Appendiccio Numero Tre
DE LA TALEBENNING, OF COURSO, IDIOTAS!
Friends, we have reached the end. This is il ultimo appendiccio. There shall be no more.
Readers may remember that the solution to my puzzle (which nobody solved) was that, in the second hash preimage in the section, How Fragile Nassim Will Respond To This Essay, there must be a quote from Part IV of The Waste Land. The puzzle, therefore, was, what quote? It could not be solved because SHA256 cannot be cracked.
However, in Appendicio Numero Due, I teased the reader that, if you got this far, maybe you could go further and just guess the quote anyway?
Sensing the tension has become too much to bear, I feel I must cut it by revealing the preimage, concluding this Talebenning nonsense, and letting us all get on with our lives. Here’s the timestamp to prove I’m not a Talebesque charlatan:
A reminder that this was originally supposed to be a hash of my prediction as to how Fragile Nassim would respond, knowing that I had predicted it. A kind of second-order, self-referential, Gödelian prediction, which somehow also includes a quote from Death By Water, Part IV of The Waste Land …
Well, here it is:
This isn’t a prediction at all, but it is pretty darn second order and it has enough self-reference to pass as Godelian as well. It is a victory dance on a monkey that took one piss too many and then was drowned in a piss monsoon. This was a death by water, just as Eliot foretold: Nassim the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss. A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Nassim, who was once handsome and tall as you.
SHA256: 993AC3021E57662DAD6FCFB91A5A7459A281EF0A5B2FA08B2973FA99E3262B01
Shantih shantih shantih
see y’all later.
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