Almost realistic enough
BBC feature on who gets to be president and how the election works. Allegedly aimed at British youngsters. Surprisingly realistic, especially about the intrinsic corruption of the Electoral College. Most US descriptions focus on the old fake selling point that the EC "gives more power to small rural states." That was never the purpose, and it's wildly untrue now.

A much simpler answer would be more comprehensible to Brit yoots.

You get to be President the same way you get to be Monarch in Britain, by belonging to the dynasty. The US dynastic setup is sloppier. We don't have a single permanent dynasty; instead we have gang wars between short-lived competing dynasties, as happened in Britain before Tyrant Elizabeth 1.

Occasionally a non-dynastic is placed in office when the heir of the dominant dynasty isn't ready. Hillary was used up and Chelsea wasn't ready, so Trump was installed as Regent to maintain the dynastic policies while besmirching all opponents of the dynasty. Chelsea's path will be easier after all opponents have been exterminated.
  ¶ 5:41 AM

  Wrong kind of coding
A pretty good modern version of the Declaration of Independence by Larry Sanger, the disgruntled cofounder of Wikipedia.

The League of Disgruntled Cofounders should get together and make something happen. Most of the tech companies were taken over at some point by imperial monsters like Zuckerberg and Elon, leaving the originals unhappy with the change.

But this declaration misses ALL the necessary points.

1. Dissidents aren't common. The people who WANT to express independent opinions, and CAN express them coherently, have always been in the 3% range. 97% are happy to read what everyone else reads and say what everyone else says. 97% emphatically includes all popular and attractive people, by simple logic.

2. Before the net, dissidents understood that you can't expect the enemy's newspapers to publish your articles for free, and you CERTAINLY can't expect the enemy's newspapers to PAY you for publishing your articles. Modern dissidents expect Youtube to PAY them for articles that Youtube doesn't like. This is crazy. Earlier dissidents had their own printing presses or personal 'networks'. The latter is harder now because even the landline phone system is monitored by NSA. But a mouth-to-ear whisper network or a hand-to-hand Morse network is still possible.

3. Independence means independence. If you want to get away from NSA, you have to PHYSICALLY disconnect from NSA. This declaration talks about 'coding' but it DOESN'T talk about printing presses or shortwave or hand-to-hand communication or visual semaphore chains or clock codes or book codes.

4. Without physical disconnection, no amount of 'coding' will give you independence.

Labels: Aberree, From rights to duties, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 10:34 PM

  Fakedowns
Convective thought.

Most of the "activity" of Sorosian dysgovernments is FAKE SHAKEDOWNS.

Fakedowns are an old classic in ordinary crime, but relatively new in dysgovernments. Ordinary blackmailers often threaten to expose letters or documents that don't really exist, or letters that the blackmailer has forged. Ordinary kidnappers often threaten a kidnap that hasn't happened yet. If the threat is credible, it brings in money with no real labor by the criminal. No document theft, no grab, no killing.

Real shakedowns are old and universal among governments. Give an ultimatum, get the payoff. If no payoff, real invasion and destruction by armies or SWAT teams.

The biggest dysgovernment fakedown is "climate change", where governments ruin their own industries and slaughter their own people to fund fake shit like "carbon sequestration" and "carbon reduction", which CAN'T POSSIBLY AFFECT THE WEATHER. The weather responds to internal changes in the earth's magnetic field and core. CO2 is a RESULT of those changes. Thanks to 45 years of vicious genocidal propaganda, all corporations have decided to go along with the racket. Going along was hard at first, but after the 1980 switch from profit to share value, it's easy. Eliminating production and skills and jobs is the only way to gain share value.

Trump is a virtuoso fakedown artist. He threatens to do some shit, gets the payoff, then turns off the threat. It doesn't matter if the shit is possible. Sometimes he even surrenders before getting the payoff, but he still seems to think he's winning. Invading Russia is impossible. We did it in 1918, but that was before nukes. Invading Persia is physically possible, and we've done it before, but now Persia will respond by blocking Saudi oil, which is the ONLY oil, so we aren't going to do it. Invading Venezuela is physically possible, and we've done it before, but we're currently proving that we aren't competent enough to make it happen.

As with the classic protection racket that relies on silence by all businesses, Trump depends on other countries to go along with the fakedowns against Russia and Persia. BUT: Unlike the "climate change" fakedown where going along gets easier, cooperation is getting harder. Euro countries are losing massive amounts of money and fuel, and they've finally decided to break the chain.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:20 AM

  Misattribution of purpose 2
Here's a misattribution in the opposite direction from previous item.

As usual, Dreher cultivates our outrage at the SJWs who destroy old art.

A 'socialist realist' mural funded by WPA is being wiped out by progressives because it shows the standard progressive view of blacks, injuns and honkies.

Dreher attributes this lunacy to an ideological PURPOSE:

The religion of Social Justice is a thing of staggering stupidity and destructiveness. It is moralistic therapeutic barbarism. If you value art, literature, and freedom of thought and expression, you will fight hard to keep these people from coming to power within political and cultural institutions. It might be too late for California. But for the rest of us? We are creating a generation of sentimentalized Stalinists.

No, it's not any kind of -ism. Isms are purposeful action. These cultists have been stripped of all human rationality. Their myelin insulation has been burned off, exposing the bare axons. They are humans who think like computers. Their code contains a list of banned subjects. When they see a representation of the banned subject, they delete it. Extremely simple code, two or three lines. Termite code. See wood, eat it.

Censorious types have ALWAYS been mechanistic. Librarians have always removed Twain's anti-racist books because he uses ordinary words that are indexed in the current list of prohibitions. The new censorship by ACTUAL computers is not new. The actual computers are just replacing humans who think like computers.

The PURPOSE of the New Deal artist is utterly irrelevant, just as Twain's PURPOSE is irrelevant. There's no irony here, just a complete lack of LIFE.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 12:27 AM

  Misattribution of purpose 1
A typical Spokompton item in the Spokane News FB page.

The official account doesn't tell you what's happening or why.

Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Deputies responded to multiple reports of two fires west of Carnahan near 16th Avenue. Witnesses stated a female, later identified as 28-year-old Angel M. Garton, was walking around and starting the fires. Spokane Valley Fire quickly extinguished the small fires which caused minimal damage. Garton was booked into jail for two counts of Arson 2nd Degree.

On June 27, 2019, at approximately 6:55 p.m., Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to reports of a female acting strange and starting fires as she walked on Carnahan between 14th and 16th Avenue.

Spokane County and Spokane Valley Deputies arrived in the area and found two small fires, one mainly grass and brush and one in an electrical/utility box. Witnesses told Deputies, Garton was the one responsible for setting the fires. As Deputy McKenzie approached Garton, he observed she was holding BIC lighter in her hand. Garton was detained without incident pending an investigation.

The ensuing discussion is worth reading. As fucking usual, conservatives cite "lack of personal responsibility" and liberals cite "sympathy for mental issues".

In the middle of the thread, a GENUINE EXPERT with GENUINE EXPERIENCE explains what's happening and why. He works at a metal recycling company and has to deal with the results of fires like this. Tweakers set fires in junction boxes to burn off the insulation and short out the current. They return later to cut out the bare copper and sell it.

This is REAL INFORMATION, data that we didn't know before.**

Nobody listens to the REAL INFORMATION. The conservatives keep mocking "lack of responsibility" and the liberals keep coddling "mental issues".

Both of the ideologues are failing to attribute PURPOSE to the criminal. The recycling worker understands that tweakers are engaged in a PLANNED AND PURPOSEFUL act of destructive criminal greed.

= = = = =

Next item forms a complementary pair.

= = = = =

** Nicely appropriate since Shannon's original work aimed to improve the performance of multiplexed telephone cables.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 12:10 AM

  Bravo to EU!
Via ZH:

Following a meeting between the countries who singed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by US, French, British and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last summer and called Instex, is now operational.

As a reminder, last September, in order to maintain a financial relationship with Iran that can not be vetoed by the US, Europe unveiled a "Special Purpose Vehicle" to bypass SWIFT. The mechanism would facilitate transactions between European and Iranian companies, while preventing the US from vetoing the transactions and pursuing punitive measures on those companies and states that defied Trump. The payment balancing system will allow companies in Europe to buy Iranian goods, and vice-versa, without actual money-transfers between European and Iranian banks.

ZH sees this as a major line-crossing toward independence from US imperialism. It's also a step away from the entire international BANKING system, which is the core of Deepstate.

EU continues doing massive amounts of Sorosian evil, but this one heroic action is worth saluting. So, for the first and probably the last time, Polistra and friends salute EU!



More from RT:

The European financial settlement mechanism (INSTEX), aimed at circumventing US sanctions against Iran, is working and transactions are already happening, according to Iran’s JCPOA envoy. ... On Friday, seven EU countries said in a joint statement they are working with Britain, France, and Germany on establishing trade channels to Iran, including “one of the foremost of these initiatives” – the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX).

= = = = =

Graphic sidenote: The animation has 12 frames, looping roughly every 2 seconds. Way below flicker fusion. Very slow and steppy compared to any proper video. The steppiness is easy to count on the mill wheel, with the spokes unrealistically clicking and the buckets doing a classic stagecoach alias routine. But you can't perceive any steppiness in the waving flag despite the slow pace. Smooth as Chinese-made silk. Your visual system fills in the steps.

