Super-random sloppy thought chain
Speaking of smartasses having fun, I'm having fun trying to "retrobuild" an analog computer that could have been used by the astrometeorologists. As with all animations, whether for real courseware or 'courseware without a course', a lot of study is needed along the way. I'm learning the symbols and patterns and geometry of astrology.

One of the small pleasures of reading old library books, whether physically or virtually, is seeing evidence of previous readers. This astrology book was read and notated intensively by one reader. She asked questions and tried to answer them.

Why do I say she? I'm never PC. I know it was she because she made notes in shorthand.



She was easily mixing the astro symbols with the squiggles and curls of shorthand. Humans are miraculous creatures.

Here's where the sloppy thought chain started.

Shorthand reminded me that women in the 20s had special skills from office work. They wrote and read shorthand, typed like an AK-47, and knew the peculiar legalistic boilerplate of business correspondence. Yrs of 14th ult to hand and similar cryptic phrases.

This in turn reminded me that those women used some of the boilerplate as slang. They especially used the legalistic said and same.

This led to an observation.

Same is a reflexive pronoun, and those former flappers used it actively as a reflexive pronoun. Standard English doesn't have a reflexive pronoun. Russian retained the Indo-European se in its full use. Latinate languages retained it but use it ambiguously.

We missed the chance to regain a useful bit of grammatical mechanism.

Footnote: The text visible in the screencaps above is typical of this book. The author classifies all the possible human types by planetary aspect, and all of them are ferociously negative. Only a few types might halfway deserve to live for a while in secure captivity. The exact opposite of the usual newspaper horoscope or fortune-teller who gives out vague and pleasant descriptions that could apply to anyone.

Labels: Language update, se-lu, skill-estate

  ¶ 8:55 AM

  Bye, Bernie
Just another Trump, another faker. Bye, asshole.

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 1:58 AM

  Se-lu 34, Solvent Soviet edition
Pretty good article at RT, which sometimes takes the usual Western viewpoint on economics.

As of August 1, the state debt (at the federal, regional and municipal level) amounted to 16.2 trillion rubles (around $247.3 billion). At the same time liquid assets of federal government, regions and non-budget funds stood at 17.6 trillion (nearly $268.8 billion).

Both of those numbers are small by Western standards. Total government debt of $250 billion? We crossed that line a century ago and never looked back.

More importantly, the liquid assets are greater than the debt.

Russia is SOLVENT by strict accounting standards.

Reviewing the meaning of SOLVENT:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

SOLVENT. Seems like a completely inappropriate word for 'got money'. How did that happen?

The etymology is beautiful.

The original Latin solvere meant 'loosen, untie knots, split apart.'

The chemical meaning of solvent is literal.

The most common meaning is untying the knot of a problem. Latin solve = Greek analyze = determine where to cut the rope. Slightly less literal but still easy.

Solvent as 'got money' was later and more metaphorical. Around 1600 when banks and currencies started to branch away from gold, solvent came to mean able to cut the ropes of debts, able to clean up obligations.

Beautiful. It's not just having bucks, it's the economic form of gumption. It's active. See a debt, untie it and dissolve it before it chokes you.


= = = = = END REPRINT.

When you are able to untie all knots without obeying banks, you can solve your own problems. You can loosen sanctions and blockades by mobilizing your own skills and resources, because Goldman isn't holding you hostage.

Putin is the supreme problem-solver.

He had one initial head start: the Soviet system ran without significant debt and without the usual Western reliance on credit. The Soviet economy was strictly REAL VALUE. He inherited low debt plus a habit of avoiding debt, and he carried on the tradition.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law, se-lu

  ¶ 5:59 AM

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

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

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

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

= = = = =

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

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

= = = = =

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

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

Labels: Carver, Constants and Variables, se-lu

  ¶ 7:12 AM

  Why AMLO is ignored by both "sides"
Mexico is starting construction of a new oil refinery. This is part of AMLO's project to bring all refining in country, so Mexico won't have to depend on USA for refining its crude. Keep the jobs and skills in country, keep the profit in country.

US "right" wingers can't stand it because the refinery is government-owned.

US "left" wingers can't stand it because oil is sin.

FDR would understand exactly what AMLO is doing. And in fact FDR did understand what AMLO is doing. As always, I don't have to ask what FDR would do, because FDR faced all the same problems we have now, and solved them. Since 1946 we have been thoroughly and painstakingly DEsolving all the problems FDR solved. In most cases we have overshot the DEsolving, making the problem massively worse than it was in 1932.

