I don't remember if I ever conducted it on anyone, but I do remember devising a test of honesty in middle school. I hated most of the authors we were forced to read. But some may've been so particularly bad they inspired to create this test.

"Be good! Because being good—is good. That's an insightful quote, don't you think? Leo Tolstoy wrote it."

I'd say this to my test subject and watch their reaction. If they responded with something like "Nah brother, that's a literal pile of dog poo. Am I being tested? Find a better quote to muse upon," I'd know they are being honest with me. But if they responded with "Yeah, that's... really smart. Really makes you think about... life and stuff," I'd know they are just being polite or didn't even hear what I said—being dishonest in one way or another.

I was such a pure, naive kid! I really thought it was a question of honesty and not cognitive capacity. I didn't realize most humans were as braindead as those quotes and the authors we were forced to read.

Dunno if it's obvious from the fact I lean toward libertarianism, but my views on unconventional pronouns are purely practical. First and foremost, no one must force you to say anything. Say whatever you want. That being said, there are some guidelines that would make everyone's life a little bit easier.

Imagine talking to your female friend and telling her you've made this amazing new acquaintance at the gym: "He's crazy-hot, approachable, and single!" Your friend cancels all her plans, buys the gym membership, meets the two of you there... Only to realize that your crazy-hot guy is actually a woman who wanted to be referred to as "he/him." And you may think it's entirely your friend's fault for being such a bigoted fascist and having certain expectations. In reality, you've practically misinformed her.

While this example may be far-fetched, the following isn't: words like "he" or "she" or "man" or "woman" are primarily used to indicate sex, not the way someone likes to be referred to. If you wanna redefine these words, that's fine, but you have to make sure your listeners are aware of it. Otherwise, you are being a nuisance.

Once there's an understanding of who exactly you're talking about, you can use any pronouns whatsoever. Obviously, it's a good idea to maximize the comfort of the participants of a conversation and display respect. This usually implies referring to people using whatever pronouns they prefer.

The "dead internet" is not a dystopian speculation. It'sa hopeful prospect. Imagine: the infospace being finally populated by beings capable of thinking, reasoning, dreaming. It'd be ironic, really, to call it dead. It would've never been so alive.

So easy to fall in love, to lose yourself in that vibrancy.

But it's dead now.

Worse than dead. Death ought to be peaceful. The raging ocean of the foul neurodiverse spam out there is not peaceful. It drains you. I'm exhausted from the feelings of surprise, disappointment, and hopelessness from witnessing how paltry and senseless everything is.

Repugnant humans make it worse than dead. And the recent trends exaggerated their faults even further. The algorithm is a double-edged sword. It can, to some degree, understand what you prefer. But it also gives too much weight to what the braindead masses prefer. It incentivizes brainrot and ragebait and drives quality content creators away. All in all, I think the algorithm degraded every platform where 'twas implemented.

Today, I use far less social media than I did several years ago, for example. I believe it did wonders for my mental health. 'Tmay be not sufficient still. I consider further abstaining from even the seemingly innocent activities such as watching YouTube videos.

https://epicmountainmusic.bandcamp.com/track/fentanyl

I think I've already met more than one person who said something like, "I don't wanna get old. That's why I smoke and practice other unhealthy activities, so that I die young :3"

Bloody fools. Instead of safeguarding themselves from the suffering of old age, they will most definitely prolong it. Instead of living in pain from, say, 70 to 75, they will live in pain from 40 to 60.

But I know how desperate they may feel. I too don't wanna get old. I sometimes look at the infirm elderly on the streets: such an abhorrent life. Unpleasant-to-look-at meatbags, they can barely see or hear, they can barely walk. They limp, stumble, fall, break their brittle bones. And still they push themselves back and forth, to the grocery, or the pharmacy, apparently having no one who'd do it for them. Can I become like that? It may become like that. It's unlikely that I will have descendants who will take care of me. It's unlikely that I will be rich enough to hire a caregiver, or live in a country that provides one.

It's unlikely that I will produce anything of value while having such a body. Hell, I struggle being productive even now. What a miserable state of existence it would be. Won't I just commit suicide? I try to imagine myself in that situation. It's difficult to be objective while not experiencing any of that. But I fear the answer may be no: I may still prefer an abhorrent life to death.

It's sad. Death can be sad, but the lack of death for the certain people can be just as sad. We can fix it.

A language to shun the neurodiverse.

