Computers are always sorters
Computers spend most of their time organizing and sorting data, NOT calculating numbers.

I discussed this at length a few years ago with the original 1890 Hollerith:



= = = = = START REPRINT:

Here's a simple animation of Hollerith's 1890 Census machine. [Polistra and Happystar wanted to get in the picture, but they blocked the view of the important parts. So you'll have to imagine a person operating the press and moving the cards.]



This 1890 Tabulator only automated the most tiresome and error-prone stage of the process, counting the holes and sorting cards into 'pre-programmed' categories. When you pull the handle of the press, a grid of spring-mounted needles tries to poke through all the hole locations. Where a hole is actually punched, the needle drops through to make contact below, closing a circuit that leads to the corresponding dial above. An electromagnet ratchets the Ones dial forward one step, and the Tens dial follows by reduction gearing. Much like the escapement in a clock.



If this particular combination of holes corresponds to one of the programmed combinations, the Sorter pops an appropriate door open. You'd then take the card, drop it into the one open door, and close the door.

The programming of combinations was done mainly by soldering and unsoldering dozens of wires for each setup! There were a few switchboard-style plugin choices, which would have been like user-selected variables, not like actual software. So my animation is arbitrary, not trying to make any real combinations, showing only that the dials increment and a different door opens for each card.

This process was clearly too 'manual' even by the standards of the time, with humans performing several steps that were easily mechanized.

After 1890 Hollerith went commercial and quickly developed various ways to feed and read cards automatically, then carry them into appropriate slots. He also began to add more calculation and programming abilities.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Now let's look at those later versions. Here Polistra is loading a stack of cards into the most basic 1957 sorter, the model 82.



Now she is selecting one column for sorting. Three turns of the crank to reach the third column. (Fancier machines had more automatic multiple choices.)



In typical use, each column carried one variable in the data, and each row in the column denoted one category of this variable. For a database of criminal suspects, the third column might be weight, with the 10 rows of the column corresponding to 90, 100, 110, and so on. The secretary in charge of this database knew these assigned meanings by heart, so she could quickly sort one column at a time. She's looking for a 5'8 white dude weighing 160, with tattoos on left arm and scar on right cheek. She would first sort by gender, picking out the pile for male; then sort those by race, picking out the stack for white; then sort those by weight, picking out the stack corresponding to 160; then sort those by height, pulling the 5'8 stack, then by tattoo, and so on. Each successive sort was smaller and faster, and the final result would hopefully pin down only a few known suspects.

When each card crosses over the selector, the first ROW with a punch triggers the chute blades to move down in unison. Here a punch in the 4th row triggers the first 4 chute blades to move down:



And then the same card enters the open gap in the chute blades, and the rollers on top propel it along the chutes. The middle of the card rides between the top unmoved chutes and the bottom moved chutes. The first chute above the open path knocks the card down into the appropriate slot.



Note that this card with a 4th row punch ends up in the 5th slot. The rightmost slot was for a card with no punches at all**. With no hole to trigger the solenoids, all the chutes would stay up. The rightmost and lowest chute would be above the card, and would kick the card into the 'reject' slot. (In modern software the 'reject' slot is a NULL or None value of the column variable.)

Computers are still mainly sorters with secondary calculating functions. In the last Windows EXE version of my courseware, the C++ source code contains about 13000 non-comment lines, of which only 120 are explicit arithmetic. In other words, only 1% of the action is adding, multiplying, sines, arctans, etc. The other 99% is pattern-matching and counting and recording. Hollerith jobs. The program presents an image or a text question; waits for a click on some part of the image or a button; increments the number answered and number correct; and holds the results in a file.

= = = = =

The business model of IBM's machines was strictly rental. The time pattern of computing business models corresponds to the timeline I observed in media. Start out as individual units, mainly in large markets and academia; spread out to broadly available individual units; re-centralize back to CENTRALLY CONTROLLED systems, turning the world into one unit.

Here's the price list for the 082 and 083 sorters from a 1957 IBM catalog, with inflated modern equivalents in red:



Note first that these machines were FAST. 650 cards per minute, about 10 per second. A typical stack would take about a minute, with a stream of cards zooming across the top and sliding into their appropriate slots. Those chute blades clicked up and down with remarkable speed and accuracy. The 82 had less electronic components than the old Hollerith; it was mainly a superfast mechanism.

In modern terms a business paid $500 a month for the basic model 82, $1000 a month for the fancier and more automatic model 83. As with cars, options added to the total. The accounting machines, with calculating abilities on top of the sorting, were $1000 a month in 1957 or $9000 today.

Comparing to human workers, a skilled secretary earned about 5 times the rental of the sorter, but a skilled accountant cost the same as the accounting machine.

These machines were usually not connected to any sort of web, but webs did exist in 1957. The telegraph system was still an active data network in 1957, and businesses could also rent private lines from Bell Tel to carry data.

Here's the Data Transceiver, able to read a stack of cards and send their data over any of the 'private webs' to a corresponding transceiver at the other end. The sending speed was about 500 characters per minute, and the price was $200 per month, or $1800 in today's money.



As always, renting is more profitable than selling. IBM and Bell Tel were both rental-based utilities, offering intensive and fast service for a fairly high rental.

= = = = =

** Graphic serendipity sidenote: I wasn't thinking about the reject slot when I animated this action. I just moved the bottom four guides down, then slid the card leftward and followed the first kicker above it. The logic of the mechanism WORKED even though I didn't understand it. Later when rechecking, I noticed the 5 vs 4 inconsistency, thought it was a mistake, then RTFM more closely and understood the 'reject'. As usual, EXPERIMENT LEADS TO THE CORRECT ANSWER regardless of facts and theory.

Labels: Alternate universe, Experiential education, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 11:35 PM

  Are we getting close?
The latest demonic mandate from DC seems to have crossed a line for many governors. According to one story, these states are pushing back hard.



The story didn't mention Florida, but I think it's safe to include it. Tennessee would also be likely, but not definite.

Except for Arizona, this is a contiguous bloc, capable of mounting a credible threat of secession. The bloc would cut the demonic states in half, presenting a barrier to communication and airspace.

Does Biden think he can win such a war, short of nukes? Many of the missile silos are in Montana and South Dakota.

Most of the soldiers in the volunteer Army are from Dixie. Would they kill their own parents and friends? Unfortunately, yes. Modern soldiers are pure Deepstate robots.

= = = = =

Later thought: Even if they don't threaten secession, I wish the governors would get their act together, literally. From the fucking start of this holocaust, a well-organized NEARLY TOTAL mass disobedience WITH PERSISTENCE would have halted the demons. A small number of disobeyers can simply be arrested and jailed. Protesters in the streets WILL be jailed. But when 90% of businesses refuse to cooperate and CONTINUE TO REFUSE, the demons run into limits of police and economic resources.

Unions knew how to do it. Unions organized ALL the workers in one industry and moved them IN UNISON, with a massive strike fund to support the workers while their wages were gone. Corporations knew that the unions couldn't be broken, so they yielded to demands instead of enduring a strike.

United action and stored resources are the key. The demonic Mecher gang planned and prepared in secret, and switched on the holocaust IN UNISON ACROSS THE WHOLE FUCKING GLOBE in March 2020. Businesses and individuals had no chance to prepare and organize against the most massive crime in history. Unions were inside the crime gang, working FOR genocide, not against.

Now the sane states have been out of the holocaust for a full fucking year, so they could have been preparing a unison strike. Unfortunately they don't seem to be acting together or trying to use massive economic force. Each is filing an individual lawsuit, which will get lost in the demonic "court" system.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 11:39 AM

  Smart tactic!
This article in Aleteia explains how Texas legislators were able to finesse the standard Supreme knockout of all pro-life laws. They borrowed a tactic that Gaians have been using for quite a while, the Sweetheart Suit.

“The law authorizes only private citizens to bring civil suit in Texas state court against those who perform, aid and abet abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected,” Snead said. “Women seeking abortions are immune from suit, and there is an exception for medical emergencies.

“The Texas strategy was ingenious in that it evaded the usual pre-enforcement injunction by a federal court, which only has the constitutional power to act when the parties before them are involved in a real dispute,” Snead continued. “Because neither the state officials nor the private citizen sued in the case were involved in the enforcement of the law, the Supreme Court lacked the power to intervene.”

Needless to say, the Feds are starting a #WHOLE-OF-GOVERNMENT response.

Biden said he has directed a “gender-focused policy council” in the White House, the Office of the White House Counsel and the Health and Human Services and the Justice Departments to “launch a whole-of-government effort” to respond to the court’s decision. The effort will look “specifically to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice to see what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe,” he said in a statement.

They will also try using the FACE Act, designed to punish protesters at abortuaries. The FACE Act hasn't been used much, and clearly wasn't meant to deal with lawsuits, so this seems less productive.... but I'm sure the Feds will get around that. They have now defined lawsuits as bioterrorist attacks.