Labels: #desistance, se-lu

  ¶ 4:37 AM

  Aptroboulevard alert
Via ZH:

The Yellow Vests have burned a bank on Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt, along with several other stores serving the aristocracy.

First thought: A beautiful salute to the only REAL bankburner we ever had.

Better thought: There's one crucial difference. FDR didn't actually burn the banks. FDR saw that people were ready to burn the banks along with everything else. He CONTROLLED the banks and the monopolists to STOP the burning.

Best thought: Macron's agents provocateurs are busy. This bank is associated with the Rothschild family, thus completing Macron's goal of Nazifying the protestors.

FDR solved the problem of inequality by INCREASING the comparative power of ordinary people.

Macron and Merkel and Trump and May are making the problem worse by INCREASING the power of Juncker and Soros. Juncker is reproducing the Third Reich, and Soros is the only ACTUAL PEDIGREED ORIGINAL NAZI in the world. Now that the protestors are "officially" defined as "Nazis", the ACTUAL Nazis can resume their genocide without obstacles.

= = = = =

Stupid linguistic sidenote: When contrasting problem-solvers vs problem-make-worsers, the lack of a true antonym for solve is dramatically obvious.

Solve is derived from Indo-european se-lu, self-loosen. You solve a problem by loosening the ropes that bind your mind, or by untangling the component parts of the problem.

Online dictionaries list plenty of supposed antonyms, most of which are completely offbase.

Confuse, pose, question, wonder, bewilder, complicate, aggregate, bamboozle, baste, dumbfound, encode, encrypt, mystify, obscure, perplex, aggravate, tangle, twist...

Tangle and twist are literal antonyms of the original loosen, but they haven't gone through the same long history of metaphor, so they don't feel like proper antonyms.

Aggravate is probably the best of this weak list, but still misses the target.

Labels: se-lu, Sorosia

  ¶ 6:13 AM

  Se-lu 33, non-Dillinger edition
I've been incessantly pointing out, both here and in comment boxes, the obvious fact that RT is NOT pro-Trump. RT is pro-Bernie. RT agrees with MSNBC and CNN on everything except RUSSIAN_MEDDLING.

The leaks from the Integrity Initiative showed that the reality is perfectly understood by the ORGANIZERS and SENDERS of Sorosian propaganda, but their OUTPUT constantly hammers on the RUSSIA=TRUMP equation.

I've been so irritated by this nonsense that I never stopped to ask the broader question.

Why does Russia do this?

In 2015, before Trump and before the RUSSIAN_MEDDLING shit started, I assumed that RT was just marketing its message efficiently. Dillinger's Rule. If you want to recruit activists, go where the activists are. The most experienced activists are on the 'progressive' side, so those are the sales prospects. At that time I also THOUGHT that RT would have to switch its advertising to a more populist appeal:

Modern Russian propaganda seems to have missed the switchover. RT and Sputnik are still aiming at hippies, agreeing with everything MSNBC/Fox/CNN/ABC/CBS/ETC say on all topics except Ukraine. They love Earth Day, hate fracking, love Sharpton, hate cops.

They won't get very far this way. Putin himself understands the switchover correctly. He knows that Russia's maintenance of traditions and re-embrace of the Orthodox faith are the best selling points; but his message doesn't seem to be coming through the existing channels.

Didn't happen. RT didn't switch over to supporting and cultivating traditionalists and populists. The much smaller Russian Faith and Russian Insider websites work this side of the street, but the big broadcasters RT and Sputnik are still talking to people who are incapable of listening.

I don't have the answer, but it's a damn good question.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, se-lu

  ¶ 5:03 PM

  ALL_BOT
Gabbard is starting to pick up a little after a flat start. She's hitting back fairly hard against the genocidal media with its vile destruction of all truth.

Let's ask a broader question: Aside from the infinitely loony RUSSIAN_BOT crap, would Russia prefer a less aggressive America? Fuck yes.

Even broader: Which other countries would ALSO prefer a less murderous America?

EVERY COUNTRY EXCEPT SAUDI AND ISRAEL.

And there are signs that even Saudi is getting tired of the game, starting to hedge its bets with some Russian weapons.

So: If we're going to identify Tulsi as an 'agent' for some country, the most accurate identification is that she is an 'agent' for all the world except Saudi and Israel.

