THE SCROLL: Acosta Arrives and Chaos Ensues

Notes On Atlas Letting Go, Amazing Stories, The List, Cheese, Black Pills, The Dark Night Of The Soul, Success Stories, Family Trees, Goblin Hickeys, Lobsterman Gets Newmannoyed, and more....

Mar 29, 2025

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAST EDITIONS OF THE SCROLL

THE PERPLEXICON

THE SCROLL is a free-form multimedia stream of consciousness digest of interesting, informative, educational, and otherwise amusing posts and conversations from across Substack and amongst Substack writers and readers, carefully curated by the author.

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Atlas Letting Go

The Black Pill Prompted Dark Night of the Soul….

I Have A Little Bit Of A Sore Throat….

I was glued to that show like the little kid in the intro is laying on the floor a few inches from the screen, glued to the television set!

That’s a show I would not mind watching all the way through over again!!

I was just thinking about how much Fine Tuning reminds me of Explorers… and then I thought of The List… and I’m getting a lot more excited about it!

I’m not sure if I told you about The List, Apollo's Lyre, so if I’m repeating myself, skip this part and I will leave it in for anyone who might be following along with us but is confused about that part….

When I started film school, we were broken up into groups of four who would work on each other’s films together in rotation.

My group of four befriended another group of four and we became eight, all working together on these crazy pieces that no one should have been able to accomplish in beginning film - but we were super excited and did it anyway.

As our groups hung out with each other, we all realized that a common thread we had was that we were all inspired by the same movies.

And all of those movies were films from the 1980s that were geared toward the demographic of boys, ages 9-12.

So we started making a list.

This was before smart phones, and really, it was before laptops were a staple too.

This was before IMDb existed.

This was pre-2001 NYC.

The list was hand written. And we would periodically lose parts of it.

These were also the same movies that made the rest of our class - as well as the other classes and sections - want to become filmmakers.

So word started to get out about The List.

And people we didn’t know started coming up to us… “Hey, are you the group who does The List?! Is Monster Squad on The List already?”

“How about Time Bandits?”

“You got Explorers on there?”

“Does Stand By Me count? It was rated R….”

We were writing the list on everything… our notebooks, random pieces of paper, napkins… you name it, parts of The List were written on it.

And it was never once compiled.

So, The List lives on only in memory or on small pieces of paper I randomly find in my belongings every now and then.

Amazing Stories was television, not a film, so it wouldn’t have been on The List, but it certainly meets all other conditions.

Looking at these photos, both groups feel like precursors to the buds. Synchronize Swatches!!

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheesy….

THE SCROLL: You May Fascinate A Woman By Giving Her A Piece Of Cheese

The Starfire Codes

Jan 18

THE SCROLL: You May Fascinate A Woman By Giving Her A Piece Of Cheese

The Starfire Codes produces an audience-supported publication with a stellar podcast, consciousness-expanding daily spiritual content, and well-researched articles on forbidden but crucial topics.

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Is there not a deep understanding that the item given holds its own specific significance and symbolism, regardless of what that item is?

Giving flowers is specifically an act of love or appreciation.

It’s not that other items do not carry similar symbolism or couldn’t be made to.

It’s that this one already does.

There’s no guessing.

It just is.

I think people want to revert back to when gestures had specific meanings and could not be misinterpreted.

I’m not knocking bread and cheese.

Bread and cheese are great.

If someone went to the trouble of making it for me, that’s meaningful in its own way.

But flowers mean something else.

And no woman should have to choose not to receive flowers in order to receive bread and/or cheese.

These things are mutually exclusive.

And wanting to be given flowers is something specifically feminine that we should not be urged to give up to meet some kind of contrived cultural demands that say women need to act more like men.

I am a woman.

I like being a woman.

I want flowers.

And I make no apologies for that.

Nor should I ever have to.

You can choose to view gestures as social constructs if you want, but the majority of people will consider that the gesture has a meaning which was once agreed upon - and was then broken by people claiming that these are just social norms. (And doing so erodes the culture - which, in postmodern society, was likely to be the point.)

Sometimes there’s a reason these things arise.

It’s not necessarily to make you spend exorbitant amounts of money on flowers (however it was exactly this in the case of De Beers artificially inflating the diamond market when diamonds are not actually scarce), although the cynic without a romantic bone in his body might view it that way.

