Entrepreneur
A heckle is ordinarily an attack on a performance, and the cure is taken to be a steadier will. Read against the foundation, it is a mark made while an act is still going, so it reaches the marks already left and not the next one, and the size it lands at is set by the speaker’s own record of receiving marks of its kind. … readWhat Is a Heckle
Flattery is ordinarily a lie told to please, and the cure is taken to be seeing through it. Read against the foundation, it is praise that would have been the same whatever the work was, because another condition governed the mark, and the size of the pleasure it gives is measured against the hearer’s own doubt and cannot report which kind it was. … readWhat Is Flattery
Turn a dial from 100% uncertainty to 0% and watch the future become the past, one bit at a time. A playable thought from my new free book, How the Future Becomes the Past: A Mythology of Quantum Gravity. … readSixteen Futures, One Past
Spite is ordinarily the wish to see someone hurt, acted on at a cost to yourself. Read against the foundation, the hurt is a quotient in another host that its maker cannot take, and the reading she can take is her own, which is small when she predicted the reaction. … readWhat Is Spite
Gossip is ordinarily news about a person who is not there. Read against the foundation, each telling is a new mark made out of the teller’s own departure from her prediction of that person, which is why the ordinary days go untold and why the person talked about meets only what the hearers then do. … readWhat Is Gossip
An accent is ordinarily a property of a person. Read against the foundation, it is the size of a departure in one listener’s quotient, which is why the same sound is strong in one room and unremarked in the next, and why the speaker is poorly placed to hear it. … readWhat Is an Accent
A wink is ordinarily a small message sent to one person across a room. Read against the foundation, the eyelid carries very little of it: a twitch and a wink leave the same mark, and what the other person reads is a name the two of them already hold. … readWhat Is a Wink
A hug is ordinarily something one person gives another. Read against the foundation, nothing is handed over in it: an act at each pair of arms lands on the other host as something received, and each host reads its own squeeze smaller than the other does, so “it was only a hug” and “that was a lot” can both be accurate. … readWhat Is a Hug
A souvenir is ordinarily a small object that brings a place home. Read against the foundation it is the mark of a later and smaller act, the buying or the lifting, which its owner reads as though it were a mark of the trip, so binning it leaves the trip exactly as it was. … readWhat Is a Souvenir
A lullaby is ordinarily a soft song that sends a child to sleep. Read against the foundation it is a tune together with a hearer’s record of it, made again each night until it is met at almost no size, which is why its ending reads as the largest mark of the run unless made in small steps, and why the verses after it has worked are measured by fidelity alone. … readWhat Is a Lullaby