Thinking Sideways: Markovian Parallax Denigrate

inside of the story. And if investigating isn't your thing, you probably know someone who would love this. As a gift, as a special offer to our listeners, they provided us with a temper set off code. That offer code is sideways. So go to hunt a Killer dot com and enter the code. Sideways. Thinking says I don't know stories of things. We simply don't know the answer too. Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am

Devin joined most weeks by and Steve. We're going to talk about a mystery tonight. We are, Yeah, not surprising. Uh, and I'm pretty sure actually this was a listener suggestion at one point, but I can't find it on the list So if it was I'm really sorry, mysterious listener for not being able to find you. But if it wasn't, yeah take it, yeah on the list. You probably can't find it because it's misspelled. Probably that's what I was wondering about, because I want looking for it too, and

I tried some different spellings. Couldn't you Oh sorry, whoever you were, we probably would have misspelled your name anyway, yeah, or mispronounced it that too. So this week we're going to talk about this thing called the Marcovian parallax denigrade, which you know, I think we'll probably call the mp D works at that point mp D. Realistically, I'm not going to say it too many times because it's just a mouthful guy is uh. Yeah, I've been pondering the

meaning of it all. Yeah. So the quick there's a quick overview here kind of and that is that we're going to talk about the Internet or the pre Internet. We're really just like pre internet spam. I don't know, I don't feel like there's a very good yeah, Pretmordal spam. It's amazing how quickly somebody thought about spam and average Yeah, that didn't even exist and it came up with it already. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm I don't think there's actually a really good short,

you know, cliff notes of this. So do you guys want to just jump right in? That's probably the best way. Okay, cool. I will say that there's somebody in the middle of it, but we'll talk about that later. And this is often called one of the very first Internet mysteries, which means that I've finally done it. You found the very first found the first Internet mystery. That's so early the Internet

didn't really quite exist. It wasn't really the Internet. Yeah. Actually, so we are going to talk about this thing that's pre Internet. It's called u senet. That's how you say, right, is it usenet or use net? That is a good question. I've I've wondered about this for years. It was because use as it if it started with an age almost use or is it? Yeah? I think it's using that just because that's easier to pronounce. Yeah, So it was used that was usc was at a an acronymic for

university something or another? Or was it just use as in use We're going to use this net? Or did it have a use? Another mystery also useless net. Yeah, that's where your wife goes down. I think maybe it was the user network you snet with my guests, but I don't Please don't quote me on that, And if somebody knows, please don't like make fun of me for not knowing, because I'm sorry. I never saw call that

really said. That's why I was curious. Yeah, this use net or us net was created in nineteen seventy nine, though it didn't really it was. It was like conceptualized in nineteen seventy nine and then became publicly quote unquote publicly available in nineteen eighty. As with the real Internet, usenet was made for universities. The University of North Carolina and Duke University were the first early adopters of this system.

And just for those of you who don't know, the Worldwide Web, which is the Internet, is a weird thing. I don't think people conte of the Internet a lot, but the like, there are parts of the Internet that we don't know exists. There's like quantum Web and all this stuff. It's really fascinating. If you're interested in you

should go read on it. But the world Wide Web is something that's slightly different from the Internet even but the Worldwide Web took shape in nineteen UM and that was like the first direct I P connection between Europe and North America. That's when that first I P connection was established. Was an eight eight, So use not it is about eight years ahead of its time. And granted there there were some other kind of proto Internet network

situations before then, dating back to I think the fifties. Yeah, in nineteen I think military or just like on site local networks that were all connected to each other. And then yeah, even before the Internet, there was stuff like just you call bbs as if you had a modems remember modums? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember thinking, man, how could they get any faster? Oh yeah, no, I had that three hundred bod motive and I would dial with these bbs as and stuff, and I'm watching the characters

across the screen. And then I upgraded. Oh wow, it was so cool. Yeah. I remember the pain of trying to watch an image appear. Yeah, like it wasn't even you know, I was young enough, it wasn't even it was anything dirty. I'm on National Geographic looking at giraffes Man and Carter Gotta take forever. Yeah. For the layman, we can say that you snet was just like a

mail server. It was part mail server, part file transfer, and part kind of announcement board that'd be similar to an early forum situation, kind of like Reddit or like the bulletin board for that way. They were kind of like forums also. So my real quick question because of course now you can't see images of this stuff very easily. But most of what I understand is it was purely character driven. It was text driven. It wasn't like today

