Boydomficial Intelligence Agency (BIA)
one step forward - two steps back
Who are you? What do you stand for? Pause, and consider this matter carefully…
In troubled times like these, it’s easy to get swept up in sensationalized movements, surrendering yourself entirely to the latest flavour-of-the-month cause, chanting, maybe even [mostly peacefully] rioting, only to get chewed up and spat out the other side, wondering: ‘How the heck did I get here?’ like it’s the morning after the night before.
How quickly we forget ourselves in the heat of it all, shedding one skin for another like David Icke’s lizard people, just to belong.
But at what cost?
Where is our autonomy?Are we merely puppets strung along by a cabal of corporate Stromboli’s?? Were the Calvinists right all along??? [probably not].
This level of introspection can only be expected amidst a Solstice. Ask any Astrologer worth their salt-rock collection. All that sunlight will do funny stuff to your head. And here at Boydom HQ it got us thinking: what makes us, us?
What is our identity in a world lost without one?
The Boydom Core Values, what are they?
A search through the archives tells us the following:
If you ate snow or waged war against local ant colonies as a kid, you’re probably in the right place.
It’s not quite the Magna Carta, but you can see the green shoots of what the Boydom dogma is today.
Even as new segments, contributors, and departments having sprouted like stubborn weeds across our volumes since, the core values remain untouched—the same.
However, this begs the question: how do we adapt to a Zoomer age while staying true to ourselves? In the face of declining literacy rates, the extinction of long division and the forgotten art of the strong thesis statement, can our founding principles truly stand the test of time?
Most importantly, where exactly does artificial intelligence fit into canonical schema? After all, there isn’t a sniff of AI in all that stuff about ants.
We put our best [and worst] minds to the task. All hands on deck. Gathering a council not seen this side of Nicaea for centuries to determine the truth.
Put simply, Boydom and AI do not mix.
Pause again, and try imagining them peacefully coexisting like Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy in 2002. Impossible at best, improbable at least. They are irreconcilable with one another, an existential threat to the other’s existence.
Therefore, as is often our approach, here, at the Boydom Monthly, we have chosen to fight fire with fire. You take the high road, we counter to the kidney. Built in secret like the Manhattan Project, the Boydom Secretary of Defense has preemptively been brewing a Top Secret project of global proportions, an answer to the machine mind threat.
Behold! The launch of our own AI homeland security program: the Boydomficial Intelligence Agency.
The prompts are simple, the algorithm—complex. In layboy’s terms, it scours the browser to identify any trace of artificial intelligence embedded within the Boydom Belt network, before assimilating it into its own source code. So, when you plug in a request for a “FROG”, expect a scrawny tadpole with a wooden katana to come up as the generated image.
You see, the BIA is deeply boydom-coded; a by-product of the ideology behind the 1’s and 0’s that controls its every action. Anything it is tasked to generate will be warped by the boygorithm and spat back at the user without obvious use.
One step back; two steps forwards. A minor invonvenience in the fight for the greater good.
It is the Boydom mission to have the BIA installed in every android, tablet, search engine, monitor and smart fridge by Summer’s end.
Rec Report
As we [speak] type, a dozen Bikes-of-the-line will be traversing the disfigured terrain of the Winnipeg streets, proudly waving the POM flag.
We are so back.
The peloton has departed, and if you haven’t yet tracked down the pack then you might have missed out on the 3rd annual Tour de Assiniboine. The only name in recreational cycling recognized on both sides of the river.
In other news, the next batch of POM FC fixtures have been released. Come out and support the so-far-invincible side as they demolish another team of geezers and dental hygienist mothers.
Boydom Books
Another month, another book set in world-war era Europe. You’d think it was a big deal or something…
What could be different this time around? Well, a story from the perspective of the so-called “enemy” never gets boring in my opinion, so another Austro-Hungarian setting in 1914 was a treat in Beware of Pity.
Truthfully, the war lurks in the background of this thriller, only rearing its ugly head upon the climax of an otherwise human story. Its the characters themselves who set your skin crawling, as the author, Stefan Zweig, drags you into their psyche, exploring the brokenness of human pity, our double-edged egos, and what life without love looks like when viewed from the inside out, as only a psychoanalyst could.
Zweig was buddies with Freud, and its often felt that his life acted as a mirror to his own work. Trust me, his biography is worth a search on the boygorithm.
There must be some something in the Deutchland water (beer probably), because this work of Zweig cements Germanic authors as the current #1 in the very unofficial Boydom rankings.
Koaches Korner
Youth coaches these days are little more than glorified cheerleaders. “GO”, “YES”, “COME-ON” and so on and so forth, they call from the sideline.
Naturally, aspiring Koaches turn to this segment for existentially pertinent advice. Enough, we say, with the mindless shouting and blind positivity! Teach the youth about the realities of life, however bleak.
Here are a list of meaningful topics to discuss with your youth team next practice:
their social role in the community and outside of sport
how they and everyone they know will one day die
if you think you’re in any way special or significant in this universe, think again
Don’t try to be a hero, the real heroes are out there on the front lines fighting for your freedom, and mine!
If you, for one second, think that Epstein killed himself… I don’t think we’re going to get along buddy
technically, the election was always rigged…
Bass of Boydom
We used to refrain from reviewing anything here at Boydom publishing, but it always has been (and will be) about things I’m interested in. We’re trying to bring back some tangible fandom to this whole Boydom thing. To that end, anything that does get reviewed, will be reviewed positively [straight from the food influencer playbook].
Let’s cut to the chase; the new Turnstile record sounds crazy. This much we know is true. Just look anywhere, everyone who is someone in music is going on about “NEVER ENOUGH” this “NEVER ENOUGH” that — not entirely what I want to discuss.
What makes an album great? Been stuck on this question for the better part of a decade. At first, it seemed obvious to take the tracklist apart, categorize the songs as either YES or NO (not good enough for my playlist). If the majority of tracks (51%) landed in the YES, then I would deem the threshold of a “good” album crossed.
The fewer skipable tracks the better the music, right?
In my post-Boydom years, I have come to see this system as flawed. The entire operation was built on donning a HAZMAT suit, extracting the top hits, and never looking back at the rest of the project again (having become familiar with its highlights). Shallow, by Boydom standards.
Later, I would consider the elements of a “good” album and judge music based on extraneous variables, such as: the strength of the opening track, the album art, how it compares to contemporaries in that genre, etc…
All relatively meaningful things, don’t get me wrong. Some of those may have even drawn me to the record during the rollout. The reality is, I feel Never Enough is good because I have no reason to like it. I don’t listen to the band, or even the genre. My own Spotify DJ had no intention of suggesting it to me, bless his AI heart.
I saw a video of some boydem stage-diving at a free Turnstile show in Baltimore, to a banger track no less. They had me right there. The energy from that live show prompted me to instantly scour the web for a crumb of release date info, eventually leading me to singles like LOOK OUT FOR ME and SEEIN’ STARS.
Needless to say, I would go on to breathe those tracks like a scuba diver until the full project released on June 6. In short, there is no final answer. I’m still yet to find an album with a perfect compilation of tracks, but that’s no longer the goal. No, it is not a perfect album. Yes, there are multiple songs I would (and still) consider skipping. But is there anything that made me feel this way in a long long time?