Almost realistic enough
BBC feature on who gets to be president and how the election works. Allegedly aimed at British youngsters. Surprisingly realistic, especially about the intrinsic corruption of the Electoral College. Most US descriptions focus on the old fake selling point that the EC "gives more power to small rural states." That was never the purpose, and it's wildly untrue now.

A much simpler answer would be more comprehensible to Brit yoots.

You get to be President the same way you get to be Monarch in Britain, by belonging to the dynasty. The US dynastic setup is sloppier. We don't have a single permanent dynasty; instead we have gang wars between short-lived competing dynasties, as happened in Britain before Tyrant Elizabeth 1.

Occasionally a non-dynastic is placed in office when the heir of the dominant dynasty isn't ready. Hillary was used up and Chelsea wasn't ready, so Trump was installed as Regent to maintain the dynastic policies while besmirching all opponents of the dynasty. Chelsea's path will be easier after all opponents have been exterminated.
  ¶ 5:41 AM

  Wrong kind of coding
A pretty good modern version of the Declaration of Independence by Larry Sanger, the disgruntled cofounder of Wikipedia.

The League of Disgruntled Cofounders should get together and make something happen. Most of the tech companies were taken over at some point by imperial monsters like Zuckerberg and Elon, leaving the originals unhappy with the change.

But this declaration misses ALL the necessary points.

1. Dissidents aren't common. The people who WANT to express independent opinions, and CAN express them coherently, have always been in the 3% range. 97% are happy to read what everyone else reads and say what everyone else says. 97% emphatically includes all popular and attractive people, by simple logic.

2. Before the net, dissidents understood that you can't expect the enemy's newspapers to publish your articles for free, and you CERTAINLY can't expect the enemy's newspapers to PAY you for publishing your articles. Modern dissidents expect Youtube to PAY them for articles that Youtube doesn't like. This is crazy. Earlier dissidents had their own printing presses or personal 'networks'. The latter is harder now because even the landline phone system is monitored by NSA. But a mouth-to-ear whisper network or a hand-to-hand Morse network is still possible.

3. Independence means independence. If you want to get away from NSA, you have to PHYSICALLY disconnect from NSA. This declaration talks about 'coding' but it DOESN'T talk about printing presses or shortwave or hand-to-hand communication or visual semaphore chains or clock codes or book codes.

4. Without physical disconnection, no amount of 'coding' will give you independence.

Labels: Aberree, From rights to duties, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 10:34 PM

  Fakedowns
Convective thought.

Most of the "activity" of Sorosian dysgovernments is FAKE SHAKEDOWNS.

Fakedowns are an old classic in ordinary crime, but relatively new in dysgovernments. Ordinary blackmailers often threaten to expose letters or documents that don't really exist, or letters that the blackmailer has forged. Ordinary kidnappers often threaten a kidnap that hasn't happened yet. If the threat is credible, it brings in money with no real labor by the criminal. No document theft, no grab, no killing.

Real shakedowns are old and universal among governments. Give an ultimatum, get the payoff. If no payoff, real invasion and destruction by armies or SWAT teams.

The biggest dysgovernment fakedown is "climate change", where governments ruin their own industries and slaughter their own people to fund fake shit like "carbon sequestration" and "carbon reduction", which CAN'T POSSIBLY AFFECT THE WEATHER. The weather responds to internal changes in the earth's magnetic field and core. CO2 is a RESULT of those changes. Thanks to 45 years of vicious genocidal propaganda, all corporations have decided to go along with the racket. Going along was hard at first, but after the 1980 switch from profit to share value, it's easy. Eliminating production and skills and jobs is the only way to gain share value.

Trump is a virtuoso fakedown artist. He threatens to do some shit, gets the payoff, then turns off the threat. It doesn't matter if the shit is possible. Sometimes he even surrenders before getting the payoff, but he still seems to think he's winning. Invading Russia is impossible. We did it in 1918, but that was before nukes. Invading Persia is physically possible, and we've done it before, but now Persia will respond by blocking Saudi oil, which is the ONLY oil, so we aren't going to do it. Invading Venezuela is physically possible, and we've done it before, but we're currently proving that we aren't competent enough to make it happen.

As with the classic protection racket that relies on silence by all businesses, Trump depends on other countries to go along with the fakedowns against Russia and Persia. BUT: Unlike the "climate change" fakedown where going along gets easier, cooperation is getting harder. Euro countries are losing massive amounts of money and fuel, and they've finally decided to break the chain.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:20 AM

  Misattribution of purpose 2
Here's a misattribution in the opposite direction from previous item.