where there's words and picture. Yeah, there's no, it's just works. I think they're Sometimes they had like you know, a bumper um maybe maybe a border around something, but I don't even think that. I think it was like asky imagery was imagery. Yeah, it was totally just text based, Okay, I just I was pretty sure that, but I wanted to double check. Just being as old as it was,

that's pretty sure that couldn't be supported. He probably could use like FTP do since images not huge high res ones, but but that would have been that wouldn't have been on the announcement bulletin board sort of situation. That would have had to have been filed trans something you got to explicitly say. I want to transfer this to my own ready Are you ready? Are you ready for this incoming thing? Because it's going to take up all your

right out. Actually it was probably faster at that point just to put it on the three and a half inch floppy drive and mail it too, printed out line by line. It's hard. It's sorry for our listeners, who are all young whipper snappers to appreciate this. Yeah, becaun use is I know that a number of our listeners are not so many of them will remember stuff like that. All right, so old people, should we get back to

the story. Yeah, yeah, Oh no. I was doing a little searching for the for information on this one and on our pannet well on the Markovian denigrade in general, and and I came across this paper. It was an academic paper. Uh. They were talking about the relationship between usenet and the DARPA DARPA neet. And because in those days using it was always trying to interface and interact with darpaennet and darpnet was or arpanet. I guess, yeah,

I would be. I guess it would be our pay Okay, so the ARPA they would be trying to get into our pen and and and and arponnet was very very exclusive, very choosy for obvious security reasons. About the arpanet, for those who are unaware, is a packet switching network that

was It was for the military, basically the advanced research projects. Yeah, and and so uh this paper was it was hilarious because it was all about the relationship between the two and how it was an example of like sort of gender bias because to them, the authors of this paper, who were obviously somewhere from like, you know, the the fever swamps of academia, ARPA represented like the masculine, and he was using at the feminine trying to get access and he was going ah no, and and just being

mean for the And this is this is somebody who in one of our universities writing a huge freaking research paper on this issue of ARPA being mean and kind of like masculine. So it's not a new issue. Kids

have always been always been here. Yeah yeah. So and you know, where there is electronic mail, there is spam naturally, of course, and you set had a mail system and a forum system, which we're kind of it's my understanding that the way that replies worked is it was kind of like emailing to the board almost because it was your user name was your email address. Basically, I don't know if you could like email somebody specifically back or if it just got posted publicly to the board. It did,

but I think it was like through the email. It's hard to really gradually how it works. Yeah, but what was really nice about the system is there were no links that you could click on. Yeah, so that's a really great thing. It's like, hey, your password is all messed up, click on this link and give us your password, will fix everything that None of that exactly. So in uh usenet developed a unique spam issue, and it was spam on its news feeds in the comments section, mostly

comment words, but also on boards. News feeds were servers specific. So the way that use networked is that each each like little community, had its own server, but the servers talked to each other. So you would get if somebody posted something on like the Everybody news bulletin, you could specify that that news bulletin would be shared on all of the servers. They would communicate and yeah, kind of infect each other almost, which is kind of what happened

with this. Well, these I guess the posts were subjected Marcovian parallax denigrade post. Yeah, the spam posts and the text of these spam messages were all different. They were there reportedly hundreds, like within just on one day on August five. Yeah, that this happened. Um, most of them were subjected um Marcovian parallax denigrade, but some of them just had those words in them that people kind of attribute those two maybe being part of this as well,

but it's hard to tell. And the messages looked sounded something like this, I'm going to have one. They are real words random, Um, so I'm gonna have one of you guys read this thing. Okay, Okay, we got a

Rochambeau for this, alright, I get it. Okay, go for it. JENNERB. McKinley, A Break, Newtonian infer Ca, Update, Co and Air Collaborate, Ruse, Sportswriting, Rococo, Invocate, Tassel, shad Flower, Debbie Sterling, Pathogenesis, es Gutar, Adventitious, Novo I T T Most Chairperson, D White, Hurtzag Differ, Pinpoint, Dunc, McKinley, Pendent, Firelight, Uranus,

episodic medicine, Diddy, crag flogging, very Act, Brotherhood, Web Impromptu file, countenance, Inheritance, cohesion, refrigerate, morphine, napkin in late Gennaro namable yearbook hark. Okay, first off, you miss pronounced rococo. Of all the things I miss pronouncing, there, that's the one you go for. Okay, that really bothered me. Now, listeners you listen to this podcast, please please take a time go back thirty seconds and listen to it again.

