Sidenotes on notes
A couple of sidenotes after watching the grand and glorious moment.

There wasn't much music, because "popular" musicians are the opposite of popular. "Popular" musicians serve Soros and Bezos. "Popular" musicians sue ordinary people who try to use their music for non-Deepstate purposes, and "popular" musicians steadfastly boycott all actual expressions of popular will.

At the appointed hour, Big Ben Bonged as promised, and then a weak little ensemble of keyboard and drums played God Save The Queen. Nigel gave it his all, and the words were pointed by the bouncing ball on screen, but nobody sang along.

I've noticed in USA that choral singing is extinct. In previous decades you could count on an audience to sing with pretty decent pitch and harmony. Now you can't get two people to agree on the same note. Britain apparently has the same problem.
  ¶ 3:15 PM

  BREXIT!
ENGLAND IS A NATION AGAIN.

Manweller's Law is BROKEN. An election COUNTED. An election CHANGED THINGS.
  ¶ 2:00 PM

  By George, they've got it!
After the first few months it was clear that Brexit would never happen.

I stopped tracking the meaningless ins and outs, since it was permanently out.

I was wrong.

I underrated Boris, underrated Farage, and ABOVE ALL underrated the patient long-suffering British PEOPLE.



They were terminally tired of Kraut occupation. They had sacrificed everything in 1940 to avoid Kraut occupation, and then their evil government had invited the Krauts in.

They voted against Kraut occupation three times, and finally Boris got the message and GOT SHIT DONE.

If the government had RESPONDED TO NEGATIVE FEEDBACK in June 2016, the exit itself would have taken about one week, and the treaties with various countries would have been settled and done by 2017.

This is a victory for Farage, a victory for the British PEOPLE, and more broadly a victory for NEGATIVE FEEDBACK, which is another word for LIFE.

= = = = =

And while I'm at it, let's move England and Wales and Berwick-upon-Tweed out of Soros territory on the Sorosia map! (I'm anticipating that Scotland will find a way to move back into EU by hook or crook.)

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Patient things, Sorosia

  ¶ 5:00 AM

  Silly Tulsi
I'm getting tired of vain futile "attempts" to prove a point that doesn't need proving.

Latest example: Tulsi wasted money in an "attempt" to sue Hillary for defamation. Hillary has refused to accept the subpoena, and that's the end. Nothing more will happen. No lawyer or "judge" will work against the Clinton mob, because no lawyer or "judge" wants to be tortured and killed.

Hillary is the law. Using "written" "laws" to sue Hillary is like using gravity to sue gravity, or using existence to sue existence. Physically impossible.

If you want to diminish Hillary's power, you need to use appropriate tools. Counter wicked blackmail with INFINITELY MORE WICKED blackmail. Counter force with a trillion times as much force.

  ¶ 9:41 AM

  One slightly good thing
Putin has been spending tremendous energy to insure that Russia's government will continue to serve Russia. As of this month he's got the futurestructure** built, so he's relaxing a bit.

AMLO has been doing the same on a much smaller scale for Mexico and Central America, setting up organizations to train competent non-interventionist leaders.

The opposite side is NOT paying attention to developing the future. UK/USA/EU are locked in a completely pointless and purposeless struggle of everyone against everyone. Parkinson is the only law. [See page 3 of this version.] Leaders want to forbid all competition, so they guarantee that NOBODY is ready to take over. The top monsters, Hillary and Adelson and Bezos and Soros and Zuckerberg, have no successors at all. Each monster believes that he is the entire universe, and wants the universe to collapse when he's done.

= = = = =

** I'm sure there must be an existing word for this concept, but I can't think of it. The organizational equivalent of physical infrastructure, laying the foundations and creating a mold for future expansion of culture and population and economy.
  ¶ 7:26 AM

  Watch those tenses
A sudden switch of verb tense catches my attention.

Via RCS:

A leading Harvard chemistry prof has been arrested for failing to disclose connections to China. The connections were deep and profitable, and ...

Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a ‘Strategic Scientist’ at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017,” the justice department statement says. At the same time, he also received funding from US federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense, which require researchers to disclose if they receive aid from foreign governments or foreign entities.

Wuhan.

There are no coincidences. It was immediately clear that the Chinese government is running this "epidemic" to enforce martial law on a rebellious province. Now we see FBI collaborating with the Chinese government to create more charges against Wuhan. This dude was working for China from 2012 to 2017 and it was OK. Now it's not OK.

Any time you see a sudden enforcement of "laws" that have been wildly and ferociously ignored for 40 years, you need to be suspicious. US government and universities and corporations have been working FOR China since the '80s. Universities and corporations have gladly handed over all sorts of info and skills that would normally be classified or NDA'd. Secrecy was always enforced against mere Americans but never a problem for China.

We've always been at war with Eastasia. We've always been at peace with Eastasia.

Watch the tenses.
  ¶ 2:04 AM

  Enforcing leadership by service
Populism: The government of THIS nation must serve the PEOPLE of THIS nation.

Putin leads by serving the people of Russia, and expects all his subordinates to do the same. Today he fired a provincial governor who had consistently showed disrespect for the people of his province.

Apparently the governor of the Chuvash region had laid down a record of mocking his local Deplorables. The last straw was a public ceremony where he handed the keys of new equipment to the head of the local firefighting agency. Instead of just handing over the keys, he held them high and made the fireman jump to retrieve them.

Jump, boy! When I say jump you jump, boy!

Mocking the Deplorables is REQUIRED behavior in USA. It's PROHIBITED in Russia.

Labels: #bluelivesmatter, #DeplorableLivesMatter

  ¶ 1:04 AM

  As fucking always
As fucking fucking fucking ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS, Trump has broken ALL ALL ALL of his disgustingly genocidally false "promises".

Via Reuters,

Toyota said on Friday it will move production of its mid-size Tacoma pick-up truck from the United States to Mexico as it adjusts production around North America.

In February, Fiat Chrysler said it was reversing plans to shift production of heavy-duty trucks from Mexico to Michigan in 2020,

The new North American trade agreement approved by the U.S. Senate on Thursday ensures that automakers will still be able to build pickup trucks in Mexico without facing new punitive tariffs.

Good for AMLO, who is KEEPING his promises to improve Mexico's industries and wages.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite evil

  ¶ 9:24 AM

  Pointless question, obvious answer
Pointless question.

Why isn't there a third or fourth type of article?

Latin and Teutonic languages have indefinite and definite articles, and use them all the time. Italian and Portuguese use the articles most intensely.

Most other languages get along fine without articles. Slavic originally had definite articles but mainly dropped them, except for Bulgarian and Macedonian where Latin influence kept the concept alive.

The indefinite article is just a degenerate form of the number one, and has no real connection to the definite.

The definite article arose from the demonstrative pronoun family.

Here's where the question pops up. Demonstrative or pointing pronouns have three types of pointing, in parallel with 1st, 2nd, 3rd person 'ordinary' pronouns.

Latin has ipse, hic, ille corresponding to me, you, and him. Ipse points inward to where I am, hic points outward to where you are, and ille points beyond you, to where he is.



In Latin-descended languages, ille became both the definite article and the third-person pronoun.

Why didn't ipse and hic also degenerate into adjective-like or enclitic forms?

It's hard to imagine how such forms would feel or function.

Trying a couple of examples:

Ipse hair needs a trim = Hair right here, on me, needs cutting.

Hic house needs painting = House familiar to you needs painting.

Aha! They perform pretty much the same function as possessives, which may explain why they weren't needed.

Ipse hair = My hair, Hic house = Your house.

There's a semantic distinction, but it's weak. Weak distinctions always fade out.

From another angle: Though ipse hair and hic house never came into use, they do show up as missing places in a table. Try applying the to both situations.

The hair needs a trim = NOT my hair, somebody else's hair.

The house needs painting = NOT your house, some other house.

Ille retains its over-yonder feel and doesn't work well in ipse or hic situations.

= = = = =

Later and MUCH simpler answer: We don't need ipse and hic forms as articles because we have this and that. This = ipse, that = hic, the = ille. We call this/that demonstrative pronouns instead of articles, but all three are strictly parallel.

This little exercise wasn't entirely pointless. It helped to display a normally hidden pattern in grammar, and helped to refine the semantics of a common word.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Language update

  ¶ 1:11 AM

  Does Obama belong on the list?
Following on this....

I've been watching the REAL exceptions to Deepstate for a long time. Harding, FDR, Ike, JFK. Their motives and methods were different, but all disobeyed the rulers. FDR was most effective by a HUGE margin, which required Deepstate to return with HUGE genocidal force in 1946.

We need to learn from each of these rebels. What did they do that worked? How did FDR stay alive after the 1933 assassination attempt? How did JFK fail to stay alive?

Obama may belong on the list. He fired Hillary in his second term and started to pull out of Deepstate's wars. He started to slow down our blockades of Persia and Cuba.

Trump is clearly Hillary's revenge on Obama. Trump is doing everything Hillary wants, ESPECIALLY in Persia.

