thomasjkenney
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@tboc re: ti
Drillium was the other highly prized material of the ’90s bike scene.
Upsidaisium – Rocky & Bullwinkle, one of their finest runs
OK, gotta be a bit of a crank here: Why the phuq would you mine shit in space, then bring it back here?
Ion drive is suitable for small payloads and/or when you really really don’t have to be there overnight.
@tboc re: Putin and MAD
Though ATM he’s ‘the best we got,’ the astute observer will have seen his exceptionalist stripes. “World without Russia…” was a most unfortunate slip. Even if you’re just trying to scare somebody, it’s off-message and irresponsible. What if someday it becomes fashionable to not be a monolithic ‘country’ and we have an attempt at distributed governance? Will the erasure of all countries, Russia included, trigger somebody who can’t let go?
#Mythos
Moire patterns of neural activity, an infinite spectrum of mental experimentation, cause ‘intuition’ and ‘caprice’ and ‘epiphany.’ This is what supercomputers get partly right…the ‘massively parallel’ part of the spark, but the analysis of results is still hampered. The #Logos has to step across each connection in it’s beetle crawl. The spark gets filtered. Steps taken to refine or condense the data are lossy. The gate gets moved closer to the final analysis as we get better machines, but we can’t (yet) get last-mile delivery, and the foundation gets taller and shakier.
You need both #L and #M and the spectrum between. If you have no #Mythos, your STEMs will break.
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Each is given a bag of tools,
Shapeless lives,
And a Book of RulesSchneier has an interesting one today: How AI Will Change Democracy. He admits up front it’s a big pile of ‘what if?’ but it’s an interesting read, and it is time for most humans to begin considering these questions.
Can we do a GoFundMe to pay a bounty for collection of independent telescopic observations of our Lagrange Points?
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last laugh
They won’t last, and I won’t laugh.
parallel universe
“Welcome to the Best President Fan Club! Here, you, John Q Citizen, will get a chance to participate in a non-binding vote by paper ballot, hand counted. Results will be published the first week of November in our monthly newsletter. Our curated list of candidates is no limit to your desires. Write in whomever you wish! And we’ll actually publish those results, too!”
Let the statistically significant results flow.
@phoenixvoice re: “I also now understand better what the online health exchanges mean — full access for *any* health care provider to the individual’s complete medical record with no start/end dates. I do not find that idea reassuring — I find it terrifying. The patient/individual cedes all control of their health data to the medical industry.”
Almost immediately after Bush Jr was elected, we had ‘universal default’ rushed into the credit card industry. If you are having trouble with one creditor, that creditor is now free to share your delinquency with all your other creditors…who are now also free to act upon such information in any way they see fit.
I performed a harsh exit from that pool.
…or maybe Brooklyn (Owes The Charmer Under Me).
Rowan Atkinson as Dr Who, with Jonathan Pryce, Hugh Grant, Joanna Lumley
@Dr D re: change is there, but obfuscated
Yes, agree. And that is a finger in my eye for sure. Some things my friends and I felt were inevitable have been squashed. You’ve talked before about “…weapons no work…” being cover for different classes of weaponry under development. You can run GPS navigation from spacecraft that are nowhere near this planet. You can’t do transceiver and expect responsiveness, but you can read signal and triangulate. Sorry, I digress.
Much of the News has always seemed to me an attempt to keep the ‘timeless’ conflicts burning. LA Riots, poor Rodney King. Phuq dat, I went for a bike ride and tried to be at peace with my fellow beings. There’s an old oil patch set aside as a park, named the Gates King Open Space. “Can’t we all just get along?”
To be more on-topic, I think our host does a remarkable job, and we are not at liberty to steer this ship unless input is solicited. I am quite frustrated with various separations that have happened this last decade, particularly losing Foss and others. At that moment, all focus shifted and hasn’t really returned. It’s not that energy/ecology topics have disappeared. They’re being subsumed in a gulf of unnecessary politics (by that, I mean humans shouldn’t require this much overhead to buy a donut).
