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Mach Log season 7, resolution 30

There are eleven essay drafts sitting in the pre-publish bin on the Mach Log right now.

I want to finish them; none of them deserve to be discarded entirely; several of them are about two polish sweeps from completion. But I can’t put any of them out yet, partly because housework and workwork have swamped me for months, robbing me of the momentum I need to keep the Mach Log moving, but also because doing so would violate my 30thbirthday resolution, which I should have revealed here several months ago but the explanation for it got trapped inside one of the essays I can’t publish while abiding by it, at least for now. I do need to get back into the swing of this, however, so I’m going to kick off Mach Log season 7 now with a decontextualized read of the resolution, promising a better explanation in the future. It is as follows:

It is neither above nor beneath you to create beautiful things, and refuse any lesser aim in doing so: academic, interpersonal, moral or emotional.

There is a man by the name of John Dolan who frequently goes by Gary Brecher who is known under the alias The War Nerd. This 60-something year old Irish-American expatriate understands the vile logic of war and the rhythmic backboard of poetry, having studied both his entire life from more places and circumstances than I ever expect to encounter. He has world-worn experience of a brand I had forgotten was real, and that I’ve never heard relayed so clearly OR honestly. I’ve been trying to absorb this intergenerational lost wisdom through his podcast and his newsletter, burning many of my spare hours this year doing so. I’m not quite done with this ersatz seminar on the War Nerd, but I’m almost there.

Writing can be a beautiful thing, and in keeping with this resolution I’m not about to publish a paragraph that can’t take advantage of this man’s perspective to the degree that’s feasible. It would be lesser without it. You might wonder whether this attitude lead to a spiral of patient enrichment over the rest of my life? God I hope so.

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Moby Dick...reviewed!

The Cast - Kim, Pat, Ryan, David

A variety of takes on the inkblot of odysseys.

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Main room audio test

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I was going to start a webcomic at the end of this month.

I suppose I could still do that. There are, frankly, too many podcasts now so rather than compete for a daintier sliver of that mostly theoretical pie, I figure it’s time to regress to a more staid institution: the scribbled word.

The key behind nearly all webcomics appears to be an utter lack of visual artistic skill, which I think I can manage. Take Randall Munroe: world renowned man of scribbles. He’s been doing XKCD for, what, 85 years? This is on his website as of less than a minute ago:

Witty, incisive commentary on the human condition w.r.t. science? Without a doubt. But what on Earth’s green Earth is that jaggy cropped line with the hatching to the right of the bereted swordsman? Many Pictionary rounds would be lost without guessing that’s a glacier.

I bought an iPad Pro last year, partly because I wanted a platform for drawing, partly because my internet bill is tied to my HOA and my employer wouldn’t let me itemize that so I needed another data plan to expense. The iPad has served the latter purpose admirably to this point, but I think it’s finally time to get some leverage out of the former.

Not that drawing will be a constant in this Machination Log multimedia websperience, or even a primary vehicle. I want to leave all options strewn about the floor, to be picked up as wont demands. Audio, video, graphics, ARG’s, QR codes, sculptures, panels, and—of course—extremely long essays.

This is not a promise of anything whatsoever. I’m mostly re-recognizing how easy it is to just type things into this window and hit “Publish” without hitting “Save” first. A monstrous power. Can it even be used for good? I do not intend to find out.

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Midwest Furfest 2018 Straw Poll

This is not science. I counted people’s hands in a video, rapidly, without double checking. The population sample was not randomized and changed throughout the polling. I did not re-ask questions after clarifying. None of this should be taken at face value as factual. Furscience.org does an okay job with demography. Ask them if you have real questions about furs. I’m here to yell at 30 people in a room and pass out napkins.

Every once in a while, I decide to host a panel at a fur convention just to shake up the basic attendee routine for myself. This year I submitted four panels to the Midwest Furfest programming team. This is the one panel they accepted, passing on an African Wild Dog meetup (unforgivable), a discussion of amorphous sexual identity (slightly more forgivable), and an ersatz talk show on furry political drama (submitted mostly to see where they draw the line). It was tempting to just mash those other topics into one power hour but, as a self-respecting pseudoscientist, I instead performed the task proposed. Here are the results.

20 to 30 people found their way to the bottom floor of the Hyatt Regency O’Hare, walked through a door marked “Tech Center”, hung a right past a water cooler, then sat down in one of four stair-stepped rows of mesh back chairs. I didn’t check ID’s, so it’s entirely possible none of them were here for the convention but instead arrived in this room by random chance. 5 minutes past the hour, I instructed those present that this was the Straw Poll panel: that I would make statements and then raise my hand, at which time they would decide whether to raise their own hands in agreement. For example:

Each participant was also greeted with an unmarked Paw Patrol napkin. As a method of free response, I asked them to please write or draw something on it with the provided Sharpies. These are the results.