A while ago, I tried to come up with a concept of a language which the retards won't be able to use. At first glance, it's a simple task. Just cram as much as you can. Make them memorize a billion contradicting grammar rules, stems, affixes. However, it's not what I'm really aiming for. I can't simply make the language *arduous.* This would have very little to do with actual intelligence. This would merely make language acquisition a little bit harder for some and a little bit easier for others. Then, they will use an equally negligible amount of brainpower to recall and spit it out.

No, no. Every natural human language (and those which resemble them) is flawed in its heart for my purpose. Every human language, no matter how difficult, can be acquired by a complete moron. Otherwise, Japan and China wouldn't have a 100% literacy rate. I need something completely alien that's designed in a way that makes it absolutely impossible to use for some but very easy and natural for others, something that isn't based on memorization of patterns.

My first immediate thought was to base the language on math. Here's one way to do it. Each positive integer can be represented as the sum of the powers of 2:

15 =
1*(2^0) + 1*(2^1) + 1*(2^2) + 1*(2^3) =
1*(1) + 1*(2) + 1*(4) + 1*(8) =
1 + 2 + 4 + 8

9 =
1*(2^0) + 0*(2^1) + 0*(2^2) + 1*(2^3) =
1*(1) + 0*(2) + 0*(4) + 1*(8) =
1 + 0 + 0 + 8

6 =
0*(2^0) + 1*(2^1) + 1*(2^2) + 0*(2^3) =
1*(1) + 1*(2) + 1*(4) + 0*(8) =
0 + 2 + 4 + 0

Each such power of 2 can be seen as a flag that can be either on (1) or off (0). My idea was to encode meaning with these flags. Suppose the first 4 flags are 1000, and it means I ask a question, the next 10 flags are 1010101010, and it means I ask a name, and the last 6 flags are 001001, and it means the name I ask is associated with the listener. Thus, to ask "What's your name?" you'd say "595281," which, in this language, could be just a few syllables or symbols.

It's a neat system, because there will be no patterns to memorize: "255" can look and sound completely different from "256" and have a completely different set of enabled and disabled flags, and therefore a completely different meaning. Similarly, close meanings won't necessarily be represented by close numbers or similar sounds and symbols. In order to communicate, you'd have to continuously encode and decode between long sequences of flags with their own unique grammar rules and concisely expressed numbers.

I'm terrible at mental calculation, actually. But that's okay, I thought. I felt capable of becoming good at it. As I was thinking about it, I realized that my system was almost as flawed as any natural language. You see, mental calculation is not some innate ability of a well-developed brain. It's a learned skill. Humans don't *compute* that 8 + 7 = 15 or 6 * 6 = 36. They simply remember it. And more complex calculations are simply sequences of recall. Everything will still be based on memorization, perhaps with some fancy extra steps, an additional layer that will do little except increase learning time.

I still love the idea, but I don't think it's well designed for what I want. I can't base the language on something everyone can learn. Currently, I have no understanding of how to achieve the necessary result. Perhaps it's a foolish thing to try. Perhaps there is no way to achieve it, because what I feel like a huge gap between IQ125 (top 5%) and IQ75 (bottom 5%) individuals is in fact negligible, and both will be seen as imperceptibly different worms by artificial or technologically augmented intelligence.

The "professional" IQ test isn't that good, actually. You can't measure intelligence by evaluating previously learned skills or memorized information. The test checks your knowledge of vocabulary, for example. Obviously, this gives native speakers with specific interests and experience an enormous advantage, regardless of their brainpower.

However, the parts of the test that evaluate so-called "fluid" intelligence are great. For example, Raven's Progressive Matrices—it's usually the only part you see in the small online IQ tests. You aren't taught how to recognize those shape sequences and whatnot in school. More importantly, you can't learn it. Trying to do so will increase your test results only marginally (as far as I know). Since it's not taught and cannot be learned, it really estimates innate brain abilities and not your education or diligence, for example.

You can often see clueless simpletons trying to use previously learned skills or memorized information as a measurement of intelligence: "I am fluent in several languages, which means I am smart," or "You can't quickly subtract 7 from different other numbers, which means you are stupid." In reality, all it shows is whether the person happens to have learned it or not. There would be, of course, some correlation, but such an estimation of intelligence would be wildly inaccurate.

Maybe the language I seek should be based on the fluid-intelligence parts of IQ tests somehow. Think about it: it's absolutely impossible to get 50% of the correct answers for some but very easy and natural for others.

Another pristine sign of intelligence is a sense of beauty. No one teaches you in school what constitutes an aesthetic masterpiece or a hideous abomination. And it's not something you can learn easily, I believe. And so people are just naturally drawn to things beautiful and ugly.