As usual, Dreher cultivates our outrage at the SJWs who destroy old art.

A 'socialist realist' mural funded by WPA is being wiped out by progressives because it shows the standard progressive view of blacks, injuns and honkies.

Dreher attributes this lunacy to an ideological PURPOSE:

The religion of Social Justice is a thing of staggering stupidity and destructiveness. It is moralistic therapeutic barbarism. If you value art, literature, and freedom of thought and expression, you will fight hard to keep these people from coming to power within political and cultural institutions. It might be too late for California. But for the rest of us? We are creating a generation of sentimentalized Stalinists.

No, it's not any kind of -ism. Isms are purposeful action. These cultists have been stripped of all human rationality. Their myelin insulation has been burned off, exposing the bare axons. They are humans who think like computers. Their code contains a list of banned subjects. When they see a representation of the banned subject, they delete it. Extremely simple code, two or three lines. Termite code. See wood, eat it.

Censorious types have ALWAYS been mechanistic. Librarians have always removed Twain's anti-racist books because he uses ordinary words that are indexed in the current list of prohibitions. The new censorship by ACTUAL computers is not new. The actual computers are just replacing humans who think like computers.

The PURPOSE of the New Deal artist is utterly irrelevant, just as Twain's PURPOSE is irrelevant. There's no irony here, just a complete lack of LIFE.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 12:27 AM

  Misattribution of purpose 1
A typical Spokompton item in the Spokane News FB page.

The official account doesn't tell you what's happening or why.

Spokane County Sheriff’s Office Deputies responded to multiple reports of two fires west of Carnahan near 16th Avenue. Witnesses stated a female, later identified as 28-year-old Angel M. Garton, was walking around and starting the fires. Spokane Valley Fire quickly extinguished the small fires which caused minimal damage. Garton was booked into jail for two counts of Arson 2nd Degree.

On June 27, 2019, at approximately 6:55 p.m., Spokane County Sheriff’s Deputies responded to reports of a female acting strange and starting fires as she walked on Carnahan between 14th and 16th Avenue.

Spokane County and Spokane Valley Deputies arrived in the area and found two small fires, one mainly grass and brush and one in an electrical/utility box. Witnesses told Deputies, Garton was the one responsible for setting the fires. As Deputy McKenzie approached Garton, he observed she was holding BIC lighter in her hand. Garton was detained without incident pending an investigation.

The ensuing discussion is worth reading. As fucking usual, conservatives cite "lack of personal responsibility" and liberals cite "sympathy for mental issues".

In the middle of the thread, a GENUINE EXPERT with GENUINE EXPERIENCE explains what's happening and why. He works at a metal recycling company and has to deal with the results of fires like this. Tweakers set fires in junction boxes to burn off the insulation and short out the current. They return later to cut out the bare copper and sell it.

This is REAL INFORMATION, data that we didn't know before.**

Nobody listens to the REAL INFORMATION. The conservatives keep mocking "lack of responsibility" and the liberals keep coddling "mental issues".

Both of the ideologues are failing to attribute PURPOSE to the criminal. The recycling worker understands that tweakers are engaged in a PLANNED AND PURPOSEFUL act of destructive criminal greed.

= = = = =

Next item forms a complementary pair.

= = = = =

** Nicely appropriate since Shannon's original work aimed to improve the performance of multiplexed telephone cables.

Labels: malign misattribution

  ¶ 12:10 AM

  Bravo to EU!
Via ZH:

Following a meeting between the countries who singed the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was ditched by US, French, British and German officials said the trade mechanism which was proposed last summer and called Instex, is now operational.

As a reminder, last September, in order to maintain a financial relationship with Iran that can not be vetoed by the US, Europe unveiled a "Special Purpose Vehicle" to bypass SWIFT. The mechanism would facilitate transactions between European and Iranian companies, while preventing the US from vetoing the transactions and pursuing punitive measures on those companies and states that defied Trump. The payment balancing system will allow companies in Europe to buy Iranian goods, and vice-versa, without actual money-transfers between European and Iranian banks.

ZH sees this as a major line-crossing toward independence from US imperialism. It's also a step away from the entire international BANKING system, which is the core of Deepstate.

EU continues doing massive amounts of Sorosian evil, but this one heroic action is worth saluting. So, for the first and probably the last time, Polistra and friends salute EU!



