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ESINT

ESINT

zero inside information newsletter

April 5, 202425m 33s

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Show Notes

My mind is like working good.

In the last two years, there has been quite a lot of use of Osint 

Open source intelligence. 

Nerds who try to find things to talk about by looking at sources readily available online.

It is not so different from what we are all trying to kind of do.

Who did what to whom? and how can I back that up?

Hard data to gossip a string of narrative elements into a story for whatever helpless individual is willing to listen to it.

And you see, this is where I think: Ah! You are wrong.

It's very dangerous to do that. 

Creating logical sense out of something that you piece together from a biased and low-sample amount of snippets. Bibs and bobs of found footage. A collage of things you find online. This can be very dangerous as you're looking through binoculars made from two toilet rolls. Trying to see some vibrazione, that only you think you can see. 

However, it is a nice hobby, and it's a hard cozy hobby as it has an edgy vibe.

But you can do it in a cozy setting. It can only work if you see the entire elephant, when constructing an image. It must be multidimensional. With a large sample size. And nose diving from vibe to vibe is maybe not enough.

I think if you want to craft a story, a film, or a movie, you're a designer pretending to do anything outside of your actual field. "I make deconstructed theater, by doing fashion design."

Even if you are a government agent, employed to organize: and this is a word I don't hear a lot anymore: psy-ops, which probably means that they're getting better at it because only unsuccessful psy-ops are known as psyops. Successful psy-ops are commonly held beliefs.

What they have in common, what they all must realize. When stringing together narrative elements, is that they need to make emotional sense before they make logical sense. Why? It works, bitch. 

It is probably better to be akin to medieval Osint, a peasant climbing a tree. 

If you climb that lonely tree in an oasis and happen to discover you live in a vibe desert, having to resort to international air travel to catch a vibe. 

I will try my best to supply you with some Brosint from the Periphery to console you and help you catch a vibe. 

First, it is good to mention that it's probably good to do the opposite of cultural analysis. 

I propose a ceasefire in the field of cultural analysis.

Critical theory has become a theatrical science of protest.

After happy hour at the bar, we can return to amateur hour on Discord.

I prefer a rooftop bar, to be as high as possible. The squid ink pasta no longer tastes good in this hyperlocal resort that I call: my room. 

Two years ago, Covid 1 BC or actually Covid 1 AD. A destination mood board would look something like: 

Bari, Bucharest, Beijing.

Flixbus to Vladivostok 

Events were far and few between. 

I need some time and distance, and I’m not calculating velocity. 

Don’t stop believing

A bad memory is a microaggression against thyself

In 2018, we all used to be event managers.

I have whiteboard markers in the shower to write on the tiles, as it is the most productive room in the house.

There's no doubt about it; in hindsight, Covid was cool.

Quite obviously, Covid was cool because there was a united front of you and me. Feeling like we were 18 on some sort of unemployed summer vacation of teenage gaming. In combination with the fact that there was an elderly pair, also known as the government, telling you what to do and what not to do. So it was very easy to rebel against that and it felt good. Because nobody that you actually knew was ever in any sort of real danger. And then besides that, you had this nice, weird, overly hysterical news feed that was going on all the time. Punctuated by extreme boredom, in combination with the fact that every one of your single fucking problems actually had nothing but a good answer to it, because why do you feel bad, Covid!

In 2018, we all used to be event managers. 2020 finally killed off Facebook (back big time), and Instagram never really got its level out of the theater of protest, That killed events completely. And then we had this little bit of mania: going back to the club. ‘Slutty summer’ Suddenly, everybody was drinking cocktails. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. Rooftop bars galore. 

But, however, the bill still had to be paid, and three cool kids you just met, ordering whiskey after whiskey sour, just Irish exited the rooftop bar. In other words, inflation became a thing. Everybody's complaining all the time. What should I do? What to do? What to do? What to do? A funeral of public life. Worse than Covid, vibelockdown. 

