Tech arrogance isn't new
Following on Zillow's stupid trust in the computer, here's a view of the problem from 1954, in Computers and Automation as usual.

Fletcher Pratt was a well-known popularizer of science and tech. I read his book on cryptography in 1959 and picked up a tremendous amount of insight into language and thinking.

In this case Pratt sounds just like Bezos or Zuckerberg.

The problem is likely to grow more acute with the advance of automation into new fields. Does it mean some kind of reorganization of industrial structure? It would be almost idle to predict, for the problem has not yet been submitted to enough study. It is possible that the situation will require going back to the level of the secondary schools and altering education. As now organized these schools tend to turn out specialists or at least people who will specialize at the next educative stage. Yet the demand of both automatic computers and an economy based on automation is for an immensely increased adaptability on the part of the individual. He must he willing not merely to accept periodic reeducation, but to regard it as a normal part of existence.

Sound familiar? Submit or die! Re-education every year! Miners must become coders!

It doesn't work. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT and PEOPLE NEED STABILITY. If you want people to learn, you need to maintain a civilization that lets them learn naturally and gradually. You need a bond of two-way loyalty, assuring the workers that they will continue to be useful and PAID after they risk their time and energy on adaptation. The promise of re-education was fake, just a scam to enable total destruction of work and industry.

After reviewing the story of the Luddites, Pratt predicts:

Modern counterparts of the machine-smashers can expect to achieve little more in the long run. The really important impact of the new methods will be felt when the use of computers is extended to take in the totality of a business or industrial operation instead of only some of its parts.

It is important to realize that computers today are as it were grafted onto industry and business, rather than built in as an integral part. There is no business in the United States today whose total structure has been set up with the use of computers as an essential part of the operation. Partly, no doubt, this is because the machines are so new; there has not been time for the growth of industries in which they perform a fully integrated function. Nor has programming progressed to the point where it is possible to instruct a computer on all the elements in a given industrial operation and expect an answer that will make managerial decisions almost unnecessary.

67 years later it's STILL not possible to "make managerial decisions unnecessary". QED Zillow.

Clearly this level of control seemed inevitable in 1954, and it still seems inevitable to the aristocrats. Or more accurately, the aristocrats want us to think it's inevitable.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Soviet law, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:37 AM

  Epstein prophecy
Continuing from ACM, Oct 1969. Those dissidents knew what would happen when an Epstein, aided by Big Data, was able to monitor everyone in real time.

This author was noticing proposals for a National Data Bank, and proposals for a cashless society. He wrote a parody, supposedly dated 1987.



Swift and SWIFT would be proud.

= = = = =

1987 was an interesting date. Roy Cohn, who operated the old-fashioned way, stopped blackmailing in 1986. Epstein started his blackmail business in 1981, and took over Cohn's government contracts after 1986. But Epstein didn't take over the tech world until the mid 90s. Of course the government itself had been using computerized data for its own blackmail operations since 1890. The older tech firms had been part of Deepstate since the '50s. Epstein's contribution to the extortion industry was flipping those Silicon Valley outsiders, not bringing in tech as such.

Labels: Jackboot stomping forever, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 8:46 AM

  Two heavvvvvvyyyyyyyyyy assholes farting
Randomly wandering through the latest uploads at American Radio Library. A 1972 issue of a trade newsletter featured two HIGH-STATUS IDIOTS, both speaking at the same convention.

= = = = =

First Bucky Fuller:

To set a tone of purpose and concern for the days that would follow, the opening keynote address was delivered by author/inventor, Buckminster Fuller, who spoke for two hours and 15 minutes about the "dynamics of mass communication in relation to expanding world technology." Fuller urged those present to consider how insignificant the human being is in relation to the universe. Fuller observed great growing concern over the crisis of energy but stated that, "the concern should be for the apparent crisis of ignorance."

I later realized how right Fuller was when I asked about 35 people at random what they thought of Fuller's speech. Some of the comments I received were: "he's really heavy," "his speech was a bit heavy for 9 o'clock in the morning." "the old guy is really sharp," and "he really didn't say anything about radio or records."

No, Bucky wasn't right. Anyone who complains about IGNORANCE is automatically wrong.

