Bingology - BingoBoingo's Blog

Prototype Pizarro Marketing Payloads

March 2nd, 2019

While I have spent the last four year contributing to and then later operating the Republic's wire service and writing up 1697 pieces doing so, writing copy for the purpose of marketing is new to me. This means having a hook, which I have little experience crafting. An early attempt at marketing Pizarro sent to the "Proud Boys" contact email was met with silence. The effort looked like this:

Subject: Considerations regarding censhorship and your fraternal organization's outlaw status

If you are interested in the future of online censorship resistance and
opposition to the totalitarian femstate, you are welcome to check out
PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel
#Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we
offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of
Bitcoin whose proceeding you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/
while Pizarro's physical presence is in Montevideo, Uruguay.

In light of the outlaw status being forced upon your organization, it
is advisable to begin to operate accordingly.

There was no reply to this dispatch, but it is hard to tell of the inadequacy was on the part of the recipient or the absence of a great hook. I am inclined to believe both are at play. This sample begins with a polite invitation follows with links the politely invited may follow down the rabbit hole which in the best case may lead to a spyked type epiphany:

It occurs to me, after circa three years of following the unfolding history of The Most Serene Republic, and about a year and a half of just beginning to participate, that this is by far the most interesting, intellectually challenging (and demanding), fun, promising, etc. project one could think of, or in any case, the only (as far as I know) serious thing happening while the world's busy derping about.

- A Man Who Gets It

Then there's the good cases where Pizarro gets a customer and in time the customer later comes to find that no, there really isn't anyone outside the Republic doing anything seriously. To this end I submit the following attempts at adding a hook for review, comment, and hope an informed in WoT recommendation for a copyrighting text to read comes forward.

Do you want to take your internet back from the Mommy State? In the face of online censorship resistance and opposition from the totalitarian femstate, you are welcome to check out webhosting and servers from PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel #Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin whose proceedings you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/ while Pizarro's physical presence is in Montevideo, Uruguay.

[optional]In light of the outlaw status being forced upon us all, it is advisable to begin to operate accordingly.

This may be a hook, but I am underwhelmed though it is stronger than the initial effort.

Do "they" keep banning all your favorite places online? Tired of Silicon Valley dicking you around? Need a place to plant your flag online? You are welcome to check out webhosting and servers from PizarroISP. You may find us on the Freenode IRC network in the channel #Pizarro and browse our website http://pizarroisp.net/ to see what we offer. Our operating jurisdiction is The Most Serene Republic of Bitcoin whose proceedings you may read here: http://btcbase.org/log/ while Pizarro's physical presence is in tranquil Montevideo, Uruguay.

Or for target audiences that are, in the contemporary pop lingo "Woke on the JQ" a variation could be tried with triple echo Jew quotes.

There's also a discard pile. An there's the knowledge I can spin my wheels unproductively without a deadline. Thoughts, comments, other angles to try hooking?

Posted in Computing, Exercises | No Comments »

Peso Watch February 2019

February 28th, 2019

One USD buys 0.15 more pesos than last month. The peso Argentino and peso Europeo held steady versus the peso Uruguayo. The Real Brasilero moved just a little bit.

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Mundane Shit I Took For Granted That Is New

February 19th, 2019

To continue the exercise started earlier:

Laundry Machines

The way laundry works here is you have a laundry machine in your residence and air dry your clothes. Not having a half dozen children to cloth and an aversion to fitting too many things in the habitation module that I cannot easily carry or roll to a new location, I started out availing myself of the local lavaderos. Back in old country there were businesses called laundry mats where you fed a coin operated machine anywhere from 5 to 16 quarters and it carried out its task. In Uruguay where consumer and capital goods are precious and no one has cared enough to develop a way to automate coin handling we have laverderos instead. Your lavadero rents a space that could have otherwise been a kiosko and stuffs it full of washing and drying machines. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Computing, Housekeeping, Midwestern Rube | No Comments »

Just About Everything I Grew Up Understanding To Be Normal Is A Recent Invention

February 11th, 2019

Following last week's consumption of some serious food for the soul, much of my past week has been immersed reading Trilema, following links, and reading all manner of Pantsuitist produced histories. Some Trilema pieces I might have read recently before the re-reading, but others have been a while. Pantsuitist histories were read to get the cancer's perspective on the its own metastasis. For my own reference, several points about how the world works are collected below. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Birds, Computing, Midwestern Rube, Peso Watch | 4 Comments »

Fire In Montevideo

February 8th, 2019

So, an insula unit in the Edificio Panamericano¹ complex was engulfed in flames.

From another angle:

In the second photo it appear a second higher insula may be on fire as well. My eyes left the scene unsure if there was one big fire or one big fire and a smaller fire. The smell for a couple blocks leaving was burning plastic. Walking up Luis A. Herrera I saw the first fire truck on its way.

