Author: Zen

Why do you hate this roast?

Posted by Zen On 1 December 2022

A photo of a plate with roast meat, baked carrots, cauliflower and a yorkshire pudding.

Sometimes, you just want a sunday roast prepared by someone else.

Sometimes, for this very reason, you go – on a sunday – to a reputable ‘italian’ restaurant and see that the roast in question is on the menu. Obviously, you order the roast, since this is what you wanted.

You sit there, observing the faux wood paneling on the walls, the orange lamps and 70s looking tables whilst the food is being prepared. You see people coming in for their sunday lunch, hear them say things like “ooh, that’ll be lovely” and “I love a good pasta” and so on and so on. Eventually, your food is brought out. And you see it on the plate. The food looks at you. You look back at the food. And you fucking hate it.

You can forgive the generic industrial yorkshire pudding. You can sort of tolerate the boiled vegetables. Your eyes come across the mushy potatoes and your patience starts slipping. The overall appeal shatters at the meat. It was meat once, probably. However, after being subjected to some kind death by a microwave, it is more reminiscent of crushed chalk that was coloured then re-shaped into food-like substance.

And you see all this and you hate it. You hate it because it’s bad. You hate it because it is what it is supposed to be, and if there was another person instead of you at this table, they would’ve said “what a lovely bit of roast dinner”. You hate it because you can make this better yourself. You hate it because you spent your time going to this restaurant based on somebody else’s recommendation when you knew better. You hate how isolated in your taste it makes you feel.

Sometimes a roast is not just a roast, but something that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. And sometimes you hate all the parts and their sum both of because of they are and what they are not. In this case, nothing about this roast is good and that’s why you hate it.

LaCroix Office Interior Review.

Posted by Zen On 27 January 2022

Sebastian LaCroix is a Ventrue Prince of Los Angeles, associated with Camarilla. In simpler terms he’s a powerful vampire that has businesses in human world. He resides in a building that bears the family name in a very fancy office mostly decked in gold.

The more I think about it, the more striking is the resemblance between an ex president of USA and our guy becomes.

The office is huge and imposing. It’s technically richly decorated and yet very sparse. The space has a sense of liminality to it – it’s as if the old owner was kicked out along with the brick-a-brac but the walls remained.

Initially, the space around the room screams opulence. The rich cream and gold curtains play off the grand chandelier and gold accents lining the ceiling and the azure wallpaper. The empty window tables are clearly missing grand ceramic flower vases. It makes little sense for a vampire to have fresh cut flowers, as they normally they are associated with the alive but then we don’t really know if that choice is due to vampirism or personality. I would say that the empty tables downgrade the overall look – they could have easily been replaced with torcheres to keep the design complete yet inorganic.

It is also worthwhile to mention that the carpeting is awful – a thin strip running from the lift and back and couple of rugs too small for their floor sections. The small step just after the carpet ends is also a weird safety hazard – it’s not tall enough to properly elevate the platform and only seems to create a harsh divide in the space with no seeing benefits.

I do want to tip my hat of appreciation towards the completely extra columns that serve to create smaller rooms on the right and the left hand side.

To the left from the entrance we see a fireplace. As fire is bad news for a vampire, this could serve as another power indicator – akin to a tame jaguar. The presence of a fire could also instill slight sense fear and discomfort in the vampire visitors. The space is well complemented by a discussion table with chesterfield style armchairs.

Above the fireplace hangs the original (presumably) of “Sleep and his Half-Brother Death” by Waterhouse, a surprisingly Romantic choice for a vampire however, since death is part of the painting, it checks out.

Looking opposite to the right side of the room – it’s a disaster: back to back sofas facing the wall or the middle walkway, empty display shelves and bizarre lighting choice ending in dead zones in each corner. It’s as if someone removed a plastic tap after moving, but not bothered to arrange the furniture.

However, the real pièce de résistance of the room are the six paintings.

Four of the painting are depictions of Cain killing Able by Rubens, Titian, Josep Vergara and Pietro Novelli. Cain in this universe was the vampire progenitor after the famous incident of murdering his brother with a donkey jaw and being punished by the God, and the presence of the paintings is therefore is pretty self explanatory.

