Never fails to disappoint
Every now and then I check FrontPorchRepublic to see how badly they can disappoint me. They never fail.

This time they're pushing the "third" party candidacy of Brian Carroll, who is a strictly orthodox Democrat.

Few quotes from Carroll:

The pursuit of short-term goals also tends to depend on fear as a motivator. That often results in racist tropes, and xenophobia.

Standard D line.

The battles against Climate Change and to provide Racial Justice are not going to provide the immediate and measurable results that a President can brag about for re-election purposes.

Standard D line.

Ross Perot championed a balanced budget, and both President Bush and Challenger Bill Clinton had to shift in that direction. Perot’s influence lasted through several administrations.

That wasn't Perot's main point, and nobody even tried to balance the budget.

The UN has no business forcing abortion on its member nations, but it does have a role overseeing the rules of ocean-fishing.

The UN doesn't enforce fishing rules. Ad-hoc groups of nations do. If you accept UN's authority on any subject, you have to take the whole package. You can't pick and choose.

Parents and a local school board should have the first say about curriculum decisions.

Standard R point, but misses the real threat. Lawsuits are the real problem, not Federal standards.

The Federal government grew when no state government was big enough to control the railroads.

No, it grew because no state government was big enough to SUBSIDIZE the railroads or kill half the country to increase the share value of railroads. But Genocidal Madman Lincoln didn't permanently grow the government. Wilson created the modern Deepstate, invading every aspect of thought and culture.

I heard a speaker who worked in the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives under Bush 2. He said they were simply expanding work begun under President Clinton, and which was continued under President Obama. The office is still there under President Trump, but it suffers from staff vacancies and a poor understanding of what its job should be. This office should be a priority, under any Administration.

This is just silly. Bush's "faith-based" shit was a placebo, intended to satisfy demands while doing nothing. It's succeeding.

I think one reason I was nominated by the American Solidarity Party is that during some fairly intense disagreements within the Party, I demonstrated the ability to discuss important topics with civility.

Standard D line.

= = = = =

So he's mostly a standard Democrat, sounding more like Biden than anyone else. Why do we need another Biden?
  ¶ 1:26 AM

  How many purposes?
Headline: Music is universal.

Not a surprising fact, but surprisingly not systematically proved. This BIG study is trying to prove it, and more specifically to categorize the main types and PURPOSES of music.

They looked at every society for which there was ethnographic information in a large online database, 315 in all, and found mention of music in all of them. For their own ethnographic portion, they collected around 5,000 descriptions of song from a subset of 60 cultures spanning 30 distinct geographic regions. For the discography, they collected 118 songs from a total of 86 cultures, again covering 30 geographic regions.

They found that, across societies, music is associated with behaviors such as infant care, healing, dance, and love (among many others, like mourning, warfare, processions and ritual), and that these behaviors are not terribly different from society to society. Examining lullabies, healing songs, dance songs, and love songs in particular, they discovered that songs that share behavioral functions tend to have similar musical features.

"In music theory, tonality is often assumed to be an invention of Western music, but our data raise the controversial possibility that this could be a universal feature of music," he said. "That raises pressing questions about structure that underlies music everywhere -- and whether and how our minds are designed to make music."

The last question, whether and HOW OUR MINDS ARE DESIGNED to make music, is sliding into problematic territory for academics. I'd add that our minds are designed to make and use and consume music. Music is necessary food for the wave patterns that form our mind.

We no longer do lullabies or healing songs. We have plenty of war songs and procession and ritual songs, and we have plenty of futile mating songs.

Wouldn't be surprised if we have genes for each of the universal purposes, and wouldn't be surprised if the same genes are expressed in birds and bees for the same purposes.

= = = = =

Related thought: While reading about semaphores I bumped into an unexpected type and purpose of song. It's not clear to Modern Me what these songs were doing, but their purpose was definitely clear to the writers.

Les Merveilles de la Science was written in 1868 by Louis Figuier. He wrote several compendiums of various subjects. Especially in the section on balloons (aerostats), he frequently breaks into song. Each song is set to a popular melody so the reader can sing it. I googled these popular melodies and found only one of them. The others are totally unmentioned and unrepresented online.


Two examples with only the first verse:

LE VOYAGE AÉROSTATIQUE.
AIR : Le curé de Dôle.
Écoute, ma mie:
Dans les Tuileries,
On a vu Charles et Robert,
S'allant promener en l'air.
Ça faisait envie!


AIR : Premier jour de janvier.
L'autre jour, quittant mon manoir,
Je fis rencontre sur le soir
D'un globiste de haut parage;
ll s'en allait tout bonnement
Chercher un lit au firmament,
Et moi, je lui dis bon voyage.

What category do these fit? Songs of science? Songs of wonder and discovery?

Tom Lehrer's semi-modern science songs have the same flavor. I can't think of more recent examples. The "climate" genocidists sing, but their songs are ferocious all-consuming war screeches, devoted to obliterating science along with the rest of life and civilization.

= = = = =

Random speculation: We're finding that 40 Hz is a crucial brain syncing frequency, and auditory inputs of that freq seem to make a difference in aging and Alzheimers. The ears just barely pick up 40 Hz as a sine tone, but we can hear it easily as a trill or a beat frequency superimposed on a higher note. Did any of those healing songs require the singer to trill? Did they involve two singers 40 Hz apart, or more complex harmonies that evoked a 40 Hz beat freq?

Labels: Carbon Cult, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 3:04 PM

  Carver in Iowa
Latest item at KSHS is a real rarity. An 1895 group photo of GW Carver as a student at Iowa Agricultural College, with several of his friends.

Labels: Carver

  ¶ 10:05 AM

  One of these dudes is not like the other
Mike Hughes, the flat-earth dude, built a rocket by himself with one or two helpers, and launched successfully for a half-mile trip.

Elon Musk, the Gaia dude, used billions of dollars and thousands of employees to build a rocket. It blew up without launching, creating a giant cloud of toxic pollution.

Both dudes are pursuing idiotic theories. Only one dude knows how to GET SHIT DONE.

Labels: Constants and Variables

  ¶ 2:56 AM

  Hard to make metaphors for infinite lunacy
Stupidly watched a few minutes of replays from the latest "debate". This is crazy beyond crazy beyond crazy.

As always in a "debate", the participants are not arguing two sides, they're bidding up the strength of one side. "Debates" are auctions. In this auction, each bidder takes a turn at bidding up the need to impeach Trump. Why do they want to impeach Trump? Because he was pretending to "investigate" an ordinary bit of corruption. Who caused this unremarkable bit of standard DC corruption? Biden.

Hmm. I guess this Biden fellow must be out of politics, safely insulated from the discussion of his corruption.

No! Wait! Biden is right there on stage along with the bidders! He's joining in the bidding!

Best analogy for this craziness: A jury trial with the defendant serving in the jury. The defendant turns the trial around to convict the cops for arresting him.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 2:24 AM

  Aberree vs Disnee again
Continuing from yesterday's discussion of good management vs tech-monster management of a digital storefront...

The item I ordered brings up a separate topic. For clarity, this item was made long before the current GOOD management of the storefront, so it has ZERO connection to them.

The item is a scene of an old saloon. It includes several OBJs and several textures that are unquestionably derived from my free work posted at ShareCG. I knew about the derivation a long time ago, so this is old news.

Did I buy the item in order to start litigation? No, the exact opposite. I bought the item to use for my own enjoyment, because the artist ADDED VALUE. He added some of his own pieces, creating a scene that pleases my tastes by definition because it reflects my tastes. I could have built this scene, but I never got around to it, so it's worth paying a few bucks to let the other artist build it.

This attitude clashes with the modern Disney notion of copyright, but it harmonizes with Alphia Hart's idea of copyright.

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

Hart's view of copyright was unique in 1954:

Copyrighting everything you write is a confession that you have little faith in your ability to continue producing salable stuff -- and that there may come a time when you'll have to fall back on your own, protected material to make a living. When we can't produce new copy for The ABERREE, The ABERREE ceases to exist, because we're certain no one wants to read tomorrow what we said yesterday and today.

I reached a similar conclusion a long time ago in making courseware. The restrictions of 'digital rights' get stricter and more tangled every year, but they don't bother me because I have CONFIDENCE in my own ability to produce new images and animations.

Framing it as "rights" to duties: The newer Disney versions of copyright law show the insanity of "inherent rights" more perfectly than other applications. In this dyslogical delusion, every "creative" product has the "inherent right" to be held and sold. When everything is automatically "protected" without any form of registration or payment for title, raw force is the only determinant of title. In plain reality, the Disney law gives total freedom to the mafia with the largest army of consiglieri, which mysteriously and astonishingly turns out to be Disney.

When you start with the GOD-ASSIGNED DUTY to create order and value, the selling is secondary. You can try to sell your created products for money, and customers can buy them. You can't transfer the DUTY OF CREATION to a publisher because the publisher didn't create the item. You can pay the publisher to disseminate your product, or you can persuade the publisher to bet on your product, splitting the profit by negotiation. The publisher is not the owner, it's just providing a service for you.