It was moving with sirens and everything:

This was followed a block and a half later by four bomberos on their motocicletas sin sirens. They were too fast and hard to see for photographic capture.

[Firecycles not pictured]

The AfroUruguayan culture parade is going on in another barrio at this same time.

Not the one facing the River identified as "Edificio Panamericano" in the photos, the nearly identical construction catty corner and facing Luis A. Herrera. The nearest intersection where Luis A. Herrera meets the Rambla as it changes from being "Rambla de la Republica de Peru" to "Rambla Armenia" is about as high traffic as traffic gets away from Tres Cruces. [↩]

Posted in Birds, Midwestern Rube | No Comments »

Ring Lardner And Confronting My Own Inner Hayseed

February 4th, 2019

This weekend I was struck by a text I should have read at 13. Ring W. Lardner's " You Know Me Al: A Busher's Letters as has been established in the logs as the definitive tract on the American. The master anthropologist already posted on this text, but his headcase is not mine and my exposure to this text has absolutely dominated my weekend. Lardner, a man with the benefit of great exposure tells the story of Jack, a hayseed of little exposure through Jack's epistles to his buddy Al back home. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Midwestern Rube | 4 Comments »

Peso Watch January 2019

January 31st, 2019

Euro up a tiny bit, real up quite a bit during real taking season. Only a 10th of a peso movement between UYU and USD.

Posted in Peso Watch | 1 Comment »

Reading Two English Language Publications On Uruguay

January 31st, 2019

Our first publication comes from the "Winter 2019" issue of Dissent Magazine. It is an English language translation of a piece by a "professor of history at the Universidad de la República" who has side gigs as "a researcher at the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores del Uruguay" and "president of the Superior Council of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales."¹ Let us begin with the title block: Read the rest of this entry »

The awful trend of presenting history as a "social science" rather than a humanity lives here as well. [↩]

Posted in Birds, Midwestern Rube | 4 Comments »

Terminal Pantsuit Discourse: No, There is No "We" In "Si se puede"

January 24th, 2019

The ongoing USG interference in Venezuelan domestic politics has lead to an observation that the USG propaganda outlet CNN has been translating sloppily and lazily. Notably taking:

Si/í se Puede

On the streets of to be

Yes we can.

This doesn't work. First for the minor point that verbally sí meaning yes and si meaning if need to be distinguished. The distinguising happens through conversation. In a chant the ambuguity CANNOT be resolved. Ths quirk of the language does have cultural impacts. At the other end of the chant the English word "can" maps onto the root word "poder" in Spanish which can be branched as follows:

I can == Puedo
You can == Puedes
He/She can == Puede
We can == Podemos
They/Yall can == Pueden

Which form of the verb poder is chosen determines who can. As you can see there are plural option of this list for the first as well as second and third person perspectives. Puede is clearly singular. One person can, and that person can be a third person or the second person addressed formally in the third person. As far as the pronoun "se" it can do a lot of things. The only thing of importance here is that excludes introducing the first person. This allow clarifying that one person who is neither me nor us can. However it could be you provided you are cool enough to formally address in the third person.

At no point at all is there a "We" involved.

Which leads to the wonder of why the tired Hussein Bahamas campaign slogan is being forced on to these poor Venezuelan marchers? Could it be CNN and the Pantsuit femstate were abusively instead mocking the English language. That the "We" in Obama's "Yes we can" was never about the abusively educated kids getting to be a part of the "we."

US Pantsuit Interest In The Spanish Langage

While CNN is abusively mistranslating street chants for their handicapped English as a single language audience, they at the same time publish numerous puff pieces favoring mass Central American immigration of a very particular sort to the United States. They advocate bringing the poorest of Central America's poor into the United States to deliver them asylum from their own poverty.

I don't particularly care whether poor Hondurans speak their Mayan languages in Honduras, California, New York, or Alaska. I find it peculiar that the particular Central American country Pantsuit has focused on is the one that speaks the least Spanish. As far as I can tell Pantsuits appear to be giving up on language as a tool for social engineering their Femstate.

Consider the situation on the ground in Venezuela. Both sworn Presidents of Venezuela drew enormous crowds in rallies supporting them. Now there are Venezuelans, mostly outside of Venezuela who hold strong political opinions which they try to ground in reasons, to the extent they can given the toxic information warfare environment dominated by dueling flavors of socialism. There's surely some of these in Venezuela as well mostly trapped by family obligations. The major dispute in the crowds however is a simple one.

One group is comfortable with the dry goods basket Maduro's team delivers to them. The other group thinks someone else could give them a better dry goods basket. This makes very educated Venezuelans who survived intense schooling in the soviet tradition very uncomfortable when mentioned.