As another commenter feared yesterday, if it is burn-out, go do something away from people for a while. Immerse in something that isn’t related to Rat Race, and feel that thing to be right as rain if humans weren’t around to interfere. Or start chewing away at your reading list/bucket list/retribution list.
Shut down for a while. We’d miss you dearly. Appoint a trusted friend to run the site, and allow occasional user contribution to keep folks engaged. There are a few people here I end up reading daily anyway, so if it was an official thing, might be good…and might move the focus to new, uncharted lands.
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Give me the New Song:
Sittin’ With A Duck On A Bay – The Aristocrats
@Raul re: lack of topic
Have not much direct answer for that. I will say that most ‘news’ is the same, different cast of characters, forever (from my perspective). In ’90s thru mid ’00s there was plenty of stuff to attract my attention on many topics, especially tech stuff, semiconductors and chip advances, etc. From ’10s onward it was all poisoned well devastation. All the tech journals I’d read (Ars Technica!!!) couldn’t shut up about Russian Hackers. Past decade, poison ruined every TV show and movie. I finally ditched the last remnant of my habit, classical movies, a couple years ago. Now I’ll only watch music interviews/videos and the occasional ‘cute cat clip.’
I just had a very interesting convo with wife re: AI and the ‘nuclear bomb’ nature of that. The legal cleavage, dodge copyright and paying the artist, is double edged. Same with the deep fake aspect. OK, so we can’t believe vid anymore. How do they use that to gin up the hate again? “Didja see that? They killled that guy.” “Yeah, yeah…looks fake.”
Currently, the big news in my world is the stupefying wave of ‘supply chain’ attacks on open source software. Schneier’s Backdoor in XZ Utils That Almost Happened is a good vignette, but even he, who admonishes against easy attribution, winds up blaming Russians.
@Dr D re: space budget and the big booster
Again, I ask… What’s parked at the Lagranges? A bitcoin mine? A laser? A Sanrio factory?
It is my belief that we are past a time when big rockets are the correct strategy. At one time, they were the only solution, we lacking some tech. Now, start small and build the infrastructure to wait for you to arrive. The big rockets are a cool show, but so much wasted effort. It is time to ‘grow into space with our roots’ so to speak. Also my belief, we will have evolved past human in the process in a remarkably short time.
@zerosum re: the simulator – This is gonna kinda veer off a bit.
MS Flight Simulator is very good right now (some bugs), and the next gen looks to be also good. The base program is ~$40 on Steam, but it is a ‘robust framework’ in which 3rd-party authors are writing extremely sophisticated models of planes. There is a price split where the ‘cool’ models that are mostly for fun range from $0-$50 or so. Then the range of actual ‘training’ models begins. Single airliner model could be $150+. The realism re: flight controls and aerodynamic behavior, even air traffic interaction, passenger support systems, is really amazing.
But I noticed a disturbing trend. The more recent airliners leave less and less for the pilot to do, and after a while I feel like a monkey pressing the right button whenever I see a glyph on a screen. An odd, analogous thing happened about 20 years ago. Shortwave radio (HAM) certification dropped some cumbersome requirements, IIRC having to do with calculating radio behaviors and some other technical things. That’s it…dropping the little technical things…that contribute to a rounder comprehension of the subject. The professionals thusly trained are probably OK if they ‘stay on the freeway’ but would be lost out in the bush.
re: Baden-Powell
There’s a mountain near Los Angeles named for him. I visited on one of my first Scout outings, and did many weekend backpacks there…great campsite with cold spring water at 2350m/7800ft, overlooks Edwards AFB and a gigantic swath of the Mojave Desert.
@John Day re: alternate oils
Kerrygold is da best! Dubliner is on the mild side. They have aged cheddars that go great with scrambled eggs and avocado and such. For sandwich cheese and ice cream, Tillamook. They’re central Oregon, so no ocean voyage.
re: avocado – Long time ago we switched to avocado oil mayonnaise. It’s a better flavor, better texture, keeps longer, and can be produced locally – SoCal has forests of avo, right next to the orange forests.
@jb-hb re: navigation time
We still use base-12 time because it is an overlay on, a ‘module’ to accompany, navigation tools. Each cardinal direction is a whole number. Base-10, you only have 0 and 5. If you then go to base-20 or somesuch to solve this, you’re in a bigger mess than the clock issue.