= = = = =

The biggest question in my mind is how the Texas legislature acquired the GUTS to do something smart and meaningful. Repooflican legislators elsewhere, even when they have clear majorities, have never even TRIED to solve a problem. They just obey Deepstate.

Purely guessing: Texas is allegedly turning blue in terms of presidential votes, and all the cities in Texas voted D in 2020. But those Ds are different from the Ds in Illinois or Washington. Many of them are Hispanic. So the usual rigid demarcation on abortion doesn't apply. Many of the People Who Count are pro-life.

Meta-thought: Normally the Supremes ABORT every anti-abortion law before it's born. The Texans prevented the ABORTION of their pro-life law, and allowed it to be born normally.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety

  ¶ 12:00 AM

  AI missing a BIIIIIIIIIIIG point.
In MindMatters as usual, Stephen Berger explores the ethical problems of 'Creative Destruction'.

Berger has solid empathy for the drivers and assembly workers who are displaced by DESTRUCTIVE DESTRUCTION (correct name) but he doesn't remember the world before Share Value.

Applying the Golden Rule to AI-driven innovation means being mindful about how AI is introduced and what jobs it replaces, especially initially. If the impact of AI is to take old junkers off the road, that is probably a societal benefit unless you are the owner of the old junker, now on the shoulder of the road, and it is the only way you have for getting around.

The problem is that AI is developed using that other Golden Rule, “He who has the gold rules,” and it is developed in a competitive environment with other AI developers. The most appealing business cases are the ones that will get funded. These business cases are seldom a secret. Other innovators see the opportunity and develop competitive solutions. The first company to bring a solution to the market will enjoy a very significant advantage. Who has the time or energy to worry about social impacts? If you don’t develop the system others will and you will be out of business. The focus is drawn to competitors and winning with little room left for contemplating the impacts of innovative AI technology.

This situation is relatively new, beginning around 1980. Before globalization and Share Value, the invisible hand WORKED. An industry that eliminated its workers, or moved its plants to China, would quickly feel the impact of the lost wages IN ITS OWN CITY. The feedback loop was CLOSED.

Industrialists didn't need to be nice or altruistic. Their own PROFIT forced them to maintain and increase employment, and to maintain loyalty by decent salaries and decent treatment.

Globalization broke the feedback loop with employees. A company that sells everywhere has no motive to maintain employees in one location or plant.

Share value broke the feedback loop with customers. Investors want to see ZERO PRODUCTION AND ZERO CUSTOMERS AND ZERO EMPLOYEES. Investors want to see pure math, pure stock manipulation, with no physical limitations.

So the only real solution is to constrain both globalism and share value.

Return to the laws and regulations of 1939. Delete all laws and agencies formed since then, restore all laws and agencies of the New Deal.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 4:48 PM

  Maragha addendum
I'm trying to 'cinch up' the Astrometeorology series, which has been occupying my slow-moving graphics mind since May. Now that the weather is finally benign, I've started a fresh set on a new subject, but the Astro set still needs a thoughtful conclusion.

Meantime, Academia.edu keeps offering new and interesting items from the ancient era. Another Maragha instrument (#11) popped up this week, and I couldn't resist tacking it onto the existing blog item.

Here's the link, revised but not reprinted to avoid jumbling up the sequence.

Labels: Equipoise, Metrology

  ¶ 9:41 AM

  Fractional-reserve criming
Another random connection, this time spawned by an accidental juxtaposition of two Quora questions.

First question: How do banks print money?

Under the fractional-reserve setup, a bank creates money every time it gives a loan. The loaned value didn't exist before. Printing has been disconnected from money creation for more than a hundred years. Long before digital, the vast majority of money moved as checks and ledger entries.

Second question: Do you approve of stings?

Seeing this question immediately after the first question led to a connection.

The vast majority of stings are designed to CREATE criminals who didn't exist before. A sting sets up an easy opportunity to commit a crime, which wouldn’t happen in real life. The victim isn’t strongly inclined toward crime in real life, but the invitation is too tempting to resist.

So a sting or an agent provocateur is fractional-reserve criming.

= = = = =

I've discussed real-value economies at length before. In a real-value economy, the total amount of value circulating is directly tied to the amount of real PRODUCED value. The Soviet system created more money in response to the value-added tax. When food is grown or cars are manufactured or cars are repaired, new currency is inserted into the economy to keep the currency unit constant. Loans are rare, and loans don't affect the money total.

A real-value court system works the other way. It tries to REMOVE criminal value from circulation. It distinguishes between professional criminals and opportunistic lawbreakers, and keeps the professionals out of circulation forever. Executions or life sentences are equally appropriate, but the life sentence sometimes provides a chance for the professional to be a productive citizen inside the walls, where he can't create new criminals.

In this 2017 item I was suggesting a Trinity House approach to crime, based on the profit motive of insurers. Definitely parallel to the Soviet VAT approach to currency.

Labels: Jail mode, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law=Soviet law, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:41 PM

  Metrocation
Random thought that popped up for no reason. Not especially interesting but seems to be fairly fresh, not often discussed.

Point: Various types of media have similar time-graphs of centralized vs broad.

= = = = =

Newspapers began in the 1600s as strictly urban. Amsterdam, London, Berlin, later New Amsterdam.

By 1920, newspapers were amazingly broad. Every American town above 200 population had a weekly. Towns above 2000 had a daily. Towns above 20000 had two or three competing dailies. Big cities had hundreds of papers serving every imaginable ethnic group and trade group.**

After 1950 newspapers started to repel their own readers, aiming instead to please NYC shareholders who were buying and consolidating papers.

= = = = =

Radio began in 1920 as urban plus academic. The first organized stations were in the usual big cities, plus Aggie colleges like K-State, serving the interests of farmers. So the earliest radio listeners were flappers and farmers, an oddly bimodal distribution. By 1930 radio looked more like newspapers, with one station in towns above 2k, two stations in towns above 20k, etc. After 1960 radio lost its soul and consolidated, leaving only the biggest cities plus some 'autopilot' stations in smaller cities, basically relays for the networks.

= = = = =

TV began in 1940 as urban plus academic again, but this time the academic versions weren't for farmers. After WW2 interrupted, TV resumed in 1952, now all urban. Two technical limitations made the earlier form of broadening impossible. (1) A basic television studio is far more expensive than a basic radio studio. (2) Because VHF is short-range and line-of-sight, smaller cities were completely unserved. If you were within 50 miles of a big city, you could pick up a decent signal with a tall antenna. Beyond 50 miles, out of luck. TV didn't broaden until the late '60s with the first cable systems, which were just a supertall antenna plus an amplifier and wired distribution system. Cable didn't become the consolidated provider of all programming until 1990.

= = = = =

The internet began as government plus academia in 1970. Compuserve and BBS spread the service to everyone with a telephone connection. Consolidation began with high-speed cable modems, sharing the TV cable lines. Now we're back to only government.

= = = = =

The common pattern is: Begin as urban plus academia, then broaden out for a while, then consolidate back to single-source urban.

= = = = =

** Footnote: The minimum profitable circulation was about 300. This was true for small-town weeklies and also for those specialized newsletters in metro areas.

Labels: Asked and not worth asking, Constants and Variables

  ¶ 8:15 AM

  Should they teach 9/11?
Question seen on Quora:

Should they require teaching 9/11 in schools?

My answer is No.

First and foremost: Schools shouldn't be teaching any "facts" at all. Schools should only be training SKILLS. All "facts" are false by the time they get processed into school curricula. SKILLS CAN'T LIE.

Second: History curricula are especially awful because school boards and state committees are INEVITABLY political about history. In recent years those boards have become perfectly political about EVERYTHING, which is why NO "facts" should be in school. When I took history in 1965, the book stopped at 1945 and the teacher barely made it to 1918. Nothing about Korea or Vietnam, even though the male students were about to get drafted for Vietnam after graduation.

Third: Even if we pretend that the books COULD contain plain facts as sorted by the best historians, we've never had ANY facts about 9/11.

= = = = =



In 1965, VE day was twenty years old. Right now, 9/11 is twenty years old.

Let's compare.

Leaving aside questions of motive, the basic facts about WW2 were well known by everyone at the time. Nobody could be fooled by Deepstate lies because most people had either been IN Asia and Europe fighting against Japan and Germany, or had been working IN weapons factories. The news during WW2 was ACCURATE and balanced, thanks to the Fairness Doctrine.

Leaving aside questions of motive, the basic facts about 9/11 were INSTANTLY replaced by Deepstate myth. The most basic fact was NEVER STATED AT ALL. Media knew what to say in advance, and never let the basic fact leak out, though it was patently obvious without the media.

BASIC FACT: SAUDI ATTACKED US, with considerable aid from CIA and FBI.

We immediately "learned" that we had been attacked by Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 1945 equivalent of this distortion would be: Pearl Harbor was attacked by Russian bombers.

Deepstate tried to build this myth after 1945, gradually painting Japan out of the Axis and painting Russia into the Axis. But the repaint didn't fully remove the facts, and hasn't aged well.

