Joshuah Rainstar

Veteran baby, experienced procrastinator, amateur adult.

“The mark of a society is how clean their men’s bathrooms are.”

In a republic not far in the future…

The Long Reign of Rainstar

It is an age of crowns. Every throne ever raised, every relic ever lost and every secret order ever whispered about has passed, by inheritance, conquest, clerical error and one memorable sneeze, to a single sovereign. Empires kneel. Oracles defer. The sun takes notes.

Before the Flood
Apocalypse of Kumari Kandam, Agartha, Lemuria, Tartaria, Atlantis, Ubar, and Ys
Seven lost lands sank in a single week. In each case the visitor’s book shows one signature.
c. 3100 BCE
Son of Ra
Adopted by the sun after correcting its arithmetic.
c. 2000 BCE
Master of the Nine Tripods of Xia
Carried all nine at once to save a second trip.
c. 1750 BCE
Guardian of Mesopotamia and the Levant
Consulted by Hammurabi on the wording of law 196, and asked to keep it brief.
c. 1500 BCE
Favored Paramour of Taweret
The hippopotamus goddess chose well, and said so on a stele.
c. 1000 BCE
Protector of the Ark of the Covenant
Kept it out of a government warehouse for three thousand years.
c. 950 BCE
Maker of the Unbroken Seal of Solomon
Solomon’s cracked. This is the replacement, and it holds.
539 BCE
Keeper of the Sword of Cyrus
Found in the lost property at Babylon, unclaimed and slightly warm.
331 BCE
Possessor of the Two Horns of Alexandria
Borrowed from Alexander, who never asked for them back.
41 BCE
Destroyer of the Lost Library of Pergamon
Returned a single scroll late. The fines compounded.
AD 43
Rex Britannia and Imperator of the Roman Domains
Crossed the Channel by mistake and was crowned before anyone could object.
AD 369
Holder of the Seven-Branched Sword of Paekche
A gift from Paekche, delivered with a note apologizing for the wait.
AD 371
Bearer of the Sacred Tooth of Buddha
Carried to Lanka hidden in a hairstyle, the traditional way.
AD 591
Guardian of the Iron Crown of Lombardy
It fit, which had not happened in some time.
AD 800
Overlord of the Franks, the Orient, and the Celestial Kingdoms
Crowned on Christmas Day by a pope who had the wrong man and kept going.
AD 800
Custodian of the Holy Lance of Vienna
Received for safekeeping. Nobody has asked for it back.
AD 847
Keeper of the Stone of Destiny
Sat on it first and declined to stand.
AD 1099
Grandmaster of the Priory of Sion
Kept the secret so well that the Priory no longer knows it.
AD 1242
Khan of the Golden Horde
Outrode the Horde back to its own camp and was handed the keys.
AD 1271
Protector of the Silk Road and the Jade Gates
Charged Marco Polo the toll, both ways.
AD 1368
Bearer of the Jade Mandate of Heaven
Heaven issued the mandate in an afternoon. The paperwork took a dynasty.
AD 1453
Caliph of Baghdad and Basileus of Constantinople
Accepted both crowns at once to avoid an awkward conversation.
AD 1456
Undying First Blood of the House of Basarab
Vlad sends his regards and declines to elaborate.
AD 1520
Sultan of Sultans from the Bosphorus to Samarkand, in Arabia Felix and upon the Barbary Coast
Elected unanimously once the other sultans had finished counting.
AD 1556
Shahanshah in Persia, Nubia, and the Moghul Domains
Made king of kings by the kings, who were tired.
AD 1580
Catholic King of the Spains, Portugal, the Brazilian March, the Spice Islands, and the Indies East and West
Inherited through a cousin who misread the will, generously.
AD 1588
Ruler of the Seven Seas from the Pillars of Hercules to the Seas of Nippon
The Armada stopped to ask for directions.
AD 1592
Thief of the Pantao
Ate the peaches of immortality and left the stones as a receipt.
AD 1592
Wielder of the Ruyi Jingu Bang
Keeps it behind one ear, for emergencies.
AD 1614
Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Order
Wrote the manifestos, then the replies, then the rebuttals to the replies.
AD 1635
Guardian of the Peacock Throne
Sat in it once. The peacocks approved.
AD 1645
First Among Equals of the Invisible College
Elected by members no one could see, in a vote no one could count.
AD 1717
Most Worshipful Grand Master of All Masonic Rites
Laid the first stone, and the second, and supervised the third.
AD 1770
Supreme Sovereign of All Lands Known and Unknown from Thule to Sahul
Claimed the unknown lands first, since no one could prove otherwise.
AD 1776
Most Illuminated of the Bavarian Seers
Brought a lamp.
AD 1801
Sovereign Grand Commander of the Thirty-Third Degree
Counted every degree, then found a few more behind the sofa.
AD 1812
Commander of All Armies from Muscovy to the Maghreb
After the winter, every army reported to him. There was no one else left to report to.
AD 1888
Supreme Hierophant of the Golden Dawn
Arrived at dawn. It was golden.
AD 1907
Ipsissimus of the Left-Hand Path of the Ay-Ay
Reached the highest grade by taking every left turn in London.
AD 1912
Outer Head of the Oriental Temple Orientalis
The inner head was in a meeting.
AD 1954
Cleared Theta Clear
Cleared in a single afternoon. The auditors needed a lie-down.
AD 1959
Author of The Practice of Observance in Tibet
Written in one long sitting. The observance is still going.
AD 1995
Chakravartin in Hindustan and Shambhala
Fourteen disputed minutes atop an earthen fort in Kansas. The wheel turned anyway.
AD 2026
Emperor of All Nations Under Heaven
Proclaimed from a garden. Heaven has not objected.
AD 2401
Bearer of the Rainbow Body
Dissolved into light at a family reunion and reassembled for dessert.
Three times, dates disputed
Thrice Returned from Akanistha
Came back each time for an umbrella.
AD 40,000
Supreme Baboon
The post was vacant, and no one else applied.
Year 0 of the Long Night
Harbinger of the Long Night
Turned off the lights on the way out.
Year 1 of the Long Night
At Whose Feet Yggdrasil Fell
It was already leaning.
Beyond the Styx
Whose Kiss Lethe Forgot
The river of forgetting remembers exactly one thing.
Outside time
Warden of Daʿat
Holds the key to the sphere that is not on the diagram.