Tulsi is not a RUSSIAN_BOT, she is a WORLD_BOT.

= = = = =

I'm irrelevantly but irresistibly reminded of the old FBI radio show, which was a fake cover story for the incalculably evil real FBI, but had lots of good writing and acting anyway. At the end of EVERY episode, the criminals just happened to be gathered in one place, ready to shoot each other. Right at that moment the FBI dudes always broke in and said "We're agents for the FBI. Here are our credentials."

This would be a nice ending for the USA Imperial Crime Syndicate episode.

"We're agents for the rest of the world. Here are our credentials."

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 2:52 PM

  Se-lu 32, bulletproof edition
The story of Mickey Cohen's bulletproof Caddy doesn't make sense.

When Mickey took over LA, he didn't fully defeat the previous owner Jack Dragna. Jack's soldiers tried constantly to kill Mickey. Cohen built massive defenses for his mansion, and ordered a special bulletproof and weaponized Caddy limo. But he didn't get to ride in the limo. The Highway Patrol licensed the car for ownership but loudly refused to let it drive on the streets. It was delivered on a trailer with a huge police escort, then simply sat unused.

Dumb? Nope.

Se-lu. Loosen the bonds, open the question.

What's the best protection from enemy gangsters? A police escort. Problem: Police won't come when a gangster calls. Solution: Police will come when a gangster violates a standing order.

Cohen effectively informed Dragna that he could mobilize the CHP any time he wanted. So he never had to. He died from alcohol, not gunshots.

Smart.

Labels: defensible spaces, se-lu

  ¶ 2:54 AM

  Se-lu 31, good government edition
The "good government" monsters are playing their usual game. Via RT, some EU agencies are trying to halt Google's use of "private" data to target advertising.

Headline: Impotence, substance abuse, brain tumors? New docs reveal ultra-creepy Google ad tracking

Google and other online ad companies use intimate personal information like political beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, and even diseases and disabilities to target users for advertising, according to new evidence filed by digital rights organizations in Poland, Ireland and the UK. Their complaint takes aim at real-time bidding (RTB), online ad auctions in which highly sensitive information about users gleaned from their browsing history is traded by thousands of third-party companies which use these behavioral profiles to target ads.

Se-lu. Loosen the bonds, step back, ask the deeper question.

Why is this creepy? Yes, Google is a vicious invader and injector of information. But this particular invasion is USEFUL TO ORDINARY PEOPLE. It's like a salesman or doctor with good intuition. Targeted advertising lets you know about products and services that could help with your problems, or help you enjoy your job and avocation more. Why is this creepy?

As always, the "good government" monsters are getting the public worked up about the INNOCENT activies of Deepstate, forcing us to watch the wrong end of the snake.

This is directly parallel to the cultivated outrage at NSA spying on Merkel. Spying on leaders of hostile countries is EXACTLY WHAT SPIES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. Krauts started the two biggest wars in recent history. Watching Kraut leaders is a PRODUCTIVE AND HELPFUL use of espionage budgets. When our outrage is focused on PROPER activities of NSA, we don't have any steam left for the IMPROPER work, which is pretty much EVERYTHING EXCEPT spying on Merkel.

When we are outraged about the GOOD activities, Deepstate can nicely oblige us by slowing down the GOOD activities and moving the budget into BAD shit, which is what it wanted to do in the first place. The "good government" monsters specifically help Deepstate do MORE EVIL.

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 1:03 AM

  The opposite of boycotts
Last month I noted the dispute between Patreon and some dissidents like Jordan Peterson.

Concluded with this counterthought:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

WAIT. HOLD IT. A strongly contrary thought.....

Twitter and Youtube may be demonetizing or banning a few nationalists and heretics, but the BIG and IMPORTANT nationalists are using all social media without any observable limits. AMLO, Salvini, and Bolsonaro have highly active FB and Youtube accounts, carrying lots of important news and views that are perfectly opposed to God-Emperor Soros. So maybe the whole dispute is just a source of talking points.

= = = = = END REPRINT

I don't see any new developments from Peterson et al. The contrary thought still stands. Major WORLD-SCALE populists and nationalists are still unjammed and uncensored, and many smaller ones (including me!) are also unjammed. If the censors wanted to suppress this line of thought, they would hit HARDEST on the biggest and most influential sources of this line of thought. So the suppression of some smaller thinkers is not evidence of total censorship; it's more likely a gutless and mechanistic corporate attempt to stay within the tyrannical rules of EU.