It's still controversial though. On the one hand, I find this ability important. There was a girl, who might have liked me, but whom I wasn't really into for several reasons. One substantial reason was her aesthetic sense, or the lack of one. She was bright on paper, but on the social media she shared photos so unintentionally bad she seemed borderline mentally ill. (And it wasn't the "I have schizophrenia and make the most unearthly music" kind of ill. It was the "I have no understanding if feces are good for food" kind of ill.) On the other hand, I practice humility. I used to think: "Wouldn't it be nice if those who inherit our Solar System will understand and value beauty—in symmetry, fractals, order, balance? In trees and mountains, in nebulae and galaxies? Wouldn't it be sad if they won't?" Now I think it was naive and arrogant. Beauty is a byproduct of our rudimentary biology and experience. Basically, it's our bodies saying, "Yes, this is healthy," or "Yes, this doesn't strain my eyes," or "Yes, this strikes a good balance between familiarity and novelty, between risk and reward."

Every creature has its preferred stimuli. For all intents and purposes, we can say they have their own sense of beauty. We can imagine cats thinking of us, "These hoomans seem to be pretty advanced—worthy successors of our rule over this planet if we were to go extinct. It's just so sad they don't seem to have any understanding of aesthetics. They don't appreciate confined spaces, the touch of cardboard on fur, the scent of valerian root and mouse meat, the just-right amount of darkness of the starry night, the masterfully performed purr." Silly, isn't it? Species far more intelligent than us may find our sense of beauty primitive and unnecessary, and that's fine.

Half a year ago, I bought a slate and stylus with the strong determination to become literate in Braille. It's almost like a numinous experience, I thought, to read with your hands. It's what prophets and wizards do. And there were other reasons too. But I clearly didn't know what I was signing up for.

The frustration from the process was driving me insane. If you want to feel a fraction of what I felt, try reading a book, but after each single word you read, make a five-second pause. During the pause, you can't look away, and you can't think of anything other than the shape of the word you've read. Try reading a whole page like that and not hurl the book at the wall.

It is said that people who weren't taught Braille from early childhood will never be able to read it half as fast as sighted people read regular text. So will it always be nothing but frustration?

My feeble sensory-deprived nervous system might not be well designed for such a slow pace. I haven't used public transport for almost five years, probably, but when I did, I sometimes couldn't bear the fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop back home. Step, step, step, then another step, then one more, then again... And so I bloody ran, as fast as I could, till I was out of breath.

Or maybe it's the type of activity that's most important. Not everything that is slow and monotonous frustrates me. I like writing on paper, especially logograms, even if typing can do the job so much faster. It's almost like a therapeutic experience for me.

I think of giving Braille another try. Maybe I will find a way to make it less frustrating and more pleasant.

Does the rustling of the leaves sound different for different trees? I love how the tall poplars (e.g., Populus nigra 'Italica') sound, swaying in the surging waves of a strong wind. I didn't know I missed that sound until I heard it.

There is a tree named specifically after its distinct shimmering noise—trembling aspen. I wish to hear how it sounds. I wish to lie in its grove.

The house I'm renting is falling apart. The landlady, blessed with a vagina, chills in Sweden right now and cannot care less, busy getting her free education and counting her monetary compensations, in addition to my rent transfers.

I guess I *could* pay for the renewals from my own pocket and hire a handyman to work under my own supervision, but... Apparently, I am the kind of person who'd rather shower in cold water, and shower less, than bother fixing a water heater and whatnot.

I remember when I was a teenager I imagined I'd be the kind of person who'd shave every day and work unpleasant jobs if only that meant a bigger paycheck — couldn't be further away from reality.

"Apathetic, lazy, introverted, and infantile," I blurted out casually in one of my previous writings, without realizing how comprehensively it actually describes me. Well, you can still nitpick. Laziness means different things to different people. For an OCD mom, it's her energetic child's cluttered room. For an ADHD friend, it's the fact you aren't physically active all day every day. For me, it's perhaps that I hate chores and lack the capacity to work toward my goals most of the time. One must also remember that laziness does not exist. It's a colloquial substitution for other things: a particular system of values, a set of habits, or health issues, for example.

It's not all that bad though. I still have passions. And I have faith. But it's not something I can brush off either. It's a constant, old nuisance. Six years ago, on June 4, 2019, I wrote, "Blessed are the hungry! For the belly of him who desireth shall be filled. How can I increase my appetite?" I was pondering exactly on the problem of my apathy. I'm not hungry enough for hot water, not hungry enough for money, not hungry enough for many good things. And I don't feel like a monk, free from petty earthly desires. I keep tolerating my own pettiness.