This is parallel to the sharia paradigm of capitalism, which STRONGLY encourages you to USE your capital instead of hoarding it. Land should be USED for growing crops. Money should be USED to make products for people to USE. Skill should be USED to invent and develop more products and services for others to USE.

= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

Now I know that this is also parallel to the Soviet notion of copyright as embodied in the inventor certificate. The IP belongs to the state, which will use it for the benefit of the people; but the inventor gets public and permanent recognition plus some of the profits, and doesn't have to bankrupt himself fighting a Disney-style mafia corporation which is guaranteed to win in the end.

Labels: Aberree, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 12:57 AM

  Feature, not bug.
Via ZH:

The poll found that only 35 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 29 felt comfortable sharing their political opinions with their college professors, highlighting a severe disparity when compared to Democrats and independents, who polled at 54 percent and 51 percent, respectively, on sharing views with educators.

Everyone thinks this is a problem for the Repooflicans. No, it's an advantage. The conservatives and Repoofs are learning a valuable life lesson early.

Politics doesn't belong in most situations. If you're learning something REAL, you won't even be thinking about politics. Your entire mind and body will be involved in PRACTICING a new skill, whether it's welding or audiology or haircutting or gene-splicing.

The Dems are acquiring a false impression that you can share your beliefs with everyone, regardless of context. They are also learning that politics is the only thing that matters. Both of these experiences will be shockingly reversed when the young Dems enter the real world of work. (Unless they go to work for Deepstate or its subsidiaries like Google.)

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 3:44 PM

  Need more non-weaponized humans
One of the old storefronts in the CG graphics world has been resurrected under new management. The old version failed because it was run by a Weaponized Autist who applied precise standards to everything, measured and calibrated down to the 461.34.8876th decimal place. (Decimals have decimals have decimals in Autist World.) If you didn't calibrate precisely with his requirements and opinions, he didn't need you as a customer.

The new management is getting off to a much better start. I tried to order something. The ordering system didn't work. I emailed the management, telling them that they were probably losing some sales because the system isn't working. They sent me a gift card thanking me for "letting us know that the barn door was open."

It's wonderful to deal with REAL HUMANS WHO WANT TO DO BUSINESS AND MAKE A PROFIT, not computers or share-value bots or humans who function like computers.
  ¶ 8:53 AM

  What would OCD do?
Random and stupid thought.

OCD types have undoubtedly been around forever. It's a distinct genotype that comes through clearly regardless of circumstances.

Here's a funny 1949 episode of 'This is your FBI'. A 'germsy' kidnapper who compulsively cleans everything spoils the perfect crime by scrubbing down the abandoned tourist cabin where the gang was holding the victim. Before his cleanup, hundreds of random fingerprints were scattered in and under the dust and leftover magazines and clothing. After his scrubbing, he carefully touched every surface to check for the last particle of dust, and left perfect prints.

What would 'Germsy' have done in Elizabethan England where soap was unknown and everything rotted under layers of perfume and lead-based makeup?

Later thought: We do have evidence that the 'germsy' type existed, and it's hardly obscure! Out, out, damned spot!
  ¶ 6:59 AM

  Brilliant!
A beautiful piece of science, cutting across all the lines of orthodoxy and contributing directly to both education and medicine.

Does traditional medicine work? Yes, and sometimes it works better than modern.

London schoolchildren have found that some of their families' soup recipes have antimalarial properties, with the help of Imperial scientists. Researchers from Imperial College London helped the schoolchildren test their family soup broths for activity against the malaria parasite.

Several of the soup broths, collected from traditional family recipes that originated around the world, showed activity against the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, either by curbing its growth or preventing it from maturing. The soup recipes had been passed down through the generations for the treatment of fever.

Especially interesting that the recipes were ALREADY KNOWN to be medicinal.

Five of the broths were able to curb growth of the parasite in its disease-causing stage by more than 50 percent. In two of these, the inhibitory activity was comparable with that of a leading antimalarial drug, dihydroartemisinin.

Four other broths were more than 50 percent effective at blocking the ability of the parasites to mature to a form that infects mosquitoes, potentially blocking the process of transmission.

The recipes for each of the broths varied. They were vegetarian, chicken, or beef based, with no particular ingredient common to those with the strongest antimalarial activity.

Unfortunately the press release doesn't give the recipes of the effective soups, and the original article isn't properly linked through the DOI system yet.

Later the link was fixed: Here's the original article, but still no recipes.

Labels: Experiential education, infinite GOOD

  ¶ 5:25 AM

  More puzzling behavior
Liz Warren, who formerly tried to sound like an independent, has suddenly joined Trump. She fully and violently supports our coups in Venezuela and Bolivia.

If nothing else, her support of the purely ethnic coup in Bolivia will dispel those rumors of Cherokee ancestry. It also dispels any rumors of support for poor people or ordinary people or "socialism".

There must be a calculated reason for this change, probably related to those 700 people in Florida who are the only actual voters. She now loses all other potential supporters.... which really doesn't matter because only those 700 Floridians matter.
  ¶ 3:58 PM

  Flipping the other way
Earlier today I talked about the duty of beauty, and a magnificent flip.

I understand people who take ugliness ... or even prosaic dullness ... as a reason to create beauty, no matter how big or small. Write a symphony, plant a flower. That's the exact definition of life. Ingest chaos, create order and complexity and beauty.

I don't understand people who intentionally create ugliness.

For many years I've been following the decline and momentary fake rise of an abandoned building in this neighborhood. During a decade of vacancy Nature wasn't doing much harm. The basically pretty building was holding its own against snow and wind. Two years ago meth-addled squatters moved in, and decline accelerated dramatically. Windows broken, fires started. Finally the city bought out the original owner and forced a sale.



Supposedly the buyer was required to tear down the building and put up new housing on the large lot. The buyer didn't demolish; instead, they started to renovate. They fenced off the lot, reshingled the roof...



... pulled out the windows and doors and drywall ....



... and that's all. Now the building has been wide open for six months, and all signs of construction have stopped.

Why? What's the gain? The squatters were breaking the windows, now the windows are all wide open to rain and snow and squirrels and rats. The roof is new, but it's not sheltering anything. The fence may be keeping squatters out, but nobody is supervising, so I doubt it will last much longer.

I don't understand the long holding by the original owners, and I don't understand the behavior of the new owners. Neither makes sense by ordinary business purposes. Supposedly the purpose of owning an apartment building is to rent out the apartments and gain profit. Spokane is seriously short of rentals now, so the apts would rent quickly.

The original owners were paying property taxes and risking lawsuits for 10 years, with no gain. The new owners spent a considerable amount for construction crews, with no gain. No tenants, no rent coming in, property tax and potential lawsuits still going out.

There must be a profit-based reason for this "Creative Destruction" and profitless expense. Tax dodge? Using the LLC as a shell for illegal activities?

I don't understand.

Labels: Asked and unanswerable

  ¶ 1:54 PM

  Who are they?
Pew poll shows that only 8% of Americans want to keep pot fully illegal. 92% want various degrees of legalization.

Who are those 8%? Gangsters, especially the DC-based drug gang DEA. Only gangsters benefit from illegal pot.
  ¶ 10:29 AM

  Good description
This documentary by DW is a wonderfully clear account of how the financial world works, and the massive damage it does. Special attention to the murder of savers, since Krauts are savers. Toward the end it covers some possible solutions, again with solid clarity. The program is about two years old, but nothing has changed. Surprising from DW, which normally serves Satan.


  ¶ 12:36 AM

  Flipping
Our duty is to make beauty.

Best example:

By all reliable accounts, Elizabeth 1 was an ugly stinky mass-murdering filthy psychopathic stupid faghag. It spent its life destroying countries and minds. Courtiers and intellectuals and soldiers and artists had to constantly fawn over it and please its picosecond-changing Github whims; despite their best efforts, it would decide randomly to torture and execute them.

What did they do? The artists and musicians created the largest store of pure beauty in history as a "tribute" to the "beauty" of it.... or more precisely as a counterpoint and counterforce to the ugliness of it.

The madrigals collected as 'Triumphs of Oriana' stand as a lasting monument to the infinite power of beauty. A nasty filthy monster was flipped into the best music in the universe.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 11:37 PM

  Good point but backwards
Robert Shiller is arguing that economics pays too much attention to theories and numbers. Perfectly correct. He's also arguing that real economies run mainly on narratives, feelings and gossip. Half correct and possibly deceptive.

We need to separate economics from Dow. The people who call themselves economists have ZERO connection with actual business. The people who call themselves economists are SOLELY stock shills. Their SOLE PURPOSE is to raise share value for their employers.

If Shiller is talking about Dow, then his judgment is accurate. Dow is a number which depends on nothing but fake stories, frauds, cheating and mass murder. Mostly mass murder. The Dow curve surfs on a growing tsunami of Deplorable carcasses.