I've been rethinking the whole issue, partly based on this observation and partly on my rejection of "rights" in favor of duties.

For many years I was strict about withholding money from Satan. It's clear that "legal" resistance is totally useless and counterproductive, but monetary resistance sometimes works when it's large enough.

This refusal is inconsistent with the Emersonian and FDRian line of thinking based on duties instead of "rights". Emerson and Marx and Mohammed and FDR all agree on the BASIC POINT of real value economics and Natural Law.

PAY FOR VALUE.

This is a duty under Natural Law. Duty doesn't make exceptions for disagreement with some of the actions or principles of the vendor. If you are using a service you must pay for it.

So I've recently restarted using Patreon to support some artists and thinkers who deserve support; and I've resumed contributions to Archive.org because I use it constantly for OTR. Both Patreon and Archive have said and done Satanic things, but I'm not entitled to break my duty for that reason.

Aside from the abstract question, PAYING FOR VALUE has an extremely concrete and practical result. It's a question of scale. Each dollar makes a real difference to a small artist or dissident. Each dollar is totally inconsequential to the payment agency. Payment strengthens the dissidents. Refusing to pay them because of other actions by the payment agency weakens the dissidents.

The intended targets of our boycotts are huge monopolies that are totally unaffected by our refusal. The pain of our refusal lands on the people we intend to help.

= = = = =

Relevant sidenote: Come to think of it, refusal based on opinions is identical to USA's sanctions. We refuse to trade with Persia because Sheldon Adelson hates Persia. The sanctions harm the innocent people of Persia, and secondarily harm innocent Europeans who freeze to death because Sheldon Adelson hates Persia.

= = = = =

Irrelevant sidenote: Kant's version of the Golden Rule has always made me itchy, but I couldn't scratch the itch. Kant said that we should do what we want everybody to do. The above question of scale scratches the itch. Acting on behalf of everyone only works when everyone is ALREADY DOING what we think they should do. In that case it doesn't matter what we do, because the desired purpose is already achieved. If only a few people are sharing our desired action, our action can harm the people we want to help.

Labels: From rights to duties, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, se-lu

  ¶ 12:37 AM

  Se-lu 30, bubbly Nature edition
Following on this item from yesterday.

Repeating the main part and then returning to my usual EXP/TANH shit:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

In fact, ABSTRACTION is the cause of EVERY SINGLE CRASH in business, government, and ordinary lives.

Abstraction has three Ds:

(1) Debt.

(2) Delusions.

(3) Drugs.

All three are unsustainable departures from real value and real work and real measurements. Sooner or later reality crashes you.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

What do the three D's have in common? EXPONENTIAL curves, or at least attempted exponentials. Debt is obvious. Compound interest IS exp by definition. Delusions and drugs both arise from a false anticipation of constant increase in pleasure or holiness or popularity or status.

We EXPect things to be EXPonential. Reality is TANH. The DELTAS between anticipation and reality grow larger as reality departs from our desires.





Happystar illustrates the process. First our EXPonential EXPectation:





Reality goes tanh. Up at first, then reaches saturation or maturity and holds steady. Our heads are in the clouds of EXPectation and our feet are on the ground of tanh.





Now the crucial point. Our anticipations feel like the constant standard, the point we measure from. Our EXPectations are the baseline, the goal for our error-correcting feedback. We are constantly TRYING to achieve the EXPected condition. Thus our perceived reality is DOWNWARD,





Because reality is increasingly disappointing, we have an increasing desire for SOMETHING that will restore us to standard. This is where the sellers of religion or drugs or politics or hair color come in. You're not misperceiving reality, you're just NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH. You need more booze, more Eucharist, more voting, more makeup.

= = = = =

New thought. Se-lu. Loosen the bonds and ask the inverse question.

Does Nature ever USE exponentials?

Well, life can't do an unending exp, because an unending exp is physically impossible. You can only get an unending exp in math. So the question narrows: Does life create AND POP bubbles intentionally?

Of course. All the time, in an infinite number of ways. Specifically, many types of neurons are pulse oscillators, repeating an exp rise followed by a natural pop. The most common neurons of all, the granule cells in the cerebellum, are pulse code handlers. Most of the action in hearing is done by pulse codes. Toward the output of each system, the pulses are smoothed into analog motions for muscles, or integrated into longer and more complex resonances for memory patterns.