More from RT:

The European financial settlement mechanism (INSTEX), aimed at circumventing US sanctions against Iran, is working and transactions are already happening, according to Iran’s JCPOA envoy. ... On Friday, seven EU countries said in a joint statement they are working with Britain, France, and Germany on establishing trade channels to Iran, including “one of the foremost of these initiatives” – the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX).

= = = = =

Graphic sidenote: The animation has 12 frames, looping roughly every 2 seconds. Way below flicker fusion. Very slow and steppy compared to any proper video. The steppiness is easy to count on the mill wheel, with the spokes unrealistically clicking and the buckets doing a classic stagecoach alias routine. But you can't perceive any steppiness in the waving flag despite the slow pace. Smooth as Chinese-made silk. Your visual system fills in the steps.

Labels: infinite GOOD

  ¶ 2:45 PM

  For once the Republicans are NOT Repooflicans
Via Oregon Public Radio, which is NOT happy about the result:

Oregon Senate Republicans have notched a number of unlikely victories this Legislative session. None were as great as the concession they appeared to have won Tuesday morning.

Without warning his Democratic colleagues, Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, took to the Senate dais, gaveled the chamber to order and solemnly announced his party’s proposal for fighting[sic] climate[sic] change[sic] was dead.

“What I’m about to say, I say of my own free will. No one has told me to say this,” Courtney said. “House Bill 2020 does not have the votes on the Senate floor. That will not change.”

The REPUBLICANS in Oregon actually DID THEIR FUCKING JOB. They were elected to REPRESENT their constituents. Their constituents didn't want more Carbon Crap. The LEGISLATORS used every tactic in the book, including boycotting. When the demon dysgovernor illegally sent out the state troopers to gather them in, the REPUBLICANS refused to buckle.

Result: REPRESENTATION.

I wish the exquisitely delicate Wash state Repoofpoofpoof eunuchs would do the same. They squeal about ZERO TAX but don't even mention other issues, and always surrender before the battle starts.

Labels: Carbon Cult, infinite GOOD

  ¶ 5:03 AM

  Not a mystery
Via MindMatters, a recent survey on returning lost wallets is baffling to "social" "scientists" and economists.

A team of economists found recently that, in a massive global study of 17,000 “lost wallets” in forty countries, people were more likely to return a wallet if it contained a large amount of cash. This finding “defied the expectations of both professional economists and 2,500 respondents to a survey, who predicted that people would act in self-interest.”

No mystery.

First, listen to people who DO understand human nature, namely swindlers. The old wallet touch always used a BIG WAD OF MONEY, guaranteeing that the suckers would want to return it. (The money was never truly lost; one of the swindling team was present at the "accidental" finding, helping the sucker to reach the correct decision.)

Second, self-interest IS the motive. A person who loses lots of money is more likely to want it back, which means more punishment for keeping the dough and more reward for returning it.

People who carry 10K in cash are usually criminals. They committed crimes to acquire the money, so they're perfectly willing to commit crimes to retrieve the money.

Non-criminals carrying big piles are likely to be performing a rare and important transaction, perhaps paying off a criminal. They need to get the money back FAST to save their own life, so they're willing to offer a reward.

= = = = =

Later, from the other angle: If I lost my wallet, would I offer a reward? Certainly not for the money. I typically carry about $30. How about the cards? At this point in life, they wouldn't matter either. Drivers license, debit card, SS card, voter registration. Only the debit card ever gets physically used. The others could be replaced at leisure. New thought: In fact I wouldn't even want the debit card. I would cancel and replace it INSTANTLY to stop thefts. The old card would thus be redundant as soon as it was lost. I've carried a wallet for 55 years without ever losing it, so I hadn't thought about the question before.

Later again: The Statcounter listings show that USBank read this item, without a referring link. Obviously they know that my debit card is a USBank card. Is that creepy? No. Their algorithms worked beautifully a couple of times in the past when the card's info was stolen online. The criminal transactions didn't fit my usual pattern, so USBank caught them and cancelled the card automatically. It's actually reassuring to know that their algorithms are still on the job. Thanks, USBank!

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 4:18 AM

  What isn't quite said
The latest Googleak from Veritas is interesting for what it doesn't quite say.

It's an internal document published by Google to guide protests organized by Google. Most of it is standard material. In the hippie days we heard the same basic rules from our Deepstate advisors. There's one difference: We weren't superrich highly paid highly privileged employees of our Deepstate advisors. We were volunteer idiots, not careerist idiots.

The subject matter of the protests is pure Soros, and also self-serving because Google relies on H1B immigrants to keep its labor costs low.