Why was Obama allowed to stop wars? He hasn't been killed or suicided or even scandaled. Was he able to pull enough blackmail files to quietly slow down the swamp? Or was he granted a couple of incomplete rebel moves as a reward for his FLAWLESS service to Wall Street?

Labels: Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 6:31 AM

  Legacy
Putin introduces his new cabinet. Their experience matches his recent speeches focusing on economics and demography. He especially wants to establish 'maternity capital', making it easier to birth and raise kids in a supportive culture.

Putin had seemed tired and tense for the last year or so. Now that he's laid down the Peace Ultimatum backed by military strength, and now that he's firmed up the future increase of cultural and economic strength, he's noticeably looser. He knows that his country and his people are on the right path.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:12 AM

  Good advice
I noted before that acetylene couldn't compete with electricity in urban or automotive uses, but it should have done better in off-grid and emergency situations.


An ad from 1912 Acetylene Journal tries to sell acetylene to farmers.



[An interesting piece of typesetting art, using slugs and rules and blocks to pull your eyes in two directions. You could turn it into a dynamic neon sign.]

The ad was good advice to the young salesman, and he would be offering good advice to the farm wife.

Electricity didn't arrive at most farms until after WW2, so the choices were coal, wood, kerosene or acetylene. Among those four, acetylene was the safest and cleanest and coolest. A wood or coal range is always hot and always consuming fuel. Kerosene is smelly and greasy and dangerous. Acetylene is inert until you turn the valve to let water drip on the carbide. Then you can open the burner valve and light the burner.

The generator took some maintenance, filling the carbide in the morning and emptying out the limestone after it was done, but the process was no worse than coal or wood ashes. The leftover material is slaked lime or hydrated lime, usable as aggregate in concrete, and a good fertilizer.



Why did acetylene fail in this application? Still mysterious. Maybe the young salesman married the farmer's daughter.

Labels: 1901, Patient things

  ¶ 1:53 PM

  Busting some persistent myths
This 1978 educational film about newspapers helps to break several current myths. Are newspapers suffering because digital? Nope, they were already declining fast in '78. Has competition disappeared because digital? Nope, in '78 competition was already gone. 97% of cities had only one newspaper.

Newspapers ruined themselves. They didn't need any help from radio or movies or TV or internet. They NEVER served the alleged purpose of "holding power accountable". They ALWAYS worked exclusively for Deepstate in its various forms. They ALWAYS created crime and war.

A permanent crime syndicate, constantly ruining civilization and killing billions of people.
  ¶ 6:39 AM

  Thanks to Pipwerks!
Just thanking the e-learning blogger Pipwerks for an old tip that solved a baffling SCORM problem. A customer reported that my courseware was not showing grade percentages on Moodle. The problem was intermittent, with some data getting through. Intermittents are always hardest to fix.

I ran through several attempted solutions that didn't work. Finally found a 10-year-old item at Pipwerks on the importance of calling LMSCommit() at frequent intervals. This solved the problem!

Labels: Zero Problems

  ¶ 6:20 AM

  A shutdown and a shakedown
The latest Swine Flu panic is highly suspicious.

CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in between 9 million – 45 million illnesses, between 140,000 – 810,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 – 61,000 deaths annually since 2010.

The estimates are ranges, not guesses. Some years have much higher flu rates than others.

Taking the middle, let's say 20M cases, 400k hospitalizations and 40k deaths is typical in USA.

China's population is about 4 times USA population, so the expected figures there would be 80M cases, 1.6M hospitalizations and 160k deaths.

This particular "epidemic" has been going for about a month, so divide those by 12 to get 6M cases, 130k hospitalizations and 13k deaths.

So far this "epidemic" has 2k cases and 56 deaths.

Not very impressive. Not even noticeable against the typical pattern.

The CDC (Centers for Dissident Control) and WHO have a long record of overstating "epidemics" for Parkinson reasons. Bigger panic = bigger budget.

If I had to make a hypothesis, I'd say Wuhan was brewing some kind of rebellion, and China's government decided it was time to shut the province down. Note this headline.

USA found the panic convenient as another way to sanction China.

We should have been sanctioning US CORPORATIONS who chose to send their jobs to China. Instead, we let the corporations steal our jobs and skills, and then the corporations let China steal their factories. Pretty good deal for China. Sanctions now are just a shakedown, Trump's way of getting concessions for his favorite corporations.
  ¶ 11:40 PM

  Where's the trailer for Coming Attractions?
Apparently the "impeachment" stageplay is in its 4th act, ready for the curtain.

More interesting question: What's next on the playbill?

First we had RUSSIAN_MEDDLING, then we had UKRAINIAN_MEDDLING. Both have kept Hillary's puppet Trump firmly in power with a solid media onslaught against Trump's followers. Hillary is able to achieve all of her genocidal goals through the Pied Piper, while escaping all the blame for her mass murder. All the blame goes to "alt-right neonazi white nationalists".

What's next? KAZAKHSTAN_MEDDLING? BELARUS_MEDDLING? TUVAN_AUTONOMOUS_OBLAST_MEDDLING?

Labels: Asked and not worth asking

  ¶ 4:52 PM

  Proving their point without trying
This bit of research on fonts caught my attention.

The authors are trying to make a connection between "liberal" vs "conservative" personality types and the fonts chosen by campaigns.

After running through a bunch of meaningless theoretical crap about personality types, they finally followed Carver.

LOOK ABOUT YOU.
TAKE HOLD OF THE THINGS THAT ARE HERE.
TALK TO THEM.
LET THEM TALK TO YOU.

In this case the THINGS THAT ARE HERE are the fonts ACTUALLY CHOSEN by the Bernie and Obama campaigns.

The allegedly "conservative" font was Times New Roman, but the study didn't try to find fonts used by Trump or Romney campaigns. Presumably the authors couldn't stand to look at Unthink.

There's probably some validity in the main distinction. "Conservative" types prefer serif, "Liberal" types prefer sans.

I'm the "conservative" personality type for sure, and I unquestionably prefer serifs**. The preference arises from an engineerish focus on functions instead of details. When you know how things work you don't need the details. Serif fonts are inherently connective, creating an implicit baseline and structure. Sans fonts are inherently separate and disconnected, all detail and no structure. The same distinction works in grammar.

The Bernie font is a serif type, which might seem contradictory by the usual meaningless labels. No contradiction when you're thinking in terms of functions vs details. I like Bernie, and would have voted for him in 2016. He's functional and structured, always working toward one purpose for his entire political life.

The authors accidentally proved this with their own choice of fonts.



They used a Roman font for the headings (structure) and a sans font for the details.

= = = = =

** I've been applying this distinction consciously for a long time, and it's visible in blog cartoons with captions. Polistra always speaks in an antique Roman font, and media idiots always speak in sans fonts. Example from 2013.

Labels: Carver

  ¶ 1:29 AM

  Peace ultimatum 2
Putin announced his Peace Ultimatum in cautious terms last week.

Now he's getting specific.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 10:36 AM

  You'd think....
Putin visited Jerusalem and appeared with Netanyahu to dedicate a new memorial to WW2.

Why is this unusual? Because Russia has been STOPPING Israel's wars of aggression in the last few years. Russian forces have directly fought Israel/US proxies in Syria, and Russia is emphatically taking Persia's side against Israel/US aggression.

You'd think Bibi would shun all connection with Putin, but he does the opposite. Israel is buying Russian weapons and infrastructure.

From the opposite angle, you'd think Putin would take the anti-Israel side in discussions of WW2 history, to be consistent with his war-stopping activities. But Putin sticks with FACTS on all issues.

In every case Russia STOPS THE AGGRESSORS. In WW2 the main aggressors were anti-Israel, and Russia stopped them. Now the main aggressors are pro-Israel, and Russia stops them. Stopping aggression is the CONSTANT.

I can't get into Bibi's mind, but I suspect he's saner than his US "defenders". He kicked out Soros, THE ONLY ACTUAL LIVING PEDIGREED NAZI. We continue to harbor Soros and follow his infinitely evil commands. Bibi is happy to have the entire US government and corporate and cultural and media structure working on his side, but maybe he'd still be happy if we slowed down the war just a tad. Maybe we could experiment with destroying only one nation per month instead of one per week? Just as a temporary trial project?

Labels: constants and constants, modest proposal

  ¶ 4:44 AM

  Life started everywhere
UncommonDescent features a newly discovered walking shark. Surprisingly, walking sharks are fairly common.



The video is done by Attenborough, high priest of Gaian genocide, but he manages to get through two minutes without mentioning Gaia. The shark itself is amazing. If it hadn't been identified as a shark, I'd be sure it was a salamander.

Note the gait pattern. It's the same as familiar mammals. Front feet move opposite to back feet.

Swimming fins don't move this way; both fronts move together, and both backs (when present) move together. Turtles have both gaits available, and use them appropriately.

In other words, the gene for walking is present in all animals, and it not only forms legs, it forms a gait pattern in the brain. The gait pattern comes with a decision mechanism.