In short, Nature uses all of the PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE combinations of exp and tanh. Nature rejects the only combination we believe in.

Labels: Real World Math, se-lu

  ¶ 2:54 AM

  Se-lu 29, containment edition
RT is interviewing an Expert who is arguing that before the Switchover USA was mainly containing Russia. Since the Switchover Russia is trying to contain USA.

Makes sense.

Looking at it from a different angle:

In 1945 both USA and Russia were working together to contain Germany. The purpose of occupation was to prevent Krauts from reuniting, because united Krauts always try to take over the world.

When our Deepstate was restarted in '46, our political propaganda turned against Russia, but the military reality in Europe remained the same. USA and Russia were still working toward the same goal, if not exactly together. We were still keeping Germany weak.

In 1961 the Berlin Wall changed things.

Conventional wisdom says that the Wall "taught us Russia couldn't be trusted".

SE-LU. Loosen the ropes, open the mind. As seen from the containing-Germany angle, the Wall made the division permanent, allowing us to relax our attention on Krauts and focus totally on exterminating Russia. We started the task immediately and succeeded in 1989. The ascension of Putin in 2000 broke our first attack. Like any psychopathic bully, we paused when we encountered real resistance. Now we're trying again, but it's too late. The rest of the world has figured out that we're Satan. Nobody is voluntarily helping us ruin the universe.

Labels: se-lu, switchover

  ¶ 11:41 AM

  Poll without questions? What's going on?
I've got the phone bell turned on this week, running phone tag with a contractor.

Since the phone bell is only on for about a week each year, I'm not accustomed to dealing with incoming calls. I grab each one, wanting to get the contractor stuff over with so I can turn off again.

About 4:10 a junk call came in, but it didn't start with the standard 5 seconds of silence so I didn't hang up instantly. It was a Chinese-sounding female doing a poll on voter choices. Since she sounded pleasant, I went ahead and responded. After verifying my name and address, she said the standard thing about call being monitored, then said "We have no questions at this time. Thank you for responding."

Huh?

Shortly thereafter this email came in:

Washington Opinion Research is conducting a survey about issues concerning registered voters in your area and would like to invite you to share your opinions.

If you'd like to participate, please click the link below. Again, this is a survey about issues in your area and there will be no attempt to sell you anything or request any personal information. Your opinion does matter!

Link: CLICK HERE

Thank you in advance for helping us with our research efforts.

Many thanks,
Washington Opinion Research
1232 Q Street Suite 100
Sacramento, CA 95811
916-443-4722

Sounds like the same text. I clicked the link and found:

"This survey is closed at this time. Thank you for responding."

Clearly the same thing in two forms, nearly simultaneous.

Google shows the outfit in Sacramento is an actual polling company, not a made-up address. I probably shouldn't have clicked the link, but AVG takes care of such things reliably.

Why would they waste money on the caller and email if they're not asking any questions? If they're just looking for people who WILL respond, this isn't the way to do it. Now I'm suspicious and WON'T respond the next time. If they had asked some real questions, I'd be more willing to do it again. (Basic human nature, understood by salesmen forever. People enjoy answering questions about their own opinions.)

= = = = =

Next day: SE-LU! Loosen yourself to SOLVE the problem!

In fact this is the first HONEST political poll. There are no questions because there are no QUESTIONS. "Both" "parties" agree 10000000000000000000000000000000% on everything AND MORE, but speak in slightly different accents.

Labels: se-lu, Unasked and unanswered

  ¶ 4:56 PM

  Se-lu 28, ductape edition
We hear stories of Apollo astronauts fixing things with ductape. We hear that Americans are supposedly "independent" and "self-sufficient". We hear that Russians and other Current Enemies are mindless obedient slaves.

If this was ever true, it's no longer true.

Modern Americans are mindless termite-like obedience machines.

A perfect fable:

Mission Control instructed cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Sergei Prokopiev to immediately start patching the leak. But the decision reportedly caused some tension aboard the station ... the ISS commander, US astronaut Andrew Feustel, disagreed with the plan.

Feustel reportedly wanted to take 24 hours to consider all the possible repair options, since the leak posed no immediate serious threat to the station and the crew. With the Russian cosmonauts eager to fix the cracks, the ISS commander refused to participate in further repairs until NASA and the Russian Space Agency came to an agreement back on Earth.

