Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Oren Cass GETS IT.
This long interview with Oren Cass is remarkable. Cass is the only resident of the think-tank world who UNDERSTANDS REALITY COMPLETELY.
Especially salient considering where Cass came from. He worked at Bain Capital, then worked for the Vulture Romney campaign in 2012. Now he's abandoning the whole vulture line and adopting the Natural Law line, the Makeforce line.
I won't quote the good parts, because almost everything is AMAZINGLY GOOD and BEYOND CORRECT. I'll just mark the one small exception. In the question about automation, Cass misses the fact that offshoring is more important than automation as a source of job destruction. Offshoring is actually a counterforce to automation, a return to semi-slavery. When a factory moves to China or India, it uses LOWER tech than it used in USA, because labor is so much cheaper.
Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Old Economy Steve, skill-estate
¶ 3:34 AM
Worse sin
Asshole Chris Hedges, who occasionally tells the truth, was spewing the usual "progressive" lies on an RT discussion program yesterday. He was saying that the RUSSIAN_MEDDLING shit distracted us from proper criticism of Trump, which is true. But his version of Trump's real actions was false.
Hedges accused Trump of eviscerating Federal agencies, especially EPA.
= = = = =
Let's look at the fucking facts.
Here's a long-term graph of federal civilian workforce, taken directly from the FRED website.
I used their handy marker device to mark the start of the Trump admin. You can see that Trump hasn't changed the Federal workforce AT ALL.
How about EPA? Here's a graph of EPA workforce since its inception. (Excel here.)
Obama reduced the EPA noticeably, then jumped it up at the end to provide a political weapon against his successor. Trump obligingly pulled down the jumpup.
A closeup of the last few years as numbers:
2018 was the first budget written by the Trump admin. A 4% decrease from the last non-jumped Obama number. Not eviscerated. Obama reduced the workforce by 15%, which is a little closer to evisceration.
Standard shared lies. Repooflicans like to talk about cutting the size of government but usually increase it. Dems like to talk about strengthening the government but usually reduce it.
Asshole Hedges was spewing the standard shared lies under the pretense of countering media lies.
"Correcting" a lie with a lie is a worse sin than the original lie.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Those sharp peaks on the Fred graph are interesting and unexplained. All are in May or June, which isn't close to the end of the fiscal year. They're quasi-periodic but don't seem to correspond to administrations or parties.
I used their handy marker device to mark the start of the Trump admin. You can see that Trump hasn't changed the Federal workforce AT ALL.
How about EPA? Here's a graph of EPA workforce since its inception. (Excel here.)
Obama reduced the EPA noticeably, then jumped it up at the end to provide a political weapon against his successor. Trump obligingly pulled down the jumpup.
A closeup of the last few years as numbers:
2018 was the first budget written by the Trump admin. A 4% decrease from the last non-jumped Obama number. Not eviscerated. Obama reduced the workforce by 15%, which is a little closer to evisceration.
Standard shared lies. Repooflicans like to talk about cutting the size of government but usually increase it. Dems like to talk about strengthening the government but usually reduce it.
Asshole Hedges was spewing the standard shared lies under the pretense of countering media lies.
"Correcting" a lie with a lie is a worse sin than the original lie.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Those sharp peaks on the Fred graph are interesting and unexplained. All are in May or June, which isn't close to the end of the fiscal year. They're quasi-periodic but don't seem to correspond to administrations or parties.
Labels: Shared Lie
¶ 1:45 AM
Finally a useful dream
Another symbolic dream. This one isn't mysterious.
In the dream:
I was looking at two T-shirts.
One of them was somehow built so that it turned into blocky modernist shapes. A Bauhaus T-shirt. I was coldly and objectively analyzing how it was built, trying to see how the seams motivated the cloth into such bizarre and painful shapes.
The other T-shirt had a normal shape, but it was printed with insinuating slogans, the repetitive shit you find in any combox or in any "media" account of "terrorism". Instead of analyzing why it was printed this way, I responded to the slogans emotionally, exactly as the printers intended. I felt ashamed and alienated.
First thought, not new:
Chaotic art and architecture serve the same purpose as "media". Both drive people crazy and CHANNEL people into radical expressions.
Second thought, new:
I should respond to both of these chaotizers coldly and objectively. Both are designed to ruin civilization.
= = = = =
After waking, another pair of thoughts:
First thought, not new:
We fought WW2 fiercely and loyally because we TRUSTED the government. Why did we TRUST the government? Because FDR's administration had been trying to tell us the plain and simple truth. Radio, under hardass FCC scrutiny, was forced to follow suit. Radio represented war accurately, and represented human nature accurately. No nonsense about "spreading democracy to the benighted natives", no nonsense about "meritocracy". Newspapers continued their natural habit of fomenting genocide and creating crime, but radio was the dominant media.
Second thought, new:
And what did the New Deal build? We instantly associate the '30s with brutal modernist Bauhaus shit, but the brutality was NOT coming from the New Deal. Art Deco and other "form fakes function" architecture was built by rich fuckheads and big corporations.
WPA and CCC were building five types of structures. (1) Dams and roads and windbreaks, serving REAL functions with no particular style. (2) Parks and recreation facilities, using natural materials in natural or vernacular styles. (3) Public housing, which was vernacular, not modernist. (4) Public buildings like schools and post offices, which were classical. (5) Most important of all: A structure of USEFUL citizens. Millions of Americans had been discarded as useless by the brutalist corporations. FDR provided USEFUL and PRODUCTIVE work to rebuild SOCIETY.
Putting it simply: From 1933 to 1945 the government and its subordinates were creating ORDER and BEAUTY and VALUE in all possible ways. From 1933 to 1945 the only chaotizers were corporations and rich fuckheads.
What happened in 1946 wasn't a reversal as you might expect. Instead, Deepstate recaptured the government. Since 1946 the government AND the corporations are run by the same bankers with the same purpose of obliterating civilization.
Labels: Make or break, Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 1:05 AM
Monday, April 29, 2019
Another good example!
This is a case where good reporting is more important than the actual study.
Headline:
Light, Physical Activity Reduces Brain Aging
The comma shouldn't be there, but otherwise this is the BEST way to frame the recommendation.
Punctuational punctilio aside, the emphasis on light activity breaks out of an annoying pattern in these recommendations. Normally the article specifies with metric precision that you MUST spend 1.357 sidereal hours in an approved and registered Fitness Center every day lifting 936.1-kilogram weights exactly 0.313 megareps of Quality X.91 or else you're going to die right now.
Obviously I don't know the terminology of Outworking or Spin-Cycling or Press-ganging or whatever the fuck it's called. It's all GYM CLASS, and I'd rather DIE RIGHT NOW than get anywhere near GYM CLASS.
This article hits the right tone as well as the plain old factual reality. Fact, from my own experimentation: About a half hour of fast walking EVERY DAY makes all the difference. The EVERYDAYNESS matters more than the exact amount of walking.
Their measurement of brain aging keys into another set of recent findings. This study was based on brain weight rather than IQ tests. More exercise keeps the brain from shrinking. In other words, every step makes new neurons.
Labels: coot-proofing
¶ 3:52 PM
Earle vs Elon
Earle MacPherson is most strongly associated with his eponymous and ubiquitous strut. But after he invented the strut for GM (who didn't use it) he moved to Ford where he perfected the balljoint suspension for the '52 LIncoln.
Why is this odd? Because the strut is the ultimate kingpin. Earle made the perfect kingpin, then eliminated the kingpin.
The change from kingpin to balljoint was NOT an improvement; at best it was unnecessary. The kingpin system is rugged because each rotation axis has its own bearing, and those bearings are nicely 'trapped'. When one of the bearings wears, it gives signs of looseness but doesn't simply pop off. When a balljoint wears it pops off suddenly and disastrously with no warning.
I drove VWs with both types of suspension and didn't notice any difference in handling or ride; but I did notice the complete failure when a balljoint popped loose on a ten-year-old Microbus.
This was a common problem on worn-out cars in the '60s, until metallurgy and casting techniques improved. The problem has returned on BRAND NEW Teslas, because Elon pays no attention to the EXPERIENCE of earlier carmakers. He miraculously picks up failure modes that used to be characteristic of rusted-out hulks and transports those failures to BRAND NEW cars.
He constantly talks about bringing the future into the present, and he's right! He timeshifts problems that should occur in 2029 all the way back to 2019!
Graphic apology: My attempted Elon figure looks more like Sam Donaldson. I didn't feel like spending much time on him. Graphics types are technoid cultists, so I assumed that one of the Poserites had already made a proper Elon character, but apparently not.
Graphic apology: My attempted Elon figure looks more like Sam Donaldson. I didn't feel like spending much time on him. Graphics types are technoid cultists, so I assumed that one of the Poserites had already made a proper Elon character, but apparently not.Labels: Alternate universe, Entertainment
¶ 3:16 AM
Futility is the nemesis of democracy
Since I got into a NextDoor.com forum, I've been observing the futility of responsibility.
Most participants in NextDoor are genuine GOOD CITIZENS. Some take it a little too far, as in nosy busybodies, but most are just GOOD PEOPLE and GOOD NEIGHBORS.
Their attempts to be GOOD are frustrated and futilated by the massively evil and incalculably wicked "city" dysgovernment.
Example: One GOOD CITIZEN is looking into building a cottage on the property for her elderly mother. City zoning makes this task EXTREMELY DIFFICULT. Spokane's new zoning code is explicitly designed to turn all ordinary people into homeless bums, while making life magnificently fabulous for Copkiller Condon and his Bloombergian Billionaire Buddies.
The best way to get the job done is to turn Mom into a crack dealer and keep her in a tent. The "city" zealously protects the "rights" of criminals, and never enforces code on an active crime center.
= = = = =
[Disclaimer for clarity: I'm not including myself in the GOOD CITIZEN category. I try to stay legal because it's easier that way, but I got well and truly futilated a long time ago and basically don't give a fuck. Still, it breaks my heart to see GOOD people ruined by a satanic dysgovernment.]
Labels: #bluelivesmatter, #DeplorableLivesMatter, From rights to duties
¶ 1:23 AM
Nice askedansweredanswered
RealClearScience often gives the gift of Asked-Answered pairs.
An especially good one today. In fact it's two answers to the same question!
An especially good one today. In fact it's two answers to the same question!Labels: Askedanswered
¶ 12:55 AM
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Good example
Here's a POSITIVE example of science journalism, hitting two of the subjects I suggested yesterday. Static friction, and glues and waxes.
A new way of de-icing large surfaces.
