Suuuuuuckeeeeeeeer Fiiiiiiiilteeeeeer
Must admit, I'd never listened to Lord Elon actually talking.

This piece of his lecture on rocket science is astonishing.

Stoned out of his mind, or just naturally mindless. The typical meth-addled beggar speaks more coherently and sanely than Elon. Normal people, Negative Externalities Without Harvard PhDs, speak VASTLY better than Elon. I've known some real schizies who rambled from topic to topic in the same way, but even they were more coherent in their incoherency.

THIS IS THE ULTIMATE LEADER? THIS IS THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE? THIS IS YOUR GOD?

A couple days later, Atlantic notes that NASA isn't quite thrilled with Elon's spaceships.... but NASA is still in love with Lord Elon.

Marina Koren: Did you watch Elon’s presentation this weekend?
Jim Bridestine: I did, yes.
Koren: What did you think?
Bridenstine: I thought it was awesome. I think it was inspirational. I like it when contractors get people enthused and inspired about space exploration, and I was inspired myself.

Gaians think other Gaians are awesome, even when they're obviously brainless drug addicts.

Labels: infinite STUPID, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 6:39 AM

  Layer upon layer upon layer
Caitlin Johnstone is the sneakiest of all the Deepstate operatives. She gets a lot of things right in this piece.

She starts by listing all the people who should be assumed as CIA (or other Deepstate):

Take off the revolutionary’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the terrorist’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the news man’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the filmmaker’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the professor’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the billionaire’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the whistleblower’s mask, and it’s the motherfucking CIA.

Good list, but you forgot one.

Take off the "climate" activist's mask, and it’s the CIA.

Semantically speaking, this is contained within revolutionary, but Caitlin explicitly excludes "climate" revolutionaries.

She lists all the steps we should be taking to "solve the climate crisis". These steps sound good. Basically eliminate the stock market and central banks and monopolistic capitalism.

Why is this list sneaky? The steps are good, but if we are primarily working for "climate change", we won't actually take any of those steps. We will implement the Green New Deal, which requires MMT, the exact opposite of productive real-value economy. Financiers are the FOUNDATION of Deepstate. Their goal is to eliminate all life and value and beauty and productive activity from the earth, leaving only abstract numbers processing abstract numbers.

One commenter got it, but cited a lengthy and paywalled report written by LaRouche as proof. You don't need to cite questionable and unavailable sources. The CIA itself wrote the "climate" manifesto in 1975, and its orders are being carried out visibly.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Leth

  ¶ 10:59 PM

  Premium Sucker Filter
The Tesla skeptics are featuring the latest episode of Elon's Sucker Filter Parade.

Elon introduced a new bug called "Summon" which is advertised as a feature. "Summon" is supposed to fetch the car by remote control, bringing it to you from wherever it happens to be. The suckers are trying out the bug, demonstrating its utter and absolute bugness, while happily cheering its featureness. Cars haltingly creep across empty parking lots, wandering randomly without noticing any of the lines or obstacles. In several of the videos real drivers have to stop suddenly to avoid hitting the driverless Tesla.

Any ordinary driver who INTENTIONALLY released the parking brake, put the car in Drive, and placed a brick on the gas pedal would be convicted of attempted manslaughter.

Tesloids are not ordinary. Like other cults, they believe that they acquire magic powers by association with Lord Elon. Unlike other cults, REGULATORS AND LAW ENFORCERS AND INSURERS AGREE WITH THE CULT. Nobody is arresting the cultists.

Elon's membership in the Epstein blackmail ring has obviously given him access to PREMIUM blackmail files, emitting fragrant clouds of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th-hand premium blackmail smoke. He is untouchable, and his cultists are untouchable by extension.

It's a remarkable demonstration of maximum evil.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite evil, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 5:13 AM

  Cleansing the palate
After the last item about cold evil, here's a giant helping of pure beauty.


Our duty. More value, more life, more beauty.

Labels: infinite GOOD, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 9:12 AM

  Always the same
I bumped into this while looking for info on an old gadget called the Hipp Chronoscope. It seemed like an interesting 'model' for my latest set of Lost Gadgets, and I was trying to find good diagrams and pics. After bumping into this, I decided to skip the Chronoscope. Every tool can be used for good or evil, but this one seems to have been primarily evil.

This 1922 experiment shows several things.

(1) "Social" "science" has always been about cold mechanical torture and evil. The CIA torture chambers, planned and staffed by academic "social" "scientists", are nothing new. The Milgram experiment, which was recently "ameliorated", was nothing special or unusual.

(2) "Social" "science" has always tried to avoid #desistance and keep "both" "sides" playing the deadly game.

(3) Africans have a stronger moral sense than Euros. (As I've been observing for a long time.)

Relevant parts of the text:

The Faradic shock was then used. However, this involved a serious difficulty in getting subjects to continue the experiment after the first day. One of them — subject C, the colored janitor — had to be bribed, and even then he would not continue the experiment under any circumstances.

The results follow:

Subject (N.). After eight shocks the subject responded (without the shock) on the ninth trial, saying, "I got away from it." On the next two trials (the 10th and nth) he also responded and laughed. Reactions without the shock then came frequently on the following trials: 13th, 15th ("I am stealing on you here; I did not get it"), 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 21st, 22nd, and successively after that, with the exception of an occasional shock given now and then as punishment when the subject did not react quickly enough.

Subject (C). The colored janitor. (As stated before, this subject after the first shock had to be bribed to continue the experiment.) After 31 trials with the shock the subject reacted five times (on the 32nd, 33rd, 34th, 35th, 36th trials) to the positive stimulus without the shock, saying, "I jump just the same." On the 37th trial he did not respond and was punished (shocked). After that the reactions to the positive stimulus without the shock were frequent, as shown in the accompanying time curve (Figure VI). However, after having obtained the measure of 31 "conditioned reflexes," the subject would under no consideration continue the experiment. We therefore then took 36 conscious discrimination reactions to the hammer and released him.

The white grad students were mainly concerned with finding ways to cheat. The colored janitor knew the whole pile of shit was wrong. He wanted to keep his job, so he went along for a moment, but his moral sense overcame his fear quickly.

He #desisted, which was unthinkable. "He HAD TO be bribed". Keeping the experiment going was an automatic necessity, and all participants HAD TO remain involved. Morality and scruples HAD TO give way before the juggernaut of "science".

And what is the "scientific" question here? The purpose of the experiment? We didn't need experiments to prove that people learn to avoid pain. We needed experiments to REFINE AND PERFECT OUR TORTURE TECHNIQUES.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, #desistance

  ¶ 8:21 AM

  Who counts?
Our war against Venezuela is fading out, and Europe is pulling away from it. Even some of the South American countries that originally went along with us are returning to normal, deciding that their trade with Cuba and Venezuela matters more than satisfying US Deepstate.

Meanwhile, our war against Persia continues, and Boris is intensifying British participation in the war. Why?

We are the contract hitman for Saudi and Israel. Our wars advance the interests of our mob bosses. Both of the bosses want war against Persia, so it expands. Israel has no interest at all in Venezuela, and Saudi has no personal interest there. We are destroying Venezuela to guarantee that Saudi oil is the only oil, but more importantly to shore up Florida's voters against Rubio.

Nobody outside the RNC cares about combating Rubio. Protecting Saudi monopoly is important, but Venezuela wouldn't really make much difference toward that goal.

So one war fades while another grows.

Old wars never die, they just fade away.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 7:21 AM

  Handling #desistance
I recently noticed (to my surprise!) that computers CAN handle Real World Math better than abstract math methods.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The most obvious and most intentional failure is statistics. The mean can be figured in an equation, so we use it instead of the median. In fact the mean is rarely a useful 'handle' on real situations. The median is nearly always a better representation of middle or typical. Economists and Share Value Demons use the mean to persuade us that making Bezos richer is good for everyone. Other stats are just fancy ways of lying. An extremely old observation, but we still ignore it and still use stats as weapons.

A more subtle failure is thresholds and log-ness. Our senses function logly, not linearly, and we sense deltas, not steady states, and we sense things when they run over a threshold. Closed-form math can't handle any of this. A well-written algorithm can crudely approximate it.