Many of the cheaters and fraudsters use math jargon to cloak and cover their bad logic. This type of cheating is especially dense in the Bitcoin world. A new example:

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee believes Bitcoin (BTC) will accrue price value following a similar logic to the Silicon Valley tech titans. During an interview for CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on show on Nov. 15, Lee argued that cryptocurrencies “are network value assets” — and share this with the world’s most successful tech stocks.

“Cryptocurrencies are network value assets, meaning the more people hold the asset, the greater the value. In fact, it’s a log function — so if you double the users hold it, you get a quadrupling of value. To go to $25,000 you essentially need a little less than 4x rise, which means you need to double the number of people who hold Bitcoin.”

In the first place he's got log and exp backwards. Log describes REAL business, rising to an asymptote and settling there. Exp describes frauds like Bitcoin. In the second place, network value asset is a meaningless phrase. (Wolfstreet has a solid takedown of the nonsense!) Tech stocks and Bitcoin are mass hallucinations, depending solely on the fraudster's ability to puff up a giant indescribably stupid fantasy.

= = = = =

Shiller's complaint is ON THE FUCKING DOT for this situation.

But he's clearly talking about more than Dow. He claims to be discussing the entire realm of business.

A real-value economy DOES function more by math than narratives, but NOT the math used by the people who call themselves economists. The math of business is simple, and entirely handled by bookkeepers using ledgers.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

The blockchain fad is a bizarre symptom of Deepstate-induced craziness. First let's ignore the simple and obvious facts that (1) Bitcoin's founder openly proclaimed his CIA connections (2) Bitcoin is perfectly centralized, running all transactions through NSA. Even without those blazingly obvious links, the idea is still crazy and harmful.

As an old pen-and-ink bookkeeper, I have a feel for how ledgers are supposed to work. Ledgers aren't supposed to be accessible and changeable by everyone in the world. Ledgers are supposed to be an accurate and unchanging record of the Debits and Credits, the outputs and inputs, of ONE business or organization or individual.

Modularity is IMPERATIVE and BASIC to the functioning of an organism, and thus to the ledger that records the functioning.

Without modularity, without borders and layers and hierarchy, you can't even define inputs and outputs so you can't have a ledger. You can't have any sort of schematic or equation or model unless you have a boundary.

= = = = =

This article in a 'new econ' website invokes the double-entry ledger to explain fractional reserve fake currency creation.

The commons is a conscious implementation of reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruists, whether human or ape, reward those who cooperate with others and punish those who defect. A commons works the same way. A resource such as a lake or a field, or a monetary system, is understood as a shared asset.

If one’s business activities hurt any other market participant, they undermine the integrity of the marketplace itself. For those entranced by the myth of capitalism, this can be hard to grasp. They’re still stuck thinking of the economy as a two-column ledger, where every credit is someone’s else’s debit. This zero-sum mentality is an artifact of monopoly central currency. If money has to be borrowed into existence from a single, private treasury and paid back with interest, then this sad, competitive, scarcity model makes sense. I need to pay back more than I borrowed, so I need to get that extra money from someone else. That’s the very premise of zero-sum. But that’s not how an economy has to work.

Zero-sum misses the point entirely. The crucial question is where the CRedit comes from.

Value is an increase in order. Value is an increase in life and beauty.

In the most basic agricultural forms of commerce, the CRedit is CReated by plants, who turn sunlight and water into infinitely ordered life, and secondarily by animals who eat the plants and transform the order into a more condensed order.

CR represents an increase in order.

Within the boundaries of the ledger, CR is measuring the number of currency units paid to the farmer or miner or oil driller or supplier, but it directly represents an increase in order, an increase in life.

DR is also an increase in order.

The business processes the raw input, using human labor and machinery, and turns it into a more complexly ordered object, or makes it more convenient to use, or more attractive to buy, or more STORABLE. Storage is probably the most important increase in order.

DR in the ledger measures currency units coming into the business from the customer who gains convenience or storability.

= = = = =

I've often cited Steinbeck's analogy: Real value business brings in salmon, puts it in cans with human and machine labor, and sells it. Capitalists HATE human and machine labor. They would rather can salmon with ledgers, and now they've finally managed to do it.

= = = = =

Using salmon, Polistra shows how the REAL-VALUE ledger measures the increase in order on both sides of a REAL-VALUE business.

On the CR side, Nature increases order by growing a salmon. The fisherman brings in a salmon, adding a unit of life-order to the business. The ledger represents this CRedit as money going back to the fisherman.



On the DR side, the business increases order by filleting the salmon and placing it in cans, then selling it to customers. Canning makes the salmon more convenient for ordinary people without butchering skills, and it makes the salmon STORABLE. The ledger represents this increase in order by showing the money flowing from customers to the business.



A business wants to have input money exceeding output money. Profit means that the business is creating more order than it consumes from its suppliers. In other words, the business is alive. And this accumulation of increased value is where the money supply really increases. The Soviet system recognized this basic fact by using VAT to determine when the national money supply would increase.

= = = = =

From this viewpoint we can see how debt is actually a LOSS of real value. When a business rents money from a bank, the incoming money was NOT generated by nature or labor. It was counterfeited by the bank. The business gets nothing but an obligation to repay the money, which limits the freedom of the business. The interest paid to the bank must be sucked out of the real value accumulated by the business.

Modern economics turns the whole picture upside down by treating the sucked-out interest as the "creation" "of" "value".

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: Real World Math, storage

  ¶ 1:06 AM

  Poor service, but why do they want ads?
Yesterday I was ungratefully bitching about Lambdatest, an excellent emulator service that won't let you pay for the service you need. You can get it free, or you can pay way too much for more than you need.

Free is supposedly wonderful, but in fact it's terrible. Product, not customer.

Now I'm bitching about the opposite kind of mispricing, which is more serious.

Part of the current courseware project is a set of videos showing anatomical dissections. I dissected the videos into short pieces, with questions and quizzes interspersed in the usual courseware pattern. At first I had tried to do it the cheap way since I'm getting very little money from this work. I used FFMPEG to cut the pieces manually. FFMPEG is a crude tool, cutting only on keyframes, and the copy-editor didn't like the results. I respect this editor's judgment tremendously, so I looked for a non-cheap way to dissect the dissections. I remembered using Ulead (now Corel) on a much earlier courseware project, and purchased the latest.

(I wasn't listening to good old Emerson. Cheap is always more expensive in the end!)

Corel VideoStudio is a HUGE NEOCON MONSTER that invades and occupies the computer. It has all sorts of features that I'll never need or use. The installation was crude and coarse, failing with no error message. I tried using Corel's India help center, but they were slow to respond. Finally figured out the problem by reading error logs. Corel was sulking because it didn't like my display resolution setting. I set the resolution to max, Corel installed and ran. I finished the work, with a much cleaner result than FFMPEG.

Now that Corel is occupying a large part of my computer, you'd think it would at least be QUIET. That's supposedly why you PAY for software, to stop the annoying advertisements.

Nope. Being paid is not enough for Insatiable Neocon Corel. Several times a day it pops up HUGE ADS on my regular desktop, where they have the feel of serious warnings from the operating system.



I'll be glad when this project is done so I can uninstall this parasite.


= = = = =

Update 11/27: Project is done. Uninstalled the parasite immediately, ran CCleaner to rip out its roots, rebooted. Unshaving the yak was just as hard as shaving. The UNINSTALL required me to switch screen resolution. and during the reboot Windows had to run CHKDSK to clean up the file system that Ulead had messed with. Good riddance to a BAD program.

Next day: Computer still seemed to be running slow, so I looked at tasks and startup. Corel had turned ON Windows Update without asking permission. I'd shut off Update a long time ago because it's essentially malware. Removed Update from startup and rebooted. At least no DISKCHK this time.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 12:21 AM

  Rethinking Bolsonaro again
Looking at coverage of the BRICS meeting, it seems that I've been overestimating Bolsonaro's neocon devotion. He serves USA when it comes to Venezuela and Israel, but he hasn't joined the blockades against Russia or China or Persia. He continues trading with them as before, maintaining Brazil's tradition of commercial sanity**. He picks his fights, trying to navigate the difficult straits.

This comment by Putin verifies the thought. A Russian reporter asks Putin if Brazil is an ally or an enemy. Putin emphasizes that Russia has lots of trade and assistance deals with Brazil, and all are running steadily. As translated by the subtitle:

"Needless to say, the US as a major power located in the Americas is interesting to Brazil. This is natural."

= = = = =

**Commercial sanity is defined by two questions:

Do you have something I want to buy? Let's negotiate.

Do you want something I have to sell? Let's negotiate.

The USA approach to commerce is defined by two questions:

Does Adelson like you? If so, I'll sell you weapons at a good price.

Does Adelson hate you? If so, I'll send your opponents free weapons.

  ¶ 12:21 PM

  What's the opposite?
What's the opposite of HARDASS REALIST? How about TAKINGITUPTHEASS FANTASIST?

