Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Klein bottle 3
A more specific instance of the peculiar blindness of our elites, their total lack of empathy, which fortunately cancels out their attempts at propaganda.
Economoids and Tech Tyrants constantly tell us that the period from 1939 to 1974, the time when ordinary Americans had a chance to live a normal life, was a bizarre exception to the norm. They tell us that the current Gilded Age 2.0 is the norm.
Stop and think. Ordinary Americans are suffering. We know now that our suffering arises from the system that makes Economoids and Tech Tyrants supersuperwealthy and supersuperpowerful. E and T tell us that the current situation is the best part of capitalism, and tell us that capitalism is the best of all possible systems.
Wrong twice.
The current system is pure predation, pure genocide. E and T are intentionally starving us to build their own private Utopia.
If this is the norm of capitalism, as E and T insist, then capitalism is the worst of all possible systems FOR US. Obviously it's the best FOR THEM.
Not effective propaganda, to put it mildly.
Labels: Emersonian justice
¶ 3:59 AM
Coulda hada Gosbank
Oddly hopeful dream this morning. Sort of followed Dmitri Orlov, sort of paralleled Russia's collapse and rebuild. It was in the not-too-distant future, after our collapse and rebuild. We were driving a car produced by local factories that were able to function because the federal regulatory structure and Free Trade and the stock market no longer existed. The car was small and simple, returning to the simple side of the '50s in some ways. Resembled the original Rambler or Crosley.
There's no reason why small or mid-size factories can't build cars or computers or anything. We did it before, we could do it again, if the pressures of globalism were pulled out. Globalism concentrates all activity in one type of work and one city. Graybill's Law.
We could do it again, after the federal monster collapses. It just takes a determination to equalize usefulness among people and among cities. Yeah, from each according to his abilities. American "socialists" like Freestuff Sanders always focus on the second part of the sentence, but the first half is the real core and purpose of socialism. Putting it another way, socialism works where it emphasizes the ability side of the equation, fails where it emphasizes the need side.
The Soviet system (after Stalin died!) accomplished it through central planning by Gosbank and Stroybank. Capital was allocated to keep local industries and local farms running, to create relatively appropriate jobs for all types of people. Each business was expected to operate at a profit, to generate surplus value. The state depended on a percentage of this profit for its tax, so it was motivated by profit. Needless to say, there was no stock market, no derivatives, no HFT, no LBO, no CEO bonuses for killing entire companies. CEOs were rewarded for maximizing jobs.
We had the kernel of Gosbank in the TVA and BPA. Both were expected to operate at a profit (and still do!) and both were expected to allocate their power to create industries and farms. Their Gosbankiness was destroyed by EPA Terrorist Army, but they still exist.
We could do it again. Will we? I doubt it.
= = = = =
Tech sidenote: The dream car was simple and small, but not crude. The interior looked and felt sort of like a Simca Aronde, with a crisp and precise column shift. If you're aiming for max simplicity you don't want a column shift. More parts and labor to build, harder to maintain, less reliable. But this local factory wasn't going for max simple, it was focusing on max SKILL. The column shift was a point of pride for the workers, who had perfected a normally faulty mechanism. HUMAN CAPITAL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CAPITAL.
Footnote on 'from each': The second part of the sentence as usually quoted is flat wrong. Here's the relevant passage from the 1977 Soviet Constitution:
There's no reason why small or mid-size factories can't build cars or computers or anything. We did it before, we could do it again, if the pressures of globalism were pulled out. Globalism concentrates all activity in one type of work and one city. Graybill's Law.
We could do it again, after the federal monster collapses. It just takes a determination to equalize usefulness among people and among cities. Yeah, from each according to his abilities. American "socialists" like Freestuff Sanders always focus on the second part of the sentence, but the first half is the real core and purpose of socialism. Putting it another way, socialism works where it emphasizes the ability side of the equation, fails where it emphasizes the need side.
The Soviet system (after Stalin died!) accomplished it through central planning by Gosbank and Stroybank. Capital was allocated to keep local industries and local farms running, to create relatively appropriate jobs for all types of people. Each business was expected to operate at a profit, to generate surplus value. The state depended on a percentage of this profit for its tax, so it was motivated by profit. Needless to say, there was no stock market, no derivatives, no HFT, no LBO, no CEO bonuses for killing entire companies. CEOs were rewarded for maximizing jobs.
We had the kernel of Gosbank in the TVA and BPA. Both were expected to operate at a profit (and still do!) and both were expected to allocate their power to create industries and farms. Their Gosbankiness was destroyed by EPA Terrorist Army, but they still exist.
We could do it again. Will we? I doubt it.
= = = = =
Tech sidenote: The dream car was simple and small, but not crude. The interior looked and felt sort of like a Simca Aronde, with a crisp and precise column shift. If you're aiming for max simplicity you don't want a column shift. More parts and labor to build, harder to maintain, less reliable. But this local factory wasn't going for max simple, it was focusing on max SKILL. The column shift was a point of pride for the workers, who had perfected a normally faulty mechanism. HUMAN CAPITAL IS THE MOST IMPORTANT CAPITAL.
Footnote on 'from each': The second part of the sentence as usually quoted is flat wrong. Here's the relevant passage from the 1977 Soviet Constitution:
The state exercises control over the measure of labour and of consumption in accordance with the principle of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work". It fixes the rate of taxation on taxable income. Socially useful work and its results determine a person's status in society. By combining material and moral incentives and encouraging innovation and a creative attitude to work, the state helps transform labour into the prime vital need of every Soviet citizen.
Labels: 20th century Dark Age, skill-estate, switchover
¶ 2:57 AM
Tuesday, June 14, 2016
Massacre of assumptions
I started to wonder about the Orlando thing when the media were unusually low-key. Normally on an event like this they run feral with WE ARE ALL MUSLIM! WE ARE ALL GAY! MUST PROTECT MUSLIMS FROM HATEBACKLASH BY HATECHRISTIANS! MUST PROTECT GAYS FROM HATEHOMOPHOBIA BY HATECHRISTIANS! MUST KILL CHRISTIANS! KILL KKK! KILL ODDBALLS! KILL WHITEY! BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD! POGROM! POGROM! POGROM!
This time they skipped most of that, though local TV tried to get into the usual mood without success. They returned to normal programming after one day, with only occasional coverage of the event. This told me that the media knew something about the event that they couldn't properly use for their normal bloodthirsty tyranny.
And then the extra info leaked out.
This Orlando dude not only shot a bunch of innocent people, he shot a whole bunch of assumptions. Most assumptions, including mine, were wrong in this case, though some of the comments, including mine, are valid for other situations.
He wasn't a "homophobe". He was a homo. He didn't pick the bar as a "symbol of gayness", he picked the bar because he was there every night for many years. It was his regular nightspot.
He wasn't a loner, he was highly social.
FBI didn't fail to catch the symptoms of terrorism. They were correct in dismissing his vague delusions. He wasn't ISIS, he just liked to toss around threatening words.
At this point we still don't know what snapped; it might have been a rejection by one of his homosexual lovers, or it might just be a plain old snap. Above (or below) all, he was a bad drunk. Nothing more.
The only valid political or cultural assumption is one that nobody has said yet. Oddly (or not oddly) it's a conclusion that any good Muslim (or Mormon or Baptist) could have said at any time for any reason.
Alcohol is evil.
The only valid advice is the NRA advice, which applies to any shooting regardless of motive. If someone had been armed with a gun or other effective weapon, and ready to use it, the slaughter could have been stopped.
= = = = =
Next day: Well, the mediasatans only damped down their enthusiasm for one day. Now they've roared back into action, setting up pogroms from several different angles. DeepState Hillary is explicitly saying EXTERMINATE ALL HERETICS! Still, the one-day slowdown was enough to provide the important clue.
¶ 3:35 PM
Define 'convective'.
Convective.
The experience matches the picture. 20 seconds of heavy rain, then one wind gust, then nothing for a few minutes. 20 seconds, then one, then nothing.
¶ 1:08 PM
Convective.
The experience matches the picture. 20 seconds of heavy rain, then one wind gust, then nothing for a few minutes. 20 seconds, then one, then nothing.
¶ 1:08 PM
Did Nature get there first?
Thinking about the painted ckt as an active tattoo....
Did Nature get there first?
First thing that occurs to me is the licking habits of dogs and other mammals. When a mama dog licks her baby, or a dog licks an injury on another animal, is the saliva laying down a conductor to aid growth or healing? We know from electrotherapy that currents can help healing.
Partial and unsatisfying answer. There's a firm connection between saliva conductivity and ovulation. It's well known and forms part of a natural family planning method called 'CUE'. This article seems to answer the question about conductivity changes after birth, but the full text is behind a paywall.
How about actual tattoos? Black ink would be conductive, I'd think. Lamp black. Other colors, maybe not. Does a broken bone heal faster in a tattooed arm?
How about masseurs? Have they found that using a high-carbon or high-conductivity oil works better? Nothing at all from the web. I remembered that I have a sample of 'aromatherapy oil' which may not be the same as massage oil, though it certainly smells wonderful.
Tried a quick semi-scientific experiment. Brushed a strip of this oil onto a piece of paper, (dark strip in center) then licked a similar strip on the right and used a sponge to put plain water on a similar strip to the left. Checking with ohmmeter (pointy probes, about an inch apart) showed about 6K resistance for saliva, 40K for the plain water, and no conductivity at all for the oil. I tried over and over, with probes nearly touching, pushing hard into the surface. Open circuit all the way. If this is the same sort of oil masseurs use, I think they're missing a bet. Saliva is 4 times more conductive than water. Nature does things for a reason.
If a masseur is reading this, try infusing some graphite powder or wood ash (close to pure carbon) into your oil and see what happens.
Partial and unsatisfying answer. There's a firm connection between saliva conductivity and ovulation. It's well known and forms part of a natural family planning method called 'CUE'. This article seems to answer the question about conductivity changes after birth, but the full text is behind a paywall.
How about actual tattoos? Black ink would be conductive, I'd think. Lamp black. Other colors, maybe not. Does a broken bone heal faster in a tattooed arm?
How about masseurs? Have they found that using a high-carbon or high-conductivity oil works better? Nothing at all from the web. I remembered that I have a sample of 'aromatherapy oil' which may not be the same as massage oil, though it certainly smells wonderful.
Tried a quick semi-scientific experiment. Brushed a strip of this oil onto a piece of paper, (dark strip in center) then licked a similar strip on the right and used a sponge to put plain water on a similar strip to the left. Checking with ohmmeter (pointy probes, about an inch apart) showed about 6K resistance for saliva, 40K for the plain water, and no conductivity at all for the oil. I tried over and over, with probes nearly touching, pushing hard into the surface. Open circuit all the way. If this is the same sort of oil masseurs use, I think they're missing a bet. Saliva is 4 times more conductive than water. Nature does things for a reason.
If a masseur is reading this, try infusing some graphite powder or wood ash (close to pure carbon) into your oil and see what happens.Labels: Asked and sort of answered, Grand Blueprint
¶ 9:07 AM
1948 IC
We treat integrated circuits as a silicon-era development, and consider Intel 1958 to be the point of invention. Simply not true. The idea is MUCH older.
Looking for new ways to screw around with submini tubes, I bumped into this 1948 publication by National Bureau of Standards, which served for a long time as a national clearing house for inventions. Auditing and examining new developments, giving a boost to those that seemed likely to help national purposes. Gosbank for creativity.
The booklet is a survey of the new technologies of printed circuits and integrated circuits, which were just starting to make inroads in military uses and hearing aids. Manufacturers and experimenters were trying several methods, directly parallel to the traditional methods of art and printing.
Two of those methods have stood the test of time. Sputtering/electroplating mainly for silicon ICs, photoresist etching mainly for PC boards.
The first method in the book (painting) didn't go commercial and seems to have been lost. I hadn't heard of it before. It deserves another look.