Stagflation! And a Stoic one at that. Stoic stagflation, where nothing seemed to be happening over an extreme amount of pages. And yet, normal society continues to evolve. Because outside my window right now, out of sight, on the parking that is larping as the piazza, four men with fat bikes—four thousand euros in total—are all chilling outside in the rain. More and more storms are coming (it has rained every day since October 7th.). 

Stackzibit D: In 2006 every game had a piss filter on it. No one knows why.

Yet, the storms in tempestuous times won't pass. They will ride their fat bikes in circles around oatmeal concentration camps we call coffeshops.

It is hard to pick eloquent moods. On a budget or with home-spun technology.

I want to go to a bar that, metaphorically, is a hot-tub filled with rainwater from a forgotten ashtray on the balcony in the context of luxury. Filled to the brim with long and thin half-smoked cigarette butts and the occasional short-circuited Juul pod. 

I want to drink Byzantine wine in a tent. But the fabric of the tent must be jacquard. 

Roast a fish on a parking lot bbq with a grill made out of a shopping cart. 

Blast speakers in an alley, where an occasional city fox peaks around the corner to make sure we are still okay. Self-care by self-destruction is very important now. A fire-and-forget missile, laser-guided but with no target. Precision munition that can land through the toilet window at hypersonic speed, but still blows up the whole block. 

It was climbing out of a cave, so boring that one craves a bump of anxiety.

Perhaps I do actually prefer an eloquent manipulation. Being subject to eloquent manipulation is something that I happily accept. I don't think that's wrong. If others don't necessarily abide by the rules, but they play the game well, it's much easier to take part in your own abuse. A form of mental rough-and-tumble play. It's easier to digest; this is a succulent, lightweight meal to me. Gaslighting is just a negotiation of alignment. In the end, it's not going to go away.

No, no, no, no. You don't understand this house. We 

They prefer to have the cards on the table, but it is always allowed, 

Subjected by style and elegance to having some cards under the table. 

An exaggerated truth is better than a white lie. 

You think Greek goddesses had BPD or not? The Greeks def fucked with narcissism. It is in the name. A quick history of BPD would still be a long story just by nature of the ailment.

Pure at heart and toxic by proxy. 

No content is better than vacuous content; beware not to enter the risky territory of high-frequency nostalgia trading. 

Predictive models of cognitive dissonance.

If you never chill, no optimization is necessary.

Any Brosint account with a FPV drone with thermal vision of the vibe desert at this very moment: leaves it with no undeniable facts; we have to say the mood of the moment is a stoic stagflation. It is stagnation with inflation that also doesn't care about you. It is stoic. Utterly untroubled by the likelihood of vibe

Stackzibit: E Strange how Amazon promised us to bring packages with drones, that never was fruitful, yet grenades and bombs delivered by drone are, weird.

It remains unpleasant, annoying, and unfavorable. To such a degree that you can use the calendar of 2022, it's close enough.

This creates all sorts of Midtrovert dilemmas. Is the best place to observe still at home?

Should I leave the house, yes or no? 

 "Stoic stagflation" a situation where there's a stagnant yet enduring condition, drawing from the economic term "stagflation" (a combination of stagnant economic growth, high unemployment, and high inflation) and the philosophical term "stoic" (enduring pain or hardship without displaying feelings or complaining). "Vibe dessert" an environment or situation with a specific, perhaps sparse or minimal, ambiance.

Considering this interpretation, here are some edge cases for a function designed around these concepts:

1. **Extreme Minimalism**: The function could be pushed to its limits by a scenario with the absolute minimum of inputs or environmental stimuli, testing how it interprets or reacts to a near-absence of data. This could simulate a "desert" of vibes, where the ambiance is almost nonexistent.

2. **Overwhelming Complexity**: In contrast, an edge case could involve an overload of complex, conflicting inputs that simulate a chaotic and dense "dessert" of vibes, challenging the function's ability to maintain stoicism amidst overwhelming information or stimuli.

3. **Prolonged Duration**: Testing the function over an extended period to see if it maintains its "stoic" approach consistently, even when conditions (vibes) change or when faced with prolonged stagnation, akin to enduring stagflation.

