Time Machine Argot: Sexing the Cube

[salimondo]

I'm interested in outcomes. Generate a cubic environment. To the extent to which your space mirrors the world -- that is, to the extent to which you will avoid the autodidact's embarrassment -- it will conform to the right-hand rule along with other fundamental principles. This is why, for example, your cube should resemble a die even when rolled.

Comments

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[brendan831]

Fascinating stuff!

P.S.: I used to own that dice set. I think it came from here.

Link correction

[brendan831]

here

Re: Link correction

[ayrkain]

and here too! ;)

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[salimondo]

Thanks. Parts of it have been percolating for years, so I'm happy to get them attached to a chassis and turn them loose. The key is the inflationary/deflationary cycle.

I'm often surprised that so few people ask why or how these things evolved, but suppose that it's rare enough that anyone finds more than one or two of the broken pieces of antiquity and can get them back into anything like working condition.

That dice set is still intensely totemic for me in its colors, relative sizes and even smell -- yellow pyramid for relatively gristly guys, red cube for the fat priests, green octahedron for the jocks and underground mutants, and of course the white 20 determining who lives and who dies. I've bought a few basic sets (and maybe a Gamma World) over the years just to harvest the dice, like killing a chicken to look at the liver.

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[brendan831]

That dice set is still intensely totemic for me in its colors, relative sizes and even smell -- yellow pyramid for relatively gristly guys, red cube for the fat priests, green octahedron for the jocks and underground mutants, and of course the white 20 determining who lives and who dies. I've bought a few basic sets (and maybe a Gamma World) over the years just to harvest the dice, like killing a chicken to look at the liver.

Sweet! May I ask what you use them for?

% appearing

[salimondo]

It's a funny question because I'm sure plenty of high school kaowts have used them (or the later variants) in various divinatory capacities close to the purpose to which they were intended. Maybe they get results; I don't know those kids.

Now and then a set goes back out as a bribe for people who were active in that era -- there's usually a really satisfying flash of recognition, and so one of the reasons they pop up in this post is to take that flash online. They've also been my favorite Platonic solids for the occasional run at Kepler.

In the project at hand, they're nice, juicy little magnets pointing back to 1978 -- triggers for that long-buried response, my own personal flash that then serves as fuel and ballast. They're strange and evocative things, those particular dice. The collector market for them has yet to rationalize and probably never will. You were what, six when you got yours?

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[brendan831]

You were what, six when you got yours?

Yeah, something like that! My aunt got me the box set. I was intrigued by it, but didn't really understand how the game was played until a few years later.

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[salimondo]

Six is too young, which means just right for this kind of thing. I think our earliest misunderstandings of the game are actually some of the most useful things we can take away from out contacts with it. Down those routes lies relatively strange and virgin gold.

Maskull stared at the table. After a minute he raised his brows and turned to Nightspore with a smile. "The message grows more intricate."
Nightspore looked bored. -- A Voyage to Arcturus

chess-boards-and-pieces-were-invented-before-the-game-of-chess

[pharminatrix]

Re: ! ! !

[ineffabelle]

I'm a 12-sider fan really.

the 12-5 correspondence is so alien and yet concrete that it really does it for me...

ether

[salimondo]

Isn't the 12-5 the "Mozart" aspect?

One of the things that was funny about the blue dodecahedron is that it was almost useless in everyday play, yet shared pride of size with the white one that generated all the results. If the white one was the active verb, the blue one was the passive one, some kind of representative of modality, never rolled but always on hand and filling its role that way while the little three generated planets.

Re: ether

[lhasa7]

When I first met Lissy, he pointed out to me that I was obviously a Lumarian and not an Atlantian.

"What the fuck are you taking about, Lissy, have you lost your mind?

No, no he replied. Listen, John, originally there were two races. Those who live on the Island of Lumeria and those who lived on the island of Atlantis.

"What the fuck's the matter with you, Lissy? We've all heard that shit before. Furthermore, how can you tell that I am a reincarnation of a Lumerian?"

"Oh, that's easy. All Lumerians had five letters in their surnames and all Atlantians had six letters in their surnames. Moreover, the numbers five and six frequently occur in the numbers on their license plates, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and so forth. You see, he went on, the universal cosmic spirit who gave the fives and sixes to the preborn spirits make certain that these two numbers are continuously brought up to date in each incarnation."

"Oh, I see", I said, not seeing.
http://

five equals six, mister bones told me

[salimondo]

I haven't heard "Fare Forward Voyagers" since, like, the analog era either. Another brilliant find -- typical of the Lumerian current or "blue dodecahedron."

Rani Singh’s Erroneous Bee Venom

[lhasa7]

The Voice of the Turtle holds up real well. John actually sent me $500 shortly before he died, which was I think a noble gesture on behalf of a fellow sufferer, though I had pledged to help him with some of his manuscripts (and I did get to make a pass over How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life in galleys).

Re: ! ! !

[pharminatrix]

An old friend with whom I've regained contact, and also an avid gamer used to, as I recall, refer to the 20-sided behemoth as Moby Dick. Big, white, fierce, and arbitrary.

After conversations and weeks of investigation, I found myself returning to this post and finding reward; it seems to have accrued additionally delicious complexity and more nuanced significance.

P.S. A wink to things that work

P.P.S. The chicken liver is one of the more influential enhancement agents of the soup. The more I make, the more this becomes apparent.

20-sided drum solo

[salimondo]

This is a note from the future to people reading this post for the first time. The last few months have been very productive in terms of cube-rolling, thus actualizing the promise of the Tropermic Calculus and its right-hand rule as a way to organize temporal analysis. The work continues. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also bought five extra sets of those dice for future use.

I think chicken liver is invaluable because it contains the metal, blood and also the future.