In both of the above cases, computers are actually pretty good at handling Real World Math, but we don't use them properly because we don't understand that computers are sorters, not calculators.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

The problem isn't the machines, the problem is the abstract and evil people who pay to use and develop the machines.

Now I'm thinking about #desistance. Breaking out of the two-sided "game" that Deepstate enforces.

Does abstract math handle #desistance? No. There's no way to show that a variable has NOT entered the equation, no way to show that the result goes nowhere.

Do computers handle #desistance? At the lowest level, yes. All CPUs have a NOP command, and machine-level algorithms use it. In higher level languages, partly but a lot better than abstract math.

A function call can return nothing. A loop can break and go nowhere.

Various languages make it easier or harder to deal with #desistance.

Python makes it easy. Functions are not obliged to have a return value, and loops can pass when needed. Functions that input a list of arguments don't have to leave space for #desisted arguments. You can simply specify which arguments you're using:

fn=tkFileDialog.askopenfilename(initialdir=PZ2Path, filetypes=[("Pose", "PZ2")] )

C makes it hard. Every function is supposed to return a value, and you have to specify void for a function that doesn't have an output. Every argument must be specified in order.

= = = = =

How about real ledgers vs blockchain "ledgers"? Here the difference is dramatic.

A real ledger has pages for each account. If the store establishes an account with a supplier, or a customer establishes a credit tab at the store, the ledger shows the account even if no purchases ever occur. There's no cost or time wasted on those pages; they simply sit there until the supplier or customer decides to participate in a transaction.

Blockchain requires ALL participants to handle ALL transactions. #Desistance is intrinsically forbidden and impossible. Even if you never actually spend or receive money, your computer has to process every single transaction.

Labels: #desistance, Patient things, Real World Math

  ¶ 2:16 AM

  More AI point-missing
Via MindMatters, Eric Holloway asks what happens if we try to create an AI god.

He runs a consistent chain of logic and clearly shows:

Enter the horns of the dilemma. If we want a smart AI, then we must give it the power to make decisions. And if it has the power to make decisions, then it must ultimately decide between good and evil. If it chooses evil, then too bad for us.

But he misses the PURPOSE of AI when he talks about we and us.

We are not paying to develop AI. Normal humans are totally excluded from the process.

Bezos and Elon and Zuck are paying to develop AI, and all the coders are cult members with the same goal.

The AI god has one purpose. Obliterate everything in the universe that is not Bezos. (or Elon or Zuck respectively).

Good = Only Bezos exists.

Evil = Something outside of Bezos exists.

There's nothing contradictory in this goal for each god-maker.

The contradiction is between the three universes. We can assume that each obliterator will easily remove everything that isn't being controlled by the other obliterators. They will cooperate and collaborate to remove all Negative Externalities. (Deplorables and other inanimate objects.) But what happens at the end when the three obliterators try to obliterate each other?

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 5:53 AM

  It's all about the delta

A rare piece of sanity in "education" "research"...

Schools serving disadvantaged and minority children teach as much to their students as those serving more advantaged kids, according to a new nationwide study.

The results may seem surprising, given that student test scores are normally higher in suburban and wealthier school districts than they are in urban districts serving mostly disadvantaged and minority children. But those test scores speak more to what happens outside the classroom than how schools themselves are performing, said Douglas Downey, lead author of the new study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"We found that if you look at how much students are learning during the school year, the difference between schools serving mostly advantaged students and those serving mostly disadvantaged students is essentially zero," Downey said.

Yup. This should be obvious, but neither "side" accepts it.

Both "sides" insist on their own particular brand of nonsense. The left says we shouldn't evaluate anything, and the right says all students should memorize the Speeches of Cicero and the Peloponnesian Wars.

At best a school adds a few skills and facts. The skills are permanent improvements of the student's mind and senses, permanent ADDED VALUE. The facts are irrelevant and transient. Most of this adding happens in the first six years. After that, students should be split by type of talent, leading to different types of apprenticeship.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of good teachers and good schools are DOING THE RIGHT THING, focusing on experiential learning. Common Core is all about SKILLS.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 4:54 AM

  Wrong connection
Still in leaving-a-marker mode this week...

Trump replaced Bolton with O'Brien, a more diplomatic type.

O'Brien is Mormon, which should give him a big head start in the diplomacy department. Mormons are specifically trained in diplomacy. But he also spent several years in South Africa.

The screeeechers are focusing on apartheid, claiming that O'Brien went there to become a White Nationalist or whatever the current word is.

In the context of a government career, South Africa has a much more significant implication. SA and Israel have been closely tied for many decades, especially at the level of intel agencies. When a US diplomat type spends time in SA, he's basically spending time with Mossad.

So O'Brien has excellent credentials to continue serving Lord Adelson.
  ¶ 1:31 AM

  Where are the aphids?
Just putting down a reminder to self. Today appears to be the last warmish day of the year. The weather bureau sees nothing but 40s and 50s for the next few weeks, and downhill from there. I pulled out the air conditioner today.

Where are the aphids? Normally they mark the last warmish day, which varies from end of Sept to end of Oct. I haven't seen even one this fall.

The aphids haven't missed yet. If they're right, we still have a few warm days ahead.

10/16: They were right as always. Can't get ahead of Ma Nature.

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 9:36 AM

  More Harding surprises
When trying to answer why Deepstate went into dormancy after WW1, I found surprisingly that Harding was largely responsible. That's why we "remember" him as a failed scandal-ridden idiot, and perhaps why he died of "natural causes" in office.

Decided to do a little more looking this morning, and found more surprises. Because phonographs were a mature invention and radio was available for the first time, many of his speeches are preserved in audio form.

Univ of Va has an archive with recordings and transcripts. [The website doesn't seem to have a Harding category. The link is one speech about economics, and several other Harding speeches are linked sequentially.]

From the speech about economics:

I decline to recognize any conflict of interest among the participants in industry. The destruction of one is the ruin of the other. The suspicion or rebellion of one unavoidably involves the other. In conflict is disaster, in understanding there is triumph. There is no issue relating to the foundation on which industry is builded because industry is bigger than any element in its modern making. The insistent call is for labor, management, and capital to reach understanding.

The human element comes first. I want the employers in industry to understand the aspirations, the convictions, the yearnings of the millions of American wage earners. I want the wage earners to understand the problems, the anxieties, the obligations of management and capital, and all of them must understand their relationship to the people and their obligation to the Republic.

Out of this understanding will come the unanimous committal to economic justice; and in economic justice lies that social justice which is the highest essential to human happiness. I am speaking as one who has counted the contents of the pay envelope from the viewpoint of the earner, as well as the employer. No one pretends to deny the inequalities which are manifest in modern industrial life. They are less, in fact, than they were before organization and grouping on either side revealed the inequality; and conscience has brought more justice than statutes have compelled. But the ferment of the world rivets our thoughts on the necessity of progressive solutions -- else our generation will suffer the experiments, which means chaos for our day -- to reestablish God’s plan for the great tomorrow.

Among modern politicians, who does this sound like? Certainly not Trump. Much more like Bernie, but most of all like AMLO.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 5:13 AM

  In other words, Fuck Putin Fuck Trump
This is fantastically stupid even by "social" "science" standards.

Archeologists are familiar with a race that populated the area of modern Romania and Ukraine. This race had big cities by ancient standards....

Hofmann’s team compared the structures at Maidanetske with more than 100 others in various other ancient European settlements, and determined that they must have been critical parts of life in the settlement. While the dwellings were two-storied, the mega-structures were just one floor, and some lacked roofs, suggesting an open activity space. The unroofed ones tended to be located in central plazas, while smaller, roofed buildings may have served specific groups, farther from the city center. Researchers think most could hold more than 1,000 people at a time. Maidanetske was clearly an organized place, and persisted for 350 years.

The archaeologists speculate that over time, the larger meeting spaces became more important than the smaller ones, which fell into disuse. Hofmann suggests that changes to the social organization—perhaps increasingly centralized in a way that discouraged or suppressed participation—was unsustainable.

“The case of Tripolye mega-sites seems to be an example,” Hofmann says, of “how humans should not govern. Dysfunctionality of social institutions, lethargy, and lack of democratic participation contribute to deterioration of the social fabric in a human society.”

Why in the fuck do you think these MARKET SQUARES were meeting places for Robust Debates and Parliamentary Procedures?