The perfectly predictable outcome of the Daleiden case came out as perfectly predicted. "Trial" done, Daleiden in jail for a long time.

I wrote a year ago:

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

I've contributed to the Thomas More defense fund for Daleiden. They're begging for more, which is EXTREMELY UNDERSTANDABLE. They estimate that the defense will cost 20 million.

New thought:

Don't be there applies to legal defense as well. We've seen REPEATEDLY AND CONSISTENTLY that heretics are NEVER ALLOWED TO WIN. Satan owns all the black-robed demons and all the prosecutor demons.

Both sides are playing a game. The defense side knows perfectly well that Satan NEVER GIVES UP. Satan has INFINITE resources because SATAN OWNS THE COUNTERFEIT PRINTING PRESS. There is exactly ZERO chance of winning. Defender organizations like Thomas More gain budget and workforce by running a permanent defense. Parkinson, Parkinson, Parkinson.

Satan doesn't really like to kill heretics, because death ends the wasted energy and creates a martyr. Satan prefers to keep heretics OCCUPIED FOREVER with pointless fighting that will never succeed.

What's the alternative? Don't be here. Live elsewhere without wasted energy.

= = = = =

MODEST PROPOSAL:

Instead of crowdfunding an endless and EXPONENTIALLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE court "fight", we should be crowdfunding a proper pension or annuity for heretics. We know that heretics will never be allowed to work, so we should honor them and protect them by giving them a decent retirement in a sane and INDEPENDENT country like Brazil or Russia.

= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

I've been leaving futile and pointless comments in various articles on the case, pushing the idea of pensioned exile. Perfectly predictably, nobody is listening. Everyone is stuck on stupid, mindlessly following Deepstate orders, mindlessly reading their assigned puppet part in Deepstate's grotesque puppet show, mindlessly pouring their money and talents into Deepstate's hyperdemonic project of obliterating the universe.


DON'T FUCKING BE THERE.
  ¶ 5:11 AM

  The only way
Here's a HARDASS REALIST article at Strategic-Culture.

Poor, naive Evo Morales. Instead of seeking secure refuge in a sovereign friendly country, he must be languishing now in the catacombs of Mexico City, where his tormentors are making sure that he will remain isolated and is never allowed to attempt a comeback. They are a wicked lot, but also undeniably sharp learners. They will use every tool at their disposal to make sure Morales does not spring on them a nasty surprise, as Lula just did.

Hardass to be sure, and realist to be sure.

The article details several groups that have been working openly for USA and Soros. Morales failed to arrest and execute their leaders, so they were free to take him down when they chose to.

Plain fact: A leader who wants to serve the people needs to ELIMINATE the enemies of the people. Erdogan, for all his failings in other areas, did exactly the right thing when Soros ran a coup against him. Erdogan arrested everyone who was involved at all levels, and sorted them out after arresting them.

Other leaders have done the same thing, sometimes with less force but always with enough force for the situation. Hungary kicked out the Sorosians BEFORE the coup, thus obviating the need for force.

CIVILIZATION can survive in a few places by RUTHLESSLY ERADICATING the opponents of civilization.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Sorosia

  ¶ 12:05 AM

  Great service, but why don't they want money?
Another of those odd mispricings in the world of software.

A customer was wondering whether my courseware is compatible with Safari on a Mac. We had tested it a couple years ago with Safari on Windows, and it was fine there; but apparently Safari stopped updating its Windows browser. So I needed to check the latest Mac version via emulation. There are several choices available. Lambdatest is the only one that offers a free service.

Tried it. After some yakshaving (my Fujitsu keyboard, which runs through a USB emulator, couldn't talk to the Lambdatest emulator) the test shows everything works properly. So the customer's problems aren't related to incompatibility of my app. Relief. The problem must have been something else, and the complaint seems to have quieted down, indicating that they found the something else.

Thus I'm happy with Lambdatest's service, and would LOVE to pay for it during the times when I need it. Lambdatest doesn't offer that alternative.

Their subscription is $30 a month. I'd gladly pay $30 for this important service when I need it. I only need it for about a month every two years. But you can't subscribe for a month. You have to pay $360 for a full year in advance.

Why would a company choose to provide service for free instead of thirty dollars? Doesn't make sense.
  ¶ 3:29 PM

  More point-missing on AI
As usual, Brendan Dixon at MindMatters makes some good evocative points but misses part of the big picture.

When I read a piece created by another human, I am engaging with another mind. When I read a piece “authored” by an AI, however, I’m engaging an algorithm. The human may ponder, evaluate, weigh, and rewrite. (I sure do.) An AI spews: Given this input, under these conditions, this is the output. Period.

In a genuine publishing setup, the writer and editor are working together.

A human writer can certainly spew an algorithmic output. Most fiction writers do. A human editor can also be algorithmic, catching fake grammarhoid "rules" like "split infinitives" and "lie/lay confusion".

When both writer and editor are fully human, the result transcends algo. I'm thinking of my current final edit on courseware. The publisher has a new copy-editor who is inspiring. She catches real failures of clarity, not grammarhoid "errors", and best of all she knows when a paragraph or image or animation could use improvement. She caught an image that had been subtly wrong for many years, and she inspired me to redo an animation that had been unclear for many years.

There's no way an editing algo could feel that the animation is unclear, and there's no way a writing algo could make the animation clearer.

Dixon again:

AI can be useful in writing. Consider an AI working from a mass of field reports and “writing” an overview of very complex events. Or a health writer who must summarize a huge batch of academic papers to determine what coherent message can be gleaned from them about a controversial issue in cancer treatment or vaccination. These uses of machine analysis benefit us by augmenting what we can do — like every other tool we use.

An algo could probably do a better job of gathering than modern "journalists", but only because modern "journalists" can't even read their own words, let alone process external facts. The algo would be unable to detect subtle biases unless it was told in advance to trust CNN and mistrust RT, which is what the wetware "journalist" already does. The algo's analysis of science papers on an important topic would be equally useless for the same reason. 100% agreement with current fashion as of this picosecond = valid. Less than 100% agreement = invalid.

Labels: AI point-missing, From rights to duties

  ¶ 5:51 AM

  Y no modern sun visor?
Modern materials and modern software in modern cars still haven't solved one very old problem. Sun in your eyes. Sun visors haven't changed, and still offer only partial relief. Tinted windshields relieve glare from above, but that's not where the problem is. The problem is directly in front.

Modern materials and software COULD solve the problem. GPS and time can determine when the sun is in the critical area. Two or three dashcams could locate the sun's angle wrt the driver's eyes right now. An LCD-style matrix in the windshield could dim the exact circle of the sun along this line of perspective, to the point where it's still bright but not masking the entire retina.



Come to think of it, the way I showed it graphically would be better than LCD. I placed a little semi-transparent circle against the windshield in front of Polistra's face. In reality a circle of polaroid or fresnel material could be floated magnetically against the windshield and dynamically positioned to stay in the cone. Less tech than LCD, less obstruction when sun wasn't present.

Footnote: In keeping with the next item, I could probably title this one More conic-section-missing on AI.

Labels: Asked and worth asking again

  ¶ 12:46 AM

  Who's socialist?
Via Bloomberg:

Venezuela is managing to export some of its oil despite our massively infinitely incalculably evil war. Tanker companies and oil dealers want to do BUSINESS, and are willing to play games like turning off transponders on ships to get BUSINESS done. Persia is doing the same.

Who's capitalist and who's socialist?

Doing business is capitalism. Creating value by mining and processing a resource, and selling it to people who want to use it.

Stopping business isn't even socialism, it's just crime. Mob tactics. Gangster tactics.

Venezuela never attacked us, never threatened us, has no military capacity to threaten us even if it wanted to threaten us. We have NO REASON to attack Venezuela. We are simply acting as hitman for Saudi, which wants Saudi oil to be the only oil.

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite evil

  ¶ 11:37 PM

  Conquistadors for damn sure
The faces of the Bolivian coup reminded me of Conquistadors. Turns out to be on the dot. The woman who identifies as the "president" expressed a purely conquistadorian thought several years ago:

I dream of a Bolivia free of indigenous satanic rites, the city is not for 'Indians,' they better go to the highlands or El Chaco.

Pisarro and deSoto and their murderous Jesuit accomplices would have agreed fully.
  ¶ 3:27 PM

  I guess this makes sense
I've paid zero attention to the "impeachment" stageplay.

After listening briefly to some "news", this is what seems to be happening:

Party D is colluding with Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on party R, in order to prosecute party R for colluding with Ukrainian officials to dig up dirt on party D.

I guess this makes sense. It's like robbing a bank to get evidence that a robber robbed the bank, EXCEPT that there's nothing illegal or unusual about digging up dirt on political opponents. All politicians do it all the time, so there's no self-defense justification for acquiring evidence on acquiring evidence on acquiring evidence on acq

Question: Why do we pay politicians trillions of dollars? If they did something else as a day job, this convoluted theater of the absurd would just be a weird hobby like cosplay. But they don't do anything else. This is their day job.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking

  ¶ 11:23 AM

  Followup on Inventor Certificates
Recently I wondered how the Soviet system treated inventors.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

In 1929 the 'cruel annoyances' were familiar. The ITT author knew that the sole purpose of patents is to STOP innovation and KILL inventors. He was ruefully unsurprised to find the same situation in 1797. Nothing has changed. Patents still serve to halt and impoverish real inventors.