Interestingly the other two paintings are of french origins – “Louis XVI dressed as a Roman Emperor” Unknown, a “Chancellor Seguir” by Charles Le Brun. “La Croix” is a french sounding name (meaning: the cross) and Louis XVI was the last king of France summarily guillotined in public. Putting two together implies there’s a chance that La Croix family was connected/part of french royalty which was picked by Ventury to continue the vampire bloodlines.

All in all, cool office, isn’t it?

Conspirarists part Cinque

Posted by Zen On 22 March 2021

What do?

As of year 2020, the year of the Covid-19/Corona virus, people on the internet talk about “low-trust media environment” where we are discovering that there is a massive communication gap between well, everyone. And what is especially terrifying, between scientific vs sensationalist vs reactionary spheres.

I wanted to come up with a way to be able to easily gauge the validity of any particular piece of writing online. As it turns out conspiracy filled garbage is pretty formulaic. Before looking for specific details in a piece of informative media (articles, podcasts, videos), you only really need to ask this:

What is the purpose of the text?

Is it to inform? Is it to sell? Is it to inform you and then sell you something?

It is more or less obvious with physical products, since the product is physically present. It harder to identify informational products as such since their intent could be hand waved by “it is just an opinion” statement.

So, what details should you look out for? Brief list of signs that the information source might not trustworthy.

Verbose, latinated language:

This includes specific-seeming terminology that is difficult to check. This terminology might be entirely made up by the author.
Alternatively, the terminology might be correct, but “applied as a metaphor” or used in completely improper context.
Lack of structure on subject delivery. An argument is stated, but then the speaker would not inform us of the conclusion.
Lack of evidence is given for the conclusion of the argument.
Often literal interpretation of abstract or relative ideas. Absolutism bordering on obsession.

Lack of specific details.

If evidence is present, it is heavily lacking in statistical detail: “researches found out that x ” not “researchers found out that x affects z% of population y”. For example saying “as a consequence of x crime rates have risen” paints a different picture than “latest report by National Stat Bureau has shown that crime associated with x has risen from 1% to 3%”.

“Conservative” vibe and Moralism.

“it is destroying family values”. You can’t measure family values. Furthermore, different cultures have different “family values”. Terrified of “the other”.
The author relies on tribalism to attract the audience with such words as “as everyone knows”, “anyone reasonable would agree”

“Experts” either rejected by peers or is involved in a loud scandal.

Expertise of the speaker does not extend to the topic at hand, “the expert” (if they is one) is from a completely different field
Bad self-awareness, bragging “I had major luck interviewing X” instead of “In an interview with X…”, “I had the pleasure of meeting X”, “I was excited to use product X since I’ve been following the author’s work for years”

Very repetitive content overtime. Topics do not evolve or change.

No solutions to the problem are offered. Problems are ‘raised’ to attention, but no alternative is given, in fact the main call is to “go back to the way things were”. It’s akin to pointing to a dead, rotting fish in the middle of the room, complaining about the smell and then walking away.
Any solutions that improve the situation are rejected or deemed “not perfect” and then rejected. Incremental benefits from partial solutions are deemed unworthy of attempt.

No barrier to entry / overreliance on sensationalist information.

Products (ingestible supplements/business ‘opportunities’) are pushed to the reader under the guise of promising instant health, wealth & happiness.
No entry requirements – you are not required to have previous experience in this topic.
Freud, Jung or psychological stereotypes are used to describe people’s personalities. Especially suspicious if the speaker in question does not have a background in psychology.

“Charm of the ancients”

“We had arcane knowledge, but we lost it”
often combined with “it used to be simple back in the day, but now it is difficult”. This also includes simplifying complex socio-politico-economic factors to absurdity e.g. “men worked at factories, women did homemaking”, chasing ‘exotic’ religious practices: “taking ayahuasca was my lifechanging experience”.

First of all, the list above is my opinion, of course. Secondly, it is not a prescribed list, and a single checkmark would not necessarily point to a sketchiness of the piece of media, but a cluster of “symptoms” definitely would make me extremely skeptical.

Also, it might be just me, but the delivery of this crap is tends to be very sexless and humorless. I suspect it tends to be this way since humor and sex need other people to be there. Or rather require empathetic connection and some degree of self awareness.

Though out last decade designed algorithms have been / tend to accelerate ‘bad’ news propelled in no small part people’s predilection towards sharing the shocking and dramatically upsetting. It’s not a new phenomenon or anything – sharing information, especially if it is negative, is a survival tactic that developed alongside language.