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 2:45 PM

  For once the Republicans are NOT Repooflicans
Via Oregon Public Radio, which is NOT happy about the result:

Oregon Senate Republicans have notched a number of unlikely victories this Legislative session. None were as great as the concession they appeared to have won Tuesday morning.

Without warning his Democratic colleagues, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, took to the Senate dais, gaveled the chamber to order and solemnly announced his party’s proposal for fighting[sic] climate[sic] change[sic] was dead.

“What I’m about to say, I say of my own free will. No one has told me to say this,” Courtney said. “House Bill 2020 does not have the votes on the Senate floor. That will not change.”

The REPUBLICANS in Oregon actually DID THEIR FUCKING JOB. They were elected to REPRESENT their constituents. Their constituents didn't want more Carbon Crap. The LEGISLATORS used every tactic in the book, including boycotting. When the demon dysgovernor illegally sent out the state troopers to gather them in, the REPUBLICANS refused to buckle.

Result: REPRESENTATION.

I wish the exquisitely delicate Wash state Repoofpoofpoof eunuchs would do the same. They squeal about ZERO TAX but don't even mention other issues, and always surrender before the battle starts.

Labels: Carbon Cult, infinite GOOD

  ¶ 5:03 AM

  Not a mystery
Via MindMatters, a recent survey on returning lost wallets is baffling to "social" "scientists" and economists.

A team of economists found recently that, in a massive global study of 17,000 “lost wallets” in forty countries, people were more likely to return a wallet if it contained a large amount of cash. This finding “defied the expectations of both professional economists and 2,500 respondents to a survey, who predicted that people would act in self-interest.”

No mystery.

First, listen to people who DO understand human nature, namely swindlers. The old wallet touch always used a BIG WAD OF MONEY, guaranteeing that the suckers would want to return it. (The money was never truly lost; one of the swindling team was present at the "accidental" finding, helping the sucker to reach the correct decision.)

Second, self-interest IS the motive. A person who loses lots of money is more likely to want it back, which means more punishment for keeping the dough and more reward for returning it.

People who carry 10K in cash are usually criminals. They committed crimes to acquire the money, so they're perfectly willing to commit crimes to retrieve the money.

Non-criminals carrying big piles are likely to be performing a rare and important transaction, perhaps paying off a criminal. They need to get the money back FAST to save their own life, so they're willing to offer a reward.

= = = = =

Later, from the other angle: If I lost my wallet, would I offer a reward? Certainly not for the money. I typically carry about $30. How about the cards? At this point in life, they wouldn't matter either. Drivers license, debit card, SS card, voter registration. Only the debit card ever gets physically used. The others could be replaced at leisure. New thought: In fact I wouldn't even want the debit card. I would cancel and replace it INSTANTLY to stop thefts. The old card would thus be redundant as soon as it was lost. I've carried a wallet for 55 years without ever losing it, so I hadn't thought about the question before.

Later again: The Statcounter listings show that USBank read this item, without a referring link. Obviously they know that my debit card is a USBank card. Is that creepy? No. Their algorithms worked beautifully a couple of times in the past when the card's info was stolen online. The criminal transactions didn't fit my usual pattern, so USBank caught them and cancelled the card automatically. It's actually reassuring to know that their algorithms are still on the job. Thanks, USBank!

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 4:18 AM

  What isn't quite said
The latest Googleak from Veritas is interesting for what it doesn't quite say.

It's an internal document published by Google to guide protests organized by Google. Most of it is standard material. In the hippie days we heard the same basic rules from our Deepstate advisors. There's one difference: We weren't superrich highly paid highly privileged employees of our Deepstate advisors. We were volunteer idiots, not careerist idiots.

The subject matter of the protests is pure Soros, and also self-serving because Google relies on H1B immigrants to keep its labor costs low.

“#NoMuslimBan #NoWall” “Don’t Be Evil” “Refugees Welcome” “Immigrants Welcome” “Make America Welcoming Again” “#GooglersUnite” “Resist” “Never Again” “No Ban No Wall” “This is not who we are” “Muslims cure cancer”

Needless to say, Deepstate Trump agrees with the main theme. He has opened the border much wider than Obama did, and is shipping more "Dreamer" invaders into American cities than Obama did. So these slogans are NOT directed at Trump. They are directed at Populists.

What ISN'T QUITE SAID:

Be aware of the situation and your surroundings. It’s okay to leave. Don’t feel pressure to do something or be somewhere you don’t want to.

No dangerous routes, even if it’s “on the route.” Watch out for construction, heavy traffic, and be aware of your surroundings.

Be aware of your surroundings = Don't go into ghettos.

The "less privileged" folks you're supposedly supporting have zero patience for privileged assholes obstructing traffic. And they have less than zero patience for immigrants brought in to lower wages.
  ¶ 10:55 PM

  Not so complicated
Via UncommonDescent,

These simple mathematics are tools that Fuentes, in 2009, used to describe another system with an unusual fat-tailed distribution: the stock market. By using superstatistics — an approach from thermodynamics to describe turbulent flow — Fuentes could accurately describe the hard-to-predict dramatic crashes and explosions in value.

“In biology, we see these crashes and explosions too, in terms of biodiversity,” says Rominger. “We wondered if Fuentes’ elegant approach could also describe the evolutionary dynamics we see in the fossil record.”

You don't need fancy math for either situation.

Population booms when food is abundant (easy to find). Stocks bubble when money is abundant (low interest).

Population busts when a species uses up the available food. Stocks bust when easy money is used up or turned off.

You never need statistics. Never.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 2:53 PM

  Logic, lunacy
The blackrobed hyperdemons have simultaneously enforced simple logic and pure lunacy in two parallel decisions.

Logic: Decided not to handle some lower demon decisions about gerrymandering. This makes perfect sense. Gerrymandering is NORMAL and APPROPRIATE. Separating by party, or separating by demographics, is MORE LIKE DEMOCRACY than trying to distribute people randomly. A legislator who automatically knows what his district wants is a BETTER legislator by FUCKING DEFINITION. When the interests of a district are evenly distributed, a legislator CAN'T REPRESENT THE DISTRICT AT ALL. It's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. So he represents lobbyists instead of his district.

Lunacy: The hyperdemons decided that the Census can't have a question about citizenship. The SINGLE SOLE SOLITARY PURPOSE of the census is to determine who's eligible to vote, which means PRECISELY AND SOLELY that the CENSUS IS A QUESTION ABOUT CITIZENSHIP. That's ALL IT IS. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, NOTHING ELSE. Now the census is prohibited from asking the ONLY QUESTION IT IS MEANT TO ASK.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 10:48 AM

  Not Orwell
"New" "revelations" about the NYTimes are "shocking":

The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.

Nothing new. Always been that way. The myth of newspapers as counterforces to government has always been total nonsense.

The phrase "paper of record" is supposed to be ironic and Orwellian. I've always gone along with that supposition, and I've used the phrase that way.

Convective thought: No, it's not ironic or Orwellian. The original simple meaning of a "newspaper of record" comes from the distant past when every city with a population over 2000 had many newspapers. The city GOVERNMENT picked and paid one newspaper to carry Legal Notices about lawsuits, property transfers, probated wills, etc.

PAPER OF RECORD explicitly means GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED OUTLET.
  ¶ 8:15 AM

  Three facts
While both R and D continue to bash Persia for "malign behavior", here's a set of THREE FACTS.

I knew one of the facts already. The other two were surprising.

1. Persia has an excellent universal health care system for its own citizens. (I knew this already)

2. Persia is taking care of ONE MILLION REFUGEES from OUR wars in Iraq and Syria.

3. The universal health care extends to the refugees as well, though it's not free. The UN is paying for the service.

This is "malign behavior". This is "violating human rights". All of our idiots (except Tulsi) agree firmly with Sheldon Adelson that Persia must be obliterated to stop its "malign behavior".

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 1:22 AM

  Both right but both missing the point
Via Eurekalert, profs are having to compete with iPhones in class, and they don't like it.

Students think it is instructors' responsibility to ensure they don't surf the web in class, according to a new study.

Although most students used technology in class to keep up with the course, some also used it to catch up on other classes, or because they felt bored and not engaged in the classroom. Students felt strongly that it is their right to use technology as they see fit, since they are adults paying for their education.

Well, the students have a point about paying.

"Some students said that instructors need to be more entertaining to keep students engaged in the classroom, but this a big ask, given that we are not employed in the entertainment industry," says Neiterman. "There is also a question of what we are preparing our students for: If we are training them for future employment, we might need to teach them to focus even if the class is 'boring.'"

The majority of instructors understood that banning technology in class is not an answer.

Another good point about focus.

Both are missing the BIG POINT.



If the students are WORKING WITH THEIR HANDS, doing REAL PRODUCTIVE WORK involving all of their SENSES AND MUSCLES, they won't have any spare hands or spare attention or spare brainpower for iPhones. When Nature is providing the "entertainment", the instructor doesn't need to be a standup comedian.