“#NoMuslimBan #NoWall” “Don’t Be Evil” “Refugees Welcome” “Immigrants Welcome” “Make America Welcoming Again” “#GooglersUnite” “Resist” “Never Again” “No Ban No Wall” “This is not who we are” “Muslims cure cancer”

Needless to say, Deepstate Trump agrees with the main theme. He has opened the border much wider than Obama did, and is shipping more "Dreamer" invaders into American cities than Obama did. So these slogans are NOT directed at Trump. They are directed at Populists.

What ISN'T QUITE SAID:

Be aware of the situation and your surroundings. It’s okay to leave. Don’t feel pressure to do something or be somewhere you don’t want to.

No dangerous routes, even if it’s “on the route.” Watch out for construction, heavy traffic, and be aware of your surroundings.

Be aware of your surroundings = Don't go into ghettos.

The "less privileged" folks you're supposedly supporting have zero patience for privileged assholes obstructing traffic. And they have less than zero patience for immigrants brought in to lower wages.
  ¶ 10:55 PM

  Not so complicated
Via UncommonDescent,

These simple mathematics are tools that Fuentes, in 2009, used to describe another system with an unusual fat-tailed distribution: the stock market. By using superstatistics — an approach from thermodynamics to describe turbulent flow — Fuentes could accurately describe the hard-to-predict dramatic crashes and explosions in value.

“In biology, we see these crashes and explosions too, in terms of biodiversity,” says Rominger. “We wondered if Fuentes’ elegant approach could also describe the evolutionary dynamics we see in the fossil record.”

You don't need fancy math for either situation.

Population booms when food is abundant (easy to find). Stocks bubble when money is abundant (low interest).

Population busts when a species uses up the available food. Stocks bust when easy money is used up or turned off.

You never need statistics. Never.

Labels: Blinded by Stats

  ¶ 2:53 PM

  Logic, lunacy
The blackrobed hyperdemons have simultaneously enforced simple logic and pure lunacy in two parallel decisions.

Logic: Decided not to handle some lower demon decisions about gerrymandering. This makes perfect sense. Gerrymandering is NORMAL and APPROPRIATE. Separating by party, or separating by demographics, is MORE LIKE DEMOCRACY than trying to distribute people randomly. A legislator who automatically knows what his district wants is a BETTER legislator by FUCKING DEFINITION. When the interests of a district are evenly distributed, a legislator CAN'T REPRESENT THE DISTRICT AT ALL. It's PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. So he represents lobbyists instead of his district.

Lunacy: The hyperdemons decided that the Census can't have a question about citizenship. The SINGLE SOLE SOLITARY PURPOSE of the census is to determine who's eligible to vote, which means PRECISELY AND SOLELY that the CENSUS IS A QUESTION ABOUT CITIZENSHIP. That's ALL IT IS. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS, NOTHING ELSE. Now the census is prohibited from asking the ONLY QUESTION IT IS MEANT TO ASK.

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

  ¶ 10:48 AM

  Not Orwell
"New" "revelations" about the NYTimes are "shocking":

The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.

Nothing new. Always been that way. The myth of newspapers as counterforces to government has always been total nonsense.

The phrase "paper of record" is supposed to be ironic and Orwellian. I've always gone along with that supposition, and I've used the phrase that way.

Convective thought: No, it's not ironic or Orwellian. The original simple meaning of a "newspaper of record" comes from the distant past when every city with a population over 2000 had many newspapers. The city GOVERNMENT picked and paid one newspaper to carry Legal Notices about lawsuits, property transfers, probated wills, etc.

PAPER OF RECORD explicitly means GOVERNMENT-CONTROLLED OUTLET.
  ¶ 8:15 AM

  Three facts
While both R and D continue to bash Persia for "malign behavior", here's a set of THREE FACTS.

I knew one of the facts already. The other two were surprising.

1. Persia has an excellent universal health care system for its own citizens. (I knew this already)

2. Persia is taking care of ONE MILLION REFUGEES from OUR wars in Iraq and Syria.

3. The universal health care extends to the refugees as well, though it's not free. The UN is paying for the service.

This is "malign behavior". This is "violating human rights". All of our idiots (except Tulsi) agree firmly with Sheldon Adelson that Persia must be obliterated to stop its "malign behavior".

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

  ¶ 1:22 AM

  Both right but both missing the point
Via Eurekalert, profs are having to compete with iPhones in class, and they don't like it.

Students think it is instructors' responsibility to ensure they don't surf the web in class, according to a new study.

