#Pakistani Prankster

[govindhtech]

Effective Strategies for Handling Malware

Malware history is long due to its volume and variety. Instead, here are some notorious malware moments.

1966: Malware theory

Mathematician and Manhattan Project contributor John von Neumann developed the idea of a program that could replicate and propagate throughout a system when the first modern computers were produced. Posthumously published in 1966, Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata is the theoretical foundation for computer viruses.

1971: Crawler

Within five years of John von Neumann’s theoretical work, Bob Thomas produced Creeper, an experimental software that moved between ARPANET computers, a predecessor to the Internet. His colleague Ray Tomlinson, the email inventor, adapted the Creeper program to copy itself between computers. Thus began the first computer worm.

Although Creeper is the first known worm, it is not malware. As a proof of concept, Creeper only displayed the whimsical message: “I’M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.” The following year, Tomlinson created Reaper, the first antivirus software designed to delete Creeper by moving across the ARPANET.

Elk Cloner virus, 1982

Rich Skrenta created the Elk Cloner program at 15 as a prank. Skranta was known to change games and other software shared in his high school’s computer club, so many members refused to take disks from the prankster.

Skranta created the first Apple computer virus to change disk software he couldn’t access. Elk Cloner, a boot sector virus, infected Apple DOS 3.3 and copied itself to the computer’s memory from an infected floppy drive. Elk Cloner would transfer itself to an uninfected disk used later in the machine and spread to majority of Skranta’s friends. Elk Cloner could accidentally erase floppy disks while malignant. The beautiful message read:

ELK CLONER:

THE PROGRAM WITH A PERSONALITY

IT WILL GET ON ALL YOUR DISKS

IT WILL INFILTRATE YOUR CHIPS

YES IT’S CLONER!

IT WILL STICK TO YOU LIKE GLUE

IT WILL MODIFY RAM TOO

SEND IN THE CLONER!

1986 Brain virus

On the ARPANET, the Creeper worm could propagate across computers, although most malware was spread via floppy disks like Elk Cloner before the Internet. Elk Cloner affected one little computer club, but the Brain infection spread globally.

Brain, the first IBM Personal Computer virus, was created by Pakistani medical software distributors and brothers Amjad and Basit Farooq Alvi to prevent copyright theft. To prevent software copying, the virus was designed. Brain would tell pirates to phone the brothers for the vaccination when installed. Underestimating how extensive their piracy problem was, the Alvis received their first call from the US and many more from throughout the world.

1988: Morris Worm

Another malware forerunner, the Morris worm, was constructed as a proof-of-concept. The worm was more effective than MIT student Robert Morris expected, unfortunately. Internet access was limited to 60,000 machines, largely in colleges and the military. The worm, designed to exploit a Unix backdoor and stay secret, quickly copied itself and infected 10% of networked machines.

Because the worm transferred itself to other computers and frequently on infected machines, it unwittingly ate up RAM and froze many PCs. Some estimates put the damages in the millions as the first widespread internet strike. Robert Morris was the first US cybercriminal convicted of cyber fraud.

1999: Melissa worm

Melissa proved how rapidly malware can spread via email a decade later, infecting an estimated one million email accounts and at least 100,000 office machines. The fastest-spreading worm of its time, it overloaded Microsoft Outlook and Exchange email servers, slowing more than 300 corporations and government agencies, including Microsoft, the Pentagon’s Computer Emergency Response Team, and 250 others.

2000: ILOVEYOU virus

When 24-year-old Philippines resident Onel de Guzman couldn’t afford dialup internet, he created ILOVEYOU, the first significant piece of malware, to collect passwords. The attack is early social engineering and phishing. De Guzman exploited psychology to exploit curiosity and trick individuals into downloading love letter-like email attachments. De Guzman remarked, “I figured out that many people want a boyfriend, they want each other, they want love.

Aside from stealing passwords, the worm erased information, cost millions in damages, and briefly shut down the UK Parliament’s computer system. De Guzman was detained but acquitted since he had not breached any local laws.

2004: Mydoomworm

Email helped the Mydoom malware self-replicate and infect computers worldwide, like ILOVEYOU. Upon infection, Mydoom would commandeer a victim’s machine to send new copies. Mydoom spam once made up 25% of all emails sent worldwide, a record that’s never been broken, and caused $35 billion in losses. It remains the most financially devastating malware, adjusted for inflation.

Mydoom uses compromised machines to establish a botnet and launch DDoS assaults in addition to hijacking email programs to infect as many systems as possible. The cybercriminals behind Mydoom have never been captured or identified, despite its impact.

2007, Zeus virus

In 2007, Zeus attacked home computers via phishing and drive-by-downloads, demonstrating the dangers of a trojan-style malware that can unleash multiple unwanted programs. In 2011, its source code and instruction manual leaked, benefiting cybersecurity experts and hackers.

2013, CryptoLocker ransomware

CryptoLocker, one of the earliest ransomware attacks, spread quickly and used sophisticated asymmetric encryption. CryptoLocker from Zeus-infected botnets systematically encrypts PC data. If the infected PC is a library or office client, shared resources are targeted first.

The authors of CryptoLocker demanded two bitcoins, worth $715 USD, to decrypt these materials. Fortunately, in 2014, the Department of Justice and international agencies took control of the botnet and decrypted hostage data for free. Unfortunately, basic phishing tactics spread CyrptoLocker, a persistent danger.

Emotet trojan 2014

The Emotet trojan, termed the “king of malware” by Arne Schoenbohm, head of the German Office for Information Security, is a polymorphic spyware that is difficult to eradicate. Polymorphic malware creates a harmful variation by subtly modifying its code each time it reproduces. Polymorphic trojans are harder to detect and block, making them more harmful.

The Zeus trojan and Emotet are modular programs that spread additional malware through phishing campaigns.

Mirai botnet (2016)

Malware evolves with computers, from desktops to laptops, mobile devices, and networked devices. Smart IoT gadgets introduce new vulnerabilities. College student Paras Jha created the Mirai botnet, which infected many IoT-enabled CCTV cameras with inadequate protection.

The Mirai botnet, meant to assault gaming servers for DoS attacks, proved more powerful than Jha expected. It targeted a major DNS provider and shut out large parts of the eastern US from the internet for nearly a day.

2017: Cyberspionage

Malware had been used in cyber warfare for years, but 2017 was a banner year for state-sponsored assaults and virtual espionage, starting with Petya. Phishing disseminated Petya ransomware, which was deadly but not infectious until it was transformed into the NotPetya wiper worm, which destroyed user data even if ransom was paid. The WannaCry ransomware infection hit several high-profile European targets that year, including Britain’s National Health Service.

NotPetya may have been modified by Russian intelligence to strike Ukraine, and WannaCry may be linked to North Korean adversaries. What links these malware attacks? The National Security Agency discovered Eternalblue, a Microsoft Windows exploit, which enabled both. Microsoft found and fixed the weakness, but they chastised the NSA for not reporting it before hackers exploited it.

Ransomware-as-a-Service 2019

Ransomware malware has grown and declined in recent years. Though ransomware attacks are declining, hackers are targeting more high-profile targets and wreaking more harm. Recently, Ransomware-as-a-Service has become a worrying trend. RaaS may be purchased on dark web marketplaces and allows skilled hackers to launch ransomware attacks for a price. Previous virus attacks needed extensive technical skill, but RaaS mercenary groups empower anyone with evil will and money.