Grifters, or self-aggrandised societal rejects that try to create their own societies through fearmongering are also not new of course but they all seem to act in a formulaic manner. Perhaps looking at the symptoms we can at least get immunised against bad information, even if there’s never going to be a cure.

You can always tell who they are.

Posted by Zen On 14 December 2020

Setting: Open space office pod, just before lunchtime.

Dramatis Personae: Me, Team Lead, Manager, Director

It is worth noting that Team Lead, Manager are quite older than me, and the Director is twice that. All of us come from different socio-economic backgrounds.

The Director came up one day for a casual pre-lunchtime chat and the discussion turned to motorbikes, because he wanted to get one. So naturally, we looked at some models, and Manager asked: “Why don’t you get one?” and the Director sighed and said: “The Boss says no.” (meaning his wife). Both Manager and I nodded and went like ‘ah ok, that makes sense’, but Team Lead got very quiet. The conversation ended but as soon as Director ambled away, Team Lead hesitantly asked Manager “Can his wife really forbid him something? That sounds ridiculous. I’d say fuck off if my girlfriend forbid me anything.”

The manager explained this as something along the lines about trusting your partner’s decision and listening to their opinion. I sat quietly because I really wanted to watch this explanation.

I didn’t think much of this conversation for a year or so until recently I stumbled on a podcast about embittered men who are bad at relationships. And for some reason this conversation just *puff* materialised in my memory.

Both Manager and Director have long term wives, and kids (about my age actually). It is worth mentioning that Director really hates his ex-wife (I don’t know what she did exactly, but she wasn’t very stable by the sound of it) and Manager, well, it’s interesting because his wife is his first-and-last relationship? The story goes is that they met when they were younger, but split apart, didn’t keep in touch for years, had couple of kids from different partners, until one day they randomly met in a shop and decided they actually wanted to be together. According to him, they quarrel horribly from time to time but he can’t imagine being with anybody else. Team Lead’s previous relationship turned rancid after a long time, but he was never married because marriage is a trap and governmentally ordained commitment is for losers or something. He does currently have a long-term partner whom…drumroll….

He bitched about constantly. To the point that I once said “Why don’t you break up with her? You’re not going to marry her anyway.” and mean it. The reason I mentioned marriage is that I knew she wanted to be married from gossip and stories, but because of his pressure it’s highly unlikely they ever will marry. His opinion forbids her achieving something she wants.

Deferring judgement to your partner for a major decision doesn’t make you weak. It just makes you a human in a relationship. But I guess they don’t understand that.

How much does making jam cost?

Posted by Zen On 30 October 2020

I like making jam. It’s completely due to my grandmothers’ influence. Considering it is a calorific experience, I don’t even eat jam that often. That doesn’t stop me, however.

Ingredients:

1 unit of Fruit
1 unit of Sugar
Pectin (and/or lemon juice)
Herbs/spices if feeling fancy

Method:

Soak fruit in sugar
Boil mixture, add pectin, boil a bit more
Sterilize the jam jar
Pour jam in jar, let cool.

But what does it cost to make jam?

Conspirarists Part Cuatro

Posted by Zen On 25 August 2020

Alternative Educator Two : The Baptist

Life is arguably meaningless. It is especially meaningless for those who have not found their own meaning in it. Life is less meaningless if you have found something to enjoy, take care of or work for, but that’s neither here nor there. On the day-today basis we are definitely tired of our unfulfilling jobs, feeling alone, and advertising that tells us that it’s our fault we’re unhappy.

This time we have a proper academic to tell us how to deal with it all.

Conspirarists Part Drei

Posted by Zen On 22 August 2020

Alternative educator 1: Thrown to the Lions.

The old establishment ™ is outdated.

Recently, on the fringes of the world wide web, thoughts have been stirring: dark, radical thoughts.

They are thought by radical, alternative thinkers.

One of them is a dude that will teach you how to use this alternative knowledge to make sense of the world.

Since nothing is created in a vacuum, let’s see this dude’s credentials. Where does he get his inspiration from? Who has influenced his ideas? Why should I be persuaded by his argument?

