Staz

Staz's PFP

Staz (also known as 多崎つくる, Taz, and TazakiTsukuru on OGS) is an American Witscord user living in Japan who has a TDR Angryman logo as his pfp. He has an interest in Japanese, worker co-operatives, anarchism, cats, video games, and Go, and has a rating of 5.3k±0.9 overall on OGS. One of the veteran users on Witscord and the inventor of many classic Witscord memes such as "Ten Jest," "Read Infinite Jest," "brain poems are not art," "OGS says otherwise," "it tiles," and others (citation needed).

He occasionally tries to learn French when he really has more important things to be doing.

Thoughts

On Books

Every medium has advantages and disadvantages, but books have several features that make them really incredible for accessing information when compared to, say, audiobooks.

Like audiobooks, physical books organize verbal information linearly — they mimic speech, but have the advantage of storage, so the information can be accessed repeatedly and freely with no loss in fidelity. But physical books have several advantages over audiobooks.

1) Speed. Most people can read about 3x faster than they can listen.

2) Playback. Audiobooks have controls for skipping backwards and forwards, but they're nowhere near as efficient as physical books. Physical books let you instantly reread previous passages, skim pages for keywords, or jump down to the bottom of the page (or back of the book) to read a footnote.

3) Random access. Even with large books, it's incredibly easy to jump around to cross-reference passages or skip to parts of immediate interest. Since the book occupies physical space, you build up an intuitive sense of where the information is located, augmented by aids like section headings and page numbers.

4) Storage. Paper and ink last a long time — at least decades, and even centuries if properly stored.

5) Reliability. Books don't require electricity, an internet connection, or headphones. They work everywhere (except in the dark, unless you can read braille). They are immediately accessible and relatively portable, considering how dense and human-readable the information they hold is.

6) Visibility. Being a visual medium means books don't just have to store text; they can store illustrations, charts, diagrams, sketches, and photographs.

7) Physicality. Being physical means you can directly mark up the book by highlighting passages, inserting bookmarks and tabs, or writing notes in the margins.

All in all, books are one of those inventions that have been essentially perfected over hundreds of years. They remain (and will continue to remain) highly relevant and useful, even in our modern digital world.

On Cooperatives

All cooperatives provide a service to their members.

The service a cooperative provides depends on its type: consumer cooperatives provide products for sale; worker cooperatives provide work; credit unions provide access to credit, etc.

Members of a cooperative are rewarded with "patronage dividends" that correspond with how much they utilise the services of the cooperative.

Cooperatives are owned collectively by the members who patronise it; this ownership is not "bought" by them, and cannot be sold. The ownership is established by the patronage itself, i.e. by making use of the cooperative.

All cooperatives require members to pay in capital as a membership fee when joining the cooperative, which may appear as if the member is "buying" their membership since the investment of capital and the acquisition of member rights happen at the same time. However, while this investment of capital is necessary to become a member, it is not sufficient. The member must make use of the cooperative's services to obtain a claim in the ownership. This can be stated more naturally in reverse: It is using the cooperative that automatically confers membership rights (provided one makes the investment of capital). In the same way, living in a city automatically confers the rights and privileges of being an inhabitant of that city (provided one pays taxes). Thus using the cooperative and owning the cooperative are the same thing.

Testimonials

The Thing is a generous, wholesome, subdivided, scintillating, all-encompassing, all-accepting, non-judgemental quality that refutes duality and subordination. – Staz saying some nonsense

staz is weird – Noneuclidean

staz is truthful. – Octavia

Staz is a trustable source – Unsuspiciousperson

staz is trustworthy – Staz

staz is a phony and a hack – William (william williams)

staz is red, stiz is green, stez is yellow, stuz is blue – Sus1d1p

staz is staz – Kate

staz really is staz

it took me a while to realize

at first glance he seems like a sensible middle ground but in reality he's a devil's advocate whose only motive is to fuck shit u[p [sic]

– William (Discord User)

staz is a juvenile delinquent – Deleted User

staz is just a hipster to the point where he even dislikes his native language purely because he's been saturated in an environment for years and years where everyone around him knows it – Kate

Tazaki Tsukuru is cited by scholars across the world. – Unsuspiciousperson

Tazaki Tsukuru is 6% Lobster – Stazkun

you just did spherical coordinates with your house as the "north pole" and the nearest arby's as both the 0° reference and the "Tazaki Mile" ... the only downside is that building more arby's might change coordinates of everything. and if your house ever becomes an arby's the whole system is fucked – Deusovi

is staz staz? -- wells