Emergency in 2021

In 2019, hackers broke into security staffing agency Allied Universal and threatened to leak their data online in the first high-profile double-extortion ransomware attack. Due to this extra layer, Allied Universal would still suffer a data breach even if they could decode their information. This incident was notable, but the 2021 Colonial Pipeline attack was more severe. The Colonial Pipeline supplied 45% of eastern US gasoline and jet fuel. The multi-day attack affected the east coast’s public and private sectors and caused President Biden to proclaim a state of emergency.

National emergency, 2022

Though ransomware attacks may be reducing, highly targeted and efficient operations remain a scary menace. Ransomware attacks in 2022 crippled the ministry of finance and civilian import/export firms in Costa Rica. Following an attack, the healthcare system went offline, affecting potentially every citizen. Costa Rica declared the first national state of emergency after a cyberattack.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[prankvids]

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[dawnfacts-blog]

UAE based Pakistani 'Joker' goes viral with makeup skills UAE-based Pakistani "Joker". Photo: Khaleej Times film screening Hollywood film "Joker" has not only caught up with cinema screens, but has also influenced a Pakistani artist in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

[antics-pedantic]

RALLY CO. #4: THE GATE TO WITHIN, PART 1

Dieter was getting on in years. He scrambled to open another bottle of some vigor or tonic promised to grant greater vitality. He went through these quickly—it had been a guilty pleasure of his to indulge in formulas for prolonged youth. But nothing could compare to his true goal: To return to the secret place he had begun his work in. A place on Earth, yet unlike it.

          But here he found himself in hiding, at the Harbortown ports. It was not so long ago that he had been in Arcadia, Harbortown’s neighboring concrete jungle of art deco. And Dieter had yet more distance to travel. He had to get overseas, away from here. And after that, an even more tremendous distance the likes of which the world had never known.

          “Bumbling oaf!”

          Dieter cursed all the while: Money could buy him the strong arm of thugs. But these local toughs were too clumsy for him. Unforgivably so: He was far more forgiving of his creations. Mankind squandered its potential, where his creations only had the capacity to keep learning. And without complaint!

          “Be careful with my shipment! One wrong move and everything will be ruined!”

          “Cut us some slack, Prof!” wheezed a goon, as they and their gang carefully brought the wide crate down in front of Dieter. “This thing weighs a ton. What’d you get, a new fridge?”

          “Hardly. Once it’s assembled we’ll be home free.”

          The thing in the crate was an archaic archway. The goons were more than a little annoyed at this bout of admiring archaeological findings: They had been expecting something more obviously capable of helping them out of their present situation. That is, until Dieter had started to use his instruments to toy with the stones. The tracing of his instruments over the stones revealed etched grooves. Symbols patterned into each face of the archway’s stones rather than alphabetic characters. Patterns that Dieter had studied for some time now.

          “Dieter Leistung…”

          Even in his anger, the voice that Dr. Dieter Leistung heard now gave him chills. He turned to look in every direction. But could not pinpoint the source of the sound. Nor could his hired goons, who were getting to be on high alert. A prankster would hardly pose a threat to such a watchful bunch.

          But this was no prankster. It was however, one of those times where misdirection made bedfellows of folks and foolishness: For the sting of .45 caliber bullets knocked away any melee weapon or firearm that might have been brandished.

          “Justice finds you, Doctor.” the voice from no discernable direction continued.

          “Impossible! Though I abandoned my work, I left no trail!” thundered Leistung.

          The voice offered laughter. Mocking laughter.

          “Think of me as the guilty conscience you thought yourself above having. Ever-watching, ever-judging.”

          A fist lashed out to send one of Dieter Leistung’s men a couple of steps back. It wasn’t an immediate knockout. But it had them startled, ready to lash out at the first sign of another person close-by. It served to scatter them, despite their boasts to the darkness. If the shadows did not heed them, would they fare any better with their vigilante tormentor?

          “An extra thousand to the man who can gut The Junker!”

          Leistung set about introducing some chemicals and copper wiring to set points on the gate and activating a portable generator. All the while behind him, several of his thugs were knocked around, fighting with their phantom foe. They scored a few punches but only blindly so, never with consistency.

          “I’ve got him!” one goon exclaimed, gesturing to a white scarf he’d grabbed. “Someone grab the tommy gun while I’ve got him all choked up!”

          Another goon dived for the weapon that they’d been disarmed of earlier, preparing to fire. They caught the briefest glimpse of a raven-haired figure in an aviator’s jacket, the white scarf, and goggles. Goggles whose lenses gave off a light green glow. Even for the darkly colored ensemble, this hardly seemed a figure that should have been able to escape their sight. And yet he did, along with all the other senses.

          “AUGH!”

          A swift motion from two gloved hands locked the arm that had held the scarf. What few features of the mystery man that were visible only offered a minute displeasure at having his breathing briefly constricted. This prompted the goon with the tommy gun to cut loose, showering the area ahead with gunfire. The bullets stopped abruptly following two clicks: One of the submachine gun’s ammo drum being suddenly removed, and the second being as the goon reflexively continued to shoot. At least, until he was hit in the mouth with his own ammo drum.

          The Junker loomed over this body, drawing his dual pistols once again to threaten Leistung. But the mad doctor was already going through the archway, as a shimmering effect occurred in the space beneath and between the stone archway that caused his disappearance, before the generator shorted out and damaged the arch.

          But, that wasn’t to say the Junker lacked for an idea as to where Leistung was going. Junker did after all, recognize the patterns of the archway…

X

          Elsewhere, world-renowned occult detective Solomon Callahan awoke from his slumber. He had recalled that he’d traveled to the markets of Morocco after some such artifact or trinket of interest. Perhaps inquire about any local issues with the paranormal, or other exceptional forces that might have been troubling folks. And he did so with the company of his students, all of whom drew closer and closer to being professionals under his guiding influence.

          Almost all of them, at least. Solomon didn’t wish to dwell on that, at this moment where there was little he could do about the past. Not when he was needed here and now as a guide. To put forth all his learned skill as a mystic to use against the forces of evil, as was the trade of investigators and explorers—the noble adventurer.

          “Monsieur Callahan, are you well?”

          Where Solomon’s hair turned snow white from stress, Katrina Kafka’s hair was more of a silver, accented by her favorite red hairband. Her eyes and complexion were like the paled terror of one who appeared haunted. But in spite of that, the former Parisian inhabitant had traveled overseas with her mentor to stay with him while she honed her psychic abilities.

          “I can’t hide much from you, can I dear?” chuckled Solomon.

          But Katrina shook her head. “This is not being the most ideal state, let alone just before important actions are to be taken. And I know it is made worse, by hearing of the Junker.”

          Solomon frowned.

          “That vindicator is all the way back in Arcadia, stateside. I can only hope he’s not stirring the proverbial hornet’s nest.”

          “Yes, but—”

          Katrina meant to ask Solomon more about his ties to the mystery man, before there came a familiar pair of dueling voices: Returning to their shared hostel were two lively sorts: A tall, umber-skinned woman whose pockets were lined with a couple of test tubes, and her shorter companion who might have passed for an escaped orangutan with his messy reddish-brown head of hair and full side-burns about his round cheeks.

          “And I say to ye again, Ez!” bellowed cryptozoologist Tycho Gallagher. “That ye be missin’ out on some mighty fine Turkish coffee. That ladle-thing set in the hot sand. Makes for a stronger drink than most sell it as such elsewhere.”

