Barley shrinkflation?
Undoubtedly a dumb question.

When I switched back to vegy diet in 2010, I decided to use barley instead of rice as the 'base'. It's more nutritious and less starchy than rice. I've been buying Safeway's house brand Signature barley ever since, and the product has always been consistent.

Last month Safeway switched brands to Goya. I didn't think a commodity like barley could be different, but this is different. The grains are half the size, and they cook up with a lot more starch and less taste. Most of the grains are missing the structure of a barley grain.

With the house brand, all of the grains looked like barley when dry, and looked like fatter barley when cooked. With Goya, all of the grains are little unmarked white things when dry, and a few of them end up looking like barley when cooked.

I don't understand the difference. Maybe the Goya is milled longer, taking off more of the grain? At any rate it's less satisfying and possibly less nutritious.

I'll look in the 'organic' aisle and see if they still have unshrunk barley there.

Labels: Asked and unanswered

  ¶ 1:24 AM

  Will be interesting
Apparently an "unknown number" of Swine Flu cases have been transported to Spokane via high-security military aircraft. They may be from one of the idiot cruise ships**. It's no big deal here; I didn't know about it until I read it in one of the NYC stock demon twits.



Shorts and longs, all paid by the same master, working together to drive the "economy" ever upward.

It will be interesting to see if there's any response here, any masks or panic.

There won't be any response in this neighborhood. No snowflakes here. Hump up and take it types. Working-class whites, old vets, Russian emigres, Injuns, blacks. The snowflakes are in Browne's Addition and the new Kendall Yards 'urban haven'.

I'm more worried about the response by schizies. A certain type of schizy feels the need to participate in Official Terrorist Events. Sacred Heart has the isolation unit where the Swine Flu patients are arriving, and (I think) Sacred Heart also has a psych ward with occasionally troublesome schizies.

= = = = =

** Cruise ships are ALWAYS virus incubators. Many cruises are halted when a stomach virus takes over. I can't BEGIN to understand why anyone would want to spend thousands of dollars to mingle with thousands of idiots, all pretending to have fun, inviting all sorts of trouble. Hurricanes, diseases, pirates, capsizing. Nature takes revenge on such idiots. Unfortunately the rest of us end up paying for the revenge.

= = = = =

Later after the usual store trip: Yup. As predicted, no panic, no masks, no conversation about flu. People sneezing and coughing as usual without covering mouth, nobody worrying about it.

Equally predictably, the demon media are doing their genocidal job of creating panic and chaos and crime:



= = = = =

Next day: Yup, here we go with the schizies!

Labels: Heimatkunde, Shared Lie

  ¶ 4:47 PM

  Erdogan is fucking crazy
It's discouraging to watch a leader who once had a firm grasp on reality descend into self-destructive craziness.

Turkey has been playing US against Russia for many decades. The coquette routine works when you're offering favors in return for favors. It doesn't work in the current situation.

Erdogan has inserted himself BETWEEN Russia and USA in Syria, fighting AGAINST both sides. And now he wants USA and Russia to give him more weapons so he can fight AGAINST both sides.

This is like parachuting into Normandy on D-Day and shooting both ways at once, then asking FDR and Hitler for more bullets to shoot more American and Kraut soldiers.



Crazy beyond crazy beyond crazy.

Labels: Alternate esrevinu, Turkey

  ¶ 9:03 AM

  Bernie's right about this
Via ZH:

Sanders midway through took umbrage at Bloomberg for implying Bernie was a communist or, perish the thought, that socialism often leads to the totalitarian curse of communism.

“Let’s talk about Democratic Socialism. Not communism, Mr. Bloomberg. That’s a cheap shot. Let’s talk about what goes on in countries like Denmark, where Pete correctly pointed out; they have a much higher quality of life …We have socialism for the very rich. Rugged individualism for the poor,” Sanders stated, ripping into Bloomberg.

Sanders called it a “cheap shot.” It wasn’t. It was the truth.

No, it's not the truth. I don't feel like defending Bernie in general, but he's exactly right on all questions of socialism and communism. Soft socialism never leads to Soviet communism.