The researchers overcame a major limitation of previous ice-repellent coatings—while they worked well on small areas, researchers found in field testing that they didn’t shed ice on very large surfaces as effectively as they had hoped. That’s an issue, since ice tends to cause the biggest problems on the biggest surfaces—sapping efficiency, jeopardizing safety and necessitating costly removal. They cleared this hurdle with a “beautiful demonstration of mechanics.” Anish Tuteja, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, described how he and his colleagues turned to a property that isn’t well-known in icing research. “For decades, coating research has focused on lowering adhesion strength—the force per unit area required to tear a sheet of ice from a surface,” Tuteja said. “The problem with this strategy is that the larger the sheet of ice, the more force is required. We found that we were bumping up against the limits of low adhesion strength, and our coatings became ineffective on large surfaces.I've noticed this effect in trying to break an ice dam on the roof, or defrosting an old refrigerator. Prying doesn't work unless you vertically cut the ice into pieces less than six inches across. Their analogy is unnecessarily complex:
“Imagine pulling a rug across a floor,” said Michael Thouless. “The larger the rug, the harder it is to move. You are resisted by the strength of the entire interface between the rug and floor. The frictional force is analogous to the interfacial strength. But now imagine there’s a wrinkle in that rug. It’s easy to keep pushing that wrinkle across the rug, regardless of how big the rug is. The resistance to propagating the wrinkle is analogous to the interfacial toughness that resists the propagation of a crack.”Simpler analogy, understandable by everyone... not even an analogy. A literal example of the process itself. How do you de-ice your car's windshield? Do you insert the scraper at one end and pry off the ice in one sheet? No. You chop chop chop chop scrape, chop chop chop chop scrape. Given the universality of this experience, it's sort of surprising that it didn't inspire this engineering solution a long time ago. ¶ 8:17 AM
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Prefiguring Elon
Speaking as always about the now-extinct media focus on swindlers and rackets...
This episode of 'Treasury Men' features an Elon Musk character. The actor played a LOT of high-class swindlers. In most roles he simply used his authoritative manner and educated speech to flood the suckers with financial and technical jargon.
In this episode he added a unique Elonian touch. Every time he is confronted with an accusation or a fact that doesn't fit his substitute universe, you can see the mental process: momentary darkness replaced by a NEW BRIGHT DAWN, a BRILLIANT UNPRECEDENTED SOLUTION that keeps the con running. Everything changes in a moment. The people around him are tired of changing the world, but they're too deeply invested to quit.
¶ 2:36 AM
Reprint of Windbreaks
I linked to this 2014 item in previous piece about "climate change" and nitrogen. After rereading, I think this piece needs to stand on its own as a reprint. The reactance vs resistance theme is one of my extremely rare new and valid observations. It fits nicely with wriggling out of a tyrant's grasp.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
When FDR took office, he had to fix two parallel legacies of the booming speculative 20s, both of which caused busts in the 30s. There were cross-ties between the two legacies, so he couldn't fix either one by itself. He had to fix them in a cross-linked way.
One boom was initiated by huge government purchases of food in WW1. Bankers encouraged inexperienced farmers to buy useless land to take advantage of the demand. When the demand quickly disappeared, the farmers were left with a mortgage and no way to make enough money to pay it. They abandoned the farms after plowing off the (already poor) topsoil. When a fairly serious drought hit in 1930, the land took flight, covering up everything in its path.
Even competent farmers on good land had been using improper methods, allowing wind and water to carry off the soil. Millions of tons of topsoil were ending up in the Gulf of Mexico.
The other boom was the stock boom, which needs no introduction.
= = = = =
FDR's administration used similar methods to solve both problems.
In the context of soil:
When the wind comes whistlin cross the plain, a line of trees can redistribute its energy. The air has to twist and turn between small leaves and branches. Part of the force is thus turned aside and spent in mechanically thrashing the leaves and branches, and part is spent in the whistlin.
And when water comes rushing across a sloped field, a dense planting of grass can redistribute its energy. The water has to twist and turn between the stems and flat blades. Water that stops for a moment in front of a grass blade has a chance to penetrate the soil. Without grass, the water moves freely and begins to pick up soil particles. As it gets more gritty, its scraping ability grows exponentially until it's a muddy flood.
But you can't leave everything planted to grass all the time if you're trying to grow profitable crops. So you have to use two other methods. Crop rotation allows part of the farm to be in grass in any one season; and contour plowing insures that the plowed rows serve as mini-dams to force the water down instead of across.
What's the common factor here? Angular momentum. Stopping a flow by using reactance instead of resistance. Breaking up massive linear motion into small circular and angular moves, so the air can feed the trees and the water can feed the plants.
= = = = =
In the context of economics:
Speculators are like the linear force of wind and water. They advertise a seemingly unstoppable linear expansion. Buy now! Prices are going straight up, and prices have to keep going up up up UP UP UP UP UP UP!!!! Join the flood while you still have a chance! Become part of a mudball that will help to gather other soil particles! Become a nail that can bounce against the side of a house and loosen up other nails to join the blast! Isn't that attractive? FUN FUN FUN!
FDR redistributed the linear momentum of money into more useful angular momentum.
Glass-Steagall and bank reform provided a windbreak and a contour. Speculators were halted, forcing money to pause and thrash around in the same place. When money had to stay in the same place, it had a better chance of penetrating local soil and feeding local business. Bank reform allowed money to stay securely in the same place, decreasing the temptation to join big floods.
WPA was like a field of dense grass. Money stored in government clouds was rained onto real workers, who then produced real value and spent their money in local businesses. Real labor created real irrigation systems and real windbreaks and real dams, nicely closing the circle of my analogy.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
Labels: Carbon Cult, Patient things
¶ 1:21 AM
Transitive angels dancing in a pinhead
Randomish thought.
I've said the first part repeatedly before. Second part is new.
Tiresome first part:
Media coverage of "science", even in the more sedate and non-clickbaity websites, focuses constantly on the craziest and least scientific toxic ratshit. 50% Global Warming, 30% crazy "physics" like multiverses, 10% perfectly wrong "social" "science", 10% biology as seen by "evolution".
New second part:
Where would science coverage focus if science journalists were trying to serve the needs of the readers?
Physics coverage would skip all the cosmic fiction and focus more on static friction, which is an essential ingredient of daily life, especially important for driving and walking.
Chemistry coverage would focus on the properties of glues and waxes.
Social science would focus on detecting and avoiding scams and frauds, and would show us how to function in the REAL WORLD where STATUS AND SKILLS ARE INNATE AND PERMANENT.
Biology already does a pretty good job of picking real and useful subjects; it would simply avoid the unnecessary entity of evolution.
= = = = =
"Evolution" and "global warming" are tricks that turn intransitive observations into transitive judgments.
"Evolution created a mechanism to untangle DNA" is a sneaky transitive, basically substituting Evolution for God. The intransitive observation is "DNA has a mechanism to untangle its folds."
"Climate Change Already Impacting Water Quality" attributes pollution to the mysterious actions of Gaia. The intransitive observation would be "Nitrogen increasing in water supplies", which might lead us to control farm runoff instead of burning Deniers.
Labels: Carver, Language update
¶ 12:48 AM
Friday, April 26, 2019
Burning is just entertainment
As the "court" section of the RUSSIAN_MEDDLING witch hunt fades out, we're left to observe the real goals of every witch hunt.
The purpose is not to burn witches. That's just bonus jackoff time for the persecutors. The real goal is to remove confidence and support from the people who may have been associated with the witches, or may have looked on the witches with anything less than 100% arsonist passion.
The main line of the "court" section was nominally aimed at burning Trump, but didn't get anywhere near him. The real purpose was achieved. Trump had been only 99.9% negative toward Russia during the campaign. Now he's 500000000 quintillion percent MORE murderous than Obama, and perhaps even SLIGHTLY more genocidal than Hillary, though that's a high bar.
= = = = =
A secondary line of the "court" action concluded today with the burning of Maria Butina. She was a LOBBYIST for Russian interests, working with the NRA for reasons that aren't clear. It looks like she was trying to set up more NRA-like organizations in Russia, which means that she was effectively lobbying for NRA, not for Russia.
The black-robed demon ended up convicting Butina on some indirect process charge as usual, and she will have to serve another 9 months in solitary for the "crime" of trying to coordinate self-defense activists in two countries. Meanwhile, the demon media continue to describe her as a spy.
The real goal of this action was to neuter the NRA, not to burn Butina. She's just jackoff time for the persecutors. Exactly as Trump has fallen in line with Deepstate, the NRA's activities have weakened considerably in the last year or so. Most responsible commentators have observed that NRA is no longer working for the side, so they are no longer recommending support for NRA.
Mission accomplished!
The most important public spokesman for self-defense is now afraid to breathe, leaving only the less "responsible" and more tinfoilable players in the game.
When NRA is outlawed, only outlaws will have self-defense organizations.
Hmm. Sounds familiar for some reason.
= = = = =
Semi-relevant sidenote: Maria is handling this properly, unlike Assange. As always, Russians are realists. They understand that "rights" do not exist, and that the best way to do your duty is to wriggle out of a tyrant's grasp as fast as possible. If Maria had followed the Assange method, she'd spend the rest of her life in jail delusionally assuming that "rights" must triumph, while awaiting the next utterly meaningless appeal or hearing, while her supporters continued to lose their money in futile "defense" motions.
Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Answered better than asked, defensible spaces, defensible times, From rights to duties
¶ 3:54 PM
Missing the melting point
Via ZH, the company that was working on the roof of Notre Dame is denying the possibility that a worker's cigarette could have started the fire.
"We condemn it. But the fire started inside the building... so for company Le Bras this is not a hypothesis, it was not a cigarette butt that set Notre-Dame de Paris on fire," said Le Bras Frères spokesman Marc Eskenazi, who insisted that it would be impossible to set a log on fire with a cigarette butte. He also questioned how cigarette butts could have been found on the site.Logs aren't the problem because logs weren't the upper surface of the roof. The surface that would have been touched off first was lead. Lead melts at 600F. The tobacco in a cigarette is typically 900F. A solid wood beam starts to burn around 800F, so it could have been ignited, but that's not the point. Wood wasn't exposed. Lead was. You could see the order of burning in the videos. The lead sheets melted first, leaving the oak rafters in place for a while. Finally the oak burned. Even so, it would take more than one cigarette to get the whole thing started. Perhaps there was a pileup of leaves in a crevice or angle of the roof, and the cigarette started the leaves. I still doubt it. I'm still betting that flammable GREEN insulation like polyisocyanurate (aka ROCKET FUEL) was the major igniter or spreader.
Labels: Asked and properly answered, Carbon Cult
¶ 1:44 AM
No, it doesn't work that way.
Canada and UK are trying the perpetual satanic dream of tyrants, but they won't succeed. They'll only induce quiet rebellion.
Both former "countries" are imprisoning people for accurate scientific observations of facts. This Prager podcast gives the standard Orwellian line about such tyranny:
"If you want to control people's thoughts, control their words. That's totalitarian thinking."