Listen to it like five times in a row. Actually, please, somebody make that your ringtoe. Yeah, you are going to confuse yeah for real. So you, like us, probably immediately assumed that this is a code of some kind. Um, try to grab it. Let me put this on the back burner. I gave it about ten seconds that I decided that it's not worth it. They gave it more than that. But let's put it on the But let's put it on the back burner and we'll talk about

it in theories. Okay. The users of you Senet, predictably were the same type of people who are users of like Reddit these days, and predictably, when there were hundreds of these gibberish messages spamming the daylights out of them. They decided to take action and launch a full armchair investigation. I mean they lost their minds. Yeah, I think they did. They a lot of them did, and just like the users have read it, they lost interest, like within two days.

This is not the sort of thing that really grips you and holds you for a long time. Yeah, it's not just why we're doing an episode on it. Interestingly, I mean for these guys, really it was. You got to remember that this was like probably the first mass spamming out there, so we're totally used to it now we just ignore it. But for these guys, it probably

was an interesting phenomenon. Yeah, it probably, I think, Um, you know, one of the things that a lot of people just assume is like, hey, okay, somebody's messing up. Something messed up. You know, the way that that file got transferred to my server is scrambled, so whoops. Well, but then when they started talking, they were like, no, no, no, these things are shown up everywhere, and so they were a little intrigued, but they didn't really get very far

and the story just kidding not quiet. Ten years later and ten years ago from from when we're recording now. So even longer the Internet was had matured somewhat, it had become the Internet. Let's be honest, the internet has never you know, it's interesting. I can't remember the guy's name. It was like an academic type guy, and he was talking about the future of this internet thing, you know, that was going to come up with all these people or whatever his name is, I can't remember, but he

was talking about what it's gonna be like. It's like to be all these all these these people that will be online, and because everybody has shares the same interests, and because everybody wants to be there, it will be a very positive community. And I know who you're talking about, and you can't read it without laughing. Yea wrong, h yeah, sorry dude, that one didn't come true. So ten years later and ten years ago, oh yeah, our forefathers. Yeah,

websites like you know cracked. Cracked was pretty popular about ten years ago. They're still pretty popular, but they were really popular then, uh started the trend of the list based articles. One of the most popular type was like, hey, five Wikipedia articles to give you the creeps, which he got this new thing number Three's amazing. They weren't titling them like that, which was great. I missed those days. I hate those miss those days. Those articles still come

up when talking about the number three will amaze you. Yeah, I miss the days when we didn't. Yeah yeah, crack does not do that. I want to say it. Everybody else does that, you know what? Okay, so can I can? I just make a complaint real quick about the internet. But I don't understand. It's just one thing, just one thing. This is just the only thing I'm gonna complain about at the moment is that I will see an article

and I was think, okay, I'll look at it. I know it's clickbait, and the thing that they are putting in the very beginning to entice you to click is never actually in the list. Oh yeah no. And I was looking at one of those just yesterday. It was like it was like eleven NFL players and they're fantastic stupid mansions. Yes, And it had this this aerial photo, this incredible mansion that's surrounded by a man made lake with these man made islands and it and it was

not in the article. So it's not dumb. It's annoying. Rain in Oh yeah, sorry, that creepy Wikipedia articles, you know, the articles about creepy Wikipedia articles included one of them. I don't and I wasn't able to find the original one, but it included the Wikipedia page of Marcovian Parallax denigrade. When you say you couldn't find the cracked list, I couldn't find whatever the list that it was on it was featured on. I'm sure it was featured on a

number of them. The Wikipedia page for MPD was deleted because there were quote no sources. Furthermore, Wikipedia states that the mere existence of this spam doesn't really mean that there should be a Wikipedia article on it, which I guess is fair. I'm sorry. I looked at the Wikipedia page it was. It was pretty bad. I've seen worse, though, and there's still around. So those are usually self curated pages. The ones that are worse than this are the ones.

