Lots of fire and explosions, some cool engineering, chemistry, and physics.  Some decent ideas for someone trying to be secure in their information.  I'm not sure what more I need to say to introduce this resource.

Today's suggestion is fun and practical and is only tangentially related to freedom or philosophy.  CodinGame is a game in which one programs their character in just about any programming language (no Rust, sorry).  The game runs through a series of tests to see how many contingencies your program can over, granting a higher score for more tests cleared.  I've been playing it this morning to see how much I remembered of Bash and Java and realizing that I've forgotten just about all my C(++).


What does this have to do with philosophy?  Programming languages are function-driven languages.  Like the difference between math, spoken language, artistic expression, programming language is another type of language.  In order to best explore reality, I believe a philosopher has to have at least a passing familiarity with these different kinds of expression, each with their unique grammar and vocabulary.  It gives one the epistemic and phenomenological tools required to see things from different angles, maybe even noticing regularities that would otherwise be missed.


Also, even though one may never find themselves programming autonomous drones to defend the planet from invading aliens, such know-how can server one's survival well, especially in high-tech self-providing environments.  In order to run an aquaponics bunker/greenhouse off of a handful of Raspberry Pi-s, one would likely have to do a little coding to get them to do what one wants.

Also, this game is fun and you should try it for that reason.

The time has come, I think, to purge some podcasts off my list.  I have more podcasts than I have time, and some of them have ceased providing utility for my current situation... which happens a few times a year.  Usually, when this time comes, I share on facebook the ones that I am abandoning and why.  Now that I have a platform on which I talk about podcasts incessantly, I figure this may be a better place to do so.

Podcasts I continue to listen to (in order of priority):

1. Superego:  Short and rarely updated, Superego is the funniest thing I have ever heard on the internet.  That is all.
   
2. Robot or Not: Five minute episodes in which the hosts determine whether or not a specific piece of technology is a robot.  Fun, short, funny.  I disagree with their conditions for being a robot, but that doesn't take away from the fun.
   
3. Tom Woods Show:  Updated every weekday, I make it a point to keep up-to-date with this show.  Tom is the most respectable and most influential anarchist alive today.  Every day he has something new and important to share with the world.  Everyone, regardless of what they believe, must listen to his show, if they are going to say they are a critical thinker.
   
4. Mad Philosopher Podcast: Yeah, yeah... I know... I listen to my own show, I'm such a dork and a narcissist.  I listen to it the day I upload in order to catch major issues with the show.  I've already caught and re-uploaded two shows, so the process works.  I recommend everyone listen to what I have to say, too (as any narcissist would).
   
5. Sovryn Tech:  A tech and culture podcast with another paradigm anarchist.  A little think/left sometimes, but always well-reasoned and intellectual, Brian Sovryn has done more for liberty than any politician, ever.
   
6. History of Philosophy Without any Gaps: A weekly podcast that has been methodically plodding through the history of philosophy from the pre-socratics through today.  Each episode is short, easy to understand, and like the name says, has no gaps.  Excellent for both beginners and people who know it all.
   
7. The Cracked Podcast:  Just like the Cracked website, but in audio format.  Hilarious, informative and a little too left to be taken seriously.  I have fun and learn a lot of trivia.
   
8. DH Unplugged: A weekly discussion of the financial markets by Dvorak and Horowitz.  Very informative about what's going on in the world, even if one has no skin in investments.
   
9. Christopher Cantwell Essays:  With more passion and rage than even I can muster, the well-read and ever-grounded Cantwell will occasionally record a stand-alone rant which always has something important to tell someone.
   
10. Very Bad Wizards:  My favorite Philosophy podcast, these two guys are hilarious and relaxed.  Their content is always fresh and informative.
    
11. Philosophize This:  A fun exploration of concepts in philosophy, seemingly chosen at random.  The host has a cleverness about him and a solid grasp of the concepts and contexts he covers.
    
12. Catholic Stuff you Should Know:  A podcast currently hosted by my assistant pastor and my (likely) future pastor, they cover a wide variety of subjects, all of which are important to living a full faith life.  Lots of fun banter and jokes, lots of educational stuff.
    
13. Partially Examined Life:  My first and still one of my favorites podcasts, the Partially Examined life is a monthly exploration of a small group of texts in philosophy.  With a healthy balance of irreverence, humor, and knowledgeably, this show is usually a lot of fun, and teaches me stuff I didn't know in a field in which I'm generally very knowledgeable.
    
