backing singers plus keyboards + drums, playing this year’s top 40 and interrupting each other like they’re on a DJ’s mixing desk.

It’s like cargo cult remix culture in here. I’d hire these guys for a postapocalyptic film where ersatz DJing is all that’s left.

Except it already exists. They took over from the DJ, who was mixing this year’s top 40. 

It’s weirder than the time I saw a Balkan punk band play Moby. 

Got bullied into watching Maleficent by my daughter.

Got bullied into watching Maleficent by my daughter.

 

Man, I had no idea what a political tragedy it is. The movie of our times. Magical creatures of infinite potential, living in an ideal anarchy, sleepwalk into a monarchy (a monarchy!), led by a proven incompetent and distracted by some dodgy emotional sideshow.

Truly, anarchy is the most difficult and demanding of political systems to maintain. It requires constant vigilance and engagement from all participants. The way inattention turns to a state of emergency and then, inevitably, de-facto dictatorship is chilling and timely.

I have to say, the terrible decision-making evident from all sides was superbly observed and completely believable.

Mike Rowe, America’s favorite TV personality in blue-collar drag and #1 proponent of being a good little worker bee,…

Mike Rowe, America’s favorite TV personality in blue-collar drag and #1 proponent of being a good little worker bee, totally understands it’s hard to be the object of state-sanctioned brutality, but remember it isn’t easy to be a cop either, okay?

http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/12/22/mike-rowe-just-delivered-the-best-response-on-the-nation-wide-protests-over-the-deaths-of-michael-brown-eric-garner///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

skim this. is American Tartary.

skim this. is American Tartary.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KLqIDYvpdUiBAAF4H7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTByZ2N0cmxpBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMg–?p=gothic+king+cobra&vid=921f7173477d39201b730efe46c832f7&l=1:03:33&turl=http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id%3DVN.608050009536595515%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3DCvhchxHUCA0&tit=Gothic+King+Cobra&c=1&sigr=11bn5scq7&sigt=10hs4sg6j&age=0&fr2=p:s,v:v,m:sa&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=mozilla&tt=b//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I’m reposting this to archive it: it’s a thoughtful post about the fact that we already live in a panopticon and…

I’m reposting this to archive it: it’s a thoughtful post about the fact that we already live in a panopticon and we’d better learn to deal with that.

It occurs to me that the consciousness of living in a panopticon (which is, according to Foucault, the whole point of it) is something we’ve only been collectively free from for a short time. God is the ultimate surveillance camera: if you believe in him/her/it then you already inhabit a perfect panoptic recorder – one with eternal consequences for your innermost self. To the extent that religious folks think the panopticon is new, they also have not seriously considered the implications of their creeds.

The Elf on the Shelf is supposed to be a benevolent watcher but we all instinctively know he isn’t. Is that because we don’t trust other people to watch us, or because we detest falling back under the thumb of our own rules?

Originally shared by Yonatan Zunger

I have to admit that, until a few days ago, I had no idea what an “Elf on the Shelf” was. But after hearing about it, I’m both horrified and thoughtful. The headline of the article below is clearly meant to attract attention, but the underlying analysis is, I think, quite sound. This is a “game” in which the child, every day, has to find where the elf which is spying on them is. They aren’t allowed to touch the elf or play with it; the most they can do is talk to it, in the knowledge that whatever they say will be duly reported back to Headquarters that night.

I was about to say that this is not “play” in any normal sense, but that’s not true.

Let me ask: What is the purpose of play? Specifically, what is the purpose of “pretend play,” in which personalities are given to items, identities are adopted, stories are told? It’s very similar to the purpose of fiction: it’s how we learn to interact with the world, by imagining scenarios and thinking about all of the different ways that we could respond to them. (Fiction both does this, and gives us exposure to how other people might think about them: it’s thus a combination of play — imagining ourselves in the protagonist’s shoes — and a window into other people’s worlds) 

A game like “Elf on the Shelf” is a chance to place oneself in the situation of knowing that one is being watched, monitored, reported on, and analyzed by remote and powerful forces, and think about how to structure one’s life in such a circumstance. 