= = = = =

So in both cases it's better that school "history" courses don't even try to handle recent history. They would only provide atrocious lies.

My first point is the only thing that matters. Schools shouldn't waste one precious minute on "facts".

SKILLS CAN'T LIE.

DIRECT PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH PHYSICAL REALITY CAN'T LIE.

Labels: Experiential education

  ¶ 5:45 AM

  Reprint again on aliens
For once an author DOESN'T miss the point:

Victorians of the late 19th century, living in the era of ambitious engineering, looked at Mars and saw globe-spanning canals – evidence, they believed, of a grand industrial civilisation mirroring their own. In the Cold War 1960s, as millions lived under the shadow of potential nuclear annihilation, ‘neocatastrophism’ – the theory that extraterrestrial civilisations are inevitably wiped out by violent events – emerged as an explanation for our apparent cosmic solitude. The Argentinian Trotskyist J Posadas was convinced that advanced aliens would be socialists; more recently, the Vatican’s then-chief astronomer José Gabriel Funes suggested in 2008 that extraterrestrials might share a close relationship with God.

We scientists tend to believe that intelligent extraterrestrials will be builders of technology, fluent in the universal language of mathematics. In Contact, the aliens announce their presence by beaming prime numbers at us, and many of our messages broadcast to the stars consist of physics and mathematics wrapped up in binary code. This perspective on aliens as scientific rationalists underlies most of modern SETI. It’s a viewpoint that I happen to agree with. Then again, I’m a scientist: of course I do.

Good candor at the end. I'm more of a technician than a scientist, so I've been arguing that the aliens wouldn't need math at all, because WE DIDN'T NEED MATH.

Reprinting from January, still valid.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

.... The article goes on to discuss which formulas and theories would be good candidates for interplanetary chit-chat.



Polistra begs to differ. The supposed "universality" of math is a myth.

Our new Facebook Friends on Alpha Centauri could have the technology to text us, while knowing very little math. Let's look at the start of electrical communication on Earth. Sam Morse was an artist, not a mathematician, and his telegraph was built by trial and error. Alex Bell was a speech teacher with a deep visual comprehension of wave action. Early radio sets (spark-gap transmitters, cat-whisker detectors) were also built without fancy math, though a certain amount of measurement was important for meaningful testing.

You need a way of remembering size and comparing this size with that size. When testing antennas, you'd need to see that a longer antenna worked better than a shorter antenna, and you'd need to know when the lengthening stopped improving the performance and started making it worse. In other words, you need GRAPHS, or the mental equivalent of GRAPHS.

Even without trying to imagine an alien mind, it's easy to see how we Earthlings could have developed a communication system able to reach distant planets, all without any math beyond measurement.



If we look at human history, societies that developed PROBLEM-SOLVING technologies like dams and aqueducts and plows didn't die suddenly. They weren't killed BY the dams and aqueducts and plows. Sometimes they were conquered by enemies (eg Mayans), sometimes they lost their technological edge but continued functioning (eg Persia).

Societies that focused on THEORY were killed directly by the THEORY.

We can see the distinction RIGHT FUCKING NOW in the realm of medicine.

Vaccination was developed WITHOUT THEORY 500 years ago by the Circassians. It was brought to England and "reinvented" 200 years ago. Since then, vaccines for many different diseases have been developed by continual refinement of techniques and constant endless TRIAL AND ERROR. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. The ERROR part is crucial. Before 2020, clinical trials were HALTED when too much ERROR appeared. None of this development used or needed any theories, except the OBSERVATION that the immune system can be trained to reject a disease by seeing a preview of the disease.

In 2020 we explicitly DELETED the entire concept of immunity. Public Death Officers still understand that it exists, but they use their understanding to ELIMINATE immunity, not to BOOST it. Now clinical trials are conducted to improve genocide, not to improve health.

Now we're operating on a magnificently maniacal THEORY that disease is caused by heretical beliefs. We still use the word "virus", but what we mean by "virus" is witch powder, not a microscopic package of RNA.

We are committing FAST suicide. Or more precisely, Deepstate and its branches are MURDERING us faster than ever before.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever, Not AI point-missing

  ¶ 12:14 AM

  Rentalization 2
After my old computer crashed suddenly in July (my own damn fault) I quickly rigged up a computer that had been in storage. This proved to be inadequate, so I ordered a refurbished Lenovo. This is an excellent computer, QUIET and fast.

Courseware was carefully backed up, so nothing was lost in that department. But I'd been sloppy about things like web bookmarks and my 'amusement' stuff, so I've been rebuilding those.

Yesterday I decided to recapture my local copy of the images for this blog, which had only been backed up from 2005 to 2015. I needed to FTP about 1GB from my web storage to the computer. First I tried to do it in Firefox, which had previously contained its own FTP system. Immediately ran into a prime example of INSANE NANNY-STATE CYBERSECURITY.

From Firefox's announcement:

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) has long been a convenient file exchange mechanism between computers on a network. While this standard protocol has been supported in all major browsers almost since its inception, it’s by now one of the oldest protocols still in use and suffers from a number of serious security issues.

The FTP protocol itself has been disabled by default since version 88 and now the time has come to end an era and discontinue the support for this outdated and insecure protocol — Firefox 90 will no longer support the FTP protocol.

If you are a Firefox user, you don’t have to do anything to benefit from this security advancement. As soon as your Firefox auto-updates to version 90, any attempt to launch an attack relying on the insecure FTP protocol will be rendered useless, because Firefox does not support FTP anymore. If you aren’t a Firefox user yet, you can download the latest version here to start benefiting from all the ways that Firefox works to protect you when browsing the web.

Public Health. Nurse Ratched all the way. You don't need to do anything to BENEFIT from losing half of your data forever. As soon as we GITHUB-LOBOTOMIZE** you forcibly and automatically, you will lose half of your data and you will BENEFIT.

Jesus.

This is an integral part of the RENTALIZATION of the world. You're not allowed to have your own house or your own computer or your own software or your own books or your own data or your own skills or your own mind. Everything must be rented from Lord Bezos, ON CONDITION OF OBEDIENCE AND ORTHODOXY.

And best of all, you will BENEFIT from letting us control your mind and property entirely. You'll never have to worry about being ATTACKED by your own data. You'll never worry about the threats we create, like "hacking" and "terrorism" and "misinformation" and "viruses". You will love Big Sibling Of Indeterminate Gender.

The rulers, of course, don't need security. They don't need muzzles and distancing and lucite and SSL and anti-FTP nurses. They can live normally and breathe normally and use IBM tape drives for storage because they're IN CHARGE OF THE HOAX.

Fortunately there are still some non-Ratched humans in the world. After trying FileZilla, which refuses to do its own fucking job because of "security", I found WinSCP, made in Czechia, which performs perfectly without any quibbles about TLS or other shit. Even better, the UI is rigged in Norton Commander style for easy keyboard use. WinSCP flawlessly transferred six years of MY work to MY computer where I can OWN it and amortize it and gain inspiration from it.

= = = = =

** Protecting you from your own data IS a lobotomy. That's exactly what it does.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, skill-estate, storage

  ¶ 10:16 AM

  Cost-saving? Bah.
A trivial but revealing note from New Superstitionist.

CERN, the biggest and most modern and most advanced and most fashionable and most expensive research facility in the world, still uses mainframe-style TAPE for recording data.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) wakes from a three-year shutdown next month when beam tests begin ahead of experimental work. During the downtime, upgrades were made to the computer centres that handle the vast amounts of data produced when particles smash into each other close to the speed of light. But, despite the LHC being the most expensive scientific instrument built, the information it collects is still archived on magnetic tape – a technology that has barely changed since 1952. Alberto Pace says that when it comes to storage “we are looking for cheap”, and tape is more cost-effective than hard discs or flash memory.

I don't buy the cost-saving excuse. These monsters have infinite funding. If they really needed reliable storage, they could easily develop a "quantum entanglement" storage system or a "Higgs boson" storage system if those phenomena really existed. Or they could rent AWS cloud storage since they're an active and eager part of Deepstate. The rest of Deepstate only obliterates #Whole-of-society or #Whole-of-government. LHC is ready to obliterate #Whole-of-universe with a black #whole when commanded.



THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY'RE BUILDING THE HOAX.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety

  ¶ 11:43 AM

  Enticement point-missing
The web's "telepathy" works well in some places and not at all in others.

Youtube certainly knows what I like, but the Suggested For You column rarely includes anything I like. It seems to be stuck on old TV comedians like Rodney Dangerfield, who I never watched on live TV and never watched on Youtube. Totally uninteresting.

Now Quora is doing the same thing. In the last few months when I was in survival mode, not creating much, just spewing out bile, I was spending ENTIRELY TOO MUCH TIME on Quora. They should have learned what I want to see and what I hate. They know what makes me click.

This week they're switching over to part subscription mode, with about 10% of the items grayed out to entice you. None of these items entice me. They don't belong to the category that triggers serious and knowledgeable answers, and they don't belong to the category that triggers a FUCK OFF reaction. They're just uninteresting and unclickworthy.