The old story that life started in water and moved onto land just doesn't work. Life started everywhere, so life started with the genes needed to live everywhere.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 12:21 AM

  Constants and variables 143, AWS MBS edition
Today's "news" tells us that Bezos was hacked by Saudi prince MBS.

The "news" is focusing on the Shared Lie as always.

Shared Lie: We should be concerned about what MBS learned from hacking Bezos.

Underlying truth: We should be concerned that Bezos is dumb enough to get hacked.

Everyone is hacked all the time. That's a constant.

For most of us the hacking is inconsequential and purposeless. Our data is available to anyone who wants it, but nobody wants it, so it never causes a major problem.

For powerful monsters the hacking is much more focused and purposeful.

The variable: Powerful monsters should be using powerful security.

Bezos wasn't using security. I presumed the richest man in the world could afford something BETTER than AVG. He could afford PERFECT security. If he had any AV system at all, it didn't work as well as AVG, and he didn't have the common sense to avoid clicking on an unknown link.

Why does this matter? Bezos runs AWS, the biggest server on the web. AWS is Amazon's real cash cow. Amazon is responsible for the security of maybe 80% of all communications. Bezos doesn't take the most ordinary and common steps to insure security.

Later thought: It's possible that the whole story is a Shared Lie designed to punish MBS for daring to make peace with Persia. There wasn't any hacking at all. But why create a story that casts doubt on Bezos's ability and risks Amazon's precious Share Value? Doesn't make sense.

Third thought: We have a sudden burst of Experts admitting openly that they were hacked and casting doubt on their own intelligence, seemingly without realizing it. First Krugman, then Schiff, now Bezos. The stories have a similar flavor. Are we being conditioned for a big event? But again, why would Experts voluntarily ruin their own reputation for wisdom? Blackmail? Still doesn't make sense on the surface. Keep watching and counting.....

Update a few hours later: Well, that was fast. Expert #4. The ultimate expert, Epstein's Mossad handler, the woman who knows where all the bodies are buried, the woman who knows where Epstein's LIVE body is NOT buried, claims to have been hacked. Maxwell is second-generation Mossad, so she has absolutely no excuse for ignorance of elementary security procedures. If she was actually hacked, it was because she CHOSE to be hacked.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Shared Lie

  ¶ 4:49 PM

  Sometimes 1916 is 1916
I enjoy debunking idiotic modern beliefs about earlier decades and centuries. Especially feminist and Die-Verse myths.

But sometimes ....




From An Article About An Atlantic City Convention Of Acetylene Dealers And Their Frolicking Wives.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 2:17 PM

  More AI point-missing
This time the article is about randomness and human perception in the context of card games.

Originally, bridge hands were shuffled and dealt by the players themselves. During the late 1970s and into the early 1980s, serious competitions began switching to computer-generated hands. At first, players complained that the algorithms were faulty because they dealt too many wild hands with uneven distributions of cards. More often than they remembered, at least one player was dealt a void (no cards in one suit) or six or seven or more cards in the same suit.

These complaints were taken seriously because the players in competitive matches had many years’ experience to back up their claims that the computer-generated hands showed wilder distributions than the hands shuffled by bridge players.

Several mathematicians stepped forward and calculated the theoretical probabilities, comparing them to the actual distribution of computer-dealt hands. It turned out that the distribution of computer-generated hands was correct.

No it wasn't "correct". The computer-generated distribution was mathematically random, but mathematical randomness is NEGATIVELY CORRELATED with human perception of randomness.

There is widely accepted fallacy called the “law of small numbers,” according to which short-run outcomes should be similar to long-run average outcomes. If heads comes up half the time, on average, in coin flips, then we should expect 5 heads when a coin is flipped 10 times. (In fact, there is only a 25 percent chance of 5 heads and 5 tails in that case.)

No, small N is not the problem here. We're dealing (heh) with the inevitable results and patterns of a random process that is filtered through thresholds or categories.

In this case the categories are the four suits in a deck of cards. In other cases the categories may be types of disease in a city or types of fish in a pond or types of music in a playlist.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The recent big lottery brings up randomness again. Lotteries are a very rare case, maybe the only situation in common experience, where a mathematical randomizer shows up in PURE or raw form.

The vast majority of "randomized" events in our lives are THRESHOLDED random.

Let's see if I can illustrate the difference.

This first animation shows some bars rising and falling by a pure mathematical random process. The height of each bar is decided separately at each frame of the movie. Notice that this set of motions looks fully random; you can't see any pattern in it.




Now I've added a THRESHOLD across the bars. This makes the situation far more realistic, corresponding to many random-driven events in ordinary life. From this angle it still looks unpatterned.




Now we're looking at the same THRESHOLDED situation from the top. Now we can see all sorts of patterns! At each moment we can see CLUSTERS of bars that have popped above the threshold, and we can't see the bars that are below. Most importantly, we don't see the continuously variable heights any more; we only see the DECISION. Each bar has turned into a yes-no vote.




Everything we sense is thresholded. These bars might represent sounds coming from all sorts of things (crickets, doors, cars, dogs in your yard, dogs in China, rivers in Argentina.) All of those things are in the air, but you only hear the nearest and strongest. Same with points of light, or weights on your hand, or differences in income and status between you and your neighbor. You only sense values that pop up above your internal threshold.

The most direct analogy for this image might be a field of grass seeds popping through the soil. They are driven by temperature and moisture, so they will tend to sprout within a limited range of time; but each one has a unique micro-climate depending on shadows, bacteria, earthworms, etc.

Another prime example: Cancer clusters. Each bar corresponds to one person, with a varying number of cancerous cells. Everyone has some cancerous cells all the time, but we don't register a case of cancer until the number of cells pops through the threshold of a screening test. Each frame in the animation might correspond to a map of cancer cases in one year. Some of the frames show very definite clusters of cancer cases! Better look for known carcinogens where those clusters formed! Is there a power line? A kerosene lamp? A cell phone? No, it's most likely just random stuff.

Or we could be talking about weather events. Rivers rise and fall all the time, but we don't call it a flood until a river rises above the line of the nearest occupied land. Some of these bars seem to be flooding several years in a row! It's global warming! No, it's most likely just random stuff.

But not always. In some cases a repeated flood is just part of this clustering effect, but repetition is actually more likely than plain clustering would imply. Everything in Nature depends in infinitely complex ways on previous events. If Wildcat Creek floods in March, the ground is still wetter than usual in May, so it takes less rain than usual to bring the creek up to flood stage. The threshold has moved. There are also long-term trends like sunspot cycles and El Nino / La Nina ocean oscillations. If conditions favor big rains this year, the trends are likely to favor big rains next year as well. Probably have to wait several years until the cycles return to a dry phase.



To illustrate, I've moved the threshold up and down in a sine wave. First as seen from the side, just to show what's really happening:





Now from the top. Wow! We got 500-year floods everywhere, for several years in a row! And then we have terrible droughts everywhere, for several years in a row! This can't be random!


Yes it can. The bars are still moving in the very same pattern; the driving forces haven't changed. It's just that the conditions for popping each event above the threshold are changing from year to year as they do in Nature.

People who see life through the prism of statistics have trouble handling thresholds. Abstract academics have to shoehorn life into closed-form real-number equations, and you can't use a threshold in that context. Thresholding is perfectly natural to a binary computer. An on-off choice is easy to write as code, and the computer can handle it more precisely than a continuous number. But this naturalness doesn't penetrate the academic mind. If you can't write a continuous function suitable for a slide rule, you can't begin to think about the problem.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

My illustrations show only two categories, above and below threshold, but the same rule applies with four categories. The players expect to see a relatively smooth distribution of categories over time, not a perfect mathematical random. They don't want to see long streaks of hearts or gaps of spades. Computerized random always gives you streaks and gaps in categories. The "imperfect" shuffling apparently leaves a smoother pattern of categories.

Since bridge is a HUMAN game played by HUMANS, the shuffle should give the HUMAN players what they want to work with.

Labels: AI point-missing, Real World Math

  ¶ 11:37 PM

  Smugthugs wouldn't be so smug
These smug thugs clearly knew that an old couple had died, leaving the house unprotected.

The men pictured are suspects in the unlawful use of credit cards taken in a burglary earlier in January of this year. In the same incident a car was stolen and numerous other items of value were taken from the home. The crime took place in a home where the elderly occupants had recently passed away and irreplaceable heirlooms and keepsakes were also taken. The SPD wants your help to get these items back to the family of the recently deceased couple.

We know they won't spend serious time in jail, because real criminals never spend more than a coffeebreak in jail around here.

Too bad. In the old days they would have spent a few years, and those years would have been ESPECIALLY nasty, brutish and short. Black criminals RESPECT GRANDMA and RESPECT THE DEAD. Italians and the old tribes are the same. Thugs who mess with ghosts wouldn't last long.

Labels: Jail mode

  ¶ 1:51 PM

  Reductionist = destructionist
The pill-pushers are facing some minor opposition now, but they're still plenty powerful and plenty stupid.