= = = = =

Disclaimer: I have a vested interest in "technology to keep up with the course", aka courseware. I try to make it as interactive and sense-absorbing as possible, but I know that software is NO SUBSTITUTE for hands and muscles and noses.

Labels: Entertainment, Experiential education

  ¶ 10:43 PM

  Askedanswered

Labels: Askedanswered

  ¶ 5:55 AM

  Just another night
Typical night in Spokompton...

Labels: Entertainment, Make or break

  ¶ 5:27 AM

  Thanks Ralph 131, depuppetation edition
Via RT:

Baghdad will not allow Washington to use its military bases to launch an attack on Iran, the country's president stressed, thrashing Donald Trump's warmongering policies towards the Islamic Republic.

“We do not want our territory to be a staging post for any hostile action against any of our neighbors, including Iran,” Iraq's President Barham Salih told CNN, noting that there is no agreement between Baghdad and Washington that could make Donald Trump think he can use it as such.

This destroys the only "strategic" reason for removing Saddam.

After the WMD myth dissolved, "strategists" justified the 2003 war as a steppingstone toward obliterating Persia, which has always been the main goal of our bosses in Israel. Supposedly we were killing millions of people in one country as a warning to people in another country.

When I was still idiotically consuming and digesting TV, I swallowed this shit. It sounded rational to a TV-poisoned mind. After I tossed the TV in 2010, all of this crazy nonsense was purged.

Now our "reformed" "democracy" in Iraq has mysteriously turned out to be a real democracy, serving its own people instead of Israel.

Thanks, Ralph!

Labels: EXTREME SUPREME ABSOLUTE DEFINITIVE FINAL Emersonian justice

  ¶ 11:29 PM

  Missing the line
O'Keefe follows up the Gennai expose with some emails leaked by another Googler. The emails were proposing that "nazis" like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager should be removed from the Suggested For You list.

First, the proposal wasn't carried out. When I watch populists like Farage and LePen, Youtube tries to steer me toward Shapiro and Prager.

Second. Shapiro and Prager are standard neocons, not dissenters or populists. They follow Buckley, not Farage. When Google suggests Prager, Google is trying to steer me back toward globalism.

O'Keefe is dividing the world between Right and Left. This is no longer the important line. The vast majority of globalist leaders, from Soros to Zuckerberg to Bezos to Macron, are hard-line CAPITALISTS. They all agree on ZERO TAX and ZERO BORDERS and INFINITE WAR and INFINITE DEBT.

Localist and traditionalist leaders are more varied, but most would lean toward the 'socialist' side, favoring strict government control of monopoly capital, and more government assistance for poor people.

Needless to say, this pogrom is brought to you by Google's ETHICS team. As always, ETHICS means genocide.

Labels: Ethics

  ¶ 3:28 PM

  More honest
Pointless convective thought.

Our government used to be more honest. The WAR DEPARTMENT made war.

When Deepstate was reanimated after FDR died, the War Department was renamed the Defense Department. Since 1945, all of our wars have been unnecessary and vicious and genocidal AGGRESSION against foreign countries and AGGRESSION against our own citizens. We've made NO EFFORT to defend our borders, NO EFFORT to provide bomb shelters. We invite gangsters from Latin America, bring them across the border, and transport them into US cities where they can help to slaughter the citizens. The dysgovernment has done everything possible to remove SELF-defense from citizens.
  ¶ 8:11 AM

  Constants and Variables 134, practical edition
Repeating and broadening a very old point, just because I feel like it.

We know the problems in politics, science and academia. The problems have been thoroughly exposed. We don't need to spend ANY MORE TIME on exposing the problems. And we can't afford to waste time on 'innovative disruptive' solutions, because ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL 'innovative disruptive' solutions are GUARANTEED to make the problem infinitely worse. Instead, we should be thinking of PRACTICAL ways to solve the problems.

PRACTICAL: Was this problem solved before? If so, how? And how can we re-apply the OLD solution to re-solve the problem?

Most of our political and economic problems were solved hundreds of times. Some of them were solved by Natural Law setups like Sharia, some by the Soviet system, MANY of them by FDR.

= = = = =

One exception to the FDR pattern is the first breakup of Deepstate. Deepstate was formalized in the 1890s by Sherburne Hopkins and brought into government by Wilson. After 1920, Wilson's bureaucracy went away quickly except for Lady Edgar's Bureau of Inquisition. I've been trying to figure this out, and came up with one pretty good answer. Harding tried to break up Deepstate, tried to turn away from imperialism. He was discredited by "scandal", an everyday bit of corruption involving some of his friends. Then he died of "natural causes". We remember him ONLY for Teapot Dome.

The facts are right out in the open. I don't have the history skills or access to connect the facts in a more rigorous way. I wish somebody who has skills and access would pick up the ball and run with it, to find out HOW Harding broke up Wilson's Deepstate.

= = = = =

The problems of Academia, theorigenic blindness and rigid orthodoxy, have been extremely well documented. As with Harding, we already have an example of the solution, and it's not even outside the structures of Academia. Some disciplines have succeeded in breaking the Kuhn deadlock, and still manage to get grants for research. Microbiology and invertebrate biology have taken off the theory goggles and started to LOOK ABOUT THEM AND TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.

What's the difference? How did those researchers open their minds without leaving the system?

Labels: Carver, Constants and Variables, se-lu

  ¶ 7:12 AM

  Leak devoutly to be desired
It's obvious that USA is an acronym for Underlings of Sheldon Adelson. We need an inside leaker to disclose, preferably in real time, the stream of orders from Sheldon Adelson to USA. How specific are the commands? Who delivers his Absolute Imperatives to the entire government and all journalists simultaneously? How does the chain of command work? How are the Underlings punished when they fail to carry out the order?
  ¶ 1:10 AM

  Trump's noble predecessor
Start at 9:30 in this episode of 'Strange as it Seems'.
  ¶ 9:55 AM

  Better this way or that way?
An ad for a Pet Cemetery flashed on a local Facebook page. My eyes are older than usual this morning and I read it as Pest Cemetery.

Excellent business idea! Got a cat or a dog or a swarm of bugs or a human who was a pest in life? Plant it in the PEST CEMETERY! Let revenge ring loud and clear on the headstone! Funeral ceremonies conducted by certified Roman Exorcists!

Labels: Answered better than asked, coot-proofing

  ¶ 9:45 AM

  Forgivable but serious AI pointmissing
The latest from O'Keefe is a BLOCKBUSTER.

O'Keefe is an expert in truth, not an expert in computers, so he misses the AI point as always in all discussions of AI.

The Googlers are intentionally distorting the whole idea. What they describe as 'machine learning fairness' is the opposite of all words. O'Keefe emphasizes the Orwell reversal of fairness, but he misses the other Orwells.

It's not machine learning. It's not artificial intelligence.

Learning or intelligence means absorbing sense inputs and ADJUSTING your skills or movements or attitudes to FIT the inputs from the real world.

Google is NOT absorbing anything. Google is COMMANDING the machine to OUTPUT information to the rest of the world, with the specific goal of ADJUSTING the real world's skills and attitudes to FIT Google's purpose.

This appears clearly in the ultimately scary words of Jen Gennai, who is the Gold Standard Example of Newthink. In Gennai's brain nothing exists but Google. Google is the entire universe. Other stuff intrudes briefly, but we don't need to listen to other stuff because we won't change.

We won't change is the EXACT OPPOSITE of learning and intelligence. It's not machine learning, it's just machine. As rigid as a simple lever or a single gear or a clock escapement. No feedback, no input, just mechanism moving forward relentlessly.



Is there any weak point in this total solipsism? Maybe. When you don't listen to inputs, you don't recognize when an input is helping you. Gennai doesn't recognize that the hearings in Parliament and Congress were PLUPONENTS, not opponents. Congress wasn't complaining about Facebook's tyrannical use of data to serve Hillary. Congress was complaining that Facebook accidentally allowed a few bytes of data to escape into Cambridge Analytica, which was less than 100% Hillary. Congress wanted MORE tyranny, MORE safeguards against the accidental leakage of data toward Deplorables and Trolls. Congress wanted to see perfect firewalls to contain all data within The Party.

This isn't a meaningful weakness, since Congress doesn't matter. As Gennai said, Google is the universe and the universe doesn't change.

= = = = =

Later, after watching the video again, realized that I also missed a huge part of the point. I was so focused on the unchanging and anti-learning that I didn't listen to the PURPOSE ITSELF. The purpose of the universe is to SLAUGHTER ALL DEPLORABLES. It's clear in Gennai's words and in the explanations given by the anonymous interviewee. Problem: Non-globalists exist. Solution: EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE all non-globalists.

Labels: AI point-missing, infinite infinite infinite infinite evil, Pluponents

  ¶ 6:43 AM

  Answering one question, opening another
The American Radio History library has added a collection of newsletters issued by the Scott company, which made the fanciest and most expensive radios from the '30s to the '50s. Scott got into shortwave in '32, before the main trend in '34. So the newsletters focused on foreign stations and foreign owners of Scott receivers.

From the May '33 issue, here's a poignant letter from a German owner.



Transcribing:

For a long time I wanted to write you, and only now I am coming to do it.