Analysis

Two goats: one lovingly rendered in profile, the other spelled out with descriptive adjectives (“GAY”, “Trans”). Combined with a small horse what appears to be a llama-class creature to my eye, this is a grand total of 4 ungulates. As with last time, a lot of gay self-identification as well as one entreaty to be gay. I was once again accused of looking like Owen Wilson. One person appears to have written their full actual name on the napkin, though this could be a head fake. I see only one “““mature””” drawing in the bunch: a relatively tamely proportioned sheath with “Sheathes 4 Lyfe” written next to it. Whether this is a lifelong passion for the writer or a characteristic of sheathes themselves is unclear. Two people drew ASCII emoji’s (“OwO” and “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ “), a direct breach of the internet/real-life barrier that spells doom for us all. One fish. Significant amounts of overlayering on the Paw Patrol graphics: black eyes, two cat faces, an eyepatch, a pig snout, a spinoff series called Mow Patrol. This kind of additive creativity pervades our now meme-governed culture. More will be added here as new patterns emerge.

Fistbumps

Everyone was asked to turn to the person next to them and perform a fist bump. Several styles were observed:

The Bread Loaf scale

In the interest of expanding the purview of science, the Machination Log implemented an experimental bread loaf scale for certain items. Participants were asked to raise their hand when the number of slices raised corresponded to their level of identification. The operational variable in this case was Brownberry Premium Italian.

7 of 27 participants claim to have experienced a phantom limb. 2 claimed to feel 3 or more; both believe this has improved their lives.

7 out of 26 consider themselves to be “on the spectrum”.

9 out of 26, after a lot of drawn out “ehhhhhhh”s considered themselves to be sexual deviants (the term was deliberately not defined).

16 out of 26 like to pet people who are dressed up like animals.

19 out of 26 like to be pet by people who are dressed up like animals.

The farthest flung attendee in the room was from Los Angeles. The closest were two people who both drove 40 minutes to get to the hotel; they didn’t claim to know each other.

12 out of 28 “Pokemon Go’d to the polls in 2018”.

The participant with the coolest pet in the room had a sugar glider. They also had a variety of other animals including guinea pigs and hamsters.

15 out of 26 have considered moving to a reclusive commune consisting entirely of furries or other kindred folk.

It took 11 out of 26 longer to get their badge than it did to commute to the con itself. In case you weren’t there, this picture of one half of the registration line should help explain the query:

Applause scale

For this section, we have an audio clip documenting audience enthusiasm for a variety of subjects. They include Kirby, Incineroar, bagels, representative democracy, Spanish nationalism, curling, the live-action remake of Cowboy Bebop on Netflix, Neon Genesis Evangelion on Netflix, Jib Kodi, dogs, cats, bread, ears, tails, haunches, snoots, paws, and maws. Feedback for this section is subjective, so we recommend auditors take a listen and come to their own conclusions. (If I find my drawings of paws and maws and such I’ll post them here; not sure where they wandered off to).

So, what did we learn? What practical lesson can we take away from the science?

Consumption-based trends in the fur community don’t last very long. Bronies were absolutely a thing in 2015 and not one walked in the room this time. We are a self-determining style of folk.

Fist bumps have a serious diversity crisis, with most participants not even bothering to “spice it up” with an exit strategy. The data recommends a 6-month re-education boot camp on the subject for all Americans.

Bread is a more contentious and confusing grading scale than anticipated, despite audience enthusiasm for the substance itself.

For a community that isn’t directly about being gay, furs remain—on balance—pretty gay.

Brown liquor was the most popular alcohol by a slim margin. Twice as many people would consume decaf coffee as dirt, despite those being the same thing.

Twice as many people prefer the bottom half of their fursona to the top half. This will require some additional exploration in a future installment.

Everyone is bad at high fives sometimes.

Furry art and furry pornography are not seen as overlapping magisteria and more people considered themselves well-versed in the latter than the former.

Paws are better than maws. We already knew this to be true going in, but replicability is important.

Naps are great and no one takes enough of them.

Until next year, or whenever.

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The joke to play here would be something about how money is worthless or animals will evolve, but the real story in my brain is:

“Dog observes students giving money and LOOK AT CUTE DOG WITH THING IN ITS MOUTH ITS A GOOD BOY”

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I finally played through Night In The Woods Over the past few weeks and I got a LOT OF FEELIN’S. First and foremost GREGG RULZ OK

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I forced a bot to watch over 1,000 hours of Pirates of the Caribbean movies and then asked it to write a Pirates movie of its own. Here is the first page.

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Bring it in by CherryBox

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bottoms lemme hear yall make some noise !

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Art by Kippurable

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A Night in the Woods valentine.

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Art by Nowandlater

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A TF workout scene commission. I think sequences like this are a fun challenge.