Via Eurekalert, a classic example.

To better treat people with depression, not only must we treat the neurons affected by the disease, but we must also restore the integrity of the barrier that regulates exchanges between blood circulation and the brain.

Between 30% and 50% of those suffering from depression respond either poorly or not at all to antidepressants," says main author Caroline Ménard, professor at Université Laval's Faculty of Medicine and researcher at the Cervo Brain Research Centre. "This suggests that biological mechanisms other than those directly affecting neurons are at play," adds some asshole who holds a Named Chair at the Centre For Something.

Conversely, depressed stressed mice express more of an enzyme called HDAC1 that triggers a loss of claudin-5. "When a chemical compound is used to block HDAC1, the depressive mice produce more claudin-5 and their social interactions spontaneously increase," says some other named-chair asshole who directs some other Centre.

No, named-chair assholes.

If medication fails, it's not because you haven't broken through the blood-brain barrier to create a complicated chemical reaction in precisely defined proteins and enzymes.

It's not working because it's THE WRONG FUCKING ANSWER FROM START TO FINISH.

Depression is caused by prolonged and persistent frustration. Repeated attempts to achieve physically impossible goals based on unrealistic expectations.

Depression is cured by finding more realistic expectations, and by finding unpunished and unfrustrated ways to DO YOUR DUTY and BE USEFUL.

Every living creature has a duty. Every living creature needs to be needed, needs to feel useful. Wrong expectations, formed by reductionist mechanical worldviews, are the main cause of depression. When you start with the genocidal assumption that all creatures are identical passive mechanisms, you will try to do things that are impossible. You will try to ascend the status ladder or achieve power or be liked. When your attempts fail, you will try harder because reductionism tells you that anything is possible if you try hard enough.

If you are born with low status and low popularity, those goals are PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Attempting to achieve them is SUICIDAL.



You need to find your proper unique duty and DO IT. You also need to keep moving and establish a rhythm and resonance.

MAKE. WALK.

Labels: From rights to duties, Make or break

  ¶ 8:27 AM

  Resonance
AMLO is visiting a fiesta in Oaxaca. These folks don't have a lot of material wealth, but they know how to MAKE sensory wealth. Spanish speakers use resonant singing mode for ordinary speech. They MAKE beauty and color.

It's a stark contrast to the monochrome world of the North, especially in winter. Black and white and gray. Everyone dresses in black and white and gray, cars are black and white and gray, houses are brown and white and gray, the landscape is black and white and gray. We speak in nonresonant glottal fry.

Labels: Make or break

  ¶ 6:30 AM

  Pretty good speech
Somebody wrote a pretty good speech for Trump. He doesn't believe any of it and won't do anything about it. Still, the speech contains some truth, and it's good to have truth on the record in a demonic place like Davos.

Labels: Bemusement, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:17 AM

  Rolls before Royce
Bumped into this while looking for more acetylene gadgets to "build"....



From the article:

The delights of winter touring by motor-car can only be enjoyed when accompanied with good fellowship, and when the keenness of cold winds is mitigated by great depths of fur and appropriate raiment. Provided with both essentials, the trio of motor-enthusiasts recognisable in the photograph recently participated in a tour from France to Wales, which was thoroughly enjoyed, and should add another demonstration to the attractiveness of the new means of locomotion for winter touring as well as for summer trips.

The vehicle was an 8-h.p. Panhard car, and with it the party left Paris a few days before Christmas. Members of the Automobile Club will readily identify the three travellers, while those who are not within that organisation will be interested in the features of Mr. Roger Wallace, Q.C., the presidont of the club, who is to the left of the Hon. C. S. Rolls, to whom the ear belonged. Though the upturned collar prevents a full view of the latter's face, it gives some idea of the way in which the party were prepared for any climatic conditions. Seated behind is Mr. Frank H. Buller, treasurer of the Automobile Club.

Rolls was a car dealer for a while before he joined up with Royce to build cars.

Another picture shows Rolls piloting a Peugeot. There were plenty of English autos available at that time, but Rolls obviously preferred the French.

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 12:30 AM

  Rare view of skill
This clip from Spiked UK is refreshing in many ways. Actor Laurence Fox has the proper FUCK YOU attitude toward tyrants.

More broadly he tries to restore the SKILL of acting to its proper place. Unlike all other paid actors, he sees acting as a secondary craft like printing. The actor is NOT supposed to Innovate or Disrupt or Protest Officially Approved Protest Targets. He is supposed to reproduce the reality of a character, adding value with his own angle. The added value should enhance the work of the author, not destroy the brains of the audience.

Needless to say, the actors union denounced him for defending the skill of acting. Unions should be saying exactly what Fox is saying. Modern unions have reversed their proper function.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 2:15 PM

  Bot no like picture
In the last couple of months a different type of bot has been "reading" this blog. Usually bots don't show up as specific views of items. These bots are "reading" items, but they are mechanically selective. They "read" only the items that don't include a picture. The pattern is clear and consistent in this blogspot table. Most of the bots have a .best suffix with various random words in front, like multilingual.best and cozenage.best.



What will they do with this item, which includes a picture of their activity? Will they suffer the AI version of cognitive dissonance?

Update: This item was almost immediately "read" by something or somebody. So either (1) my hypothesis is wrong or (2) the item was read by a human, not by these bots.
  ¶ 5:46 AM

  Teslas working for Greta
In Belgium a Tesla saw a convoy of classic cars passing by, and attacked them.

Looks like Teslas are now being programmed to follow Greta's orders in the automotive world. Kill all oldsters.
  ¶ 5:07 AM

  A point long forgotten
From 1899:

A Springfield, Mass., contemporary. discussing the advance of the motor-vehicles in the United States, advances the opinion that it will "take the U.S.A. half a century of progressive road building and improved paving before any but the few largest cities in the United States could utilise motor-waggons for the ordinary purposes of traffic."

Our contemporary continues :— "The recent tremendous snow-falls remind us that conditions are likely from time to time to arise in all northern cities under which the motorwaggons would be as helpless as a bicycle on a sandy road. It was more than 24 hours after the recent nine-inch snowfall in New York before even the main avenues of travel in the business section of the metropolis were cleared of snow, and it was several days later before the rest of the city proper was cleared, to say nothing of the other boroughs of Greater New York.

The spectacle must have given Mr. Croker and the other would-be revolutionists of the trucking and passenger carrying business in New York a very bad half hour's reflections. If their plan had been effected and motorcarriages and waggons had entirely supplanted horse-drawn vehicles in this city, there could not have been a pound of freight or a single carriage passenger moved in the city for many hours, and the blockade of traffic and delay of business would have been perfectly intolerable."

Needless to say, it still takes a long time to clear the snow from streets in a city. Our motor waggons have improved, but a good snowfall still stops all traffic for a day or two.

Snow doesn't stop horses.

= = = = =

Looking up Mr Croker: He was the leader of Tammany Hall at that time.

Croker was in the newspapers in 1899 after a disagreement with Jay Gould's son, George Gould, president of the Manhattan Elevated Railroad Company, when Gould refused Croker's attempt to attach compressed-air pipes to the Elevated company's structures. Croker owned many shares of the New York Auto-Truck Company, a company which would have benefited from the arrangement. In response to the refusal, Croker used Tammany influence to create new city laws requiring drip pans under structures in Manhattan at every street crossing and the requirement that the railroad run trains every five minutes with a $100 violation for every instance.

In other words, he wasn't really a prophetic lover of autos, he was a normal NYC businessman using blackmail to raise his Share Value.

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 12:01 AM

  Breaks all the lies
Excellent piece by Cynthia Chung. History of Deepstate from 1933 to now. Breaks through ALL the Shared Lies. Clear and crisp writing, not cluttered with unnecessary details. Just the necessary facts. Open and shut case.

('Not cluttered' is a comparison with Whitney Webb's pieces on Deepstate. Webb breaks the Shared Lies and tells the whole truth, but she takes so many sidetrips through dense jungles of detail that the plot is hard to follow. She needs an editor who can write a two-page synopsis with href links to the detailed subparts.)

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:40 PM

  Wonderful story
From June 1914 Telephone Review:



Lassie's intelligence is equal to most humans and her moral sense is vastly superior. She doesn't know the inner workings of a phone, but she knows that the phone is carrying Margaret's voice from the place where Margaret is. She also knows where Margaret is, and knows that her DUTY is to bring Margaret home safely.

Unfortunately the Googlebooks scanner didn't like the halftone picture.

The same scanner did a better job on the cover art in the same periodical:



Magnificent.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Less funny than it seems
This clip of yoots trying to figure out a rotary phone is funny, but there's a counterintuitive point that we oldsters never stopped to think about. It's a point that designers and teachers need to think about.

The rotary phone is NOT self-explanatory. Obviously you're supposed to turn the dial, and obviously the dial has the digits 0-9. Nothing else is obvious. How far do you turn it for each digit? Which direction? Forward? Backward? Forward to first digit, then backward to next digit, then forward to next digit like a combination lock? Where do you start? Is the fingerstop meant to start or end the turn, or is it just there to hold the dial in place? Do you need to push or click the fingerstop at some point?

