Odd IRS point-missing
For the record, just in case:

Got a letter from IRS this morning, saying that I paid but didn't file a return.

I went back through bank statements and found that I did pay the same amount they say. The check for $673.15 was cashed Feb 18.

My records also show all the forms filled out in PDFs. I'm getting old and this year is hellish, so I might have forgotten to send the return at all, or forgotten to include the check. Those are plausible options. But I wouldn't send ONLY A CHECK. I always send the forms with the check folded inside.

How did IRS process the check but not the 1040 and other forms wrapped around the check? This makes me wonder if they're trying to set up a "crime".

I'll resend the forms and hope they get processed this time.

Later after reprinting the PDFs and resending: I noticed that I had left off the SSN on one of the schedules. Fixed it this time. Maybe their error indication is all-or-nothing, interpreting one missing element as NO_FORMS?

Labels: Bemusement, TMI

  ¶ 10:40 AM

  Just sort of cute
An ad from Computers and Animation in 1965. Not relevant, just cute.



It nicely combines my latest two graphics projects, Brahe's star castle and IBM in 1957. Note also the animistic tendencies.

The story is clever in deadpan British style. Unfortunately the company didn't last.

The guy talking to the secretary seems to be holding a medieval clipboard. Did such a device exist? Writers and artists have always needed a way to write or draw while standing or traveling. It couldn't include an inkwell, but it could include a patch of dry ink. ... Oh. Now I see. Yes, it existed. It's called a palette.

Labels: coot-proofing, Entertainment, TMI

  ¶ 3:18 PM

  More from the point of inflection
The April 76 issue of Computers and Automation includes a POWERFUL article by Joseph Weizenbaum, the author of ELIZA. He got everything right, and saw the dismal consequences.

Weizenbaum had originally wanted to demonstrate the limits of computers. He wanted to show people that computers were just machines. He was truly shocked to find that ELIZA had the opposite effect....

DOCTOR, as ELIZA playing psychiatrist came to be known, soon became famous around MIT mainly because it was an easy program to demonstrate. Most other programs could not vividly demonstrate the information-processing power of a computer to visitors who did not already have some specialized knowledge, say, of some branch of mathematics. DOCTOR, on the other hand, could be appreciated on some level by anyone. Its power as a demonstration vehicle was further enhanced by the fact that the visitor could actually participate in its operation.

Participation and the use of language were certainly key differences. In the '60s ordinary students punched a pile of cards and submitted them to the Computing Center, which then returned a printout several days later. No connection with the process. Nearly all instruction in computers and programming started with number theory, the most abstract and least useful part of math. Prime numbers are mental masturbation for math freaks.

The shocks I experienced as DOCTOR became widely known and "played" were due principally to three distinct events.

1. A number of practicing psychiatrists seriously believed the DOCTOR program could grow into a nearly completely automatic form of psychotherapy. I had thought it essential, as a prerequisite to the very possibility that one person might help another learn to cope with his emotional problems, that the helper himself participate in the other's experience of those problems and, in large part by way of his own empathic recognition of them, himself come to understand them. What must a psychiatrist who makes such a suggestion think he is doing while treating a patient, that he can view the simplest mechanical parody of a single interviewing technique as having captured anything of the essence of a human encounter?

This point isn't surprising. Freudians knew they weren't doing anything real. Eysenck had disproved the human value of the process, but the practice continued because it was lucrative.

2. I was startled to see how quickly and how deeply people conversing with DOCTOR became emotionally involved with the computer and how unequivocally they anthropomorphized it. Once my secretary, who had watched me work on the program for many months and therefore surely knew it to be merely a computer program, started conversing with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked me to leave the room.