Well, how about the Soviet system? We know that the USSR treated scientists better. They were trained properly, and they were given tremendous respect and comparative freedom to think and work.

Did inventors get similar treatment? The patent situation is unfamiliar. Fortunately I found a 1973 US trade document aimed at increasing trade with Russia:

By facilitating imports of Soviet machinery and industrial products, the United States might reap an unexpected benefit from expanded trade ties with the Soviet Union, namely, the acquisition of new Soviet technology in a few industrial sectors. In certain high-priority industries, the Soviet Union has devoted considerable resources to research and development. Some Soviet industries have made important technological innovations which could prove very valuable to US firms. The steel and aluminum industries and certain mining industries are examples of US sectors which could benefit from such an exchange of technology.

As with the 1968 Commerce dept document I cited earlier, our government knew about Russian superiority even while it was telling us the opposite. Our government knew that Russia had kept its own industries and developed its own skills while we were offshoring electronics, killing metals and mining with EPA rules, and dumbing down students.

Specifically on patents:

Soviet patent law, however, is quite different from Western laws. Under Soviet law, an inventor is given the option of receiving a patent or an inventor's certificate for his innovation. The foreign inventor who submits an application to the Soviet Union is given the same choice.

The certificate gives the inventor recognition for his achievement and assures him of a predetermined financial reward, but vests in the state all rights to use, develop, and exploit the invention.

The Soviet patent is similar to its Western counterpart; the patentee gains the right to exploit his invention for his own personal profit, up to a ceiling established by law. As an innovation by a Soviet citizen can generally be exploited only by a state enterprise, the incentive to own a patent is reduced. Moreover, legal requirements for obtaining a patent and various tax benefits and compensation advantages for certificate holders induce most Soviet inventors to apply for certificates.

If we had the choice, sane and sensible inventors would also go for the certificate. A guaranteed payout, even if small, is VASTLY BETTER than going deep into debt for lawyers and development costs, only to watch a giant corporation snatch the invention away.

= = = = =

I got curious to see if Ebay had any of those certificates. Only a couple:



= = = = = END REPRINT.



So I bought one of those certificates from Ebay, mainly to see details of the 'payout'. It came in the mail today. The front is as above.

The middle pages are a typical patent description, with drawings:



And here's the payout part:



1972 rubles were about the same as current US dollars, so this is about $60 today. Certainly small, but certainly certain. These inventors, who were profs at an Institute of Hydroautomation, didn't have to spend thousands betting against a giant corporation which would steal their invention. They received firm official credit and recognition, which couldn't be stolen, and got some actual money instead of a zero-chance lottery.

Credit footnote: Since credit and recognition were the point, I should continue the credit and recognition. The inventors were A.I. Kudryavtsev and A.V. Nikitskii.

Numerical footnote: Exchange rates don't give the full picture. Soviet citizens paid very low rent and paid nothing for medical care. A big part of their system functioned without money, so a cash prize was better 'disposable income' than it would be here.

Labels: Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 1:51 PM

  Erdogan gits er done
Via ZH: Erdogan has stopped fucking around and started fucking.

As of Monday Turkish officials announced plans to begin sending hundreds of the some 1200 plus ISIS detainees and other jihadists it has in its custody back to Europe, saying Turkey "is not a hotel for jihadists" — to quote an Interior Ministry statement from last week.

"Turkey deported three foreign jihadists on Monday, with more than 20 Europeans including French and Germans in the process of being expelled to their countries of origin," the AFP reported. This after Turkish officials have repeatedly lashed out at European capitals for refusing to repatriate their citizens caught fighting for ISIS.

Good.

Erdogan can't get over his idiotic need to kill Kurds, which interferes with everything he should be doing FOR TURKEY. At least his attitude toward Europe is gradually firming up.

Europe has been FUCKING TURKEY UP THE ASS for 20 years, and Erdogan has been taking it, spending billions to house and feed and educate the refugees from OUR evil wars, always hoping that EU will suddenly thank him for his service and stop FUCKING Turkey up the ass.

When you're unlovable you have to live unlovable. You can't waste time and life hoping that somebody somewhere might stop FUCKING YOU UP THE ASS. Not gonna happen. Never. Survival requires GETTING THE HELL OUT of bad situations, and sometimes requires counterfucking. Satan doesn't understand gentleness or empty threats. Satan understands RAW FORCE AND VIOLENCE AND BLACKMAIL.
  ¶ 10:12 AM

  Simpler way
Trump and Calif Gov Newsom are arguing about Calif's infinitely stupid high-speed rail project.

Both are missing the point.

Who benefits from this railroad? Casinos. Who loses from this railroad? Calif people.

The sole purpose of this railroad is to bring LA people to Vegas so they can lose all their money.

No government entity should be involved AT ALL in this evil sinful wasteful project.

If it's going to be built, the casinos should pay all of it. There's a long history of railroads building tourist attractions to create traffic, and tourist attractions paying for roads or railroads to reach them.

This project simply proves what we already know. Casinos run everything. They can mobilize state and federal governments to pour billions of dollars into projects that SOLELY serve the casinos, and avoid spending any of their own evil sinful stolen bloodmoney.

Ordinary taxpayers everywhere are paying to support the most profitable industry in the world, which doesn't need any support. Worst of all, many of those taxpayers have SERIOUS religious objections to gambling. This is identical to funding Planned Parenthood.

The cheapest high-speed link between LA and Vegas would be a money pipeline similar to Paypal. Every LA idiot could link up to the high-speed bankrupter and instantly send all of his money to Wynne and Adelson. Use blockchain to make it even COOOOOOOOOLER.

Labels: modest proposal, Natural law = Sharia law, Shared Lie

  ¶ 1:51 AM

  Proper illustration of DuPillon
I should give this semaphore a writeup and animation, since I only slipped it into an older item before.

The DuPillon system was used by the French navy for coastal stations communicating with ships. This model is based on a DuPillon station at the tip of Normandy that was still operating in the 1930s, along with a radio beam.



DuPillon used a variation on the English two-arm system, not the Chappe wing system, but it was built with Chappe parts. The arms were louvered and counterweighted like Chappe wings.



The short third arm served as an advance alert to watchers, so they wouldn't miss part of the message; and the coastal stations added a cannon firing blanks** to guarantee that the ships were paying attention! (Something like the railroad torpedo placer alarm.)

I wouldn't have modeled this device for its mechanism, since it was derivative; but the building and the ocean setting were too beautiful to neglect.

= = = = =

Links to the illustrations so far:

Russian 1850s

Chappe clock system and wing system

Dupillon (French) [I snuck this into an older item without properly describing it]

Six shutter (English)

More discussion of Chappe

Chatley (English)

Redo of Russian

Redo of DuPillon (this item)


= = = = =

**Later thought: The coastal stations could have skipped the semaphore and sent Morse-like code with the cannon. Big cannon and little cannon for dashes and dots.

Labels: defensible times, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 9:03 AM

  Unsynced thought
Random thought vaguely triggered by thinking about the Bolivian tribe.

Is there any tribe or language that marks a long time unit without syncing with the four seasons?

There's lots of variation on starting points for years and calendars and lifetimes. Until 1750, England started the new year on March 25, even while using the normal January to December month pattern. Many countries still start their calendars from the current emperor or the current dynasty or a religious landmark other than the mistaken birthday of Jesus. Human birthdays start at 0 in some countries and 1 in others.

If there is any unit outside the four seasons, it would probably be an equatorial tribe. Elsewhere the seasons are clear and unavoidable.

Near the equator the day and month are clear, but seasons are vague. A tribe could simply ignore the year-size unit, or mark 10 moons or 60 moons or 3 rainy/dry alternations........

Labels: Asked and not worth asking

  ¶ 5:28 AM

  10k
This is post #10000. Just happened to notice 9999 on the counter, and wanted to mark the nice round meaningless number before it slipped by.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 1:05 AM

  AP = QC
Zuesse points out that Tulsi's actual votes in Congress were strictly in line with D and R orthodoxy on Russia. Every vote, and every public statement until this year's candidacy, was firmly against Russia and for the blockades and sanctions.

I've given up waiting for Tulsi to DO something meaningful. The only possible conclusion is that Tulsi is a milder version of the Trump Pied Piper. She's an Agent Provocateur. Putting it another way, she's a quality control magnet. Her job is to draw off and identify unorthodox voters so they can be explicitly discarded.
  ¶ 12:51 AM

  More predictability
Leftists are properly decrying our latest coup in Bolivia. As usual the leftists are correct about some things and wrong about others.