4. **Abrupt Changes**: Introducing sudden and drastic changes in the input to see if the function can maintain a "stoic" composure and how it adapts to a sudden shift from a desert to a dessert-like abundance of vibes or vice versa.

5. **Ambiguity in Inputs**: Providing inputs that are ambiguous or have multiple interpretations to see how the function decides on a course of action, reflecting the stoic philosophy of focusing on what can be controlled.

6. **Contradictory Vibes**: Inputs that are directly contradictory, simulating a scenario where the environment oscillates between two extremes, challenging the function's ability to remain unaffected or to make reasoned decisions.

7. **Isolation vs. Community**: Testing the function both in isolation and in a connected environment (with other functions or data sources) to see how it handles solitude versus communal input, akin to a desert versus a bustling dessert party.

8. **Resource Scarcity and Abundance**: Simulating conditions of scarcity (a lack of vibes, information, or resources) and abundance to see how the function manages with minimal versus excessive inputs, reflecting economic aspects of stagflation.

Minestrone.

I finally feel compelled to say something about Zoomer fashion high-frequency nostalgia trading, a carousel that spins at the speed of light, recycling all that has come before in a giant merry-go-round.

In 2021, I used to call this Gen Z minestrone, referring to the many styles and mix and match that Gen Z kids like to dress themselves as. Sometimes it's referred to as the Zoomer uniform.

Now that since 2021, Indie Sleaze is mainstream, and the Japanese horror game protagonist aesthetic from (2022-3 (2003)) is going mainstream, we have somewhat of a head-to-head race of two waves catching up to the current time frame. 

This leaves me with a weird question, though. Wait, are we just going to rehash the distant past because people get younger, and they don't really have partaken in these trends until we catch up to now? Are we just like a figure eight of two snakes biting each other's and their own tails at the same time in some sort of weird hyperloop? That would be strange to me. Because if that's the case, I can be so behind, that I can be ahead of you in the same way I can be behind you, as you are ahead of me interpreting the past. In the idea that time is a flat circle and we both have the same level of understanding of what's cool and what is not. I'm already going to be into techno, which was cool in 2016, so I'm ahead of the Indie Sleaze trend of 2008 after you're going to do hipster 2011 Woody Allen for kids Wes Anderson style. If that's the case, then I'm going to undercut you and one-up you by doing the Balenciaga 2018 thing until I'm so ahead that I'm so behind that I'm actually the exact same person as I am right now.

You know what comes after baggy jeans? Skinny jeans! He shouted as he smashed his cocktail glass with a concoction of his own making on the table. And promptly got up to turn off the music, or on, depending on your professionalism on the subject, by interrupting the current song and putting a new one up.

It is not surprising that someone took the stick blender to the Gen Z minestrone, pulverizing it into a soup with a thick but even viscosity. Nowadays, that is referred to as the zoomer uniform. 

Hyper-frequency boredom.

Stackzibit : F Nostalgia listens to Hit and run Riddim during the wednesday morning commute

Maxin maxin starve min-maxin plus, for midtrouverts.

After girls and gays maxin, my Esint emotional source intelligence tells me : Being better off than your parents is too high a goal. Being better off than your children is a much easier task.

Modern life solves things that were not really problems, to activate a level of stress and recovery. You should probably look for problems in order to solve them. I am not really talking about escapism here or scamming a mysterious demon semi government service, but more of a problem-maxing approach. 

Hang out with the wrong people for a year or two. Get to know some people.

If Harari says all language starts with gossip, give the boy his dues for a while.

Try and loiter around normie cattle twisted by amphetamines. 

I have made this recipe myself, and I highly recommend you try it.

It consists of some crushed-up Adderall pills, a crumbled banana-pea protein bar. Two parts of green tea. One part: Red Bull. One teaspoon of stevia. 

Two cubicles of frozen ginger. Blend for 5 minutes; add a mango for viscosity. 

Drink out of a Long, tall glass. With a straw. For the topping, add two more frozen. Cubicles of ginger. 

After fifteen minutes of drinking this smoothie, the whole world will look like a 2 by 2 of ambition and productivity.

