Something big

Since the Quisling incident a few months ago we have been studying the activities of the Parent Corporation and the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch even more carefully than usual, and we can without a doubt state that they're up to something big. We're not talking big like giant babies--that hype will soon fade. I should mention that we have known about portions of their plans for some time, including the experiments on butterfly antennae where butterflies were tortured in the name of science. Reports indicate they plan to create human antennae out of brads, but while we don't believe they will succeed in this endeavor we are concerned with their progress. We also knew about "Edgar" and his mysterious as-yet-unrevealed-to-the-public motive for infiltrating one of our offices in Nevada. We wish we could reveal more about this motive, but we don't want to jeopardize "Viktor's" investigations. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not cautious, and we hope you will heed our advice to be vigilant and to renew your commitment to stop the spread of evil office products!

The Death of Jacob Gehris

Many supporters responded to our recent post about the discovery of Jacob Gehris's hand by asking us what the rumors surrounding his apparent suicide were. We are surprised that so many of our supporters have not researched this topic, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not convinced that information is power, so we'll share with you what we know (and what rumors say) about his untimely demise.

First, the facts. Jacob was last seen alive on April 14, 1875 in Conflate, Arizona by his nephew Jonathan Hansen (who, incidentally, was rumored to have ties with the Company, but more about that later). His nephew said that Jacob was acting moody and discussed his failure to make any money off his invention at length. Besides Jonathan the last time he is documented to have been seen alive was during a particularly involved April Fool's Day joke involving several horses and a ladder. Not much more is officially known about his whereabouts before his body was discovered on April 15 by Percival Grant, the milkman. The police investigated the death, labeled it a suicide, and quickly rushed his body away for disposal. It is at this point that the details become a bit fuzzier. It has been rumored that the Company had Jacob's body embalmed, dismembered, and scattered, presumably so that nobody could investigate his death further. Documents we recovered from the collapse of the Company suggested that his body parts may have been moved a few times over the years, but since the Company is no longer in business it is little surprise that his hand has turned up after all these years. There were other more bizarre rumors such as the one involving a UFO coverup, but you can read about them online, so we won't take up space here. Just search for "Jacob Gehris Hoax". The most interesting unresolved question from the police investigation in 1875 is whether his nephew was involved in the death. The police at the time labeled him as trustworthy and dismissed him as a suspect, but documents that have more recently come to light paint a different picture of him. We can't confirm any of the rumors that he was a Brad Guy, but we certainly think it was likely. We'll keep you informed of new developments in the case of the no-longer-missing hand.

If you're going to do the time...

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to justice for criminals, but we find it just a bit dodgy that people can be charged with crimes without being allowed to follow through. We understand that sometimes the crime must be prevented, but in this case, we think the man being charged with shoplifting should have been able to finish the crime he started before he paid for it. It's not like the beer could be taken back to the store or anything. Really.

An interesting discovery

Imagine this: you're digging in your yard, and suddenly you see a finger pointing at you from inside the dirt. Most people would simply have run in terror from the apparent zombie. Not Hugh Tanner, a supporter who lives in Maryland. He remembered the stories his mother used to tell him about how Jacob Gehris had been dismembered post-mortem and scattered to discourage medical examination. Until now the stories have been nothing but rumors, but with this hand we can finally and categorically state that Mr. Gehris was indeed dismembered after his death. We are continuing our forensic investigation in the hopes it might shed some light on his apparent suicide in April of 1875.

We're still surprised

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not ready for opposition, but it still surprises us when the mainstream press chooses to report on some incidents and not on others. We understand that an apparently nutty guy hurling golf balls into a national park to honor deceased golfers and leaving piles of vegetables near the roads for stranded hikers is news, we just don't understand why they didn't bother reporting on the man who was recently apprehended in Redwood National Park spreading small brads in the bushes around a trail and claiming that we has simply trying to replenish the world's supply of brads by planting more. We don't believe the reporters are deliberately avoiding the juicier stories, but we do believe that the Parent Corporation must be putting pressure on the editors to stifle stories that paint brads in a bad light. Interestingly, the individual apprehended while planting brads was not affiliated with the Parent Corporation in any way--he was just a bit off his rocker. The Parent Corporation does not relish the thought of crazy being associated with brads, which is why they went to great lengths to squash this story. Many thanks to Harriet Thurman, the park ranger who made sure the story got out of the park!

Discrimination

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to ending discrimination in all of its forms. Loyal supporters will remember our groundbreaking work with the EU to end discrimination against fruits and vegetables, and you will all remember our "Let's beat up people who like to discriminate against others" campaigns. In spite of all of our efforts, however, it seems that stubborn individuals still refuse to be tolerant of others. We hope that those individuals are shamed into conformity by angry neighbors, because, after all, why shouldn't a Jedi be able to shop at Tesco without giving up his religious convictions?