= = = = =
Placing integration in its proper historical perspective:
Here's the simplest single tube, a type 81 half-wave rectifier, developed around 1920. Just one active element in the bottle. Hot filament emits electrons, plate receives them. Current flow in one direction only. Checkvalve.
= = = = =
Around 1930, as radios got more complicated and crowded, tubemakers found ways to fit two or three active devices in one bottle. This type 53 contains two triode amplifier elements. This would likely have served as a class B push-pull amplifier stage. Because the two triodes were born together and mated for life, they are more likely to remain balanced and symmetrical than triodes in separate bottles. When each triode takes its half of the wave, each will handle it the same way. They heat up together, cool down together, and age together.
= = = = =
Toward the end of the tube era in the '60s, tube integration went wild. This 'Compactron' tube has two triodes and two diodes jammed into one fat bottle. Some Compactrons also included passive devices like resistors and capacitors, forming major sections of circuitry inside the bottle. Same advantages: save space, maintain original specs, age in unison.
= = = = =
Getting closer to the 1958 IC: These modules made by Centralab were mentioned in the NBS booklet. They were common in hi-fis and TVs around 1960. No tube elements, just a network of resistors, capacitors and inductors printed and packaged together. These were especially useful in the high-frequency front end of a TV. At VHF frequencies every wire has a meaningful inductance and capacitance, so dimensions and shapes of wiring are critical. If you wire up separate components by hand, there's no way to standardize the dimensions and shapes; one little bump and the wire assumes a different curve with a different frequency response. Centralab modules kept the critical pieces standardized and immovable.
= = = = =
Painting is the forgotten method. Semi-quoting from the booklet:
Semiquoting again:
= = = = =
Around 1930, as radios got more complicated and crowded, tubemakers found ways to fit two or three active devices in one bottle. This type 53 contains two triode amplifier elements. This would likely have served as a class B push-pull amplifier stage. Because the two triodes were born together and mated for life, they are more likely to remain balanced and symmetrical than triodes in separate bottles. When each triode takes its half of the wave, each will handle it the same way. They heat up together, cool down together, and age together.
= = = = =
Toward the end of the tube era in the '60s, tube integration went wild. This 'Compactron' tube has two triodes and two diodes jammed into one fat bottle. Some Compactrons also included passive devices like resistors and capacitors, forming major sections of circuitry inside the bottle. Same advantages: save space, maintain original specs, age in unison.
= = = = =
Getting closer to the 1958 IC: These modules made by Centralab were mentioned in the NBS booklet. They were common in hi-fis and TVs around 1960. No tube elements, just a network of resistors, capacitors and inductors printed and packaged together. These were especially useful in the high-frequency front end of a TV. At VHF frequencies every wire has a meaningful inductance and capacitance, so dimensions and shapes of wiring are critical. If you wire up separate components by hand, there's no way to standardize the dimensions and shapes; one little bump and the wire assumes a different curve with a different frequency response. Centralab modules kept the critical pieces standardized and immovable.
= = = = =
Painting is the forgotten method. Semi-quoting from the booklet:
It is possible to purchase paints for conductors ready-mixed and applicable to any solid surface. NBS found that the preparation of conductor paints is not especially difficult though careful attention to quantity and quality is necessary if good adhesion to the base plate is desired.... There is no single paint formula which can be used to print resistors from one ohm to several hundred megohms. It is necessary to use several mixtures and vary the dimensions of the painted resistor. ... Capacitors can be incorporated directly in the base plate by a vitreous dielectric process.In other words, you could pretty much draw a schematic, with the C plates very close together, and let the glass base plate be the dielectric. = = = = = This picture shows some printed and some painted ckts:
Semiquoting again:
Five types of subminiature 132 mc radio transmitters using printed circuit techniques. All types are grid modulated and require only connection to a microphone and battery to operate. The oscillator ckts of the two units at the left are printed on the outer surface of a thin steatite cylinder housing the submini tube. The ckt of the center unit is PAINTED ON THE GLASS ENVELOPE of a 6K4 submini triode. Next is also painted on the glass envelope of the tube. [This one doesn't even look like a tube, let alone a ckt. Maybe the original picture was clearer?] On right, the same ckt painted on a flat steatite plate.Painted on the tube itself! Like an active tattoo! Intriguing. Incidentally, steatite is a fancy name for soapstone. It's generally ground up, formed into ceramics and baked, but this booklet doesn't say if the steatite is natural or ceramic'd. = = = = = Later: More detail on those NBS experiments, including schematics, in this 1947 issue of Radio-Craft.
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 6:06 AM
Again
Said it before, saying it again.
Status and popularity are natural. Can't avoid it. If you're naturally unlikable, nothing will make you likable.
FUNCTIONAL CIVILIZATIONS find ways to flatten the gradient of unequal popularity, just as they find ways to flatten economic inequality. Functional civilizations make places for unlikable people (eg monasteries) just as they make places for low-skilled workers (eg factories.)
Our non-functioning civilization, with zero negative feedback and infinite positive feedback, turns the gradients of inequality into unscalable cliffs. In the world of Facebook, literal LIKES are the literal CURRENCY of self-worth. Oddballs are the only group we're permitted to hate. All hate channels toward the already unlikable.
Sharper and sharper and sharper, until the unlikable ones decide there's nothing to lose. Tried everything, nothing works. Usual result is suicide, sometimes homicide. Sometimes revolution.
And that's where we are.
Fucked.
= = = = =
Do the elites want revolution? Of course. That's why they're working so hard to develop it, and that's ALSO why they're working hard to develop robot servants and space travel. Let the Negative Externalities wipe each other out, escape to bunkers or Mars. And that's ALSO why they push rewilding. Bunkers and Mars will get tiresome. After all the NegEx cease respirating, The Planet [pbuh] will be too smelly for the hypersensitive olfactory apparatus of the Hypermensans. What to do? No need to waste robots on this task. That would be economically inefficient, might cut a few picopicobeeps off the acceleration of the share value of AAPL and ABCD. Unacceptable, intolerable, all options on the table. Efficient final solution: Prestaged and prepositioned raptors, ready to reduce the NegEx to clean bones. No cost at all.
Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 4:18 AM
Monday, June 13, 2016
Just enforcing the deal
The feud between Trump and various media outlets is mainly about 'access'. Because they have consistently lied about him, he decided to stop giving their reporters free passes to press conferences.
What are they complaining about? He's simply enforcing the terms of THEIR OWN business model.
Every contract has two sides.
DeepState media normally kiss the ass of preferred politicians and bureaucrats in order to get access. That's the deal. Politician gives tips, media give nice coverage.
Trump started out giving lots of access to the DeepState media. They broke the contract by giving him libelous slanderous vicious bigoted vile filthy toxin in exchange for the access.
So Trump is simply enforcing the contract. No proper coverage, no access.
And needless to say, the DeepState media is responding by committing even more of the crime they already committed.
= = = = =
Grammar sidenote: I wish I could settle on singular or plural for media. Properly it should be a 'collective' like data, thus singular. But sometimes the usage feels like it needs to be plural. The distinction seems to be people vs institutions. When I'm talking about journalist-demons as individuals, media are. When I'm talking about the networks and newspapers, media is.
¶ 5:57 PM
Odd low-down windstorm
The measurements from the Weather Bureau (taken at a height of 30 feet) show something like 15G30, which normally doesn't cause any damage. And the upper parts of pine trees agree with that range. The trees are doing the typical sedate 30 dance, not the wild 40 dance or the 50 crashdown.
But the wind sounds at ground level are MUCH stronger than the above-ground readings would imply. Lots of howling and rattling windows and doors, and bushes are thrashing more like 40.
A Spokane-News reader reported a fallen tree; looks like a fairly low dense tree, which also agrees with the pattern.
¶ 2:52 PM
A leak that doesn't change anything
Since I'm comparing leakers, might as well pointlessly comment on Assange. His latest output is peculiar, showing an odd lack of basic smarts.
(1) He supports Brexit reluctantly, which is out of phase for a standard-brand commie. Normally an Assange type would always go for more UN, more Europa.
His reasoning is backwards and highly personal:
There is something I’ve experienced personally which is seeing this Government, the Cameron Government, repeatedly use the EU as political cover for its own decision-making. It launders things to the EU and then claims that it can’t do anything about it. For example, the EAW, the European Arrest Warrant.In other words, he thinks Britain should get out of EU to protect EU from being abused by Cameron. This is just weird. (2) He's planning to publish more leaks on Hillary. In this case he seems to be more realistic, but still oddly out of phase:
Assange said it was highly unlikely that the US attorney general, Loretta Lynch, would indict Clinton. “She’s not going to indict Hillary Clinton, that’s not possible. It’s not going to happen. But the FBI can push for concessions from a Clinton government,” he said.He's correct that it ain't gonna happen. The Deep State prefers to have two "choices" to guarantee a spare if one goes rogue. This year the Repoofs mysteriously went rogue and failed to approve DeepState Jeb, leaving dubious maybe-not-DeepState Trump as one "choice". We know that the non-DeepState "choice" will lose, but the missing spare means Hillary is especially valuable now. The Deep State would never indict her. Assange has that part right. But he's delusional if he thinks FBI would use the indictments for leverage. Concessions???? FBI already knows what happens when it gets too close to a Clinton. Tried that in '93, got canned FAST. Won't do it again. ¶ 1:38 PM
Klein bottle 2
Further to Klein Bottle / inside / outside.
The really remarkable and genuinely new aspect of today's imperial elites is their absolute lack of empathy.
Just a little reminder there.
Previous tyrants had some sense of marketing, a purely cynical understanding of the masses. They persuaded the masses to walk into the slaughterhouse willingly and happily.
Today's tyrants either don't give a fuck or have NO IDEA AT ALL that their demonic spewing is turning the masses against them. It's equally apparent in #neverTrump and the anti-Brexit EU forces.
The tyrants keep warning us that HORRIBLE EVENTS will happen, and they describe the HORRIBLE EVENTS in gory detail. Trouble is, the HORRIBLE EVENTS sound WONDERFUL to the masses, because the EVENTS are only HORRIBLE for the elites.
It's way beyond old-fashioned Let Them Eat Cake. It's more like
DON'T VOTE FOR TRUMP/BREXIT! IF YOU CHOOSE TRUMP/BREXIT, I WON'T BE ABLE TO SLAUGHTER YOU! THIS IS A HORRIFYING TERRIFYING TROLL BUFFOON XENOPHOBE TRAGIC FATE! IF YOU CHOOSE TRUMP/BREXIT, I WILL NOT GET THE THRILL OF RIPPING YOUR USELESS LITTLE BODY TO SHREDS AND SUCKING YOUR BLOOD AND JACKING OFF! DON'T YOU SEE WHAT A HORRIFYING TRAGEDY THIS WILL BE?
Why yes, in fact I do see how horrible it is. For you, not for us. And it warms my useless little heart to think of it.
¶ 8:43 AM
Just a little reminder there.
Previous tyrants had some sense of marketing, a purely cynical understanding of the masses. They persuaded the masses to walk into the slaughterhouse willingly and happily.
Today's tyrants either don't give a fuck or have NO IDEA AT ALL that their demonic spewing is turning the masses against them. It's equally apparent in #neverTrump and the anti-Brexit EU forces.
The tyrants keep warning us that HORRIBLE EVENTS will happen, and they describe the HORRIBLE EVENTS in gory detail. Trouble is, the HORRIBLE EVENTS sound WONDERFUL to the masses, because the EVENTS are only HORRIBLE for the elites.
It's way beyond old-fashioned Let Them Eat Cake. It's more like
DON'T VOTE FOR TRUMP/BREXIT! IF YOU CHOOSE TRUMP/BREXIT, I WON'T BE ABLE TO SLAUGHTER YOU! THIS IS A HORRIFYING TERRIFYING TROLL BUFFOON XENOPHOBE TRAGIC FATE! IF YOU CHOOSE TRUMP/BREXIT, I WILL NOT GET THE THRILL OF RIPPING YOUR USELESS LITTLE BODY TO SHREDS AND SUCKING YOUR BLOOD AND JACKING OFF! DON'T YOU SEE WHAT A HORRIFYING TRAGEDY THIS WILL BE?