According to his website he has an eclectic educational background, mostly from outside of academia, in sciences and philosophy i.e. self-taught, with no scholarly training. Now, we are not education snobs here, so hey, let’s take a look at the books he learned from and now recommends to us:

Pop science, pop science, weird esoterics, another book by the same author (what’s a “social architect” anyway?), Chinese philosophy, more Indian philosophy, Feynman lectures (oh hey, actual science, but hardcore physics), Dawkins (obviously), Markus Aurelius’s Meditations (obviously), Art of War (double obviously)[1], more pop science, literally one book by a woman (out of 48 other recommendations), metaphysics, metaphysics, one book on stat related economics… Some of this is pretty heavy stuff. The man can certainly read, at least.

But can he write? Well, he has written 4 long essays on “economics”, and my academic senses tingled in excitement because, dear reader, I have had the pleasure of studying econ up to my second year of uni, and I know a difference between words such ‘neo-Keynesian’ and ‘neo-classical’, innit.

That didn’t really seem to matter, as I read on through very verbose text and got really annoyed as all of these essays require a massive “citation needed” stamp across each. And why the hell is he referring to a very common term of “zero sum game” as “win-lose system”? And why is he simplifying systems of trade done in the ‘ancient times’? Why is his picture of the ‘current economic system’ doesn’t talk about economic things like cycles? Why doesn’t he refer to real-life examples of change to support his propositions? He keeps saying that we need to build a new model of economics that’s a win for everybody but doesn’t offer solutions. Aren’t these essays supposed to explore that? I could go on.

After finishing reading all this new & revolutionary thought what struck me, is how much of this comes across as trying to re-invent the wheel, based on never having seen the wheel but hearing about it from someone who has seen it couple of times. I must stress, the intention of these essays is to… I am heavily assuming, because I am not very clear, is to present the idea that the world is kind of shitty right now[2], but could be made better. That is a very decent idea.

But… is it worth to pay a £250 to listen to that idea?

Well, the thing is, you could already listen to a lot of his ideas for free. The comments on his youtube podcasts are very enthusiastic along the lines of “this is pure knowledge gold” and “everybody needs to listen to this man”. I have also listened to a couple of the casts, but the thing is…I don’t remember much about what he said. I remember that he sounded very clever at the time, but I couldn’t tell you what was his point. Like his writing, it’s a lot of unsupported statements that lasted hours, and provided little to no solutions to proposed problems, if it acknowledged any. History that led to these problems is unscrutinised or presented so out of context in “in the olden days there was” format, as if the olden days are completely unrelated to the current day.

The general idea of that things ‘could be made better’ is sort of good in itself, isn’t it though? Do you know what, I might be unfairly tough on the guy. If he wants to make the world better, maybe he has practically done more than just Edu-tament pieces on a bro platform for bros. Let’s check out his LinkedIn. What has he done to advance economics and reduce capitalism?

Oh, he founded an expensive nootropics company. Oh.

Buy my pills.

[1] Yeah, I have read it as well, at this point who hasn’t (and if you didn’t, don’t bother).

[2] I also love how he defends himself at one point “I’m critising capitalism because it’s what’s on rn, I am not a dirty commie, I promise” – I am heavily paraphrasing, but like, that’s so indicative of the audience he is expecting.

Prosecco ham, brie & cranberry sandwich

Posted by Zen On 20 August 2020

Two women approach an outdoor café table.

Older Woman: Maybe here ? Do we need to come up to the counter?

Younger Woman: No, they come to the table, mum, just sit down – it says right there on the sign.

Mum [sitting down with relief]: Ooft, I think that should be a bottle of wine. It’s a good day for a bottle of wine. Or maybe even…prosecco? Do they have prosecco?

Younger Woman: Oh yes, a bottle of wine would be nice.

Mum: What do you think you’re going to get Jackie? They have A –vocado toast on the menu there. I think I’ll have the prosecco ham, brie and cranberry sandwich – that sounds very nice.

Jackie: Maybe the avocado toast, I am not sure.

[Pause where they both look at their phones]

Hostess: Good afternoon ladies, can I have your contact details?

Mum: Oh yes, it’s Aierdrie, A-i-e-r-d-r-i-e and I can never remember this phone number-

Jackie: -Let me – it’s 077…. That shall be your little task for later mum! Memorise the phone number.

Hostess: What would you like?

Mum: I will be having the ham, brie and cranberry sandwich.

Jackie: Do you have a menu?

Hostess: It’s there on the board, behind –

Jackie: Ah, I see, I will take a look [stands up to take a look]

Mum: Do you do wine by the bottle?