          “And I say to you, my hirsute accomplice.” spat emininent bio-chemist Esmerelda “Ez” Broughton. “You may enjoy your deplorable bean waters without bringing me into it! Just as I was set to find fine fabrics with which I might set upon making my own fashions. Katrina dear, I’m so sorry that Tycho prevented me from finding a proper souvenir!”

          “Th-that is quite alright, Esmerelda!” chuckled Katrina, nervously. “Might we perhaps resume our original goal first?”

          “Yeah well, I don’t see much stock in it.” said Tycho, as he stuck a tongue out at Ez. “Shooing a lion from a movie theater was all the action I got to see. Nary a true disturbance by cryptid or any other manner of monster. I shoulda stayed back in Arcadia and continued at the university!”

          “Indeed, save us the trouble.” Ez playfully jabbed, as was her custom with Tycho. The two were always friends beneath the taunting. “I for one, have done splendidly on my analysis and restoration of artifacts. Say, has anyone seen Felix?”

X

          Felix Basra was a very serious Pakistani woman, in training since adolescence to become a detective like her aunt Malika, or Solomon. Versed in the martial arts, preferring the use of a hooked rod known as the jutte, perfect for catching blades and striking foes bluntly. And maybe, Felix also had taken to leadership well. For it was her efforts that brought together and now kept alive the adventuring alliance known as the Rally Company. She was following in the tradition Solomon and his colleagues had begun, righting wrongs and using specialized knowledge and skills to tackle strange situations.

          And that included this one, in which she had personally set about finding back alley leads on the crime cult of the Golden Shadow. A supposed necromancer, but for certain a gangster of mystery. Felix specifically wanted revenge against the assassin that injured her aunt, forcing her out of investigative work. Felix owed this to her after Malika cared for her like Felix was her own daughter.

          She deftly avoided the thrust of several daggers, their steel clanging against that of her jutte. The battle was back and forth for a time until finally not one, but two of her would-be slayers erred and got their blades caught on the hook of the jutte. A strong twist later, they were disarmed of their knives. The remainder sought to throw their blades, Felix just barely catching their glint in the light as she drew her revolver and fired. When the gunsmoke cleared, every cheap hitman in the room had been subdued.

          “The Golden Shadow. Who are his most favored assassins?!” demanded Felix, huffing all the while from her exertion, as well as her anxiety over finding answers.

          “We don’t know! They come and go so swiftly through our neutral grounds.”

          “And outside of it?”

          “Fool! Rival assassins are at each other’s throats all the time. Any who might know would never live to tell the tale.”

          “Then why did your lot work so intently on those?”

          The assassin turned: Nearby was a large set of large, lidded vases. And Felix pointed to them, seemingly for no reason.

          “Have you gone mad?”

          “When I walked in it was the only container with holes drilled into the lid.”

          Just then, the container in question tipped over and was smashed open to reveal a fellow wearing a poncho over surplus military gear.

          “You oaf…” grunted the assassin. “I can’t believe we paid him so much to come here—AGH!"

          Felix shoved aside the assassin to address the foreign mercenary.

          “The mercenary, Duke Luke, I presume?”

          The man threw his poncho at Felix in the hopes it would give him the chance to get up to his feet. He lunged, trying to go for a pistol hidden under a desk. Felix dived for cover behind a sofa, revolver in hand. Duke Luke was at a disadvantage: He was afraid. If Felix hadn’t gotten such a workout from fighting off those assassins just now, she might have captured the mercenary by now.

          “Give it up. Even if these killers weren’t writhing in pain, I’ve smashed your illusion.”

          “The hell you have! I’m a soldier of fortune. I’ve fought in conflicts around the world!”

          “Mm. And always lived to tell about it. You’re a smart little chicken, aren’t you?”

          Duke Luke roared. He emerged from his hiding spot to fire. There were only a couple reports from his weapon, bullets drilling through the furniture Felix was behind as she gave off an anguished cry. Duke Luke’s laughter was boisterous, as he approached to confirm his kill. So boisterous that he almost missed the sound of Felix’s foot kicking the gun from his hand.

           “Damn you! I’m going to make it out of here! They swore it!”

          “Swear all you want, Duke. You’re going to tell me all about your time as an employee of the Golden Shadow.”

          Felix finally had a lead. This was it! While the rest of Rally Co. had managed to find the artifact being smuggled, she had pressed the possibility that the Golden Shadow’s gang was behind this caper. She did have to wonder why Solomon was not as forthcoming with that information as he should have been though.

          And then a velociraptor broke through a padlocked door.

Duke Luke screamed, Felix’s own vocal chords freezing in fear. She turned her gun to fire, grazing the beast. Duke Luke saw something in the room it emerged from, and sprinted towards it while Felix rolled out of the path of the raptor, adrenaline pushing her to avoid its tooth-and-nail attacks, as she received a few fresh cuts and some spots on her jacket were torn. Finally, Felix forced a chair into the jaw of the beast, before running into the room after Duke Luke.

And there stood the carved stones in an arch, not unlike the one she’d seen the Golden Shadow attempt to use not so long ago. Within the center of the arch was a shimmering light that also seemed to move like the surface of troubled waters. She could make out greens—even purples and other shades of jungle foliage along with craggy rocks and dimly lit tunnels. There she saw Duke Luke sprinting with no regard for his own safety.

The wooden chair Felix had used to stave off the velociraptor was broken to splinters. The dinosaur charged ahead at her, aiming to whip her with its tail. Felix dived to the side as the tail lashed upon the stone arch, with sufficient force to damage it as it stumbled through the portal just before it closed.

Felix would have to find the nearest payphone or teletype: The others had to get here immediately to examine this before it was too late. The trail couldn’t end here, and perhaps it was leading to something bigger.

[fancydancing]

The 8½ Laws of Rumor Spread

***Please read this article and think about every rumor you’ve heard about Scott and/or Tessa in the past year. I think it’s very enlightening***

Some rumors grind to a halt, while others circle the world. Why some ideas spread and others die.

By  Taylor Clark, published  November 1, 2008 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

If I'm not gullible and you're not gullible, how come some improbable stories take a long time to die?

"The money it's cost me," said clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger. "It hurt my integrity."

"It" was the shocking story that had circulated for years on the Internet and through word of mouth: Hilfiger, known for his colorful, preppy styles, had supposedly appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to air a disturbing grievance. "If I had known that African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice," Hilfiger complained. "I wish those people would not buy my clothes—they were made for upper-class whites." According to the tale, an outraged Winfrey immediately asked Hilfiger to leave her show—and when she came back from a commercial, he was gone.

Never mind that intentionally alienating your core market isn't exactly a shrewd business strategy. Never mind that Hilfiger had founded a philanthropic fund to benefit inner city youth long before the rumor even appeared, or that he donated over $5 million toward building a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in Washington.

Of course, Hilfiger had never said anything of the sort. At the time the rumor surfaced and spread, Hilfiger had never been on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In fact, the two had never met until 2007, when Winfrey did invite him onto the show to try to squelch the rumor once and for all. "The next time somebody sends you an email or somebody mentions this rumor to you, you know what you're supposed say to them?" said Winfrey. "You're supposed to say, 'That's a big fat lie!'"

Nor did the president of Procter & Gamble appear on The Phil Donahue Show to "come out of the closet" about his company's ties to the Church of Satan. Nor did Liz Claiborne tell Oprah that black people shouldn't wear her clothes—which didn't stop director Spike Lee from telling Esquire magazine, "It definitely happened. Get the tape. Every black woman in America needs to go to her closet, throw that shit out, and never buy another stitch of clothes from Liz Claiborne."