Soviet communism succeeded in countries where capitalism or feudalism had failed. Soviet communism DIDN'T succeed in countries where soft socialism was already in control. Socialism is a vaccine against Stalinism. FDR understood this point thoroughly.
  ¶ 6:55 AM

  Just odd
The city of Spokane is reminding drivers not to leave their cars warming up in the driveway. Open invitation to theft. Oddly, the picture they use is a car that was never imported to the US, a mid-60s British Ford Cortina. The car is LHD, so presumably it was Canadian.

Maybe not so odd. They caught MY attention and kept it! Would it work as well for a normal viewer who isn't a fan of weird old cars?
  ¶ 6:10 AM

  Not taking his or her own advice
From a "study" on scientific communication, aimed at killing the maximum number of Climate Denialists and Xenophobes and Vaccine Denialists:

Study participants tested the theory by completing a 19-question survey on authenticity. Survey questions were based on a description of published plant science research and a group of randomly assigned narrative messages attempting to explain that research. The group of messages included a story drawn from the real-life experiences of J. Chris Pires of how he became interested in plant science. Pires is a Curators Distinguished Professor in the Division of Biological Sciences in the MU College of Arts and Science, and an investigator in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center.

Researchers found that if a scientist shares the story of the development of the origin of his or her interest in the subject through a first-person narrative -- without use of institutional affiliations -- people are more inclined to perceive him or her as authentic.

The overall point is unquestionably true. When I see an expert introduced with a 200-word list of his Named Chairs and Directorships of Centres, I stop reading.

The introduction of Pires fails to learn the lesson of the "study".

First-person narrative isn't especially important. Impersonal objective style is fine as long as you keep it clear and uncluttered. No PC locutions, no grammarrhoid sentence structures.

= = = = =

A bit later, via Eurekalert, here's a scientific press release that gets everything right for clear communication.

Headline:

New research takes p*** out of incontinence

Best headline of the year. The article gets to the point, skips the 200-word CV for the researchers, explains the problem, and describes the limits and potentials of the solution. No obligatory mention of Climate Emergency, no obligatory mention of Evolution. Just the facts.

The explanation is so clear that it answered a question I'd been wondering about for years. After age 50 I started having short pee intervals, and assumed it was just prostate. I took some supplements for prostate, but they didn't help. At age 60 I finally got blood pressure under control, and the peeing problem disappeared. The article tells why: High blood pressure swells up all tissues, including the tissues of the bladder. Less room for urine inside. Simple.

Labels: Asked and De-answered, TMI

  ¶ 12:11 AM

  Wrong question
There's a new and pointless "debate" about eugenics, apparently started by Universal Idiot Dawkins.

Pointless because the "debate" is happening in Sorosian countries where the governments have already decided the question. At the leading edge of Sorosia, in places like California and Belgium and UK, eugenics is solidly allowed and moving fast toward required.

The non-Soros countries, led by Russia, are moving fast in the other direction.

Eugenics is just one of many symptoms of Sorositis. Arguing against it is like trying to affect the natural weather cycle by restricting CO2. Wrong end of the process.

The question under "debate" is:

How many oddballs should we kill?

= = = = =

As always, "Robust Debates" are auctions where both "sides" bid up the kill count.

The religious "side" says we should only kill some oddballs as a first step. The Dawkins "side" says we should kill more than all oddballs immediately.

Here's the real question:

Do we want civilization or not?

= = = = =

Civilization, as defined by God, makes places for all sorts of productive talents and tastes and tendencies, but punishes or eliminates people who persistently attack and kill others.

Eugenics is NOT about eliminating killers. The backers of eugenics are EXPLICITLY against punishing professional criminals.

How do we make civilization? How do we make places where many types of non-destructive people can be useful? First we need to have lots of PLACES. Separate places. Modularity. Sovereign countries, semi-sovereign provinces and cities, separated neighborhoods, businesses that can operate solely in separated neighborhoods without predation from globalized monsters.

The non-Soros side of the world is moving toward sovereignty at all levels, and trying to block globalized monsters.

Labels: Jail mode, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, skill-estate

  ¶ 11:23 PM

  Elon's five-star restaurant
The TeslaCharts podcast is turning out to be a good listen, mainly because of the male and female cohosts. Most radio shows in recent decades are all-male for obvious reasons.