We think computers are private. In 1964 this was more or less true, though ELIZA obviously had a logfile generator. Otherwise the transactions couldn't have been written up in articles. The secretary had been editing those logs, so she knew it wasn't private. The same illusion continues. The vast majority of iPhone users worry about "Russian hackers", and go along with all the "security" needed to block "Russian hackers". The same iPhone users don't notice that Siri is listening all the time. If Siri WASN'T listening all the time, she wouldn't be able to jump in and answer your questions when you say her name.

3. Another widespread, and to me surprising, reaction to the ELIZA program was the spread of a belief that it demonstrated a general solution to the problem of computer understanding of natural language. In my paper, I had tried to say that no general solution to that problem was possible, i.e., that language is understood only in contextual frameworks, that even these can be shared by people to only a limited extent, and that consequently even people are not embodiments of any such general solution. But these conclusions were often ignored.

Deeply correct, and AI still proves it all the time. NSA and Google have been working hard on this problem for 40 years, and it's still not solved.

Here's the strongest and most prophetic part.

...the question of whether or not human thought is entirely computable. That question has, in one form or another, engaged thinkers in all ages. Man has always striven for principles that could organize and give sense and meaning to his existence. But before modern science fathered the technologies that reified and concretized its otherwise abstract systems, the systems of thought that defined man's place in the universe were fundamentally juridicial. They served to define man's obligations to his fellow men and to nature. The Judaic tradition, for example, rests on the idea of a contractual relationship between God and man. This relationship must and does leave room for autonomy for both God and man, for a contract is an agreement willingly entered into by parties who are free not to agree. Man's autonomy and his corresponding responsibility is a central issue of all religious systems.

See the loss of two-way obligations.

The spiritual cosmologies engendered by modern science, on the other hand, are infected with the germ of LOGICAL NECESSITY. They no longer content themselves with explanations of appearances, but claim to say how things actually are and must necessarily be. In short, they convert truth to provability.

Surely, much of what we today regard as good and useful, as well as much of what we would call knowledge and wisdom, we owe to science.

But science may also be seen as an addictive drug.

Not only has our unbounded feeding on science caused us to become dependent on it, but, as happens with many other drugs taken in increasing dosages, science has been gradually converted into a slow-acting poison.

Beginning perhaps with Francis Bacon's misreading of the genuine promise of science, man has been seduced into wishing and working for the establishment of an age of rationality, but with his vision of rationality tragically twisted so as to equate it with logicality. Thus have we very nearly come to the point where almost every genuine human dilemma is seen as a mere paradox, as a merely apparent contradiction that could be untangled by judicious applications of cold logic derived from a higher standpoint.

Even murderous wars have come to be perceived as mere problems to be solved by hordes of professional problemsolvers.

As Hannah Arendt said about recent makers and executors of policy in the Pentagon:

"They were not just intelligent, but prided themselves on being 'rational'. They were eager to find formulas, preferably expressed in a pseudo-mathematical language, that would unify the most disparate phenomena with which reality presented them; that is, they were eager to discover laws by which to explain and predict political and historical facts as though they were as necessary, and thus as reliable, as the physicists once believed natural phenomena to be. An utterly irrational confidence in the calculability of reality became the leitmotif of the decision making."

And now we're back in the territory of Conelrad and CDC. Predictive models control everything, and the psychopaths decide the variables for the predictive models. Science has passed beyond slow-acting poison. It's now a full-fledged HOLOCAUST, obliterating life and soul and universe FAST.

The demons are simply hiding behind the computer. Most people STILL don't understand the mechanical nature of computing. Most STILL believe that computers think rationally. The latest New Superstitionist STILL says computers will achieve true thought with more power and more speed. (Translation: More grants.)

Only programmers know how powerful the programmer is.

In '76 these trends were just starting to show up, and only a few prophets saw them. At that point we could have tamed the trends, could have applied the brakes with some strong negative feedback mechanisms keyed on empathy. But we didn't. Nobody listened.