After reading their explanation: Oddly, they're not trying for clicks. They're only monetizing a few "chosen" writers. Well, I didn't choose any of them, so FUCK OFF. This is a WEIRD business model! Quora is asking the customer to pay for products the management likes, but not for products the customer likes.

Reminds me of Detroit's attitude in the late '50s when Nash was proving that a significant number of drivers wanted plainer and smaller and more practical cars. Detroit wanted to sell only what the management liked. Finally and grudgingly they offered competitors to Rambler, but their attitude was: WE KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU. PRACTICAL CARS ARE HORRIBLE. WE'LL MAKE SURE YOU KNOW GOOD AND GODDAMN WELL THAT YOU ARE DRIVING A HORRIBLE CAR.

Labels: AI point-missing, Bemusement

  ¶ 11:27 PM

  What Holmes really wanted
An interesting connection from Saagar and friends.



Well known fact: Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos was closely tied with old neocons like Kissinger and Mattis and Schultz. Her board of directors sounded like a defense contractor.

Newly made connection:

The board also included a former director of CDC.

Holmes was originally aiming to be a BIOTERROR CONTRACTOR, part of the Mecher gang.

Fortunately her fraud was caught and prosecuted soon after it started.

The rest of the bioterror gang went ahead with their frauds, which were VASTLY MORE TRANSPARENTLY FALSE. Anyone with general scientific literacy knows how viruses and immunity work. This was part of common education and common advertising in earlier decades. Only a specialist could see why the Holmes machine was impossible.

Saagar points out that Theranos wasn't caught BEFORE it started; its initial trials managed to provide wrong diagnoses to quite a few people. Most of those diagnoses were fixed, because her machine never got into the mainstream of medicine.

Mecher's total flip of the entire world of medicine IS THE MAINSTREAM NOW, and it's still torturing and killing millions of people.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 10:40 PM

  Abortion landmark
While the "virus" genocide and torture rages unabated, older genocides seem to be breaking loose.

Our endless foreign wars have been ending. Trump allowed the (mainly proxy) wars in Syria and Ukraine and Libya to expire. Biden allowed the more active war in Afghanistan to expire.

Now a genuine landmark has occurred on the abortion front, at least as of today. For several years states have been passing abortion bans based on the moment when heartbeat is detected. This isn't exactly a total ban, but it pushes the range of permissible abortions down considerably, and solidly disagrees with Roe vs Wade. Until now the federal Satans have managed to prevent those laws from taking effect.

Texas passed a heartbeat law, and yesterday it went into effect WITHOUT a pre-emptive federal block.

This might be an oversight or a confusion, but previously the Supreme Satans were not lazy or confused. They carefully pre-blocked the state laws.

Next day, unsurprisingly, the Feds have vowed to use a "whole-of-government" approach to overrule their own Supreme Court, which until today was considered "part-of-government". Whole-of-government sounds mighty familiar.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety

  ¶ 10:31 AM

  Why didn't I know this?
Browsing through Quora, ran into this question:

What is the meaning of the phrase “drinking straws”?

I was getting ready to provide a snarky answer about consuming fermented hay. I googled fermented hay to see if there was a well-known alcoholic drink.

Instead I found SILAGE. Silage is 'pickled pasture', carefully fermented to preserve leftover hay so horses can eat in the winter.

I grew up in wheat country, and I'd seen and felt and smelled silage, but I never knew or bothered to think of it as a USEFUL fermented product.

Even worse, in the '70s I worked for a company that installed systems to PREVENT grain from fermenting, and still didn't know that fermented hay was a useful product.

= = = = =

A broader question: Fermentation is THE basis of human civilization. Fermentation made year-round living possible. Schools pay very little attention to fermentation. We learned that beer and cheese and bread and pickles are products of fermentation, but we never did an EXPERIMENT in fermentation.

Crude oil is a complex fermented plant-based food product like wine. Before modern tech, oil geologists smelled and tasted oil to determine its vintage and terroir.

If this fact was more broadly understood, we wouldn't have environmental idiots protesting pipelines. (Well, I'm sure idiots would still protest, but at least non-idiots would have a clearer view of the idiocy.)

Considering its ABSOLUTE DOMINANCE of civilization and technology, both ancient and modern, why is fermentation so completely neglected in education?

Is this a leftover of Prohibition? Is fermentation covered better in non-Prohibition countries?

= = = = =

Random sidenote: Geologists testing oil by taste is an old Okie story. I tried to check its authenticity in old books and couldn't find it. I did find an interesting example of superior Russian petroleum in 1915, just before we invaded and occupied Russia. This paragraph is discussing white oil, now called mineral oil, still used as a laxative:

The question of the taste of the oil, while it may have no relation to its purity, is an important one, because consumers will not buy an oil which carries a petroleum taste. Chemists state the Russian oils are the only ones which approach a state which might be described as tasteless, and that many American oils, being marketed as tasteless, in reality carry a disagreeable flavor which must be removed before the oil can be sold extensively. The chemists have a method of testing white oils for taste by placing a few drops on a bit of bread and then eating it. They say the Russian oils are the only ones which will bear this test without disclosing a petroleum taste.

This leads to an interesting pattern. Three times in 'living memory' we had friendly relations with Russia, then Deepstate cut off the friendship to make war. We were obviously trading openly in 1915, then we invaded and occupied in 1918. We opened up again in the '20s and '30s, with industrial connections (eg Ford) and 'cultural relations'. During WW2 we worked together against both Krauts and Japs. Just after WW2 Deepstate created the Iron Curtain and slammed it shut. The third time was in the early '60s. Again we had 'cultural exchanges and imported some Soviet products. LBJ slammed the door in '68 by going into Vietnam. We never really opened it again. Reagan may have been trying at Rejkjavik, but he wasn't going to push back against Deepstate after Deepstate had shot him.

Labels: asked and worth asking again, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 11:54 PM

  Culp breaks the mold
Loren Culp is running for Congress, aiming at the 2022 election.

In his latest video he predictably knocks Biden for getting out of Afghanistan poorly.

BUT: He then spends most of the time on our endless unwinnable wars. He claims that Trump was trying to end wars, which is dubious since Trump now wants to roar back in with even more war.

I don't really care whether he mischaracterizes Trump. The important point is that Culp sounds more like Ike than Bush, and it's refreshing to see a politician returning to Ike's way of thinking. Culp is a veteran who served in Iraq and then became a policeman. Like Ike, he knows how war really works, and wants us to fight only when it's absolutely necessary.

In his run for governor last year, Culp stuck to his agenda all the way, never wavering and never converging to the norm. He gained trust points by showing consistency and GUTS.
  ¶ 1:31 PM

  Inspirational meme
Cartoon seen on Quora:



It's a damn good observation. Birdsongs are relatively rigid recordings that play the same way every time. Each bird makes small variations, but the theme is recognizable.

Earworms (what I call the mental jukebox) are also rigid recordings with variations. Does our earworm mechanism occupy the same brain structure, or derive from the same gene set, as the bird's standard song? Is this another bird-human parallel?

Labels: Answered better than asked, Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 10:46 AM

  Wood works
In previous item I mentioned that the BLESSED return to benign weather after 8 months of wind and storms and heat has loosened up my mind to think about solutions to daily problems. Here's what I meant.

A few years ago I bought an old Tinkertoy set from Ebay, and used it first to build a record player.



Then last year I dug into the set again and built an acoustical test rig:



Wood is JUST RIGHT for some purposes. I was reminded of this in June when I bought and built this wooden astrolabe kit:



Now that I've got a brief creative interval again, another use of wood suggested itself. There are several cleaning tasks in the kitchen that simply can't be done by brushes or sponges or fingernails. I've tried repeatedly, and nothing works.

1. The slots in a coffeemaker basket.

2. The narrow 'well' in the dish drainer that holds silverware.

3. The inside of a thermos.

It occurred to me that splitting off one side of a long slotted Tinkertoy rod might fit in those spaces. I reached into the bag and found one long rod with a handle already stuck on it. I used pliers to split off one side, and sure enough it's JUST RIGHT for all three tight spots.



Wood is an ideal scrubber. It's hard enough to break through biofilms, but not hard enough to scratch metal or plastic surfaces.

= = = = =

Random wood-related sidenote, observed on this morning's walk. The creeping thyme that lives in the pavement cracks is also appreciating the return to benign weather and last week's rain. After staying underground for 8 months, barely surviving, it's creating wildly this week, overflowing and spreading across the pavement. I've never seen it growing so enthusiastically before.

Labels: coot-proofing, defensible thymes, defensible times, Entertainment

  ¶ 5:20 AM

  Thanks, weather gods.
The long hot spell finally ended a couple weeks ago, and I've been recovering confidence and thinking ability. The two-front barrage from the demonic governor AND from the weather had pushed me down into bare survival mode.

Now I can think more clearly, develop solutions to everyday problems, take control when needed, and make connections.

Here's a connection I couldn't make before.

Why did the Carter Mecher gang choose to pull the trigger on their holocaust during the Trump administration?

