Another depressingly mundane post. Click on the speech bubble to read all the upset comments or go back with the undo icon.
Another week blows by. Time feels like it's slowing down and speeding up at the same time. I've been inside for a long time now. In a sense I can't complain. I am keeping pretty busy. I'm starting to actually do all of these things I've been wanting to do for a long time.
I've been trying to solve problems. I've been working with the 4x4 "Rubik's Revenge" cube and trying to get proficient at solving it. It took a couple hours to get into it but now I'm pretty ok at it.
For some strange reason last week I really got into true crime videos and podcasts. I stumbled upon a video on the Zodiac's 340 cipher and just started watching video after video on it. It's seems this one guy, David Oranchak, has pretty much been collecting all this fascinating information on the cipher and what could be making it so hard to solve. He goes into quite some detail on various aspects like how many bigrams the cipher has and if there was some kind of transposition used.
Short video on the 340 cipher by David Oranchak
His website has a lot of different resources on the cipher and online tools you can use to work on it yorself. I couldn't help myself and cribbed a few words I thought might fit to see if I'd get anywhere. Given taht people have been guessing at this thing for like 50 years, I'm pretty sure it won't be me solving it by just putting the word "slave" in the right place.
Try to solve the Zodiac's 340 cipher
One thing I did was that I joined the American Cryptogram Association. It looked like a really cool group and it only cost 20 bucks for the first year. I liked the trial version of their magazine and thought it'd be cool to read and challenge myself once in a while. I'll let you know when I get my hands on the first issue.
Did I mention that I also joined the EFF? That was a few weeks ago. Been meaning to for a while and thought it's high time. As I said, being alone a lot has given me a lot of time to reflect on how I want to affect the world.
Also, I started watching Midnight Gospel, that new animated show on Netflix. Talking about that is going to be a whole post, the kinds of things they talk about in that series are really fascinating and I really want to go into the themes explore. I found the episode with Damien Echols pretty fascinating, perhaps not so much because of the ideas, but because I can so clearly see all the influences that have affected him and I have a pretty good idea of the books he's read. They also had Caitlin Doughty from "Ask a Mortician" which was really cool. Anyway, as I said that's for a different post. Going to log off now and try to do something "productive".
Take a look at how the post from
Monday 27th of April 2020
upset the world!
m4ra - 04.05.2020 23:38
Wowie, I better look into that Harrari Google talk. I, too, am of the opinion that free will is a complete illusion. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a corpse releasing gas in a way that could be mistaken for conscious life. <br /> <br /> I'll let you know how being a part of the American Cryptogram Association feels like once I get my membership card.
Michael - 03.05.2020 13:44
Man, I always learn so much by coming here. Just watched a video on the Zodiak cipher and also googled cryptograms. Wow. If only putting on the tv would be this informative. <br /> <br /> Yesterday I watched a Google Talk with Harari. He made some interesting points about people having no real free will cause we are so limited in our choices based on stuff we didn't decide, but also about how much of society is just our imagination like countries, companies (like Google where he did the talk), currency, banks etc. And recommended focusing on what is reality. He meditates 2 hours a day, so probably has some mental clarity for doing that too.
Let the world know how my words upset you.
