Frens,
Do have difficulties understanding the illegible? If so, then I feel your pain.1
I recently spent a lot of time and effort to untangle the gordian semantic knot that is “tpot” and “tcot”. In an effort to provide meaningless value to the community, I’m sharing the fruit of my labour:
It’s not the “Α and the Ω”; the א is the ᛟ.
Exhibit 1.
As this ancient 日本の teapot illustrates:
Chuang Tzu and Hau Zhi were strolling around the Bank of the Hao River
when Chuang Tzu said,
“See how those deadheads dart out and swim about as they please. That’s what phish really enjoy!” Hau Zhi said, “You’re not a phish. How do you know what they enjoy?” Chuang Tzu said, “You aren’t inside my head, brah. How do you know that I don’t know what phish enjoy? Do you even squat?”
Hau Zhi said, “Word.
On the other hand, you’re certainly not in a band, you don’t do acid, and you’re like, at least 2 generations removed—so that still shows that you wouldn't know what they enjoy!”
Chuang Tzu said, “On the other other hand, you asked me how I knew what fish enjoy.
Your question already accepted that I did, in fact, know.
I know it by standing here beside the Hao.”Hau Zhi sputtered for a sec, “wait, wat?”
“Hau”, Chuang Tzu replied, “you asked how I know. I know it from observing the Hao.”
“…”2
Critically, the Master laid that epic Chaos Dunk of a shut-down rebuke upon the woo-woo macro-dosing viby shamankin Hau ZuangZhi,3 after hearing the following sophistry:
Once, Zhuangzi dreamed that he was a butterfly,
a butterfly flitting and fluttering around,
happy with themself and doing as they pleased.They didn’t know that they was Zhuangzi.
Suddenly they woke up, and there he was,
solid and unmistakable Zhuangzi.But he didn’t know if he was Zhuangzi who had dreamed he was a butterfly
or a butterfly dreaming they was Zhuangzi.Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly, there must be some distinction!
This is called the Transformation of Things.
And then Zhuangzifly had to wake up and go back to work. These weekly pennacures4 aren’t gonna pay for themselves, amirite?
So, to summarise and conclude Exhibit 1:
When one swims on the surface of the teapot, one draws the outer boundary of tpot. But, swimming here and there on the surface as fish like to do (or not, as the case may be), is to be forever at a remove from those in the vibing center. Of course, some of those fish might dream that they are swimming in the warm cozy tea with the butterflies. And sometimes those butterflies might dream they’re a fish on the outside.
So it’s an inscrutable mobius strip symbol that means whatever it needs to for whomever is a part of it - or something. But whatever it is, it is NOT AN ACRONYM. Tpot is a new word posing as an acronym much like any SV startup’s l33t speak name. Except when it is an acronym (though never an initialism). Here’s a few for you:
Exhibit 2.
EPCOT:5 Experiment Planned Community of Tommorrow (before being completely consumed by Moloch and converted into another mini-moloch-optimizer).
That’s right. TCOT is an acronym for Tpot6 Community Of Tommorow.
OG’in grouper Walt Disney7 planned and built EPCOT as a temporal message in a bottle to us. To let us know that he was tcot before tpot was a thing. And that he’ll be waiting for us in that big arc reactor in the sky, if we ever manage to get off this rock.
Oh, and some other fun things too:
Hopefully this has answered all of the questions you didn’t have and dodged all the ones you did.
Embrace inscrutability. The ‘world’ is a hyperreal hyperstition that we have collectively conjured into existence though our collisions, misunderstandings, and bad acting. Only in-between these mundanities can we step through to the liminal train platform and escape the desert of the real.
fin.
Of course, I don’t literally feel your pain. But I am simulating a model of a hypothetical you that might have felt some pain and I am assigning a relatively high probability that the metaphorical pain I felt trying to parse the illegible tpot/tcot is in some handwavy and undefined way similar to the (modeled & hypothetical) you-rs.
I hope this footnote is unnecessary, but it is current year. So. Chuang Tzu and Zhangzi are just two different romanizations of the same Daoist main dude’s name. Both of these parables (which I have taken liberties with) come from the same actual text linked in footnote 2. Finally, if that didn’t make things clear enough, I am NOT trying to diss anyone in the various rat-adjacent circles. If anything, I’m saying we’re just different versions of each other dreaming each other? We’re all different sides of the same coin? Something dumb but wholesome.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/penna#Latin
https://www.retrowdw.com/pictorial-souvenir/wdw-concept-art-models/epcot-center/
not an acronym
Fun fact, WD is the real life father of Elon Musk (a fictional, based, billionaire character based on Tony Stark, who shows up from time to time ranting about electric aerocraft) from the Avengers Movies