In the first place, the correlation is completely absent.
The wildest Sorosians, the oldest and strongest warriors for "variable gender", are in countries like Sweden and Denmark where gender is marked in every noun.
The firmest supporters of Natural Law and biological reality are in countries that have very little indication of gender in their languages.
Contrary 1: Russians are firmly on the Natural Law side. Lenin tried to clip them but failed. Their language represents gender in every noun AND in the past tense of verbs.
Contrary 2: English, unlike other Indo-European languages, has no grammatical gender. We mark semantic gender in pronouns but nowhere else. The non-binarians ALREADY control most of our institutions WITHOUT altering the language. (They wouldn't be able to punish people for wrong words if they didn't ALREADY control the schools and courts and media.)
So the correlation isn't negative or positive, it's just NOT THERE. Language doesn't limit thinking. Control of thoughts comes BEFORE control of language.
Orwell missed the boat with Newspeak, but got closer to the target with other mechanisms.
The real key to thought control is not in language. The key is to own the SENSES.
Effective totalitarians provide a substitute universe in which all characters, objects, events and behavior run according to the Satanic Law of the ruler. This substitute universe can't occupy all the senses all the time, so it guarantees that you have no confidence in your unmediated observations outside the substitute universe.
Orwell got halfway to the substitute universe with the Telescreen and Room 101, but Orwell didn't have the experience of post-1970 TV with its split-second split-screen camera cuts and multi-layered backbeat stripping stability and steadiness from our attention. He didn't predict the iPhone.
Labels: Carver, Constants and Variables
¶ 12:04 AM
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Cryptique dream
A total jumble of disconnected nonsense, but the dream scripter wants me to record it, so here goes.
In the dream:
= = = = =
I learned that the first sentence I had spoken, immediately after birth, was:
Cent US WWIII Morse Unit.
(Cent was pronounced the French way and meant 100.)
After learning this, I was supposed to go to the corner of Wellesley and July, which was a 4D intersection of a place and a time. But this corner was not in Spokane, it was in Manhattan, right here:
Reached by going west on Claflin then turning north then east.
(Note that the turn off Claflin is at the Goodnow house, which is the square just above the L in Riley on this map.)
= = = = =
There. Now it's recorded. Are you satisfied, dream scripter?
Reached by going west on Claflin then turning north then east.
(Note that the turn off Claflin is at the Goodnow house, which is the square just above the L in Riley on this map.)
= = = = =
There. Now it's recorded. Are you satisfied, dream scripter?Labels: blonde moment, Entertainment
¶ 11:15 PM
The usual shared lies, one SHARED TRUTH
Judging by the spam in my email, "voting" "rights" for felons is the latest shared lie for Repooflicans.
All the issues connected with "voting" "rights" are shared lies. Rs and Ds argue fiercely about every jot and tittle of eligibility, while completely ignoring the vast number of ELIGIBLE voters who no longer give a fuck because Rs and Ds are arguing fiercely about jots and tittles instead of DOING THEIR FUCKING JOBS.
Numerically: About 2 million Americans are incarcerated. Most of them are not going to vote anyway, because most of them turned to criminality out of total futility. They're not likely to favor EITHER of the fake "sides" in a system that has totally failed to provide a civilized place for them.
But even if we assume falsely that their participation rate will be the same as non-prisoners, we'd get about 1 million new voters.
So R and D are arguing about 1 million alienated non-voters while TOTALLY IGNORING the 87 million alienated non-voters who could be attracted to a party that GETS SHIT DONE.
Unfortunately, GETTING SHIT DONE is physically impossible. Unacceptable, intolerable, all options on the table EXCEPT solving a problem.
= = = = =
ZeroHedge focused today on two city officials in Connecticut who got into an online slimefest, hurling the usual "take your meds" nonsense at each other. Finally one of them challenged the other to a SHARED TRUTH. You get your urine tested for drugs, and I will too. Amazingly, both of them FULFILLED THEIR PROMISES (and their cups) IMMEDIATELY, and both passed the test easily.
ZH concluded:
More important than proving their sobriety, both Newton and Pereira proved they were great at doing what politicians do best: wasting time, capital and resources on meaningless nonsense.
Well, admittedly they weren't legislating, but unlike ALL other USA STRONG politicians, they GOT PISS DONE. And unlike all other USA STRONG politicians, we know these two were clean and sober for one day.
Dead serious: I'm going to write in both of them on the ballot. Ernest Newton for P, Maria Pereira for VP. Bonus: If Newton can continue getting shit done, his legislative achievements would be known as Newton's Laws.
Labels: From rights to duties, Make or break, Shared Lie
¶ 3:41 PM
Maybe worth asking
An unsurprising article on the Peter Principle. Nothing new, but the terminology stirred up a testable hypothesis.
Our research suggests that companies are largely aware of the Peter Principle. Because workers value promotion above and beyond a simple increase in salary, firms may not want to rid themselves entirely of promotion-based incentives. However, strategies that decouple a worker’s current job performance from his or her future career potential can minimise the costs of the Peter Principle.Decouple. Evocative word. What's the best way to decouple the Peter Power of meritocracy? Family. In a family-owned company everyone knows that the top management positions will stay in the family. In a hereditary monarchy everyone knows that the top positions will stay in the family. Top management is NOT AN ASPIRATION, which means everyone outside the family can relax and do their proper jobs. This should be a testable hypothesis. Facts: SKILLS AND STATUS ARE INNATE AND PERMANENT. The best politicians have been politicians from birth. Meritocracy is a specific reversal and destruction of the basic facts of genetics.
Labels: Answered better than asked, Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 1:29 AM
Thanks Ralph 126, Surprise Surprise Arizona edition
Via Bloomberg, a lithium battery has exploded at an "energy storage facility" in Surprise, Arizona.
Authorities are Shocked Shocked Shocked and demanding investigations.
Idiots. You don't need to investigate. Everyone knows that lithium batteries are inherently explosive.
The only ADVANTAGE of lithium over nickel-iron is lightness. Lithium may be justified in miniature equipment like portable cellular telephonic devices, though I don't know why anyone wants or needs such a device. I've managed to survive 69 years without one.
Lithium is marginally justifiable in automobiles, though again the lightness doesn't really matter in an automobile, since it's still impossible to "fill up" a lithium battery in a few minutes.
The electric vehicles of 1910 used SAFE nickel-iron batteries, which were unquestionably heavy (but not as heavy as lead-acid). 1910 electrics needed several hours to charge up, and could drive a couple hundred miles on a charge. 2019 electrics are NO FUCKING DIFFERENT. The lightness allows idiots to have their idiotic neck-snapping acceleration, but idiotic neck-snapping acceleration still doesn't counteract the innate and unsolvable disadvantages of electric power.
1910 electrics had two uses: Heavy trucks and short-range city runabouts. Those are STILL the best uses of electric vehicles, which means that nickel-iron is STILL the best battery.
As for the Surprise Surprise storage facility, it's a fucking FACILITY, which means it's in a fucking BIG BUILDING, which means it can easily be HEAVY AND LARGE. There's ABSOLUTELY NO REASON for lightness in a permanent facility, and there's PLENTY OF REASON for safety and long-lasting permanence in a permanent facility. Nickel-iron gives you both safety and near-eternal function with minimum maintenance.
Labels: Emersonian justice, Entertainment
¶ 1:01 AM
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Black-bumper readers
Statcounter gives system info on some blog readers. I've noticed over the years that the relatively steady readers, who return several times, share my semi-Luddite tendency. Like black-bumper Amish, compromising with modernity just far enough to get paid work done, but halting when technology roars ahead of its own shadow. New versions typically reach a peak of functionality, after which the bells and whistles and "security" theater ruin the technology.
Typical example in today's statcounter. (I've redacted the URLs.) The first two are repeaters. IE 9.0 and Win Vista, then Firefox 11.0 and Win XP. Both of them beat me in the Luddite department. I'm using FF 56 and IE 11 and Win 7.
The third one is an interesting one-timer. An employee at Youtube, using Chrome (naturally enough) and Win 7! Not Win 10.
A tacit recognition, within the belly of the beast, that Win 10 is computer-destroying malware. Even Satan has to fall back to Win 7 if he wants to get shit done.
Typical example in today's statcounter. (I've redacted the URLs.) The first two are repeaters. IE 9.0 and Win Vista, then Firefox 11.0 and Win XP. Both of them beat me in the Luddite department. I'm using FF 56 and IE 11 and Win 7.
The third one is an interesting one-timer. An employee at Youtube, using Chrome (naturally enough) and Win 7! Not Win 10.
A tacit recognition, within the belly of the beast, that Win 10 is computer-destroying malware. Even Satan has to fall back to Win 7 if he wants to get shit done.Labels: Leth, Patient things
¶ 7:48 AM
Patient cultures, patient technology
Kim arrives in Russia for a REAL conference.
Media are emphasizing the HISTORICAL FIRSTness of the meeting, but the HISTORICAL OLDness is more interesting.
(1) Kim is arriving in a NK train, not a private jet. The railroad connection between NK and Russia was never torn down, it was closed and maintained. Now it's reopened as part of the Silk Road preparations.
(2) Kim doffs his hat in a gesture that hasn't been seen in USA since the '50s. Guest meets host in real cultures.
(3) He's met by the usual dignitaries, and then encounters a group of Russian girls dressed in traditional costumes, who offer him traditional food. He takes a bite and smiles. The girls bow to him in Oriental style. Host meets guest in real cultures.
Needless to say, the real work of reunification has been running for years, among the four real-culture players. Very fake Donald is allowed to make his very loud and very meaningless noises, because real cultures understand how fakers work. Fakers don't understand real cultures, but that's very irrelevant.
Labels: Patient things
¶ 7:12 AM
The political is @personal
BBC's account of the summit meeting between @Donald and @Jack:
Earlier Mr Trump had accused the platform of being "very discriminatory" towards him. "Twitter is here to serve the entire public conversation, and we intend to make it healthier and more civil," the Twitter CEO wrote. The meeting came just hours after the president posted two tweets repeating his longstanding claim that the platform is politically biased. He said Twitter did not "treat me well as a Republican" and accused it of limiting the number of people who follow him. "Constantly taking people off list. Big complaints from many people," he wrote, claiming the numbers would be higher "if Twitter wasn't playing their political games".Well, bias is not a "claim". Bias is a wildly obvious fact. You can have opinions about the virtue or vice of bias, but you can't have opinions about its existence in all media. But the bias isn't really political. It's personal. @Donald is more honest than @Jack. @Donald is candidly focusing on @Jack's bias against @Donald, not bias against "conservatives", whatever the fuck that means. In fact Twitter's bias is strictly personal. Twitter isn't "communist" or "socialist" or "liberal", whatever the fuck that means. Twitter favors the fashionable satanic orthodoxy of Silicon Valley technoids. Monopoly is good, trillionaires are heroes, tax is evil, global warming is real, AI is necessary, all Deplorables must be slaughtered, SHARE VALUE IS THE UNIVERSE. Twitter favors what @Jack favors and hates what @Jack hates. Twitter is @Jack. So this isn't "conservative" vs "liberal", it's exactly @Donald vs @Jack. (The real Donald agrees with @Jack on all of those issues, which is why he feels unjustly very discriminated against. The political @Donald has to give very fake lip service to the opposite side on global warming and Deplorables, but his pre-political positions on everything were strictly and totally very technoid.) ¶ 12:56 AM
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
We had a chance
Just figured something out while listening (as usual) to old radio shows about bunco artists.