The Bell dial was far from ideal by existing standards. Strowger's dial came before Bell's version, and Strowger was better in most ways. Pushbutton mechanisms were available and common at the time, in the familiar context of cash registers.

Example, the 1907 Couch-Seeley phone with Rube-Goldberg description.



Even within the later rotary setup, Automatic Electric's rotary dials were easier than Bell because the forward pull wasn't slowed down by a governor. Significantly faster and less physically tricky.

When Bell introduced the dial phone, it made films to explain the procedure. Later generations simply observed and imitated parents and friends.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 12:00 AM

  Grotesque little demonic creature returns
Neeeeeel Kashkari, Hank Paulson's mini-me, has returned to center stage with real power. Neeeeeeeel is still as unstoppably vicious and incurably stupid and genocidally demonic as heeeeeeeeeeee was in 2009. Begone, miniature bloodthirsty microbe! You are a blight on the universe.

Labels: imprecatory psalm, infinite infinite infinite infinite lunacy, infinite STUPID

  ¶ 11:19 PM

  Tired of winter
I really like the Great Smith Runabout that I added to the Smith set.



I'd been wanting to make this type of vehicle for a long time, and it came out better than expected. Also, it's not common among existing old car models and may be unique. A quick scan of the DMI models and Renderosity and Daz finds coupes and roadsters and sedans, but no open-front runabouts.

Using it here as a graphic 'prayer' to the weather gods. Enough already. Let winter steam away and clear the crossing. Give us a break. Let it melt for a while.

Graphic sidenote: In most cases the judgment of an audience disagrees with the self-evaluation of the author or artist or teacher. Usually the creator is proudest of the products that the audience disdains, and the audience loves items that were produced hastily or incidentally. This inversion doesn't happen at ShareCG. Pretty consistently the best ratings go with the items I'm proud of, the items I continue using for pictures and animations. The items that I don't especially like, and don't use after making, get lower ratings.

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 2:46 PM

  Fake? Maybe.
ZH shows a supposed test of our answer to Russia's hypersonic missiles,

First and most obvious, the missile is sitting on a test stand. There's no way of knowing how fast it can go. It's just shooting out a flare.

Second, the rocket is in the middle of a big field of grass or ground cover, which looks fairly dry. A cigarette can start a brushfire. This huge superhot flame was presumably running for several minutes, radiating heat in all directions. No sign of charring, no brushfire.
  ¶ 8:26 AM

  Not really the big point


In this clip Putin is laying down the basic necessities of a nation. These necessities used to be common knowledge and common practice, but they have disappeared from Sorosian lands. Soros tried to remove them from Russia and nearly succeeded. Now Putin is reasserting them.

The goal of state service is to serve the people of Russia, and those who enter this path must know that by doing this they inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian people without any exceptions.

Putin has done this. His life is Russia, and he serves Russia because he is Russia.

The translators and describers at Russia Insight are focusing on the requirement that top leaders must have lived steadily in Russia for 25 years. No carpetbaggers, no transnational jet-setters.

This seems sort of obvious and tautologous to me. Putin makes one BIG economic point which doesn't receive as much attention.

We created powerful RESERVES, which multiplies our country's stability and capability to protect itself from foreign pressure.

Not just gold, but reserves of skill and industrial capacity, and reserves of cultural and religious strength. Trained workers who are USING a wide variety of skills to add REAL VALUE to a wide variety of material resources. In all areas Russia intends to operate on RESERVES, not debt.

In individual terms we understand the value of Fuckyou Money. The same principle applies nationally, and it applies to human capital and intellectual capital along with money capital.

Sorosian countries are exterminating Fuckyou Money at all levels. ZIRP makes it hard to accumulate money capital. Abstract education instead of vocational education makes it hard to accumulate skill capital. Eliminating unions and real industry makes it hard to develop and protect skill capital. Github and Room 101 make it hard to accumulate experience and thought and memory.

The Soviet system did an excellent job of maintaining most types of capital. Education was free, vocational training was emphasized, citizens had large savings accounts that paid interest, all citizens were expected to work in a wide variety of jobs, and the variety was enforced by refusal to outsource and offshore industries. Room 101, of course, was a big exception to the rule.

Putin is restoring the Soviet tradition and eliminating the exception.

Labels: skill-estate, storage

  ¶ 7:33 AM

  Fox, not farmer
American Radio History has added some issues of International Broadcast Engineer from the '60s. IBE was a British trade journal for shortwave and TV broadcasters.

What caught my attention was a listing of tech articles and developments. Half were British, half Russian, only a few US or German.

The first two didn't surprise me. England was THE CENTER of electronics research and development for 140 years, from 1830 to 1970. IBE was catching the tail end of British dominance before the bankers took over the economy and deleted all non-banks. Russia was a late starter, but I'd always been aware that Russia was a major source of development starting in the '50s. England and Russia were cooperating and sharing tech info in both directions, while USA was handing off its electronics to Japan in a one-way gift.

The lack of other Euro and US contributions did surprise me.

= = = = =

A lively article on the pirate radio stations of the 60s focuses on Radio 390. (Radio Caroline was the most familiar of those pirates.)

Ted Allbeury, the Kent farmer who is managing director of Radio 390, said that the PMG has been misinformed about offshore radio and that he would welcome the occasion to explain to him exactly what they are doing, how they are doing it, and why they are doing it.

Radio 390 has been likened to the BBC Light Programme he said. The comparison is a fair one, he added, but unlike the BBC which tries to satisfy all of the people some of the time, Radio 390 sets out to please some people all of the time.

The serious press reaction was interesting in that while treating the pirates like a headmaster might speak to pleasant pupils who'd been party-ing without permission, it expressed sympathy with the needs which they supplied and advised the Government not to behave in a negative fashion.

Made me curious. Did Allbeury end up in prison, or did he simply return to farming?

Neither. And he wasn't a farmer at all, HE WAS A SPY.

From Wikipedia, Allbeury was a Special Ops spy in the '40s and '50s, then briefly ran an advertising agency, then briefly ran Radio 390, then settled down into writing spy novels.

In other words, he switched from military warfare to information warfare, and those pirates were Deepstate operations.

This explains the mild reaction of the serious press. They always know who's Deepstate and who isn't.

Unlike the BBC which tries to satisfy all of the people some of the time, Radio 390 sets out to please some people all of the time.

Here's the seed of Fox "versus" CNN. Murdoch and Turner, both Deepstaters with equally murky origin stories, created "competing" networks with a pirate feel. Each set of viewers feels like a clandestine group committed to defeating the other set of viewers. Neither set is ever exposed to facts. They spend all their time "debating" Shared Lies.

Labels: Answered better than asked, Shared Lie

  ¶ 1:47 AM

  Genuinely SHOCKED
Via Eurekalert, several major science publishers have written an open letter

SUPPORTING

a proposal by the Trump Administration.

I had to read it carefully to be sure it wasn't a typo or a parody. In fact they are

SUPPORTING

the Trump Admin.

Even more shocking is the proposal itself. The admin wants to insure that all federally funded research is openly available.

In theory this is already required, since tax-funded products are supposedly public domain. In reality it rarely happens. Most fed funded research is published behind paywalls, or effectively classified.

Most shocking of all is the consequence if this rule is fully applied to ONE PARTICULAR TYPE of fed funded research. Until now, all the fake "data" used by "climate emergency" "researchers" like Michael Mann has been firmly classified. Real scientists have tried repeatedly to get Mann and his monstrous cohorts to conform to the normal rule of public domain. Mann has the right name and the right connections. He doesn't use laws.

Will PLOS and the other publishers still go along with this proposal if it forces Mann to obey the law? Remains to be seen.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 2:48 PM

  Thinking about the peace ultimatum
Thinking about Putin's peace ultimatum.

Several random thoughts, probably wrong.

1. USA will not respond. We are utterly incapable of learning or adapting or surviving. We will continue serving Israel and obeying Hillary until we fully collapse.

2. Germany will respond positively and cautiously. China is a wild card. China is tied to Russia by the Silk Road, but China has its own incurably aggressive Deepstate. France may join Germany, especially after Macron has been replaced by something sane. Britain is in a state of flux. If Brexit actually happens, Boris will be free to make his own policy, but at the moment his own policy looks firmly tied to the dying USA.

3. There's an interesting semi-symmetry between hypersonic missiles and Reagan's SDI. Both are portrayed as an irresistible advance. SDI was mostly fake, but hypersonic is real.

4. Pipelines are another semi-symmetrical element. Reagan's campaign to ruin USSR used sabotage against Russian pipelines, and used Saudi to drop oil prices. Putin doesn't need to sabotage our infrastructure. EPA and NYC are doing the job beautifully, preventing new construction and halting maintenance of everything that helps the real economy and real humans. Instead, Putin is BUILDING Russian infrastructure, MAKING INSTEAD OF BREAKING. Putin has also made Russia less sensitive to oil prices by developing the rest of the economy into a fast-growing and varied set of SKILLS AND RESOURCES.

