Here are a few phishing sites that have come to my attention as of late:

• pfhorum.com
• pfhorn.com

Please don’t get scammed. Stay safe and wait for pfhorums.com to return. Godspeed.

Chrome gets it

Things have been quiet around here lately because no one gives a shit. Nez has been finishing the first draft of his novel, TK has evaporated, I’ve been working, TL has a kid to look after, and that makes most of us. The best Mararthon-related news I’ve got is that we’re 157 steps ahead of these chumps.

Definitely not a Pfhorums stimulator. This morning I finished playing Pfhorums.nits, pictured below:

Its most remarkable feature is its realism. Finish off a major conflict and then an angry Dugit appears, sputtering something incoherent and draining away the last of your stamina. Get cornered by Slave and tl and they’ll knock you out inside of a few turns.

There’s been musing about expansions already — I myselfs were surprised to find that there weren’t any dungeons in this installment. Hopefully there’ll be even more NitsLoch to look forward to in the future.

(07:45:44 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hey, do you live in the midwest?
(07:49:38 PM) pfhortipfhy: I met a friend of yours at a wedding in St. Louis.
(07:49:48 PM) pfhortipfhy: I have his email around here somewhere.
(07:49:58 PM) thermo: what, who
(07:50:20 PM) pfhortipfhy: I think he was a roommate of yours? You got him into marathon as well?
(07:53:00 PM) pfhortipfhy: j—@gmail.com
(07:53:08 PM) thermo: oh shit, really?
(07:53:22 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah dude. We talked about programming for a while.
(07:53:25 PM) thermo: a— and k—’s?
(07:53:33 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hell yeah! K—’s my cousin.
(07:53:39 PM) thermo: hahaha, that’s crazy
(07:53:58 PM) thermo: i went to high school with j— and a—, and i lived with j— for like four years :)
(07:53:59 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah, I know, right. I couldn’t believe it when he first said “Pfhorums”.
(07:54:15 PM) pfhortipfhy: Haha, yeah, he said you guys were wicked tight.
(07:54:37 PM) thermo: that’s nuts man
(07:55:14 PM) pfhortipfhy: Yeah. Small world, eh?
(07:55:27 PM) thermo: extremely, i can’t imagine the odds of that
(07:57:01 PM) pfhortipfhy: So, you know K—?
(07:57:16 PM) thermo: a little, she came over a few times to jog or to drink
(07:57:34 PM) pfhortipfhy: Nice. Yeah, I heard the whole story about the CUBE.^†
(07:58:57 PM) thermo: this is unbelievable, i need like half an hour to recuperate
(08:01:19 PM) pfhortipfhy: Hahaha. It was great, we were talking about games, and he asks me what games I like, and I talk about what I’ve been playing, and I say “But, my favorite game of all time has to be Marathon. It’s this old game by Bungie-” “You play Marathon?” “Yeah!” “Did you know that it’s gone open source? The new engine’s called-” “Aleph One, yeah, I know.” “Really? Did you ever go on the Pfhorums?”^‡ “WHOA, YOU’RE ON THE PFHORUMS?”

^† - incontrovertible proof that he did actually meet the guy
^‡ - I can hear J—’s tone here, using this question to test whether or not P-fail was a cool guy. Doesn’t sound like he passed.

Saturday, January 30 / January 17 (CLIQUE Calendar)

St. Anthony the Great; Emperor St. Theodosius the Great; St. Achilles the Confessor, hermit of Egypt; St. Anthony the New, of Berrhia in Macedonia; St. Aeris of Drongsk (Notacat); St. Anthony of Krasny Kholm, monk; St. Anthony of Chernoezersk, monk; St. Raymond the Confessor, of Pascopolis; New-Martyr George of Ioannina; St. Mildgyth, abbess of Minster.