The commenters were right. Bucky was heavvvvyyyyy in the 70s sense, a shitpile of big words with little meaning. The last commenter recognized that Bucky wasn't talking about anything at all, just bullshitting as usual. All of Bucky's "inventions" are equally bullshit. Just plain DUMB.

= = = = =

And then the inimitable McLuhan.

We entered Barry's large sterile living room and for the first time that evening I saw Dr McLuhan without his coat...Even while he had napped at home he had kept it on...Now he seemed to change...to relax more...He literally fell down on the couch in slouch...and began to rap...For some unknown reason his subject began...

MARSHALL: Ahhh...There we go...Somebody said..."Farting is such sweet sorrow...You might be amused to know that the word "fart" means go...It's the past participle of the word "faron "...which means..."to go"...to fare...forward...to fare...and "faron" to go...is the past participle of fahrt (German) meaning gone...and when you're "gone"...or "fahrted" why the people say in England..."and joy go with thee"...instead of saying..."Gesunheidt" they say..."and joy go. with thee"...But, Chaucer built his great poem The House of Fame...or..."The House of Fame"...It's a theory of what human reputation of fame is...He built the entire poem on the metaphor of "fart "...because he says "Fame is just air broken and broken air "...Here's your resonant interval again...And broken air creates the noise of sound...And then there's reputation...or fame...And fame is just a collosal fart...So he built a learned poem using all the physics of the Middle Age entirely on the pun... "As Fame As F a r t "... T h e G r e a t Chaucer..."

"Incredible"...I said, trying to figure out just what great wisdom he had bestowed upon me...

No wisdom at all. Pure bullshit. Schizophrenic rambling.

Fart doesn't come from fahren, it's an old word that goes all the way back to Indo-European, and always meant a gaseous emission from an asshole.

McLuhan's famous "philosophy" about media was equally transparent bullshit. This connects nicely with previous item about the condensation and fortification of radio.

Radio and text are condensed. They present an outline or framework that invites you to create your own universe, to exercise your own mind. Television and movies are the opposite. They inject a pre-cooked universe, leaving no room for your own imagination.

McLuhan had it EXACTLY FUCKING BACKWARDS. He claimed that TV was cool, which meant that it passively invited you to fill in your own images, while text and radio were hot, actively providing the full package. This is OBVIOUSLY AND BLATANTLY AND TRANSPARENTLY WRONG.

You don't need to know ANY FUCKING THING about neurology or printing or modulation or cathode-ray tubes. Anyone who has experienced all three types of media KNOWS how each type works.

Both of these assholes were basically cult leaders. They had more in common with Charlie Manson than with any actual inventors or philosophers.

Labels: NOT alternate universe, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 9:45 PM

  Parallel is always faster
Ran across a fact I hadn't heard before, in an area that I thought I understood. The fact fits nicely into my latest just-for-fun graphics project on 1957 IBM.

Punched cards are totally old-fashioned. Carrying data around in a box is just hopelessly passe.



Wrong!

Surprising fact: When you need to transfer a REALLY BIG batch of data, it's still easier to do it physically. Big databases or raw unedited video can run into the petabyte range. No matter how good your web connection, it's faster to let FedEx fly the entire set of disks. Amazon has a special product for this purpose, a memory box designed for freight handling.

I hadn't really thought about the question of scale, just ass-u-me-d that big corporations had special web connections. They do, but no web connection can beat a box of memory cards when the box is big enough.

It comes down to the oldest dividing line in communication. Parallel vs serial. A box of cards is parallel. A data wire is serial. Parallel is always faster.

Data communication STARTED as parallel. The Chappe semaphore system was beautifully designed to carry blocks of semantic data as a visual image. It had 256 available positions, most of which were assigned to words and phrases. Later versions even had a code-switch character, denoting that this message will use the Government phrase set or the Stock Exchange phrase set, etc.



Wheatstone's early telegraphs were parallel in the modern sense, with five wires carrying a range of 32 characters.



Morse introduced serial communication, which became the norm for obvious practical reasons. One wire is cheaper to mount and maintain than five wires.

IBM offered web connectors in 1957, using either telegraph** or telephone wires. They transferred about 500 characters per minute.