One more triumph

In the wake of the investigations surrounding the Quisling incident we have found a great deal of information, and we have made a significant arrest. The mainstream media, of course, doesn't appear to grasp the significance of the arrest, but we are thrilled. The man we arrested was none other than Hans Jenkins, the Chief Technology Officer for the Parent Corporation. Papers found at the scene of the Incident implied that the Parent Corporation had financed the redesign of the reality simulator, and we have long had reason to believe that "Edgar" and the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch retain their tax-free status by some creative accounting with the Parent Corporation. We believe that the documents we found will not only indict Hans for illegal dealings with the Unholy Brotherhood, but that they will break the facade of separation between the UBHP and the Parent Corporation once and for all.

Hans has been organizing "surplus sales" of phantom office equipment and having the accountants work their magic. In reality, he is funneling the profits from the UBHP's activities into the Parent Corporation simply so that the UBHP can avoid tax liability.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not thrilled by the arrest of Hans Jenkins and we are looking forward to the day when the UBHP has to face the music and pay their taxes.

A caution

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not concerned for your safety, which is why we are suggesting that you take more baths, or at least get a metal shower head. Incidentally, similar studies have been performed on brads and found that the same bacteria flourish there. We are not aware of any studies on hole punches, but we are commissioning one as we speak...er...as I type?

An inquiry

The recent popularity of the "Cash for Clunkers" program in the United States has prompted thorough reviews of the way aging cars are treated in general. Many activists claimed the Cash for Clunkers program amounted to little more than death panels, where bureaucrats got to decide which cars lived and which cars died. Others claim that the dismantling of certain cars was done following a cost/benefit analysis that was transparent and clearly the right thing for society to do.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not interested in getting to the truth, and so we have been performing our own investigation into the alleged mistreatment of older cars. We visited (clandestinely, of course) three separate nursing facilities for older cars and what we found may be shocking, so if you are easily shocked or appalled, please read no further.

Most people believe that when they drop their aging car off at a nursing facility that the car will receive regular maintenance and cleaning and that the car's problems will be mitigated in such a way as to help it die with dignity. Most people are wrong. At least in the three facilities* we infiltrated the truth is much less dignified.

In order to get inside, we found three older cars that were donated by supporters, and rigged them with microphones, video cameras, and a few more specialized sensors before dropping them off. In each case, the first thing that was done to the car was a thorough inspection akin to a strip search intended to find any parts that might be able to be extracted and sold to repair shops. When such parts were found they were immediately removed from the vehicles and replaced with barely-functioning parts that caused the vehicles a great deal of pain. After this initiation into the nursing home, the aging cars were then unceremoniously parked in an uncovered lot behind the home. When we went back to visit our car we were told it was being cleaned at the moment and we would have to wait. Our surveillance revealed that during our wait the car was taken from the lot, cleaned up, and brought to a garage where we were finally allowed to visit it.

If this were the extent of the atrocities we observed, however, we would have been shocked but not yet appalled. As it is, we were so far beyond appalled that we're not sure what to call it. We intentionally did not visit our cars for several months, and our surveillance revealed that the workers began to remove more and more parts, sometimes replacing them with duct tape.

What surprised us most about the "care" our cars received was that as parts were being removed and replaced, more often than not the replacement parts would be constructed from or installed with hole punches and brads. We haven't established a firm link with the Parent Corporation or the Unholy Brotherhood of the Hole Punch just yet, but in a situation this evil we are not surprised to find evil office products being used.

After several months we went back and asked to see our cars, but were told that they had expired. We knew from our sensor data that this was not the case, and that they were suffering in silence in the back lot. We resolved to break into the lot and retrieve our cars before it was too late, but in one case the car was crushed alive before we could retrieve it.

We don't think there is cause for widespread panic, but we do want to let people make informed decisions about their aging cars.

*Although the facilities were striking in their similar approaches to aging car care, they were run by ostensibly different entities. We won't mention the names of the homes here, but if you are curious please contact your local GPD office for a request form (2245-K Request for Information about a GPD Investigation)

What "Edgar" was doing in our offices

While we still can't reveal everything we learned from our investigations of the abduction and replacement of our Count Quisling, the Board of Dictators has met often and we have decided to let portions of our finding be made public. We would like to make it all public, but ongoing intelligence operations might be compromised by revealing all of it at this point. As soon as we can we will release the remainder of our findings.