Why yes, in fact I do see how horrible it is. For you, not for us. And it warms my useless little heart to think of it.
¶ 8:43 AM
One Weird Idea
Latest ISIS "terrorist" worked many years for a GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR, basically part of DHS, which OFFICIALLY IMPORTS TERRORISTS, skipping border controls, and placing them directly inside USA.
Say, I've got a weird idea. Obviously Trump's proposal to block immigration from certain parts of the world is XENOPHOBIC HOMOPHOBIC TRANSPHOBIC BUFFOON NAZI TROLL. But maybe we could at the very least STOP BRINGING THEM IN AS AN OFFICIAL INVADING ARMY.
Nah. That would be TOO CLOSE to acknowledging that Trump and Orban and LePen and Farage and all the sane people in USA and UK and EU have a point.
TROLL never has a point. TROLL is always wrong. Don't feed TROLL.
BETTER TO KILL A BILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE THAN TO ALLOW A SINGLE TRUTH TO BE SPOKEN.
Everyone knows that the CORRECT response to "terrorism" is to recruit more terrorists and disarm anyone who could defend himself against terrorists. More war in Afghanistan to piss off more Afghans, more government-forced invasion of this country, and make sure that ONLY government contractors and criminals can get guns. That's the CORRECT response. Everyone knows.
¶ 2:10 AM
Sunday, June 12, 2016
A leak that really changes things
Snowden's leaks were totally unsurprising to anyone with tech knowledge. Some interesting details, but all details were derivable from the basic PERFECTLY WELL KNOWN fact that NSA monitors everything. NSA monitors American citizens? Yeah, American citizens are part of everything, so NSA monitors us. NSA monitors Merkel? Well, Merkel is part of everything, so NSA monitors her. It's like those idiotic studies "discovering" that some human taste or tendency or talent is partly innate. We've known for 100 years that ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL ALL human tastes and tendencies and talents are partly innate, so we DON'T NEED "studies" to separately examine each item contained in everything.
Trans Thing Manning's leaks weren't even negative. He only showed us that ambassadors have normal emotions. They don't like dealing with foreign tyrants. Might have been embarrassing to the ambassadors, but overall made the State Dept look more human. If he had made those leaks from a higher rank (like Petraeus), he probably would have been rewarded instead of punished.
This new set of leaks by BBC, though highly incomplete and unclear, is REAL SHANNON INFORMATION. It tells us something that we EMPHATICALLY DID NOT KNOW beforehand, and couldn't even have guessed from available info.
In short, Khomeini was our SOB at first, just as the Shah had been our SOB at first. Our agents took steps to slow down a pending military coup against the Shah, so Khomeini could take over without interference.
What went wrong? Not yet revealed, maybe not present in this set of leaks. Did Carter break a promise, or did Khomeini simply decide to turn against us? If the latter, did we send Saddam into Persia to punish the Ayatollah? The timing is right. Open questions pending more info.
BBC also verifies a less surprising set of observations, that US and Persia have been working together quietly for a long time. This continuous contact has surfaced a few times, and finally culminated in Obama's one good achievement, officially normalizing relations. If Khomeini was always our SOB, this line of contact looks less mysterious.
= = = = =
Later: Matthew Ehret explains in more detail why we were running Khomeini.
¶ 11:57 AM
The Klein bottle
The West (EU/UK/US) is in a peculiar predicament right now.
All the insiders are outsiders, and all the outsiders are insiders.
= = = = =
Look at the American elites. The Bush and Clinton dynasties and their helpers like McCain, Romney and Obama. They are traitors. They serve foreign masters. China, Saudi, Israel. The weighting of specific foreign nations varies somewhat over time, but it's always those three.
I could detect the outsideness easily with Bill. I wanted to see him impeached for serving China, not for fucking Monica. The idiot Repoofs continued to play the Monica game because they were also serving China and couldn't afford to let the dispute focus on treason.
For some reason I stopped seeing the outsideness with Bush The Son; probably because I got addicted to cable TV around that time and fell into partisan stupidity. Gained a false sense of being an insider. The Dubai port fiasco forced me out of the bubble, forced an accurate view.
The elites are stuck inside their bubble of delusion. They jet around the world, occupying many different physical locations, but always talking with other elites. The world outside their bubble does not exist. They are around the world but not in the world.
= = = = =
Now examine the ordinary citizens of EU/US/UK. We are insiders in terms of national identity and boundaries. We understand that humans and houses and bathrooms and cities and nations need borders. Sometimes physical walls or fences, sometimes gradients of money and status and "laws" and approval; but always a boundary. We are not rich enough to live in 20 places at once as the elites do. We're getting poorer by the day, more firmly stuck, more pinned to our countries and cities.
The elites treat us as outsiders, literally and etymologically EGREGIOUS and OUTSIDE THE PALE. They call us XENOPHOBIC because we dislike the infinite foreign-ness and strangeness of the elites.
¶ 3:40 AM
Good old NRA line
First Target made its customers Targets of gunmen by declaring its stores to be gun-free zones. Now it has made its customers Targets of sex offenders by declaring its stores to be gender-free zones.
Target is losing sales much faster than other stores. The publicized boycott may be partly responsible, but it's more likely a sense of general discomfort. When you know that Target REFUSES TO PROTECT YOU while other stores are NOT REFUSING, you're likely to pull away from the UNPROTECTED place. It's like avoiding a neighborhood where the criminals seem to be more visible than the cops.
Where gender is outlawed, only outlaws will have gender.
This is visible on a massive scale in Sweden, where the natives outlawed gender a long time ago. Swedes may still be physically male and female, but they are not allowed to notice or distinguish. EU's Arab invaders are unquestionably male, and they are still capable of distinguishing. I'm not sure why you'd WANT a "female" Swede, but Arabs are not known for good taste.
When you start with the assumption that humans are identical passive machines, you run afoul of Nature in all sorts of ways.
Target's idiot CEO forgets that other stores exist, and forgets that most humans don't share ve's set of ideas. Nature is quickly instructing ve that ve is wrong. In fact other stores exist, in fact other stores have not made the same idiot decisions, and in fact most people understand Nature.
Sweden's idiot government forgets that other countries and cultures don't share Sweden's idiocy. EU also forgets this fact when it sends Arabs to invade its own people. EU leaders assume that Arabs will be just as delusional as Swedes. Nature is instructing EU that Arabs are both sane and aggressive.
Nature wins every time. Often the win takes several generations, so it's not easy to parse out from general noise. In these specific cases Nature is winning dramatically and IMMEDIATELY, which is great fun to watch.
Labels: Emersonian justice
¶ 3:01 AM
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Thanks, Ralph 387
I always enjoy the little weekly podcasts of Conger and Kallsen at Anglican Ink. They discuss the latest events in the Anglican schism, speaking from the Real Christian viewpoint.
Today's segment started with an attempt to compare Miss Justine Welby with Rowan Williams. The analogy got stretched, but one sentence HIT the point with a tremendous resonance.
Both Welby and Williams had one job.
As archbishops they are executives, not legislators. Their task is to EXPLAIN AND ENFORCE the doctrines and laws of the church. Both Welby and Williams fail to do their ONE JOB. They convene conferences and official synods. The synods provide Christian decisions because the vast majority of the church is African, another word for Christian. Williams and Welby IGNORE what God is saying through African voices, and instead implement what Satan is saying through the voices of Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.
Result: Epic fail at the ONE JOB and epic fail in the Church.
= = = = =
This resonated in me because it's identical to a teacher's job. When I was teaching electronics, I was not a legislator. My ONE JOB was to explain and inculcate the laws of electronics, which are natural in EXACTLY the same way that God's laws are natural. I was supposed to preach sermons and give communion in the form of capacitors and wires and transistors. If I did the ONE JOB properly, the students would absorb and internalize the laws of Nature; the students would then be capable of performing their own sacraments.
If I did the ONE JOB in Welby/Williams form, I would be inventing my own laws, designed specifically to short out every power line and shock every user of the system except the High Priests. My W/W laws of electronics would turn a burglar alarm into a burglar protector. They would turn televisions into direct brain injectors for official propaganda. They would make every meter and scope read random and arbitrary numbers. They would make computers calculate to the advantage of the scammer and thief every time.
Leviticus = Faraday. Both gave us a record of painstaking experimentation that revealed specific sections of God's laws. Teachers and preachers don't need to make up new laws, because the old laws are REAL, and the old laws will force the new laws to fail catastrophically when implemented.
Thanks, Ralph!
Labels: Emersonian justice, Experiential education, Natural law = Sharia law
¶ 3:30 PM
Oh, now I see.
Returning to car names....
After carmakers broke out of simple enumeration, most model names tried to evoke high status or superiority. Some were just adjectives like Deluxe or Custom or Royal. Many were high-status places like Cambridge or Daytona or Malibu or Bel Air. Many were fierce animals: Cougar, Mustang, Wildcat. Some denoted a warlike spirit: Corsair, Cherokee, Invicta. Some were verbs denoting the car's ability to take you into higher status: Charger, Challenger, Wayfarer, Land Cruiser.
Only one model (that I can think of) got right down to the nitty-gritty of status at the NEURAL level. The Olds Delta 88. Status is always a DELTA, a perceived increase from current situation or a perceived superiority over the neighbor.
Why haven't the marketers explored the status of anatomy? Hyundai Hyoid. Cadillac Corpus Callosum. Buick Biceps. Toyota Trapezius. Renault Rectum.
Oh. I guess the question answers itself. Sorry.
= = = = =
Graphic sidenote: The car in my cartoon is a generic '80s Olds, which was after they stopped using the Delta 88 name... but at least it's an Olds. Ordinary sedan-type cars are hard to find in digital models, just as they're hard to find in plastic. Modelmakers prefer dramatic cars with ACTUAL status.
Why haven't the marketers explored the status of anatomy? Hyundai Hyoid. Cadillac Corpus Callosum. Buick Biceps. Toyota Trapezius. Renault Rectum.
Oh. I guess the question answers itself. Sorry.
= = = = =
Graphic sidenote: The car in my cartoon is a generic '80s Olds, which was after they stopped using the Delta 88 name... but at least it's an Olds. Ordinary sedan-type cars are hard to find in digital models, just as they're hard to find in plastic. Modelmakers prefer dramatic cars with ACTUAL status.Labels: Asked and answered
¶ 4:54 AM
A better "debate"
A NON-RANDOM THOUGHT for once.
Listening to BBC running Imperial propaganda as always, "debating" whether Brexit is the end of the universe or the end of the universe, "debating" whether Trump is the most dangerous and evil dictator in history or the most dangerous and evil dictator in history.
We report, you decide... but you CANNOT pick a decision that is outside our wildly diverse range of choices. We've given you a vast array of possibilities, all you have to do is pick one.
= = = = =
No.
Simple fact.
EU is dissolving. Like other monstrously monstrously monstrously evil empires through history, it is collapsing from its own wild stupidity and infinite evil. Nature takes care of monsters who violate every law of nature and physics and morality and logic, plus infinitely more laws that Nature couldn't imagine.
We SHOULD be asking a question based on history.
Compare 1918 and 1945 and 1990. When the German and British empires collapsed after WW1, treaties and other arrangements produced the fuel for a century of new wars. When Germany and Japan were defeated after WW2, treaties and MAD produced comparative stability in Europe and Africa, but not in the Orient. When USSR collapsed in 1990, the LACK of arrangements allowed USA STRONG to go batshit murderous bonkers, lighting all the Arab fires that had been waiting for a match since 1918.
Comparing those three endgames should yield a set of desirable actions to handle EU's collapse. Fucking constants and fucking variables as fucking always.