Skeptical or gullible, we all buy into rumors sometimes. Even Barbara Mikkelson, who runs the popular myth-debunking Web site Snopes.com with her husband David, admits she's swallowed some whoppers. "A friend told me that when his friend's daughter was off on vacation, she had a whirlwind romance with this charismatic guy," Mikkelson says. "When it was time for her to come home, he gave her a package. Inside was a ceramic coffin with a message on it: 'Welcome to the world of AIDS.' I believed that one hook, line, and sinker."

Rumors have a way of slipping under our mental defenses before we think to question them. The best ones sidestep common sense entirely. "Think of the lawsuits parents filed over subliminal messages in heavy metal songs," says Martin Bourgeois, a rumor researcher at Florida Gulf Coast University. "People believed Judas Priest was planting messages to make teenagers commit suicide; no one thought to ask, 'Why would a rock band want its audience dead?'"

Most of us don't like to think of ourselves as gullible. But we're especially likely to accept as true—and do our best to spread—tales that have several specific characteristics that take aim at our best defenses.

At its core, a rumor is just an unverified scrap of information we pass among ourselves to make sense of the world. In one case study conducted at Ohio University by psychologist Mark Pezzo, students had heard that someone on campus had died of meningitis. The story spread because the anxious students were trying to find out what was going on: "Is the rumor true?" "How do you get meningitis?" "I heard that everyone on campus will need to have a painful spinal tap, did you hear that?" In the marketplace of misinformation, fit rumors survive and spread like epidemics, while unfit rumors die quick deaths. So what separates the fit from the unfit? What, in short, are the laws of effective rumors?

1: Successful rumors needle our anxieties and emotions.

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, water wasn't the only thing that flooded the city. In the environment of intense anxiety and uncertainty, grim rumors flourished: Sharks have infested the water! Terrorists planted bombs in the levees! Murdered babies and piles of corpses filled the Superdome!

Unfortunately, the national media reported many of the rumors as fact—especially after a misinformed Mayor Ray Nagin told talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of armed gang members" were killing and raping at will inside the dome. Yet once the crisis began to abate, investigators found that almost all of the widely circulated stories were false. FEMA doctors even showed up at the Superdome with a refrigerated 18-wheeler to cart away the hundreds of dead bodies rumored. They found six—none of them a homicide victim.

So why did these stories pop up? Fear breeds rumor. The more collective anxiety a group has, the more inclined it will be to start up the rumor mill. As Rochester Institute of Technology rumor expert Nicholas DiFonzo explains, we pass rumors around primarily as a means of deciphering scary, uncertain situations: Exchanging information, even if it's ludicrously false, relieves our unease by giving us a sense that we at least know what's happening. "One major function of rumors is to figure out the facts and find what the appropriate, adaptive thing to do is. Look at 9/11. I don't ever remember feeling so threatened as I did after 9/11, and people used rumors to try to manage the threat."

Thus when 9/11 left people terrified and searching for answers, they heard a horde of alarming (and completely false) rumors—that terrorists had injected anthrax into one of every five cans of Pepsi, that no Jews showed up to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 because they knew about the attacks beforehand. (In fact, about 15 percent of those who died in the attacks were Jewish.)

Very few of the tales were positive, because we're naturally more inclined to pass on negative information. "As humans, we have a tendency to weight negative information more," says Helen Harton, a psychology professor at the University of Northern Iowa. "It makes evolutionary sense. It's more important to know how to avoid a tiger than to know where a field of nice flowers is."

Of course, most of us don't have to worry about tiger attacks anymore, but we do dread things like layoffs at work. So we toss rumors back and forth to figure out what's really up.

2: Rumors stick if they're somewhat surprising but still fit with our existing biases.

If you ever open endlessly forwarded e-mails, you're probably familiar with at least one notorious malapropism from President George W. Bush: "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepreneur.'" Or this embarrassing gem from the pop starlet Mariah Carey: "When I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean, I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff." Can you believe they actually said these things?

Well, don't. Both quips were made up by pranksters. Even so, they enjoyed viral spread for the simple reason that both are juicy enough to be shocking—yet not so far-fetched that we doubt the two parties could have uttered them. They confirm what many already believe—that Bush is, let's say, not quite firing on all cylinders, and that Carey is a vain diva—without setting off too many common-sense alarms.

In short, we're primed to accept them. As Mikkelson explains, "These stories get in under our radar because they click in with what we already believe, or want to believe." If you already think liberals are waging a war on religion, you'll be more likely to buy 2008's (untrue) rumor that the new dollar coins omit the customary "In God We Trust." (It's printed along the side.) If you buy the idea that too much money unhinges people from reality, you might believe the story that Tiger Woods rented a mansion for the 2007 U.S. Open, moved everything out, and flew in all of his own furniture so he would feel at home during the four-day tournament.

Even when presented with evidence refuting a rumor, we often stick to our biases. A 2007 University of Maryland study found that only 3 percent of Pakistanis believe Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. "It's difficult for them to accept that Al Qaeda, their fellow Muslims, could have perpetrated these acts," says DiFonzo.

3: Easily swayed people are more important than influential people in passing on a rumor.

In the mid-1970s, the Life Savers Company introduced a product that revolutionized the way kids chewed gum: Bubble Yum. Before it came along, you had to work on a piece of gum for ages to make it soft enough to blow bubbles. But Bubble Yum was squishy right out of the wrapper. It was the perfect gum… maybe a little too perfect, kids thought. What was making it so soft? Soon, the obvious answer presented itself: spider eggs. Bubble Yum was made with spider eggs.

This bit of schoolyard conjecture became ironclad truth with staggering speed, sending Bubble Yum's sky-high sales into a tailspin. Within 10 days of first getting wind of the rumor, Life Savers executives commissioned surveys that revealed "well over half" of New York area children had already heard it.

The spider egg story didn't zoom from kid to kid so quickly because of well-connected playground information magnates or influential adolescent gum mavens, but because kids are credulous, and credulous people make rumors go. "It's your willingness to pass things along that matters, not necessarily how much status or respect you have," says Duncan Watts, a sociologist who researches information spread for Yahoo. Kids will believe almost anything (another long-lived schoolyard rumor claimed the "Mikey likes it" Life cereal kid died after a mixture of soda and Pop Rocks made his stomach explode), and thus rumors run rampant in schools. But the same is true of gullible adults: They're the ones who really fuel rumors.

4: The more you hear a rumor, the more you'll buy it—even if you're hearing that it's false.

According to a poll, 11 percent of Americans believe the rumor that Barack Obama is secretly a radical Muslim who refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance and was sworn into the Senate on the Qur'an (and probably hates mom and apple pie as well). The myth that he is a Muslim is so pervasive that The New Yorker could satirize it on a cover depicting a cheery new prez Obama hanging out in the White House in full Islamic garb—with an American flag burning in the fireplace and a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall.

But if the hyper-liberal New Yorker was trying to expose the absurdity of the rumor, someone probably should have talked to Mark Pezzo first. Even hearing that a rumor is bunk, he observes, tends to plant it deeper in your mind. "No question, the more you hear something—even the same thing from the same person—the more you believe it," says Pezzo. "Politicians know all about this; the more I heard about weapons of mass destruction, the more believable they seemed to me. Even a denial can be a repetition of a rumor." (Just ask Senator John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential bid sunk thanks to whispers about his swift-boat service in Vietnam—even though most of the media stories were about how the rumors were false.)