It seems that "Edgar" had at least three motives for his infiltration. One of these we can't talk about publicly yet, so that's all we'll say about mysterious motivation number one. The second motive was to gather intelligence about the GNU Public Dictatorship and its regional operations. We have studied all of the records that the fake Quisling would have had access to during his brief stay, and we have concluded that the only non-public information he encountered was a proposal for extending the GNU Public Theme Park to other locations around the world by setting up mirrors using rsync. The proposal was being circulated among our Counts for preliminary comments, and has subsequently been referred to one of our standards groups (and, of course, made public). For the curious, the proposal is on track to being implemented, but there is disagreement over whether the mirrors should use the traditional rsync or the more innovative RideTorrent. Only time will tell. He also had access to the disciplinary records for Lincoln County, Nevada, but we asked our computer to correlate that information with all of our other records to determine whether anything useful could have been gleaned from that. We found that there was a small exhaust port in our space station against which they could send a squadron of small fighters and, assuming their aim was superb, could destroy our space station, but we have remedied the situation by adding a few extra deflectors to the exhaust port. But I digress. Back to the third reason.

The third and perhaps most interesting reason "Edgar" infiltrated our office was that he apparently wanted to try giving up brads and hole punches for a while to convince himself that he is not dependent on their evil influence. We found this out by reconstructing several of the shredded documents he left in the office when he fled, and after reviewing surveillance and interviewing coworkers we found that he apparently did live without brads for the amazing period of 24 hours. He kept up the appearance of not using brads for much longer, but some of the office workers noticed strange behavior in the brad disposal room as early as a week after the abduction of Quisling. It was these repeated strange incidents that caused Daniel's investigation that precipitated the rest of the events that are so well known.

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not encouraged by the fact that "Edgar" couldn't give up his brad and hole punch habit for more than a day. He is apparently more of a slave to his addictions that we had previously believed.

When to call Emergency Services

For some time now we have been trying to get our supporters to understand when it is not appropriate to call for emergency services, with apparently more success than we thought. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not moderate, so it shouldn't surprise you to find out that there are times when calling emergency services is the appropriate thing to do. When you are trapped in a storm drain and can't get out, while posting your status on Facebook as "is stuck in storm drain, please help" might be amusing, you will have better luck using your phone to call emergency services. We encourage all of you to take some time and list the situations you may encounter in your life and to decide whether each of them warrants the calling of emergency services. If you have doubts about any particular situation, contact your local GPD office for clarification.

"Not MY dog, officer"

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not observant, and we have recently observed a disturbing trend. We won't bore you with the statistical gobbledy-gook that we calculated to make sure it is a trend, but we will say that our observations were conclusive. More and more people are calling for law enforcement assistance and, instead of stopping someone else's illegal actions, ending up being cited for their own misbehavior. Take this case, for example. If you are going to call the cops to complain about a neighbor's dog, you should probably not let your own dog chew the officer's tires. We hop that we don't have to go into greater detail than this: Before calling the cops on somebody else, be sure that you aren't violating the law.

Sacrifice

We live in an age where sacrifice is often discouraged--we tend to prefer a life of comfort to one that asks us to give anything up. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not pleased with those who do sacrifice for the greater good, and hope that we can learn from their examples!

A report

I am pleased to report that my visit to the scene of the crime in Nevada was a complete success, and that the information we were able to gather will serve us for years to come. We have confirmed the details we presumed before about the abduction of Quisling, and we have found some important information about "Edgar." We would love to reveal this information now and have you all be as excited as we are, but we haven't passed the information through our security process yet. We don't want "Edgar" to anticipate our next move, but at the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not eager to make it!

A Gateway to Brads

It has come to my attention that there are some who believe that I have been neglecting my post on the Board of Dictators. As it is true that I have not posted for a while, it is because I was working on many essential and very time-consuming projects for the well-being of society. I have also, in this time, managed to identify one of the latest plots of the Parent Corporation.

We have known for a long time to avoid the evils of brads and the hole punch, as well as evil stickers. Our state is such that those who would call themselves loyal to the GPD would never dream of using these materials. Therefore, the Parent Corporation has been inventing 'gateway' products, which in and of themselves are not evil, and in some cases may even be very practical, but which resemble the evils effects of the Parent Corporation. One such product is the folder with 'prongs'. Sure, it seems simple enough -- maybe even practical. The danger is that people start to associate good feelings for these prongs that subconsciously remind them of brads. Pretty soon they start finding "good uses" for brads, and they are well on their way to evil. As a side note, since these folders are not inherently evil, please be sure to use them according to the instructions provided, and never use them to rip holes in papers -- this creates tendencies that could easily lead to the use of brads.

We at the GNU Public Dictatorship are nothing if not supportive of those who invent things that can be used for the good of mankind. We ask you, however, to be careful what items you let into your home, lest lead you to the use brads or hole punches.

The Scene of the Crime

We have found some interesting new leads in the disappearance of Quisling and his replacement by his evil twin "Edgar" which have called me to Nevada to investigate them personally. With a little luck we'll know exactly what happened and be able to make a few arrests within a few days. I'll keep you posted.

