It takes a nation of millions to link us back

Beginning from Random Article we ask: what is the shortest number of links from any given random article on Wikipedia to Public Enemy? That the origin is first among equals means some unexpected power can be gained by exploiting path dependency as an authoritative model.

This is the dumbest data model yet, and it needs a leaderboard. In the above speed run, 9 seems like a joke. On our best days we find our way to The Evil Empire of Everything in <3 clicks but never <2. Anyone who has a graduate degree in cultural studies but can't connect the dots between imperialism and the crack wars by way of either MTV or Long Island is a pleb? That tracks as reliably as any six figure finishing school should. In the Evil Empire of Everything there are many ways to the center but only a few limited routes to the top of the charts.

During the Eternal September of art education when graduates of high-profile art schools dropped out en masse, it became less important to showcase ivy league credentials than to demonstrate skill and determine a winner. The valence of a group and the potential of organization will ultimately depend on who is with us and who is without.

There are many other variations of this game that can be played on various personages such as 'Hitler' or 'Disco Demolition Day' across the nine most expensive campuses in the US. However, Public Enemy remains the supreme, non-trivial variation for both hardness testing and humiliation.

Ward drops a link in our Text and Video Chats to Six Degrees of Wikipedia . I ask if this is a result of not Managing the Risk of Saturation.

It takes a nation to link us back is a bad idea that gets better. The point of this exercise lies somewhere between a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion, and what to expect from start-up culture.

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