From this little town on the edge of the Black Forest I greet you. My admiration for you comes not only from the fact that you sold me a radio with which I am well pleased, but also because every month your "Just Friendly Chats" booklets bring cheer and inspiration in my otherwise not too happy life.

Since coming home a year ago, I have made not more than just my living. In spite of the fact that I have learned what life could be, (from living in America for five years) I am satisfied with my life. Most of the others in my age are out of work and depending on charity, while I have still my savings in the bank.

I do not know where any improvement could be made from what my receiver is able to accomplish.

Please keep on, Mr Scott, sending me "Friendly Chats", they bring back to me so many memories, memories of America, which I have come to like and which I am perhaps never to see again.

In closing, I wish you and your work for the future all the success you deserve.

Ernst Walz, Nagold, Wittenberg

We typically think of the Weimar time as hyperinflation, but in fact the hyperinflation was fairly brief and was replaced by deflation. Ernst verifies this by saying that he's living on savings, giving him an advantage over others of his age. In deflation, saved money automatically gains value.

We typically think that ordinary Krauts were happy with Hitler. This letter would probably have been written in March when Hitler was consolidating his power. Ernst is not happy about the change and not sure if he will be able to leave.

Ernst doesn't say why he decided to return a year earlier after spending five years in America, where he was able to afford a fancy Scott. Was there a forced return order, or a false promise of prosperity to returning Germans?

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 12:59 AM

  Here's your ad, ARRL!
If ARRL wants an ad to show the joy of ham radio, this will do.



The cosmonauts were doing a ham radio day. She got in and made a QSO. Language not needed, just watch her face as she simultaneously talks in 'radio mode' and logs the QSO in Braille.

Joy.

Sidenote: Most of Valeriya's youtube clips are musical. Her singing is excellent and intensely Russian.

Labels: infinite GOOD, Гром победы

  ¶ 1:19 PM

  More grammarrhoids
From a grammarrhoid writing at Slate:

If you don’t know Postmates, it’s one of those on-demand delivery apps, in the same category as Uber Eats, DoorDash, and so on—you essentially send someone to pick up something (often food) for you. The new ad campaign began in April, and, being a national effort, signage with the slogan now blares across billboards in Los Angeles and the New York City subway. The latter is where I’ve been staring at it for a few weeks now: “Your sweatpants are calling and they want a burger. Postmate it.” In late May, the company launched the second phase of the campaign, national TV ads wherein Martha Stewart intones, “Just Postmate it.”

Did you spot the problem yet? “Postmate it” is, I’m sorry to say, a grammatical nightmare. The company name is Postmates, so the verb form should be “Postmates it,” with an s at the end.

As always the grammarrhoid misses the point. This isn't a plural, it's a genitive.

Most people think of a store or company as belonging to the owner. You hear it often in conversation, and see it in unfiltered online forums like local Facebook pages.

I was heading for Kroger's.

He works at Safeway's.

Kaiser's Aluminum closed down.

Postmates fits into this category. The business is implicitly Mr Postmate's company, even though we know there isn't a Mr Postmate. When we verb a noun, we use the nominative, not the genitive.

= = = = =

Sidenote: It's a little unusual to find a grammarrhoid in "left-wing" publications. Much more typical in Buckley-influenced "right-wing" pubs and TV. Maybe the tendency is spreading now that everyone who writes or talks for a paycheck is required to be neocon.

Grammarrhoid = Deepstate. It's a pretty good leth. When up which at the start of a sentence one hears prepositions pile, one can be certain that by a condescending Deepstater down to whom one is being talked. One needs loudly and firmly to shout "OFF WHICH FUCK!"

Labels: Language update, Leth

  ¶ 5:56 AM

  Borodin effect on Persia?
Reviewing: Back when shortwave radio was the main way of acquiring alternate info, I observed the habits and tendencies of various countries. Radio Moscow reliably signaled a period of uncertainty in leadership by switching to heavy Russki music. I called it the Borodin Effect.

You can see the same thing in any outlet that relies on official doctrine instead of direct personal senses. When the official source is tangled or confused, the outlet switches to standard 'features' or trivia, or just goes silent.

I'm noticing a Borodin today in official sources. Normally I get a constant stream of spam email from Repooflican organizations, always urging personal loyalty to Trump and his family. They also want me to defend various media personalities who are supposedly being threatened by their employers at Fox. Tucker is a main character in this strange little soap opera about soap opera production.

Since Trump's quantum-style Schrödinger War Declaration, the spam is silent. Not even trivia. No mention of Tucker's apparent role in the switchback.

Turley is also silent. Normally he springs to defend Trump's ordinary Repooflican actions, calling them "populist" to distort the definition of populism. So far no comment on the Schrödinger Declaration.

Later: Yup, Turley skipped past the Trump Quantum. This morning he has a good feature on the advance of conservative parties in Estonia.
  ¶ 1:05 AM

  Astrocyte abacus
Another astonishing discovery in brain function.

Learning is controlled by an internal abacus.

Via Eurekalert, a study using larval zebrafish.

These two pictures tell the story.



The experimental setup is 'virtual reality' or in old-fashioned terms a flight simulator. The fish is held firmly in place in a small aquarium. A visual landscape is moved forward and backward in response to the swimming motion. In real life each wiggle moves the fish forward, and then the counterwiggle moves backward a bit. (Like a rowboat with incompletely lifted oars on the backstroke.) So the simulated landscape does the same thing.



As long as the landscape moves, the fish moves forward in bursts. Swim for a second, rest for a second. When the experimenters turn off the motion, the fish tries harder for about 30 seconds, then gives up entirely.

This is rational behavior for all animals in all** situations. Modern human dysculture aka "meritocracy" turns us irrational by persuading us that forward motion is ALWAYS necessary regardless of our observed gains relative to the status landscape. If you're not gaining, you need to try harder. We keep trying harder, wasting exponentially increasing quantities of energy and soul, until we violently burn out and die.

The experimenters were trying to determine how the fish decides when to quit. Is it just a buildup of charge or neurotransmitter on a comparator neuron?

What they found is ASTONISHING. The action is controlled by a specialized type of glial cell, not by neurons.

Here, we found that the fish analog of the mammalian astrocyte is a central computational element of a circuit implementing a behavioral-state change after integrating sensory information.

Specifically, radial astrocytes in a subregion of the brainstem in larval zebrafish temporally integrate noradrenergically encoded failures to accumulate evidence of futility before inducing a state of passivity (giving up). This behavioral pattern has a familiar combination of features: trying to achieve a goal, repeatedly failing despite trying harder, giving up temporarily, and then trying again. Fish swim more vigorously in open loop (i.e., ineffective swim attempts), become passive, then swim again.

First try harder, then give up for a while.

Using whole-brain imaging, we found that astrocytic calcium was elevated just before and during passive states. Activation and silencing experiments established that these glial cells are required to trigger the passive state. Neuronal imaging and manipulation showed that the NE system encodes an expectation-outcome mismatch signal, which activates Ca2+ signaling in radial astrocytes. Thus, behavioral failures are detected by NE-MO and integrated by glia, which, after accumulating sufficient evidence of motor futility, trigger a passive behavioral state via GABAergic neurons. Once passivity is triggered, its persistence may be due to sustained effects of the glial cells on neurons, or a lag in the reactivation of swim circuits.

In other words, the astrocytes serve as a kind of scorecard or abacus outside of the neurons. The neurons click up the astrocytes, and when the number of raised beads reaches a threshold the neurons tell the muscles to stop swimming.

= = = = =

** Later thought: It's obvious that frustration is universal, but why is it universal? Why do so many situations need this calculated give-up response? Specifically, why would zebrafish need to know when their attempt to swim didn't result in forward motion? Virtual reality experimental setups aren't exactly common in the real ocean. A headwind in the current would be the main reason for lack of progress. When you're moving against a headwind you do have to try harder, but I'd think the frustration response would include something like gliding down to the floor for stability until the current slows down, or turning around to swim with the current.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:27 AM

  Uniter not divider again
The story is circulating this morning that Trump was fully ready to end the world, but was persuaded to hold off by Tucker Carlson.

If this is true, we finally have a VALID reason to impeach the idiot. Impeach him and replace him with Tucker. Same great taste, less killing.

Until now the idiot Dems have been following the idiot Repoof playbook from 1998. The Repoofs ignored Clinton's treasonous dealings with China and impeached him for sleazy shit he did BEFORE he was president. The current Dems are ignoring Trump's treasonous dealings with Israel and Saudi, and impeaching him for sleazy shit he did BEFORE he was president.

Now maybe the 99% hawks and 1% doves in DC can agree on something. The 99% hawks can impeach him for FAILING to end the world, and the 1% doves can impeach him for TRYING to end the world.

Uniter not divider!

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 11:11 AM

  Disproves the author, proves something more interesting
RealClearScience linked this article disputing the supposed benefits of breastfeeding. The author tries to show that the correlations are mainly due to innate differences. In rich countries, richer people are more likely to breastfeed. Their babies have innate advantages since healthy and attractive people are more likely to get rich, plus the advantages of more leisure and better neighborhoods and health care.

Makes good sense. I was ready to go along with the argument.