Now I'll take a moment to respond to a concern raised by several of our supporters: shouldn't there be an independent commission investigating this incident? The truth of the matter is that we do use independent commissions, but as they often take too long to get any useful leads we usually wait until the situation has been properly handled and then hire a third-party contractor to confirm that we did our jobs correctly. Having the independent investigators looking at the same time we do means (1) we duplicate work, and (2) we step on each others' toes. By using independent investigators later, we can be sure that they only investigate important leads and verify that our correct methods reached the correct conclusions. It's much less messy this way. We appreciate your concern about transparency and would like to reiterate that everything the GNU Public Dictatorship does is open, meaning that you can find out everything that we do, assuming you file the right paperwork. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to truth and openness in government!

Mutants

I was thrilled to learn that we are all mutants, but I am a little disappointed. Where's my laser-eyes? My ice-making ability? My ability to control magnetic fields? My ability to regenerate when injured? I find it hard to believe that television and movies have perpetrated such lies upon us, but that's the way it looks, folks. If we really are mutants, I guess it's like we learn from The Incredibles that if everyone is super then nobody is super. Oh, well.

Masterful diplomacy

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not committed to ruling the world without other entanglements, but we are also nothing if not realistic. In the short term, at least, it seems we'll have to deal with existing organizations and governments. In these dealings we have learned a few secrets of diplomacy, one of which we will share with you today.

The secret we want to share with you today is that to get people to agree with you there are two options: (1) find something that everyone agrees with, or (2) find something everyone can agree to be against.

In practice the only things people generally agree on are things like "being hospitalized is unpleasant" and "paying less for the same thing is good." We could keep listing this type of statement for quite a while without touching on anything that would help forge a real relationship. I mean, nobody will help you in a war just because you agree that hospitalization is a drag.

The real power of diplomacy is to make people do what they don't want to do because they believe it is in their best interests. Much of our diplomatic success stems from the fact that brads and hole punches are so universally loathed once people understand what they stand for and that the organizations pushing these devices on the unsuspecting public are so villainous that only they themselves can deny that they are purely evil. Another thing that most people in the world will condemn is the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, where they agreed to carve up eastern Europe for their own purposes. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wisely chose to condemn it this week, creating good feelings around the world because they, too, hate evil.

We hope this post has been instructive, and we'd like to let you know that we are currently recruiting for several positions in our Ministry of Propaganda and Diplomacy. If you are interested, please submit form TDSI-2254L-a (we no longer accept form TDSI-2254L) to your local GPD office at your earliest convenience.

Appropriate Naming

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not convinced that that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and that the converse is equally true. Take the city of Boggy Bayou, Florida, for example. After years of lower-than-hoped-for turnout at the annual Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival they finally relented and renamed the city Niceville. Unfortunately, the name by itself change didn't freshen things up enough for some residents, such as this lady. Her neighbor was smoking and infringing on her constitutional right to breathe fresh air, so she decided to spray air freshener at the smoker. Neither of the people involved in this incident were being very nice, even though they were in the city of Niceville. Shocking.

Proof

Clearly there are a handful of words and phrases that are often used to incite arguments or to prove that your own ideas are clearly superior to those of other people. At the GNU Public dictatorship we are nothing if not disapproving of such methods, which is why we would like to take a moment to discuss the use of the word "proof" in such a context.

One of the difficulties in living in a society where we aren't allowed to brainwash people or even simply require that they learn and use newspeak is that different ideas inevitably emerge. People, left to themselves, have an irritating habit of thinking for themselves and coming to conclusions based on their own experiences and beliefs that do not agree with the conclusions of other people. While it would be much simpler to require our supporters to act on our edicts without thinking for themselves, much of the power of the GNU Public Dictatorship is derived from the open source model, which asserts that the community can be a great asset. You can rest assured that the GPD is not going to brainwash you any time soon. Maybe when the technology has improved we can revisit it, but for now you don't have to think about it.

Anyway, the bottom line is that when people disagree about things they often request proof from one other. The problem is that proof has many definitions, ranging from testing the effectiveness of yeast to "a sequence of steps, statements, or demonstrations that leads to a valid conclusion." Unfortunately, even in mathematical proofs, the fact that the proof exists only means that the conclusion is valid given the axioms used and assumptions that were made initially. One person's proof is a silly idea from another person's perspective. Take this example of the use of the word "proof." The writer of the article clearly does not believe that the photo is proof of the existence of the Loch Ness monster, but is using the claim that it is proof to make fun of the person making the claim.

At the GPD we recognize that proof that stands independently of people's assumptions is hard to come by (in fact, we know of only a few instances of such proof, and they all involve hole punches and brads), so we suggest that more can be accomplished by sharing and understanding assumptions than by proving things based on your own assumptions.