= = = = =

Irrelevant personal sidenote: I've never humanized a computer, perhaps because as a programmer I know it's just a machine. I do humanize my house to some extent, and fully humanize the air conditioner. This odd choice started from a charming Japanese ad for Hitachi ACs. The word Kura stuck in my head, and I started calling the AC Kura. When Kura fights through an especially hard day, I pat it and praise it. When I pull Kura out of the window in October, I lay it down on a soft towel and cover it with a soft towel, and give it a sendoff to its annual long vacation. Six months of rest and dreams, with no exposure to sun and wind and rain and snow.

Labels: endless hell, TMI

  ¶ 6:18 AM

  Purely personal
I've been trying to figure out why the ballgags are so FEROCIOUSLY TORTUROUS to me. Most people, even among the sane folks who know that the entire monstrous project is nothing but an exercise in demonic evil, don't have the same wild allergy to the ballgags.

It reduces to two separate aspects of my innate nature and history.

1. Prison PTSD. In 1969 I shared a cell with a psychopath for six months. This gave me some useful survival strategies, and it also left me with an instant HARDASS defensive response to any hint of forced confinement or constraint.

2. A peculiar innate dislike of any object on my neck and face. Back in 4th grade I got eyeglasses for myopia, but refused to wear them until required for driving at 16. Neckties are equally anathema. Two of my jobs nominally required neckties, but I managed to get away without the tie by performing loyally and competently. My lifetime total of Days Under Necktie is countable, probably about 20.

I don't mind seatbelts because they constrain the chest and waist. Just once I rode in a VW Rabbit with an automatic motorized NECK BELT. As soon as it grabbed my neck, I screamed. The driver didn't understand.

= = = = =

Females seem to enjoy the ballgags, for two reasons that are the exact opposite of my two reasons for hatred.

1. Karen types were the first to voluntarily self-strangle. Karens view themselves as submissive courtiers seeking the favor of the Alpha Lords. Psychopathic demons like Fauci are the ultimate Alpha Lords. Look at me, Your Highness! I am wearing 100 ballgags at once, hoping to be Pleasing In Your Holy Sight. May I be privileged to bathe in Your Holy Radiance, Lord Fauci?

2. Ordinary sane women are accustomed to putting stuff on their neck and face. Makeup, earrings, piercings, wigs, choker necklaces. No big deal.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, Jail mode, TMI

  ¶ 7:14 AM

  Persuasion gets it again
Persuasion hits another homer.

Constant supervision wasn’t always an American credo: Today’s parents had plenty of time to play and roam on their own when they were kids. But children’s safety has turned from a concern into an obsession within a generation. The abductions of Etan Patz in 1979 and Adam Walsh in 1981 became huge news stories and led to missing kids’ pictures on milk cartons. (The vast majority of the kids were runaways or taken in custodial disputes, a fact never made clear to the public.)

The fact isn't stated explicitly, but it has always been clear if you're paying attention. 99% of Amber Alerts are custody disputes. The other 1% are runaways. The "suspect" is described anonymously like a stranger. (More relabeling.) When we learn more details, the "suspect" always turns out to be the biological mother or father. Sometimes both parents are together, "kidnapping" the child from an official foster.

The problem with a society devoted to zero risk is that kids grow up overprotected and under-socialized. They miss out on the thrilling experience of fending for themselves, crucial in forging confidence. They miss out on learning to assess risk and dealing with minimal danger without constantly deferring to an authority.

A dynamic society requires citizens who appreciate that difficulties and failures are a part of life and that’s OK. Just as kids recover from a bike crash or playground fight, they can bounce back from failure and frustration in their adult lives, too. This is possible only if children grow up with some independence so that they arrive at adulthood with the resilience to handle life on their own.

Amen. No quibbles or additions. Just Amen and Bravo.