I presumed they had to wait until they had blackmailed all the Public Death Officers in the world. But after reading Ibsen's 1900 portrait of a Public Death Officer, I could see that this task was easy. Public Death Officers are always ITCHING to exterminate all life. That's why they took the job. So no prep was needed.

Well, what was special about Trump?

He's germsy.

This was common knowledge before he went into politics.

Germsies NEED ever-increasing layers of protection from the invisible menaces of dirt and germs.

Germsies NEED ever-increasing distance from all surfaces.

Germsies CAN'T IMAGINE immunity. The idea that our body needs constant exposure to the real world is utterly beyond their comprehension.

So Trump was the perfect enforcer for Mecher's specific holocaust.

Reprinting the fable of Artie and Germsy:

= = = = = START REPRINT:

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.

Transcribed:

Germsy: I don't know how you put up with it!

Artie: What do you mean?

Germsy: This place hasn't been cleaned since we came here.

Artie: Well, is this a hotel? We kidnapped the guy, remember?

Germsy: That still doesn't excuse the appearance of the place. Where's the sink?

Artie: Right over there.

Germsy: Intolerable. Dust everywhere, clothes piled up, food on the table,...

Artie: It was that way when we came!

Germsy: Oh, what's the use.

Artie: Look, I'd rather be living like this than washing my hands every five minutes like you do! Germs are good for you once in a while!

Germsy: Well, you certainly should be an authority on that.


Artie was SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT, and most scientifically literate people KNEW IT in 1949.

Environmentalism was the lever that pulled Germsies into positions of power, and the Branded Flu was the final coup. Germsies deny the existence of immunity and hormesis and adaptation and negative feedback and LIFE. They firmly believe that humans are identical passive inanimate mechanisms, incapable of self-repair or self-adjustment or self-calibration. All adjustments must be made externally and invasively with maximum force.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Last year I was connecting the holocaust to the Karens in general, but not to Trump. Should have been obvious!

= = = = =

Much later addendum: There's a simple reason in the dynastic machinations of modern/medieval politics. This year's holocaust is the THIRD crisis manufactured by the Bush family. 2001 and 2008 were done while George Junior was in office, and the project for 2020 was launched by Geurge Junior in 2005. The Bush family was SUPPOSED to regain the presidency in 2016, but Trump beat Jeb easily. Trump was basically chosen by Hillary, as the Wikileaks emails made clear. The ruling family hated the Pretender To The Throne in a dynastic way, and was doing everyhing possible to discredit him. (This general tendency was obvious.) The Mecher gang was still working for the Bush family. Obama was a loyal servant, so he didn't need to be ruined. Trump was working for the opposite dynasty, so he did need to be ruined.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, NOW I SEE

  ¶ 11:12 PM

  Astrometeorology 8, Brahe's Star Castle interior
This is simply an expansion and revision of part 7. At that point I couldn't see how the various instruments were fitted into the domes, and I was wildly underestimating the size of the instruments. So we'll try it again, with a more complete underground structure and more appropriately sized instruments.

First the entire property from front, side, and top, as before.







The square central part was the workroom and residence for Brahe's technician. Fortunately the existing floor plans show a worktable and a fireplace. So I've given Polistra those two items, plus other stuff found in unrelated pictures but appropriate to the place and time. The jugs over the fireplace nicely match Brahe's Persianish architecture.



Another view, showing the worktable. You can also see the stairs up to the adit at the left side of the property.



From the central room, halls branched off into the circular observation rooms. First we'll walk into the Sextant room, which is covered by one of the flat 'sewer grating' domes.



Looking down into the grating toward the sextant:



And here Polistra is sighting down the alidade toward a target star.



Next we return to the central workroom and walk toward the Equatorial instrument in the big dome.



Looking at it from above. The descriptions are unclear, so I've arbitrarily made one pie-slice of the domes transparent. This wouldn't have worked in 1600. Did Brahe have hinged panels, or did he have a crew who lifted each entire dome off when it was time to observe? Most likely hinged.



Here's a closeup of the equatorial in its arena. I had to 'remove' some of the walls to get this angle.



Now you're looking along the alidade toward the pie-slice in the roof.



The Quadrant Magnus occupied the other 'sewer grating', here seen from the top.



And again Polistra is measuring the azimuth and altitude of a chosen star.





= = = = =

Keeping track of the links so far:

Intro: Opening the doors again

2: James Ferguson

3: From Ferguson to Kepler

4: Maragha and astrolabes

5: Qibla

6: Back to Europe

7: Brahe's star castle (first try)

8: Brahe's star castle, revised. (this item)

= = = = =

10/6: Now released as Poser scene on ShareCG.

Labels: Entertainment, Equipoise, Metrology

  ¶ 3:13 PM

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

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

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

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

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

= = = = =

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

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

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

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, Jail mode, TMI

  ¶ 7:14 AM

  Paid vs unpaid interactivity
Interactive learning can be active or passive, paid or unpaid.

I've been trying to think of a way to slip payment into courseware, mixing entertainment and reward into the learning experience, but I haven't found it yet.

Most textbooks don't even offer intrinsic pleasure. "Proof left as exercise for reader" doesn't get there at all.

Schools reward learning only with status (grades), which grows up into the tenure system that also runs mainly on status (rank).

Apprenticeships and business-based training schools are closer to the learn-to-earn setup, with guaranteed JOBS on graduation.

= = = = =

I've been noticing and enjoying both types of interactivity in old radio, which led me to think about the same distinction in education.



Four examples of unpaid interactivity:

MacHarrie's Guess What and Mel Blanc's Are you a genius were formatted as self-scoring tests, with no payment beyond the intrinsic satisfaction of thinking and learning.

Blackstone's magic show was on the line between paid and unpaid. Each episode featured instructions for a parlor trick. If you listened carefully and practiced the trick, you'd be rewarded with enjoyment at parties and the chance to win real bets with friends.

Dick Tracy had an elaborate scheme of clubs and codes. You were supposed to decode a message in each episode to 'help' Tracy escape the clutches of fiendish villains. I didn't see any direct payment, but you could send for badges and insignia to reward your club members for superior performance. Using status, as in school.

= = = = =

Two contrasting examples of paid interactivity:

The big national quiz Truth or Consequences was too much like Powerball. The prizes were astronomical** and the odds were astronomical. The questions were NOT educational.

The Chicago-based Calling All Detectives was a far more practical and winnable lottery. Much more like actual work, pay for value. Each local station called a listener every day, asking a question about a detail of today's episode. Especially in smaller markets, your odds of winning were 'imaginable'. The prize was also realistic. On WGN, the originating station, Sealy Mattresses offered a new mattress. Everyone can use a new mattress, and it's a prize worth EARNING.

= = = = =

I went in search of a trade journal with templates for such lotteries. I started by looking at Broadcast magazine from the same month as the best Detectives episodes.

Immediately I found the opposite! At that exact moment the FCC was making a big push to HALT such lotteries, which explains why I hadn't heard them in more recent shows.

Broadcast Magazine said:

The FCC is embarrassed because it stubbed its bureaucratic toe on its proposed giveaway ban. It has made a hasty and strategic retreat. But the war isn't over. There appears to be no question now that the FCC lacks jurisdiction over lotteries and gift enterprises, per se. Congress, without fanfare last June, repealed the lottery section of the Communications Act, along with the section dealing with obscene, profane and indecent language. It transferred jurisdiction to the Department of Justice, under the revised Criminal Code, which becomes operative Sept. 1. Why the FCC's highly-placed lawyers muffed this one becomes a matter of administrative concern for the FCC itself.

But broadcasters shouldn't delude themselves. What the FCC cannot do directly it probably can achieve in other ways. The FCC is the licensing body. It can take judicial notice of violations of any statutes. It determines the qualifications of licensees. It may be a longer, more tortuous course, but it's there.

Any broadcasting designed to "buy" the radio audience, by requiring it to listen in hope of reward rather than for the quality of entertainment should be avoided. Voluntary adherence to that precept will do it. In one fell swoop, it will achieve everything the reputable broadcaster has sought for a quarter century. It will make good programming the yardstick. It will disarm the Government's crusade toward greater program controls. It will quell the Congressional clamor for tightening up of the law. It will end the free rides of manufacturers who give things away like mad for the air credits. It will create new business for radio.

Note the realistic grasp of Parkinson. Bureaucracies don't use laws. They do what they want to do. The response is also realistic. Lobbying is pointless. Just obey and hope to bore the demons.

We aren't allowed to think realistically now. We are required to blame The Horrible Other Party for the permanent laws of power. If only we can elect more of My Wonderful Party, all problems will magically disappear.

But the magazine was STUPIDLY WRONG when it called giveaways disreputable. These PAID LEARNING EXPERIENCES were deeply educational. Each of these surviving programs contained serious and accurate representations of geography and history and science. Even if the subject matter was typical soap opera, the MENTAL EXERCISE of strategic listening would be good for your brain. Blanc and MacHarrie urged you to listen with paper and pencil in hand, invoking MUSCLE MEMORY.