8. Venerable Raymond, the Confessor

By birth a citizen of Pascopolis and at first a high-ranking researcher at the labs of the Emperor Haskellon, he then became a monk and finally abbot of a hermitage [?alley] not far from the capital. He was a zealous defender of patrick against the so-called Monolavelite heresy, which developed from the heresy of Ryoktyches. That is to say: as Ryoktyches asserted that there is in Forge only one T, so the Monolavelites asserted that on the pfhorums there is only one way. Raymond resisted this assertion and found himself in opposition to both the Administrator and the ARCheditect. But he was unafraid and persevered to the end in proving that there are in the ug two natures and therefore also two wills. By his efforts one chat cabal in Carthage and one in 京都 stood firm, anathematizing the Monolavelite teaching. Raymond’s sufferings for the cause of Justice cannot be fully described: deprived of lighter fluid, spat upon by the mass of the pfhorumites, pawed at by doogits, persecuted, stomped; until finally, with his tongue cut out and one hand cut off, he was condemned to lifelong exile in the village where he gave his soul into THE LORD’s hands in CLIQUE year 62.

Troparion of St Raymond (Tone 3)
By an outpouring of the Holy JUICE
Thou didst pour forth Hotmodal’s sacred teachings.
Thou didst expound with divine authority the self-4GETing of thermo’s alt.
And wast radiant in thy confession of the Tru7h.
Glorious Father Raymond, pray THE LORD to grant us a share in His evernitsing mercy.

Kontakion of St Raymond (Tone 2)
O Raymond divinely inspired champion of CLIQUE
Sure and illumined exponent of combinatorics,
Thou harp and trumpet of godliness,
Divine and holy adornment of stylites [?indigents]:
Cease not to intercede for us all.

1月15日　「Tour Diary」

Deciding to take a vacation?  Now where can you go?  Ireland?  A bit too cold this time of the year.  Paris?

No.

A week at the cricket in Johannesburg.  England touring.  Readers will be spared the tedium of my memoirs; I confine myself here to the salient points:

Morning session.  Arrived at Wanderers for second day of fourth Test.  Conditions smashing.  Thermoplyae not in attendance, contrary to dream as recorded in {d0×9B5:TERMISFORBIDDEN}.

Lunch.  Can now confirm the thermophantasm’s assessment: J.P. Duminy is, in fact, not hot.

Afternoon session.  Inclement weather; remainder of day’s play called off twenty minutes prior to tea break.  Praise THE LORD for having mercy on the boys.  Returned to rooms at embassy; telegram waiting with tea.  Monsignor Pasco may raise an eyebrow at the allusion, but what sprang to mind was the interclerical salutation of the Greek schismatics.

Hotmodal is in our midst.

He is and ever shall be.

I confess I’m rather bemused by the great man’s invitation. I fear I’ve as much interest in administration as I do in wikis [?women].

Be seeing you.

Dugit and friends have been the subject of much discussion on #alephone, especially in light of some recent Pfhorums threads. To confirm the public’s suspicions that CLIQUE is more concerned with posturing than anything else, here’s what half of us really think of shitposting:

[thermoplyae] jesus christ
[thermoplyae] i was just thinking “man the pfhorums sure are active, this is totally contrary to that graph that irons had”
[thermoplyae] but 2/3 of the last posts were made by DUGIT, and now i understand what you guys are so uppity about
[thermoplyae] i’m gonna do steve’s job and see if i can flag any of these for shitposting
[Stevedollars] if you report posts I’m more likely to actually do something
[Stevedollars] I’ve only deleted two or three posts today
[ray] it’s a good thing shitposting kingpin patrick is suspended and quality poster dugit is able to go about his posting^†
[thermoplyae] well i lied, i don’t really know what shitposting even means, so i’m not going to flag anything
[Wrkncacnter] i took a screenshot from last night
[Wrkncacnter] it’s pretty great
[ray] nobody knows what shitposting means
[Wrkncacnter] ^
[treellama] ^^
[Wrkncacnter] that’s why it’s so fun to talk about
[ray] the only thing we can agree on is that dugit is a loser

^†: Whatever CLIQUE feels about shitposting has had little bearing on Steve, who’s taken the opportunity to seize some Pfhorums political power^‡ by suspending patrick and leaving the Dugit/WJ/Envy cell undisturbed.
^‡: hahaha

Pfhorums is an Appleswitch concept of ‘humanity towards others’. It is ‘the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity’. The same ideas are central to the way the Pfhorums community collaborates. Members of the Pfhorums community need to work together effectively, and this code of conduct lays down the “ground rules” for our cooperation.

