I gave a talk a few years ago at Defcon XIX on the art of trolling. Since, I’ve done a great many things with my life. In fact, while I am reasonably accomplished in a number of areas, that one talk continues to be a source of recognition in many communities I find myself intersecting with. This has not always been a source of pride or happiness for me. The reality I have come to accept, is that there are a great many people on this planet that are closed minded and all too willing to demonize and damn people at the drop of a hat. And sometimes they simply don’t get why trolls are out there being themselves.

Yesterday, a guy named ‘weev’ aka Andrew Auernheimer was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison. Not because he broke any laws. He broke none. He was convicted because of his personality. Your fellow Americans, and the united states government sent a man to prison because he was a jerk. And to do that, they had to pervert a bad law, and lie in court. As a result, now still more money and resources has to be spent by groups like the EFF to undo their terrible work. Not because Auernheimer is a good person, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Also yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled against Jammie Thomas-Rasset. This is not the first time the Supreme Court has voided entire sections of the Constitution. It is however the first time they have done it outside of the guise of national security concerns. It is an act of betrayal by those men and women who swore an oath to uphold the constitution, and it was done without any real reason other than simple stupidity. In short, a person’s rights have been trampled and their life destroyed by a callous uncaring group of undereducated fools. And yet, there is as much outcry to burn this poor woman at the stake as there is to save her from this abomination of justice.

I again find myself uttering the phrase, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

An acquaintance has been banned from pycon for the next 2 years for lighting up a bowl of weed in South Bay ( Santa Clara ) California. He does not claim injustice. And was gracious in accepting the ban. But, a person has been cast out of a professional and foss organization for reasons that are to be blunt, unacceptable in this area of the world.

Several weeks ago at B-Sides SF, Violet Blue had a talk pulled by a woman whose personal bias drove her to threats of harassment towards the volunteer event staff and the non profitting organization behind it. There are deeply troubled people on this planet. People who have been scarred and will never truly heal. But that is no excuse for threats. That is no excuse for silencing voices that pursue knowledge and world with less barriers to thought.

Again, I find myself uttering the phrase “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

Attorney General Eric Holder, now more blatant a failure first as a human being and second as an attorney general than even Ashcroft sat before congress and had the unmitigated gall to call the charges brought against Aaron Schwartz “a good use of prosecutorial discretion”. A claim that was as ridiculous to the members of congress questioning him as it is to me. A claim that has been the subject of a failed campaign of deception by the Attorney General of Massachusetts. A claim that today is so much more galling as complaints have been officially filed against the Assistant Attorney General in Mass, for violating the rights of Aaron Schwartz by withholding evidence.

A boy is dead. Because he dared to challenge the status quo. Because in burning just a little brighter than the rest of us, a fool saw an opportunity to place their names in a news paper. A politician saw an opportunity to demonize a defenseless kid and climb still further up their own ladder at the cost of an innocent life. And still, there are no repercussions. No accountability. No justice. Because after all Aaron was a criminal.

Today, executives of Lehman Brothers are wealthy, free, and living their lives as if their past transgressions were nothing more than a few bad days to be brought up in remembered annoyance. While countless Americans continue to reel in financial debt so steep it can seem inescapable. These executives defrauded their investors, their customers, and the United States people. They LIED. Their fraud collapsed the global economy costing people their jobs, their homes, and in some cases for those on the very ragged edge, their lives. And no charges were ever filed. Criminals pure and simple walk free. And the people who scream for justice are silenced, degraded, and ultimately mocked.

In short, there is a lot of hurt in the world. There is a lot of injustice. And there are a lot of victims.

And it can be hard to keep a clear head, when there is so much to draw our attention and drive us into a funk.

So, I understand, why it is that people act like people. Why we make mistakes. Why people sometimes get so fed up with the world they live in that they try to break free. Why sometimes, you need to knock a barrier down just to see what lies beyond. Just to know that SOMETHING lies beyond.

Why someone like Aaron Schwartz would walk onto the MIT campus, walk into a routing closet, and setup a laptop to download publicly funded research by the millions of papers.

Why weev would contact news reporters and dump into their hands the results of his own investigations of how the ipad operates and the betrayal of AT&T against their own customers.

Why a woman stood before the supreme court to decry the criminal nature of legislature that targeted her with damages far beyond any real or imagined justification.

Why termie would light up a bowl, while among friends and peers. Why a person would open themselves to the world and look for acceptance only to be cast out of their own community for simply being themselves.

Why Violet Blue would publicly call out an organization claiming to fight for equality, when in truth they sacrificed knowledge and freedom in that pursuit.

And of course, why a group of people would march down to the Stock Exchange in NYC and setup camp for well over a year braving cold, and beatings, and heckling just to ask for some small measure of justice.