In this particular case they're correct about racism. Usually they're wrong. Pictures tell the story. Evo and his officials and his people have native faces. The Bolivian tribe has a distinct face shape, easy to recognize. The Soros protesters have Euro faces, Conquistador faces. The coup is definitely Euros smashing natives.

As usual the leftists are wrong about resources. We don't want to TAKE the lithium and other minerals. We want to DESTROY the minerals. 100 years ago we made war to gain resources. Since 1946 most of our wars have been pure evil, unrelated to resources. When resources are involved, we destroy them or make them unavailable to everyone including ourselves.

Our sole purpose is obliteration. No physical reality shall remain, only pure numbers.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 11:38 PM

  Speaking of DON'T BE THERE
Here's an excellent example of radical realism and duty instead of "rights". Predictably, Soros and USA mounted a coup against Morales in Bolivia. Instead of standing on "rights", Morales suddenly resigned.

If he had stayed and defended his "rights", the ensuing devastation would have happened under his name and brand, and he would very soon lose power ANYWAY.

The first duty of a populist leader is to protect the people. Faced with an unstoppable USA/Soros coup, the best way to protect the people is to HALT the coup and let peace happen. Peace is better for the people than death.

Gouvernour Morris would DEFINITELY understand this move.

= = = = =

Later, AMLO also understands:

Por lo pronto, ya que mañana daremos a conocer con amplitud nuestra postura, reconocemos la actitud responsable del presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, quien prefirió renunciar a exponer a su pueblo a la violencia.

... Evo preferred renunciation instead of exposing HIS PEOPLE to violence.


= = = = =

And later, via RT,

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said his country would grant asylum to former Bolivian President Evo Morales if he seeks it. Ebrard said that two dozen Bolivian lawmakers and government officials have already taken refuge in Mexico’s official residence in La Paz.

“Mexico, in accordance with its tradition of asylum and non-intervention, has received 20 people from the Bolivian executive and legislature in the official residence in La Paz, so we also decided to offer asylum to Evo Morales,” Ebrard tweeted.

Good. AMLO is the strongest defender of PEACE on this side of the world. He's taking a real risk by making the offer. USA/Soros is already playing the usual "hiker" game, ginning up the usual war against Mexico. Now we have another reason.

Later: The new leaders of Uruguay and Argentina have joined in with AMLO. I wasn't sure whether those leaders would turn out to be Soros or non-Soros. Now we know they're on God's side, at least verbally.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 3:03 PM

  Yup, those are APs.
Listening to Tom Gresham's gun talk show. Guns are definitely Not My Department, but Gresham is one of the few sources of plain common sense and sanity in modern radio. His attitude is strict non-interventionist. Be ready to defend your life and family WHEN ATTACKED, but MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS. Don't get involved in a dispute that isn't yours, avoid situations where you're likely to need a gun. Let the cops do what they're paid to do.

Today he's talking about some folks who have decided to start carrying rifles openly, as a way of "expressing" their "rights". Gresham suspects they're Agents Provocateurs, and he's undoubtedly correct.

= = = = =

This year is Jail Mode, so I'm always going back to the 1969 experience for reference.

I learned two things IMMEDIATELY on March 21, 1969.

1. Government runs by fakery and stings. An open drug seller, or an openly available drug buyer, is working for the government. Both are APs, designed to lure unsuspecting hippie dummies into buying or selling so the government can nab you.

2. Government works for the rich. My rich housemate had a significant stash, but the cops knew who he was and knew what was his. They searched only my materials and found one seed.

The rest of the jail experience repeated and reinforced those two learnings.

= = = = =

Later on, especially after 9/11 when I allowed TV to ruin my mind, I forgot both of those learnings and went along with partisan idiocy. Government was OK when it was Repooflican, not OK when it was Democrat. The ruination disappeared when I unplugged the TV in 2011, and the old valid learnings returned to the foreground.

= = = = =

The sum of those two learnings, in three words:

DON'T BE THERE.

If a "movement" is inviting you to "express" your "rights", the movement is a trap.

The best way to express a radically realistic understanding of the world is to remain quiet and inconspicuous, and to do your duty according to your talents and tendencies and opportunities.

Know the truth, make more life and value and beauty.

Labels: From rights to duties

  ¶ 2:38 PM

  Something I hadn't heard before
Old Sovietologist Steve Cohen is pretty much the only valid historian. In this interview he says lots of familiar true facts, plus one fact I hadn't heard before.

At the start of the Switchover in 1990, most Russians were ready to 'join the West', ready to form a cautious alliance with USA. Their attitude reversed quickly when Yeltsin became our mindless puppet. Yeltsin, following explicit orders from Clinton, obliterated Russia. Understandably the people didn't enjoy being obliterated.

Our idiotic experts now blame Putin for turning the people against the obliterators.

This is an exact replica of our 1918 actions. Even before Armistice we were working WITH the Kraut side to occupy and subvert Russia. We wanted the Revolution to result in an Axis slave. Our meddling turned Russians against our pet Mensheviks and gave the victory to the Bolsheviks.

The same story is repeated in dozens of other countries, including China in 1946. We start a revolution or meddle in an ongoing revolution, aiming to set up a slave government. Sometimes our meddling succeeds for a while, but whether successful or not we manage to turn the PEOPLE solidly against us.

As Yeltsin was losing his mind and body to alcohol, he made one heroic move. He recommended Putin as his successor, convincing Clinton that Putin would continue blind obedience. Putin turned out to be the literal savior of Russia, solving problems FAST and turning Russia into a self-sufficient modern prosperous country, USING RUSSIAN CULTURE AND TRADITION, AND USING SOVIET SYSTEMS.

Labels: switchover

  ¶ 6:35 AM

  Oklahoma GETS SHIT DONE
The Okla state government has released 500 prisoners after commuting their sentences. It began with a referendum that reclassified drug offenses to misdemeanors. Then the legislature followed through by ordering commutations of previous sentences.

Okla doesn't always do the right thing, but when it decides to do the right thing it GETS SHIT DONE. Endless fucking around is the Yankee way, not the Okie way.

Good work.

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 5:10 AM

  Ice gets the grant
Nothing new about this, EXCEPT the obvious reference to "global warming".

Watching immersive 360 videos of icy Arctic scenes helps to relieve intense burning pain and could hold hope for treating chronic pain, a small study has found.

Scientists from Imperial College London have found that using virtual reality headsets could combat increased sensitivity to pain, by immersing people in scenes of icebergs, frigid oceans and sprawling icescapes.

Active distraction has ALWAYS been known to break the positive feedback cycles of pain and spasms and anxiety. Before technology, people danced or knitted or walked or sang to create the distracting RHYTHMIC stimulus. Since the invention of sound and video technology like movies and phonographs, therapists have been using technical methods to provide the distraction.

The choice of ice and snow seems peculiar. Cold causes muscle spasms. Warm cozy scenes would relax muscles better.

AHA! This is in England, where EVERYBODY is required to think the same thoughts in unison. So a scene that shows the Arctic BEFORE IT VAPORIZED would be seen as a mythical nostalgic memory of cozy times in the distant prehistoric past before KKKTRUMPHITLER pushed the BURNING OCEANS out to 9999999 gigamiles, drowning the moon and sun and Milky Way in BURNING BURNING BURNING KKKTRUMPHITLERWATER.

Even if the scene doesn't really work that way on the patients, it certainly worked that way on the granting agencies.

Labels: Carbon Cult, infinite STUPID

  ¶ 11:11 PM

  Another home run by Ehret
Ehret gives a straightforward account of the Depression. He emphasizes the assassination attempt on FDR, which happened two weeks before the inauguration. Deepstate wanted to prevent FDR from taking power. Fortunately they chose an inefficient assassin, and his shots were knocked out of line by brave civilians in the audience. Mayor Cermak and two civilians died.

Ehret doesn't say it, but this undoubtedly accounts for FDR's immediate and effective action. If he didn't fully understand the problem before, he knew for sure after the assassination. He knew it was life or death for the country and for himself.

I'm hoping Ehret will take a close look at Harding. He deserves recognition for breaking down Wilson's Deepstate agencies and imposing non-intervention abroad and controls on capitalism domestically. Harding was thoroughly Unpersoned and possibly killed.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 3:37 PM

  Not new heights
Reading about the indescribably evil capture of Syria's oil fields.

New height in insanity. Syria can't use Syria's own resources, because only Saudi is allowed to have oil.

Second thought: No, it's not a new height. This is identical to the Amber Alerts in USA, where a biological parent is treated as a criminal for attempting to claim her OWN children back from state care.

Simple rule: The wrong people are not allowed to own what they own. The right people are allowed to steal and capture and own everything forever, plus an infinite amount of newly generated counterfeit "value".

Labels: infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite infinite INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE INFINITE lunacy

  ¶ 3:25 PM

  Finishing off the Semaphores
Got another break in courseware before the final push, so let's do an animation to close off the sequence of non-electric Semaphores.

This Russian scene was the first one I tried before I studied the systems closely. The original code was arbitrary and fictional. Now we'll do it again after learning more about the codes and patterns of operation.



