Earth has been restored to 1-day simultaneous rotation.
September 9, 2015 9:31 AM   Subscribe

First created in 1997, Gene Ray's Time Cube disappeared on August 24, 2015. Timecube.org now points to nothing. Twitter mourns. Snapshots of Time Cube continue to exist on the Internet Archive. The status of Gene Ray, creator of Time Cube, who would be 87 this year, is unknown.
posted by Shepherd (78 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
End of an era
OR IS IT?


posted by gwint at 9:37 AM on September 9, 2015 [10 favorites]


sometime in the cubic future we will realize how right he was.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 9:38 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


....
posted by clorox at 9:38 AM on September 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


It will always be alive in the fourth dimension.
posted by Artw at 9:41 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]



posted by Wolfdog at 9:43 AM on September 9, 2015 [14 favorites]


It's okay, don't panic. Abe Vigoda is STILL ALIVE. The Earth is safe. For now.
posted by briank at 9:43 AM on September 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


Pure strain gold you say
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 9:45 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


I hope he's okay.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:46 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


You can pry zombo.com from my cold dead hands you time cube stealing bastards!
posted by gideonswann at 9:48 AM on September 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


For me, Timecube.org shows a page that says "I AM THE SECOND WISEST HUMAN." And that then links to timecube.com, which leads to nowhere and to nothing.
posted by dng at 9:48 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


::
posted by Maecenas at 9:50 AM on September 9, 2015 [5 favorites]


And that then links to timecube.com, which leads to nowhere and to nothing.

It could be a link to outside the space-time continuum.
posted by Rob Rockets at 9:50 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


It doesn't point to NOTHING, actually. It's pointing to http://imptestrm.com/, which doesn't appear to be much of anything aside from a blank-page redirect at the moment.

I've been reading TimeCube and AboveGod for years and years and years. Gene Ray is the OG internet crank and a fascinating, bizarre read. The TimeCube and AboveGod text was updated multiple times per year, too, so if you're hitting the snapshots on archive.org be sure to move back to see earlier craziness (if that sort of thing appeals to you).

YOU ARE EDUCATED STUPID
posted by radiosilents at 9:51 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


What do you mean? It's still there in the pan-dimentional web at level... oh I've said too much
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:55 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've been reading TimeCube and AboveGod for years and years and years. Gene Ray is the OG internet crank and a fascinating, bizarre read.

Feh, he's a relative newcomer compared to Archimedes Plutonium, Alexander Abian et al.

Alas, Francis E. Dec (as far as I know) never lived to see free AOL CD-ROMs.
posted by acb at 9:57 AM on September 9, 2015 [9 favorites]


. __ .
|🌍|
. __ .
posted by brecc at 10:02 AM on September 9, 2015 [12 favorites]


I hope the post doesn't read as snide or dismissive -- I have a genuine affection for Time Cube and Gene Ray and his steadfast, unflagging commitment to it. I was e-mailing a colleague about something and made reference to it in the e-mail, then thought I should check the link just in case, and was genuinely shocked to see it was gone.

Time Cube has been on the Internet since shortly after I got on the Internet. It's been a pole star for Internet weirdness for nigh two decades, and it just being... gone... makes me really sad and kind of unsettled, like when an old and rundown corner store closes or that guy who is always on the park bench feeding pigeons just isn't there any more.
posted by Shepherd at 10:04 AM on September 9, 2015 [33 favorites]


Time is not cubic, it's qubic — the first player will win if there are two optimal players, but when is that ever the case?
posted by ubiquity at 10:06 AM on September 9, 2015


It's okay, don't panic. Abe Vigoda is STILL ALIVE. The Earth is safe. For now.

Zombo.com is still up too. THE INFINITE REMAINS ATTAINABLE AT ZOMBOCOM.
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:07 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


And now how will we know that we are all EDUCATED STUPID?

: :
posted by dis_integration at 10:12 AM on September 9, 2015


Noooooo! Time Cube was my sanity check. If I ever went there and it was making sense it was time to call my psychiatrist and set up an appointment.
posted by MikeMc at 10:14 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Everybody understands Mickey Mouse. Few understand Hermann Hesse. Only a handful understood Albert Einstein. And nobody understood Gene Ray.
posted by foobaz at 10:15 AM on September 9, 2015 [11 favorites]


Scott Alexander once wrote a steelman of Time Cube. Do not read it unless you want to be almost completely convinced that Time Cube is true.
posted by officer_fred at 10:16 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


At least you can still read the label on your Dr. Bronner's soap.
posted by TedW at 10:16 AM on September 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


Exactly as foretold by John Titor.
posted by dr_dank at 10:18 AM on September 9, 2015 [13 favorites]


Time has inertia
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:20 AM on September 9, 2015



posted by mbrubeck at 10:24 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


With this loss we are all, now, educated a little bit stupider.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 10:27 AM on September 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


I thought the current thinking was that time is a flat circle.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:31 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


the fourth dimension
more like fourth DEMENTin', amirite?

