Month: January 2023

Since I’m fascinated by rituals, secular and otherwise, I might have taken the whole “short nails as a way to salvation” thing a bit too far. Regardless, I’m making a tract for people to hand out!

My goal is to have the tracts distributed by people in the street in at least five locations across the world, and get documentation from the events. I’ll send the tracts out for free to my missionaries, and might put them up for sale if others want them. Shipping will be the expensive part, since manufacturing is dirt cheap on the Risograph, and paper is more or less free.

The content of the tract will be made up of Jack Chick style comic panels generated by Midjourney, and I still have to put together a text and the gospel itself. It would be great if I could get my homepage up before doing this, but a link to this here blog, with some project background might serve just as well (and I’ll do a writeup for the portfolio later on).

The impetus for this is just a shitpost Insta I did a while back, but since that post got very little traction I’m thinking either using Reddit (maybe /r/cults?) or some rando Discord server. It’s all about finding other people who find this kind of stuff fun, and from my informal polling among classmates, not many people share my sense of humour.

Tracts are today tied to Christian evangelism, particularly in the USA, and even here in Sweden I’ve found Chick-tracts on subways and whatnot. But my point isn’t to make fun of religious evangelism, but to confuse recipients and allow participants to get some fresh air and entertainment. It’s not elaborate enough to be design fiction, so maybe it’s a cargo-culting event – a light social prank? Anywho, let’s see how it’ll all come together, and let’s be open for unexpected results.

We just finished watching the first season of His dark materials – a great show based on a great adventure book – and I was struck of how the look reminded me of the moods created by some of the Midjourney prompts. And this feels new. The newness isn’t that an AI generated something in the style of a particular artist – the lawsuits for infringement have just begun – but that many scenes looked like part of the “prompt space.” My thought wasn’t that “ah, this looks like this artist/director,” but “ah, this looks like that bunch of stuff I’ve seen on Midjourney.”

This is unfair since HDM came our before Midjourney was a thing, but we’ll get more and more of this, and it will force artists not only to find something which is outside of the AI:s wheelhouse, but it will also force artists to work in secrecy to preempt trends. Imagine that you’re a director for a movie where you have a modicum of visual ambition, and you’d like to woo your audience with your cinematics. You might want to keep photos of your set & costumes a secret as long as possible, so that your superfans don’t swamp the net with AI generated fan-art. Otherwise, once your movie comes out, the look will feel old and overdone.

Of course, if you’re not relying on original visuals, this will play into part of your marketing instead; You can hold competitions for imagined scenes, most sexy action poses, or whatever. Regardless, there’s a whole new world of creative and business practices knocking on many doors, and they’re not knocking politely.

There’s a hypothesis of the Cortical homunculus – that our brains map motor control and sensory input in different proportion to their size. In practice it means that your hands, one of our primary exploratory tools, have an outsized “mental space” in your brain. Along with parts of your face, genitals and feet, they are considered “primary interface”.

Perhaps this might have something to do with my dislike of the sensation of uncut fingernails. It’s not an æsthetic consideration, but rather a persistant feeling of my fingers being tight or constricted, where my nails start to grow into the lateral nail fold. It drives me bonkers and I find myself clicking my nails or otherwise fidgeting once a minute – even if I remind myself that I can’t do anything about it at the moment. It’s instinctual, and it makes me uncomfortable.

This seems tied to whether I’m sick, since I’m more aware of it if I have a flu or such. When you’re sick you can get hot, a bit swollen or more sensitive in general, and whatever slight pressure you’re feeling is increased – for example from your growing nails against your skin.

This also means that one of the best ways of feeling better is to cut your nails.

And this is where the cult comes in: Every religion, health fad or cult needs a few gimmicks. You can put a jade egg up your snatch, you can pray four times a day or you can avoid beans. In my case, I would make an edict that nails had to be trimmed. I already have a clergy class and/or profet class in the wings – those with anonychia, congenital or otherwise. We can work in cermonies and punishments related to nails, force heretics to smoke clippings, decorate them for coming-of-age ceremonies, etc. I can actually see people handing out pamphlets for this. I’m just lacking a name.

Pythagoras the vegetarian did not only abstain from meat, he didn’t eat beans either. This was because he believed that humans and beans were spawned from the same source, and he conducted a scientific experiment to prove it. He buried a quantity of beans in mud, let them remain there for a few weeks, and then retrieved them. He noted their resemblance to human fetuses, thus convincing himself of the intimate relationship between beans and humans. To eat a bean would therefore be akin to eating human flesh. Equally, to crush, smash, or dirty a bean would be to harm a human. Thus the very strict rule to abstain from beans.

Bruce Pennington: The death of Pythagoras

As long as you can convince others either by the strength of your own conviction, association to good outcomes or just plain placebo, you can get people on board all kinds of philosphical vehicles.

So hear ye, hear ye! For the nails of thine hands, and the nails of thine feet are the yellowing stiffened discharge of your otherwise Godly body. Lo! Cut them from you and cast them away – and let the healing power infuse you with calm!