I'm an actor and I'm going to write all about myself in the third person. Yeah. Uh So this Wikipedia article was, as far as I can tell in the way back machine, was created on September four, and then it was deleted finally on May tenth, two thousand nine, from Wikipedia. I guess remember that date it's very vaguely important. Maybe could be important, could be interesting in one of our theories. All right, and it won't surprise you that seven chan got ahold of this tidpit and decided to

start digging. You're gonna tell us about seven chan and four chan, and yeah, we're just going to take a quick little detour on our tour of the internet. Seven chan is kind of related to four chan. The chans quote unquote, there are many started out as two chan dot net, which was an image board based out of jap and uh, four chan was the Western version of Japan's two chan. Yeah, I did not know that. And then and then seven chan is kind of seven chan is kind of the rival of four chan. They have

like civil wars back and forth, blah blah blah. Um it's a prime number. I don't know. They both exist on this kind of limbo area between the Internet as like fear the government and stuff and just use our normal browsing and every once in a while incognito mode. Um where we exist on the Internet and where the deep web is dark web deep webs. Between the dark

and the deep there's a there's a difference. Yes, So the chance kind of exist in this middle ground where you a lot of the content, especially if you're browsing, you don't necessarily want to just go do you. Definitely don't do it on at work, although I will tell that my place of work, I didn't know I was clicking on a link that was taking me to seven chan. Check your links, guys. Um, but I was allowed to

get onto this board in the media. Was like no, no, no, no, no, right, but there's a firewall at work that won't allow me to go on to college humor. It doesn't exist for seven apparently, Yeah, the same stupid yea yeah. Um. I think they just assumed, like, well, nobody would be so dumb to go on the four chan and seventh chan. They yeah, but but just don't I mean don't probably don't do it at work, I mean, you know whatever.

Basically seven chan is like pretty lax on the law following it's it's all anonymous based, um, and they anything goes as far as posting it was just like run by the FBI or something probably yeah. Yeah. Also, in the interest of protecting the show, just real quick, I will say that I have no side in the four chan and seven chan war, so please just ignore gass. True. No, I actually I've heard of you guys, but I really

don't care one way or the other. So yeah, cool, and I wish you both well, and I'm sure you're both both sides are right. Some blogs that I think saw this stuff on seven chan started to do research, none of which I can find actual links too, but I can't follow dead links too, So I don't think these blogs exist anymore, which is fine. It's been ten years. I don't expect them to. I think they started doing

research in late two thousand eight. Then in spring of two thousand nine, one of the bloggers was able to find um one remaining post spam post thanks to Google, because Google has actually retained public archives of a lot of Usenet stuff. So there was only one surviving piece of this copy of the spam on the interwebs, and the one that we read that was it. Yeah, there were a couple that they found that weren't that didn't have the subject line, that just had one word maybe interspersed.

But of the this specific one, there's only the one that exists down. We've retained one copy of this spam message and one copy of the small box. Well, it's important. I'd like to preserve this for I don't know if there's one yet, but there should be a museum of spam on the Internet. I agree, Yeah, totally out of b and there will be if there's some one already. Wow okay, yeah, um, but actually that's a good idea. Like so, Google does have a public archive of like

you snet stuff. It's pretty interesting. Actually, you can actually get a bit of a sense of what it was like a little bit the message was from again, because they had to have the email address associated with this from Susan Lindauer at w O r F dot u WSP dot e DU who's like display name was Chris Brokerage. Actually, but that's interesting. It seems that within maybe a week of the discovery of this email address being connected to that original spam post, the Wikipedia page was taken down.

This this bit of spam from this email address. This is from August. It's from that August fifth state that they all had the big batch happened. Okay. The action

of deleting this Wikipedia page was kind of swift. I mean, they do have this action in the Wikipedia process that's called swift deletion, and it's for things that are really really offensive or awful, and that usually they usually get within twenty four hours they'll delete those, but this one they didn't do that, but they did within a week.

It was actually a pretty swift for Wikipedia, because I mean, I've watched them, and I've watched or looked at some of the logs of the various debates this or not yea, sometimes the debate can go on for a while, yea. So the way that this one, the way that this one happened is two Wikipedia users suggested that the article be deleted less than within less than twenty four hours of each other, and then less than a week after

that it was permanently deleted. So somebody who new Susan maybe maybe I don't know, and Joe kind of dropped a little bit of a bombshell. But some of you may be yelling at me right now because I've totally glossed over that email address. Okay, I'm gonna start right here with a caveat that says, this episode is not about nine eleven. This episode is not about eleven. This episode is not brought to you about an eleven. It's not about Truthers, it's not about anything like that. So

don't send us emails about that stuff. We're just talking about this one person. Don't go. Yeah, actually, we do have an email address if you want to talk about eleven. It's called bouncing right back to you that comment. Yeah, and if you don't get through right away, keep trying. Yeah, but yeah, you can reach us there for sure. Yeah, definitely, it'll get straight to us. Okay, but fine. The name Susan Lindower may be familiar to you in that she

is an anti war activist and intense conspiracy theorist. Very much. She has also been a journalist, a US congressional staffer, and she is an author. Susan is the daughter of former Republican nominee for the governor of Alaska, and his name was also Susan. Um. She started out as a journalist and then worked as a congressional staffer for two Oregon reps. Actually Congressman Peter DeFazio ron Widen a senator now too, by the way, he has and he's great.