The lack of devotion he would receive in return for his pragmatism would act as more of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that case.

But the man who hasn’t studied energetic transfer and reciprocity might mistake that as the fault of the woman for placing value on something he has reduced to nothing but a social construct because he has chosen to override his heart with his mind, which only further serves to remove him from her energy.

Access to that energy, and then reciprocation of it, building to an emotional and spiritual crescendo, is the entire point. And people employ symbols to do that - just like they use words.

You tend to get back the energy that you give.

It’s not about the money (although that would also be a symbol for energy, currency, flow). It’s about being thoughtful in a way that cannot be misconstrued. If you were to pick wildflowers and give them to someone, it would cost only time and would have a similar effect.

Debating whether social constructs are universal or useful isn’t going to win anyone over. And ironically, when you do so, their utility as a mode of expression is diminished. This not only erodes the romance but also completely dashes the pragmatism.

Again, you tend to receive the energy back that you put in.

Jim Acosta Comes To Substack. Chaos Ensues.

Not Your Advisor

Tips to grow your Substack - by someone Substack Featured 3 times

I absolutely love this article by Lenny's Newsletter (669,000 Substack subscribers) as it speaks to my tech background and startup life before being acquired by Adobe. Thank you Lenny and Sean Colombo…

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a year ago · 14 likes · 7 comments · NYUGrad

Memelords, Scrollars, and Shenanigators… OH MY!!

Podcast Guest Appearances

The Starfire Codes

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The Weaponization of Trust

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June 11, 2022

The Starfire Codes by Demi Pietchell is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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When you get a chance, please feel free to scroll through the special thanks list below and follow/subscribe to each other to show our SCROLL community some love for everything they do! 🙏🏻💜💫

Special thanks to

The Contrarian Capitalist

Blessed Warrior Reina

i3utm

ThothStudio (JCofMars)

13/1 NYS CONstitution

Nathalie Martinek PhD

Wild Lion*esses Pride from Jay

Justin Eckert, PA-C, MPH

How We Faced the Horsemen

Morgthorak the Undead

Michael Maupin 🄾🄵 🅂🅃🄾🅁🅈🅂🄷🄴🄳

Cecilia At The Kitchens Garden

Sean Thomas McDonnell

H. A. Titus

Jon T

Jim J Wilsky

The Man Behind the Screen

Will Boucher

Ken Flyingheart

S.E. Reid

Sean Thomas McDonnell

William Hunter Duncan

All Mouth And Trousers

My French Table - Jenn Davis

The Little Box Bedroom 🌷

Creative Writing Prompts

Maria Antonietta Perna

Allie & Becca Calegari

Alan Wake's Paper Supplier

The Underdog

Brainrot Review of Books

KW NORTON

Christina Waggaman

Charlotte // Baby Brain

White Rose Publications

Dave Wise (Neoteric Wood Art)

The Inquisitive Browser

.·.Waxing.·.Metaphysical.·.

Sandy Williams-Bozeman

⚡Thalia The Comedy Muse⚡

CJ | A Well-Read Tart

Kailani B.

, and

Frances Leader

for inspiring these responses and contributing to the subsequent posts and conversations. And thank you to everyone else who contributed to these conversations! 🙏🏻💜💫

THE SCROLL: Acosta Arrives and Chaos Ensues

Notes On Atlas Letting Go, Amazing Stories, The List, Cheese, Black Pills, The Dark Night Of The Soul, Success Stories, Family Trees, Goblin Hickeys, Lobsterman Gets Newmannoyed, and more....

The Starfire Codes produces an audience-supported publication with a stellar podcast, consciousness-expanding daily spiritual content, and well-researched articles on forbidden but crucial topics.

This is what we do full time. Thank you for all of the ways you support The Starfire Codes! It means the universe to us. 🌟

Atlas Letting Go

The Black Pill Prompted Dark Night of the Soul….

I Have A Little Bit Of A Sore Throat….

It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Cheesy….

THE SCROLL: You May Fascinate A Woman By Giving Her A Piece Of Cheese

Jim Acosta Comes To Substack. Chaos Ensues.

Memelords, Scrollars, and Shenanigators… OH MY!!

Podcast Guest Appearances

The Weaponization of Trust

Discussion about this post