So to be perfectly honest, it’s a perfect game for today’s children, in that it asks them, when still small, to role-play through real challenges which they’ll face as adults: how to survive in a panopticon. Being aimed at children, it takes the form of a happy, pleasing elf, as opposed to — say — a Stasi agent wearing headphones and listening to a bugging device. (Although I don’t think I can really look at this toy without remembering Ulrich Mühe’s brilliant performance in The Lives of Others) 

Pinto’s critique of this toy is that it normalizes living under surveillance for children, and encourages them to grow up thinking that this is normal. There are really three ways to think about this, though.

One is to imagine a world in which these children will grow up to have agency over the state in which they live. In such a case, for them to grow up seeing surveillance as the most ordinary of things would be terrifying — at least from our perspective as people who have grown up in a world which was not quite so monitored. (Which is to say, those who grew up in the Western world prior to the mid-90’s or so) 

A second is to imagine a world in which our children have no meaningful agency over these matters, in which various organizations with ambiguously alarming names like “the committee for state security” (among others) are monitoring one continuously, and their operators therefore have infinite powers of blackmail or imprisonment over everyone. (“Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world,” Cardinal Richelieu famously said, “and I will find enough therein to hang him.” He meant it, too.) In a world like this, children need to learn how to survive from an early age: dealing with a panopticon becomes as important a thing to learn as dealing with wolves or Klansmen was for other generations.

But there is a third possibility, one which I think is both the most likely and the hardest to think through: that, by the time our children grow up, the ways in which they think about surveillance will be as foreign to us as the ways we think about computers are foreign to our own parents. The rise of surveillance has not been a simple ascent of the Stasi: it’s been a “democratized panopticon,” in which many people have access to one another’s information: people as unknown to one another as strangers in a city knowing as much about one another as fellow residents of a small village. We have already seen many profound shifts in our notions of privacy, and we are still quite far from reaching an equilibrium with which we are, as a society, happy. Consider, for example, the question: is it appropriate for a prospective employer to look at one’s social media posts, and deny employment to someone based on — say — pictures of them at a party? Most people instinctively feel that there is something profoundly wrong here, but within the rather rough bounds of our established norms, it’s hard to say what: these pictures are publicly visible, after all.

What’s happening here, and in hundreds of other similarly complex cases, is that as information has become tremendously more available, our social norms around the acceptable use of such information, and the acceptable means by which such information can be gathered, are still evolving. This is something I deal with every day, trying to balance people’s wish to disseminate information with people’s wish to control it — and often, with the same people having profoundly contradictory desires for themselves and for others. We don’t have solid answers yet: what we have are evolving norms, as we (as a society) feel out the boundaries of the acceptable, and try to construct a working system in a technologically different world.

In a context like this, the Elf on the Shelf suddenly has a very important meaning: it’s a way for children to start to grasp and grapple with these issues from childhood. We’ve created toys like this for our children because, consciously or not, we are aware that the problems which face our world are profound, and we’ve come to see them as so natural that of course they would manifest in the toys we make. This is beyond natural: it is important, because it creates a channel for children to start to explore these questions from an early age.

I don’t know what kinds of games and behaviors children will develop around these toys. I suspect that there will be a wide range, and that as these children grow up, the experience of surveillance-play will shape their attitudes and feelings around the technical panopticon which we have accidentally created. And I suspect that it is these children — the still-unnamed, post-Millennial generation — who will ultimately come up with a working social order that defines much of our future.

So given that, I understand the existence and the popularity of the Elf on a Shelf.

But I still think the damned thing is creepy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/12/16/the-elf-on-the-shelf-is-preparing-your-child-to-live-in-a-future-police-state-professor-says//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js