The Gibs Problem

US Pantsuits see what is happening in Venezuela and they envy it, seeing how it matches the strategy they have been using to dominate urban politics in the United States expanded to a national scale. Consider the last few US presidential elections:

Bush/Gore: Two candidates debate dueling visions for the US leadership in the World
Bush/Kerry: Two candidates debate dueling visions for the US in a world where the US apparently is less popular than imagined.
Obama/McCain: Hope, Change and free shit versus a stern lich¹ imagining himself a Maverick while pathologically agreeing with Hope/Change guy.
Obama/McCain: Now he can (after failing to deliver) versus polite fellow uncommitted to win it
Trump/Clinton: Narrative of redemption and a path for more gibs versus old woman who waited her turn.

It appears whoever most convincingly makes the case they are going to give the people what they want wins. Simplifying what the people want to a particular monthly basket of dry goods sure seems to cut out a lot of messy business. Nevermind the difficulty of holding the elected government to their promised dry goods basket while being the sort of biped choosing a government over how many noodles they are offering. Maybe one candidate offers longer noodles, another a higher count of noodles, neither are likely going to want to be pinned down and made to offer a weight of noodles.

What Is Pantsuit Talking About Today?

Today the trendy Pantsuit organs, the remains of Gawker, WaPo's magazines et al are talking about a story they broke this weekend. A white 14 year old boy attending an anti-abortion protest with a a group from his catholic school was part of a group aggressed by "Black Israelites" from another protest group hurling racial abuse. An old "Native American Rights" protestor with yet another protest decided to intervene in the situation by approaching the school group and aggressively beating a drum inches away from the school group. The fact the the white kid reacted by smiling triggered a fountain of outrage.

After days of being outraged, hedging their outrage, and doubling down on their outrage, the Pantsuit press continue targeting this one 14 year old boy personally by name. Now they are outraged that they've driven the kid to issue a statement that his does no feel sorry towards the old chief who got in his face with a drum. There's little to the story other than the kids haven't been completely cowed out of politely standing their ground.

Yet, at a time when another color revolution is going on and and Iraq style "humanitarian intervention" is in the works... they can't stop writing about the kid and putting his headlines above actual developing news. Instead they wring every ounce of emotional response out of the kid's smirk because they have to try their damnest to drown out reality with concern over form.

What Is Pantsuit Not Talking About Today?

The sad story of Simón Bolivar who inspired by the colonies to the north casting off the British worked to liberate the southern Americas from the Spanish. However when spreading Democracy he took the gringo "people" out of context to mean all featherless bipeds with flat nails at at time the gringos were using people to mean a much narrower class of bipeds. He spent his last years horrified by the monster he wrought which in his own lifetime frequently materialized as elections decided by who promised the most generous monthly rations.

Fellow citizens! I blush to say this: Independence is the only benefit we have acquired, to the detriment of all the rest - Simón Bolivar

Eventually, painfully Venezuela emerged as a country. Enough of a country to take loans from Europe and get blockades after defaulting on the loans. Then the democracy brought the World Wars the Americas got leverage from having not been wrecked. Uruguay had a miracle, Argentina was a power, but Venezuela was a petro state. While the rest of the continent ran out their luck by the 70s, Venezuela was rich as late as the 1990's. Richer than Qatar, but... more populated. Then they got Chavez who read young Bolivar without reading old Bolivar. In the name of equality everyone got poorer. When elections came around, the will of the people continued to favor monthly rations over earning one's own way. Repeatedly. When Chavez died, the last of the skilled people started fleeing but Maduro kept riding this formular to the re-election for which he was just sworn in.

The Pantsuits are quiet now because they want Trump to unleash USG.RED so they can pin the ensuing debacle on Trump. All of the starving babies under Maduro be damned, Pantsuit want to unload democracy's failure in Venezuela on anything but socialism. Until the missiles start flying and Maduro sinks an aircraft carrier, Pantsuit can only bide their time and bitch about smiling white boys. Once the missiles fly they'll demand Maduro voters resettled in Ohio, but I doubt they will expend the effort to learn Spanish. Going back to the start of this post they will simply keep telling Anglophones and Spanish speakers different things while dutifully inserting themselves in the middle as unreliable translators.