We encounter walls all the time. Day in and day out, we edge around the walls of personal responsibility, legal accountability, and the judgement of our neighbors and peers. We find ourselves all too often taking round about paths to where we want to be, or giving up on dreams entirely. But occasionally there are just too many walls. Too many constraints. We can’t move forward anymore and we’re trapped. And that’s when inside of us, the voice of a troll rises up and says… that wall is weak, and you are mighty.

Many people think the word troll is synonymous with people who comment on the internet in a belligerent or hate filled manner. This is a load of crap. A bastardization of the word brought about by people who didn’t know what the word meant and started using it inappropriately. While from time to time a troll will take up the mask of the malcontent, they just as often will take up the mask of the activist, the artist, or even the peacemaker. You see a troll doesn’t have a method. There isn’t some rule book for trolling. It’s not the path, it’s not the transport, it’s the destination. Trolls breach barriers. Trolls tear down everything they can. They go where others dare not tread. And in each of us, there is a little bit of troll that every now and again climbs up out of that deep dark place inside and smashes down a wall.

Maybe this is why the incredible hulk resonates with all of us. In many ways, the hulk reflects the trollish nature of mankind. We keep that little monster locked away deep inside, but every now and again a wall appears that needs to be knocked down and he will rear his ugly head and do just that. He’s hard to control. And he’s a part of ourselves that we don’t like. But no matter what he’s always there, under the surface, waiting for his chance to climb out and change his fate.

Of course, trolling is more than just channeling rage. As I said before, it’s the destination that matters. When George Herbert Leigh Mallory once was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, he replied “Because it’s there.” He saw a barrier, and he meant to go through it. He died trying, but his words inspired countless others to break down barriers for decades to come. Trolls see barriers and they break them… because they are there.

Groups like 4chan sprung up from the cess pool of IRC. And in the process distilled several aspects of that culture. However, the self proclaimed b-tards of /b/ kept with them the idea that no barrier was sacred. They freely wandered into the realms of the tasteless, the offensive, and the utterly deplorable. And in so doing they came back with the stuff of legend. 4chan will be remembered because people roamed through barriers that at no other time in history had been so openly and wantonly breached. They created art, and story, and inspired an entire generation with varying aspects of their debauchery. Always the goal was to go one barrier beyond the last person. Sometimes this ended in tragedy. Sometimes it ended in greatness.

And so, while I utter “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.” I remember that trolls don’t have to. They can live wherever they damned well please. YOU can go wherever you damned well please.

I am not saying there will not be consequences. In fact, odds are you are going to fail. You are going to fail a lot. When you get knocked down, you get back up. And you WILL be knocked down no matter how high you climb. And eventually, you won’t be able to get back up. We are all fighting a losing battle with our own mortality. But sometimes when you’ve been knocked down hard too many times, when there’s not enough room between the punches to recover, you need to just reach deep inside yourself, and let out one ugly trollish smile and walk right on through the barriers before you like you absolutely cannot be bothered to give a shit. And if you owe a pound of flesh for doing that, so be it. It’s the price of your freedom.

Trolls are the John Hancock of our constitution. They are the people who stood in the face of certain failure, and said to hell with it. And, history is littered with the bodies of those that died in failure, alone and tormented. But, there has always been a true respect for those who are given to climbing Everests because they are there. Not because we understand it. Sometimes we do. But a lot of times we don’t. When we look at a person like Weev, it’s easy to simply say “I don’t understand why he would do that? He brought this upon himself.” But, it’s utterly important to think about what it means to tell a person that they cannot do what you do not understand. To not do the things you might think are rude, offensive, or wrong.

I won’t advocate that one should accept harassment. But when we put up barriers, we lose more than the things we know about. We lose all the things that the weevs and aarons of the world might find beyond that barrier. We lose good and bad but what’s worse is we are blind to so much of our world. They say science is the pursuit of truth. Truth is lost when we build barriers that deny us the reality we dislike, or fear, or simply disregard. A reasonable person cannot simply set aside truth for the lie of a world in which a barrier is the only truth we know. A troll knows this implicitly. And that is why a troll is a hero.

We look at the world for what it is. Every gutter, ditch, and pit. Every mountain, tower, or sunrise. It’s all one big beautiful canvas and we want to see the whole damned amazing thing. And sometimes nothing else in the world will matter more than just seeing it all for what it is. And because of that, you might very well hate us. And that’ll knock us down. But we’ll keep smiling that ugly and beautiful smile, because it reflects back to you the very same beauty we see in the world beyond your barriers. And you might cringe, you might never understand it, but we will carry you kicking and screaming into a better future.

While at a bar the other night with my friends Seth and Jesse, I remarked on a ‘gaggle of ladies’. This raised the question of whether or not that phrase was, in fact, acceptable English. What ensued was a drunken journey through the Internets, and onto the path of an astounding tale laid out through history. Now I will share with you this grand tale as if I were a merry bard of old, perhaps a gallant of bards.