The latest one features 'Machine Planet', the commentator I mentioned yesterday with a slight quibble.

Usually the personality revealed in a podcast is less interesting than the personality shown in blogs or Twitter. Introverts! In this case it's the other way around. 'Machine Planet' sounds sort of numberoid and accountantish in print, but lively and extroverted in voice.

Lots of good thoughts in the podcast. The best was by cohost 'Georgia'. Discussing the immense trash piles and waste visible in all Tesla plants, which would NEVER BE ALLOWED in any other factory anywhere, 'Georgia' made a sharp comparison.

Super-rich fuckhead investors pour money into "environmentalist" Elon without noticing the trash and waste and pollution. The same super-rich fuckheads eat in five-star nouveau cuisine restaurants without noticing that the ingredients are old and spoiled, and the kitchens are rat-infested fire hazards. Symbolic status is EVERYTHING for rich fuckheads.

My comment:

Elon's trash piles would NEVER BE ALLOWED by state and federal agencies, and even before those agencies existed, the trash would NEVER BE ALLOWED by efficient manufacturers. Carmakers have always been super-careful to minimize waste and maximize REAL recycling. Every stage of forging, pressing, cutting, welding, and assembly is designed from the start to leave nothing behind. All raw material and all labor is accounted for. Elon violates all the established rules of manufacturing and still pulls in billions from investors who like to talk about "efficient markets". Elon violates all the environmental and safety laws established long before Gaia, and never gets punished or regulated by the agencies or the Gaia-worshiping investors.

When you have Epstein connections, you have absolute power. Blackmail conquers the universe.

Labels: $TSLAQ, Carbon Cult

  ¶ 7:07 AM

  Speaking of standardization....
Several months ago I "built" some semaphore towers and semaphore equipment. Now I'm making acetylene stuff, including a couple of lighthouses.

The Russian semaphore tower was built in 1858 by the Russian military under Nicholas 1. I used a sketch as guidance.

The Chumbe lighthouse was built in 1904 in the British colony of Zanzibar, presumably by British military contractors. It still exists, so I was able to use clear photos for guidance.

I always like to include some interior pieces in these buildings for completeness. If an artist wants to make an adventurous picture, his characters should be able to reach the top of a tower via ladder or stairway while fighting with Ninja swords or light sabers or whatever.

When I started to make a ladder for the Chumbe, I thought the Russian tower's ladder might be adaptable.



Sure enough, it fits with only a little adjustment.

These towers were built at different times by different people for different purposes, but their dimensions are remarkably similar. England and Russia have a history of real cooperation behind adversarial noises.

Labels: Metrology

  ¶ 4:21 AM

  Bespoke radios
American Radio Library has added a few issues of a newsletter from McMurdo Silver, one of the most expensive radios of the '30s. I've never seen one. They were rare for a good reason.

In no sense of the word is the MASTERPIECE V standardized. Each one is different, each one custom built to the exact specifications and needs of its particular owner.

Basically, the MASTERPIECE V which we offer you is an extraordinarily flexible basic design having certain fundamental characteristics. Upon this flexibility is erected the structure of your own particular receiver.

With your order you give us information about your antenna location, your home, your reception conditions and your own particular desires and specifications of what you want.

With this data at hand, McMurdo Silver personally plans and lays out your own radio and supervises its building to these exact specifications. Through building and preliminary test and adjustment, this is your radio, not a standardized averaged radio, but your own special set.

Despite the 'bespoke' verbiage, all McMurdo radios looked the same.



You can see that they're all the same chassis, clumsily inserted in different cabinets. The cabinets are also clumsy and ill-proportioned.

A closeup shows an even worse problem:



The dial bezel is stylish but the knobs are generic and cheap. Ham operators and experimenters bought these knobs. No professional manufacturer used them. Better knobs were available from regular suppliers, and the professional radiomakers commissioned or made their own knobs to match their elegant cabinets. Even GenRad, which sold only to industrial customers, had its own style in dials and knobs.

Why would you pay bespoke prices for a clumsy standardized radio that looked like something a ham cobbled together from junkbox parts?