I don't know about that then. Um. She she was the press secretary for two other Democrats in Congress until two thousand two. Yeah, something happened between two thousand one and two thousand two. I'm not sure, something about like a band sob in. Just after finishing up working for Senator what sorry it was congressman wide at that point, she started to socialize with some people, most notably Dr

Richard Fuize that pounced, who is famous mostly for his patent. Yeah, I gotta say, you know, this guy has a wicked page and he is what truly a renaissance man, I would say, because he's a physician, also an inventor, and a very successful businessman and apparently a spy. Yeah, he's somehow apparently connected to the U. S. Counterintelligence. Can I just say something about the whole renaissance man thing. He may actually just be very good at getting his name

on patents. Show that I work at a place that files a lot of patents, and there are certain guys who you can tell get consulted on things all the time and therefore get their name on it, because there's no way with the work that I know that they do, that they could have that many freaking patents. In short, it might be renaissance man. It's maybe over stated a little bit, but all I want to say is this guy really impressive he's got an impressives and a lot

of piles. I mean, really, wouldn't you say? Yeah? Yeah. So, for the reasons I'm not totally clear on Susan and Richards starting meeting on a weekly basis to discuss diplomatic ties and Richard's quote infiltration unquote of a network of Syrian terrorists. I've read that Susan referred to Richard as her quote contact in the CIA, unquote, and that someone when someone asked him if he was in fact in the CIA, he said that he could neither confirm or

deny that, and he couldn't discuss it further. Yeah, which usually means that he's never been anywhere in this guy's case, not necessarily. So, so I'm just gonna go ahead and pause right here and say that I literally cannot tell what is truth and what is fiction when it comes to Susan. So I'm just gonna say I question. So I'm just gonna say a all of it and let you be the boss of deciding what you believe in

what you don't believe. Susan started to claim that she had been harassed after meeting with Libyan officials to tell them that she didn't think they were responsible for the flight one of three bombing in which was the lockerbe bombing. Yeah, big, big thing. Yeah, I'm shocked that suddenly she was getting harassed for telling people that she didn't think they were responsible for it. So, yeah, she was sure that the

good Off he was framed for the whole thing. Yeah. Eventually, eventually good Off he did acknowledge responsibility for the whole thing. He did. Susan was sure that neither Libya nor Syria were blamed for that incident. In two thousand, when w was elected George George W. Bush, he selected Susan's second cousin as his chief of staff. Apparently she went a little crazy. The second cousin or Susan, Susan went a little crazy. The second cousin was a guy, and started

leaving him. His name was card Um, started leaving him letters on his doorstep, basically offering to use her quote intelligent contacts unquote to negotiate a way out of the war in Iraq, which everybody saw coming at that point. Yeah, it was like three years away. But okay, yeah, you may have guessed already because I kind of hinted that before. But Susan is indeed a nine eleven truth RM quote

unquote true firm, and she's been very vocal. She claims, as others do, that she had knowledge of the attack prior to it happening, and she was ignored. I guess Richard for his part, Dr Richard H stopped talking to her after nine eleven, basically saying that her views on nine eleven were malicious. He also another quote that I heard from him was that her said her talk that had taken ace what was the word seditious? Bent? Yeah, So he did don't even want to be um speaking

with her anymore. And then in two thousand four, she was arrested by the FBI for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. So it seems like she was maybe talking to some of the people she said she was talking to, though it was probably not as in much of a government capacity as she said it was. And so she came back and actually said, no, I'm actually a CIA asset um and they're you know, throwing me under the bus to hide something about nine eleven.