Earlier archeologists were more objective. They interpreted MARKET SQUARES as MARKET SQUARES. The gradual fading of the smaller MARKET SQUARES would indicate consolidation of business, due to better trade and transportation, or due to normal gangster protection rackets.

These Sorosian monsters can only think FUCK TRUMP FUCK PUTIN,

so they have to interpret a MARKET SQUARE as a Robust Debate which failed when an ULTRA FAR FAR FAR RIGHT TRUMP HITLER KKK PUTIN HITLER took over.

Labels: infinite STUPID, Sorosia

  ¶ 11:15 PM

  Next step
The demons are aware of #desistance, and are starting to develop strategies to make it impossible.

The team analyzed what strategy can promote and maintain a cooperative society in a basic model of a social dilemma called "the prisoner's dilemma" by introducing a new action of not participating in games.

They determined a strategy that can lead to mutual cooperation without using non-cooperative actions even when facing an exploiter. The strategy can be described as "escape interaction if a partner defected or cooperate if a partner escaped interaction".

Game theory is total nonsense, but we can observe the interests of the demons by observing how they use game theory. They are starting to recognize that #desistance is popular. The next step is devising strategies to forbid #desistance and exterminate #desistors.

Labels: #desistance

  ¶ 7:04 AM

  Ehret hits a double home run
Just read it.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 5:55 AM

  Meanwhile....
As US and UK descend impossibly fast into unimaginable stages of idiocy and pointless noise, the sane parts of the world continue to GET SHIT DONE.

Putin, AMLO, Mahathir, and Orban continue to serve their people. (Salvini has been whacked and the whackers have immediately resumed the migrant invasion. Remains to be seen what will happen next.)

I've been comparing Putin to Nicholas 1. The comparison also applies to AMLO.

A nice drawing of Nicholas trying out the first semaphore system.



Reminds me of AMLO trying out an ancient but still active and still profitable sugarcane press.



All of these leaders have their HANDS AND SENSES on the real workings of the nation. US/UK dysleaders are totally disconnected from reality. They appear to have eyes and ears and hands but never use them.

Later thought: There's an important difference. Nicholas is surrounded by academic and aristocratic types, while the peasants and horses are grayed out in the background. AMLO is talking directly with the peasant and horse.

Credit footnote: The Nicholas picture, and similar Chappe pictures, are from Les Merveilles de la Science in 1868. The unnamed artist knew how to make cartoons move!
  ¶ 5:44 AM

  Bergoglio no like grammar
Bergoglio is treading into my territory.

Let us learn to call people by their name, as the Lord does with us, and to give up using adjectives.

What does he mean? Impossible to determine, but he's certainly pushing away from the resonance and harmony of grammar, pushing toward a crude globalist mechanical form of communication.

= = = = = START REPRINT 1:

Life is order. Death is chaos.

Civilization is a specific TYPE of order called Natural Law. Natural Law was recorded in God's experimental log book. It was recorded by the civilizations who survived. Sorosians break every provision of Natural Law. We can watch the experiment in supercompressed video now. Sorosian cultures are dying fast from both ends, failing to reproduce and committing mass suicide. Natural Law cultures are reproducing and staying alive.

Language also has a specific TYPE of order called grammar, which develops naturally. I've made two pretty good observations on the subject. (1) Grammar is a trellis that organizes and strengthens civilization. (2) Languages with caseless nouns are easy prey for Sorosian chaos. The latter connects with Scruton's discussion of places. If your language has firm structure of the relations between places and things and people, you have a better defense against Sorosian destruction of borders and connections. A place for everyone and everyone in his place. Firm structure of verbs doesn't seem to help.

Natural grammar is generally unrecorded, so it doesn't have lobbyists or churches to defend it against the chaotizers. The chaotizers, unsurprisingly, started to enforce the invented rigid abstractions of UNnatural grammar at the same time that they started to enforce the rigid demonic insanities of the "Enlightenment". The "rules" of official "grammar" lead to confusion and ambiguity, and make it impossible to express normal thoughts in normal order, just as the crazy abstractions of "rights" and "equality" lead to confusion and ambiguity. Chaotized meaning is well-known, thanks to Orwell. Chaotized grammar is equally important but not often discussed.



= = = = = END REPRINT 1.

And,

= = = = = START REPRINT 2:

I've noted before that a well-structured language with good internal modularity protects people against invasive ideas.

Often-invaded cultures and languages like Russia develop sophisticated complexities that are impossible for invaders to understand.

Invading cultures like USA and invading languages like English are simple and crude. We are the pathogen, so we don't need to defend against other pathogens.

Babel tells us that God wanted modularity, not universality. Why? To protect us against both physical and cultural pathogens.

Globalists FORCIBLY break all of these defensible spaces and cases. Globalists want one universal language and one universal culture and one universal mindset. Why? So the Imperial pathogen can spread into all lands. Globalists are like the seed-pod fungus.

= = = = = END REPRINT 2.

"Calling people by their name" seems to encourage a return to the primitive, a return to the stage of language development where each item in my limited world has its own unique referent. We pass through this stage during infancy, and early languages probably worked this way. As we grow up, and as a language matures, we learn to generalize, learn to form sentences where each category has its proper place in the harmonious sequence of a sentence.

Labels: defensible cases

  ¶ 1:02 AM

  Filter ratchet
It's interesting to watch US and UK Deepstates working in close synchrony. Both have spent the last three years jacking off with accelerating sound and fury, signifying nothing and accomplishing nothing.

This month both are reaching their climax together. In US the climax is called "impeachment", and in UK the climax is a ruling by their Supreme Demons that British independence is "unconstitutional". Only total perpetual surrender and enslavement to the Fourth Reich is "constitutional".

You'd think they would at least pretend that they're pounding their puds separately, but there's no point in any pretense.

Sucker filters over and over and over. Each filter selects and softens the part of the population who will believe nonsense, and each filter moves the boundary of nonsense one step outward.

These demons understand neurology. They know how adaptation works, and use it to the hilt.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 11:57 PM

  Real value ledgers
The blockchain fad is a bizarre symptom of Deepstate-induced craziness. First let's ignore the simple and obvious facts that (1) Bitcoin's founder openly proclaimed his CIA connections (2) Bitcoin is perfectly centralized, running all transactions through NSA. Even without those blazingly obvious links, the idea is still crazy and harmful.

As an old pen-and-ink bookkeeper, I have a feel for how ledgers are supposed to work. Ledgers aren't supposed to be accessible and changeable by everyone in the world. Ledgers are supposed to be an accurate and unchanging record of the Debits and Credits, the outputs and inputs, of ONE business or organization or individual.

Modularity is IMPERATIVE and BASIC to the functioning of an organism, and thus to the ledger that records the functioning.

Without modularity, without borders and layers and hierarchy, you can't even define inputs and outputs so you can't have a ledger. You can't have any sort of schematic or equation or model unless you have a boundary.

= = = = =

This article in a 'new econ' website invokes the double-entry ledger to explain fractional reserve fake currency creation.

The commons is a conscious implementation of reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruists, whether human or ape, reward those who cooperate with others and punish those who defect. A commons works the same way. A resource such as a lake or a field, or a monetary system, is understood as a shared asset.

If one’s business activities hurt any other market participant, they undermine the integrity of the marketplace itself. For those entranced by the myth of capitalism, this can be hard to grasp. They’re still stuck thinking of the economy as a two-column ledger, where every credit is someone’s else’s debit. This zero-sum mentality is an artifact of monopoly central currency. If money has to be borrowed into existence from a single, private treasury and paid back with interest, then this sad, competitive, scarcity model makes sense. I need to pay back more than I borrowed, so I need to get that extra money from someone else. That’s the very premise of zero-sum. But that’s not how an economy has to work.

Zero-sum misses the point entirely. The crucial difference is where the CRedit comes from.

Value is an increase in order. Value is an increase in life and beauty.

In the most basic agricultural forms of commerce, the CRedit is CReated by plants, who turn sunlight and water into infinitely ordered life, and secondarily by animals who eat the plants and transform the order into a more condensed order.

CR represents an increase in order.

Within the boundaries of the ledger, CR is measuring the number of currency units paid to the farmer or miner or oil driller or supplier, but it directly represents an increase in order, an increase in life.