What was the dividing line in 1957? Let's say you needed to transfer the text of a novel from your office in Chicago to your office in NYC. 100k words = 500k characters, so it would take 1000 minutes or 16 hours. Sending a typed manuscript, or a stack of cards, by truck would take about 20 hours, and a flight would take about 4 hours. So the flight would have been much faster than the web. If you needed to transfer two of those novels or data sets, even the truck would be faster.

Obviously distance is the crucial variable. Between offices in the same city, driving will almost always be faster than any kind of electronic transfer. For a longer distance, the threshold in 1957 was around one megabyte. Now it's around one petabyte, but it's still a threshold.
** "Telegraph" in 1957 was really teletype, using FSK Baudot audio. The direct ancestor of later web modems.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 12:35 AM

  Elon, you've got my attention now.
Elon is living in a tiny house. Of course it's a stunt, but he seems to be part serious as well. The house rings all sorts of bells.

First, the exterior looks something like my actual house, which is the same size but has a less efficient floor plan. I think my house was a kit, not a prefab. There are a dozen originally identical units around town.

Elon's house is built by Boxabl, and we can assume Elon has an interest in the company. They call this model the Casita.

Here's the stronger bell. The Casita has the same plan as the Homette, built by a Texas company in the late '40s. The Homette was fully prefab and modular, just like the Casita. Same name, same house, same construction method, same plan.

I discussed the Homette here, then "built" one for Polistra to live in.

The original Homette. (This was the "double" model, just two units jammed together.)



Homette's interior:



Casita's interior:

Homette's floor plan:



Casita's floor plan:



= = = = =

Elon is bringing back a system that was common around 1910. Here's a Sears ad showing how their prefabs were constructed:



And here's how the Casita is constructed:



Elon is continuing his tradition of RESTORING old inventions. He has a misplaced reputation as a revolutionary. In fact he's a counter-revolutionary. 1910 cars, 1910 housing construction.



Sidenote on price: Boxabl lists the price, without transportation and assembly and lot, as $50k. This includes all the appliances. Aladdin's 1917 catalog had similar sized houses (kit, not modular) for about $500, NOT including any plumbing or wiring or appliances. $500 would be $10k after inflation. Seems about right, accounting for the equipment and kit vs modular.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:00 AM

  Yet more on Gallup and church attendance
Following on this and this and this.

Another similar view:

Yet we cannot think that even these diversions are the sole causes for the growing non-church attendance. There seems to be something back of it all that has changed, to a great extent, the old idea of worship and church reverence, and given the idea that a minister is only wanted at a funeral or a marriage.

We are told that “there is no religion west of the Missouri and no God west of the Rocky Mountains,” and that the church “is now only a retreat for imbeciles, women and children.” That it has had its day, is now dominated by weak minds and mental dwarfs; that it has lost its sympathy and charity for the masses and has been converted into “mutual admiration societies and closed corporations for the rich.” That God has left the church in disgust; that men to enter the church must leave their minds behind; that to get a favor or a job you must not go to the church people; or, having either, you must be a hypocrite to escape the venom of their bigotry, and all such.

To the observant this means something. Indeed it means much, for only a short time back it was thought that only Thomas Paine and Col. Ingersoll would make such remarks. Today the unorthodox speak to crowded houses, and what they write finds immense and ready sales. And, whether right or wrong, good or bad, they appear to have been more successful in conversions than do the churches.

At least something, or a combination of things, has put the public to reading and thinking, and in just this proportion do they seem to be seeking other places and amusements to the neglect of the churches.

Not only this, but many of the old Bible stories, at least in their literalities, are emphatically denied. The old-fashioned hell is now scoffed; the Jonah story is jested with; the school boy is openly told, as a choice between the teachings of his teachers at Sunday school and those of science and the high school, of the story of creation, to accept the latter; while the churches have about agreed that creeds are of human origin and limitations, and not those of the spirit or Deity.

From Metaphysical Magazine, 1899.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 2:57 PM

  Gangsters and Ford V8s
The linkage started in '32 with the Barkers and Dillingers. When French yoots in the '80s copied gang styles from West Side Story, they were still driving and hotrodding Ford V8s.