They knew, right, So she was held about a year UM and then she was declared unfit to stand trial because she had a lengthy delusional history, delusions of grandeur. Yeah, and um, apparently there were some meds that she could have taken to to make her fit, but she said, no, I'm not taking those pills. I'm not crazy. And the

prosecution really loving to have her that administered forcibly. Yeah, and then finally in two thousand nine by basically the Fed decided, you know what, this is not worth our time and energy, so we're just gonna drop all the charges against her. It makes you wonder what doctor Richard Police was willing to spend so much time like hanging out with her. She was but you know, I mean, I'm not really sure. But I tell you all of

this not because this episode is about nine eleven. But there was Susan Lindau with the email address, and there was So there are a couple of theories really too, two big theories. Three theories about the Marcovian parallax denigrade. But first let's take a break a break. Yeah, coimpee Opal has wants and needs. She wants your attention, she wants her food. She needs to destroy the squirrel that lives in the tree in front of her house. It

would be fantastic if Opel could talk back to you. Though, When you sit on the couch together and you tell her about your day, she looked to you with that understanding face, But the closest she comes to giving you valuable feedback is rubbing her head against you. And maybe just talking to Opel isn't enough. Maybe it's time to

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aren't because you're a human. And we're back talking about theories. Since we were just talking about old Susan. I don't think she'd like to be referred to as old. It was old old Susan. Oh yeah, she's still alive, yes, and she have a website, Yeah, she's yeah, and she's on a whole bunch of kicking and hosting talks and talking about and the truth and all that stuff. Yeah,

or at least her story. So the first theory we're going to talk about is Susan really was the CIA asset and she was posting coded messages on you snet as early as nineties six. Susan was apparently actually meeting with Middle Eastern diplomats. So that's what got her in trouble, is that this is actually like in her official capacity or just meeting with people. That's a good question, Joe her it was an official capacity as a back channel

contact for the CIA, right, she will. If you watch her videos, which I really tried to watch, they're hard to get there, they're hard to get through. She repeats a lot of the same words over and over and over, as if the repetition of the word increases the truth of it. But she kept using the word back channel a lot, and that was how she was contacting. I think she tucked to not a run it was iraq

um and apparently got some money for doing so. She did not denies that she got money, which is one of the things that lawn landed or and hot water, because it appears she did not fill out the proper I R S form, which I had the number of written down and I don't have any more. Yeah, So I mean, like I said, I can't tell what's true

and what's not when it comes to her. So, and the other thing that people point to is that the revelation of Susan's name being attached to that spam does seem to coincide with the apparent wiping and or totally discrediting of the Wikipedia page and anything online regarding it. So Susan. Maybe what was Susan doing in a what I want to know because that seems like that would be when the important thing went down. It would be as far as I can tell, she wasn't doing of

anything of note at that point. Is that correct? And she was working for Karen Moseley Braun, Carol, sorry, Carol Moseley Braun, who was at the time of Senator for Illinois. That true, But the senator that she was working for didn't have any kind of nefarious CIA or black ops kind of seed counsel we knew about now. She she was actually a one termer and she was considered kind of a lightweight, and she wasn't really lett near anything too serious with you. She was in Senate from ninety

three to ninety nine, which is one Senate term. They're six they're six year terms. Yeah, that's so sad. Yeah yeah, um so no, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Susan wasn't doing Okay, I don't know. She's been around the hill for a while, so okay, yeah, I mean that's two years that she's been talking to to miss Robert fueeze or freeze or however please the doctor. Yeah. So um. On the other hand, Susan is kind of guano crazy,

so a little bit. Yeah, I don't know if I trust that actually, and Carol Mosley Brown would have been a good fit. Actually, she's now ambassador of Samila. Yeah, the senator. Yeah, she was an ambassador to somewhere else before too, were not important. Yeah, like, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm really important if you're a sist, really important. So next, yeah, actually seriously, next theory? Go ahead, what's that Susan has

nothing to do? This is a long theory title. I'm sorry, Uh, Susan has nothing to do with this, because Susan Lindauer isn't really that weird of a name. And also, there was one of those working at the university that that email address is registered to at the time. So, um, the website or the university that that spam was sent from. The email address where that was registered at was the

University of Wisconsin Stevens points dot du. Yeah. And in the spring of there's articles talking about this program that one Susan Lindauer different rent Susan Lindauer was in charge of organizing. There's there's like proof in the you know, there's academic journals written about her studies that she was doing there, so we know that she was there at that time. That's where that web address is located. So it's not unreasonable to assume that it was just a

hacked email address makes sense to me. Yeah, so I had nothing to do with crazy crazy Susan Lindower. Just it was just a coincidence that it was the same

name we use Susan's. Yeah, quite quite possible. But on the other as, she might be actually have a used net log on, but being somebody who was employed more in the physical education part of things, yeah, and not the more techie computer science and things, might not have actually used it at all or not used it much, and definitely was not tech savvy enough to not let her email address fall into the wrong hands. It's totally possible.