= = = = =

Bike crash reminded me of something I hadn't remembered in a while. When I was 11, I had a useless little bicycle, basically a toy without brakes or coaster. I decided to ride down a steep hill on a rutted road behind our house, and ran into the end of a rut. My face went into the gravel and some sharp rocks. I walked back up to the house, covered in blood. Even though I was probably in shock, I knew that I shouldn't walk into the house, so caught my mother's attention through the screen door. She told me to turn on the hose and wash off first. So I did. She then put iodine on the cuts, and that was it. 60 years later, I still have the little scars above and below the right eye. Near miss, but no big deal.

= = = = =

A picture is worth 1000 words! Via GoogleMaps, here's the entrance to the road now.

Labels: Alternate universe, TMI

  ¶ 6:32 AM

  Semantic mixing
Right now I'm listening to a woodpecker working on one nearby tree, and a chainsaw working on another nearby tree. The two sounds are dissimilar in acoustical form, but they're mixing and conflating at a semantic level. My mind knows that both sounds have the same PURPOSE and tries to mix them.

It's sort of like hearing the same text in English and Spanish at the same time.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, TMI

  ¶ 9:42 AM

  Another oddly specific dream
My dream scripter has been active lately after several months of dull dreams. Tonight I was running a political campaign against Demon Inslee, trying to elect someone named Hugh Imhoff.

During the dream, the name seemed suspiciously parallel. Jay Inslee vs Hugh Imhoff. Did the dream scripter create a character for phonetic balance?

After waking I checked dim memory. Imhoff was real but not interesting. He was a newsreader for the local PBS station for many years, then moved sideways into corporate publicity and occasionally ran for office. A common career path around here. His appearance was also parallel to Demon Inslee. They could be cousins.

After googling and finding his twitter: He's been retired for a long time, and his political views are also parallel to Demon Inslee, as you'd automatically expect from a "journalist". So the "election" would be a perfectly normal choice between two identical demons.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 4:17 AM

  Oddly specific dream
I was visiting someone I know in Tasmania and viewing the destruction caused by a typhoon. We were discussing how soil types affected the destruction; I assumed that the soil was clay but the lady corrected me that it was a messy mixed soil.

WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT COME FROM?

I've never been out of North America, I wasn't thinking about Australia or soil at all. I never think about soil types. Not my department.

The OTR playlist was running an episode of 'Ignorant', which also had nothing at all about Australia or typhoons or soil types, so the subject couldn't have 'leaked' in from that source.

The subject of wind was on my mind. Before bed I was grumbling about this spring, which has been relentlessly convective and breezy, with one major windstorm in January and several half-serious storms. I said a disgusted prayer to the Weather Gods: This is getting tiresome. Enough already. Knock it off.

When a dream is so specific and so far afield, it seems to be worth recording.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, TMI

  ¶ 10:29 PM

  Not surprising
Article in the misnamed "Conversation" outlines the development of voice profiling as used by Deepstate.

In one Amazon patent, a device with the Alexa assistant picks up a woman’s speech irregularities that imply a cold through using “an analysis of pitch, pulse, voicing, jittering, and/or harmonicity of a user’s voice, as determined from processing the voice data.” From that conclusion, Alexa asks if the woman wants a recipe for chicken soup. When she says no, it offers to sell her cough drops with one-hour delivery.

None of this is surprising. I was working on this stuff in academia in the '80s. At the time I didn't foresee the evil reality. After I caught the shadows of NSA working in the same areas and sometimes subsidizing the academic side for replication, I shied away from that line of work. It could have beneficial uses, but frankly the beneficial uses haven't materialized. Only the Deepstate uses.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 9:12 AM

  Odd variation on Sucker Filter
Now that the "election" crap has cleared out of spam, the spammers are back to the usual tricks. One recent trick is new and puzzling.

Congratulations Capital One Customer!

Special Offer for Wells Fargo Customer!

Refund for Walgreens Customer!

Open for news, valued State Farm customer!

And today a paper mail containing a supposed refund from Hemmings Auto News.

Why odd? They're all for companies that I don't use. My bank is USBank, not Wells Fargo. My credit card is Citibank, not Capital One. My insurance is Allstate, not Geico or State Farm. And I've been subscribing to Collectible Automobile for 20 years, but never bought an issue of Hemmings.