What's more, repeating a rumor can also make people believe it came from a credible source. In one Stanford study, the more subjects heard a rumor about dried rat urine on Pepsi cans, the more likely they were to attribute the information to ConsumerReports rather than to The National Enquirer.

5: Rumors reflect the zeitgeist.

Every fall, right around mid-September, Barbara Mikkelson starts receiving urgent reports of a grisly new trend in gang initiations. Prospective gang members are driving around in the evening with their headlights intentionally turned off, the story says, and when a well-intentioned motorist flashes his brights at them, the would-be gang member has to follow the car home and kill everyone inside. SO NEVER FLASH YOUR LIGHTS THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE!

It's always in mid-September that the rumor resurfaces. "That's when you first have to start thinking about putting your headlights on when you're coming home from work," she explains. "Headlights are on people's minds. That's why you never hear it in the dead of winter or the height of summer."

Rumors have the greatest chance of multiplying when the topic is something people are already pondering. As University of British Columbia psychologist Mark Schaller points out, "What matters is a match between the nature of the information and the goals of the people who are trafficking that information." So what's on our minds lately?

The election of 2008, and the thousand plausible and implausible tales swirling around the candidates. Among the best ones: As a Navy pilot, John McCain executed a "wet start" (a maneuver that involves flooding your fighter plane's engine with fuel so that starting up unleashes a huge and macho burst of flame) so reckless that he actually set an aircraft carrier on fire. Then there's the one about how Barack Obama has been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan—they're tricky, those Klansmen.

6: Sticky rumors are simple and concrete.

Examine your stockpile of offbeat conventional wisdom: It takes seven years for swallowed gum to pass through the body. We only use 10 percent of our brains. The Great Wall of China can be seen from space. People swallow eight spiders a year in their sleep.

These tidbits are all simple and specific, with a vivid detail that sticks in the mind. They're also false. But they illustrate the point that tangible, easily graspable tales have an excellent chance of catching on. "Complicated ideas are not that spreadable," says Duncan Watts. "Ideas with content, when they do spread, lose their content." Rumors work just like a game of telephone; after they've been transmitted a few times, the details get lost and the message grows simpler.

According to Mikkelson, the spider-swallowing rumor got its start when a columnist for PC Professional wrote a story bemoaning our tendency to believe every harebrained factoid in mass e-mails; the writer made up the statistic as an example of the kind of ludicrous thing credulous people will, um, swallow. In time, the fact that it was a joke got lost in transmission, and now millions live in fear of sleepingwith their mouth open.

The principle of concreteness also helps spread urban legends (which are rumors presented in story form, usually as something that happened to a friend's ex-girlfriend's mechanic's second cousin). Ever heard the tale of the guy who accepts a drink from a stranger at a bar, then wakes up in a tub full of ice, one kidney poorer? How about the one where the woman tries to dry out her wet lap dog by putting it in the microwave? Chances are, you remembered those tall tales because a visceral image—fingering your stitches in an ice-filled tub, watching a live dog sizzle in a microwave—got lodged in your mind.

"Urban legends survive only if they conjure up very visual or very tactile images," says Chip Heath, a Stanford business professor who studies idea spread. "Our brains are wired to remember concrete, sensory things better than abstract things." For example, if researchers give people lists of words to memorize and then recall later, the tangible ones ("apple," "pencil") will spring to mind more often than the conceptual ones ("truth," "justice").

7: Rumors that last are difficult to disprove.

Ever wonder why even the craziest legends and conspiracy theories never seem to die? Why do people still believe there's a giant prehistoric reptile prowling Loch Ness, even though innumerable hours of investigation have produced zero proof of such a creature? Well, it's a pretty big lake: How can we be sure she's not in there? It's tough to disprove the idea definitively.

As DiFonzo explains, a rumor like "On Thursday's Late Show, David Letterman's hairpiece fell off!" doesn't work, because people can check it out and easily find evidence it didn't happen. But a rumor like "I heard David Letterman's hairpiece fell off during a show, but they destroyed all the tapes!"—that's more like it.

Persistent rumors tend to have what Chip Heath calls a "testable credential," some element that can be misconstrued to give the story a whiff of credibility. "Rumors very often have a little truth test that people can run," he explains. "There was a rumor in the San Francisco Bay Area in the '90s that Snapple supports the KKK. You turned the label around, and you saw a capital letter K with a circle around it. People were doing that test, and then all of a sudden this seemingly preposterous rumor becomes more plausible." (For the record, Snapple bottles do bear the K—the symbol for "kosher"—as do thousands of other drinks and food products.)

8: We are eager to believe bad things about people we envy.

Is there anyone in America who hasn't heard about Richard Gere and the gerbil? The story goes something like this. Gere checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital in California complaining of intestinal pain and rectal bleeding. When doctors investigated, they found Gere's beloved pet gerbil Tibet, shaved, declawed, and dead, lodged in Gere's rectum—the result of "gerbilling," a sexual practice common among gay men. So doctors performed an emergency gerbilectomy on Gere. The gerbil was removed—but the story stuck.

Needless to say, none of this ever happened. Gere was never admitted to the hospital for rectal bleeding, and "gerbilling" is not a sexual practice at all, among gay men or anyone else. Gerbils aren't even legal in California (for agricultural reasons, not sexual ones). Like most rumors about celebrities, its origin is unknown, but we do know the rumor hit a tipping point in the 1980s after a hoaxster, claiming to be from the ASPCA, flooded Hollywood fax machines with a bogus press alert about Gere's putative "gerbil abuse."

Celebrities are easy targets for sordid tales. An almost equally widespread rumor is the one about the lead singer of New Kids on the Block being rushed to the emergency room, where doctors pumped his stomach and removed more than a gallon of semen he'd swallowed during an orgy of oral sex. The details vary: Sometimes the quantity of ejaculate is reported as one gallon, sometimes 10. Sometimes the substance removed is human semen; other times it's dog semen. The rumor has variously featured Rod Stewart, Elton John, David Bowie, Marc Almond, Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol, Jeff Beck, Jon Bon Jovi, Alanis Morrissette, Li'l Kim, Foxy Brown, Britney Spears, and Fiona Apple. But the basic story stays the same.

Once someone hits a certain level of celebrity and adulation, it seems, the mill starts to churn automatically—and the more beautiful and successful the star, the more depraved the rumors. Jamie Lee Curtis is a hermaphrodite. Cher (or Janet Jackson) had a rib removed so she'd look skinnier. Catherine the Great died trying to make love to a horse.

What is it about celebrity rumors that makes them spread so widely and stick so hard? Part of it is good old-fashioned schadenfreude. "People pass along rumors that they, on some level, tend to agree with, if there's something in the story that they identify with, that they want to be true," says Mikkelson. "We envy celebrities, and it's just human nature to pull down what has been raised so high."

Richard Gere is so annoyingly handsome that we want to believe he's really a sicko or otherwise flawed. Girls were so taken by the New Kids on the Block that men longed to believe they were actually secret gay dog fellators.

The easiest way to tarnish the reputation of a male heartthrob is to undermine his masculinity and suggest he's not interested in women at all—but rather, men, gerbils, or dogs. Which is why gay rumors have plagued so many handsome Hollywood leading men, from Tom Cruise to Johnny Depp to Orlando Bloom. "Saying that so-and-so good-looking male actor is gay is seen as pulling him down a peg or two," explains Mikkelson. "It's like, well, he may be attractive to women, but he's not attracted to women—so there!"