The Russians were left alone to deal with the leak, and on Thursday night they patched the cracks by filling them with epoxy-based sealant and applying duct tape – both part of the standard repair kit.

The Russians used ductape and SOLVED THE PROBLEM. The American refused to SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Americans are no longer interested in SOLVING PROBLEMS. We only want to avoid punishment by bureaucrats and lawyers. This is understandable, given Deepstate's addiction to instant extermination of heretics.

BUT: This isn't really part of the post-1989 Switchover. It's not really a change of attitude. Russians have ALWAYS been good improvisers and Americans have ALWAYS waited for the highly organized expensive non-solution. Even within the specific context of space stations, this difference is permanent.

Orlov included this difference in his 2008 analysis of collapsing empires. He concluded that American collapse will be much more painful BECAUSE Americans have the Kraut habit of waiting for government commands, while Russians are accustomed to ductaping their problems, often with great ingenuity.

Labels: Patient things, se-lu

  ¶ 12:20 AM

  Se-lu 27, cafeteria sunporch edition
For no apparent reason (maybe just long sleep and cool weather) I was reminded of the complex architecture of Manhattan Junior High. I discussed it here a long time ago.

Today another odd aspect of the building zapped into the remains of my senile brain.

In the West wing, which had originally been the HS, the cafeteria and library were adjacent. The cafeteria was a big open room with a separate exit to the outside. The library was elevated above the regular floor by three steps, which meant that you had to open the door from the hall and climb a little inset stairway to the rather elegant wooden floor of the library. The wall between the library and cafeteria was not solid; it was mostly openable casement windows, again fairly elegant like a 1920s sunporch.

At the time I was desperately trying to survive gym class and bullying, so I didn't stop to wonder about architectural oddities. Now I have the leisure to think about it.

Libraries have a heavier floor load than classrooms, so an elevated and nicely carpentered floor should be exactly wrong. Libraries need quiet, so the openable sunporch wall into the noisy and smelly cafeteria is also exactly wrong.

Se-lu!

The cafeteria was originally the auditorium for the high school, and the library was originally the stage. The height and dimensions are just right. The sunporch windows must have been a sort of folding wall to allow separation when needed.

When the East and West wings were joined, the middle part included a much larger and more formal auditorium and gym, so the small version was no longer needed.

= = = = =

Note after looking at the diagram in earlier entry: The external cafeteria shown on the diagram was built in '62, between my 8th and 9th grade years. The internal cafeteria described above was then turned into a study hall, which probably made the library quieter. All of this was basically pointless because students rarely got a chance to USE the library. You had to acquire a special pass from the teacher, which almost never happened.

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 4:59 PM

  Se-lu 26, pff-qff edition
A tech oddity.

As I'm running through debug phase on courseware, I'm finding and fixing lots of little text errors as expected. Missing periods, inconsistent bolds, repeated words.

Only one non-textual problem remained, which seemed stubbornly unsolvable until I LOOSENED MY MIND.

The problem was narrow and highly specific. One animation, out of a couple hundred, refused to show up in one specific situation. This animation ran properly in all the usual browsers when the module was 'barefoot'. But when the module was running inside ScormCloud displayed through Firefox, the images didn't show. IE and Chrome behaved properly in ScormCloud.

I compared the animation with others. By linear thinking it seemed to be extreme in two ways: (1) It has more images than most of the others (2) its timestep is longer than most of the others. But neither of those variables was at the end of the line; a few other animations were longer and slower, and worked properly. I tried cutting some of the frames, and tried shortening the timestep. Nothing worked.

Could the filenames be a problem? ScormCloud is highly case-sensitive. All filenames must be purely LC. But that wasn't the problem here.

The filenames were aff-eff01.jpg ... aff-eff30.jpg, because the animation is about afferent vs efferent nerves.

Too long? Other animations have much longer names. Hyphen? Most of the animations have hyphens.

Well, is there something peculiar about the name itself? Nah. Can't be.

SE-LU.

When you reach "can't be", you have to LOOSEN YOURSELF and assume that it can be.

Tried changing the names from aff-eff*.jpg to pff-qff*.jpg.

BINGO! It works!

Because pff-qff is meaningless and looks vaguely dirty, I changed to a more meaningful word. Still good.