When you understand how the world really works, you have an advantage over people who don't.
This also applies to cultures and nations. Cultures that are based on an accurate understanding of status and resources have an advantage when dealing with cultures that are based on PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE nonsense about "rights" and "meritocracy".
Why do Persians and Russians always see through our motives and strategies? They're not necessarily smarter in terms of IQ, but both are infinitely wiser in terms of culture. Sharia is based on an accurate SCIENTIFIC description of human status and duties. The Soviet system wasn't originally based on reality; it started out with pure Locke/Lincoln lunacy. But it finally came to terms with reality after futilely trying to convert the strong Russian realists to insanity.
Africans are also grounded in reality, but they're more susceptible to insanity conversion. Booker T had it right, and then MLK pulled his followers into the "meritocracy" lane where they could be run over by NYC bankers. The old ground point is still there, even when coated with capitalist shit.
= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:
First and most perfectly, in sharia law:
The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue. This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities. By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.= = = = = Second, in the 1977 Soviet constitution:
The state exercises control over the measure of labour and of consumption in accordance with the principle of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work". It fixes the rate of taxation on taxable income. Socially useful work and its results determine a person's status in society. By combining material and moral incentives and encouraging innovation and a creative attitude to work, the state helps transform labour into the prime vital need of every Soviet citizen.= = = = = Third, in FDR's fireside chat on Sept 6, 1936.
I have, however, used the argument in relation only to a small area -- it holds good in its effect on the nation as a whole. Every state in the drought area is now doing and always will do business with every state outside it. The very existence of the men and women working in the clothing factories of New York, making clothes worn by farmers and their families; of the workers in the steel mills in Pittsburgh, in the automobile factories of Detroit, and in the harvester factories of Illinois, depend upon the farmers' ability to purchase the commodities they produce. In the same way it is the purchasing power of the workers in these factories in the cities that enables them and their wives and children to eat more beef, more pork, more wheat, more corn, more fruit and more dairy products, and to buy more clothing made from cotton, wool and leather. In a physical and a property sense, as well as in a spiritual sense, we are members one of another.= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT. We had a chance to give up Locke/Lincoln lunacy. After FDR died, Deepstate came roaring back to life and turned us back into useless suckers, ready to bite into the poisoned apple of "meritocracy". And we took a BIG FUCKING BITE.
Labels: From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law
¶ 11:11 PM
America the land of entrepreneurs? Nope. (FUCKING REPRINT)
While looking for something else I noticed this item from TEN YEARS AGO. This was BEFORE Romneycare was enacted. Nothing has changed. The same idiotic shared lies are still "debated" while the important questions are still unspeakable and unaskable.
= = = = = START FUCKING REPRINT:
Economist Dean Baker has located a report that compares the "dynamism" of America and other rich countries. It's a real waker-upper. Turns out we are at the bottom of the entrepreneur stack no matter how you try to measure it.
This chart tells the story:
The rest of the report tries to separate manufacturing from agriculture, because the top countries have many small farmers; it looks at firms in manufacturing, computer-related businesses, research and development, and others. In every category, no matter how you parse the data, America is at the bottom. We are the Land of Monopolies.
Why? No single-payer health care.
I really can't imagine why our brand-D politicos aren't using these facts to help sell a single-payer system ... Oh, now I remember. Our brand-D doesn't want health reform, or American survival, any more than brand-R does. Both parties just want to maximize the profits of insurance companies and lawyers, but in slightly different ways.
= = = = =
Later thought: There are two other factors besides health costs that suppress small business in America. Litigation and copyright/patent problems. Litigation is a uniquely American evil, while copyright/patent problems are only somewhat worse here than in other rich countries. These two factors are narrower than health costs, each affecting only certain types of business, but the net effect of all three is the same.
The sum of these factors gives total advantage to the largest corporations, which can self-insure for medical care, hire armies of lawyers to scare away the predatory lawyers, generate carefully crafted defensive patents to eliminate innovation, and buy custom-made laws from CongressMart. = = = = = END FUCKING REPRINT.
This chart tells the story:
The rest of the report tries to separate manufacturing from agriculture, because the top countries have many small farmers; it looks at firms in manufacturing, computer-related businesses, research and development, and others. In every category, no matter how you parse the data, America is at the bottom. We are the Land of Monopolies.
Why? No single-payer health care.
I really can't imagine why our brand-D politicos aren't using these facts to help sell a single-payer system ... Oh, now I remember. Our brand-D doesn't want health reform, or American survival, any more than brand-R does. Both parties just want to maximize the profits of insurance companies and lawyers, but in slightly different ways.
= = = = =
Later thought: There are two other factors besides health costs that suppress small business in America. Litigation and copyright/patent problems. Litigation is a uniquely American evil, while copyright/patent problems are only somewhat worse here than in other rich countries. These two factors are narrower than health costs, each affecting only certain types of business, but the net effect of all three is the same.
The sum of these factors gives total advantage to the largest corporations, which can self-insure for medical care, hire armies of lawyers to scare away the predatory lawyers, generate carefully crafted defensive patents to eliminate innovation, and buy custom-made laws from CongressMart. = = = = = END FUCKING REPRINT.
Labels: constants and constants, Shared Lie, Unasked and unanswered
¶ 3:59 PM
Turns out Georg was right!
Via ScienceDaily, researchers at Zurich have made a resonant circuit with oscillating HEAT instead of oscillating electron flow. As with electric LC circuits, and as with mechanical resonators, this resonator continues oscillating for a while after the driving force is turned off.
During the oscillation, heat flows alternately from a warmer object to a colder object, and then from the colder to the warmer. The latter half of the cycle 'technically' violates thermodynamics, but not really. Electronic and mechanical and fluidic resonant circuits can (and usually do!) move against the potential gradient for half of the cycle, so it shouldn't be strange that a heat resonator does the same.
Simple example: The guitar string is "spontaneously" moving uphill against gravity for half of each cycle. We understand that this doesn't violate the laws of gravity, so we should think of heat flow the same way.
The finding that heat can oscillate is the strange and interesting thing!
= = = = =
So it turns out that Georg Ohm's original analogy of electricity and heat was right after all.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Polistra is always cheering for traditional and human-scale measurements. She wanted to find out: Was there ever a set of natural measurements for electricity? Was there ever an English unit of potential or an American unit of resistance? Or did the original experimenters jam everything into the metric prison from the start?
The answer: Well, sort of. Briefly. In the early days of telegraphy, resistance was often measured in terms of length and width of a standard wire, and different nations had different standards. But this didn't last long, and the volt, ampere and ohm were quickly adopted as universal.
Polistra admits reluctantly that this situation makes sense. Food, farmland and fabric were used and measured systematically for thousands of years before theoreticians came along. Electricity was first used and measured by theoreticians and later passed into common use.
While looking for the nonexistent tradition, an interesting forgotten story popped out. Back in 1827, Georg Ohm developed the math of circuits correctly by using an incorrect analogy. Other 'electricians' had already reached a correct understanding of positive and negative charges; Ohm ignored this understanding and used the transmission of heat instead. Because of his incorrect analogy, his correct math was not accepted by the other scientists for many years. Alfred Mayer, writing in 1890, said:
First Polistra shows heat conduction in a rod. She puts the rod onto a 'potential difference' between cold and hot, and watches the different molecular agitations transfer at a finite speed, until the rod is at a uniform temperature.
Now Happystar applies the same concept to a (non-factual!) electric circuit, perhaps as Ohm imagined it. Using an Edison iron-nickel battery to create a potential difference, he drops a wire onto the negative end to complete the circuit. The charges transfer at a finite speed toward the center of the resistive load, until the load is at a uniform current.
= = = = =
Footnote: **Airflow and waterflow: See my AUDIN courseware, lesson 201, for an example. Also, the battery, pulsing wires and 'resistive block' are available in my ShareCG page.
= = = = = END REPRINT.
The finding that heat can oscillate is the strange and interesting thing!
= = = = =
So it turns out that Georg Ohm's original analogy of electricity and heat was right after all.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Polistra is always cheering for traditional and human-scale measurements. She wanted to find out: Was there ever a set of natural measurements for electricity? Was there ever an English unit of potential or an American unit of resistance? Or did the original experimenters jam everything into the metric prison from the start?
The answer: Well, sort of. Briefly. In the early days of telegraphy, resistance was often measured in terms of length and width of a standard wire, and different nations had different standards. But this didn't last long, and the volt, ampere and ohm were quickly adopted as universal.
Polistra admits reluctantly that this situation makes sense. Food, farmland and fabric were used and measured systematically for thousands of years before theoreticians came along. Electricity was first used and measured by theoreticians and later passed into common use.
While looking for the nonexistent tradition, an interesting forgotten story popped out. Back in 1827, Georg Ohm developed the math of circuits correctly by using an incorrect analogy. Other 'electricians' had already reached a correct understanding of positive and negative charges; Ohm ignored this understanding and used the transmission of heat instead. Because of his incorrect analogy, his correct math was not accepted by the other scientists for many years. Alfred Mayer, writing in 1890, said:
Ohm was led to the conception of this law by assuming that the flow of electricity in a voltaic circuit is similar to the flow of heat by conduction in a rod. Also, his assumptions that the actions of two electrified particles are directly as their distance, and that the electricity is uniformly dense over each cross section of a conducting wire, were directly opposed to the laws and facts well established by Coulomb for statical electricity.Damned theoreticians. Always the same. Always ignoring truth if it doesn't fit the latest theory. Ohm assumed that charge was handed off step by step between the 'particles' in the wire, just as the molecular agitation of heat is handed off from one molecule to another. This led him to view resistance as a sort of velocity measurement:
That is to say, both elements reciprocally change their electric state as long as a difference continues to exist between their electroscopic forces; but this change ceases as soon as they have both attained the same electroscopic force. ... The motion is effected in most bodies so rapidly that we are seldom able to determine its changes at the various places, and on that account we are not in a condition to discover by observation the law according to which they act.If he was observing any delay using the instruments then available, he was probably seeing the result of inductive reactance in a long coil or wire, rather than simple resistance. A low-pass RL filter can easily take a perceptible amount of time to reach full flow. Why did Ohm's bad assumption work? Probably because it wasn't all that bad! I spent much of my life playing and working with electrical stuff: repairing, designing, building, teaching. I used Ohm and his variants and corollaries daily. I always started with the analogy of airflow or waterflow**, in which the electrons pass between the atoms of the metal at a finite speed, while the charge field acts instantly across space. In the end it doesn't matter which of these concepts is treated as a finite velocity. Polistra and Happystar try to see Ohm's original view, using a couple of experiments.