It all began long ago in distant Europe, long after the War of the Ring, and before the Great War. In fact, before freedom was ever invented by the United States. During these dark days the Church ruled with an iron fist. In fact, people wore iron armor on their fists. It was a pretty crazy time. Now, among the number who served the Church there was a woman named Juliana Berners. Juliana was what’s known as a Prioress. She was attached to the Priory of St. Mary of Sopwell. Now Juliana wasn’t your typical Dark age serf. She was a Dame. Which means she was not covered in shit. Also, she had free time. Something that would later be made available to all Mankind by the glorious forces of George Washington and his band of drunken Protestant men. Now Dame Juliana was not yer average dark ages lady. She spent her free time Hunting, Fishing, and Hawking.

Now as we all know from the works of Conan the Barbarian. What is best in life is not ‘a falcon on your arm and the wind in your hair’. But, it’s still pretty good times. And Juliana embraced the lifestyle of barbarian adventurers. But, unlike the other barbarian adventurers of that age, she was an educated and driven lady of means. And so when the “Boke of Seynt Albans” was printed, among it’s major essays relating to the barbaric arts was a treatise on hunting derived from the Le Art de Venerie of the huntsman Guillaume Twici. Juliana is credited with this essay. And among this essay is the inclusion of numerous phrases that provide for special collective nouns specific to game animals. Among the many collective nouns for game, was also included a number of humours collective nouns directed at professions. Juliana even took the time to give her own chosen profession their very own collective noun. A Superfluity of nuns, would likely later regret that.

Now, almost 200 years after Juliana’s rough and tumble times roving the lands of dark ages europe hunting dragons and slaying snake gods, times had changed. Gervase Markham would edit the Boke of Seynt Albans and give to the victorian world “The Gentleman’s Academie”. Today we refer to this work as the Gentleman’s Academic. Now, Victorians were assholes. Seriously. People who emulate steam punk, may as well be dressing up as Adolf Hitler. Victorians implemented a rigid caste system designed to oppress the majority of the population driving them into factories and mines and depriving them of any real hope. These were very dark times. Now, the victorians loved the collective nouns that Juliana provided for them. They saw them as another way to oppress the down trodden and differentiate themselves from the masses. And so, they took Juliana’s essays on hunting and poured them into the English language joining the collective nouns of her past fancy into the common vernacular, first as ‘terms of venery’, and later simply as collective nouns in the English language.

And so, over a half of a millennium after a royal hunter priestess academic wandered a time of myth and legend, we find in our language the lasting echo of her enjoyment of hunting, as well as a spectacular sense of humor. So, the next time you find yourself grabbing your .22 and taking aim at a murder of crows tearing into a mbau of your trash, give thought to the Dame Juliana Berners of the Priory of St. Mary of Sopwell, and thank her for making our language a place where a kindle of kittens could enjoy a skein of yarn almost as much as a blush of boys would enjoy a giggle of girls.

Some links:

• Concering Juliana Berners
• Concerning the Book of St. Albans
• A short list of collective nouns

Today has turned out to be one of those days when I hear philo t farnsworth’s voice in my head saying in it’s shakey timber… “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”

This morning I scurried off to work ready to watch a rather large amount of work finally go green on gate / unit tests and be merged into our next release. That may yet happen, however I needless to say encountered some unplanned hurdles and it is now 3:30 in the afternoon.

I also expected to find a completed print of a raspberry pi case. Instead I found that my new 3d printer had decided to lose it’s mind and end up in a very bad state.

Needless to say, this overcast tuesday morning was living up to the pogues rendition of it.

Anyways… I set to work. Sometimes these dark days are the test by which we can change our fate. And so with renewed vigor… I set to work. Of course I would occasionally check email / twitter throughout the day. And it was this lifeline to the world that increasingly has darkened my mood.

First was the news that Weev, a guy I’ve met a few times on IRC and even a few times IRL at Noisebridge or parties in the bay area was facing a judgement in his ongoing trial.

Weev’s not the most political correct guy on the planet. In fact, he’s downright irresponsible. That is probably the reason more than any interpretation of the law that he was held guilty today on a felony charge. You see, the reality is, weev didn’t break any laws. The proposition by the state that he broke laws is absurd. And not just esoteric interpretation or subjective viewpoint. They quite literally picked some random laws that had nothing to do with anything then used the Chewbacca offense to declare weev had broken them. There wasn’t any evidence he had, as the laws weren’t even applicable to the case. Basically they throw legalese out as a basis for charging him. Then formed a case around no one being able to understand all the bullshit technological explanations they fabricated. The end result is that a guy is going to jail on a felony conviction for basically guessing a url to some data that AT&T had made publicly available when they should not have. Client customer data. Your data most likely. Weev was looking at how his own iPhone worked, and he saw where his own data was being hosted for all the world to see, and he guessed that by incrementing a single value he could see more peoples data.