The floaters in your eyes, glinting in the early morning sun, they will become data points on a grid of machinations on whichever surface. You look. 

It's good to see the grid; the grid never lied to you. The secret bearings of a quantum graph appear. 

It is time to make a plan. 

First time I bought tuna in its own juice, instead of in olive oil. It set off a local meme. As it turns out many things are in their own juice. It reminded a friend of mine of the pigeons in the Parisian metro who have decided upon nesting next to the ultrasound speakers that are meant to deter them.

Completely dismal, they are visibly tortured and otherwise generally chewed up in their own juice made out of ultrasound, squinting through their eyes in absolute agony. A chilling reflection of our melting pot of dreams.

It is good to be in das eigenen saft. 

Install an annoying buzzing sound in your house. Live with tinnitus for a while. 

Do not forget that you need stale bread to make croutons.

Recipes for your own juice. 

Club forming is problems maxing 

We come together to gamble and play the cards. See what hand you are dealt. The creation and instalment of local norms reevaluates and purifies your aesthetics and old behaviours. 

Practice self-forgiveness by doing more hard-to-forgive things.

Kindness has diminishing returns. 

Kill me if I listen to another podcast. It’s not clear how they make money, making me weary and suspicious. What is the actual message being conveyed here? 

Reading the Twitter feed into a mic as a weekly or monthly introspective ? This is not even tuna in its own juice; this is tuna in somebody else’s juice.

Create your own juice to marinate in. 

I cannot stretch enough. Stare out of the bus window! 

Raw doggig the tram is better for your life. Everything is material. Both moderately pessimistic and moderately optimistic attitudes are linked to a healthier life.

More and more people are mentally ill. DSM 6 is dropping soon. Trained on  8 billion parameters. One of the main qualifiers is the ability to be alone. Being alone with your own thoughts is a luxury item. More and more, I scroll through the feed without reading it. I just watch the pixels go by as we’re looking at the geographic features of a landscape. Sitting on a plane, pushing scenery past the window.

A crossfire of stochastic parrots talking or talking back at me in a feed of disquiet, 

For two years, I’ve looked at maps, and they didn’t move much. A very detailed render of a barren, featureless wasteland.

Nobody cared about inflation, but everybody said back in 2022  "I do not really have money to go away this year."

Solitude endurance training (eating lunch alone)

How long can your life plan withstand direct questioning ? That’s the point; for the first time, I lost the overview. The adults are in the room, and they will not tell me what they are doing.

You are sitting on a big novelty cake; don’t miss your cue.

An endless onslaught of content about content maxing. 

I saw someone post 

Role of the artist

To fill in the gaps that institutions and power structures of dominant culture overlook or deliberately avoid

And I disagree: It's to make art. The role of the artist, that is. 

There's this unsettling thought that's been trailing me

I remember this one time, someone let slip this notion that keeps gnawing at me. Suggesting that a good third of what's hanging on the pristine walls of these contemporary art shrines might just be nothing more than expert forgeries, courtesy of either the Italian or Romanian mafias. And the way art's evolving, morphing into this ultimate asset class, a chic maneuver to dodge taxes as it gathers dust and value—it's all so predictably post-modern. It makes you think, when are we going to catch up with the whole conceptual art scene, right? But here's the kicker: I'm craving a film that dives deep into this entire charade. Showcasing the Italian and Romanian mob stretching their ingenuity to the limit, crafting these painstaking replicas of what's ostensibly the most niche, the most avant-garde out there— some esoteric performance art piece steeped in identity politics, lesbian undertones, and dance theory. Honestly, that's the kind of art that resonates and feels real in this fabricated landscape.

I reject myself and think that silence is probably the only remaining art form.

Making absolutely zero sense is a status signal.

Low-balling fine china is better than getting the latest drip.

Oh hello:

Bureau Chief berlin:  

Sent an urgent memo!!! 

If you live in a Mountain Village, like a European capital city of Paris or Berlin, it's probably not such a good idea to be cynical. Why you may ask? Because I feel being cynical in the end is a cheap way to burn your bridges. It's not really cultural analysis, and it's not really nice either. My mind is somewhat of a black-and-white reasoning model of the world.