BUT: The author cites as proof a recent study in Belarus. The study followed breastfed and formula-fed infants from 1991 to 2001. Since I'm curious about Belarus as the last true Soviet country, I read the actual article.

It doesn't prove the author's point at all. It looks like a pretty well controlled experiment in a country with low inequality and uniform ethnicity. The results show definite advantages for breastfeeding.

Despite our initial overestimate of the incidence of gastrointestinal tract infection, the risk of such infection was reduced by 40% in the intervention group. This represents a clinically substantial reduction in risk of this important cause of infant morbidity and confirms recent results of a small randomized trial in Mexico

The article also incidentally confirmed the blessings of the Soviet system, which are gradually being lost as the system fades.

An uncontaminated water supply is ensured and monitored throughout the republic by public health authorities, and hospital clinics are abundant and readily accessible, even in rural areas. ... The prolonged (approximately 3 years in most cases) obligatory maternity leave and absence of day care centers for infants in Belarus probably also played a role. ... These effects occurred against a background of a higher-than-expected breastfeeding duration in the control group. The latter may well be attributable to deteriorating economic conditions in the country during the trial and the higher costs of formula feeding. Even though locally made formula was readily available, it cost nearly 20% of an average monthly salary by the end of the study.

Experience ALWAYS beats theory, even when the theory is sane and sensible.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 1:56 AM

  More obvious fake automation
Alarm! Alarm! Robot dishwasher!

Not a robot at all. It's just an industrial-strength dishwasher. Humans still have to stack the plates in a plate holder, stack the saucers in a saucer-holder, and so on. The "robot" then automatically washes all the identical plates.

After the dish is cleaned with special scrubbers, it's rotated and examined for cleanliness using computer vision and machine learning algorithms.

What happens to the dishes that fail the QA? They still need to be scrubbed manually. You still need a human to scrub, so the human might as well be inspecting. AI not needed at all.

One commenter catches the real purpose:

The trick again, making the customer doing the work. They are putting it in. Like the self checkout terminals, or the self order displays. Good luck making them clean the bathroom.

It's not replacing the dishwashers with robots, it's replacing the PAID dishwashers with PAYING customers.

This is the real DISRUPTION of the tech "revolution". Tech has abolished the old PAY FOR LABOR pattern that made civilization work. We've been suckered into paying the company for the privilege of working. Civilization is replaced by a black hole. All value flows into NYC, nothing flows out.
  ¶ 12:36 AM

  Is AMLO turning the wrong way?
A videoconference between AMLO and Zuckerberg. AMLO is asking FB to participate in extending internet service to the remote parts of Mexico.

Bad idea. Terrible idea. I hope it fails. There are plenty of ways to achieve the goal without involving Satan.
  ¶ 12:12 AM

  The Empty Boast
Another ad from the same 1956 magazine as previous item about analog spreadsheets.



Most citizens had the idea that satellite development was top secret classified hush-hush. It wasn't. Companies were openly boasting about their contributions to the project, well before the actual launch.

The boasting turned out to be a bad bet when the Soviet system of state-controlled capital got there first. The Sputnik brand became the Kleenex of satellites.

We did achieve a victory in the image of The Earth Satellite. This picture remains the basic public icon for satellites. The real Sputnik, which looked more like a folded umbrella, never grabbed our imagination.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Гром победы

  ¶ 3:03 PM

  War strategy = Dow strategy
This morning Trump pulled a fucking weird move when seen in the context of diplomacy and war maneuvers, but it's not all that weird in the NYC world.

He claims that he was 'locked and loaded', ready to BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN in "response" to our latest Lusitania hate hoax, but at the last minute he decided not to.

Hopelessly crazy in foreign affairs. Strictly normal in the Dow world.

The central bank pulls this shit all the time, and the Dow responds. Once a week the Fed pulls a head-fake. Is Powell going to cut? OH BOY MY FAVORITE! Raise? UNACCEPTABLE INTOLERABLE ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE. The odds of cutting or raising are quantified, and the Dow responds wildly while simultaneously and previously already "baking in" the quantification. Powell then decides to do nothing, which is the normal condition, and the Dow responds wildly while simultaneously previously already "baking in" the hugely unexpected strictly normal NOTHING HAPPENED.

The same trick works with COOL companies like Tesla. Every hour on the hour Elon claims to be 'locked and loaded' for his new venture in banking or cookies or universes or flamethrowers or movies or interplanetary telepathy or cave rescue equipment. Every hour on the quarter hour Elon forgets about his latest claim and gives a nonsensical reason for his failure to perform. The Dow responds wildly and simultaneously previously already "bakes in" each of these NOTHING HAPPENEDS.

So it's not surprising that Trump expects Persia to respond like the Dow, by going up hugely and crashing hugely and "baking in" the NOTHING HAPPENED, all at the same future present past preterite continuous instant subjunctive indicative time.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 10:23 AM

  I want one! I want one!
While verifying the old use of analog computers as 'spreadsheets' for previous item, I bumped into this ad for a MAGNIFICENT device.



I've never seen one of these in real life or in print before. A graph-definer module for analog systems. Set the graph, and get a custom X to Y function. Undoubtedly wildly expensive when new, and totally unobtainable now.

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 5:22 AM

  Even when they try....
On AI, even the people who are trying NOT to miss the point are still missing the point.

Brendan Dixon at MindMatters tries to pull back the hype:

We are tool-creating and tool-using creatures. When confronted with a problem, we develop a tool—whether logs that can roll stones or exquisitely engineered nanotech—to overcome it. And, despite the misguided hype, AI is just another tool. So it is encouraging to read about the ways that Japanese firm Hitachi is using AI as a tool to provide services that, as Bernard Marr notes at Forbes, would otherwise be difficult or unavailable....

Improving shipping efficiency: Hitachi is partnering with one of Europe’s largest shipping companies, Stena Line, to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. “With the help of AI, Stena Line captains can consider several variables, such as currents, weather conditions, shallow water, and speed through water – all in various combinations. All of which would be impossible to do manually.”

Improving fuel efficiency by monitoring lots of variables?

Been done before with analog computers, a LONG time ago.

From Electronics Mag, Dec 1947:

Commercially, the complete control of an airplane by a robot pilot on a flight across the Atlantic brings closer to realization the airline operator's goal of all-weather flying, with greater comfort and safety for passengers as well as adherence to time schedules. The electronic, electrical, and mechanical sensing controls are smoother and more responsive than human senses, so that correcting forces are applied at almost the same instant that a flight deviation occurs. This makes for much smoother flight through turbulent air, along with conservation of fuel through elimination of overshooting and hunting.

Analog computers could also be set up as simulators to try out various combos of inputs without real-time action.

Next point? Next miss?

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 11:35 PM

  Skill-based colonialism
From the start, AMLO has been pushing hard on two themes: (1) Improving Mexico's self-sufficiency with WPA/CCC style programs. (2) Cooperating with the poor parts of Central America to help them achieve self-sufficiency.

Now we see a specific junction of the two themes. AMLO has met with El Salvador's new leader Bukele to spread the CCC program 'Sembrando Vida' into El Salvador. (In other words, Sembrando 'Sembrando Vida'.)

This halfway resembles China's approach to colonialism in Africa, where China spreads prosperity and employment and gets part of the product.

But this is actually a new concept. AMLO is already doing skill-based socialism. Now he's invented skill-based colonialism, spreading the skill of leadership. AMLO knows how to set up a program that works, knows how to get shit done. Bukele is young and ready to learn from the master. (You could also call it guild-style or union-style colonialism!)

This is the DIRECT ANTIDOTE to Graybill's Law.

If it works, Mexico will benefit by handling less refugees from El Salvador. Less direct cost, less annoyance to USA, less sanctions from Trump.

Labels: skill-estate, Zero Problems

  ¶ 5:08 PM

  For once a valid article about AI
After noting a whole bunch of AI pointmissing, here's an article at Stat that GETS EVERYTHING RIGHT, in the context of medical uses of AI.

First point is obvious: AI doesn't work.

As an example, he showed an image of a cat that a Google algorithm had correctly categorized as a tabby cat. On the next slide was a nearly identical picture of the cat, with only a few pixels changed, and Google was 100 percent positive that the image on the screen was guacamole.

Second point is something I hadn't thought about: Anonymizing is impossible.

But wearable data are not the same as numbers on a spreadsheet; they can’t be easily anonymized, said Andy Coravos, chief executive of Elektra Labs, a company seeking to identify biomarkers in digital data to improve clinical trials.

“How many people here think you could de-identify your genome?” she asked. “Probably not, because your genome is unique to you. It’s the same with most of the biospecimens coming off a lot of wearables and sensors — I am uniquely identifiable with 30 seconds of walk data.”

The whole point of gathering 'wearable' data is to form a unique pattern that CAN'T be anonymized. And it doesn't take AI to re-nominalize such patterns. An 1890 Hollerith computer could do it, given enough time. Even a box of McBee cards could do it.

Genomes are obviously unique BY FUCKING DEFINITION.