Labels: Emersonian justice
¶ 4:02 AM
Still haven't got it
Defining untrainable as usual:
Republican fund-raisers are beginning to fret that Donald Trump does not comprehend the enormity of the challenge before him, warning that if he fails to execute the basic tasks of fund-raising during a critical six-week stretch, he will find himself badly outgunned this fall.They STILL haven't figured it out. Trump gave them the key early on, when he said "We're doing everything wrong." What he's doing is quite simple though it looks inconsistent. He's NOT doing what you have been doing. He's NOT doing what you instruct him to do. In every detail. Policy, handling the media, fund-raising, talking to the voters. Even now, after he beat all of your Golden Ladyboys or rather Goldman Ladyboys, you're still trying to tell him how to be wrong. He's still trying to tell you how to be UNwrong. Not necessarily right; not necessarily the best course; but when EVERYTHING YOU DO IS INCONCEIVABLY UNIMAGINABLY INFINITELY SUPERHYPERULTRAWRONG in every possible way plus every impossible way plus every way that no evil monster could have ever imagined the possibility of imagining the possibility of imagining in any conceivable and/or inconceivable universe, ANY change from the current course is an improvement. It's not hard. Anybody but you could do it. ¶ 1:49 AM
Friday, June 10, 2016
SES in the first degree
In a news story about a professional criminal and his similar wife, detailing how they were identified in a recent string of bank robberies:
"Shanna always drives because his license is suspended in the first degree and hers is only suspended in the third degree."
CLASSIC Self-Explanatory Sentence. Tells you all you need to know in 21 words.
¶ 5:06 PM
Hada V8
More idiot speculation.
I halfway wonder if playing with these '59 vacuum tubes is pulling me back through some kind of time warp. This morning I saw and heard an original '58 Impala starting up in the Safeway parking lot. Nice V8 roar. Then a minute later spotted a 33RPM LP sitting on the street. It was a Columbia record. Couldn't read the title, but it was the sort of label that usually signified 'respectable' 50s music like Henry Mancini.
Later thought: The record wasn't entirely out of place. Hoffman St is a respectable 50s time capsule. Original houses, original owners. Wouldn't be surprising to find Mancini spinning on the Magnavox in the basement Recreation Room.
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 4:19 PM
Coulda hada V
Pointless speculation.
Packard had a chance to make the right move in 1945. Given the information available THEN, they should have switched from automobiles to aircraft. Packard had established itself as the BEST builder of giant piston aircraft engines, and was already moving into jets. Packard had a major jet contract with the Air Force in the Korean era.
Packard's car business was already doomed at that point, and everyone could see it. Cadillac owned the luxury market and there simply wasn't room for anyone else. There was even less room in the Buick caste where Packard had briefly made good money in the late '30s.
Rolls was in the same position in 1945 and made the correct decision. After WW2, Rolls was ... and STILL IS ... a major builder of jet engines. Cars were a hobby, jets were the day job.
If Packard had focused on aircraft it could have pioneered the corporate jet market before Lear and Gulfstream, with the cachet of its still-memorable cars and perhaps the skills of its old coachbuilders working on the interior of the plane.
= = = = =
Later note: In fact Packard's aircraft skills did survive, but not under the Packard name or Packard purposes. When Curtiss Wright Aviation LBO's the merged company in '56, they were ostensibly trying to rescue the company but really stealing Packard's aircraft tooling and engineering.
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 1:00 PM
Pretty neat
Latest from Antichrist Francine:
"It's not Catholic to say, 'this, or nothing.' This is not Catholic. This is heretical."
When you declare that X is heretical, you are making a 'this or nothing' division between not-X and X.
So: Anyone who says 'this, or nothing' is placing himself on the Nothing side, the heretical side. But placing anything on the heretical side is illegal, which means that placing 'this, or nothing' on the heretical side is also illegal.
Pretty neat by Antichrist standards. Almost Gödel. A command that recursively contradicts its own command-ness. When you obey the command you are disobeying the command.
Later and calmer: I suppose Francine is just being an immature hippieshit, not trying to create a Zen puzzle. "Like I can't tolerate like intolerance and shit dood".
When I was 18 I enjoyed saying such things. Made me feel like really smart and shit. Prison cured me. Showed me the SHARP line between evil and normal. Civilization needs to be HARSHLY intolerant of real evil, which has NOTHING to do with "bigotry" or "hate speech". Life is purpose and order. Evil is futility and chaos. Criminals turn order into chaos, sometimes by force and sometimes by words. Antichrist Francine is a criminal.
¶ 3:44 AM
H-rain
Interesting radar pattern this morning. Same pattern happened two days ago, even more distinct. Sort of an H or railroad track. Two narrow lines moving south to north with occasional bridges or ties between them. I don't recall seeing this before.
¶ 3:08 AM
Interesting radar pattern this morning. Same pattern happened two days ago, even more distinct. Sort of an H or railroad track. Two narrow lines moving south to north with occasional bridges or ties between them. I don't recall seeing this before.
¶ 3:08 AM
Deep State "wins" Peru
Amid the general world tendency toward populism, Peru has gone the other way, "electing" a pure Chosen Deep Stater. An investment banker with all the right connections. He was part of Peru's government before Fujimori broke the pattern; now the Deep State resumes power. His main achievement in his previous period as Finance Minister and Prime Minister was to enrich himself with an oil-exploring company.
Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay form a pattern. Other South American countries made the jump into First World prosperity early, sometimes fell back but basically held onto the culture and infrastructure. These three never made the jump, staying with Spanish feudal patterns. DeSoto (the new one, not the original one) attributes this non-jump to a lack of private property, but I suspect it's simpler. Not enough Europeans, especially German or English genes. Just natives and Spaniards, continuing the setup that began with the original DeSoto. Feudalism appears to satisfy those countries, so I can't call it inferior to the First World setup. [These three countries also have LONG national anthems, but Uruguay, a First World country, has the longest and best of all anthems, so this probably doesn't correlate well.]
What will Goldman do with Peru? Given his record, I'd guess oil, leading down the Venezuela path.
Labels: skill-estate
¶ 2:25 AM
Yeah, still harping on this
When attempting to solve serious problems, it's always wise to sort the problems into quick-n-easy solutions and hard solutions. If there's a quick-n-easy, DO IT NOW.
Among our economic problems, outsourcing and immigration have been building up for 40 years, and will take a long time to unravel. Even if we do the RIGHT thing by shooting all the serial-killer capitalists, confiscating their criminal wealth, and imposing a Soviet-style Gosbank system, it would still take a few years to rebuild factories and skills.
ZIRP/QE is the quick-n-easy one. It isn't a broad long-standing agreement by many murderers and gangsters; it's a RECENT SINGLE DECISION by ONE agency. It could be undone INSTANTLY by deleting the central bank and shooting all of its employees.
So where does ZIRP/QE stand in the priorities of our alleged 'radicals'? Bernie never touched it. Trump mentioned it once, but now he's falling in line with the Deep State as I feared. The Legalize Pot Party, especially the Pauls, had made an issue of "auditing" the Fed, which would do nothing at all; but now the LP has chosen candidates who are even Deeper State than Hillary.
As always I'm puzzled by this. Outsourcing/immigration achieves a pure Deep State goal without any conflicts. Kills the poor, enriches the Chosen plus even some non-Chosen rich. It's easy to see why the Deep State loves this range of murder methods.
ZIRP kills the responsible middle class and benefits SOME of the rich but also kills another section of the rich. It benefits hedge funds and investment banks and kills insurers and pension funds. Why didn't those BIG companies with LOTS of lobbyists try to stop it? Are all insurers owned by the wrong ethnic group? Is it that simple? The correct tribal casino pushing out the incorrect tribal casino? Could be, but seems unlikely.
Labels: skill-estate, Гром победы
¶ 1:35 AM
Thursday, June 09, 2016
The tube museum
Noticed a website for a Vacuum Tube Museum, apparently tied to the Smithsonian system. Seems awfully ambitious in plans, with awfully limited results so far. Smells a bit like vaporware. Successful tech museums usually start as one man's collection, and expand organically and gradually from the inherited core.
The website shows sample exhibits, exclusively focused on the high-dollar side of tube equipment. Hallicrafters ham xmtrs, HP and Tek test equipment, McIntosh audio.
I don't see any of the everyday tube world. No Philco or Zenith console receivers, no Webcor phonographs, no battery-powered portables, no hearing aids, no movie projectors, no office intercoms or Dictaphones.
Also I don't see anything non-American. Seems that a museum would want to pay special attention to the Russian parallel universe where tubes and discrete circuitry lasted 30 years after Americans went bonkers. Especially since the title is International Tube Museum, and even more especially since the high-dollar audiophiles, who ARE represented, depend crucially on new Russian tubes.
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 5:54 PM
Constants and variables 43
You rarely see pure old-fashioned corruption on display in Wash. It's always been wide-open in states like Illinois, Okla and Jersey, but NOT in states like Wash and Kansas.
A decision today by Chief Arsonist Inslee is old-fashioned. CA Inslee normally acts on the basis of universal genocide, seeking to obliterate all life on earth. Today CA Inslee gave genocide a break and decided that the Spokane Tribe SHALL build a new giant casino in the Airway Heights area. He mobilized the Interior Department to issue the contract, but other parts of the Feds are not happy. The specific location will interfere with flight patterns of Fairchild AFB, and may lead to closing down the base. Fairchild is by far the largest single employer in the Spokane metro. Spokane businesses are thus unhappy.
What makes the corruption obvious is that we ALREADY HAVE a huge Injun casino in Airway Heights. Northern Quest, operated by the Colville Tribe. There's no way to claim that Spokane is "under-served" in the casino department.
CA Inslee is rewarding one tribe to punish another tribe, and to damage the Air Force and the city. Raw old-fashioned Mafia corruption.
Labels: Constants and Variables
¶ 5:27 PM
More fun with tubes
Experimenting with the Mystery Tube inspired me to dig further into submini tubes. I'd skipped tubes in my previous electronics playing. Big tubes require way too much overhead. Multi-winding transformers and rectifiers; sheetmetal work to hold the sockets; worst of all, the whole setup, including the experimenter, needs to be ready to handle 250V. Amid all that expense and danger there's not much room for piddling around.
These subminis are no worse than transistors in terms of overhead, and far more interesting than transistors.
I ordered a bunch of hearing aid tubes through Ebay, type 6418 pentodes.
The 5-packs seem to have been assembled by a previous big retailer in 1985, who also added a UPC code to the tube boxes.
Here's one tube along with its original milspec box. The code starting with 5960 is the military part number. Looking it up, this particular number is no longer used, but there are still a LOT of active 5960 (tube) numbers. Smart military, holding onto EMP-immune technology as long as possible. Not nearly as smart as Russia, but that doesn't need saying. [Sidenote: WW2-era milspec tube boxes said TUBE, ELECTRON, ONE instead of ONE EACH ELECTRON TUBE. Old way was funnier.]
Tube along with the two transistors that would be needed to replace it. Some applications would need three.
Sidenote: When these tubes were used in hearing aids, the wires were soldered to a little inline 5-pin plug, which was inserted in a socket on the chassis. Made replacement easier. I thought this was how the tubes were sold, but after looking at a lot of them on Ebay, I'm only seeing raw wires. Puzzling. Maybe hearing aid companies like Zenith added the sockets so the hearing aid salesman could replace tubes easily.
The Ebay price was $14 for 20 tubes in NOS condition. 70 cents each! Outstanding bargain. 20 tubes should allow for some bad units, give me a chance to burn up a few.
In general Ebay tube prices are well below what specialist 'antique electronics' dealers charged 10 years ago. Tubes prized by audiophiles (such as matched Mullard long-plate ECC83s) run into the hundreds, but most are close to their original price in nominal dollars, not inflated dollars.