The Ninth Law

We might also postulate a final law of rumor survival: Sometimes, there is no "why." Often, we tell remarkable tales to build relationships or show off our yarn-spinning prowess—not necessarily because we think they're true.

And hey, sometimes they are true. Research by DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia, of the University of South Australia, has found that in groups with an established hierarchy—like large offices—the scuttlebutt you hear about company affairs is around 95 percent accurate.

"Every Halloween, you hear the rumors about people putting razors in apples and giving them to trick-or-treaters," DiFonzo says. "Actually, my own family had an experience where my wife found a sewing needle embedded in a piece of our kids' Halloween candy. I know, it sounds crazy—the rumor expert believes a rumor. Don't tell anyone."

The 8 1/2 Laws of Rumors Spread

[eweniversal]

Erai'hym Character and Race Guide

Kotaphira Havanne - Derhanish (half Elfirrin)

Named after the founder of the city Maerise in the country Derhan. From the hold called Whitepeak, she is on a quest to establish herself as an important member of the Derhanish knights based on her own merit and not inheritance. Nicknames include Phira, Grapes, and Twobits.

Ayler Havanne - Derhanish (human)

Half brother to Kotaphira Havanne, intent on proving himself through his own means, no matter the cost. Also from Whitepeak, served in the same squadron as his half sister Kotaphira. Nicknames include Lyre, Clouds, and Threebits.

Laranen Relt - Jenyae

A wandering merchant and showman, she is native to the volcanic jungles of Firastrous. Having met many and important people, she has picked up many valuable pieces of artifacts- and information.

Sir Bicroy - Derhanish (human)

From Whitepeak, he leads the squadron called Ninebits. From this squadron come Kotaphira and Ayler Havanne.

Kotaphira Arculum - Derhanish (half Elfirrin)

Founder of the free city Maerise in the wartorn country of Derhan, Kotaphira is perhaps the oldest member of their society. Still sitting on the council, she advises most of the important ongoings and oversees the military higher-ups. Through her influence, she has conducted many peace treaties, talks, and negotiations- even if half of them were for her own gain.

Mind riddled with constant anxiety and chatter from an unknown relic's influence, she struggles with making sound decisions and formulated opinions based on self interest instead of as seeing the larger picture. Despite having many children over the years (Taskell, Samund, Perine, Baloren, Aress, Jaesin, and Maeldrid) she is not known for her close knit familial ties. Titles include Lady Doe, Madame Kota, and Dragon Queller.

Rinlear Moban - Derhanish (human undead)

Once called brother to Kotaphira Arculum, the two were raised together in the small logging town Daelen, west of Derhan in the mountains. Dreaming of a peaceful and academic future, he established a university called “The College” nearby to encourage magical teachings to all, as a safe haven for whoever was fleeing any sort of persecution.

In the Battle of Laves, he almost lost his life protecting his best friends. A wicked and strange necromancer from the country Arc'hilde captured him and did extensive experimentation on him, attempting to create a sort of vial to hold magical essences of others. It backfired, and Rinlear became a consumer of magical essences instead- which caused his body to rot but still be held together.

Echertai Omos - Derhanish (human)

Lover to Kotaphira Arculum in her younger years and best friend to Rinlear, the three had worked together to bring their dream of a free and welcoming country to fruition. He established trade routes, invitations from other countries at the threat of war, and set up holds around the country of Derhan to ensure safety to the civilians. During the Battle of Laves, he sacrificed himself to save Kotaphira, having followed her own self serving orders at the risk of destroying the newly founded city of Maerise at the hands of Arc’hilde.

Taskell Omos - Derhanish (quarter Elfirrin)

Son to Kotaphira Arculum and Echertai Omos, Taskell is 200 years old and has long since grown past a serious and ‘old’ demeanor, despite his reputation for having once been a sour a cynical man. Having taken up parkour in the past 50 years, he is well adept at scaling, climbing, and leaping. Having served in the military and tried his hand at sitting on the council, he’s given that up to be more of a snoop; sneaking around and learning everyone’s secrets to spread rumors for fun. An all around easy going guy and jokester/prankster, he enjoys his time learning and messing with others. Titles and nicknames include: Sir Brightsword, Kellman, and Quidnunc.

Samund Miras - Derhanish (quarter Elfirrin)

Younger half-brother (Kotaphira Arculum being his mother as well) to Taskell by about 70 years, Samund is studious and somber. Having recently been assigned to the city council for public finance, he takes his job seriously, though gives the other council members a hard time in reminding them the costs of things.

He and Taskell aren’t on the best of terms, but they tolerate each other at dinner functions and other public meetings. After the death of their younger half-sister Perine, the two brothers drifted apart and never fully healed the chasm between them. Titles and nicknames include: Sir Hardoc, Miramira (by Taskell only), and Councilman Miras.

Kemryn Sebuho - Derhanish (half Elfirrin)

One of the youngest and brightest of her magical class, Kemryn is in her 8th year at the College. Studying to hone her magical ability of creating wards and channeling magics like water, she has become quite adept in her studying and has caught the eye of Kotaphira Arculum to work directly under her. Kemryn and her sisters (Ia’wori and Sadinah) can use their magical abilities together to create vessels to trap newly released souls (golems basically, but refined). Level headed and quirky, she is still a bit naive but very much open about her ideas on others. Titles and nicknames include: Lady Wardsmith, Lady Pink, and Bunny.

Steirtorim Brighteyes - Derhanish (Trocblood)

A mix of Derhanish human and trocoblin, Steirtorim has a muddled skin color the blend of green and brown. Short tusks protrude from his lower teeth out of his mouth, and his nose is shorter than the average human’s. Because of the commonality of trocbloods now in Maerise (within the past seventy years or so) he’s just now adjusting fully to feeling on more equal grounds to others such as furmen and the Derhanish natives. After the Treaty of Ulpustur, he was assigned to the royal Maerisian Knights, and over the years became captain, serving directly under Kotaphira Arculum. His loyalty and honesty knows no bounds, but this serves as a weakness. Titles and nicknames include: Captain, Sir Changorim, and Steir.

Verusk Alondale - Arc’hildean (Night Elfirrin)

Advisor and brother-in-law to King Selreth of Maerise, Verusk has been working over the past several decades to keep his personal sanity in tact. Lady Kotaphira has irritated him to no end, but he still respects her due to her abilities and serving on the council under him. Verusk is not clueless when it comes to most other’s ongoings and tries to be steps ahead at all times, but he’s not perfect in his attempts. His nephew (Prince Jonvis) is the only one who has caught on to his secret intentions, and seems to be the only one able to keep up or even be steps ahead of him, despite the boy’s much younger age. Titles include: Advisor Alondale, Sir Husk, and Verdant Shadow.

King Selreth - Derhanish (human)

After the Treaty of Ulpustur, Selreth returned with Verusk, Verusk’s sister (Aneela), Steirtorim, and Kotaphira Arculum where he was crowned king by the previous one. Since then, he married (Aneela), and has run the city- and country- to the best of his abilities. A family oriented man, he places his family above the city, much to Kotaphira Arculum’s frustration (and advantage). He is hard headed and logic driven, but he still listens to Kotaphira’s advice given her age, wisdom, and experience with the city. Titles include: Sire, Sir Trell, and Stonenose (by Steirtorim only).