Turns out, weev was right. AT&T had published in the clear a ton of customer’s sensitive data. They had basically fucked over weev and a bunch of their iphone customers. Weev being a somewhat irresponsible and rightfully pissed off customer responded by telling all the world that AT&T had fucked him and the rest of their iphone customers over.

This was big news for like a day. Then because our news media gets more money from sex scandals and terrorism decided to move on. AT&T of course decided that the right PR move was to declare that weev had bypassed their security, hacked into their systems, and falsified his identity. All of this buy guessing the URL ( that was plainly obvious ) to download information that AT&T had made freely available to the entire internet.

The case the state fielded quite literally makes less sense than the mad rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic. But because they slathered on enough technical jargon ( that didn’t actually make any sense to any real experts ), the jury bought it. In short, the prosecutors lied. Blatantly. But because the average American is technologically illiterate they simply did not know that.

Now, the EFF and a bunch of other tech organizations need to spend a ton of money to over turn this decision lest it become a precedent. All because AT&T decided to first break the law, then criminally slander someone who caught them doing it.

This is our world today. This happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

Now Weev is no poster child. The guy has prior drug convictions and he claims this is a Jewish conspiracy. So, by all accounts Weev most likely brought this down on himself. But, when a company can declare someone is guilty of their own crimes. Or a prosecutor can straight up bullshit a court with blatant lies. I have to wonder what the hell has become of our world?

That’s just till lunch.

Then it comes out that on the eve of this Patraeus debacle, that our infinitely wise legislators want to make it still easier to violate the 4th ammendment in regards to email ( because it being digital somehow makes it not mail or something ) no one seems to care. Luckily the EFF was able to direct enough attention at that to shut it down. But the really sad part was, that bill was originally written to increase privacy protections. Something the Patraeus fiasco has clearly emphasized.

When was it the 4th ammendment just dropped off the constitution?

Why is there no one in legislature, executive, or judicial defending it?

What the fuck?

Fine, I still have build errors. Back to those.

Finally several hours later my builds are passing muster, and I am cleaning up code. Time to do some more looking about in the world. Apparently wayne coyne got caught with a dummy hand grenade in OKC airport. He’s fine. Apparently being famous means they won’t violate your rights. Unlike the guy the other day who got arrested solely for having a scary looking watch. Seriously. That was the only reason cited.

Check through my responses list… and I see this exchange.

The specific Knuth point I am referencing is this famous letter: Knuth’s letter to EPO ( with Letter to USPO included )

Basically I think my fundamental disgust with the legislature that exists today regarding technology can be summed up in this exchange.

Lawyers are very smart people, when it comes to their chosen profession. They accept liability which in my own estimation makes them a true professional and worthy of an honorific title. But, that in and of itself leads them down a path of folly.

Time and again, legislators, judges, and even lawyers have put into practice in law methods and systematic interpretations of the world around them that have been far removed from the fundamental truth of nature. This exchange on twitter is a perfect example of that. Knuth has been a vocal proponent for the abolishment of software patents, and he’s made his arguments using a basis of mathematical interpretation of the facts at hand. His arguments take into account a full understanding of the laws intents and the technology as well as the limitations of each. He expresses that as a mathematician would. He proves his point.

This quote from Daniel R. Ravicher is very telling “…Says you, but not the Supreme Court, the CAFC, or any District Court. SW is patentable. It doesn’t help to deny reality.” In this case, Ravicher would have you believe that reality is to be derived from the legislature’s acceptance, interpretation, and enforcement. The problem is, that legislature is at odds with an argument founded in a fundamental understanding of the truth of the situation as expressed by a Mathematician in clear and accurate terms. Lawyers get so wrapped up in their work, they end up living in a giant fiction that they themselves have had a hand in producing.

You can legislate away global warming, and legislate into existence the ability to create innovative software solutions, and you can even legislate into existence unicorns. This, is not reality. This is a guy driving civilization and deciding he wants to go on a certain path, but that the tree standing in his way is an inconvenience, so he chooses that the tree doesn’t get to tell him where he’s going to drive his car. Of course, he’ll not stop being the driver. And he’ll not have to alter any of his beliefs. But, the car will end up demolished and brought to a halt by the tree all the same. Reality is defined by nature. Math is a true expression of that nature. And the day legislature tries to make math and nature subserviant to it’s wishes is the day we set up civilization for a nice big crash right into the unyielding wall of reality.

And lawyers chronically seem to not care about that. Because when they do set us all up to slam head long into a reality they refuse to accept, they are not held accountable.

That’s unacceptable to me.

And that is why sometimes I hear philo farnsworth whispering in my ear, “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.”