I'm guessing this tube was made in the late '50s. A few common tubes were around a dollar in 1959, but most were around $3.00 retail, and this submini is in the typical range. A page from an Allied catalog in 1959 includes the 6418 (circled):
$3.05 would be $25 now by plain inflation.
Incidentally, the tube at the bottom of the page, priced at $5300!! ($44k today) was a high-power water-cooled UHF Klystron transmitting tube. It probably would have been used by a military radar installation, and wouldn't have been bought through Allied.
= = = = =
Starting to play around. Hooked up 1.5v to filament. It lights! Yay! The light and heat are delicate compared to a larger tube; this isn't going to emit tube glow or tube smell. Even with all the room lights off, it's just barely visible, and just barely warm.
Tried using a rechargeable weedwhacker battery for 20V plate. Because the big batt has nearly unlimited 'push', it turned out to be almost as dangerous as the AC mains. I had to use clip leads to connect to it. When both clip leads accidentally touched the aluminum foil surface of my workdesk, BZZZT! Arc welding! Big noise, big spark, hole in the foil, smoke in the wood.
Decided to fall back to tame 9V batt, already part of my breadboard setup. The tube's data sheet claims that the tube should still amplify with 9V, though it's near the low end of working range.
= = = = =
Next day: Yay! Amplifier action! Contrary to the data sheet, 9V wasn't enough. Had to put two nines in series to get a tame 18V plate supply. With the extra pull, a simple ckt worked just the way it should. Here's the ckt, scrawled and scanned:
The voltmeter is across the plate resistor, so a higher reading means more flow through the cathode and plate. Screen grid is tied to plus through the same size R. Suppressor grid is internally tied to filament. The control grid is highly sensitive; touching with fingers changes the flow, and 'bridging' to other wires with fingers makes more flow.
Short clip showing the action:
Now that I've got my literal hands on the basic requirements, I can move on to more interesting stuff. More later.......
The 5-packs seem to have been assembled by a previous big retailer in 1985, who also added a UPC code to the tube boxes.
Here's one tube along with its original milspec box. The code starting with 5960 is the military part number. Looking it up, this particular number is no longer used, but there are still a LOT of active 5960 (tube) numbers. Smart military, holding onto EMP-immune technology as long as possible. Not nearly as smart as Russia, but that doesn't need saying. [Sidenote: WW2-era milspec tube boxes said TUBE, ELECTRON, ONE instead of ONE EACH ELECTRON TUBE. Old way was funnier.]
Tube along with the two transistors that would be needed to replace it. Some applications would need three.
Sidenote: When these tubes were used in hearing aids, the wires were soldered to a little inline 5-pin plug, which was inserted in a socket on the chassis. Made replacement easier. I thought this was how the tubes were sold, but after looking at a lot of them on Ebay, I'm only seeing raw wires. Puzzling. Maybe hearing aid companies like Zenith added the sockets so the hearing aid salesman could replace tubes easily.
The Ebay price was $14 for 20 tubes in NOS condition. 70 cents each! Outstanding bargain. 20 tubes should allow for some bad units, give me a chance to burn up a few.
In general Ebay tube prices are well below what specialist 'antique electronics' dealers charged 10 years ago. Tubes prized by audiophiles (such as matched Mullard long-plate ECC83s) run into the hundreds, but most are close to their original price in nominal dollars, not inflated dollars.
I'm guessing this tube was made in the late '50s. A few common tubes were around a dollar in 1959, but most were around $3.00 retail, and this submini is in the typical range. A page from an Allied catalog in 1959 includes the 6418 (circled):
$3.05 would be $25 now by plain inflation.
Incidentally, the tube at the bottom of the page, priced at $5300!! ($44k today) was a high-power water-cooled UHF Klystron transmitting tube. It probably would have been used by a military radar installation, and wouldn't have been bought through Allied.
= = = = =
Starting to play around. Hooked up 1.5v to filament. It lights! Yay! The light and heat are delicate compared to a larger tube; this isn't going to emit tube glow or tube smell. Even with all the room lights off, it's just barely visible, and just barely warm.
Tried using a rechargeable weedwhacker battery for 20V plate. Because the big batt has nearly unlimited 'push', it turned out to be almost as dangerous as the AC mains. I had to use clip leads to connect to it. When both clip leads accidentally touched the aluminum foil surface of my workdesk, BZZZT! Arc welding! Big noise, big spark, hole in the foil, smoke in the wood.
Decided to fall back to tame 9V batt, already part of my breadboard setup. The tube's data sheet claims that the tube should still amplify with 9V, though it's near the low end of working range.
= = = = =
Next day: Yay! Amplifier action! Contrary to the data sheet, 9V wasn't enough. Had to put two nines in series to get a tame 18V plate supply. With the extra pull, a simple ckt worked just the way it should. Here's the ckt, scrawled and scanned:
The voltmeter is across the plate resistor, so a higher reading means more flow through the cathode and plate. Screen grid is tied to plus through the same size R. Suppressor grid is internally tied to filament. The control grid is highly sensitive; touching with fingers changes the flow, and 'bridging' to other wires with fingers makes more flow.
Short clip showing the action:
Now that I've got my literal hands on the basic requirements, I can move on to more interesting stuff. More later.......
Labels: defensible thymes, new toy, skill-estate, Zero Problems
¶ 11:13 AM
Gradients
Many of the WALLS I've been defending are actually GRADIENTS. It's a sign of the utter poverty of our global-poisoned political language. We don't even have proper words for NECESSARY actions. We only have words for pointless trivial shit like Benghazi and Koch and UniterNotDivider and Politicizing.
I've drawn a wall to represent a gradient several times, as in the gradient of boredom that protects some concepts from satanic destruction because Satan simply doesn't find them interesting enough to smash.
= = = = =
Biology and engineering aren't poisoned.
Nature uses gradients AND walls. We understand and use some of them in neurology (altering ion gradients) and cardiac medicine (controlling blood pressure). Smart parents and smart court systems use steep gradients of pleasure and pain to pull kids and dickheads toward desired behavior. Satanic court systems flatten the gradient by prohibiting spanking and capital punishment and solitary, thus reducing the pull toward goodness. Not a fucking accident.
All forms of engineering from roads to sewers to automobiles to HVAC to electronics make intense and precise use of gradients AND walls. From the start engineering has used gravity (a gradient of potential energy) to great advantage for irrigation and canals and water supply. Since 1700 we've used temperature gradients in steam and gas engines. Since 1840 we've used gradients of charge in electronics.
The real manipulators of politics and economics obviously DO understand gradients, and they take advantage of their language-destruction to fool us with gradients.
Outsourcing is a perfect example. Mexico and India have a different pattern of consumption and labor, forming a gradient of labor-reward that doesn't get reflected in currency exchange. A dollar paid to a Mexican or a Hindu yields far more satisfaction for him and his family, which means he's willing to do the same labor for less dollars. A Hindu programmer and an American programmer could receive the same dollars from an American firm. The Hindu is able to support his family and hire SERVANTS, while the American can barely support himself. We don't quantify this cultural gradient, so we don't understand it and can't defend ourselves against the serial killers who DO understand it.
ZIRP/QE is another. The purpose of these crimes is to establish a steep curvature of money-space down to the stock market, so all available money will flow into the Chosen Black Hole.
Because we don't have terminology for gradients, we don't understand why our interest is being stolen by serial killers.
= = = = =
Biology and engineering aren't poisoned.
Nature uses gradients AND walls. We understand and use some of them in neurology (altering ion gradients) and cardiac medicine (controlling blood pressure). Smart parents and smart court systems use steep gradients of pleasure and pain to pull kids and dickheads toward desired behavior. Satanic court systems flatten the gradient by prohibiting spanking and capital punishment and solitary, thus reducing the pull toward goodness. Not a fucking accident.
All forms of engineering from roads to sewers to automobiles to HVAC to electronics make intense and precise use of gradients AND walls. From the start engineering has used gravity (a gradient of potential energy) to great advantage for irrigation and canals and water supply. Since 1700 we've used temperature gradients in steam and gas engines. Since 1840 we've used gradients of charge in electronics.
The real manipulators of politics and economics obviously DO understand gradients, and they take advantage of their language-destruction to fool us with gradients.
Outsourcing is a perfect example. Mexico and India have a different pattern of consumption and labor, forming a gradient of labor-reward that doesn't get reflected in currency exchange. A dollar paid to a Mexican or a Hindu yields far more satisfaction for him and his family, which means he's willing to do the same labor for less dollars. A Hindu programmer and an American programmer could receive the same dollars from an American firm. The Hindu is able to support his family and hire SERVANTS, while the American can barely support himself. We don't quantify this cultural gradient, so we don't understand it and can't defend ourselves against the serial killers who DO understand it.
ZIRP/QE is another. The purpose of these crimes is to establish a steep curvature of money-space down to the stock market, so all available money will flow into the Chosen Black Hole.
Because we don't have terminology for gradients, we don't understand why our interest is being stolen by serial killers. Labels: defensible spaces, Language update
¶ 2:00 AM
Wednesday, June 08, 2016
Where's the madrigal?
Yesterday I placed Hillary in line with previous empire-building female monarchs.
Today's imperial media echoes older imperial media.
All praise to the empress! Kill all enemies of the empress!
The only difference is that the older media sometimes created pure beauty in the process of kissing the feet of the Empress.
Madrigals were often hymns to Elizabeth (who was called Oriana for lyrical purposes)
This perfect anthem for the Russian Empire is almost entirely about 'our mother' Catherine.
So far I don't see any beauty arising from the current crop of ass-kissing. It's just ass-kissing.
¶ 5:51 AM
Today's imperial media echoes older imperial media.
All praise to the empress! Kill all enemies of the empress!
The only difference is that the older media sometimes created pure beauty in the process of kissing the feet of the Empress.
Madrigals were often hymns to Elizabeth (who was called Oriana for lyrical purposes)
This perfect anthem for the Russian Empire is almost entirely about 'our mother' Catherine.
So far I don't see any beauty arising from the current crop of ass-kissing. It's just ass-kissing.
¶ 5:51 AM
Now that's SMART.
Heard a PSA on radio just now. The main pharmaceutical trade association has bought the .pharma address suffix, and only allows proper pharmacies to use it. "If you see dot pharma, you know it's legit."
SMART!
When the web address system was laid out, there was an unenforced expectation that .com would be profit-making companies, .org would be NGOs, .edu would be colleges, and so on. This lasted about three milliseconds because nobody was CHECKING.
More details on the dot pharma:
The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy® (NABP®) has launched the .pharmacy generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) to provide consumers around the world a means for identifying safe, legal, and ethical online pharmacies and related resources. Of the tens of thousands of rogue sites selling prescription drugs online, NABP has reviewed over 10,800 and found that nearly 97% do not follow pharmacy laws and standards established to protect the public health. With this in mind, NABP will grant use of the .pharmacy domain only to legitimate website operators that adhere to pharmacy laws in the jurisdictions in which they are based and in which their patients and customers reside, so that consumers can easily find safe online pharmacies.This is a genuinely Historic first. Previous forms of addresses and phone numbers never provided a SURE way to distinguish legitimate operations. You could be aware that the car dealers on East Sprague are more likely to be shady than the downtown dealers, but neither address guaranteed anything. As I mentioned yesterday, an American radio station with an XE call sign was probably skirting the law, but a K or W could also be shady. The name gave you a hint but not much more. Now you have CERTAINTY. Later thought: This is a welcome retaking of SKILL-ESTATE that had been lost. When customers can tell instantly and definitely who's legitimate, the BORDER between licensed and unlicensed practitioners grows sharp and bright, and it doesn't even require any new regulations.
Labels: skill-estate
¶ 5:22 AM
Ryan's idiocy
Ryan's plan to do something vaguely related to poverty:
The WALL needs to block in two directions.