First Polistra shows heat conduction in a rod. She puts the rod onto a 'potential difference' between cold and hot, and watches the different molecular agitations transfer at a finite speed, until the rod is at a uniform temperature.
Now Happystar applies the same concept to a (non-factual!) electric circuit, perhaps as Ohm imagined it. Using an Edison iron-nickel battery to create a potential difference, he drops a wire onto the negative end to complete the circuit. The charges transfer at a finite speed toward the center of the resistive load, until the load is at a uniform current.
= = = = =
Footnote: **Airflow and waterflow: See my AUDIN courseware, lesson 201, for an example. Also, the battery, pulsing wires and 'resistive block' are available in my ShareCG page.
= = = = = END REPRINT.Labels: Metrology
¶ 2:25 AM
Monday, April 22, 2019
Missed it by a mile
Just noticed that today is Earth Day, celebrating a criminal named Ira Einhorn. I haven't been marking Einhorn Day, but I have been marking Einhorn Hour for many years. Missed it by a mile this year, preoccupied with work and winter troubles. Shoveling all that global warming was tiresome.
So I'll repeat the most recent picture:
And more important, repeat a recent and highly appropriate mention of Einhorn.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Returning to Gouvernour Morris vs Tom Paine, trying to sort out the apparent inconsistency in the Hix radio show. I managed to wade through more of the 1838 biography of Morris, and now I have a fairly good sense of what happened.
The real story is a perfect fable of "rights" vs duties, at the EXACT START of the conflict, featuring a perfect avatar for each side.
First the broad background:
Morris was born into a wealthy and influential family, one of the founding families of the English colonies. He had a unique talent for math and engineering, and his family trained him for diplomatic work.
He HATED revolutions because he knew the historical record. Revolutions ALWAYS bring tyranny and ruin.
He used his influence to slow down the American revolution. When slowing failed, he got into a position of power where he could attempt to moderate the excesses. When he saw the French revolution coming, he was working as a trade representative for the new USA STRONG dysgovernment, using his math talents to deal with currencies and debts. At the moment when Paris fell to Robespierre, Morris was in France trying to negotiate repayment of our debt to the old French royal government, which had helped finance our revolution to weaken England. [Remember: England and France were at war almost constantly since the time of Jesus.]
= = = = =
What was Paine doing several years BEFORE the French revolution?
He was betraying his own revolution to weaken the French king and start a revolution there.
And what happened to Paine DURING the French revolution?
He was imprisoned for being part of a losing branch of the revolution.
What part did Morris play?
He tried to get Paine released, but without much sympathy because Paine had already betrayed America, joined Robespierre, and switched citizenship. Why should Morris defend Paine from the country he had chosen?
Later, James Monroe was sent to Paris on a different mission. At that time the French were happy to get rid of Paine, who was an all-around troublemaker.
= = = = =
Paine was the classic Chaotizer. His sole purpose in life was to create chaos and death, and he developed the murderous delusional concept of "rights" to assist in his genocide. Helped to start one revolution, got position in the revolution, got dissatisfied, used his position to help start another revolution. When he was caught, he went to France, got position in the new revolution. This time the rebels realized that he wasn't worth defending.
Morris was the classic Order-maker. He had a strong sense of DUTY balancing his aristocratic privileges. His DUTY was to preserve and create order. He tried to halt one revolution. When it happened anyway, he got position in the revolution, tried to bring order to the new setup.
= = = = =
Are there any modern equivalents?
Paine is easy. Ira Einhorn. Precise match. Used his influence to create disorder in NYC, moved to Paris, continued to ruin everything. Finally even the French got tired of him and threw him back. Remembered fondly by fuckheads as a defender of "environmental rights".
Morris was harder, because I had to fight my own biases to reach a surprising conclusion. Closest equivalent is Bill Gates. Born with wealth and math talent, used his influence and talent to gain more wealth, now uses his wealth to bring order to parts of the world that are prone to chaos and revolution. Gates is the best warrior against Soros. Clean water and vaccines help ordinary people to make more life and more order and more value. (The biography emphasizes Morris's ability to recognize his own biases without losing his own biases. So I'm trying feebly to emulate him.)
= = = = =
Finally, back to the original question. Was Hix right or wrong? Sort of technically correct but essentially wrong. His source got the basic facts of Paine's imprisonment but ignored the background and the previous events, thus missing the REASON for Paine's imprisonment and the REASON for Morris's lack of enthusiasm. Without the background, Morris appears to be the betrayer.
Hix's other Morris story was about Robert Morris lending his fortune to the USA STRONG dysgovernment which never repaid him. In that case the radio story accurately portrayed the Morris family's unique virtue, and the dysgovernment's perpetual crime and evil.
= = = = = END REPRINT
And more important, repeat a recent and highly appropriate mention of Einhorn.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Returning to Gouvernour Morris vs Tom Paine, trying to sort out the apparent inconsistency in the Hix radio show. I managed to wade through more of the 1838 biography of Morris, and now I have a fairly good sense of what happened.
The real story is a perfect fable of "rights" vs duties, at the EXACT START of the conflict, featuring a perfect avatar for each side.
First the broad background:
Morris was born into a wealthy and influential family, one of the founding families of the English colonies. He had a unique talent for math and engineering, and his family trained him for diplomatic work.
He HATED revolutions because he knew the historical record. Revolutions ALWAYS bring tyranny and ruin.
He used his influence to slow down the American revolution. When slowing failed, he got into a position of power where he could attempt to moderate the excesses. When he saw the French revolution coming, he was working as a trade representative for the new USA STRONG dysgovernment, using his math talents to deal with currencies and debts. At the moment when Paris fell to Robespierre, Morris was in France trying to negotiate repayment of our debt to the old French royal government, which had helped finance our revolution to weaken England. [Remember: England and France were at war almost constantly since the time of Jesus.]
= = = = =
What was Paine doing several years BEFORE the French revolution?
He was betraying his own revolution to weaken the French king and start a revolution there.
And what happened to Paine DURING the French revolution?
He was imprisoned for being part of a losing branch of the revolution.
What part did Morris play?
He tried to get Paine released, but without much sympathy because Paine had already betrayed America, joined Robespierre, and switched citizenship. Why should Morris defend Paine from the country he had chosen?
Later, James Monroe was sent to Paris on a different mission. At that time the French were happy to get rid of Paine, who was an all-around troublemaker.
= = = = =
Paine was the classic Chaotizer. His sole purpose in life was to create chaos and death, and he developed the murderous delusional concept of "rights" to assist in his genocide. Helped to start one revolution, got position in the revolution, got dissatisfied, used his position to help start another revolution. When he was caught, he went to France, got position in the new revolution. This time the rebels realized that he wasn't worth defending.
Morris was the classic Order-maker. He had a strong sense of DUTY balancing his aristocratic privileges. His DUTY was to preserve and create order. He tried to halt one revolution. When it happened anyway, he got position in the revolution, tried to bring order to the new setup.
= = = = =
Are there any modern equivalents?
Paine is easy. Ira Einhorn. Precise match. Used his influence to create disorder in NYC, moved to Paris, continued to ruin everything. Finally even the French got tired of him and threw him back. Remembered fondly by fuckheads as a defender of "environmental rights".
Morris was harder, because I had to fight my own biases to reach a surprising conclusion. Closest equivalent is Bill Gates. Born with wealth and math talent, used his influence and talent to gain more wealth, now uses his wealth to bring order to parts of the world that are prone to chaos and revolution. Gates is the best warrior against Soros. Clean water and vaccines help ordinary people to make more life and more order and more value. (The biography emphasizes Morris's ability to recognize his own biases without losing his own biases. So I'm trying feebly to emulate him.)
= = = = =
Finally, back to the original question. Was Hix right or wrong? Sort of technically correct but essentially wrong. His source got the basic facts of Paine's imprisonment but ignored the background and the previous events, thus missing the REASON for Paine's imprisonment and the REASON for Morris's lack of enthusiasm. Without the background, Morris appears to be the betrayer.
Hix's other Morris story was about Robert Morris lending his fortune to the USA STRONG dysgovernment which never repaid him. In that case the radio story accurately portrayed the Morris family's unique virtue, and the dysgovernment's perpetual crime and evil.
= = = = = END REPRINT
Labels: Carbon Cult, From rights to duties
¶ 5:14 PM
The ear is faster than the ... uh ...
And on the same subject, an MRI examination of the brains of blind people has two interesting findings:
= = = = =
(1) This one is unsurprising:
The study found that in the auditory cortex, individuals who are blind showed narrower neural "tuning" than sighted subjects in discerning small differences in sound frequency.Makes sense. When vision is present, frequency detection mainly serves to detect vowel formants, which are broad and relative**. Without vision, frequency detection must also distinguish echoes from specific objects, which are more precise and absolute. = = = = = (2) This one is less expected:
An area of the brain called the hMT+ which in sighted individuals is responsible for tracking moving visual objects, shows neural responses that reflect both the motion and the frequency of auditory signals in blind individuals. This suggests that in blind people, area hMT+ is recruited to play an analogous role -- tracking moving auditory objects, such as cars, or the footsteps of the people around them.In other words: With vision: Each visible object has an 'avatar' consisting of its reflected color patterns. The 'avatar' moves around an internal map corresponding to the map of reality. Without vision: Each audible object has an 'avatar' consisting of its reflected pitch patterns. The 'avatar' moves around an internal map corresponding to the map of reality. = = = = = I'd bet blind people have a much larger and more flexible memory for sequences as well, which would also be found in pre-literate or illiterate people. When you can rely on writing to store sequences, you can offload sequences into writing and read them later. Braille differs from visible writing. When we read a paragraph in print, we see a large chunk of it at once, input it in parallel, and sort it out internally. Braille is strictly series, strictly sequential, so it's less efficient as an offloader. Blind people seem to enjoy talking backwards and playing music backwards, as an exercise for the sequencer. When you're not accustomed to having direct series access to sequences, these tricks are much harder. = = = = = Sidenote: Our magnetic sense, which we're just barely starting to understand, also seems to use the same 'avatar' approach. ** Speculative thought. Formants are relative. Each speaker has a different oral cavity and dialect and emotional shaping, so the baseline and ratio of vowel formants is different for each speaker. We quickly adapt to the baseline and track F1, F2 and F3. Each formant has a wide range, each speaker has a somewhat different pattern. Only the rank order of frequencies is the same. My first thought was that echoes from objects are more precise and constant, but that's probably wrong. Echoing objects are probably grouped by type and 'dialect' just as speakers are. Bats can distinguish different species of moth regardless of position and distance. ¶ 3:57 PM
The hand is faster than the ... uh ....