Hostess: Yes, three choices. I have a red – it’s a Malbec from Argentina, and Pinot Grigio –

Mum: Yes, I think we will be having that.

Hostess: Great, just a moment [she leaves to bring an ice bucket with an Italian Pinot Grigio]

Jackie [with suspicion]: Is it Spanish?

Hostess: No, it is Italian.

Mum: She’s only got three bottles here, Jackie.

Jackie: ah, allright. I will be having a falafel and hummus wrap please. [Hostess leaves]

Mum: So, what did you go for? I thought you wanted the A -vocado?

Jackie: I went for falafel and hummus wrap I quite like falafel I just don’t get it very often. What do you think you’re getting?

Mum: I think it’s like what that lady over there has.

[Pause]

Jackie: Did you see the birthday cake Sharon had?

Mum: Yes, quite a good looking cake, wasn’t it.

Jackie: I hope her work goes well.

[Pause]

Mum [looking over to the space across the bench in the shade, currently occupied by a lady with a notebook]: It’s very sunny here, are you ok over there Jackie? It’s very warm.

Jackie: Yes, I am really enjoying the sun.

Mum: [muttering] Can’t move much because of the social distancing thing. [To Jackie] It is really a nice day, quite hot out, we rarely get days like these.

Jackie: Yes that was quite a nice walk we did today. Ah, here comes the food.

P.s. The ‘brown seeded bread’ for the sandwich was awfully generic shite with not enough brie, but the off-menu margarita was nice.

Conspirarists Part Deux

Posted by Zen On 9 August 2020

The Alternative Thinkers

One of the more interesting questions I think would be to see why there’s a market need for ‘alternative’ platforms to ‘traditional media’. Well, we kind of having answered that above. These platforms are edgy, new. They allow for free-speech-discourse-marketplace-of-ideas to be even freerer than the stifled old establishment™ that is having trouble evolving and is doing a bad job of being relevant or politically extreme enough (in any direction) so we NEED to rebel and wise up to the world of information that surround us.

Have you noticed how information dense our daily lives are? How it has become harder to trust what you see online because there’re is a lot of lying going on? How overwhelming it is to sift through all this information?

Well, The Journalist has a solution for you and it’s a mere £250. It’s an 8 week course that doesn’t boast to let you do what you love, become financially free, be your own boss, but it does promise to teach you to:

Act more from a place of authority and autonomy
Become better at meta conversations and explore cultural intelligence
Become more skilled at untangling complexity
Level up in your life

Now, who would not want that?

Conspirarists Part One.

Posted by Zen On 21 July 2020

‘Conspiracy Theory’ – a theory about some events that have/are happened/ing but are being either kept in secret or covered up ex-post.

Conspirator – a person taking part in the conspiracy.

Conspirarist – a conspiracy theorist that theorises that a conspiracy theory exists.

Couple of months ago, I started getting into conspiracy theories no-not-like-that, as in – it fascinated me why people believe them. This was triggered by a gym member posting an ‘interview’ on the gym group chat and urging us to listen. The interview was with a (in?)famous anti-vaxxing quack who was basking the light because of the Covid19 pandemic extravaganza.

This in turn led me to explore the rabbit hole of who was the podcast host and why was he ‘interviewing’ (what a joke, he was asking leading questions, not interviewing) people who effectively contributed to scaremongering and fearshovelling in times when people needed clarity and comfort.

It was interesting to see that earlier in the career the podcast host [1] interviewed slightly kooky yet ok people but as the time progressed the interviewees became more and more…questionable. Let’s call this PodcastPlatform1. As I was looking through all of the content, an interesting pattern emerged:

There is one bitcoin ‘expert’ [2] that came on regularly to persuade people to sign up to either a pyramid-scheme or a make-money-quick scheme or possibly both.
There’s one ehh…drug ‘expert’ whose main topic was that ayahuasca and its potential to “Kill Your Fears and Alter Your Consciousness”.
Also, rarely, but persistently an old Taoist man who talks about sex and multiple orgasms that you can reach or whatever. Orientalism? Never heard of it.

I’d joke that this place is Men’s Health on steroids, but that would be offensive to Men’s Health. However, PP1 does read like a men’s magazine on ayahuasca. Also, I was initially confused as to what exactly this place is about because it advertises “Business Masterclasses that are serious about your potential” in the banners surrounding the podcast window. The business class is led by your humble podcast host – Skeletal Man.