Using the British 'Popham' code. I still haven't found a reference for the actual Russian code.

= = = = =

Links to the illustrations so far:

Russian 1850s

Chappe clock system and wing system

Dupillon (French) [I snuck this into an older item without properly describing it]

Six shutter (English)

More discussion of Chappe

Chatley (English)

Redo of Russian (this item)

Labels: defensible times, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 2:20 PM

  More shared lies
Still in Shared Lie department, this one is getting annoying. All the "independents" are pushing hard for one side of a permitted question. They're insisting that Epstein didn't commit suicide, he was killed.

When everyone is arguing about one question or one set of details, we know for sure it's the wrong question. We don't necessarily know which is the right question, and we don't necessarily know the answer to the right question. Most likely the answer is permanently unavailable.

In this case the right question is easy. Did Epstein die? Epstein had more than enough power and connections to pre-arrange a substitution, and the available info suggests a substitution.

Deepstate has a long history of fake deaths, enabling the "dead" man to continue in power under a different identity or in deeper secrecy. Classic technique in spycraft.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 3:37 AM

  Smartest religion headline of the week
Mark Tooley at Juicy Ecumenicism does the opposite of previous item. He instantly dismisses the standard shared lie and gets down to asking a more realistic question.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff has written the umpteenth claim that declining churches and Christian influence in America owe to conservative “religious blowhards” who “have entangled faith with bigotry, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia.” And “for some young people, Christianity is associated less with love than with hate.”

Every branch of Christianity, and every religion, has its share of blowhards and hypocrites. Conservative Christian blowhards get more attention because they have political influence and peeve liberal cultural elites. But do they deserve exclusive credit for overall Christian decline?

Good work.

Tooley goes back a few decades and notes that the "liberal" mainline churches used to be the sole representation of Christianity in media. In the '80s televangelists like the Bakkers created their own media universe, which was always Unpersoned by the satanic mainstream.

He misses a couple of important points.

1. The independent media universe began exactly when radio began. For instance, Aimee Semple McPherson had a huge radio station, competing with the mainstream and equalling the mainstream in cultural level.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

I found this schedule for Aimee Semple McPherson's radio service in 1924. Based on mainstream bigotry I was expecting to see hillbilly music...



Nope! All classical with only a few old favorite hymns. Next to Aimee was a broadcast schedule for a more upscale church, with exactly the same combination of classical and old faves.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

2. So the change in influence didn't arise from a change in media coverage. Mainstream media didn't change its disdain for religion in 1980, and Bakker and Swaggart weren't doing anything new. Why did the change happen?

Evangelicals gained influence in DC politics for exactly one reason. Israel. When evangelical leaders focused on defending the modern nation of Israel for "theological" reasons, politicians stopped Unpersoning them and started counting their votes.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Shared Lie

  ¶ 3:02 AM

  Dumbest science headline of the week
First, when I say dumbest I'm excluding the entire categories of "climate change" and "social" "science". Those areas are genocidal, which is a separate axis. Most of the research in those areas is also dumb, but there's no point in separating dumb genocide from smart genocide, dumb torture from smart torture.

Among the items that can be treated as dumb vs smart, this one takes the cake:

Headline: Can our thoughts alter our brains?

Answer: The PURPOSE of thought is to alter the brain.

Every thought either creates new associative pathways or reinforces old pathways. This has been broadly known for many decades. We're just starting to explore the actual mechanisms.

At the first instant, those new or altered associations are just signals, but every signal causes axons to seek new connections which alters the brain in VISIBLE ways.

The cited research finds that those VISIBLE paths are VISIBLE on MRI scans, which shouldn't be surprising.

The research itself isn't dumb. Only the headline is dumb. A smarter version would be

HOW does thought alter our brains?

Labels: Asked and answered

  ¶ 2:14 AM

  Not such a bad idea
In the 'definitely not my department' department....

Critics are unhappy with a CGI movie that inserts real images of James Dean into the animation.

I've never seen any of his movies. I watch LOTS of movies and TV shows from that era, but for some reason none of Dean's products have ever caught my attention.

However: Dean's offscreen side showed up in car magazines back then, and in car websites now. It's clear that he was a techie type. There's one candid pic showing Dean, carrying a briefcase, getting into his work car, a plain '55 Chevy 150 business sedan. Looks more like an engineer going to work at GM, not a movie star.

So I suspect the real Dean would have enjoyed this idea.

Labels: Entertainment

  ¶ 6:59 AM

  Here we go with the "hikers" again
Some "hikers" somehow got involved in a fight between drug gangs while "hiking" Mexico. Now the neocons are beating the drum for yet another invasion and takeover of Mexico.

Guaran-goddamn-teed these "hikers" will turn out to be gangsters or undercover agents of our government-branded drug gang DEA. Any time we focus on a few people who were supposedly killed or kidnapped by our next intended conquest, you can be SURE the "victims" are really spies of some sort.

But we won't hear the truth until we've invaded Mexico for the 20th time. The previous 19 failed, but that won't stop us. We are the stupidest people in history.

Labels: infinite STUPID

  ¶ 5:52 AM

  Powerful fable
One of those single-episode leftovers at Archive.org. Like many cop shows of the time, it's oily and sanctimonious, packed with Complex Moral Conundra; but the ending is simple and important.

A man who works for a peculiar thing called a "News Paper" is doing what "News Paper Men" always did. He is trying to improve people's lives by revealing facts. I don't know if this "News Paper" was simply made up by the episode's authors or possibly existed at some time in the distant past. We have things with similar names now, but their job is the exact opposite. They ruin people's lives with violent lies.

Anyhow, this News Paper Man is working in a place called "San Francisco", which must also be an imaginary place. Again it seems to be the exact opposite of a similar place in the current world.

News Paper Man notices an event that doesn't fit the usual patterns, a genuine piece of Shannon information. A young Chinese man beats up his brother in public, outside of Chinatown. The community always keeps its troubles inside. If a trouble is big enough to spill out into non-China streets, it must be worth looking into.

Soon News Paper Man pulls together a set of seemingly unrelated events to find the big trouble. The new revolutionary government in China is extorting money from Chinese people all over America with letters claiming falsely that their relatives at home are sick or in trouble.

The crucial moment happens when News Paper Man is pressing the head of the Chinese Social Bureau, who knows and coordinates everything in Chinatown. (This part does have a current equivalent.) The head resists, following keep-it-quiet tradition, then finally decides that it's time to break the blackmail bubble by pouring out the information. He provides a complete list of people who have received letters, News Paper Man publishes the story, and the blackmail stops.

Sarc off. The part about breaking the blackmail bubble is a powerful fable that deserves to be told and heard now, even if we no longer have those News Paper thingamajigs.

= = = = =

[Footnote: The title of the clip at Archive is wrong. The title is 'Don Gray Marine Investigator', but the show was actually 'San Francisco Final'.]

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 11:33 PM

  Speaking of semaphores
The local "election" yesterday showed a turnaround of opinion. Current mayor Carpetbagger Copkiller Condon was termlimited, so his Sorosian buddy Stuckart ran as the incumbent party. Soros Stuckart was easily defeated by Nadine Woodward, a well-known TV newsreader. Woodward has always made it clear that she was closer to normal Spokane views than NYC views, and her clarity paid off this time. Another Sorosian Condon buddy ran for council president, and was also defeated by a well-known member of a big business family.

Nothing will change, but at least a signal calling for change has been given.

(The election also included the standard load of several dozen Tim Eyman ZERO TAX referenda. All were approved statewide, none will make any difference.)
  ¶ 6:22 AM

  Always nice
Always nice to get immediate verification. We know that the purpose of the Carbon Cult is to slaughter Deplorables. This was implicit in the original 1975 CIA manifesto, but not often emphasized.

A new document states the goal explicitly. Via ZH, 11000 "scientists" have signed an open petition calling for slaughter of all Deplorables.

They don't say Deplorables verbally, but the logic of their proposal forces it.

Who is reproducing? Deplorable countries, and Deplorable areas and neighborhoods in Sorosian countries. Specifically, real Muslims and real Christians are reproducing. Everyone else is declining.

So a population control project necessarily focuses its attention on Christians and Muslims. Secular Western groups and the Oriental area are declining on their own and don't need an extra 'boost'.

This religion-based genocide must be highly satisfying to those 11000 "scientists". They found a way to kill believers without saying it openly.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Carbon Cult, Deadthink

  ¶ 11:29 AM

  One real
Via Eurekalert, headline:

Health care, mass shootings, 2020 election causing Americans significant stress

The article lists a bunch of other stressors including "climate change" and immigration, but the article misses the fucking point as usual.

Health care is a REAL problem for everyone. Even if you're not saddled with huge medical debts and incompetent botched medical treatments, your salary is being decimated by a monstrously criminal system that absorbs money and does nothing. But health care is NOT discussed often in media.