5. If Putin wins, this will be a massive victory for MAKERS against BREAKERS.

Labels: Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:15 AM

  Peace ultimatum
Putin is making three points in this clip, two explicit and one implicit.



1. Explicit: Russia is now ahead of everyone in weapons, and can halt any incoming missile or break through enemy defenses.

2. Explicit: Now that we have unquestioned superiority, we can relax just a bit on the defense front and concentrate on strengthening our people and culture. "Russia's greatness is inseparable from the dignified life of every citizen."

3. Implicit: We're ready to mediate a new agreement among the major powers to insure PEACE. You have no choice. You must make peace because you CAN'T DEFEAT US. You can't break our people as you tried to do in 1990, and you have no hope of defeating us in war.

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 1:46 PM

  Does QC add value?
Does quality control add value? In most areas the answer is simply and easily YES. In education it's an open question and a real problem.

In manufacturing and farming and mining, QC is a necessary part of value-adding. Manufacturers have to reject bad welds or sloppy assembly. Farmers have to reject poor crops or sickly livestock. Mining is mostly rejection, getting rid of the unwanted minerals that incorporate the valuable minerals.

QC is often analog, with a continuum of grades corresponding to price. A big customer or retailer is often able to do its own grading, and may be able to use the non-prime stuff. Stew instead of entree, understressed circuits for non-prime transistors and ICs, subflooring for ugly wood.

Much of our pre-college education is neither added value nor QC. It's just wasted time.

Vocational courses like cooking and carpentry are pure added value, permanently improving the student's skills and functionality.

Basic reading and writing and arithmetic are added value, changing the brains and muscles of the student to make the student more useful and capable in life.

"History" and "The Humanities" and "Grammar" and the usual "Science" courses are SUBTRACTED VALUE. These courses temporarily infect the student's brain with perfectly wrong and often perfectly murderous "facts" that have no relevance to life. You remember the "facts" long enough to pass the test, then hopefully forget them. If you retain them, your thinking will be disordered and chaotic in ways that serve Deepstate.

Math beyond basic arithmetic is where the QC question arises. Graphing and trig and basic calculus are useful skills. Traditional math teaching is NOT meant to train most kids to use those skills. Math is presented INTENTIONALLY in a way that resonates with the students who will do well in college math, the students who can get math degrees. All others gain nothing more than a permanent distaste for math.

A few good teachers, and all teachers in vocational subjects, train math AS PART OF THE JOB, so the math procedures are a unified part of the real added value of job skills.



It's likely that "history" and "grammar" are taught for the same reason, but I don't know that for sure. In math the QC purpose is well known and discussed, but it never disappears because the profs at the end of the production line can't possibly handle Negative Externality students.

Labels: Asked and partly answered, Experiential education

  ¶ 7:44 AM

  Same pivot, opposite turns
Two items in today's "science" web news relate to old tribes vs new tribes.

1. Anthropologists find that Columbus was probably right when he described one of the native tribes as cannibals.

Christopher Columbus' accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men - stories long dismissed as myths. But a new study suggests Columbus may have been telling the truth.

Using the equivalent of facial recognition technology, researchers analyzed the skulls of early Caribbean inhabitants, uncovering relationships between people groups and upending longstanding hypotheses about how the islands were first colonized.

One surprising finding was that the Caribs, marauders from South America and rumored cannibals, invaded Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Bahamas, overturning half a century of assumptions that they never made it farther north than Guadeloupe.

I'd add a strong caution. The Caribs were apparently fierce warriors. Among the old tribes, fake news of "cannibalism" was used as an insult to help fight and defeat the accused tribe. The Tonkawa in Okla were hated by other tribes. The same insult was applied to them, which helped other tribes to wipe them out.

Fake descriptions of the enemy are constant over thousands of years. The enemy is always cannibalistic, always desecrates our gods, always uses dead children as booby traps, always stinks, always farts.... So Columbus accurately repeated what he heard about the Caribs, but probably didn't observe them boiling and eating their enemies. Nevertheless, his bosses found the myth useful in the same way that the old enemies of the Caribs had found it useful:

The Spanish monarchy initially insisted that indigenous people be paid for work and treated with respect, but reversed its position after receiving reports that they refused to convert to Christianity and ate human flesh.

Fake news is always useful for tyrants.

= = = = =

2. Old tribes in Hawaii are halting the construction of yet another telescope by the new tribes. There are already 13 telescope facilities on Mauna Kea. The new secular tribe thinks it needs one more. The old tribes, who consider Mauna Kea sacred, have decided to draw a line.

My sympathy is entirely with the old tribes in this case**. Astronomy is perfectly useless. Astronomy has NEVER solved any human problems. Space flight has NEVER solved any human problems. The whole enterprise is an absolute waste of money and effort that could have been used for real solutions. 13 telescopes ANYWHERE is 13 too many.

In Hawaii the result may end up opposite to the Spanish change of attitude:

For Dempsey, the debate has pushed long-simmering disagreements over science and land rights to the fore. “I’m kind of glad in some ways that we’ve been forced into this conversation,” she says. “We didn’t do enough creative things in our local community in Hawaii until we were forced to — by people saying that this is not okay.”

= = = = =

** Footnote for clarity: My sympathy is usually with the new tribes in similar clashes. In the Dakota pipeline situation, the "desecration" was a cover for defending the local tribal casino and resort. Often "desecration" of relics halts a USEFUL project. Respect for ancient beliefs is important, but other priorities are usually more important. Astronomy is an exception.
  ¶ 1:51 PM

  Reorganizing Russia
USA media are seizing on the sudden announcement of a change in Russia's governing structure. They're making it sound like Medvedev is resigning in protest.

This clip clarifies what's happening:



Putin's SOTU address focused heavily on demographics. He wants to work on building Russia's future generations, strengthening culture and families. He wants Russians to produce lots of competent and civilized kids.

The reorganizing puts Medvedev in charge of foreign affairs and defense, so Putin can concentrate on internal matters. (I suspect the placement is a form of on-the-job training for Medvedev so he can be a more competent successor, but this isn't stated or implied in the available info.)

Putin is absolutely unique in the modern world, and perhaps unique in all of history. No other leader cares so deeply and comprehensively and intelligently and EFFECTIVELY about the total welfare of the nation he rules.

Labels: Гром победы

  ¶ 8:30 AM

  Share Value politics
The most egregious aspect of Shared Lies is when the truth appears openly, gets published in mainstream media, then disappears without changing anything.

I'm thinking of the dramatic poll that appeared last month.

From the source:

This finding is consistent with the theory of “minimal effects” in political communication research. The people who are most likely to engage with political messaging are the least likely to be influenced by it.

Indeed, a recent study indicates the net effect of most political campaigns is probably zero. If the most sophisticated American campaigns can’t really influence voters, why should we expect the Russians to be anymore successful?

CAMPAIGNS HAVE NO EFFECT ON VOTERS.

This got mentioned in NYTimes. Nobody noticed, nobody started asking questions about the "election" process and the billion-dollar campaign industry.

My first response was good old Manweller, the long-standing observation that elections are not allowed to make changes.

Another obvious metaphor is Share Value.

Big corporations don't seek profit, they seek maximum share value. A business that wants profit tries to gain customers. A business that wants share value tries to lose customers. Customers and employees and factories are Negative Externalities that interfere with Share Value.

Politicians don't seek votes, they seek donors, who are the same NYC monsters as share-buyers. A politician who wants votes tries to gain voters. A politician who wants donors tries to lose voters.

The latter is clearly accurate for Federal campaigns, especially presidents. For many decades the parties have been trying to disgust and repel voters who are open to making choices. Both parties want ONLY the mechanical partybots who can be moved mechanically by shouting the official talking points.

The Share Value takeover is more complete in politics than business. Privately owned businesses still exist, still seek profit, and still try to gain customers. I don't see any evidence of a distinction between NYC and private in politics. I don't see any politicians at any level trying to gain votes.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 5:56 AM

  Canary in the former coal mine /// EDIT: Nope.
Via SpokaneNews:



Later, it turned out to be a complete misunderstanding of an unusual but healthy situation.



Clearly not a fake response. Note the avatar....

Labels: NOT self-explanatory sentence

  ¶ 12:15 AM

  She's not the most interesting part
Tulsi has finally done what she should have done a couple months ago. Held her own meaningful debate simultaneous with the meaningless "debate" of DNC/HRC.



She's discussing current events with Kucinich and Kinzer. Tulsi is boring, always saying the same things but never DOING much. Kucinich is the interesting part. His actions in Congress were consistent.**

I hadn't seen Kucinich in several years, and expected him to look much older now. Strangely, he doesn't. He speaks in literary terms, says interesting and unexpected things, which always make sense, always advance the cause.

Maybe I'll vote for him, just to see the write-in register in the meaningless counts.