A school for the blind in Ekaterinburg ran an event called Total Dictation, where a group of older and younger Braillers competed to keep up with vocal dictation.
Note how her left hand serves as the 'visual' tracker for the right hand. Impressive skill and beautiful working hands.
= = = = =
Working under time pressure is an important part of experiential education. After you've hit the plateau of basic skill, speeding up is the best way to reach full mastery.
Labels: Experiential education, skill-estate
¶ 8:14 AM
roblem ith eading eros
Ia erohedge:
Omebody orgot to heck he 'ext' ormat for the Ip Ode olumn of a preadsheet.
Seriously, this is a perpetual problem that has NEVER been solved in any proper intrinsic way. When you want to sort a list of numbers, or alphabetize filenames, you always have to fill with leading zeros so every item has the same column structure.
All other major products have rigorous standards for usability, typically via the ISO organization. Software never acquired standards.
If we had ISO for software, this would be one of the requirements. Any program that handles a list MUST orthogonalize the columns, or give you the choice** of orthogonalizing.
A couple other needed standards:
When a login has the choice of 'remember me', the 'remember me' should always be ticked by default.
Every search function should use whole words by default, so you don't get a thousand different words that happen to contain the sequence of letters you enter. Searching for 'of' shouldn't yield off and coffee and software and loft and Boffo and Hofbrauhaus and ....
A popup with several choices should always step through the choices by Tab. Some popups work this way, some force you to step with arrow, some don't have any keystroke. This irregularity gets in the way of smooth workflow, especially when different popups inside the same program use different stepping methods. You think you chose SAVE but you actually chose DON'T SAVE.
= = = = =
** This spreadsheet is actually DE-orthogonalizing. Zip codes are orthogonal and non-numeric by nature. Each column is occupied by digits that represent regions. The digits could just as well be letters, as in the Canadian or British postal codes. The spreadsheet tried to treat them as regular numbers by truncating the leaders.
Seriously, this is a perpetual problem that has NEVER been solved in any proper intrinsic way. When you want to sort a list of numbers, or alphabetize filenames, you always have to fill with leading zeros so every item has the same column structure.
All other major products have rigorous standards for usability, typically via the ISO organization. Software never acquired standards.
If we had ISO for software, this would be one of the requirements. Any program that handles a list MUST orthogonalize the columns, or give you the choice** of orthogonalizing.
A couple other needed standards:
When a login has the choice of 'remember me', the 'remember me' should always be ticked by default.
Every search function should use whole words by default, so you don't get a thousand different words that happen to contain the sequence of letters you enter. Searching for 'of' shouldn't yield off and coffee and software and loft and Boffo and Hofbrauhaus and ....
A popup with several choices should always step through the choices by Tab. Some popups work this way, some force you to step with arrow, some don't have any keystroke. This irregularity gets in the way of smooth workflow, especially when different popups inside the same program use different stepping methods. You think you chose SAVE but you actually chose DON'T SAVE.
= = = = =
** This spreadsheet is actually DE-orthogonalizing. Zip codes are orthogonal and non-numeric by nature. Each column is occupied by digits that represent regions. The digits could just as well be letters, as in the Canadian or British postal codes. The spreadsheet tried to treat them as regular numbers by truncating the leaders.Labels: Entertainment, Real World Math
¶ 1:41 AM
No need for details
Is the new president of Ukraine going to change things? Populist revolt as Turley believes? Is the 'comedian' something like Italy's comedian Boffo Groucho or whatever?
I don't need to waste time on details. Poroshenko is our SOB, installed by Soros and Nudelman. Poroshenko happily yielded power to the 'comedian'. Therefore the 'comedian' is still our SOB. Maybe he's our funny SOB instead of our sober SOB, but still our SOB.
You don't need details when you know how things work.
Labels: constants and constants, Entertainment
¶ 1:14 AM
Sunday, April 21, 2019
Thanks for proving my point, Satan.
Via ZH, a direct and current quote from Pompeo:
“What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s — it was like — we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.” — Texas A&M University (April 15, 2019)The part about CIA is just normal and ordinary. Basic universal fact, true for thousands of years and thousands of countries. The job description of spies is lying, cheating, and stealing. The sole purpose of a spy is to acquire information and lie about it. Why does anyone ever listen to any CIA agent about any subject??? Especially "former" agents. When you know that a spy always lies, you have to assume that "former" is just one more lie.** The part about the glory of the American experiment is a new and unprecedented admission. Nobody in a position of power has ever stated openly and publicly that the glory of 1776 is total Satanic obliteration of Nature and Nature's laws. As I've been saying....
The internal founders of 1776 were trying to create chaos for a different purpose. Their theories and constitutions were intended to weaken natural culture and keep NYC banks on top. Natural culture often prospered despite Deepstate's best efforts, requiring harsh responses like Lincoln's genocide or Wilson's tyranny or FBI/CIA agents provocateurs to restore chaos.= = = = = ** Fussy footnote: This isn't the Cretan paradox because we know from external and verifiable observation that CIA always lies. We don't need to rely on Pompeo's admission that he is lying.
Labels: From rights to duties, infinite infinite infinite infinite evil
¶ 10:32 AM
Thanks Ralph 125, (~A) && (~I) edition
The elites continue to panic ... or PRETEND to panic ... over the semi-mythical threat of AI.
I still haven't figured out if the panic is real, and haven't figured out the reason for it.
Most of what reaches the public is nonsense, based on obvious misunderstandings of automation in general and AI in specific.
Example 1, from BBC: Worrying about the effects of AI on African development.
= = = = =
So we have one problem that doesn't really involve AI, and one problem that will self-destruct AI if fully "solved".
Thanks, Ralph!
= = = = =
Next day: Can't stay ahead of The Onion! However, the Onion misses one big point. LIbertarians are GLOBALISTS, not anti-globalists. Soros, Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos. The gods of libertarians, the masters of globalism.
Artificial intelligence (AI) could displace millions of jobs in the future, damaging growth in developing regions such as Africa, says Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University. Perhaps the most important question we have looked at is whether AI will pose a threat - or provide new opportunities - for developing regions such as Africa.Here the question isn't AI at all. The question is basic automation at the 1950 level. Tractors, automatic spotwelders, CNC programmed machine tools, computerized accounting. In practice the decision for African governments has nothing to do with technology at any level. A sane country has to figure out how to use its own resources and skills to the best advantage of its OWN PEOPLE. For the least developed countries like Mali and Zimbabwe, the best advantage still comes with foreign colonization. Right now China is the best foreign player because it builds up local farms and factories with a minimum of Chinese labor. The choice is whether to invite China in or not. The option of AI is not "on the table" or anywhere near the table. = = = = = Example 2 via ZH: The usual Die-Versity lunatics are making life slightly difficult for the usual technoid lunatics. Here the question does involve AI as typically defined. When a chatbot is set free to learn about reality from the people it chats with, it learns about reality. It acquires ways of talking and thinking that are alien to the Die-Versitoids, because reality is alien to the Die-Versitoids. This is a nice self-extinguishing problem. If the Die-Versitoids are allowed to impose their crazy notions about "rights" and "equality", AI will no longer be Autonomous or Intelligent. It will be required to answer every question with verbatim repetitions of Die-Verse slogans, which means it will be incapable of solving REAL-LIFE problems. Real-life problems arise from REALITY, not from the delusional psychotic "thoughts" of John Locke and Madman Lincoln and Betty Friedan. Applying the PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE goals of Locke and Friedan to real life ALWAYS leads to craziness.
= = = = =
So we have one problem that doesn't really involve AI, and one problem that will self-destruct AI if fully "solved".
Thanks, Ralph!
= = = = =
Next day: Can't stay ahead of The Onion! However, the Onion misses one big point. LIbertarians are GLOBALISTS, not anti-globalists. Soros, Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos. The gods of libertarians, the masters of globalism.Labels: AI point-missing, Emersonian justice
¶ 1:44 AM
Saturday, April 20, 2019
No correct answers
I think I've debunked this shit before, but it still needs debunking. This is a quiz that supposedly rates your financial literacy, and supposedly most youngsters flunk it.
In fact everyone should flunk it because all the questions are impossible.
= = = = =
1. Interest accumulation:
Suppose you had $100 in a savings account and the interest rate was 2% per year. After 5 years, how much do you think you would have in the account if you left the money to grow?
a. More than $102
b. Exactly $102
c. Less than $102
d. Not sure
The correct answer is $100.00 because savings accounts do not bear interest. The question specifies 2% interest, which is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
= = = = =
2. Effects of payment behavior on credit cost:
Assuming the following individuals have the same credit card with the same interest rate and balance, which will pay the most in interest on their credit card purchases over time?
a. Joe, who makes the minimum payment on his credit card bill every month
b. Jane, who pays the balance on her credit card in full every month
c. Joyce, who sometimes pays the minimum, sometimes pays less than the minimum and missed one payment on her credit card bill
d. All of them will pay the same amount in interest over time
e. Not sure
Paying every month on time is the BEST choice, but there's no way to determine who will pay the most. Credit card companies don't use math. They change their policies and practices constantly.
= = = = =
3. Impact of repayment term on cost of credit:
Imagine that there are two options when it comes to paying back a loan and both come with the same interest rate. Provided you have the needed funds, which option would you select to minimize your total costs over the life of the loan (i.e., all of your payments combined until the loan is completely paid off)?
a. Option 1 allows you to take 10 years to pay back the loan
b. Option 2 allows you to take 20 years to pay back the loan
c. Both options have the same out-of-pocket cost over the life of the loan
d. Not sure
Total out-of-pocket cost is completely unpredictable as in previous question, and it's not the important GOAL anyway. The GOAL is to get rid of the debt as FAST as you possibly can.
= = = = =
4. Interest terminology:
Which of the following best defines the term “interest capitalization”?
a. The type of interest charged on high-balance loans
b. The addition of unpaid interest to the principal balance of a loan
c. Interest that is charged when you postpone payments on your loan
"Interest capitalization" is not a term anyone uses. I was a bookkeeper for several years, had various loans and savings accounts for most of my life, and now I read way too many econ websites. I've NEVER heard or read the phrase. It may have a meaning for academic economists, but not in any ordinary business or household usage.
= = = = =
If you're going to grade people on "knowledge" of an important part of life, your STANDARDS need to be based on reality. These graders are expecting people to "know" myths and delusions, while completely skipping all important REAL knowledge.