Later: Here's an exception to the rule. A ham station with high-quality knobs.
  ¶ 1:12 AM

  Win-win, fun-fun
I've been trying to figure out why we're hearing all these Repooflican-style soundbites from Bloomberg. When a topic gets into the media and isn't instantly silenced, we're supposed to take in the topic and digest it. If we weren't supposed to hear this stuff, we wouldn't hear it.

Figured it out after writing a brief comment on an article about Bloomberg:

Bloomberg vs Trump is the perfect "election" for Hillary. Clinton puppet vs Clinton puppet. The Clinton mob wins both ways. Bloomberg wouldn't be as much fun because he couldn't be used as an Official Hate Target. Hillary wouldn't be able to dissociate her brand from her actions.

Aha. I was missing the point.

Here's why we're getting these Bloomberg clips that sound like the standard parody of Repooflican rhetoric on race and class. Bloomberg is being sprayed with orange paint. He's being prepared as a slightly different and shorter version of Trump, so the Epstein-Clinton mob can continue to use him as Official Hate Target. The fun must continue either way.

Why do Bloomberg and Trump stand still for the spraying? It's not obvious to non-power-seeking people, but a memory from high school helps. The principal, Mr Bishop, was a smart power seeker. He was a short bald man at a time when baldness wasn't fashionable. [Shortness is never fashionable.] Everyone called him Old Chromedome when he wasn't watching. So: At pep rallies Mr Bishop officially became Old Chromedome. When he came out to start the rally, the band played the cartoonish Parump-tee-dump, parump-tee-dump thing. Laughing was required. Miss Marley, the classic frumpy old maid who looked like a cash register, appeared after Chromedome, accompanied by The Stripper theme.

Channeling hate into Officially Approved Events makes it easier for the Official Hate Target to keep power during the Unofficial Hours. Orwell missed this point when he made Immanuel Goldstein a separate character.

Parump-tee-trump, parump-tee-trump...
  ¶ 11:06 PM

  Too soon old, too late smart
I've been shaving with Norelco from the start. Only three shavers... first one given by parents on 16th birthday, second inherited from Grandpa in 1974, third bought in 1992. Replaced the blades a few times along the way. Very little use of materials and electricity.

After 54 years of useless experience with one type of machine, I just now figured out the right way to do it. DON'T PUSH. A light touch works. The harder you push the less you shave.

Pushing seems logical, but in this case it's wrong.

Labels: coot-proofing, NOT skill-estate, TMI

  ¶ 6:03 AM

  Archeological Sitzfleisch
Archeologists are willing to spend serious time on a task!

Professor Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, who works as the curator at the Lowie Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, spent fifteen years deciphering the clay tablets which were uncovered and excavated in Syria by French archaeologists in the early 1950s. The tablets, it has been confirmed, formed “a complete cult hymn and is the oldest preserved song with notation in the world.”

The article includes a MIDI rendition of the song with accompaniment, which probably would have been harps or lyres.

It doesn't sound anything like traditional Arab music or early European music. It sounds more Oriental, like this Korean song.
  ¶ 4:44 AM

  More nonsense about random sequences
BBC tries to deal with the contrast between mathematical random and human random. Specifically they're talking about the tendency to bet against a streak.

This isn't a math error. It's natural, and in most situations it's a valid response to reality. It's only a counterproductive fallacy when the events are TRULY mathematically random, like the numbers in a lottery. (I was going to list some other examples like the pennies of a stock price, but lottery numbers are the ONLY common example. Stock prices are rigorously controlled down to the femtopenny by HST. Every microvariation is designed to benefit somebody, and it ain't you.)

When a streak or run happens in a natural or human-controlled sequence, it's NOT just part of randomness. It's meaningful. We should recognize it as a trend or phase, and in fact we usually do.

Here's a situation where betting against a streak is a VALID response:

One team of researchers recently analysed US judges’ decisions on whether or not to grant asylum to refugees. Logically speaking, the ordering of the cases should not matter. But in line with the gambler’s fallacy, the team found that the judges were up to 5.5% less likely to grant a case if they had granted the two previous cases – a serious decline from the average acceptance rate of 29%. Consciously or not, they seemed to think that the chances of having the same judgement three times in a row was just too small, and so they were more inclined to break the streak.