(The French version, that is.)

The unique rhythm of a V8 is well defined. It can't be smooth by mechanical definition. V8s must strike an innate resonance in the human ear and vestibule, perhaps ringing a specific brainwave pattern that fits with serious driving. Maybe it matches a galloping horse. Ford wasn't the fastest affordable car in '32, so the gangsters weren't simply seeking speed.

The Simcas in these pictures used a smaller V8 that was designed under Henry in the '30s, originally intended as an economical option. It was tried for a year or two but didn't sell. Henry finally yielded to numerological doom** and allowed his company to make a six. The smaller V8 was sent to Europe, where it thrived for 30 years.

** I'm going with the legend here for a better story, but later historians have found that Henry started developing a six at the same time as the smaller V8, and encouraged both projects. The smaller V8 reached production first.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 5:21 AM

  Aimee GOT IT.
Looking back through a chain of links, bumped into this. I had originally used this clip in a superficial way to illustrate that Aimee Semple MacPherson was a VERY DIFFERENT type of female cult leader. I hadn't listened to the whole piece before. The whole piece is eminently worth hearing RIGHT FUCKING NOW. (And not just because it happens to be Easter again.)



THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 11:54 AM

  Cat doors and cancelers
... have been around forever.

A couple items from Gernsback's Science and Invention, 1923.



Pompeian hinges weren't unusual. This type of hinge was common on two-way kitchen doors in the '20s. The unusual part is the cat and dog door.

= = = = =



A reminder that censors and cancelers and life-destroying Karens have been in charge in most places and most times, long before Pompeii. Smart dissidents have always found ways to get a message across, via poetry or songs or images or carefully chosen words or carefully chosen missing words.

The only modern difference is that dissidents before 2010 didn't expect the censors to PAY THEM for using the official printing presses and broadcast studios, and didn't whine when one publisher decided not to print their material. They just found other ways to get the message through.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 2:12 PM

  Pre-Wilson = Post-Wilson. Deepstate forever.
In previous item on entertainment and science, I noted yet again the shift toward total Deepstate absorption of science that began in 1946 and accelerated around Sputnik.

Here's an interesting presage of the 1958 subsumption.

From 1913 Proceedings of IRE, a convention keynote triggered mainly by the use of radio to hear the Titanic.

This address was originally planned as a resume of the progress during 1912, but one topic has become the main subject to the exclusion of the resume. However, I wish to mention before proceeding that Lee de Forest has given us an excellent account of some notable long distance work and observatrions with an interesting theory which may help to overcome radio absorption.

Hmm. DeForest gave us a THEORY. What's missing? DeForest also gave us the AUDION, which wasn't interesting to this THEORETICIAN. DeForest didn't understand the Audion theoretically; he just showed that it could be used to send and receive audio.

We frequently hear that the United Fruit Company has practically the best radio service. If this is true, it may indicate that the steamship companies would obtain better radio service if they bought their apparatus outright and hired their own operators and engineers.

United Fruit was one of the main foundations of the Sherburne Hopkins proto-Deepstate, just before Wilson brought it into government and formalized it. Deepstate always has the best radio, the best everything.

There are at least 18 members of this Institute who are capable of designing and constructing far better apparatus than is commonly found on steamships today, and there are at least four companies that sell such apparatus.

In favor of the method of obtaining apparatus through competitive bids, the fact may be stated that the US Army and Navy get superior apparatus by specifying what is wanted and then calling for bids.

Radio communication is valuable to the public in general. It is particularly valuable to the ocean-going public, steamship companies, marine underwriters, newspapers, shippers, armies, navies and weather bureaus. For all this service the public probably pays in the end, but the most apparent payment is made by the steamship companies.

What's missing? Entertainment. Music. Speech. Beauty. LOCAL radio stations using and cultivating LOCAL talent.

What's present? Military + Shipping + Newspapers + Weather Bureau = Globalism.

GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS were already the pot of gold as seen by Big Electronics.

The IRE was stuck in Marconi's mode of thinking, which simply turned the transatlantic telegraph cable into a transatlantic radio beam. In 1913 the UNOFFICIAL amateurs and tinkerers were already sending music and speech, using both Alexanderson alternators and DeForest audions.