The spam is never aimed at my actual purchasing patterns. All of it seems to think I'm a customer of a different company in each category.

Must be Sucker Filter. If you're foolish enough that you don't know your own bank and insurance and shopping habits, you're foolish enough to go for Bitcoin or an inheritance from somebody you never knew.

Labels: Sucker Filter, TMI

  ¶ 12:39 PM

  Trade-grade
Speaking of long-term skill memory, here's an item that popped out this morning after sitting dormant and unremembered for 60 years.

In elementary school the teachers saved their own labor and helped the students gain more skills by trading and grading. After a quantifiable quiz in spelling or arithmetic, we traded papers and checked answers while the teacher read them off. The trading method wasn't constant, presumably to avoid partner collusion. Sometimes each column was a recirculating shift register, sometimes each row recirculated, sometimes the columns moved boustrophedon-style, with the NE student carrying his paper over to the SW corner.

This was good empathy exercise, letting us see how other people got answers wrong or right, and giving us practice in clerical work.

Why didn't I use this trick when I was teaching in the '80s? Did I actively decide against it, or simply didn't think of it? I don't remember the reason for that decision.

Labels: coot-proofing, skill-estate, TMI

  ¶ 12:44 PM

  Unfashionable regrets
It's fashionable to say "I regret the things I didn't do, not the things I did."

I'm unfashionable. I mainly (but not entirely) regret stupid things I did. The potentially smart things I failed to do mostly turned out to be stupid in hindsight, or even in direct sight**.

Here's a nice pair of regretting action vs regretting inaction. The pairing is congruent in time and space, involving two 10th grade teachers whose rooms were adjacent.

= = = = =

Mr Dickerson taught history. He was a highly competent teacher. He wanted us to discuss rationally, and he actively and consistently encouraged discussion.

Since 1975, all requests for "discussion" mean I GIVE THE COMMANDS. YOU BEND OVER AND OPEN YOUR ASSHOLE AND TAKE MY COMMANDS.

Not Mr Dickerson. He meant it. So I took him up on it, idiotically correcting his pronunciation of Nazi as Naxi. He took the criticism rationally, without flaring up. But I wasn't really arguing, and I didn't have anything MEANINGFUL to say at that point. I was just being an adolescent dickhead. Like most older men in 1965, Mr Dickerson had actually fought the Naxis, so he was entitled to call them whatever he wanted.

= = = = =

In the next room, Miss Marley "taught" "English". She ruthlessly and rigorously enforced all the false and malicious grammarhoid "rules". And not just in class. When she heard us using "bad grammar" in casual discussions before class, she stormed over and "corrected" us.

These "corrections" always ended with YOU MUST SPEAK EK RIT LY. She carefully enunciated the three distinct syllables of EKRITLY, providing an example of EKRIT SPEECH to enlighten the unwashed masses.

I regret that I didn't stand up to Miss Marley. At that time I knew FAR MORE about real grammar than she did. I had been reading serious linguistics books for many years, and I knew the real grammar of English. I could have assembled a rigorous response to each of the grammarrhoid "rules", using real authorities.

= = = = =

In the first instance I was imitating Miss Marley, "correcting" Mr Dickerson's insignificant pronunciation "error". I should have been resisting Miss Marley, not imitating her.

= = = = =

** Footnote: There isn't a proper word for this. We need a midpoint word between hindsight and foresight, meaning clearly true by the facts available at the time when the judgment was made. Maybe nowsight would do the job?

Labels: coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 11:11 PM

  Storm note
Just for the record, we had a major windstorm here 1/13 morning. This neighborhood wasn't the main target; only a couple full trees down, lots of branches busted. Houses and roofs untouched. Previous windstorms ruined many roofs.