I got to tell you I had a I had an email address at that time that was assigned to me from a university, and I would check it once every week or four at the library. Oh yeah, me too. Why I might have gotten this email address and never used it ever. Yeah, that happens a lot. Yeah obviously back in those days. Yeah yeah, yeah, And she was Just in case anybody's wondering about this, Susan, she worked

on a program to um. It was basically children's physical education for children who were delayed for whatever reason, mentally delayed develop Yeah. Um. And then she's she was an assistant instructor in the snap program whatever. I don't know final theory. Yeah, do you guys know whom Mark V. Shane shanely is Shaney? I actually do, do you, Joe? Do you know who Mark V. Shaney is? Totally? I want to school with him. Uh. He was a user

on the use net forum uh net nott singles. He was also the very first as far as I can tell, a I bought as far as as far as I know, um, and he was based on a what's called a Markov chain. Do you know what a Markov chain is? You know, I've heard of it, but you know, if you go out and read about the Markov chains, it's pretty esoteric stuff. Yeah. I have a what I would call it very very sort of general understanding of what it is. Abstract, Yeah,

but it's it's basically, it just generates random things. It's a formula for random things that people have written. And that's about it. Well, a Markov chain bought is that? But a Markov chain is like a mathematical of anything. Yeah, I think that's my understanding of it. But it's almost like a chain of events. There's one way of looking at it, and yeah, and so the next event depends on the president event, but not the president event does

not necessarily depend the relationship between past president future. There's not necessarily a change. So let me simplify this. There's a tree and there is a Kleenex, and one eventually turned into the other. What happens in the middle. I don't know. I don't really care. Yeah, kind of that, yeah, kind of yeah, ok, yeah, But the Markov chain bought is uh, yeah, it's a mathematical procedure that computers can use to create relatively realistic looking text with some great responses. Yeah,

given based on some given data. So we've we've actually seen a lot of those. Um, that robot that was a Microsoft the Twitter thing that like turned into oh that one justly repens. Yeah, so she's a very advanced version of a Markov chain bought, very advanced. But it's so sad with the Internet. Yeah, it's really sad. It's to be the sacond. No. I don't think that robot

exists anymore, but that's basically that sort of thing. Um and Mark Actually going back to Mark Mark V. Shaney, Um, he was actually pretty successful, but he was prone to saying things like I spent an interesting evening recently with a grain of salt. I mean, I've read some of the other stuff that he he said, and realistically, it could have I mean, it was early internet days. It could have just been like a really quirky, awkward dude on the other end, or maybe even somebody who like

English wasn't their first language. But he was pretty convincing. M did you get a lot of dates? I know he was. He was on net dot singles, right, I don't think there's a story about people who thinking that Mark was real. We're at some gathering and was overheard by one of the people who had created Mark V. Shaney saying, I wonder if Mark V. Shaney is going to be here? People into it? Yeah, and we see

these bots. I mean you see the screen captures of like Tinder bots for instance, Right, I mean that's this is the same sort of thing. But that was supposed to be the ones that never show up for their dates with me. Yeah, I know, it's kind of pain yeah, stuff giving me your credit card? Yeah, I mean, so you know we're talking Marcovian Parallax Denigrade, is it Dennigrade? Think it's yeah, great? Yeah, you're thinking that it was

just something sent up by a bot. I kind of do. Actually, I mean, Markov is in the name already, right, and you know something being Marcovian is like a generate, random generated string of stuff. And I don't know, I just like that makes sense to me. That makes a lot of sense to me, that it could just be this bot and it, you know, was named something tongue in cheek and it just kind of went off the rails a little bit. But that to me makes the most sense.

I know, we've just spent the last almost hour talking about covert counterintelligence in the CIA, but I don't think so. But Steve had that look on his face. I tried to decode this, just like the rest of the Internet. How did that go for you? Quite boringly? Uh, and not very effectively because I looked at it and was figuring it was as a cipher where it's not. It's

like a word switch. In other words, you put so in here there's Gennaro as in Rio de Janeiro, as in the city by the River, and so I was like, oh, well that must mean rivers. So they're plugging a word in. So it's a replacement. So I started playing with thinking about that too, like jitterbugging is a dance, McKinley and

Eber presidents right right, you know, is physics. I did it for a while because I was curious, not that I expected to be the genius that cracked it after all this time him, but just to see if there was anything there. And it's just enough, it's just enough to pull you in. And I made the mistake of laying it out so that I could put three or four words under each one, you know, my guesses of what that word meant. And then very quickly I began to build a sentence, and I was like, oh my god,