14. Radical Agenda:  Christopher Cantwell again, hosting a live show in his living room.  Every so often, he goes a little too conservative (being against immigration, for example), but he is usually 100% on top of what it means to be an anarchist in an unfree world.
    
15. School Sucks Show:  Usually randomly updated, but with long episodes, School Sucks is a show devoted to education and intellectual self-defense.  Parents and educators ought to listen to this show, as well as anyone who wishes to be intellectually literate.
    
16. The Ex-Worker:  An AnCom production about AnComs, this is a useful resource in encouraging me that at least some anarchists are actually doing something besides sitting around and praying for the second coming of John Galt.
    
17. Rationally Speaking:  An atheist podcast that focuses primarily on cognitive biases, science, and ethics.  On rare occasion they'll bring Neil DeGrasse Tyson (or some other popular "scientist") on to shit all over philosophy and religion, but they are usually very ice and even-handed.  One of the main hosts just left, but the remaining host has carried along nicely.
    
18. Anime World Order:The snobby older brother to Anime Pulse, AWO updates rarely and sporadically, but I very much enjoy their discussions of older anime, especially since they tend to share similar opinions to my own and expose me to things I've missed.
    
19. History on Fire:  A new podcast from Daniele Bolelli (of Drunken Taoist fame).  He recounts interesting and often-ignored chunks of history from an amusing angle.  The history lessons being my favorite part of the Drunken Taoist, this podcast is awesome.
    
20. Atlas MD: A recent discovery of mine (I shared it on the daily resource suggestions).  It helps me keep tabs on an amazing agorist project that may save the medical industry from itself.
    
21. Personal Profitability Podcast:  Another recent find, this is a podcast put on by a former co-worker of mine from Summer Camp.  It reminds me a lot of "The Art of Manliness" but with more useful ideas about money and less soldier worshiping.
    
22. Samurai Archives Podcast: Exactly what it sounds like.  A historical survey of Japanese culture, samurai, bushido, etc.  A must-listen for samurai fans.
    
23. The Drunken Taoist:  A show that talks about lefty subjects more than anything else, funny and informative, if a little too statist for me to really recommend it.  My favorite parts are the history, drugs, and stories about the host's daughter, Isabella.
    
24. Powerful Parenting:  I found this show just last week.  It was features on School Sucks, and it seems to be a good show along the lines of peaceful parenting and the other parenting "styles" that I'm interested in.
    
25. Rebel Love Show:  The host of this show recently reached out out me on facebook, so I thought I'd give his show a listen.  Turns out it's pretty good.  I've only heard a few episodes, but I plan on listening to more.
    
26. Lets Talk Bitcoin:  A huge network of blockchain-related shows, I listen to the actual "Let's Talk Bitcoin" show and the MaidSafe show.  Both of them keep me up-to-date on what I believe to be the most important areas of the Bitcoin world.
    
27. East Meets West:  A show that I'm not really sure why I listen to... It's a discussion between two fairly well-to-do people in the hollywood circuit.  They usually talk a little bit about movies and a lot about current events.  They update rarely, but their conversations are fun.
    
28. The Art of Manliness:  A former favorite of mine, the Art of Manliness explores manliness and male culture.  Of late, there has been too much president and soldier worship for me to get all that excited about the show.
    
29. Radiolab:  This show keeps just barely making the cut.  Overproduced, frenetic, and excessively liberal, the only thing that keeps me coming back is the fact that every three episodes or so presents me with something I hadn't known about previously.
    
30. Matt Walsh:  The only reason he's still on my list is because his episodes are short and it reminds me of how a lot of my Catholic friends see the world still.  When talking about social issues (like whether someone becomes a woman because they chopped off their balls), he's usually spot-on, but his politics are decidedly neocon bullshit.
    
31. Anime Pulse:The show is on a temporary hiatus while management gets all their ducks in a row.  Until recently, it has been a fun and quality production (mostly Manga Pulse and Anime Pulse... VG pulse sucks).  After a host change at Anime Pulse, I've been losing interest in the show, but this hiatus makes me feel that if it gets off the ground again, it will be a quality show again.
    