Power out for 3 days, managed with propane as usual. Thinking about getting a natural gas hookup to avoid the hassle.... also, cooking with propane always reminds me of the absolute superiority of gas over electric cooking.

Labels: Heimatkunde, TMI

  ¶ 3:26 PM

  The value of keeping a daily worklog
I always keep a detailed worklog of real courseware projects and fun graphics projects. Good programming habit. A few years ago I started keeping a worklog for life in general, tracking sleep, dumps, moods, health stuff.

This morning I noticed a blister on the right heel that was starting to bleed. Seemed familiar, so I checked last year's life worklog. Yup, the same blister happened ON THE SAME DAY last year.

Last year I had been walking extra, avoiding one bus trip because I was having vestibular trouble that was sometimes tricky on buses.

This year I've been walking extra, avoiding one bus trip to minimize time under murder mask. I've also been adding a separate 2nd walk every day to burn off the annoyance, which I didn't do last year.

Patterns repeat, and there's a "reason" for the pattern each time. In reality the pattern matters more than the "reason".

Last year I reluctantly stopped the extra walking, took the bus both ways, and the blister healed in a few days.

Cold weather is also a factor in the exact date. Skin gets dry and stiff in cold, and shoes shrink a bit.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.... but only if you're able to learn from the experience. A worklog helps the learning.

Labels: constants and constants, coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 10:36 PM

  Raking record
Just for my own purposes, since I've been keeping the record here for many years.

10/24/2020 first roof raking of the winter. Unusual Oct storm, about 7 inches wet and HEAVY.

Last winter was easy, with only two rakings needed, both in January. Total snow for year was average, but it was distributed in smaller storms with space between, so didn't accumulate much and didn't need much raking.

12/26/2020 after a long and welcome gap, 2nd raking. 4" powdery.

12/31/2020 3rd raking, 6" powdery.

2/16/2021 4th raking, 5" powdery.

3/12/2021: Weather Bureau is pretty sure the snow is done, so we'll close out this year's record at 4 rakes. The winter was a full LaNina in terms of precip, but a lot of the precip happened when the temp was warm enough for rain. If the temp had been cold in Dec, this would have been a giant like 2008, in the 90 inch range. Instead it was about average. I'M NOT COMPLAINING.

Thanks, weather gods! You're the only merciful and sane rulers in this horrible year. Some of the mercy was highly specific, and we thank you specifically.

Labels: coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 12:01 AM

  Speaking of atrophy....
Mentioned atrophied senses at the end of previous item.

I've always understood the use it or lose it principle in an intellectual way. I didn't understand it in a direct experimental way until two years ago.

I was having lots of trouble with vestibular crap. Frequent dizzy spells, occasional spins. Being naturally anxious and hypochondriacal, I sought advice and solace in a Facebook group. After a while I realized that these people were medicalized. They were spending their entire life in various clinics and therapy offices, constantly getting "treatments" that never really helped. I didn't want to end up that way.

I decided to try an experiment. Waiting for the bus was an especially difficult time. Walking was easy, but standing in one place without support wasn't easy on the bad days. I had been standing next to the bus bench and holding on tight.

I tried NOT holding. Every time the impulse to put out a hand occurred, I resisted. Quickly the unsteadiness receded. The internal senses, which had been conditioned to laze around, started working again, and they worked properly.

Use it or lose it. Don't let the senses and muscles get lazy, even if lazy seems better. It's not better.

Labels: coot-proofing, Experiential education, TMI

  ¶ 6:39 AM

  Comparing yaks
After spending a week waiting for various permissions, I finally settled into proper testing of my courseware on the Canvas LMS. After two days of trying and failing, I happened to notice some forum discussions.... It turns out others are having the same problem, which seems to have cropped up this semester. Canvas simply isn't handling SCORM grades properly.

I don't know whether I should be semi-satisfied that it's not entirely my bug, or annoyed at spending so much UNPAID time and energy on someone else's bug. I'll pick 'Both'. Canvas is part of a fairly large corporation that has its own PAID programmers. Why aren't they fixing their OWN bugs?