Labels: Entertainment, NOT alternate universe, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:03 AM

  Quintessentially British
Vintage.es has a series of pix from a 1966 publicity event. 15 girls crammed into an Austin Mini. Not really amazing in terms of volume; skinny flexible youngsters can fold into tight spaces, and the Mini was surprisingly roomy inside like a Tardis. The amazing part was the weight. A small car is intended to hold 4 people and a little luggage, about 700 pounds. Those 15 average-size girls would weigh close to a ton. The Mini was loaded down but not broken.

What's British? A crowd of men is gathered around the Mini, and none of them are looking at the girls. Some are looking at the car, and most are looking at the other men. One group of men seems to be focused intently on a picture of a man while leaning against the car full of girls.

Labels: constants and constants, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 6:04 AM

  From cable to cable
Think modern partisans are idiotic? Think the "cable" "news" is totally preoccupied with soap opera details instead of actions? True but not new.

Searchendipity led to this peculiar 1832 publication. I was looking for calculating telegraph. This thing is titled The American Telegraph and happens to use calculating several times in the sense of scheming.

The title is unexpected since electrical telegraphs were just freshly invented in England and unknown here. The word had been coined by Chappe for his mechanical semaphore system. Presumably the word was well enough known here.

It's not about telegraphs or semaphores, it's just a weekly tabloid carrying soap opera shit against Andrew Jackson.

One screenshot:



Soap opera. Dozens of confusing characters involved in dozens of interlocking subplots. Relitigating cold cases. The same lip-smacking prurience you'll hear from MSNBC discussing Trump, or Fox discussing Biden.

Labels: constants and constants, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:40 PM

  Plus c'est, but not quite
Is media bias new?

Fuck no.

But there is one difference. From Broadcasting Magazine, Aug 1964.

A request for public opinion on "prejudicial expressions" in CBS newscasts was voiced July 20 by Rex G. Howell, owner of KREX, Grand Junction, Colo., in a TV editorial. Mr. Howell, whose stations are CBS affiliates, said he had been registering protests with the network "for many months" over newscasts which "constituted opinion-making rather than reporting of factual news." He said: "We protested the snide manner in which Eric Sevareid interviewed Senator Goldwater, and the side comments frequently voiced by Walter Cronkite which seemed to convey the impression of extreme hostility toward the Arizona senator."

"We fervently wish," Mr. Howell said, "that Mr. Schorr and some of his other liberal colleagues would practice greater regard for the basic principles of fairness in journalism." The editorial quoted Mr. Howell's telegram to CBS President Frank Stanton. In it Mr. Howell said: "It is a source of great personal sorrow that the ideological differences between certain network personnel and the Republican nominee for the presidency has led to such unfortunate exchanges as to reflect upon our dedication to the principles of the fairness doctrine and our own sense of journalistic responsibility."

The one real difference: Howell headed a local station. Now no local station would complain. Everyone is on the same side. There are only ponents and pluponents, no opponents.

Another difference, at least in formalistic terms, is that Howell had the LAW on his side. CBS was violating the fairness doctrine and forcing local stations to participate in the violation.

Howell pointedly FOLLOWED the law by finding a local Democrat to give a counter-editorial after his own editorial.

= = = = =

Later: I looked to see if Sevareid vs Goldwater was available on Youtube. The specific interview wasn't there, but the search led to an even more perfect example of pluponents.

CBS recently ran an 'archive' feature from the '64 election, with a clip of Sevareid discussing media bias.

Headline:

Think media bias is a new issue? Think again: Here's a 1964 special hosted by CBS News correspondent Eric Sevareid, who speaks of "an ugly boil of hostility towards the press."

Media bias as defined by the media has NOT changed. As seen by CBS then and now, media bias means "an ugly boil of hostility toward the press" and nothing else. Deplorables are zits.