Princess Mylla - Derhanish (half Elfirrin)

Younger sister to (prince Jonvis), she is stubborn and loud. Allowed to do as she pleases, she never had proper restrictions in her upbringing and was quite spoiled. Still, she was loved by all for her beauty and gracefulness, revered almost as a mascot by the Maerisian populace. Her magical ability allows her to absorb any magic aimed at her and return it to the spellcaster, making her ideal to fight in a mage’s battle. However, she has no desire to join the military or College, much more comfortable at parties and balls so she may receive more praise by others. Titles and nicknames include: Princess, Madame Frou, and Sponge (by Jonvis only).

The Boar's Head - (unknown)

Leader of the Thieves’ Guild, The Boar’s Head keeps hidden from everyone, including the guild’s own members. No one knows the age or race of The Boar’s Head, except that they might be a woman. Rumors state ‘she’ is older than the city itself, having lived in caves with ‘her’ pet boar that used to exist underground, and has infiltrated the city after it’s construction to steal from those who had killed her boar. Kotaphira Arculum is the only person from aboveground The Boar’s Head chooses to interact with.

---

Races:

Human: Derhanish human 'natives’ are dark skinned- they migrated many generations ago from the low deserts of Lutria. Light skinned humans are typically from the country of Arc'hilde. The native humans to the country Firastrous resemble real world Native Americans and South Americans.

Edirthean: From the magical forest called Edirthe (ee dirth ee) come 12 magical tribes of Edite (ee die tee), their powers granted by the love elemental, Loffine. Protectors of the magical well in the center, they keep a precious balance within the forest, but are constantly at war with the trocoblins. They resemble real world mix of Pacific Islanders and Pakistani.

Elfirrin: From Lutria, descendents of the light elemental Leada, natural magic wielders. Elfirrin blood cannot mix with Vessifer or Trocbloods. Lifespan is typically 800 years. Tall, limber, and sharp features set them apart from typical humanoids. Pointed ears make them easily recognizable as Elfirrin.

Sun Elfirrin: Born during the day, they have skin tones that range from yellow/tan to black, hair colors that range from pastels to white, and they cannot venture out at night for long periods of time.

Night Elfirrin: Born at night, they have dark colored hair, and pale skin. They are not restricted to the day time, making them ideal assassins.

Moon Elfirrin: Previously Sun Elves that were transformed by exposure to the light of the moon called Herac'ine (hee rak ine).

Half Elifirrin: Still magically inclined, but their hair color is typically vibrant in hue. Lifespan is halved.

Quarter Elfirrin: Softer hue color for hair, and only slight magical abilities. Lifespan is about 250 years.

Furmen/scalemen/feathermen: From the northern reaches of Ai'ltiem down to the hot sandy deserts of Lutria, to northwest of Derhan, they are tribal and territorial. Bipedal and larger than the average human, each tribe imbues physical traits of animals. They are unable to breed with any other humanoid or race but their own. They are not magically inclined.

Trocoblin: Descendents of the dark elemental Derdia's nightbeasts, these creatures resemble a mix of trolls, orcs, and goblins. Not altogether intelligent, they do have a verbal form of communication. Any magics a troc or Trocblood might have is crude and raw, but not strong.

Trocblood/ trocmutt: A trocblood is any person of trocoblin ancestry. “Trocmutt” is a racial slur. Their skin is tougher than a typical humanoid’s, their intelligence much higher than a trocoblin’s, and they seem to be much more susceptible to magics than any other race or race blend.

Jenyae: Though descendents of the fire elemental Firastra, they are also bound by earthen magics. Limbs are typically transparent, while skin color ranges from yellow to red to green. They are magically inclined and have wish granting abilities (based on the laws of equality), though are known to be clever tricksters who put on colorful, entertaining shows.

Vessifer: From the frozen reaches of Ironmarsh, they are the descendents of the dark elemental Derdia, they were created as a natural enemy to Elfirrin. The Vessifer curse does not dilute if one has a non-Vessifer parent. You either have the curse or you don't (if you don't, then neither parent was Vessifer). The curse activates when under extreme mental or emotional strain, and the Vessifer are very emotional creatures. Normal form is similar to humans, but severely attractive, while their cursed form is of hellish nightmares and individualized based on the person.

Heraghine: From the Vessifer and the love elemental Loffine come a line of special healers that balance the Vessifer's emotional states out. Called the Heraghine (hee ra ine), one is born to a generation. She is always wise, insightful, and has the ability to enter in to the minds of her patients to help quell their suffering. Her method of healing is by encouraging the mind to work on it's own instead of as an invasive force. Some Heraghine are granted a special ability of foresight, though this can greatly affect her mental stability depending on how strong the foresight is.

Aethestian: Descendents of the wind elemental Aerie, these people carry an avian gene, though most lay dormant. In those that are active, they have what resemble wings but they are usually small and pathetic, though greatly revered and decorated. Aethestians resemble real world Asians.

Phaerie: Short creatures that resemble a mix of human and moth or human and plant. Native to the jungles around Arc'hilde, they are simple minded but have a high magical inclination.

Piksie: Tiny beings that emit a magical glow, they are native to the magical forest called Edirthe. Historically they are known for being the cause of wars and the ends of them.

Ulpustur Dragon: From the Ulpustur mountain range in the far Western region of Ironmarsh, the Ulpustur dragons are very large, old, and intelligent beings who study magic, philosophy, and the arts. Despite their cultured ways, they still rely heavily on instincts and the laws of nature. Through extensive magical studies, elder dragons are able to take on crude humanoid forms, but none are perfect.

Cave Dragon: Much smaller than the Ulpustur Dragon, Cave Dragons are seen typically as annoying pests, dwelling within the cave homes of the Ulpustur Dragons.

Akooakae: From the ocean that surround the Eastern parts of the country Arc'hilde come the Akooakae, half humanoid, half sea creatures who emerged in recent times. Worshipping the water elemental Akooa, these beings rely on each other and a female leader to act on their behalf. Matriarchal and vindictive, they are sly creatures but ever curious. 

[siantlark-blog1]

Asian Anarchist, Anti-colonial and Anti-Authoritarian Reading List

Note: This was originally just a reading list that wasn’t started by me. The project eventually got abandoned and I remembered it recently, so I’m posting it here instead of Google Docs so more people can actually use it. I tried to clean it up a little but I’m too lazy to take away a bunch of the idiosyncrasies and asides that accumulated. Whatever could be found online (for free) is listed, whatever couldn’t is listed with the place to buy the book in question. Also I don’t use Tumblr so I have no clue if this will like delete itself or anything. Oh and Anti-Authoritarianism and Anarchism are used interchangeably, and things that really shouldn’t be considered anarchism (Indigenous Resistance to states and modern society for example) is listed because honestly more people need to know about it anyways.  Share this if you want, it was rotting away on some godforsaken corner of the internet anyways, it needs sunlight. 