Mass shootings are a REAL problem for about a hundred people each year. Mass shootings affect almost nobody, but they dominate the media. The SOLE PURPOSE of media is to create war and mass murder, and it's magnificently successful.

The 2020 election is a REAL problem for incumbents who might lose their jobs briefly until they can rotate into think-tanks or media. It's TOTALLY IRRELEVANT for everyone else. No matter which puppet ends up in each office, nothing will change. The dysgovernment will continue to make wars and slaughter Deplorables.

Weather is always a REAL problem for farmers and people who work outside, but "climate change" is only a problem for the "scientists" who might lose their grants if "climate change" stops providing an excuse for slaughtering Deplorables, and of course for the media who might lose a major outlet for their sadistic psychopathic bloodthirsty murder if "climate change" stops being a concern.

So we have one real universal problem which isn't discussed, and a pile of fake "problems" that exist only to feed the media's blood fetish.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 2:54 AM

  STOP FUCKING AROUND AND DO YOUR GODDAMN JOB.
Most people in the world do their jobs, and I daresay most people derive some enjoyment and satisfaction out of completing a task.

Sorosian governments have stopped doing their jobs, and even the Soros-commanded "independents" like Tulsi and Rand Paul are just fucking around.

Rand Paul is fucking around. He is urging some idiot involved in the "impeachment" stageplay to "do your job" and reveal secrets. Paul has never done his job. Paul has never revealed anything. He tells us that the secrets exist, and tells us that he has read the documents, but never DOES HIS FUCKING JOB. He maintains the power and maintains the "two" "sides" of the standard Robust Debate.

Tulsi tells us to be kind. We're already there. We want you to do something for us FIRST, specifically BREAK A BUBBLE. Break Deepstate's blackmail power by revealing some of the secrets that you're keeping.

= = = = =

Here's a good example of another way of FUCKING AROUND. The "American" "Conservative" website, now wholly owned by Soros, is holding a grand and thoughtful conference devoted to starting the process of filling in the details of the concepts related to a restrained foreign policy.

NO. JUST FUCKING DO IT. If you are in a position of power, where you can advise politicians and bureaucrats, the only advice is GET OUT NOW. Bring all the soldiers and spies home NOW.

This is the same JACKOFF as Brexit. As I've tiresomely repeated, Brexit should have taken about one month of clerical work. Gather bureaucrats who know the documents, order them to delete all references to EU from treaties and laws. Announce the result formally to Juncker. DONE.

Instead, UK has fucked around for three years, arguing about ever-finer infinitesimal details that aren't even part of the actual process.

= = = = =

When you're in a bad situation, whether it's an addiction or a bad marriage or a bad job or a bad government, you have to GET OUT FIRST.

While you're inside the bad situation, your mind is locked in. You don't know how to live sober or single or non-interventionist. You might have memories of the good situation from before, but the world has changed and those memories won't help. You can't waste time planning the details based on poor knowledge. If the situation is bad enough to require change, GET OUT FIRST. After you're out, you can then fill in the details properly because you'll be adjusting to the new reality as it happens, not as you imagined it from within the bad world.

Most of the details take care of themselves anyway. This is dramatically obvious with Brexit. UK companies have tried to negotiate post-Brexit arrangements with their suppliers and customers in other countries, but the counterparts have no power to negotiate, and have no motivation to start, until they know whether Brexit will happen at all. After the divorce, the two sides of the negotiation will know what they have to do, and will simply do it. People who want to do business will find ways to do business.

Labels: Shared Lie

  ¶ 1:17 AM

  Semantic edge detection
Via ScienceDaily:

Researchers analyzed the genomes of 20 butterfly species and found evidence that many butterflies -- including distantly related species -- have a surprisingly high amount of gene flow between them. The findings challenge conventional views about species, and indicate that hybridization may be a key process in the emergence of biological diversity.

The definition of species we "learned" in high school was simple, and made sense for most familiar species of mammals.

Two species are distinct when they can't mate with each other. They might try, but no offspring result from the attempt.

There were a couple of exceptions like horse + donkey = mule, but mules can't reproduce, so this wasn't a strong exception.

After geneticists removed their theory goggles, they started to see LOTS of exceptions.

The actual rule is more like:

Two species are distinct when they don't usually mate with each other. They could, but they recognize the difference and would rather mate with their own kind.

Hmm. That sounds more like races or ethnic groups, doesn't it? And "science" has been INSTRUCTING US with whips and chains that races and ethnic groups are purely imaginary. "Science" screeches that there are no boundaries or distinctions between races or ethnic groups.

Now we know why the old poor definition of species has been so furiously defended. Scientists are definitionists. The most important definition is that ALL HUMANS ARE IDENTICAL PASSIVE INANIMATE GRAINS OF SAND. Scientists HATE all definitions that allow individual or group differences among humans, and refuse to allow their high-caste definitions to mate with low-caste definitions. Semantic miscegenation is verboten.

In other words, ethnicity is a valid concept for human types, and for butterfly types, and for definition types.

Labels: Language update, metametrology

  ¶ 7:34 AM

  Missing the whole fucking point as fucking usual
The Israelist considers that Common Core is a failure because scores on college entrance tests are declining.

Totally misses the whole fucking point. Common Core was NOT meant to improve college entrance scores. Students who can actually use college don't need anything from public schools. They have innate IQ and discipline, and they acquire knowledge outside of school. They would be better served by skipping public school entirely.

The students we've been failing to serve are the NON-college types. Common Core was meant to do more for them, giving them useful skills in communicating and problem-solving and life management.

We don't know if CC has succeeded for those students because WE'RE STILL NOT BOTHERING TO TEST FOR REAL SKILLS.

So the verdict is undetermined, at least officially. We're trying an experiment without measuring the results.

My unquantified impression, from what I hear in the street and on the bus, and more directly from the projects in DonorsChoose, is that things are improving.

Labels: Experiential education, Unasked and unanswered

  ¶ 11:34 PM

  Knowledge is power
Chafee, who is mostly silly and ineffectual, just did something serious that gathered my respect. In an RT interview he showed a copy of the original 9/11 Authorization of Force, complete with penciled revisions and crossouts. He noted that the document empowered BUSH, not simply a president, to decide which countries to obliterate.

It says "He shall determine", not "He or she shall determine." Chafee pointed out that all Federal documents have been gender-neutral for a long time [and legal documents have been neutral even longer, for simple precision]. The use of he meant that Congress was sending the authority to Bush the man, not just Current Occupant Of White House.

Chafee has done God's work. Power flows from the file cabinet of a blackmailer. Deepstate runs on secrets and extortion and honeytraps. Elections are utterly meaningless, and even money and status can be overruled easily by blackmail.

Any politician who claims to be 'independent' or 'anti-establishment' MUST start by popping blackmail bubbles. Tell us something we don't know, give all the details, and explain the implicit interpretations. Chafee did it, and I respect him.

Your turn, Tulsi, though I don't think you're up to the task.

Labels: Leth

  ¶ 4:53 PM

  Your location?
AVG does an excellent job of catching malware, but their ads are unnecessary and a little annoying. I'm already paying them, so they shouldn't be advertising.

However, this ad is accidentally reassuring:



Your location exposed!

This is definitely where Google thinks I am. All online maps start out here. It's the right metro area, but the wrong end of the metro area. Since I don't have a cellphone, I don't have a more accurate locator, and that's just fine.

I'll get scared if Google's bots read this and pinpoint a more accurate location. Will be watching for it....
  ¶ 2:35 PM

  Slow to turn on
I just figured something out. For an old negative-feedback type, this realization is awfully slow.

Two years ago I had a new front door installed. The old one was leaky and drafty, and the new one is better insulated.

Since then, I've had to turn up the knob on the baseboard heater noticeably higher to get comfort. It's not just my elderly senses; a thermometer on my desk shows 65 instead of 70 at the previous knob setting.

I've been trying to spot the difference. I don't feel any new drafts anywhere, so there's no new source of cold.

What triggered the realization was noticing that the heater isn't ON all the time at the higher setting; it's cycling on and off about the same as before.

The heater control is right next to the door. The old leaky door kept the thermostat ON more often at the minimum setting of the knob. Now that the thermostat isn't constantly receiving blasts of cold air from the gap under the door, it's slower to turn on, so a higher setting is needed to get the same cycling.

Labels: metametrology

  ¶ 6:38 AM

  Proper use of mass power
Unions lost power by their own self-destructive idiocy. For several decades unions struck for higher wages, even when their leaders KNEW that the strike would kill the company or offshore the factory and thus delete the jobs. Most of those union workers ALREADY had higher wages than anyone else in the country, so they didn't NEED higher wages.

Now for the first time we have a union returning to the ORIGINAL idea of protecting the workers from the corporation.

Via ZH:

Tens of thousands of American Airlines' flight attendants fear for their safety and will not work on Boeing 737 Max planes if they return to the air in 2020, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA) union's president wrote in a letter to Boeing's CEO this week.

If unions had been acting like this all along, they wouldn't have killed themselves. Good work.
  ¶ 6:00 AM