the mellow tigger's musings

During the last week, I have completely ruined my online tracking data. I couldn't even guess what data algorithms now conclude about me from my behavior. I've watched video material from the far right and left, trying to make some sense of what's going on during these turbulent times. I've searched text that is problematic.

Most of what's out there is awful, low-data, conspiracy-related, emotionally-manipulative triviality. There are a few rare nuggets of appreciated perspectives, from sources that I never would have visited, absent our current point in history. In that vein, I wanted to record a handful of things that I was glad I watched, despite how uncomfortable some of it is. There was:

• insightful observation from a professional USA-trained sniper (1 (contains some blood in still-frame images) and 2 (follow-up with some corrections)),
• moving comments from black pastors (1 and 2), and one of those videos includes a pastor saying they were called by the federal government to ask what they would say during their first sermon after the shooting,
• which connects too obviously to the disturbing warnings about coordination and manipulation that this historian explains happened with churches and other institutions in the past,
• potential manipulation on the ABC news network of judicial video covering the accused assassin (watch 5 minutes starting here),
• very powerful words from a black woman, Joy Reid, offered here by an old white guy, which is important because sometimes words from an ally can pierce mental resistance against issues presented by whichever minority uses the same words, and
• uplifting encouragement here from a journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I'm sure that I've never heard the phrase "spicy whites" before, but I think I kind of like it. I wouldn't have heard it during the last week either, except that I was deliberately exploring outside my usual territory and arrived someplace new where I heard Joy Reid speaking.

Part of the danger of my most recent adventure is that I would get suckered by false information... and I was. I found a particular YouTube video very moving and politically significant. While I was writing this post, I tried to source the supposed speech quotations. I eventually realized that the whole thing was fictional. No such speech. Inspiration crushed with the false attribution. I dislike this modern age of digital falsehoods.

There are labels that I gladly accept and others that I reject.

For instance:

• I am not a Democrat. Not since Bernie got sidelined the first time.
• I am a progressive. Meaning I want continuing improvements in response to new empirical knowledge.
• I am #antifa. And you should be too.
• I am not an anarchist.

I should explain that last label, given my longstanding criticism of so many things here in the USA. I want great changes in government and economic structures, yes, but I still want structures. Anarchism has the debatably-laudable goal of making individuals each responsible for all outcomes. It plans to accomplish that goal, thanks to elimination of all hierarchy as a form of coercion. Afterwards, individuals and their choices would be all that matters.

I've recommended the book "The Nature of Economies" by Jane Jacobs many times over the years. It uses easy ecological metaphors to teach ideas that are more complex. I propose a biological metaphor for understanding proposed anarchy. Show me the creature that was formerly a multicellular organism of specialized cells (requiring hierarchy of its own sort) that later backtracked to eliminate that specialization, where each cell becomes master of itself and must negotiate with other cells as equals. Show me how evolution has proved that simplification strategy as more adaptable than advanced specializations, then I'll believe that anarchism is viable at our level too. It seems at first glance, at least, that Mother Nature prefers constant change and reorganization, not mere simplification.

"You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
- G.K. Chesterton

I still believe in the beauty of complex systems, and I still believe in the possibility of their actually serving the long-term needs of constituent components.

I'm playing a lot of the Pantheon MMO in my spare time. It is still years away from being complete, but there's more than enough to keep me entertained. I keep creating (and sometimes deleting then recreating) new characters to try out all of the different character classes and tradeskills. So far, my highest-progressing characters are shaman, wizard, and ranger. That experimentation process leads me to today's question.

My next character class will be a necromancer. In this game, they can perform an unusual and much-needed service called corpse summoning. When any player's character dies, they leave behind a visible corpse in the game world, still containing all of their character inventory. The player must return to that corpse to retrieve the money and items they carried at the time of their death. That's fine if the corpse is in a convenient location. If not... then corpse summoning is essential. A necromancer can target the currently-living character (respawned in town or other safe location) and magically teleport their distant corpse to them, where they conveniently retrieve all of their lost items.

For my necromancer, I want to learn the tradeskills of 1) carpentry for creation of bank boxes for large storage space which I have decided to call "coffins" and 2) provisioning for creation of meals and drinks which I will call "funeral gifts". So... I need a name that alludes either to "happy" funeral meals amongst the living or to those meals that are delivered with the dead into their tomb. I've been looking through pages about the times from modern practices back to ancient Egypt. So far, nothing stands out as a useful word for these offerings. At some point, I ran across the Latin silicernium, but I'm just not fond of it as a character name.

Are there any language aficionados out there who might know of a word that fulfills this description? I want to summon corpses for people in need, then afterwards hand them food and a bank storage box, saying something like: "Please accept this coffin and funerary meal. We wish the recently departed good luck and safe journey." I'm not even on a roleplay server, but some people do actually roleplay here. I'd just get a kick out of playing a good guide-to-the-afterlife, I think, rather than the expected evil death magician.

But I just can't figure out a character name yet.