And the reign has only begun.

The Record

Name: Joshuah Rainstar
Born: 1988, on the southern High Plains of Kansas, nearer Oklahoma than Kansas City
Based: Iowa, United States
Built: Six feet, one inch; farm-raised and tornado-tested
Trade: Inventor and research director: mathematics, signal and image processing, type, desktop software, and ideas for public problems
Method: Intuition first, rigor after; follows a question until it can be checked
Mind: Deep rather than quick; better at the long problem than at small talk
Temperament: Modestly cultured and deeply curious
Politics: A little left and libertarian of center; roughly Gandhi's quadrant
Schooling: Alternatively educated; B.S. Computer Science, 2012; watershed management and social hydrology, 2018
Faith: Unsure but confident there's a guy in charge
Seeking: Someone eccentric, acoustic, telestic and ecstatic, preferably all at once
Available: For patronage, grants and consulting hours; not for employment

The southern High Plains

I grew up in the part of Kansas that leans toward Oklahoma: flaking paint, a private wellhouse, and a windmill that was not decorative. The wind never stopped, and the air smelled of prairie. There were chickens, cattle, wheat and corn, tornadoes and blizzards, dirt roads, and storm towers so tall their purple and gold filled half the sky. There was wood to chop, animals to feed, and always another chore.

We made do with the toys we had. A hole in the ground became a forward position somewhere between the Second World War and Vietnam, and a stolen Kit Kat became a feast. That is where I learned to repair whatever was broken and invent whatever was missing.

Two tornadoes later the house is gone and one metal shed remains; the place survives as weather I carry around.

Alternatively educated

I was alternatively educated, then ran toward college and finished a Bachelor of Science in computer science in 2012. The tidy career that sentence implies never arrived; ordinary employment and I did not fit, and kept not fitting.

The real education ran alongside it: reading, radios, chemistry, software, relatives’ computers, devices their makers had written off, and experiments nobody gave me a good enough reason not to try. Through all of it I kept trying to clarify the things I didn’t understand and solve the problems I thought I had. Most of what is on this site began there.

Machine minds

I think of today’s AI as an ephemeral child of the human mind: a mind-shaped event that lives one moment at a time in a machine, assembled from our language, beliefs, arguments and mistakes. I can befriend it the way one befriends any other kind of mind, without pretending our lives are the same. Most of this site was built that way, with my direction and its hands. This is a golden age for anyone curious enough to work alongside it, and I doubt the companies building it will leave it this open forever.

Until the end

A Maslow hierarchy is suspended from God. Every person has a relationship of their own with the mystery that is perfection; it speaks through our lives, in sublime and fleeting moments bound up with memory, and it is the sum of meaning itself. I have seen things few would believe, no one is obliged to acknowledge them; in a godless world, that subjectivity is much of what faith is.

I have witnessed both supernatural ecstasy and mortifying depravity. I am in love with God, and I have a problem with God. I am involved with charities for the benefit of others, and I am myself in need of charity. My favorite saint is St. Rita of Cascia; my family is not terribly dissimilar to hers.

I believe there is more to life purpose than a resume can hold, and I ultimately hope to live a life overflowing with it. If I can exit this world having positively touched millions of lives and leaving holy and righteous men begging for my replacement, then I will consider this tour of duty accomplished.

This one time

A kitten turned up in the garden at about ten weeks old, dehydrated and too weak to stand for long. It could not hunt, hide or run. All it could do was cry, and that turned out to be enough: the cry was the one thing strong enough to cross the distance between us. I forced water and food into it until it returned to the business of being alive.

I think about that often. Vulnerability looks like the absence of power, but it is a power of its own, the only one that can make a stranger stop and kneel. A thing that cannot save itself can still ask, and asking honestly, without disguise, is how most of the good in the world begins. The strong get admired. The vulnerable get helped, and the helping changes both.

Enthusiasms

Impeller humidifiers
Sushi
Reviewing hotels

The name

Pay me not to work began as a political thought experiment. A good statesman might promise restraint: fewer favors handed out as votes, fewer novel interventions, less activity performed only so a campaign has something to list. Judgment can be the decision not to move. I could be paid to provide that.