Well, the Space Jam site is still up and functioning, so the internet has not been totally Facebooked and Reddited. Also the Heaven's Gate site is still there, as are other relics (trigger warning: Cracked.com). And if they could bring back Twinkies, who knows what the future holds (geez, I sound a little like The Amazing Kreskin, who is also incredibly still around).
posted by oneswellfoop at 10:35 AM on September 9, 2015


Another old site: Pacific Grand Prix, a Formula One team from 1994 to 1995 (Wikipedia article). Unfortunately many of the images and some of the pages are dead, but it still look great in Netscape 1.1!
posted by clorox at 10:42 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Scott Alexander once wrote a steelman of Time Cube. Do not read it unless you want to be almost completely convinced that Time Cube is true.

now my eschaton has been thoroughly immanentized, dammit.
posted by quonsar II: smock fishpants and the temple of foon at 10:42 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Time Cube was like the early Rick Roll. You sent people there and waited for them to come back all "WTF did you just send me to???"
posted by emjaybee at 10:44 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


I thought the current thinking was that time is a flat circle.

You say this in jest, but there was more-than-a-second while watching True Detective that I thought, when Rust says that, that he was about to start talking about Timecube, and that he was actually the killer, and his faltering mask of sanity had finally cracked.
posted by eclectist at 10:47 AM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


  .
.   .
  .
posted by Rangi at 10:47 AM on September 9, 2015


There's a few Gene Ray / Time Cube videos on YouTube. The one I know of is from a talk he gave at MIT in 2002. IIRC they thought it'd be funny to invite him, then found a valuable life lesson in how people with mental illness are not there for your entertainment.
posted by Nelson at 10:49 AM on September 9, 2015 [25 favorites]


---
| |
---
posted by Golem XIV at 10:50 AM on September 9, 2015


Time has inertia

BLOW UP THE MOON AND JOLT THE EARTH OUT OF ITS MALIGNANT ORBIT
ALTER EARTH'S ORBIT AND TILT - STOP GLOBAL DISASTERS AND EPIDEMICS
ALTER THE SOLAR SYSTEM. REORBIT VENUS INTO A NEAR EARTH-LIKE ORBIT
TO CREATE A BORN AGAIN EARTH (1990).
posted by straight at 10:59 AM on September 9, 2015


RESURRECT DEAD website ON PLANET JUPITER.
posted by Foosnark at 11:05 AM on September 9, 2015 [13 favorites]


I haven't felt this way in nearly 15 years... when Schwa disappeared... God I'm old...
posted by Devoidoid at 11:06 AM on September 9, 2015


IIRC they thought it'd be funny to invite him, then found a valuable life lesson in how people with mental illness are not there for your entertainment.

The sense I got from some other interview of Ray was that he was For Sure a weirdo but when he wasn't talking about his wacky ideas he was as coherent as the next random jackass and seemed like he could manage in the world just fine.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:53 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Scott Alexander once wrote a steelman of Time Cube. Do not read it unless you want to be almost completely convinced that Time Cube is true.

Actually just took a pretty hard right into it's own just-as-potent flavor of reactionary crackpottery once the deep affection for "Moldbugism" became impossible to steer around
posted by anazgnos at 11:59 AM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Has nobody posted the Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives song yet?
posted by Shmuel510 at 12:03 PM on September 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


Maybe it's just gearing up for a visual refresh...
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:24 PM on September 9, 2015


well, we still have VHEMT to consider
posted by pyramid termite at 12:25 PM on September 9, 2015


More good is caused by evil than by good, do what's right!! Enlarge the positive! Replace the negative with the moral ABC's ALL-ONE-GOD-FAITH that lightning-like unites the Human race! FOR WE'RE ALL ONE OR NONE! "LISTEN CHILDREN ETERNAL FATHER ETERNALLY ONE!" WE'RE ALL ONE OR NONE! EXCEPTIONS ETERNALLY? NONE!!

posted by the painkiller at 12:35 PM on September 9, 2015


(oops, sorry, wrong screed, nothing to see here)
posted by the painkiller at 12:36 PM on September 9, 2015


Has nobody posted the Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives song yet?
By MetaFilter's own dfan!

I feel like the number of people who know the reference has gone down over time. This is going to make it even worse.
posted by dfan at 12:42 PM on September 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


Scott Alexander once wrote a steelman of Time Cube. Do not read it unless you want to be almost completely convinced that Time Cube is true.

Really? In the classic fashion of Moldbuggian writers everywhere, I found it roughly as long, incomprehensible, and obnoxious as Time Cube itself, except that unlike Time Cube it should know better.
posted by Itaxpica at 12:45 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


IRC they thought it'd be funny to invite him, then found a valuable life lesson in how people with mental illness are not there for your entertainment.

The sense I got from some other interview of Ray was that he was For Sure a weirdo but when he wasn't talking about his wacky ideas he was as coherent as the next random jackass and seemed like he could manage in the world just fine.


