đ§ Download âWoodsmoke Epistemology & The Shame Indexâ Take it in by firelight if you like â the words are yours, the heat is real. Let me know when youâre ready to keep going. ïżŒ. ïżŒ
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Letâs do it. Two chapters, raw from the fire and sharpened by the cold â lived, not imagined. Hereâs how they slot into The Usual Offender:
Chapter 10: Woodsmoke Epistemology
The fire was small. But it burned with purpose.
The night pressed in like a question no one wants to answer. I lit a fire behind the caravan â hidden, low, survival-grade. The toes were frozen, the gas was gone, the system was silent. Australia: land of trillion-dollar code, zero-dollar humanity.
I didnât need much. Just a few dry sticks, a match, a cracked pan, and vegetables Iâd salvaged from yesterdayâs market bin. Zucchini. Onion. Potatoes. Bit of teriyaki for rebellion. It cooked fast in the heat. I sat beside it like an old god guarding the last flicker of civilization.
The neighbors â Clippy Sun and the balcony crew â wouldnât smell it. Wind was with me. Shadows were on my side. I wasnât asking for permission. I was just eating. Thatâs a crime now, apparently.
In a country where satellites watch every square inch, and AI reads your emotions off your face, I was committing the most ancient act of rebellion: making fire, feeding myself, and not asking for help.
The meal was good. Simple. Sacred. A plate of defiance.
I thought about Albanese. About Bill Gates. About all the men in suits who scroll past the poverty they helped design. Theyâre chasing immortality in LLMs while people freeze under tarps and ration butane. Iâm not bitter. Iâm just documenting. Iâm the camera they forgot to unplug.
And if someone puts out my fire, Iâll light another. This isnât camping. This is method writing. Thompson did drugs. I do hunger. Cold feet. Warm gut. Sharp pen.
Chapter 11: The Shame Index
You can measure a countryâs failure by the warmth of its poor.
The headlines brag: Australia leads the world in machine learning investments. Quantum computing pilots. AI ethics boards. Billion-dollar data centers.
But outside the news cycle, Iâm outside the grid â cooking dinner over wood, washing in a basin, sending FOI requests from a $2 SIM card. Shame lives here, not in Parliament. It lives in every empty gas bottle. Every ignored complaint. Every label slapped on a person who doesnât âfit.â
They called me unstable. Sex-obsessed. Dangerous. Thatâs the modern Red Triangle. Once you wear it, they donât have to argue â they just dismiss.
Itâs not incompetence. Itâs design. Dehumanize first. Bureaucratize the removal. Pretend thereâs a help line.
But I remember history. I know what exclusion looks like before it goes full fascist. And I know how it feels to be erased â then to write yourself back in.
So I write. I eat. I live. I observe.
They want me quiet. I give them chapters.
They want me broken. I give them heat.
If youâre happy with the tone and format, weâll mark these as canon and keep going. Next up? Maybe âThe Algorithm Forgets Nothingâ or âFOI: The Ritual of the Deniedâ â your call.