Glove Boxing

What comes after "need to know".

Creating and maintaining compartments is non-trivial when working in the context of a social movement. Unlike the hard sided TS/SCI environment, non-professional groups are more organic. There will be diffusion, at times knowingly done because that is how a group’s direction is modulated, but quite often purely by accident. An accretion of tiny clues like pinhole leaks between compartments assures the whole submarine goes down with a sequential crunch of collapsing bulkheads when the pressure goes up.

When someone goofs in a more structured environment they get “boxed”. They and everything around them are considered suspect, activity may continue, but there’s always a radiotracer in whatever is shared. This is called a barium meal in espionage circles, but Tom Clancy dubbed this method a “canary trap”.

As things are starting to wind up for third quarter I can see situations where this sort of tradecraft is going to come to the forefront.

Attention Conservation Notice:

Our border problem isn’t in the Sonoran desert, it’s in the pockets, purses, and book bags of almost all of us. Reality is under siege, that’s a theme to which I often return. The flip side of that coin is that exposing reality enables bad actors. This post might be too meta for you …

Little Rainbow Lies:

There’s a little bird on my shoulder, not a “today could be the day” Buddhist bird, this one is a Lyre (liar) bird. It reads what I write aloud, sometimes in the voice of a Christian nationalist federal prosecutor with a north Texas accent. Or one of those folks I alluded to in the conclusion for Dispelling Delusions Of Adequacy.

“When it stops feeling like a game you are in dire need of a break.”

“Paranoia is paralyzing.”

So every day, in every way, we play a little game.

Anything in those 4,900+ items could serve as a clue. You saw how this worked in Kiwi Farms Crack Baby Butthurt, which depended on some observations from Organic Stupidity, LinkedIn Style, last December. Yesterday I noticed a thing, and the person behind it made a tiny mistake last New Years Eve, right around lunch time. Patience is a virtue, like the nine year delay between my knowing some things and the publication of Scientology’s Dullest Tool.

There are a portion of things in there that are fiction. Not enormous gotcha fictions, more like unique names for people that don’t actually exist, or a phone number with some digits transposed. If I’m sure it’s an issue, those strings get a Talkwalker alert set. I think Situational Awareness is a good place to start, before you read Regarding Your Ass. You’ll hear me using the term “salted” to describe this practice of putting out what only seem to be pinhole leaks.

If you aren’t in the mode of paying close attention to what happens with whom, and when, you will inevitably get manipulated. We’re just clever apes wired for savanna living, the internet permitting everything everywhere to happen all at once confuses even the most hardened among us.

OK, that’s enough of that.

Boxing:

What happens when you face a situation in an environment where you MUST pay attention, but you already know there are multiple problems?

It’s box time …

An entirely expected brewing theme for third quarter are the return of persons and personas, a sort of virtual last march of the Ents. Everyone with any capability who still draws breath is figuring out how they’re going to spend their time from now through Guy Fawkes day.

I’ve got several of these boxes in play already.

One of them has a couple social group wranglers. They’re a good bunch, but a lot of newness, and they have the typical judgment deficit. They periodically attack armored columns armed with little more than slingshots, or they’ll run for their lives from something that really deserves to be mocked and derided until the source of the behavior is shamed into moving on. When they’re in a place to listen, I share my thoughts on the direction of the moment.

There’s another box with some resources in it, but it’s my opinion that they have a really grim problem. They don’t see it. I can’t un-see it. I might just be on the wrong side of the line in terms of Paranoia: Pathological Or Professional? Doesn’t matter, I stick my hands into the gloves as needed. I don’t want to be right on this one, but I’m not getting any of it on me due to the character defect of wishful thinking. My chilly demeanor is out of step and it has been noticed. So it goes.

And the last box produced a purported fact this weekend. Just as in Scientology’s Dullest Tool, it’s something I’ve periodically looked at for years. This is a bit like a wild west poker table, only inside a multi-station box. I see several sets of hands, there are two pair I can nominally trust, and one of the two is like me - hard and fast. I don’t have to explain much, I never have to repeat myself, and this is comforting in what is a dangerous, ugly environment.

Reciprocity & Other Evils

The most hazardous social expectation in this trying-to-be-professional space is reciprocity. “I show you mine, you show me yours?” Nope. The second most hazardous is familiarity. Like a bankers box doing double duty as a stool, repeated wear will start to split seams. The third … probably ego, the self-promotion angle. If there’s something you need, and the initial answer is no, the urge to disclose why you need it may become very strong.

If you can’t just pull your hands out, shrug, and walk away, you don’t actually have a box … this is a more apt representation.

Conclusion:

As a mildly autistic farm boy. I’d really prefer things to just be up front. But that’s not how things are. Luckily I have a professional box inspector handy, and she notices the little things I might miss.