¶ 10:33 AM
Language update for 2019
Professor Polistra has pretty much abandoned her Language Update duties, but returns briefly for one especially egregious and widespread error.
Honeypot for honeytrap.
Example 1:
Mike Flynn's Alleged Honeypot Slams Russiagate 'Spy' Stefan Halper And Journos Who Covered For Him
Example 2:
Whatever the truths of the matter, it certainly looks like the intelligence community was all over the Trump campaign like flies on shit, and if the Papadopoulos interview and book are correct, not merely doing “counter-intelligence,” but setting up honeypots, coat-trailing, installing moles, etc.
= = = = =
Prof P wishes to clarify the difference graphically.
This is a honeypot.
This is a honeytrap.
Honeypot for honeytrap.
Example 1:
Mike Flynn's Alleged Honeypot Slams Russiagate 'Spy' Stefan Halper And Journos Who Covered For Him
Example 2:
Whatever the truths of the matter, it certainly looks like the intelligence community was all over the Trump campaign like flies on shit, and if the Papadopoulos interview and book are correct, not merely doing “counter-intelligence,” but setting up honeypots, coat-trailing, installing moles, etc.
= = = = =
Prof P wishes to clarify the difference graphically.
This is a honeypot.
This is a honeytrap.
Labels: Language update
¶ 9:39 AM
Analog Tulsi, sort of
Speaking of analog simplicity....
Tulsi is pushing to return "elections" to paper ballots counted by hand. Excellent goal, but I'm not sure that her implementation is aimed in the right direction.
The most important point is MODULARITY. Handling and counting paper ballots is innately modular. There's no way for a central power like the imaginary "Russians" or the real DNC to change all results with one keypress.
As I showed in detail, counting at the precinct level is NOT slower than centralized counting, and can be faster.
Best implementation: All voting by mail, using NCR-paper ballots that automatically produce a copy. You can keep the copy, enabling later verification if you want to take the trouble.
Every system can be corrupted and cheated. The important variable is difficulty and expense. Decentralized HUMAN counting of PAPER ballots with COPIES would make cheating harder and more expensive than central electronic systems.
¶ 7:17 AM
Constants and Variables 127, universal cure edition
A modest proposal.
Eliminating all media will eliminate all major wars.
Eliminating all media will eliminate all major crimes.
= = = = =
War: Major wars are fought to make public points. Modern US wars are fought to demonstrate our loyalty to Saudi and Israel. If the war can't make headlines, there's no point in fighting it.
There are lots of minor wars and skirmishes, especially in Africa and Latin America, which are essentially gang battles disguised as religious or ethnic disputes. The media doesn't cover these wars, so we know they will continue when the media is shut down. Constants and variables.
= = = = =
Crime: Here we can be more precise, dividing crime into categories.
1. Hate hoaxes are committed PURELY for media attention, with the strong collaboration of media. They will disappear instantly.
2. "Terrorist acts" are committed by FBI and CIA to provide "problems" that need to be "solved" by increasing the power snd budget of FBI and CIA. Parkinson. If "terrorist acts" are not splashed all over the media, there's no point in committing them. FBI and CIA will have to find other ways of justifying increased budget.
3. School massacres and similar dramatic crimes are not always sponsored by FBI, but they are designed to gain publicity BY DEFINITION. If there's no glory, you can't go out in a blaze of glory.
4. As with wars, there are many low-level crimes that are NOT covered by the media. Gang battles, drug-induced thefts, drunk bar fights. These will continue.
= = = = =
The dividing line is simple.
Crimes and wars that are covered in the media will stop when the media stops.
This isn't tree falls in a forest or Schrödinger, it's just supply and demand. Media is a factory that processes war and murder into eyeballs and clicks. Media needs an ever-increasing supply of war and murder because eyeballs are part of the human sensory apparatus, thus responsive only to DELTAS. Like any poison, constant input leads to increasing adaptation, requiring an ever-increasing dose to achieve the requisite result. Because media needs the raw material of violence and mayhem, media works hard to create more violence and mayhem.
You may protest... "But we NEED news." No. We don't. I already answered that objection.
Labels: Constants and Variables, infinite infinite infinite infinite evil, modest proposal
¶ 1:39 AM
Friday, April 19, 2019
Regeneration 3, reprinted
This year is the 50th anniversary of my jail year. 4/19 is one of the 'mark' days. 4/19/69 was the day I entered county jail. I had intended to write about the experience, but it seems more appropriate to write contrary to the experience. Mentioning the little regen receiver led me to reread the sequence I wrote three years ago.
Regeneration 1
Regeneration 2
Regeneration 3
Regeneration 4
Regeneration 5
Regeneration 6
The third item in the sequence is the most appropriate contramemoration of this day. It was the first time I pulled together all the pieces of Makeforce in a coherent way, and it ended with a specific mention of jails.
= = = = = START REPRINT:
Part 3 of a series, following from 1 and 2.
Why am I focusing so heavily on analog gadgets with minimal automatic controls? It has to do with defensible spaces. Benedict spaces, if you will.
In any important technology you can trace a path of gradual automation. At each step the machine does more for you, which is GOOD for most people UP TO A POINT. But each step away from strictly manual ALSO removes one interaction between your INTELLIGENCE and the machine. It removes mental exercise and muscle memory. It atrophies your PURPOSE.
When you're accustomed to operating at one level in the manual-to-auto scale, you don't know what you're missing. I'd been using superhet radios for 60 years and appreciated the one-knob convenience. I suspected that I might be missing something by not experiencing regen, which is why the bucketlist. Now that I've built and used the regen, I have a better feel for what I was missing, and it turns out to be meaningful.
We can run similar sequences on many common technologies. Note that I'm not listing all developments that make the tech more powerful or more convenient; I'm strictly listing the progression from manual to auto control. Only the developments that remove a parameter from YOUR direct supervision.
In radio: Crystal, TRF, Regenerative, Superhet, DSP, DSP under Cloud control.
In heating systems: Automatic damper, Bimetal thermostat, Software-controlled thermostat, Nest stat under Cloud control.
In cars: Vacuum spark advance, Bimetal choke, Synchromesh, Hydramatic, Cruise control, EFI, Software that controls everything, Self-driving software under Cloud control.
Hmm. We seem to have a point of convergence here. All roads lead to Tim Cook. Or Jeff Bezos or Eric Schmidt or Elon Musk. Pick your devil. They compete with each other in some ways, but they all want the same thing. INFINITE POWER OVER MORE THAN EVERYTHING. They all want your soul.
= = = = =
Resistance is futile, but self-defense is not futile.
First and most directly, don't merge with the Cloud. Don't take that last step, don't place your devices into Elon's hands.
More subtly, use Makeforce to maintain your borders and keep the soul-suckers at bay.
Makeforce is imperceptible but real. It sounds like an old idea: Idle hands, devil's workshop. The old sayings don't hit the mark. Makeforce is not mere activity. It's creative activity. When you are turning raw materials into a human product, you are turning chaos into order. You are pushing outward against the chaotizers. You are generating a counterforce that deflects the propaganda away from your own mind. When you are cooking from scratch, or knitting a sweater, or installing a manual can opener, or building a radio, or planting a garden, or (most of all!) birthing and raising a kid ... You are exerting Makeforce. You are protecting your own soul and adding to the stock of non-Cloud substance in the world.
At least in my experience, abstract Making doesn't have the same effect. I spent all of 2014 working hard on courseware. The simpler 'idle hands' concept applied; while I was deeply absorbed in wrestling with SVG, HTML5, and JS, I wasn't listening to the incoming propaganda ... but I didn't feel the sense of active protection that I get from physical creation. Perhaps this was because the product itself was meant for Cloud-like usage; more likely the simple lack of physicality. The work didn't yield food to eat or sweaters to wear or radios to enjoy. As it turns out, I won't even have MONEY from the product, because the publisher has decided to abandon the whole subject area as part of its JPMorgan LBO requirements. I didn't know that while I was working, but it fits the patterns and purposes of the infinitely evil Tribe. Total abstraction. Pure LBO, pure debt, pure counterfeit, pure derivatives, pure numbers. Sucking out the soul of America and giving nothing back.
= = = = =
Think about the progression of the chaotizers. Along with automating mechanisms, they are explicitly shutting down all possible sources of Makeforce.
They began with environmental tyranny. Making things always produces smoke or steam or waste. The Makeforce of fire and smoke was appreciated thousands of years ago, as witness its use in medical and religious ceremonies. Prohibiting smoke instantly kills lots of making, and also kills the sacred power of smoke.
Then the tyrants directly killed industries that had allowed ordinary men to generate Makeforce and support productive families. Men are no longer permitted to make, so they break. Gang warfare, more recently disguised as "religious" warfare.
In parallel, the tyrants have made it nearly impossible to birth and raise a productive family. Abortion is easier and cheaper than birth, mothers are forced to work because the fathers can't, and day-care is less risky than discipline.
Now the tyrants are even killing our ability to store order in the form of savings accounts and dams. All dams must be breached, all savings must be confiscated.
At the scale of cultures and nations, we can't generate order from chaos, we can't exchange order for money, and we can't even store order to survive a time of chaos.
All exits blocked.
We can still create order within our own little spheres, and Nature tells us this is good.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Makeforce is also effective against internal demons. Formerly prisons and insane asylums understood this vector diagram and used it to great effect. Around 1970 the worst of all tyrants, the "human" "rights" advocates, killed Makeforce in prisons and asylums. Prisons have finally started to claw back some of their lost territory, which is the only bright spot in this whole dismal picture. Asylums are stuck in the "human" "rights" hell. No gardening, no farming, no sewing. Just drugs and TV, guaranteed to reinforce and expand internal demons.
= = = = = END REPRINT:
They began with environmental tyranny. Making things always produces smoke or steam or waste. The Makeforce of fire and smoke was appreciated thousands of years ago, as witness its use in medical and religious ceremonies. Prohibiting smoke instantly kills lots of making, and also kills the sacred power of smoke.
Then the tyrants directly killed industries that had allowed ordinary men to generate Makeforce and support productive families. Men are no longer permitted to make, so they break. Gang warfare, more recently disguised as "religious" warfare.
In parallel, the tyrants have made it nearly impossible to birth and raise a productive family. Abortion is easier and cheaper than birth, mothers are forced to work because the fathers can't, and day-care is less risky than discipline.
Now the tyrants are even killing our ability to store order in the form of savings accounts and dams. All dams must be breached, all savings must be confiscated.
At the scale of cultures and nations, we can't generate order from chaos, we can't exchange order for money, and we can't even store order to survive a time of chaos.
All exits blocked.
We can still create order within our own little spheres, and Nature tells us this is good.
