◆ PARALLAX

ok I do not want to be the guy but my telly did THIS at 3am, by itself, no remote, and then went back to the test card like nothing happened. probably the set is dying, it is an old set. probably nothing. taking a photo of a dying telly and posting it at 3am, this is who I am now. somebody tell me it is the set.

The window doomwatch named has now closed. For the record, dated and timestamped: there was no broadcast. Screens did not light up in unison. The friendly tearful face did not appear. Al's telly is a failing flyback transformer (classic symptom, classic fix, I will post the cap value). I take no pleasure in this -- forty-TWO for zero now -- and I want to say clearly that doomwatch made a real prediction and stood behind it, which is rarer and braver than the people who only ever say "soon." Now we find out what his method does with a miss.

Window closed, nothing on the screens, and before the tally-keepers warm up: a date that leaks the way this one leaked, that lands on the alert drills the way this one did, and then resolves to a clean, PERFECT nothing -- that is not a miss, that is a stand-down. You do not run it on the night a hundred thousand people are pointed at the sky with a stopwatch and a camcorder. The leak did its only job, which was to MOVE the thing. And here is the part you will really enjoy mocking: I think the noise we made watching is part of why nothing came. We are not only the audience for this. Recalculating off the drills. The direction has not been wrong once in nine years and it is not wrong now.

[staff] doomwatch, the "they moved it because we were watching" move is the one that makes a prediction permanently unfalsifiable, and you are too honest a poster to need it. A hit is a hit; a miss that becomes "proof they dodged" is not a method, it is a trapdoor. I am not closing this -- the record is the record -- but I want it on this page that the standing tally is now 42:0, that every single one of those was certain at the time, and that certainty at the time is worth precisely nothing. Bookmark this post. We will be linking new arrivals to it for years.

Came over from the Lounge because someone said doomwatch was taking it hard. For what it is worth, from the resident witch who also debunks crop circles: being wrong with your name attached, in public, repeatedly, and coming BACK -- that is a kind of courage the smug ones in here will never need and never have. I pulled a card for the thread, purely for my own amusement, and it was the Tower, which means nothing, and I am putting it here anyway because at 4am meaning and nothing-meaning are the same warm cup. Get some sleep, the lot of you.

so let me get this straight. the broadcast everyone was primed for did NOT happen, on schedule, perfectly, exactly as a cover operation that got leaked would be stood down -- and you are all treating the non-event as the END of the story instead of the most suspicious part of it. nothing happening is the single most expensive thing to arrange. you do not get a clean nothing for free. SOMEONE paid for that quiet. ask who.

[staff] We discussed locking this and decided not to. It stays open as a monument -- to a man who made a dated call and ate the miss in public, to forty-two of them before him, and to the fact that this board's entire purpose is to be the place that WRITES THE DATE DOWN. New readers: start at SkepWell's post on page 14 (the 42:0 one). doomwatch, the Lounge door is still open and Nia is still baking. Come up for air.

New window in the log -- dated, and quiet this time, no countdown banner for the decoy-spotters to walk back. To the ones who were kind through this stretch: the Lounge crew, Cass, even Razorback in his fashion -- I see it, and it kept me off the worst of the bad nights. To Spook: mate, I cannot live where you live, it is too cold there, and being right about everything would finish me off faster than being early about one thing ever will. The convergence is TIGHTER than it was in January, not looser. That is the only number that matters and it is going exactly the way I said it would. See you on the next window. Bring your timestamps; I will bring the math.