DR is also an increase in order.

The business processes the raw input, using human labor and machinery, and turns it into a more complexly ordered object, or makes it more convenient to use, or more attractive to buy, or more STORABLE. Storage is probably the most important increase in order.

DR in the ledger measures currency units coming into the business from the customer who gains convenience or storability.

= = = = =

I've often cited Steinbeck's analogy: Real value business brings in salmon, puts it in cans with human and machine labor, and sells it. Capitalists HATE human and machine labor. They would rather can salmon with ledgers, and now they've finally managed to do it.

= = = = =

Using salmon, Polistra shows how the REAL-VALUE ledger measures the increase in order on both sides of a REAL-VALUE business.

On the CR side, Nature increases order by growing a salmon. The fisherman brings in a salmon, adding a unit of life-order to the business. The ledger represents this CRedit as money going back to the fisherman.



On the DR side, the business increases order by filleting the salmon and placing it in cans, then selling it to customers. Canning makes the salmon more convenient for ordinary people without butchering skills, and it makes the salmon STORABLE. The ledger represents this increase in order by showing the money flowing from customers to the business.



A business wants to have input money exceeding output money. Profit means that the business is creating more order than it consumes from its suppliers. In other words, the business is alive. And this accumulation of increased value is where the money supply really increases. The Soviet system recognized this basic fact by using VAT to determine when the national money supply would increase.

= = = = =

From this viewpoint we can see how debt is actually a LOSS of real value. When a business rents money from a bank, the incoming money was NOT generated by nature or labor. It was counterfeited by the bank. The business gets nothing but an obligation to repay the money, which limits the freedom of the business. The interest paid to the bank must be sucked out of the real value accumulated by the business.

Modern economics turns the whole picture upside down by treating the sucked-out interest as the "creation" "of" "value".

Labels: MMT, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, Real World Math, storage

  ¶ 10:28 AM

  Too busy with serious matters
The Weather Bureau's forecasting has been sloppy lately.

Their daily outlook:



Weather.com hourly:



Real radar:



This isn't a convective popup. Those are genuinely hard to forecast. This is a nice Midwestern-style front that has been sliding across the state for several hours.

I guess they're busy watching Priestess Pippa Longstocking's screeeeeechfest and offering burnt Deplorables as contrite sacrifices to Gaia.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 3:18 PM

  Knowledge is power
The title is normally used as a meaningless slogan by educators and librarians.

Here's what it really means.

= = = = = START MODIFIED REPRINT:

Listening to the powerful dramatization of the Neck Verse by Hix's anonymous actors in 'Strange as it Seems', packed with empathy for the poor and downtrodden.



Benefit of clergy.

Sudden question: WHY did they exempt clergy from punishment? It's a peculiar ancient custom, impossible for secular moderns to understand.

Sudden answer: It wasn't because the clergy could read. That was just the marker. The benefit was provided because the clergy heard confession.

Priests knew everyone's secrets. They could reveal everyone's secrets if they were threatened with any loss of privilege.

This also applies to newer priest-like occupations that know and keep secrets. Psychiatrists and doctors have special legal powers and immunity.

Sudden insight: And that's why our Web Lords are also exempt, why the SEC and FTC and DOJ and FCC can't touch them.

Zuck knows all of our secrets because he built the confessional and requires us to attend daily. We can't receive full sacraments unless we use Devices that confess all to Zuck.

Elon knows the secrets of his cultists because his rosaries on wheels are constantly reporting location and driver behavior as part of the "machine learning" for the heaven of FSD, which will not arrive until the Second Coding when Lord Elon resurrects as the Holy Emperor Of The Terraformed And Gloriously Carbon-Free Mars Kingdom.

Bezos knows the secrets of his customers, Kalanick knows the secrets of his riders, and so on.

Not so strange after all.

= = = = = END MODIFIED REPRINT.
  ¶ 1:08 AM

  Did Willys Aero have a chance?
Reading an old Collectible Auto magazine, noticed a fact that breaks conventional wisdom. The normal story, which I'd always believed, says that Rambler grabbed the compact niche immediately and the later competitors never had a chance.

Not quite true.

Total sales in 1953:

Rambler = 36231

Henry J and rebadged Allstate = 17300

Hudson Jet = 21143

Willys Aero = 41549

and the Station Wagon = 5417

Since the Station Wagon was also a compact (104" wheelbase, 4 cylinder engine) it fits in this category.

So Willys was beating Rambler by 10k in 1953, even without counting Jeeps and pickups.

Kaiser bought Willys in 1953 and got rid of the sedans. The Station Wagon and Jeep continued to grow in popularity, and now Willys is the #3 American brand by some measures.

Would Willys have grown faster and more consistently if Kaiser had put money into the sedans here? Kaiser did develop the sedans after moving them to Brazil, where they had a long second life in a more luxurious market niche.

At any rate, the conventional story about Rambler's inevitable win is wrong.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 4:52 PM

  We don't want easy
Random thought, probably wrong but I want to pull it out for further examination.

In my long and emotional piece on the Chappe telegraph I wrote:

This system required considerable skill and brute strength. The stationnaires were expected to work 12/7/365 for 38 francs a month, roughly $150 now. They had to watch up and down the line for messages from other telegraphs, and then twist their wrists and bodies to resend the message. No wonder they were easy to bribe.

By contrast, the early dial telegraphs required no skill and no strength, and Morse requires considerable skill and no strength.

Raises an interesting question: Successful systems required either physical strength or mental skill. Telegraphs that anyone could operate didn't succeed.

Is this a general rule? We presume that every improvement in convenience, every decrease in strength or skill, should be immediately popular. In fact it doesn't work that way.

I can think of several examples in the history of automobiles. Synchromesh made shifting much easier, but it wasn't a major selling point. The first full automatic by Sturtevant in 1905 didn't even get noticed; Reo's Self-Shifter in 1933 didn't sell; Hydramatic took 10 years to become popular. Power brakes, relieving effort and improving safety, appeared on most big cars in the '30s then disappeared, and didn't return until the mid '50s.

In household appliances: Automatic ironers were introduced after WW2. A few people bought them, but most preferred the manual way. Kitchens of the '20s were designed so the housewife could sit down while washing dishes or cooking. Later kitchens returned to full standup, and nobody complained.

The same presumption is behind the current push toward "autonomous" cars. Again it's pretty clear from sales and polling that most people would rather do their own driving, and most people are exactly right. In this case the "innovation" is NOT innocent and misguided. The "innovation" is genocide.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Within limits, most creatures would rather accomplish their purpose by using and improving their own skills. An invention that eliminates dangerous or extreme exertion will succeed, but an invention that goes beyond the optimum will fail.

= = = = =

This is intimately related to the idiotic Repooflican Tocqueville cultists, who constantly tell us that politicians win because they give free LARGESSE to the "47% Takers". I decisively and definitively debunked Tocqueville. In fact people vote AGAINST largesse, and vote FOR real jobs.

Labels: Asked and sort of answered, skill-estate

  ¶ 5:58 AM

  More "energy efficiency" in Nature
Via Eurekalert, new research on one of Nature's extremely "efficient" pieces of design.

The fly Ormia ochracea has evolved directionally sensitive ears to eavesdrop on the communication signals of field crickets. Crickets that are parasitized by these flies face almost certain death. How these flies recognize cricket songs and whether crickets can change their love songs to avoid parasitism is unknown.

The Lee Lab of Neural Systems and Behavior at St. Olaf College will apply this new approach to unravel how different geographic populations of O. ochracea have evolved to recognize and prefer species-specific cricket songs that mainly differ in the temporal patterning of sound pulses. Temporal pattern recognition is a common sensory processing task shared by many animals that communicate with acoustic signals, including human speech. Studying temporal pattern recognition in O. ochracea may provide insights into general auditory system function involved in signal recognition.

Lee believes that his research into O. ochracea hearing can be harnessed to help improve human hearing by providing engineers with insights into how the natural world has solved common hearing challenges such as recognizing temporally patterned sounds. Engineers have relied on biomimicry to design miniature microphones based on O. ochracea ears, with the hope of applying these microphones to create directional hearing aids.

St Olaf is especially strong in speech and hearing, so the implications are shaped toward S&H.