Although most students used technology in class to keep up with the course, some also used it to catch up on other classes, or because they felt bored and not engaged in the classroom. Students felt strongly that it is their right to use technology as they see fit, since they are adults paying for their education.

Well, the students have a point about paying.

"Some students said that instructors need to be more entertaining to keep students engaged in the classroom, but this a big ask, given that we are not employed in the entertainment industry," says Neiterman. "There is also a question of what we are preparing our students for: If we are training them for future employment, we might need to teach them to focus even if the class is 'boring.'"

The majority of instructors understood that banning technology in class is not an answer.

Another good point about focus.

Both are missing the BIG POINT.



If the students are WORKING WITH THEIR HANDS, doing REAL PRODUCTIVE WORK involving all of their SENSES AND MUSCLES, they won't have any spare hands or spare attention or spare brainpower for iPhones. When Nature is providing the "entertainment", the instructor doesn't need to be a standup comedian.

= = = = =

Disclaimer: I have a vested interest in "technology to keep up with the course", aka courseware. I try to make it as interactive and sense-absorbing as possible, but I know that software is NO SUBSTITUTE for hands and muscles and noses.

Labels: Entertainment, Experiential education

  ¶ 10:43 PM

  Askedanswered

Labels: Askedanswered

  ¶ 5:55 AM

  Just another night
Typical night in Spokompton...

Labels: Entertainment, Make or break

  ¶ 5:27 AM

  Thanks Ralph 131, depuppetation edition
Via RT:

Baghdad will not allow Washington to use its military bases to launch an attack on Iran, the country's president stressed, thrashing Donald Trump's warmongering policies towards the Islamic Republic.

“We do not want our territory to be a staging post for any hostile action against any of our neighbors, including Iran,” Iraq's President Barham Salih told CNN, noting that there is no agreement between Baghdad and Washington that could make Donald Trump think he can use it as such.

This destroys the only "strategic" reason for removing Saddam.

After the WMD myth dissolved, "strategists" justified the 2003 war as a steppingstone toward obliterating Persia, which has always been the main goal of our bosses in Israel. Supposedly we were killing millions of people in one country as a warning to people in another country.

When I was still idiotically consuming and digesting TV, I swallowed this shit. It sounded rational to a TV-poisoned mind. After I tossed the TV in 2010, all of this crazy nonsense was purged.

Now our "reformed" "democracy" in Iraq has mysteriously turned out to be a real democracy, serving its own people instead of Israel.

Thanks, Ralph!

Labels: EXTREME SUPREME ABSOLUTE DEFINITIVE FINAL Emersonian justice

  ¶ 11:29 PM

  Missing the line
O'Keefe follows up the Gennai expose with some emails leaked by another Googler. The emails were proposing that "nazis" like Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager should be removed from the Suggested For You list.

First, the proposal wasn't carried out. When I watch populists like Farage and LePen, Youtube tries to steer me toward Shapiro and Prager.

Second. Shapiro and Prager are standard neocons, not dissenters or populists. They follow Buckley, not Farage. When Google suggests Prager, Google is trying to steer me back toward globalism.

O'Keefe is dividing the world between Right and Left. This is no longer the important line. The vast majority of globalist leaders, from Soros to Zuckerberg to Bezos to Macron, are hard-line CAPITALISTS. They all agree on ZERO TAX and ZERO BORDERS and INFINITE WAR and INFINITE DEBT.

Localist and traditionalist leaders are more varied, but most would lean toward the 'socialist' side, favoring strict government control of monopoly capital, and more government assistance for poor people.

Needless to say, this pogrom is brought to you by Google's ETHICS team. As always, ETHICS means genocide.

Labels: Ethics

  ¶ 3:28 PM

  More honest
Pointless convective thought.

Our government used to be more honest. The WAR DEPARTMENT made war.

When Deepstate was reanimated after FDR died, the War Department was renamed the Defense Department. Since 1945, all of our wars have been unnecessary and vicious and genocidal AGGRESSION against foreign countries and AGGRESSION against our own citizens. We've made NO EFFORT to defend our borders, NO EFFORT to provide bomb shelters. We invite gangsters from Latin America, bring them across the border, and transport them into US cities where they can help to slaughter the citizens. The dysgovernment has done everything possible to remove SELF-defense from citizens.
  ¶ 8:11 AM

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

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

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

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

= = = = =

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

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

= = = = =

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

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

Labels: Carver, Constants and Variables, se-lu

  ¶ 7:12 AM