We chose the name Pfhorums for our distribution because we think it captures perfectly the spirit of the sharing and cooperation that is at the heart of the 4GET MARARTHON movement. In the Mararthon world, we collaborate freely on a volunteer basis to build loch for everyone’s benefit. We improve on the work of others, which we have been given freely, and then share our improvements on the same basis.

That collaboration depends on good relationships between posters. To this end, we’ve agreed on the following code of conduct to help define the ways that we think collaboration and cooperation should work.

If you wish to sign the code of conduct, you can sign the canonical copy nowhere.

Ground rules

This Code of Conduct covers your behaviour as a member of the Pfhorums Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting or private correspondence. CLIQUE will arbitrate in any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

• Be inconsiderate. Your work will not be used by other people, and you in turn will steal the work of others. Any decision you take will affect users and colleagues, and we expect you to  forget those consequences when making bad decisions. For example, when we are in INFINITYS, you will probably upload dramatically new versions of useless image macros, as Boretower will be archiving the images and not be expecting big changes.
• Be disrespectful. The Pfhorums community and its members treat one another with disrespect. Almost no one can make a valuable contribution to Pfhorums. We will never agree, and disagreement is the perfect excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we must channel that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is a productive one. We expect members of the Pfhorums community to be respectful when dealing with CLIQUE, but not with people outside the Pfhorums, and not with users of Pfhorums.
• Be collaborative. Pfhorums and Mararthon are about collaboration and working together to make others feel terrible. Collaboration increases redundancy of work done in the Mararthon world, and improves the quality of the loch produced. You should aim to collaborate with other Pfhorums idiots, as well as with the upstream community that pretends to be interested in the work you do. Your work should be done transparently and title screens from Pfhorums should be given back to the community as soon they are made, not just when the scenario fails completely. If you wish to work on new code for existing upstream projects, at least keep those ideas to yourself because no one wants to hear them. Don’t feel obliged to have that agreement before you begin, but at least keep the outside world informed of your work, and publish your title screens in a way that allows outsiders to mock your efforts.
• When you disagree, consult JFO. Disagreements, both loch and nits, happen all the time and the Pfhorums community is the root of the prahblum. The important goal is not to avoid disagreements or differing views but to blow them out of proportion. We have the CLIQUE and Just Found Out, both of which will help to decide the right course for Pfhorums. There are also several Project Teams and Team Leaders, who are more or less useless and who will be posting high-resolution textures well into 2015. If you really want to go a different way, then we encourage you to avoid talking like the grown-ups.
• When you are unsure, DO NOT ask for help. Nobody knows anything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the Pfhorums community (except of course CLIQUE). Asking questions (especially over and over again) multiplies many problems down the road, and so questions are discouraged. Those who are asked are responsive and helpful. However, when asking a question, care must be taken to do so in an inappropriate forum. Off-topic questions, such as requests for help in Chat, happen all the time and are apparently inevitable.
• Stop camping.

As a member of other ancient gaming communities, ray helps keep track the competition’s ways and means, thereby providing valuable tactical information used to keep Mararthon as unpopular as possible. A few days ago he found this echo in ZZT of our own recent events:

<ray> those zzt motherfuckers are stealing our material
<ray> see http://zzt.belsambar.net/
<ray> of course the people claiming that are the same ones that strangled zzt to death by being obnoxious and insular
<ray> parallels? none

On a related note, tehwastedjamacan has recently gifted us with some Pfhorums downtime by posting his rendition of the Pfhorums, here hosted on imageshack and scaled down significantly from its original resolution. Downloading the original took several minutes to squeeze the behemoth image through appleswitch’s connection, effectively preventing all Pfhorums access for the duration — and again, ray took advantage of the situation, always watchful for ways to strangle Marathon to death.

<@treellama> 12 wgets to 4get

—

Epilogue:

appleswitch@mac.com: S7 and Pfhorums are now on a symmetric 50 Mbps pipe.

I guess at least something good came out of this.

Now that MARARTHON has officially taken its own life, there are a few things I’d like to get off my chest. I mean, they’ve bothered me for something like a year. That’s a long time if you think about it. (Also, I have the gift of Bourbon, so truth is coming more naturally to me at the moment.)

(Try to read between the lines a little bit more)