This particular study is solid but not groundbreaking. I looked into previous research on these over-designed parasites...........

The fly has a bay-window eardrum on the front of her thorax. She uses the two-sided eardrum as a direction-finder, walking in various directions until she homes in on the target cricket's chirp.

Birds and mammals have large enough heads that we can use time of arrival and phase differences to determine sound direction accurately. This fly is almost microscopic, so there's no way for her to distinguish time of arrival between the sides. Instead, the two sides of the eardrum are coupled in the middle, giving a differential response to off-angle wavefronts and a non-differential response to straight-on wavefronts. This happens mechanically in direct response to the sound waves, not via neural computation.

= = = = =

In these animations, the gray blob is the thorax; the red and blue are the bay-window eardrum; and the eardrum is pushing a sort of malleus into three separate neurons: S for signal, R for Right side leading, and L for Left side leading.

We can assume that the whole mechanism is sharply tuned to the frequency of the target cricket's chirp, because that's how Nature does things.



When the signal is coming from straight ahead, the middle of the eardrum moves, but there's no differential back-and-forth. The S neuron is sensing presence of signal.

= = = = =

In the second animation the insect has turned toward the left.



The high-pressure phase of the sound wave strikes the right window before it strikes the left window. The malleus rocks back and forth, giving the insect an OFF-BEAM warning, just like Loran.

So the fly walks forward, using the R and L neurons for negative feedback. When the off-beam indicator is pulsing, she turns one way or the other until it stops.

Energy efficiency? A tremendously clever and unique design, used only in this one insect, and only in the adult version of the insect which lives long enough to fuck and lay eggs and die.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 10:46 AM

  Wilson gets it, partly
A discussion of Europe's dead Christianity by Roman intellectual AN Wilson.

Amazingly, Wilson faces facts, and starts to look in the right places.

Olivier Roy, the social philosopher, has returned to the earlier theme, explored in his Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture Part Ways (2010). In Is Europe Christian? he offers little comfort to those who hope for the revival of Christian Europe. “Dechristianisation never takes a step backward”, he asserts.

If Dante read Roy’s book, he would surely suggest that the scandals surrounding the Banco Ambrosiano, in which Archbishop Marcinkus, abetted by John Paul II, were involved in Mafia-style skulduggery on a murderous scale (witness the corpse of Roberto Calvi, found hanging under Blackfriar’s Bridge in London in June 1982) were of greater significance than the fact that some Catholics practise birth control.

Apart from the murder, usury itself is a mortal sin in which Marcinkus revelled, eluding arrest for murder and fraud because the saintly pontiff refused to allow his extradition from the Vatican.

Fact: Deepstate's foundation is banks. Bankers are the source and maintainer of evil.

This is explosively clear in the modern world, but it's not quite as clear in the older Roman version of Deepstate. Wilson makes the connection.

Wilson also faces another fact, which most Roman intellectuals get exactly backwards:

Usury is persistently forbidden by scripture, as by the tradition of the Church. The ways in which the Church as an institution, and Christian Europe, as a whole, came to terms with this, have varied, and there has no doubt been much hypocrisy over 2,000 years. Papal encyclicals, however, until our own times, have been consistently anti-usury. That is, anti- not merely the way that banks operate, but anti- the entire economic system on which the Western world, since the invention of modern capitalism in the City of London in 1694, is founded.

Paradoxically, today, it is the Muslims, on the whole, who keep alive what used to be Christian values in Europe—family virtue, and dread of usury.

On the fucking dot.

Islam sees clearly and coherently that charging interest for loans is the key dividing line between real value and fake value. When bankers can create money arbitrarily, they no longer need to DEPEND on real farms and mines and craftsmen. They are free to serve Satan, which is their automatic and innate tendency.

Repeating the best description of Sharia:

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.

Everyone has different tastes, talents and tendencies. Each person is DESIGNED and INTENDED to be USEFUL. When bankers can counterfeit money, only banker tastes and tendencies exist. Normal morality is cut out of the loop. People who learn from Nature and experience are starved and slaughtered.

Europe actually has two sources of anti-debt sanity, Islam and Russia. Russia's anti-usury tendencies derive partly from Orthodox (NON-ROMAN) Christianity and partly from Soviet tradition. Both are more closely aligned with God's law. The pro-debt and pro-Satan forces are strongest in the Protestant north, from England to Denmark to Sweden to the Baltics. In the areas where Islam and Orthodox/Soviet influence are strong, Soros and Satan are being pushed out. Catholic areas are in the middle by this measure, neither best nor worst.

[I added 'partly' to the title because of the word 'paradoxically'. There's nothing paradoxical about understanding and obeying God's laws.]

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, Sorosia

  ¶ 12:59 AM

  La Roue Phonique
This isn't really a telegraph, but it was invented as an accessory for telegraphs. After reading the original document I simply couldn't resist making a model. Poul LaCour was a Dane living in France. He was so proud and excited about his invention that his passion burns through the years.

He called his invention the Roue Phonique or Phonic Wheel.

It was the first precision oscillator, using a tuning fork as a fast-moving reversing relay. The AC output drove a synchronous magnetic motor.

In modern terms the tuning fork part is an inverter, sending out an accurate AC signal from a battery. We use inverters constantly in solar power systems and computers.

In 1880 power grids were just barely starting to develop, and the Tesla/Edison battle was still in the future. All power came from batteries, so LaCour's Phonic Wheel could serve to drive clocks or any mechanism requiring accurate AC or accurate rotation. LaCour imagined the wheel driving multiplex telegraph systems, and showed how to use visible interference patterns between two wheels to calibrate one frequency against another.

Here's the Phonic Wheel in action, driving a clock. I've slowed down the oscillation for visibility. I've also left out the wires because I'm lazy.



AC power came along soon thereafter, so the need for an inverter faded away.

GenRad, the calibration company, was still using LaCour's idea in 1948. The mechanism of their Precision Fork was the same:



And the circuit was basically the same:



LaCour's later inventions in the area of windmills and wind power have been more productive and better known.

Labels: Metrology, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 3:51 PM

  Consummation devoutly
Via ZH, an interview with some NYC demon:

Finally, Cooperman and Wapner moved on to a discussion of the 2020 Democratic primary race. Equities haven't seen much of an impact from politics, Cooperman said, because right now, the market is assuming that President Trump will be reelected. But if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren start gaining credibility, things could turn around in a hurry. If Warren or Sanders happened to win, they would almost certainly usher in the next bear market.
"Right now, the market is assuming Donald Trump is reelected. If it looks like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders are credible opponents, the market will go down. They won't open the stock market if Elizabeth Warren is the next president."

Absolute salvation and rebirth of REAL CAPITALISM.

Of course it won't happen. Manweller. No change is possible via elections.

Still, what a wonderful heavenly dream. Shut'n'shoot. Close down all abstract markets, confiscate the real wealth (if any) held captive by those demonworlds, and execute all participants. Ideally torture all participants until the end of the universe, but shooting is faster and cheaper.

Labels: Alternate universe, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 7:10 AM

  What's unusual?
Via Eurekalert, an analysis of the Denisovan branch of early humans.

Three interesting things:

1. The composite picture of the suspect is GREAT ART. It could be a 1600's oil painting. I wouldn't be surprised to see this picture in a museum. The article credits Maayan Harel for "beautiful illustrations", which is an understatement!

2. The analysis was done at the epigenetic level, not the 'hard genes', thus acknowledging that 'hard genes' are losing their importance as the main driver of variation.

3. The suspect doesn't look strange at all. I see people with identical characteristics every day. Pretty much the norm** around here. If this skull and face seem unfamiliar to the researchers, maybe the researchers are the strange ones. Modern tenure-track researchers are uniformly LONG AND TALL. They are selected for maximum stamina and competitive dominance. A group picture of science grad students looks just like a group picture of varsity basketball players, except that the science students are taller.

** I think this type is mainly the original tribes around here, not the Euros. I notice them because they're outstanding examples of a strong culture where everyone has a firm place. When I see a CALM mother with a CALM baby, they're usually original. The Denisovan branch was first found in Siberia, so there could be a line of descent.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:12 AM

  Cui bono bugeating?
Bugeating pops up repeatedly among the schizoid genocidal screechings of Carbon Cultists. BBC features articles along this line every week.