Global Anarchism

Non-Western Anarchisms, Rethinking the Global Context (Jason Adams)

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott  (Libgen link to The Art Of Not Being Governed here)

Bibliography of Western Language Publications on Asian Anarchism  (Compiled by: Eef Vermeij / 2nd draft, August 2015)

Anarchism A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas  (Compiled by Robert Graham)

Pan-Asian Struggles and Solidarity & General Anarchism

Building a Non-Eurocentric Anarchism in Our Communities: Dialogue with Ashanti Alston (Institute of Anarchist Studies)

Legacy to Liberation: Politics and Culture of Revolutionary Asian/Pacific America edited by Fred Ho

Against Communism, Against Capitalism: The New Asian Revolution by Anonymous

Asian Anarchism: China, Japan, Korea, India

Leftism in East Asia

Chinese Anarchism

The Chinese Anarchist Movement by George T. Yu and Robert Scalapino (The Anarchist Library)

What Women Should Know About Communism by He Zhen 何殷震(PDF)

Towards an Anarchist History of the Chinese Revolution by Andrew Flood

He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China by Peter Zarrow (PDF)

The Individual in Early Chinese Anarchism: Feminism and Utopianism in the Tianyi (Natural Justice) by Ole Fossgård  

Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture by Peter Zarrow

Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism by Edward S. Krebs

Anarchist Publications of the May Fourth Era by Daniel SS Cairns

Chinese American Anarchism (+ Ungovernability?) (Asian American Anarchism)?

Chinese Anarchists in the U.S. by syndicalist (libcom.org)

The Equality Society: Chinese Anarchists in the 1920s USA by Mitchell Landsberg (anarkismo.net)

Anarchism in Hong Kong

An account and critique of the 1970s Hong Kong libertarian socialist group 70s Front by Ken Knabb (libcom.org)

Anarchism in Japan

A Brief History of Japanese Anarchism

Anarchist Opposition to Japanese Militarism, 1926-37 by John Crump (flag.blackened.net)  

The Anarchist Movement in Japan, 1906-1996 by John Crump (The Anarchist Library)

E-texts of Shusui Kotoku’s works in Japanese

Against the God Emperor: The Anarchist Treason Trials in Japan by Stefan Anarkowic (AK Press)

The Labor Movement in Japan by Sen Katayama

1868-2000: Anarchism in Japan (libcom.org)

A Unique Tradition of Materialism in Japan by Katsuhiko Endo

Anarcho-syndicalism in Japan: 1911 to 1934 by Philippe Pelletier

Bakunin and Japan (An history of Bakunin, Osugi Sakae, and Anarchists in Japan) (Libcom.org)

ZENGAKUREN: Japan's Revolutionary Students  A collection of essays and histories translated from the original Japanese.

Uprising: Music, youth, and protest against the policies of the Abe Shinzo government (Asia-Pacific Journal)

Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kotoku Shusui and Japan’s First Anti-Imperialist Movement by Robert Thomas Tierney (Contains both a history of Shusui’s works and an actual translation of Shusui’s Imperialism)

Anarchism/Leftism in Korea

Chronology: The Pre-War Korean Anarchist Movement

The Story of the Korean Anarchists and the Anarchist Revolution in Manchuria, 1929-1931 by Eric Every

The Korean Anarchist Movement

Anarchism in Korea: Independence, Transnationalism, and the Question of National Development, 1919-1984 by Dongyoun Hwang (2016)

Who Was Yo Un-Hyung? by Lee Wha Yang (Part II here)

Gwangju and the Paris Commune  by George Katsiaficas on grassroots and decentralized uprisings.

Leftism in the Pacific

Imminent Rebellion 9 - An anarchist journal from the South Pacific

How the Polynesian Panthers Changed Our World

The Anarchist Confederation of Oceania

Anarchism in Tonga

Tonga - (libcom)

Anarchism in Samoa

The Mau Movement - (sidenote: bummed this blog is no longer active.)

Anarchism in New Zealand

Anarchism.nz

Interview with Sam Buchanan in Aotearoa New Zealand (Alpine Anarchist)

Women in the Polynesian Panthers Legacy - Paving the Way

Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters: A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand From the Mid-1950s to the Early 1980s by Toby Boraman (2008)

“It’s Not Black and White - It’s Blurry”: An Interview with Teanu Tuiono

Tino Rangatiratanga and Capitalism by Teanu Tuiono (Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua)

The Evolution of Contemporary Maori Protest

Leftism in South East Asia

The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott (Libgen link to The Art Of Not Being Governed here)

Repelling States: Evidence from Upland Southeast Asia 

Anarchism/Leftism in the Philippines

The Age of Globalization by Benedict Anderson

About anarchist history in the Philippines (libcom)

An Archipelagic Confederation by Bas Umali

Gasera Journal - A oneoff publication by anarchist inspired activists in the Philippines. Articles are a mix of Tagalog and English.

Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition - by Dylan Rodriguez

Cordilleran Resistance to the Philippine government

Macli-ing Dulag

Anarchism in Indonesia

Anarchism in Central Java, Indonesia - an interview with local anarchists by a WSM supporter travelling in the region (Workers Solidarity Movement)

A 2010 interview with Indonesian anarchists about the anarchist movement

Anarchism in Cambodia

Cambodia: Anti-Colonial Protest 1863 - 1945 (Blackwell Ref. Library.)

Anarchism in Vietnam

In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary by Ngo Van, trans. by Hélène Fleury and Ken Knabb (eBook) (Libgen link to In the Crossfire here)

Anti-colonial Religious Movement In Vietnam

Early History of Vietnam - Anti-Colonial Struggle

The Anti-Colonial Movement in Vietnam

Phan Boi Chau & Dong Du

Anarchism in Thailand

Political Unrest in Thailand (libcom)

Class Struggle for Democracy in Thailand (Naked Punch)

Anarchism in Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur: Police raid Anarchist space 

Leftism in South Asia

South Asian Anarchism: Paths to Praxis (Attack the System)

Revolutionary Lives in South Asia: Acts and Afterlives of Anticolonial Political Action (Routledge, Google Books)

Anarchism in India

The Gulabi Gang (Utter Pradesh, North India) (Shades of Brown)

Har Dayal’s Writings in Punjabi

Decolonizing Anarchism: An Antiauthoritarian History of India’s Liberation Struggle by Maia Ramnath

Decolonizing Anarchism: An Interview with Maia Ramnath (Institute for Anarchist Studies)

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism

Anarchism in Pakistan

News of Anarchism - Pakistan (Scribd)

Anarchists of Pakistan (Facebook guh)

The Pakistani Experiment in Anarchism (dawn.com)

[sheikhfarhan4]

Meet With #shahmeerabbas Well Known #Pakistani #prankster Thank You @shahmeermulti For The Beautiful Picture. Very Nice To Meet You Bro. 😊 ❤ I Wish You All The Best For Your Future. Good Luck 🍀.

[blog-writting]

Famous Pakistani Youtuber and Prankster Khan Ali "Velle Log" Arrested in Harassments Case

Famous Pakistani Youtuber and Prankster Khan Ali “Velle Log” Arrested in Harassments Case

Pakistani Youtuber and prankster, Khan Ali, owner of “Velle Log” Youtube Channel has been arrested after posting YouTube videos of him pulling a prank on women by handing them money and asking them to buy shawls to cover their heads. He was arrested by Gakhar Mandi police in Gujranwala after social media users complained against the harassment of women on roads and in public places for not…

[iamfawad25]

Shocking and sad news, watch my video https://t.co/kJpLF6cje0 of how and why a Pakistani Prankster #RanaZuhair #LahoriVines Got Killed During A Scary Prank Shoot. #PakistaniPranksterKilled #IAmFawad https://www.instagram.com/p/BsDyDndhd-G/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1rrvtr4r201mf

[iamfawad25]

Pakistani Prankster Rana Zuhair #LahoriVines Got Killed | How And Why?

Shocking and sad news, watch my video https://youtu.be/MJ5ZfoquhOw of how and why a Pakistani Prankster #RanaZuhair #LahoriVines Got Killed During A Scary Prank Shoot. #PakistaniPranksterKilled #IAmFawad