It's not just the incoming immigrants; it's primarily outsourcing. As long as serial killers find it easier and cheaper to hire immigrants or operate elsewhere, there won't be enough jobs for Americans. Serial killers need to pay a trillion% tariff on all manufactured shit imported from elsewhere, and a trillion% tariff on all work farmed out to foreigners, both here and in foreign lands. If you want to kill Americans you should have to pay our entire national debt. If you can't pay our entire national debt, we shoot you.
¶ 4:07 AM
• Requires “work-capable” adults in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, to demonstrate that they are working or seeking a job. • Gives states greater authority to repackage benefits if a recipient gets married, works more hours or gets a promotion, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach. • Includes a “pay-for-results” partnership in which the government teams up with private-sector providers seeking to raise capital for effective social programs. • Modernizes the Pell Grant program to allows students to use grants year-round while enacting financial-aid reforms to make it easier for students to pay for college and pay back loans. • Allows small businesses to band together and provide 401(k)s for their employees.All totally irrelevant until we
The WALL needs to block in two directions.
It's not just the incoming immigrants; it's primarily outsourcing. As long as serial killers find it easier and cheaper to hire immigrants or operate elsewhere, there won't be enough jobs for Americans. Serial killers need to pay a trillion% tariff on all manufactured shit imported from elsewhere, and a trillion% tariff on all work farmed out to foreigners, both here and in foreign lands. If you want to kill Americans you should have to pay our entire national debt. If you can't pay our entire national debt, we shoot you.
¶ 4:07 AM
Tuesday, June 07, 2016
Historic in their sense
Hillary isn't a historic first, but a lot of the rank vile shit in this election IS a historic first.
The media are bashing Trump for the HORRIBLE CRIME of OVERRULING HIS STAFF. Some disloyal asshole** leaked a conversation where the idiot establishment tried to push Trump into acting like the idiot establishment. Trump refused and OVERRULED HIS STAFF, deciding to be a sane human instead of an idiot.
CRIME AGAINST NATURE! WAR CRIME! CONVENE THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL! AN EXECUTIVE LISTENED TO HIS SUBORDINATES THEN DECIDED TO DO SOMETHING ELSE! WORST EVIL CRIME EVER COMMITTED! UNTHINKABLE! THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE! UNPRECEDENTED HISTORIC ARROGANCE AND CRIMINALITY! HANG HIM HIGH!
= = = = =
** Whoopsie! Reading this next day (after the first good sleep in several days), I caught myself being team-partisan. Normally I understand that leakers are assholes by definition; normally I consider all leaks to be good things. Need to bop myself upside the head and restore equilibrium.
This leak IS a good thing because it tells us something about Trump's leadership that could be problematic. Overruling subordinates is NOT the problem. That's an everyday part of any enterprise. The problem is the disloyal asshole who knew how the Deep State could use this everyday fact. Trump hasn't yet learned the lesson of Roy Cohn and David Brock. An unorthodox politician needs to be FEROCIOUSLY watchful for Deep State spies and operatives who try to turn his work into shit. This leaker is clearly working for the Deep State, and Trump (or Trump's security types) didn't recognize him and eject him. Could indicate a larger problem with the security types as well. Or even worse, the leak could be intentional by Trump, giving himself an excuse to stop being unorthodox and join the Deep State.
Same as national or industrial spying. We shouldn't blame the spy. He's just doing his job. We need to blame the country or company that ALLOWED the spy to insert himself. We need to ask WHY the spy was allowed.
¶ 10:53 AM
Less, more
Appropriate pair of headlines in Spokane-News.
We have a serious and steady epidemic of bridge-jumpers. Three this week. Young people who can't see a solution to their problems.
Legitimate city governments would attempt to look into this epidemic, would see if there's a way of reshaping priorities to slow it down.
We do not have a legitimate city government. We have a monstrous infinitely criminal syndicate of Gaian terrorists, firmly devoted to SMASHING the city. Their response to an epidemic is to arrogantly assert their own lethal psychosis. You want crazy? Okay! We'll show you what crazy looks like!
We need to turn despair into anger. We need
Graphic sidenote: The guy in this cartoon looks a lot like Snowden. Not intended. He's just the standard Poser figure 'James'.
Appropriate pair of headlines in Spokane-News.
We have a serious and steady epidemic of bridge-jumpers. Three this week. Young people who can't see a solution to their problems.
Legitimate city governments would attempt to look into this epidemic, would see if there's a way of reshaping priorities to slow it down.
We do not have a legitimate city government. We have a monstrous infinitely criminal syndicate of Gaian terrorists, firmly devoted to SMASHING the city. Their response to an epidemic is to arrogantly assert their own lethal psychosis. You want crazy? Okay! We'll show you what crazy looks like!
We need to turn despair into anger. We need
Graphic sidenote: The guy in this cartoon looks a lot like Snowden. Not intended. He's just the standard Poser figure 'James'.Labels: defenestration / depontication
¶ 1:28 AM
Temporal borders
Saw the single word NIGHT at top of a website. Probably a typo. Fragment of a headline or something. Briefly imagined a Night edition of a website. Doesn't exist now, but would have made sense 50 years ago. BORDERS used to separate night from day in business, newspapers, radio. Night and day were separate editions, separate provinces.
Now everyone (who has work) is expected to work all hours when needed. No boundaries.
As a kid I appreciated the night side of radio, both AM and SW. Most AM stations signed off around sunset leaving a sparse but widespread crop of DX. When the ionosphere was right you could easily hear Edmonton and Caracas, Boston and San Francisco on BCB. "Mexican" stations were run by Americans taking advantage of looser laws, and often featured wild preaching or strange rants. (Thanks to Goat Gland Brinkley for inventing the setup!)
Closer to home there were two distinct approaches to night service among the few stations that stayed on.
KOMA in OKC had rock-n-roll for the youths. WIBW in Topeka had swing for the adults. Big bands were still going strong in the late '50s, and WIBW carried live broadcasts from the Avalon Ballroom in the evening. After midnight they switched to half-hour transcriptions of records plus DJ comments. Most of the records were solid swing, some were 'novelty numbers' that have disappeared now.
Full autopilot was illegal. The station had to have an engineer/announcer awake and ready to handle emergencies. Reassuring for the listeners, and a job for an engineer.
We have one limited remnant of the Night Province in Art Bell's show. That's about it. Everything else is intentionally timeless and borderless, a show without a temporal country. Time of day is never specified, even day of the week is never specified.
As an adult I switched to the reassuring side of the desk when I worked night auditor jobs in motels. The place was in my hands. I enjoyed the sense of being responsible for the safety of sleepers, and I carried out the responsibility. I belonged to the night and the night belonged to me.
Later on I moved into day jobs. Though more skilled and sometimes better paid, I was never given the same level of responsibility. Never carried the keys.
Perhaps I was accurately seen as a Migrant in the province of daylight.
Closer to home there were two distinct approaches to night service among the few stations that stayed on.
KOMA in OKC had rock-n-roll for the youths. WIBW in Topeka had swing for the adults. Big bands were still going strong in the late '50s, and WIBW carried live broadcasts from the Avalon Ballroom in the evening. After midnight they switched to half-hour transcriptions of records plus DJ comments. Most of the records were solid swing, some were 'novelty numbers' that have disappeared now.
Full autopilot was illegal. The station had to have an engineer/announcer awake and ready to handle emergencies. Reassuring for the listeners, and a job for an engineer.
We have one limited remnant of the Night Province in Art Bell's show. That's about it. Everything else is intentionally timeless and borderless, a show without a temporal country. Time of day is never specified, even day of the week is never specified.
As an adult I switched to the reassuring side of the desk when I worked night auditor jobs in motels. The place was in my hands. I enjoyed the sense of being responsible for the safety of sleepers, and I carried out the responsibility. I belonged to the night and the night belonged to me.
Later on I moved into day jobs. Though more skilled and sometimes better paid, I was never given the same level of responsibility. Never carried the keys.
Perhaps I was accurately seen as a Migrant in the province of daylight.
Labels: defensible times, Old Economy Steve, skill-estate
¶ 12:57 AM
I guess they're right
Now that Hillary's delegate numbers finally agree with Dynastic Succession, all the headlines are calling her nomination HISTORIC.
By HISTORIC they mean a First, a break with previous patterns. Presumably they're talking about gender in the usual bizarre delusional multiply self-contradictory way. Hillary is the first "woman" to take over a dynasty. First gentle nourishing delicate wispy loving maternal figure.
Wrong use of HISTORIC. When we say an equation is mathematical we don't mean it breaks out of all previous math. We mean it follows the rules of math. When we say a procedure is surgical we don't mean it violates all existing medical practices. We mean it follows the rules of good medical practice.
Actual history gives us a clear pattern. Female monarchs are always more tyrannical and imperialistic than male monarchs in the same dynasty. Hillary fits the historical pattern laid down by Cleopatra, Boadicea, Elizabeth I, Victoria, Catherine, Indira Gandhi, Madame Mao, Golda Meir, and Angela Merkel. Empire builders. Butchers.
So in fact she is HISTORIC in the proper sense of the word. Not breaking the pattern but continuing the pattern.
¶ 12:24 AM
Monday, June 06, 2016
Constants and variables 42
In the Brexit runup, the old vile maltheory that EU prevents WW3 keeps popping up.
After WW2, the elites pushed EU for Europe and UN for the rest of the world, portraying these empires as the preventers of future empires. We now know that EU was a bait and switch trick, but the initial idea (the bait) was NOT bad. It sort of worked for a while. So it's hard to blame the world for accepting it.
UN was quickly grabbed up by Russia and used as a tool to prevent US domination. This wasn't nice for US, but ... again as later events proved .... it was good for the world.
The constants and variables for both bad ideas showed up clearly after 1989.
We had been using the wrong rule for controlling Germany. The correct rule is:
When Germany is in one piece it takes over the world. When Germany is fragmented it does not take over the world.
We couldn't see the rule before 1989 because there was only one instance. After reunification, the rule showed up clearly. EU became the Fourth Reich.
The deification of UN was less justifiable. With or without Russian influence, it has ALWAYS been a terrible idea. Everything it touches turns to chaos.
What really kept the world safe was good old MAD. A solid balance of power between US and USSR.
When USSR dissolved, USA STRONG went batshit murderous psycho. The UN didn't slow us down; in fact we used it as a tool to start our binge of wild genocides in Arab lands and Europe.
Therefore: What kept the world comparatively calm from 1945 to 1990?
It wasn't EU and UN. It was the Soviet bloc.
Thanks, Russkies!
Thanks, Russkies!Labels: Constants and Variables, switchover, Гром победы
¶ 1:07 PM
Wonderful idea, but
Clickbait:
An Australian woman has come up with a unique name for her daughter. You could liken it to a vanity plate for your car, but using Roman numerals. Instead of Kaitlyn, they replaced the 'ait' with VIII, making it "KVIIIlyn." A magazine clipping announcing the daughter's birth reads: "I've always loved the name Kaitlyn but hated how popular it was. So when I found out I was having a girl, my husband suggested we replace the 'ait' with the Roman numeral symbol for eight! Now our daughter is truly unique."I love the concept! But it's the wrong name. In most fonts the last I and the L are indistinguishable, so the middle of the word will look like IIIIY. Whole bunch of vowels. A teacher or employer will first wonder if it's a typo, then wonder if VIIII is meant to be nine, then give up on the Roman and pronounce it K-viiiiiine. Maybe she can shorten it to plain old KVIII, which gets the pun across more clearly.
Labels: Language update
¶ 12:11 PM
Still fussing about Snowden
I keep returning (pointlessly!) to the Snowden story. All of his actions smell like Agent Provocateur or False Flag, but I can't pin it down, can't convince myself either way, can't scratch the itch. That's part of the pattern, of course.
Every time he surfaces in public I ask: Is this what NSA would want, or is this undesirable to NSA? So far the answers have always been on the NSA-wants side.
Overall his "revelations" were not new. That's exactly what intel agencies do when they feel pressure to say something. Provide facts that are true but known. Provide zero Shannon information. Good old epistemology again.