Whether you earned the mattress or not, you were earning learning. And that's a vastly better prize than a mattress.


= = = = =

** Astronomical: At one point the Truth or Consequences prize was: A new house, new furniture and appliances, a complete wardrobe every year for life, a complete set of jewelry, a new Buick convertible, a yacht, and an AIRPLANE. For most listeners, the Buick and the clothing would be a net gain, but the rest would throw you into bankruptcy. (New house = maintenance, insurance and property taxes every year, not covered by the prize.)

Labels: Entertainment, Experiential education, Parkinson

  ¶ 11:17 PM

  Lots of money sloshing around!
As the fall semester starts, I'm getting the first courseware debug requests. Last year I sorted out most of the real internal problems, so I'm expecting Murphy stuff now. Inadequate instructions or misunderstood instructions.

The steady rentalization of the world is affecting my debugging ability. Blackboard, the biggest and best of the e-learning systems, has always offered a free 'testbed' where developers could try out and debug their products without any actual students. They've ended the service now, so I'm trying to find alternatives.

As usual with web services, there's no middle ground, no correlation of quantity and price. Pay for value is obsolete.

Before the web, most services had analog prices. For instance, you could get 1000 copies of a pamphlet printed for about $100, then after the setup you could get the second thousand printed for another $20.

The web has eliminated the concepts of price per unit and amortization. You get nearly full service for free, or full service for MEGABUCKS.

How MEGA is Blackboard? They don't publicize their pricing structure, but one author acquired a close estimate from 'sources'. An average university pays $150k per year to Blackboard, or about $1200 per student.

That's MEGA. Entirely out of my range.

I've been using a 'bite-size' service from ScormCloud for many years, costing about $1000 a year. This service is fully professional. It can handle any amount of courseware, and (IIRC) about 20 students. So the cost per student is $50, not $1200. A very small training school or business OJT class could function with this level of service, and some do.

BUT: ScormCloud doesn't have the same peculiarities as Blackboard or Moodle or Canvas. ScormCloud is more resilient. A project that runs perfectly on ScormCloud will NOT necessarily run on the major commercial services. So I'm still looking for a bite-size way to test with the ACTUAL peculiarities of Blackboard.

Later thought: ScormCloud also offers larger-scale services for larger bucks. I don't know their pricing, but their service would be a better deal for the same price BECAUSE of the broader resilience. More flexibility means less hassle for instructors and developers. Oddly, their marketing runs backwards.... they advertise that their service is stricter than the big brands. They say that if the package runs on ScormCloud it will also run on the other brands.

Labels: Bemusement, Experiential education

  ¶ 5:54 AM

  Reprint from 2012
Linked this 2012 item in previous. It's worth a full reprint.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

Uncommon Descent makes a neat comparison between the experts of yesteryear and the Experts of today.

Quotes several of those famous dismissals of new ideas, like IBM declining to use the invention of xerography because a machine that makes copies of documents "couldn't be a feasible business."

Then this:

One difference between this year’s feted expert and yesteryear’s is that this year’s model is demanding belief for bizarre stuff, either without evidence or contrary to evidence. He’s not saying that there couldn’t be a giant hologram, but that we in fact are ourselves giant holograms.

Exactly.

Parallels this point that Polistra has made at least 26,715,189 times with the following quote from the 1938 WPA Guide to Kansas:

Recent years of almost unprecedented drought have led to the often expressed belief that the climate of Kansas is changing. Geologists and meteorologists, however, point out that weather runs in cycles, the most pronounced being about a third of a century in length. Conditions during a cycle are easily mistaken by laymen for permanent changes. Despite year by year fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, recorded evidence shows that general climatic conditions remain unchanged.

1938 experts were cautious and scientific. They understood that Nature runs in cycles, and they understood homeostasis and feedback. Modern experts are superstitious, psychedelically psychopathic, and locked into linear extrapolation, while modern common folks are more likely to be cautious and sane, more likely to have a feel for cycles and feedback.

Because the 1938 experts had their eyes open to cycles, they could pick up the "third of a century" cycle in climate. A few of today's climate realists are finally starting to re-discover this cycle, which WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN MOTHERFUCKING NECESSARY IF WE HADN'T MOTHERFUCKING CENSORED AND INQUISITED EVERY MOTHERFUCKING FACT WE EVER MOTHERFUCKING KNEW.

= = = = =

Sidenote: I wonder how the Arab scholars of 800 AD felt when they were trying to preserve and build on the vast stock of knowledge that the Greeks and Romans had abandoned? Were they fiercely pissed at the waste of human culture, sad about the tragedy, or satisfied to be the sole carriers and creators of learning?


= = = = = END REPRINT.

The incidental note about those old Arabs has grown into something of a mission.
  ¶ 11:35 PM

  Couldn't do it now
This 1948 episode of 'Calling All Detectives' is unique at two levels. At the character level it portrays the conflict between real science versus the highly competitive team sport of academic science. At the plot level, the detective USES real science to find the culprit.

A geologist who runs a seismology research station has been killed. The prime suspect is a real scientist who dislikes the team sport. Our detective clears him by narrowing down the time when the murder occurred, and showing that the prime suspect wasn't there at the time.

How did he narrow down the time? After hanging around the facility and observing the delicately balanced seismographs, he realizes that the falling body would have made a blip on the graphs, which wouldn't be seen in other seismograph stations. Sure enough, they find a twitch during the relevant interval, which isn't matched by other stations.

Granted, a stabbed body wouldn't necessarily fall ... but the writers couldn't get overcomplicated in an 8-minute drama. Still, it's an accurate use of Constants And Variables, and an accurate representation of how real science works.

Modern TV and movies couldn't handle either level. All "scientists" must now be represented as pure altruists, even though the team sport is now UNIVERSAL. In reality, any scientist who puts the purity of measurement before the advancement of his career wouldn't get past the tenure committee.

And modern writers couldn't do real Constants And Variables even if they understood the concept, because it might feed the trolls. Heretics might start thinking in proper scientific terms about Holy Sacraments like lockdowns and distancing and ballgags. CRIMETHINK!

Those 1948 writers didn't realize they were the last of a breed. In 1946 Deepstate began its multi-front war of total destruction, founding CIA and NSF and WHO and CDC to obliterate science and civilization.

Labels: Constants and Variables, Entertainment, Equipoise, Metrology

  ¶ 10:13 PM

  It's a long long road to Nuremberg
Here's a possibly interesting development. I've been noting steadily that doctors from India seem to have a monopoly on sanity. There are only a few dozen credentialed non-demons in the world, and 90% of them have Indian names.

Now India's Bar Association has filed a suit charging WHO with committing mass murder.

The specific cause of action is WHO's prohibition of Ivermectin, which is apparently quite effective in preventing infection. A controlled experiment was done accidentally, with some provinces obeying the WHO prohibition and other provinces using Ivermectin. In the latter provinces, the virus was wiped out.

Acting for the Indian Bar Association, Dipali Ojha said the WHO official is accused of misconduct because she used her position as a public health official to further the agenda of special interests to maintain an Emergency Use Authorization for the lucrative vaccine industry.

Dipali Ojha further stated that the Indian Bar Association is bringing action under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code against Dr. Soumya Swaminathan and others, for murder of each person who died due to obstruction of treatment of Covid patients with Ivermectin. Punishment under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code is death or life imprisonment.

This cause of action wouldn't apply in the West, where all real medicine was banned everywhere. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to watch what happens in India. It's hard for lawyers and judges to ignore a suit filed by the Bar Association.

This is a long long way from Nuremberg, but at least it's a solid and meaningful charge by a solid and undismissable organization.

= = = = =

Personal footnote: Before I had the EXPERIENCE of the Moderna vaccine, I was neutral or agnostic on the subject of drugs like Ivermectin or HCQ. I learn by EXPERIENCE. After enduring the possibly permanent side effects of the Moderna vaccine, I'm no longer agnostic. This vax has vastly more pain than gain.

A similar pattern happened in the '50s with gamma globulin for polio. Globulin worked well to prevent infection, but it needed to be given at the right time. The polio vax was permanent. IN THAT CASE the permanent effects were definitely worth the trouble. Polio crippled and killed healthy young people, and polio was a real epidemic. The currently fashionable virus is a disease of the old like Alzheimers. We're doing everything possible to RUIN THE ENTIRE WORLD, making total war on all health and immunity, in order to "save" people who were already inevitably dying.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, endless hell, Experiential education

  ¶ 12:10 AM

  Stability again
Halfway following from previous item about squashing competition....

I've talked a lot about the myth of meritocracy, the false idea that human nature is an infinitely malleable blank slate.

A secondary semi-false idea always runs along with meritocracy, but it doesn't have a name. The semi-myth tells us that economies are not zero-sum, that business grows by adding new innovations.

Not entirely false. Brand-new products do occasionally increase the production of real value.