The underlying problem is that the techmonsters who develop and push AI for share value are modern thinkers. They don't believe in genes. They are solidly convinced that "all humans are evolved equal". They also don't understand actual intelligence. Techmonsters are humans who think like computers. When they develop a computer that thinks like a human who thinks like a computer, they are solidly convinced that they have developed "intelligence". Nope. They've only made a computer that simulates a computer.

Labels: AI point-missing, Deadthink

  ¶ 6:11 AM

  Ever hear of swamp gas, fuckheads?
Headline via Eurekalert:

Unexpected culprit -- wetlands as source of methane

Wetlands are an important part of the Earth's natural water management system. The complex system of plants, soil, and aquatic life serves as a reservoir that captures and cleans water. However, as cities have expanded, many wetlands were drained for construction. In addition, many areas of land in the Midwest were drained to increase uses for agriculture to feed a growing world.

Draining wetlands disconnected the natural flow and retention of water, a system that had worked well for millennia. One solution to wetland draining was to rebuild these wetlands in another area (more convenient to humans). These are referred to as "constructed wetlands." In other cases, constructed wetlands are built to rebuild an area no longer used for agriculture.

"Globally, wetlands are the largest natural source of methane to the atmosphere," says Jarecke.

UNEXPECTED CULPRIT????????

Ever hear of SWAMP GAS? Swamp gas was the FIRST observation of methane. For as long as we've known about the properties of methane, we've known it was produced heavily in swamps.

The Gaians claim to be "fighting global warming" by building more wetlands, even though everyone has ALWAYS known that wetlands are the main emitters of methane.

As usual, the Gaians are really slaughtering Deplorables. Rebuilding wetlands means evicting farmers and rural residents, turning usable land into worthless land that breeds disease and pestilence.

This is parallel to "rewilding" grizzlies and wolves. Civilization has worked HARD for 5000 years to remove those pests from human habitation. Now the Gaians insist on bringing the predators back. In this case the Gaians don't even pretend to be fighting "global warming". Rewilding is proudly proclaimed as a genocidal war on civilization.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 12:11 AM

  Turley shows his true colors
I keep up with Turley's commentaries because he has good connections and catches new developments on the populist front before other media. Unfortunately he isn't a real Populist. He doesn't have the excuse of ignorance or misunderstanding, because his definitions are academic and ACCURATE. He knows plenty about the history of globalism vs localism, and tells it properly.

Despite that, he defends Trump as a populist while actually defending Trump's standard NYC Repooflican actions. This is an intentional distortion of meaning and logic.

In the latest piece Turley bashes Michael Weiner alias Savage for telling the truth about faker Trump. I've never been sure about Weiner's real position, but that's irrelevant. Weiner's public output has been consistent and strong on this subject for decades, always defending the working class regardless of party, always seeing through the fakes regardless of party. If it's a shtick, it's a mighty deep shtick.

In fact Trump has broken nearly ALL of his scampaign promises. One complete exception is Persia. Trump made it clear that he would obey Israel and make war against Persia, and he is doing it. One partial exception is the tariffs against China, which are mostly proper and starting to give proper results. The other tariffs are evil blockades and sanctions with no economic justification.

Aside from the partial tariff exception, Trump's real actions are standard NYC Repooflican. Zero interest, zero tax, zero borders, infinite debt, infinite war, infinite Dow.

Turley claims that Trump "built the wall". Flat lie. Trump has opened the border wider than Obama did, and hasn't even started on the wall.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:43 PM

  Meanwhile......
By contrast, in the PURPOSELESS part of the world:



This is what happens when you SNATCH AWAY the PURPOSE of people who were formerly USEFUL.
  ¶ 12:03 AM

  Good medicine
A story featured on ZH that gets EVERYTHING right.

Life is PURPOSE. People are made to be USEFUL.

At the end the author throws in "Good things happen to good people", which is one of those stupid cliches like "God won't give you anything you can't handle". In fact good things mostly happen to attractive people. But aside from the last line, the story is GOOD MEDICINE.

Even the ZH commenters got the point and liked it!

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 11:51 PM

  Brief thought
Been scrambling to meet a courseware deadline this week.

Just one convective thought:

Some foreign leaders understand that Trump is a fake created by Deepstate. Some don't. Putin understands and says it implicitly if not quite openly.

Salvini doesn't seem to understand. He calls himself the Italian equivalent of Trump. Terrible comparison. Salvini is straightforward. His purpose is clear and his actions follow the purpose, with occasional necessary sidetracks and compromises to get things done.

Why would an honest worker compare himself to a faker?

It's like Caravaggio calling himself the Italian equivalent of Andy Warhol, or Caruso calling himself the Italian equivalent of the Monkees.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 3:22 PM

  Not likely to work
I've tried to avoid** reading or listening to Jordan Peterson, except for the snippets in various reviews. He seems to be heading in the right direction in many ways, but I'm not sure of his motivations. Finally listened to a few minutes of an interview where he describes the new Twitter-like alternative, which is definitely a good idea in theory.

Still not impressed. He doesn't seem to understand how BIG this alternative must be. When you're up against the entire universe of money, and the entire universe is a branch of CIA and NSA, you need a BIG army of lawyers and investors and counter-intel operators and sleazy private detectives. Otherwise the entire universe will squash you in an instant.

Also, after listening to Peterson I'm even more suspicious of his motives. His views are mostly the usual "social" "science" bigotries. He smells like an Agent Provocateur, and his new forum smells like a cult. Or maybe it's just a "social" "science" research project, gathering data on a specific group of subjects. Can't prove it, but my olfactory nerves for APs have always been pretty accurate.

Connecting to previous item, EARLY apprenticeships are the real solution to the problem Peterson claims to address. If unlovable men spend adolescence acquiring the discipline and PRIDE of productive work, their life path will be entirely different. They still won't be lovable, but they will have a SHIELD against the insinuations and idiocies and bullies of an infinitely busted genocidal anticulture, and they will have a head start on an independent and confident career.

= = = = =

** For clarity: I always try to avoid reading or examining the work of 'parallel' people. I don't want my own courseware or thinking to be pulled or pushed by similar work or thoughts. In the pull direction I want to avoid unintentional plagiarism; in the push direction I don't want to steer away from a valid idea through fear of unintentional plagiarism. My work should follow directly from my own observations as much as possible.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 6:13 AM

  Celebrating the right things
AMLO celebrates apprenticeship. He says Mexico currently has 580K apprentices, and hopes to double the number by next year.

How many apprentices are currently working in USA STRONG? According to the Hechinger report, about 500K now. Obama pretended that he wanted to increase to 750K but didn't do it.

Since Mexico's population is half of USA STRONG's population, Mexico is doing twice as well in this department.

Meanwhile, we're still shaping all of our educational incentives to Harvard PhDs.

Most Euro countries beat both Mexico and USA all to hell in apprenticeship and all aspects of REAL-LIFE TRAINING.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 8:18 AM

  When you serve.....
Watching one of AMLO's events where he introduces his pension system to a town or county. Thinking as usual about Mexico's strong culture, and AMLO's well-earned confidence. When you serve the people, the people support you.

A nice little symbol of a secure culture and a secure leader:



Can you imagine the Secret Service allowing that belt buckle anywhere on the planet, let alone next to the president????

I looked at the transcript to see if this fellow was identified, but I couldn't really tell which of the names was his. As it happens, AMLO's speech was making the same point.

There is no longer a Presidential Security Staff.

Do you know how many security guards cared for the president of Mexico?

Eight thousand soldiers. Not even Trump is cared for by eight thousand soldiers. That elite body has disappeared and now these soldiers have become part of the Secretariat of Defense to take care of the people. The president is taken care of by the people. He who fights for justice has nothing to fear.

I hope and pray that he's right.

As for "not even Trump", he's just barely correct on that number, but Trump is getting ready to blow through it:

President Donald Trump's fiscal 2020 budget proposal seeks $2.3 billion to fund the U.S. Secret Service, an increase of 7 percent over the estimated spending for 2019 and some 15 percent above actual spending for 2018.

The budget summary issued by the White House last week says it seeks to hire 177 additional special agents, officers, and professional staff for the agency. But the budget detail released this week says that overall Secret Service full-time equivalent employees will rise by 313 employees, jumping from 7,334 in the 2019 budget to 7,647 in the 2020 budget.

The vector comparison is sharp. AMLO eliminates Secret Service, Trump expands it.

Labels: 2/3

  ¶ 5:00 AM

  It's not the silicon computer, it's the meatware computer
Yet another missed point about AI and Big Data.

Via MindMatters, Gary Smith discusses how Big Data helped and failed in the 2008 and 2016 campaigns.

In 2008:

The Obama campaign put every potential voter into its database, along with hundreds of tidbits of personal information: age, gender, marital status, race, religion, address, occupation, income, car registrations, home value, donation history, magazine subscriptions, leisure activities, Facebook friends, and anything else they could find that seemed relevant…

After Obama secured the nomination, the fund-raising continued. For the full 2008 election campaign, Obama raised $780 million, more than twice the amount raised by his Republican opponent, John McCain. McCain didn’t have a realistic chance of winning, and he didn’t—with only 173 electoral votes to Obama’s 365.