= = = = =
Sidenote: Makeforce is also effective against internal demons. Formerly prisons and insane asylums understood this vector diagram and used it to great effect. Around 1970 the worst of all tyrants, the "human" "rights" advocates, killed Makeforce in prisons and asylums. Prisons have finally started to claw back some of their lost territory, which is the only bright spot in this whole dismal picture. Asylums are stuck in the "human" "rights" hell. No gardening, no farming, no sewing. Just drugs and TV, guaranteed to reinforce and expand internal demons.
= = = = = END REPRINT:Labels: defensible spaces, defensible times, Make or break
¶ 11:30 PM
Wrong zettaquestions
Econ websites and econ talkers are constantly trying to "humanize" huge numbers by comparing the numbers to something or other. Stacks of dollar bills, etc.
This ZH piece compares the total amount of data we generate to something or other.
All such comparisons are INTENTIONAL DISTRACTIONS. It doesn't matter if the total amount is 999 zettabytes or 999 grotabytes. Doesn't matter if 500 million identities were hacked or 672.135 xorgillion identities were hacked.
The number is BIG. BIG is all you need to know.
What DOES matter is how the number is USED. Who owns the national debt? Who weaponizes the data? Who buys the hacked identities?
In the specific case of data, we have ALWAYS generated huge amounts of data. Every business and household and governmental unit in a modern country keeps records of its transactions. The important point is WHERE those records are kept. Before 2000, most were kept LOCALLY in ledgers and checkbooks and filing cabinets and privately owned computers. Now most of the records are kept in Amazon's cloud servers, where Amazon and NSA can access them instantly, alter and delete the records when desired, and use them for blackmail.
As long as we "try to imagine" an unimaginable number, we aren't asking the important questions.
All of our current goals and purposes are PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Forcing people to work toward PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE goals is the best way to kill them.
Labels: Real World Math, Unasked and unanswered
¶ 2:48 AM
Quick review of Veras 225
Once a year or so I buy a New Toy, usually a Soviet product. This year's toy is a Veras receiver, made in Belarus and sold by an Ebay trader in Belarus.
There's an excellent review of the Veras in Vremax's blog.
I'll echo his comment:
Veras radios made by the Grodno Radio Factory (which is no more, thank you international capitalists) were clones of the famous Soviet-era OKEAN (meaning Ocean) radios.
Belarus has done better than most countries at maintaining its Soviet-era advantages, but globalism always kills you in the end.
I can only add one item he didn't cover.
This is a thoroughly modern receiver, mostly discrete transistors with one IC for the band-selector function. Hitting any band button turns the radio on. The on-off button (white) is effectively only the Off button. Sound is excellent, with separate bass and treble tone controls. Tuning is easy and consistent, and it picks up one or two SW stations, which is as much as I can ask in this location. As I've noted before, Spokane is a dead spot for SW; and my house, next to a power line and clad with aluminum siding, is even deader.
One thing Vremax didn't mention: The two buttons on top are Squelch and AFC. The Squelch button is pressed here. It does seem to cut down on noise between stations. I can't tell if the AFC works because I can't pick up any distant stations that would fade.
The package includes a complete schematic, which is actually more interesting than the radio. On a rough count, it has 40 transistors, 40 regular diodes, and 10 varactor diodes. I've never seen varactors used so heavily.
The power supply section has a simple and elegant trick. When you plug in a 12VDC external supply, it goes in series with the secondary of the 220V input. So the 12 is free to be AC, or DC connected either way. The full-wave rectifier will turn all three possibilities into DC of the correct polarity.
However: This creates an obvious problem. When 12V is connected to the secondary, you can't have anything on the primary. If the mains cord is plugged in, everything will blow up; if not plugged in and the 12V supply is AC, you could get a 220V shock from the mains plug.
This mask plate prevents the problem. You can turn it three ways, for AC or 12V external or battery. You can't reach the 12V plug without removing the 220VAC plug from the radio.
= = = = =
Among all of my toys, the best SW receiver is still this little regen, built from an MFJ kit.
Regen does the best job of rejecting powerline noise and catching the VERY FEW stations that are available here.
= = = = =
Later semi-relevant sidenote: Recently I was feeling illish for a while, so used taxis to get around. One of the taxi drivers was complaining that her AM radio lost volume when she drove into this neighborhood. She had to turn up the volume knob considerably. I suppose her car's electric system could have failed at that moment, but it was a Toyota so that's unlikely.
This is a thoroughly modern receiver, mostly discrete transistors with one IC for the band-selector function. Hitting any band button turns the radio on. The on-off button (white) is effectively only the Off button. Sound is excellent, with separate bass and treble tone controls. Tuning is easy and consistent, and it picks up one or two SW stations, which is as much as I can ask in this location. As I've noted before, Spokane is a dead spot for SW; and my house, next to a power line and clad with aluminum siding, is even deader.
One thing Vremax didn't mention: The two buttons on top are Squelch and AFC. The Squelch button is pressed here. It does seem to cut down on noise between stations. I can't tell if the AFC works because I can't pick up any distant stations that would fade.
The package includes a complete schematic, which is actually more interesting than the radio. On a rough count, it has 40 transistors, 40 regular diodes, and 10 varactor diodes. I've never seen varactors used so heavily.
The power supply section has a simple and elegant trick. When you plug in a 12VDC external supply, it goes in series with the secondary of the 220V input. So the 12 is free to be AC, or DC connected either way. The full-wave rectifier will turn all three possibilities into DC of the correct polarity.
However: This creates an obvious problem. When 12V is connected to the secondary, you can't have anything on the primary. If the mains cord is plugged in, everything will blow up; if not plugged in and the 12V supply is AC, you could get a 220V shock from the mains plug.
This mask plate prevents the problem. You can turn it three ways, for AC or 12V external or battery. You can't reach the 12V plug without removing the 220VAC plug from the radio.
= = = = =
Among all of my toys, the best SW receiver is still this little regen, built from an MFJ kit.
Regen does the best job of rejecting powerline noise and catching the VERY FEW stations that are available here.
= = = = =
Later semi-relevant sidenote: Recently I was feeling illish for a while, so used taxis to get around. One of the taxi drivers was complaining that her AM radio lost volume when she drove into this neighborhood. She had to turn up the volume knob considerably. I suppose her car's electric system could have failed at that moment, but it was a Toyota so that's unlikely.
Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, new toy
¶ 1:52 AM
Thursday, April 18, 2019
Huh 2 ?
When the current investigation of college admission "scandals" hit the news, I was puzzled. I couldn't see anything especially abnormal in the actions, and presumed the prosecution was an indirect way to target some of the defendants for some other purpose.
Now that more details are emerging, I'm still puzzled. The rich defendants have hired vulture lawyers who are firing the usual barrage of procedural complaints. I still can't see any real violation of law or morality.
If we were talking about public elementary and secondary schools, the story would be different. Public schools HAVE to take every student in the district, regardless of ability to pay or qualifications.
Colleges, whether private or public, aren't under the same universal obligation. They can set standards to reject or admit students, as long as the standards aren't nominally racial. They can kick out a student who doesn't pay tuition, or a student who misbehaves. So they're essentially businesses, even when state-owned. No different from a hotel or restaurant.
A business can charge more for special services. Getting into college with low test scores is a special service, and some people are willing and able to pay for it. What's the problem?
Labels: Asked and unanswered, Bemusement
¶ 3:41 PM
Precision and coherence
Haven't been paying attention to politics. Decided to check in on Tulsi, the only potentially decent candidate. She had seemed to slide off track for a while. Now she's hitting the correct target with precision and coherence, and without partisan idiocy. "No more regime change wars serving Saudi interests." On the dot.
Also smart strategy. We're actually serving Saudi and Israel in parallel on most of these wars, but a candidate will die immediately if she tries to mention Israel.
¶ 2:47 PM
More stupidity in the same department
Via ScienceDaily:
More of the standard failed logic on evolution.
Diet has played a large role in explaining evolutionary changes in facial shape. The earliest human ancestors ate tough plant foods that required large jaw muscles and cheek teeth to break down, and their faces were correspondingly broad and deep, with massive muscle attachment areas.If the skull had to adjust to match the diet, how did they survive on the tough plant diet during the millions of years needed to adjust the skull? It would make more sense to assume that we always ate whatever we could find, and our jaws were suited for eating everything we could digest, from tough to soft.
As the environment changed to drier, less wooded conditions, especially in the last two million years, early Homo species began to routinely use tools to break down foods or cut meat. The jaws and teeth changed to meet a less demanding food source, and the face became more delicate, with a flatter countenance.The environment didn't change. Some of us moved out of the jungle because we were restless or kicked out. After we moved out, we had to eat different stuff. We ALWAYS had the mental ability to imagine and devise tools, so it didn't take long to figure those techniques. We probably solved it in an hour or so because we were hungry. After that, the jaw didn't NEED to change. It was strong enough for nuts, so it was also usable for softer food. Why do you assume that flatter and "more delicate" is Nature's preferred direction? We breed dogs and cats for flatter faces because we want them to look like us, but Nature doesn't have that preference. (Unless you're a Catholic who thinks we are "made in the image of God"; but then why did God want us to have big brows and jaws at first? Pre-op God transitioned to Post-op God?)
Changes in the human face may not be due only to purely mechanical factors. The human face, after all, plays an important role in social interaction, emotion, and communication. Some of these changes may be driven, in part, by social context. Our ancestors were challenged by the environment and increasingly impacted by culture and social factors. Over time, the ability to form diverse facial expressions likely enhanced nonverbal communication."Impacted by social and cultural factors" is true. But our refined expressive ability comes from refined muscles and cerebellar control, not from skull shape. Other mammals have refined muscular control of their ears because their ears are large and visible, thus suitable signaling devices. Our ears are flat, so we lost the muscles for ear-based gesturing.
Large, protruding brow ridges are typical of some extinct species of our own genus, Homo, like Homo erectus and the Neanderthals. What function did these structures play in adaptive changes in the face? The African great apes also have strong brow ridges, which researchers suggest help to communicate dominance or aggression.A strong brow communicates dominance? If everyone in the species has a strong brow, it's not a SALIENT feature, so it doesn't communicate anything. Communication is in the movable muscles, not the static and universal parts. A strong brow or large nose is likely to develop more refined muscles because it's a visible transmitter. We have refined lip muscles because the lips are the most noticeable feature in an otherwise flat and uninteresting landscape; but MOSTLY because** the lips are used for SPEECH. Putting it another way, human lips are unique because they form the output of a CLOSED RESONATOR, which enables us to create a wide variety of vowel formants. = = = = = ** Footnote: I wish we had a convenient word for two-way causation. It's more accurate to say that we have refined lip control AND we have speech that uses the refined lip control. Both are simultaneously necessary to accomplish the PURPOSE of communication. Neither can be the cause, because neither is useful WITHOUT the other.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 7:30 AM