Why does Firefox refuse to display an image named aff-eff01.jpg, when running in ScormCloud?

Is aff-eff a reserved test word of some kind, left over from FF's development? The FFs in the name are suggestive.

= = = = =

Another accidental realization that may be more useful: These modules have been through a year of development, and the text parts have been read repeatedly while I was mainly working on the animations.

The text normally appears on one 'page' while the animation appears on the facing 'page', in blocks about the same size as this blog column. During this final phase, for reasons too obscure to explain, I've had to do the proofreading on the raw HTML. In the HTML as viewed in a programmer's editor, each text page is one LONG line. So the proofreading is more like a ticker-tape than a page.



Scanning is purely left-to-right, with no downward movement and no switchbacks of the eyes. This ticker-tape mode is a VASTLY more effective way of detecting small errors like repeated words and missing periods. The errors weren't seen in dozens of page-style reads, but they stand out instantly in ticker-tape view.

The problem with page mode isn't entirely surprising; proofreaders have known about this for a long time. But the ticker-tape solution is new.

On the next project I'll do all the proofing in ticker-tape mode from the start!

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 2:43 AM

  Dreams getting silly
Dream in this afternoon's nap.


I was re-evaluating the theme song of the Monkees, which goes like this:

Hey hey we're the Monkees,
We're comin to your town,
We love foolin and failin,
Or just messin around.

Hmm, I pondered. This would indeed be an ideal theme song for Experimentalists in our War of Rebellion against the Theorists.


Well, that's not how the song goes. I looked it up. We may be comin to your town is the last line, but the other stuff isn't there at all. In fact the song's message is that the Monkees are hard-working Type A workaholic entertainers who never fail and have no time for messin around.

Still, the Experimentalists could use a theme song. Not this one.

Literary sidenote: We may be comin to your town is a peculiarly legalistic line for a rock song. Presages the audio fine print of modern infomercials. None of the statements or advice given in the foregoing textual material should be considered as statements or advice. These lyrics may not be suitable for everyone. Consult your percussionist before listening.

Labels: Carver, se-lu

  ¶ 2:18 PM

  Se-lu 25, soulless automaton edition
One of Einstein's soulless herd-like automaton Orientals shows us his herd-like soulless automaton nature.



Problem: Got a motorcycle. Need to deliver a big rack thing. You're a herd-like automaton. What do you do? Obviously you surrender to the herd and automatonically sit down on the ground in great stench and filth, doing nothing. Einstein said it, so it must be right.

= = = = =

In reality, you tie a side-trailer onto the motorcycle, then tie the rack thing onto the side-trailer, then tie on some shopping bags for overwidth warning, then put a couple of helmets on the side-trailer to satisfy legalities, then start up the bike and deliver the big rack thing. Problem solved, job done.

It couldn't happen in Einstein's Krautland and it couldn't happen in modern America, because Krautmericans are ACTUALLY herd-like automatons blindly obeying all rules and regulations. We are physically incapable of LOOSENING our souls.

(Incidentally, all of the abovementioned tying took about three minutes. This dude clearly has plenty of experience in improvised delivery.)

Labels: se-lu

  ¶ 2:21 AM

  Se-lu 24, tweaker edition
I'm always jabbering about how CIVILIZATION has channels for each non-criminal talent and skill, and provides a sense of USEFULNESS for useful skills. We no longer do it. We honor and pay for crime and murder and hyperlunatic delusions leading to genocide.

Here's a beautiful example of lost skills. This youtuber films the tweakers who inhabit his neighborhood and turns the clips into entertainment.

This clip has a nicely appropriate sound track, but if you LOOSEN YOUR TEMPLATE and decide to stop being entertained, you see something entirely different.



'Norma' is a natural organizer. She would be a good housewife or housekeeper or stock clerk. Even while organizing street litter with no purpose, every move is careful and constructive and efficient. She tries to make each item clean and neat and useful, and leaves the sidewalk clean.

CIVILIZATION would find a way to develop and pay and respect her talents. We no longer have CIVILIZATION, so her talent is only serving to entertain snotty dickheads like me.

= = = = =

Note for clarity: I'm NOT criticizing or blaming the clipmaker. When you've got entertainment like this available, you might as well use it. I'm criticizing the uncivilized setup that rejects and ruins the GOD-GIVEN gifts of unfashionable people.

Labels: se-lu, skill-estate

  ¶ 8:04 AM