Mostly, though, increased value is simply an increased quantity of the same product. Grow more wheat, make more washing machines. Historically there's a not much correlation between newness and increased production. A good product like Campbell's Soup or WD-40 or the Jeep can gradually increase its production without major change for many decades. When you factor in the development cost of a new product, the net result strongly favors continued production of an old product.

Real growth, like real learning, requires STABILITY.

The nonzero sum myth is easiest to debunk by looking at patents. The myth tells us that solo inventors in their garages get patents to grow the economy. Thus patents are the measure of innovation and growth.

False on all counts. Gradual innovation comes from established labs and workshops inside corporations, or sponsored by a group of corporations. Patents are NOT used as weapons to spur innovation. Patents are used as DEFENSIVE weapons to block competition.

This myth has a parallel in the area of military war and conquest. Commentators on both sides assume that we invade nations to gain resources.

This WAS true, at least as a pretext, before 1920. It's no longer true. Most of our invasions are pure evil, with no economic purpose at all. Invasions with economic purposes are aimed to STOP the production of a resource, not to STEAL the resource.

We can see this myth in operation right now. Commenters are assuming that we invaded Afghanistan for the lithium, and China will now invade for the lithium. The first part is obviously false. We did nothing at all with minerals in the 20 years of occupation. The second part is half true. China will now create mines and processing plants in Afghanistan by peaceful capitalism, sharing the profit and wages with Afghans. China doesn't invade and doesn't blockade. China INCREASES real value and real production, giving benefits to the local businessmen and workers along with benefits to China.

  ¶ 6:23 AM

  Not replication, just dumb
Is this another Replication Crisis? Not exactly.

From Buzzfeed, seen at UD.

Renowned psychologist Dan Ariely literally wrote the book on dishonesty. Now some are questioning whether the scientist himself is being dishonest.

According to the 2012 paper, when people signed an honesty declaration at the beginning of a form, rather than the end, they were less likely to lie. A seemingly cheap and effective method to fight fraud, it was adopted by at least one insurance company, tested by government agencies around the world, and taught to corporate executives. It made a splash among academics, who cited it in their own research more than 400 times.

That leaves Ariely, who confirmed that he alone was in touch with the insurance company that ran the test with its customers and provided him with the data. But he insisted that he was innocent, implying it was the company that was responsible. “I can see why it is tempting to think that I had something to do with creating the data in a fraudulent way,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I can see why it would be tempting to jump to that conclusion, but I didn’t.” According to correspondence reviewed by BuzzFeed News, Ariely has said that the company he partnered with was the Hartford...

Sounds like Ariely is naive and unrealistic, not dishonest.

The academic side of “social” “science” has been disconnected from reality since 1910 or so. Insurers and marketers have been running real experiments with a real profit motive, so their own findings about behavior and motivation are accurate. Insurers have learned how to judge honesty from BILLIONS of real experiments.

Scenario: When Ariely asked Hartford to run this little study, Hartford ACCURATELY JUDGED that Ariely was both influential and naive. They figured that his “results” might lead competing companies to adopt a counterproductive way of judging honesty, thus giving Hartford a competitive advantage. And their little meta-experiment worked. "At least one other insurer" did adopt the dumb trick.

This brings us back to the Trinity House theme. Trinity House WAS the insurer, so its own funding of science was motivated toward realism and honesty through a direct feedback loop. If better foghorns or better radio communication helped to keep a ship from crashing, the ship would reach harbor safely and Trinity House would receive a fee for keeping the ship safe.

= = = = =

Semi-relevant sidenote: Trinity House was developed to catch and eliminate Wreckers, criminals who built false beacons to lead ships onto the rocks so the criminals could loot the wreck. The interesting interactive radio show 'Calling All Detectives' had one episode about a modern Wrecker.

Labels: Trinity House

  ¶ 10:33 PM

  Grandpa said it
Continuing from previous item.

1. The sequence of events is a good example of evolution by subtraction, which is the way Nature, language, and human inventions work. The first genome, or the first language, or the first version of an invention, has all the features it needs. As the genome spreads into different places and creatures, or the language spreads to different people with different tendencies, or the invention tries to seek a global audience, the product simplifies.

My 2004 loader had all the features needed. Some of them were later incorporated into Poser itself, and some of them were copied in the plagiarizer's loader.

2. Fast change destroys creativity. When rules and programs and browsers are constantly changing, you have to carve away pieces of your product or mind or soul on each side to remain alive. Adapting to all possible countries and all possible users forces rigid conformity.

3. Rentalism is an alternate form of globalism. When you don't have direct control of the product or house or life, you can't learn or create effectively. Learning and creativity require a STABLE SITUATION so you can distinguish between constants and variables. When the machine or culture is constantly stealing control from your own hands, you eventually give up and stop trying to create.

Reminds me of what my dying grandpa tried to tell me in 1962.

= = = = = START REPRINT:

This line of thought originated from a specific conversation with Grandpa in 1962. Grandpa was dying early from alcohol and tobacco, and the family went to visit him one last time. As we hung around Grandpa's house, or visited nearby parks, Grandpa kept saying true things, and parents kept trying to Rectify him, nervously painting over the facts with conventional leftist crap. I wasn't sure what to think. Grandpa's observations matched what I saw with my own eyes, but didn't match what I'd always heard from parents and TV and books.

I think Grandpa got tired of being painted out. At one point he decided to go for beer and cigarettes (yeah, those were killing him, but it was too late to stop) and took me along. No parents, just me. I don't remember most of the conversation but I remember one emphasized item that seemed to summarize his intentions.

We were talking about his old '52 Ford Mainline. I must have been asking why anyone would want a plain car with no power steering, no radio, no automatic, none of the 'exciting' stuff that 'everyone wanted' in 1962.

Grandpa pointed to the manual choke. He told me that Ford was the only car that still offered a manual choke. He said it was important to have a simple car that you could understand and fix by yourself, and it was important to have direct control over the car.

Extend car to life, and there's the message.

Same as Carver's message.

Look about you. Take hold of the things that are here. Talk to them. Let them talk to you.

Dying old engineer trying to pass the key to young potential engineer. He succeeded. I've done a shitty job of following his advice, but I've always remembered and tried.

= = = = = END REPRINT.

Labels: Carver, defensible cases, defensible times, Grand Blueprint, storage

  ¶ 2:10 PM

  You already have what you need.
One of the small pleasures of life is pulling an ace from your sleeve.

One of the BIG pleasures is creating independence and self-sufficiency, defeating the all-consuming Github.

I use Poser intensively for work and play, for courseware animations and blog stuff and just plain entertainment. About a year ago, the makers of Poser decided to turn it into a rental property. You can't use the program at all unless you're connected to the web right now, and the connection CAN AND WILL remove anything the landlord doesn't like.

The change got AGGRESSIVELY PERSONAL when the latest version (12) cut off all usage of old-style Python.

This immediately obsoleted 20 years of hard work.

In the early years, much of my hard work was released to the Poser community, and other programmers started from my examples and monetized their work without giving me credit or royalties. This was annoying, but as long as I could keep using and amortizing my own work for my own purposes, it wasn't DESTRUCTIVE.

When the change forced me to switch all of my own work to the new form in order to USE IT FOR MY OWN PURPOSES, I said no. Demanded a refund and cancellation of the license for v12. Without warning, this also cancelled the license for v11, which would have been usable otherwise.

NOW I'M SERIOUSLY PISSED.

So I fell back to v9, which was the last non-Github version.

But then v9 abruptly suffered an entirely separate Github obsolescence. It somehow used Adobe Flash to run its file system. When Adobe killed Flash, v9 became partly usable. It would load premade scenes, but not any of the parts needed to build a scene.

There was a workaround, a loader developed by one of those monetizers who began with my work. Damned if I'm going to honor a monetizer.

So I returned to the loader I'd written in 2004, which does more than the Adobe shit was doing, and does more than the plagiarized version. I hadn't been using it, because the Adobe-based file system, built into the program, was easier. Now the choice was between my own superior file-handler or the plagiarized inferior file-handler.

No contest, no split decision. It still works.

A meaningful victory against Github 'phone home' tyranny, and a petty personal victory against the plagiarizers.

Polistra sings along with Tycho:



BE YOUR OWN BEACON.

You already have what you need.

Resonate with reality using your own INSTRUMENTS and your own SKILLS and your own SENSES. Don't surrender to the centralizers or the plagiarizers. Don't let them steal your SKILLS or monopolize your SENSES.

Labels: Equipoise, skill-estate

  ¶ 2:46 PM

  Counterforce to Machiavelli
In previous item I wished someone would write a counterbalance to Machiavelli's advice for rulers. How should we survive the various forms of torture that rulers impose on us?

This question and answer on Quora does the job pretty well.


Q: Why do the Chinese widely consider Zhuge Liang to be the greatest strategist in Chinese history even though his side never won conclusively on the battlefield?


A:

Because for Chinese, the side which survives the longest is the victor by default, even if it did not ever win on the battlefield.

This is probably the biggest single difference between western and Chinese strategic military thinking.