Obama didn't need the data. He had intrinsic advantages. He was attractive and confident, and above all he KNEW what the people wanted to hear. Obama beat Hillary in the primaries because Hillary was SCREEEEECHING the standard D talking points over and over. Obama beat McCain in the general because McCain was speaking the standard Repooflican talking points over and over.

= = = = =

In 2016:

That should have worked for Clinton too, surely. Her team of sixty mathematicians and statisticians created a program called Ada to replicate the success, as widely expected. But, as Smith explains to Marks:

Smith: Some of the stuff that made a difference, they couldn’t put in a computer. Like the enthusiasm factor. When Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump gave speeches, tens of thousands of people showed up and yelled and screamed and were excited. And when Hillary Clinton gave a speech, a couple of hundred people would show up and sit politely. And you couldn’t put that in a computer.

Wrong. Audience size is a simple number. You CAN put it in a computer, and the computer CAN calculate the national average audience size. Hillary's staff DIDN'T put it in the computer, didn't write the code to evaluate it. Here again the computer wasn't needed anyway. The difference was so fucking obvious that you didn't need refined statistical evaluation to see it.

[This is broadly and importantly true. In science and in life, statistics are totally unnecessary. A distinction or measurement that only appears after statistical evaluation is NOT a meaningful difference. If you have to use stats to get the answer, you don't have an answer.]

The real difference was the same as 2008. Bernie and Trump were speaking clearly and confidently, saying things that agreed with human experience. Hillary was SCREEEEEEECHING the standard old Dem talking points. Bernie would have won if Hillary's team hadn't MEDDLED AND HACKED the primary results.

In both cases the data was totally irrelevant. But on another level all recent campaigns were in fact human vs machine. Hillary and McCain and Romney were repeating the same meaningless noises over and over and over like a busted washing machine. Obama and Trump and Bernie were acting like humans, appearing to observe a real problem that real humans had experienced, and appearing to offer rational solutions to the real problem.



In the end both Obama and Trump turned out to be fake humans. Both reverted to machine behavior after the election. But we're only talking here about campaigns.

= = = = =

Larger sidenote: I've been noting lots of AI pointmissers lately. All of them are intentionally giving the computer too much credit. In some cases the pointmisser wants us to be SCARED so the pointmisser can intimidate us into submission. In other cases the pointmisser wants us to be IMPRESSED so the pointmisser can sell us a fraudulent product.

Elon wants to IMPRESS us with autonomy so we'll buy his shares. Hillary wants to SCARE us with the unstoppable force of the computer so we won't notice that she's a dumb low-IQ drunken thug.

There's nothing new about Big Data, and nothing autonomous about computers. Computers handled millions of verbal and numerical data points in the 1890 Census, and Hollerith machines have been figuring and printing mass quantities of checks and other documents ever since then.

This year's model can handle more data and more sophisticated algorithms than the 1890 Hollerith, but it's still just sorting and counting. It's still mechanically performing a task assigned by the HUMAN who hires the programmers. We should always give full credit or blame to the HUMAN who sets the goal.

Labels: AI point-missing, Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 11:26 PM

  Dozens of fake "answers", ignoring the answer.
Via Eurekalert, public health authorities are worried about insufficient blood donations from "communities of colour". The article proposes a huge pile of possible reasons and possible solutions, but never gets CLOSE to the obvious answer.

PAY.

When you PAY people for hard labor, they're VASTLY more likely to do it.

This applies even more strongly to organ donation. For some ABSOLUTELY NONSENSICAL AND UTTERLY TURBOCRAZY DYSREASON, we have decided that paying people for a HUGE piece of pain and suffering is "unethical".

The other end of this nasty industry is flooded with LITERAL blood money. The Red Cross and the various "donor" industries get PAID monstrous amounts of money for storing and sorting and transporting the raw material. Why in the HOLY FUCK shouldn't they PAY for the raw material?

As always, NYC is the satanic black hole of economics. All money goes into NYC, nothing leaves. Paying Deplorables is UNACCEPTABLE INTOLERABLE ALL OPTIONS ON THE TABLE. "Ethics" means genocide.

Labels: Ethics, unasked and answered

  ¶ 8:38 AM

  Double shared lie
Linked via NakedCapitalism, more totally wrong dysdefinitions of socialism.

“The 2018 PRRI American Values Survey offered respondents two definitions of socialism. One described it as ‘a system of government that provides citizens with health insurance, retirement support and access to free higher education,” essentially a description of social democracy. The other was the full Soviet dose: “a system where the government controls key parts of the economy, such as utilities, transportation and communications industries.’

Neither of these conditions has ANYTHING AT ALL to do with socialism.

"Health insurance, retirement support and free college" was the US standard from 1940 to 1980. The first two are still there. We still supply single-payer Medicare for 70% of all medical COSTS, because 70% of all medical COSTS are in old age. Retirement support = SS, standard equipment since 1936. College ranged from free to affordable. Two-year community colleges, which are the ONLY post-secondary education needed by 98% of the population, were usually free.

"Government controls utilities, transportation and communication": Again standard in 1950 USA. Utilities were mainly municipal, sometimes state. Privatization of utilities started in 1980, expanded with the Enron laws in 1999. Transportation was railroads and bus systems. Railroads were a strictly regulated utility. Bus systems were municipal. Communication was the post office and Ma Bell. The post office was purely federal, and Ma Bell was a strictly controlled utility, not owned by government but serving government.

We don't want these good things because they're socialist. We want these good things because we FORMERLY HAD THEM and we remember that LIFE WAS BETTER when we had them.

= = = = =

Tiresomely repeating:

Socialism means that the SUPPLY of capital for business is CONTROLLED by government, not by Jamie Dimon. That's all.

In the Soviet system, businesses were expected to make a profit by creating real value. Government shared in the profit via VAT. Government used some of its tax income to invest in new or improved businesses, aiming to maximize the use of human skills.

In the modern US system, businesses are FORBIDDEN to make a profit and FORBIDDEN to allow customers or employees to survive. All employees and customers must die. Government gets nothing because tax is also forbidden. Everything, including government, runs on debt supplied by NYC banks. No value is generated. All value is destroyed. The Dow exponentially rises toward infinity as the population declines toward zero.

= = = = =

Why is PRRI distorting the definition so grossly? Who is PRRI? Quick answer by looking at their connections: PRRI is a branch of Deepstate.

So: Deepstate has figured out that "socialism" is popular. Deepstate must associate "socialism" with free stuff from government, to accelerate the push toward zero real value and infinite debt.

Using this definition also discredits Bernie, who is trying to restore the CORRECT definition of the word. Come to think of it, maybe discrediting Bernie is the MAIN purpose?

The big problem again: This definition of "socialism" misses the crucial role of PROFIT in both the old US setup designed by FDR and the Soviet setup. None of the services and products in those actual systems were free. Everything had a cost, and both government and business tried to operate on the profit side of the ledger. Medicare and SS brought in more tax revenue than they paid out. Municipal utilities and Bell Tel were profitable. Colleges were affordable and profitable.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:19 PM

  Sensible conclusion
For once a sane headline in RealClearScience.

Marijuana probably won't stop the opioid crisis.

I didn't bother to read the article, but it's a good question and a non-trivial answer. Before legalizing pot, you could rationally ask whether opening up one currently illegal drug would ease the pressure on other illegal drugs. Would heroin addicts switch to pot and be satisfied? Seemed plausible.

The answer here in Spokane is clearly NO. Heroin overdoses are increasing steadily, while problems related to pot remain zero, as they were before legality.

Marijuana belongs in the same category as tobacco. The smoke itself is hard on the lungs, just as inhaling smoke from any fire would damage the lungs. The intoxication is relatively mild. It can make you feel better and calmer, but it doesn't consume your life. Heroin and meth become your entire life.

After legalization the folks who had already been using pot continued using pot. There wasn't a huge burst of new users or crossover customers from other drugs.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 6:17 AM

  Missing the AI point as always
Worriers are worrying about the danger of deep fakes, computer animations good enough to get past all human and software detection.

Under the right set of circumstances, deepfakes will be very influential. They don’t even have to be particularly good to potentially swing the outcome of an election. As with so much in elections, deepfakes are a numbers game. While the presence of tampering in all but the most sophisticated deepfakes can be quickly identified, not everyone who views them will get that message.

As with all worrying about AI and robots, this misses the real question.

All politicians in Sorosian lands are COMPLETELY DISJUNCT from all truth, facts, logic, thinking, reason, and emotion. Our leaders emit bizarre word-jumbles based on absolute beyond-schizy nonsense.

It doesn't matter if a digital video misrepresents the R version of hyperinsanity or the D version of hyperinsanity. All of it is 999999999999999999 gigalightyears outside of reality, so 999999999999999999.1 gigalightyears is not any worse.

Fortunately we have some ground points, some baselines, for comparison. Historically we can compare with FDR, who told us the whole truth. He explained what he was trying to do and why, and then he DID IT.

In the current world we have another ground point. Putin tells his people the truth. He CONSTANTLY explains what he's doing and why, and then he DOES IT.

THIS IS NOT MYSTERIOUS.

Every good leader, in every realm from parenting to teaching to corporate execs to national execs, follows this pattern. When the followers know what you're doing and why, they can judge your performance. When your performance matches your purpose well enough, the followers will follow gladly through difficult times. FDR proved it here, and Putin proved it in Russia.