That doesn't mean he isn't mentally ill.
posted by Pendragon at 1:25 PM on September 9, 2015


We have less time than I initially thought.
posted by doctor_negative at 1:32 PM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Man, that Netscape page! Seeing it made me a little woozy; it was like the scent of madeleines for my Internet lifetime.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:34 PM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Time Cube was like the early Rick Roll

Like adding alt.test to your usenet post distribution in a followup, just to be a dick. I can't think of anything earlier. Maybe sticking a paper clip in an RS-232 pinout?
posted by sidereal at 1:38 PM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


as has been mentioned above, it points to http://imptestrm.com/, registered to Ashkaan Rahimi of rookmedia.net, which advertises itself as, "A monthly magazine targeting successful well traveled professionals interested in doing business in Canada and the Middle East north Africa (MENA) region."
The images are hosted on rmgserving.com which is registered to domainsbyproxy.com aaaand that's all I got.

p.s. when you google the domain it takes you here: https://serverfault.com/questions/582962/unused-domain-name-getting-routed-to-double-click

Which makes me think it's just a left-over artifact or something.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 1:55 PM on September 9, 2015


◰ ◱ ◲ ◳
posted by rodlymight at 2:25 PM on September 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


  +----+
 /    /|
+----+ |
|    | +
|    |/
+----+
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:36 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Fortunately the website for nature's simultaneous 4 flavor revolution in 1 Earth plant, the ThymeCube, is still alive.
posted by fragmede at 4:11 PM on September 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


Green Card Lottery 1994 May Be The Last One!
THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED.
posted by Chrysostom at 5:07 PM on September 9, 2015


www.timecube.com is not empty for me. I don't know if its the same as what was there before, though.
posted by thefoxgod at 5:13 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Huh. Back for me too.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:15 PM on September 9, 2015


Sweet mother of fuck, do I dig this song. Nice work, dfan.
posted by dr_dank at 5:20 PM on September 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


I knew the Illuminati couldn't hide the truth that the Earth has 4 days in the same 24 hours from us for long.
posted by double block and bleed at 6:46 PM on September 9, 2015


It's back! Praise the Lord Gene Ray, Wisest Cubic Human!
posted by Rangi at 6:57 PM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


We did it, Metafilter!
posted by dirigibleman at 7:24 PM on September 9, 2015


I get it for a second then it redirects to some search spam.
posted by Artw at 7:42 PM on September 9, 2015


A friend of mine saw that it was just domain registrar expiration causing the outage, and simply paid them to renew it. With netsol anyone can give money toward any existing registration.

All hail Velociraptor Aerospace Dynamics, champions of the four-day simultaneous timecube!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:33 AM on September 10, 2015 [10 favorites]


I get it for a second then it redirects to some search spam.

but don't you see that second is cubed
posted by No-sword at 2:19 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wait so, wait WE are now running Time Cube?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 2:22 AM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]


Wait so, wait WE are now running Time Cube?

It's always been blue hour
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:22 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


Here's the aformentioned netsol domain renewal service. Although the URL says 'bulk renewal', you can renew one or any other number of domains.
posted by BiggerJ at 6:03 AM on September 10, 2015


.

Everything is so mundane now.
posted by Theta States at 8:20 AM on September 10, 2015


I found Time Cube exceptionally fascinating, until Dr. Ray started emphasizing the anti-race-mixing aspects of his theory more and more.

I remember once while browsing I came across a "letter" he had received from an acolyte who had apparently cornered an in-law who was a teacher, and forced her to admit the oath she had sworn not to teach the cubic truth. Pretty dark stuff.
posted by enjoymoreradio at 10:48 AM on September 10, 2015


Works fine for me.
posted by SPUTNIK at 11:44 AM on September 10, 2015


abovegod, his other site (it's still down) , also got creepy about the race stuff. But it did have this nifty picture I occasionally think about printing and putting on my door.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:12 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


I remember once while browsing I came across a "letter" he had received from an acolyte who had apparently cornered an in-law who was a teacher, and forced her to admit the oath she had sworn not to teach the cubic truth.

I'd think pretty much any promise an educator makes to do their job well ought to count as such an oath.
posted by straight at 1:25 PM on September 10, 2015


The difference between an amusing crank and something far less amusing is power; we can laugh at Gene Ray, Cubic, because he has no means to force his theories on anyone. It's a bit harder to laugh at, say, Lawsonomy, a nonsense theory cherished by an authoritarian small-town big-wheel who forced generations of youth to waste their time and potential memorising his inane yurblings, to say nothing of, say, Turkmenbashi (who renamed the months after his horse and his mother and forced children to memorise his writings as he filled gulags with those who objected), or the God-Emperor of North Korea.
posted by acb at 7:10 AM on September 12, 2015


It appears Lawson was prescient (like a broken clock):

He also developed, during the Great Depression, the populist economic theory of "Direct Credits", according to which banks are the cause of all economic woes, the oppressors of both capital and labour.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:22 AM on September 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


CTRL+F "Alex Chiu" 0 results? Not even any mention of the "Immortality Rings Users' WebRing"
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 6:51 PM on September 20, 2015


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