It's better to come across the bridge and offer people a mood they can identify with. 

That may take its origins, or subconscious, feeling from the ever-recurring four questions of philosophy.

What is the situation? What can I know? Who am I? And what should I do?

That's the starting grid that lineup. You can always extrapolate a vision for the near future that can be supercharged by modernistic behaviors. 

Cultural analysis is annoying because, in a 24/7 media onslaught, I don't feel like being berated, about what to think about other people in a recursive loop like some unmade Woody Allen movie, family drama script. Therefore, I end up in a position where I myself find that not even my anger is authentic.

I'm actually much better told what to do. It's more honest. If you look at life a little differently through a prism, that shifts the colors in the balance ever so slightly. Then, perhaps you see cathedrals and reflecting light from a simple water bottle. And I think that's very commendable.

Why not make an unscheduled call to friends, leaving them bewildered, but secretly delighted by the spontaneous combustion of social norms?

Stackzibit: H the future we could've had

Deutche Bahn ICE - Berlin - Hanover - New York

You can totally embrace your inner "city bitch” in the quaintest of villages, strutting down cobblestone streets like a catwalk.

It's a micromanaged mirth wearing a gold leather jacket, one line of poetry a day,

going to your local “Neo-Baroque meets Industrial Chic," a blend of edgy and snug, possibly an offshoot of “Urban Rustic” coffee place at a parking Trying to be a piazza. 

Yes, exactly next time at the end of the year, when you sit on your balcony and the landscape of life unfolds like a technicolor dream coat, try to write a little essay, not a list.

Try dissing the Frankfurt school; perhaps you apply to Städelschule.

With unreal 5 renders of groupshows full of imaginary friends and non-existent residencies. 

Just pick and name a couple of these one million inhabitants cities in China; there are like a hundred of them you haven't heard off. It doesn't matter. Contemporary art? 

Ce n'est pas Versailles!

Perhaps when you are in school, try to find out what the movements of the bizarre ballet of the hidden curriculum is. 

Here, I suggest a context-phobic constructive guidance. A probabilistic manifesting, so to speak. And what is probabilistic manifesting? This is, for instance, when you have a spouse, a partner, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend. And you yourself, you're sitting on the couch, or you're laying in bed, and they're looking for a certain item within the room. And you cannot directly point to that item. There is no direct line of sight, but you know where it is. It is, like, in the general area. And you just say to them as they're searching, like, There, there, no, it's there, there, it's right there, there, right there, there, it's right there. And not even by the intonation of your voice, not even by, like, saying objects, or, like, the general surroundings of it, it does guide them onto the target. It guides them to what they're looking for. And the thing is that there's not even, like, so much to do with intonation, or the way you use your voice. It has to do with the fact that it is a negative feedback loop, because every time you repeat the word there, you know that where they were looking at that particular point, it wasn't. So they have a negative feedback loop, which drives them to be agentic, to look where the fuck the thing could be. And this works really well. And this is a form of, like, you know, probabilistic manifesting. Like, does it matter if probability in the manifesting is important or not? Yes, it does. You manifest that the object is there, and you make it more probable by including a negative feedbag loop.

It might turn out the case that probabilistic manifesting is making an extremely educated guess; you can almost feel the ambience.

 In a way that you like can relate to it as a mental feng shui, 

and a lot of people are concerned that they don't do 10,000 steps a day. But the question is, do you make 10,000 mental steps a day? If so, then you can actually use this as a ramjet type of compressor for extremely hard to compress vibes. In a way, train hard and fight easy, but train hard. This could be important. The Romans had a training sword that was twice the weight of the sword they used in combat. 

In the end, I think this time will be as deep as a puddle in the desert. And probably we'll look back at this and laugh at it. Never forget that Mussolini's son, Romano, was a jazz pianist and a good one at that, and he married Sophia Loren's sister. So, I have good hopes for the proverbial Bibi Netanyahu's son, who's studying in Florida, to become a cryptobro.



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