Here we see bugeating coupled with terraforming Mars, another apocalyptic theme.

Who is paying to advocate bugeating? It doesn't make sense by any standards. The advocacy is clearly designed to soften up our cultural taboos, but why? An industrial cricket farm would be just as large and dirty and inhumane as an industrial pig farm. Each unit is smaller, but the total mass would have to be the same to satisfy the same demand for protein. From a moral viewpoint, avoiding the unnecessary murder of intelligent life, the insect farm is a million times worse.

There are a few commercial insect farmers, mainly for fish bait or zoo food. Not nearly a large enough industry to support lecture fees and grants for "scientists".

Elon and Bezos are pushing terraforming for megalomaniac personal reasons. They want to own an entire planet, and they need cultists for slaves. But they haven't been emphasizing bugs.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:50 AM

  Strict Borodin effect
Polistra likes to keep track of the Borodin effect, named after Radio Moscow's old habit of switching to heavy funereal music when the Soviet oligarchs were in a confused condition.

Nice example this week at The Israelist, which calls itself "The Federalist" for some obscure reason. Normally The Israelist is nothing but Israel. It offers Robust Debates on how harshly we should punish politicians who suck Bibi's dick with insufficient vacuum power, and it offers helpful tips on how to improve your vacuum power the next time you are blessed with a moment at Bibi's knees.

This week there's NOTHING about Israel in The Israelist. They are solely focusing on some utterly meaningless soap opera related to Kavanaugh or Kaepernick or whatever, the latest pro-abort "judge" who fraudulently claims to be "conservative" or whatever.

The Borodin is strict this time, not loosely metaphorical: Bibi's power is in a confused condition this week.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Borodin isn't really the heaviest Russian composer. He wrote a lot of light-hearted stuff. I should have used Khachaturian, but Borodin is easier to spell.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 12:25 AM

  Thanks Ralph NaN, Perfect infinite justice edition
As I've been noting for quite a fucking while, Russia never offshored its manufacturing. This means that Russia continued to TRAIN its own engineers and mechanics, and continued to USE its own engineers and mechanics to make its own products.

We offshored everything except FUCKING DEBT. We let Japan and China do the engineering on all the shit we consume using the debt produced by our bankers, who are the only "producers". All of our effort and intelligence has been devoted to Disruptive Innovation of new frauds and tricks and scams and rackets and swindles and extortions and shakedowns and stings and cons and gyps and cults and chaos and mayhem and genocide and insanity beyond insanity and evil beyond evil.

Now we're paying the price for our total loss of SKILLS, and it's BEAUTIFUL.

Via ZH,

GAO also lists the challenges of developing a hypersonic weapon, and are likely some of the reasons why the U.S. is losing the weapons race against Russia and China.

Heat-tolerant materials: At hypersonic speeds, the exterior temperature of a hypersonic vehicle or weapon can exceed 2,000°F, necessitating advanced materials that will protect interior electronics. Such materials also need to be mechanically strong and efficient.

Propulsion technology: Refinement of engine technology is needed for HCMs. This includes increasing the reliability and efficiency of scramjet engines. New types of engines that allow for propulsion from standstill to hypersonic speeds are also being developed, which would eliminate the need for rockets to provide the initial launch.

Weapon tracking: Defense against a hypersonic weapon would involve tracking and intercepting it, but current radar and satellite systems are inadequate for this task.

Limited testing resources: There are limited places to perform ground tests and flight tests of hypersonic weapons and vehicles in the United States. Currently, there are limited wind tunnel facilities in the country capable of running propulsion tests of hypersonic weapons and vehicles.

Safety and control: Hypersonic velocities require additional improvements of aircraft control and guidance to help ensure the accuracy of hypersonic weapons.

Now it's too late, and I'm DELIGHTED. We are technologically checkmated. For at least a few years we can't even DREAM of attacking Russia or its friends. The world is SAFE for a few years.

THANKS, RALPH.

INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE EMERSONIAN JUSTICE.

Labels: defensible spaces, Emersonian justice, Experiential education, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:49 PM

  Tulsi, you just won me back
Elections don't matter, and my support certainly doesn't matter, but maybe someone in their marketing dept is paying attention to these things.

Tulsi lost me by appearing to serve Deepstate.

She got my money again with this message.

Trump is Saudi's bitch.

Exactly.

It's not just Trump; it's everyone in the last 40 years. The first externally visible indication that Saudi was Our Man was in 1978.

Since then, but ESPECIALLY starting with the all-out Deepstate coup by Bush The Father, we have been working for Saudi and Israel, NOT for America. After Saudi beat our ass in 2001, we obeyed even more loyally. A beaten bitch is a loyal bitch.

This year is jail anniversary, so the talk of pimping and bitches strikes a resonance. I've been there, I know how it works, and I swore not to look back. Watching helplessly as the whole country gets turned out by Deepstate is painful.
  ¶ 2:48 PM

  Worth remembering
A discussion on econ twitter that is worth remembering.

Simple point: When a small business survives for a long time with no customers, or only a few customers who couldn't possibly provide enough profit, it's not a real business. It's a front for a profitable criminal business, money-laundering or tax evasion or smuggling.

I figured this out a long time ago and then forgot it.   ¶ 5:24 AM

  Speaking of Shannon information..........
Via Spokane News:

Real news by Shannon definition. Trustworthy news.
  ¶ 12:31 AM

  Gimme Shannon
Strikes me that a slight variation on the Thiel question is a good test for people who claim to be "ex"Deepstate, or "whistleblowers" against Deepstate.

The original Thiel question:

Tell me something that's true that nobody agrees with you on.

My looser version:

Tell me something that's true that nobody else knows.

= = = = =

Variation to test the EXness of "ex"Deepstaters:

Tell me something that's true that I don't already know.

Intel agencies use this question intensely and rigorously to test claimed defectors from enemy intel. We should use it for the same purpose, since CIA and FBI and NSA are enemy intel.

"Ex"es always tell us things that we already know, or give us unnecessary details about things that we had already guessed. This is NOT Shannon information.

Shannon information is fully surprising and unexpected, totally unguessable and undeducible from existing knowledge. Shannon is consequential, not trivial. When you act on Shannon information, things change.

We could formalize this by gathering (online or in person) a jury of UNPAID NONEXPERTS who have some experience dealing with aspects of Deepstate. People who have been involved in "radical" activities where CIA or FBI planted APs, or people who have worked in tech areas where NSA's tentacles are visible. Require the "Ex" to tell us something that is fresh and surprising to all jurors.

Labels: Asked and worth asking again, Leth

  ¶ 11:56 PM

  Why haven't we returned to chordal writing?
We speak in chords, we hear in chords, we grammar in chords. Why don't we write or type in chords?

Expanded slightly:

Speech is chorded. The larynx is just a trigger for the complex and smooth modulation of harmonic patterns in vowels, shaped by the pharynx and tongue and lips.

Hearing is chorded. From the cochlea on up, the entire setup is harp-like, and the actual signals are parallel patterns of chords in parallel tone-based channels.

Grammar is chorded. English, the invading parasite, has lost some of the chordiness, but non-parasitic languages have complex and smooth patterns of harmony among morphemes on different words in the sentence, and harmony among vowels within and between words.

= = = = =

Some writing systems have their own internal harmony and continuo, but AFAIK no writing system tries to represent the harmony of speech or grammar.

So how come our language machines settled down into strictly monophonic and serial form? One keystroke adds one letter.

They didn't start that way.


Wheatstone's first telegraph had a chordal keyboard and a chordal readout. (Not surprising since Wheatstone came from a family that made accordions and concertinas!)

Other telegraphs were more piano-like.


This is a steno-telegraph designed by Michela. You hit two or three keys with each hand, and the result was printed as a symbol for a syllable or word. Michela's written symbols were quasi-phonetic like Korean:



Chordal machines survive in courtroom transcription, but again they're not trying to represent the chordal aspects of sound or grammar. They simply type a group of letters simultaneously, and the stenographer later visually translates the peculiar letter combinations into words.

In the digital world it's possible to restore Michela's concept. A regular keyboard won't do because it's strictly one output at a time, but it should be possible to connect a pressure-sensitive MIDI keyboard to produce not only phonic chords but grammar chords.