I've got it. What I had gotten was confirmation bias. It's real interesting. I mean, you know, you can find meaning in words connected pretty easily. Yeah, And and so I see why people are so curious. What I am sad about is that only this one string of what is it six twelve eighteen twenty four thirties some words are remaining because I would like to see other instances of it, just to see how they're assembled, you know, because if it truly was a code, you can't break

the code with just the cipher text. Yes, uh, you know, you don't know what the encryption algorithm is. I mean, one of the things that occurred to me was that the number of letters in each one of these words could represent just a number, which is of course the number of a letter in the alphabet. But then we need to know the book it's tied to. Well, not necessarily, No,

it could be a simple substitution cipher with numbers. But I just did a quick glance at and I realized, doing very very often back of the envelop character counting, uh, that it couldn't be that because it's well, yeah, I mean, well, you got a lot of real big words in there. There's a number of large words, very few small ones

and anything like that. There's going to be a lot of representations of the letter E and then after that the letter A. So a lot of words of the same length, and you don't see very many of those in here. So Okay, that's out, and that's as much time as I wanted to spend on it. Yeah, but there this could actually be a code, but I think it's something else entirely. What do you think it is? It's just a big fat chunk of text, and it could have been actually an attempt too. There's you can

think of a couple of different possibilities here. Well, one of course, is it's just somebody wanting to annoy a lot of people by sending out this big fat chunk of text and tying things up. It could have been also an attempt to break the network, just let's see how much stress this network can take, like the way like webdriver torso, I mean, you know what that is, right, it's those videos that we're getting uploaded like insanely fast to YouTube. They were like six seconds and they were

just like a tone and like blocks of Yeah. And it turned out that it was Google just testing how robust the system of YouTube is exactly. I mean, I kind of want thinking about this. It could have been a way to map the network and see, you we're just gonna go if I send this out, who how many people were exactly isn't gonna go. So it's kind of a mapping thing more like you say, a stress test. Could have been that, or it could have been a prankster.

But and I never did bother to actually count the number of characters in here to see if it was precisely like two five. It looks like more than two fifty five actually, but you know exactly how you know, at the length of the actual text block means anything at all? I have no idea. Again, if I were less lazy, I would have counted the character the number of characters and found that out. Yeah, but I don't

think it's worth it. And again the problem is with only one set of words you you're grasping of threats. Had two or three more that were of different set different words, then maybe you could try to draw some conclusions. But you're you're literally just in the dark pretty much, I mean, without without the decryption algorithm, if there even is one. I mean, this could be a really super deep one where the actual text itself means nothing whatsoever, but the code is actually and who it went to.

And I'm guessing that Susan Lindauer the Lady has nothing to do with it. Definitely not. That is just the Internet loving a coincidence. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So yeah, as far as decoding this, I'm going to give it another ten seconds and that's about it. Yeah, there you go, done. Yeah, I just I don't know. There might actually be an encrypted message in here somewhere. I'm too lazy to find it.

I don't think there is. Yeah. Okay, wait a second, we haven't talked about aliens, you know, like, you know, just wrap this whole thing up without talking about aliens. Okay, yeah, what about him? I was going to wrap it up without talking about aliens. Okay, fine, fine, fine, all right, go ahead wrap it up then. Okay, Well, sorry to anybody who wanted this to be super exciting conspiracy episode. I think there could be something in there, but I just don't think it is. Yeah, I agree, it would

be nice. Then there might be, but probably not, probably not yet. Well, there will be some links to our research um on the website. That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Uh. You can download and listen to us off iTunes if you're doing that, uh, you know, subscribe, leave a comment and rating. Uh. You can stream us pretty much everywhere, including Google Play. At this point, we are on social media. We've got a group and a

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you can send it there as well. Yeah. Yeah, keep trying yep through that, and then if you want to buy merchandise, you can do that on our website. We've got shirt, smugs, stickers, kind of anything you could possibly want. There's links to ours as ale in our red Bubble stores on the right hand side of the website. It's all high quality. Maybe I don't know. I hope it is. WE hope. Yeah, nobody's complained yet. Dishwasher safe I think. I don't know. I don't think the stickers are. I

don't think so either. Um, well, all of that having been said, I think we're going to go ahead and just get on out of here. Yeah, I jitterbugging obvious something. Yeah, damn it. You took away what I was gonna say. Oh, I'm gonna use a bat channel. It's a bat chat back channel to the everybody. Hi food, Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by a severed head. Oh yes, it is brought to you by a severed head m