The researchers next analysed bank staff considering loan applications. Once again, the order of the applications made a difference: the loan officers were up to 8% more likely to reject an application after they had already accepted two or more in a row – and vice versa.

Both of these are HUMAN-CONTROLLED sequences where we KNOW that organizations are at work. When you receive a dozen asylum or loan applications that look similar, the applications are NOT random. They were created by an NGO, a "human rights" organization attempting to storm the gates. The technique is well known by front-line agents who handle such applications. Breaking the storm is a correct and PRODUCTIVE response.

Labels: Real World Math

  ¶ 12:10 AM

  Good observation, inadequate reason
Comment from one of the Tesla skeptics on Elon's permanent habit of "inventing" things that have been perfectly common and ordinary for centuries:

Pardon me but I can't say this enough: Musk could never have got away with his schtick 25 or 30 years ago; it's all enabled by the collapse of science education and knowledge of popular history. We've entertained ourselves into suckerdom.

Partly right, partly open to question. For sure Elon couldn't have done it a few decades earlier. Nobody would have bought his shtick or his shtock.

But I wouldn't blame the collapse of science education. Science ed was HORRIBLE in 1970. I think it's slightly better today. It's certainly not worse or 'collapsed' today.

Science ed outside the classroom is BRILLIANTLY better today for students who take advantage of it. Beautiful and informative demonstrations and animations of every conceivable topic are easily available on Youtube. [And some of the animations are available right here in this blog!]

In 1970 you couldn't see those demonstrations or animations. Everything was text or still pictures. Even historical science events that had ALREADY HAPPENED weren't available in 1970. Physics classes watched filmstrips of the Tacoma Narrows bridge. Real films existed, but we didn't see them. Now you can see the real films. The same applies to medical topics and optical demonstrations and acoustic ... and everything you can imagine.

You can see all** of Elon's fake "inventions" in their original century-old forms. Electric cars, early pneumatic subways, solar roofs, all of it.

It's all there at your fingertips, with Youtube's "suggested" serving as a helpful librarian.

If you want text and still pics, you can read centuries of real science publications in Google Books and American Radio Library and dozens of other places. A tiny fraction of those publications would have been available to a 1970 university student who was willing to trudge up and down 10 flights of narrow stairs in the Old Stacks of the library carrying hefty volumes. Most would have been completely inaccessible in other libraries and other countries.

So the problem isn't in available education and available knowledge. The problem is that nobody WANTS to take advantage of the knowledge. Elon's cultists are just as blindly loyal as any apocalyptic cult. They cut out all sources of competing knowledge.

= = = = =

** Well, not all. Some of his fake "inventions" are so catastrophically stupid that nobody would have bothered with them before. Nobody invented a long metal tube for traveling through caves because everyone who had been in a cave knew how caves are arranged.

Labels: $TSLAQ, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 2:52 PM

  Egregiously ignorant
Via ZH, Bloomberg shows his typical NYC ignorance of the real world.

"I could teach anybody, even the people in this room" to be a farmer, said Bloomberg during a 2016 talk at Oxford University in a now-viral clip in which he called agriculture a process. "You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn."

Bloomberg then described metalworkers similarly.

"You put the piece of metal in the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow, and you can have a job."

Working in the information economy is “fundamentally different, because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze. And that is a whole degree level different. You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”

Jesus.

Farming is the deepest and most educated skill in the world. It takes many generations to develop a good farm and a good farmer, and the two must develop together.

Bloomberg not only displayed his own typical NYC decorticate vacuous cranial cavity, he made a reverse comparison with the "information economy". Farming and metal work have been computerized longer than just about anything else.

The first time I saw a desktop computer was in 1974 at Parsons Grain Company. I was working for an elevator repair firm, and I had delivered some of our equipment to the elevator. As I was waiting to fill out forms, Mr Parsons proudly showed me his completely computerized loading and storage system, and his web-connected computer to keep track of grain prices and futures. At that time I'd never seen a computer in actual use; I'd only seen the mainframes in university facilities.