Once undying and now dead [↩]

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The Internet Of Poverty Or Why Residential Internet Is Cheap

January 22nd, 2019

For more than a year now I have had the priviledge of living in Uruguay while working on an Internet venture. Unpacked this means:

Living In Uruguay: I've gone from being the longest staying guest in my initial tourist accomodation/residence to renting a residence, signing associated contracts, and generally being embedded amongst the Uruguayos. I drink the tap water, I have favored kioskos, and I know which Pichis and Planchas belong in my barrio¹ and which don't. Terraforming though slow is happening. My social contacts have shifted from largely being weighted towards various types of nomads to locals and fellow immigrants.
Internet Venture: By this I mean physical machines, actual cables, some tangible keys in addition to cryptographic ones, and a number of contacts with the upstreamprovider that I have talked to more face to face than any other communications channel. I get the priviledge of looking at the machines, checking seals, and more when the act up. In the search for a datacenter I got to appreciate how rare an independent non-Equinix datacenter is that doesn't make cloud automation software for industrial laundries their primary business.²

Problemata

Uruguay is similar to Canada in some ways with an economy supported mostly by agriculture, tourism, and some mining. While the popular analogy is proposes Uruguay as Argentina's Canada, during my time here Brasil has appeared to be the bigger influence in everything except the langauge. Manufactered goods of any sophistication come from Brasil, China, or Europe. Some consumable consumer goods of Argentine manufacture appear on store shelves, but Argentina largely doesn't have the prowess to be competitive. The 20th and 21st century history of Uruguayo and Argentino economic relations is Argentina falling from emergent world power to a regional abcess that won't heal and Uruguay catching toxic shock and other nastiness through physical proximity and cultural channels. A more accurate attempt to analogize relations in the region to Anglophone countries that Uruguay is the United Kingdom if Agentina takes the place of the US and Canada if Brazil is the US. If you try analogically mapping South American countries to US states, Argentina is Illinois and nothing else maps cleanly.

Mind that as the dollar printing press loses strength due to Bitcoin and other reasons³ that US position appears as though it will approach Argentina's more rapidly than Argentina itself did.

For all of this, a residential internet connection runs ~42 USD monthly paid in local currency. The connection is carried over an optical fiber that terminates inside the home and by most appearances functions like a home connection does in the US. Streaming video works, IRC works, torrents work, and so on. Streaming multiple high definition videos from multiple platforms just works. How does this happen at this price point in Uruguay? The answer appears to be the same as in the US or any other part of the world.

My God The Caching

It has been roughly a decade now since Netflix killed Blockbuster and then pivoted from offering a large catalog of movies distributed through the mail to a tiny catalog⁴ streamed over the Internet. During the first few years there was a lot of drama over the internet transit this required. The amount streamed has grown while the complaints have all but disappeared. This is not because internet transit capacity grew faster than the streaming. It is not because Internet transit got cheaper. It's because Neflix places boxes with local residential ISPs.

Google places racks boxes with residential ISPs that'll hold big chunk of Youtube and other Google mystery meat, Akamai enthusiastically racks boxes with residential ISPs that'll hold the porn flicks, and your resdential ISP will pay a pretty penny for a general caching solution under the guise of serving the web but mostly serving popular torrents... by they time your residential ISP is done they'll have a couple racks filled. They'll also have recreated something like an old school BBS system to serve most of what their customers want.

For all the press about a "high speed" and "global" internet, it is in a residential ISP's financial interest to locally cache everything it can. The only reason "high speed" connections to a "global" internet works at residential price points is because they don't have to.

Any Everything Else?

Everything else is relatively small and unavoidably expensive. This includes any realtime two way communications. The expectation of routinely carrying two way real time communications is why generally entry level "business" internet plans involve doubling the price and decimating the advertised bandwidth. It isn't simply that sticking the word "business" in front is a license to mark up. It's that a couple hours of video calls to another provider costs them more than streaming Friends beginning to end on repeat.

This means everyone smart is serving lean content. It also means that when Conde Nast presents Ars/Wired/Cosmo/BarryDillerIAC tell you to funnel all your shit through https or a VPN while wrapping 1KB of text in 2 MB of shit that they bleed. And how do they bleed.

What Does This Mean

Back in the old days 10 and 20 years ago the force driving down consumer connection prices was over subscription, that while a plan was advertised "up to" a certain speed "demand" could drive delivered speed down. Now the force driving down price is the fact that delivering 90+ percent of what the customers demand can be done from their own premises. The advertised maximum has also become unimportant so long as they can support enough simultaneous video streams on their local network as demanded.

It also means home machines are uninteresting for DDoS attacks, servers don't deal great returns, and anyone who knows what is targets the routers either intentionally or unintentionally. It means the actual deep dark web is only going to grow. It means the cost of offering anything to all comers is only going up.

Solution?

There isn't a stable one. Thankfully there can't be a stable one. Whether you hit them or not, walls are going up and location matters.

Unlike in other Latino locales, every neighborhood is a barrio. From historical Barrio de los Judios near the not especially commercial La Commercial to the present Barrio de los Judios more commonly know as Punta Carretas. [↩]
Asia is weird and Pacific coastline correlates with poor international internet connectivity. [↩]
Such as form continuing to be substituted for substance. [↩]
Featuring classics such as Fireplace For Your Home: Birchwood Edition [↩]

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