Labels: defensible cases

  ¶ 5:05 PM

  More Jesus Why
Another Jesus! Why would anyone want to PAY for this product?

Via the Tesla skeptics, a lengthy analysis of a fake IPO for a fuel cell company.

Crucial points:

The company has sucked in $1 billion in government subsidies.

The fuel cell installations cost $892 per KW, and expected lifetime of each fuel cell is 34 months. Less than 3 years.

= = = = =

I ran the numbers last year on a similar comparison of lithium ion batteries with Edison's eternal Nickel-Iron batteries:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The Lithium setup cost 41 million Aussie dollars, which is 29 million US.

For comparison I'm using the retail price list from Iron Edison, figured for small installations. The price for a huge installation would involve a lot less overhead, but I don't have access to those numbers and I'm not going to ask them for a quote! So the best I can do is plain multiplication.

Using the retail numbers, the biggest available pack is 48 volts at 1000 amp-hours = 48 KWH. This setup is listed at $42k dollars = $875 per KWH. If you simply put together enough of these to reach 100 MWH, the cost would be $87.5 million. About three times the cost for the Lithium setup.

The real difference comes in upkeep and replacement, not initial cost. Lithium batteries last two years, so the Lithium outfit was already halfway to the first replacement point when it finished testing. Nickel-Iron lasts INDEFINITELY. Iron Edison recommends flushing and replacing the electrolyte every TEN years. NiFe batteries made by Edison have lasted 90 years in continuous use.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

In this case the comparison is even more dramatic because the fuel cells cost the same per KW as the nickel-iron. So lifetime is the only variable. 3 years versus forever. Which is better?

Labels: variables and variables

  ¶ 8:00 AM

  Starting to get somewhere
Some AI researchers are finally peeking outside their digital bubble and returning to analog technology.

Cybernetics started in analog form with tubes, and was developing quickly in the '60s. In the '70s, of course, analog was abandoned and all grants went to exponentially larger and exponentially more purposeless digital computers.

These researchers finally caught onto the fact that the brain is analog. Their device isn't revolutionary; it's an extremely small and efficient Gauss-curve function. The same thing could be done with mechanisms, as I illustrated last month...



... or it could be done with tubes or plain FETs or a pair of biased germanium diodes.

It's not clear from the summary why they want Gauss; neurons do Tanh, not Gauss.

A bit later after looking again at the Schwann stuff: Yeah, Gauss makes sense. Gauss is the derivative** of Tanh. Most neurons have a Tanh curve, but the purpose of a sensory system is a soft two-way change detector. If you're modeling the black-box behavior instead of the transfer function of a single neuron, you want Gauss. The recently discovered Schwann sensors implement Gauss directly, as does this device.

** Well, strictly speaking Gauss is the rectified or absoluted derivative of Tanh.
  ¶ 11:16 PM

  Damn! Wish I'd said that!
... But I'm glad I read it!

ZH clickbait article about real estate developers in Vancouver offering a free Tesla with their overpriced houses.

My trivial thought: That would be a counter-premium. I'd rather have a covenant in the gated neighborhood prohibiting ownership or passage or discussion of Teslas.

One commenter casually slipped in a TREMENDOUS piece of wisdom:

Valuations are a matter of opinion, debt is real.

Indisputably true and important, but it's NOT a proverb in common circulation. This is why all forms of gambling are sinful and suicidal. You're delusionally hoping for a return that's a matter of opinion, but you're incurring a PRECISE AND OBJECTIVE DEBT, enforced by a precise and objective crowbar.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 10:41 PM

  Perfect jab
The master of SELF-DEFENSE makes a nice jab at US inability to DEFEND anything:

“Saudi Arabia needs to make a smart decision, as Iran did by buying our S-300, and as Mr. Erdogan did by deciding to buy the most advanced S-400 Triumph air defense systems from Russia,” Putin told reporters in Ankara on Monday. “These kinds of systems are capable of defending any kind of infrastructure in Saudi Arabia from any kind of attack.”

US and Saudi only know how to attack. We don't defend our own borders, we don't defend our own people from crime, we only attack internally and externally.

Putin cited the Koran to admonish the Saudi coalition’s war on Yemen, saying that the Muslim holy book said the only legitimate form of violence was self-defense and, in that context, spoke of the Russian-made missile systems as a possible solution.

Yup.

Natural Law: NEVER ATTACK. ALWAYS DEFEND.

Corollary: If you defend well enough, you won't need to counterattack because the enemy won't waste effort on attacking in the first place.

Labels: defensible spaces, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 2:41 PM

  Pass the test and reject the test
A nice Godel in an article supposedly about numeracy.

The article begins with a word problem about probability, calling it a good test of math skills.

In fact the specific problem isn't about math at all. It tests your ability to see which variables are important and which are irrelevant. After you reject the irrelevant parts the math is extremely simple. The problem would test the same ability if it used non-numeric variables.

(It's a lot like this question, also falsely described as a math test.)

The article goes on to list several cases where people who overestimate their own math ability make poor decisions.

In fact the real variable in each decision is not math but confidence.

I was able to solve the initial problem (slowly!) by rejecting irrelevant mathiness, so I then applied the same rejection to the rest of the article. The decisions, like the probability, had nothing to do with math or math skills.

In short, the article is just saying that people who know their own ability know their own ability.

Labels: variables and variables

  ¶ 5:35 AM

  Must have seemed like a good idea
From Radio Retailing in 1948, a neat idea that obviously didn't sell.

Two-page spread:



Closeup:



You can almost read the minds of the marketers: Hey! How about a radio that works like a music box? Reasonable metaphor, but clearly not wanted. I've seen a bunch of old radios in antique shops and auctions, and I've never seen one of these. Checking Ebay, I see a lot of Emerson radios from that era, but no Memento.

If they're still around, the Catalin versions would be wildly valuable. For instance, here's a pair of Catalin KNOBS from an Emerson radio, priced at $495.00. A regular table-model Emerson that would be $200 in wood is $6900.00 in Catalin.

Why didn't it sell? Probably the battery power. Tube portables needed A and B batteries, and the batteries didn't last long. Portables were strictly for outdoor use or off-grid farms. This elegant jewel box wasn't suitable for either location.

= = = = =

Purely subjective sidenote: I can understand why Catalin is wildly valuable. It's intrinsically beautiful. Nothing else matches its visual depth and complexity. I can't understand why diamonds are valuable. They just look like glass.
  ¶ 6:11 AM

  Gets it.
Twitter has an #introvert trend this morning. Best of the lot.

The modern understanding of introversion is dominant in the discussion. This is probably the only place where an energy-usage explanation makes sense, and this concept is genuinely modern, dating from the mid-90s.

I wish this concept had been available in the '70s when I was determined to go into teaching as a career. After I burned out I recognized the correlation, but still didn't know that this was UNIVERSAL and EXPECTABLE. If I'd known the EXPECTABLE result beforehand, I would have chosen a different career path.
  ¶ 4:40 AM

  Cavalier isn't the worst problem
Via ZH, Mish Shedlock has found some earlier writing by Kupperman, the full Tribal who replaced insufficiently Tribal Bolton as Nat Sec Advisor.

In true autistic Tribal form:

Nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.

If the objective in a war is to try to destroy as many Soviet civilians and as many American civilians as is feasible, and the casualty levels approached 150 million on each side, then it’s going to be tough to say you have a surviving nation after that. But depending on how the nuclear war is fought, it could mean the difference between 150 million casualties and 20 million casualties. I think that is a significant difference, and if the country loses 20 million people, you may have a chance of surviving after that.

I think it is possible to win, in the classical sense. It means that it is clear after the war that one side is stronger than the other side, the weaker side is going to accede to the demands of the stronger side.

Shedlock calls this a cavalier attitude, which is an understatement. The real problem is that Kupperman's FACTUAL assumptions were FALSE in the '80s and even more drastically FALSE now.

As I wrote earlier:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Supposedly the 'duck and cover' drills and the fallout shelters of 1960 were generators of panic. Nope, it's the exact opposite, by intention and result. Eisenhower and JFK wanted Americans to feel confident. That's why they built public shelters and encouraged the building of private shelters.

Basic fact about anxiety: When you do something that gives you a convincing sense of control, you lose the panic.