His recent demo of modifying an iPhone to "resist detection" was guaranteed to increase NSA attention on anyone who tries it.
Now there's an article in Vice, written for Snowden if not by Snowden, detailing his supposed efforts to blow the whistle through proper channels. He was allegedly bothered by the fact that NSA is doing its job. NSA's job is to monitor everything physically available. Anyone who had reached his level of security clearance and employment would understand this job. By focusing the reader's attention on mysterious abstract fictions called "laws" and "regulations", the Vice article encourages readers to spend their energies on changing or enforcing nonexistent concepts. Good old ontology again.
There's no way to completely escape a highly competent monitoring agency, but there are classic ways to limit its connections. Don't be interesting, don't own or use smartphones or web-connected appliances, don't talk through public channels.
Snowden's recent efforts directly counteract those classic cautions. He wants us to use our iPhones in a way that attracts maximum attention, and he wants us to focus on a completely futile task instead of controlling our footprint.
Labels: epistemology
¶ 4:18 AM
We need philosophackers.
Seriously random thought.
The Deep State has taken control of epistemology and ontology and logic. All of those TOOLS of philosophy are no longer available to ordinary people.
When the UK state says that the number of Dreamers is unknown and unknowable, the state has usurped epistemology. You are not permitted to say that the Dreamers CAN BE COUNTED.
When the US "government" says that a Trans Thing can exist any time the Trans Thing declares that it exists, the state has usurped ontology. You are not permitted to say that this Trans Thing does not exist and CANNOT PHYSICALLY EXIST.
When every "government" says that Carbon causes the current phase of unusual weather, but Carbon did not cause the previous similar phases 33 years ago and 66 years ago and 99 years ago and so on, all governments have usurped logic and math. You are not permitted to say that the obvious leading variable, the earth's magnetosphere, is the leading variable. You are required to believe that Evil KKKarbon, one of the results, is the cause.
I've hit these points often. It's no longer enough to just mention them. We need philosophackers. Underground workers who will use all physically possible methods to fuck up and break up the state's control of PROPER THINKING.
I've hit these points often. It's no longer enough to just mention them. We need philosophackers. Underground workers who will use all physically possible methods to fuck up and break up the state's control of PROPER THINKING.Labels: epistemology, Metrology, STRONG!, switchover
¶ 12:53 AM
Sunday, June 05, 2016
Must be it
I've been trying to figure out why NPR, BBC, CNN and all the other Deep State Neocon media are treating Cassius Clay like a god while simultaneously treating Trump like a devil.
Got it. Cassius was a HARDASS racial separatist, a HARDASS antiwar isolationist, a HATER of neocons, a HARSHLY ACCURATE realist about all races and ethnic groups. Trump is a mere dilettante, buzzing around the edges of all those subjects, probably not intending to implement any of it. [Float like a bee, sting like a butterfly.]
NPR wishes Trump would get serious, turn into a HARDASS separatist isolationist realist like their hero Cassius Clay.
That must be it. Can't think of any other possible answer.
Labels: Asked and answered
¶ 9:32 AM
Not so simple
SciAm reports on an experiment with stickleback fish. The researchers got to know the fish in their aquarium, identifying the bold and timid ones. They set up a situation where the fish needed to make 'expeditions' to get food, and then recorded the leaders and followers. Everyone did some leading, but bold fish were more likely to lead. Timid fish were more likely to come out of hiding and follow another timid fish.
Makes sense. We don't see it easily in modern USA STRONG because shy people get slaughtered when they try to lead. Perhaps a civilization has more opportunity for different types. I wouldn't know.
The podcast ends with:
"We may soon see if such tendencies hold true in humans, when Americans decide who they'll follow in November."
Of course we know which side SciAm is on. Always loyal to the Deep State, because the Deep State is the source of grants.
Science is grants, nothing more and nothing less. Any idea or theory that gets grants is valid and proved. Any idea or theory that doesn't get grants is
= = = = =
But the current election is a lot more complicated. Style and substance are opposite.
Trump has a bold STYLE and a bold way of moving.... or more precisely, he moves and expresses and talks like a live human.
Hillary moves and talks like a Dalek in a pantsuit, which is presumably non-bold in SciAm's formulation. I don't see the connection, but apparently they do. Scientists love robots because robots kill the non-grant-giving poor and enrich the grant-giving rich; scientists think of themselves as timid and cautious; therefore robotic behavior is "like us".
Trump's actual PURPOSE is timid. Cautious. Cat-like. Preserve our own survival FIRST before we waste money and lives on slaughtering other nations or making other nations rich.
Hillary's actual PURPOSE is not just bold but genocidal. Ferocious. Like a Dalek. EXTERMINATE everything except the Chosen. EXTERMINATE our own people and EXTERMINATE everyone else (except Israel) in order to create terrorists who will then EXTERMINATE our own people.
= = = = =
Later sidenote: The most interesting thing about the fish experiment is what it implies about the intelligence and empathy of fish. There's no automatic or mechanical reason why timid should prefer to follow timid. It requires several stages of smarts. (1) The fish must know their neighbors as individuals. Know them by name, so to speak. (2) The shy ones must have observed over time that the bold ones got into unnecessary scrapes, leading their followers directly into the path of a shark or squid more often than the cautious leaders. That's pretty goddamn smart, even by human standards. (3) Well then, why doesn't EVERYONE follow the cautious leaders? Why don't the bold ones make similar observations and draw similar conclusions? Easy. Bold ones don't have time to observe. They're too busy fighting sharks and squids.
= = = = =
But the current election is a lot more complicated. Style and substance are opposite.
Trump has a bold STYLE and a bold way of moving.... or more precisely, he moves and expresses and talks like a live human.
Hillary moves and talks like a Dalek in a pantsuit, which is presumably non-bold in SciAm's formulation. I don't see the connection, but apparently they do. Scientists love robots because robots kill the non-grant-giving poor and enrich the grant-giving rich; scientists think of themselves as timid and cautious; therefore robotic behavior is "like us".
Trump's actual PURPOSE is timid. Cautious. Cat-like. Preserve our own survival FIRST before we waste money and lives on slaughtering other nations or making other nations rich.
Hillary's actual PURPOSE is not just bold but genocidal. Ferocious. Like a Dalek. EXTERMINATE everything except the Chosen. EXTERMINATE our own people and EXTERMINATE everyone else (except Israel) in order to create terrorists who will then EXTERMINATE our own people.
= = = = =
Later sidenote: The most interesting thing about the fish experiment is what it implies about the intelligence and empathy of fish. There's no automatic or mechanical reason why timid should prefer to follow timid. It requires several stages of smarts. (1) The fish must know their neighbors as individuals. Know them by name, so to speak. (2) The shy ones must have observed over time that the bold ones got into unnecessary scrapes, leading their followers directly into the path of a shark or squid more often than the cautious leaders. That's pretty goddamn smart, even by human standards. (3) Well then, why doesn't EVERYONE follow the cautious leaders? Why don't the bold ones make similar observations and draw similar conclusions? Easy. Bold ones don't have time to observe. They're too busy fighting sharks and squids.
Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 2:46 AM
Maxwell's angel
Convective thought.
Hungary is Maxwell's Demon for nationalism.
Twice now, Hungary has been the key that broke an empire. Literal key, as in door or gate.
When the Soviet Empire reached a point of collapse, Hungary OPENED its borders to create a path from East Germany to Austria, and started an avalanche.
Now that the EU Empire is collapsing, it is trying to destroy heretics with an invading army of Dreamers. Hungary was first to CLOSE its borders, which diverted the flow to other countries, who then had to close their own borders to defend their existence.
Is this an argument against walls? No.
You can't open and close a door unless you have a wall.
In biology and nations, that's the WHOLE FUCKING POINT. A cell membrane INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its ion gates and digestive pores, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff.
An animal INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its mouth and anus and respiratory ports, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff. A nation INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its borders and ports and tariff controls, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff.
All the same. Without the wall, toxins and burglars and rain and Dreamers flow in uncontrollably and destroy the chemical or cultural integrity of the interior. But a wall without INTELLIGENTLY controlled doors won't let nutrition in and won't let waste out.
Twice now, Hungary has been the key that broke an empire. Literal key, as in door or gate.
When the Soviet Empire reached a point of collapse, Hungary OPENED its borders to create a path from East Germany to Austria, and started an avalanche.
Now that the EU Empire is collapsing, it is trying to destroy heretics with an invading army of Dreamers. Hungary was first to CLOSE its borders, which diverted the flow to other countries, who then had to close their own borders to defend their existence.
Is this an argument against walls? No.
You can't open and close a door unless you have a wall.
In biology and nations, that's the WHOLE FUCKING POINT. A cell membrane INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its ion gates and digestive pores, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff.
An animal INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its mouth and anus and respiratory ports, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff. A nation INTELLIGENTLY opens and closes its borders and ports and tariff controls, to let in good stuff and let out bad stuff.
All the same. Without the wall, toxins and burglars and rain and Dreamers flow in uncontrollably and destroy the chemical or cultural integrity of the interior. But a wall without INTELLIGENTLY controlled doors won't let nutrition in and won't let waste out.Labels: defensible spaces
¶ 1:55 AM
Saturday, June 04, 2016
Pleopleonasm
This stupid headline helped me to notice a trend. Should have put it together earlier.
For many years Global Warming has been boogey-punctuation. It's the required period on all sentences describing a bad event.
... caused by poor maintenance AND GLOBAL WARMING.
... caused by strikes, unemployment AND GLOBAL WARMING.
... caused by defective airbags AND GLOBAL WARMING.
Now Trump has become the Second Boogey-period for all bad phenomena.
... caused by poor maintenance AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
... caused by strikes, unemployment AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
... caused by defective airbags AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
Will GLOBAL WARMING fade to allow the superior evil of AND TRUMP to take over? No. In a normal process of syntactic pleonasm, the middle part would fade, but there's nothing normal about these monsters.
This stupid headline helped me to notice a trend. Should have put it together earlier.
For many years Global Warming has been boogey-punctuation. It's the required period on all sentences describing a bad event.
... caused by poor maintenance AND GLOBAL WARMING.
... caused by strikes, unemployment AND GLOBAL WARMING.
... caused by defective airbags AND GLOBAL WARMING.
Now Trump has become the Second Boogey-period for all bad phenomena.
... caused by poor maintenance AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
... caused by strikes, unemployment AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
... caused by defective airbags AND GLOBAL WARMING AND TRUMP.
Will GLOBAL WARMING fade to allow the superior evil of AND TRUMP to take over? No. In a normal process of syntactic pleonasm, the middle part would fade, but there's nothing normal about these monsters.
Labels: Loughnerian Logic
¶ 2:59 PM
Parole points
Christianity Today has a survey article on why very few churches do prison ministry. The survey completely misses the main point. CT doesn't have comments but I just had to answer this.
Can't go to sleep! Somebody's WRONG on the Internet!
From the prison viewpoint, church or chapel serves only one purpose. Parole points. Sprucing up your 'resume' for release. Many prisoners, especially blacks, are deeply and solidly Christian, but the church in jail doesn't invite serious worship.
It's sort of like a vo-tech classroom where most of the kids are there to get Federal subsidies, not to learn. The students who genuinely want to learn are submerged beneath the noise and apathy of the subsidy-grabbers.
I suspect some of the preachers who answered CT's survey have been through this experience, which is exactly why they gave up. Can't tell for sure because the article doesn't go beyond the survey.
¶ 10:40 AM
More misplaced paranoia
There's a little kerfuffle about Facebook using its apps on portable cellular devices to listen for keywords when you're not intending to speak into the Facebook universe. One professor of Mass Communications said that she had done an experiment, but it didn't prove anything. She obviously doesn't understand constants and variables. She talked to her phone about a couple of subjects, then noticed those subjects popping up in her incoming feed. Obvious problem with the experiment: she was talking about constants. Subjects that are already part of her dossier, things that she mentions often.