Metalwork has been computerized MUCH longer. From Wikipedia's history of CNC machine tools:

The birth of NC is generally credited to John T. Parsons and Frank L. Stulen,[3] working out of Parsons Corp. of Traverse City, Michigan. In 1942, Parsons was told that helicopters were going to be the "next big thing" by the former head of Ford Trimotor production, Bill Stout. He called Sikorsky Aircraft to inquire about possible work, and soon got a contract to build the wooden stringers in the rotor blades. At the time, rotor blades (rotary wings) were built in the same fashion that fixed wings were, consisting of a long tubular steel spar with stringers (or more accurately ribs) set on them to provide the aerodynamic shape that was then covered with a stressed skin. The stringers for the rotors were built from a design provided by Sikorsky, which was sent to Parsons as a series of 17 points defining the outline. etc....

A lathe operator has been a computer operator for many decades.

NYC ignorance is meta-ignorance. The NYC demon doesn't know anything about reality AND doesn't know that humans can instantly recognize how fucking stupid the NYC demon is.

(Next day, a somewhat smarter thought on the subject.)

Labels: infinite STUPID

  ¶ 10:33 AM

  Multifocal fuckhead
Article by Godwin, the writer of Godwin's Law.

He's been around the net since the BBS/USENET days, and he's been a lawyer dealing with net cases most of that time.

He says he used to be pure libertarian, but now he's starting to believe that more controls are needed because the WRONG SORT OF PEOPLE are using freedom. RUSSIAN_MEDDLING can't be allowed to MALIGN_BEHAVIOR the web, and of course non-Sorosians need to be EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE. Individual Liberty requires it. Individual Liberty means Soros owns everything.

Here's one focus of idiocy:

Another thing we clearly got wrong is how large platforms would rise to dominate their markets—even though they never received the kind of bespoke regulated-monopoly partnership with governments that, generations before, the telephone companies had received. In most of today’s democracies, Google dominates search and Facebook dominates social media. In less-democratic nations, counterpart platforms—like Baidu and Weibo in China or VK in Russia—dominate their respective markets, but their relationships with the relevant governments are cozier, so their market-dominant status isn’t surprising.

Nonsense. Google was a government contractor from the start. Long before the web, big tech companies were primarily government contractors. It started in 1946 and it was already obvious in 1960 when Ike talked about it.

Second focus of idiocy:

Alternatively, as in this 2019 piece by Matt Schruers, the newly appointed president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, it’s sometimes called “the moderator’s dilemma,” where opposing incentives lead either to the suppression of viewpoint diversity or to websites “plagued with off-topic content, trolling, and abuse.”

One reason we need to keep Section 230 safe—a reason I didn’t have the foresight to champion back in the 1990s—is that it’s crucial to fighting disinformation: It allows internet platforms to curate their content without necessarily increasing liability.

Platforms have always curated content. It's called publishing. Publishers have always worked within the constraints of liability for real harm. Publishers didn't need Section 230. Moderating specialized forums has always been a hard job. Do you kick out the asshole who really knows his stuff but can't stop lording it over others? Or do you stay loose and keep the asshole's valuable knowledge while losing some newbies? Alphia Hart discussed it often in his 1950's anti-Hubbard magazine Aberree. Editors of radio hobbyist newsletters discussed it in the '30s. It's just part of the job. No easy solution.

Third focus of idiocy:

I remain skeptical as to whether tactics like microtargeting and demographic profiling, whether used by political campaigns or foreign governments, are as effective at manipulating people as some critics fear, but I see nothing wrong with using legal and policy tools to stop malicious actors from trying to use these tools.

Nothing new about profiling. It's called knowing your customers. Scammers have always done the best job of knowing their customers. The post office and Ma Bell always made efforts to stop scammers, though it was easier with mail. Also, in previous decades media tried to educate people about the techniques of scammers. Now that our entire "economy" is mobs and rackets, nobody wants to train the suckers.

But Godwin isn't talking about scammers when he says MALICIOUS ACTORS. The keyword means only one thing. Surprise surprise surprise.

I still believe that, but here in 2020 I’m also haunted by the challenges we face everywhere in the world in this century, ranging from climate change to income inequality to the (not-unrelated) resurgence of populist xenophobia and even genocidal movements.

Freedom is fine as long as the free people are 100% SorosThought. Any entity that is not 100% SorosThought is MALICIOUS_ACTOR MALIGN_BEHAVIOR and must be EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE.