When you have your own tornado/fallout shelter, or you know there's a public tornado/fallout shelter nearby, you don't panic nearly as much about the mysterious tornado/fallout.

Later presidents, beginning with Unhanged Traitor Carter, intentionally substituted panic for confidence, and concentrated solely on protecting their own personal dictatorial ass. The fallout shelter system, and the Civil Defense warning system, were allowed to lapse and gradually deleted from the bureaucracy.

In 2001 when the dreaded event finally happened, no part of the government responded and no emergency warnings were broadcast. The Professional Panicators at the cable TV networks grabbed the fearball and ran with it, with considerable help from Sultan Bush's bureaucrats.

Mission accomplished: Total vulnerability. Civil Defense was replaced by Cognitive Dissonance. We realized the government was absolutely useless (or worse) and we simultaneously had to obey the government's "protective measures" like TSA.
China and Russia never abandoned Civil Defense. They continued to serve their own people with vast and well-maintained bunkers.

See this 1971 Civil Defense document in PDF form. It's a formerly classified study of shelter and evacuation options, and it explicitly cites Soviet shelters and plans as a 'gold standard'. So we knew good and goddamn well that we were providing less protection than the USSR.


= = = = = END REPRINT.

There is also a CULTURAL assumption that the autistic Tribals miss, or more likely know and lie about. Russia is a nation and an ethnic group and a church, all in one. The Soviets tried to break the church but failed, and didn't try very hard after 1941. Russians are unconditionally Russian, and educated and trained for real life. See Orlov.

Putin has been working to rebuild and strengthen the unity of nation and culture and church, which never fully disappeared. Our government has been smashing and obliterating and pulverizing our culture and religion since 1946.

Footnote: Checking the hrefs, I see the 1971 Civil Defense document is no longer openly available. It's behind a DHS dictatorial-ass-protecting wall. This is typical. When I wrote the above in 2011, the web had reached a peak of information openness. Since then, useful info has been disappearing fast.

Labels: defensible spaces, Pluponents, Shared Lie

  ¶ 9:56 PM

  More Thiel
Expanding and probably loosening the Thiel question again.

Thiel's evocative original: “Tell me something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.”

Loosened: Something that's true that almost nobody else seems to know.

1. Eskimos survived a period of melted ice and high sea levels, and told us about it in their legends.

2. An accurate understanding of the anti-SOUTHERN-slavery settlers in Kansas. They were sent by Northern sweatshop owners to expand NORTHERN slavery.

3. Normal people want security. Criminals want freedom. This isn't entirely unknown; populist commentators like Turley hit the first part. My full version is based on prison experience.

4. During FDR's time, American media were NON-INTERVENTIONIST and pushed NEUTRALITY. Most people think we've always been warlike and aggressive.

5. The items above are based on long experience or specialized research. This last item is especially annoying because it's a specific fact easily available in the present, but nobody else seems to avail it!

In 2008 Bernanke ANNOUNCED CLEARLY AND PUBLICLY that he had no intention of helping the economy. QE was solely intended to boost share value, which it did. The Fed wasn't "clueless" and it didn't "fail in its mission." It succeeded MAGNIFICENTLY.

Example heard just now: Economist interviewed by Rick Sanchez. "This doesn't mean that the officials at the Fed and the ECB are bad people; they probably believe that they are helping the real economy." The economist is otherwise making excellent sense, fully in touch with the reality of genocide by bankers.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 2:10 PM

  WeWork is for people living in cars?
ZH covers the idiotic saga of WeWork.

Leaving aside the tech-bubble shit, this article shows some pictures of actual WeWork "offices". Jesus! Why would anyone want to PAY for this service?

I had imagined that an office space you'd PAY TO RENT would be an OFFICE SPACE. It would be better than working at home for most people. You'd have privacy, security from theft, a place to meet clients, a locked filing cabinet, and bookshelves. Nope. The pictured space is a SCHOOL CAFETERIA, with laptops substituted for trays. People are sitting in rows along two sides of a cafeteria table, each with his own laptop and nothing else. No monitors, no printers.

Nobody can work in a school cafeteria, and nobody can do SERIOUS computer-based work on a laptop.

Graphics work requires a fairly large computer with a fairly large monitor, often two monitors, and a proper mouse, not a touchpad. Serious text work, writing or editing, requires a full-size keyboard and a large monitor to handle several texts at once. You can set up a full-sized computer at home, in a corner of a room, without worrying about theft or disruption. You can also have your own telephone and mailing address at home.

The WeWork layout would only be worth paying rent if you're living in a car.

Sidenote: This is the same Jesus! Why? moment I had when I saw an actual picture of Tesla's "solar" "roof". How in the holy fuck could ANYONE be fooled into thinking this is useful or worth trying?

Labels: Bemusement

  ¶ 6:58 AM

  Another giant Carver.....
Another group of scientists removed their theory goggles and LOOKED ABOUT THEM and TOOK HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.

Astonishing result:

A new study out Thursday seems to show that in both mice and humans, bones secrete a hormone in reaction to stressful situations. What’s more, this bone hormone seems crucial to our fight-or-flight response, in a way completely separate from other well-known stress chemicals like adrenaline.

Because of this, Karsenty and his team have argued that the skeleton should be considered an endocrine organ.

A whole new area for exploration. When do the bones secrete this hormone? How does it reach the brain? Does it act directly on the muscles near the bone? Is it an intrinsic part of the alpha-gamma feedback loops?

More practical question: How many milliseconds before someone develops a synthetic version of the hormone and sells it to elite athletes for a million dollars per milligram?

Labels: Carver

  ¶ 5:49 AM

  Trust experience!
A comment at NakedCapitalism by a reader who has real experience with offshoring. Worth reading! The thread includes other experiences, with one silver lining: US corporations are getting tired of the Chinese approach, tired of losing their IP and then losing the contract after China bleeds them dry. They were starting to move elsewhere long before Trump played his idiotic fake-tariff game. Of course this will never lead to hiring Americans, but at least the corporations seem to be learning something.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 2:16 PM

  Y no stereo?
Still in random mode....

A picture of Silvanus Thompson's telephone. His technology was nothing special, and modern writers seem to think he was just playing patent games.

But there's one unique feature:



Two receivers.

We have two ears. Why did successful telephones stick with one receiver, even after the handset incorporated the receiver and mic in one unit? Occupying one ear is tiresome, and leads to unpleasant aftereffects from a long conversation.

On the neural level the two sides of the auditory pathway are not symmetrical for language. Most people end up using the left ear for the phone to leave the right hand free for dialing and writing. The left ear feeds mainly into the right side of the brain, which isn't the best for language. Binaural receivers would give both sides of the brain their proper work assignments as in normal pre-technology conversations.

= = = = =

Later after more perusing: Thompson may not have been much of an inventor, but he was a WONDERFUL writer. His intro to calculus should have become the ONLY book on the subject. Nothing else compares. I wish to hell I'd known about this book and worked through it before ... or instead of ... taking calculus in college.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Asked and badly answered, Experiential education

  ¶ 10:06 AM

  Just waiting?
This week's big rain triggered a ferocious sprouting of a 'ground cover' plant in ALL of the street cracks. The streets are a dense web of cracks now, thanks to the Gaian city dysgovernment abandoning silly little games like plowing and sanding. Ice has full control of the streets in winter, and criminals have full control in summer.

The ground-cover plant is always present in the well-watered crack between the pavement and the curb. I grabbed up a handful and scanned it:



Normally it doesn't show up in the smaller cracks. Now it fills and marks every crack wider than 1/4". This plant obviously doesn't need soil, and seems to dislike soil. It doesn't grow where the dips in the street have gathered a permanent deposit of dirt.

Are the stolons just waiting year-round, always ready to explode into action with sufficient water?

After some googling ... I know nothing about plants, and most pix of "ground cover between pavers" or similar phrases aren't closeups, so can't compare the tiny leaves. The nearest equivalent with a clear picture is creeping thyme.

Later: It's not just my neighborhood, it's everywhere. Every crack is caulked with Creeping Thyme.

Michael Bloomberg, you may own the commanding heights of Spokane, but Creeping Thyme owns the ground. Creeping Thyme was here before you, and will still be here after you.

Labels: defensible thymes, imprecatory psalm, infill

  ¶ 7:49 AM