32. Freedom Feens:  This show was one of my favorites for a good while.  A group of people just talking about freedom and stuff on the radio for a few hours every day.  The only reasons I don't listen to them too much anymore is because they put out so much material that if they had priority, I would wind up listening to nothing else, and for a while now they've been spending more time shitting on Chris Cantwell than doing anything fun or productive (and MK Lords posses me off a lot of times).
    
33. Anarchast:  I rarely listen to this podcast anymore, as Jeff Burwick is a very sketchy guy and the show tends to host respectable people alongside total nutjobs and it isn't really worth my time.  However, There is an occasional guest that I hadn't heard of before who actually has something worthwhile to say, and I use this podcast to find these people.
    

Podcasts I no longer listen to:

• ArchDen.org: The official podcast of the Archdiocese of Denver.  It used to be a campy but fun and informative podcast by a couple people from teh Chancery... but that was discontinued in favor for random instances of the Archbishop's homilies.  All of which are identical: "God loves you, we are unworthy, abortion is bad, vote republican, give us money."
  
• The Nerdist:  Funny, but updates something like every day, and I just don't have time for it.  Cantwell, Superego, and Cracked make up for it in the funny department.
  
• The Voluntary Life:  I originally started listening to this show because Stephanie Murphy voiced the intro and outro.  It's an interesting show, with good tips and tricks for living more freely in an un-free world, but they rarely present anything I don't already know.
  

Podcasts that have been discontinued:

• Enchanted Grounds: Technically, not discontinued, but their podcast feed has been broken and they haven't fixed it for over a year.
  
• Into The Deep: Also technically not discontinued, but the last time it updated was June of last year...
  
• Z-Talk:
  
• Zelda Working Title Podcast:
  
• FTL Weekly Digest:Philosophize This:
  
• Saint Cast:
  

As one would expect, I am opposed to all of the TLAs in both principle and based on their actions.  Of late, the FCC has been at the heart of some non-issues.  Most especially that of Net Neutrality, which simply would not be an issue in a free society.

In the latest instance of the FCC attempting to halt technology and freedom, they are attempting to lock down all of the software interactions with hardware concerning network infrastructure.  This is a major problem for three reasons:

• There is not, as of yet, a reliable open-source community for hardware engineering and manufacturing, a federal lockdown of commercially available hardware will essentially cripple the infrastructure options available to people.
• There is no manner in which such a law can be justified: it uses the violence of the state to compel behaviors that have been arbitrarily selected out of a select group of individuals' special interests (just like every law and regulation).
• Regulation of the type and scope have been implemented in other industries and have demonstrably hindered or stopped innovation and progress in those industries.  This is likely seen as a feature, not a flaw, with such regulations.

If one isn't certain what this is about, I recommend listening to Sovryn Tech episode 142 and then heeding calls to action.  Namely, call your senators or whatever bullshit involvement people have in politics.  Most importantly, though, one ought to do what they can to aid in the development of open-source hardware and do whatever they can to eradicate the FCC.

The Beastlick Internet Policy Commission Outreach Team recently produced a new media license, similar to the existing GPL license.  However, unlike any other media license, it does not hinge it's enforcement on the violence of the state being used to enforce it.

As a matter of fact, it is the only valid license that allows use by anyone EXCEPT governments and government employees.  Enforcement of the license hinges on honor and shame as opposed to the violence of the state used to enforce the benighted concept of intellectual property.

As is the case with all things created by Michael W. Dean, the BipCot NoGov License is simultaneously something functional and farcical.  It is functional as a legitimate media license that operates in the typical legal jurisdiction of copyright, EULA, and copyleft, granting the user of such a license some degree of protection from the insanity of IP laws and courts.  It is also farcical at the same time, mocking the entire system of copyright law and courts, hinging its enforcement on shame and disallowing government use demonstrates the anarchist ethos in a peaceful manner.

So, if you make anything and put it out on the market, I recommend you follow in teh footsteps of HYPERCRONIUS and Ninja Trek, by licensing it with the only anarchist media license that currently exists:

Due to licensing issues with Weebly, this blog is only partially covered by the BipCot license, but once I secure my own domain and host, you can rest assured that it will be fully covered by the BipCot license.

Today's resource suggestion is another book.  This one is available on amazon for purchase or, for free, in unabridged installments at The Daily Bell.  It is a fun novel which explores real technology, real cultures, and provides the reader with a new way of looking at the world and a set of actionable options for improving one's quality of life.

To call Thieve's Emporium a work of science fiction would be unfair.  While it somewhat defies genre, I guess it could be considered an educational drama?  The characters are largely fictional, but what they face and what they do are largely non-fiction.