Also, re: Vinge and machine consciousness / op-sys
I’m currently reading another old treasure, Frank Herbert/Bill Ransom, Pandora Sequence. I’ve finished Void and am starting The Jesus Incident. Ship becomes a God, by the work of cloned humans, and demands fealty. It’s kinda hand-in-glove with Clarke’s contention that advanced tech appears as magic to underlings. If Ship has been imbued with the consciousness of a human of questionable morality, why not? Vinge expressed similar in his concept of civilizational ‘ascension’ to some kind of singularity, and software archives as ‘abominations’ that you dare not open…like a cluster bomb with a candy cane and pretty bow on top.
re: The End
Phish does a marvelous ‘medley’ mashup of The End and Careful With That Axe, Eugene, called This Is The End, Eugene. A quote:
MOTHER!!!
Mother…I wanna cook you breakfast!
And then? Then I wanna borrow the car…When I was a juvenile delinquent, we built a tiny cannon using a section of 1″ sprinkler pipe. We threaded a cap on one end, drilled a small hole for a fuse, and then filled and fired. Contents were powder from emptied ladyfingers, and the leftover paper as wadding. Ball was a Japanese ‘pinball’ (only remember the derogatory ‘pachinko’), about 8mm dia. We managed to kill a few old surfboards one afternoon before we lost interest.
It’s probably possible to build a functional flintlock using fired clay. Then you need to brew beer to ensure a good supply of salt peter. 🙂
The oak and the fir accidentally fall on the same patch. They struggle for centuries over the same square meter of surface. It’s a slow, ugly, brutal struggle that leaves each with half a life. John Q Hiker walks by and sees a loving embrace.
Hupa, Yurok, Modoc – These weren’t militarily defeated. They had to be surrounded and ‘put to siege’ until they were assimilated. But the mountains are still theirs, and they bent all interlopers to live as they do or miss the bus. There are many winners and losers on both sides of that conflict.
re: flying man
If you’re a Larry Niven fan, it’s a pretty funny joke! Or maybe a cargo cult call for help…hmmm…
re: obtaining gold
A friend-turned-enemy, 1/4 Hupa person to 3/4 Irish gobshite, once described to me his ‘placer’ technique. He’d take a denuded couch cushion, just the foam rubber part, and place it in the bottom of a gully with intermittent stream. Let it sit for a year, and go back and dig it up. Take it somewhere safe, and dissolve the foam rubber with acid. What’s left is a much higher percentage of gold than would normally be found by panning or sluicing.
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Gomorrah – Jerry Garcia
@Red re: earth beams
Gerrard K O’Neill sleeps restless this night.
@Dr D Rich re: easter shenanigans
Another, very powerful, very hated country (name begins with ‘R’) also has a very strong attachment to Easter. Are the trolls that petty, myopic, panicked? I dunno… This almost seems like an inverted South Park, offend anyone/everyone kinda schtick. Draw thousands more cuts. Segway into…
re: mounting legal challenges
Is Gaza a gigantic ‘wrongful death’ suit in construction? Merely a bigger bite out of the bloated, floundering carcass?
@DB Smith: I believe the correct spelling is ‘foo-farraw’. 🙂
Russian technical expertise is superior, IMO, because they understand the cyclic nature of everything. Hence, much better signals tech (radio, encryption, system integration). ‘West’-ish thinking, at least what can be seen, has been trained linear. Happy ending to every story, or some definite ending of some kind. Do this, and that happens. Work toward a permanent steady state of some kind, and never ever ever allow that new equilibrium to be subverted.
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Dersu Uzala – “Look around. All is people.”
re: weak bridge in a dumb location
We (Los Angeles) have one also… Vincent Thomas Bridge. It’s not vulnerable to direct strike, but it’s situated ‘outside’ about 60% of the capacity of the port. We’re one of 3 big port cities on the west coast.