Overall, I can't see why Canvas is becoming the preferred LMS. Compared to Blackboard and Moodle, it's much harder to get into, much harder to use, much less transparent, much less resilient. Canvas rejects several browsers outright.

Blackboard and Moodle are about equal. They behave differently, but both have the same general level of convenience and flexibility. For my taste Blackboard is marginally better because it handles multi-SCO packages.

Labels: TMI

  ¶ 1:47 PM

  What was special?
The yak picture in previous item stirred up an OLD memory of a salient moment, an AHA moment, a memory that hadn't popped up in 60 years.

I think the stirrer was the brick building, which I used in modified form in the Great Smith set. The Great Smith version reminded me of the real building in the memory.



This AHA happened in 1955. The sign was on the side of a laundry in Noble, where my parents lived at the time.

I was 5, and had been reading books for a couple years, so the words weren't special. What was the AHA? The big P serving as the initial letter for all three words. I marveled at the artistic efficiency.

In an older culture the AHA, plus the fact that I was competently reading at 5, would have led to an early and easy career choice. Typographer. Apprentice at 7, master at 21.

Unfortunately the cultural expectations and economic setup didn't lead in that direction, so I wasted 20 years trying to do math instead of letters.

Calibrating: Fortunately, one piece of the older culture was still intact in 1955. I was free to wander all over town and find my own AHAs, in vacant lots and creeks and letters. My mother was glad to have me out of the house, and probably would have been gladder if I just disappeared.

Labels: skill-estate, TMI

  ¶ 9:37 PM

  Old frustration
This is a very old frustration, shared for centuries by authors and artists and teachers, whether professional or semipro.

The best output is ignored, while routine crap is read and bought.

I first noticed it in the '80s when I was teaching at DeVry. My best and most organized lectures got yawns from the students, while my hastily assembled drones after a sleepless drunken night seemed to engage the students fully.

The same frustration occurs now in the "reads" by bots. For a couple weeks the bots were "reading" elsewhere, now they're back. Some of them repeatedly pick up a few old items that were trivial and meaningless, not worth reading once let alone hundreds of times. Some of them carefully "see" only the rants and carefully "avoid" the items I put some thought and passion into.

Latest picture:

They're "reading" my dissident rants, which are emotional and ephemeral and momentary. They're ignoring my creative animations and tutorials and thoughts about Duty. Their selection is perfect, so I doubt that they're simply scanning keywords.

In fairness, I do seem to have two or three human readers who pay attention to the good stuff. YOU ARE APPRECIATED!

Labels: Bemusement, TMI

  ¶ 6:31 AM

  Third Shift Workers Day
The Weather Bureau salutes Third Shift Workers Day, for the folks who work graveyard shift. Hadn't heard of this Day before.

From the linked items I couldn't tell for sure which day is the Official Day. They range from May 7 to May 13. This is fitting, since graveyard shift blurs the boundaries of dates.

I've always been happiest and steadiest on graveyard shift. I worked graveyard at motels in the '70s, then made my own graveyard shift at KU in the '80s, and again when working from home in the last 20 years. On graveyard I'm a willing worker, ready to do what's needed and more. On 8-5 I'm reluctant and unreliable, to put it mildly. Useless and absent to put it precisely.

= = = = =

Speaking of the Weather Bureau, here's a fine piece of prose in today's Forecast Discussion.

The death throes of this formerly stately and persistent upper low...by now smack dab over the forecast area for Thursday night and through Friday...will probably promote an extended period of gradually decreasing showers.

This is art. To an unfocused observer, the persistent showery pattern is just annoying. I would never have called it stately. The word gives me a new perspective on the radar picture.

= = = = =

Here's my belated graphic salute to the graveyard shift.

Labels: coot-proofing, TMI

  ¶ 11:47 PM