Tag Archives: humor

White Paper: The Psychology of Hierarchy and Card Passing in the Game Presidents

Posted on December 8, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary The card game Presidents—also known as Asshole, Capitalism, Kings, and other regional variants—contains a rule in which the highest-ranked players receive the best cards from the lowest-ranked players at the start of each new round. This mechanic creates … Continue reading →

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Googooli (گوگولی): A White Paper on the Semantic Range, Usage, and History of a Modern Persian Term of Endearment

Posted on November 23, 2025 by nathanalbright

Abstract This white paper examines the colloquial Persian adjective/noun googooli (گوگولی) and its extended form googooli-magooli (گوگولی مگولی). It surveys the term’s semantic range, the types of referents it applies to (people, animals, and objects), its pragmatic and sociolinguistic profile, … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Buster Scruggs as a Compelling Character for Feature Films and Serialized Television

Posted on November 18, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Buster Scruggs, the white-suited singing gunslinger from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), stands out as one of the most singular Western characters created in the 21st century. Though he appears only briefly in an anthology film, his … Continue reading →

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White Paper: “Woke Up Dead”: The Meaning and Context of the Hebrew Phrase in the Assyrian Army Narrative: A Linguistic, Historical, and Biblicist Analysis

Posted on November 15, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary The destruction of Sennacherib’s Assyrian army in a single night—recorded in 2 Kings 19:35 and Isaiah 37:36—is one of the most dramatic deliverance narratives in the Hebrew Bible. Popular preachers sometimes describe this event with the phrase “they … Continue reading →

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“Law on the Move”: The Legal Climate of Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois—Its Rhythms and Culture

Posted on October 29, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive summary Between statehood (1818) and the Civil War, Illinois law matured from a rough-hewn, locally inflected system into an increasingly professional, statute-guided, market-oriented order. Abraham Lincoln practiced in the very center of this evolution (1830s–1850s). The daily life of … Continue reading →

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Folk Resilience as Sociocultural Programming: A White Paper on the Adaptive Logic of Cultural Continuity

Posted on October 23, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary This white paper examines folk resilience—the informal, decentralized, and deeply embedded capacity of communities to adapt to change—as a form of sociocultural programming. Drawing on insights from anthropology, psychology, systems theory, and cultural history, it argues that traditional … Continue reading →

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Gator Tastes Like Chicken: Redneck Cuisine and the Cultural Programming of Adaptation in a Jurassic Park Scenario

Posted on October 23, 2025 by nathanalbright

I. Introduction: From Swamp to Cretaceous If Jurassic Park were real — not just a billionaire’s dream but an inhabited, chaotic frontier — few groups of people would take to it more naturally than rural Southern “rednecks.” The term, often … Continue reading →

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White Paper: The Invincible Ignorance of the Tourist: Dynamics of Exploitation, Adaptation, and Social Response

Posted on October 1, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Tourists occupy a paradoxical role in global culture: they are welcomed for their economic contributions while simultaneously resented for their ignorance, cultural insensitivity, or lack of situational awareness. This paper analyzes the phenomenon of “invincible ignorance” among tourists—defined … Continue reading →

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White Paper: Jane Austen’s Letters and Juvenilia as a Long Apprenticeship in Writing

Posted on September 19, 2025 by nathanalbright

Executive Summary Jane Austen’s surviving letters and juvenilia provide a unique case study in the gradual cultivation of literary expertise. Far from being the polished novelist of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, Austen was a writer in apprenticeship for nearly … Continue reading →

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A Manual of the Picturesque: Or, Directions for the Refinement of Taste and Deportment, For Those Who Would Be Classy in the Manner of the Gentry

Posted on August 21, 2025 by nathanalbright

Preface To those desirous of rising above the vulgar habits of common life, and of adorning their conduct with that grace and taste which mark the true gentleperson, this little Manual is humbly offered. For though wealth may procure a … Continue reading →

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