** Looking back at previous mentions of Kucinich, I see that he wasn't always consistent. Here and here I was frustrated when he failed to follow through on his beliefs.
  ¶ 11:01 PM

  Closing the Memory Hole
Exploring old tech journals helps to close the Memory Hole, helps to destroy the lies of Innovative Disruption. We have standard Shared Lies about every invention. Elon is taking the art to new heights. Every invention by Elon is NEW NEW NEW and NOBODY EVER THOUGHT OF IT BEFORE.

Four examples from just two months in 1914, from The Automobile.

1. On p 360 of the PDF, the Ruetschi full synchromesh gearbox. As I've noted with Smith, GM claimed to have the first sync in 1929. Smith had it in 1906, Ruetschi in 1914. In fact the Big Three didn't get FULL sync until 1963. Smith and Ruetschi had sync on all gears.

2. On p 443, an adaptive air suspension that automatically responds to load conditions.

3. On p 791, the Zeitler full automatic, with a selector knob that looks a lot like the HydraMatic selector. I've noted the earlier 1905 Sturtevant full automatic. Both well before the Innovative Disruptive 1940 HydraMatic.

4. Less important but still well before the Shared Lie. On p 358, this Duryea convertible had a fully concealed top and spare tires in the trunk. We normally believe that the '34 Airflow started the hidden spare trend, and the first concealed soft top was the '55 Tbird. The Duryea has nice graceful lines. Too bad they didn't slant the windshield.



General observation: Most 1915 cars were trending toward smoothness and streamlining. The trend reversed after WW1, and most cars in the '20s were rigidly square and essentially identical. The trend toward smoothness and real variety restarted in '33 when the Depression forced automakers to think outside the rigidly square box.

Labels: 1901, Shared Lie

  ¶ 3:10 PM

  Good line
Took a taxi to the store this morning because of snow. I used to be braver, but decided that I'm old enough AND solvent enough to tip the scales toward taxis in bad weather. (Needless to say, taxi means REAL TAXI, not Uber or Lyft. I'll never use those Share Value scams.)

Discussed the city's idiot failure to use

with the lady driver. We're both old enough to remember when the city used sand instead of the EPA-approved Zamboni "deicer", which actually polishes the ice to a diamond-hard skating surface.

Good line by the driver: "It's not like they have to go anywhere to find sand. The whole city is a sand pit."

Gave me a good and necessary laugh. Perfectly true. The soil is sand. You could dig up part of the yard and use it on the sidewalk instead of the EPA-approved non-salt slime granules. The city could reactivate Henry Kaiser's old sand quarry and have safer streets with less GAS-CONSUMING plowing and less SOUL-CONSUMING deaths.

But they won't. EPA wins every fucking time.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 2:31 PM

  Askedanswered, IQ edition
A nice askedanswered pair in the daily notices from quora.com:



What screams "I have IQ of 130"? The question.

Labels: Askedanswered, SES

  ¶ 7:48 AM

  BBC accidentally breaks its own rule
BBC describes an admirable effort to preserve the hardest thing of all: Smell.

Without knowing it, the BBC writer violates BBC's absolute policy:

But these particular smells, while omnipresent to those living in the city, will not be around forever. “What we increasingly see is the arrival of a transnational aromascape or flavourscape,” says Rhys-Taylor. “It is pretty much the same in every global city now: smell of pulled pork, flat whites, roasting coffee beans is an increasing one, microbreweries. There is a global constellation of transnational aromas and flavours associated with a transnational class, people that move around from city to city.”

BBC just acknowledged that Populists might have a point after all!

The methods of preservation are interesting and could finally lead to Smell-O-Vision:

One method involves exposing a polymer fibre to the odour, so that the smell-causing chemical compounds in the air can stick to it. Then Bembibre analyses the sample in the laboratory, dissolving the compounds stuck to the fibre, separating them and identifying them. The resulting list of chemicals is effectively a recipe for the scent.

“We characterise the smell from the human point of view,” adds Bembibre. “This is important because if we want to preserve it for the future, it depends on many factors. Not only the chemical composition but also our experience.”

Bravo for acknowledging that places are different, and for recognizing that human perception matters. In an era when "multiple chemical sensitivity" wipes out smells, in an era when all physical things and activities must be EXTERMINATED leaving only raw abstract numbers manipulated by NYC, this is an important way of defending both modularity and the universe itself.

The effort is probably too late for most unique local smells. EPA wiped them out in the '70s. Thinking about Okla: Shawnee was peanuts. Ponca was crude oil. SW OKC was the slaughterhouse. Enid was wheat. Stillwater had an odd iron-ish smell that didn't seem to come from any industry.

Fortunately I already have a tag for this subject!

Labels: defensible spaces, defensible thymes

  ¶ 5:21 AM

  Crediting the Sucker Filter
The Sucker Filter is a wonderful tool for spotting fakery. I've been using it for a while and wishing I could give proper credit for the source. NakedCapitalism sees the Filter in Trump's negotiating techniques, and gives the proper credit.

It was described in a brief 2012 article in Atlantic, based on internal research by Microsoft.

The Filter is meant to gather in the most gullible marks from a random set of cold calls or spam emails. If you think the wildest weirdest nonsense is worth checking out, you're worth cultivating. If you can distinguish sense from nonsense, the scammer doesn't want to waste effort on you.

I'm not sure that it would apply to Trump. The people who need to negotiate with Trump are already tightly filtered and selected. In his main business, the owners of hotels and casinos already know who he is and what he does. In his new hobby of politics, China and Russia and Persia already know who he is and what he does.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 4:42 AM

  Where's the GUILD? There's the GUILD!
Another Where's the GUILD question.

I've wondered why USA businesses didn't have a GUILD or UNION response to Bezos. He buys up entire industries and kills them. There is never an ORGANIZED counterforce, never any resistance or attempted survival. Bezos just keeps killing and killing and killing.

Still no answer to the question in USA, but a beautiful answer in India. What happens when small businesses HAVE A UNION?

Via RT:

Jeff Bezos should not count on a red carpet welcome in India when he arrives in New Delhi later this week, with mass rallies and sit-ins being planned by the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), protesting what it calls “predatory” trade practices.

The CAIT, which represents 70 million small traders and businesses, has called on its supporters to go on strike on Wednesday, when Bezos is set to touch down.

70 million businesses will go on strike. That's a meaningful GUILD.

In the dim past, Chambers of Commerce and mutual benefit associations were able to ORGANIZE against unwanted monopolies, though they never exerted their bullyforce at this level, never actually called a strike.

Labels: skill-estate

  ¶ 11:28 PM

  Moring
When writing about "rights" vs duties, I'm thinking of a quote from Doris Lessing:

If you're meant to do it, do it now. Conditions are always impossible.

Bumped into the quote recently on a support page for vestibular problems. I hadn't read Lessing before; I somehow acquired the idea that she was one of those suicide-generating poets like Plath. After reading a long list of quotes from Lessing, I apologize. She's the opposite of suicidal. She's a firm realist and a firm defender of duties in the Sharia sense.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 8:32 AM

  Ames gets it
Illuminating comment from Mark Ames on Twitter.

In a discussion of the gig economy, mostly about insecurity and medical costs, Ames says:

I remember when neoliberal shock therapy destroyed Russia's once-thriving "creative class"—writers, journalists, actors, artists, along with teachers, doctors —- how American-Anglo journalists hectored them with endless sermons about "the market knows best".

Neoliberal shock therapy = Soros.

We don't like to acknowledge that the Soviet system was good for real inventors and writers, especially after Stalin died. Stalin was brutal and erratic. His successors were rule-loving bureaucrats, and the rules they enforced were good for real creators.

Science education was excellent and free. Health care was free. Scientists and writers were treated with respect. Genuine innovation was valued in school and in work. Tech industries were NOT OFFSHORED, so engineers and technicians had secure JOBS. The whole system was biased toward improving and respecting human skills. Opposing the regime got you in trouble, but opposing the regime is not a duty. It's a meaningless assertion of meaningless "rights".

Putting it another way, opposing the regime is not a form of MAKING. Real creative people are driven to MAKE paintings or machines or houses. Opposing is a form of BREAKING. The people who are driven to oppose are BREAKERS. Our system mainly supports BREAKING. Our copyright system is made for Disney, so the biggest company can sue others to death. Our stock market is made for Goldman, so the nastiest thieves and blackmailers can kill everyone who isn't Goldman. Our patent system enables the biggest company to sue small inventors to death. Our feminist movement and hippie movement and Birchers and jazz and rock-n-roll and Antifa and Alt-Right are all sponsored and organized by CIA, to keep the whole society BROKEN.

Solzhenitsyn proved the point. He went overboard with dissent, got in trouble, and CIA recruited him for propaganda. After spending some time in USA, he figured out that both systems were tyrannical, but the Russian system had more advantages to balance out the tyranny. He figured out that we were rewarding him for BREAKING, not MAKING. He returned to Russia.

Labels: From rights to duties, Make or break, skill-estate

  ¶ 7:15 AM

  Sign of progress
When Erdogan jumped into Libya a couple months ago, it looked like more of his stupid self-defeating imperialism.