I always considered it our Winchester Mansion, built in envy of the other great port cities that actually require bridges.
re: bear
That’s another beautiful being denied self-actualization. Look back on your own life and see if you spot the times when you had unrestricted frolic or gambol. “Frammin’ at the Jim-Jam! Frippin’ in the Krotz!”
re: open source gov
Bruce Schneier is your ‘nexus point’ for that. He’s written extensively on the subject, and attends conferences of like-minded for the purpose. Some is hogwash, some is dangerous, some very interesting, and some downright brilliant.
re: bird ball
Notice that the bird is throwing the ball at the pavement. Knowledge of physics, and that the ball has special properties not apparent at a glance. Cats do physics too.
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It is my belief that Samoans are among the elite of human genetic material. Uneducated guesstimate, that.
Fish Stocking – Huell Howser witnesses aerial bombardment of Duck Lake, Sierra Nevada, CA. This is headwaters of Middle Fork San Joaquin River.
I watched half a day of this activity once, near Bishop, CA. There were 2 planes, arrive in tandem, dump in a large lake high in a drainage, then back to the airport for another batch. There are hatcheries that are open to public visit along the east Sierra, including Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, near Manzanar.
IIRC, when I witnessed this (25-30 yrs ago?) it was Desolation Lake, in the Humphreys Basin, South Fork Jan Joaquin. It’s a large lake for alpine zone, and high in it’s drainage with only a few small tarns directly tributary. As a rule, highest lakes in a chain will be dead zone, no fish or very small. The second lake and downstream will have plenty. Not sure why this is the case, something to do with nutrient levels I’m sure (will read about in future). The guy who told me about this went on to distract me with fly tying and usage information, with a convincing demonstration of his skills.
@jb-hb re: loyalty, fealty, branches of spirituality
Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight – This is a translation, but has the original (??) text along-side. It’s quite engaging, but a slog.
re: “That lets the man play Chess and Civilization VI online, making his life much more fun.”
That is just f#(<ing amazing. Samuel R Delany story, Nova (1968), has some characters wired up to mining equipment, industrial machinery, etc.
Civ VI is a puke-inducing greenwash. The whole tech tree ushers you in to AGW, and the other NPCs won’t shut up about it. I played 2 games, and just stopped.
re: Ibogaine
Probably does work. I read some about it back in late ’80s. Very effective, but was said to induce a terrifying 3-day quasi-shamanic journey into your soul. Methadone continued to be popular, for some reason.
re: cultural revolution
Anecdote: Someone I know raised 2 kids to adulthood, and they’re rocketing off to better things. They’re twins. One son, one daughter. The daughter succumbed to the pressure, is a ‘person of alternate lifestyle’ in the most inoffensive way possible. The son has flatly rejected the programming, dropped out of colege, grown a manly beard, found a pike-smart hippie chick…damnest thin I ever saw! 🙂
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@jb-hb: Remember (if you know, express it) that those ‘failings’ are not light-switch. I feel exactly those, but to different degrees. For instance, I am not ambitious, do not desire greatness. Recognition, of course! I can accept much change, in fact seek some just to see it, but I’m brittle in many areas, moreso with age.Thanks for Vinge rec. Read that (Zones of Thought Trilogy) years ago, and will second the rec. He can be as info-dense as Heinlein, really a treat!
I note that many recent actions look to me like attempt to set up Peace Authority (Peace War, Marooned). Anyone not in the club gets busted down to 100-watt-per-day lifestyle.
Relevant to cultural rev – I kinda lost interest in Benford and Vinge when they wrote some very ‘cardboard’ lesbians. No one, especially not lesbians, should forgive them for that. It seemed odd timing, and forced.
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Uncle Jack – Dewa Budjana
re: kugel fountain
SOFIA Telescope – the unit is mounted in a kugel, a colossal gimbal of pressurized oil. This is the same principle used for a crank bearing in ICE. The crank rides on bushings with tiny oil ports. Likewise glacier transport downhill…meltwater bearing.
re: lazarus catfish
That’s a better trick than the antifreze-endowed amphibians of the Arctic.
Good resource for on-the-ground snow conditions in CA: ALERT Wildfire Cams
Bersepeda di hutan. “Everything’s so f#(+ing GREEN!!!“