It shouldn't be hard to run a better experiment, by randomly picking subjects you know nothing about. Look up stuff in a paper dictionary offline, find something obscure that you've never seen before, then read it to the phone. I don't have a portable cellular device, so I'll try a similar experiment in text mode by mentioning the first branded non-computer object I see, which is a box of Diamond "Greenlight" wooden matches. They work very well! I like them! I will buy more! I can verify (via my offline blog archive) that I've never mentioned these in the blog before. I won't be surprised to see a popup ad very soon, because I've seen this happen several times. [A few hours later: No exact ads for the product, but two ads for other stuff (NHL and a credit union) that began with a big focused word: MATCH.]
More broadly this "paranoia" is misplaced both ways.
On one side you can't be paranoid at all. Web services are hugely expensive. You get the services with zero MONEY cost because you're a product instead of a customer. That's the deal. Nothing secret about it. When you're a product you have to perform according to spec. Part of your specified performance is giving the web service hints about your interests and preferences so the web service can pay for itself with advertising. If the web service wants to pick up those hints when you're not "officially" talking to it, you can't complain.
On the other side, you should be far more paranoid than you already are. You must assume that every measurable aspect of your existence is being recorded at all times, because that's the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of smartphones. Again no mystery. Snowden didn't reveal anything that wasn't already known or assumable.
¶ 12:53 AM
Friday, June 03, 2016
Shift in emphasis 2
Another perceptible shift in attitudes ... For background noise I mainly "listen" to the money-talk types on radio. They tend to be less annoying and less blood-pressure-jumping than political types.
Until maybe six months ago, most of the money-talkers were going along with the blatantly obvious myth that the Federal Reserve was "improving the economy".
The chartists were NEVER fooled. They tend to be engineerish types, maybe just a tiny bit autistic ... or a giant bit autistic ... which means they don't get bulldozed by PR fluff. They see numbers and facts and draw conclusions.
But the regular estate planner types (salesman personalities) were strictly running in sync with Bugsy and Janet's official line until this year. Now some of them are admitting that the Fed is a fraud, solely designed to enrich the rich. I don't know if they stopped lying or just finally caught on. Seems more like the latter.
¶ 12:04 PM
Mouse
Just now heard the unmistakable snap of a mousetrap. Sure enough, killed a mouse.
That's ODD. This isn't mouse season. I hadn't heard or seen any of the usual mouse indications since last October when the weather started to turn cold. At that time I caught one mouse, then used the Shake-Away stuff around the foundation. No more mice through the winter.
The weather is ordinary this week; nothing seems likely to drive mice inside. Maybe last week's heavy rain flooded their outdoor nests?
Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 3:35 AM
Descent
Elon says we're all living in someone else's video game.
Joe says we're all living in someone else's video game.
Both of them are psychotic, both are totally delusional and dangerous.
Elon is the Right Kind Of Psychotic because he has the Right Kind Of Name. Elon lives in many Giant Mansions and many Gulfstream Jets. Everyone listens and obeys, everyone agrees that we're all living in someone else's video game.
Joe is the Wrong Kind Of Psychotic because he has the Wrong Kind Of Name. Joe lives in a Locked Cell, totally Haldol'd at all times. Nobody listens, nobody obeys, nobody agrees.
We have descended into medieval aristocracy, caste rigidly determined by genes. Serfs and Nobles have entirely different cultures and laws.
¶ 2:43 AM
Shift in emphasis
A notable shift in some mediasatan coverage. Until now, every attack by anti-Trump rioters was perfectly Orwelled. Media know that Trump is TROLL, so TROLL must be the attacker. Just like RUSSIANAGGRESSION is always the attacker, just like German and Swedish girls are raping innocent Migrant Dreamers.
Today SOME of the big mediasatans are telling the truth. WashPost, NBC, ABC, CBS and even HuffPost say Protesters Attack Trump Supporters. Reuters, CNN, and WSJ only say Protesters, Supporters Clash. I don't see any headline calling Trump the attacker.
It's possible that Trump's constant refusal to back down before the satanic bullies may finally be slowing them down just a bit. Possibly they're not entirely insane; possibly they can dimly perceive that their usual instant SLAUGHTER is not happening this time, and they can't figure out how to handle it. The usual double-down and quadruple-down and 2^10000000000000000000000000000 down didn't work. There's no way to go except the unexplored dark daunting Terra Incognita of Facts and Truth.
Later: BBC has found a way around the truth. BBC says the protesters attacked first, and then the Trump supporters INSTIGATED the protesters. As always, TROLL is capable of time reversal. Just like the German and Swedish girls INSTIGATED the Gentlemen With A Migrating Background by being raped.
¶ 1:49 AM
Thursday, June 02, 2016
Hard choice!
Via ZeroHedge: For $27,000 you could buy ONE BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE in the Jue Lan restaurant. I didn't make up the name. Wish I had.
OR
Via Zillow: For $28,000 you could buy this neat 3-bedroom pure bungalow in a decent part of Ponca.
Oh dear. Choices choices choices.
ZeroHedge or Zillow? NYC or America? Jue Lan or Ponca? Champagne or bungalow? A few swallows of poison or years of pleasure and security? Can't possibly make up my mind.
JEEEEE SUSSSSS. We are fucked.
= = = = =
Later thought of a better comparison, house vs house. This house in Vancouver (aka Chi Lan):
was featured a few months ago as the peak craziness of the Chi Lan bubble. A fair comparison because it's sort of bungaloid if not pure bungalow. Finished basement makes it somewhat larger, but the lot is smaller and the condition is worse. For $28k you could buy about 1.5% of this house, as indicated by the red square.
Well, which do you want? Five ratty shingles or an entire nice house? Hard choice!
Oh dear. Choices choices choices.
ZeroHedge or Zillow? NYC or America? Jue Lan or Ponca? Champagne or bungalow? A few swallows of poison or years of pleasure and security? Can't possibly make up my mind.
JEEEEE SUSSSSS. We are fucked.
= = = = =
Later thought of a better comparison, house vs house. This house in Vancouver (aka Chi Lan):
was featured a few months ago as the peak craziness of the Chi Lan bubble. A fair comparison because it's sort of bungaloid if not pure bungalow. Finished basement makes it somewhat larger, but the lot is smaller and the condition is worse. For $28k you could buy about 1.5% of this house, as indicated by the red square.
Well, which do you want? Five ratty shingles or an entire nice house? Hard choice!
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 10:52 AM
Chaos notes
Just registering this for the delight of Copkiller Condon and his Man Bloomberg. Your beloved crime and chaos are spreading, Copkiller, and the unpersons notice it. Not that it matters. Unpersons do not exist.
This morning two new advances of chaos, spreading from east to west. In 2900 block of Wellesley, a broken window on the front of a house. In 3000 block of Hoffman (a highly civilized street!) a homeowner has draped a large banner on his porch: "STEALING FROM SENIORS!!! WHO TOOK MY PLANTS? COWARDS!!!"
The latter word is probably not a good idea. Calling hoodies cowards is a dare, and hoodies will answer the dare.
I suspect the windstorms in Jul 2014 and Nov 2015 have helped to spread Copkiller Condon's Chaos. Many roofs are still tarped because roofers are still overwhelmed. Some of the tarps are acquiring a sense of resigned permanence, with properly nailed wood frames and decorative rocks holding down the plastic.
Few days later: The media have picked up the STEALING FROM SENIORS banner. GOOD. This part of town gets very little attention from the local media. TV features can help to bring out informants.
Labels: Heimatkunde
¶ 8:51 AM
Medallions and skill-estate
Returning to the specific subject of skill-estate.
The big problem is that we understand and respect skill-estate in some contexts, but we don't have a vocabulary or a legal structure to protect and regulate it.
Intellectual property, which is parallel to skill-estate and even overlaps in some ways, has a name and a legal structure, so we know how to protect it and how to limit it.
Uber vs Taxi provides a clear flashpoint, and shows the proper boundaries of skill-estate. Taxi systems own a fairly small amount of skill, but many of them have overused the skill to create falsely valued Medallions. Uber takes advantage of the misvalue. This is unfair to taxi services in non-Medalliony cities, who have a serious investment in cars and dispatch and repair garages. A balance will eventually be struck, but the cultural and media defense of Uber will push the balance against the taxis.
A similar balancing process already occurred in quasi-medical professions like audiology and optometry. Both tried to maintain a Medallion-like monopoly on high-priced devices while simple hearing aids and reading glasses have been available cheaply for many decades. The monopoly gave way to public information, leaving the real professionals dealing with more complex medical situations.
Right now the same process is starting for prosthetists, as 3d printing makes simple prostheses easy to build. Not really new: hand replacements have always been possible with simple wood and leather technology. The fad for 3d will inevitably fade, but the Medallion has been busted. Prosthetists will have to sparsify and regroup just as audiologists did.
Big lessons from those professions:
New tech can't be blocked by pure monopolistic force. It requires an adaptation.
BUT: New tech can't be allowed to dissolve the profession. Real professionals with real experience can give answers and provide services that CAN'T be replaced by web-found information and 3d printing.
Right now Taxis are in danger of dissolving. They need to regroup, find a more 'professional' set of duties, find a way to be indispensable.
A self-serving suggestion from my own recent experience: I tried to get surgery for a navel hernia. The surgery itself takes an hour, not much worse than major dentistry. But the surgeon wasn't able to do it because idiotic liability rules require an 'escort' to take you home. Taxis aren't allowed. An ambulance would cost $5000. I can't find an 'escort', so I'll have to live with the hernia, or try to find a less legal doctor. Taxi systems could work with the state to provide this service at a reasonable cost. Add a few similar services, and the system becomes indispensable.
Labels: skill-estate, TMI
¶ 2:04 AM
Wednesday, June 01, 2016
Do the popups know something?
Slatan magazine, normally serving its eponym loyally, is putting in a little word for God this week with an anti-marathon campaign.
The point is purely GOOD. Marathons are all consumption, zero production. When you spend half a year preparing to run Bloomsday or whatever, you are not making anything new, even in your imagination. You are not blazing any new trails, even in writing. You're just marching marching marching marching marching.
One of the articles may be counterproductive because it urges people to do BIG IMPORTANT things. BIG goals can lead to disappointment and burnout. Just MAKE something, no matter how important or insignificant. Improve your skills.
Unfortunately the popup advertisers are grabbing the GOOD point and running 26.3 miles in the wrong direction:
Labels: skill-estate
¶ 2:45 PM
Gotthard vs Bertha
Switzerland completes world's longest rail tunnel. 35 miles long. Total cost $12 billion, took about 22 years.
Let's compare. Seattle is trying to build a suicide tunnel to replace its Alaskan Way viaduct. Supposedly this will be safer in an earthquake. Fantastically idiotic idea to begin with. Surface is the only safe place in a quake.
Total length, if it ever gets done, will be 1.75 miles. Project has been fucking around for three years, mostly repairing Big Bertha because Big Bertha was not designed to drill through rock. Actual tunnel so far, 2000 feet or 20% of completion. If work continues at this rate it will take 15 years to go 1.75 miles. Total cost by official estimate: $3 billion.
Cost per mile for Gotthard tunnel: $12 billion / 35 miles = 340 million / mile
Cost per mile for Seattle Big Bertha: $3 billion / 1.75 miles = 1.7 billion / mile.
Therefore: Big Bertha, assuming it EVER gets done, will cost FIVE TIMES as much as the Swiss tunnel.
Inflation doesn't affect these figures much, and Swiss labor cost is somewhat higher than ours. What's the main difference? Apparently the Swiss have come up with a radical weird Martian sci-fi idea that is beyond American comprehension.
Use tools that work.
I'll admit that I can't begin to parse this super-weird Martian lingo, but I'm just writing it out phonetically in hopes that maybe someone else will understand, many centuries in the future.
Labels: skill-estate
¶ 4:18 AM