Maybe not.

Via Al Jazeera, Russia and Turkey are hosting the leaders of both sides in Libya's long civil war, hoping to start some kind of peace process. Russia has been backing Haftar and Turkey has just started backing Sarraj. Now both countries have some degree of leverage on the respective sides.

This turns out to be a smart move, an intervention aimed toward peace.

After several years, I'm re-applying the Zero Problems tag to Erdogan. ... but still remaining cautious.

Labels: Turkey, Zero Problems

  ¶ 1:10 AM

  More Great Smith after all
I decided that the Great Smith set wasn't done after all. There was another version I hadn't "built" yet.



The runabout with openable front compartment is a type that wouldn't be practical now, but in the days when cars averaged 15 mph it would have been fun to drive and ride.

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 12:00 PM

  Perfect match
I linked this article on plant intelligence in previous item, as a nice handy example of biologists removing the DarwinIST theory goggles and returning to Darwin's own open-minded curiosity.

The article turns out to be sharply appropriate to the subject of previous item: a naturalist who constantly canceled and erased his own observations to serve DarwinISM.

These authors aren't afraid to talk about smart plants:

"It's not only that the plant can 'sense' or 'smell' a nematode," Schroeder said. "It's that the plant learns a foreign language, and then broadcasts something in that language to spread propaganda that 'this is a bad place'. Plants mess with nematodes' communications system to drive them away."

Here's the specific match: The plants suck up chemicals that the nematodes use for communication within the plant, thus CENSORING the roundworm senses; and then pour out the chemical into the soil, thus blinding the roundworms with fake THEORIES that this plant is already fully parasitized.

The conclusion is beautiful:

He added: "Plants aren't passive green things. They are active participants in an interactive dialog with the surrounding environment, and we will continue to decipher this dialog."

Take that, Burroughs.

Labels: Smarty-plants

  ¶ 7:24 AM

  Acetylene world 2
Following on the prevalence and advantages of acetylene...

A picture from one of Floyd Clymer's books on the T.



Henry with two of his friends, outdoorsman John Burroughs and Thomas Edison.

We know Edison as Mister Electric Light. We don't know anyone as Mister Acetylene.

Union Carbide is the counterpart to GE as systematizer and provider of material and machines, but Union Carbide didn't have any notable inventor/founder figures.

= = = = =

I hadn't heard of John Burroughs, so I sampled his writings. I'm not impressed. He was a good observer of Nature, but he constantly deleted his own clear and crisp observations and replaced them with Darwinist crap.

He marveled at a hemlock tree that had germinated on a partly floating log. The hemlock had formed roots that clasped the log, and sent out one 6-foot-long horizontal root into the soil on shore. Was this intelligence? If he had simply BELIEVED HIS OWN SENSES he would have said Yes. Instead, he CANCELED AND ERASED his own senses:

In the case of the little hemlock upon the partly submerged log, roots were probably thrown out equally in all directions; on all sides but one they reached the water and stopped growing; but on the land side, the root on top of the log, not meeting with any obstacle, kept growing. It was a case of survival, not of the fittest, but of that which the situation favored.

Darwin himself wasn't blinded by Darwin's theories, and made clear observations and clever experiments in plant senses and plant intelligence. Biologists are just now starting to take off the theory goggles, starting to repeat Darwin's own experiments without DarwinIST distortions.

= = = = =

Sidenote: Though Edison's workshop never dealt with acetylene, there is a family connection. Edison's chief mechanic and model builder was John Kruesi. Edison sketched ideas and Kruesi turned them into practical patentable devices. Kruesi's son Paul ended up as head of American Lava, a major manufacturer of acetylene equipment.

Labels: 1901, Patient things, Smarty-plants

  ¶ 2:06 AM

  Metameta
Dream scripter pulled a cute meta trick.

Inside the outer dream I had awakened from the inner dream, and I was trying to remember an insight gathered inside the inner dream. I was trying to remember it so I could post it here on the blog.

The insight itself wasn't original by any standards. Just a Graybill corollary. When you know you've got to do something by yourself, you're more likely to figure out how to do it for yourself.

So now I'm posting it on the blog, for what it's worth. The metameta was better than the insight.

Labels: defensible spaces, skill-estate

  ¶ 12:37 AM

  Just for my records
I've been keeping track of this for many years, so might as well continue the habit. Yesterday was the first SERIOUS snow of the season, about 7 inches. Today, first roof raking of the season. Much easier without the ladder. No big deal.

1/16 second raking of the season.

March: Looks like that's all. Thie was a nice non-rakey winter. Total snow was 41 inches, just a bit under average. The storms were more spread out than usual, with more warmish gaps between storms, so the snow didn't accumulate as much.

Labels: Heimatkunde, Metrology

  ¶ 12:56 PM

  More likely consequence
An interesting observation by archeologists. In villages built before surveying and compasses, newer houses tend to turn slightly counterclockwise from older houses. This tendency is constant enough that it can be used for dating the structures.

The authors propose a neurological explanation: a general tendency among right-handers to favor the left visual field. Seems unlikely in terms of rotating a house. When you're laying out a square foundation in a dense village, you'll try to keep things parallel to existing paths and roads. Favoring the left wouldn't change your view of parallelism. Without surveying tools you'll be off perpendicular, but the errors would balance.

Favoritism could influence our choice of placement for the house. This tendency does show up in how we build cities. Growth tends to turn counterclockwise from downtown. If growth starts pushing northward, it will turn toward the northwest. If it starts westward, it will turn toward the southwest. Start southward, turn toward southeast.

As the roads bend leftward, houses parallel to the roads will also necessarily turn leftward.
  ¶ 7:03 AM

  Another Kansas car
Unlike the Great Smith, this one may have been a speculation that never produced anything. Still, it was an interesting car made in an unusual place.

The Great Smith was made in Topeka, which had some Detroit-style advantages thanks to the Santa Fe. Plenty of machine shops and foundries and industrial workers. Hiawatha is in the NE corner of the state but not close to St Joe or Atchison.



The Average Man's Runabout. Later marketers realized that Everyman's car is a used car, and also figured out that nobody wants to be Average. But both assumptions were forgivable in 1905.

About the same size as a Jeep or Nash Metropolitan, and VERY light at 700 pounds. Two-cylinder two-stroke aircooled transverse engine, with CVT and chain drive. It would have been easy to drive if it existed, and the price would have been comparatively easy at $500. (The Great Smith was a more realistic $2500.)

Labels: 1901

  ¶ 2:35 PM

  Harding before he was Unpersoned
As I've been trying to emphasize, Harding was the first effective opponent of Deepstate. He broke down most of Wilson's imperialist bureaucracy and worked for non-interventionism abroad and economic justice at home.

We have the impression that Deepstate's campaign to destroy him was universal, even before his death. Here's contrary evidence, from a journal advancing a cross-country highway. It's worth reprinting entirely.

Warren G. Harding has gone. He has passed into that next world, leaving a glamour** and disturbance in America, that he had tried to calm for more than two years. To him goes the crown of laurels for his perseverance in his daily battle to bring America out of the restless age. His work toward the end of peace and calmness has been wonderful, and he will long be remembered for that, but being a big man in a big place was not his best attribute. He has for years been a public man, and has accepted public office as a duty, but never, during his career has he lost his touch with his fellow man.

Of all the good things that might be said about Harding, we feel that the best, and the one touching him closer than any other is that he has been a perfect example of a Christian gentleman. One editorial writer has said that he was too good a man to be president. But he is wrong. He was the type of man that should have been president, as an example of what American citizenry should be. His works were not the most brilliant in American history. but his energetic striving to do that which he thought was right, with all of his ability, all of the time, has made him a friend of all America. The universal observance of grief came not through the fact that the president had died, but because Warren G. Harding, a man's man, and a man of God, had passed on.

The good roads movement in America lost a loyal supporter when Harding died. He followed the progressive steps in highway work taken by President Wilson, and had made big strides forward in giving to the people of the United States highways that unite communities in all parts of the country. He has always favored federal aid legislation for highway work, and has, at times discussed a national highway system which will take routes such as the Pikes Peak, and make them government highways, built and maintained.

His life was but too short for this accomplishment. The Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway Association, consisting of members from coast to coast, over a period of 35,000 miles. bows its head in sorrow at the loss it has sustained. Not only as a highway booster, but as a lovable American citizen, devoted to his ideals, his friends, his country and his God, Harding will be missed.

Out of the restless age ... work toward peace and calmness. We could use another leader like Harding, but there will never be another.

This shows that Deepstate killed Harding first, then ruined his reputation afterward.

= = = = =

** Footnote on glamour: The specific connection to beauty is fairly recent. Hix used glamour often in 'Strange as it seems', always for the romantic and dramatic aspects of war and politics. Washington crossing the Delaware is "one of the most glamorous moments of American history." The same meaning seems to fit here ... unless the author really meant clamour.
  ¶ 8:12 AM