I don't want to spoil too much of the plot, and I have not quite finished the book yet, but I strongly recommend people read this book.  With unlikely sympathetic characters in a world that is designed to marginalize them, and a slew of philosophical, moral, and ethical discussions that can and should be sparked by this work, It's certainly a good way to spend a lazy weekend.

Today's resource is tied to last week's full post, and relates to future posts on property.  It relates to my recent entreaty for prospective Windows 10 users, as well.  Today's resource is a long-ish, but important video that gives a great overview on the role technology plays in our lives, the role cryptography plays in that technology, and the ridiculousness of the laws and social constructs we have built around that technology.  While his suggested solutions are certainly flawed, at least this guy is willing to address the issues and their existential ramifications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=13&v=_J_9EFGFR-Y

Windows 10 is great,as long as you fix it first.  And by "fix", I mean "turn everything off."

Microsoft has a tendency to build a decent system, and then heap mountains of bullshit on top of it, turn it on by default, and charge you for it.  More concerning than your machine doing things that you don't know about, or Microsoft trying to charge you for it, is the reality that each one of these settings presents a serious security risk.

Even though everyone knows why security is important (even if they choose to ignore them), it's important to remind people that even if you've got a boring vanilla machine that you use exclusively for words processing and email, these security risks open ones machine to being used by malicious crackers for whatever nefarious purposes.  I am occasionally called upon to help people get a machine running after it bogs down or breaks... every time, it's so riddled with bitcoin miners for ISIS, data miners from the NSA, ad/spyware for evil corporations, tor nodes and proxy gateways... and any one of these things can, if the government so chooses, get one landed in prison or killed.

So, in a manner of speaking, making sure you don't use the default settings on Windows 10 is a life-or-death situation.  Here's  a handy guide to at least pretend you're being cautious.

And here's a short song about just one of the many ill-advised portions of the License Agreement:

Bitcoin, as both a technology and as a currency, is an invaluable tool for the rise of freedom and decentralization.  There are those in governments (especially the US government) who understand this and are doing their best to smother it in its crib.  The remainder are ignorant and happen to be blundering their way into attempting the very same sort of abortion.

Fortunately, the government cannot regulate Bitcoin, they can only regulate the points of contact between Bitcoin and the legacy systems that the government controls.  This, of course, has made access through exchanges and more traditional methods of exchanging one form of money for another quite difficult and somewhat risky.  Fortunately, where there is a market demand, the market provides:

Purse.io is a simple solution to a ridiculous problem.  Much like Brawker, a previous endorsement of mine that has since gone out of business, Purse.io allows one to essentially use their credit/debit card to buy Bitcoins.

Basically, someone makes a wishlist entry on a site like Amazon and places an appropriate amount of bitcoin into an escrow wallet to purchase that item.  You then order that item form their wishlist.  When they receive the item, the bitcoin is released from escrow and sent to your account.  Congratulations! You've just got yourself some invaluable magic internet money.
The process works in reverse, as well.  If you want to spend your newly-acquired Bitcoin to buy something from Amazon (say the price jumps in value 600% again and your $50 in BTC becomes $300 in BTC overnight), You need only to make an Amazon wishlist entry and to place enough bitcoin to make the purchase worthwhile to another Purse.io user (people frequently get amazon products at a 5-25% discount buying in BTC) and just wait for someone to fulfill that wish.

I've only used the service once, but the UI was seamless and easy to use, the instructions were clear and simple, and I managed to get my Bitcoin right away, courtesy of same-day shipping on Amazon.  This is a great starting place for people who are bit-curious but intimidated by all the paperwork and regulatory bullshit associated with using fiat to buy crypto-assets on exchanges.

Today's resource suggestion is a blog post on ZomiaOfflineGames.com.  You may recognize the site from the resource suggestion on HYPERCRONIUS; the man who made that game is a huge content producer, daily content on one of his handful of blogs, weekly or twice-weekly podcasts, video games, etc.  All of his material is worth the time and effort; even when he is wrong, he is such in an intelligent and informative way.  Today's resource suggestion is about the "quantified self" and the rise of wearables marketed as self-quantifiers and the inherent dangers and cultural tyrannies that can result from their use.
 Wearables can kill.
It's short and to the point, and gives one a good taste of what to expect from the podcast or other blog posts.