= = = = =

On a vastly more positive note, here's a 1975 interview of Howell by a Grand Junction oral history project. A fascinating big picture of radio from a thoughtful and objective man who was there at the start. He mentions one 'backwater' that I haven't read about: In the '20s the wire services like UP and AP refused to deal with the upstart radio industry. So a group of broadcasters formed their own coop news service, strictly by CW. When one station had a scoop, or read something important in their local newspaper, they sent the item to the other stations. Most early stations were founded by hams, so Morse was universal and natural. It would also have been semi-secret, not easy for casual listeners to intercept.

= = = = =

Personal: I mentioned Barry a few days ago, now he turns up again. It's odd that I still think of Barry on first-name terms. I supported him in '64, even though I was an ignorant young leftist then. Now that I'm a slightly less ignorant old populist, I still have positive feelings about him, though he would count as a tech-monster Libertarian in modern terms. In '64 he was probably serving as a pluponent provocateur, helping LBJ to steer the reluctant Dems into total war without feeling like warmongers. "We're not pro-war like those horrible Goldwater zits! We were reluctantly forced into total war by Tonkin Gulf."

Why do I still look at Barry in a positive light? Probably the ham radio thing, a SKILL-based guild that runs deeper than ideology.

NOW I SEE: And why have the modern monsters been wiping out SKILLS since 1975? Specifically because SKILL runs deeper than ethnicity or ideology. When people work together, using shared SKILLS on an absorbing project, ideology and race don't matter nearly as much. Now that all SKILLS have been offshored or obliterated, we have nothing but ethnicity and ideology, which are incurably and intentionally divisive. This also applies to schools, which led the way in eliminating all SKILL-based projects and job training. It's not surprising that schools have also led the way in ethnic and ideological division.

Labels: Morsenet of Things, NOT alternate universe, NOW I SEE, Pluponents, skill-estate

  ¶ 9:44 AM

  Speaking of diluted educators.....
Yesterday, just for fun, I cited a comparison of new media battles vs old media battles. One type of media is always mobilizing "science" and academia to squash the other type of media. The 1933 end of the comparison mentioned diluted educators such as EC Buhler, director of Forensics [debate] at KU.

Here's an earlier example of UNDILUTED educators, also at KU. From 1923 Popular Science, p 177 of the PDF.

The Eugenics Building at the Kansas State Fair, where you could have your family tested for Evolutionary Fitness.



Capper was the media king of Kansas, serving as Governor and Senator at various times.

Media and politicians and academics haven't changed a bit in 100 years. They see humans as passive identical inanimate objects, needing to be bred and branded and prodded and culled and slaughtered like cattle.

Labels: Deadthink, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 1:35 PM

  Plus c'est la même merde
Via ZH today:

Newspaper executive Peter Wright has slammed big tech for secretively developing and changing algorithms for news distribution without giving the industry any indication whatsoever of what they are doing. Wright of DMG Media, which is the parent company of The Daily Mail, was testifying before the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee Tuesday.

He accused companies like Google and Facebook of ‘monopoly behaviour’ as they seek to seize ‘all the power’ in online news and advertising.

= = = = =

Via Radio Log in 1933:

Radio broadcasters of the United States are up in arms at what they declare to be an organized move to discredit commercial broadcasting as it exists in this country and to cause it to suffer in comparison with the British Broadcasting System.

Prime movers in this plot, say the broadcasters, are the same newspaper interests that have continually sponsored adverse legislation at Washington and that are continually trying to throw a monkey wrench in the broadcasting show, the alleged reason being that broadcasting is more and more becoming a competitive menace in the advertising field.

Teamed up with the newspaper interests are said to be a faction of professional office-holders in the national capitol with an eye to soft bureaucratic berths, with these two carefully pushing a group of diluted educators into the foreground.

The thing that has aroused the broadcaster's ire is a book compiled by E. C. Buhler, director of Forensics, University of Kansas, entitled "American versus the British System of Radio Control", said by the broadcasters to be part of a plan to undermine broadcasting on a large scale. This alleged piece of propaganda is supposed to go hand in hand with a move to inaugurate school debates throughout the land on the same subject, "American versus British System of Radio Control."

Same shit. One type of media using soft bureaucrats and diluted educators to create a "Robust Debate" aimed at killing the other set of media.

Diluted educators. Not nearly as mysterious as Prueters, and vastly more appropriate.

Labels: NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:18 AM