Our modern dysleaders NEVER explain anything and NEVER do anything. In a certain empty trivial sense their performance is perfect. No purpose, no action. Just weird gibberish and screeching. But nations need more than empty screeching.

Also non-mysterious: Nations with good leaders are moving ahead FAST, and nations with gibberish screechers are collapsing fast.

Labels: AI point-missing, infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy, Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:32 PM

  Moral guide dogs
Dogs made civilization. Without dogs, humans are just chimps.

Via a Bad Girls tumblr...

I enjoy watching her. I'm a chimp. Her dog is trying to guide her toward a different path. She really should be listening to the dog instead of the chimps.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 4:47 AM

  Privilege without responsibility
Turley brings out a fact that I hadn't heard before. It doesn't get much attention.

Web services are clearly somewhere between the traditional roles of publisher and carrier.

Turley's rarely heard point: Web services were granted immunity from prosecution for carrying illegal or libelous content.

Immunity makes sense for the post office or the old Bell Tel utility, because they couldn't practically read or listen to every message. Neutral carriers are expected to carry messages until a specific sender has been legally banned. After a sender has been determined to be officially obscene or treasonous, the carrier will usually disconnect service.

Immunity doesn't make sense for Youtube and Facebook, which use algos and thousands of human censors to EDIT content. By normal definitions they are publishers, not carriers. A publisher can be sued for carrying illegal or libelous content, because the publisher has knowingly decided to publish the material.

Immunity is normally balanced by the requirement to carry content until specifically banned. Google and FB are getting immunity without the requirement to carry.
  ¶ 1:19 AM

  Constants and Variables 133
Constant: Every country arrests journalists and whistleblowers for various reasons, some of which are perfectly valid.

The variable is what happens AFTER the arrest.

UK arrested Assange many years ago and the case continues to increase in intensity, despite many years of huge protests.

Russia arrested a journalist a week ago and the case has been dropped following a few complaints.

At the moment Russia is doing a better job of "freedom" for journalists than US or UK.

If "democracy" has any meaning or purpose, it should mean responsiveness and adaptiveness. Good feedback loops.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 12:07 AM

  Vicarious vegetarians
It's been clear from the start that Tesla cultists are not truly green. They're rich fuckheads who fly and drive all the time. Owning a Tesla is a plenary indulgence that shortens their time in Gaian purgatory.

The latest Innovative Disrupter shows the same disconnect. BYND is a "new" fake meat made from soy and other stuff. BYND is claiming that its form of fake meat is new, and above all it claims to make the product more available by placing it in the meat department.

Real vegies with real experience know that both claims are false.

How do I know? I've been mostly vegy for most of my adult life. Vegy from 1970 to 1990, then part carny from 1990 to 2010, and now vegy again. The weakly carny period exactly corresponded to my TV-watching period and my neocon period. Not surprising. When you're locked into TV's forcible injection system, you aren't running on natural tendencies.

Though I pretended at first to be following "moral" principles, vegy is just easier for me. My guts don't like meat and don't handle it well. I'm healthier without it. I don't claim or believe that everyone should be healthier without meat. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT.

During the 1970-1990 period I used fake meat made by Morningstar. It was easily available in regular grocery stores everywhere, including beef-loving Enid and OKC. When I resumed vegy in 2010, I started using the stuff again, then a quick experiment proved that it wasn't adding any nutrition, so I stopped. It's pretty damn expensive for nothing more than taste and texture.

Morningstar is a big company that has dominated the niche for 50 years because its products are EASILY AVAILABLE and good. Not all of the items taste convincingly like meat, but all of them are easy to cook, tasty, and satisfying to eat.

So the traders and cultists who are boosting BYND clearly don't understand the market. They don't know (1) the niche is already occupied (2) vegies are satisfied with Morningstar (3) serious vegies won't buy fake meat from the meat counter because they don't want to endanger their souls by touching the real thing. This is true of genuinely religious vegies from Muslim to Adventist.

In other words, there's a damn good COMMERCIAL reason why fake meat isn't sold in the same freezer with pig knuckles and T-bones. Stores and distributors haven't simply been missing an opportunity for 50 years.

= = = = =

Two minutes after posting the above, this appeared in Youtube's Suggested For You:


And three minutes later, this ad popped in RealClearScience:



Apparently I confused Google's algo with the discussion of part carny and weakly carny, so it decided to hit me from both flanks.

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 6:22 AM

  Finding the control lever
Via Psych Today, a study in good old nematodes has found the control path for epigenetics. The article is somewhat unclear and the original paper seems to be extremely dense with jargon and insider concepts. There isn't a doi ref so I can't try to read the original, and I wouldn't get very far anyway.

After all the caveats, here's the apparent point: In the simple nervous system of C. Elegans, there are direct neural connections to the ovaries, which directly shape the variable parts of the genome while the offspring are being built.

Up till now, the existence of epigenetic change has been firmly established, but the physical link from parental experience to genomic modulation wasn't known. Now we know HOW parental thoughts and emotions cause permanent learning in the child. It's not through diffuse influences like hormones. It's a hardwired cable from the brain to the baby, writing firmware in EPROM.

Speculation: A roundworm's thoughts and emotions are simpler than a mammal's thoughts and emotions. Direct feed is probably sufficient for a nematode, but a mammal would need a distinct processor and selector to emit the correct RNA molecules into the fetus. Where is this processor and code generator?

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 1:26 AM

  Good old grammarrhoid
From a rather obscure Australian culture website, a classic grammarrhoid.

We must have all noticed the fast-coming oblivion of the adverb ending in “ly.” Here are just a few of the many instances that I have heard recently from people on air:

It is something that comes natural / You will feel different / We did everything correct / It has not worked perfect / She sings it so beautiful / Are you going to take this competition serious / They are doing it safe / We’re doing absolutely phenomenal / What do you say to people who say you are acting hypocritical – What I say is can you rephrase the question and not mangle the language.

Hypercorrection. Taking a "rule" and blindly applying it to cases where it doesn't work.

Feeling different and acting hypocritical are exactly right by the traditional rules, and in this case the traditional rules are good.

Feel and act are condition verbs that behave like be. Such verbs require adjectives as predicates, not adverbs. I am different, I feel different, I act different.

Feeling differently would only be meaningful if you were discussing an alternate use of the tactile sense, such as a prosthetic hand with electronic pressure detectors. Acting hypocritically would only be meaningful if you were a theatre critic discussing an actor who was using his skills dishonestly. Both are conceivable but contrived.

Sidenote: The above grammarrhoid, while claiming to defend traditional rules, breaks traditional rules of punctuation in every sentence, leading to constant ambiguity.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 3:56 PM

  More sanity from Ed
Sanity as always from Ed Niedermeyer:

I feel like a broken record with this, but Nissan took people at their word with the Gen1 Leaf, invested huge and then nobody bought it. I wasn't a perfect product, but it worked and was affordable. Turns out people only want to save the world if they can go fast & look cool.

On the fucking dot.

I've been grousing for years that nobody is paying any attention to the EV's proper niche. EVs are uniquely suitable for city runabouts, in a situation where you can always charge up overnight at home. The first EVs 110 years ago fitted the niche. The rebirth of EVs has always missed the proper market. NOBODY has come close yet.

Saving the world is fashionable. Fashionable people can't POSSIBLY go slow, and can't POSSIBLY tolerate the slightest hint of uncoolness. Uncool cheapskates are happy to live slow and simple, using much less energy and resources than the world-savers. We never get thanked for being GENUINELY GREEN, because we don't give a fuck about saving the world. Saving the world is another name for destroying the world, and uncool cheapskates don't enjoy destruction.

Coolness is all about theory and orthodoxy.

Survival is all about experience and preservation.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 3:19 PM

  Parkinson all the way
A couple weeks ago I said:

Actually the Austrian nationalist party would have done better to simply disband after Kurz adopted their platform and started controlling the border. Mission accomplished, go home and rest. An organization that keeps running after its purpose is achieved ALWAYS descends into corruption. Parkinson's Law.

Convective thought:

This also applies to individuals and even organs and cells.

I've been saying this forever in the context of crime and Sorosian dysculture:

A man is meant to MAKE things. If he can't MAKE things, he will BREAK things.

This is exactly the same law. Without PURPOSE, a man descends into corruption. Crime, addiction, suicide. Hadn't quite connected it until now.

Within the organism, Nature mostly takes care of the problem. Janitor cells ruthlessly clean out cells that aren't actively participating in the organ's purpose.

The vast majority of "reformers", in prisons and poor neighborhoods and poor countries, totally miss this part of Natural Law. They believe, or pretend to believe, that supplying money WITHOUT VALUE will solve all problems. Dead wrong. It always creates more problems. The welfare only feeds the corruption. In poor neighborhoods, welfare checks are the venture capital for criminal enterprises. In poor countries, Foreign Aid buys mansions and limos for the dictator.

The intellectual leaders of "reform" have no illusions about their purpose. They are intentionally creating new problems which will "justify" more expenditure and power for their organizations. Another Parkinson's Law, probably the most important one.

Labels: Make or break, MMT, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 11:00 PM