The only genocidal movements are on your side, fuckhead. Greta is explicitly and joyfully genocidal.

Is Godwin just an idiot, or is he an AP? I'm inclined toward idiot. The centralizing nature of the web was perfectly clear in the '80s. NSA was the central node, and NSA developed the web for its own ends, not for "liberty". The other problems have been around long before the web, and didn't inspire "libertarians" to favor total censorship.

Meta-Godwins-Law left as exercise for reader.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, Aberree, Carbon Cult, malign misattribution, Sorosia

  ¶ 11:05 PM

  Open question
Just noticed that the previous two items are metaphorically identical. Honest beacons vs corrupt beacons, honest experts vs corrupt experts.

The first problem was solved when governments took control of all lighthouses and kicked out the wreckers.

Obviously we can't eliminate the expert wreckers the same way, because government is already paying and controlling the wrexperts.

Stepping back: Who forced governments to clean up the wreckers? The shipping industry, which was crucial to the success of governments. Tariffs and excise taxes depended on ships getting from origin to destination without wrecking. Corrupt aristocrats were less important than the tariffs.

Is there a way to create the same economic counterforce or GUILD among people who want and need uncorrupted facts? Can we reverse Zuesse's idea? I can't see it, but the question is worth some thinking.

Trinity House is funded by user fees charged to ships. If you reach port safely, you have to thank the beacons and buoys and foghorns for helping you get there. What would you pay for a certified fact beacon, which always brings your thinking and writing into port safely? A sharp acetylene light that busts through all the Shared Lies and illuminates simple truth? A beacon that never disagrees with experience and observations, never agrees with theories or Deepstate or bankers or politicians or "social" "science"?

Is there a tax or benefit to government that can be threatened by a guild withdrawing support? Probably not. Sorosian dysgovernments run solely on debt, in a closed satanic circle with the demonic bankers. Print money, print bonds, buy bonds with money. Revenue no longer motivates dysgovernments. No feedback allowed.

Even aside from funding, the idea is completely impractical. If the Guild's leaders wanted to survive, the organization would have to be off-planet, unreachable by US rockets and unjammable by NSA. So it would be incapable of communicating the truth.

Could the guild be implemented without leaders? Could it be an unconquerable digital virus, penetrating all networks, halting and discarding all signals from all sources connected at any level of remoteness to Deepstate? No. Unconquerable is impossible. NSA would flip it.

Labels: Asked and unanswered, skill-estate, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:17 AM

  Beacons and counterbeacons
I was thinking and reading about the remarkable continuity of beacons. This Acetylene journal has a nice long history of lighthouses and buoys, focused naturally on acetylene.

Beacons have been important parts of shipping for thousands of years, and beacons have also been an important metaphor.



From the Iliad:

So, tonight, wandering sailors pale with fears,
Wide o'er the watery waste, a light appears.
Which, on the far-seen mountain blazing high,
Streams from some lonely watch-tower to the sky.

Lighthouses and buoys used unique sequences of colors or flashes to identify their location. Radio beacons for ships and aircraft adopted the practice with identifiable sequences of Morse. Those sequences turned into call letters, which were later extended to broadcast stations.

Through the same long history, hackers have faked beacons to force shipwrecks and steal the loot:

St. Agnes, Scilly, light, built in 1680. shows an improvement by enclosing the fire with glass, forming a lantern, and the use of a stove-pipe for carrying off the smoke and products of combustion. The first keeper of this light was a wrecker and it was noted that very often his light was very dim, rarely extinguished, however, to cover himself, but dim enough to allow vessels to run on shore and be wrecked. The plunder from wrecked ships was found, after a report and investigation, under a coal pile at the lighthouse.

As I was thinking, I noticed this delicious ZH item.

For instance, those making minimum wage at a Burger King somewhere, while honorable work, may not have the luxuries of the billionaire lifestyle - but at least they never have to worry about slamming their super-yacht into the side of a prized coral reef off the coast of Belize.

Because that's the problem that hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb is being forced to deal with this week. Loeb's yacht damaged what is being called a "pristine reef" near the famous Great Blue Hole outside of Belize, according to Bloomberg.

Loeb's 200 foot yacht was filmed last Sunday anchored at Belize's Lighthouse Reef Atoll.