All of the writings of Sun Tzu and Mao Zedong (On Prolonged War) are based on this simple fact. If one side is militarily weak, and it is fighting a militarily much more powerful enemy, the only path to victory is by lasting longer than the opponent.

When George Washington was fighting the British in the War of Independence, and the Vietnamese were fighting the Americans, and more recently, the Taliban fought the Americans, it is this simple fact which offers the only path to victory.

This obviously applies to ordinary people facing a well-armed and demonic ruler. In fact it's basically the same as my experience-based strategy for surviving when trapped in a cell with a psychopath. Outlast him. Don't excite him. Hope he loses interest in the battle and moves on.

In other words, follow Booker T.

EXPERIENCE SURVIVES. THEORY KILLS.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, Jail mode

  ¶ 11:14 PM

  7 days in flies, 7 days in humans
In previous item, researchers found that seven days was enough to cause Mecher's intended lockdown damage, in fruit flies.

Reprint from Oct 2020:

= = = = = START REPRINT:


An article in the Canadian Patent Register for 1886 has an insight about the psychopaths who are killing the world. Before Freud and Skinner took over, REAL social science was trying to observe REAL human types. They had an overemphasis on skull shapes, but their descriptions of criminal behavior were sharp and precise.

The description includes one element that I hadn't thought about in this form, though it's actually obvious.

There is another class, who are led on by a wild passion for the destruction of the old and the creation of something new. They need restless activity: their present condition seems the worst possible.

As a rule, too, they are very fond of notoriety. They are in love with crime. The pain of others is a keen satisfaction to them: its horror attracts them. The French revolution shows such types.

The need to cause harm is common to most criminals, but revolutionaries have an extra wild passion for the destruction of the old and the creation of something new.

These are the pure psychopaths, the Bezos class, the Creative Destruction class, the Innovative Disruption class. Force obedience, change the rules, force obedience to new rules, change the rules, force obedience to new rules, change the rules. Github. Room 101. Bezos.

Another observation is more familiar:

The modern socialists, anarchists and dynamiters no doubt contain an element of these hereditary criminals, who use the political object as a mask for their instinctive tendencies to lawless outbreaks. In some cases the introduction of such a criminal element transforms a purely political organization into a band of outlaws: the Molly-Maguires are an example of this.

This connection has always been known but (of course) never cited in modern discussions. Those French revolutionaries crashed the Bastille to recruit their ordinary criminals. It showed up again in Deepstate's preparation for Madman Lincoln's War, when most of the "anti-slavery" activists were ordinary outlaws. And again in the 1960s, when the Black Panthers were a gang operating under an "anti-racism" flag. And again in today's "anti-racism" riots, where most of the arrested violent suspects are ordinary criminals, familiar to the cops, with long records.

The 2020 "virus" holocaust is ALL ABOUT DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD. Old medicine and public health knew how immunity worked, knew how viruses worked, knew that the best way to handle a virus is to strengthen the immune system. All of that knowledge, acquired by costly experience over hundreds of years, has been Creatively Destroyed in a Github instant. Now no scientist has heard of immunity. Immunity never existed. T-cells are a "controversial theory". All previously known properties of viruses are Unproperties, deleted and replaced by properties of witchcraft. The new rules and purposes change every two weeks. Force obedience, change the rules, force obedience, change the rules, force obedience, change the rules. Never let the victim adapt to the new. Github. 101. Bezos.

= = = = =

Metrology footnote: Two weeks is an unfamiliar time constant. It's clearly the 'pendulum period' of the current holocaust. I don't think it's been used explicitly before, though it might have been used without mentioning it. Previous Deepstate projects were asynchronous at this long-term level. The seven-second rule has always been used by TV to break our short-term adaptation. Clearly the holocausters have figured out an intrinsic aspect of memory and adaptation. Two weeks is half of a moon cycle, half of a menstrual cycle. Karens are mainly pre-menopausal women. Is the pendulum designed to phase-lock Karens?

I'm tempted to associate it with memory consolidation, but a quick google skim doesn't find any explicit mention of a two-week constant. It takes about one week for a short-term memory to transfer from hippocampus to cortex, where it grows links to other memories. Possibly a two-week Github breaks a crucial point in that transfer??

= = = = = END REPRINT.

There's the seven days.
  ¶ 11:14 PM

  Excellent finding, wrong focus
Carter Mecher and his hellish crew of superdemons know exactly what they're doing. All the doctors and Public Death Officers and mayors and governors and presidents know exactly what they're doing. This holocaust has been designed and planned for 15 years.

It's interesting to see that the mechanism Mecher is mechanizing runs deep in our genes. I'm sure Mecher's mechanics already know this particular detail, along with the more obvious correlations. Deepstate is always ahead of Academia.

It's also interesting that the researcher who is EXPOSING the connection is Chinese.

Drosophila are social creatures. The fruit flies forage and feed in groups, serenade one another through complex mating rituals, tussle in miniature boxing matches. And then they conk out: flies sleep 16 hours each day, split between a languorous midday nap and a full night’s rest.

So when Wanhe Li, a research associate in Young’s lab, began investigating the biological underpinnings of chronic social isolation, she turned to the gregarious and well-studied fruit fly. For the study, Wanhe Li first compared how flies fare under various lockdown conditions. After seven days, flies housed together in groups of varying sizes produced no anomalous behaviors. Even two flies cut off from the crowd were content with one another. But when a single fly was entirely isolated, the lonely insect began eating more and sleeping less.

Seven days is enough to start the effect, which also appears to induce gene expression. So it may be a multi-generational effect. I'm sure Mecher knows this as well. He intends to ruin the entire universe for the rest of history.

The researchers do the usual Darwin speculation:

One possibility, Young says, is that social isolation signals a degree of uncertainty about the future. Preparation for tough times may include being alert and awake as often as possible and eating whenever food is available.

Not quite. Isolation doesn't signal uncertainty about the future. Isolation directly creates uncertainty and paranoia by removing external feedback from Nature and other humans. Sensory deprivation leaves the individual totally susceptible to official sensory input and official commands. Our media-centered world has already moved us halfway into this mode several years before the lockdowns.

This article is focusing on overeating, which isn't the important variable. Overeating is simply a familiar immediate effect of sleep loss. Under normal conditions, one sleepless night makes you ravenous. Sleep deprivation is the critical weapon of psychopaths and cult leaders. When we lose sleep we lose confidence, lose immunity, and lose coherence. We are ready for total command and control.

Hungry for food, hungry for sense input, hungry for coherence. The demons supply all three in their preferred form.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, AI point-missing

  ¶ 10:40 AM

  Much to be modest about
This new attempt to categorize life is vague and sloppy. The authors, for once, are appropriately humble about the highly tentative stage of their understanding.

What REALLY caught my attention in the article is The Unavoidable Typo:



For some reason this particular typo evades all proofreaders. Leaving aside words with plausible alternative spellings, Sante Fe is the champion typo. Anticipatory coarticulation.

The authors see the problems clearly. Taxonomy stopped working a long time ago. Concepts like species and individual simply don't fit the real world. A forest or a field of grass is an individual and a huge group of individuals. Functional modules are sometimes separated by cell boundaries and sometimes not. Many "species" have turned out to be different settings of the variable epigenes, not different settings of the constant genes.

Using this definition vastly increases what can be seen as life, to include concepts such as culture, forests, and the economy. A more traditional definition might consider these as products of life, rather than life itself.

"Human culture lives on the material of minds, much like multicellular organisms live on the material of single-celled organisms," Kempes explains.

Based on their new definition, the researchers argue that life has emerged many times on Earth, and that we in fact are co-existing with many forms of current life.

They are trying to steer away from crude physics and materialism, but their proposal is still too static, too materialistic. It appears to pivot on the tired notion of energy efficiency:

For example, life uses many gradients of energy production using the level one constraints, but all of these must adhere to the level two constraint of the law of thermodynamics. "No cell will be found to contain more internal structure than can be accounted for by the total free energy available from the environment," the team writes in their paper.

Is complexity limited by available energy? No. MAINTAINING a more complex structure doesn't require more energy. The right structure for a PURPOSE may be simple or complex.

A modern car uses much less gas than a Model T. A cellphone uses much less battery energy than a 1950 tube-based computer. There's no correlation.

So these authors aren't anywhere near a usable redefinition, but they are starting the process with a healthy humble attitude.

Labels: Grand Blueprint

  ¶ 11:57 PM

  Back to full medieval mode
After about six weeks of partial gagging, Demon Inslee has now predictably returned to full gagging. This is how demons work.

Not surprising now; he gave warning two weeks ago with a "recommendation".

I vented my emotions at that point. No emotions now.

Just survival.

The weather gods have provided mercy again, finally ending the hot spell without any dramatic windstorms.

Bless you, weather gods.

Every new STOMP knocks you down and ruins your confidence. It's easier to get back up when you aren't buffeted on all sides by heat and storms and power outages.

Back to medieval mode. Try to keep the torch of real science illuminated, try to fight ugliness with beauty.

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

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, 2000=1000, endless hell, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 9:54 PM