Obviously Loeb's crew wasn't paying attention to the actual modern lighthouse on Lighthouse Reef, nor to the modern beacons of GPS.

Or maybe a wrecker was jamming GPS? Unlikely. Modern wreckers are probably working for the bankers, just as the old wreckers were often corrupt aristocrats:

The grant by the crown for the establishment of these lights was considered to be of so much importance that one of the noted English lords, very near the court and an adviser of the king. Lord Grenville, notes in his diary : "Watch for the time when the king is in a good humor and ask him for a lighthouse." In this way many of the king's favorites absorbed many of the most important stations. This became in time such an intolerable nuisance that the shipping people petitioned the king for redress.

Henry VIII responded to the pressure by founding Trinity House, a mutual benefit association or guild for sailors, and giving it full authority over lighthouses and navigation. Trinity House still exists and still has the same functions. Remarkable continuity for an organization, breaking all of Parkinson's Laws. Serving the same purpose for 500 years, funded the same way for 500 years. Every ship that docks at British ports pays a user fee to Trinity House.

= = = = =

Irrelevant stupid footnote by a fussbudget proofreader type: The last line of Alexander Pope's translation above should be a lonely watch-tower, not some. The previous three lines have a long-legged meter that beautifully captures the light beam skipping over the waves. Some trips up the meter.

Musical footnote: British semi-modern composer Ethel Smyth wrote an opera about the wreckers.

Later: The interactive radio show 'Calling All Detectives' featured modern wreckers in this episode.

Labels: Trinity House

  ¶ 1:19 AM

  Zuesse gets it backwards
Zuesse often shoots a sharp arrow with great precision into a conventional target.

This time he's shooting backwards. He's saying that ANY censorship is the mark of a dictatorship, and ALL censorship must be banned. He confesses that the ban is hard to imagine and hard to do in practice, but his proposed alternative is no improvement at all.

On print or broadcast media, every news-piece will be controlled in real time by its audience so as to determine what the questions are and then to bring into the presentation randomly selected scientifically qualified experts regarding each such question. For example: on the question of climate-change, the experts would be individuals who have terminal graduate-level degrees in each of the related climatology sub-specialties, such as those listed at Wikipedia, but also in essential related fields such as economics (an important climatological sub-specialty that’s not listed there). If, indeed, over 90% of climatologists agree that man-made global warming is a reality, then the result of this method of selecting the “experts” who will be presented is that that viewpoint will be represented by over 90% of the experts — and this outcome would not be controlled by the given ‘news’-medium, nor affected by its advertisers. In other words: only the subject-matter and academic qualifications — no governmental positions or background — would qualify individuals as being “experts” on the given topic. If a terminal degree isn’t a qualification for expertise on a topic, then what is?

We already do what Zuesse proposes. We trust advanced degrees because advanced degrees are given for CONFORMING TO CURRENT ORTHODOXY.

In some academic areas the current orthodoxy is uncontroversial**, so it might be correct. But in all of the areas that CONNECT WITH POLITICS AND NEWS, the current orthodoxy is determined by Deepstate.

In other words, some experts are uncorrupted, but they aren't going to be used by government or media, so they're irrelevant to this discussion.

As to the original question, I don't buy the premise. It's entirely possible to have healthy feedback from people to government in a culture with strong censorship. Most of the rulers we call 'dictators' were able to stay in power because they served the needs and interests of the people. They provided prosperity and freedom from crime, and allowed plenty of room for varied skills and talents. As long as you didn't insult the king or dictator, you could express anything you wanted.

The real problem is not LIMITED information, it's DISTORTED information. And the system Zuesse proposes, which is in fact our current system, guarantees distortion.

= = = = =

** For clarity: In those uncontroversial academic subjects that aren't closely connected to politics or media, the experts tend to be a lot more humble and open to learning and thinking. Every subject has internal orthodoxies and fashions, but it's a lot easier to break the internal fashion when government grants and accrediting agencies aren't enforcing Deepstate's preferred lies. When billions of dollars and institutional prestige depend on Deepstate, everyone will stick firmly to Deepstate's preference.

Labels: Answered better than asked

  ¶ 2:02 PM